The 12th Legion has formed a battalion of women, who in addition to their other military duties are to disarm publicly all runaways.
The Communal Delegation of the 2d Arrondissement, considering that slavery was considered immoral even before the American War, and that a standing army has been suppressed by the Commune, decrees that all houses of ill fame in their quarter shall be immediately closed, as involving traffic in human beings.
Peter's Restaurant was searched last night, and several arrests were made, among them officers of the National Guard suspected of complicity in the Tricolour Brassard Plot. The Restaurant is closed.
The heaviest firing to-day has been against the Point du Jour. Large pieces of Marine Artillery have been placed on the ramparts behind Montrouge.
A terrific explosion has just (6 o'clock) created general alarm. Enormous volumes of smoke are visible from a great distance. The cartridge manufactory near the École Militaire has exploded. Six hundred employés, chiefly women, are said to have been killed. Bullets were launched in all directions, killing and wounding many passers by.
The Insurgents have constructed a battery of Marine pieces, which much embarrasses the troops and retards the breaching works. Breaches will be opened at three points—namely, at Mortemart, opposite Auteuil, at Bastion 65, opposite the Parc-aux-Princes in the Bois and in the neighbourhood of Vaugirard.
This afternoon the Insurgents fired from three batteries between the left bank ending the viaduct at the Point du Jour and Montrouge. One of these batteries was placed close to the Vaugirard Gate, and its fire was directed to a point at which the Engineers were supposed to be constructing a trench.
There were conflagrations this evening in Auteuil, the Point du Jour, and between the latter place and Vaugirard. The flame and smoke were distinctly visible. We hear it was the blowing up of a powder factory in the Rue de Wagram, Paris, or at the Trocadéro.
The Committee of Public Safety, in order to save the country from a military dictatorship, has associated Civil Commissioners with the various Generals of the Commune. With Dombrowski are joined Burger and Dereuve, with La Cecilia, Johannard, and with Wrobleski, Leo Meillet.
All passenger and goods trains leaving Paris have to stop outside the walls for examination. Trains contravening this order will not be permitted to proceed.