3-043-851 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The last of the Commune, 1871. La semaine sanglante in Paris. '...a party of female Communist prisoners led off to captivity, who had been taken at the barricades, fighting amidst the insurgent battalions, or carrying petroleum to set fire to houses..."I saw about forty of these passing along the Avenue de Paris who were being conveyed to the House of Correction; some were packed together in an artillery waggon, others were on foot, walking between two lines of gendarmes. It was a very sad sight. Some of them were old women, but most of them were under thirty, and two or three could not have been eighteen years old. Some seven or eight were dressed as cantinières, and wore upon their heads...a dust-coloured képi...An immense crowd collected to look at these Communeuses, some of whom were said to have assisted in discharging mitrailleuses [machine guns]. They were received with insulting laughter, and jests in sorry taste, occcasionally even with ribald insults. The female spectators especially were very furious against these unhappy creatures, and I saw one who, in spite of the escort, knocked off with her parasol the képi which a cantinière was wearing. The latter looked towards her assailant and wept".' From "Illustrated London News", 1871.