"THE ACROPOLIS OF REVOLUTION" (Louise Michel)

THE CHAIN OF EVENTS THAT LEAD TO LA COMMUNE CULMINATE AT THE HILLTOP, WHICH BECOMES A SITE OF MARTYRDOM 

Histoire de la Révolution de 1870-1871 by Jules Claretie, 1872

"Paris après le siege - le parc d'artillerie  de Montmartre"

 

• Distant, hard to reach and poverty stricken, Montmartre is part of the city that at the end of the war the humble control. So 171 of the cannons seized in advance of the Prussian march are deposited on the empty space at the top of the hill.

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

• So that is where the arrested officers are locked up. Their lynching takes place in the courtyard. 

Versailles's goal: neutralize the cannons and punish 

• Instead of marching along the arteries toward the communard bastions of the east, on entering Paris and committing the first massacres the army climbs the hill.  As there are no shells for the cannons, the Communards fighters are elsewhere. There is no resistance.  

• Forty-seven residents seized at random, taken to the site where the generals were lynched and ordered to kneel. A woman holding a baby cries, "let us show these miserable people that we know how to die standing up!" 

Le Cri du peuple by Jacques Tardi (Castermann 2004), YouTube

• More residents on the following days, force them to look at the wall for a long time, and shot.   

 -- Lissagary, text and Appendix XVIII

# # #

The ordeal of Eugène Varlin

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

He assumes the humble tasks that lets La Commune 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, Mes Cahiers rouges : la mort de Varlin 
Vuillaume walks the route and examines the different accounts,

including that of a witness.

• "He died bravely," a right-wing journalist wrote.

-- Lissagary, Appendix XVIII

# # #

The outbreak of La Commune, the woman with the baby, the next 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

 Then the hill becomes a symbol

for the victors too.

*     *     *

Next,
The church of vengeance