The Paris Commune lasted for only days in but during that short time it gave rise to some of the grandest political dreams of the nineteenth centurybefore culminating in horrific violenceFollowing the disastrous French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War hungry and politically disenchanted Parisians took up arms against their government in the name of a more just society They expelled loyalists and soldiers and erected barricades in the streets In Massacre John Merriman introduces a cast of inimitable Communardsfrom les ptroleuses female incendiaries to the painter Gustave Courbetwhose idealism fueled a revolution And he vividly recreates the Communes chaotic and bloody end when troops stormed the city burning half of Paris and executing captured Communards en masseA stirring evocation of the spring when Paris was ablaze with cannon fire and its citizens were their own masters Massacre reveals how the indomitable spirit of the Commune shook the very foundations of Europe.
