1. France Capitulates & the Government of Thiers¶
Core Argument¶
On 4 September 1870, a cabal of barristers led by Thiers and Trochu seized power in Paris, claiming to govern France on the basis of lapsed mandates as representatives of the capital. The working class accepted them only on condition they would defend the nation. However, arming Paris meant arming the revolution, and the Government of National Defence immediately chose class interest over national duty, becoming a Government of National Defection. Thiers was dispatched to European courts to barter the republic for a king, while Trochu later admitted that on the very evening of 4 September he had told colleagues that holding Paris against a Prussian siege would be an “heroic folly” – his “plan” was always capitulation. Instead of abdicating, the government imposed famine and violence on Paris while issuing false manifestos. Jules Favre avowed in a letter that they were defending against the working men of Paris, not the Prussians.
The capitulation of 28 January 1871 revealed the government as Bismarck’s prisoners. Leading members had personal reasons for wanting Paris destroyed: Favre was a forger who had escaped exposure only through Bonapartist connivance; Ernest Picard’s brother was a convicted thief; Jules Ferry had profiteered from famine. Thiers, the consummate expression of bourgeois corruption, had a career of betraying republicans, massacring them in the Rue Transnonain, and denouncing bombardments he later employed. The capitulation closed the treason begun on 4 September and initiated a civil war against Paris. It stipulated an impossible eight-day election, producing an Assembly of reactionary ‘Rurals’. Thiers made clear that peace must be accepted immediately, as only on those terms would Prussia permit war against the republic and Paris. The immense war debt, they decided, would be paid by the producers, not the appropriators.
Paris was the sole obstacle to the conspiracy against the republic. Thiers’ first condition for success was to disarm the city. Paris was provoked by a series of actions: the anti-republican demonstrations of the monarchist Rural Assembly; Thiers’ equivocation on the republic’s legal status; threats to decapitate and decapitalise the city; the appointment of Orleanist ambassadors; Dufaure’s laws on overdue bills and rents, which ruined Parisian commerce and industry; Pouyer-Quertier’s two-centime tax on publications; death sentences against Blanqui and Flourens; suppression of republican journals; the transfer of the National Assembly to Versailles; renewal of the state of siege; and the appointment of Vinoy, Valentin, and D’Aurelles de Paladine to key posts. Through Pouyer-Quertier, Thiers contracted a loan of two milliards, and it is asked whether several hundred million was secured for the private benefit of Thiers, Favre, Picard, Pouyer-Quertier, and Jules Simon, and whether no money was to be paid until after the ‘pacification’ of Paris. At any rate, Thiers and Favre unblushingly solicited the immediate occupation of Paris by Prussian troops, but Bismarck publicly sneered at this request.