Eleanor Marx’s translation of Lissagaray’s History was made from a manuscript revised by the author and approved by Karl Marx. Lissagaray himself regarded it as the definitive edition of his work. Editing has therefore been confined to a minimum, though some minor mis-translations from the original French have been corrected and a number of anachronistic terms, generally derived directly from the French, have been revised to make their meaning clearer. Other French terms recurring in the text are expanded in the glossary provided.
Lissagaray’s own appendices and notes, which contain valuable documentation of the events described, are reproduced in full. A general index has been added to this edition together with a full inde... (From: Marxists.org.)
The following translation of Lissagaray’s Histoire de la Commune was made many years ago, at the express wish of the author, who, besides making many emendations in his work, wrote nearly a hundred pages especially for this English version. The translation, in fact, was made from the Histoire de la Commune as prepared for a second edition — an edition which the French Government would not allow to be published. This explanation is necessary in view of the differences between the translation and the first edition of Lissagaray’s book.
Written in 1876, there are necessarily passages in this history out of date today; as, for example, the references to the prisoners in New Caledonia, the exiles, and the amnesty. But for two re... (From: Marxists.org.)
The history of the Third Estate was to have been the prologue to this history. But time presses; the victims are gliding into their graves; the perfidies of the Radicals threaten to surpass the worn-out calumnies of the Monarchists. I limit myself for the present to the strictly necessary introduction.
Who made the Revolution of the 18th March? What part was taken by the Central Committee? What was the Commune? How comes it that 100,000 Frenchmen are lost to their country? Who is responsible? legions of witnesses will answer.
No doubt it is an exile who speaks, but an exile who has been neither member, nor officer, nor functionary of the Commune; who for five years has sifted the evidence; who has not ventured upon a single assertion with... (From: Marxists.org.)
How the Prussians got Paris and the Rurals France
Daring — this word sums up all the politics of the day.
(St. Just’s Report to the Convention)
August 9, 1870 — In six days the Empire has lost three battles. Douai, Frossart, MacMahon have allowed themselves to be isolated, surprised, crushed. Alsace is lost, the Moselle laid bare. The dumb-founded Ministry has convoked the Chamber. Ollivier, in dread of a demonstration, denounces it beforehand as ‘Prussian’. But since eleven in the morning an immense agitated crowd occupies the Place de la Concorde, the quays, and surrounds the Corps Législatif.
Paris is waiting for the word from the deputies of the Left. Since the announcement of the defeat they have ... (From: Marxists.org.)
Neither the head of the executive power, nor the National Assembly, supporting and strengthening one another, did anything to provoke the Paris insurrection. (Dufaure’s speech against amnesty, session of 18th May, 1876.)
The invasion brought back the Chambre introuvable of 1816 [ultra-right wing parliament under the Bourbon restoration in 1816]. After having dreamed of a regenerated France soaring towards the light, to feel oneself hurled back half a century, under the yoke of the Jesuits of the Congregation, of the brutal rurals! There were men who lost heart. Many spoke of expatriating themselves. The thoughtless said, ‘The Chamber will only last a day, since it has no mandate but to decide on peace and war.’ Those, howeve... (From: Marxists.org.)
The Republic was threatened by the Assembly, it was said. Gentlemen, when the insurrection broke out, the Assembly was noted politically by only two acts: nominating the head of the executive power and accepting a republican cabinet. (Speech against amnesty by Larcy of the Center Left, session of 18th May, 1876.)
To the rural plebiscite the Parisian National Guard had answered by their federation; to the threats of the monarchists, to the projects of decapitalization, by the demonstration of the Bastille; to D'Aurelles’ appointment, by the resolutions of the 3rd March. What the perils of the siege had not been able to effect the Assembly had brought about — the union of the middle class with the proletariat. The immense majority... (From: Marxists.org.)
We then did what we had to do: nothing provoked the Paris insurrection. (Dufaure’s speech against amnesty, session of 18th May, 1876.)
The execution was as foolish as the conception. On the 18th of March, at three o'clock in the morning, several columns dispersed in various directions to the Buttes Chaumont, Belleville, the Faubourg du Temple, the Bastille, the Hôtel-de-Ville, Place St. Michel, the Luxembourg, the thirteenth arrondissement and the Invalides. General Susbielle marched on Montmartre with two brigades about 6,000 men strong. All was silent and deserted. The Paturel brigade took possession of the Moulin de la Galette without striking a blow. The Lecomte brigade gained the Tower of Solferino only meeting with one sen... (From: Marxists.org.)
Our broken hearts appeal to yours. (Mayors and adjuncts of Paris and deputies of the Seine to the National Guard. and all Citizens.)
Paris only became aware of her victory on the morning of the 19th of March. What a change in the scene, even after all the scene-shifting in the drama enacted during these last seven months! The red flag floated above the Hôtel-de-Ville. With the early morning mists the army, the Government, the Administration had evaporated. From the depths of the Bastille, from the obscure Rue Basfroi, the Central Committee was lifted to the summits of Paris in the sight of all the world. Thus on the 4th September the Empire had vanished; thus the deputies of the Left had picked up a derelict power.
The Committee, to... (From: Marxists.org.)
I thought the Paris insurgents would be unable to steer their own ship.
(Jules Favre, Inquiry into the 18th of March.)
Thus no agreement had been come to, only one of the four delegates having, from sheer weariness, given way to a certain extent. So on the morning of the 20th, when the mayor Bonvalet and two adjuncts sent by the mayors came to take possession of the Hôtel-de-Ville, the members of the Committee unanimously exclaimed, ‘We have not treated.’ But Bonvalet, feigning to believe in a regular agreement, continued, ‘The deputies are today going to ask for the municipal franchises. Their negotiations cannot succeed if the administration of Paris is not given up to the mayors. On pain of frustrating the efforts... (From: Marxists.org.)
I thought the Paris insurgents would be unable to steer their own ship.
(Jules Favre, Inquiry into the 18th of March.)
Thus no agreement had been come to, only one of the four delegates having, from sheer weariness, given way to a certain extent. So on the morning of the 20th, when the mayor Bonvalet and two adjuncts sent by the mayors came to take possession of the Hôtel-de-Ville, the members of the Committee unanimously exclaimed, ‘We have not treated.’ But Bonvalet, feigning to believe in a regular agreement, continued, ‘The deputies are today going to ask for the municipal franchises. Their negotiations cannot succeed if the administration of Paris is not given up to the mayors. On pain of frustrating the efforts... (From: Marxists.org.)
The Central Committee was equal to the occasion. Its proclamations, its Socialist articles in the Officiel, the truculence of the mayors and deputies, had at last rallied round it all the revolutionary groups. It had also added to its members some men better known to the masses.[99] By its order the Place Vendôme was provided with barricades; the battalions of the Hôtel-de-Ville were reinforced; strong patrols remounted the boulevards before the reactionary posts of the Rues Vivienne and Drouot. Thanks to it, the night passed tranquilly.
As the elections on the next day had become impossible, the Committee declared they could only take place on the 26th, and said to Paris: ‘The reaction, excited by your mayors and your dep... (From: Marxists.org.)
A considerable part of the population and the National Guard of Paris calls on the support of the departments for the reestablishment of order. (Circular from Thiers to the Prefects, 27th March.)
This week ended with the triumph of Paris. Paris-Commune again resumed her part as the capital of France, again became the national initiator. For the tenth time since 1789 the workmen put France upon the right track.
The bayonets of Prussia had laid bare our country, such as eighty years of bourgeois domination had left it — a Goliath at the mercy of his driver.
Paris broke the thousand fetters which bound France down to the ground, like Gulliver a prey to ants; restored the circulation to her paralyzed limbs; said, ‘The life of the ... (From: Marxists.org.)
All parts of France have united and rallied around the Assembly and the government. (Circular from Thiers to the Provinces, evening of the 23rd.)
What was the state of the provinces?
For some days, without any of the Parisian journals, they lived upon lying dispatches of M. Thiers, 103 then looked at the signatures to the proclamations of the Central Committee, and finding there neither the Left nor the democratic paragons, said, ‘Who are these unknown men?’ The Republican bourgeois, misinformed on the events occurring during the siege of Paris — very cleverly hoodwinked, too, by the Conservative press — cried, like their fathers who in their time had said, ‘Pitt and Coburg’, when unable to comprehend popula... (From: Marxists.org.)
Since the elections of the 8th February, the advent of the reactionists, the nomination of M. Thiers, the patched-up and shameful peace, the monarchy in prospect, the defiances and the defeats were as bitterly resented by the valiant town of Marseilles as by Paris. There the news of the 18th March fell upon a powder-magazine. Nevertheless, further details were looked for, when the 22nd brought the famous dispatch of Rouher-Canrobert.
The clubs, playing a great part in the ardent life of Marseilles, were at once thronged. The prudent and methodical Radicals went to the club of the National Guard; the popular elements met at the El Dorado. There they applauded Gaston Crémieux, an elegant and effeminate speaker, now and then happy at... (From: Marxists.org.)
The Place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville was still astir when the newly elected members of the Commune assembled in the municipal council-hall.
The ballot had returned sixteen mayors, adjuncts, and Liberals of all shades, [108] a few Radicals, [109] and about sixty revolutionaries of all sorts. [110]
How came these latter to be chosen? All must be told, and virile truth at last substituted for the stale flattery of the old romantic school styling itself ‘revolutionary’. There might be something more terrible than the defeat: to misconstrue or to forget its causes.
Responsibility weighs heavily enough upon the elected, but we must not charge it all to one side — the electors also have their share of it.
The Central Committee h... (From: Marxists.org.)
That very day, the 2nd April, at one o'clock, without warning, without summons, the Versaillese opened fire and launched their shells into Paris.
For several days their cavalry had exchanged shots with our advance posts at Chatillon and Putteaux. We occupied Courbevoie, that commands the route to Versailles, which made the rurals very anxious. On the 2nd, at ten o'clock in the morning, three brigades of the best Versailles troops, 10,000 strong, arrived at the cross-roads of Bergeres. Six or seven hundred cavalry of the brigade Gallifet supported this movement, while we had only three federal battalions at Courbevoie, in all five or six hundred men, defended by a halffinished barricade on the St. Germain road. Their watch, however, was wel... (From: Marxists.org.)
The paralytic Commission still continued to doze, when, on the 26th, Espivent beat the réveille, placed the department in a state of siege, and issued a proclamation à la Thiers. The municipal council began to tremble, and on the 27th withdrew their delegates from the prefecture. Gaston Crémieux and Bouchet were at once sent to the mairie to announce that the Commission was ready to withdraw before the council. The council asked for time to consider.
The evening was passing away, and the Commission searching for a loophole by which to escape from a position become untenable, when Bouchet proposed to telegraph to Versailles that they would resign their powers into the hands of a Republican prefect. Poor issue of a great... (From: Marxists.org.)
After an armistice of seventy days, Paris again took up the struggle for France single-handed. It was no longer the territory only which she strove for, but the very ground-work of the nation. Victorious, her victory would not be sterile like those of the battlefield; regenerated, the people would set to the great work of remaking the social edifice; vanquished, all liberty would be quenched, the bourgeoisie turn its whips into scorpions, and a generation glide into the grave.
And Paris, so generous, so fraternal, did not shudder at the impending civil war. She stood up for an idea that exalted her battalions. While the bourgeois refuses to fight, saying, ‘I have a family,’ the workman says, ‘I fight for my children.’
... (From: Marxists.org.)
The rout of the 3rd April daunted the timorous but exalted the fervent. Battalions inert until then rose; the armament of the forts no longer lagged. Save Issy and Vanves, rather damaged, the forts were intact. All Paris soon heard these fine cannon of seven, which Trouchu had disdained, [119] firing so lustily and with such correct aim, that on the evening of the 4th the Versaillese were obliged to evacuate the plateau of Chatillon. The trenches that protected the forts were manned. Les Moulineaux, Clamart, Le Val-Fleury resounded with the shooting. To the right we reoccupied Courbevoie, and the bridge of Neuilly was barricaded.
Thence we continued to threaten Versailles. Vinoy received the order to take Neuilly. On the morning of the 6th... (From: Marxists.org.)
For the second time the situation was distinctly marked out. If the Council did not know how to define the Commune, was it not in the most unmistakable manner, and before the eyes of all Paris, declared to mean a camp of rebels by the fighting, the bombardment, the fury of the Versaillese, and the rebuff of the conciliators? The by-elections of the 16th April — death, double election returns, and resignations had given thirty-one vacant seats — revealed the effective forces of the insurrection. The illusion of the 26th March had vanished; the votes were now taken under fire. Also the journals of the Commune and the delegates of the Syndical Chambers in vain summoned the electors to the ballot-box. Out of 146,000 who had mustered ... (From: Marxists.org.)
The glorious flame of Paris still hid these failings. One must have been enkindled by it to describe it. Beside it the Communard journals, in spite of their romanticism, show pale and dull. It is true the mize en scène was unpretending. In the streets, in the silent boulevards, a battalion of a hundred men setting out for the battle or returning from it; a woman who follows, a passer — by who applauds — that is all. But it is the drama of the Revolution, simple and gigantic as a drama of Aeschylus.
The commander in his vareuse, dusty, his silver lace singed, his men greyheads or youths, the veterans of June 1848 and the pupils of March, the son often marching by the side of the father.[124]
This woman, who salutes or acc... (From: Marxists.org.)
The insufficiency and the weakness of the Executive Commission became so shocking, that on the 20th the Council decided to replace it by the delegates of the nine commissions, among whom it had distributed its different functions. These commissions were renewed the same day. In general they were rather neglected; and how could one man attend to the daily sittings of the Hôtel-de-Ville, to his commission and his mairie? For the Council had charged its members with the administration of their respective arrondissements; and the real work of the several commissions weighed on the delegates who had presided over them from their origin, and for the most part were not changed on the 20th April. They continued to act, as heretofore, almost s... (From: Marxists.org.)
M. Thiers was fully acquainted with the failings of the Commune, but he also knew the weakness of his army. Besides, he prided himself upon playing the soldier before the Prussians. In order to appease his colleagues, eager for the assault on Paris, he was haughty in receiving the conciliators, who multiplied their advances and their lame combinations.
Everybody intermeddled, from the good and visionary Considérant down to the cynic Girardin, down to Saisset’s ex-aide-de-camp Schoelcher, who had replaced his plan of battle of the 24th March by a plan of conciliation. These encounters became the common topics of raillery. Since its pompous declaration, ‘All Paris will rise,’ the Ligue des Droits de Paris had been altog... (From: Marxists.org.)
The last act of the second Executive Commission was to name Rossel delegate at War. On the same evening (the 30th April) it sent for him. He came at once, recited the history of famous sieges, and promised to make Paris impregnable. No one asked him for a written plan, and there and then, as on the stage, his nomination was signed. He forthwith wrote to the Council, ‘I accept these difficult functions, but I want your entire support in order not to succumb under the weight of these circumstances.’
Rossel knew these circumstances through and through. For twenty-five days chief of the general staff, he was the best-informed man in Paris as to all her military resources. He was familiar with the members of the Council, of the Centra... (From: Marxists.org.)
The greatest infamy in living memory is now being enacted. Paris is being bombarded. (Proclamation of the Government of National Defense on the Prussian bombardment.)
We have crushed a whole district of Paris. (Thiers to the National Assembly, Session of 5th August, 1871.)
We must leave this heroic atmosphere to return to the quarrels of the Council and of the Central Committee. Why did they not hold their sittings at the Muette or under the eyes of the public?[152] The shells of Montretour, which had just unmasked its powerful battery, and the severe attitude of the people, would no doubt have made them unite against the common enemy. He had begun to batter a breach in their ranks.
On the 8th May, in the morning, seventy naval guns beg... (From: Marxists.org.)
The Commune had given rise to the various trades of the plotmonger, the betrayer of gates, the conspiracy-broker. Vulgar sharpers, Jonathan Wilds [character in a novel by Henry Fielding] of the gutter, whom a shadow of police would have scared away, they had no other strength than the weakness of the prefecture and the carelessness of the delegations. The evidence relative to them is to a certain extent still in the keeping of the Versaillese; but they have themselves published a good deal, often borne witness against each other, and what with private information, what with the opportunities offered by our exile, we shall be able to penetrate into this realm of blackguardism.
From the end of March they levied contributions upon all the Min... (From: Marxists.org.)
We took Paris with cannons and politics. (Thiers, Inquiry into the 18th of March.)
Who was the great conspirator against Paris? The Extreme Left.
On the 19th March, what remained to M. Thiers wherewith to govern France? He had neither an army, nor cannon, nor the large towns. These possessed arms, and their workmen were on the alert. If that lower middle-class which makes the provinces endorse the revolutions of the metropolis had followed the movement, imitated their kindred of Paris, M. Thiers could not have opposed to them a single regiment. In order to subsist, retain the provinces, and induce them to provide the soldiers and the cannon that were to reduce Paris, what were the resources of the leader of the bourgeoisie? A word and a h... (From: Marxists.org.)
At the advent of the new Committee on the 10th May our military situation had not changed within the line from St. Ouen to Neuilly, where both sides faced each other on the same level; but it was becoming serious from La Muette. The powerful battery of Montretout, that of Meudon, of Mont-Valérien, covered Passy with shells and greatly injured the ramparts. The Versaillese trenches extended from Boulogne to the Seine. Their skirmishers were pressing upon the village of Issy, and occupied the trenches between the fort and that of Vanves, which they tried to cut off from Montrouge. The negligence of the defense was still the same. The ramparts from La Muette to the fort of Vanves were hardly armed; our gunboats bore almost alone the fir... (From: Marxists.org.)
The Paris of the Commune has but three days more to live; let us engrave upon our memory her luminous physiognomy.
He who has breathed in thy life that fiery fever of modern history, who has panted on thy boulevards and wept in thy faubourgs, who has sung to the morning of thy revolutions and a few weeks after bathed his hands in powder behind thy barricades, he who can hear from beneath thy stones the voices of the martyrs of sublime ideas and read in every one of thy streets a date of human progress, even he does less justice to thy original grandeur than the stranger, though a Philistine, who came to glance at thee during the days of the Commune. The attraction of rebellious Paris was so strong that men hurried thither from America to b... (From: Marxists.org.)
The St. Cloud gate has just been breached. General Douai has thrown himself at it. (Thiers to the Prefects, 21st May.)
The great attack approached; the Assembly drew up in battlearray. On the 16th May it refused to recognize the Republic as the Government of France, and voted public prayers by 417 out of 420. On the 17th the army established its breach batteries against the gates of La Muette, Auteuil, St. Cloud, Point du Jor, Issy. The batteries in the rear continued to pound the enceinte of the Point du Jor and to confound Passy. The pieces of the Château de Brécon ruined the Montmartre cemetry, and reached as far as the Place St. Pierre. We had five arrondissements under shell.
On the 18th, in the evening, the Versaillese ... (From: Marxists.org.)
