Notes and Remembrances, 1871-1872 Book

Ludovic Halevy's notes recorded his observations of the terrible civil war in France in 1871, and the violent destruction of the Commune of Paris by the armed forces of the National Assembly based temporarily in Versailles. In his day, Halevy was known primarily as a novelist and a librettist, especially for the popular works by Offenbach and Bizet. It may be that the vivid aspects of the savage fighting, of the fires set deliberately by the radicals of Paris, and the harsh legal reprisals in the aftermath, were portrayed more effectively by a man of the theater than they were by conventional historians. That dramatic character makes the book attractive to the general reader of history and provides the student of history a rare inside story.