Commune Of Paris | Encyclopedia.com (2024)

origins
the franco-prussian war
the versailles government
the outbreak of the paris commune
the character of the paris commune
the defeat of the paris commune
the legacy and significance of the paris commune
bibliography

The Paris Commune of 1871 was the most important urban popular rising in Europe between the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of February 1917. It ended the series of Paris popular risings begun in July 1789 and continued in July 1830 and June 1848; it involved a popular revolutionary seizure of power in Continental Europe's premier city; and it inspired a legend of revolutionary government, heroic resistance, and tragic martyrdom that enjoyed a century's iconic status for the European Left.

origins

The reasons for the outbreak of the Paris Commune were many and complex. Paris was a quite exceptional city. Its population had risen from approximately 1.2 million in 1850 to nearly 2 million in 1870, a figure larger than that of the combined populations of the next fourteen most populous French cities. Rapid expansion reflected the city's status as France's most important industrial center and largest building site. More than one-fifth of all French urban workers lived in Paris and they tended to be highly skilled and literate. The rebuilding of Paris under Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann (Prefect of the Seine, 1853–1869) in the interests of modernization, imperial prestige, security, and the bourgeoisie necessitated tax increases, involved authoritarian planning decisions, and attracted large numbers of construction workers and other migrants to the capital.

At the same time, workers and their families were displaced from the city center to outlying suburbs with virtually nonexistent public transport. Since Paris was the imperial capital, as well as the principal business center and urban resort of the rich in France, Paris workers were exposed to the extravagances and excesses of the court and of the wealthy elite in this "New Babylon." Moreover, Paris had a revolutionary tradition going back to 1789, renewed in the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, and demonstrated again in the resistance to Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte's (later Napoleon III; r. 1852–1871) coup d'état of 2 December 1851. Thereafter, election results and the plebiscite of May 1870 confirmed that Paris remained the center of opposition to the Second Empire. The liberalization of the regime during the 1860s simply facilitated the emergence of radical opposition leadership, for example, against state centralization, of opposition newspapers, and of opposition ideologies (the Belleville Programme of 1869), aided by the law of 18 June 1868, which tolerated public meetings.

the franco-prussian war

The political alienation of the Paris working class from the Second Empire did not mean that a revolutionary situation existed in Paris before July 1870. It took the Franco-Prussian War, the siege of Paris, and the decisions of the Thiers government to transform political alienation into violent revolution. The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War on 19 July 1870 rapidly led to the defeat at Sedan on 2 September, when Napoleon III and approximately one hundred thousand French soldiers surrendered. The news of this catastrophe in turn led on 4 September to a crowd invasion of the Legislative Body (the lower house of the French parliament), the proclamation of the Third Republic at the Hôtel de Ville (the Paris city hall), and the formation of a Government of National Defense. The new French government included a radical, Léon-Michel Gambetta (1838–1882), as Minister of the Interior, but moderate republicans predominated. The moderate republicans wanted to make peace, but the demands of Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) for a large indemnity and the cessation of Alsace and much of Lorraine were considered too high. The war therefore continued. By 19 September German forces had surrounded Paris, cutting it off from the rest of France. Paris had modern fortifications, consisting of a thirty mile rampart and sixteen outlying forts; the city had numerous defenders, including both regular soldiers and members of the National Guard (a civilian militia), who were reasonably well supplied with weapons and ammunition; and the city initially had substantial food stocks. Consequently, the Germans decided not to try to capture the city by assault, while the Parisians were able to survive a prolonged siege.

The Government of National Defense (except Gambetta) wanted to end the war as quickly as possible and so neither introduced radical measures nor prosecuted the war vigorously. In contrast, most of those besieged in Paris, fired by political radicalism and patriotic republicanism, urged a total mobilization of national resources for the war effort and an aggressive military strategy against the Germans. The failure of sorties from Paris or of a relieving force from the provinces to end the siege, the German decision to begin an artillery bombardment of Paris from 5 January 1871, and, above all, the near-exhaustion of food supplies in Paris, led to the negotiation of an armistice on 28 January 1871.

By this date the siege had transformed the situation in Paris. A revolutionary leadership had emerged, partly through vigilance committees set up in each arrondissem*nt or district. A popular revolutionary program had been developed, including the introduction of an elected city council or commune, the election of all public officials, and the replacement of the police and the regular army by the National Guard. The National Guard itself had been hugely expanded to more than 340,000 men, all of whom were paid one franc and thirty centimes per day and most of whom were issued with a uniform and military equipment. Recruitment was organized on a neighborhood basis and officers were elected. Much of the population of Paris had been radicalized by political clubs and newspapers; by the conservative and defeatist policies of the Government of National Defense; and by the whole traumatic experience of the siege, especially the desperate food situation, aggravated by the nonimplementation of an adequate food-rationing system.

the versailles government

One of the conditions of the armistice was that elections should be held as soon as possible for a National Assembly that would approve the final peace treaty between France and the newly proclaimed German Empire. The elections (8 February 1871) revealed the political division between Paris and the provinces. Nearly all the forty-three representatives elected in Paris were prowar radical republicans, whereas provincial voters returned more than four hundred conservatives but barely one hundred republicans. The National Assembly, meeting at Bordeaux on 17 February, chose Adolphe Thiers (1797–1877) as head of the executive. Unsurprisingly, Thiers and his new government pursued conservative policies, unsympathetic to Paris: a law of 15 February limited National Guard pay to those who could present an official certificate of dire poverty;

the Germans were allowed to hold a military parade down the Champs Elysées on 1 March; a right-wing aristocrat, General de Paladines, was appointed on 3 March commander of the Paris National Guard; six radical Paris newspapers were suppressed; a military court condemned two radical leaders (Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens [1838–1871] and Auguste Blanqui [1805–1881]) to death; the moratorium in Paris on the payment of rents and commercial bills of exchange was ended; and the National Assembly decided to meet at Versailles, former seat of absolute monarchy and recent setting for the proclamation of the German Empire (18 January 1871).

the outbreak of the paris commune

Finally, the Versailles government on 18 March sent troops to remove cannon parked in the working-class suburbs of Belleville and Montmartre. This attempt to deprive the National Guard of its most dangerous weapons is understandable, but so too is the Parisian response. Angry crowds of National Guards and civilians obstructed the troops, who refused to resist. Several officers were arrested and two generals, Claude Martin Lecomte (1817–1871), the commander of the troops at Montmartre, and Clément Thomas (1809–1871), the former commander-in-chief of the Paris National Guard, were executed.

A panicked Thiers, fearing that troops of the Paris garrison and civil servants would become prisoners of the insurgents, ordered all soldiers and government civil servants to withdraw to Versailles, thereby creating a power vacuum. The remaining representatives of authority in Paris, the mayors of the city's arrondissem*nts, the National Assembly representatives of Paris, and the Central Committee of the National Guard all agreed that elections should be held on 26 March for a new commune or city council. Political radicalization during the siege, hatred of Thiers and the Versailles government, and the behavior of the bourgeoisie (who tended either to leave Paris or to boycott the elections) led to a sweeping left-wing victory: only nineteen moderates, as opposed to seventy-three members of the Left, were elected. The Paris Commune was formally proclaimed in a solemn ceremony on 28 March.

The military situation for the Paris Commune was hopeless from the start. The Paris National Guard lacked discipline and units were usually reluctant to fight outside the neighborhoods from which they had been recruited. Attempts to mount sorties against the well-entrenched Versailles troops all failed. Communes in Lyon, Marseille, Limoges, Toulouse, Narbonne, St. Étienne, and Le Creusot were soon suppressed, so no help came from provincial France. The German army remained encamped on the outskirts of Paris, ostensibly neutral but potentially hostile to the Commune. Bismarck released French prisoners of war to the Versailles government, which was able to build up forces of overwhelming strength and begin a steady assault on the city's defenses. The southwestern ramparts were penetrated on 21 May, although it took a week of sometimes intense fighting against insurgents defending buildings and street barricades before the Commune finally fell on 28 May.

the character of the paris commune

Despite its increasingly desperate military situation, the short-lived Paris Commune was remarkable for its social and political character. Most members of the Commune council belonged either to the lower middle class or to the working-class elite, at a time when upper-class elites dominated governments throughout Europe. Politically, Communards saw themselves as being republicans, revolutionaries, patriots, and Parisians. No organized political parties existed, although there were factions such as the Blanquists (revolutionaries) and the Jacobins (left-wing republicans). Although distorted by military demands and limited by lack of time, Communard priorities can be discerned. Communards believed in grassroots democracy and the election and public accountability of all officials. The National Guard, recruited from all able-bodied men, replaced the police and the regular army. The confiscation of church buildings, the destruction of religious symbols, the dismissal of religious personnel from their jobs, and the planning of a secular educational system all featured in an anticlerical crusade. Women-friendly policies included equal pay for male and female teachers, support for women's committees and women's cooperatives, and pensions for common-law wives of National Guards killed in action.

Economic policy, though, was relatively conservative. Night-work in bakeries was banned and the price of bread was fixed. The moratorium on rents was reinstated and extended to objects pawned in the state pawnshops. However, property was not confiscated, except church property; and, until the last week of the Commune, property was not destroyed, again except church property and symbolically significant buildings and monuments, such as Thiers's townhouse and the Vendôme column. A decree of 16 April did provide for the confiscation of workshops, but only if they had been abandoned. Compensation was to be paid to their owners, and the decree was not put into practice. The Commune also promoted the establishment of producers' cooperatives.

the defeat of the paris commune

The final week of the Commune (21–28 May), "the Bloody Week," witnessed atrocities on both sides. Communards burnt prominent public buildings, such as the Hôtel de Ville and the Tuileries Palace, and executed hostages, including the Archbishop of Paris, Georges Darboy (1813–1871) on 24 May, and a group of fifty (mostly priests and policemen) on 26 May. The Versailles troops shot numerous prisoners, most notoriously in front of a wall in the Père Lachaise cemetery.

After final resistance had been overcome, nearly forty thousand suspects were rounded up, of whom approximately ten thousand were found guilty. In all, it is likely that as many as twenty-five thousand Parisians were executed, with notoriously radical neighbourhoods such as Belleville especially targeted. Four thousand people were transported to New Caledonia and the remainder were imprisoned. An amnesty was not granted until 1880.

the legacy and significance of the paris commune

The total military defeat of the Commune and the harsh treatment of suspected Communards virtually

destroyed the radical Left in French politics for nearly a decade and massively discouraged any future resort to violent popular revolution in France. Under the leadership of Thiers until 1873, and then the Duc de Broglie (Albert, 1821–1901) and Marshal de Mac-Mahon (1808–1893) (commander of the troops who suppressed the Commune), the Third Republic emerged as a conservative regime. A monarchist restoration was avoided, but when republicans came to power from 1877 their radicalism was anticlerical rather than socialist. Paris lost its National Guard and mayor (the latter until 1977). The French parliament and president did not leave Versailles for Paris until 1879. Public buildings burnt by the Communards were rebuilt exactly as they had been, except for the Tuileries Palace. The basilica of Sacré Coeur was erected on the heights of Montmartre, where the Commune had begun and Generals Lecomte and Thomas had been executed. Altogether, the memory of the Commune was officially obliterated while conservatives portrayed the Communards as bloodthirsty savages and blamed the burning of public buildings on female incendiarists (pétroleuses).

In contrast, Karl Marx (1818–1883) hailed the Commune as a proletarian government that had destroyed the bourgeois bureaucratic machine and as "the glorious harbinger of a new society" that should serve as a model for future revolutionary governments. He did, however, criticize the Commune for failing to launch an immediate attack on Versailles and for failing to seize the gold reserves of the Bank of France. For the French Left, the Commune became a symbol of heroic resistance and martyrdom, annually commemorated at a ceremony at Pére Lachaise cemetery.

See alsoBlanqui, Auguste; First International; France; Franco-Prussian War; Marx, Karl; Paris; Republicanism; Socialism.

bibliography

Primary Sources

Marx, Karl. The Civil War in France. Peking, 1966.

Secondary Sources

Edwards, Stewart. The Paris Commune 1871. London, 1971.

Greenberg, Louis M. Sisters of Liberty: Marseille, Lyon, Paris, and the Reaction to a Centralized State, 1868–1871. Cambridge, Mass., 1971.

Rougerie, Jacques. Paris libre, 1871. Paris, 1971.

Shafer, David A. "'Plus que des Ambulancières': Women in Articulation and Defence of Their Ideals during the Paris Commune (1871)." French History 7 (1993): 85–101.

Tombs, Robert. The War against Paris, 1871. Cambridge, U.K., 1981.

——. The Paris Commune 1871. Harlow, Essex, U.K., and New York, 1999.

William Fortescue