Two months later, the picture had become somewhat more sombre. M. Edouard Dangin writes: "Paris has become a veritable city of war. At seven o'clock in the morning, before all the gates of the city, the guard is under arms, the drum beats aux champs, the portcullis is lowered. It is the opening of the gates. At eight o'clock, in all the quarters of the city, the rappel is beaten, all the citizen soldiers who are to relieve the guard on the ramparts and on the minor posts are called to arms. Others are called out for the drill; there are, however, some quarters in which there is no drill in the mornings. The crowd commences to form in line before the butcher-shops in which beef and horse-flesh are sold, even before the doors are opened, then it becomes more numerous; the housekeepers press against each other, crowd and jostle. The men hasten to the different kiosques and purchase the newspapers, to learn the news of the morning. At noon, the distributions are all made; calm reigns, Paris is taking its déjeuner.... Toward half-past three the rappel is heard again in various quarters,—it is the evening drill. From all the houses issue the national guards, their muskets on their shoulders. At five o'clock, the drums beat aux champs again before all the gates and the portcullis is raised. Paris is closed. The Parisians return home for dinner. The greater number of them go to bed early. Some of them go in the evening to take a little promenade, whilst others, who have not lost their café habits, commence, by the light of gas, games of dominoes which they finish by candle-light. In the streets, there are no cries, no drunkards, almost no more petites dames, nor others who lodge in houses and accost the passer-by too much preoccupied to reply to them. After eleven o'clock, silence prevails in the streets and the darkness deepens, because it is necessary to save gas."
Finally, the Germans entered the capital, and the population became more patriotic than ever. "The vanquishers, enclosed in their restricted zone, looked with astonishment at the grand city indomitable, whose superb monuments were seen in profile against the horizon. Those who showed themselves at the windows were hooted.... Women accused of having smiled on the enemy were whipped. Those unfortunate honest women who were wrong enough to inhabit the quarters occupied, or, perhaps, to be curious, were subjected to the same fate as the street-walkers. The ferocity of the populace began to manifest itself."
"It was much remarked that the German officers had all new uniforms, and that they all held in their hands plans of Paris. Their soldiers, frightfully dirty, prepared their meals in the open air, whilst the noisy fanfares of their military music were greeted by the hootings and hissings of the spectators. The stone statues of the Place de la Concorde, veiled in black by unknown hands, did not see the soiling of Paris. The Arch of Triumph of the Place de l'Étoile had been barricaded and obstructed in such a manner that the Germans could not pass under it. The triumphal monument remained virgin of this defilement. In the evening, Paris assumed the aspect, strange and prodigious, of a city asleep. Nowhere were there any lights, rare pedestrians, no omnibuses, no carriages. The footsteps of a patrol which resounded rhythmical and sonorous in the distance, and the qui vive? of the sentinels, alone came to break the mournful silence which hung over the capital. The long line of boulevards, black and sombre, displayed the mourning of the city. Paris was superb in her suffering."
It may be remembered that the number of German troops admitted into the city was restricted by the terms of the capitulation to thirty thousand, the entrance to be made at ten o'clock on the morning of the 1st of March, 1871, and the district occupied by them to be limited to the space between the Seine and the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, from the Place de la Concorde to the Quartier des Ternes. The evacuation was to take place immediately after the ratification of the preliminaries of the treaty of peace by the Assemblée Nationale.
If the Prussians had remained in Paris, the public peace would have been much better preserved. On the heels of their withdrawal came the Commune, and within three weeks the condition of the city had become such that the following is the official report of a quiet night, made to the Comité Central by "a Sieur Garnier d'Aubin, 'général de brigade, commandant de place du 18e arrondissement'":
Report of the 20th and 21st of March.
"Nothing new.
"I have received the reports of the different chiefs of the posts. The night has been calm and without incident.