The Terrible Year: The Paris Commune, 1871. Alastair Horne

by Alistair Horne and Alastair Horne

Book Overview

Beneath the glittering facade of Louis-Napoleon's Second Empire there were forces of seething social and political unrest. When France succumbed to the Prussian invaders these forces came to the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1842127594
• ISBN13: 9781842127599
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Phoenix
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.

Customer Reviews

First rate historical prose -- never a dull or dusty moment

I am going to assume that anyone landing here already has an interest in the subject. So... no rehash. This is a short book. I like that. Horne tells the tale with wit, charm, interesting tidbits, sweeping themes and all that other stuff you look for in a book (history or not). I hope to read all of Horne's histories of post revolutionary France all the way through to WWI. Its a subject that tells a great deal about emotional and intellectual underpinnings of Europe's secular, internationalist politics in our time. Great writer, highly recommended!

You'll Get No Sleep Tonight...

....if you take this gem of a book to bed with you. France loses a war. Paris is surrounded by the Prussian army. The government decamps to Versailles and agrees to a hobbling peace treaty with the enemy. The besieged Parisians refuse to accept defeat. They send up reconnaissance balloons and eat all the animals in the zoo. They set up their own Commune authority and declare war on the French government. Their Commune government quickly degenerates into madness, Lord of the Flies-style, murdering the archbishop, much of the clergy, and many others denounced as politically suspect. An episode far more murderous and traumatic than the Reign of Terror or the Occupation of the 1940s, and still deeply cherished, feared and argued about in France to this day.