Massacre

by John M. Merriman

  42.Louis Énault, Paris brûlé par la Commune (1871), p. 266.

  43.Paul Lidsky, ed., Les aventures de ma vie, Henri Rochefort (2005), p. 215; Pierre Vésinier, History of the Commune of Paris (1872), pp. 344–5; Élie Reclus, La Commune au jour le jour (2011), pp. 380–82. H. Sarrepont (Eugène Hennebert), Guerre des Communeux de Paris: 18 mars–28 mai 1871 (1871), pp. 363–6.

  11 Remembering

  1.Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray, Les huit journées de mai derrière les barricades (1871), p. 34.

  2.Ibid., pp. 138–9.

  3.Georges Bell, Paris Incendié: Histoire de la Commune de 1871 (1872), section three, ‘Les ruines’; Anonymous [Davy], The Insurrection in Paris: Related by an Englishman (1871), pp. 118, 122–59; Robert Tombs, The Paris Commune 1871 (London, 1999), p. 12; Jules Bergeret, Le 18 mars: Journal Hebdomadaire (London, 1871), pp. 14–15; Camille Pelletan, La semaine de mai, pp. 301, 344–50.

  4.Camille de Meaux, Souvenirs politiques, 1871–1877 (1905), pp. 54–6.

  5.Alexis Pierron, Mgr Darboy: Esquisses familières (1872), pp. 111–12. The new archbishop restored Lagarde to his status as first vicar. Pius IX saluted Darboy in his Lettre encyclique of 4 June. The Versaillais shot Vérig at La Roquette immediately upon arrival. Various campaigns to obtain Darboy’s beatification began in the late 1880s and lasted into the late 1960s. A statue of Darboy, sculpted in 1873 by Jean-Marie Bienaimé (Bonassieux), stands in Notre Dame. Streets in the Eleventh Arrondissement were renamed for Darboy and Deguerry.

  6.Jacques-Olivier Boudon, Monseigeur Darboy (1813–1871) (2011), p. 146; Wickham Hoffman, Camp, Court, and Siege: A Narrative of Personal Adventure and Observation During Two Wars, 1861–1865, 1870–71 (New York, 1877), p. 264.

  7.Fournier, La Commune, pp. 22–5. The Church of Notre-Dame-des Otages today stands at 81, rue Haxo.

  8.Olivier Marion, ‘La vie religieuse pendant la Commune de Paris 1871’ (unpublished master’s thesis, Paris-X Nanterre, 1981), p. 262; John Merriman, Dynamite Club (New York, 2009), pp. 88–9; Fournier, La Commune, pp. 26–7.

  9.Albert Hans, Souvenirs d’un volontaire versaillais (1873), pp. 213, 239–40.

  10.Hans, Souvenirs, pp. 213, 229–32.

  11.Henri Ameline, ed., Enquête parlementaire sur l’insurrection du 18 mars, vol. 1 (Versailles, 1872), pp. 227–8; René Héron de Villefosse, Les graves heures de la Commune (1970), p. 249.

  12.Frédéric Chauvaud, ‘L’élision des traces, l’effacement des marques de la barricade à Paris (1830–1871)’, in Alain Corbin and J.-M. Mayeur, eds., La Barricade (1997), pp. 272–79.

  13.Lissagaray, Les huit journées de mai, pp. 142–3.

  14.Georges Valance, Thiers: bourgeois et révolutionnaire (2007), p. 325; Élie Reclus, La Commune de Paris au jour le jour (2011), pp. 374–6, 378.

  15.William Serman, La Commune de Paris (1986), pp. 529–37; 8J 6e conseil de guerre, 683; E. Tersen, ‘Léo Frankel’, Europe, revue mensuelle, 29: 64–5 (April–May, 1951), p. 166.

  16.Louise Michel, La Commune, Histoire et Souvenirs (1970), pp. 328–9; Serman, La Commune de Paris, p. 536.

  17.Sutter-Laumann, Histoire d’un trente sous (1870–1871) (1891), pp. 356–7.

  18.8J 3e conseil de guerre 6, dossier 29/5 (Gustave Courbet), reports of 31 May and 1 June 1871 and interrogation of Courbet, 25 July 1871; Eugène Delessert, Épisodes pendant la Commune, souvenirs d’un délégué de la Société de secours aux blessés militaires des armées de terre et de mer (1872), p. 51.

  19.APP Ba 1020, for example, report of 7 July 1871.

  20.8J 3e conseil de guerre 6, dossier 29/5 (Gustave Courbet), p.v., 8, 13 and 14 June 1871.

  21.Pierre Courthion, Courbet raconté par lui-même et par ses amis, vol. 1 (Geneva, 1948), pp. 267–9; Gerstle Mack, Gustave Courbet (1951), p. 272; Jean Péridier, La Commune et les artistes: Pottier, Courbet, Vallès, J.B. Clément (1980), pp. 70–71.

  22.8J 3e conseil de guerre 6, dossier 29/5 (Gustave Courbet); Péridier, La Commune, pp. 72–5; Henri Dubief, ‘Défense de Gustave Courbet par lui-même’, L’Actualité de l’Histoire, 30 (January–March, 1960), pp. 32–3; Édouard Moriac, Les conseils de guerre de Versailles (1871), pp. 95–100, 222–3; Robert Boudry, ‘Courbet et la fédération des artistes’, Europe, 29: 64–5, April–May 1951, p. 126; (Jules) Castagnary, Gustave Courbet et la Colonne Vendôme: Plaidoyer pour un ami mort (1883), pp. 2, 77–83. Courbet was fined 323,091 francs for the rebuilding of the column and 6,850 francs for the trial.

  23.L. Bigot, Dossier d’un condamné à mort. Procès de Gustave Maroteau (1871), p. 163.

  24.Gay Gullickson, Unruly Women of Paris (1996), pp. 206–9; Susanna Barrows, Distorting Mirrors: Visions of the Crowd in Late Nineteenth-Century France (New Haven, 1981). Three women, Élisabeth Rétiffe, Joséphine Marchais and Léotine Suétens, were condemned to death, despite a lack of evidence that they had set fire to anything, but they were subsequently spared.

  25.8J 6 dossier 135 Louise Michel, interrogation 28 June 1871; Louise Michel, Lowry Bullitt and Elizabeth Ellington Gunter, The Red Virgin: Memoirs of Louise Michel (Alabama, 1981), pp. 85–6; Gullickson, Unruly Women, pp. 210–14; Kathleen Jones and Françoise Vergès, ‘“Aux citoyennes!”: Women, Politics, and the Paris Commune of 1871’, History of European Ideas, 13 (1991), p. 725.

  26.Louis-Nathaniel Rossel, Rossel’s Posthumous Papers (London, 1872), p. 203; Jules Bourelly (Général), Le ministère de la Guerre sous la Commune (n.d), p. 154; Ly 137; Michel, Bullitt and Gunter, The Red Virgin, pp. 77–9; 8J 3e conseil de guerre 6 dossier 29/8 Théophile Ferré, interrogation 16 July 1871; 8J 6 dossier 554; Pelletan, La semaine de mai, pp. 154–5.

  27.Louis Énault, Paris brûlé par la Commune (1871), p. 25; Amerline, vol. 1, pp. 127, 243, 264; J.M. Roberts, ‘La Commune considérée par la droite, dimensions d’une mythologie’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, XIX (April–June 1972), pp. 200–1. Alain Corbin suggests ‘it is as if no regime could establish itself firmly until it had proved its capacity to bathe in the blood of the monster: the angry populace, the frenzied mob’ (Village of Cannibals: Rage and Murder in France, 1870, Cambridge, MA, 1992), p. 98.

  28.Éric Fournier, La Commune n’est pas morte: Les usages politiques du presse de 1871 à nos jours (2013), pp. 16–17, 30; François Bournand, Le clergé pendant la Commune (1892), p. 10.

  29.Robert Tombs, The War Against Paris 1871 (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 191–2; Tristan Rémy, La Commune à Montmartre: 23 mai 1871 (1970), p. 125. According to another report, the Versaillais forces claimed to have arrested 38,578 people, including 1,054 women and 615 boys and girls under the age of sixteen. Of these, about 20,000 were released without charge and more than 10,000 were condemned to a variety of penalties. Others ended up in well-guarded prison forts in the provinces (Valance, Thiers, pp. 344–5; Général Appert, ‘Rapport d’ensemble … sur les opérations de la justice militaire relatives à l’insurrection de 1871’, Annales de l’Assemblée nationale, 43 (1875); Stewart Edwards, The Paris Commune 1871, pp. 347–8). By early 1875, the cases of 50,559 prisoners had been heard. Twenty-two courts-martial tried 10,448 people, bringing 13,440 condemnations of which 3,313 par contumace between 1871 and 1874; 270 were condemned to death and 26 men were executed; 410 Communards (20 women) were sentenced to travaux forces; 3,989 (16 women) were deported, and 1,269 were sent to prison (Gérard Milhaud, ‘De la Calomnie à l’Histoire’, Europe, 48 (November–December 1970), pp. 42–56). They were not the ‘dangerous classes’ imagined by elites; yet compared to other workers, they were poorer and, by virtue of the transient nature of their work, arguably less integrated into the city, younger and less likely to be married than other workers, and more likely to be ‘illegitimate’ (enfants naturels) and to be illiterate; 21 per cent had had some sort of encounter with the law but the vast majority of these had involved only quite minor judicial proceedings. Of those condemned, 64.2 per cent were aged 21–40; 25.6 per cent 41–60. Those aged 21–25 were more likely to be deported. Of those arrested, 24.5 per cent
were born in the département of the Seine (that of Paris). The Seine led the way with 8,938 facing charges, followed by the neighbouring Seine-et-Oise with 1,267. Among the 1,725 foreigners arrested at the end of the Commune, Belgians led the way with 737, followed by 215 Italians, 201 Swiss, 154 Dutch and 110 Poles (Appert, ‘Rapport d’ensemble’, p. 117). The Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Saint-Denis gives a total of 34,952 arrests, including 819 women and 538 children, of whom 2,455 were acquitted with 22,727 cases of charges dropped; 93 people were condemned to death, with 23 executed; 251 were sentenced to hard labour for specific terms or for life; 3,417 were deported to New Caledonia, 1,247 were sentenced to life in prison, and 3,359 received shorter prison terms; 3,313 were condemned in absentia.

  30.Arthur Monnanteuil, Neuf mois de Ponton: Paroles d’un détenu (1873), pp. 6–9; Maurice Choury, Les damnés de la terre, 1871 (1970), p. 160.

  31.Louise Michel, La Commune, Histoire et Souvenirs (1970), pp. 395ff; Serman, La Commune de Paris, pp. 531–5. Henri Rochefort and Francis Jourde managed to escape in March 1874, bribing the captain of a British vessel carrying coal to take them to the Australian port of Newcastle, from which they eventually reached Europe (Roger L. Williams, Henri Rochefort: Prince of the Gutter Press [New York, 1966], pp. 135–7).

  32.Robert Tombs has argued that fewer Communards perished than has been suggested by other historians – including Tombs himself, who had earlier posited the figure of 10,000 (Robert Tombs, ‘Victimes et bourreaux de la Semaine sanglante’, in 1848: révolutions et mutations au XIX siècle 1994, pp. 81–96). He argues against Rougerie’s contention that outward migration, including the departure of foreigners who could no longer find work and residents who had managed to flee during the siege, can in part explain the precipitous decline of 10,000 in population among workers, particularly in certain radical trades, with the next official census. Tombs estimates the number of those buried within Paris during and right after Bloody Week at 5,700 and 7,400 (‘How Bloody was “La Semaine Sanglante” of 1871? A Revision’, The Historical Journal, 55, 3 September 2012, pp. 679–704). He concludes that Bloody Week was neither ‘an act of unprecedented violence’ nor as violent as the French Revolution. However, many bodies were not buried until after 30 May, and lime, cremation and mass graves discovered subsequently account for thousands more deaths, which are not totalled in Tombs’ new figure of 7,400 executions.

  33.Appert, ‘Rapport d’ensemble’; Jacques Rougerie, ‘Composition d’une population insurgée: L’Exemple de la Commune’, Mouvement social 48 (July–September, 1964), p. 32; Camille Pelletan, who was there, figured 30,000, Benoît Malon estimated about 25,000 (Benoît Malon, La troisième défaite du prolétariat français [Neuchâtel, FR, 1871], p. 475; Pelletan, La semaine de mai, p. 5); Robert Tombs, ‘La lutte finale des barricades’, p. 364. Wickham Hoffmann relates that the huge sixteen-foot-deep ditch had been dug in front of Napoléon Gaillard’s barricade at place de la Concorde (Hoffman, Camp, Court, and Siege, p. 280).

  34.Lissagaray, Les huit journées de mai, pp. 140–3; Serman, La Commune de Paris, p. 521.

  35.Rougerie, ‘Composition d’une population insurgée’, p. 31; Pelletan, La semaine de mai, p. 398; Lissagaray, Les huit journées de mai, pp. 160–1; Tombs, ‘How Bloody Was “La Semaine Sanglante” of 1871?’, pp. 13–14.

  36.Maxime Vuillaume, Mes Cahiers rouges au temps de la Commune (1971), p. 58; Michel, Bullitt and Gunter, The Red Virgin, p. 68; Jean Baronnet, ed., Enquête sur la Commune de Paris (La Revue Blanche) (2011), p. 146.

  37.Frederic Harrison, ‘The Revolution and the Commune’, Fortnightly Review, 53:9 (May 1871), pp. 577–8; Jean Allemane, Mémoires d’un Communard (1910), p. 136; E. Belfort Bax, Victor Dave and William Morris, A Short History of the Paris Commune (London, 1886), pp. 63–5, 72–9. Jacques Rougerie, Procès des Communards (1964), p. 7; Peter McPhee, A Social History of France 1780–1889 (New York, 1992), pp. 214–15. From London, Karl Marx asserted that the Paris Commune was the first socialist revolution in history. He intoned memorably: ‘Working-man’s Paris, with its Commune, will forever be celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are enshrined in the great heart of the working class. Its exterminators’ history has already been nailed to the eternal pillory from which all the prayers of their priests will not avail to redeem them’ (Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, Chicago, 1934). Marx concluded that the Paris Commune was not the anticipated social revolution that would free the proletariat. Yet workers had risen up spontaneously, so he was reassured. Lenin would point to the revolutionary role during the Commune of the leadership of the avant-garde of the proletariat. In this he was thinking of the organisation of his own Bolsheviks, thus turning away from an emphasis on the revolutionary spontaneity of ordinary people.

  38.Robert Tombs, ‘L’année terrible, 1870–71’, Historical Journal, 35:3 (1992), p. 724, anticipating ‘the chilly bureaucratic carnage of the twentieth century’.

  39.Henri d’Alméras, La vie quotidienne pendant le siège et sous la Commune (n.d.), pp. 514–15.

  40.Denis Arthur Bingham, Recollections of Paris, vol. 2 (London, 1896), pp. 126–33.

  41.Paschal Grousset, Francis Jourde and Henri Brissac, La bagne en Nouvelle-Calédonie … l’enfer au paradis (Nouméa, Nouvelle-Calédonie, 2009), p. 13.

  42.Malon, La troisième défaite; Gustave Lefrançais, Études sur le mouvement communaliste à Paris, en 1871 (Neuchâtel, 1871). See Fournier, La Commune, pp. 32–40, 147–74.

  43.Madeleine Réberioux, ‘Le Mur des fédérés’, in Pierre Nora, ed., Les lieux de mémoire, vol. 1, pp. 619–45. See also Danielle Tartakowsky, ‘Le mur des fédérés ou l’apprentissage de la manifestation’, Cahiers d’histoire de l’Institut de recherches marxistes, 44 (1991), pp. 70–9, and Manifester à Paris 1880–2010 (2010-).

  44.Jules Vallès, L’Insurgé (1923).

  45.Remy Cazals in Gilbert Larguier and Jérôme Guaretti, eds., La Commune de 1871: utopie ou modernité? (Perpignan, 2001), pp. 389–90. Clément wrote ‘La Semaine sanglante’ (‘Bloody Week’) while in hiding in Paris.

  46.Jean Varloot, ed., Les poêtes de la Commune (1951), pp. 95–8.

  47.Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward Angel: A Story of the Buried Life (New York, 1929).

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