sentences:  In September, as the Siege of Paris began, he was importuned by the city's American community to form, at their expense, the Parisian equivalent of the Civil War U.S. Ambulance Corps.For the next six months, through the fall of Paris to the Prussian Army on January 28, 1871, until his departure on March 18, the first day of the revolutionary Paris Commune, the ambulance corps operated on a wide-ranging scale throughout the city, obtaining results beyond the over-stretched capacities of the local physicians.In recognition of his efforts, the newly formed Third Republic awarded him the decoration of Chevalier [Knight] in Legion of Honor, the country's highest distinction.