20. Rossel replaces Cluseret¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 20: Rossel replaces Cluseret
This chapter charts the brief, disastrous tenure of Louis Rossel as the Commune’s Delegate for War, arguing that his appointment marked not a turn toward military competence but a continuation of the same fatal disorganisation that had characterised Cluseret’s command. Rossel, though well-informed after twenty-five days as chief of staff, immediately revealed a fundamental misapprehension of the struggle. His response to a Versaillese summons for the surrender of Fort Issy—threatening to shoot the flag-of-truce bearer while addressing the enemy officer as ‘my dear comrade’—is presented as the cynical posturing of a condottiere, utterly alien to the ‘great heart of Paris and her civil war’. He mistook the vulgar Père Duchesne for the authentic voice of the workers and proposed breaking up the National Guard into regiments under colonels of his own choosing, a project that provoked the Central Committee’s resistance.
The narrative details Rossel’s failures in concrete terms: he never submitted a general plan of defence, gave no written report on the military situation, issued orders for a second enceinte of barricades and three citadels but never supervised their execution, and vacillated in his command appointments, extending then restricting General Wroblewski’s authority before bestowing it on La Cécilia, who lacked the requisite qualities. He named Eudes commander of the second active reserve precisely when Eudes had abandoned Fort Issy against orders. The result was that ‘everything would go on as under Cluseret’. The Central Committee, emboldened by Rossel’s assault on the legions, demanded the direction of the War Office; Rossel had one member arrested, but the chefs-de-légion marched on the Hôtel-de-Ville. Félix Pyat, ever the intriguer, approved the Committee’s co-operation, while the minority in the Council spoke of arresting them. The Committee of Public Safety issued a decree admitting the Central Committee’s role, which Rossel accepted, but the Commission of War continued to squabble.
The cost was paid by the rank-and-file. The chapter recounts the massacre at the Moulin Saquet redoubt on the night of 3rd–4th May, where five hundred sleeping Federals were surprised by Versaillese troops who butchered about fifty, took two hundred prisoners, and captured five pieces of artillery. The Council, incredibly, never investigated. Thiers announced the ‘elegant coup-de-main’ in a mocking despatch. The chapter then broadens into a polemic against the Versaillese, describing the ‘bestial ferocity’ of soldiers who believed the Federals were thieves or Prussians, and the ‘elegant rabble’ of St. Germain who amused themselves by abusing prisoners. A specific atrocity is cited: on 25th April at Belle-Epine, four National Guards who surrendered were shot by an officer; two died, two survived to testify. The chapter notes that the Federals, by contrast, shot no prisoners from 3rd April to 23rd May.
Rossel, meanwhile, set nothing going. Pyat undermined him constantly, calling him a ‘Caesarian’ and a traitor, and on 8th May secured a decree transferring operational direction to Dombrowski, which Rossel forced the Committee of Public Safety to revoke. When Rossel complained to the Council, demanding public sittings, the Council subjected him to a ‘sort of Freemason examination’—the antediluvian Miot asked his democratic antecedents. Rossel answered with sangfroid, disarming scruples and carrying cheers, but nothing more. The chapter’s verdict is damning: Rossel ‘dreamt of battles, was at bottom but a bookish soldier, original only in speech and style’. He allowed the best blood of Paris to be shed in sterile struggles outside the city, at Neuilly, Vanves, and above all Issy. The chapter closes with extracts from the military journal of the fort’s defenders—Rist and Julien—recording the relentless bombardment, the shortage of food and shells, the corpses piled in dungeons, and the cantinière dying with a plea for her children.