Edmond de Goncourt's Journal:
The brothers, Edmond (1822-96) and Jules de Goncourt (1830-70) had an unusually close relationship. Spending time together virtually every day, they began writing together and eventually published six novels. But they are best known for their journals, which combined often caustic gossip with observations about contemporary literature. In June 1870 the death of Jules devastated his older brother, who initially decided to end the journals with the last entry Jules had written in January of that year, but he decided to continue as a way of dealing with his grief. By August, however, references to the Franco-Prussian War began to find their way into his pages, and over the next year Edmond produced are some of the finest eye-witness reports of war and revolution that I have ever read.
I strongly recommend someday reading the entire journal for this period. It has been excerpted and translated in Georges J. Becker, Paris under Siege, 1870-1871: From the Goncourt Journal (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1969).
Boy in Military Uniform, Paris, 1870