soldiers in Paris, and fears of a royalist restoration, led to an insurrection in late March, and the city was ruled by the Paris Commune until late May 1871. While Hugo condemned the violence, he endorsed the idea of the state-within-a-state, and this led to his expulsion from Belgium on 1 June, after an attack on his lodgings. He took refuge in Vianden, Luxembourg. When Marshal Patrice de Mac Mahon retook Paris, many were executed, and thousands more imprisoned or exiled. Hugo finished L'Année Terrible while at Vianden, and it was published in April 1872. It was a huge success, on the same order as Les Châtiments, but his sympathy for the Communists ended his political career. Although he pleaded with God in one poem for the preservation of his surviving children, his other son François-Victor died on 26 December 1873 after a long illness. He returned to the theme of revolution in the novel Quatre-Vingt-Treize (1873), which dealt with the events of 1793. Poetry by Victor Hugo 1872 poems