3-028-577 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Disturbances in Paris: cavalry clearing the boulevards on the night of June 10., 1869. 'There has been unusual turbulence in Paris,...consequent, it would seem, on the excitement stirred up by the late elections. Street rioting, repeated for several successive nights, can never be regarded by any Government as devoid of unwelcome significance...[There were] a great many arrests, some skirmishes with, but more dodging of, the city police, a final demonstration of military force, and a sudden subsidence of tumult and disorder...The cavalry swept the people out of the most crowded...boulevards and streets, but without using their weapons...The people of Paris...have been taught by painful experience the immense costliness and the ultimate worthlessness of revolutions brought about by popular violence...That they are not satisfied with the existing political condition of France was demonstrated by the issue of the recent elections. But neither the upper, the trading, nor the working classes, wide asunder as their political views may be, are anxious to contend for them behind barricades. They have votes, and they consider them more efficient than rifles'. (The Paris Commune revolutionary government seized power in Paris in the Spring of 1871). From "Illustrated London News", 1869.