A substantial booklet produced for a display to the Royal Philatelic Society London of perhaps the finest collection ever formed of the fascinating postal history of the Franco-Prussian War. This first part covers all aspects except the siege of Paris balloon post, intended for a second part which the death of the author prevented. Well illustrated in black & white with covers from the author’s collection. Contents: The Newspaper Posts; French Military Mail; The “Papillons de Metz”; The “Ceres” issues of the Siege of Paris; The posts in and out of Paris under siege; Bourbaki’s Army of the East; The provisional “Bordeaux” Lithographs; Prisoner of War correspondence; The Red Cross; The Paris “Commune”; “Detoured” Mail; Posts into the German occupied French territories; The German “Alsace-Lorraine” issue and the German occupied North-East; Postal communications between the occupied and free French territories at the conclusion of hostilities; The war tax and the absence of a 5 centimes adhesive.