Massacre

by John M. Merriman

  13.Haudebourg, ‘Carnet de guerre’, pp. 15–18.

  14.W. Pembroke Fetridge, p. 395; Charles des Cognets, Les bretons et la Commune de Paris 1870–1871 (2012), p. 342; Lissagaray, Les huit journées de mai, pp. 96–8; Joseph Vinoy (Général), L’Armistice et la Commune (1872), pp. 327–8.

  15.Tombs, The War Against Paris 1871, p. 140. The Prussians held everything between Charenton and Saint-Denis, including all the forts except Vincennes. Tombs describes the tensions between Bismarck, eager to extend his influence, and the Thiers government (pp. 136–40). The Versaillais entry into Paris removed any possibility of German intervention.

  16.Alistair Horne, The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-71 (1965), p. 408.

  17.Pelletan, La semaine de mai, pp. 50–53.

  18.Augustine Blanchecotte, Tablettes d’une femme pendant la Commune (1872), pp. 200, 204, 211–13.

  19.Albert Hans, Souvenirs d’un volontaire versaillais (1873), pp. 108–9; Tombs, The War Against Paris 1871, p. 167.

  20.Hans, Souvenirs, pp. 128–38, 141–2, 148–53, 161–71.

  21.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.

  22.P.F. Borgella, Justice! Par un officier de l’armée de Paris (1871), pp. 11, 23.

  23.Ibid., pp. 33–4.

  24.John Leighton, Paris Under the Commune (London, 1871), pp. 262–3.

  25.Le Maréchal de Mac-Mahon, L’Armée de Versailles depuis sa formation jusqu’à la complète pacification de Paris (1872), p. 40.

  26.Blanchecotte, Tablettes, p. 263; Jules Bergeret, Le 18 mars: Journal Hebdomadaire (London, 1871), pp. 11, 86.

  27.Reclus, La Commune de Paris, p. 364.

  9 Massacre

  1.Élie Reclus, La Commune de Paris au jour le jour (2011), p. 368.

  2.Paul Martine, Souvenirs d’insurgé. La Commune de 1871 (1971), p. 270; Stewart Edwards, The Paris Commune 1871 (Newton Abbot, 1971), p. 326; Ernest Vizetelly, My Adventures in the Commune (n.p., 2009 [1914]), p. 176.

  3.Alain Dalotel, ed., Émile Maury, Mes Souvenirs sur les événements des années 1870–1871 (2001), p. 74.

  4.Benoît Malon, La troisième défaite du prolétariat français (Neuchâtel, 1871), p. 473; Robert Tombs, The Paris Commune 1871 (London, 1999), p. 168.

  5.Edwards, The Paris Commune 1871, pp. 334–5. The previous day Édouard Moreau and two others had proposed reaching out to Thiers in an attempt to arrange a truce, based improbably enough on the Versaillais army abandoning Paris, the dissolution of the National Assembly, and the holding of new elections. Thiers never would have accepted this, and, in any case, there was no way of getting to Versailles (ibid., p. 333).

  6.Edwards, The Paris Commune 1871, p. 335; Alistair Horne, The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-71 (1965), p. 401; Robert Tombs, The War Against Paris 1871 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 157.

  7.Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray, Les huits journées de mai derrière les barricades (1871), pp. 101–2; Vizetelly, My Adventures in the Commune, p. 56; Charles Prolès, Les hommes de la révolution de 1871, pp. 120–23; Maxime Vuillaume, Mes Cahiers rouges au temps de la Commune (1971), pp. 293–6; Jean Baronnet, ed. Enquête sur la Commune de Paris (La Revue Blanche) (2011), pp. 161–6. On 20 June, Vermorel died of his wounds, which the Versaillais left untreated.

  8.Vuillaume, Mes Cahiers rouge, p. 49.

  9.Malon, La troisième défaite, p. 473; Jean-Pierre Béneytou, Vinoy: Général du Second Empire (2003), pp. 176–83; Tombs, The War Against Paris 1871, pp. 186–8.

  10.Jacques de La Faye (Marie de Sardent), Le Général de Ladmirault, 1808–1898 (1901), pp. xii, xxii-xxiii, 281–9.

  11.Tombs, The War Against Paris 1871, pp. 112–13.

  12.William Serman, Les origines des officiers français 1848–1870 (1979), p. 6; William Serman, Les officiers français dans la nation (1982), pp. 55–7, 85–8, 98–9; Robert Tombs, ‘Réflexions sur la Semaine sanglante’, in Claude Latta, ed., La Commune de 1871, pp. 238–9; Alexandre Montaudon (Général), Souvenirs militaires, vol. 2 (1898–1900), p. 420; Tombs, The War Against Paris 1871, pp. 172–6. On 26 May, MacMahon ordered that any Communards offering to surrender should be taken prisoner, and thus not executed (ibid., pp. 185–7).

  13.Augustine Blanchecotte, Tablettes d’une femme pendant la Commune (1872), pp. 250–2; Jules Bergeret, Le 18 mars: Journal Hebdomadaire (London, 1871), p. 11.

  14.Camille Pelletan, La semaine de mai (Paris, 1980), pp. 269–75; Louis Thomas, Le Général de Gallifet (1830–1909) (1941), pp. 102, 104; Pierre Guiral, Adolphe Thiers (1986), p. 402. Benoît Malon titled his Chapter 9 ‘The Tricolour Terror’.

  15.René Héron de Villefosse, Les graves heures de la Commune (1970), pp. 256–7; Jean Bruhat, Jean Dautry and Émile Tersen, La Commune de 1871 (1970), p. 283. The Ardennais poet Arthur Rimbaud, who sympathised with the fédérés, compared oppressed workers to oppressed colonial peoples (Kristin Ross, The Emergence of the Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune, Minneapolis, 1988, pp. 148–9).

  16.Charles de Montrevel, Nouvelle histoire de la Commune de Paris en 1871 (1885), pp. 204, 208; Gustave de Molinari, Les clubs rouges pendant le siège de Paris (1871), pp. x–xxvi.

  17.Anonymous, Réflexions sur les événements des dix derniers mois par un provincial habitant à Paris (1871), pp. 19, 48–9.

  18.Jacques Silvestre de Sacy, Le Maréchal de Mac-Mahon (1960), pp. 260–61.

  19.Tombs, The War Against Paris, p. 186.

  20.Ibid., pp. 186–9.

  21.Edith Thomas, Louise Michel (1980), p. 94.

  22.Bruhat, Dautry and Tersen, La Commune de 1871, p. 283; Pelletan, La semaine de mai, pp. 39, 104; William Serman, La Commune de Paris (1986), p. 521; Tombs, The War Against Paris 1871, pp. 170–1.

  23.Pelletan, La semaine de mai, pp. vii, 2, 6–7, 17, 20–3, 32.

  24.Maurice Choury, La Commune au Quartier latin (1971), pp. 163–4; Pelletan, La semaine de mai, p. 191.

  25.Arthur Adamov, La Commune de Paris 18 mars–28 mai 1871. Anthologie (1959), pp. 223–4.

  26.Sutter-Laumann, Histoire d’un trente sous (1891), pp. 312–21; Tristan Rémy, La Commune à Montmartre: 23 mai 1871 (1970), pp. 64, 86.

  27.Paul Perny (R.P.), Deux mois de prison sous la Commune, suivi de détails authentiques sur l’assassinat de Mgr l’archevêque de Paris (1871), p. 197.

  28.Pelletan, La semaine de mai, pp. 119–22.

  29.Tombs, The War Against Paris, pp. 183–5; Pelletan, La semaine de mai, pp. 340–1.

  30.Clémence (Adolphe Hippolyte dit Roussel), De l’antagonisme social, ses causes et ses effets (Neuchâtel, 1871), pp. 23–4.

  31.Tombs, The War Against Paris, pp. 178–82; Maurice Choury, Les damnés de la terre, 1871 (1970), p. 151 (9 June); Serman, La Commune de Paris, p. 522.

  32.Lissagaray, Les huit journées de mai, p. 161.

  33.Serman, La Commune de Paris, p. 508.

  34.Édgar Monteil, Souvenirs de la Commune, 1871 (1883), pp. 102–7; Charles des Cognets, Les bretons et la Commune de Paris 1870–1871 (2012), p. 334; 8J 3e conseil de guerre 6 dossier 29/8 Théophile Ferré, 24 May; Pelletan, La semaine de mai, pp. 306–7; Stewart Edwards, The Paris Commune 1871, p. 337; Tombs, The War Against Paris 1871, p. 159.

  35.W. Pembroke Fetridge, The Rise and Fall of the Paris Commune in 1871 (New York, 1871), p. 394.

  36.Reclus, La Commune de Paris, pp. 369–71; Éric Fournier, Paris en ruines: du Paris haussmannien au Paris communard (2008), pp. 92, 96.

  37.Fetridge, The Rise and Fall of the Paris Commune, pp. 445–7; Edwards, The Paris Commune 1871, p. 337.

  38.Cognets, Les bretons et la Commune, p. 351.

  39.Alain Dalotel, Gabriel Ranvier, Le Christ de Belleville: Blanquiste, Franc-maçon, Communard et Maire du XXe arrondissement (2005), p. 52; John Leighton, Paris Under the Commune (London, 1871), p. 227.

  40.Pierre Angrand, ‘Un épisode de la répression versai
llais. L’affaire Tribels (mai 1871–october 1872)’, La Pensée, 68, July–August 1956, pp. 126–33. Tribels earned a living selling gold and gold objects and dealt in des valeurs and des coupons de rente. All the valuables had disappeared, undoubtedly into the hands of Vabre and other Versaillais. Madame Tribels later received an indemnity from the French government.

  41.George J. Becker, ed., Paris Under Siege, 1870–71: From the Goncourt Journal (Ithaca, NY, 1969), pp. 305–8.

  42.Bergeret, Le 18 mars, pp. 15–16; Malon, La troisième défaite, p. 462.

  43.Martine, Souvenirs, p. 269; Edwards, The Paris Commune 1871, pp. 336–7.

  44.Blanchecotte, Tablettes d’une femme, pp. 249–50; Serman, La Commune de Paris, pp. 515–16; 8J 6e conseil dossier 189, Antoine Ramain.

  45.A6 Ly 137, Rapport sur l’affaire des nommés …’ 23 February 1872; ‘Assassinations de la rue Haxo, Pourvois en Cassation’, 29 April 1872; interrogation of Antoine Ramain, 7 February 1872; Fetridge, The Rise and Fall of the Paris Commune, p. 309.

  46.A6 Ly 137, dossier François, interrogation of 3 February 1872; A. Rastoul, L’Église de Paris sous la Commune (1871), pp. 220–32; Jacques Rougerie, Procès des Communards (1964), p. 54; Serman, La Commune de Paris, pp. 515–16. Those accused of involvement in the massacre of the prisoners on rue Haxo were workers, mostly from nearby quartiers. Six were condemned to death, whereas Ramain received fifteen years’ hard labour.

  47.Rastoul, L’Église de Paris, pp. 235–43; Horne, The Fall of Paris, p. 410. Rastoul relates, among other items, that Ferré came to La Roquette at about 3.00 p.m. and ordered the remaining prisoners who were serving time for criminal offences to be freed if they would agree to fight against the Versaillais (pp. 239–40).

  48.Rastoul, L’Église de Paris, pp. 243–56; Perny, Deux mois de prison sous la Commune, pp. 227–9; J.-O. Boudon, Monseigneur Darboy (1813–1871) (2011), p. 153; Robert Tombs, ‘Les Communeuses’, Sociétés et Représentations 6 (June 1998), pp. 60–1.

  49.Fetridge, The Rise and Fall of the Paris Commune, pp. 437–41; Edwards, The Paris Commune 1871, p. 338; Tombs, The War Against Paris 1871, p. 159; Horne, The Fall of Paris, p. 411.

  50.Pelletan, La semaine de mai, pp. 320–7.

  51.Reclus, La Commune de Paris, pp. 370–1; Tombs, The War Against Paris 1871, pp. 165–6.

  52.Villefosse, Les graves heures, p. 253; Martine, Souvenirs, p. 288.

  53.Albert Hans, Souvenirs d’un volontaire versaillais. 1873, pp. 160–5.

  54.Denis Arthur Bingham, Recollections of Paris, vol. 2 (London, 1896), p. 110.

  55.Archibald Forbes, ‘What I Saw of the Paris Commune’, Century Illustrated Magazine 45: 1 (November 1892), p. 61.

  56.Pierre Vésinier, History of the Commune of Paris (1872), pp. 312, 325–8, 334. During the June Days, between 1,500 and 3,000 were killed and several hundred were summarily executed.

  57.Hans, Souvenirs, pp. 187–96.

  58.Edwards, The Paris Commune 1871, p. 338; Becker, ed., Paris Under Siege, p. 313; Horne, The Fall of Paris, p. 412.

  59.Gérard Dittmar, Belleville de l’Annexation à la Commune (2007), p. 76; Hélène Haudebourg, ed., ‘Carnet de guerre d’un Vertarien en 1870 Julien Poirier’, Regards sur Vertou au Fil des Temps, 2003, no. 7 (2003), p. 18. Poirier remained in occupied Paris until September, then returned home to Vertou.

  60.Louise Michel, La Commune, Histoire et Souvenirs (1970), p. 59; Edwards, The Paris Commune 1871, p. 339; 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), p. 364.

  61.Edwards, The Paris Commune 1871, pp. 338–9.

  62.Lissagaray, Les huit journées de mai, pp. 108–10, 129–36; Les Martyrs de la Seconde Terreur ou Arrestation, Captivité et Martyre de Mgr Darboy, Archevêque de Paris de M. Deguerry (1871), p. 197.

  63.Pelletan, La semaine de mai, pp. 276–82.

  64.Bergeret, Le 18 mars, p. 9; W. Gibson, Paris during the Commune (London, 1895), pp. 297, 308–9.

  65.Vuillaume, Mes Cahiers rouges, pp. 14–50, 308–17, 327–57.

  66.Reclus, La Commune de Paris, p. 379; Paul Reclus, Les frères Élie et Élisée Reclus (1964), p. 189; 8J 3e conseil de guerrre 82, dossier 2084. A military court-martial condemned Élie on 6 October 1875 to ‘deportation to the confines of a fortified enclosure’. Four years later the condemnation was reduced. Élisée was condemned to deportation on 15 September 1871 to deportation. Élie Reclus was arrested in 1894 at the time of the anarchist attacks in Paris.

  67.Paul Vignon, Rien que ce que j’ai vu! Le siège de Paris – la Commune (1913), p. 203.

  10 Prisoners of Versailles

  1.Anonymous [Davy], The Insurrection in Paris: Related by an Englishman (1871), pp. 102–14.

  2.Ibid., pp. 123, 133, 141–3.

  3.Ibid., pp. 153–4.

  4.John Leighton, Paris Under the Commune (London, 1871), p. 266.

  5.Arthur de Grandeffe, Mobiles et Volontaires de la Seine pendant la Guerre et les deux sieges (1871), pp. 255, 274; Jean Bruhat, Jean Dautry and Émile Tersen, La Commune de 1871 (1970), p. 283.

  6.George J. Becker, ed., Paris Under Siege, 1870–71: From the Goncourt Journal (Ithaca, NY, 1969), pp. 306–11.

  7.Pierre de Lano (Marc-André Gromier), La Commune, journal d’un vaincu, p. 38; Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray, Les huits journées de mai (1871), pp. 122ff; Stewart Edwards, The Paris Commune 1871, p. 339.

  8.Lano, La Commune, pp. 39–55, 223; Éric Fournier, La Commune n’est pas morte: Les usages politiques du presse de 1871 à nos jours (2013), p. 56.

  9.Rupert Christiansen, Paris Babylon (New York, 1995), pp. 360–5.

  10.William Serman, La Commune de Paris (1986), p. 519.

  11.Christiansen, Paris Babylon, pp. 360–65.

  12.David Barry, Women and Political Insurgency: France in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Basingstoke, 1996), p. 143.

  13.Léonce Dupont, Souvenirs de Versailles pendant la Commune (1881), pp. 93–5.

  14.Camille Pelletan, La semaine de mai (1880), pp. 265–68.

  15.Ibid., pp. 282, 288.

  16.Lissagaray, Les huit journées de mai, pp. 148–9.

  17.Paul Lidsky, Les écrivains contre la Commune (1970), p. 75; Robert Tombs, ‘How Bloody Was “La Semaine Sanglante” of 1871? A Revision’, The Historical Journal, 55, 3 (September 2012), p. 33.

  18.Gay Gullickson, Unruly Women of Paris: Images of the Commune (Itaca, NY, 1996), pp. 195–8; Léonce Dupont, Souvenirs de Versailles pendant la Commune, pp. 104–6.

  19.Louise Michel, Lowry Bullitt and Elizabeth Ellington Gunter, The Red Virgin: Memoirs of Louise Michel (Alabama, 1981), pp. 69–73.

  20.Susanna Barrows, ‘After the Commune: Alcoholism, Temperance, and Literature in the Early Third Republic’, in John M. Merriman, ed., Consciousness and Class Experience in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. John Merriman (1979); and Susanna Barrows, Distorting Mirrors: Visions of the Crowd in Late Nineteenth-Century France (New Haven, 1981); Kristin Ross, The Emergence of the Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune (Minneapolis, 1988), p. 148.

  21.On rue du Cherche-Midi, a drunken corporal allegedly gunned down a woman standing in front of her store, then a passing dog, then a seven-year-old child, and then another woman (Pelletan, La semaine de mai, pp. 123, 257–62).

  22.Sébastien Commissaire, Mémoires et souvenirs, vol. 2 (1888), p. 384; Lissagaray, Les huit journées de mai, p. 156; Robert Tombs, The War Against Paris, 1871 (Cambridge, 1981), p. 166; Pelletan, La semaine de mai, pp. 102–3. In the end, there were 399,823 denunciations.

  23.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), p. 309.

  24.Marcel Cerf, Édouard Moreau, l’âme du Comité central de la Commune (1971), p. 207.

  25.Stewart Edwards, The Paris Commune 1871, p. 343.

  26.Lidsky, Les Écrivains,
p. 66; Marforio (Louise Lacroix), Les écharpes rouges: souvenirs de la commune (1872), p. 96; Woodford McClellan, Revolutionary Exiles: The Russians in the First Internationale and the Paris Commune (London, 1979), pp. 167–8.

  27.Bronislas Wolowski, Dombrowski et Versailles (Geneva, 1871), pp. 140–42; Denis Arthur Bingham, Recollections of Paris, vol. 2 (London, 1896), p. 122; Pelletan, La semaine de mai, pp. 130–3.

  28.René Héron de Villefosse, Les graves heures de la Commune (1970), p. 253.

  29.Pelletan, La semaine de mai, p. 129.

  30.Augustine Blanchecotte, Tablettes d’une femme pendant la Commune (1872), p. 225; Lissagaray, Les huit journées de mai, pp. 132–33.

  31.Lidsky, Les Écrivains, p. 46.

  32.Gautier, Tableaux de siège, pp. 242–4.

  33.Henri Opper de Blowitz, My Memoirs (London 1903), p. 40.

  34.Lidsky, Les écrivains, pp. 47–8; Gullickson, Unruly Women, pp. 176–7. Gustave Flaubert, who had served in the National Guard during the Franco-Prussian War, now wrote to George Sand, who was hostile to the Commune, that the latter was ‘repugnant’ (Michelle Perrot, ‘George Sand: une républicaine contre la Commune’, in Claude Latta, ed., La Commune de 1871, pp. 147, 154).

  35.Gullickson, Unruly Women, pp. 197, 205; Léonce Dupont, Souvenirs de Versailles pendant la Commune (1881), pp. 255, 267, 286. Gullickson shows that during the trials at Versailles that followed, the Communards’ physical appearance remained almost an obsession.

  36.Marforio, Les Écharpes Rouges, pp. 147–52.

  37.Gullickson, Unruly Women, pp. 180–3; Georges Jeanneret, Paris pendant la Commune révolutionnaire de 1871 (1871), p. 250; Jules Bergeret, Le 18 mars: Journal Hebdomadaire (London, 1871), pp. 7–8.

  38.Bruhat, Dautry and Tersen, La Commune de 1871, p. 285; Gullickson, Unruly Women, p. 169; Maurice Choury, Les damnés de la terre, 1871 (1970), p. 151; Lissagaray, Les huit journées de mai, pp. 132–3; Pelletan, La semaine de mai, pp. 351–8.

  39.Laure Godineau, La Commune de Paris par ceux qui l’ont vécue (2010), p. 218; Frédéric Fort, Paris brûlé (1871), p. 124.

  40.Becker, Paris Under Siege, p. 312.

  41.Georges Valance, Thiers: bourgeois et révolutionnaire (2007), p. 344; Lidsky, Les Écrivains, p. 76; Sébastien Commissaire, Mémoires et souvenirs, vol. 2 (1888), p. 383; Bruhat, Dautry and Tersen, La Commune de 1871, p. 288.