Originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 3 March 1871
Victor Hugo, in the "Misérables," describes the 18th of June, 1815, as "the most mournful day in the history of France;" but he himself probably will now be the first to transfer the title to this sad pre-eminence to the 1st of March, 1871. On Wednesday last France was doubly humiliated; Prussian troops entered Paris for the third time this century and on the same day the French National Assembly, compelled to meet far away in a provincial city, ratified a treaty of peace which proclaims in every line the utterly prostrate and helpless state of the nation.
It is to the credit of Frenchmen that both in Paris and in Bordeaux they have accepted their fate with dignified resignation. The Parisians mastered their natural feelings of anger and curiosity sufficiently to abstain from either taking up arms to resist the Germans or making a popular spectacle of the triumphal march of a victorious enemy. One may reasonably doubt if there would not be some deplorable scenes of disorder in London while 30,000 foreign troops were marching in to occupy the quarter of the city extending from Kensington Gardens to Charing Cross and the Houses of Parliament; but, although there were small gatherings here and there in the Champs Elysées of those roughs who abound in all great cities, and who live for the most part in the streets, nothing more serious in the way of a disturbance occurred than may usually be witnessed at a Lord Mayor's show.
By the general testimony of correspondents, the householders of all classes resolutely carried out the difficult programme of abandoning the district to Prussian occupation, and in other parts of the city closing their houses and shops for the day. The gay and splendid capital of pleasure was changed for the victorious besiegers into a city of tombs; and the German soldiers must have felt themselves baulked, after all, of what they had looked forward to as the chief reward of their labours, when, having entered Paris, they found they could not advance beyond barricades which shut them out from access to the boulevards, the theatres, and the shops, and left them to form in the deserted alleys of the once brilliant Champs Elysées as dreary an encampment as ever they had outside the fortifications.
It is fortunate, however, that the trial of patience to which the Parisians were subjected was not to last long. Although the riotous quarters of the city were a good way off where the Germans entered, and the French troops could apparently be relied on to prevent any concerted attempt at hostile action by the reckless spirits of Belleville, it would have been almost impossible to guard for days together against the occurrence of individual sets of violence; and we may be pardoned for feeling sceptical as to the continuance of passive heroism of the Parisians in refusing to hold any intercourse whatever with the enemy.
[Capitulation to Prussia sparked the Paris Commune, a populist rebellion against the French government which was defeated three months later.]