1. The Prussians enter Paris¶
Core Argument¶
1. The Prussians enter Paris
The Bordeaux Assembly, packed with monarchist and clerical “rurals” from the provinces, convened with a single purpose: to humble Paris. When Garibaldi attempted to speak, he was howled down. The Assembly appointed Adolphe Thiers as chief of the executive power, heading a ministry of moderate republicans. Paris, which had endured months of siege and starvation, was now branded a coward by the countryside. The provinces demanded its disarmament, the abolition of the thirty sous daily pay for National Guardsmen, and the immediate enforcement of rent and commercial debt arrears that had been suspended during the war.
In response, the National Guard spontaneously federated itself. A Central Committee emerged, composed largely of obscure middle-class men, unknown to the wider political scene. When the Prussians were scheduled to enter Paris on 27th February, the Guard prepared for armed resistance. The Central Committee, under pressure from the International Workingmen’s Association and other socialist groups, issued a manifesto on 28th February restraining the Guard from attacking. It argued that a premature battle would drown the social demands of the workers in blood. The Prussians entered on 1st March, marching through a deserted, mourning city whose boulevards were hung with black.
The Assembly then voted a punitive peace, appointed the Bonapartist General D’Aurelles de Paladines as commander of the National Guard, and proposed the decapitation of Paris by removing its status as capital. On 3rd March, two hundred battalions elected a provisional executive committee that included Eugène Varlin and other socialists, and voted for the immediate re-election of all officers. A motion was passed declaring the Seine department an independent republic — a desperate gesture reflecting Paris’s complete isolation from the rest of France. Each of the city’s twenty arrondissements had already organised its National Guard into a separate legion, laying the military groundwork for the coming insurrection.