VI.3. MYSTIFICATION

MENU: 6.3. Mystification

THIS SIGN ON THE SITE OF THE GENERALS' LYNCHINGS IS VERSAILLAIS PROPAGANDA 

But even most leftist historians accept it

    The visitors ignore the sign. So much the better.

In brief

• The victors' view

• That view returns 

• Two historians fight back

*      *      *

Next,

The victors' view

VI.3.1. THE VICTORS' VIEW

6.3.1. Menu: The victors' view

EMBLEMATIC SITE, ODD MARKER

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

Baroness Danute

The shooting of March 18, 1871

Details incomprehensible to most visitors are bolded up. Most of the 700 panels sponsored by a right-leaning City Hall in 1992 follow the pattern of obscurity and omission of what counts. 

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. 

Why give two full lines to a change of address and leave out La Commune ?

# # #

As well, that the generals were

"shot by their own soldiers" is invented —  

and what comes next largely distorted. 

In brief

• An impossible firing squad

• 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"

 *     *     *

Next,

An impossible firing squad

AN IMPOSSIBLE FIRING SQUAD

THE AUTOPOSY REPORT SHOWS THE GENERALS KILLED BY BULLETS SHOT FROM BEHIND... 

 -- L'Année terrible: La Commune, by Pierre Milza, 2014.

But even pro-Communard historians accept the Versaillais version of a firing squad, that is, of an insurrection sparked by premeditated murder. 

 Yet...

• Participants would have had to pose for such a photo, since the matériel of the time could not capture movement. So they pose in the midst of tumult?

• Versailles sponsored the montage. How can it be uncritically accepted?  

• Soldiers have killed their officers spontaneously.* But by organized execution?  

** As before the October Revolution and during the Vietnam War.

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 others. 

Yet only Victor Hugo found it "curious" that troops shoot their generals. 

 

• Marx says conscripts' hostility to officers explains it. Yet these soldiers had no reason to oppose Clément, who as head of the Parisian National Guard was not linked to the army. 

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

    The New Babylon 

• Raspou'team, whose street art commemorated La Commune's 140th anniversary, accepts and even adds to it:

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." (The last sentence is imagination. Bolding mine.)

• A graphic novel has Louise Michel oppose it:

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

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

 Gone from the web 

Execution of generals Thomas and Lecomte.

  

•  A television series shows the crowd composing it, which erases mutiny but keeps premeditation.

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

• The 13th's historical journal* adopts it:

*Right-leaning but not deliberately biased. 

 

 La Commune de Paris,"Histoire et histories du 13e," 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."  Because of...

• 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...

• ...residents coming from the bottom of the hill. The sense of personal responsibility is lost in a crowd: "It was as if my gun took over." 

Then 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 him "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, he involuntarily reveals how deeply the privileged ignore their  "dancing on corpses."

# # #

Many historians simply follow what is usually said. As well, those on the left may not wish La Commune to have sprung out of such crime. 

A version that makes more sense:

The outrage building for years

and especially since dawn,

and the myopia of the generals themselves.   

*     *     *

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.

-- Mes Cahiers rouges : un peu de vérité sur la mort des otages par Maxime Vuillaume, vers 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.

      Ni Dieu ni Maître : Auguste Blanqui by L. Kournwsky & 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 on hearing that Ferré had given Thiers the high-profile martyr he sought, a drama Versailles used again and again:   

    Photomontage by Ernest-Charles Appert,1872 / zoom

Zoom

Zoom

  Illustration adapted from a painting by Henri Motte / gone from the web, zoom

    Photomontage by Ernest-Charles Appert, 1872 / zoom

Monseigneur Darboy at the prison of La Roquette

This painting was made in 1926...

May 24 1781, Execution de Mgr Darboy et le President Bonjean à 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