Preface¶
Core Argument¶
This preface, dated London, November 1877, establishes the author’s purpose and method for the history that follows. The core narrative thrust is to provide a definitive, evidence-based account of the Paris Commune and the Revolution of 18th March 1871, wresting its history from the distortions of both Monarchist calumny and Radical perfidy. The author declares that the intended prologue—a history of the Third Estate—has been set aside due to urgency: the surviving participants are dying, and the lies of the Radicals threaten to eclipse even the worn-out slanders of the Monarchists. The preface thus frames the work as a necessary intervention against a double assault on historical truth.
The key claims are implicit but forceful. The author poses a series of rhetorical questions—who made the revolution, what role did the Central Committee play, what was the Commune, why are 100,000 Frenchmen lost to the nation, who bears responsibility—and promises that “legions of witnesses” will answer. The evidence base is asserted to be rigorous: the author claims to have sifted testimony for five years, to have made no assertion without accumulated proofs, and to write in full awareness that the victorious counter-revolutionaries are poised to seize on the slightest inaccuracy to deny the entire account. The author’s authority is established negatively: he was neither member, officer, nor functionary of the Commune, and thus writes as an independent exile, not a partisan apologist.
The historical context is the immediate aftermath of the Commune’s suppression, a period of intense reaction and propaganda warfare. The theoretical context is socialist: the work is owed to the children of the vanquished and to “all the workingmen of the earth.” The author explicitly analogises his task to that of a cartographer: to tell the people revolutionary legends or sensational stories is as criminal as drawing false charts for navigators. The polemic is directed against two fronts: the Monarchists, whose calumnies are “worn-out,” and the Radicals, whose “perfidies” are a fresh and perhaps greater threat. The preface thus positions the coming history not as a memoir but as a weapon in the class struggle, a truthful chart for the international socialist movement.