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Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgements x

Introduction: Revolutionary Antecedents 1

Chapter 1: The Second Empire 7Introduction 7Haussmanization 9Proudhon and the Emergence of a Working-Class Identity 12‘The International’ and Working-Class Politicization 14Revolutionary Republicanism: Blanquists and Neo-Jacobins 16Liberalism Amid Turmoil: 1868–1870 20End of the Empire 26Conclusion 27

Chapter 2: Prelude to the Commune 29Administering Paris 34Federalism and Communalism 38A Divided Government 41Paris Besieged 47Capitulation and National Elections 54An Unbridgeable Chasm 57

Chapter 3: The Commune 63Paris Separates 63Following Paris’s Lead? Provincial Communes 72The Commencement of Hostilities 75

vii

French Republicanism and the Commune: Between Opposition and Conciliation 79Three Crucial Weeks in May 83The Bloody Week 86

Chapter 4: A Socialist Revolution? 110The Commune’s Contested Historiography 111Backgrounds and Ideologies of the Communards 119The Commune in Action 126

Chapter 5: Women and the Commune 143Three Communards 146Women and Legislation 150Women’s Roles in the Commune 154Gender Constructs and the Commune 155

Chapter 6: Revolution, Culture, and the Commune 162Art and Revolution 162The Functioning of the Arts During the Commune 163Culture, National Regeneration, and the Public Space 166Visualizing the Commune 172Caricature and the Commune 176

Postscript: Neglect and Resonance 183

Notes 188

Select Bibliography 213

Index 219

viii CONTENTS

Chapter 1: The Second Empire

On 26 March 1871, nearly 230,000 Parisians defied their national govern-ment and voted in elections for a municipal government, the ParisCommune. The vast majority of those elected to the Commune were vet-erans of revolutionary movements and beginning with its first pronounc-ments two days after the election, the Commune set itself up as a rival,revolutionary source of authority to the national government whose legiti-macy the Commune openly questioned. On one level, the election of theCommune was the result of short-term factors, a response to a successionof events that commenced on 4 September 1870 with the declaration ofthe Third Republic, amidst the Franco-Prussian War. On another level, theCommune flourished out of the roots of France’s revolutionary history,entrenched in the French political soil for more than 80 years, and fertil-ized by events, personalities, and ideas of the nineteenth century. TheCommune and its supporters drew inspiration from France’s revolutionarypast, but also interpreted the French Revolution, as well as the revolutionsof 1830 and 1848, as having challenged the Commune to complete therevolutionary mission its revolutionary progenitors had fallen short of ful-filling. The Commune, though, was not simply an attempt by revolutionaryrepublicans at recapturing lost opportunities; it also resulted from Frenchworkers’ burgeoning class consciousness, and their resultant politicization,during the Second Empire. Revolutionary republicanism, socialism, anar-chism, utopian socialism all found their expression in the Commune that,in turn, represented the culmination of these distinct movements.

Introduction

True to his word, Louis-Napoléon reinstated manhood suffrage and,over the ensuing 19 years, several times provided voters with the oppor-

7

tunity to register their opinion of him in plebiscites. However, theplebiscites were skewed in favor of his approval. Between 1848 and 1852,large numbers of potential dissidents were in exile or prison. No precisefigure exists for those punished for their opposition to the coup d’état,but estimates range from around 10,000 all the way up to 100,000!Furthermore, those tempted to vote against Louis-Napoléon had to goto extra lengths under the gaze of local Bonaparte-appointed officials.1

Louis-Napoléon’s electoral success was not strictly the result of arepressive machinery which foreclosed the development and expressionof opposition. On the contrary, the Emperor was a master of public rela-tions and at least one historian has referred to Bonapartism as ‘the greatsynthesis of post-revolutionary French political culture,’ capable ofblending such seemingly opposing concepts as revolution and order inthe same package. The inability to tag Louis-Napoléon with a label gavehim the enigmatic qualities so confounding to the French populace.2

Fearing a démoc-soc resurgence, moderate republicans and conservatives,alike, viewed Bonapartism as a bulwark against social revolution. Louis-Napoléon stood for economic progress – in fact, he had been a followerof Saint-Simon; if parliamentarianism was a victim of the march ofprogress and the deliverance of social order and stability, so be it. Evensome former démoc-soc adherents supported Louis-Napoléon out of thebelief that he was a populist. In fact, with the ability to bypass the two-house legislature and appeal directly to the voters through plebiscites,Louis-Napoléon appeared to be the epitomy of direct democracy.3

Ideological mysteries aside, Louis-Napoléon understood the advan-tages to be gained from inextricably identifying his regime to his personand becoming a national political figure. In this respect he took a pageout of the book of royal absolutism, but in rendering himself more per-sonally accessible, Louis-Napoléon generated strong personal affection.Advance teams would precede his numerous stops at French towns andcities generating ‘a buzz’ about the Emperor’s impending visit.

Public relations junkets, democratic rhetoric, and fear of socialismwould not, alone, stabilize or legitimize an extraconstitutional regime.Louis-Napoléon also benefited from a fortuitous economic climate. Thediscovery of gold in California and Australia worked as a stimulus for theexport sector of the French economy. Through an increase in the globalcirculation of precious metals, manufacturers and exporters of Frenchluxury goods were the first to realize the benefits as the Europeaneconomy broke out of the slump in which it had been mired since 1846.

Though circumstances played a large part in France’s economic

8 THE PARIS COMMUNE

rebound, the Empire also deserves some credit for capitalizing on afavorable economic climate. The Empire strove to increase investor con-fidence in the private sector and the Paris stock-market, the Bourse, pro-vided early venture capitalists with all sorts of speculative opportunities.In addition, it encouraged French banks to modernize through emula-tion of the British model of lending money to entrepreneurs. No bankbetter epitomized this new approach to banking than did the CréditMobilier. Formed by the Pereire brothers, adherents to the Saint-Simonian creed that economic modernization through cooperationbetween the financial and industrial sectors holds the key to socialharmony, the Crédit Mobilier provided the capital for enterprisesranging from the railways to the salt industry; expansion and improve-ment of the transport infrastructure benefited other economic sectors.Because collateral largely consisted of shares in the companies in whomit invested, the Crédit Mobilier not only had a lot riding on the viabilityof the companies, it was also notoriously short of liquid funds; as aresult, it was dependent upon bond issuances for its available resources.Although state policies sometimes frustrated its operations, the CréditMobilier incarnated the Empire’s encouragement of risky, thoughpotentially profitable, speculations.

Nonetheless, after several years of a shaky economic picture, the 1850sushered in a period of opulence, conspicuous consumption, andrampant materialism. Whereas standards of living, as measured bycaloric intake and dietary diversity, were certainly improving for eventhe poorest segment of society, France continued to be plagued by dis-parities based on social class. In fact, those disparities might have beenaccentuated by an economy in which those with investitive resources hadopportunities to maximize their wealth.4 In spite of an improved eco-nomic picture, the plight of the Parisian working class remained precar-ious; the Prefect of the Seine, Baron Georges Haussmann, estimatedthat a slight rise in food prices would cause the capital’s poor (estimatedby Haussmann to be more than 70 percent of the population) todepend on public assistance.5 While the material condition of theworking class did not worsen during the Empire, it did not improve sig-nificantly either.

Haussmannization

Accentuating the problems facing urban workers was Haussmann’s 1860redevelopment of Paris. During the eighteenth century, visitors to Paris

THE SECOND EMPIRE 9

remarked upon the seeming incongruity of a city that, from a distance,appeared magnificent, but up close revealed squalor, poverty, and dis-order.6 Constrained by its medieval origins, Paris remained largelyuntouched until Louis-Philippe’s Prefect of the Seine, comte deRambuteau, initiated the drive to render Paris a more liveable city,promising to give Parisians ‘water, air, and shade.’ By the 1850s Paris wasattracting legions of provincials, drawn to the capital’s higher wages(offset, of course, by its higher cost of living). An ambitious, and almostpathologically opportunistic, functionary, Haussmann capitalized on theEmperor’s passion for a make-over of Paris that would bear his indeliblestamp. Haussmann was not motivated simply by cynical intentions. If theParis confronted by Rambuteau was a fetid, dark, choking urbanlabyrinth, it had gotten far worse over the ensuing years, buckling underthe weight of both an antiquated infrastructure and a growing popula-tion. Haussmann’s plan was a radical expansion of Rambuteau’s originalproject, unconstrained by the financial and spatial concerns that ham-strung his predecessor’s proposed reforms.

Haussmann’s renovations addressed Paris’s most pressing problems.They called for the enlargement of Paris’s city limits beyond the originaltax gates, razing of many dilapidated buildings, beautification of publicspaces, installation of more sewer and water pipes, and the constructionof long rectilinear boulevards. Under Haussmann’s direction Paris wascompletely transformed into a showcase. The traffic that previouslychoked its narrow streets now wended effortlessly through large boule-vards, facilitating travel throughout the city and from one side of theSeine to the other. The sewer and water system was a technological break-through, even if the technology had been borrowed from the RomanEmpire; at the Universal Exposition of 1867 (the forerunner to theWorld’s Fair), it was celebrated as ‘a subterranean second Paris.’ Landdevoted to parks increased by nearly 100-fold (including the magnificentButtes Chaumont in working-class Belleville and the domestication of theBois de Boulogne) while formerly privately maintained squares becameopen to the public. Spatially Paris absorbed an area of more than 9300acres and an additional population of 351,189, overwhelmingly com-prised of provincial and foreign wage workers, nearly all of it the banlieue(suburbs) northeast and east of Paris. Perhaps Haussmann’s most com-pelling argument for incorporating the banlieue into Paris was to bringsome semblance of order to an area known as ‘a no-man’s land beyondthe civilized pale, marked by mud, squalor, and shantytowns.’7

Before Haussmann’s appointment as Prefect, Napoléon III dedicated

10 THE PARIS COMMUNE

himself to the completion of two projects thought of, but never broughtto fruition, by his uncle: construction of the market pavilions known asLes Halles and an extension to the Rue de Rivoli. Haussmann resumedthese plans and expanded on them through two different networks ofboulevards and major streets and avenues that facilitated intracity travelwhile opening Paris to increased light and air. The road-works clearedaway many old, some might say distinctive, neighborhoods and commer-cial zones, to make way for opportunities for new construction. Whereasthe Empire built a few structures, most notably the Paris Opera House, itleft most of the construction to private developers who were blessed bytax exemptions and loans with favorable terms, while being restricted byregulations on height, architectural style, and exterior maintenance. Inother words, the government’s seemingly tight regulatory scheme,designed to produce a uniform and more attractive capital, did notextend to the interiors of buildings; rather dichotomously old tene-ments gave way to new tenements, the latter being distinguished only bymore attractive exterior facades!8

Demolition and construction projects also created more employmentand encouraged even more migrations to Paris. While this helped toalleviate unemployment and was crucial to Paris’s renovation, the addi-tional workers further strained municipal resources. Paris’s working classwas a consideration only to the extent that the make-over would lead togreater control over the banlieue and greater difficulties for insurgents toerect barricades across the wide boulevards. In fact, one of the chiefmotivations for the transformation was to make Paris more hospitable tothe bourgeoisie. Although some aspects of the renovation, for example,the sewer system, benefited all Parisians, they were offset by other conse-quences. Rents rose exponentially, driving the working populationfurther away from central Paris and towards its periphery, increasingtheir commuting time while literally and figuratively shifting them to themargins of Parisian life. Paraphrasing Haussmann opponent LouisLazare’s account of a poor family’s travails under Haussmannization,David Jordan writes:

Originally residents of the Halles neighborhood [in central Paris] theywere driven out by demolitions and were unable to return, becauserents had doubled. The family moved out of the center of Paris to sub-urban Belleville, and their journey to work in the city was now length-ened. When Belleville was incorporated rents were raised, and theywere forced still farther from the center.9

THE SECOND EMPIRE 11

Criticism of Paris’s renovation was slow to generate, but once com-menced, it incorporated a variety of arguments that tied the general phi-losophy of the Empire in Haussmannization’s Gordian knot. Liberalrepublicans characterized Haussmann’s dictatorial approach as repre-sentative of the Empire’s highly centralized, undemocratic structure.Others, including celebrated author Victor Hugo, condemned the gov-ernment as being complicit in a ‘spiv economy’ that rewarded financialspeculators while penalizing the public interest. Finally, revolutionaryrepublicans decried the dispossession of the working class whose condi-tion had, if anything, been worsened by being ghettoized in a suburbansemicircle. Reflecting on the veracity of these criticisms, historian DavidJordan states, ‘The emotional energy of the Commune was already inplace.’10

Proudhon and the Emergence of a Working-Class Identity

During the 1850s Pierre-Joseph Proudhon exercised perhaps thegreatest influence on working-class political thought. AlthoughProudhon’s esoteric, contradictory, unresolved, sometimes impractical,ideas generated a wide following in the middle of the nineteenthcentury, they defy tidy interpretation.11 Even his statement, ‘Property istheft’ was misinterpreted as an attack on property per se rather than as acondemnation of unearned income. A product of peasant and provin-cial working-class stock, Proudhon is best remembered as an advocate ofmutualism, a theory for social reorganization that called upon small pro-ducers to replace capitalist modes of production and exchange with asystem based on bargaining and cooperation. Producers, whether indi-viduals or groups, would freely enter into ‘federative contracts,’assuming mutual obligations towards each other, without entirely sur-rendering their individuality.

Proudhon’s mutualist scheme minimized the role of government andreplaced the centralized state with a federalist political structure.Originally associated with the Girondins and counter-revolutionariesduring the French Revolution, federalism witnessed a revival after theleft’s experiences during the Second Republic revealed that a central-ized government, even a republican one, could be a repressive force.Whereas most federalists believed that a devolved political structurewould increase democracy, protect regional diversity, and preventauthoritarianism, Proudhon simply saw federalism as the least interven-


tionist form of government. For Proudhon, the relative merits of a cen-tralized or decentralized governmental structure was not the extent ofthe problem; rather, in his estimation, the State, and its incorporation of‘natural groups into an unnatural entity,’ was the real source of oppres-sion.12 Though ostensibly a socialist, Proudhon had long been at oddswith Jacobin socialists like Louis Blanc, for whom an activist state was thenecessary precondition for socialism’s advent. Instead of laying the stresson communitarian equality, Proudhon’s conception focused on theliberty of individuals willfully integrating into a collective whole andforging a social contract that ‘is not an arrangement between man andgovernment, or between man and polity, but between man and man.’13

Though some would take the Hobbesian position that the witheringaway of the state would result in disorder, Proudhon would counter thatthere is no order when the state must continually resort to force.14

In contrast to his contemporaries in the socialist camp, Proudhon didnot wax lyrical over the model provided by the French Revolution.Rather, Proudhon attributed 1848’s failings to its emulation of theFrench Revolution. In both cases, Proudhon claimed, a cadre of revolu-tionaries, preoccupied by their own advancement within a transformedpolitical landscape, limited the revolutions to political change, thwartingthe resolution of social problems.15 Reflecting upon these experiences,Proudhon was ambivalent over revolution as a vehicle for change.Though he believed the width of the social chasm mandated revolu-tionary change, Proudhon viewed revolution as an uncontrollableprocess that, in relying on coercion to achieve its results, obviates theunity and liberty at the core of the mutualist system.16

Moving from theory to practice, Proudhon’s belief that all forms ofgovernment are inherently authoritarian led him to a brief flirtationwith the Empire, misguidedly hoping that Napoléon III’s quest forpopular support might result in the initiation of progressive legislation.By 1857, however, Proudhon’s view changed completely, and, until hisdeath in 1865, he urged the working class to develop a distinct classidentity separate from the bourgeoisie and to seek their own ameliora-tion. Proudhon cautioned workers to abstain from voting, even forrepublicans, as participation in a bourgeois political system, be it impe-rial or republican, would be a tacit endorsement of that system.

Proudhon’s ideas found particular resonance amongst a small, edu-cated segment of the working class. Whether as students in night classesor autodidactic, these workers formed the core of a burgeoningworking-class intelligentsia which sought to raise the class-consciousness


of their fellow workers. Through working-class organizations, pamphlets,poems, songs, and plays, they indicated a Proudhonian sensibility byinculcating a sense of separateness and autonomy amongst theirworking-class constituency. That said, anecdotal evidence raises somequestions as to the extent to which workers had personally imbibedProudhon’s works or had a very general familiarity with his ideas.17 Infact, while Henri Tolain, a bronze engraver and one of the first working-class advocates, maintained his fidelity to mutualism, over the course ofthe 1860s most working-class activists departed from his prescriptions.Though they continued to acknowledge Proudhon’s influence, theyonly preserved his advice that the working class must take the lead rolein its own liberation.

Beginning in 1859, Napoléon III began a concerted effort to coopt theworking class. Motivated by the loss of conservative Catholic support (afterhis 1859 abandonment of Pope Pius IX’s temporal authority), NapoléonIII’s initial overtures were the issuance of an amnesty to all political pris-oners and exiles, followed by his patronage of a worker delegation to theLondon International Exposition of 1862. In London, the Parisian dele-gates, led by Tolain, initiated discussions with their working-class counter-parts in other European countries. Two years later these contacts led tothe formation of the International Association of Workingmen (‘the Inter-national’) and the drafting of ‘the Manifesto of the Sixty,’ a declaratonreflective of the increasing autonomy of the French labor movement.Under the guidance of orthodox Proudhonians such as Tolain, ErnestFribourg, and Charles Limousin, though, the French section of theInternational adopted a conciliatory stance condemning strikes andrejecting confrontational politics. In fact, many viewed the French sectionof the International in its early years as an ally of the Empire.18

‘The International’ and Working-Class Politicization

Whatever sycophancy the International was guilty of in the first half ofthe 1860s, its position changed, ironically, when the Empire extended itmore liberties by repealing the 1791 Le Chapelier Law that forbadeworker coalitions and strike activity (though still punishing threats ofviolence and interferences with the ‘right to work’19). Beginning in1865, French workers in a variety of industries from bookbinding tobronze works to coalmining organized strikes, demanding betterworking conditions, higher pay, and an equal bargaining position.


Taking advantage of the Empire’s liberalism, the French labor move-ment was, after 1867, increasingly under the direction of a younger gen-eration of workers who assumed a decidedly more militant posture inrejecting the Empire’s largess as paternalistic. Eugène Varlin, a leader inthe bookbinders’ union, dismissed the Proudhonian position thatworkers eschew political solutions: ‘political revolution and social revolu-tion are intertwined and cannot do without each other.’20 However, themore the International engaged in political activity, the more theEmpire endeavored to eliminate it; nonetheless, with each successivecampaign of repression, including its suppression in March 1868, theInternational gained more adherents, its ranks swelling to between40,000 to 50,000 at Paris, and between 200,000 and 500,000 nationally.21

By the late 1860s, Varlin, a one-time mutualist, strayed fromProudhon’s ideas, embracing collectivism, actively supporting the libera-tion of women workers, and encouraging workers to strike. Varlin’s oneremaining link to Proudhon’s ideas was his disavowal of violent means.Napoléon III’s carefully crafted facade of representing the ‘nation’ andno particular party or interest group cracked under the weight of moreintense labor protests. In 1869, relations between the state and workerschanged dramatically after the Empire called out the military againststriking miners, first at la Ricamarie on 17 June, and then at Aubin on 8October, resulting in 13 and 14 deaths respectively. As the dead becamemartyrs to the workers’ cause, attitudes on both sides hardened. In out-right defiance of the government, Varlin reorganized the Internationaland, amongst the working class, both the International’s prestige and itsmilitancy were at their apex. As the state pursued, and received, one lastseries of judicial condemnations of leading Internationalists in July 1870,military hostilities between France and Prussia were about to commence.Within seven weeks, the Empire fell, the Internationalists were liberated,but the International faded from importance, overshadowed and sub-sumed by events between early September 1870 and late May 1871.Inasmuch as a number of Communards had been active in theInternational, it had little chance of surviving the repressive atmospherethat prevailed in post-Commune France. Blamed for having been theCommune’s inspiration and feared as a potential source for future con-flicts, the International was outlawed in both France and Spain whileactivists in the Commune were the targets of legal proceedings inDenmark, Austria-Hungary, and Germany.


Revolutionary Republicanism: Blanquists and Neo-Jacobins

Beaten, but not completely obliterated, republicanism limped throughthe 1850s to reemerge in the relatively relaxed political climate of thefollowing decade as something akin to a loyal opposition. Having recog-nized the futility of their original strategy of urging abstention from elec-tions, moderate republicans sought election to the Legislative Assembly.Being very much on the outside of Napoleonic political culture, republi-cans resisted their usual tendency towards political cannibalism and,instead, maintained the unity that proved illusive to them throughoutthe Second Republic. Republicans of all stripes, bourgeois and workingclass, liberals and socialists, centralists and decentralists coalescedaround several fundamental republican ideals: anti-Bonapartism, to besure, but more importantly, identification with the legacy of the FrenchRevolution and attachment to its core ideals of liberty, fraternity,manhood suffrage, and anti-clericalism. With the accent squarely onpolitical solutions, republicans largely shunted aside the more divisivesocial issue, emphasizing, instead, the unity necessary for arriving at therepublic. As long as republicanism ‘was contained by the imperatives ofthe political struggle against the Second Empire,’ social and politicalrepublicans muted their differences and sought consensus.22 Such unity,however, would not be enduring.

The ‘social question,’ though relegated to the back burner of republi-canism, nevertheless persisted. The French Revolution, the historicalexperience that provided republicanism with its foundation and unifiedall republicans, also, on another level, drove a wedge between them.Although all republicans could find common ground around the mostgeneral principles of the Revolution, the Revolution was no ideologicalmonolith. Rather, its legacy was readily divisible; 1793 provided achronological fault line that, as under the Second Republic, separatedpolitical from social republicans.

During the second half of the 1860s, social republicanism becameimpregnated with revolutionary rhetoric. Historians have situated therevolutionary republicans in the Blanquist, Internationalist, or neo-Jacobin camps, but, in reality, these designations were no more thannuanced distinctions, and in some cases, reflected little more than per-sonal animosities. For example, while imprisoned from 1861 to 1864,Auguste Blanqui, the unrepentent revolutionary, received visits fromGeorges Clemenceau, the future president of the Third Republic then ayoung doctor flirting with militant politics. Blanqui broke off contact


with Clemenceau after learning that he had also been visiting CharlesDelescluze, a démoc-soc.23 While in prison, Blanqui became a magnet forstudents, journalists, and even some workers, many of whom had begundabbling in the philosophical currents (e.g., mutualism and positivism)of the time. Assuming the role for a new generation of activists thatBuonarroti had played for his cohort three decades previously, Blanqui’scredibility was only enhanced when, as his prison term drew to a close in1865, the authorities ordered him rearrested in the interest of publicsecurity.24

Whereas Blanqui’s place in history has largely been confined to therole of inveterate conspirator, he was a substantive, if not always original,thinker. By the late 1860s, his writings amalgamated the principal cur-rents of nineteenth-century French social and political thought – revolu-tion, utopianism, republicanism, and communism. Characterizingrevolutions as violent manifestations of social-class tension, Blanqui andhis followers contributed an understanding of France’s revolutionaryhistory premised on social-class conflict. This represented a departurefrom previous conceptions of revolution as resulting from a nationalconsensus against an economically and socially powerful minority.According to Blanqui, French history was littered with instances inwhich a revolutionary vanguard challenged the existing political orderonly to exit prematurely from the revolutionary stage, its work later sub-verted by opportunists. Blanqui insisted that, in order to ensure itscontrol over the process it put in motion, the revolutionary elite neededto establish a Parisian dictatorship over the nation.25

The Blanquists located the origins of their revolutionary creed in theexample of the Hébertists, followers of Jacques-René Hébert. A jour-nalist whose extreme revolutionary views and vulgar prose were calcu-lated to resonate with a sans-culottes audience, Hébert’s place in thehistory of the Revolution was, at its most charitable, relegated to that ofmisguided idealist who sowed the seeds of class division. In 1864, one ofBlanqui’s most dedicated followers, Gustave Tridon, immortalized theHébertists as representing the true ideals of the Revolution.

Consistent with the polemical nature of most publications on theFrench Revolution produced during the middle third of the nineteenthcentury, Tridon’s Les Hébertistes represented yet another attempt atforging a tradition out of the Revolution’s malleable past.26 It made littledifference that Tridon’s idolatry of the Hébertists as harbingers of com-munism was totally misplaced and that nothing in Hébert’s rhetoricevinced hostility to private property.27 Less a historical tract than a polit-


ical platform, Les Hébertistes conveyed the aspirations of Blanquism: anuprising by a committed cadre who maintain the revolutionary initiative.Exercising a dictatorship from Paris, the crucible of revolution,Blanqui’s revolutionary elite would enlighten the unenlightened andregenerate France into an egalitarian, democratic, atheistic, fraternaland communist republic.

In retelling the story of the Hébertists, Tridon cast them as tragicheroes of the revolutionary saga, ‘intellectuals . . . willing to share thesuffering of the people,’ beleaguered by adversaries masquarading asrevolutionaries (the Girondins), and eliminated by rivals who hadneither affinity nor empathy for the people (the Jacobins).28 In fact,Hébert’s adversarial relationship with Robespierre rendered him a par-ticularly attractive historical standard bearer for the Blanquists.Blanqui’s writings reveal an undisguised contempt for Robespierre.Although it is possible that there was a personal dimension to Blanqui’shostility (his father, a Girondin-sympathizing member of theConvention, barely survived the Terror), in all likelihood, Blanqui wasunable to reconcile his material atheism with Robespierre’s groundingof the First Republic on the deistic Festival of the Supreme Being.29

Alone the Hébertists of Tridon’s work exemplified, but were unable tobring to fruition, the Revolution’s highest ideals.

The young intellectuals who formed the nucleus of Blanqui’s disciplescast themselves as the inheritors of the Hébertist revolutionary tradition.By situating their movement in the Hébertist shadow, Blanquists claimeda piece of the Revolution for themselves. Association with the Revolutionbestowed a sense of historical destiny to the Blanquists as their responseshad transcendence over the immediate issues of the late 1860s.

The conspiratorial nature of Blanquism foreclosed any prospect of itbecoming a mass movement. On the other hand, during the final twoyears of the Empire, neo-Jacobinism experienced a renaissance.Associated with such concepts as centralized government, revolutionarydictatorship, chauvanistic republican nationalism, and a controlledeconomy, Jacobinism had become, for conservatives, la bête noire of revo-lutionary excess. Though revolutionary republicans during the SecondRepublic routinely identified themselves as Jacobins, and were labeled assuch by their opponents, their attachment was largely due to a mytholo-gized understanding of Jacobinism as a beacon of republican socialism;in reality, neo-Jacobins so routinely strayed from its commanding eighteenth-century principles that Jacobinism had become little morethan a convenient historical designation.30


Although some historians have gone to great lengths to draw strategicand doctrinal distinctions between Blanquists and neo-Jacobins31 in theoverall context of late Second Empire politics, the differences wouldhave been barely perceptible at the time. The distrust neo-Jacobins,reconstructed démoc-socs, harbored towards the Blanquists appears tohave been motivated more by historical considerations than by any sub-stantive disputes. In other words, although they addressed contemporaryissues, republicans were more bedeviled by their propensity to enrobethemselves symbolically in the vestments of their historical heroes and torevisit their disputes. In this case neo-Jacobins and Blanquists were lesslikely to view each other as revolutionary confrères than as latter day incar-nations of Robespierre and Hébert, anachronistically resuming theirconflict. Conversely, historians Alain Dalotel and Jean-ClaudeFreiermuth argue that substance lay behind these designations and that‘it was by virtue of these choices that people split themselves up intosocialists or communists, idealists or materialists.’32

Above all, neo-Jacobins and Blanquists shared a similar perspective onthe unavoidable inevitability of a violent contest for power, though as wehave seen, Blanquism premised this on a sectarian putsch. Similar to theBlanquists, the neo-Jacobins also wove social and economic democracyinto the weft of the fabric of their republic, crossing the warp ofmanhood suffrage. Neo-Jacobinism was not a political party, but rather adesignation. As such, defining it by reference to anything approaching aparty platform is nearly impossible. During the Second Empire, mostneo-Jacobins rarely spoke or wrote in specific programatic terms, insteadreiterating core republican values (manhood suffrage, secular and com-pulsory education), peppered with positions ranging from support forsocial welfare to substantial state intervention in the economy.

Some historians have characterized the Blanquists as anarchists com-mitted to the elimination of the state, in contrast to the neo-Jacobins’support for a strong state, as evidence of a substantive differencebetween the two factions. The syllogism falls apart when one considersthe contradictory evidence relative to the Blanquists’ ultimate goal. Itwas Blanqui’s hostile view of Robespierre, the symbol of Jacobin statism,rather than any identifiable expression of anarchistic rhetoric, thataccounts for this confused interpretation.33

As it was, the neo-Jacobins were unambiguous in their advocacy of astrong centralized state emerging out of a revolution. Like theBlanquists, they too believed in the necessity of a period of dictatorship.While their activist and interventionist state was the antithesis of


Proudhonianism and bourgeois liberalism, their socialist convictions,though not well formulated, were not too far removed from the similarlyambiguous Blanquist communism.

Age, and its attendant frames of reference, best explain the differ-ences between Blanquists and neo-Jacobins. Older than the Blanquists,and having actively participated in the Second Republic, neo-Jacobins,including Charles Delescluze, Félix Pyat, Charles Gambon, were less dis-illusioned by the ideals of 1848 than by how they had been betrayed. Incontrast, the Blanquist leadership and support was centered amongstthe students of the Latin Quarter. At once intellectually and viscerallyappealing to students, Blanquism appeared as a romantic and adven-turous alternative to other movements on the left. Students were drawnto Blanqui’s stoic martyrdom and the seamlessness by which his life con-nected the French Revolution with nineteenth-century revolutions. Inthe estimation of many young intellectuals, the démoc-socs had squan-dered an opportunity in 1848 and lacked Blanqui’s uncompromisingverve, audacity, rationality, and stridency. Though Blanqui hoped, andexpected, to attract working-class support, his efforts were largely unsuc-cessful as the Blanquist emphasis on atheism, direct action, andsocialism did not resonate with workers.34

Liberalism Amid Turmoil: 1868–1870

The republican left’s ability to disseminate its positions received a hugeboost with the Empire’s lifting of some restrictions on the press (11 May1868) and the right to assemble (6 June 1868). Often cited as furtherevidence of the Empire’s trend towards liberalization, the laws alsoencapsulated the limits to Napoléon III’s liberalism. By maintainingrestrictions on political and religious discussions, but permitting discus-sions of the social economy, the Empire hoped to direct the tone ofworking-class discourse away from its increasing infatuation with polit-ical solutions and to reestablish himself as the benefactor of organizedlabor.35

In promulgating reforms that gave a voice to his opposition, NapoléonIII did not choose a very propitious moment. By the second half of the1860s, the economic, diplomatic, and political buoyancy of the 1850ssuccumbed to the laws of gravity, reversing more than a decade offoreign policy successes, economic growth, and political stability. In1867 Napoléon III was forced to order the evacuation of French troops


from Mexico, ending a very costly six-year expedition whose goals orpurposes were never formulated with any precision. In 1860, against theadvice of French manufacturers, the Empire secretly negotiated a free-trade agreement with Britain. At the time, French manufacturing tech-nology was significantly behind British standards; intent on modernizingand improving French production standards through free trade,Napoléon III disturbed France’s traditional protective trade policies thatshielded inefficient producers from foreign competition. Steadily overthe course of the 1860s, the agreement contributed to an economicdownturn in France as more efficiently manufactured British productsflooded into France without a reciprocal flow. The 1867 collapse of theCrédit Mobilier Bank, the epitomy of the Bonapartist economic successof the 1850s, signaled economic disaster for the regime. Economic andforeign policy failures opened up the Empire to greater scrutiny by bothits royalist and republican opponents. Republican candidates to theCorps Législatif, who had carried majorities at Paris, Marseilles, Lyon,Lille, Bordeaux, and Toulouse in 1863, nearly doubled their share of theurban vote in the 1869 election. More ominously, though, republicansunwilling to reconcile themselves to loyal opposition experienced thelargest leap in support.

With the passage of the press and meetings laws, dissenters had anoutlet for their opposition to the regime. Amongst the revolutionaryrepublican press, Charles Delescluze’s Le Réveil best exemplified thepotential for reawakening the republican conscience. In November 1868Le Réveil opened a subscription to erect a monument to AlphonseBaudin, heretofore an obscure Second Republic deputy who was killedon a Parisian barricade on 3 December 1851 while extolling workers tofight against Louis-Bonaparte’s coup d’état. The imperial authoritieschose to make an example of Delescluze, after a rally at Baudin’s tombturned violent. While Delescluze was convicted and sentenced to a six-month prison term, the trial pitted the regime against the liberty itclaimed to represent. In the words of Dalotel and Freiermuth, by ‘April1870 the liberal Empire was very much the enemy of the very freedom itpurported to establish.’36 Though it was the central player in one of thepivotal domestic crises in the final years of the Empire, Le Réveil’s circula-tion was limited to 8000 copies. However, in mid-December 1869, HenriRochefort, the iconoclastic scion of a prestigous noble family, launchedLa Marseillaise, a journal whose circulation exceeded 40,000. Uniting thevarious strands of revolutionary republican thought, La Marseillaise pro-vided a journalistic forum for future Communards such as Arthur


Arnould, Gustave Cluseret, Gustave Flourens, Pascal Grousset, PaulLafargue, Prosper Lissagaray, Benoît Malon, Jules Vallès, Eugène Varlin,and Eugène Vermersch to transcend the petty doctrinal squabbles inwhich revolutionary republicans were mired. Most notably, LaMarseillaise printed the rhetoric at republican meetings.

Within months of the passage of the law on meetings, gatherings ofbetween 800 and 3000 people proliferated throughout Paris. Through-out 1869 until May 1870, over 1000 meetings took place. While themajority stayed within the confines of the law while eschewing politicalquestions, political questions were not completely ignored. Revolution-ary republicans, in particular, routinely flouted the law and exposedthemselves to prosecutions. Reflecting the spirit of La Marseillaise, theytemporarily put a moratorium on their internecine conflicts and articu-lated and defined the ideals that would form the foundation for theCommune.

Whereas the parliamentary republican perspective dominated thepress, revolutionary republican thought pervaded at the meetings. Thediscourse at the meetings can be broken down into the past, the present,and the future. More specifically, the past refers to the propensity ofspeakers to look back to the French Revolution and 1848 as either inspi-ration or pitfalls to avoid. As far as the present is concerned, contempo-rary topics such as elections to the Corps Législatif, the plebiscite onNapoléon III, the murder of journalist Victor Noir by the Emperor’scousin, were covered in the meetings. By far the most compellingrhetoric at the meetings was devoted to the future, and in particular, torevolution.

France’s revolutionary tradition was never far from the surface at thepolitical meetings. Fidelity to the French Revolution was hardly a litmustest for earning one’s revolutionary republican credentials; nearly allrepublicans expressed their adhesion to the Revolution, seeing it as afount of lost or as yet unrealized aspirations. The critical line of demar-cation was over dates. To revolutionary republicans, the ideals of 1789,so dear to liberal and moderate republicans, were too tepid, too steepedin bourgeois principles. The true spirit of the Revolution, the one mostworthy of emulation more than six decades later, was 1793. Although1793 remained a potential flashpoint between neo-Hébertists and neo-Jacobins, as a whole speakers presented the Revolution as the progenitorof the modern revolutionary republican movement. This is not to saythat fidelity to the Revolution was the equivalent of fidelity to accuracy.Speakers often mischaracterized the ideological stances of eighteenth-


century Jacobins and the sans-culottes. Robespierre, Danton, Saint-Justwere all transposed into communists; the sans-culottes nearly indistinctfrom the nineteenth-century proletariat. Ends justified means asspeakers lauded the decisiveness, however violent, of crowds during theFrench Revolution whose idea of sovereignty was not limited to repre-sentative government.

Though bronze bas-relief plaques bearing Marat’s likeness or emula-tions of Robespierre’s fashion sense may have been more of a decorativefad, there was substance behind the choice of 1793. As Dalotel andFreiermuth remind us, declaring one’s allegiance to 1793 was a meansfor circumventing the continued prohibition against political commen-tary. It was also understood to be a political testimonial in support of rev-olution. Although distinctions began to emerge between speakers whendiscussions turned to controversial figures like Hébert and Babeuf, by1870, all revolutionary republicans accepted 1793 as their common her-itage.37

If 1793 was the historical fault line that separated revolutionary fromparliamentary republicans, June 1848 represented a tectonic schism ofunbridgeable proportions. Having occurred within the lifetime of allparticipants in the meetings, 1848 was etched in the collective memoryas the unfulfilled dream of a democratic and social republic. June 1848revealed the folly of February’s expectations that a republic could tran-scend class divisions. As republicans held on for dear life to what was leftof the Second Republic, they subordinated social class for survival untilthe amalgamation of socialists and republicans during the 1860s revivi-fied the political hues of social class conflict last seen in 1848. Social-class conflict moved to the center of the revolutionary republican uni-verse, with bourgeois republicans, especially those connected to the collapse of the Second Republic, being lumped in with Legitimists,Orléanists, and Bonapartists as adversaries. In the 1869 campaign,speakers at revolutionary republican clubs urged the rejection of parlia-mentary republicans, reminding their audiences that these same individ-uals, responsible for repressing workers in June 1848, had since beencoopted by Bonapartist liberalism.

While it is to be expected that revolutionary republicans would use thepublic meetings as a vehicle to lash out against the Empire, less pre-dictable was the vehemence with which they expressed their hostilitytowards parliamentary republicans, whether moderate or radical.Militants vociferously attacked the 1869 candidacies of Marie, Garnier-Pagès, Jules Favre, and Eugène Cavaignac, all of whom were leaders of


the republican parliamentary opposition to Napoléon III, but were com-promised by their conservatism during the Second Republic.38 Althoughsocial democrats from 1848 (e.g., François Raspail) received strongsupport from the clubs, the rhetoric of 1860s revolutionary republi-canism had surpassed them. As June 1848 became the defining monthof the Second Republic, 1848 became a cautionary tale for revolutionaryrepublicans, made all the more imperative by a growing sense that theEmpire was drawing to a close.

Political meetings also addressed contemporary events, distilling theissues of greatest pertinence to their audiences in the expectation ofstimulating action. In fact, it was the responses generated at meetings totwo events – the murder of journalist Victor Noir and the plebiscite onNapoléon III’s liberal reforms – that led authorities to suspend the lawof 6 June 1868. As already noted, the 1869 elections to the CorpsLégislatif dominated meetings during spring 1869, providing evidenceof increasing social-class polarization.

On 10 January 1870, Prince Pierre Bonaparte, the Emperor’s cousin,killed Victor Noir, a young editor on La Marseillaise. Two days later, acrowd estimated at between 80,000 and 200,000 turned up for Noir’sfuneral amid a highly charged atmosphere; a violent confrontation withgovernment troops was only averted when Rochefort insisted that thecortege march to the western suburb of Neuilly rather than throughcentral Paris where the troops awaited them. Nonetheless, while Noir’simperial killer received only a fine from a special court, Rochefort wascharged with incitement and sentenced to six-months imprisonment. Asthe clubs rallied behind Rochefort, the government aggravated analready delicate situation, ordering the closure of clubs for one weekand the arrest of numerous meeting organizers. The harsh treatmentmeted out to the cautious Rochefort led to a radicalization of discourseat the clubs as no accommodation with the Empire appeared possible.

Between January and March 1870 one of the most violent strikes of theperiod occurred at the Schneider mineworks at Le Creusot. One of thewealthiest men in France whose mineworks employed nearly 10,000workers, Eugène Schneider also wielded considerable political influenceas both a legislative deputy and board member of one of the majorFrench railway lines (for which his mine works was a major supplier!)The Le Creusot strike, and the deadly strikes at La Ricamarie and Aubinthe year before, brought the real world of labor–capital relations to themeetings in a way that abstract discussions of elections and socialismcould not. Discussions of the strikes, collections of donations, and refer-


ences to the martyrdom of the fallen fostered working-class solidaritywhile the violence at Le Creusot inspired revolutionary discourse.Ironically, the namesake of the 1864 law that legalized strikes, ÉmileOllivier, a one-time republican who now headed the government, madethe call for troops to repress the strike. Whereas the Empire’s one-timepaternalistic, palliative concessions to the working class encouragedworkers to address labor activity in a non-political way, the Empire’sviolent defense of the interests of capital altered the dynamic; no longercould economic activity be bifurcated from political questions. Working-class activists, such as Eugène Varlin, understood that the solitary strike,shorn of linkage to larger political movements, was too limited. Varlinand others extolled attendees at meetings to view strikes as a weapon,but not the ends, of working-class activism. In other words, the workingclass had moved past the parochialism of labor issues.

Conceivably, strikes carried implications that transcended the narrow-ness of labor disputes. In the run-up to the 8 May 1870 plebiscite on theliberal Empire (increasingly appearing to be an oxymoron), oratorsaddressed abstention from voting in terms of a strike. Revolutionaryrepublicans argued at the clubs that even the act of casting a ‘no’ votewas tantamount to both a validation of the Empire’s legitimacy in fixingthe parameters of political debate and cession to the leadership pro-vided by liberal and moderate opponents of the regime. Instead, revolu-tionary republicans urged their audiences to spoil their ballots withexpressions of protest (e.g., ‘long live the ’93 consitution,’ ‘long live thesocial and democratic republic,’ or just simply, ‘shit’) and therebyengage in the equivalent of a strike against the extant political process.On the other hand, clubbists were far from unified on this front; afterthe Empire directed a repression against advocates of abstention, themajority of speakers urged a ‘no’ vote as the least ambiguous sign ofopposition to the Empire. Interestingly, both abstentionists and ‘no’supporters believed they were at the forefront of a revolution; theformer seeing no alternative to a violent confrontation, the latterhoping a majority vote against the Empire would produce a peaceful rev-olution limited to political change. The overwhelming majority won bythe Empire in the plebiscite reaffirmed the revolutionary republicanposition that it was chimerical to believe that a revolution could ever beanything but violent and comprehensive in scope.39

Overshadowing discussions of the past and the present at the meetingswere considerations of a future French republic. In spite of the judg-ment of at least one historian that, had it not been for the disastrous


Franco-Prussian War, ‘there is no reason to doubt that the parliamentaryEmpire would have survived,’40 clubbists seemed poised for its imminentcollapse.41 In fact, through discussions on a future revolution and theregenerated society it would produce, we see the Commune in chrysalisform, causing historian Alain Faure to conclude: ‘The Commune wasborn during the Empire.’42

Anticipating the unity that would be needed to overcome both theEmpire and bourgeois republicans, speakers urged revolutionaries tosubordinate their doctrinal differences in favor of a unified commitmentto very generally articulated socialist ideals. While revolutionary repub-lican speakers at the clubs were unable to come to agreement on the fea-sibility of a post-revolution dictatorship or the extent to which privatelyowned property should be tolerated, they were unanimous in their callfor the reorganization of society into ‘social communes.’ Perhaps inanticipation of different understandings of the Commune that woulddevelop amongst the Communards, clubbists rarely got beyond the gen-eralities of the idea. However, the very ambiguity of the Commune, andthe fact that there were no precedents for organizing a republic as aconfederation, allowed club activists wide latitude in formulating andconveying their conceptions of the Commune.

End of the Empire

The combination of the mandate he received from the May plebiscite,imprisonment or exile of club leaders in the repressive aftermath of theplebiscite, and the prohibition of public meetings appeared to offerNapoléon III a level of security he had not had since the early 1860s. Justover ten weeks later, however, France ill advisedly declared war onPrussia. Long anticipated, but until then avoided, the French declara-tion was further confirmation of Napoléon III’s continued propensityfor rash acts. Voices of sanity were drowned out amid baseless optimismthat the Prussian army would collapse under the weight of a Frenchoffensive and diplomatic pressure by European states fearful of Prussia’sgrowth. It was France, though, that was diplomatically isolated and aPrussian force that numbered over 800,000 easily outmatched its paltryarmy of 370,000 troops. By early August the French offensive had turnedinto a rout, and the Prussian army was fully ensconced on French soil.

In a premature gesture that was bound to fail, 300 Blanquists attackedthe fire station at La Villette on 14 August, hoping to get their hands on


its arsenal. Quickly routed by the local police force, the Blanquistsdescended into Belleville shouting, ‘Long live the Republic! Death tothe Prussians! To arms!’ Their nationalistically tinged revolutionary crieswent unheeded. Although he had attempted to temper the insurrec-tionary zeal of his young followers, much as he had urged caution in1839, Blanqui had been unsuccessful. What Blanqui understood, butwhat was beyond the experiential ken of his disciples, was that revolu-tionary situations arise organically, and must be seized by its ever-vigilantvanguard. In the repression that followed, several Blanquists, includingfuture Communard Émile Eudes, were tried, convicted, and sentencedto death; however, events less than three weeks later fortuitously savedEudes. On 2 September, Napoléon III, his troops surrounded at Sedan,surrendered to the Prussians; two days later, at Paris, republicans of allvarieties declared the fall of the Empire and proclaimed its replacementby a republic.

Conclusion

The French Revolution established the parameters of political culture innineteenth-century France. The Revolution bequeathed the heritage ofrepublicanism as a partible legacy that separated liberals from socialists,bourgeoisie from workers, reformers from revolutionaries, town fromcountry. The Revolution’s ideas and personalities were one part exem-plar, one part commemorable event; they permeated and punctuatednineteenth-century discourse, ideology, and action, at times con-straining republicans from accurately understanding the past or fromcreatively addressing contemporary problems. The stones set by theFrench Revolution, but reconfigured by nineteenth-century events,paved the road to the Commune.

Revolutionary republicanism in the nineteenth century functionedon two different levels: as an incessant quest to realize the egalitarianpromise of the French Revolution and as a response to changes in theFrench political, economic, social, and cultural landscapes that wereunimaginable at the time of the Revolution. The result of the FrenchRevolution was to position the Parisian bourgeoisie and working class atopposite ends of the social axis, viewing each other with undisguised sus-picion from vastly different existences. When locating a single repub-lican consensus over fraternity, the least complicated, but mostfundamental of the revolutionary triptych, proved illusory,43 it was


apparent that a social, political, and geographical chasm separated revo-lutionary republicans from most other shades of political opinion,including moderate republicans. As it turned out, the gulf dividingrepublicans was almost as unbridgeable, and nearly as violent, as thedivide between monarchists and republicans.

Essentially, since the Revolution, politics had become more compli-cated as republicanism intersected with the social changes that emergedout of economic, demographic, ideological, and cultural transforma-tions. The correspondence between brewing class conflict and the liber-alized political climate of the late 1860s provided an opportunity forstudents, idealists, and labor activists to articulate an alternative revolu-tionary, though not always clear and consistent, vision of republicanism.However, this much was clear: the republican references and ideals towhich they subscribed were fundamentally different from those of par-liamentary and reformist republicans. If the rapid fall of the SecondEmpire made for an easy birth for the Third Republic, divisions that haddeveloped over the decades within republicanism did not suggest anuncomplicated postpartum.


Adam, Edmond, 45Adamov, Arthur, 185Algeria, 88, 95, 96Allix, Jules, 145Amazons of the Seine, 145American Civil War, 77Aminzade, Ronald, 73, 75amnesty, 107, 108, 174, 183anarchism, 148Andrieu, Jules, 141Appert, Eugène, 172–3, 180Arago, Emmanuel, 31, 44Arnaud, Antoine, 41Arnould, Arthur, 22, 86, 136–7, 138,

151Artists’ Commission for the

Protection of NationalMuseums, 163–4, 165

Artists’ Federation, 166Assi, Adolphe, 63Association for the Rights of

Women, 144–5associationism, 121, 127, 187Aumale, Duc d’, 180autonomy,

artistic, 163, 164municipal, 117, 127, 183

Babeuf, François-Noël, 4, 23balloons,

use of during Franco-Prussian War, 42–3

Bakunin, Mikhail, 39, 40

Bank of France, 65, 124, 134–5barricades, 87, 89, 90, 97Bastelica, André, 40Baudin, Alphonse, 21Bazaine, General François, 40, 43,

45Beaufort, Charles de, 92Bellemare, General Carey de, 44Belleville, 10, 11, 27, 32, 190n.32,

193n.65Belleville Program (1869), 131Belly, Félix, 145Bergeret, Jules, 76Beslay, Charles, 71, 124, 135,

204n.72Billioray, Alfred, 86Bismarck, Otto von, 30, 44, 46, 54,

55, 56, 82Blanc, Louis, 13, 80, 107Blanchecotte, Malvina, 67Blanqui, Auguste, 4, 5, 16, 17, 18,

19, 20, 27, 31, 32, 45, 48, 59, 69, 84, 91, 107, 124, 130,195,n.17

Blanquism, Blanquists, 16, 17–18,19, 20, 26–27, 69, 120, 122, 123,124, 128, 129, 130, 133, 141,147, 195n.18

Bloody Week, 85, 86–99, 111, 125,134, 147–148, 149, 150, 160,173, 174

fires during, 98–100, 158–9number of deaths during, 97–8

219

Index

Bohemianism,as rejection of bourgeois values,

118–19, 173Boime, Albert, 174Bonaparte, Prince Pierre, 24Boulangism, 108, 142Bréa Chapel

demolition of, 85, 130Bréa, General Jean-Baptiste, 85Brébant, 48Brecht, Bertolt, 185Bréton, Geneviève, 133Breuillé, Alfred, 133Brocher, Victorine, 31, 34, 51, 55,

78brutalization theory, see VersaillaisBuonarroti, Philippe, 4, 5, 17

Caillebotte, Gustave, 175Cavaignac, Eugène, 23Central Committee of National

Guard, 57–8, 61, 63, 69, 88, 89,100, 125, 141, 193n.64

conflict with Paris mayors, 66–7and defense of Paris’s cannons,

60hostility towards, 66military miscalculations, 64–5,

197n.49support for, 67

Central Committee of TwentyArrondissements, 35, 37–8, 52, 53

Challemel-Lacour, Paul, 39, 40Charles X, 3Chaudey, Gustave, 92, 198n.80Cissey, Ernest-Louis-Octave Courtot

de, 95Cladel, Léon, 174class conflict,

and Commune, 66, 111–12, 115, 173, 174, 175, 177

at Lyon in 1870, 41Clemenceau, Georges, 16, 17, 60, 61,

80, 81, 107, 114Clément, Victor, 141Cluseret, Gustave, 22, 32, 40, 77, 79,

83, 84, 85, 86Colombier, Marie, 99

Committee of Public Safety, 86, 88,89, 100, 110

Commune’s creation of, 84, 125, 139–41

Communardscharacteristics of, 115, 122, 125,

174and class identity, 115–19, 121,

159–60ideology of, 119–20and sans-culottes, 115

Commune, see Paris, CommuneCourbet, Gustave, 118, 140, 141,

163–164, 165, 167, 168, 169,198n.80, 209n.29, 210, n.36

Crédit-Mobilier, 9, 21Crémieux, Adolphe, 31Crémieux, Gaston, 103, 120,

199n.103Crimean War, 77, 88

DaCosta, Gaston, 89Dalotel, Alain, 19, 21, 23Danton, Georges-Jacques, 6, 23Darboy, Georges, archbishop of

Paris, 91–92, 93, 98, 106, 129,134

Daudet, Alphonse, 174David, Jacques-Louis, 162decentralization, 72–3, 74, 113, 127Degas, Edgar, 173, 175Deguerry, vicar of the Madeleine,

129Delescluze, Charles, 17, 20, 21, 32,

45, 74, 84, 89, 90, 92, 93, 97,120, 123, 183, 191n.12

Demay, Antoine, 169démoc-socs, 8, 19, 20, 84, 123deportations, see New CaledoniaDesplats, Victor, 29, 30, 34, 52, 59,

75, 87, 133, 195n.13Dmitrieff, Elisabeth, 150, 152,

206n.21Dombrowski, Jaroslaw, 87Dreyfus, Alfred, 107, 108, 142DuCamp, Maxime, 107, 112Ducoudray, Élie, 153Ducoudray, Félix, 153

220 INDEX

Duruy, Victor, 130Duval, Émile, 76, 91

1848 and the Second Republic, 1,5–6, 13, 20, 22, 31, 36, 61, 69,73, 84, 123, 144, 154, 155, 157

June Days, 23, 24, 77, 85, 87, 88, 112, 125, 144, 155, 181

18 March 1871, 60–2, 65, 77, 78, 87,147, 154, 158, 168, 194n.68

electionsto Commune, 65, 67–71, 195n.16to National Assembly, February,

1871, 55–6, 193n.61municipal, 1870, 45–6under Second Empire, 25

Esquiros, Henri, 39, 40Eudes, Émile, 27, 76Expiatory Chapel,

demolition of, 85, 130exile, 105, 149

Faure, Alain, 26Favre, Jules, 23, 31, 32, 34, 37, 42,

44, 45, 54, 64, 66, 67, 105, 120,147, 176

federalism, 12–13, 38–41, 72–3, 120,127, 128

Federation of Artists, 164–5, 173fédérés, 75, 76, 79 86, 87, 88, 90, 92,

96, 133, 146, 149, 150, 158, 159feminism, 144–5, 147, 150, 154,160Ferré, Théophile, 64, 92, 103, 120,

134, 147, 148Ferry, Jules, 31, 62, 92, 184, 192n.36Fetridge, W.P., 100Flaubert, Gustave, 107, 174Fleury, Hubert Rohault de, 171Floquet, Charles, 81Flourens, Gustave, 22, 32, 45, 53, 59,

76, 77, 91Fourier, Charles, 131Franco-Prussian War, 15, 26–7, 29,

120armistice, 54–7end of war, 83military defeats, 43–5, 53

francs-tireurs, 191n.26

Fränkel, Léo, 124, 138, 152, 195n.18,204n.81

freemasons, 81–2Freiermuth, Jean-Claude, 19, 21, 23French Revolution, 3, 4, 13, 28, 35,

78, 94, 115, 123, 126, 128, 129,130, 133, 134, 137, 148, 154,155, 162, 166–7

and Blanquists, 20and federalism, 73as inspiration, 1, 2, 16, 17, 22, 23,

27, 33, 38, 55, 64, 66, 68, 89, 108, 139, 140, 141, 142, 163, 174, 187, 198n.70

Revolutionary Commune of 1792–3, 68

and women, 143Fribourg, Ernest, 14Friends of Order, 67, 80

Gaillard, Jeanne, 39, 73Gaillard, Napoléon, 89Galliffet, Marquis de, 94, 95Gambetta, Léon, 31, 39, 40, 41, 42,

43, 44, 54, 56, 106, 131Gambon, Charles, 20Garibaldi, Giussepe, 57, 63, 77,

193n.13Garnier-Pagès, Louis-Antoine, 23, 31gender,

and conceptions of the republic, 177–80

constructs of, 143–4, 155–61, 180–2

Genton, Gustave, 134Girondins, 12, 18, 140Goldman, Emma, 148Goncourt, Edmond de, 47, 48, 50,

51, 62, 66, 71, 75, 87, 174Gould, Roger, 115–18Government of National Defense,

31–4, 35–7, 38, 39, 41, 111capitulation by, 54, 176distrust towards, 45, 52–3efforts at surrendering, 44–6and protection of art works, 163–4

Greenberg, Louis, 72, 73, 113Greppo, Louis, 81

INDEX 221

Grieg, Nordhal, 185Grousset, Pascal, 22Guerra, Armand, 185Guesde, Jules, 107, 125guillotine

burning of, 166–7Gullickson, Gay, 156, 160, 180

Harvey, David, 115–18Haussmann, Georges, 9, 10, 11, 12,

116Hébert, Jacques-René, 17, 18, 19, 23Hébertists, neo-Hébertists, 17, 18,

19, 22, 23, 129, 190n.32 hostages, 91–3, 129, 134Huard, Raymond, 73, 75Hugo, Charles, 61Hugo, Victor, 12, 57, 105, 107, 147,

174, 183, 210n.35

impressionism, 175International Association of Free

Thinkers, 130International Association of

Workingmen, 14–15, 16, 31, 35,37, 41, 69, 77, 82, 111, 120, 123,124, 125, 128, 130, 141, 145,147, 149, 150

Jaclard, Anna, 149Jacobinism, neo-Jacobism, 4, 5, 6, 16,

19–20, 22, 31, 84, 108, 113,120–1, 123, 128, 140, 141,190n.32, 195n.18

and gender, 143and socialism, 18

Johnson, Martin Philip, 121, 127,155

Jordan, David, 11, 12Jourde, Francis, 135, 141, 204n.72July Monarchy, 3, 5, 84

Kranzberg, Melvin, 48

Labouchere, Henry, 48, 50Lafargue, Paul, 22, 119Lamartine, Alphonse, 92Lazare, Louis, 11

League of the Midi for the NationalDefense of the Republic, 39–40,73

Lecomte, General Claude, 60, 61,62, 103, 148, 171

Lefrançais, Gustave, 38, 66, 71, 76,124–5, 128, 135

Legentil, Alexandre, 171Lemel, Nathalie, 145, 150Lenin, Vladimir, 112, 184Léo, André (Léodile Champseix),

145, 149, 150Lidsky, Paul, 173Limousin, Charles, 14Lisbonne, Maxime, 175Lissagaray, Prosper, 22, 75, 79, 91,

97, 101, 112, 134Lockroy, Edouard, 81, 107Longuet, Charles, 118, 124, 125, 141Lorcin, Patricia, 95Louis XVI, 85, 130, 169Louis-Philippe, 3, 6, 44, 61, 64, 167,

176Lullier, Charles Ernest, 64, 66,

194n.4Lyon, 3, 112

declaration of Commune, 74municipal autonomy in 1870,

38–9, 40–1

MacMahon, Marshal de, 78, 94, 95,97, 106, 138, 169, 170–1,198n.86

Malardier, Pierre, 102Malet, Edward, 87Malon, Benoît, 22, 65, 79, 112, 121,

123, 124, 130, 149, 152Manet, Edouard, 173, 209n.29Marat, Jean-Paul, 23, 123Marcel, Étienne, 34Marianne, allegory of the republic,

177, 178, 180, 182Marie, Pierre, 23Marseille, 191n.13

Commune, 78, 103municipal autonomy in 1870,

38–39, 40–41Marx, Eleanor, 112

222 INDEX

Marx, Karl, 46, 111, 115, 119, 124,125, 150

Marxist interpretation, 113, 121Mason, Edward S., 113, 120Matsuda, Matt, 170Maury, Émile, 79Mendès, Catulle, 68Mexico, 21, 88, 95Michel, Louise, 64, 65, 103, 104, 120,

145, 146–8, 149, 150, 205n.7Millière, Jean-Baptiste, 32, 65, 80–1,

97Minck, Paule, 145Miot, Jules, 139Mirabeau, comte de, 123Moissonnier, Maurice, 41Molinari, Gustave de, 52Monet, Claude, 175monts-de-piétés, 59, 137–8Moreau, Edouard, 65, 194n.7Murat, André, 130Murger, Henri, 148

Napoléon I, 167Napoléon III (a.k.a., Louis-

Napoléon), 7, 8, 10, 13, 14, 20,21, 22, 24, 26, 27, 29, 30, 34, 38,55, 92, 111, 122, 125, 130, 138,145, 147, 167, 180

Napoléonic Code (1804), 143National Assembly, 56

growing tensions with Paris, 58–60hostility towards Paris, 67response to coniliation efforts, 83

National Guard (see also: fédérés;Central Committee of NationalGuard), 33–4, 38, 45, 53

neo-classical art, 162New Caledonia

deportations to, 103–4, 148, 194n.4, 204n.72

Kanaks, 104, 148Newman, Edgar Leon, 3Noir, Victor, 22, 24, 77Nord, Philip, 83, 114

Opportunists, 183Ostyn, Charles, 141

Parisadministration during Franco-

Prussian War, 34–8administrative history, 35–6conflict with provinces, 55–6, 57Haussmannization, 9–12, 116political culture, 3reaction to war against Versailles,

84and revolution, 2, 4, 5, 18, 74

Paris, Commune,administration of Paris, 126,

132–4art, preservation of, 169–71artists’ responses towards, 173,

174–5and caricatural record, 176–82commissions, creation of, 72conciliation, attempts at, 80–3,

114, 173cultural legacy of, 185–7as cultural revolution, 118–19declaration of, 69–71decrees on:

housing, 137mont-de-piété, 137–8National Guard, 137salaries, 138, 151–2, 204n.81,

204n.82, 204n.83worker cooperatives, 138, 152–3

demands for during Franco-Prussian War, 36–8

Education Commission, 131, 138, 154, 165, 166

elections to, 7executive authority, 139Executive Commission, 139first acts of, 71–2in French history, 85, 98, 106–7,

108, 109, 129, 142, 175, 183–4General Security Commission,

122, 129, 134global legacy of, 184–5historical connotations of, 36–7inspirations for, 7interpretations of, 107–8, 110–19Labor Commission, 124, 138, 152,

154

INDEX 223

Paris, Commune – continuedlegislative record of, 136–9and literature, 174mandate and jurisdiction, 71, 128,

136medical services and health care

during, 132–3military leadership of, 76–7, 83,

84, 86and national memory, 169–71,

175police and fire services, 133–4postal service during, 132Prefecture of Police, 122, 134provinces, appeal to, 74–5, 127provincial communes, 72–5provincial responses to, 79–80,

88Prussian responses to, 82, 87–8and public education, 130–1, 151and reconquest of public space,

130, 174–5republican response to, 80and restructuring political

authority, 126–8and revolutionary regeneration,

126–32, 166–71and secularism, 126, 128–31, 133,

136Subsistence Commission, 132Versaillais characterization of, 78visual depictions of, 172–3war against, 75–9, 83–6, 198n.70women, legislation effecting,

150–4, 207n.46women’s participation in, 146–50,

154–5, 157–61Party of Conciliation, 114Père Lachaise cemetery, 77, 183pétroleuses, 100, 158–9, 160, 179,

180, 181, 182Picard, Ernest, 31, 44, 64Pilotell, Georges, 198n.80Pindy, Jean-Louis, 158Pius IX, 123Pottier, Eugène, 125, 140, 183prostitutes, 146, 152, 153–4,

206n.23, 206n.30, 207n.47

Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph, 12–14, 15,71, 121, 122, 124, 133, 141, 144,145, 163, 165, 189n.11

Prussia, 26, 82 (see also ParisCommune, response toCommune)

Przyblyski, Jeannene, 172Pyat, Félix, 20, 43, 57, 76, 123–4,

140, 166, 169, 203n.46

Quinet, Edgar, 68, 80

Radical Party, 114Ranvier, Gabriel, 129, 191n.12Raspail, François, 24, 107, 183Rastoul, Paul 141Renoir, Auguste, 122, 173, 175Republican Alliance of

Departments, 81Republican Union for the Rights of

Paris, 81republicanism, 2, 31, 190n.8

and Communards, 119–26, 136, 137

divided over armistice, 55divisions within during Second

Empire, 23–4, 28interpretation of Commune, 113,

114, 184in provinces, 72, 73during Second Empire, 16–20,

21–2, 25and workers, 4, 5, 6

revolutionand art, 162–3, 165and bourgeoisie, 2, 4, 5definition, 1forms of popular protest, 1–2mentalité, 2regeneration, 2, 121, 126, 165 theatricality of, 166–7, 186–7and workers, 3, 5, 6

Rigault, Raoul, 64, 92, 97, 118, 120,122, 123, 129, 134, 140

Rimbaud, Arthur, 210n.35, 211n.43

Robespierre, Maximilien, 6, 18, 19,23, 162

224 INDEX

Rochefort, Henri, 21, 24, 32, 44, 45,57, 59, 104

Rococo, 162Ross, Kristin, 119Rossel, Louis Nathaniel, 83, 84, 85,

89, 103Rothschild, Baron de, 34, 65Rougerie, Jacques, 36, 64, 97–8, 103,

114, 115, 118Russian Revolution, 112

Sacre-Cœur Cathedral, 97, 106, 171Saint-Just, Louis, 23Saint-Simonianism, 143–4Saint-Yenne, La Font de, 162Salon des refusés, 165salons,

artistic, 162, 163, 165, 169Sánchez, Gonzalo, 163, 164Sand, George, 174sans-culottes, 3, 23, 115Sapia, Théodore, 54, 92Scheurer-Kestuer, Auguste, 107Schneider, Eugène, 24, 63Schoelcher, Victor, 81, 107Second Empire,

class conflict, 9, 11, 15, 24–5, 27, 63

economic successes, 8–9fall of, 30–1liberalism, 20

resistance to, 8reversals, 20–1revolutionary republicanism

during, 25–6, 27, 120Serman, William, 102, 114, 141Shoshtakovich, Dmitri, 185siege of Paris, 37, 47–54

bombardment of Paris, 52class differences during, 47communications during, 47entertainment during, 51–2

food, 48–50, 192n.36, 192n.40,192n.41, 192n.44, 192n.45,193n.46, 193n.47

mortality, morbidity, 51weather, 50–51women’s roles during, 145–6, 157

Simon, Jules, 31, 145, 163, 167, 176situationist movement, 187social realism, 163Socialist Party (Parti Ouvrier

Français), 142socialism,

and Commune, 111, 113, 114, 118, 121, 126, 135, 195n.18, 200n.4, 201n.7

in provinces, 72, 73Society for the Rights of Women,

149Spang, Rebecca, 50Sue, Eugène, 128

Taine, Hippolyte, 160Taithe, Bertrand, 46, 94, 114, 121,

154Tamisier, General, 45Tardi, Jacques, 186theatres,

during Commune, 166Thiers, Adolphe, 44, 56, 58, 59, 60,

61, 64, 68, 69, 75, 77, 78, 81, 82,83, 88, 91, 133, 147, 176, 180

demolition of house, 85–6, 165, 169

hostility towards Paris, 89refusal to negotiate with Paris, 66,

92Third Republic, 18431 October 1870, insurrection of,

45–6, 124Thomas, Edith, 152Thomas, General Clément, 62, 103,

148, 171Tillier, Bertrand, 172Tirard, Pierre, 71Tolain, Henri, 14, 81Tombs, Robert, 78, 88, 95, 114Tours Delegation, 39–40, 41–42Treillard, Camille, 133trials, 100–103, 148, 159Tridon, Gustave, 17, 18, 76, 129,

141Trochu, General Jules, 32, 42, 43,

44, 45, 46, 49, 56, 145, 176Trotsky, Leon, 112

INDEX 225

22 January 1871, insurrection of,53–4, 92, 147

utopian socialism, 131–2and women, 143–4

Vaillant, Edouard, 76, 124, 125, 131,165, 166

Valentin, General, 93Vallès, Jules, 22, 71, 74, 92, 118, 141,

174Varlin, Eugène, 15, 22, 25, 58, 63,

97, 123, 130, 145, 150, 171,205n.7

Vautrin, Jean, 186Vendôme Column,

toppling of, 86, 167–71Verdure, Augustin, 153Verdure, Marie, 153Vermersch, Eugène, 22Vermorel, Auguste, 122–3, 125, 140,

141Versailles

atrocities committed by army of, 89–98, 158, 159

bourgeois departure to, 66

entry of army into Paris, 83government moves to, 64loyalty of army, 77–8size of army, 83

Vésinier, Pierre, 128vésuviennes, 157Vigilance Committees, 63, 69

Eighteenth Arrondissement Vigilance Committee, 146, 147, 149, 205n.7

Vildieu, Abbé, 94Villeboisnet, Espivent de la, 78, 103,

197n.41, 199n.103Vinoy, General Joseph, 60, 61, 90,

93, 95Voltaire, 166, 167

Warner, Marina, 178Washburne, E. B., 87Watkins, Peter, 185–6William I, King of Prussia, 30Women’s Union for the Defense of

Paris and Care for theWounded, 150, 152, 159

Zola, Émile, 174, 210n.36

226 INDEX

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