The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-71

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE FALL OF PARIS

Sir Alistair Home was born in London in 1925, and has spent much of his life abroad, including periods at schools in the United States and Switzerland. He served with the R.A.F. in Canada in 1943 and ended his war service with the rank of Captain in the Coldstream Guards attached to MI5 in the Middle East. He then went up to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he read English Literature and played international ice-hockey. After leaving Cambridge, Sir Alistair concentrated on writing: he spent three years in Germany as correspondent for the
Daily Telegraph
and speaks fluent French and German. His books include
Back into Power
(1955);
The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916
(Hawthornden Prize, 1963);
The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870–71
(1965);
To Lose A Battle: France 1940
(1969);
Small Earthquake in Chile
(1972, paperback reissued 1999);
A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954–62
won both the
Yorkshire Post
Book of the Year Prize and the Wolfson History Award in 1978 (revised paperback edition 2006). His other publications include
The French Army and Politics 1870–1970
(1984), which was awarded the Enid Macleod Prize in 1985,
Harold Macmillan, Volumes I and II
(1988–91),
A Bundle from Britain
(1993), a memoir about the USA and World War II;
The Lonely Leader: Monty 1944–1945
(1996);
Seven Ages of Paris: Portrait of a City
(2003);
Friend or Foe: A History of France
(2004) and
The Age of Napoleon
(2004). In 1969 he founded a Research Fellowship for young historians at St Antony’s College, Oxford. In 1992 he was awarded the CBE; in 1993 he received the French Légion d’Honneur for his work on French history and his Litt.D. from Cambridge University. He was knighted in 2003. He is currently working on an authorised biography of Henry Kissinger, as well as a second volume of his own memoirs.

A
LISTAIR
H
ORNE

THE FALL OF PARIS

THE SIEGE AND THE COMMUNE 1870–71

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published by Macmillan 1965

Revised edition first published by Papermac 1990

Published in Penguin Books 2007

3

Copyright © Alistair Horne, 1965, 1990

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-193917-9

For CAMILLA

‘… Paris goes her own way. France, irritated, is forced to follow; later she calms down and applauds; it is one of the forms of our national life. A coach passes flying a flag; it comes from Paris. The flag is no longer a flag, it is a flame, and the whole trail of human gunpowder catches fire behind it.

To will always, this is the fact about Paris. You think she sleeps, no, she wills. The permanent will of Paris—it is of this that transitory governments are not enough aware. Paris is always in a state of premeditation…. The clouds pass across her gaze. One fine day, there it is. Paris decrees an event. France, abruptly summoned, obeys….

This smouldering between Paris the centre and France the orbit, this struggle which resembles a swaying of the forces of gravity, this alternating between resistance and adherence, these bursts of temper of the nation against the city followed by acquiescence, all indicate clearly that Paris, this head, is more than the head of a people. The movement is French, the impulsion is Parisian….’

From the Introduction by Victor Hugo to the
Paris Guide
, 1867.

Contents

List of Illustrations

List of Maps

Foreword

Preface

PART ONE
THE SIEGE

CHAPTER

1 The Greatest Show on Earth

2 Empire in Decline

3 The Disastrous Six Weeks

4 Paris Prepares

5 The Investment

6 Trouble on the Left

7 The Triple Disaster

8 A Touch of Verne

9 ‘Le Plan’

10 The Great Sortie

11 The Outsiders Within

12 Hunger

13 Over the Hill

14 Paris Bombarded

15 Breaking-Point

PART TWO
THE COMMUNE

16 The Uneasy Interlude

17 Guns of Montmartre

18 The Commune Takes Over

19 The Red Spectre

20 Monsieur Thiers Declares War

21 Besieged Again

22 Return of the Jacobins

23 ‘Floreal 79’

24 ‘La Semaine Sanglante’—I

25 ‘La Semaine Sanglante’—II

26 ‘Let us kill no more’

27 Aftermath

Bibliography

Reference Notes

Index

List of Illustrations

Louis-Napoleon, 1871
;
General Trochu
;
General Ducrot
;
Léon Gambetta

Cattle and sheep on the Bois de Boulogne just before the Siege
;
The Crown Prince of Prussia views Paris from the heights of Châtillon

‘How one could have used the balloons to surprise the enemy’
;
‘My passport? Here it is!’

Félix Pyat
;
Victor Hugo
;
Gustave Flourens
;
Henri de Rochefort

‘
Garde nationale sédentaire
’
;
‘National Guard Officer and
cantinière
’
;
‘No news!’

‘The queue for the rat meat’
;
Alan Herbert’s hen, ‘Una’
Edwin Child in National Guard uniform
;
Child’s ‘identity card’
;
Child’s bread ration card

The lynching of Vincenzoni, February 1871
;
The revictualling of Paris: distribution of the English food

Elihu Wasburne
;
Adolphe Thiers
;
Edmond de Goncourt
;
Raoul Rigualt

Charles Delescluze
;
Louis Rossel
;
Théophile Ferré
;
Louise Michel

Communard proclamation announcing the Versaillais entry into Paris

‘La Semaine Sanglante’

‘The Follies of the Commune’

‘Execution of the trumpeter, during the Commune’
;

‘In all his glory’

The Tuileries Palace, before the war
;
The Tuileries Palace June 1871
;
The Hôtel de Ville June 1871

‘Appalled by her legacy’

List of Maps

MAP

1 The Great Sortie

2 Paris: south-west

3 Paris: north-west

4 Paris: south-east

5 Paris: north-west

Foreword

DURING the crisis of June 1940, the French Government led by Paul Reynaud, having abandoned Paris and making its uneasy way towards Tours and Bordeaux, left strict instructions with the Prefect of Police in Paris, Roger Langeron: he was to stay in the city, along with his whole force of
agents de ville
, in order to forestall the possibility of a Communist
coup
in the absence of the Government. They were to await the arrival of the German military command so as to ensure that no barricades went up in Clichy, Belleville, and the eastern and south-eastern suburbs. Of course there was no hint of a
coup
, and, at the time, the French Communist Party was largely leaderless and in full disarray. Monsieur Langeron contacted the German authorities as soon as they arrived, assuring them that the Paris police force of 15,000 was at their disposal. Order was preserved

Of course M. Langeron and his superiors had learnt from past experience and were well aware of the terrible weight of history, the compelling pull of historical memory and precedent in the apparently endless conflict of Paris versus France, in that order. May 1795, the collapse of the Prairial Days and the occupation of the Fauborg Saint-Antoine by the Army had looked after Paris for a time: thirty-five years, something of a record, as it would turn out. The switch-overs of 1814 and 1815 had been effected painlessly, thanks to the good sense of the Provisional Government in insisting on the rapid deployment within the city of the Allied troops. Paris had remained quiet. Louis XVIII had even set up his Court within a city in which his brother had been murdered: both a measure of his own confidence, reinforced, it should be added, by the presence of a substantial Royal Guard, and a striking example of his desire to reign as
le Roi de la Concorde
and the King of Forgiveness. He had been remarkably successful in both objectives. But he had been old and ill, and his foolish successor had not appeared to have forgotten or forgiven anything.