This horrifying classic photograph was taken sometime during May 1871, when members of the failed Paris Commune uprising were executed en masse. An estimated 20,000 Communards faced the firing squad and thousands more were jailed or deported. The heady two months of Socialist rebellion ended with scores of lifeless citizens who resembled broken dolls returned to their boxes. From an eyewitness account of a triple execution of revolutionaries who had been convicted of murder, which first appeared in the London Daily Telegraph and was reprinted in the New York Times on June 10, 1872:

“The priest, going up to each in turn, kissed him on both cheeks, in what seemed to me a hurried and perfunctory manner. Then, while the sentence was being read to the prisoners in a quick, low, quite inaudible tone, BOIN made a long harangue, much of which was lost in the perpetual rolling of those ghastly drums. But one could distinguish snatches of sentences such as ‘Soldiers, you are children of the people as we are, and we will show you how children of the people can die. Nous mourons innocents,’ and then opening wide his light coat–he wore no waistcoat–he offered white shirt-front for a mark, and striking his heart with his open palm, he exclaimed: ‘Portez armes en joue! feu! tirez au coeur!’ This he repeated several times, and while he was yet speaking, standing out clear away from the poteaux, and looking death at ten paces literally in the face, a sword flashed in the sun, and the three men leaped from the ground only to fall to it in horrible contortions. The smoke and the report were unheeded, for all the senses of the horrified spectator were arrested by the awful spectacle of writhing limbs and twisting hands. BOIN seemed to be rewarded for his bravery by suffering less than the others, but SERIZIER literally rolled over, and BOUDIN also moved. The surgeon then went up, examined BOUDIN first, and then directed one of the sergeants in reserve to give the coup de grace in the ear. Then SERIZIER was examined and treated in the same way; and lastly, after a considerable interval, BOIN was dragged into position and dispatched. I cannot give you any idea of the sickening impression produced by this seemingly deliberate butchery. I can say seemingly, for the men may have been dead, but, in any case, surely if the coup de grace must be given, it should be done at once. I did not time the proceedings, but, long as my description is, I believe not more than two minutes elapsed from the time that the ambulance wagons came on to the ground to the time that the volley was fired. Several more minutes, however, elapsed before the dull thud of the last coup de grace delivered a bout pontant right into the poor wretch’s ear stuck upon the ground. I have seen something of the horrors of war at Sedan and Strasbourg; I have witnessed the degradation of a public hanging in England, but have never seen anything so horrible as this supplemental butchery of the coup de grace.“