If war broke out one day, where would you flee?
For the residents of the Neuilly area during the Franco-Prussian War, Paris was their last choice.
After the Paris Commune took over Paris, bread and flour came under strict control. Everyone received rations with bread coupons, while refugees were given refugee vouchers to cover lodging and meals in Paris.
These refugees had fled Prussian shells, only to suffer bombardment from their "own people" after entering Paris.
Many old photographs remained from the Paris Commune movement. Many buildings that had once been beautiful were reduced to ruins, yet this was not all caused by looting and arson.
The vast majority of damaged buildings had been struck by shells from the "Versailles faction" outside the city.
Today, many tourists, and even French people, confused the difference between Paris and Greater Paris.
Paris had once had ancient city walls. Their earliest builder was Philip II. After him, nearly every new French king ordered the walls raised upon taking the throne. This was not because the walls built by Philip II had not been high enough.
In the filthy Middle Ages, many residents simply dumped excrement directly into the streets.
Later, after the walls were completed, the residents developed "civic awareness." Since the stench of excrement affected the city's cleanliness, citizens began flocking onto the walls and dumping it outside the city.
Over countless years of accumulation by Parisian residents, the excrement outside the city had piled into mountains. The moat beyond the walls was also full of filth. The fish and shrimp in it had long since died, and the water had turned viscous. The walls that had originally protected the people of Paris from foreign invaders lost their intended function beneath the heaps of waste. Later, during a war against foreign invasion,