Siege of Paris (1870-1871): Balloons, Hunger and Surrender

The Siege of Paris was the German blockade and bombardment of the French capital during the Franco-Prussian War, lasting from 19 September 1870 to 28 January 1871. For more than four months some two million people lived cut off from the rest of France, communicating by balloon and carrier pigeon and surviving on dwindling food. The city’s surrender ended the war in practice and set the scene for the revolutionary Paris Commune.

Background: from Sedan to the walls of Paris

After the French defeat at the Battle of Sedan and the capture of Napoleon III on 2 September 1870, republicans proclaimed the Third Republic in Paris on 4 September. The new Government of National Defence, headed by General Louis-Jules Trochu, the military governor of Paris, refused to accept German demands for territory and decided to fight on.

German armies under Helmuth von Moltke marched on the capital and completed its encirclement on 19 September. King Wilhelm I set up his headquarters at Versailles, west of the city. Moltke chose not to storm Paris but to starve it into surrender. Meanwhile the veteran statesman Adolphe Thiers toured London, Vienna, St Petersburg and Florence seeking help for France, but none of the great powers was willing to intervene.

The defences

Paris was one of the most heavily fortified cities in Europe. The Thiers wall, built in the 1840s, ran around the city for more than 30 kilometres, and a ring of sixteen detached forts stood in front of it. The wide boulevards created during the Haussmann renovation of Paris helped troops move quickly inside the city.

On paper the city had well over 400,000 armed men: regular troops and sailors, the Garde Mobile from the provinces and a hugely expanded National Guard of Parisian citizens. Many, however, were poorly trained and armed. The besieging German forces numbered roughly 200,000–240,000 but were better organised and well supplied with artillery.

Balloons and pigeons

With the telegraph lines and roads cut, Paris turned to the air. Balloons were built in the city’s railway stations, which had stopped running. Around 65–67 manned balloons left Paris during the siege, carrying more than 100 passengers, hundreds of carrier pigeons and an estimated 2.5 million letters. A few drifted far off course; one landed in Norway, and a few were lost at sea or captured.

The most famous passenger was the interior minister Léon Gambetta, who left on 7 October in the balloon Armand-Barbès. From Tours he organised new armies to relieve the capital.

Messages into Paris travelled by carrier pigeon. Using a technique developed by the photographer René Dagron, thousands of dispatches were photographed onto tiny sheets of film, attached to the birds and projected onto screens on arrival to be copied out. It was one of the first practical uses of microphotography.

Hunger in the city

Food became the central concern. The government had brought in large flocks of sheep and herds of cattle before the encirclement, and grazing animals filled the Bois de Boulogne, but the stocks could not last for months. Prices soared, and long queues formed outside butchers and bakers in the cold. Meat was rationed from October. Parisians ate tens of thousands of horses, and as supplies ran out some butchers sold dogs, cats and rats. Late in December 1870 the elephants Castor and Pollux from the city’s zoo were shot and sold as meat. Elegant restaurants printed menus featuring exotic animals, but such meals were for the wealthy few.

For the poor the siege was grim. Bread grew dark and coarse, firewood ran out in an unusually cold winter, and disease spread. Deaths in the city rose sharply, especially among infants and the elderly, reaching several thousand a week by January 1871.

Sorties and unrest

The defenders made several attempts to break out. French troops took Le Bourget at the end of October but lost it again on 30 October. The largest effort, the Great Sortie of 30 November to early December under General Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot, crossed the Marne at Champigny but was driven back with heavy losses.

Bad news fed political anger. When Parisians learned on 31 October of Bazaine’s surrender at Metz and of talks about an armistice, radical National Guards briefly occupied the Hôtel de Ville and held members of the government captive before loyal troops restored order.

On 5 January 1871 German heavy guns began shelling the city from the south. Over about three weeks thousands of shells fell on districts on the Left Bank, killing and wounding a few hundred civilians. A final sortie at Buzenval on 19 January failed, and Trochu resigned as governor.

Surrender and armistice

With food almost exhausted, the foreign minister Jules Favre negotiated with Bismarck at Versailles. An armistice was signed on 28 January 1871. The forts were handed over, the regular army was disarmed except for one division, and Paris paid a war contribution of 200 million francs. The National Guard kept its weapons.

On 1 March 1871 German troops held a brief victory parade through western Paris, including the Champs-Élysées, before withdrawing two days later after the National Assembly ratified the preliminary peace.

Key people

• Louis-Jules Trochu: governor of Paris and head of the Government of National Defence.
• Léon Gambetta: minister who escaped by balloon to lead resistance in the provinces.
• Jules Favre: foreign minister who negotiated the armistice.
• Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot: led the Great Sortie at Champigny.
• Helmuth von Moltke: directed the German siege.

Legacy

The siege was one of the best-documented events of its time because so many writers were trapped inside the city. Victor Hugo, who had returned from nearly twenty years of exile on 5 September 1870, stayed throughout and later wrote poems about the siege in L’Année terrible. Edmond de Goncourt recorded daily life, prices and rumours in his journal, and the British journalist Henry Labouchère sent out reports by balloon that were published as the Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris.

Artists also served in the National Guard, among them Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas. Their experiences, and those of ordinary Parisians, fed a lasting sense that the capital had been abandoned by the rest of France and betrayed by its own leaders.

The balloon post became a source of national pride. A monument to the siege balloonists by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty, was later erected near the Porte des Ternes; it was melted down during the German occupation in the Second World War. Collectors still prize letters carried out of Paris by balloon, known in French as ballons montés.

Timeline

• 1870, 19 September: German forces complete the encirclement of Paris.
• 1870, 7 October: Gambetta leaves Paris by balloon.
• 1870, 31 October: Unrest at the Hôtel de Ville after news of the fall of Metz.
• 1870, 30 November – early December: The Great Sortie at Champigny fails.
• 1871, 5 January: German bombardment of Paris begins.
• 1871, 19 January: Last sortie, at Buzenval.
• 1871, 28 January: Armistice signed.
• 1871, 1 March: German victory parade in Paris.

Why it matters

The siege ended France’s hope of turning the war around and exposed deep divisions between republican Paris and the more conservative provinces. Those tensions exploded weeks later in the Paris Commune. The ingenious balloon post and pigeon microfilm also made the siege a landmark in the history of communications.