Les damnes de la Commune

At the end of the 1860s, Paris was rumbling. In the liberal Second Empire, Napoleon III commissioned Prefect Haussmann to modernize the capital and turn it into a paradise for the upper middle class. While poverty and rents increased, popular protest grew. To assert his authority, the emperor tried to divert the social anger against an external enemy and declared war on Prussia. But the conflict turned into a fiasco. On September 3, 1870, Napoleon III was taken prisoner. The empire collapsed, the Republic was proclaimed and the provisional government, installed in Bordeaux, decided to negotiate peace with the Prussians. In the besieged capital, the inhabitants refused to surrender.