3-039-073 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Self-crowned victors: a sketch in the Tuileries Gardens, Paris, 1871. Franco-Prussian War. 'The show apartments in the Palace of the Tuileries, and the galleries of the Louvre, were visited, on the Thursday, by many thousands of the German soldiers, not carrying their arms, agreeably to a clause in the military convention signed at Versailles. These parties were escorted by armed detachments of the French National Guards. Their admission, however, provoked the anger of the Parisians to a dangerous pitch. The Rue de Rivoli was paraded, during several hours, by an agitated crowd, some pressing against the railings of the Tuileries gardens and the Louvre, staring at the Germans, hissing, howling, and otherwise insulting them. The gates were closed and strongly guarded. The Germans while by themselves in the gardens behaved soberly enough, only plucking a few laurel-leaves to wreath their heads with crowns of victory - or, rather, to stick in their helmets or in their forage-caps. This might as well have been spared'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.