35. The executions¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 35: The Executions¶
The Versailles regime’s repression of the Paris Commune was not justice but organised vengeance, conducted through twenty-six courts-martial that operated without legal procedure or military discipline. Officers fresh from combat judged bewildered prisoners according to their own whims; the poor, lacking defenders, were processed in minutes. In under two months, the first two courts alone pronounced over six hundred sentences. The government demanded extradition of Communard officials from Switzerland and Hungary but could produce only these arbitrary sentences, without a shred of evidence, forcing the release of those detained abroad.
The trials were a travesty. Rossel was condemned to death despite testifying to his respect for the army; Rochefort received transportation; the journalist Maroteau was sentenced to death for two articles, and Humbert to hard labour for life. In the trial for the deaths of Generals Lecomte and Clément-Thomas, officers who had been present gave evidence for the accused, yet six men were condemned, including a boy of fifteen and a half. On 28 November, Rossel, Ferré, and Sergeant Bourgeois were executed at Satory. Ferré refused the blindfold and stared down the firing squad; when the first volley only wounded him, a soldier blew out his brains. Two days later, Gaston Crémieux was executed at Marseilles, having commanded his own firing party.
The courts applied the principle that simple agents bore equal responsibility to chiefs. Préau de Védel was executed for holding a lantern during Chaudey’s death. Lisbonne, wounded at the Château d’Eau, was condemned for fighting. Louise Michel accepted full responsibility for executing generals and the Paris fires, declaring she would not cease to cry vengeance if spared; she was transported to a fortress. In the La Roquette affair, only Genton, who carried the order, was among the real actors; his advocate slandered him and fled, and he was condemned to death. Sérizier was condemned for the Dominicans of Arcueil though absent; Bouin was condemned without a single witness. Wroblewski and Frankel were sentenced to death. In the Rue Haxo affair, none of the twenty-two accused were recognised by witnesses, yet seven were condemned to death, nine to hard labour, the rest to transportation. The Commission of Pardons executed twenty-five victims at Satory, including men whose innocence had emerged at trial.
By 1875, the total condemned exceeded 13,700, including 170 women and 62 children. Three-quarters of the 10,137 condemned in presence were simple guards or non-commissioned officers; nine-tenths were convicted only for bearing arms or exercising public functions. The reactionary press invented atrocities—one agent supposedly bound to a board before execution—unsupported by trial evidence. Vizentini, seized in fury and thrown into the Seine, might have survived had a board he clung to not struck his head. Nude seizures during house-searches, conducted under regular warrants, were classified alongside theft with violence, as if they had personal motives. Yet no evidence of theft was presented before the courts-martial; no one could claim the conflagrations had been exploited for pillage. The executions were not punishment but political annihilation, the bourgeoisie’s final, bloody settlement with the working class.