Paris Commune
The Paris Commune was a radical socialist and revolutionary government that ruled Paris from 18 March to 28 May 1871. The Franco-Prussian War had led to the capture of Emperor Napoleon III in September 1870, the collapse of the Second French Empire, and the beginning of the Third Re…
What was the Paris Commune and what happened to it?
Commune of Paris, also called Paris Commune, French Commune de Paris, (1871), insurrection of Paris against the French government from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It occurred in the wake of France's defeat in the Franco-German War and the collapse of Napoleon III's Second Empire (1852–70).
Why was the Paris Commune important?
The Commune played an important role in the life of the capital. Not only did it provide civic functions like tax collection, services and public works, the Paris Commune was also a democratic assembly where the ordinary people of Paris were represented. This gave the Commune a great deal of sway.
What happened to the Paris Commune in 1792?
The September Massacres of 1792 Between 2 and 6 September, an estimated 1,100 - 1,600 people were killed by around 235 forces loyal to the Commune who had been responsible for guarding the prisons of Paris, and it is estimated that half of the prison population of Paris was massacred by the evening of 6 September.
Why was the Paris Commune established?
In the wake of France's defeat by Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War, workers and students of Paris joined together to form a revolutionary government called the Paris Commune. Elected on March 26, the Commune was in direct opposition to the conservative national government.
What was the significance of the Paris Commune quizlet?
The Commune played an important role in the life of the capital. Not only did it provide civic functions like tax collection, services and public works, the Paris Commune was also a democratic assembly where the ordinary people of Paris were represented. This gave the Commune a great deal of sway.
What is the Paris Commune simplified?
The Paris Commune was a radical, popular led government that ruled Paris from 18 March to 28 May, 1871. It occurred in the wake of France's defeat in the Franco-German war and the collapse of Napoleon III's Second Empire (1852–70).
Was the Paris Commune an anarchist?
The Commune was the result of an uprising in Paris after France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War. Anarchists participated actively in the establishment of the Paris Commune. They included Louise Michel, the Reclus brothers, and Eugène Varlin (the latter murdered in the repression afterwards).
What changed politically in France as a result of the brutal destruction of the Paris Commune?
What changed politically in France as a result of the brutal destruction of the Paris Commune? France formed a new national unity.
What are the two important legacies for which the Paris Commune is popularly remembered?
The Paris Commune is also popularly remembered for two important legacies: one, for its association with the workers' red flag – that was the flag adopted by the communards ( revolutionaries) in Paris; two, for the 'Marseillaise', originally written as a war song in 1792, it became a symbol of the Commune and of the ...
When was the Paris Commune established 1789?
July 11, 1789Before its formal establishment, there had been much popular discontent on the streets of Paris over who represented the true Commune, and who had the right to rule the Parisian people. This Commune was established on July 11, 1789 just days before the storming of the Bastille on July 14.
What were the communes in France?
The communes are the fourth-level administrative divisions of France. Communes vary widely in size and area, from large sprawling cities with millions of inhabitants like Paris, to small hamlets with only a handful of inhabitants. Communes typically are based on pre-existing villages and facilitate local governance.
What does Commune mean in France?
A commune is the lowest administrative division in France. It represents all parts of a town or a village under the same name, for example Paris, Bordeaux or Rennes.
What are the two important legacies for which the Paris Commune is popularly remembered?
The Paris Commune is also popularly remembered for two important legacies: one, for its association with the workers' red flag – that was the flag adopted by the communards ( revolutionaries) in Paris; two, for the 'Marseillaise', originally written as a war song in 1792, it became a symbol of the Commune and of the ...
What changed politically in France as a result of the brutal destruction of the Paris Commune?
What changed politically in France as a result of the brutal destruction of the Paris Commune? France formed a new national unity.
When was the Paris Commune established?
March 18, 1871Paris Commune / Start date
How many died in the Paris Commune?
One of the first cataclysms to be chronicled by The Times, in its 20th year, was the brutal suppression of the Paris Commune by French and Prussian troops during the “Bloody Week” in May 1871. The most conservative estimates have placed the number of dead at 6,000 to 7,000.
What was the name of the French Commune of Paris?
Commune of Paris, also called Paris Commune, French Commune de Paris, (1871), insurrection of Paris against the French government from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It occurred in the wake of France’s defeat in the Franco-German War and the collapse of Napoleon III’s Second Empire (1852–70). A few days later, the assembly transferred the seat ...
Why was the National Assembly elected in 1871?
The National Assembly, which was elected in February 1871 to conclude a peace with Germany, had a royalist majority, reflecting the conservative attitude of the provinces. The republican Parisians feared that the National Assembly meeting in Versailles would restore the monarchy.
What did the Commune do?
The Commune abolished the death penalty and military conscription. Seeking to disrupt economic power hierarchies, they ended night work in the city's bakeries, awarded pensions to the families of those who were killed while defending the Commune, and abolished the accrual of interest on debts.
What was the cause of the Paris Commune?
The siege ended with the surrender of the French army to the Prussians and the signing ...
What was the first democratic government in Paris?
The Paris Commune was a popular-led democratic government that ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. Inspired by the Marxist politics and revolutionary goals of the International Workingmen's Organization (also known as the First International), workers of Paris united to overthrow the existing French regime which had failed to protect the city from Prussian siege, and formed the first truly democratic government in the city and in all of France. The elected council of the Commune passed socialist policies and oversaw city functions for just over two months, until the French army retook the city for the French government, slaughtering tens of thousands of working-class Parisians in order to do so.
What did the Commune rule about workers?
Stewarding the rights of workers relative to the owners of businesses, the Commune ruled that workers could take over a business if it was abandoned by its owner, and prohibited employers from fining workers as a form of discipline.
What was the short lived socialist experiment?
A Short-Lived Socialist Experiment. The short existence of the Paris Commune was fraught with attacks by the French army acting on behalf of the Third Republic, which had decamped to Versailles. On May 21, 1871, the army stormed the city and slaughtered tens of thousands of Parisians, including women and children, ...
How did the Commune work?
After the National Guard took over key government and army sites in Paris in March 1871, the Commune began to take shape as members of a Central Committee organized a democratic election of councilors that would rule the city on behalf of the people. Sixty councilors were elected and included workers, businessmen, office workers, journalists, as well as scholars and writers. The council determined that the Commune would have no singular leader or any with more power than others. Instead, they functioned democratically and made decisions by consensus.
What did the workers of Paris fear when the Third Republic was signed?
When the armistice was signed and the Third Republic began their rule, the workers of Paris and feared that the new government would set the country for a return to monarchy, as there were many royalists serving within it.
How many representatives were chosen for the Commune?
There was universal suffrage, with representatives being chosen by district, so people actually knew the candidates. Ninety representatives were chosen, but quickly the representatives of the ruling class quit. The large majority elected to the Commune were revolutionaries; 24 out of 90 were workers.
When did the French army enter Paris?
On May 21, the French army entered Paris. There was no centralized organization for the defense of the city. Everything was still organized on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis, including the dispersal of weapons and ammunition.
Why did the French take down the Vendome Column?
They tore down the Vendome Column, a monument to the past glory of French imperialism and military ventures. They demanded that those who had benefited from the war should be taxed on their profits.
How many men were in the Central Committee?
The 20 men of the Central Committee organized the defense of the city. They organized the distribution of supplies and paid for the guardsmen, etc. While the National Guard was busy attending to the day-to-day needs of ordinary people, the new capitalist government was surrendering Paris to Prussia.
Why did the communs open reading rooms in hospitals?
The Commune opened reading rooms in hospitals to make life more pleasant for those who were sick. They forbade the rich to take books from the library. Paris was filled with people going to theater, concerts, museums, listening to street corner speeches, reading books and the many newspapers that stuffed the news racks. The working class was bursting with life, ideas, and enthusiasm! And all this was happening in a city surrounded by a hostile army and under constant siege.
What did the French soldiers see the National Guard as?
The soldiers saw the National Guard as their brothers and the generals as their enemies.
What did the National Guard say about the attack on Paris?
But the National Guard said “no” and organized to back up their words. On March 18, 1871, the new republican government, in a sneak attack by the French army, tried to retake some of the cannons that the National Guard had distributed around the city to protect Paris from attack.
What did the communists do in Paris?
In response to the attacks, Communards set fire to swathes of the city, destroying important monuments and sites including Hôtel de Ville (Paris City Hall), the Tuileries Palace (which was never rebuilt), as well as several other government buildings. While some have placed in doubt the precise authors of these acts, few historians would argue that that the arson was not committed by National Guard members.
Why is the Commune period important?
Les acteurs, l’événement, les lieux (The Paris Commune 1871: The Participants, The Events, The Places), said in an e-mail interview that the Commune period is most significant for having led to the permanent end of monarchy in France.
Why was Sacré Coeur Basilica in Montmartre erected?
Sacré Coeur Basilica in Montmartre was in part erected as “penance” for lives lost during the Commune de Paris.
What were the factions of the Paris communist government?
The Paris Commune’s fleeting government was itself composed of several competing factions, including Jacobins (who followed in the footsteps of the 1793 Revolutionary club of the same name), Blanquistes (socialists who favored violent revolt), and Proudhonists, who promoted a utopian vision that involved establishing a network of Communes across France.
What was the first major revolt in 1871?
Some advocated for violent revolutionary revolt, or anarchy. Major skirmishes between the government and revolutionary insurrectionists first broke out on March 18, 1871, when Thiers moved to dismantle the National Guard, and ordered the removal of its cannons stationed in now- Belleville and Montmartre to defend Paris.
What happened to the National Guard in Paris?
After government military forces retreated from Paris to Versailles, National Guard members moved to rapidly take over the city. In late March, the revolutionary Republicans won municipal elections in Paris and declared a “Commune” government, to be led by workers and ordinary citizens.
What militia was in Paris during the siege?
The new government, in turn, feared the restive Republican working classes in Paris and other cities– some of whom had served in the militia known as the National Guard during the Prussian siege of Paris just months earlier.
Who led the Paris Commune?
The operations were led by Marshal Patrice de Mac Mahon, a monarchist French nobleman and skilled military tactician. The Paris Commune’s armed force was composed mainly of volunteers with no military training or experience and the National Guard, which had limited manpower.
What happened in Paris on March 26th?
On March 26th, the rebels announced the establishment of the Paris Commune, declaring secession from the French Republic. The freshly reformed French army quickly suppressed similar uprisings in Lyon, Marseille, and other major French cities. On March 27th, Adolphe Thiers declared the communards to be enemies of France and democracy. In the meantime, the leaders of the Paris Commune were struggling to form a working government.
What was the strategy of the French army?
The French army adopted a ruthless strategy. Only a few prisoners were taken while most communards were shot on sight. The leaders of the Paris Commune adopted a similar strategy, passing a “Decree on Hostages,” which mandated the arrest of many supposed opponents to the revolutionary regime, including religious dignitaries. The prisoners gathered by the Commune were subjected to quick judgments by popular tribunals and swift executions.
How many armed men and women were in the march on Versailles?
Despite managing to gather a force that, according to some sources, reached 170,000 armed men and women, the communards poorly managed the campaign, severely mishandling their only offensive action, the march on Versailles, that targeted to push governmental forces out of the prestigious monarchic palace.
What was the first matter of business for the President of France?
The first matter of business for the president was to finalize the peace treaty with Germany. From the Assembly’s quarters in Bordeaux in Southern France, he agreed to the German conditions and ordered full disarmament of Paris right after the departure of foreign soldiers. Arriving at the capitol on March 15th, Thiers ordered that all canons positioned inside the city be moved back to military barracks.
What year was France defeated?
The year is 1871. France has been severely defeated in the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian war. Paris is in turmoil. The freshly established Third Republic struggles to form a working government, and the French capital’s population despises the elected officials.
What was the biggest uprising in France?
After a devastating defeat against Prussia in 1870, France faced one of its biggest uprisings in modern history: a popular socialist revolt, establishing the Paris Commune.
What was the conscious aim of the Paris Commune?
This suggests that the conscious aim of the Paris Commune was the establishment of Socialism. But this was not so (and even if it had been it would not have made any difference to its chances of survival). Those who held this view of the tasks of the Commune were only a minority, the majority being made up of the Jacobins and Blanquists who looked back to 1792 rather than forward to Socialism and who wasted their time with revived “committees of public safety” and even with the old revolutionary calendar.
Why was the Paris Commune a failure?
The failure of the Paris Commune in fact vindicated the perspective Marx had of the workers gradually building up their political and industrial strength, rather than trying to stage immediate armed uprisings against the capitalist State. The Paris Commune was one such uprising, an important but exceptional incident in the history of the working class which demonstrated both the need to win political power and the futility of the barricade as the way to do this.
What was the failure of the Paris commun?
The failure of the Paris Commune in fact vindicated the perspective Marx had of the workers gradually building up their political and industrial strength, rather than trying to stage immediate armed uprisings against the capitalist State.
What was Karl Marx's long term strategy?
His long-term strategy was to encourage the working class in all countries to act independently in order to prepare them for Socialist political action. He was consistently opposed to immediate working class uprisings as advocated by, among others, the anarchist Bakunin. Indeed opposition was his first reaction to the idea of an uprising in Paris following the defeat in September 1870 of France in the Franco-Prussian War. A manifesto, drafted by Marx and issued by the IWMA in September to mark the overthrow of Napoleon III and the proclamation of a Republic in France, advised the French working class:
What was Marx's view on the Commune?
In these draft notes Marx expressed the view that the Commune, as a democratic political institution, would be tantamount to “working class government” in places like Paris where the workers were in the majority. Before the numerical predominance of the working class could become politically significant the old bureaucratic government machine had first to be taken over, then broken up and be replaced by a democratic regime such as the Commune. This is what he meant by the often-quoted (usually out of context and nearly as often misunderstood) statement, which occurs in three different forms in the draft; that “The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” It must be admitted, however, that Marx sometimes seemed to ignore or underestimate the need for the working class to have Socialist ideas as well as democratic institutions before their numbers could be a force for Socialism.
Was the Commune a socialist country?
So in 1881 Marx openly recognised that the Commune was not Socialist and that it could not have succeeded beyond reaching some compromise with the French government. We can only speculate what sort of compromise Marx had in mind, but it was probably the establishment of a (capitalist) Republic which would have allowed the working class to organise politically and industrially.
Events Leading Up to The Paris Commune
The Paris Commune―Two Months of Socialist, Democratic Rule
- After the National Guard took over key government and army sites in Paris in March 1871, the Commune began to take shape as members of a Central Committee organized a democratic election of councilors that would rule the city on behalf of the people. Sixty councilors were elected and included workers, businessmen, office workers, journalists, as we...
A Short-Lived Socialist Experiment
- The short existence of the Paris Commune was fraught with attacks by the French army acting on behalf of the Third Republic, which had decamped to Versailles. On May 21, 1871, the army stormed the city and slaughtered tens of thousands of Parisians, including women and children, in the name of retaking the city for the Third Republic. Members of the Commune and the National …
The Paris Commune and Karl Marx
- Those familiar with the writing of Karl Marx might recognize his politics in the motivation behind the Paris Commune and values that guided it during its short rule. That's because leading Communards, including Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Louis Auguste Blanqui, were affiliated with and inspired by the values and politics of the International Workingmen's Association (also know…
Overview
The Paris Commune during the French Revolution was the government of Paris from 1789 until 1795. Established in the Hôtel de Ville just after the storming of the Bastille, it consisted of 144 delegates elected by the 60 divisions of the city. Before its formal establishment, there had been much popular discontent on the streets of Paris over who represented the true Commune, and who had the rig…
Legislative origins and early history
When Louis XVI ascended to the throne, he initially sought to establish better relations with a Paris that had felt subordinated by Versailles, and in 1774 he restored the Parlement of Paris - a court of nobles that had previously been abolished. However its powers were limited, and economic pressures meant that Versailles imposed austerity measures on the military and policing structures of Paris, incentivising disloyalty to the crown amongst soldiers and the police. This co…
The insurrection on 10 August 1792
In the earlier days of the Commune, Feuillants and then Girondin bourgeois Republican forces had dominated, but an ascendant Jacobin presence amongst the Parisian political class became increasingly militant in its desire to establish control of the Commune, and it succeeded in doing so formally as part of an organised seizure of power in August 1792. As a result of this, the Paris Commune became insurrectionary in the summer of 1792, essentially refusing to take orders fro…
The September Massacres of 1792
One of the bloodiest consequences of the Paris Commune was the September Massacres, and their exact origins continue to be a source of historical debate around the internal politics of the Paris Commune. Between 2 and 6 September, an estimated 1,100 - 1,600 people were killed by around 235 forces loyal to the Commune who had been responsible for guarding the prisons of Paris, and it is estimated that half of the prison population of Paris was massacred by the eveni…
The Insurrection of 31 May - 2 June 1793
It called for the reinstatement of the Revolutionary Tribunal to try political opponents, and on 10 March 1793, the tribunal was restored. On 18 April the Commune announced an insurrection against the convention after the arrest of Jean-Paul Marat. Mid May Marat and the Commune supported Robespierre publicly and secretly. On 25 May, the Commune demanded that Hébert be released. The president of the Convention Maximin Isnard, who had enough of the tyranny of the …
The Defeat of the Girondins
The Commune took charge of routine civic functions but is best known for mobilizing the people towards direct democracy and insurrection when it deemed the Revolution to be in danger, as well as for its campaign to dechristianize the country. This campaign of dechristianization was spearheaded by many prominent figures within the Commune, such as the minister of war Jean-Nicolas Pache who sought to disseminate the profoundly anti-clerical work of Jacques Hébert by …
The Thermidorian reaction and decline of the commune
It was not until 1792 that the government had a formal cabinet in place, with the appointment of the Ministers of the French National Convention and the decision of the Commissioners of the Committee of Public Safety in 1794 to take charge of administrative departments, but the increased and consolidated power of the National Convention by 1794 now meant that they could challenge the insurrectionary and often hostile power of the Paris Commune. The ousting of Rob…
Women's rights
In 1791, the French Revolutionary Constitution attributed women to the category of "passive" citizens. Later, in 1793, the Jacobin Constitution did not allow women to vote. In 1795 some men lost their right to vote and the notion of "passive" citizenship was no longer in use, meaning that women lost their rights to be called citizens at all. The lack of rights was not unusual at the time for most working-class and middle-class women, however, it significantly influenced those mor…