6. The mayors and the Assembly combine against Paris¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter details the political and military confrontation between the Central Committee of the National Guard, installed at the Hôtel-de-Ville, and the combined forces of the Versailles Assembly, the mayors, and the bourgeois press, following the insurrection of 18 March 1871. The core argument is that the Central Committee acted with restraint and democratic intent—its sole demand being the holding of municipal elections—while the Assembly and its allies, representing monarchists and the grande bourgeoisie, responded with slander, provocation, and ultimately violence. The text contrasts the Committee’s disinterestedness, exemplified by its immediate convocation of elections and its social decrees (suspending pawnshop sales, extending bills, and prohibiting evictions), with the Assembly’s refusal to concede even the Republic’s name. The chapter draws on the historical context of the siege of Paris, the treachery of the Government of National Defence, and the long-standing subjugation of the proletariat. It notes that the 21st March saw the first socialist note struck in the movement, with the Journal Officiel articulating the class demand for proletarian emancipation, a departure from purely political revolutions. The polemic is directed squarely at the Liberal bourgeoisie—the mayors and Radical deputies—who are dismissed as a “sacred herd” that makes revolutions but permits empires, and at the Assembly, which is accused of illegality while denouncing the Committee’s actions as such. The chapter’s narrative climax is the demonstration of 22 March at the Place Vendôme, where a crowd of reactionary “dandies” and “familiars of the Empire,” shouting for order, attacked National Guard sentries and fired revolvers, prompting a volley that killed a dozen. The author argues the aggression was deliberate, noting that the subsequent court-martials never dared mention the incident. The Assembly’s response—Jules Favre’s venomous speech denouncing Paris as in the grip of “assassins” and “brigands,” and the rejection of Louis Blanc’s municipal bill—is presented as a calculated attempt to provoke a coup-de-main that failed, forcing Thiers to recognise the Central Committee as a de facto government. The chapter ends with the reactionary forces consolidating in the ninth and sixth arrondissements, forming a “town within the town,” with the mayors now backed by an army.