[1] After the surrender of Napoleon III, at Sedan, on September 2, 1870, the Prussians reached the outskirts of Paris, which was under their siege until January 28, 1871.

The Parisians endured the rigors of the siege with courage, until the failure of the battles of January 1871 after which the Government of National Defense decided to negotiate an armistice with the Germans.

[2] Meissonnier conceived this work as a memorial to the French who died at the siege of Paris, mixing realism and allegory.

The painting is built on an opposition between the central figure of the city of Paris, represented by his wife, covered in a lion's skin, with a large French flag, and the specter of famine, emerging from the smoky sky, accompanied by an eagle symbolizing the German Empire, at the left.

He also depicts Captain Néverlée, the leader of a battalion of snipers, who was killed in the Battle of Villiers, and is shown crushed under a wounded horse.