The Fall of Paris

by Alistair Horne

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  Reference Notes

  The foregoing bibliography contains the principal published works used either to a greater or lesser extent by the author, but is far from complete. Books on the Commune alone would fill a small library. In addition, and (for reasons of space) not included in the bibliography, a mass of contemporary periodicals, Government reports, affiches, and various other documents were consulted; most of which can be found in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. But, as mentioned in the Preface, one of the richest sources of material for this book (at least in the author’s opinion) proved to be the unpublished letters, journals, and diaries chiefly provided by the descendants of Britons and Americans in Paris during 1870–1.

  Certain sources—both published and unpublished, such as the writings of Washburne, of Goncourt, and of Edwin Child—have been used in almost every chapter. When quoting the Goncourt Journal, I have principally relied upon my own translation of the complete works; but I have also made use of the translated abridgement, Pages from the Goncourt Journal, by Robert Baldick—to whom I am greatly indebted. As a source, Goncourt was occasionally carried away by his own feelings, sometimes he exaggerates and sometimes bias distorts his vision; but when it comes t
o supplying the mood of the moment he is in a class by himself. Of the other principal eyewitnesses, I hope my evaluation of their various worths should be clear from the text itself.

  For the actual military details of the first Siege as well as the war outside Paris, in addition to the sources specifically listed below and the official archives, I have probably leaned most heavily on Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War; a book which as an objective study in military history towers above any other recent book on any campaign. As a more contemporary history, I have also drawn extensively on Cassell’s History of the War between France and Germany (published in 1894,) which covers both the war and the Commune. Provided its biases are taken into account (notably its anti-Communard line), it is a fund of much rich material gleaned from most of the sources available at the time.

  For a more sympathetic general treatment of the Commune, Bourgin’s large illustrated work, La Guerre de 1870–71 et la Commune is valuable. A still more partisan recent work, published in Prague under Communist auspices, is Bruhat, Dautry, and Tersen’s La Commune de 1871, which is particularly notable for its bibliography and dossiers of the leading Communards contained as appendices, For a reasonably dispassionate account of the political-social content of the Commune, a recent (Swiss) work by C. Rihs is also especially to be recommended.

  Over the twenty-five years since this book was first written, a number of new works have appeared, a number of which have been included in the bibliography above. Specifically on the Commune, Robert Tombs’ The War against Paris,1871 is to be recommended among works written in English; on the more general background, Eugene Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, The Modernization of Rural France 1870–1914 and Theodore Zeldin’s monumental two-volume study, France 1848–1945.

  The following notes list the principal source material utilized specifically in each chapter. Works to be found in the bibliography bear the author’s name only; where there is more than one by the same author, the appropriate number is given; where a work is not listed in the bibliography the title is given in full. With comments made by the various eyewitnesses, the source is generally self-evident; when this is not so, special mention has been made in the following notes but has otherwise been omitted. References below neither to be found in the bibliography nor entered in full relate to unpublished material, acknowledged in the Preface.