3-043-844 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Shooting Communist prisoners in the Garden of the Luxembourg, 1871. La semaine sanglante in Paris. 'Hundreds of the Communist insurgents, being captured at the barricades with arms in their hands, and having refused to submit to the officers commanding the troops, were instantly taken to the gardens of the Luxembourg Palace...where they were ranged in front of a wall and shot by the soldiers or sailors. There were not a few women among these wretched victims... The Luxembourg Palace Gardens...are well known to all who have visited Paris, as a very agreeable promenade. The grounds are planted with trees, shrubs, and flowers, tastefully arranged; the grand avenue of chestnut-trees, leading up to the Observatory, is their chief feature...Here, in the pleasure-garden of this palace, most of the insurgents captured and condemned to death in the Quarter of the Pantheon were summarily disposed of. They were forced to stand up before the terrace wall, which is surmounted with an elegant stone balustrade and vases in the Italian style. Repeated volleys from the rifles of the soldiery at last brought them all to the ground, and those who did not expire at the first shot were presently killed with the revolver'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.