The Battle of the Forts.

On the morning of the 26th October, 1884, as his Majesty Louis Philippe was at breakfast reading the Debats newspaper, and wishing that what the journal said about “Cholera Morbus in the Camp of the Pretender Henri,”—“Chicken-pox raging in the Forts of the Traitor Bonaparte,”— might be true, what was his surprise to hear the report of a gun; and at the same instant — whiz! came an eighty-four-pound ball through the window and took off the head of the faithful Monsieur de Montalivet, who was coming in with a plate of muffins.

“Three francs for the window,” said the monarch; “and the muffins of course spoiled!” and he sat down to breakfast very peevishly. Ah, King Louis Philippe, that shot cost thee more than a window-pane — more than a plate of muffins — it cost thee a fair kingdom and fifty millions of tax-payers.

The shot had been fired from Fort Potato. “Gracious heavens!” said the commander of the place to the Irish Prince, in a fury, “What has your Highness done?” “Faix,” replied the other, “Donegal and I saw a sparrow on the Tuileries, and we thought we’d have a shot at it, that’s all.” “Hurroo! look out for squalls,” here cried the intrepid Hibernian; for at this moment one of Paixhans’ shells fell into the counterscarp of the demilune on which they were standing, and sent a ravelin and a couple of embrasures flying about their ears.

Fort Twenty-three, which held out for Louis Philippe, seeing Fort Twenty-four, or Potato, open a fire on the Tuileries, instantly replied by its guns, with which it blazed away at the Bourbonite fort. On seeing this, Fort Twenty-two, occupied by the Imperialists, began pummelling Twenty-three; Twenty-one began at Twenty-two; and in a quarter of an hour the whole of this vast line of fortification was in a blaze of flame, flashing, roaring, cannonadi............