Massacre (12 page)

About twelve people were killed and a number of others were injured in the melee. Saisset’s disorganisation and lack of charisma, as well as rumours that key Orléanists hoped the demonstrations would constitute a first step towards a restoration, helped bring the bloody incident to a close. Most Parisians rejected any possible return to a monarchy. But rather than putting an end to the counter-revolution, the deaths only solidified strong anti-Communard sentiment among conservatives remaining in Paris.

In the meantime, the National Assembly refused to put the name ‘Republic’ on its proclamations. The government immediately adopted a discourse of denigration, with descriptions of Parisians as ‘wretches’, ‘brigands’, ‘pillagers’ and ‘bandits’. In mid-April, the Assembly reacted to the claims of Paris with a new law on municipalities, stating that in the future the capital would still have no mayor, but instead would be under the direct administration of the prefect of the Seine. Municipal councilmen would be named for five-year terms, responsible only to the central government that appointed them.
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Paris’s insurrection stirred some provincial cities. Crowds in Lyon had proclaimed the Republic in August 1870 before this had occurred in Paris on 4 September, also reflecting political radicalisation during the last years of the empire. Demonstrators called for continued war against Prussia, municipal autonomy and social reform. On 22 March, representatives from Lyon, Bordeaux, Rouen, Marseille and several other cities met with the Central Committee to listen to an account of the Parisian movement for rights. That day, insurgents seized power in Lyon. Marseille, Narbonne, Saint-Étienne, a centre of manufacturing, and the small industrial town of Le Creusot rose up on 24 March, followed by Limoges in early April. All proclaimed short-lived ‘communes’. Benoît Malon and militant socialist, feminist and novelist André Léo penned ‘Appeal to the Workers of the Countryside’, 110,000 copies of which reached the provinces. ‘Brothers,’ went the text, ‘they are fooling you. Our interests are the same!’
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Some prominent moderate Parisian republicans, such as former deputy Édouard Lockroy, who was a member of the municipal council and had represented the
département
of the Seine in the National Assembly, and Jean-Baptiste Millière, another deputy, joined Clemenceau in attempting to achieve a compromise with Thiers. However on 23 March, Thiers turned away without compromise the delegation of mayors and deputies who represented Paris. He was playing for time, saying ‘Once already I have pulled France drowning out of a revolution; I am not young enough to do it a second time.’
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Three groups, the Ligue d’Union républicaine des droits de Paris, Union nationale du commerce et de l’industrie, and the Freemasons, still pressed for conciliation, each hoping that recognition by the Versailles government of the Republic’s existence and an affirmation of the rights of Paris would lead to a negotiated settlement. Thiers insisted that because the Commune had no legitimacy, there was nothing to negotiate. To the Union nationale du commerce et de l’industrie, claiming to represent 6,000 merchants and manufacturers, Thiers demanded that the Communards give up their arms, in other words, surrender.
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The term ‘Commune’ had in these days several meanings. The Manifesto of the Committee of the Twenty Arrondissements, released several days after events of 18 March, put forward its definition of ‘the Commune … [as] the base of all political states, as the family is the embryo of societies. [The Commune] should be autonomous … [with] its sovereignty complete, just like the individual in the middle of the city.’ With an eye towards economic development and the guarantee of security, Paris should ‘federate itself with all other communes or associations of communes that make up the nation … It is this idea … which has just triumphed on 18 March 1871.’
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However, much more than municipal autonomy was at stake. Many Parisians believed that the assertion of municipal rights represented the first step towards achieving a ‘democratic and social Republic’. The manifesto asked for the organisation of ‘a system of communal insurance against all social risks’, including unemployment and bankruptcy, as well as a systematic investigation into all possibilities for procuring capital and credit for individual workers in order to end endless ‘pauperism’.
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Thus while some militants limited their demands to municipal rights, others demanded meaningful social reforms.

On 23 March, the Paris branch of the International Workingmen’s Association threw its support behind the Commune. Its proclamation,
written by Albert Theisz, a bronze-worker, optimistically asserted that ‘the independence of the Commune will mean a freely discussed contract which will put an end to class conflict and bring about social equality’. It also echoed prevalent republican demands put forth during the Second Empire: obligatory, free and secular education; the right of assembly and to form associations; and municipal authority over the armed forces, police and public health. As the socialist printer Eugène Varlin had put it, ‘political revolution and social reforms are linked, and cannot go one without the other’.
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The Protestant minister Élie Reclus captured the hope of many Communards that social reforms could bring them better lives: ‘Lazare, always starving, is no longer content with the crumbs that fall from the table of the rich, and now he has dared ask for his part of the feast.’ Like his anarchist geographer brother Élisée, Reclus believed that the future of humanity lay in a close connection with nature, without a state. He believed that if workers could organise themselves into associations of producers, they would eventually be able to emancipate themselves from bosses. Yet, although some 300,000 Parisians were now without work in the wake of the war and siege, various associations of workers bravely started up. At the Council of Federated Trade Unions an orator asked, ‘What difference does it make to me that we are victorious over Versailles, if we don’t find the answer to the social problem, if the worker remains in the same conditions?’
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Louis Barron, the son of a washerwoman, a former soldier, and writer, wanted ‘a social revolution’ so long awaited by many in his generation. He described the world of work from which the Commune took its strength:

Hundreds of thousands of Parisian workers would look to the Commune to bring out reforms that would improve their lives.

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Municipal elections, postponed for four days while some of the mayors unsuccessfully sought a negotiated settlement with Versailles, were held on 26 March. The goal was to elect the governing council of the Commune. Rigault stood as a candidate in the generally reactionary Eighth Arrondissement, which included the Church of the Madeleine, where some of the wealthiest families married and held baptisms, and the Champs-Elysées.
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He assumed that his reputation and newly acquired status as head of the police could win him the election even in a reactionary district, and it did.

The elections reflected the increasingly divided social and political geography of Paris. They were weighted by population, with the plebeian Eleventh Arrondissement – the most populous, with almost 150,000 residents – and the Eighteenth each electing seven people, while the Sixteenth – the smallest with 42,000 residents – would have but two representatives. Only about half of men voted, in part due to the fact that thousands had fled the city, but also because many were unfamiliar with the candidates or were dissuaded by the fact that Thiers had called for people not to vote.

The candidates of the revolutionary Left did well in the plebeian
arrondissements
of eastern and above all north-eastern Paris, where Blanquists, members of the International, and Jacobins were a majority. In Belleville, the anti-clerical national guardsman Gabriel Ranvier, the son of a shoemaker and a clerk, was re-elected mayor of the Twentieth Arrondissement, where he became known as ‘the Christ of Belleville’. He was known for drinking to political change with syrup and not wine, was a frequent speaker in the warehouses of
quartiers populaires
, and had spent time in prison for his role in the attempted insurrection of 31 October. Like others of similar background, he was determined that Paris should lead the way in the struggle for a just republic.
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Those now wielding authority in the Commune were men with little or no administrative experience, but they stepped together – debating and quarrelling from the beginning – into the unknown. No dominant figure emerged to lead the Commune, and problems of overlapping authority and rivalries persisted. When the Commune issued decrees, it was up to the mayors, deputy mayors, police and national guardsmen in each
arrondissement
to enforce them. Of course, not all local mayors and police were willing supporters of the Commune, which meant that there were limits to the Commune’s effective authority and that it had to rely on officials, policemen and national guardsmen no matter how republican they were.
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The Commune’s first and most pressing task, however, was defending Paris against the Army of Versailles, which was readying for a fight against Communards. Debates raged between ‘realists’ and ‘idealists’, as, much to the chagrin of ‘idealists’, who were eager to establish a just society, ‘realists’ insisted that no real reforms, social or political, could be achieved with determined enemies at the gate. The first decree of the new administrative body of the Commune on 29 March reminded citizens that they were ‘masters of [their] own lives’, warning that ‘criminals’ were ‘fostering a hotbed of monarchist conspiracy at the very gates of the city. They are planning to unleash civil war.’
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On 28 March, the victorious new authority in the French capital officially proclaimed the Paris Commune at the Hôtel de Ville, as drums, bugles and artillery salvos fired into the air from the nearby quay saluted victory over tyranny. The newly elected members of the governmental council of the Commune stood on a platform, while the National Guard marched by a vast, excited crowd. The colour red was everywhere – scarves, belts, cockades, and the flag waving from the Hôtel de Ville. Rigault had trimmed his beard and was shockingly well-dressed, revelling in his status as head of the police. Jules Vallès described the proclamation of the Commune as ‘making up for twenty years of Empire, six months of defeat and betrayals’. The Commune had from the beginning the overwhelming support of most Parisians.
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The Central Committee of the National Guard had announced that with the elections of 26 March it was going to cede power to those elected to the Commune. Yet the very next day the Central Committee began to reorganise, after sixteen of its members had been elected to the Commune. The Central Committee, which continued to hold regular meetings, saw itself as the ‘guardian of the revolution’. It warned Parisians to be wary of those favoured by fortune, because only rarely did they consider ‘the workers as brothers’. Arguably a kind of dual sovereignty existed: the Central Committee of the Federation of the National Guard, which had been formally established on 20 March, and the ‘Commune’, the elected governing body of the Commune proclaimed on 28 March.
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The Commune immediately faced challenges both internal and external. First and most immediate, it required funds to operate. Second, not everyone who supported the Commune agreed on the extent of the transformation in Paris it was to oversee – political divisions would remain. Third, while German forces surrounded the northern and eastern ramparts and forts, Thiers’s army, headquartered at Versailles, held the territory to
the south and west of Paris. The Germans posed no immediate threat, but Thiers’s army was already planning its attack on Paris.

How was the Commune to find the money to pay national guardsmen 1.50 francs a day for their service, as well as the many municipal employees? The Commune also had to find a way to make good on its promise to finance some care for the poor. As in other cities and towns in France, the bulk of municipal revenues came from money collected at the
octrois
(customs barriers) that surrounded Paris. Monies seized at the Hôtel de Ville when the old regime disappeared into the night counted for something. But many more financial resources were required.

The Commune named François Jourde as delegate for Finance. On 19 March Jourde and Eugène Varlin went to the Bank of France to ask politely for a loan of 700,000 francs. This they received. The Commune also received a credit of well over 16 million francs – though it was a paltry sum compared with the 258 million francs credit Versailles received from the Bank of France, making possible the reconstitution of the French army. The Rothschild banking family also loaned money to the Commune.
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The Commune remained attached to legalism and did not confiscate funds in the Bank of France, which it easily could have done, but it did begin to mint its own coins in mid-April.
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For the moment, the Commune’s provisional authority proposed no concrete economic or political programme other than affirming that France was a now a republic. Yet the Commune immediately took important measures in the interests of working- and middle-class Parisians. It forbade the expulsion of renters unable to pay their rent, which reassured those who had been frustrated and angered by the National Assembly’s sudden abolition of the moratorium on rents that had kept people in their homes during the siege. Gustave Flaubert, for one, expressed his indignation as a property owner who wanted rents owed paid immediately. He would not have been happy to hear of the comment by a man who informed his landlord in the Eleventh Arrondissement that ‘the Commune would triumph, and would put renters in the place of landlords’. The Commune reassured businesses by coming up with a compromise in the interest of debtors and creditors, phasing repayments for those in debt over three years, whereas the Versailles government had allowed only three months to pay back money owed. It suspended the sale of items that had been exchanged for cash at the Municipal Pawnshop, measures important to so many Parisians.