Massacre

by John M. Merriman

  23.Gaston Cerfbeer, ‘Une nuit de la semaine sanglante’, Revue Hebdomadaire 25 (23 May 1903), p. 416–23.

  24.Lecaillon, La Commune de Paris, p. 174.

  25.Vizetelly, My Adventures, p. 172; Fournier, Paris en ruines, pp. 96–9; Martine, Souvenirs, p. 241. The Versaillais were convinced that the Communards, on the verge of defeat, planned to destroy Paris, perhaps turning to science to invent new, terrible weapons. A scientific delegation of the Commune met to consider the development of new, bizarre munitions (Fournier, Paris en ruines, pp. 81–8).

  26.Frédéric Fort, Paris brûlé (1871), pp. 15–21; Édith Thomas, Les pétroleuses (1963), pp. 190–3. Yet, article 14 of the Union des Femmes states, ‘Monies that remain will be used … to purchase petrol and arms for the citoyennes fighting on the barricades.’

  27.Gullickson, Unruly Women, pp. 205–9; David Barry, Women and Political Insurgency: France in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Basingstoke, 1996), p. 127; Thomas, Les pétroleuses, pp. 164–6.

  28.Camille Pelletan, La semaine de mai, pp. 111–13; Thomas, Les pétroleuses, pp. 190–3 (quote from Gazette des Tribunaux, 23 September 1871).

  29.Elihu Benjamin Washburne, Franco-German War and Insurrection of the Commune: Correspondence of E. B. Washburne (Washington, DC, 1878), 25 May.

  30.Leighton, Paris Under the Commune, pp. 258–9; Lissagaray, Les huits journées de mai, pp. 171–2; François Jourde, Souvenirs d’un membre de la Commune (1877), p. 104.

  31.Fournier, Paris en ruines, pp. 59, 103.

  32.Serman, La Commune de Paris, p. 503; Edwards, The Paris Commune, pp. 325–7; 8J 3e conseil de guerre 6 dossier 29/8 Théophile Ferré.

  33.8J 4e conseil de guerre 131, dossier 688, reports of 29 July and 17, 19, 23, 26 August 1872; renseignements du commissaire de police, n.d.; Fournier, Paris en ruines, pp. 43, 52–6, 96–9; Martine, Souvenirs, p. 241; Godineau, La Commune de Paris, p. 204; 8J 6 dossier 135 Louise Michel, interrogation 3 December 1871; Gustave Lefrançais, Études sur le mouvement communaliste à Paris, en 1871 (Neuchâtel, 1871), pp. 326–7.

  34.Louis Énault, Paris brûlé par la Commune (1871), pp. 4, 150; papiers Eugène Balleyguier (known as) Eugène Loudun (Fidus), Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris, ms. 1284, 2e cahier, ‘Notes sur la Politique, la litérature, etc. 1870–71’; Fournier, Paris en ruines, pp. 112–13, 118–19, 125; Coquerel, Sous la Commune, pp. 99–100.

  35.Reclus, La Commune de Paris, pp. 354–5, 358–60.

  36.Ibid., p. 356.

  37.Paul Lanjalley and Paul Corriez, Histoire de la révolution du 18 mars (1871), p. 542; Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray, Les huit journées de mai, p. 55, n. 1.

  38.A point made by Tombs, The War Against Paris, pp. 164–5; René Héron de Villefosse, Les graves heures de la Commune (1970), p. 252.

  39.André Zeller, Les hommes de la Commune (1969), pp. 371–2; Pelletan, La semaine de mai, pp. 24–30.

  40.Pelletan, La semaine de mai, p. 35; Serman, La Commune de Paris, p. 517.

  41.Jacquelynn Baas, ‘Edouard Manet and “Civil War”’, Art Journal 45:1 (Spring 1985), pp. 36–42; Philip Nord, The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, MA, 1995), p. 170; Philip Nord, Les Impressionistes et la Politique (2009), pp. 54–6, 67–8. Manet’s sympathies lay, as in 1848, with ordinary people. Like Courbet, Manet turned down the imperial legion d’honneur and his canvas of the execution of ‘Emperor’ Maximilian in Mexico outraged the Emperor and Bonapartists. The Salon des Refusés of 1863 that launched Impressionism stood as a provocative rejection of imperial artistic tastes, patronage and authoritarianism. Manet was a republican who hated ‘that little Thiers’, once saying that he hoped one day the ‘demented old man’ would drop dead at the podium. Like Camille Pissarro, Manet castigated the bloody repression even if he had not originally supported the insurrection and had condemned the execution of Generals Lecomte and Thomas.

  42.Alphonse Vergès Esboeufs, Vicomte d’, La Vérité sur le gouvernement de la Défense nationale, la Commune et les Versaillais (Geneva, 1871), pp. 14–15; Pelletan, La semaine de mai, p. 123.

  43.Jean Allemane, Mémoires d’un Communard (Paris, 1910), p. 113, noted in Edwards, The Paris Commune, p. 331. The devastation is highlighted in Hans and Blanc, Guide à travers les ruines, p. 55.

  44.John Murray, M.D., ‘Four Days in the Ambulances and Hospitals of Paris Under the Commune’, British Medical Journal (January–June 1871), p. 622.

  45.Lissagaray, Les huits journées de mai, pp. 64–5; Martial Senisse, Les carnets d’un fédéré, 1871, ed. J.A. Faucher (1965), p. 139; Henri Ameline, ed., Enquête parlementaire sur l’insurrection du 18 mars, vol. 3 (1872), p. 13.

  46.Jean Allemane, Mémoires d’un Communard (1910), pp. 137–50; Maurice Choury, Bonjour Monsieur Courbet!, pp. 111–13; Gérald Dittmar, Gustave Courbet et la Commune, le politique (Versailles, 2007), pp. 151–2.

  47.Vuillaume, Mes Cahiers rouges au temps de la Commune (1971), pp. 236–8.

  48.Allemane, Mémoires, pp. 161–70, 178–9.

  49.Philippe Riviale. Sur la Commune: Cerises de sang (2003), p. 300.

  50.Roger Gould, ‘Trade Cohesion, Class Unity, and Urban Insurrection: Artisanal Activism in the Paris Commune’, American Journal of Sociology 98:4 (January 1993), pp. 721, 728–9, 735–51; Jacques Rougerie, ‘Autour de quelques livres étrangers. Réflexions sur la citoyenneté populaire en 1871’, in La Commune de 1871: L’événement les hommes et la mémoire, ed. Claude Latta (Saint-Etienne, 2004), esp. pp. 221–9, 233–5. Gould argues that social relations within neighbourhoods, more than solidarities of work and class consciousness (in contrast, he insists, to 1848), was the most important factor in explaining attachment to the Commune and resistance in its name. In his view, this accounts for the overrepresentation of textile, construction and machine workers and the presence of middle-class neighbours and allies among participants in the Commune. Jacques Rougerie contends that Gould ignores the wider sense of linkage and solidarity formed by work and class experience that developed in the late Second Empire.

  51.Barry, Women and Political Insurgency, pp. 123–8, 136–9; Jean-Baptiste Clément, La revanche des Communeux (1886), p. 159.

  52.Sutter-Laumann, Histoire d’un trente sous (1870–1871) (1891), p. 292; Da Costa, Mémoires, pp. 267–9; Edwards, The Paris Commune, p. 321.

  53.Louis Barron, Sous la drapeau rouge (1889), pp. 75–81.

  54.Alistair Horne, The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-71 (1965), p. 443; Reclus, La Commune de Paris, p. 354.

  55.Serman, La Commune de Paris, p. 499.

  56.Georges Jeanneret, Paris pendant la Commune révolutionnaire de 1871 (1871), p. 222.

  57.Albert Hans, Souvenirs d’un volontaire versaillais (1873), pp. 90–1, 97–101; Leighton, Paris Under the Commune, p. 251.

  58.Marquis de Compiègne, ‘Souvenirs d’un Versaillais pendant le second siège de Paris’, Le Correspondant, 10 August 1875.

  59.Jourde, Souvenirs, p. 73.

  60.Martine, Souvenirs, p. 231.

  61.Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray, History of the Paris Commune of 1871 (New York, 1976), pp. 329, 339; Gullickson, Unruly Women, pp. 162–3, from Commissaire, vol. 3, pp. 374–5. Robert Tombs, ‘Les Communeuses’, Sociétés et Représentations (June 1998), p. 55. Tombs argues that the story of a battalion of women is a myth in The Paris Commune, p. 139.

  62.8J 4e conseil de guerre 131, dossier 688. Le Mel would deny entering the pharmacy, insisting that they had enough bandages and medications (reports of 29 July and 17, 19, 23 and 26 August 1872; renseignements du commissaire de police, n.d.).

  63.8J 6 dossier 135; Edith Thomas, Louise Michel (1980), p. 90; Edwards, The Paris Commune, pp. 321–2; Bingham, Recollections, p. 108.

  64.Christiane Demeulenaere-Douyère, ‘Journal de l’entrée des troupes versaillaises dans Paris’, Bulletin de la Société d’histoire de Paris et de l’Ile de France, 108 (1981), pp. 301–3.

  65.Sutter-Laumann, Histoire, pp. 302–10; Lissagara
y, History, p. 360.

  66.Sutter-Laumann, Histoire, pp. 327–52. Alcide was sent as a soldier to Algeria and saved, more or less, by having been wounded during the Prussian siege.

  67.Hans, Souvenirs (1873), pp. 158–9, 172–3; Sutter-Laumann, Histoire, p. 320; de Compiègne, ‘Souvenirs’.

  68.Vinoy, L’armistice, pp. 320–1, 341; Lissagaray, History, p. 357.

  69.8J 6 dossier 554, ‘rapport sur l’affaire’, 31 May 1872; Alistair Horne, The Terrible Year: The Paris Commune, 1871 (London, 2004), p. 129; Edwards, The Paris Commune, pp. 328–9.

  70.Charles Prolès, Les hommes de la révolution de 1871, pp. 114–18; Robert Tombs, ‘Paris and the Rural Hordes: An Exploration of Myth and Reality in the French Civil War of 1871’, The Historical Journal, 29:4 (1986), p. 807.

  71.Élie Reclus, La Commune de Paris, pp. 357–8.

  72.Bergeret, Le 18 mars, pp. 45–8.

  73.Edwards, The Paris Commune, p. 322; Serman, La Commune de Paris, p. 518.

  74.‘Souvenirs d’un habitant de la Porte Saint-Denis, du 21 au 25 mai 1871’, Bibliothèque de l’Hôtel de Ville, ms. 1031.

  75.Edgar Monteil, Souvenirs de la Commune, 1871 (1883), pp. 106–13, 121–42. Monteil was condemned to one year in prison and the loss of civic rights for five more.

  7 Death Comes for the Archbishop

  1.William Serman, La Commune de Paris (1986), pp. 499–500. Moreau was condemned to death at Châtelet and shot.

  2.Ludovic Hans and J.J. Blanc, Guide à travers les ruines (1871), p. 13.

  3.Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray, Les huit journées de mai (1871), pp. 79–83.

  4.Stewart Edwards, ed., The Communards of Paris, 1871 (London, 1973), p. 161.

  5.Paul Martine, Souvenirs d’insurgé. La Commune de 1871 (1971), pp. 233–4; Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray, History of the Paris Commune of 1871 (New York, 1976), p. 348.

  6.Georges Bourgin, La Commune de Paris (1971), p. 97.

  7.Albert Hans, Souvenirs d’un volontaire versaillais (1873), pp. 119–122.

  8.Élie Reclus, La Commune de Paris au jour le jour (2011), pp. 361–2, 365–6.

  9.Ibid., p. 363.

  10.Théophile Gautier, Tableaux de siège de Paris (1881), p. 113; Maurice Garçon, ‘Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris’, Revue de Paris, 12 (December 1955), p. 31.

  11.Georges Jeanneret, Paris pendant la Commune révolutionnaire de 1871 (1871), p. 267; Ernest A. Vizetelly, My Adventures in the Commune (n.p., 2009 [1914]), p. 165.

  12.Maxime Vuillaume, Mes Cahiers rouges au temps de la Commune (1971), pp. 8–10, 300–6.

  13.Hélène Haudebourg, ed., ‘Carnet de guerre d’un Vertarien en 1870 Julien Poirier’, Regards sur Vertou au Fil des Temps 7 (2003), pp. 11–16.

  14.Laure Godineau, La Commune de Paris par ceux qui l’ont vécue (2010), p. 197; Éric Fournier, Paris en ruines: du Paris haussmannien au Paris communard (2008), pp. 157–8; Camille Pelletan, La semaine de mai (1880), pp. 104–5.

  15.Robert Tombs, The War Against Paris 1871 (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 154–5; Serman, La Commune de Paris, p. 517; Stewart Edwards, The Paris Commune 1871 (Newton Abbot, 1971), p. 331.

  16.Jean Baronnet, ed., Enquête sur la Commune de Paris (La Revue Blanche) (2011), pp. 169–70.

  17.Reclus, La Commune de Paris, p. 360.

  18.Martine, Souvenirs, pp. 245–6; 8J 3e conseil de guerre 6 dossier 29/8 Théophile Ferré, tribunal report 12 July.

  19.Martine, Souvenirs, p. 250; Maurice Choury, La Commune au Quartier latin (1971), p. 286.

  20.Lissagaray, Les huits journées de mai, pp. 88–9; Luc Willette, Raoul Rigault, 25 ans, communard, chef de police (1984), pp. 158–61.

  21.Henri Dabot, Griffonnages quotidiens d’un bourgeois du quartier latin, du 14 mai 1869 au 2 décembre 1871 (1895), pp. 228–9.

  22.Jean Allemane, Mémoires d’un Communard (1910), pp. 151–7; Edwards, The Paris Commune 1871, pp. 331–2.

  23.Jeanneret, Paris pendant la Commune, pp. 268, 318–21.

  24.Bernard Taithe, Citizenship and Wars: France in Turmoil, 1870–1871 (London, 2001), p. 138; Robert Tombs, ‘Les Communeuses’, Sociétés et Représentations, 6 (June 1998), p. 63.

  25.8J 6e conseil de guerre, 213, dossier 189, interrogations of Genton, 6, 12, 16, 24, 29 August 1871; testimony of Jean Costa, 14 August; Romain, 27 July and 16 August.

  26.Gaston Da Costa, Mémoires d’un Communard: la Commune vécue (2009), pp. 177–81, 191. Earlier that morning, Genton had gone to La Roquette prison on the matter of the incarceration of a troubled carpenter called Greffe, a Blanquist leader who had been arrested for insubordination and was being hidden in the prison apartment of Jean-Baptiste François, director of La Roquette.

  27.A6 Ly 140, rapport Alpert, nomination by Committee of Public Safety ‘25 floréal an 79; 8J 6e conseil de guerre, dossier 189 (Genton); p.v., 5 June and 24 August 1871; Charles Chauvin, Mgr Darboy, archêveque de Paris, otage de la Commune (1813–1871) (2011), p. 144; Ly 137, dossier Jean-Baptiste François; Ly 132, ‘Rapport sur l’affaire des nommés Ramain, Genton, etc.’; Joseph-Alfred Foulon, Histoire de la vie et des oeuvres de Mgr. Darboy, archevêque de Paris (1889), p. 585; L.P. Guénin, Assassinat des otages. Sixième conseil de guerre (1871), p. 303; Vuillaume, Mes cahiers rouges, p. 73. Jacques-Olivier Boudon (Monseigneur Darboy (1813–1871), pp. 153–4) thinks that no such tribunal was ever constituted. In Da Costa’s interpretation, orders for the execution of six hostages arrived at La Roquette but gave no names. Besides those of Darboy and Bonjean, the names on the two lists remain unknown, amid confusing and sometimes contradictory accounts.

  28.A6 Ly 137, dossier Jean-Baptiste François.

  29.Ferdinand Évrard, Souvenirs d’un otage de la Commune (1871), pp. 5–6, 43, 58–64; Joseph-Alfred Foulon, pp. 589–95; Abbé Henri-Pierre Lamazou, La Place Vendôme et la Roquette (1876), p. 247; L.P. Guénin, Assassinat des otages. Sixième conseil de guerre, p. 303; Sempronius, Histoire de la Commune de Paris en 1871 (n.d.), pp. 226–7.

  30.Guénin, Assassinat des otages, pp. 210, 251–2.

  31.Alexis Pierron, Mgr Darboy: Esquisses familières (1872), pp. 97–9; Guénin, Assassinat des otages, p. 303; Joseph Abel Guillermin, Vie de Mgr Darboy, archevêque de Paris, mis à mort en haine de la foi le 24 mai 1871 (1888), p. 340. Darboy (might have) said to Bonjean seeing the soldiers of Commune on Chemin de ronde, ‘Those men there are not the guilty ones – it is Monsieur Thiers!’

  32.8J 3e conseil de guerre 6 dossier 29/8 Théophile Ferré; Guénin, Assassinat des otages, pp. 14, 187–8, 303; A6 Ly 132, report; Foulon, Histoire, p. 594; Ly 137, Affaire de la rue Haxo; 8J 6e conseil de guerre, 213, dossier 189, interrogations of Genton, 6, 12, 16, 24, 29 August 1871; testimony of Jean Costa, 14 August; Romain, 27 July and 16 August; Lewis C. Price, Archbishop Darboy and some French Tragedies, 1813–1871 (London, n.d.), p. 290; Guénin, Assassinat des otages, pp. 187–8, 303. Several witnesses attested that they had indeed seen Ferré at La Roquette that day. According to one story, upon seeing Darboy bless the other hostages a member of the execution squad exclaimed, ‘So, you are giving a benediction. Well, I will give you mine!’ Communards later claimed that Darboy tried to get up three times before being shot again. According to Vuillaume (Mes Cahiers rouge, pp. 76–8), Benjamin Sicard commanded the execution squad. Ramain, brigadier chef de la Roquette, formally identified Genton as having presided over the execution.

  33.A. Rastoul, L’Église de Paris sous la Commune (1871), p. 191; Chauvin, Mgr Darboy, p. 149.

  34.Baronnet, Enquête, p. 109; Serman, La Commune de Paris, p. 503; Edwards, The Paris Commune 1871, p. 326.

  35.Baronnet, Enquête, p. 109; Serman, La Commune de Paris, p. 503; Edwards, The Paris Commune 1871, pp. 319, 326.

  36.Woodford McClellan, Revolutionary Exiles: The Russians in the First Internationale and the Paris Commune (London, 1979), pp. 154–7; Godineau, La Commune de Paris, pp. 156; 8J 6e conseil de guerre 230 dossier 683, Élisabeth Dmitrieff.

  8 The Courts-martial at Work

  1.Wickham Hoffman:
Camp, Court, and Siege: A Narrative of Personal Adventure and Observation during Two Wars, 1861–1865, 1870–71 (New York, 1877), pp. 261, 281.

  2.Robert Tombs, The War Against Paris 1871 (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 177–9; Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray, Les huit journées de mai (1871), p. 75; Laure Godineau, La Commune de Paris par ceux qui l’ont vécue (2010), p. 218; Paul Martine, Souvenirs d’insurgé. La Commune de 1871 (1971), p. 231.

  3.René Héron de Villefosse, Les graves heures de la Commune (1970), p. 253; William Serman, La Commune de Paris (1986), p. 521; Maurice Choury, Les damnés de la terre, 1871 (1970), p. 151; Camille Pelletan, La semaine de mai (1880), pp. 336–7.

  4.Pelletan, La semaine de mai, pp. 213–27.

  5.Henri Dabot, Griffonnages quotidiens d’un bourgeois du quartier latin, du 14 mai 1869 au 2 décembre 1871 (1895), pp. 222, 227–33.

  6.Maurice Garçon, ‘Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris’, Revue de Paris, no. 12 (December 1955), pp. 14–33.

  7.‘Souvenirs d’un habitant de la Porte Saint-Denis du 21 au 25 mai 1871’, Bibliothèque de l’Hôtel de Ville, ms. 1031.

  8.Élie Reclus, La Commune de Paris au jour le jour (2011), pp. 366–7.

  9.Alix Payen, ‘Une ambulancière de la Commune de Paris’, in Louis Constant, ed., Mémoires de femmes, mémoire du peuple (1979), pp. 86–7.

  10.Hélène Haudebourg, ed., ‘Carnet de guerre d’un Vertarien en 1870 Julien Poirier’, Regards sur Vertou au Fil des Temps 7 (2003), pp. 16–17.

  11.Charles des Cognets, Les bretons et la Commune de Paris 1870–1871 (2012), pp. 341–2; Tombs, The War Against Paris, p. 267; Stewart Edwards, The Paris Commune 1871 (Newton Abbot, 1971), pp. 332–3; Robert Tombs, ‘La lutte finale des barricades: spontanéité révolutionnaire et organisation militaire en mai 1871’, in La Barricade, ed. Alain Corbin and J.-M. Mayeur (1997), pp. 360–4.

  12.A6 Ly 132, report: 6e conseil de guerre, affaire du massacre des Dominicains d’Arcueil, rapport du rapporteur, 24 December 1871; Gérard Conte, Éléments pour une histoire de la Commune dans le XIIIe arrondissement, 5 mars–25 mai 1871 (1981), pp. 78, 90.