Paris Under The Commune: The Seventy-Three Days of the Second Siege (Illustrated Edition)

PARIS UNDER THE COMMUNE: OR, THE SEVENTY-THREE DAYS OF THE SECOND SIEGE WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS, SKETCHES TAKEN ON THE SPOT, AND PORTRAITS.

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 Vend’me. It would knock down the statue of Napoleon
and raise up that of Marat in its stead. It would suppress the
Académie, the École 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.