This almost felt like two books - one about the Prussian siege of Paris and one about the Communard siege of Paris. Both were thorough, well-researched, and interesting, although the Prussian siege felt a little more well-reasoned. By the time the author got to the political implications of the Commune, he seemed to be reaching at tangential consequences (arguing that the defund the police movement was somehow linked seemed the most farfetched).

This review is predicated on an ARC of Brig. N. S. Nash's "The Siege the Changed the World" to be published under the Pen and Sword imprint. The siege in question is the siege of Paris which was the result of the collapse of Napoleon III's Second Empire as a result of the Franco Prussian War. I have read a number of books on both the war itself and more particularly the resulting siege and rise of the Paris Commune. This book is, by far, one of the best I have encountered. Most books deal with the war and gloss over the civil war it precipitated around the City of Paris or, and this is more common, they gloss over the war and focus almost exclusively on the Commune itself. This approach is refreshing in that context is always key to understanding events in their entirety, and nowhere is this more true than in a conflict like the Franco Prussian War. Here, in one volume, we glimpse the social pressures driving both French policy and French failure, their contrast with the superbly trained and far better led German forces of Prussia and her allies, and the underlying class distinctions which inform the complex relationship of the Municipality of Paris and the rest of France. Since many of these themes will play out well into the twentieth century and beyond, they are well worth the reader's time and contemplation. Insights on modern military structures and war fighting, the growth of communism and some of its underlying pressure points, the origins of the First and Second World Wars as well as the Russian Revolution are all on display here in a well written, thoughtful and readily accessible text. A must read for those interested in modern history and the cataclysmic context of the great imperial clashes of the first half of the last century.