Siege of Paris (1870–1871)
파리 포위전 (1870–1871)
The four-month investment of Paris by the forces of the Prussian-led North German Confederation from 19 September 1870 to 28 January 1871. After three failed break-out attempts, starvation, cold and the bombardment of January, the Government of National Defence concluded an armistice. The National Guard, politicised during the siege and left with its arms, became the base of the Paris Commune.
In depth
With the road open after Sedan, Wilhelm I and Moltke marched on Paris with the Third Army and the Army of the Meuse almost unopposed. The governor of Paris, Trochu, assembled about 513,000 potential defenders, 60,000 regulars who had escaped from Sedan, 90,000 Mobiles, 13,000 seamen and 350,000 National Guards, though the compulsorily enrolled Guards were untrained. A committee under Marshal Vaillant spent 12 million francs on the defences, the Bois de Boulogne received 250,000 sheep and 40,000 oxen, and the government believed 80 days of flour would be ample. Moltke ordered the investment on 15 September, Versailles was taken on the 18th and became the German headquarters, and the encirclement was complete on the 19th; Blumenthal directed the siege. Bismarck proposed shelling the city to force a quick surrender, but the king, Blumenthal, the crown prince and Moltke refused on the grounds of civilian casualties and neutral opinion, preferring to destroy the new French armies first and starve Paris into surrender. Trochu hoped Moltke would storm the city and relied on the Thiers wall and sixteen forts, but Moltke had no such intention. Fighting followed at Chevilly on 30 September, Châtillon on 13 October and Le Bourget on 29 October, and on 31 October, at the news of Metz, a crowd invaded the Hôtel de Ville and held Trochu's cabinet hostage; Flourens, Delescluze and Blanqui tried to form a new government but could not agree, and the insurgents left peacefully early on 1 November. Despite promising no reprisals, the government imprisoned 22 of the leaders.
The "great sortie" of 30 November, in which Ducrot attacked Champigny, Créteil and Villiers with 80,000 men, was driven back by the Württemberg corps by 3 December, and the sortie towards Le Bourget on 21 December, in temperatures of minus 14 degrees, cost 900 cases of frostbite and 2,000 casualties. Parisians ate horses from early October, dogs, cats and rats from mid-November and finally the elephants Castor and Pollux of the Jardin des Plantes; poor women and children suffered most, and by January three to four thousand people a week were dying of cold and hunger. Sixty-six balloon flights carried some 2.5 million letters and passengers including Gambetta, and homing pigeons brought replies. After silencing the southern forts from the Châtillon heights on 5 January, the Germans fired some 12,000 shells into the Left Bank over 23 nights, killing or wounding about 400, but Delescluze declared that "the Frenchmen of 1870 are the sons of those Gauls for whom battles were holidays" and the will to resist held. When the sortie at Buzenval on 19 January ended with more than 4,000 casualties, Trochu resigned as governor. On 25 January Wilhelm I ordered Moltke to consult Bismarck, who had the city bombarded with large-calibre Krupp siege guns. Secret talks between Favre and Bismarck began at Versailles on 23 January, and Bismarck advised Favre, who feared a rising of the National Guard, to "provoke an uprising, then, while you still have an army with which to suppress it". The armistice signed on 28 January disarmed the regular troops less one division, levied 200 million francs and surrendered the forts. British and American food arrived almost at once, and on 1 March 30,000 German troops paraded through the city before withdrawing east after two days.