Thoughts On War - Edmond De Goncourt In 1870

I am reading the diaries of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt just now. I have reached a stage in 1870 when Edmond is worriedly discoursing on the imminent victory of Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War during the siege of Paris in 1870. A characteristically poetic and poignant passage reads (my best translation which doesn't do full justice) :

' Monday, 28 November, 1870. Last night I was wakened by cannon fire. I went up to the upstairs room. In the sky there were little pockets of fire cut through by the the branches of the big trees. There was a chorus of firing from the fort at Bicentre all the way to the fort at Issy. A whole semicircle of explosions in the sky, lighting up like gaslight flares, followed  by thunderous echoes. Booming voices of death in the silence of the night. It stopped for a short time to be followed by the mournful howling of dogs mixed with the roaring cannon; tearful voices of people who had been awakened and were chattering, and cockerells crowing. Then cannons, dogs, cockerells, men and women all fell silent. Everything returned to silence. I held my ear to the window and all I could hear in the far distance was gunfire which sounded like the flat thump of an oar on the side of a wooden boat.' 
The diary entry goes on to describe the food-shortages and the terror and paranoia of a besieged and beleaguered population. It struck me that the fears and anguish of the people of Paris all those years ago have been echoed more recently in many war-torn households and neighbourhoods in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Libya, Syria, Bahrain...............