1. Karl Marx. Drafts of The Civil War in France
Written by K. Marx between the middle of April and May 23, 1871
First Draft of The Civil War in France
The Government of Defence
Four months after the commencement of the war, when the Government of Defence had thrown a sop to the Paris National Guard by allowing them to show their fighting capabilities at Buzenval,[115] the Government considered the opportune moment come to prepare Paris for capitulation. To the assembly of the maires of Paris for capitulation, Trochu, in presence of a[nd] supported by Jules Favre and others of his colleagues, revealed at last his "plan". He said literally:
"The first question, addressed to me by my colleagues on the evening of the 4th September, was this: Paris can it stand, with any chance of success, a siege against the Prussian army? I did not hesitate to answer in the negative. Some of my colleagues here present will warrant the truth of these my words, and the persistence of my opinion. I told them in these very terms that, under the existing state of things, the attempt of Paris to maintain a siege against the Prussian army would be a folly. Without doubt, I added, this might be a heroical folly, but it would be nothing else... The events have not given the lie to my prevision."(1)
Hence Trochu's plan, from the very day of the proclamation of the Republic, was the capitulation of Paris and of France. In point of fact he was the commander in chief of the Prussians. In a letter to Gambetta, Jules Favre himself confessed so much that the enemy to be put down, was not the Prussian soldier, but the Paris "demagogue revolutionist". The high-sounding promises to the people, by the Government of Defence, were therefore as many deliberate lies. Their "plan" they systematically carried out by entrusting the defence of Paris to Bonapartist generals, by disorganizing the National Guard and by organizing famine under the maladministration of Jules Ferry. The attempts of the Paris workmen on the 5th of October, the 31st of October etc, to supplant these traitors by the Commune, were put down as conspiracies with the Prussian![286] After the capitulation the mask was thrown off (cast aside). The capitulards[165] became a government by the grace of Bismarck.[118] Being his prisoners, they stipulated with him a general armistice the conditions of which disarmed France and rendered all further resistance impossible. Resuscitated at Bordeaux as the Government of the Republic, these very same capitulards through Thiers, their ex-Ambassador, and Jules Favre, their Foreign minister, fervently implored Bismarck, in the name of the majority of the so-called National Assembly, and long before the rise of Paris, to disarm and occupy Paris and put down "its canaille", as Bismarck himself sneeringly told his admirers at Frankfurt on his return from France to Berlin? This occupation of Paris by the Prussians — such was the last word of the "plan" of the government of defence. The cynical effrontery with which, since their instalment at Versailles, the same men fawn upon and appeal to the armed intervention of Prussia, has dumbfounded even the venal press of Europe. The heroic exploits of the Paris National Guard, since they fight no longer under but against the capitulards, have forced even the most sceptical to brand the word "traitor" on the brazen fronts of the Trochu, Jules Favre et Co. The documents seized by the Commune, have at last furnished the juridical proofs of their high treason.15 Amongst these papers there are letters of the Bonapartist sabreursc to whom the execution of Trochu's "plan" had been confided, in which these infamous wretches crack jokes at and make fun of their own "defence of Paris", (cf. for instance the letter of Alphonse Simon Guiod, supreme commander of the artillery of the army of defence of Paris and Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, to Suzanne, General of division of artillery, published by the Journal officiel of the Commune.d)
It is, therefore, evident, that the men who now form the government of Versailles, can only be saved from the fate of convicted traitors by civil war, the death of the Republic and a monarchical restoration under the shelter of Prussian bayonets.
But — and this is most characteristic of the men of the Empire as well as of the men who but on its soil and within its atmosphere could grow into mock-tribunes of the people — the victorious republic would not only brand them as traitors, it would have to surrender them as common felons to the criminal court. Look only at Jules Favre, Ernest Picard, and Jules Ferry, the great men, under Thiers, of the government of defence!
A series of authenticated judiciary documents spreading over about 20 years, and published by M. Millière, a representative to the National Assembly,(2) proves that Jules Favre, living in adulter-ous concubinage with the wife of a drunkard resident at Algiers,(3)
had, by a most complicated concatenation of daring forgeries, contrived to grasp in the name of his bastards, a large succession that made him a rich man and that the connivance only of the Bonapartist tribunals saved him from exposure in a law-suit undertaken by the legitimate claimants. Jules Favre, then, this unctuous mouthpiece of family, religion, property, and order, has long since been forfeited to the Code Pénal. Lifelong penal servitude would be his unavoidable lot under every honest government. Ernest Picard, the present Versailles home minister, appointed by himself on the 4th of September Home minister of the government of defence,(4) after he had tried in vain to be appointed by L. Bonaparte, this Ernest Picard is the brother of one Arthur Picard. When, together with Jules Favre and Co., he had the impudence to propose this worthy brother of his as a candidate in the Seine et Oise for the Corps législatif, the Imperialist government published two documents, a report of the Prefecture of Police (31 July, 1867) stating that this Arthur Picard was excluded from the Bourse as an "escroc",(5) and another document of the 11 December 1868, according to which Arthur had confessed the theft of 300,000 fcs, committed by him as a director of one of the branches of the Société Générale, rue Palestro, No. 5.(6) Ernest made not only his worthy Arthur the editor in chief of a paper of his own, the Electeur libre, founded under the Empire and continued to this day, a paper, in which the republicans are daily denounced as "robbers, bandits, and partageux*", but once become the home minister of the "Defence", Ernest employed Arthur as his financial medium between the home office to the Stock Exchange, there to discount the State secrets entrusted to him. The whole "financial" correspondence between Ernest and Arthur has fallen into the hands of the Commune. Like the lachrymose Jules Favre, Ernest Picard, the Joe Miller of the Versailles Government, is a man forfeited to the Code Pénal and the galleys!
To make up this trio, Jules Ferry, a poor briefless barrister before 4 September, not content to organize the famine of Paris, had contrived to job a fortune out of this famine. The day on which he would have to give an account of his peculations during the Paris siege would be his day of judgment!
No wonder then that these men who can only hope to escape the hulks in a monarchy, protected by Prussian bayonets, who but in the turmoil of civil war can win their ticket of leaved that these desperadoes were at once chosen by Thiers and accepted by the Rurals as the safest tools of the Counterrevolution!
No wonder that when in the beginning of April captured National Guards were exposed at Versailles to the ferocious outrages of Piétri's "lambs" and the Versailles mob, M. Ernest Picard, "with his hands in his trousers pockets, walked from group to group cracking jokes" while "on the balcony of the Prefecture Madame Thiers, Madame Jules Favre and a bevy of similar Dames, looking in excellent health and spirits",0 exulted in that disgusting scene. No wonder then, that while one part of France winces under the heels of the conquerors, while Paris, the heart and head of France, daily sheds streams of its best blood in self-defence against the home traitors, ... the Thiers, Favres et Co. indulge in revelries at the Palace of Louis XIV, such f.i. as the grand fête given by Thiers in honour of Jules Favre on his return from Rouen (whither he had been sent to conspire with (fawn upon) the Prussians). It is the cynical orgy of evaded felons!
If the Government of Defence first made Thiers their Foreign Ambassador, going a begging at all Courts of Europe there to barter a king for France for their intervention against Prussia, if, later on, they sent him on a travelling tour throughout the French provinces, there to conspire with the châteaux[3] and secretly prepare the General elections which together with the Capitulation would take France by surprise — Thiers, on his side, made them his ministers and high functionaries. They were safe men.
There is one thing rather mysterious in the proceedings of Thiers, his recklessness in precipitating the revolution of Paris. Not content to goad Paris by the Antirepublican demonstrations of his rurals, by the threats to decapitate and decapitalize Paris,(7) (by Dufaure's (Thiers' minister of justice) law of the 10th of March on the échéances(8) of bills which impended bankruptcy on the Paris commerce [180]), by appointing Orleanist ambassadors, by the transfer of the Assemblée to Versailles, by an imposition of a new tax on newspapers, by the confiscation of the Republican Paris journals, by the revival of the State of Siege, first proclaimed by Palikao and annulled with the downfall of the Imperialist government on the 4th of September, by appointing Vinoy, the Decembriseur(9) and Exsenator governor of Paris, Valentin, the Imperialist Gendarme Prefect of Police, and Aurelle de Paladines, the Jesuit General Commander in chief of the Paris National Guard — he opened the civil .war with feeble forces, by Vinoy's attack on the Buttes Montmartre, by the attempt first to rob the National Guards of Cannons which belonged to them and which were only left to them by the Paris convention, because they were their property, and thus to disarm Paris.
Whence this feverish eagerness d'en finir(10)? To disarm and put down Paris was of course the first condition of a monarchical counterrevolution, but an astute intriguer like Thiers could only risk the future of the difficult enterprise in undertaking it without due preparation, with ridiculously insufficient means, except under the sway of some overwhelmingly urgent move. The motive was this. By the agency of Pouyer-Quertier, his finance minister, Thiers had concluded a loan of two milliards to be paid immediately down and some more milliards to follow at certain terms. In this loan transaction a truly royal pot-de-vin (drink-money) was reserved for those grand citizens Thiers, Jules Favre, Ernest Picard, Jules Simon, Pouyer-Quertier etc. But there was one hitch in the transaction. Before definitively sealing the treaty, the contractors wanted one guarantee — the tranquillization of Paris.™[2] Hence the reckless proceedings of Thiers. Hence the savage hatred against the Paris workmen perverse enough to interfere with this fine job.
As to the Jules Favres, Picards etc, we have said enough to prove them the worthy accomplices of such a jobbery. As to Thiers himself, it is notorious that during his two ministries under Louis Philippe he realized 2 millions, and that during his premiership (dating March 1840) he was taunted from the tribune of the Chambre of Deputies with his Bourse peculations, in answer to which he shed tears, a commodity he disposes of as freely as Jules Favre and the celebrated comedian Frederick Lemaitre. It is no less notorious that the first measure taken by M. Thiers to save France from the financial ruin, fastened upon her by the war, was — to endow himself with a yearly salary of 3 Millions of francs, exactly the sum L. Bonaparte got in 1850 as an equivalent from M. Thiers and his troop in the Legislative Assembly for allowing them to abolish the general suffrage.[287] This endowment of M. Thiers with 3 millions was the first word of "the economic republic'' the vista of which he had opened to his Paris electors in 1869. As to Pouyer-Quertier, he is a cottonspinner at Rouen. In 1869, he was the leader of the millowners' conclave that proclaimed a general reduction of wages necessary for the "conquest" of the English market — an intrigue, then baffled by the International}^ Pouyer-Quertier, otherwise a fervent and even servile partisan of the Empire, found only one fault with it, its commercial treaty with England[216] damaging to his own shop interests. His first step as M. Thiers' finance minister was to denounce that "hateful" treaty and to pronounce the necessity of reestablishing the old protective duties for his own shop. His second step was the patriotic attempt to strike Alsace by the reestablished old protective duties on the pretext that in this case no international treaty stood in the way of their re-introduction. By this masterstroke his own shop at Rouen would have got rid of the dangerous competition of the rival shops at Mulhausen.(11) His last step was to make a present to his son-in-law, M. Roche Lambert, of the receveur-generalship of the Loiret, one of the rich booties falling into the lap of the governing bourgeois, and which Pouyer-Quertier had found so much fault with his Imperialist predecessor M. Magne, endowing his own son with that big jobbing place. This Pouyer-Quertier was then exactly the man for the perpetration of the above-said job.
30 March, Rappel. Jules Ferry, ex-mayor of Paris, issued a circular on March 28, ordering the town dues officials to stop forthwith all collections for the city of Paris.(12)
Small state-rogueries,— a little character ... cankering conscience ... everlasting suggester of Parliamentary intrigue ... petty expedients and devices ... rehearsing his homilies of liberalism, of the
"libertés nécessaires"[174]... eagerly bent on ... strong reasons to weigh against the chances of failure ... cogent arguments which counterpoise ... kind of heroism in exaggerated baseness ... lucky parliamentary stratagems...
M. E. Picard is a swindler, who throughout the siege speculated on the Bourse over the defeats of our armies.
massacre, treason, arson, assassination, calumny, lies.(13)
In his speech to the assembly of maires etc. (25th April) Thiers says himself that the
"assassins of Clément Thomas and Lecomte" are a handful of criminals (14) "like those who may justly be regarded as having been accomplices in these crimes through abetting and assistance, that is, a very small number of individuals".(15)
Dufaure Dufaure wants to put down Paris by press prosecutions in the provinces. Monstrous to bring journals before a jury because preaching "Conciliation". Dufaure plays a great part in the Thiers intrigue. By his law of the 10th of March, he roused all the indebted commerce of Paris. By his law on Paris houserents, he menaced all Paris.[180] Both laws were to punish Paris for having saved the honour of France and delayed the surrender to Bismarck for 6 months. Dufaure is an Orleanist, and a "Liberal", in the parliamentary sense of the word. Consequently, he has always been the minister of repression and of the State of Siege.
He accepted his first portefeuille on the 13 May, 1839, after the defeat of the dernière prise d'armes(16) of the Republican party,[289] was therefore the minister of the pitiless repression of the July government of that day.(17)
Cavaignac, forced on the 29th October (1848) to raise the state of siege, called into his ministry two ministers of Louis Philippe (Dufaure, for the Interior, and Vivien). He appointed them on the demand of the rue Poitiers (Thiers),[290] which demanded guarantees. He thus hoped to secure the support of the dynasties for the impending election of president. Dufaure employed the most illegal means to secure Cavaignac's candidature. Intimidation and electoral corruption had never been exercised on a larger scale. Dufaure inundated France with defamatory prints against the other candidates, and especially of Louis Bon., what did not prevent him to become later on Louis Bonaparte's minister. Dufaure became again the minister of the state of siege of 13 June 1849 (against the demonstration of the National Guard against the bombardment of Rome etc by the French army). He is now again the minister of the state of siege, proclaimed at Versailles (for department of Seine et Oise). Power given to Thiers to declare any department whatever in a state of siege. Dufaure, as in 1839, as in 1849, wants new repressive laws, new press laws, a law to "abridge the formalities of the Courts Martial".[188] In a circular to the Procureurs-Généraux he denounces the cry of "conciliation" as a press crime to be severely prosecuted.(18) It is characteristic of the French magistrature that only one single Procureur Général (that of Mayenne)(19) wrote to Dufaure to
"resign... I cannot serve an Administration which orders me, in a moment of civil war, to rush into party struggles and prosecute citizens whom my conscience holds innocent, for uttering the word conciliation."(20) He belonged to the "Union libérale" in 1847 which conspired against Guizot, as he belonged to the "Union libérale" of 1869 which conspired against Louis Bonaparte.[291]
With respect to the law of 10 March and the law of houserents, it ought to be remarked that both Dufaure's and Picard's, both advocates, best clients are amongst the houseproprietors and the big bourses averse to losing anything by the siege of Paris.
Now as after the Revolution of February 1848, these men tell the Republic, as the executioner told Don Carlos, "Je vais t'assassiner, mais c'est pour ton bien". (I shall murder thee, but for thy own good.)
Lecomte and Clément Thomas
After Vinoy's attempt to carry the Buttes Montmartre (on the 18th March, they were shot in the gardens of the Château Rouge, 4 o'clock, 18th) General Lecomte and Clément Thomas were taken prisoners and shot by the same excited soldiers of the 81st of the line. It was a summary act of Lynch justice performed despite the instances of some delegates of the Central Committee. Lecomte, an epauletted cut-throat, had four times commanded his troop, on the place Pigalle, to charge an unarmed gathering of women and children. Instead of shooting the people, the soldiers shot him. Clément Thomas, an ex-quartermaster, a "general" extemporized at the eve of the June massacres (1848)[133] by the men of the National, whose gérant* he had been, had never dipped his sword in the blood of any other enemy but that of the Paris working class. He was one of the sinister plotters who deliberately provoked the June insurrection and one of its most atrocious executioners. When on the 31 October 1870, the Paris Proletarian National Guards surprised the "Government of Defence" at the Hôtel de Ville and took them prisoners, these men, who had [been] appointed by themselves, these gens de paroles}" as one of them, Picard, called them recently, gave their word of honour that they would make place to the Commune. Thus allowed to escape scot free, they launched Trochu's Bretons[185] on their too-confident captors. One of them, however, M. Tamisier, resigned his dignity as commander in chief of the National Guard. He refused to break his word of honour. Then the hour had again struck for Clément Thomas. He was appointed in Tamisier's place commander in chief of the National Guard. He was the true man for Trochu's "plan". He never made war upon the Prussians; he made war upon the National Guard, whom he disorganized, disunited, calumniated, weeding out all its officers hostile to Trochu's "plan", setting one set of National Guards against the other, and whom he sacrificed in "sorties" so planned as to cover them with ridicule. Haunted by the spectres of his June victims, this man, without any official charge, must needs again reappear on [the] theatre of war of the 18th of March, where he scented another massacre of the Paris people. He fell a victim of Lynch justice in the first moment of popular exasperation. The men who had surrendered Paris to the tender mercies of the Décembriseur Vinoy, in order to kill the Republic and pocket the pots-de-Vin stipulated by the Pouyer-Quertier contract, shouted now: Assassins, Assassins! Their howl was re-echoed by the press of Europe so eager for the blood of the "Proletarians". A farce of hysterical "sensibility" was enacted in the rural Assemblée,[178] and, as now as before, the corpses of their friends were most welcome weapons against their enemies. Paris and the Central Committee were made responsible for an accident out of their control. It is known how in the days of June 1848 the "men of order" shook Europe with the cry of indignation against the Insurgents because of the assassination of the Archbishop of Paris.[3] Even at that time they knew perfectly well from the evidence of M. Jacquemet, the vicaire général of the Archbishop, who had accompanied him to the barricades, that the Bishop had been shot by the troops of "Cavaignac", and not by the insurged,(21) but his dead corpse served their turn. M. Darboy, the present Archbishop of Paris, one of the hostages taken by the Commune in self-defence against the savage atrocities of the Versailles government, however seems, as appears from his letter to Thiers,(22) to have strange misgivings [that] Papa Transnonain(23) be eager to speculate in his dead body, as an object of holy indignation. There passed hardly a day, in which the Versailles journals did not announce his execution, which the continued atrocities, and violation of the rules of war on the side of "order", would have sealed on the part of every government but that of the Commune. The Versailles government had hardly realized a first military success, when Captain Desmarets, who at the head of his gendarmes assassinated the chivalrous Flourens, has been decorated by Thiers. Flourens had saved the lives of the "defence men" on the 31st October.[184] Vinoy, the runaway (runagate), was appointed grand cross of the Legion of Honour, because he had our brave comrade Duval, when taken prisoner, shot inside the redoubts, because as a second instalment, he had shot some dozen captive troops of the line who had joined the Paris people and inaugurated this civil war by the "methods of December".[292] General Galliffet—"the husband of that charming Marchioness whose costumes at the masked balls were one of the wonders of the Empire", as a London penny a liner delicately puts it, "surprised" near Rueil a captain, lieutenant, and private of National Guards, had them at once shot, and immediately published a proclamation to glorify himself in the deed.(24) These are a few of the murders officially narrated and gloried in by the Versailles government. 25 soldiers of the 80th Regiment of the line shot as "rebels" by the 75th.(25)
"Every man wearing the uniform of the regular army who was captured in the ranks of the Communists was straightaway shot without the slightest mercy. The government troops were perfectly ferocious."(26)
"M. Thiers communicated the encouraging particulars of Flourens' death to the Assembly. "
Versailles 4 April. Thiers, that misshapen dwarf, reports on his prisoners brought to Versailles (in his proclamation):
"Never had more degraded countenances of a degraded democracy met the afflicted gaze of honest men." (27) (Piétri's men!)
"Vinoy protests against any mercy to insurgent officers or line men."(28)
On the 6th of April decree of the Commune on reprisals (and hostages):
"Considering that the Versailles government openly treads underfoot the laws of humanity and those of war, and that it has been guilty of horrors such as even the invaders of France have not dishonoured themselves by ... it is decreed etc." (There follow the points.)[3]
April 5. Proclamation of the Commune:
"Every day the banditti of Versailles slaughter or shoot our prisoners, and every hour we learn that another murder has been committed... The people even in its anger, detests bloodshed, as it detests civil war, but it is its duty to protect itself against the savage attempts of its enemies, and whatever it may cost it shall be an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."(29)
"The police who are fighting against Paris have 10 fcs a day."
Versailles, 11 April. Most horrible details of the coldblooded shooting of prisoners, not deserters, related with an evident gusto by general officers and other eyewitnesses.
In his letter to Thiers, Darboy protests
"against the atrocious excesses which add to the horror of our fratricidal war".(30)
In the same strain writes Deguerry (curé de la Madeleine):
"These executions rouse(31) great wrath in Paris and may well lead to terrible reprisals". "Thus, a decision has already been taken to execute two of the numerous hostages they hold for every new execution. Judge for yourself how pressing and absolutely necessary is that which, [I] as a priest, am asking you to do." (32)
In midst of these horrors Thiers writes to the Prefects: "L'assemblée siège paisiblement." (Elle aussi a le cœur léger.)*
(33) Decree of April 5, 1871 on reprisals and hostages, The Daily News, No. 7781, April 7, 1871. The phrase in parentheses is in German in the original. See also Journal officiel (Paris), No. 96, April 6, 1871.— Ed.
Thiers and la commission des quinze of his rurals [293] had the cool impudence to "deny officially" the "pretended summary executions and reprisals attributed to the troops of Versailles" *
But Papa Transnonain, in his circular of 16th April on the bombardment of Paris:
"If some cannon-shots have been fired, it is not the deed of the array of Versailles, but of some insurgents wanting to make believe that they are fighting, while they do not dare show themselves."
Thiers has proved that he surpasses his hero, Napoleon I, at least in one thing — lying bulletins. (Of course, Paris bombards itself, in order to be able to calumniate M. Thiers!)
To these atrocious provocations of the Bonapartist blacklegs, the Commune has contented itself to take hostages and to threaten reprisals, but its threats have remained a dead letter! Not even the Gendarmes maskeraded into officers, not even the captive sergents de ville, upon whom explosive bombs have been seized, were placed before a court martial. The Commune has refused to soil its hands with the blood of these bloodhounds!
A few days before the 18th March, Clément Thomas laid before the war minister Le Flô a plan for the disarmament of three quarters of the National Garde.
"The flower of the canaille," he said, "has crowded round Montmartre and is working hand-in-glove with Belleville."b
The National Assembly
The assembly elected on February 8 under the pressure of the enemy, to whom the men of the Versailles government had surrended all the forts and handed over defenceless Paris, this Assembly of Versailles has been called for the sole purpose, which is clearly stated in the Convention itselfc signed at Versailles on January 28, namely, to decide whether the war could be continued or a peace concluded, and in the latter case to arrange for peace terms and ensure the earliest possible evacuation of French territory.0 Chanzy. Archbishop of Paris etc.
Liberation of Chanzy took place almost simultaneously with the retreat of Saisset. The Royalist journalists were unanimous in decreeing the death of the General. They desired to fix that amiable proceeding on the Reds. Three times he had been ordered to execution, and now he was really going to be shot.
After the Vendôme affair^: There was consternation at Versailles. An attack on Versailles was expected on 23 March, for the leaders of the Communal agitation had announced that they would march on Versailles, if the Assembly took any hostile action. The assembly did not. On the contrary, it voted as urgent a proposition to hold Communal Elections at Paris etc. By the concessions the Assembly admitted its powerlessness. At the same time Royalist Intrigues at Versailles. Bonapartist Generals and the Due d'Aumale.[294]
Favre avowed he had received a letter from Bismarck, announcing that unless order were restored by the 26 March Paris would be occupied by the German troops. Reds saw plainly through his little artifice.13 The Vendôme affair was provoked by the forger, that infamous Jesuit J. Favre, who on (21 March?) mounted the tribune of the Assembly of Versailles to insult the people who had rescued him from insignificance, and to rouse Paris against the departments.
30 March, Proclamation of the Commune:
"Today, the criminals, whom you did not even want to pursue, are abusing your magnanimity to organise a hotbed of monarchist conspiracy at the very gates of the city. They have been inciting to civil war. They have resorted to every means of corruption, they have acted as accomplices with everyone, and have gone to the extent of begging foreigners for aid.c
Thiers
On the 25th April, in his reception of the maires, adjuncts, and municipal councillors of the suburban communes of the Seine, Thiers said:
"The republic is there. The chief of the executive power is only a common citizen." d The progress of France from 1830 to 1871, according to M. Thiers, consists in this: In 1830 Louis Philippe was "the best of Republics". In 1871 the ministerial fossil of Louis Philippe's reign, little Thiers himself, is the best of Republics.
M. Thiers commenced his regime by an usurpation. By the National Assembly he was appointed chief of the ministry of the Assembly; he appointed himself chief of the executive of France.
The Assembly and the Paris Revolution
The Assembly, summoned at the dictate of the Foreign invader, was, as is clearly laid down in the Versailles convention of the 28th January, but elected for one single purpose: To decide the continuation of war or settle the conditions of peace. In their calling the French people to electoral urns, the Capitulards of Paris themselves plainly defined that specific mission of the Assembly and this accounts to a great part for its very constitution. The continuation of the war having become impossible through the very terms of the armistice humbly accepted by the capitulards, the Assembly had in fact but to register a disgraceful peace and for this specific performance the worst men of France were best.
The Republic was proclaimed on the 4th of September, not by the pettifoggers who installed themselves at the Hôtel de Ville as a government of defence, but by the Paris people. It was acclaimed throughout France without a single dissentient voice. It conquered its own existence by a five months' war whose cornerstone was the prolonged resistance of Paris. Without this war, carried on by the Republic and in the name of the Republic, the Empire would have been restored by Bismarck after the capitulation of Sedan, the pettifoggers with M. Thiers at their head would have had to capitulate not for Paris, but for personal guarantees against a voyage to Cayenne,[183] and the rural Assembly would never have been heard of. It met only by the grace of the Republican revolution, initiated at Paris. Being no constituent Assembly, as M. Thiers himself has repeated to nauseousness, it would, if not as a mere chronicler of the passed incidents of the Republican Revolution, not even have had the right to proclaim the destitution of the Bonapartist dynasty. The only legitimate power, therefore, in France is the Revolution itself, centring in Paris. That revolution was not made against Napoleon the little, but against the social and political conditions which engendered the Second Empire, which received their last finish under its sway, and which, as the war with Prussia glaringly revealed, would leave France a cadaver, if they were not superseded by the regenerating powers of the French working class. The attempts of the Rural Assembly, holding only an Attorney's Power from the Revolution to sign the disastrous bond handed over by its present "executive" to the Foreign invader, its attempt to treat the Revolution as its own capitulard, is, therefore, a monstrous usurpation. Its war against Paris is nothing but a cowardly Chouannerie[211] under the shelter of Prussian bayonets. It is a base conspiracy to assassinate France, in order to save the privileges, the monopolies and the luxuries of the degenerate, effete, and putrefied classes that have dragged her to the abyss from which she can only be saved by the Herculean hand of a truly social Revolution.
Thiers' Finest Army
Even before he became a "statesman", M. Thiers had proved his lying powers as a historian. But the vanity, so characteristic of dwarfish men, has this time betrayed him into the sublime of the ridiculous. His army of order, the dregs of the Bonapartist
soldatesque, freshly reimported, by the grace of Bismarck, from Prussian prisons,[175] the Pontifical Zouaves,[108] the Chouans[211] of Charette, the Vendeans of Cathelineau; the "municipals"[295] of Valentin, the exsergeants de ville of Piétri and the Corsican Gendarmes of Valentin who under L. Bonaparte were only the spies of the army but under M. Thiers form its warlike flower, the whole under the supervision of epauletted mouchards(34) and under the command of the runaway Decembrist Marshals who had no honour to lose — this motley, ungainly, hangdog lot, M. Thiers dubs "the finest army France ever possessed(35)l If he allows the Prussians still to quarter at St. Denis, it is only to frighten them by the sight of the "finest army" of Versailles.
Thiers
Small state rogueries. Everlasting suggester of Parliamentary intrigues, M. Thiers was never anything else but an "able" journalist and a clever "word fencer", a master of parliamentary roguery, a virtuoso in perjury, a craftsman in all the small stratagems, base perfidies, and subtle devices of Parliamentary party-warfare. This mischievous gnome charmed the French bourgeoisie during half a century because he is the truest intellectual expression of their own class-corruption. When in the ranks of the opposition he over and over rehearsed his stale homily of the "libertés nécessaires",[174] to stamp them out when in power. When out of office, he used to threaten Europe with the sword of France. And what were his diplomatic performances in reality? To pocket in 1841 the humiliation of the London treaty,[296]
to hurry on the war with Prussia by his declamations against German unity, to compromise France in 1870 by his begging tour at all the Courts of Europe, to sign in 1871 the Paris capitulation, to accept a "peace at any price" and implore from Prussia a concession: leave and means to get up a civil war in his own downtrodden country. To a man of his stamp the underground agencies of modern society remained of course always unknown, but even the palpable changes at its surface he failed to understand. F.i. any deviation from the old French protective system he denounced as a sacrilege and, as a minister of Louis Philippe, went the length of treating disdainfully the construction of railways as a foolish chimera and even under Louis Bonaparte he eagerly opposed every Reform of the rotten French army organization. A man without ideas, without convictions, and without courage.
A professional "Revolutionist" in that sense, that in his eagerness of display, of wielding power and putting his hands into the National Exchequer, he never scrupled, when banished to the banks of the opposition, to stir the popular passions and provoke a catastrophe to displace a rival; he is at the same time a most shallow man of routine, etc. The working class he reviled as "the vile multitude". One of his former colleagues in the legislative assemblies, a contemporary of his, a capitalist, and however a member of the Paris Commune, M. Beslay thus addresses him in a public address:
at the Hôtel-de-Ville, you have never ceased to cry to France 'They are criminals!'" (36)
No wonder that M. Thiers has given orders by his home minister Ernest Picard to prevent "the International Association" from communicating with Paris.(37) (Sitting of Assembly. 28 March.) Circular of Thiers, to prefects and sub-prefects.
"The good workmen, so numerous as compared to the bad ones, ought to know, that if bread flies again from their mouths, they owe it to the adepts of the International, who are the tyrants of labour, of which they pretend themselves the liberators."(38)
Without the International...(39)
(Now for the story of money.) (He and Favre transferred their money to London.) It is a proverb that if rogues fall out truth comes out. We can therefore not better finish the picture of Thiers than by the words of the London Moniteur of the master of his Versailles generals. Says the Situation in its number of the 21 March:
"M. Thiers has never been minister without pushing the soldiers to the massacre of the people, he the parricide, the man of incest, the peculator, the plagiarist, the traitor, the ambitious, the impotent".
Shrewd in cunning devices, and artful dodges.
Banded with the republicans before the Revolution of July, he slipped into his first ministry under Louis Philippe by ousting Laffitte, his old protector. His first deed was to throw his old collaborator Armand Carrel into prison. He insinuated himself with Louis Philippe as a spy upon and the goal-accoucheur of the Duchesse of Berry,[168] but his activity centred in the massacre of the insurgent Paris Republicans in the Rue Transnonain and the September Laws against the press,[169] to be then cast aside as an instrument become blunted. Having intrigued himself again into power in 1840, he planned the Paris fortifications[170] opposed as an attempt on the liberty of Paris by the whole democratic party, except the Bourgeois Republicans of the National. M. Thiers replied to their outcry from the Tribune of the Chambre des Députés:
"What? To fancy that any works of fortification could endanger freedom?... This is to be completely out of touch with reality. And first of all, you calumniate any government whatever in assuming that it could one day try to maintain itself by bombarding the capital. Do you really think that after it had pierced with its bombs the dome of Les Invalides or the Pantheon, after it had swept the homes of your families with its fire, it could come before you and ask you to confirm it in office? But it would be a hundred times more impossible after its victory than before."a
Indeed, neither the government of Louis Philippe nor that of the Bonapartist Regency dared to withdraw from Paris and bombard it. This employment of the fortifications was reserved to M. Thiers, their original plotter.
When King Bomba of Naples m bombarded Palermo in January 1848, M. Thiers again declared in the Chambre of Deputies:
"You know, gentlemen, what is happening in Palermo: you all shake with horror on hearing that during 48 hours a large town has been bombarded. By whom? Was ft by a foreign enemy exercising the rights of war? No, gentlemen, it was by its own government. And why? Because that unfortunate town demanded its rights. Well than, for demanding its rights, it has had 48 hours of bombardment. [...] Allow me to appeal to the opinion of Europe. It will be a service to mankind to rise and, from what is perhaps the greatest tribune in Europe, voice a few words of indignation against such acts. Gentlemen, there was a cry of general indignation in all parts of the world when, 50 years ago, in order to avoid a long siege the Austrians, exercising the rights of war, wanted to bombard Lille, when later, exercising the same rights of war, the English bombarded Copenhagen, and when, just recently, the Regent Espartero, who had rendered services to his country, wanted to bombard Barcelona in order to suppress an insurrection." b
Little more than a year later, Thiers acted the most fiery apologist of the bombardment of Rome by the troops of the French republic,[172] and exalted his friend, General Changarnier, for sabring down the Paris National Guards protesting against this breach of the French Constitution.
A few days before the Revolution of February 1848, fretting at the long exile from place to which Guizot had condemned him, scenting the growing commotion of the masses, which he hoped would enable him to oust his rival and impose himself upon Louis Philippe, Thiers exclaimed in the Chambre of Deputies:
"/ am of the party of the Revolution not only in France, but in the whole of Europe. I wish the government of the Revolution to remain in the hands of moderate men... But when that government falls into the hands of ardent minds, even into those of Radicals, I shall, for all that, not desert my cause. I shall always be of the party of the Revolution." (40)
To put down the February Revolution was his exclusive occupation from the day when the Republic was proclaimed to the Coup d'Etat.
The first days after the February explosion he anxiously hid himself, but the Paris workmen despised him too much to hate him. Still, with his notorious cowardice which made Armand Carrel answer to his boast "he would one day die on the banks of the Rhine", "Thou wil'st die in a gutter"—he dared not play a part on the public stage before the popular forces were broken down through the massacre of the insurgents of June. He confined himself first to the secret direction of the Conspiracy of the Reunion of the Rue de Poitiers[290] which resulted in the Restoration of the Empire, until the stage had become sufficiently clear to reappear publicly on it.
During the siege of Paris, on the question whether Paris was about to capitulate, Jules Favre answered that, to utter the word capitulation, the bombardment of Paris was wanted! (41) This explains his melodramatic protests against the Prussian bombardment, and why the latter was a mock bombardment, while the Thiers bombardment is a stern reality.
Parliamentary mountebank. He is for 40 years on the stage. He has never initiated a single useful measure in any department of state or life. Vain, sceptical, epicurean: He has never written or spoken for things. In his eyes the things themselves are only pretexts for the display of his pen or his tongue. Except his thirst for place and pelf and display there is nothing real about him, not even his chauvinism.
In the true vein of vulgar professional journalists he now sneers in his bulletins [at] the bad looks of his Versailles prisoners, now communicates that the rurals are "à leur aise",(42) now covers himself with ridicule by his bulletin on the taking of "Moulin-Saquet" (4 of May), where 300 prisoners were taken.
"The rest of the insurgents has fled in a wild flight, leaving 150 dead and wounded on the field of battle", and snappishly adds: "Such is the victory the Commune can celebrate in its bulletins tomorrow. ... Paris will soon be delivered from the terrible tyrants oppressing it."(43)
Paris — the "Paris" of the mass of the Paris people fighting against him is not "Paris". "Paris — that is the rich, the capitalist, the idle"(44) (why not the cosmopolitan stew?). This is the Paris of M. Thiers. The real Paris, working, thinking, fighting Paris, the Paris of the people, the Paris of the Commune is a "vile multitude". There is the whole case of M. Thiers, not only for Paris, but for France. The Paris that shews its courage in the "pacific procession" and Saisset's "escapade", that throngs now at Versailles, at Rueil, at St. Denis, at St. Germain-en-Laye, followed by the cocottes sticking to the "men of religion, family, order, and property" (the Paris of the really "dangerous", of the exploiting and lounging classes) ("the francs-fileurs"[208]) and amusing itself by looking by the telescope at the battle going on, for whom "the civil war is but an agreeable diversion"—that is the Paris of M. Thiers, as the emigration of Coblenz[210] was the France of M. de Calonne. In his vulgar journalist vein he knows not even to observe sham dignity, but he murders the wives and girls, and children found under the ruins of Neuilly not to swerve from the etiquette of "legitimacy". He must needs illuminate the municipal elections he has ordered in France by the conflagration of Clamart burnt by petroleum bombs. The Roman historians finish off Nero's character by telling us that the monster gloried in being a rhymester and a comedian. But lift a professional mere journalist and parliamentary mountebank like Thiers to power, and he will outnero Nero.
He acts only his part as the blind tool of class interests in allowing the Bonapartist "generals" to revenge themselves on Paris; but he acts his personal part in the little byplay of bulletins, speeches, addresses, in which the vanity, vulgarity, and lowest taste of the journalist creep out.
He compares himself with Lincoln and the Parisians with the rebellious slaveholders of the South. The Southerners fought for the slavery of labour and the territorial secession from the United States. Paris fought for the emancipation of labour and the secession from power of Thiers state parasites, of the would-be slaveholders of France!
In his speech to the maires:
"You may rely upon my word, which I have never broken!" "The Assembly is one of the most liberal ever elected by France."
He will save the Republic
"provided order and labour are not continuously threatened by those who claim to be the special guardians of the Republic's weal".(45)
At the April 27 sitting of the Assembly, he said:
"The Assembly is more liberal than he is." (46)
He whose rhetorical trumpcard was always the denunciation of the Vienna treaties, he signs the Paris treaty,[297] not only the dismemberment of one part of France, not only the occupation of almost V2 of it» but the milliards of indemnity, without even asking Bismarck to specify and prove his war expenses! He does not even allow the Assembly at Bordeaux to discuss the paragraphs of his capitulation!
He who upbraided throughout his life the Bourbons because they came back in the rear of Foreign armies and because of their undignified behaviour to the allies occupying France after the conclusion of peace," he asks nothing from Bismarck in the treaty but one concession: 40,000 troops to subdue Paris[175] (as Bismarck stated in the Diet). Paris was for all purposes of internal defence and Foreign aggression fully secured by his armed National Guard, but Thiers superadded at once to the capitulation of Paris to the Foreigner the character of the capitulation of Paris to himself and Co. This stipulation was a stipulation for civil war. That war itself he opens not only with the passive permission of Prussia, but by the facilities she lends him, by the captive French troops she magnanimously despatches him from German dungeons! In his bulletins, in his and Favre's speeches in the Assembly, he crawls in the dust before Prussia and threatens Paris every eight days with her intervention, after having failed to get it, as stated by Bismarck himself.(47) The Bourbons were dignity itself compared to this mountebank, this grand apostle of Chauvinism!
After the downbreak of Prussia (Tilsit peace 1807), its government felt that it could only save itself and the country by a great social regeneration. It naturalized in Prussia — on a small scale, within the limits of a feudal monarchy — the results of the French revolution. It liberated the peasant etc.[298] After the Crimean defeat, which, however Russia might have saved her honour by the defence of Sebastopol and dazzled the Foreigner by her diplomatic triumphs at Paris, laid open at home the rottenness of her social and administrative system, her government emancipated the serf and her whole administrative and judicial system.[299] In both countries the daring social reform was fettered and limited in its character because it was octroyed from the throne and not conquered by the people. Still there were great social changes doing away with the worst privileges of the ruling classes and changing the economical basis of the old society. They felt that the great malady could only be cured by heroic measures. They felt that they could only answer to the victors by social reforms, by calling into life elements of popular regeneration. The French catastrophe of 1870 stands unparalleled in the history of the modern world! It shewed official France, the France of Louis Bonaparte, the France of the ruling classes and their state parasites — a putrescent cadaver. And what is the first attempt of the infamous men, who had got at her government by a surprise of the people and who continue to hold it by a conspiracy with the Foreign invader, what is their first attempt? To assassinate, under Prussian patronage, by L. Bonaparte's soldatesque and Piétri's police, the glorious work of popular regeneration commenced at Paris, to summon all the old legitimist spectres, beaten by the July Revolution, the fossil swindlers of Louis Philippe, beaten by the revolution of February, and celebrate an orgy of counterrevolution! Such heroism in exaggerated self-debasement is unheard of in the annals of history! But, what is most characteristic, instead of arousing a general shout of indignation on the part of official Europe, and America, it evokes a current of sympathy and of fierce denunciation of Paris! Qossiles, vilains, hommes tarés(48)} This proves that Paris, true to its historical antecedents, seeks the regeneration of the French people in making it the champion of the regeneration of old society, making the social regeneration of mankind the national business of France! It is the emancipation of the producing class from the exploiting classes, their retainers and their state parasites who prove the truth of the French adage, that
"les valets du diable sont pire que le diable himself."(49) Paris has hoisted the flag of mankind! 18 March. Government laid
"stamp of 2 centimes on each copy of every periodical, whatever its nature", "forbidden to found new journals until the raising of the state of siege".
The different fractions of the French bourgeoisie had successively their reigns, the great landed proprietors under the Restoration (the old Bourbons), the capitalists under the parliamentary monarchy of July (Louis Philippe), while its Bonapartist and republican elements kept rankling in the background. Their party feuds and intrigues were of course carried on on pretexts of public welfare, and a popular revolution having got rid of these monarchies, the other set in. All this changed with the Republic (February). All the fractions of the Bourgeoisie combined together in the Party of Order, that is the party of [landed] Proprietors and Capitalists, bound together to maintain the economic subjugation of labour and the repressive state machinery supporting it. Instead of a monarchy, whose very name signified the prevalence of one bourgeois fraction over the other, a victory on one side and a defeat on the other (the triumph of one side and the humiliation of the other), the Republic was the anonymous joint-stock-company of the combined bourgeois fractions, of all the exploiters of the people clubbed together, and indeed, Legitimists, Bonapartists, Orleanists, Bourgeois Republicans, Jesuits, and Voltaireans, em-braced each other. No longer hidden by the shelter of the crown, no longer able to interest the people in their party feuds by maskerading them into struggles for popular interest, no longer subordinate the one to the other. Direct and confessed antagonism of their class rule to the emancipation of the producing masses,— order the name for the economical and political conditions of their class rule and the servitude of labour, this anonymous or republican form of the bourgeois regime — this Bourgeois Republic, this Republic of the Party of Order is the most odious of all political regimes. Its direct business, its only raison d'être* is to crush down the people. It is the terrorism of class rule. The thing is done in this way. The people having fought and made the Revolution, proclaimed the Republic, and made room for a National Assembly, the Bourgeois whose known Republican professions are a guarantee for their "Republic", are pushed on the foreground of the stage by the majority of the Assembly, composed of the vanquished and professed enemies of the Republic. The Republicans are entrusted with the task to goad the people into the trap of an insurrection to be crushed by fire and sword. This part was performed by the party of the National with Cavaignac at their head[300] after the Revolution of February (by the June Insurrection). By their crime against the masses, these Republicans lose then their sway. They have done their work and, if yet allowed to support the party of order in its general struggle against the Proletariate, they are at the same time displaced from the government, forced to fall back in the last ranks, and only allowed "on sufferance". The combined royalist bourgeois then become the fathers of the Republic, the true rule of the "Party of Order" sets in. The material forces of the people being broken for the time being, the work of reaction — the breaking down of all the concessions conquered in four revolutions — begins piece by piece. The people is stung to madness not only by the deeds of the party of order, but by the cynical effrontery with which it is treated as the vanquished, with which in its own name, in the name of the Republic, that low lot rules it supreme. Of course, that spasmodic form of anonymous class despotism cannot last long, can only be a transitory phase. It knows that it is seated on a revolutionary volcano. On the other hand, if the party of order is united in its war against the working class, in its capacity of the party of order, the play of intrigue of its different fractions the one against the other, each for the prevalence of its peculiar interest in the old order of society, each for the Restoration of its own pretender and personal ambitions, sets in in full force as soon as its rule seems secured (guaranteed) by the destruction of the material revolutionary forces. This combination of a common war against the people and a common conspiracy against the Republic, combined with the internal feuds of its rulers, and their play of intrigues, paralyses society, disgusts and bewilders the masses of the middle class and "troubles" business, keeps them in a chronic state of disquietude. All the conditions of despotism are created (have been engendered) under this regime, but despotism without quietude, despotism with parliamentary anarchy at its head. Then the hour has struck for a Coup d'Etat, and the incapable lot has to make room for any lucky pretender, making [an] end of the anonymous form of class rule. In this way Louis Bonaparte made an end of the Bourgeois Republic after its 4 years of existence. During all that time Thiers was the "âme damnée" (50) of the party of order, that in the name of the Republic made war upon the Republic, a class war upon the people, and, in reality, created the Empire. He played exactly the same part now as he played then, only then but as a parliamentary intriguer, now as the Chief of the Executive. Should he not be conquered by the Revolution, he will now as then be a baffled tool. Whatever countervailing government will set in, its first act will be to cast aside the man who surrendered France to Prussia and bombarded Paris.
Thiers had many grievances against L. Bonaparte. The latter had used him as a tool and a dupe. He had frightened him by his arrest after the Coup d'Etat. He had annulled him by putting down the parliamentary regime, the only one under which a mere state-parasite, like Thiers, a mere talker can play a political part. Last not least, Thiers having been the historic shoeblack of Napoleon(51) had so long described his deeds as to fancy he had enacted them himself. The legitimate caricature of Nap. I was in his eyes not Nap. the little, but little Thiers. With all that there was no infamy committed by L. B. which had not been backed by Thiers, from the occupation of Rome by the French troops to the war with Prussia.
Only a man of his shallow head can fancy for one moment, that a Republic with his head on its shoulders, with a National Assembly half-Legitimist, half-Orleanist, with an army under Bonapartist leaders, will, if victorious, not push him aside.
There is nothing more grotesquely horrid than a Tom Pouce affecting to play the Timur Tamerlane. With him the deeds of cruelty are not only a matter of business, but a thing of theatrical display, of phantastical vanity. To write his "bulletins", to show his "severity", to have "his" troops, "his" strategy, "his" bombard-ments, "his" petroleum-bombs, to hide "his" cowardice under the coldbloodedness with which he allows the Decembrist blacklegs to take their revenge on Paris! This kind of heroism in exaggerated baseness! He exults in the important part he plays and the noise he makes in the world! He quite fancies to be a great man! and how gigantic (titanic) he, the dwarf, the parliamentary dribbler, must look in the eyes of the world! In midst the horrid scenes of this war, one cannot help smiling at the ridiculous capers Thiers Vanity cuts! M. Thiers is a man of lively imagination, there runs an artist's vein through his blood, and an artist's vanity able to gull him into a belief of his own lies, and a belief in his own grandeur.
Through all the speeches, bulletins etc. of Thiers, runs a vein of elated vanity.
that affreux" Triboulet. Splendid Bombardment (with petroleum bombs) from Mont Valerien on one part of the houses in the Ternes within the rampart, with a grandiose conflagration and a fearful thunder of cannon shaking all Paris. Bombs purposely thrown into Ternes and the Champs Elysées quarters.
Explosive bombs, petroleum bombs.
The Commune
The glorious British penny a liner has made the splendid discovery that this is not what we use to understand by self-government. Of course, it is not. It is not the self-administration of the towns by turtle-soup guttling aldermen, jobbing vestries, and ferocious workhouse guardians. It is not the self-administration of the counties by the holders of broad acres, long purses and empty heads. It is not the judicial abomination of "the Great Unpaid".[301] It is not political self-government of the country through the means of an oligarchic club and the reading of The Times newspaper. It is the people acting for itself by itself.
Within this war of cannibals the most disgusting, the "literary" shrieks of the hideous gnome seated at the head of the government!
The ferocious treatment of the Versailles prisoners was not interrupted one moment, and their coldblooded assassination was resumed so soon as Versailles had convinced itself that the Commune was too humane to execute its decree of reprisals!
The Paris Journal (at Versailles) says that 13 line soldiers made prisoners at the railway station of Clamart were shot offhand, and all prisoners wearing the line uniforms who arrive in Versailles will be executed whenever doubts about their identity are cleared up!
M. Alexander Dumas, fils, tells that a young man exercising the functions, if not bearing the title, of a general, was shot after having marched (in custody) a few hundred yards along a road.
5 May, Mot d'Ordre: According to the Liberté, which is published in Versailles, "all regular army soldiers found at Clamart among the insurgents were shot on the spot" (by Lincoln Thiers!) (Lincoln acknowledged the belligerent rights). "These are the men denouncing on the walls of all French communes the Parisians as assassins!" The banditti!(52)
Desmarets. A deputation of the Commune went to Bicêtre (April 27) to investigate the case of four National Guards of the 185th field battalion and there saw one survivor (badly wounded) Scheffer.
"The wounded man said that on April 25 he and three of his comrades were overtaken at Belle Epine, near Villejuif, by a detachment of mounted Chasseurs, who told them to surrender. As it was quite impossible to put up any resistance against the forces that surrounded them, they laid down their arms and gave up.
The soldiers surrounded them and took them prisoner without resorting to violence or threats against them. They had been prisoners for a few minutes, when a captain of the mounted Chasseurs appeared and threw himself upon them revolver in hand. Without saying a word he fired at one of them and killed him outright; then he also fired at Guardsman Scheffer, who was shot in the chest and fell by his comrade. The other two guardsmen, terrified at this sneaking attack, tried to escape but the wild captain ran after the two prisoners and killed them both with revolver shots. After these savage and outrageous acts the Chasseurs retired with their chief, leaving their victims lying on the ground." (53)
New York Tribune outdoes the London papers. M. Thiers' "most liberal and most freely elected National assembly that ever existed in France" is quite of a piece with his "finest army that France ever possessed".(54) The municipal elections, carried on under Thiers himself on the 30th of April, show their relations to the French people! Of 700,000 councillors (in round numbers) returned by the 35,000 communes still left in mutilated France, 200 are Legitimists, 600 Orleanists, 7,000 avowed Bonapartists, and all the rest Republicans or Communists. ( Versailles Cor. Daily News, 5 May.) Is any other proof wanted that this Assembly with the Orleanist mummy Thiers at its head represent only an usurpatory minority?
Paris
M. Thiers represented again and again the Commune as the instrument of a handful of "convicts" and "ticket of leave men", of the scum of Paris. And this "handful" of desperadoes holds in check since more than 6 weeks the "finest army that France ever possessed" led by the invincible Mac Mahon and inspired by the genius of Thiers himself!
The exploits of the Parisians have not only refuted him. All elements of Paris have spoken.
"You must not confuse the movement of Paris with the seizure of Montmartre, which was only its opportunity and starting point; this movement is general and profound in the conscience of Paris; the greatest number even of those who, for one reason or another, hold aloof from it, do not deny that it is socially legitimate." a
Who says this? The delegates of the Syndical chambres, men who speak in the name of 7-8,000 merchants and industrials. They have gone to tell it at Versailles... The Ligue de la réunion républicaine... the
manifestation of the Francs Maçons[302] etc.
The Province
Les provinciaux espiègles^ If Thiers fancied one moment that the provinces were really antagonistic to the Paris movement, he would do all in his power to give the provinces the greatest possible facilities to become acquainted with that movement and all "its horrors". He would solicit them to look at it in its naked reality, to convince themselves with their own eyes and ears of what it is. Not he! He and his "defence men" try to keep the provinces down, to prevent their general rising for Paris, by a wall of lies as they kept out the news from the provinces in Paris during the Prussian siege. The Provinces are only allowed to look at Paris through the Versailles camera obscura. (Nothing but the lies and slanders of the Versailles journals reach the departments and reign there unrivalled.)0
Pillages and murders of 20,000 ticket of leave men dishonour the capital.
"The League considers it to be its primary duty to shed light on the facts and restore normal relations between the province and Paris." d
As they were, when besieged in Paris, thus they are now in besieging it in their turn.
"As in the past, the lie is their favourite weapon. They suppress and confiscate the journals of the capital, intercept reports, and sift the letters, in such a way that the province is reduced to having the news that it pleases Jules Favre, Picard and Company to let it have, without it being possible to verify its truth." e Thiers' bulletins, Picard's circulars, Dufaure's... The placards in the Communes. The felon press of Versailles and the Germans. The petit Moniteur? The reintroduction of passports for travelling from one place to another. An army of mouchardsb spread in every direction. Arrests (in Rouen etc under Prussian authority) etc. Thousands of commissioners of police scattered in the environs of Paris have been ordered by the prefect of the gendarmerie, Valentin, to confiscate journals of any trend published in the insurgent city, and to burn them publicly, as used to be done in the heyday of the Holy Inquisition.0
Thiers' government first appealed to the provinces'1 to form battalions of National Guards and send them to Versailles against Paris.
"The Province," as the Journal de Limoges says, "showed its discontent by refusing the battalions of volontaires which were asked from it by Thiers and his
ruraux." e
The few Breton idiots, fighting under a white flag, every one of them wearing on his breast a Jesus heart in white cloth and shouting "vive le roi!"f are the only "provincial" army gathered round Thiers.
The elections. Vengeur 6 May. M. Dufaure's presslaw (8 April)[214] confessedly directed against the "excesses" of the Provincial press.
Then the numerous arrestations in the Province. It is placed under the laws of suspects.[303] Intellectual and police blockade of province?
April 23 Havre: The municipal council has despatched three of its members to Paris and Versailles with instructions to offer mediation, with the view of terminating the civil war on the basis of the maintenance of the Republic, and the granting of municipal franchises to the whole of France... 23 April delegates from Lyon received by Picard and Thiers—"war at any price" is their reply.
The address of the Lyons delegates(55) is handed to the Assembly by Greppo on April 24.[304]
The municipalities of the provincial towns committed the great impudence to send their deputations to Versailles in order to call upon them to grant what demanded by Paris; not one Commune of France has sent an address approving of the acts of Thiers and the rurals; the provincial papers, like these municipal councils, as Dufaure complains in his circular against Conciliation to the Procureur
General,
"put on the same footing the Assembly elected by universal suffrage, and the self-styled Paris Commune; reproach the former for having failed to recognise the municipal rights of Paris etc" (56)
and what is worse, these municipal councils, f. i. that of Auch,
"have unanimously demanded that it should at once propose an armistice with Paris,(57)
and that the Assembly chosen on the 8-th of February, dissolves itself because its mandate had expired". (Dufaure, l'assemblée de Versailles, April 26)
It ought to be remembered that these were the old municipal councils,[305] not those elected on 30th April. Their delegations so numerous, that Thiers decided no longer to receive them personally, but address them to a ministerial subaltern.
Lastly the elections of 30 April the final judgment of the Assembly and the electoral surprise from which it had sprung. If then, the provinces have till now only made a passive resistance against Versailles without rising for Paris, to be explained by the strongholds the old authorities hold here still, the trance in which the Empire merged and the war maintained the Province. It is evident that it is only the Versailles army, government, and Chinese wall of lies, that stand between Paris and the provinces. If that wall falls, they will unite with it.
It is most characteristic, that the same men (Thiers et Co.) who in May 1850 abolished by a parliamentary conspiracy (Bonaparte aided them, to get them into a snare, to have them at his mercy, and to proclaim himself after the coup d'état as the restorator of the universal suffrage against the party of order and its Assembly) the universal suffrage, because under the Republic it might still play them freaks, are now its fanatical adepts, make it their "legitimate" title against Paris, after it had received under Bonaparte such an organization as to be the mere plaything in the hand of the Executive, a mere machine of cheat, surprise, and forgery on the part of the Executive. Congrès de la Ligue des Villes[306] (Rappel 6
May!)
Trochu, Jules Favre, and
Thiers'
Provincials
It may be asked how these superannuated parliamentary mountebanks and intriguers like Thiers, Favre, Dufaure, Garnier-Pagès (only strengthened by a few rascals of the same stamp) continue to reappear, after every revolution, on the surface, and usurp the executive power? these men that always exploit and betray the Revolution, shoot down the people that made it, and sequester the few liberal concessions conquered from former governments? (which they opposed themselves?)
The thing is very simple. In the first instance, if very unpopular, like Thiers after the February Revolution, popular magnanimity spares them. After every successful rising of the people the cry of conciliation, raised by the implacable enemies of the people, is reechoed by the people in the first moments of the enthusiasm at its own victory. After this first moment men like Thiers and Dufaure eclipse themselves as long as the people hold material power and work in the dark. They reappear as soon as it is disarmed and are acclaimed by the bourgeoisie as their chefs de file.*
Or, like Favre, Gamier Pages, Jules Simon etc (recruited by a few younger ones of similar stamp) and Thiers himself after the 4th of September, were the "respectable" republican opposition under Louis Philippe: afterwards the parliamentary opposition under L. Bonaparte. The reactionary regimes they have themselves initiated when raised to power by the Revolution, secure for them the ranks of the opposition, deporting, killing, exiling the true Revolutionists. The people forget their past, the middle class look upon them as their men, their infamous past is forgotten, and thus they reappear to recommence their treason and their work of infamy.
Night of 1 to 2 May: the village of Clamart had been in the hands of the military, the railway station in those of the insurgents, (this station dominates the Fort of Issy.) By a surprise (their patrouilles
being let in by a soldier on guard, the watchword having been betrayed to them) the 23 Battalion of Chasseurs got in, surprised the garrison most of them sleeping in their bed, made only 60 prisoners, bayoneted 300 of the insurgents. Dazu* line soldiers afterwards shot offhand. Thiers in his circular to the Prefects, civil and military authorities of 2 May has the impudence to Say:
"It (the Commune) arrests generals (Cluseret!) only to shoot them, and institutes a committee of public safety which is utterly unworthy!"b
Troops under General Lacretelle took the redoubt of Moulin Saquet situated betwixt Fort Issy and Montrouge, by a coup de main!1 The garrison was surprised by treachery on the part of the commandant Gallien, who had sold the password to the Versaillese troops. 150 of the Federals bayoneted and over 300 of them made prisoners.
M. Thiers, says the Times correspondent, was weak when he ought to have been firm (the coward is always weak as long as he has to apprehend danger for himself) and firm, when everything was to be gained by some concessions.d (the rascal is always firm, when the employment of material force bleeds France, gives great airs to himself, but when he, personally, is safe. This is his whole cleverness. Like Anthony, Thiers is an "honest man".e)
Thiers' bulletin on Moulin-Saquet (4 May)f "Deliverance of Paris from the hideous tyrants who oppress it" ("the Versaillese were disguised as National Guards") ("most of the Federals were asleep and were killed or taken in their sleep").(58)
"Blanqui thrown into jail dying, Flourens cut to pieces by the gendarmes, Duval shot by Vinoy, they had them in their hands on the 31st of October, and did nothing to them."
Endnotes
[115] The Battle of Mont Valerien (also known as the Battle of Montretout or Buzenval) was fought on January 19, 1871, four months after the beginning of the siege of Paris. It was the final sortie from besieged Paris, but it was not adequately prepared. There was no coordination between the actions of the attack troops, and the necessary reserves were lacking. Despite the courage displayed by the French soldiers, the sortie was beaten back at every point. pp. 240, 437
[286] On October 5, 1870, a demonstration of the workers' battalions of the National Guard took place in front of the Town Hall in Paris. The workers, led by Gustave Flourens, demanded that the Government of National Defence hold elections to the Commune, and take measures to strengthen the Republic and to fight resolutely against the invaders. The government rejected these demands and banned National Guard assemblies and armed demonstrations. On the October 31, 1870 uprising see Note 184.
[165] Capitulards—a scornful nickname for those who advocated the capitulation of Paris during the siege of 1870-71. It subsequently came to denote capitulators in general. pp. 313, 438, 482, 517, 523, 538, 546
[118] 1 1 8 This refers to the Convention of Paris signed on the Armistice and Capitulation by Bismarck and Favre on January 28, 1871. The Government of National Defence refused to continue the struggle against the Prussian invaders and agreed to an ignominious capitulation. By this act it betrayed the national interests of France, which were sacrificed to the ruling classes' desire to suppress the revolutionary movement in the country by all possible means. By signing the Convention, Favre accepted humiliating demands put forward by the Prussians: payment of an indemnity of 200 million francs within a fortnight, the immediate surrender of most of the Paris forts, the handing over of the field guns and ammunition of the Paris army, and the disbanding of the francs-tireurs (armed civilians). Yet Bismarck and Favre did not dare to include a clause about the disarmament of the Paris National Guard , which mostly consisted of workers. The Convention provided for urgent elections to the National Assembly, which was to decide the question of ?. peace treaty. pp. 248, 438, 519, 546, 595
[2] In May 1870, Napoleon Ill's government held a plebiscite in an attempt to strengthen the tottering regime of the Second Empire. The issues put to the vote were formulated in such a way that disapproval of the policy pursued by the Second Empire could not be expressed without opposing democratic reforms at the same time. Despite this demagogic manoeuvre, the plebiscite showed the growing opposition: 1.5 million voted against the government, 1.9 million abstained. During the preparations for the plebiscite, the government organised a broad campaign of repressions against the working class movement, scaring the middle-class sections with the threat of a revolution. On April 24, 1870, the Paris Federation of the International and the Federal Chamber of Workers' Trades Associations in Paris issued a manifesto exposing the Bonapartist plebiscite manoeuvre and called on the workers to abstain from voting. On the eve of the plebiscite many members of the Paris Federation were arrested on a charge faked by the police of plotting to assassinate Napoleon III (see present edition, Vol. 43, Engels' letter to Marx of May 8, 1870). The government used this charge for organising a broad campaign of persecution and harassment of the International's members in various French towns. In this connection, the General Council,at its meeting on May 3, 1870, adopted the Address "Concerning the Persecution of the Members of the French Sections", written by Marx (see present edition, Vol. 21), which exposed the Bonapartist police's libellous charges. At the third trial of the Paris Federation members, held from June 22 to July 5, 1870, the false character of these charges was fully disclosed. Nevertheless, a number of members of the International in France were sentenced to imprisonment merely for affiliation to the International Working Men's Association. Persecution of the International in France caused mass protests by the working class. pp. 3, 273
[287] This refers to the new electoral qualifications introduced under the law of May 31, 1850, which was passed by the Legislative Assembly of the French Republic on the initiative of Thiers' Party of Order, frightened by the successes of the Democrats and Socialists at the by-elections to the Assembly in March and April 1850. The new electoral law, directed against the workers, agricultural labourers and poor peasants, introduced personal tax and three-year residential qualification. As a result, the number of voters fell by almost three million. Shortly after the adoption of the 1850 electoral law, the salary of the President of the Republic, Louis Bonaparte, paid from the treasury, was raised by the Assembly from 600,000 to three million francs.
[216] A reference to the commercial treaty between Britain and France, signed on January 23, 1860, under which France was conceded the right to export most of its goods to England duty-free. France abandoned her prohibitive tariff policy and replaced it with duties of no more than 30 per cent of the value of the goods. The result was a sharp intensification of competition on the French domestic market, which was flooded with goods from Britain, and this caused discontent among French industrialists. Marx describes this treaty in his articles published in volume 17 of the present edition. pp. 346, 442
[289] The- reference is to the actions of the Blanquist Société des Saisons on May 12, 1839 (see Note 213).
[188] This refers to the repressive laws initiated or actively supported by J. Dufaure and passed in 1839 and 1849. On May 14, 1839, after the armed action, the secret Republican Society of the Seasons was banned. After the demonstration of June 13, 1849 had been dispersed, a number of repressive laws were adopted: on June 19, the law on associations, on June 27 — the law on the press (loi sur la presse), on August 9 — the law on the state of siege (loi sur l'état de siège). After Dufaure became Minister of Justice in February 1871, he adopted a whole series of repressive laws. The law on the state of siege of April 28, 1871 restored certain laws meant to suppress freedom of the press, including the law of 1849. pp. 325, 444, 512
[291] 291 when speaking of the Union libérale of 1847, Marx has in mind a g r o u p of so-called progressive conservatives that took shape in the French Chamber of Deputies after the elections of 1846. Its leaders were the Orleanists Girardin, Tocqueville, Dufaure and others. The Union libérale was a coalition of bourgeois Republicans, Orleanists and a section of the Legitimists, formed during the elections to the Corps Législatif in 1863, on the common platform of opposition to the Empire. An attempt to revive the Union libérale during the election campaign of 1869 failed owing to differences between the parties that formed the 1863 coalition.
[133] 133 x h e reference is to the June insurrection, the heroic insurrection of Paris workers on June 23-26, 1848. It was the first civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in history. Marx called it the first great battle between the two classes. H e assessed its historical importance in the Class Struggles in France, to 1850 (see present edition, Vol. 10, pp. 67-70). 1848 pp. 269, 316, 445, 521
[185] Bretons—the Breton Mobile Guard, which Trochu used as a gendarmerie to suppress the revolutionary movement in Paris. The Bretons replaced the Corsicans who, under the Second Empire, constituted a large section of the gendarmerie corps. pp. 323, 446, 481, 513, 527, 532, 539
[178] The Assembly of "Rurals"—a scornful nickname for the National Assembly, which met on February 12, 1871 in Bordeaux and consisted mostly of reactionary monarchists, such as provincial landowners, civil servants, rentiers and merchants elected from rural constituencies. pp. 319, 446, 492, 497, 520, 530, 538, 543, 629
[184] On October 31, 1870, following the reports of the capitulation at Metz, the defeat at Le-Bourget, and the negotiations with the Prussians started by Thiers on behalf of the Government of National Defence, Paris workers and the revolutionary section of the National Guard started an uprising and took the Town Hall, setting up an organ of revolutionary power — the Committee of Public Safety, headed by Auguste Blanqui. Under pressure from the workers, the Government of National Defence was forced to promise to resign and set elections to the Commune for November 1. But, taking advantage of the loose organisation of the revolutionary forces in Paris and the differences between the Blanquists and the petty-bourgeois Jacobin Democrats, who led the uprising, the government went back on its promise to resign, threw the loyal battalions of the National Guard against the Town Hall and restored its power. pp. 323, 447, 527
[292] 292 yhis refers to the Bonapartist coup d'état of December 2, 1851.
[293] 293 xhe Commission of Fifteen (Commission des Quinze) was appointed by the National Assembly on March 20, 1871 to help Thiers' government fight revolutionary Paris. It consisted mainly of monarchists and bourgeois republicans supporting Thiers; after the defeat of the Commune the Commission ceased to exist. pp. 447, 541
[294] Marx presumably intended to give examples of monarchist intrigues in the Versailles National Assembly. The excerpts made by Marx from the newspapers of the time contain information about the intrigues of the Due d'Aumale and his brother Prince Joinville, rumours about a merger of the Bourbons and the Orleans and plans to put the Due d'Aumale on the French throne.
[183] Cayenne—town in French Guiana (South America), a penal colony and place of exile for political prisoners and criminals. pp. 321, 451, 522
[108] "Papal Zouaves"—a regiment of the Papal Guard organised and trained like the Zouaves (see Note 13) and consisting of young French aristocratic volunteers. When Rome was occupied by Italian troops and the Pope's secular power abolished in September 1870, the Papal Zouaves were sent to France, where they were reorganised into a "volunteer legion of the West". As part of the First and Second Loire armies, they participated in operations against the Germans. After the war, the legion helped suppress the Paris Commune and was later disbanded. pp. 204, 343, 452, 513, 539
[295] The municipals or the Municipal Guard (from 1871 — the Republican Guard)— militarised foot and mounted police in Paris, formed by the government of the July monarchy in 1830 to fight the revolutionary movement. In 1871, it became the shock force of the counter-revolutionary Versailles army.
[296] The London Convention, signed by Russia, Britain, Austria, Prussia and Turkey in 1840, provided for aid to the Turkish Sultan against the Egyptian ruler Mehemet Ali (see Note 100). As France supported Mehemet Ali, it faced political isolation and the threat of a new anti-French coalition of the European powers. By denying support to Mehemet Ali, which signified a major defeat of French foreign policy in the Middle East, the French government secured its participation in the signing of the London Convention on July 13, 1841. Russia, Britain, France, Austria and Prussia, on the one hand, and Turkey, on the other, agreed to close the Black Sea Straits for foreign men of war in peacetime. In the third English edition of The Civil War in France, Marx cites the London Convention of 1840 as an example of the defeat of French diplomacy. pp. 453, 519
[168] A reference to the anti-Legitimist and anti-clerical riots in Paris on February 14 and 15, 1831, which were echoed in the provinces. In protest against the Legitimist demonstration during the requiem mass for the Duke du Berry, the mob plundered the church of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois and the palace of Archbishop Quélen, who was known for his Legitimist sympathies. The Orleanist government, which was striving to weaken the hostile Legitimist party, did nothing to stop the crowd. Thiers, who was present when the church and palace were attacked, urged the National Guards not to interfere. In 1832, by order of Thiers, then Minister of the Interior, the Duchess de Berry, mother of the Comte de Chambord, the Legitimist pretender to the French throne, was arrested and subjected to a humiliating medical examination to expose her secret marriage with a Neapolitan nobleman and pregnancy, and in this way politically compromise her and her son. pp. 315, 454, 503, 520
[169] An allusion to the unseemly role played by Thiers in suppressing the popular insurrection in Paris on April 13-14, 1834, directed by the secret Republican Society of the Rights of Man (Société des Droits de l'Homme). Thiers, then Minister of the Interior, organised the brutal persecution of the participants in the insurrection and was, in particular, responsible for the death of the inhabitants of a house in Rue Transnonain. September Laws (1835) were issued by the French government, which took advantage of an attempt on the life of Louis Philippe on July 28 to restrict trial by jury and introduce harsh measures against the press, including higher securities for periodicals, and prison terms and large fines for statements against property and the existing political system. pp. 315, 446, 454, 520, 596
[170] In January 1841, Thiers came forward in the Chamber of Deputies with a project, prepared by Minister of War Soult, for building fortifications around Paris — a wall and several forts. Revolutionary and democratic circles took it as a preparatory step towards suppressing any popular movement, though the project was presented as a measure to strengthen the city's defences. It was noted that Thiers' project provided for the construction of especially strong and numerous forts near the working-class quarters to the east and north-east of Paris. pp. 315, 454, 520
[172] In April 1849, the French bourgeois government, in alliance with Austria and Naples, intervened against the Roman Republic for the purpose of suppressing it and restoring the Pope's secular power. As a result of the armed intervention and the siege of Rome, which was subjected to fierce bombardment by French troops, the Roman Republic, despite heroic resistance, was overthrown and Rome was occupied by French troops. pp. 315, 455, 510, 521, 572
[208] Francs-fileurs (literally: "free absconders")—the name given to the Paris bourgeois who fled from the city during the siege. It sounded all the more ironical being a pun on francs-tireurs (see Note 34). pp. 342, 350, 457, 543
[210] Coblenz—a city in Western Germany, the centre of counter-revolutionary emigration during the French Revolution. It was the seat of the émigré government headed by de Calonne, former minister of Louis XVI. pp. 343, 457, 543
[297] The Vienna Treaties were concluded at the Congress of Vienna (1814-15) in May and June 1815 by the states that had participated in the Napoleonic wars. Under these treaties, the map of Europe was redrawn with a view to restoring legitimate monarchies, contrary to the interests of the unity and independence of nations. The Paris Treaty—a preliminary peace treaty signed by France and Germany on February 26, 1871 (see Note 179).
[298] Marx has in mind the half-hearted bourgeois reforms carried out in feudal Prussia from 1807 to 1811, after its defeat in the war against Napoleonic France in 1806. The personal bondage of serfs was abolished, but they still had to perform all the feudal services; their redemption was allowed only with the consent of the landowner; limited local self-government was introduced and the army and central government institutions reorganised.
[299] At the Paris Congress (February-March 1856) the Russian diplomats took advantage of the contradictions between Britain, Austria and France to secure much milder peace terms for Russia which had lost the Crimean war: the territorial concessions to Turkey were considerably reduced, Russia retained her possessions in the Caucasus and the right to have her fleet and fortresses on the Azov Sea. The Congress adopted a decision to put an end to the occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia by Austria, which made Austria's expansion in the Balkans much more difficult. Speaking about the reforms in Russia after the Crimean war, Marx has in mind the 1861 Reform which abolished serfdom, the local government reforms (the introduction of Zemstvos in 1864) and the 1870 reform of municipal administration, the introduction of new judicial regulations in 1864 and the financial reform. These reforms were a step towards the transformation of Russia into a bourgeois monarchy.
[300] Marx gave a detailed description of the bourgeois republican faction rallied round Le Notional and represented primarily by A. Marrast, A. T. Maire, J. Bastide and L. E. Cavaignac, in his The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (see present edition, Vol. 11, pp. 112-13, 119-20).
[301] The (Great) Unpaid—an ironic name for magistrates in Britain, who were not paid for their services.
[302] 302 xhe Ligue d'Union Républicaine pour les droits de Paris—a bourgeois organisation set up in Paris in early April 1871. It tried to stop the Civil War, expecting that an agreement between Versailles and Paris based on recognition of the Republic and municipal liberties of Paris would lead to a peaceful elimination of the Commune. The manifestation of the freemasons was held on April 29, 1871: the freemasons marched to the city fortifications to make the Versailles troops stop military operations. On April 26 and 29, the Commune organised meetings with the freemasons in the Town Hall striving to win over the republican petty and middle bourgeoisie, whose views the freemasons expressed. At these meetings, the freemasons, whose armistice proposals were rejected by Thiers, declared their support for the Commune. The meeting on April 29 was followed by the manifestation already mentioned, the delegates of the Commune taking part in it. pp. 466, 543
[214] This refers to the law on the press, adopted by the National Assembly on June 6, 1871, which reintroduced provisions from the previous reactionary laws on the press of 1819 and 1849: it provided for harsh penalties, including the closure of periodicals, for statements against the authorities. Besides, a law was adopted on the reinstatement of officials of the Second Empire who had been dismissed and a special law on the procedures for the return of property confiscated by the Commune and on the introduction of penalties for its confiscation, as a criminal offence. pp. 345, 467, 479
[303] Marx has in mind the "law of suspects" (Loi des suspects) passed by the Corps Législatif on February 19, 1858; it gave the government and the emperor unlimited powers to deport to various parts of France and Algeria or to exile from France all persons suspected of a hostile attitude to the Second Empire.
[304] An Address from the Lyons municipal council, submitted to the National Assembly by deputy Greppo, contained a demand to put an end to the Civil War and for a reconciliation between Versailles and Paris. It also proposed that functions be clearly divided between the National Assembly and the Paris Commune, and that the Commune's activities be limited to municipal matters.
[305] This refers to the municipal councils elected in 1865, with the Imperial authorities exerting strong pressure.
[306] Ligue des villes (League of the Cities) (full name: Ligue patriotique des villes républicaines)—an organisation which bourgeois republicans, fearing the restoration of the monarchy after the suppression of the Paris Commune, tried to set up in April-May 1871. The provisional committee of the League, with the active support of the Ligue d'Union Républicaine pour les droits de Paris (see Note 302), intended to convene a congress of municipal council representatives in Bordeaux on May 9, 1871, with the aim of bringing closer an end of the Civil War, consolidating the Republic and formalising the League. The Versailles Government banned the Congress and the provisional committee soon ceased to exist. Le Rappel in its issue No. 692, May 6, 1871 carried the programme of the proposed congress of the Ligue des villes. pp. 469, 593
[3] A reference to the coup d'état of December 2, 1851, which gave birth to the Second Empire.
[180] On March 10, 1871, the National Assembly adopted a law on overdue bills. Accordingly, a seven-month moratorium was set for payments on security made from August 13 to November 12, 1870; no moratorium was allowed for payments on securities contracted after November 12. This meant that the law gave virtually no deferment to those in debt, the working class and the impecunious sections of the population. It also caused the bankruptcy of many small industrialists and merchants. During the siege of Paris, the time for rent payment was transferred from one quarter of a year to another. At the end of March 1871 another payment came due. The project advanced by Thiers and Dufaure gave house-owners the right, if the rent had not been paid for two years, to evict the tenants and appropriate their furniture and personal belongings. The National Assembly refused to consider the project. pp. 319, 441, 444, 474
[174] On January 11, 1864, Thiers spoke in the Corps législatif about the government's duty to return the "necessary liberties" to the country, including freedom of the individual, the press, association, and elections to parliament (Le Moniteur universel, No. 12, January 12, 1864). pp. 316, 443, 453
[290] This refers to the Comité de la reunion de la rue de Poitiers, the guiding body of the Party of Order (see Note 173). The Comité was dominated by the Orleanists, headed by Thiers. pp. 444, 456
[211] Chouans—participants in the counter-revolutionary insurrection in North-West France during the French Revolution. During the Paris Commune, this name was given by the Communards to the detachment of monarchist-minded Versailles soldiers recruited in Brittany and used against the Commune. pp. 343, 452
[175] Thiers asked Bismarck for permission to increase the number of troops, which was not to exceed 40,000 according to Art. 3 of the preliminary treaty signed by Thiers and Jules Favre, on the one hand, and Bismarck and representatives of the South German states, on the other, in Versailles on February 26, 1871. Thiers' government assured Bismarck that the troops would be used exclusively for suppressing the insurrection in Paris, and on March 28, 1871, according to the Rouen Convention, Thiers received permission to increase the size of the Versailles army to 80,000 and, somewhat later, to 100,000 men. Accordingly, the German Command repatriated French prisoners of war, most of whom had been serving in the armies that surrendered in Sedan and Metz. The Versailles government quartered these units in secret camps, where they were trained for action against the Paris Commune. pp. 317, 452, 458, 483, 541