33. The fate of the prisoners¶
Core Argument¶
The victorious bourgeoisie exacted a terrible revenge upon the defeated Communards. Between 21 and 30 May, approximately 40,000 people were arrested, a figure that would later rise to perhaps 50,000. Prisoners were formed into chains, forced to kneel before churches, and subjected to the abuse of the crowds. General Gallifet personally selected prisoners for summary execution at La Muette, shooting 83 men and 3 women from one convoy, and later 111 grey-haired men. At Versailles, prisoners were held in four depots: the cellars of the Grandes-Écuries, the Orangerie, the Satory plateau, and the St. Cyr riding school. Conditions were deliberately lethal: no straw, no water, no medical care; gangrene and ophthalmia broke out, and the Fosse-aux-Lions vault drove men mad or killed them within days. At Satory, women were forced to drink bloody water from a pond while machine-guns were trained upon them. The press, notably Le Figaro, fanned bourgeois panic with fabricated stories of petroleum bombs and poisoned liquids, while denunciations reached 399,823. The Left, including Louis Blanc and Gambetta, denounced the vanquished. Louis Blanc refused to protest the Commune’s alleged crimes, arguing that public indignation made such a declaration unnecessary and that silence was obligatory when the judge was about to speak.
Prisoners’ accounts, corroborated by conservative foreign newspaper correspondents, describe women dressed as National Guards being paraded and verbally abused. At Satory, prisoner revolts were suppressed by machine-gun volleys, producing considerable casualties. A head surgeon at Beaujon Hospital had a wounded Federal soldier removed for execution. Denunciations were recorded in registers, enabling statistical proof of the scale of informing. Forged orders were produced to incriminate the Commune, signed by individuals who had already fled or were dead. Le Figaro published a plan for mass execution, stating that soldiers had already simplified court-martial work by shooting on the spot. General Appert’s report and Captain Guichard’s enquiry provided official figures. Le Journal des Débats estimated the insurrection’s losses in dead and prisoners at 100,000. The working-class movement internationally, through the International and meetings in London, Brussels, Berlin, and elsewhere, proclaimed solidarity with the Commune. After the Prussian army’s triumphal entry into Berlin, workers greeted them with cheers for the Paris Commune, prompting cavalry charges against the crowds.