Returning from the front a correspondent of the London Times sends the following under a Paris date:

“Near Charleroi I heard some stories of the bravery of the French soldiers. The Germans were bombarding the city. The French troops made what amounted to a mediÆval sortie, but, finding the enemy in much greater force than was expected, were compelled to withdraw. The bombardment continued relentlessly, whereupon the French Turcos—picked troops from Algeria—debouched from the town, and, with a gallantry which surely must live in history, charged the

German battery, bayoneting all the German gunners.

“Their losses, it is said, exceeded those of the Light Brigade at Balaklava. Of a whole battalion only 100 men, it is reported, returned unscathed. Their bravery, however, was powerless against the German advance, which crept, foot by foot, through the outskirts of Charleroi to the very heart of the town.

“There in the narrow streets the carnage was indescribable. A French infantryman told me that the roads became so jammed with dead that the killed remained standing upright where they had been shot, supported by their dead comrades.”