not be made to
do steady work upon anything. It was also considered necessary to
cut down all trees and to destroy all villages between the forts
and the walls of the city, so that they might afford no shelter
to the Prussians. The poor inhabitants of these villages flocked
into Paris, bringing with them carts piled with their household
goods, their wives and children peeping out aghast between the
chairs and beds. The beautiful trees in the Bois de Boulogne were
cut down; the deer and the swans and other wild fowl on the lakes
(long the pets of the Parisian holiday makers) were shot by parties
of Mobiles sent out for that purpose.

No military man believed that Paris, defended by uncompleted
fortifications, could withstand a direct attack from the Prussians;
no one dreamed of a blockade, for it was thought that it would
take a million and a quarter of men to invest the city, and the
Prussians were known not to have that number for the purpose. The
idea was that the enemy would choose some point, would attack it
with all his forces, would lose probably thirty thousand men, and
would take the city. But Bismarck and King William and Von Moltke
had no idea of losing thirty thousand men. They were certain that
there would be risings and disturbances in Paris. They believed that
their forces might even be called in to save respectable Parisians
from the outrages of the Reds. They knew that rural France, having
little love for Paris or the Republic, was not likely to accept
the Government formed without its own consent, nor march to the
assistance of the capital. Even should the provincial population
bestir itself, the troops it could send would be only raw levies,
and there was no great leader to animate or to direct popular
enthusiasm.

It was quite true that the respectable classes in Paris had as
much to fear from the Reds as from the Prussians. The mob of Paris
was wild for a commune.

It is not always known what is meant by a commune, and I may be
pardoned if I pause to define it here.

In feudal times cities all over Europe won for themselves charters.
By these charters they acquired the right to govern themselves;
that is, the burghers elected their own mayor and their councilor
aldermen, and this body governing the community was called the
commune. When the feudal system fell in France, and all power was
centralized in the king, city governments were established by royal
edict only. Paris, for instance, was g