IV.3.1.d. RUINS, REVENGE AND EVOLUTION

MENU: 4.3.1.d. Ruins. Revenge. Evolution.  

LA COMMUNE'S URBAN IMPACT AND ITS CHANGE 

Rubble covers a third of the city, a monstrous church hovers over town and and a general recasting when strikes replace revolts.

 

Zoom

In brief

• Emphasis on Communard destruction  

• The Communard fires

• The inferno in context

• The sacred hilltop

• The "acropolis of the revolution" 

• The church of vengeance

• Changed threat, changed city

• The Sacré-Cœur frightens, Sainte-Anne heals

• The "chocolate facade"

*      *      * 

Next,

Emphasis on Communard destruction

EMPHASIS ON COMMUNARD DESTRUCTION

 

MOST NARRATIVES FOCUS ON THE RUINS LA COMMUNE LEFT... EVEN WHEN THEY DIDN'T

For example...

 

• The National Library introduces documents of La Commune by a photo of  burned City Hall. It is true that it was deliberately burned by Ferré's order, but the choice that overlooks positive aspects that were as important. 

• The anchor of a popular television series states that Communards burned the chateau of Saint-Cloud  —  six months before they even existed.

-- Secrets of History with Stéphane Bern:

" Madame de Barry, Love at First Sight at Versailles" (2016)

The Château in Flames, lithograph, 1874 /zoom

The palace that had belonged to the Duke of Orléans, brother of Louis XIV, became a Prussian bastion, defending the access to the headquarters at Versailles. The Government of National Defense bombarded it on October 13. 1870; La Commune was proclaimed on March 27, 1871.

# # #

The army's destruction is usually omitted, yet...

• Its shells brought the first fires. Officers, who did not trust their troops, preferred bombardment to combat. As well, they tore down houses to skirt barricades rather than attack them head on:

The postcard sent in 1908 shows the memory's longevity.

Destruction at Rue de Rivoli Facing Louvre, « Illustrated London News »

I know of no records of deliberate demolitions during the insurrection of June. On the contrary, in Les Misérables Victor Hugo explicitly states that the army fought barricade defenders face to face, as   illustrations confirm.

# # #

As well, owners, who presumably backed Versailles, burned buildings to collect insurance. 

"We will never know how many crooked speculators, merchants at the end of their resources, men facing bankruptcy, used the fires to erase their situation crying, Death to the incendiaries!, when they had just lit the fire [themselves]."

A man is sentenced to 10 years of hard labor for burning his house to collect damages.

-- Lissangary, Appendix XXI 

 

Knowing which side destroyed most

is impossible.

*     *     *

Next,

The Communard fires

THE COMMUNARD FIRES

THEY BURN SYMBOLIC BUILDINGS BUT SPARE CHURCHES AND HOMES OF "THE RICH" (THIERS'S EXCEPTED)

Firemen come from as far as Brussels.

-- Victor Hugo, Things Seen (his journal), May 25,  1871

Insurrectionary Paris, exhibit at  City Hall, 2011

Since rebuilding took place in the style imposed only 15 years before, one rarely feels the copy: "The reconstructed monuments have taken on the lovely gray dress that gives them an air of tranquil and respectable age... »

-- Vuillaume

Exceptions: 

• City Hall

Taking City Hall: the Arcole Bridge (detail) by Amédée Bourgeois, 1830 / zoom

   John Orbigny Immobilier (good photos from the past, this one gone

• The Tuileries palace...

Military Parade in front of the Tuileries in 1810 by Hippolyte Bellangé, 1862 / zoom

Zoom

...could have been restored... 

Ruins of the Tuileries palace by Ernest Meissonnier, 1870's / zoom

...but leaders of the fragile new republic did not want to resurrect that symbol of monarchy, and now one walks through a void:

# # #

The ruins were tourist sites for 20 years.

New York poster of 1891 sold on the web

*    *    *

Next,

The inferno in context

THE INFERNO IN CONTEXT

A BROADER LOOK

Fire, an arm of war 

Napoleon at the Burning of Moscow, unknown German artist, 1820's / zoom. (Notice the white horse.)

• Russians burned Moscow. 

• The English, Washington. 

• The French, Algerian villages. 

• In 1934 the agitation that led to the victory of the French Popular Front began when rioters lit fires around a bastion to protect it from police.

• In 2022 residents of Kiev prepared barricades of fire when expecting a Russian attack.

# # #

The patrimony, a recent concern

• The cost of demolition alone saved Notre-Dame Cathedral and Versailles, until The Hunchback of Notre-Dame changed ideas on the Middle Ages and Louis-Philippe made the palace a museum (destroying much of its decor).

•  The Baron Haussmann tore down blue-collar neighborhoods' medieval churches.

• Westerners have tried to protect their patrimony only since the 1960's, and still lose much of it to developers. 

# # #

The Communard fires were practical in part: Burning City Hall and the police headquarters destroyed records, and the flames in themselves created barriers behind which to retreat.

Zoom (source not said)

# # #

But also, many Communards "were mad with despair and nothing would stop them." They set explosives under the Panthéon and meant to blow up its neighbors, the Sainte-Geneviève library with its 12th-century manuscripts and the 15th-century church of Saint-Etienne du Mont.*

-- Account of Jules Vallès

• Legend has Saint Genevieve's prayers save Paris from the Huns. As this church harbors her tomb, it was the site from which medieval processions to save the city from calamities began:

• In Midnight in Paris, the adventure of Woody Allen's protagonist begins at the church's stairs.  

# # #

Vallès, the mayor and others saved those edifices and others saved the Louvre:

"You think you'll terrify the hicks, but you'll really terrify our own people. That's when old ladies will call you brigands!

We had to keep repeating that, holding on to a button of their tunics..."

# # #

We who can still benefit 

from these remarkable sites

and others including the Louvre,

thank the Communards who preserved them. 

Now for a monument

that La Commune inspired...

*    *    *

Next,
A politcal church on a sacred hilltop

THE SACRED HILLTOP

  

HEIGHTS ARE OFTEN VENERATED AND THE MONTMARTRE* SUMMIT, LINKED TO DRUIDS AND ROMAN GODS, IS THE SITE OF FRANCE'S FOUNDING LEGEND 

*"Mount of Martyrs" 

There Romans decapitated the first Christian missionaries:

Their bishop, Denis, is usually shown holding his head in his hands...

     Facade of Notre-Dame Cathedral /zoom 

Bodemuseum (Berlin), 1460-70 / zoom

French illuminated manuscript, end 15th century / zoom 

Church window in Champagne / Internet, no more  information

The Crucifixion of the Parliament of Paris, unknown master, mid-15th century / zoom

# # #

   

That summit, the highest of the Paris region, is associated with Calvary and a convent was built there:  

    Piéta of Saint-Germain-des-Prés (detail), 16th century / zoom

It was destroyed during the Revolution. Secular buildings sprang up, but its 12th century church, of the right size for the 600 villagers, remained:

Zoom (please scroll down)

The Montmartre hilltop toward 1820

Richard Nahem

Saint-Pierre de Montmartre

Even before the armistice with Prussia

right-wing Catholics planned it 

as atonement for the left-wing sins that,

they said, had brought the French defeat.

La Commune made the emphasis on atonement

infinitely more dramatic.

*      *      * 

Next,

The "acropolis of revolution" 

THE ACROPOLIS OF REVOLUTION" (Louise Michel)

IT BECOMES A SITE OF MARTYRDOM 

The chain of events that lead to La Commune culminate on the void at the top of the hill:

Claretie

Paris after the siege - the artillery park of Montmartre

 

• Distant, abrupt and poverty stricken, Montmartre is part of the city that the underclass controls. So 171 of the cannons seized before the Prussian march are deposited on the empty space.

• Guards establish their headquarters a few steps away to protect them. 

• So that is where the arrested officers are shut up, and the reason why the lynching takes place in the courtyard. 

The army's immediate goal: neutralize the cannons and chastise.

• Instead of marching toward the center and the arteries that lead to the communard bastions, the soldiers climb up the hill. As there are no shells for the cannons, the Communards fighters are elsewhere and they find no resistance.  

• They seize 47 residents at random, take them to the site where the generals were lynched and order them to kneel. A woman holding a baby cries, "let us show these miserable people that we know how to die standing up!" 

The Cry of the People by Jacques Tardi (Castermann 2004), YouTube (in French)

• They arrest more residents on the following days, force them to look at the wall for a long time, and shoot them.   

 -- Lissagary, text and Appendix XVIII

# # #

The ordeal of Eugène Varlin

The son of a poor peasant become a bookbinder who reads the books he works on, is a member of the First International and an organizer of the first union to accept women. He is a rare Communard to contest the practice of paying women less, the co-founder of a cooperative restaurant that provided 8000 meals, a member of the Central Committee and deputy to La Commune.

He assumes the humble tasks that let it function, opposes violence, tries to prevent the shooting of the rue Haxo and fights on the barricades. 

-- Biography: 

Eugène Varlin by Jacques Rougerie (in French)

• The legend

When the last barricade falls he lies down on a bench, exhausted. A priest recognizes and denounces him. He is hauled up the hill followed by a huge crowd, "for at least an hour, under a hail of insults and punches [...] he became a mass of flesh, one eye hanging out of the orbit."

-- Lissagary

• The reality

The streets are too narrow for a crowd of more than 50, and soldiers protect Varlin to keep violence in official hands. But a mob follows the cortège, screaming insults, prolonging the misery and applauding when he is shot. 

-- Vuillaume, My Red Notebooks: Varlin's Death 
Vuillaume walks the route and examines the different accounts,

including that of a witness.

• "He died bravely," a conservative journalist wrote.

-- Lissagary, Appendix XVIII

# # #

The outbreak of La Commune, the woman with the baby, the other martyrs and Varlin's nightmare make the hilltop a Communard symbol. 

 

Maximilian Luce, an anarchist painter who admired Varlin, 

painted his execution several times. He put the hill in the background to link his martyrdom with that of Saint Denis:

Varlin's Execution, between 1914 and 1917 / zoom

For the victors too

the hill is also a symbol.

*     *     *

Next,
The church of vengeance

A CHURCH OF VENGEANCE

MONTMARTRE'S CHURCH OF THE SACRÉ CŒUR* AND THE EIFFEL TOWER, TWO GREAT MONUMENTS OF THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY, EXPRESS THE FRENCH DIVIDE

*The Sacred Heart of Jesus: a religious observance that stresses penitence. 

Republic, technology, optimism vs. Church, social order, reaction:

Richard Nahem

The right almost succeeds in demolishing the Tower, and the left  would have torn down the church had it not been financed by private subscription. 

-- The Sacre-Cœur of Montmartre by François Loyer, 
" The sites of memory," ed. Pierre Nora, 1992 (in French)

The church, planned at the end of 1870,* turned out to be next to the site where the cannons had been deposited and the generals lynched.

*As atonement for the sins that had led to defeat. The right was prepared to surrender at a time when the poor were galvanized to fight in spite of their suffering.

Adapted from a poster sold on the web / zoom

The official reason for building it: "To save France that has deserved God's punishment for encouraging the spirit of revolution worldwide." 

• A call for financing was launched soon after La Commune's defeat and funds came in immediately. 

• By atoning for the "spirit of revolution" on the site where the upheaval began, the church affirmed the vengeance that army had set in motion.

Visitors see only a spectacular monument, though street art can evoke the real story: 

Jan Wenner

"What do you expect from heaven? Only bombs. Neither God nor master!"

# # #

The church's subtext: "Obey!"

• The height makes the edifice overwhelming and the white stone adds to its impact: 

Claude Abron

Sole Parisian monument (the Arc of Triumph excepted) not built with the pale beige blocks of local quarries, its stones emit a chemical that whitens them when it rains. 

 

• A giant Christ awes from the summit:

Claude Abron

There is no other divinity of that size in Paris.

• Inside the church the giant image is still more overpowering, and the primary colors and gold have a billboard's impact:

Christ in Glory by Luc Merson, toward 1885 / zoom

Powerful donors to the church... and no poor 

To identify the figures: Le Sacré Cœur de Paris, la mosaïque du choeur (in French)

# # #

Seen from the wealthy west, the church was distant and by underscoring the triumph over the anticlerical Communards, reassured...

            Rue Solferino

Near the street that led to Versailles, in the aristocratic 7th district.

...but in the working-class east it reminded La Commune's survivors of the depth of their defeat: 

View from the heights of Ménilmontant: imagine the impact when houses were low.

The Sacré-Cœur backs authority in this world

 and implies that revolt will be punished in the next. 

It also gives Paris its spectacular skyline,

and is another link between
dread of insurrections and the city's beauty.

*    *    *

Next,

Changed threat, changed city