3-039-036 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Bombardment of Paris: effects of a shell bursting in the third 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...In the room...on the third floor, which is...handsomely but plainly furnished, with its pretty wall-paper of floral pattern, its framed prints, and a mirror over the mantelpiece, the shell from above has thrown down a quantity of the ceiling-plaster, by which the bed is covered, and some has fallen upon the table. Three of the chairs are broken by a fragment of the shell, which passed out of this room through a door to the left hand, where it finished by smashing all the crockery in a cupboard. 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.