History of the Paris Commune of 1871

Review by E. Belfort Bax: Lissagary’s History of the Commune : (4 December 1886) , by Imogen: A Pastoral Romance From the Ancient
This important work has at last appeared in English, and we do not hesitate to say that it ought to be in the hands of every Socialist. The history of the Commune, as presented in the generally unbiased narrative of Lissagaray, bears a profound moral with it. It is the story of the struggle of noble enthusiasm, genuine disinterestedness and devotion, and, in the ordinary sense great opportunities with foolish vanity, personal squabbles, inefficiency of organization, and pedantry, resulting in the ascendancy of the latter, and consequent general collapse. The Versaillaise entered upon a victory already prepared for them. And it will be so again in the next great popular movement, should due subordination of function and organization not be able to keep the whip hand of mere confusion, cliquishness and faddism. But the moral to be drawn is of more immediate application than to the next popular rising. To compare small matters with great, there are Socialist organisatians (save the m... (From : Marxists.org.)

Glossary of French Terms
Arrondissements — The 20 administrative districts, each with a mayor, into which Paris was divided. Brassardiers — Arm-band wearers. Cantiniere — Canteen woman attached to each battalion. Catafalques — Decorated coffins used in funeral processions. Chassepots — An early type of rifle. Code Napoleon — The French legal code upholding bourgeois property and rights drawn up under Napoleon I but still the basis of the French legal system. Corps Legislatif — Legislative Assembly. Enceinte — The wall around the old city of Paris. Faubourgs — Suburbs. Feuilles-de-route — Travel document issued to a soldier giving the route to be followed and destination, and used for passing from one army unit to another. Franc-tireurs — Irregular soldiers. Gallicans — The Church faction which wanted the independence of the Church in France and que... (From : Marxists.org.)

Author’s Notes
1 The prefect of police, Pietri, attests it: ‘It is certain that on that day the revolution might have succeeded, for the crowd which surrounded the Corps Législatif on the 9th August was composed of elements similar to those which triumphed on the 4th September.’ Enquête sur Le 4 Septembre, Vol. I, p. 253. 2 Let it be understood that I proceed, the words of our adversaries in hand parliamentary inquiries, memoirs, reports, histories: that I do not attribute to them an act or a word which has not been avowed by them, their documents, or their friends. When I say M. Thiers saw, M. Theirs knew, it is that M. Thiers has said, I saw, page 6, I knew, page 11, Vol. I of the Enquête sur let Actes du Gouvernement de la Defense Nationale. It will be the same with all the acts and words of all the official or adverse personages that I quote. 3 See the evidence of the Marquis de Talhouet, re... (From : Marxists.org.)

Appendices
I The Central Committee found in the War Office, and the Officiel of the Commune published on the 25th April, the following letter from the supreme commander of the artillery of the army to General Suzanne: Paris 12th December 1870 My dear Suzanne, I have not found among the young auxiliaries your protege Hetzel, but only a M. Hessel. Is it he who is meant? Tell me frankly what you desire, and I will do it. I will attach him to my staff, where he will be bored, having nothing to do, or else I will send him to Mont Valerien, where he will run less risk than at Paris (this for the parents), and where he will have the air of firing cannons into the air, according to Noel’s method. Unbutton — your mouth, of course. Yours, Guiod The Noel mentioned at that time commanded Mount Valerien. II The role of the Central Committee during the day of... (From : Marxists.org.)

Chapter 36 : The balance-sheet of bourgeois vengeance
The deported men are happier than our soldiers, for our soldiers have fighting to do, while the deportee lives in the midst of the flowers in his garden. (Speech against amnesty by Admiral Fourichon, Navy Minister, session of 17th May, 1876.) It is above all the Republicans who must be adverse to the amnesty. (Victor Lefranc, session of 18th May, 1876.) Two days’ journey from France there is a colony eager for hands, rich enough to enrich thousands of families. After every victory over Parisian workmen the bourgeoisie has always preferred throwing its victims to the antipodes to fecundating Algeria with them. The Republic of 1848 had Nouka-Hiva; the Versaillese Assembly, New Caledonia. It was to this rock, six thousand leagues from their native land, that it decided to transport those condemned for life. ‘The Council of the Government,’ said the reporter on the law, ‘gives the transported a family and a home.’ The machine-gun was more hones... (From : Marxists.org.)

The Versaillese fury
We are honest men: justice will be done in accordance with the ordinary laws. (Thiers to the National Assembly, 22nd May 1871. Honest, honest Iago! (Shakespeare.) Order reigned in Paris. Everywhere ruins, death, sinister crepitations. The officers walked provokingly about clashing their sabers; the noncommissioned officers imitated their arrogance. The soldiers bivouacked in all the large roads. Some, stupefied by fatigue and camage, slept on the pavement; others prepared their soup by the side of the corpses, singing the songs of their native homes. The tricolor flag hung from all the windows in order to prevent house-searches. Guns, cartridge-boxes, uniforms, were piled up in the gutters of the popular quarters. Before the doors sat women... (From : Marxists.org.)

Conspiracies against the Commune
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 Mini... (From : Marxists.org.)

Formation of the Committee of Public Safety
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 altoge... (From : Marxists.org.)

The Central Committee forces the mayors to capitulate
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. 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 deputies... (From : Marxists.org.)

Paris on the eve of death
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 be... (From : Marxists.org.)