theatres, eight whole streets,
and innumerable private houses, while the dead bodies of its victims lay
where they had been shot down. The soldiers, infuriated by the ruin
which they beheld on all sides, were savage in their revenge. Every man
seized whose hands were black with powder was instantly shot, many
innocent persons perishing, since numbers had been forced to the
barricades. The story of what took place during those bloody days of
retribution is too long to tell, and it must suffice to sum it up in the
frightful death roll of fourteen thousand persons--six thousand of them
killed in open fight, eight thousand executed in bitter revenge.

The executions over, the prisons were filled to bursting. Count Orsi
tells us that six hundred men were locked up in the wine cellars of
Versailles, forty-five feet underground. He himself, falsely seized
through the malice of an enemy, spent ten days in this horrible place
amid the scum of the insurgents. As for the members of the Council of
the Commune, some escaped, some were executed, others were transported
to New Caledonia, a lonely isle in the far Pacific--from which they were
subsequently freed when the hot blood of that year of revengeful
retribution cooled down.

Thus ends the remarkable story of that year of war, insurrection, and
devastation, the whole due to the overweening ambition of one man, Louis
Napoleon, who wished to shine as a great conqueror. The destiny of
France lay in his hand alone. He blindly decided upon war. The result
was the humiliation of France, the death of thousands of her sons, the
overthrow of her government, the frightful saturnalia of the rule of the
Commune, and the loss to France of two of her provinces, those of Alsace
and Lorraine, and a war indemnity of one thousand million dollars. Such
terrors march in the train of blind and unrestrained ambition.

THE END.

[Illustration: FRIEDLAND.]

[Illustration: COLUMN OF JULY, PLACE DE LA BASTILLE.]

[Illustration: JOAN OF ARC AT ORLEANS.]

[Illustration: A DUEL OF KNIGHTS]

[Illustration: LOUIS XI.]

[Illustration: THE DUKE OF GUISE AT THE FRENCH COURT.]

[Illustration: EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF HENRY IV.]

[Illustration: CHAMBER OF MARY DE' MEDICI.]

[Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME. PARIS.]

[Illustration: THE VOW OF CLOVIS.]

[Illustration: VOLTAIRE'S LAST VISIT TO PARIS.]

[Illustration: MARIE ANTOINETTE AND HER CHILDREN.]

[Illustration: THE LAST VICTIMS OF THE R