V.2.5. MYSTIFICATION

THIS SIGN ON THE SITE OF THE GENERALS' LYNCHINGS IS RECENT, SINCE IT WAS REWORKED IN 2016

It expresses Versaillais propaganda that most historians fundamentally accept and that, fortunately, a few contest. 

The visitors ignore the sign because they are unaware of the the site's importance. That's just as well: It is part of general obfuscation.

In brief

• Old School mystification

• Mystification now

• Two historians fight back

*      *      *

Next,

Old School mystification

VI.2.5.a. OLD SCHOOL MYSTIFICATION

EMBLEMATIC SITE, ODD MARKER

It focuses on an implausible shooting and leaves out La Commune.

Baroness Danute

The shooting of March 18, 1871

The bolding brings out data unknown to most readers.

After the failure of the night-time expedition to seize the cannons of the national guard by surprise, the first bloodletting took place during the evening of March 18, 1871. General Clément-Thomas, a staunch republican exiled under the Empire returned to participate in the defense of Paris after Sedan, is recognized on place Pigalle, despite his denials and his civilian dress: he seeks General Lecomte, arrested by the insurgents that morning, for having ordered the troops to fire on the crowd. Arrested too, he is taken to the the seat of the Central Committee situated at 6, rue des Rosiers (rebaptized rue de Chevalier de la Barre in 1907).

Condemned to death by a summary judgement, both are shot against the garden wall by their own soldiers. 

In brief

• A firing squad that makes no sense

• Versaillais propaganda that tells (part of) the truth

• "The hostages of the rue Haxo," the other highly publicized killing

• Catholic martyrs whom even the Church forgets

• "To the victors belong the spoils"

 Many of the 700 panels

 that a right-wing City Hall sponsored in 1992

turn people away from history

by their string of irrelevant data.

As well, the shooting of the generals

 "by their own soldiers" 

copies the Versaillais invention.

 *     *     *

Next,

A firing squad that makes no sense

A FIRING SQUAD THAT MAKES NO SENSE

A MONTAGE SHOWS LA COMMUNE BORN OF MUTINY AND PREMEDITATED MURDER

The posed photo would have been impossible, the autopsy report shows the bullets shot from behind, Versailles information is suspect and an event so extraordinary must be explained...* 

*Conscripts killed officers spontaneously before the October Revolution and during the Vietnam War, but I have never heard of their organizing an execution.

  

Zoom

First of the series "The Crimes of the Commune," montages that Versailles commissioned from the royalist photographer Charles Edouard Appert. The next pages show several more. 

Yet only Victor Hugo found it "curious" that troops shoot their generals. Even narrators favorable to La Commune have usually adopted the official tale:

 

• Marx says it due to conscripts' hostility to officers. Yet these soldiers must not have known Clément, who as head of the Parisian National Guard had no connection with the army. 

• The Soviet film The New Babylon skips the drama by having the Lecomte character tell the troops to abandon the cannons. That is the exception mentioned earlier in a movie that otherwise follows the sources.

    The New Babylon 

"Soldiers! After Versailles you will be allowed to go home."

• Raspou'team, whose street art commemorated La Commune's 140th anniversary, takes the montage at face value:

General Clément "who was already known for repressing the insurrection of 1848, is recognized while inspecting the barricades in civilian dress. Thomas and Lecomte are led to the rue des Rosiers, on the Montmartre hilltop. Both are shot. While about it, the National Guard parades under the windows." [Only the first sentence is true. ]

• A graphic novel has Louise Michel oppose the firing squad:

"No ! Wait for the Committee! This needs a court martial!" 

• A Soviet illustration captures the chaos, but keeps the firing squad:

Gone from the web  

•  A televised series shows the crowd making up the firing squad, which erases mutiny but keeps premeditation.

-- Karambolage, "March 18, 1871" (in French)

• The 13th's historical journal* starts a special issue on La Commune with the firing squad:  

*Right-leaning but not deliberately biased. 

 

 La Commune de Paris, "History et histories of the 13th," n°7, June 2011

"General Lecomte is arrested then shot, rue des Rosiers, by his soldiers. General Clément Thomas suffers the same fate..."

# # #

Louise Michel on Clément's arrest: "the guns went off on their own."

Memories of June, the siege and its sufferings, the useless attempts to break it with their wounded and dead, the incompetence and suspected treason of generals, the shooting into a largely unarmed crowd, the launch of an attack that was sure to fail, the shameful capitulation, the firing of over 600 officers for "agitating noisily," the Prussian victory march without announcing the quid pro quo, the army's arrival by surprise when the cannons' return had been offered, the mortally-wounded guard...

The effect of tolling bells and drum rolls.

As well, Montmartrois villagers were not alone, since residents joined them from the bottom of the hill. The sense of personal responsibility is lost in a crowd: "It was as if my gun took over." 

In that context Lecomte refuses to have the wounded guard taken to the hospital, calls the furious residents "vermin" and orders his troops to fire on them —  three times.

Clément does not realize that having repressed the demonstration of May 1848, been decorated for his role in the June massacre and fired more than 600 officers for "agitating" means that "observing" in civilian clothes is to stroll into the lions' den.*  

*In History of the 1848 Revolution Marie Agoult (Daniel Stern) mentions officers attired in that way observing the June barricades. So the practice must have been common knowledge, and remembered. 

# # #

General Trochu imagines Clément "rushing to the scene as good soldiers go toward the fighting, believing, I am sure [...] that his notoriety as Commander of the National Guard and veteran of the republican cause would impress the hysterical crowds..."  

-- Posthumous works, p. 653 / online (in French)

By believing that "hysterical crowds"

will listen to a killer of the people closest to them,

the privileged show how completely they ignore

that they "dance on corpses."

Supposition:

The left does not wish to find

the soon-to-be-Communard residents,

guilty of such crime.

It would be better to say

that the generals were killed

 by their myopia.

*     *     *

Next,

Versaillais propaganda that tells (part of) the truth

VERSAILLAIS PROPAGANDA THAT TELLS (PART OF) THE TRUTH

ONE "CRIME OF THE COMMUNE,"* DOES ILLUSTRATE REALITY, THOUGH NOT ALL OF IT

Théophile Ferré, the fanatic whom Louise Michel loved, did order the shootings of the Archbishop of Paris and five other prisoners.

     Assassination of the Hostages at the la Roquette Prison / zoom 

     Musée Carnavalet, not exhibited

Ferré was not present but as he ordered the execution, having an actor represent him is fair. Yet showing the other victims as clergy is propaganda, since most were policemen whose names happened to be first on the prison list (My Red Notebooks: a Bit of Truth on the Death of the Hostages, toward 1910). 

   By Robert Jefferson Bingham, toward 1860 / zoom

Monseigneur Georges Darboy was a kindly man of humble origin, who defended the poor and tried to limit Versailles's ferocity. 

# # #

Thiers was as responsible:

• The Communards wished to exchange Darboy for Auguste Blanqui, France's most famous revolutionary. 

     Portrait of Louis Blanqui by Eugène Appert, probably 1871 / zoom

• He is remembered for spending 35 years in prison and for the phrase "Neither god nor master:" 

Behind the Church of the Sacré-Cœur, a symbolic Commune site, 2016

 A poster in the washroom of a popular restaurant in La Goutte d'Or, 2020

Movie on a slave revolt, 2024

# # #

• When leaders of La Commune offered to exchange all 74 hostages for Blanqui alone, Thiers refused.

Neither God nor Master: Auguste Blanqui, the Jailed  by L. Kournwsky and M. Le Roy (Casterman), 2005

"You will get them on the sole condition of letting Blanqui go! 74 men in exchange for one ! Just say the word, and I will bring you all of them..

# # #

"Idiot!" cried Victor Hugo he heard that Ferré had given Thiers the high-profile martyr he sought, used again and again:   

    Photomontage by Ernest-Charles Appert, février 1872 / zoom

Monseigneur Darboy at the prison of La Roquette

Zoom

Zoom

Illustration from a painting by Henri Motte, Internet / disappeared

This painting was made in 1926...

May 24 1781, Execution of  Mgr Darboy and President Bonjean at la Roquette by Marie-Thérèse de la Fosse / zoom

And I heard a countess evoke

 the Archbishop's death with emotion

when a full century had passed.

*     *     *

Next,

"The hostages of the rue Haxo," the other highly publicized killing

V.2.5.b. MYSTIFICATION NOW

THE CITY MUSEUM OF WORKING-CLASS SAINT-DENIS, NORTH OF PARIS, DEVOTES ITS WHOLE SECOND FLOOR TO LA COMMUNE. 

Its exhibit is disappointing.

Arrest of an officer by the federated National Guard at the entry of the 8th district's City Hall by Emmanuel Massé, 1870 (That date is impossible: the federated Guard was created on February 15, 1871.)

Showing an arrest by Communards is accurate. Saying that they sought vengeance by summary executions is not. Plus, here again mistakes show ignorance and disinterest in the subject itself.

Emmanuel Massé, portraitist and genre painter, here shows an officer of the Empire arrested at the 8th district city hall. Arrests were very frequent, as often by the Communards as by the Versaillais who encircled Paris. [The Versaillais weren't in Paris. How could they arrest?] The prisoners meant pressure on the adverse camp and the summary executions nourished the insurgents' ardor in their desire for vengeance. [The number of Parisians the Versaillais killed is estimated as at least 30.000: Please read on. Arbitrary executions by Communards: six, all due to the same fanatic.] 

These pages examine the rightward U-turn

in the way French history is written.

• Whose violence? The comeback of the Versaillais myth 

• A page from a 2016 schoolbook

• Revision corrects the errors and reinforces the desired mindset

• The City Museum before renovation (in 2016-2022)...

• And after it

• The Saint-Denis museum waters down

*      *     *

Whose violence? 

The comeback of the Versaillais myth