The Project Gutenberg EBook of Paris under the Commune, by John Leighton

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Title: Paris under the Commune
The Seventy-Three Days of the Second Siege; With Numerous
Illustrations, Sketches Taken on the Spot, and Portraits
(from the Original Photographs)

Author: John Leighton

Release Date: January 29, 2004 [EBook #10861]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE THE COLUMN OF JULY (HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF)]

PARIS

UNDER THE COMMUNE: OR,

THE SEVENTY-THREE DAYS OF THE

SECOND SIEGE

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS, SKETCHES TAKEN ON THE SPOT, AND PORTRAITS
(FROM THE ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS).

BY JOHN LEIGHTON, F.S.A.,

&C.

LONDON:

1871.

Socialism, or the Red Republic, is all one; for it would
tear down the tricolour and set up the red flag. It would make
penny pieces out of the Column Vendome. It would knock down
the statue of Napoleon and raise up that of Marat in its
stead. It would suppress the Academie, the Ecole
Polytechnique, and the Legion of Honour. To the grand device
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, it would add "Ou la mort."
It would bring about a general bankruptcy. It would ruin the
rich without enriching the poor. It would destroy labour,
which gives to each one his bread. It would abolish property
and family. It would march about with the heads of the
proscribed on pikes, fill the prisons with the suspected, and
empty them by massacres. It would convert France into the
country of gloom. It would strangle liberty, stifle the arts,
silence thought, and deny God. It would bring into action
these two fatal machines, one of which never works without the
other--the assignat press and the guillotine. In a word, it
would do in cold blood what the men of 1793 did in fever, and
after the grand horrors which our fathers saw, we should have
the horrible in all that was low and small.

(VICTOR HUGO, 1848.)

PREFACE.

Early in June of the present