[1] The book is told through the eyes of a young boy, Fritz, who lives with his uncle Jacob and housekeeper Lisa in a small village called Anstatt, near the present-day German towns of Kaiserlautern and Landau.
The Colonel and the Republican army personnel do not use formal titles such as ‘Madame’ or ‘Monsieur’ when speaking to each other; instead, they address each other mutually using only the salutation ‘citizen’.
As the soldiers are departing, they quickly set up a barricade of stolen furniture and straw to block the street and then light it on fire, which soon spreads to nearby houses.
The relationship that develops between them, as well as the turn of events on the military front, eventually culminates in her marriage to doctor Jacob, the victory of the Republican army over the Prussian forces, and the joyful reunion of Thérèse with her little brother Jean.
The reader is left with the impression of a moral victory of the French Republican cause due to their ascribed ideals of social justice, fairness, and equality among classes as personified by the good-natured and kind Thérèse.
[2] For the first time, I fully understood what death is; these men that I had seen two minutes before, full of life and strength, charging their enemies with fury, and rushing forward like wolves, lay there, pell-mell, senseless as the stones of the street.