36. The balance-sheet of bourgeois vengeance¶
Core Argument¶
36. The balance-sheet of bourgeois vengeance
The Versailles government’s vengeance against the Paris Commune did not end with the Bloody Week massacres; it was institutionalised in the penal colonies of New Caledonia. There, the transported Communards endured a regime calculated to break them through starvation, forced labour, and systematic cruelty. Three levels of confinement were established: the peninsula Ducos for fortress prisoners, the Ile des Pins for simple transportation, and the Ile Nou penal settlement for convicts. The conditions of transport alone were murderous—on the Orne, 360 of 588 prisoners contracted scurvy in crowded, unsanitary cages. Once arrived, no adequate housing, clothing, or work was provided. When the state suspended works credits in 1873, the Minister of Marine justified this by refusing to recognise a ‘right to labour’ for convicts, explicitly comparing it to the 1848 national workshops. Wives were lured to join their husbands with false promises of land and tools, then abandoned to destitution. Political prisoners were chained with common criminals and subjected to hard labour, the lash, thumbscrews, and the dungeon. Many died: Maroteau, Verdure, Grandier. The escape of Rochefort and others in 1874 briefly exposed conditions, but led only to tightened repression under Colonel Alleyron, who decreed half-day forced labour on pain of reduced rations. Women like Louise Michel faced the same brutal regime.
The arrival of Governor De Pritzbuer in early 1876 worsened conditions further. He renewed decrees requiring convicts to create sufficient resources within a year or lose full rations, with the administration intending to exonerate itself of all expenses. Yet New Caledonia lacked the natural resources to employ thousands. The majority of transported Communards were subjected to hard labour, but despite efforts to break them, the honour of most prisoners held; common misdemeanours were rare. The 1876 Report of the Commission of Pardons revealed that on the Ile des Pins, 900 condemned prisoners shared only 500 hectares, forcing the Minister of Marine to admit miscalculation of the island’s resources. Admiral Ribourt’s Inquiry showed the engineering department had paid condemned workers 110,525 francs in 1873, disproving claims they would not work. Among the overseers, one first-class overlooker was convicted of attempted murder, another decorated with the Légion d’Honneur received seven years’ hard labour for attempting to murder his wife, and many were regularly sentenced for drunkenness. Details from Paschal Grousset and Jourde’s account in The Times after their escape corroborated these conditions.
Attempts to escape were almost always doomed. Fifteen successful escapes occurred; twenty prisoners, including Rastoul, fled in a secretly constructed bark and were never seen again; Trinquet was recaptured after absconding in a steamboat. Among the exiles abroad, thousands of workmen and professionals gained livelihoods through their own energy. Workmen of the Commune won honourable places in foreign workshops, reviving languishing industries in Belgium. Not one exile succumbed to police court condemnation; not a single woman fell. Only two or three spies were discovered. Exiles opened a permanent subscription for those in New Caledonia, centred in London.
The balance-sheet of bourgeois vengeance is precise: 25,000 killed during battle or after; 3,000 dead in prisons or from captivity-related illnesses; 13,700 condemned, most for life; 70,000 women, children, and old men deprived of supporters or thrown out of France; 111,000 victims in total. The Rural Assembly granted full pardon to only six hundred condemned to the lightest penalties. At the February 1876 elections, Republicans won. Five amnesty propositions were tabled; only one demanded full and complete amnesty. The Chamber’s commission declared against all propositions. On 18th May 1876, 396 noes against 50 ayes rejected full amnesty; Gambetta did not vote. A subsequent proposition excluding those condemned for common crimes was also rejected. Victor Hugo’s Senate proposition was not discussed. Prosecutions continued; courts-martial pronounced death sentences in November 1876. A consulting Commission of Pardons granted minimal commutations. Six years after the massacres,