"TO THE VICTORS BELONG THE SPOILS"

 

THE VERSAILLES CHIEFS, IMMORTALIZED AT TWO HUGELY

PRESTIGIOUS SITES

Adolphe Thiers, become President of the Republic, says of the Communards "Those people, we get rid of them" and agrees to the carnage

Portrait of Adolphe Thiers by Léon Bonnat, 1877 / zoom

 

• That cemetery was the site of the last combat. Regardless of Alphonse Daudet's story, bullet holes still mark the tombs:

The Agony of la Commune at Père-Lachaise Cemetery by Auguste Trichon after Charles Vernier, toward 1871 / zoom (please scroll down and click on a small picture on the right)

   La Commune on Fire, the Père La Chaise, anonymous, toward 1871 / zoom  (please scroll down)

The Last Combat at the Père-Lachaise, engraving of  Amédée Daudenarde / zoom (please scroll down)

 

• It is also the site of the annual commemoration of La Commune, at the "Mur des Fédérés"

Internet / photographer not named

Each last Saturday in May a ceremony honors La Commune, as well as all who have given their lives for a more just world.  

The plaque : "These men fought for a more just society and refused to capitulate to the enemy." 

• A huge crowd surrounded Theirs's funeral convoy, which passed through Communard bastions (in 1877):

The cortège passes in front of the Saint-Martin gate / zoom 

The middle classes approved his paying the reparations to Prussia rapidly without imposing an income tax, his being the first President of a conservative republic that even monarchists had come to accept — and his annihilation of La Commune.

His procession was unopposed.

Communards hid, were deported or dead. 

Eulogy, Le Monde illustré, September 15, 1877 / zoom 

• His mausoleum dominates the tombs of celebrities and overlooks Paris:

Coincidence:

 Thiers is a model for Rastignac,

 the ambitious provincial of Balzac's series The Human Comedy.  

The novel finishes with Rastignac's cry from the height,

"Now for the two of us, Paris!"

-- Le Père Goriot, 1835

# # #

Most of the 12 avenues that spring out from the Arc de Triomphe are named after Napoleon's generals, but one is for General Patrice de MacMahon...

Photo that circulates on the web; no photographer named

General MacMahon at the Battle of Sebastopol by Horace Vernet / zoom

...who also shares a bus stop with Général de Gaulle...

Internet, photographer not named

...though he lost the decisive battle with Prussia, "the hammer blow that brought the giant to the ground..."

 -- Louise Michel on the battle of Sedan, Sept 2, 1870

"MacMahan sought to regroup his forces  to this end he assembled his army in the fortress town of Sedan, a few miles from the Belgian border. It was a military decision of outstanding incompetence, since the town was surrounded by hills and was in every sense an untenable position [...] General von Molke exclaimed, ' Now we have them in a mousetrap.' "

-- Imperial Masquerade by S.C. Burchell, 1971

...because as commander of the repression
he was "the victor of the Commune."

 

End of this section.

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Next section,
IV.4.7.
An omen and a turning point