IV.4.3.1.e. MYSTIFICATION

MENU: 4.3.1.e. Mystification

THE USUAL VIEW STARTS WITH AN UNLIKELY DRAMA... 

to introduce a Communard violence that was (almost) absent.  

Baroness Danute

"Condemned to death by a cursory judgement, both [generals] are shot by a firing squad of their own soldiers."

In brief

• Emblematic site, odd marker

• A firing squad that makes no sense

• Versaillais propaganda that tells the truth

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

• Catholic martyrs whom even the Church forgets

• Whose violence? The comeback of the Versaillais myth 

• Schoolbooks buttress the mindset the ads promote 

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

• ...and after it

• "To the victors belong the spoils"

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Next,
Emblematic site, odd marker

EMBLEMATIC SITE, LYING MARKER

THE PANEL ON THE SITE WHERE THE GENERALS WERE LYNCHED IS GIBBERISH THAT SKIPS WHAT COUNTS

Baroness Danute

The shooting of March 18, 1871

(Bolding mine)

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. 

Data unknown to most readers

• What expedition? What cannons? What national guard? What insurgents? What Central Committee? 

• Many French people have forgotten the "defense of Paris" and "Sedan," and most foreigners have never heard of them at all.  

• Parisians are almost alone to have heard of place Pigalle.

• Why give an address change two full lines...

And leave out La Commune?

# # #

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" is an invention:

Please click on.

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Next,

A firing squad that makes no sense

A FIRING SQUAD THAT MAKES NO SENSE

A FAMOUS MONTAGE SHOWS LA COMMUNE BORN OF MUTINY AND PREMEDITATED MURDER

That the generals were shot by their own troops was immediately accepted. Victor Hugo alone found the tale "curious." 

-- "Curious:" in Things seen ("Choses vues"), his journal

Zoom

Part of the series "The Crimes of the Commune," Versailles propaganda that the next page describes.

But the autopsy report shows the bullets shot from behind.  

 -- Pierre Milza, March 18th, « La Commune », 2009 (in French)

Information from Versaillais sources is suspect and in any case, 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 an organized of an organized execution.  

Yet the left adopts it:

• Marx explains it as 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 is otherwise faithful to the sources.

The New Babylone 

"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,
• Fired more than 600 officers for "agitating..."

...means that "observing" in civilian clothes* when the population knows him is to stroll into the lions' den.  

* Marie Agoult (Daniel Stern) mentions so-attired officers observing the June barricades in History of the 1848 Revolution. So it 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.

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Next,

Versaillais propaganda that tells the truth

VERSAILLAIS PROPAGANDA THAT TELLS THE TRUTH

ITS MONTAGES INVENT THE "CRIMES OF THE COMMUNE,"* BUT ONE DOES ILLUSTRATE REALITY 

* Commissioned from the royalist photographer Eugène Appert

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 (the City Museum), not exhibited

Ferré was not present but as he did order the execution, having an actor represent him is fair. But showing the other victims as clergy is propaganda, since most were policemen chosen because their names were 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:

    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

# # #

The impact was lasting:

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.

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Next,

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