4) Measures of Public Safety
Commune declares incompatibility between seats in its ranks and at Versailles; (29 March)g
Decree of Reprisals.[1]" Never executed. Only the fellows arrested, Archbishop of Paris and Curé of the Madeleine[1]; whole staff of the
a [Décret sur la démolition de la colonne Vendôme. Paris, 12 avril 1871], Le Rappel, No. 670, April 14, 1871; see also Journal officiel (Paris), No. 103, April 13, 1871.— Ed.
b "Rapport de la Commission des élections", La Situation, No. 169, April 5, 1871; see also Journal officiel (Paris), No. 90, March 31, 1871.— Ed.
c Decree of April 26, 1871 on the protection of foreigners, The Daily News, No. 7799, April 28, 1871; see also Journal officiel (Paris), No. 117, April 28, 1871.— Ed.
college of Jesuits; Incumbents of all the principal churches; Part of these fellows arrested as hostages, part as conspirators with Versailles, part because they tried to save church property from the clutches of the Commune. (6 April)
"The Monarchists wage war like savages; they shoot prisoners, they murder the wounded, they fire on ambulances, troops raise the butt-end of their rifles in the air and then fire traitorously." (Proclamation of Commune)*
In regard to these decrees of Reprisals to be remarked: In the first instance men of all layers of the Paris society — after the exodus of the capitalists, the idlers, and the parasites — have interposed at Versailles to stop the Civil war— except the Paris clergy. The Archbishop and the curé de [la] Madeleine have only written to Thiers because averse to "the effusion of their own blood"h in their quality as hostages.
Secondly: After the publication by the Commune of the Decree of reprisals, the taking of hostages etc, the atrocious treatment of the Versailles prisoners by Piétri's lambs and Valentin's Gendarmes did not cease, but the assassination of the captive Paris soldiers and National Guard was stopped to set in with renewed fury so soon as the Versailles Government had convinced itself that the Commune was too humane to execute its decree of the 6th of April. Then the assassination set again in wholesale. The Commune did not execute one hostage, not one prisoner, not even some Gendarme officers who under the disguise of National Guards had entered Paris as spies and were simply arrested.
Surprise of the Redoute of Clamart (2 May). Railway Station in the hands of the Parisians, massacre, bayonetting, the 22nd Battalion of Chasseurs (Galliffet?) shoots line soldiers offhand without any formality. (2 May)
Redoubt of Moulin Saquet, situated between Fort Issy and Montrouge, surprised in the night by treachery on the part of the commandant Gallien who had sold the password to the Versaillese troops. Federals surprised in their beds asleep — massacred great part of them. (4 May?)
25 April 4 National guards (this constated by Commissaries sent to Bicêtre where the only survivor of the 4 men, à Belle Epine, près* Villejuif. His name Scheffer.) These men being surrounded by horse Chasseurs, on their order, unable to resist, surrendered, disarmed, nothing done to them by the soldiers. But then arrives the captain of the Chasseurs, and shoots them down one after the other with his revolver. Left them on the soil. Scheffer fearfully wounded survived.0
13 soldiers of the line 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. (Liberté at Versailles.) Alexander Dumas fils, now at Versailles, tells that a young man exercising the functions, if not bearing the title, of a general, was shot, by order of a Bonapartist general, after having marched in custody a few 100 yards along a road... Parisian troops and National Guards surrounded in houses by Gendarmes, [who] inundate the house with Petroleum and then fire it. Some cadavers of National Guards (calcinés0) have been transported by the ambulance of the press of the Ternes. (Mot d'ordre 20 Aprild) "They have no right to ambulances." [190]
Thiers. Blanqui. Archbishop. General Chanzy. (Thiers said his Bonapartists should have liked to be shot.)
Visitation in Houses, etc. Casimir Bouis, appointed chairman of a commission of inquirye in the doings of the dictators of 4 September. (14 April) Private houses invaded and papers seized, but no furniture has been carried away and sold by auction/ (Papers of the fellows of 4 September, of Thiers etc and Bonapartist policemen), f. i. in Hôtel of Lafont, inspecteur-général des prisons. (11 April) The houses (properties) of Thiers et Co. as traitors sealed but only the papers confiscated.
Arrests among themselves: This shocks the bourgeois who wants political idols and "great men" immensely.
"It is provoking" (Daily News, 6 May. Paris Correspondence), "however, and discouraging, that whatever be the authority possessed by the Commune, it is continually changing hands, and we know not to-day with whom the power may rest to-morrow... In all these eternal changes one sees more than ever the want of a presiding mind. The Commune is a concourse of equivalent atoms, each one jealous of another and none endowed with supreme control over the others."(1)
Journal suppression![214]
Endnotes
[190] By the terms of the European Convention signed at Geneva in 1864, subject to certain regulations, the wounded and the official staff of ambulances and their equipment were declared neutral. pp. 327, 478, 530
[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
[1] The first Address (The General Council of the International Workingmen's Association on the War ) was written by Marx between July 19 and 23, 1870. On July 19, 1870, when the Franco-Prussian war broke out, the General Council instructed Marx to draft an address on the war, of which Marx informed Engels in his letter of July 20 (see present edition, Vol. 44). The Address was adopted by the Standing Committee of the General Council on July 23, and then unanimously approved at the Council meeting on July 26, 1870. It was first published in English, in the London Pall Mall Gazette, No. 1702, July 28, 1870, and a few days later it appeared as a leaflet in 1,000 copies. The Address was reprinted, in full or in part, by a number of British provincial newspapers. As the first edition of the Address was quickly sold out, on August 2, 1870, the General Council resolved to have additional 1,000 copies printed. In September that year, the first Address was published in English again, together with the General Council's second Address on the Franco-Prussian war. In this edition, Marx corrected the misprints that had occurred in the first edition of the First Address. On August 9, the General Council appointed a commission to have the first Address translated into German and French and then distributed. The commission included Marx, Jung, Serraillier and Eccarius. The first German translation of the Address, made by Wilhelm Liebknecht, appeared in Der Volksstaat (Leipzig), No. 63, August 7, 1870. Marx edited it heavily and made a new translation of more than half the text. The new German translation of the Address was published in Der Vorbote (Geneva), No. 8, August 1870, and as a leaflet. Then it appeared in the Arbeiter Union (New York), August 12; Die Tagwacht (Zurich), No. 26, August 13; the Volkswille (Vienna), No. 26, August 13, and the Proletarier (Augsburg), No. 56, August 21. By the twentieth anniversary of the Paris Commune in 1891, Engels had the General Council's first and second addresses published in the book K. Marx, Der Bürgerkrieg in Frankreich, 3rd German edition, Berlin, 1891, Vorwärts Publishing House. The translation of the two addresses for this edition was made by Louise Kautsky and edited by Engels. The French translation of the Address appeared in L'Égalité (Geneva), No. 28, August 6, 1870; L'Internationale (Brussels), No. 82, August 7, 1870, and Le Mirabeau (Verviers), No. 55, August 7, 1870. The Address was also published as a leaflet in the French translation made by the General Council's commission. The first Russian translation of the first Address was published in Narodnoye Dyelo (People's Cause) (Geneva), No. 6-7, August-September 1870. In this volume, the first Address is reproduced from the first edition of the English leaflet, checked against its second edition and the text of the German 1870 authorised edition and that of 1891. The most important textual differences are marked by footnotes.