 The diarist Edmond de Goncourt, wrote, three days after "La Semaine Sanglante", "...the bleeding has been done thoroughly, and a bleeding like that, by killing the rebellious part of a population, postpones the next revolution...The old society has twenty years of peace before it..."

On 23 April, George Sand, an ardent republican who had taken part in the 1848 revolution, wrote "The horrible adventure continues.They ransom, they threaten, they arrest, they judge.