3-039-236 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Fighting in Paris: Communists defending the Elysée Palace, 1871. 'The rapidity with which the barricades sprang up was amazing. One passed down a street one hour without difficulty, but, coming back the next, found a barricade three or four feet high already rising across it, and every civilian who came near was expected to lend a hand in making it. It was difficult to get about without being seized and impressed into barricade-building. There was one barricade, of a kind never before seen, extemporised in a few minutes out of bedding and furniture thrown down from the windows of the barracks at the Louvre'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.