24. The new Committee at work¶
Core Argument¶
Here, Lissagaray charts the terminal decline of the Commune’s military and political authority following the formation of the second Committee of Public Safety on 10 May. The core narrative thrust is the inexorable collapse of organised defence, driven not by a lack of bravery among the Federals but by the chaos, incompetence, and internal factionalism that paralysed the Commune’s leadership. The chapter opens with a stark assessment of the military situation: the southern forts are falling, the ramparts are poorly armed, and the Versaillese are tightening their grip. The new Committee’s first act—ordering the demolition of Thiers’ house—is dismissed as a “giddy” gesture that merely handed the enemy a propaganda victory.
The chapter’s key claims centre on the fatal disorganisation of the War Office. Lissagaray contrasts the heroism of the rank-and-file with the paralysis at the top. Wroblewski’s daring night-time bayonet charge to recapture the fort of Vanves is presented as proof of what the Federals could achieve “when properly commanded.” Yet this success is immediately squandered. The defence of Issy, entrusted to the capable Brunel, is starved of men and matériel; his desperate efforts are met with only two or three hundred reinforcements. The sole Council of War is a shambles, producing grand but empty talk from Dombrowski and no concrete decision. The central indictment is of Delescluze, whose personal devotion is fatally undermined by a weak character, leaving him at the mercy of the incompetent General Staff and the meddling Central Committee. The result is a cascade of contradictory decrees—Delescluze offers navvies 3 francs 50, the Committee of Public Safety immediately offers 3 francs 75—rendering all authority a dead letter.
The chapter’s most notable polemic is directed at the minority in the Council. Lissagaray condemns their decision to issue a public manifesto and withdraw to their arrondissements as a “great fault” and “altogether inexcusable.” He argues that they had no right to decry a dictatorship they had voted for, and that their action morally weakened the defence at the critical moment. The debate that follows their return is interrupted by the catastrophic explosion of the cartridge factory in the Avenue Rapp. Lissagaray notes the suspicious circumstances—the women dismissed an hour early—and implies a Versaillese plot, but laments that the Council failed to conduct a serious inquiry. The chapter concludes with the symbolic demolition of the Vendôme Column, presented as a genuinely popular and humane act that aimed to supersede war between nations with war between classes. Yet even this triumph is undercut: the people are prevented from claiming fragments of the fallen monument, and Lissagaray ends with a bitter prophecy that the bourgeoisie would need a “scaffolding of 30,000 corpses” to raise the column again.