VI.4.3. VICTORIES OF LA COMMUNE

YOUNG MEN WTH NO ADMINISTRATIVE TRAINING KEEP THE CONTINENT'S LARGEST CITY* AFLOAT 

*A million and a half inhabitants 

With minimal resources they manage a city that has not recovered from the draconian siege to which the Prussians add their own,* and is almost immediately at war.

*They let in some goods to pressure Versailles, but the siege is still a handicap.

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

Three-quarters of the functionaries leave for Versailles with archives, equipment and funds. Their replacements are journalists, craftspeople or blue-collar workers, who are often under 30 and have no plan or governing experience. 

La Presse pendant la Commune / Les Amis de la Commune

The men in the foreground have not gone home to sleep. Most were in their '30's. They had the energy of youth.

The Commune at City Hall - The Throne Room

 -- Journal universel

Hannah Robinson for The New York Times, March 27, 2026 : zoom

The astonishing victory of Zohan Mamdan (age 34) as Mayor of New York and the will of his young team to transform the city remind of La Commune. 

"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."

-- Le Banquet des affamés [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 collapse. 

-- Jules Andrieu (below)

 Yet,

 

• While the American press calls the Communards a “wild, reckless, irresponsible, murderous mobocracy” a pastor says, "I have never seen the streets so well swept since the siege as they were this morning."

 -- American press cited by Heather Cox Richardson, blog of Sept 1 2024.

  Observation, the Reverend William Gibson cited in Paris Babylon by Rupert Christiansen, 1994

'

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

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

The elegant street light, balcony and portal (to the right) show a fashionable street.

    Illustrated London News, print sold on eBay

 "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.   

Illustrated London News / Gallica, no longer available  

# # #

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

Having given night classes to workers brings his appointment. Though he comes from the bottom of the hierarchy his former superiors agree to serve under him, so that 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 

-- Services Publiques sous la 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. Officials remove the plates for printing stamps, to stop communication within the city.

This engraver on bronze, 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). 

• 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 as they are officially part of the army, they can be shot as deserters: That is the fate of the most prominent.  

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

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

# # #

Left to itself, 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 say that call inspired them. 

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

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

  -- L'Assassinat infâme de Jean-Baptiste Millière, " Les Amis de la Commune" 

 

Such figures contradict capitalists' assertion

that greed is part of human nature.

*     *     *
Next,
 6.4.4. 

Rooted