Everything about The Paris Commune totally explained
The
Paris Commune (
French:
La Commune de Paris) was a
government that briefly ruled
Paris from
18 March (more formally from
26 March) to
28 May 1871. It has been variously described as either
Anarchist or
Socialist in tenor, depending on the ideology of the commentator.
In a formal sense the Paris Commune was simply the local authority (council of a town or district —
French "commune") which exercised power in Paris for two months in the spring of 1871. But the conditions in which it was formed, its controversial decrees and tortured end make it one of the more important political episodes of the time.
Background
The Commune was the result of an uprising in Paris after France was defeated in the
Franco-Prussian War. This uprising was chiefly caused by the disaster in the war and the growing discontent among French workers. The worker discontent can be traced to the first worker uprisings, the
Canut Revolts, in
Lyon and Paris in the 1830s. ('
Canut' was a Lyonnais silk worker, often working on Jacquard looms.)
The war with
Prussia, started by
Napoleon III in July 1870, turned out disastrously for France, and by September
Paris itself was under siege. The gap between rich and poor in the capital had widened in recent years, and now food shortages, military failures, and finally a Prussian bombardment added to the widespread discontent. Parisians, especially workers and the lower-middle classes, had long supported a democratic republic. A specific demand was that Paris should be self-governing with its own elected council, something enjoyed by smaller French towns but denied to Paris by a government wary of the capital's unruly populace. An associated but more vague wish was for a fairer, if not necessarily
socialist, way of managing the economy, summed up in the popular cry for
"la république démocratique et sociale!" ("the democratic and social republic!")
In January 1871, after four months of siege, the moderate republican Government of National Defence sought an armistice with the newly-proclaimed
German Empire. The Germans included a triumphal entry into Paris in the peace terms. Despite the hardships of the siege, many Parisians were bitterly resentful and were particularly angry that the Prussians (now at the head of the new Empire) should be allowed even a brief ceremonial occupation of their city.
By that time hundreds of thousands of Parisians were armed members of a citizens' militia known as the "
National Guard", which had been greatly expanded to help defend the city. Guard units elected their own officers who in working-class districts included radical and socialist leaders.
Steps were taken to form a "Central Committee" of the Guard, including patriotic republicans and socialists, both to defend Paris against a possible German attack and also to defend the republic against a possible royalist restoration following the election of a monarchist majority in February 1871 to the new National Assembly.
The population of Paris was defiant in the face of defeat and was prepared to fight if the entry of the German army into the city led to an armed clash. Before the Germans entered Paris, National Guards helped by ordinary working people managed to take large numbers of cannons (which they regarded as their own property as they'd been partly paid for by public subscription) away from the Germans' path and store them in "safe" districts. One of the chief "cannon parks" was on the heights of
Montmartre.
Adolphe Thiers, head of the new provisional government, realised that in the present unstable situation the Central Committee formed an alternative centre of political and military power. In addition he was concerned that the workers would arm themselves with the National Guard weapons and provoke the Germans.
Rise and nature
The Germans entered Paris briefly and left again without incident, but Paris continued to be in a state of high political excitement. The imperial and provisional governments had both left Paris for Versailles, a safer haven against the German armies, and during the time required to return there was a power vacuum in the capital of France.
As the Central Committee of the National Guard adopted an increasingly radical stance and steadily gained authority, the government felt that it couldn't indefinitely allow it to have four hundred cannons at its disposal. So, as a first step, on
18 March Thiers ordered regular troops to seize the cannon stored on the Butte Montmartre and in other locations across the city. But instead the soldiers, whose morale was low, fraternised with National Guards and local residents. The general at Montmartre,
Claude Martin Lecomte, who was later said to have ordered them to fire on the crowd of National Guards and civilians was dragged from his horse and later shot together with General Thomas, a veteran republican now hated as former commander of the National Guard, who was seized nearby.
Other army units joined the rebellion which spread so fast that the head of the government, Thiers, ordered an immediate evacuation of Paris by as many of the regular forces as would obey, by the police, and by administrators and specialists of every kind. He fled ahead of them to
Versailles. Thiers claimed he'd thought about this strategy (to retreat from Paris to crush the people afterward) for a long time while meditating on the example of the
1848 Revolution but it's just as likely that he panicked. There is no evidence that the government had expected or planned for the crisis that had now begun. The Central Committee of the National Guard was now the only effective government in Paris: it arranged elections for a Commune, to be held on
26 March.
The 92 members of the "Communal Council" included a high proportion of skilled workers and several professionals (such as doctors and journalists). Many of them were political activists, ranging from reformist republicans, through various types of socialists, to the
Jacobins who tended to look back nostalgically to the
Revolution of 1789.
The veteran leader of the 'Blanquist' group of revolutionary socialists,
Louis Auguste Blanqui, was elected President of the Council, but this was in his absence, for he'd been arrested on
17 March and was held in a secret prison throughout the life of the Commune. The Commune unsuccessfully tried to exchange him first against
Mgr Darboy, archbishop of Paris, then against all 74 hostages it detained, but Thiers flatly refused (
see below). The Paris Commune was proclaimed on
28 March although local districts often retained the organizations from the siege.
Social measures
The commune adopted the previously discarded
French Republican Calendar during its brief existence and used the
socialist red flag rather than the
republican tricolore — in 1848, during the
Second Republic, radicals and socialists had already adopted the red flag to distinguish themselves from moderate Republicans similar to the moderate, liberal
Girondists during the
1789 Revolution.
Despite internal differences, the Council made a good start in maintaining the public services essential for a city of two million. It also reached consensus on certain policies that tended towards a progressive, secular and highly democratic
social democracy rather than a social revolution. Lack of time (the Commune was able to meet on fewer than 60 days in all) meant that only a few decrees were actually implemented. These included the
separation of church and state; the
right to vote for women; the remission of rents owed for the entire period of the siege (during which payment had been suspended); the abolition of
night work in the hundreds of Paris
bakeries; the granting of
pensions to the unmarried companions and children of National Guards killed on active service; the free return, by the city
pawnshops, of all workmen's tools and household items valued up to 20 francs, pledged during the siege as they were concerned that skilled workers had been forced to pawn their tools during the war; the postponement of commercial
debt obligations, and abolition of interest on the debts; and the
right of employees to take over and run an enterprise if it were deserted by its owner, who was to receive compensation.
The decree separated the church from the state, made all church property public property, and excluded religion from schools — after the fall of the Commune, the
Third Republic would have to wait until the 1880-81
Jules Ferry laws and the
1905 French law on the separation of Church and State to re-implement these measures which founded French
laïcité. The churches were allowed to continue their religious activity only if they kept their doors open to public political meetings during the evenings. Along with the streets and the
cafés, this made the churches one of the main participatory political centres of the Commune. Other projected legislation dealt with educational reforms which would make further education and technical training freely available to all.
Some women organized a
feminist movement, following on from earlier attempts in 1789 and 1848. Thus,
Nathalie Lemel, a socialist bookbinder, and
Élisabeth Dmitrieff, a young Russian exile and member of the Russian section of the
First International (IWA), created the
Union des femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soins aux blessés ("Women's Union for the Defense of Paris and Care of the Injured") on
11 April 1871. The feminist writer
André Léo, a friend of
Paule Minck, also was active in the Women's Union. Believing that their struggle against
patriarchy could only be followed in the frame of a global struggle against
capitalism, the association demanded
gender-
equality, wages' equality, right of
divorce for women, right to
secular education and professional education for girls. They also demanded suppression of the distinction between married women and
concubines, between legitimate and natural children, the abolition of
prostitution (obtaining the closing of the
maisons de tolérance, or legal official
brothels). The Women's Union also participated in several municipal commissions and organized cooperative workshops. Along with
Eugène Varlin, Nathalie Le Mel created the
cooperative restaurant
La Marmite, which served free food for indigents, and then fought during the Bloody Week on the barricades Paule Minck opened a free school in the
Church of Saint Pierre de Montmartre, and animated the
Club Saint-Sulpice on the Left Bank.
The
Catholic Encyclopedia states that on 24 –
26 May, more than 50 hostages were murdered. In some cases, certain leaders of the Commune gave the orders, in other cases they were killed by mobs. Among the victims was the Archbishop of Paris,
Georges Darboy.
La Semaine sanglante ("The Bloody Week")
The toughest resistance came in the more working-class districts of the east, where fighting continued during the later stages of the week of vicious street fighting (
La Semaine sanglante, the bloody week). By
27 May only a few pockets of resistance remained, notably the poorer eastern districts of
Belleville and
Ménilmontant. Fighting ended during the late afternoon or early evening of
28 May. According to legend, the last barricade was in the rue Ramponeau in Belleville.
Marshall MacMahon issued a proclamation: "To the inhabitants of Paris. The French army has come to save you. Paris is freed! At 4 o'clock our soldiers took the last insurgent position. Today the fight is over. Order, work and security will be reborn."
Reprisals now began in earnest. Having supported the Commune in any way was a political crime, of which thousands could be, and were, accused. Some of the Communards were shot against what is now known as the
Communards' Wall in the
Père Lachaise cemetery while thousands of others were tried by summary courts martial of doubtful legality, and thousands shot. Notorious sites of slaughter were the Luxembourg Gardens and the Lobau Barracks, behind the Hôtel de Ville. Nearly 40,000 others were marched to Versailles for trials. For many days endless columns of men, women and children made a painful way under military escort to temporary prison quarters in Versailles. Later 12,500 were tried, and about 10,000 were found guilty: 23 men were executed; many were condemned to prison; 4,000 were deported for life to
New Caledonia. The number of killed during
La Semaine Sanglante can never be established for certain, and estimates vary from about 10,000 to 50,000. According to
Benedict Anderson, "7,500 were jailed or deported" and "roughly 20,000 executed" .
According to
Alfred Cobban, 30,000 were killed, perhaps as many as 50,000 later executed or imprisoned and 7,000 were exiled to
New Caledonia. Thousands more - including most of the Commune leaders - succeeded in escaping to Belgium, Britain (a safe haven for 3,000-4,000 refugees), Italy, Spain and the United States. The final exiles and transportees were amnestied in 1880. Some became prominent in later politics, as Paris councillors, deputies or senators.
In 1872, "stringent laws were passed that ruled out all possibilities of organizing on the left." At his funeral, his body was wrapped in the remains of a red and white flag preserved from the Commune . The Soviet spaceflight
Voskhod 1 carried part of a communard banner from the Paris Commune. Also, the
Bolsheviks renamed the
dreadnought battleship Sevastopol to
Parizhskaya Kommuna.
Other Communes
Simultaneously with the Paris Commune, uprisings in
Lyon,
Grenoble and other cities established equally short-lived Communes.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Paris Commune'.
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