THE VICTORIES OF LA COMMUNE

DEDICATED OFFICIALS KEEP THE CONTINENT'S LARGEST CITY AFLOAT* WHILE ALMOST IMMEDIATELY FIGHTING A WAR

*A million and a half inhabitants 

Fight between the Fédérés and Regular Troops West of Paris by Michel Charles Fichot, 1871, zoom

Top functionaries leave for Versailles with archives, equipment and funds, leaving Paris to men with no plan or governing experience:

The Commune at City Hall - The Throne Room

 -- Journal universel

Activity is informal but intense. The men in the foreground have not gone home to sleep.

The elected are journalists, craftspeople or blue-collar workers,

who are often under 30:

The Press during the Commune (in French) / Les Amis de la Commune

Yet with minimal funds they manage a city that has not recovered from the draconian siege, to which Versailles adds a second,* and that is almost immediately at war.

* The Prussians let goods through to pressure Versailles, but it is still a handicap.

"We had to manage war, revolution, the administration of a besieged town and reply to citizens' multiple solicitations, all at the same time. Corrupt businessmen and profiteers had no trouble slipping into the lines."

-- The Banquet of the Famished by Didier Daeninckx, 2012

A novel that follows the sources.

Thiers's "satanic battle plan:" Without functionaries Paris

will have no light or water, sewers will overflow, garbage fill the streets, the dead be unburied: Chaos and epidemics will bring its collapse. 

-- Jules Andrieu (below)

 Yet,

 

• "I have never seen the streets so well swept since the siege as they were this morning. 

 -- The Reverend William Gibson cited in Paris Babylon by Rupert Christiansian, 1994

Though he probably agreed with the American press, that The Communards were a “wild, reckless, irresponsible, murderous mobocracy.” 

-- Cited by Heather Cox Richardson, blog of Sept 1 2024

'

• Theaters, restaurants, cafés, museums, schools, universities, scientific research, transportation ... go on as usual.

• The main change: People from blue-collar suburbs come to wealthy neighborhoods...

Illustrated London News (illustration sold on eBay)

             Print sold on the web

 "The Poultry-Seller at Palais-Royal, under the Commune"

(He wears the guards' uniform)

Three musical performances are given simultaneously to succor widows and orphans (on May 11). In the background, the sound of cannons.   

  The elegant street lights, balcony and portal show a fashionable street. 

# # #

Among the officials who make the city function: 

• The Head of Administrative Personnel, Jules Andrieu

-- Notes to serve for a History of the Commune, 1871, re-ed. 2016 (in French)

Jules Andrieu

He is appointed for giving night classes to workers. Though he comes from the bottom of the hierarchy his former superiors agree to serve under him, to let public services continue. 

He works 16-17 hours a day, sleeps on a couch and leaves City Hall for personal reasons only four times in 50 days. 

Like the men sleeping through the din in the image at above and Louise Michel saying, "I almost never slept, when I did it was anywhere, or when there was nothing better to do. Many others did the same."

• The Head of the Postal Services, Albert Theisz, and his auxiliaries 

-- Public services under the Commune,

ed. Les Amis de la Commune (in French).

Albert Theisz

Versailles blocks communication with Paris to hurt its recovery and keep provincials and soldiers from knowing its realities. As well, officials remove the plates for printing stamps, to stop communication within the city.

This engraver on bronze, a member of the First International, mobilizes auxiliaries to deposit mail in points outside the city. They know they will be arrested if caught.

They distribute all the city mail by April 4 and find a plate to print stamps. 

       # # #

Salaries

•  5400 francs a year for deputies, 6000 for Delegates (Ministers) 

• Points of comparaison: specialized workers, about 1000 a year; Theisz's predecessor, 71,000. (Thiesz himself refuses the Delegate's extra pay.)

-- Public Services

# # #

Most employees stick to their jobs although they know the risk.

-- Lissagary 

• The vast majority of postal employees stay in Paris (800 out of 1000), knowing they will be fired if Versailles wins. 

                     -- Public Services

•  Firemen also remain, though they can be shot as deserters (officially they are part of the army): the most prominent will be.

-- Tombs

Guards are thought undisciplined because they want to go home
"to embrace their children, caress their wives, before plunging into the unknown of battle."

-- Vallès

They usually do their duty in spite of the unique absence of sanctions: At worst, they aren't paid.

-- Tombs  

# # #

Left to itself, the society La Commune could have succeeded because:

• Its ambitions were local. It wanted a federation of communes, not a centralized State.

• Industrialization was too new for rooted unions or political parties to smother grass-roots energy.

• It inspired heroism.  

"Long live humanity!"

cried the journalist Jean-Baptiste Millière,
when he was forced to kneel before being shot:
Later revolutionaries would say that call inspired them. 

-- An account of his death: Lissagary, Appendix XXI

-- Engraving after the work of Henri de Montaut, who received the Legion of  Honneur two months later. 

  The Infamous Assassination of Jean-Baptiste Millière, " Friends of the Commune" (in French)

 

Figures like these

contradict the capitalist assertion
that greed is part of human nature.

*     *     *
Next,
The Commune now