La Defense de Paris

It is an unfortunate fact of history that Paris has been attacked many times.  While ISIS terrorists were the most recent and the Nazis the most destructive, another group that attacked Paris was the Prussian army that invaded France from 1870 to 1871, turning the second French Empire into the third French Republic, and unifying Germany into a single state under Kaiser Wilhelm and Chancellor Bismarck.  To commemorate the French resistance against the Prussian siege, the Louis-Ernest Barrias bronze statue La Defense de Paris was erected in 1883 in the northwestern outskirts of the city.  This statue shows a woman in National Guard uniform, as well as French Army soldiers and civilian partisans, fighting against the invaders.  Though the Prussians caused a lot of death and destruction, the Parisians rebuilt their city, as they did after World War II, and as they will do again after the ISIS attack.