The executions over, the prisons were filled to bursting. Count Orsi tells us that six hundred men were locked up in the wine cellars of Versailles, forty-five feet underground. He himself, falsely seized through the malice of an enemy, spent ten days in this horrible place amid the scum of the insurgents. As for the members of the Council of the Commune, some escaped, some were executed, others were transported to New Caledonia, a lonely isle in the far Pacific--from which they were subsequently freed when the hot blood of that year of revengeful retribution cooled down. Thus ends the remarkable story of that year of war, insurrection, and devastation, the whole due to the overweening ambition of one man, Louis Napoleon, who wished to shine as a great conqueror. The destiny of France lay in his hand alone. He blindly decided upon war. The result was the humiliation of France, the death of thousands of her sons, the overthrow of her government, the frightful saturnalia of the rule of the Commune, and the loss to France of two of her provinces, those of Alsace and Lorraine, and a war indemnity of one thousand million dollars. Such terrors march in the train of blind and unrestrained ambition. THE END. [Illustration: FRIEDLAND.] [Illustration: COLUMN OF JULY, PLACE DE LA BASTILLE.] [Illustration: JOAN OF ARC AT ORLEANS.] [Illustration: A DUEL OF KNIGHTS] [Illustration: LOUIS XI.] [Illustration: THE DUKE OF GUISE AT THE FRENCH COURT.] [Illustration: EQUESTRIAN STATUE OF HENRY IV.] [Illustration: CHAMBER OF MARY DE' MEDICI.] [Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME. PARIS.] [Illustration: THE VOW OF CLOVIS.] [Illustration: VOLTAIRE'S LAST VISIT TO PARIS.] [Illustration: MARIE ANTOINETTE AND HER CHILDREN.] [Illustration: THE LAST VICTIMS OF THE REIGN OF TERROR.] [Illustration: THE CITY OF MOSCOW.] [Illustration: ARC DE TRIOMPHE AND CHAMPS ELYSEES. PARIS.] [Illustration: NAPOLEON'S RETURN FROM ELBA.] [Illustration: SCENE FROM THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR.] [Illustration: THE CORONATION OF CHARLEMAGNE.] [Illustration: CITY OF ORLEANS.] [Illustration: A MARRIAGE FEAST IN BRITTANY.] End of Project Gutenberg's Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15), by Charles Morris