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“Interesting... a remarkable portrait not only of Impressionism, but of the society that made it possible” - _The Sunday Times_ Paris, January 1871 - The agonizing final days of the Franco-Prussian War. As the German army consolidates its superiority, shells thunder on the left bank. Very cold winter; No fuel, no medicine, no food. The city's poor have long resorted to eating rats, cats and dogs. France has been brought to its knees. Edouard Manet, Bert Morisot, and Edgar Degas were trapped in the besieged city. Renoir and Bazille joined brigades outside Paris, while Monet and Pissarro fled the country in due course. From the womb of the siege and the Commune, these artists developed a new sense of the fragility of life. A sense of transience—reflected in Impressionism's emphasis on fleeting light, the changing of the seasons, fleeting street scenes, and the annihilation of everything—would change the history of art forever. This is an extraordinary account of the "Terrible Year" in Paris and its enormous influence on the rise of Impressionism.