3-039-035 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Bombardment of Paris: effects of a shell bursting in the fourth storey of a house, 1871. Franco-Prussian War. '...the interior of...a private dwelling house, No. 36, Rue de l'Ouest, at Plaisance, in the fourteenth arrondissement of Paris, after the Prussian bombardment. The [engraving] shows an attic, which has been entered by one of the enemy's shells breaking through the wall of the house, to the right hand, and demolishing that corner of the room; then grazing the ceiling and striking the opposite wall, above the clothes-press, to the left hand; thence falling through the tiled floor, in which three holes were made by different pieces of the shell as it burst asunder, and so descending to the room below. The broken furniture, bedstead, chair, toilet-table, and chest of drawers tell of the tremendous explosion; the sheets of the bed are partly burnt...Whether the persons dwelling in these rooms happened to be at home when the shell came to visit them, by night or by day, we are not informed; but many were killed, and many others wounded, during the cruel bombardment'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.