11. The Council of the Commune wavers¶
Core Argument¶
Digest: The Council of the Commune wavers¶
This chapter dissects the fatal flaws embedded in the Paris Commune from its very inception, arguing that the electoral carelessness of 26 March 1871 produced a council incapable of meeting the revolutionary moment. Lissagaray's central contention is that the revolutionary electors, having just overthrown their representatives, proceeded to vote for names rather than programmes, sending up to the Hôtel-de-Ville a majority of men chosen "without discernment" and abandoned to their own inspirations without any binding mandate. The result was a council abounding in "chapels, groups, semi-celebrities" and endless rivalry, lacking the practical men capable of negotiating and combating simultaneously.
The chapter documents the consequences of this negligence through a series of early missteps. Beslay's opening speech, defining the revolution as the "enfranchisement of all the communes of the Republic" and contrasting the soldier-Republic of 1793 with the worker-Republic of 1871, is presented as a "naive illusion" that already sounded the death-knell of the great bourgeoisie. Tirard's theatrical resignation, ironically bidding farewell while having spent eight days fomenting civil war, provoked the Council to vote secret sittings—a decision that violated the traditions of the great Commune of 1792-93 and gave the appearance of conspiracy, requiring reversal within a fortnight.
The most damning episode concerns the Council's failure to assert authority over the Central Committee. When the Committee's delegates came to hand over their revolutionary powers, the Council, instead of issuing a peremptory dissolution, resorted to recriminations. Varlin and Beslay defended the Committee's continued existence; the delegates, who would have yielded to firmness, held out against this weakness, retaining their organisation as the "bond of union" between the Council and the National Guard. No conclusion was reached.
The chapter then turns its polemical fire on Félix Pyat, who "jumped up" to propose the abolition of conscription without preamble—a decree that abruptly encroached upon national affairs, transforming the Commune from a municipal body into a would-be Constituent Assembly in a single evening. Lissagaray's portrait of Pyat is scathing: a dramatist and "Jack-in-the-box" who had deserted the National Assembly on 3 March and the Hôtel-de-Ville on 31 October, who waited for triumph before stirring, and whose rabid manifestoes under the Empire had been "the joy of the police." His pockets crammed with decrees, Pyat embodied the romanticism and visionarism that Lissagaray identifies as the Council's curse.
The chapter concludes with the consequences of this disorder: the Liberal fraction withdrew, the provinces were left without guidance for twenty-two days while commissions debated addresses, and M. Thiers cut off Paris from France, suppressing goods trains and correspondence. The popular papers, led by Pyat's Vengeur, demanded a sortie to Versailles as a "promenade"—a fatal underestimation of an adversary who, as Lissagaray notes, had refused to organise armies against the Prussians but now boasted of "one of the finest armies" being completed.