After entering 1891, the people of Paris had known no peaceful days. On one side, their material lives grew ever more impoverished; on the other, prices soared relentlessly, leaving ordinary people in unspeakable misery.
If the front lines had kept winning, everyone could have accepted a few hard days in the short term. Unfortunately, the French army's luck seemed to have been used up in the previous year. Since the new year began, there had been nothing but bad news.
With the loss of air superiority, Paris too became unsafe. Especially after August began, Austria's air force came by for a little stroll almost every day.
High-altitude bombing accuracy depended entirely on luck. The enemy air raids caused limited direct losses and posed little military threat to France, but the vile repercussions they brought left the Paris Government miserable beyond words.
The more uncertain something was, the more easily it bred panic. No matter how low the enemy air force's hit rate was, once you were unlucky enough to be struck, people still died.
For the sake of their lives, aside from politicians who could not leave, every Parisian with even a little wealth fled to country estates to take refuge.
With all the rich people gone, Paris's economy naturally fell into depression. If the war had not absorbed a vast amount of labor, the French Government would probably have had to worry about unemployment as well.
At the Palace of Versailles, Napoleon IV had already moved out of the basement and resumed working normally. There was no other reason—he was no longer afraid of dying.
Well, the truth was that after a long period of observation, Napoleon IV had discovered that the enemy air force deliberately avoided bombing the imperial palace. Even when they raided the palace, it was