Gallieni, also a star in the ascendant, was meanwhile terrorising the municipality of Paris with his orders to put the city into a state of defence. On 2 September the government had, as in 1870, transferred its seat to Bordeaux. Joffre had incorporated the capital into the Zone of the Armies, where he ruled with total power, on 31 August. With constitutional authority, therefore, the Military Governor issued instructions to prepare the Eiffel Tower for destruction (it was the transmitting station for general staff radio communications), to lay demolition charges under the Seine bridges, to send all rolling stock useful to the enemy out of the Paris rail system, to provision the 2,924 guns of the fortifications with ammunition, to clear fields of fire for the artillery of trees and houses and to conscript the labourers to do the work. Paris, in 1914, was still a fortified city, surrounded by walls and a girdle of forts. It was also, under Gallieni's command, constituted an Entrenched Camp, with improvised defences stretching out into its surrounding countryside, further to enhance the "obstacle of Paris" which had so troubled Schlieffen in the long years while he had been devising his plan.
~ From The First World War by John Keegan, p. 111