Definition of Paris Commune

Napoleon III had been defeated and captured in Sedan by the Prussian troops, who had advanced to Paris to subject the Gallic capital to a siege of several months. Meanwhile, France had become a republic, but this was not enough to stop the Prussian invasion or to satisfy the population. population civil.

In Paris, a city with a large working mass and, therefore, broad leftist movements, the citizenship he took up arms against the new government Republican taking advantage of the void that he had left behind when he moved away from the capital.

This same government desperately sought to stop the revolt, which was able to govern the city of lights for just over two months, but which ended up being harshly repressed.

The movement of the Paris Commune was a revolutionary movement that ruled the city from March 18, 1871 until May 28 of the same year, after the fall of the Second French Empire by defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, and when the National Guard decided not to surrender the city to the invaders Prussians.

With the fall of the Empire and the advent of the Third Republic, most of the French cities that had not fallen under the Prussian military thrust, were ruled by a commune, with the exception of Paris, in charge of which the Guard was left National. The government feared the excessive radicalization of the large working class in what was by far the largest city in France.

The siege of Paris by the Prussian army lasted half a year, since the Parisians had weapons and motivation, even after the government surrendered, refusing to surrender the city and allow the triumphal entry of the enemies. The Prussians, for their part, installed in Versailles, demanded the surrender of the Gallic capital.

Finally, a tacit agreement was reached, and Parisian citizens cleared the streets for Prussian troops to parade through on March 1, 1871.

In fact, they made them so expeditious that they were conspired so that no one would come to see them; Prussian soldiers marched through a deserted Paris, staying only for a day.

It was a parade symbolicBut the fact that it was the French government that had forced the proud inhabitants of the great capital to accept this parade, the exhibition of the might of the Prussian enemy, raised the spirits. The election by the republican government of a royalist military man to lead the National Guard (a purely Parisian body with which the population identified a lot) did not exactly help to environment.

A series of unpopular measures such as the suppression of the National Guard salary or the prohibition of various Republican publications They stressed the situation to a point of no return, but the last straw was the government's attempt to disarm the Guard. National.

The Parisian population went out to the step of the soldiers to avoid the requisition of the guns of the National Guard. The troops, far from carrying out their task by shooting, fraternized with the population and the Guard.

It was March 18, 1871, and this action meant the starting gun for the Paris Commune, which in turn implied power for the people of the French capital.

The revolt spread rapidly through the city, in such a way that the president of the French Republic, Adolphe Thiers, has no other alternative. to order the evacuation of the loyal troops and what he can gather from the civil service, towards Versailles, where the rest of the government.

Also a part of the population, the more affluent and of right-wing ideology, will take refuge that same day and the following, in neighboring Versailles, leaving Paris for the radical leftists raised in weapons.

On March 28, and after two days before the central committee of the National Guard resigned from the government of the city, a commune was constituted.

The objective of the Commune was, from the first moment, to correctly manage the services necessary to a city of about two million inhabitants, along with the implementation of republican reforms radicals.

Paris was besieged by the regular troops of the republican army, so the situation never could be completely normal, and the action of the government of the Commune could not be deployed all that was necessary.

Among the measures deployed, those that benefited the majority of the working class and the poor of the population stand out: postpone the payment of debts, granting pensions to the families of the national guards killed in the war, and reduction in the rents of rooms.

A very commonly adopted measure in other leftist revolutions of the future (such as on the Republican side during the Civil War Española) was the possibility that the workers of a factory could take over the management of the factory if the owner had it. abandoned.

Although at first the government tried to negotiate, it soon saw that there would be no other solution than to take Paris by force of arms.

The first attacks were carried out on April 2, 1871. The superiority of the government forces was such that, as of mid-April, the Republican executive refused to negotiate: they saw the end and wanted to crush the revolution occurred in Paris to set an example.

Probably, the Gallic government had also received pressure from outside to violently crush the insurrection, since governments like the British or the Prussian wanted to prevent possible attempts on their own territories.

Little by little, the government troops were narrowing the circle around the capital.

The National Guard lost streets and neighborhoods almost daily, but the people resisted. He did not have much to lose other than life, but much to gain if he succeeded in his endeavor: a life worth living.

Although the Paris Commune received some signs of sympathy and support from outside France, there were no successful attempts to support the initiative from French territory.

Although in some cities such as Marseille or Narbonne, there were insurrectionary outbreaks, they were quickly crushed by the army. The rural environment was more conservative, and did not accompany a revolution forged among the urban working masses.

On May 21, the government army penetrated the city wall and began to reconquer the neighborhoods of the capital one by one, a task facilitated by the wide boulevards of the capital, which had replaced the narrow medieval streets precisely to facilitate the power to abort revolutionary movements by facilitating the action of the artillery.

It was the beginning of the end of the Commune.

However, the popular government of the Commune sold its skin dearly, and the people defended themselves with barricades in the streets.

This led to an arduous task on the part of the army and the destruction of a part of the abundant heritage from the city. The revolutionaries also aided in the destruction by burning buildings to impede, or at least hinder, the advance of the troops. The Tuileries Palace, the Louvre library, or the Paris-Lyon station were victims of arson.

On May 27 at dawn, only a few districts of the working-class neighborhoods of Paris remained in the hands of the last resistant comuneros. On the afternoon of the next day, May 28, 1871, the last barricade fell.

Once the resistance was broken, the violent repression of the rebels began.

An authentic "hunt" was decreed against those who had supported the Commune, and although the comuneros had committed crimes such as the summary shooting of up to a hundred people just because of their condition ecclesiastical (the movement was deeply anti-clerical) or wealthy, government troops did not make many distinctions: some authors, up to 20,000 Parisians were shot (many times, in groups) the days following 28 May.

Currently, in the famous Parisian cemetery of Père-Lachaise, where many of the shootings took place, You can see a plaque in tribute to the victims of that repression, and in the form of homage to their ideals of freedom and equality. This plaque is found on one of the walls against which the supporters of the Commune were shot.

Paris, which had been a revolutionary city, would continue to be so.

The Gallic capital freed itself (with nuances) from the Nazi yoke in 1944, and would return to the barricades in another May, this time in '68. Have you lost that revolutionary spirit today? I do not rule out a future article in this same publication about another revolution in the city of lights. It only remains to know when.

Photo Fotolia: Daseugen

Themes in Paris Commune