3-039-232 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Fighting in Paris: on the housetops: Faubourg Poissonnière, 1871. 'The Engraving on our front page, from one of Mr. Simpson's sketches, represents some of the soldiers fighting from the attic windows and roofs...Our Artist made his way through the narrow streets to where the soldiers were firing. He...managed to see the soldiers enter the houses, and use the windows as loopholes or embrasures, from which they got a good position to fire down. More men coming up, all mounted the stairs; every window was garrisoned; at last they appeared on the roof, and taking advantage of every corner for shelter, kept up a heavy fusillade. The women in the houses at first were terrified at finding their homes invaded in this sudden way, but they soon got used to it; and one might see, at some of the windows, a pretty face behind the soldiers trying to get a peep down the street, and to see how the fight was going on. Such a party of soldiers, with their chassepots in their hands, who could clamber along the roofs like birds, might be truly called a "flying column." As this fighting from windows and roofs occurred often in the fighting through Paris, our Artist's sketch illustrates a characteristic phase of the terrible struggle'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.