From September 19, when the siege began, up to December 27, the Parisian soldiers, four hundred thousand in number (such as they were) had never, except in occasional sorties, encountered the Prussians, nor had any shot from Prussian guns entered their city.  On the night of December 27 the bombardment began.  It commenced by clearing what was called the Plateau d’Avron, to the east of Paris.  The weather was intensely cold, the earth as hard as iron and as slippery as glass.  The French do not rough their horses even in ordinary times, and slipperiness is a public calamity in a French city.  The troops, stationed with little shelter on the Plateau d’Avron, had no notion that the Germans had been preparing masked batteries.  The first shells that fell among them produced indescribable confusion.  The men rushed to their own guns to reply, but their balls fell short about five hundred yards.  It became evident that the Plateau d’Avron must be abandoned, and that night, in the cold and the darkness, together with the slippery condition of the ground, which was worst of all, General Trochu superintended the removal of all the cannon.  The Prussian batteries were admirably placed and admirably served.

But tremendous as the bombardment was (sometimes a shell every two minutes), it is astonishing how little real damage it did to the city.  The streets were wide, the open spaces numerous, the houses solidly built, with large courtyards.  In the middle of January, when the extreme cold moderated, hundreds of people would assemble in the Place de la Concorde, looking skyward.  A black object would appear, with a small bright spot in it, and making a graceful curve in the air, with a whizzing, humming sound, would drop suddenly, with a resounding boom, in some distant quarter in the city.  Then the spectators, greatly interested in the sight, waited for another.  The shells, which the Parisians called “obus,” were like an old-fashioned sugar-loaf, and weighed sometimes one hundred and fifty pounds.  But though, by reason of the great distance of the Prussian batteries, the damage was by no means in proportion to the number of shells sent into the city, many of them struck public buildings, hospitals, and orphan asylums, in spite of the Red Cross flags displayed above them.

By January 19, when the siege had lasted four months, and the bombardment three weeks, the end seemed to be drawing near.  Another sortie was attempted; but there was a dense fog, the usual accompaniment of a January thaw, and its only result was the loss of some very valuable lives.

Then General Trochu asked for an armistice of two days to bury the dead; but his real object was that Jules Favre might enter the Prussian lines and endeavor to negotiate.  Before this took place, however, Trochu himself resigned his post as military governor.  He had sworn that under him Paris should never capitulate.  General Vinoy took his command.

The moment the Government of Defence was known to be in extreme difficulty, the Communists issued proclamations and provoked risings.  The Hotel-de-Ville was again attacked.  In this rising famished women took a prominent part.  Twenty-six people were killed in the emeute, and only twenty-eight by that day’s bombardment.