bboc/05_1871_Class_Betrayal_and_Bloody_Week.tex

\chapter{1871: Class Betrayal and Bloody Week}

\chapterauthor{Claude WILLARD}

First milestone: the bankruptcy of the political and military leadership teams.
On July 19, 1870, the Second Empire, \enquote{with a light heart}, declared war on Prussia, a heart all the lighter because, according to the Minister of War, the army \enquote{did not lack a single gaiter button}.
Six weeks later, Napoleon III capitulated pitifully at Sedan and, on September 4, the Republic was proclaimed.
The new government, known as \enquote{National Defence}, in fact \enquote{national defection}, is made up of moderate Republicans \enquote{extremely finicky on the question of order and property}\footnote{J. P. Azéma and M. Winock, Les Communards (The communards), Seuil, 1970, p. 22.}. 
Presiding over this government and military governor of Paris, General Trochu, \enquote{past paticiple of the verb trop choir}\rfootnote{French pun: Trochu is pronounced the same as trop chu which is past tense of trop choir which means too much fail}, ironize Victor Hugo.

Surrounded by the Prussians since September 19, Paris, despite the extreme rigors of the siege, \enquote{chose the side of overly struggle} (Lissagaray).
The popular Paris in arms (including cannons, bought by popular subscription) is organized.

\begin{displayquote}
From then on, the fear of the \enquote{dangerous classes} resurfaced with more force than ever.
As early as September 19, 1870, Francisque Sarcey — a very reactionary journalist — observed with cynicism and lucidity:
\enquote{The bourgeoisie saw itself, not without a certain melancholy, between the Prussians who set foot on its throat, and those it called the reds, and that it saw only armed with daggers.
I don't know which one scared her the most: she hated foreigners more, but she feared the Bellevillois more.}…
\end{displayquote}

That same September 19, Jules Favre secretly met Bismarck at Ferrières to inquire about the conditions of an armistice…
However, Trochu's confidence to his friend the conservative writer Maxime du Camp: \enquote{The National Guard will only consent to peace if it loses 10,000 men.}\footnote{Maxime du Camp, \emph{Les convulsions de Paris} (Paris's seizures), Hachette, 1897, vol. I, p. 11. \emph{State of mind corroborated by the Parliamentary Inquiry into the Insurrection of 18 March}, vol. I. p. 399 and vol. III, p. 13.}
No problem: the exit of Buzenval, on January 19, 1871, resulted in the death of 4,000 soldiers and officers.

This combined fear and phobia leads to betrayal. The choice between Prussians and Bellevillois is quickly made.
Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand on April 30, 1871: \enquote{\enquote{Ah! Thank God the Prussians are here!} is the universal cry of the bourgeoisie}.
Words confirmed by Francisque Sarcey: \enquote{You cannot imagine the way this \emph{ia}\rfootnote{Francophone of the German \emph{ja}.} had been said, this \emph{ia} deeper than a mug from Germany:
\enquote{Yes, poor Frenchman, we are here, fear nothing more… You were born in a free land, ia, on a friendly land, ia, under the protection of the Bavarian bayonets, ia, ia.}
I couldn't help but repeat this ia in my turn while trying to catch the intonation.}\footnote{In the newspaper named — irony of history — \emph{Le Drapeau tricolore} (The threecolored flag), May 20, 1871.}
The armistice, signed on 28 January, delivered Alsace and part of Lorraine to Prussia.

As soon as January 3, 1871, \emph{Le Figaro} sounded the hallali: \enquote{Army of good versus army of evil… order against anarchy, the fight will be neither long nor difficult! It will be more of the fight than the battle… A crusade of civilization against barbarism.}
On March 18, Thiers executed: he sent the army, in the early morning, to seize the guns of the National Guard.
This provocative wick explode the powder keg. The Central Committee of the National Guard proclaims on March 21:
\enquote{The proletarians of the capital, in the midst of the failures and betrayals of the ruling classes, understood that the time had come for them to save the situation by taking over the direction of public affairs.
Does not the bourgeoisie, their eldest, which achieved its emancipation more than three quarters of a century ago, which preceded them in the path of revolution, understand today that the turn of the emancipation of the proletariat has arrived?}

By its birth, by its brief existence (72 days) and especially by its abundant work, the Commune, the first world workers' revolution, commits a crime of lèse-majesté, lèse-capitalism and lèse-moral order:
a government of the people by the people and for the people, elected representatives on imperative and revocable mandates, a real citizen mobilization,
the premises of self-management (restarted by the associated workers of the workshops deserted by their bosses), the first steps towards female emancipation, the role of foreigners (a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, Leo Frankel, Minister of Labour)…

During the Bloody Week (21-28 May 1871), the Versailles army had a field day.
This army, and especially its senior officers, had made its hand during the conquest of Algeria (the massacres of Dahra cave in 1845), in Mexico (\enquote{les blanca blanca} de Galliffet) and against the strikers (27 killed in Aubin and La Ricamarie). 
Long at the head of this army, General Vinoy defines himself as \enquote{a man who has always regarded order as the first duty of any society.}\footnote{Communication by Jean-Claude Freiermuth, in \emph{Maintien de l'ordre et polices}, Créaphis, 1987, pp. 41-51.}
This army was enlarged by Bismarck, who freed the prisoners of war. Class internationalism.

To the extent of hatred and fear, Paris is transformed into slaughterhouses. Among the many witnesses, Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross:
\enquote{This relentless repression… ended with appalling scenes of slaughter that turned Paris into a human mass grave.
We killed to kill… A real war of extermination with all its horrors, let us say it well, because it is the truth; and those who have ordained him boast and praise themselves:
they thought they were fulfilling a sacred duty; all those who belonged to the Commune, or were sympathetic to it, were to be shot.}
Extra judicial killings are innumerable: barracks, prisons (1,900 shootings at La Roquette on 28 May), gardens and squares (Luxembourg, Parc Monceau, Jardin des Plantes), cemeteries (Père-Lachaise, Montparnasse) are all mass graves; the casemates of fortifications, full of corpses, serve as incineration furnaces. The height of cruelty: Communards are buried alive, especially in the Square Saint-Jacques. According to the British newspaper Evening Standard,
\enquote{It is doubtful that we can ever know the exact figure of the butchery that is prolonged. Even for the perpetrators of these executions, it must be quite impossible to say how many corpses they made.} Between 20,000 and 30,000.

These atrocities elicit enthusiastic applause. \emph{Le Gaulois} of May 31:
\enquote{Insane people of this kind and in such large numbers and getting along together constitute such an appalling danger for the society to which they belong that there is no other possible penalty than a radical suppression.}
A few days later, \emph{Le Figaro} added: \enquote{Mr. Thiers still has an important task to do: that of purging Paris… Never such an opportunity will arise to cure Paris of the moral gangrene that has been eating away at it for twenty years… Today, clemency would be dementia…
What is a Republican? A ferocious beast… Come on, honest people! A helping hand to put an end to democratic and social vermin.}
Alexandre Dumas fils, author of \emph{La Dame aux camélias}, lowers himself to write: \enquote{We won't say anything about their females out of respect for all the women they look like when they die.}

The fear of epidemics stops the slaughter. An author of best-selling plays, Émile de Girardin, advocates that mass burials be carried out in the suburbs:
\enquote{There, nothing to fear from the cadaveric emanations, an impure blood will water and fertilize the furrow of the ploughman.}
The White Terror — \enquote{the cold orgy of violence} says Louise Michel — follows the bloodbath.
43,522 prisoners were taken to the cellars of the Palace of Versailles, to the Satory camp or, like the convicts, to the pontoons of the ports (Brest, Cherbourg…).
Their long march is described by the Versailles journalist Léonce Dupont as follows:
\enquote{Passes before our eyes a human flock emaciated, tattered, all in rags, a mixture of robust men, old men still firm, poor devils folded in half and dragging painfully leaning on the neighbors.
Some have shoes, others savates, others are barefoot… The crowd that sees these prisoners parade before it does not know how to moderate itself… It would like to rush at them and tear them to pieces.
I have seen ladies of very soft appearance, at the height of exasperation, forget themselves until they strike poor devils with their umbrella.}\footnote{Léonce Dupont, \emph{Souvenirs de Versailles pendant la Commune} (Memories of Versailles during the Commune), 1881.} Ladies of the world and the half-world. The great photographer and writer Nadar makes a similar account\footnote{Nadar, 1871. \emph{Enquête sur la Commune} (Inquiry on the Commune), Paris, 1897.}.

The councils of war sat for five years.
The Versailles \enquote{justice} pronounces 13,440 convictions (including 3,313 in absentia):
death sentences (9,323 executed), deportation, prison. Many Communards were sent to prison in New Caledonia.
One of them, Jean Allemane, recounts the brutality of the reception, then the inhuman discipline, the corporal punishment inflicted with sadism, hunger, isolation, despair, suicides…\footnote{Jean Allemane, \emph{Mémoires d'un Communard. Des barricades au bagne} (Memories of a Communard, from barricades to prison), Paris, 1910.}.

After this terrible bloodletting, Thiers plays the prophets: \enquote{We no longer talk about socialism and that's a good thing. We are rid of socialism.} Oracle quickly denied. As Pottier sings:

\begin{multicols}{2}

\enquote{On l’a tuée à coup d’chassepot

À coup de mitrailleuse

Et roulée dans son drapeau

Dans la terre argileuse

Et la tourbe des bourreaux gras

Se croyait la plus forte

Tout ça n’empêch’pas

Nicolas

Qu’la Commune n’est pas morte!}

\columnbreak

\noindent \enquote{She was killed with a \emph{Chassepot}\rfootnote{A type of breachloading rifle}

\noindent With a \emph{mitrailleuse}\rfootnote{A type of volley gun}

\noindent And rolled in her flag

\noindent In clay soil

\noindent And the peat of fat executioners

\noindent She believed herself to be the strongest

\noindent Not everything prevents

\noindent Nicolas

\noindent That the Commune is not dead!}

\end{multicols}

\rauthor{Claude Willard}

Claude Willard is a historian, professor emeritus of the University of Paris VIII and president of the association of friends of the Commune.