A street-level view of Saint-Cloud in the immediate aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 fills this albumen cabinet card, printed on a mount with a characteristic red-ruled border. On October 13, 1870, a shell ignited Napoleon III's apartments at the Château de Saint-Cloud, setting off a fire that engulfed the complex for two days, and the devastation extended throughout the town itself, as this photograph documents. No photographer's imprint appears on the mount.

The image looks up a broad, rubble-strewn street flanked by multi-story residential buildings whose façades have been sheared away, exposing interior floors and dangling structural members. A massive dry-stone barricade of rounded cobblestones, stacked waist-high and stretching across the middle ground, bisects the scene between the camera and the ruins beyond. A solitary dark-coated figure stands at the left edge of the frame, back to the camera, surveying the destruction, while distant figures and a ladder are visible further up the street.

Saint-Cloud suffered particularly during the Siege of Paris, and the town's destruction, as well as its subsequent reconstruction, was documented in photographs, prints, and archival records preserved in French collections. The barricade visible in the street is consistent with the defensive works erected during the siege, and the stripped building shells at right retain complete window openings and balcony rails despite total interior collapse, testifying to the precision and scale of the Prussian bombardment.

Inscribed in pencil on the reverse upper left: "St. Cloud" ("Saint-Cloud"). Additional notations in pencil on the reverse read "7/24/09," "ABDEEX," and "Eb," with a catalog number "615136" written vertically along the right edge.