3-039-241 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Late Events in Paris: "A La Mort!", 1871. Communards resisting the army. '...the soldiers soon had cover enough to fire, comparatively at ease, straight up at the insurgents' barricade, while their comrades at the windows took it from above in flank. It was in this manner that the streets of Paris were slowly but surely occupied by the regular troops. As soon as a barricade was captured, the red flag was taken down and the tricolour flag was put up instead. The defenders of the barricade sometimes yielded themselves prisoners; in other cases they refused quarter and persisted in firing on the troops, aiming particularly at the officers; or they rushed to a last hand-to-hand combat, with savage cries of "A la Mort!" [To the Death!] Upon these occasions, not a man or a woman escaped the death they sought. The corpses of the slain lay about the streets during two or three days. They were viewed with a horrible curiosity by the people who timidly emerged from the cellars and back rooms of their houses to see what had been done, when the fighting was past'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.