[Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris by Henry Labouchere]@TWC D-Link bookDiary of the Besieged Resident in Paris CHAPTER X 3/54
No town is obliged to imitate the example of Moscow.
If, however, it intends after submitting to a blockade, to capitulate on terms which it scouted at first, before any of its citizens have been even under fire, and before its provisions are exhausted, it would have done well not to have called upon the world to witness its sublimity.
My impression is that on one point alone the Parisians will prove obstinate, and that is if the Prussians insist upon occupying their town; upon every other they will only roar like "sucking doves." Rather than allow the German armies to defile along the Boulevards, they would give up Alsace, Lorraine, and half a dozen other provinces.
As regards the working-men, they have far more go in them than the bourgeois, and if the Prussians would oblige them by assaulting the town, they would fight well in the streets; but with all their shouts for a sortie, I estimate their real feelings on the matter by the fact that they almost unanimously, on one pretext or another, decline to volunteer for active service outside the ramparts. The elections on Saturday, says M.Jules Favre, will be a "negation of the Commune." By this I presume he means that the elected Mayors and their adjuncts will only exercise power in their respective arrondissements, but that their collective action will not be recognised.
As, however, they will be the only legally elected body in Paris, and as, undoubtedly, they will frequently meet together, it is very probable that they will be able to hold their own against the Government.
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