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

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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...

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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.

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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.

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Next section,

VII.2. 

An epicenter of misery