Pictorial Map of the City of Paris and its Environs, Showing the Principal Buildings, Monuments, Parks, etc., the French Fortifications, and the Prussian Lines of Investment

The climax of the Franco-Prussian War.

This image is somewhat of a contradiction; showing the lush parks, spectacular architecture and wide boulevards famous in Paris, while Prussian cannoneers in the foreground and background pound away at the numerous forts surrounding the city. A skewed perspective allows the audience to view the entirety of the culmination of the Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.

The fighting and scenes of chaos were contemporary and relatively accurate. Less than two weeks prior to publication, the recently declared French Third Republic (established after Napoleon III’s capture in 1870) signed a ceasefire allowing Prussian troops to occupy those forts in exchange for food convoys to the city, which had been starving under siege for four months. Unfortunately for the citizens, this did not bring immediate peace.

A radical revolutionary faction of France’s National Guard rebelled against the regular French Army troops (disarmed after the armistice), and staged a bloody uprising that kept them in power for two months. The results of the Franco-Prussian war caused waves of change to ripple throughout Europe including the unification of Germany, increased radicalization of the working class, and a territorial exchange of Alsace and Lorraine that planted the seeds of bitterness between the countries that would last for decades. The image was published as a supplement to Harper’s Weekly in February 1871.

Source: University of Michigan