The Fall of Paris
Page 64
1 The Journal Officiel revealed that, out of a total National Guard strength of 190,425 on May 3rd, there were no less than 27,774 absentees, of whom 14,335 were absent without permission.
1 Karl Marx, still minutely studying every move from London, wrote a warning letter in May to the two Internationalist leaders, Varlin and Frankel in which he remarked: ‘The Commune seems to lose too much time in trifling affairs and personal quarrels…. None of this would matter, if you had the time to recover the time already lost….’
1 One outside observer, Washburne—his feelings undoubtedly exacerbated by the proximity of events—observed no diplomatic moderation when describing Rigault; he was ‘… one of the most hideous figures in all history… consumed by the most deadly hatred of society and the most intense thirst for blood. All his associate assassins bowed before his despotic will….’
2 There were also certain specific economic grievances against the Church; for instance, more than half of the women working in industry in Paris were employed as seamstresses of one kind or another, while the convents also turned out exquisite work which could often undercut that produced by ‘lay’ workers by as much as 25 per cent.
1Marx commented cynically: ‘The priests were sent back to the recess of private life, there to feed upon the alms of the faithful in imitation of their predecessors, the Apostles.’
2 The Mazas prison.
1 Roughly midway.
1 As far as artistic taste was concerned, the values of the Proudhonist Courbet were simple; he once declared: ‘I have no master; my master is myself. There is not, and never has been, any painter other than myself.’
1 His diplomatic status enabling him to pass through the lines with little hindrance.
1 Wickham Hoffman estimated that 300,000 left during the first month alone.
1‘They’re the rabble, Ah well! I’m one of them!’
1 Possibly the lieutenant referred to above?
1 Karl Marx, pleading justification on behalf of the Commune in The Civil War in France, pointed to the British burning of Washington during the War of 1812; ‘To be burned down has always been the inevitable fate of buildings in the front of battle of all the regular armies of the world…. The Commune used fire strictly as a means of defence.’
1 This fragment of electric cable was in fact sent to the author for inspection by Mrs. W. M. Denham, into whose possession it had passed via Noble’s daughter, together with his notebooks.
1 His predecessor, Mgr. Affre, was killed at the barricades in 1848 when attempting to mediate.
1 The Place du Château d’Eau is now the Place de la République.
1 Beyond the city walls, at Vincennes, a Communard detachment did in fact hold out inside the fortress until Monday (May 29th). On its surrender nine out of its twenty-four officers were promptly shot, on what is one of France’s best-known execution-grounds, close to the spot where the Duc d’Enghien was executed in 1804, and Mata Hari in 1917.
1 By comparison, the total executions carried out under the Commune numbered under 500.
1 Over 40,000 Communards still remained to be tried, though of these only 23 more would actually be executed.
2 Just over 2,500, executed by the Paris Revolutionary Tribunal.
3 In The War against Paris, [pp. 107–11, 187] Robert Tombs offers three useful explanations for this savage metamorphosis: first of all the Army saw itself as representing order against the mounting anarchy of the Commune. Predominantly bourgeois, the officers of 1871 feared and hated the Communards’ seizure or destruction of private property, culminating in the wilful conflagration of large parts of Paris during the semaine sanglante. Secondly, it represented the nation against faction. Thirdly, it held itself to be the champion of liberty against tyranny.
1 In Berlin, just two weeks earlier, a triumphal march had been held at the Brandenburger Tor, when the old Emperor had received the keys of the city from a deputation of white-clad virgins—remarking to his young grandson, the future Wilhelm II, ‘This is a day you will never forget.’
1 It was not in fact completed until 1919.
2 Old Beslay, whose compliance with the Marquis de Ploeuc had saved the Bank of France from depredation by the Commune, was never brought to trial, but was quietly led across into Switzerland by a grateful Government.
1 One immediate legacy of the nightmare of the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune was to persuade France’s political leaders that henceforth the Army would have to be treated with the utmost tender loving care. ‘The army had been brought into politics by civil war,’ Dr. Tombs writes of its aftermath [Tombs, op cit, p. 200]: The extreme Right saw it as a bulwark of society… but even with MacMahon as President, the army made no move to stem the tide of Left-wing advance, however much its officers would have liked to try. The lesson of March 18th seems to have been learnt: that the cohesion of the army itself was put at risk by involvement in internal disputes… The army had won a military victory in 1871, but had been forced to realise the limits of military victory. This was to apply for many years to come.