IV.4. A COMMUNARD BASTION ERASED AND TRANSFORMED

MENU: 4.4.  A Communard bastion transformed

THE 13TH, ONCE THE CITY'S POOREST DISTRICT

Being in the east where prevailing winds blow pollution, proximity to the river, cheap land on the city's outskirt and a railroad explain the area's exceptional industrialization.

And so its exceptional misery. 

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

That site now

The arrow refers to the panels below.

The green panel indicates the Gustave-Mesureur square, saying that he founded a school for nurses at the very large medical center nearby (Pitié-Salpétrière). Next to it, a sign announcing a circus.  

The victory of the left and the discredit of the right after World War II — more here and here — explain France's social safety net.

But the particularly miserable nature of this part of the city lies behind the particular depth of its change. 

Background

• The fight for the hilltop

• Deleting the past

• An epicenter of misery

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Next,

IV.4.1.

The fight for the hilltop

IV.4.1. THE FIGHT FOR THE HILLTOP

 

Poster La Commune de Paris, 1883, Gallica

The fiercest struggle

of Bloody Week 

• Frenzied combat

• Communard fighters

• The Communard spirit continues

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

*   *   *

Next,

Frenzied combat

FRENZIED COMBAT

THE SIDES OF THE HILL* THAT OVERLOOKS THE LEFT BANK WAS THE WORST SITE OF BLOODY WEEK FIGHTING 

*The Butte-aux-Cailles ("Quail hilltop")

                                 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

Here the Versaillais officers can no longer spare unreliable troops: though their forces are six times more numerous than those of the Communards, it takes four attempts to take the hill.

-- Lissagary

First they avoid the barricade that guards the district entry* 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 begins by 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 take at last toward 4 p.m.

      Engraving of the time, gone from the web

The thousand surviving Communards retire to the right bank in good order, where they disperse 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

from the fighting.

*    *    *

Next, 

Communard fighters

COMMUNARD FIGHTERS

THE LEGENDARY 101st BATALLION: "RAGE ALONE COMMANDS THOSE DEMONS...

All are 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

The hilltop battle lost, their general, Walery Wroblewsky, refuses the command of the remaining Communard troops and fights on as an ordinary soldier:

        Mosaic outside the seat of Friends of the Commune

A young Polish nobleman exiled for participating in the insurrection of 1863, he survives 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. He he dies poverty-stricken there (in 1908). 

-- Unsigned article in a publication of Friends of the Commune, n° 33, 2008 (in French) 

Serizier, the battalion's commander 

       Cover photo,

            Elements for a history of the Commune in the 13th district by Gérard Conte, 1989 (in French)

 

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 blusters, drinks, beats his wife,

and is an extremely brave and effective soldier.

*     *     *

Next,

The Communard spirit continues

CONTRADICTORY PANELS OCCUPIED THIS CROSSROAD

ONE CALLED THE SPACE "THE PLACE DE LA COMMUNE DE PARIS," THE OTHER GAVE HISTORICAL DETAILS BUT LEFT OUT LA COMMUNE 

(UNTIL 2015)

The association "Friends of La Commune" established the Commune sign in 2015. The earlier sign, part of the series a right-wing government put up all over the city toward 2000, remained.

History of Paris

La Butte-aux-Cailles

Pierre Caille [useless erudition] purchases a vine-covered hillside dominating the Bièvre in 1543. He leaves his name to the small agricultural terrain, whose history is hardly affected by the forced landing of the first hot-air balloon carrying the marquis d'Arlauder and Pilâtre de Rozier in 1783 [useless erudition]. The hilltop is crowned by windmills. One of them remains on this small opening until the 1860's. It also provides stones and clay. Between the Révolution of 1848 and World War I, the Butte aux Cailles is colonized by ragpickers and leather workers. The village without a church is populated by farms, workshops and shops in a spirit of conviviality and freedom. [Idyllic]

In 2024 it was removed and "Place de la Commune de Paris" was more prominently displayed: 

The site's messages are political:

Liberty for political prisoners! There for many years.  

Toward 2017-2020 

Toward 2022-2024

"Nationalists not welcome"

*    *    *

Next,

A official panel finally mentions La Commune but...

A PANEL FINALLY MENTIONS THE FIGHTING, BUT...

 

ERRORS, IRRELEVANT DATA AND BEING HIDDEN AWAY CANCEL THAT HONESTY  

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. Wanting to avoid its barricades explains using the Bièvre via its islands, and so climbing the hill.

# # #

Most of the 700 panels are on the street where they are immediately noticed, but this one is placed inside the passage that leads to the hill and imperceptible to passers-by:

Ignorance and irrelevance as elsewhere,

 invisibility added. 

End of this section.

*    *    * 

Next section,

IV.4.2. 

An epicenter of misery