Illustration showing the massacre in the Place Vendome, Paris, on 22nd March 1871. On that day, the 'Friends of Order' held a peaceful demonstration outside the National Guard headquarters. The meeting became heated and the demonstrators were fired on by the Guard, killing dozens of people. At the end of the Franco-Prussian war, Parisian socialists set up the Commune and refused to surrender Paris to the rightwing French government. This led to bitter fighting on the streets of the city and large-scale executions of Communards.