NEWS OF THE WEEK • A CTIVE operations against Sontay have
begun at last. Admiral Courbet, in a telegram dated December 160, informs the Minister of Marine that he left Hanoi with his force on December 11th, and by the 16th had carried the outworks of Sontay, consisting, we are elsewhere informed, of five stockaded villages. The French loss was thirteen officers and two hundred and thirty-three men, Marines and Turcos, killed and wounded. This is official, and the Admiral states that the enemy made an "intrepid resistance;" which, again, is proved by the unusual pro- portion of officers killed and disabled. The troops were supported by a heavy fire from the gunboats, which will not be available in the final attack. This was to have been delivered, according to the Admiral, on the 16th, but all other accounts Sir the 17th as the clay. No direct allusion is made to the presence of Chinese Regu- lars in Sontay ; but the Admiral mentions that "the enemy are well armed." The Tonquinese "Black Flags "are notorious for their courage, but the presence of Chinese leaders, despatched from an Empire supposed by them to be irresistible, would greatly increase their determination. We fear, too, that the French commanders, acting on the theory that the Tonquinese are rebels against their own king, have committed the insane mistake of ordering that no quarter should be given, so that their enemies must fight like rata in a corner.
