12. The Versaillese beat back the Commune patrols and massacre prisoners¶
Core Argument¶
On 2 April 1871, the Versaillese opened fire on Paris without warning, initiating open civil war. The chapter narrates the disastrous first sortie ordered by the Commune’s generals in response, and the subsequent massacre of prisoners by the Versaillese. The core argument is that the Commune’s leadership, riven by political hesitancy and military incompetence, squandered the revolutionary enthusiasm of the Parisian masses, while the bourgeois army of Versailles deliberately inaugurated the civil war with calculated brutality.
The narrative details the initial Versaillese attack on Courbevoie, where a handful of Federal battalions, outnumbered and outflanked, were forced to retreat. Five prisoners were taken, including a fifteen-year-old boy, beaten and shot at the foot of Mont-Valérien. This provocation ignited Paris; 80,000 men were on foot crying ‘To Versailles!’ The Executive Commission, however, was paralysed. The chapter contrasts the bellicose posturing of Félix Pyat, who had been shouting for a march on Versailles for days, with his sudden timidity when action was required. He demanded reports and statistics, while Lefrançais opposed the sortie outright. The Commission’s decision was to demand a detailed statement of forces from the generals, a classic delaying tactic. The generals, receiving no formal order to the contrary, set out anyway.
The chapter offers a devastating critique of the Commune’s military organisation. The plan – a demonstration toward Rueil with flanking columns on Meudon and Chatillon – was simple, but execution was catastrophic. The National Guard lacked cadres, staff officers, and elementary logistics. Men marched for hours without food. Bergeret’s column, advancing cheerfully toward the Plateau des Bergeres, was shattered when Mont-Valérien opened fire. The Federals, believing the fortress was in their hands, cried ‘Treason!’ and fled. The chapter notes that many in the Commune knew the fortress was not held but concealed this fact, living in the hope it would not fire. On the left, Duval held out for hours on the Chatillon plateau without artillery or cartridges, abandoned by the disorganised bulk of his force. In the centre, Eudes’ column had only eight rounds per cannon.
The chapter’s most powerful polemic is reserved for the Versaillese treatment of prisoners. Duval and his staff, promised their lives by General Pellé, were instead ordered shot by General Vinoy, who called them ‘awful scoundrels.’ The chapter records the grotesque details: a horseman tore off Duval’s boots as a trophy; an editor of Le Figaro took his bloodstained collar. General Gallifet, described as a ruined scamp kept by actresses and famous for brigandage in Mexico, had three Federals shot at Chatou and published a proclamation declaring ‘merciless war’ against ‘bandits.’ The chapter draws on the historical context of the bourgeoisie’s previous massacres, citing the phrase ‘Order reigns in Warsaw’ and the boast that ‘the chassepot has done wonders,’ contrasting them with the words of a daughter of the people who said French blood made her hair stand on end. The argument is that the ‘army of order’ inaugurated civil war not merely with military force, but with deliberate, sadistic terror, and that the Commune’s own vacillation and incompetence delivered the revolutionaries into the hands of their executioners.