On January 23 Jules Favre went out to Versailles.  Paris was hushed.  It was not known that negotiations were going on, but all felt that the end was near at hand.  No one, dared to say the word “capitulate,” though some of the papers admitted that by February 3 there would not be a mouthful of bread in the city.

On January 27 the Parisians learned their fate.  The following announcement appeared in the official journal: 

“So long as the Government could count on an army of relief, it was their duty to neglect nothing that could conduce to the prolongation of the defence of Paris.  At present our armies, though still in existence, have been driven back by the fortune of war....  Under these circumstances the Government has been absolutely compelled to negotiate.  We have reason to believe that the principle of national sovereignty will be kept intact by the speedy calling of an Assembly; that during the armistice the German army will occupy our forts; that we shall preserve intact our National Guards and one division of our army; and that none of our soldiers will be conveyed beyond our frontier as prisoners of war.”

The result was so inevitable that it did not spread the grief and consternation we have known in many modern cases of surrender.  Those who suffered most from the sorrow of defeat were not the Red brawlers of Belleville, who cried loudest that they had been betrayed, but the honest, steady-going bourgeoisie, who for love of their country had for four months borne the burden and distress of resistance.

During the four months of siege sixty-five thousand persons perished in Paris:  ten thousand died in hospitals, three thousand were killed in battle, sixty-six hundred were destroyed by small-pox, and as many by bronchitis and pneumonia.  The babies, who died chiefly for want of proper food, numbered three thousand,—­just as many as the soldiers who fell in battle.

Two sad weeks passed, the Parisians meanwhile waiting for the meeting of a National Assembly.  During those weeks the blockade of Paris continued, and the arrival of provisions was frequently retarded at the Prussian outposts; nor were provision-carts safe when they had passed beyond the Prussian lines, for there were many turbulent Parisians lying in wait to rob them.  All Paris was eager for fresh fish and for white bread.  The moment the gates were opened, twenty-five thousand persons poured out of the city, most of whom were in a state of anxiety and uncertainty where to find their families.

At last peace was made.  One of its conditions was that the Germans were to occupy two of the forts that commanded Paris until that city paid two hundred millions of francs ($40,000,000) as its ransom.  It was also stipulated that the Prussian army was to make a triumphal entry into the city, not going farther, however, than the Place de la Concorde.

This took place March I, 1871, but was witnessed by none of the respectable Parisians, although the German soldiers were surrounded by a hooting crowd, whom they seemed to regard with little attention.