VII. A COMMUNARD BASTION ERASED AND TRANSFORMED: THE OVERLOOKED 13TH DISTRICT

MENU: 7. A Communard bastion

IT BECAME FRANCE'S MOST INDUSTRIALIZED AREA BECAUSE IT WAS...

• In the east where prevailing winds blow pollution 
• Next to the river and a railroad
• An outskirt with inexpensive land

Adapted from a Google map

Once idyllic, raw capitalism made it the city's poorest. 

 Painting (detail) of an inn in the area toward 1820 (anonymous, at the Auberge Ethchegorry today) 

Paris, 4 place Pinel "The Ragmen"  by Eugène Atget  toward 1900 / for more photos from the National Library, zoom 

Poverty made it a Communard stronghold, industrialization a place of crime, misery and revolt.

In brief

• The fight for the hilltop

• An epicenter of misery

• A Third-World revolutionaries' training ground

• "A lost district at the city's edge"

• A walk through an outskirt that used to be chilling

*    *    *

 

Next,

V.II.

The fight for the hilltop

VII.1. THE FIGHT FOR THE HILLTOP

 MENU: 7.1. The fight for the hilltop

THE FIERCEST STRUGGLE OF BLOODY WEEK

The Last Day of the Commune, theater poster by Leon Choubrac, 1883 / zoom (wrong date)

In brief

• Frenzied combat

• Communard fighters

• The Communard spirit continues

• A panel finally mentions the fighting, but...

*   *   *

Next,

Frenzied combat

FRENZIED COMBAT

THE BUTTE-AUX-CAILLES ("QUAIL HILLTOP"), SITE OF THE REPRESSION'S WORST FIGHTING

Elsewhere Versaillais officers spared unreliable troops, but they could not leave so strategic a height under Communard control. Government forces were six times more numerous than those of the Communards, but it took four attempts to seize the hill.

-- Lissagary

                                 The Observatory seen from the Butte aux Cailles by Jean Millet, toward 1710 / zoom

"A perspective to delight 

the most blasé traveller [...]

The Panthéon's magnificent cupula, the drab and melancholy Val de Grâce, proudly look over an entire town [...]  from there, the proportions of the the two monuments appear gigantic [...] to the left, the Observatory seems a dark and gaunt spectre [...] then, from afar, the Invalides's elegant lantern flames between the Luxembourg's blue masses and the gray towers of Saint-Sulpice [...]" 

-- The Woman of Thirty by Balzac, 1842 

First they avoided the barricade that guarded the entry* to the 13th, by advancing under fire along the islands of the Bièvre:

*Les Gobelins, the famous site of tapestry production since the 17th century and still where the district begins. 

Zoom (please scroll down)

Then their climb began at this path...

Parc René Le Gall

The park is built on enlarged islands.

Across what was then a track... 

Boulevard Auguste Blanqui 

It linked the gate at the city's entrance with place d'Italie, site of City Hall and the prison where the monks would soon be killed.

To head up the hill under heavy fire, which they took at last toward 4 p.m.

      Engraving of the time, gone from the web

The thousand surviving Communards retired to the right bank in good order, where they dispersed to defend their neighborhoods.  

# # #

That summit is five minutes

from place de la Commune...

The Brassai garden

From which the terrified residents

hear the screams and gun shots.

*    *    *

Next, 

Communard fighters

COMMUNARD FIGHTERS

THE HILLTOP LOST, GENERAL WALERY WROBLEWSKY REFUSED THE COMMAND OF THE REMAINING TROOPS AND FOUGHT ON AS AN ORDINARY SOLDIER:

        Mosaic outside the seat of Les amis de la Commune

A Polish nobleman exiled for participating in the insurrection of 1863, he has survived in Paris by lighting street lamps, then as a typographer.

La Commune defeated, he manages to escape Paris and flees to England. With the help of Marx, Engels and Polish refugees he founds a printing establishment and publishes Lissagary's account. He returns to Paris in 1885, where he dies poverty-stricken in 1908). 

-- Unsigned article in a publication of Les amis de la Commune, n° 33, 2008 (in French) 

# # #

The legendary 101st battalion: "Rage alone commands those demons," of the 13th or Mouffetard,* "undisciplined, hoarse, with torn clothes and banner, who mutiny if they rest and as soon as

they have been withdrawn from battle, must be plunged into it again."

  -- Lissagary

*Where Hemingway hears Communard memories

Serizier, the commander:

       Cover photo

            Elements d'une histoire de la Commune dans le 13e arrondissement by Gérard Conte, 1989

 

Marie Jean-Baptiste Sérizier wears his cap boldly to the side and looks intensely into the camera as he leans against his sword.  

A Communist tanner

and militant in the workers' associations of the 13th,

he blustered, drank, beat his wife

and was an extremely brave and effective soldier.

For his last fight,

please click back.

*     *     *

Next,

The Communard spirit continues

A PANEL DOES MENTION LA COMMUNE AND THE FIGHTING, BUT...

 

IT CONTAINS ERRORS, IRRELEVANT DATA AND IS HIDDEN AWAY

History of Paris

Communards on the Butte-aux-Cailles

"After the seige of Paris the government that has taken refuge in Versailles tries to restore order [misstatement,* see below] in Paris held by the Commune. The Butte aux Cailles, then sparsely inhabited and whose steep slopes dominate the Bievre river, is the theater of a bloody battle on May 25. The guards have their headquarters there [error*]. 

Their leader, Wroblewski, protects its access by ambushes and light artillery fire.

[...] The Versaillais are pushed back several times, but at the end of the day hold place d'Italie — then place Émil Duval, counselor and Communard general shot in April [irrelevant] — and the hill, while numerous insurgents retreat to the right bank of the Seine.  

* Restore order: a euphemism for taking control. Paris was exceptionally calm (please click and scroll down).

** Their headquarters were the Gobelins manufactory. The need to avoid its barricades explains using the Bièvre via its islands.

# # #

Most of the city's 700 panels are on the street where they are  noticed, but this one is placed inside the passage that leads to the hill. 

You must take the little-used passage to see it.  

Ignorance and irrelevance as elsewhere,

 invisibility added. 

End of this section.

*    *    * 

Next section,

VII.2. 

An epicenter of misery

VII.2. AN EPICENTER OF MISERY

MENU: 6.2. An epicenter of misery  

"THE 13th DISTRICT IS BY FAR THE MOST MISERABLE OF PARIS WHERE THE MOST TOXIC ELEMENTS OF ITS POPULATION FIND REFUGE"

-- Belinda Carter, Suffering Paris, "Paris treizième" (in French)

Zoom

Fog on Tolbiac bridge by Léo Malet (first published 1956), illustrated by Jacques Tardi (Castermann, 1988)

"Get out of here, Belita. 

Go dump your flowers wherever you like,
but get out of this place.

It will crush you, as it has others.  

 It stinks too much of misery, shit and misfortune." 

# # #

Its story until the 1970's

• Vanished industry

• Disease, crime and revolt 

• A Third-World revolutionaries' training ground

• "A lost district at the city's edge"

*    *    *

Next,

Vanished industry

DISEASE, CRIME AND REVOLT

THE SHAME OF PARIS, CITÉ JEANNE D'ARC

(BUILT IN 1884)

"The modern Court of Miracles... those who live there have fallen 

to the last rung of misery."

-- Belinda Carter, Paris treizième

Rue Jeanne d'Arc seen from the church steps (toward 1900) 

The posthumous account of a man who
 spent his youth among the most indigent
of the capital — notably of Cité Jeanne d'Arc — 
and tells what he has seen...

Disease  

In its dark, funereal corridors, among the stairs, corners and sordid recesses and in the midst of its shadow, the infection lurks and prowls, always in search of prey, the devouring specter: tuberculosis.

 -- A Kid, autobiographical novel by Auguste Brepson, 1927

Crime: 

The young man

in the postcard below

wears the cummerbund

of the "apaches,"*

the first modern street gangs.

*From the frightening reputation of the American West's Apaches 

The cummerbund, often red

Zoom (please scroll down)

The costume was that métro diggers who won major strikes in 1901 often wore. The apaches appropriated it for its prestige and by evoking strikers, to show that they did not work.

Revolt: The cité becomes a bastion (in May 1934), announcing the turbulence that leads to the victory of the Socialist Popular Front:*

(In power, 1936-1939)

* Wikipedia and this blook

"The besieged of Cité Jeanne d'Arc surrendered this morning" (in French) / zoom

When a Communist deputy from the 13th urges workers to vote, he is assaulted and arrested. Residents build barricades at both entrances to the cité and light fires in front of them (surely remembering La Commune), throw everything the can get their hands on at the police (as in the early 1830's and 1848), and push them back twice. 

The whole neighborhood has risen up, acclaiming the defenders of the cité who sing the Internationale and acclaim the soviets.

-- Paul Vaillant-Couturier, editor of l'Humanité (the Communist daily),

cited in Histoire et histoires du 13e, n° 6, winter 2011.

# # #

Remains of the cité: this plaque... 

On the corner of rues Jeanne d'Arc / Docteur Victor Hutinel

 [...] hovels in a neighborhood that undergoes rapid industrialization [...] A center of revolt as much as of squalor and delinquency, the Cité Jeanne d'Arc brings muscular repression, but also philanthropy.

In 1934 a movement that announces the Popular Front appears: the insurgents raise barricades [...].

And the name "Résidence Jeanne d'Arc," for this City-run housing for the elderly:

That is the sole trace.

*     *     *

Next,

A Third-World revolutionaries' training ground

VANISHED INDUSTRY

TAKE THE SAY RAFFINERIE, THE WORLD'S MAIN SUGAR REFINERY AND A HOUSEHOLD WORD 

(1832*-1968)

*An example of capitalism's take-off after the Revolution of 1830

The plant

Zoom (a series of photos of the time)

Zoom (for more pictures, please scroll down)

This aerial view of 1950 shows the establishment's extent. In fact it was much larger, since the part that is now a park with a supermarket is cut off. 

The establishment covered both sides of rue Jeanne d'Arc, which had been built for repression after the working-class insurrection of June, 1848.

When a riot broke out in 1934 (please read on), the street was finally used as intended: 

      Adapted from a map of 1892 / zoom

 # # #

A worker remembers:

"We held on thanks to coffee and sugar, which we consumed on the spot because we were searched at the exit.

My fingers bled and I would cry every night." 

-- Suzanne Chaveau, employed at Say from 1942 /
 cited in The Say refinery or Jamaica in  Paris, 2012 (in French)

Paris treizième

Working hours: 6 a.m.- 6 p.m., six days a week.

Accidents, explosions and fires: This explosion led to 41 victims,

some of whom were buried alive.

(In 1908)

Explosion at the Say refinery, Paris treizième

It was Say's third catastrophe since 1904, and other establishments had their own.

-- A Rich Industrial Past," Histoire et histoires du 13e," n° 19, 2020 (in French)

The explosion of October 10, 1915, « Paris treizième »

"The President of the Republic Raymond Poincaré on the site of the catastrophe"

"Unfortunately accidents are not rare," says the text.

# # #

The trace of the refinery now

History of Paris

The Say refinery

"An industrialist from Nantes, Louis Say in 1832 buys the terrain of the 'Jamaican refinery,' then in Ivry, behind the barrier derrière of the Two-Windmills [useless erudition]: All the area in front of us. Its cauldrons produce two or three tons of sugar daily as of 1832, and its success makes it world-size with the arrival of 'indigenous' [?] beet sugar; the Say refinery is famous for its social works: In 1863 Constant Say creates bonuses and retirements for the infirm and elderly, and in 1868 a fund to help the sick and wounded. In 1900, this manufactory, which closed in 1968, was the world's most important, with 600t. [tons?] per day." 

The sign mentions palliatifs, 

not working conditions and accidents.  

*    *    *

Next,

A Third-World revolutionaries' training ground