The Pre-Commune Chaos

The Pre-Commune Chaos

The act of the French Government following the end of the combat between Louis-Napoleon’s troops and the Prussian army contributed greatly to the birth of the commune inside of Paris following the end of combat. When the orders were given to lay down arms and surrender, the Parisians were furious, feeling that they could and should continue their resistance. Eventually, this anger against the government played a huge role in convincing the Parisians to rise up against it.

Paris was surrounded by the Prussians, who had been laying siege to the city for some three months. Food supplies had dwindled, and even the bourgeois resorted to eating horses, then dogs and cats, and finally, mice. The last French army in the field, commanded by a General Bazaine, surrendered to the Prussians at Metz. Once Bazaine was out of the field, Otto von Bismarck, added to the horrors of Paris by systematically bombarding the city.

The Return of Adolphe Thiers and the Decision to Surrender

In the meantime, Adolphe Thiers, who was a long standing member of the French government and the de-facto Ambassador to Prussia during this state of affairs, returned to Paris from Berlin. He immediately began advocating an acceptance of Prussia’s surrender terms to General Trochu. Thiers had a reputation for being conservative and unsympathetic towards the working class, making them instantly suspicious of his goals. This, in conjunction with Thiers’ return created the potential for an explosion inside Paris. Many Parisians feared that Thiers’ return heralded the return of an Imperial monarchy, something the French had quite enough of in the previous hundred years.

The mayor of Montmartre, Georges Clemenceau, ended the waiting when he declared, “The municipality of the 18th Arrondissement protests with indignation against an armistice which the Government could not accept without committing treason.”^[1] Clemenceau’s declaration caused outrage in Paris. The National Guard, furious over the entire affair, stopped shooting at the Prussians and started marching through the city. The seat of government in the Hôtel de Ville was surrounded by an angry mob, typical of the mobs of the French Revolutions on 1789 and 1848. The Reds, wearing the uniform of the National Guard, seized Trochu and his government. Behind them strode some of the great figures of the Commune, Blanqui, Flourens, Delescluze, Pyat, and Millière, who demanded that Trochu resign. The radical leaders sat around a table, holding swords and pistols to the heads of the remaining government, and talked all day about their new government. Long before they were finished, the people of Paris were declaring that, “The Government has been overthrown and the Commune established... “^[2]

Stalling the Revolution

However, to pronounce that to be the case was somewhat premature. The total confusion inside the Hôtel de Ville allowed a group of loyal guardsmen to smuggle President Trochu out of the building and to the Louvre. Trochu, unwilling to escalate the conflict, hoped to end the “revolution” without further bloodshed. Taking advantage of the confusion over the National Guard uniform and the loyalties of the guard, Trochu managed to surround the Hôtel de Ville with loyal guardsmen, get inside, and capture most of the revolutionary leaders. Flourens is said to have remarked that it was Trochu’s “only successful military operation during the whole siege.”^[3]

Indeed, with revolution seemingly averted, General Trochu prepared for a final battle, the “Great Sortie” against the Prussians. General D’Aureille had defeated a Prussian army outside of Paris with forces that had been assembled by Léon Gambetta in Tours. Gambetta was the wild card in the affair. He had political clout and control over most of France, and his organization would be key to the military operation. As had been the problem with French warfare during Napoleon III’s command however, organization was the one big problem. The French use of hot air balloons to get messages to their allies abroad was reasonably effective, but it did not allow for a return message to Paris. When the Ville d’Orléans, the balloon carrying the orders and arrangements for the battle from Paris to Gambetta ended up in Norway by mistake, the confusion that resulted was total. The French military action was uncoordinated and spastic, and the French were unable to bring any concentration of force to bear. Perhaps more importantly, the weather had done drastic damage to the French fortifications, but General Trochu refused to give up the operation in fear of a revolt. When the combat began, it looked even for about a day. The French, divided and without reinforcements, could not stand against the larger Prussian army. Once the battle was over, news arrived in Paris that General D’Aureille, still moving forward to join the Parisian army, had been engaged by another Prussian army and would be unable to assist.

More Revolts

There would be no more serious hope to save Paris from the Prussian siege. Inside Paris, malcontent citizens fed their anger with drink, as red wine was one of the few items stockpiled in the city that never ran out. On the 22 of January, seventeen days after the failure of the Great Sortie reached Paris, a group of radicals assaulted the prison where Flourens and his fellow radical leaders, arrested the previous year, were being held. In the confusion many of them escaped, including Flourens. The angry mob was far from finished, however. Following their victory at the prison, they marched on the Hôtel de Ville where they began demonstrating outside. Both the soldiers inside the building and the radical members of the National Guard, who had joined the protest, were armed. Who fired the first shot is unclear, but once there had been one shot, many more followed. Inside a besieged city, a second, smaller siege began. At first, neither side was shooting to kill, but following death of one of the leaders of the protest the conflict became brutal. A second leader, Louise Michel, was given the title “la rouge vierge,” or the red virgin, for her part in causing the escalation of the conflict. She wore a uniform, carried a rifle, and shot to kill, as well as yelling at her own people if they did not do the same.

Jules Favre, who had been one of the key figures in the founding of the Second Republic, was given the task of drafting an armistice with Prussia. Once combat had began between two factions of his own people, he saw the desperate need for peace. Just five days after the violent war over the Hôtel de Ville, he agreed to sign the armistice agreement with Prussia. The peace caused a temporary lull between all the factions as supplies were brought in from abroad. In the meantime, Thiers succeeded Trochu as president of the French republic. His lack of sympathy for the working class earned him an even greater distrust now that he was the ruler of Paris. General D’Aureille, who was not a Parisian, took command of the Paris National Guard. D’Aureille was also awarded with great animosity because he had not been able to save Paris during the Great Sortie, and the fact that he neither liked nor respected the city he was now appointed to defend did nothing to improve his standing.

Bismarck’s Humiliation of Paris

The final act of Prussia before Bismarck departed the city was a grand, celebratory march around the Arc de Triomphe. To the Parisians, it was the greatest of humiliations. The Prussians marched through the city for two days. Seven Prussian officers had the audacity to jump their horses over the barriers placed by the French around the sacred Arc de Triomphe, and actually proceed through it. Bismarck himself marched through the city shortly before the Prussian departure, making sure that the French knew that they had been defeated. Immediately after his departure the French began to scrub the streets clean and burned the roads that the Prussians had walked upon in an attempt to purge them of the disgrace.

^[1] Alistair Horne, The Terrible Year . Page 41.