Fragments
The Lies in Thiers' Bulletins
The immense sham of that Versailles, its lying character could not better be embodied and resumed than in Thiers, the professional liar, for whom the "reality of things" exists only in their "parliamentary sense", that is as a lie.
In his answer to the Archbishop's letter he coolly denies "the pretended executions and reprisals (!) attributed to the troops of Versailles",(1) and has this impudent lie confirmed by a commission appointed for this very purpose by his rurals.[293] He knows of course their triumphant proclamations by the Bonapartist generals themselves. But in "the parliamentary sense" of the word they do not exist.
In his circular of the 16th April on the bombardment of Paris:
"If some cannon-shots have been fired, it is not the deed of the army of Versailles, but of some insurgents wanting to make believe that they are fighting, while they do not dare show themselves."(2)
Of course, Paris bombards itself, in order to make the world believe that it fights!
Later: "Our artillery does not bombard—but it cannonades, it is true. "
Thiers' bulletin on Moulin-Saquet (4 May): "Deliverance of Paris from the hideous tyrants who oppress it"(3) (by killing the Paris National Guards asleep).
The motley lot of an army — the dregs of the Bonapartist soldatesque released from prison by the grace of Bismarck,[175] with the gendarmes of Valentin and the sergents-de-ville of Piétri for their nucleus, set off by the Pontifical Zouaves, the Chouans of Charette and the Vendeans of Cathelineau, the whole placed under the runaway Decembrist generals of capitulation, he dubs "the finest army France ever possessed".(4) Of course, if the Prussians quarter still at St. Denis, it is because Thiers wants to frighten them by the sight of that "finest of fine armies".
If such is the "finest army"—the Versailles anachronism is "the most liberal and most freely elected assembly that ever existed in France".(5) Thiers caps his eccentricity by telling the maires etc that "he is a man, who has never broken his word", of course in the parliamentary sense of word-keeping.
He is the truest of Republicans and (Séance of 27 April): "The Assembly is more liberal than he himself."(6)
To the Maires: "You can rely on my word which I have never broken", in an unparliamentary sense, which I have never kept.
"This Assembly is one of the most liberal ever elected by France."(7)
He compares himself with Lincoln and the Parisians with the rebellious slaveholders of the South. The Southerners wanted territorial Secession from the United States for the slavery of labour.[323] Paris wants the secession of M. Thiers himself and the interests he represents from power for the emancipation of labour.
The revenge which the Bonapartist Generals, the Gendarmes and the Chouans wreak upon Paris is a necessity of the class war against labour, but in the little byplay of his bulletins Thiers turns it into a pretext of caricaturing his idol, the first Nap., and makes himself the laughing-stock of Europe by boldly affirming, that the French army through its war upon the Parisian has regained the renown it had lost in the war against the Prussian. The whole war thus appears as mere childplay to give vent to the childish vanity of a dwarf, elated at having to describe his own battles, fought by his own army, under his own secret commandership-in-chief.
And his lies culminate in regard to Paris and the province. Paris which in reality holds in check for two months the finest army France ever possessed, despite the secret help of the Prussian, is in fact only anxious to be delivered from its "atrocious tyrants", by Thiers, and therefore it fights against him, although a mere handful of criminals.
He does not tire of representing the Commune as a handful of convicts, ticket-of-leave men, scum. Paris fights against him because it wants to be delivered by him from "the affreux(8) tyrants that oppress it". And this "handful" of desperadoes holds in check for two months "the finest army that France ever possessed" led by the invincible MacMahon and inspired by the Napoleonic genius of Thiers himself!
The resistance of Paris is no reality, but Thiers' lies about Paris are.
Not content to refute him by its exploits, all the living elements of Paris have spoken to him, but in vain, to dislodge him out of his lying world.
"You must not confound the movement of Paris with the surprise 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 by one reason or another keep back (stand aside), do for all that not disavow its social legitimity."[3]
By whom he was told this? By the delegates of the syndical chambers, speaking in the name of 7-8,000 merchants and Industrials. They went to tell it him personally at Versailles. Thus the League of the Republican Union, thus the Masons' lodges*[02] by their delegates and their demonstrations. But he sticks to it.
In his bulletin of Moulin-Saquet (4 May):
"300 prisoners taken ... the rest of the insurgents has fled like the wind, leaving 150 dead and wounded on the field of battle.... Such is the victory the Commune can celebrate in its bulletins. Paris will soon be delivered from the terrible tyrants oppressing it."(9)
But the fighting Paris, the real Paris is not his Paris. His Paris is itself a parliamentary lie. "The rich, the idle, the capitalist Paris",(10)
the cosmopolitan stew, this is his Paris. That is the Paris which wants to be restored to him, the real Paris is the Paris of the "vile multitude". The Paris that shewed its courage in the "pacific procession" and Satsset's stampedo, that throngs now at Versailles, at Rueil, at St. Denis, at St. Germain-en-Laye, followed by the cocottes, sticking to the "man of family, religion, order" and above all "of property", the Paris of the lounging classes, the Paris of the francs-fileurs,[208] amusing itself by looking through telescopes at the battles going on, treating the civil war but as an agreeable diversion,(11) that is the Paris of M. Thiers, as the emigration of Coblenz[210] was the France of M. de Calonne and as the emigration at Versailles is the France of M. Thiers.
If the Paris, that wants to be delivered of the Commune by Thiers, his rurals,[178] Décembriseurs [181] and Gendarmes, is a lie, so is his "province" which through him and his rurals wants to be delivered from Paris.
Before the definitive conclusion at Frankfort of the peace treaty,[324] he appealed to the provinces to send their battalions of national guards and volunteers to Versailles to fight against Paris. The Province refused point blank.3 Only Bretagne sent a handful of Chouans "fighting under a white flag, every one of them wearing on his breast a Jesus heart in white cloth and shouting: "Vive le roi!"b Thus is the provincial France listening to his summons so that he was forced to lend captive French troops from Bismarck, lay hold of the Pontifical Zouaves (the real armed representatives of his provincial France) and make 20,000 Gendarmes and 12,000 sergents-de-ville the nucleus of his army.
Despite the wall of lies, the intellectual and police blockade, by which he tried to (debar) fence off Paris from the provinces, the provinces, instead of sending him battalions to wage war upon Paris, inundated him with so many delegations insisting upon peace with Paris, that he refused to receive them any longer in person. The tone of the addresses sent up from the Provinces, proposing most of them the immediate conclusion of an armistice with Paris, the dissolution of the Assembly, "because its mandate had expired"/ and the grant of the municipal rights demanded by Paris, was so offensive that Dufaure denounces them in his "circular against conciliation" to the prefects.d On the other hand, the rural assembly and Thiers received not one single address of approval on the part of the provinces.
But the grand défie the Provinces gave to Thiers' "lie" about the provinces were the municipal elections of the 30th April, carried on under his government, on the basis of a law of his Assembly. Out of 700,000 councillors (in round numbers) returned by the 35,000 communes still left in mutilated France, the united Legitimists, Orleanists and Bonapartists did not carry 8,000! The supplementary elections still more hostile! This showed plainly how far the National Assembly, chosen by surprise, and on false pretences, represents France, provincial France, France minus Paris!
But the plan of an assembly of the municipal delegates of the great provincial towns at Bordeaux, forbidden by Thiers on the ground of his law of 1834 and an Imperialist one of 1855,[325]
forced him to avow that his "Provinces" are a lie, as "his" Paris is. He accuses them of resembling the "false" Paris, of being eagerly bent upon "laying the fundaments of Communism and Rebellion". Again he has been answered by the late resolutions of the municipal councils of Nantes, Vienne, Chambéry, Limoux, Carcas-sonne, Angers, Carpentras, Montpellier, Privas, Grenoble etc. insisting upon peace with Paris,
"the absolute affirmation of the Republic, the recognition of the communal right which", as the municipal council of Vienne says,(12) "those elected on February 8 promised in their circulars when they were candidates. To stop the external war, it (the National Assembly) ceded two provinces and promised Prussia five milliards. What ought it not to do to put an end to the civil war?"
(Just the contrary. The two provinces are not their "private" property, and as to the promissory note of 5 milliards, the thing is exactly that it shall be paid by the French people and not by them.)
If, therefore, Paris may justly complain of the Provinces that they limit themselves to pacific demonstrations, leaving it unaided against all the State forces ... the Province has in most unequivocal tones given the lie to Thiers and the Assembly to be represented there, has declared their Province a lie as is their whole existence, a sham, a false pretence.
The General Council feels proud of the prominent part the Paris branches of the International have taken in the glorious revolution of Paris. Not, as the imbeciles fancy, as if the Paris, or any other branch of the International received its mot d'ordre(13) from a centre. But the flower of the working class in all civilized countries belonging to the International, and being imbued with its ideas, they are sure everywhere in the working-class movements to take the lead.
From (14) the very day of the capitulation by which the government of Bismarck prisoners had signed the surrender of France, but in return, got leave to retain a bodyguard for the express purpose of cowing Paris, Paris stood on its watch. The National guard reorganized itself and entrusted its supreme control to a central committee elected by all the companies, battalions, and batteries of the capital, save some fragments of the old Bonapartist formations. On the eve of the entrance of the Prussians into Paris, the central committee took measures for the removal to Montmartre, Belleville, and La Villette, of the cannon and mitrailleuses treacherously abandoned by the capitulards [16]° in the very quarters the Prussians were about to occupy.
Armed Paris was the only serious obstacle in the way of the counter-revolutionary conspiracy. Paris was, therefore, to be disarmed. On this point the Bordeaux assembly was sincerity itself. If the roaring rant of its rurals had not been audible enough, the surrender of Paris handed over by Thiers to the tender mercies of the triumvirat of Vinoy, the Décembriseur, Valentin, the Bonapartist Gendarme, and Aurelle de Paladines, the Jesuit General, would have cut off even the last subterfuge of doubt as to the ultimate aim of the disarmament of Paris. But if their purpose was frankly avowed, the pretext on which these atrocious felons initiated the civil war was the most shameless, the most barefaced (glaring) of lies. The artillery of the Paris National Guard, said Thiers, belonged to the State and to the State it must be returned.(15)
The fact was this. From the very day of the capitulation by which Bismarck's prisoners had signed the surrender of France but reserved to themselves a numerous bodyguard for the express purpose of cowing Paris, Paris stood on its watch. The national guard reorganized themselves and entrusted their supreme control to a central committee elected by their whole body, save some fragments of the old Bonapartist formations. On the eve of the entrance of the Prussians into Paris, their central committee took measures for the removal to Montmartre, Belleville, and La Villette of the cannon and mitrailleuses treacherously abandoned by the capitulards in the very quarters the Prussians were about to occupy. That artillery had been furnished by the subscriptions of the National Guard. As their private property it was officially recognized in the convention of the 28th January,[118] and on that very title exempted from the general surrender of arms, belonging to the government, into the hands of the conqueror. And Thiers dared initiate the civil war on the mendacious pretext that the artillery of the National Guard was state property!
The seizure of this artillery was evidently but to serve as the preparatory measure for the general disarmament of the Paris National Guard, and therefore of the Revolution of the 4th of September. But that revolution had become the legal status of France. Its republic was recognized in the terms of the capitulation itself by the conqueror, it was after the capitulation acknowledged by the Foreign powers, in its name the National Assembly had been summoned. The Revolution of the Paris workmen of the 4th of September was the only legal title of the National Assembly seated at Bordeaux and its Executive. Without it, the National Assembly had at once to give room to the Corps Législatif, elected by general suffrage and dispersed by the arm of the Revolution. Thiers and his ticket-of-leave men would have had to capitulate for safe conducts and securities against a voyage to Cayenne. The National Assembly, with its Attorney's Power to settle the terms of peace with Prussia, was only an incident of the Revolution. Its true embodiment was armed Paris, that had initiated the Revolution, undergone for it a five months siege with its horrors of famine, that had made its prolonged resistance, despite Trochu's "plan", the basis of a tremendous war of defence in the provinces, and Paris was now summoned with coarse insult by the rebellious slaveholders at Bordeaux to lay down its arms and acknowledge that the popular revolution of the 4th September had had no other purpose but the simple transfer of power from the hands of Louis Bonaparte and his minions into those of his monarchical rivals, or to stand forward as the selfsacrificing champion of France to be saved from her ruin and to be regenerated only through the revolutionary overthrow of the political and social conditions that had engendered the Empire and under its fostering care, matured into utter rottenness. Paris, Paris emaciated by a five months' famine, did not hesitate one moment. It heroically resolved to run all the hazards of a resistance against the French conspirators under the very eye of the Prussian army quartered before its gates. But in its utter abhorrence of civil war, the popular government of Paris, the Central Committee of the National Guard, continued to persist in its merely defensive attitude, despite the provocations of the Assembly, the usurpations of the Executive, and the menacing concentration of troops in and around Paris.
On the dawn of the 18th March Paris arose under thunder-bursts of Vive la Commune! What is the Commune, that sphinx so tantalizing to the bourgeois mind?
"The proletarians of the capital," said the Central Committee in its manifesto of the 18th March, "have, in the midst of the failures and treasons of the ruling classes, understood that for them the hour has struck to save the situation by taking into their own hands the direction of public affairs.... They have understood that it is their imperious duty and their absolute right to take into their own hands their own destinies by seizing the political power."(16)
But the working class cannot, as the rival factions of the appropriating class have done in their hours of triumph, simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.
The centralized state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy and magistrature, organs wrought after the plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labour, dates from the days of absolute monarchy when it served nascent middleclass society as a mighty weapon in its struggles for emancipation from feudalism. The French Revolution of the 18th century swept away the rubbish of seigniorial, local, townish and provincial privileges, thus clearing the social soil of its last medieval obstacles to the final superstructure of the state. It received its final shape under the First Empire, the offspring of the Coalition wars of old, semifeudal Europe against modern France. Under the following parliamentary regimes, the hold of the governmental power, with its irresistible allurements of place, pelf, and patronage, became not only the bone of contention between the rival factions of the ruling classes. Its political character changed simultaneously with the economic changes of society. At the same pace that the progress of industry developed, widened and intensified the class antagonism between capital and labour, the governmental power assumed more and more the character of the national power of capital over labour, of a political force organized to enforce social enslavement, of a mere engine of class despotism. On the heels of every popular revolution, marking a new progressive phase in the march (development) (course) of the struggle of classes, (class struggle), the repressive character of the state power comes out more pitiless and more divested of disguise. The Revolution of July, by transferring the management of the state machinery from the landlord to the capitalist, transfers it from the distant to the immediate antagonist of the working men. Hence the state power assumes a more clearly defined attitude of hostility and repression in regard of the working class. The Revolution of February hoists the colours of the "social Republic", thus proving at its outset that the true meaning of state power is revealed, that its pretence of being the armed force of public welfare, the embodiment of the general interests of societies rising above and keeping in their respective spheres the warring private interests, is exploded, that its secret as an instrument of class despotism is laid open, that the workmen do want the republic, no longer as a political modifica-tion of the old system of class rule, but as the revolutionary means of breaking down class rule itself. In view of the menaces of "the Social Republic" the ruling class feels instinctively that the anonymous reign of the parliamentary republic can be turned into a jointstock company of their conflicting factions, while the past monarchies by their very title signify the victory of one faction and the defeat of the other, the prevalence of one section's interests of that class over that of the other, land over capital or capital over land. In opposition to the working class the hitherto ruling class, in whatever specific forms it may appropriate the labour of the masses, has one and the same economic interest, to maintain the enslavement of labour and reap its fruits directly as landlord and capitalist, indirectly as the state parasites of the landlord and the capitalist, to enforce that "order" of things which makes the producing multitude, "a vile multitude" serving as a mere source of wealth and dominion to their betters. Hence Legitimists, Orleanists, Bourgeois Republicans and the Bonapartist adventurers, eager to qualify themselves as defenders of property by first pilfering it, club together and merge into the "Party of Order", the practical upshot of that revolution made by the proletariat under enthusiastic shouts of the "Social Republic". The parliamentary republic of the Party of Order is not only the reign of terror of the ruling class. The state power becomes in their hand the avowed instrument of the civil war in the hand of the capitalist and the landlord, not their state parasites, against revolutionary aspirations of the producer.
Under the monarchical regimes the repressive measures and the confessed principles of the day's government are denounced to the people by the fractions of the ruling classes that are out of power, the opposition's ranks of the ruling class interest the people in their party feuds, by appealing to its own interests, by their attitudes of tribunes of the people, by the revindication of popular liberties. But in the anonymous reign of the republic, while amalgamating the modes of repression of old past regimes (taking out of the arsenals of all past regimes the arms of repression), and wielding them pitilessly, the different fractions of the ruling class celebrate an orgy of renegation. With cynical effrontery they deny the professions of their past, trample under foot their "socalled" principles, curse the revolutions they have provoked in their name, and curse the name of the republic itself, although only its anonymous reign is wide enough to admit them into a common crusade against the people.
Thus this most cruel is at the same time the most odious and revolting form of class rule. Wielding the state power only as an instrument of civil war, it can only hold it by perpetuating civil war. With parliamentary anarchy at its head, crowned by the uninterrupted intrigues of each of the fractions of the "order" party for the restoration of each own pet regime, in open war against the whole body of society out of its own narrow circle, the party of order rule becomes the most intolerable rule of disorder. Having in its war against the mass of the people broken all its means of resistance and laid it helplessly under the sword of the Executive, the party of order itself and its parliamentary regime are warned off the stage by the sword of the Executive. That parliamentary party of order republic can therefore only be an interreign. Its natural upshot is Imperialism, whatever the number of the Empire. Under the form of imperialism, the state power with the sword for its scepter, professes to rest upon the peasantry, that large mass of producers apparently outside the class struggle of labour and capital, professes to save the working class by breaking down parliamentarism and therefore the direct subserviency of the state power to the ruling classes, professes to save the ruling classes themselves by subduing the working classes without insulting them, professes, if not public welfare, at least national glory. It is therefore proclaimed as the "saviour of order". However galling to the political pride of the ruling class and its state parasites, it proves itself to be the really adequate regime of the bourgeois "order" by giving full scope to all the orgies of its industry, turpitudes of its speculation, and all the meretricious splendours of its life. The state thus seemingly lifted above civil society, becomes at the same time itself the hotbed of all the corruptions of that society. Its own utter rottenness, and the rottenness of the society to be saved of it, was laid bare by the bayonet of Prussia, but so much is this Imperialism the unavoidable political form of "order", that is, the "order" of bourgeois society, that Prussia herself seemed only to reverse its central seat at Paris in order to transfer it to Berlin.
The Empire is not, like its predecessors, the legitimate monarchy, the constitutional monarchy and the parliamentary republic, one of the political forms of bourgeois society, it is at the same time its most prostitute, its most complete, and its ultimate political form. It is the state power of modern class rule, at least on the European continent.
Endnotes
[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
[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
[323] 323 This refers to the secession of the Southern slave states from the North American Union in late 1860 and early 1861. The armed rebellion of the secessionist states in April 1861 marked the beginning of the US Civil War (1861-65).
[3] A reference to the coup d'état of December 2, 1851, which gave birth to the Second Empire.
[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
[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
[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
[181] Decembriseur—participant in the Society of December 10 (see Note 4). Vinoy was directly involved in the coup d'état of December 2, 1851, having used troops to put down attempts to start a republican uprising in one of the departments of France. pp. 320, 441, 525, 543
[324] 324 The Frankfort Peace Treaty, concluded on May 10, 1871, defined the final terms of the peace between France and Germany, confirming the concession of Alsace and Eastern Lorraine to Germany as was envisaged by the preliminary peace treaty of February 26, 1871 (see Note 179). Under the Frankfort treaty, France was to pay indemnities on more onerous terms and the occupation of French territory by the German troops was prolonged in exchange for help rendered by Bismarck to the Versailles Government in suppressing the Commune. The Frankfort Peace Treaty made a future military clash between France and Germany inevitable.
[325] This presumably refers to the law on municipal organisation of 1831, which drastically curtailed the rights of municipal councils, and also the law on municipal organisation of 1855, which banned interrelations between councils. On the plan for convening a congress of municipal delegates at Bordeaux see Note 306. pp. 545, 593
[16] A reference to the Austro-Prussian war of 1866 (see Note 5).
[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