"The Blockade of Phalsburg" contains one of the happiest portraits in
the Erckmann-Chatrian gallery--that of the Jew Moses who tells the
story and who is always in character, however great the patriotic or
romantic temptation to idealize him, and whose character is
nevertheless portrayed with an almost affectionate appreciation of the
sterling qualities underlying its somewhat usurious exterior.
The time is 1814, during the invasion of France by the allies after the
disastrous battle of Leipsic and the campaign described in "The
Conscript." The dwellers in Phalsburg--a little walled town of two or
three thousand inhabitants in Lorraine--defend themselves with great
intrepidity and determination during the siege which lasts until the
capitulation of Paris. The daily life of the citizens and garrison,
the various incidents of the blockade, the bombardment by night, the
scarcity of food, the occasional sortie for foraging, all pass before
the reader depicted with the authors' customary fidelity and
life-likeness, and form as perfect a picture of a siege as "The
Conscript" does of a campaign.