The Paris Commune (French: Commune de Paris, pronounced [kɔ.myn də pa.ʁi]) was a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris on 18 March 1871 and controlled parts of the city until 28 May 1871. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, the French National Guard had defended Paris, and working class radicalism grew among its soldiers. Following the establishment of the French Third Republic in September 1870 (under French chief-executive Adolphe Thiers from February 1871) and the complete defeat of the French Army by the Germans by March 1871, soldiers of the National Guard seized control of the city on 18 March. The Communards killed two French Army generals and refused to accept the authority of the Third Republic; instead, the radicals set about establishing their own independent government.
The Commune governed Paris for two months, promoting policies that tended toward a progressive, anti-religious system, which was an eclectic mix of many 19th-century schools of thought. These policies included the separation of church and state, self-policing, the remission of rent, the abolition of child labor, and the right of employees to take over an enterprise deserted by its owner. The Commune closed all Catholic churches and schools in Paris. Feminism, communism, old-style social democracy (a mix of reformism and revolutionism) and anarchist/Proudhonist currents, among other socialist schools of thought, played important roles in the Commune.
The various Communards had little more than two months to achieve their respective goals before the national French Army suppressed the Commune during the semaine sanglante ("bloody week") beginning on 21 May 1871. The national forces still loyal to the Third Republic government either killed in battle or executed an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Communards, though one unconfirmed estimate from 1876 put the toll as high as 20,000. In its final days the Commune executed the Archbishop of Paris, Georges Darboy, and about one hundred hostages, mostly gendarmes and priests.
National army forces took 43,522 Communards as prisoners, including 1,054 women. More than half of the prisoners had not fought, and were released immediately. The Third Republic tried around 15,000 in court, 13,500 of whom were found guilty; 95 were sentenced to death, 251 to forced labor, and 1,169 to deportation (mostly to New Caledonia). Many other Commune supporters, including several of the leaders, fled abroad, mostly to England, Belgium or Switzerland. All the surviving prisoners and exiles received pardons in 1880 and could return home, where some resumed political careers.
Debates over the policies and result of the Commune had significant influence on the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who described the régime in Paris as the first example of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Engels wrote: "Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat."
Prelude
On 2 September 1870, France was defeated in the Battle of Sedan, and Emperor Napoleon III was captured. When the news reached Paris the next day, shocked and angry crowds came out into the streets. Empress Eugénie, the acting Regent, fled the city, and the government of the Second Empire swiftly collapsed. Republican and radical deputies of the National Assembly proclaimed the new French Republic, and formed a Government of National Defence with the intention of continuing the war. The Prussian army marched swiftly toward Paris.
Demographics
In 1871, France was deeply divided between the large rural, Catholic, and conservative population of the French countryside and the more republican and radical cities of Paris, Marseille, Lyon and a few others. In the first round of the 1869 parliamentary elections held under the French Empire, 4,438,000 had voted for the Bonapartist candidates supporting Napoleon III, while 3,350,000 had voted for the republicans or the legitimists. In Paris, however, the republican candidates dominated, winning 234,000 votes against 77,000 for the Bonapartists.
Of the two million people in Paris in 1869, according to the official census, there were about 500,000 industrial workers, or fifteen percent of all the industrial workers in France, plus another 300,000–400,000 workers in other enterprises. Only about 40,000 were employed in factories and large enterprises; most were employed in small industries in textiles, furniture, and construction. There were also 115,000 servants and 45,000 concierges. In addition to the native French population, there were about 100,000 immigrant workers and political refugees, the largest numbers being from Italy and Poland.
During the war and the Siege of Paris, various members of the middle and upper classes departed the city. At the same time, there was an influx of refugees from parts of France occupied by the Germans. The working class and immigrants suffered the most from the lack of industrial activity due to the war and the siege; they formed the bedrock of the Commune's popular support.
Radicalisation of the Paris workers
The Commune resulted in part from growing discontent among the Paris workers. This discontent can be traced to the first worker uprisings, the Canut revolts (a canut was a Lyonnais silk worker, often working on Jacquard looms), in Lyon and Paris in the 1830s. Many Parisians, especially workers and the lower-middle classes, supported a democratic republic. A specific demand was that Paris should be self-governing with its own elected council, something enjoyed by smaller French towns but denied to Paris by a national government wary of the capital's unruly populace.
Socialist movements, such as the First International, had been growing in influence; hundreds of societies across France were affiliated to it. In early 1867, Parisian employers of bronze-workers attempted to de-unionise their workers. This was defeated by a strike organised by the International. Later in 1867, a public demonstration in Paris was answered by the dissolution of its executive committee and the leadership being fined. Tensions escalated: Internationalists elected a new committee and put forth a more radical programme, the authorities imprisoned their leaders, and a more revolutionary perspective was taken to the International's 1868 Brussels Congress. The International had considerable influence even among unaffiliated French workers, particularly in Paris and the large cities.
The killing of journalist Victor Noir incensed Parisians, and the arrests of journalists critical of the Emperor did nothing to quiet the city. The German military attaché, Alfred von Waldersee, wrote in his diary in February:
"Every night, isolated barricades were thrown up, constructed for the most part out of disused conveyances, especially omnibuses, a few shots were fired at random, and scenes of disorder were taken part in by a few hundreds of persons, mostly quite young".
He noted, however, that "working-men, as a class, took no part in the proceedings." A coup was attempted in early 1870, but tensions eased significantly after the plebiscite in May. The war with Prussia, initiated by Napoleon III in July, was initially met with patriotic fervour.
Radicals and revolutionaries
Paris was the traditional home of French radical movements. Revolutionaries had gone into the streets and overthrown their governments during the popular uprisings of July 1830 and the French Revolution of 1848, as well as subsequent failed attempts such as the 1832 June Rebellion and the uprising of June 1848.
Of the radical and revolutionary groups in Paris at the time of the Commune, the most conservative were the "radical republicans". This group included the young doctor and future prime minister Georges Clemenceau, who was a member of the National Assembly and Mayor of the 18th arrondissement. Clemenceau tried to negotiate a compromise between the Commune and the government, but neither side trusted him. He was considered extremely radical by the provincial deputies of rural France, but too moderate by the leaders of the Commune.
The most extreme revolutionaries in Paris were the followers of Louis Auguste Blanqui, a charismatic professional revolutionary who had spent most of his adult life in prison. He had about a thousand followers, many of them armed and organized into cells of ten persons each. Each cell operated independently and was unaware of the members of the other groups, communicating only with their leaders by code. Blanqui had written a manual on revolution, Instructions for an Armed Uprising, to give guidance to his followers. Though their numbers were small, the Blanquists provided many of the most disciplined soldiers and several of the senior leaders of the Commune.
Defenders of Paris
By 20 September 1870, the Imperial German Army had surrounded Paris and was camped just 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) from the French front lines. The regular French Army in Paris, under General Trochu's command, had only 50,000 professional soldiers of the line; the majority of the French first-line soldiers were prisoners of war, or trapped in Metz, surrounded by the Germans. The regulars were thus supported by around 5,000 firemen, 3,000 gendarmes, and 15,000 sailors. The regulars were also supported by the Garde Mobile, new recruits with little training or experience. 17,000 of them were Parisian, and 73,000 from the provinces. These included twenty battalions of men from Brittany, who spoke little French.
The largest armed force in Paris was the National Guard, numbering about 300,000 men. They also had very little training or experience. They were organised by neighbourhoods. Those from the upper- and middle-class arrondissements tended to support the national government, while those from the working-class neighbourhoods were far more radical and politicised. Guardsmen from many units were known for their lack of discipline; some units refused to wear uniforms, often refused to obey orders without discussing them, and demanded the right to elect their own officers. The members of the National Guard from working-class neighbourhoods became the main armed force of the Commune.
Siege of Paris; first demonstrations
As the Germans surrounded the city, radical groups saw that the Government of National Defence had few soldiers to defend itself, and launched the first demonstrations against it. On 19 September, National Guard units from the main working-class neighbourhoods—Belleville, Ménilmontant, La Villette, Montrouge, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and the Faubourg du Temple—marched to the centre of the city and demanded that a new government, a Commune, be elected. They were met by regular army units loyal to the Government of National Defence, and the demonstrators eventually dispersed peacefully. On 5 October, 5,000 protesters marched from Belleville to the Hôtel de Ville, demanding immediate municipal elections and rifles. On 8 October, several thousand soldiers from the National Guard, led by Eugène Varlin of the First International, marched to the centre chanting 'Long Live the Commune!", but they also dispersed without incident.
Later in October, General Louis-Jules Trochu launched a series of armed attacks to break the German siege, with heavy losses and no success. The telegraph line connecting Paris with the rest of France had been cut by the Germans on 27 September. On 6 October, Defense Minister Léon Gambetta departed the city by balloon to try to organise national resistance against the Germans.
Uprising of 31 October
On 28 October, the news arrived in Paris that the 160,000 soldiers of the French army at Metz, which had been surrounded by the Germans since August, had surrendered. The news arrived the same day of the failure of another attempt by the French army to break the siege of Paris at Le Bourget, with heavy losses. On 31 October, the leaders of the main revolutionary groups in Paris, including Blanqui, Félix Pyat and Louis Charles Delescluze, called new demonstrations at the Hôtel de Ville against General Trochu and the government. Fifteen thousand demonstrators, some of them armed, gathered in front of the Hôtel de Ville in pouring rain, calling for the resignation of Trochu and the proclamation of a commune. Shots were fired from the Hôtel de Ville, one narrowly missing Trochu, and the demonstrators crowded into the building, demanding the creation of a new government, and making lists of its proposed members.
Blanqui, the leader of the most radical faction, established his own headquarters at the nearby Prefecture of the Seine, issuing orders and decrees to his followers, intent upon establishing his own government. While the formation of the new government was taking place inside the Hôtel de Ville, however, units of the National Guard and the Garde Mobile loyal to General Trochu arrived and recaptured the building without violence. By three o'clock, the demonstrators had been given safe passage and left, and the brief uprising was over.
On 3 November, city authorities organized a plebiscite of Parisian voters, asking if they had confidence in the Government of National Defence. "Yes" votes totalled 557,996, while 62,638 voted "no". Two days later, municipal councils in each of the twenty arrondissements of Paris voted to elect mayors; five councils elected radical opposition candidates, including Delescluze and a young Montmartrean doctor, Georges Clemenceau.
Negotiations with the Germans; continued war
In September and October, Adolphe Thiers, the leader of the National Assembly conservatives, had toured Europe, consulting with the foreign ministers of Britain, Russia, and Austria-Hungary, and found that none of them were willing to support France against the Germans. He reported to the government that there was no alternative to negotiating an armistice. He travelled to German-occupied Tours and met with Otto von Bismarck on 1 November. The German Chancellor demanded the cession of all of Alsace, parts of Lorraine, and enormous reparations. The Government of National Defence decided to continue the war and raise a new army to fight the Germans. The newly organized French armies won a single victory at Coulmiers on 10 November, but an attempt by General Auguste-Alexandre Ducrot on 29 November at Villiers to break out of Paris was defeated with a loss of 4,000 soldiers, compared with 1,700 German casualties.