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A humiliating military defeat by Bismarcks Germany, a brutal siege, and a bloody uprisingParis in 1871 was a shambles, and the question loomed, Could this extraordinary city even survive?Mary McAuliffe takes the reader back to these perilous years following the abrupt collapse of the Second Empire and Frances uncertain venture into the Third Republic. By 1900, Paris had recovered and the Belle Epoque was in full flower, but the decades between were difficult, marked by struggles between republicans and monarchists, the Republic and the Church, and an ongoing economic malaise, darkened by a rising tide of virulent anti-Semitism.Yet these same years also witnessed an extraordinary blossoming in art, literature, poetry, and music, with the Parisian cultural scene dramatically upended by revolutionaries such as Monet, Zola, Rodin, and Debussy, even while Gustave Eiffel was challenging architectural tradition with his iconic tower.