IV.3.1.c. CIVIL WAR AND CARNAGE

MENU: 4.3.1.c. Civil war & carnage

"BLOODY WEEK:" KILLINGS BY VERSAILLAIS* ANNOUNCE

 20TH-CENTURY MASSACRES  

(MAY 21-28, 1871) 

* As the the Versailles government's troops were called 

Civil war by Édouard Manet, 1871 / zoom

The drawing's title is generic. But the church in the background is the Madeleine, the barricade is emblematic of Paris and the corpse, who holds a white rag, wears a guard's uniform. 

In brief

• A fight of the poor

• The slaughter of the wretched   

• Escape by socializing with the enemy

• The Latin Quarter after victory

• The fate of a political painter

• Soldiers whom officers mistrust

• The officers' responsibility

• The adversaries

• Parisian sequels

• The past sways pop culture: Piaf and Sinatra

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Next,

A fight of the poor

A FIGHT OF THE POOR

"I WAS A MODEST EMPLOYEE AT CITY HALL. PEOPLE HAD SEEN ME SHED TEARS...

when fathers brought newborns wrapped in their shirts as they shivered in the cold. I had known some who died, and had gone to their funerals. Ten years later, that was remembered." 

Jules Vallès is elected deputy. 

# # #

"Many men were frightening to see: Small, gaunt, deformed... they fought so that their children would be less small, less gaunt, less vicious..." 

-- Louis Rossel,* cited by Pierre Milza, "The Terrible Year: the Commune," 2009 (in French).

* The sole officer of the regular army to join the Commune, hoping that it would continue the fight against the Prussians. Versailles shot him. He was 27.

"The Call" by André Devambez, 1906, after the memories of his father and survivors. In the foreground, paving stones torn up to build a barricade / zoom

Women 

Louise Michel, Red Virgin of the Commune, told by Alain Decaux, 2019 (in French)

     "The Barricade of Place Blanche Defended by Women" (cut), artist and date unknown /zoom

City Museum (Musée Carnavalet), not exhibited

 

The myth that all were killed shows men's respect.

On another occasion: "Bearing the red flag unfurled, about 20 women came to join us, among them..." [their names follow]. Again: "They bandaged the wounded on the battlefield and often picked up a dead man's gun."   

-- Louise Michel

"Lost children"

Prisoners at Versailles

-- The Lost Children of the Commune (in French)

• "... V. Thiebaut, aged 14, ran through the bullets to bring water. When the guards were forced to pull back, they had to sacrifice supplies. The boy rushed forward on a barrel of wine that he shattered while shouting, 'They won't drink our wine!' He seized the rifle of a guard who had just fallen..."

-- Lissagary, Appendix V,

an account he says chosen among many.

• Maxime Vuillaume calls them "terrifying kids" when they join a platoon to execute hostages (My Red Notebooks, p. 109).

   "A Marriage during the Commune" by Félix Guerie / zoom 

They transmit messages, build barricades, carry shells and although battalions in principle do not accept anyone under 17, Louise Michel finds much younger boys defending the forts with her.

Many are orphans, obliged to fend for themselves. 

They resemble the right-wing mobile guards in origin and behavior, but the way in which they are taken in hand is very different. That mentoring helps explain the rarity of crime.

# # #

The 100,000 POWs Bismarck sends back to France overpower:

"The Departure from Versailles, place d'Armes" by Crafty, 1871  / zoom

"May 21 1871, the Troops Enter Paris" by Charles Vernier, 1871 / zoom

Avenue de Paris (place d'Armes is in the background) Versailles / zoom

That the army should fill the world's largest avenue gives an idea of its importance.

The force enters by a gate on the route from Versailles and the wealthy residents hail it with joy. Notice the well-dressed couple: 

"On May 24 1871 the army united at Versailles enters Paris after a classic siege; the population shows its joy and cordially welcomes our troops. The insurrection is defeated and the guilty who have sacrificed Hostages [please read on] and set fire to the Capital, will be punished for their crimes."

"All along the Grands Boulevards...

well-bred crowds came out to cheer the red-trousered troops. They clapped their hands as if they were at the opera, and called 'Bravo!' as if a battle had been won. Above the marching soldiers, coins showered down from the windows and jingled on the pavements. In this part of Paris, the stones had stayed firmly in place [that is, no barricades]. The people here sat tight, mostly, waiting to be saved,playing cards to pass the time. As soon as they knew they were safe, out they rushed, wine bottles waving. Gentlemen stood smiling while their wives' arms opened, smothering sweaty necks with silk and satin, sowing kisses under kepis."

-- Liberty's Fire, pp. 229-30

After a detour to punish inhabitants of Montmartre where the insurrection began, the soldiers head toward the working-class east...

Advance of the Versaillais troops / zoom

...to continue retribution... 

"Taking a Barricade" by Daniel Vierge, reproduced in l'Humanité

...in territories considered

"nightmares of the forces of order."

-- Louise Michel

*   *    *

Next,
The slaughter of the wretched

THE SLAUGHTER OF THE WRETCHED

THE ARMY'S BARBARISM IS CLEAR FROM THE START

(WITH THE FIRST COMBAT ON APRIL 3)

Thiers takes back the hilltop he forgot and its cannons stop a Communard march on Versailles:

Told by Alain Decaux (a well-known narrator), 2019, YouTube (in French)

Exhausted and separated from his troops, their leader Gustave Flourens takes refuge in an inn. Denounced, he comes out unarmed and...

"A police captain strikes him on the skull with such force that he turns it into epaulettes, says a policeman with a sense of humor."

-- Lissagary, 

Flourens's biography, Gustave Flourens, the Red Knight, 1987, ebook (in French)

Raspu'team

The soldiers take his corpse to Versailles in a cart with a ton of manure. The killer becomes a judge and obtains the Legion of Honor. 

Versailles thinks Communards are criminals to whom rules

regarding p.o.w.s do not apply:

• "Bloody Week" begins by shooting 300 guards who have surrendered at the barricade of place Concorde (on May 23).

Photographer unknown / zoom

The barricade at place Vendôme, a few steps from place Concorde

• "The rumor that furies threw flaming petrol led any badly-dressed woman to be dragged to the nearest wall and shot." 

-- Lissagary

"Commune Type" by Lefman, 1885, zoom

• The Versaillais pursue guards even into the catacombs, "with dogs and torches, but fear took over." Soldiers lost in the maze of tunnels expect to die until a prisoner leads them out. They spare his life but "kept it secret ... their masters would have punished them by death."

-- Louise Michel

Fighting in the Catacombs, Internet (gone), City museum (Musée Carnavalet), not exhibited at the times of my visits.

 

• Estimates of the killings, which range from 5,500 to 40,000, are impossible to verify since bodies were thrown into mass graves or the river, or heaped up and burned. Nor do we know the number that died from wounds, in prisons or in deportation, not to mention those killed in the war with Prussia or during the siege. For recent and serious investigation, please click and scroll down.

Fighting  / 

Illustration, Internet

"Passers-by remove corpses, as required after an action"

By Adolphe Eugène Disderi, the Emperor's photographer, Saint-Denis City Museum

-- A high school teacher's presentation: Please click and scroll down

A surreal city

• Flowerpots crown the barricades. The May weather is beautiful, and guards' wives bring picnics.   

• Cafés and restaurants stay open, even when the fighting is so intense that "there's hardly time for a drink at the bar." 

 --  Both remarks, Vallès

 

Soon...

• "The stench of the immense graveyard drew a horrible swarm of charnal-house flies to the defunct city; the victors feared an epidemic and suspended the executions."

-- Louise Michel

"Summary execution of insurgents on ... [illegible] Street on May 25" /  Internet (gone), more information illegible

• Memories told Hemingway 50 years later

"They were the descendants of the Communards [... ] they knew who had shot their fathers, their brothers and their friends when the Versailles troops took the town after the Commune and executed anyone they could catch with calloused hands." (Bolding mine)

-- The Snows of Kilimanjaro

Hemingway came to Paris in the 1920's. and lived in the then blue-collar 5th district.

"Examining the Hands of Communard Prisoners in Belleville" / Internet, same comment as above. 

Photos rendues accessibles par des professeurs de lycée :  cliquez et déroulez la page.

• "The Senate and the surrounding streets looked like a vast battlefield after victory. The dead were spread out in the sun. Blood stained the streets. No corner was without two or three cadavers." 

-- Mes Cahiers rouges. Souvenirs de la Commune de Maxime Vuillaume, ed. 2011, p. 54

• Burials in the cemeteries of Paris, the suburbs and Versailles plus corpses thrown into mass graves or the Seine, or piled up and burned, bring an estimate of 20, 000-30,000 dead.  

"One counts those who die on one side only;
not on the other side,
which would be impossible.

-- Louise Michel

*     *     *

Next,

Escape by socializing with the enemy

ESCAPE BY SOCIALIZING WITH THE ENEMY

JULES VALLÈS AND MAXIME VUILLAUME SURVIVE BY PURE LUCK AND BY CONSORTING WITH OPPONENTS,

AS SHOTS FROM FIRING SQUADS RING OUT

Vallès is saved when a canteen lady offers him her wagon in which

she harbors wounded, so that he can say he is a doctor taking them to the hospital.

Portrait of Jules Vallès by Courbet, 1861

An officer who says they don't take prisoners so there are no wounded, but that he can remove the pestilential corpses. 

The officer invites him for a drink in a neighboring café, and to maintain his alibi Valles shares a bottle of champagne.

# # #

 

A Day in the Luxembourg Military Court, the first "Red Notebook (Memories of the Commune)." Unfortunately, there is no translation of this classic. I have shortened the 30-page account, leaving out the friend who was with Vuillaume and a second policeman.

In front of the Luxembourg palace (the Senate) Vuillaume is arbitrarily arrested and by a slip of the tongue calls the policeman "citizen." That makes him a Communard and he is sent to the line of those waiting to be shot:

• The prisoners were led out by this exit...

• ...and shot at this balustrade a few steps away:

 Zoom (please scroll down).

Mass executions of fédéré [insurgent] prisoners in the Luxembourg gardens

 

He is young and well dressed: An officer of about his age notices him and says, "I will claim that you're my cousin." He persuades the policeman to let Vuillaume go. They all walk out of the Luxembourg together. 

Not a single officer, not one civilian who in those odious days did the hideous and voluntary job of supplying the martial courts, turned around to see where we were going. 

Two minutes after leaving the "queue" of the condemned, we were on the sidewalk, on the same spot where we had been arrested that morning by the men who accompanied us.  

Good lord!  What we went through last night and today. Just the same, what would your parents have said, when they learned this? [...] 

That man who surely had led to the military court, to the slaughterhouse, hundreds of strangers, with never a question to his conscience, was pitying, almost crying at the fate of two young men whom he did not know from Adam and Eve, relatives, or so he thought, of a sergeant whose name he did not even know.  

We heard firing behind the railings. 

• The policeman invites them for a drink in a wine shop across the street, on the corner of rue de Vaugirard and rue de Servandoni. Then, 

Ah! Guys! I'm glad I got you out of that... But I have to go back... time's up...

And, busy, wiping his mustache, he rushed off...  

He held out his hand... That handshake, it still makes me shudder.  

Oh ! how I stare at that cabaret every time I come to this place [...] I search for the little round table at which we sat. I see again the grand portal of the Senate, the soldiers who enter, the prisoners that are pushed with yells. And ringing in my ears is the sonorous laugh of the policeman, joyous and sinister at the same time. 

• Vuillaume invites the officer for déjeuner. 

The Senate and the surrounding streets looked like a vast battlefield, after the victory. The dead were spread out under the sun. Blood stained the walls. There was no corner where two or three cadavers did not lie [...]. At all the windows were officers, soldiers. [...]

When we were dining, in an isolated cabinet, I told the stupefied sergeant the real story.  

# # #

The officer protects him as long as he can. Finally he says it has become too dangerous. Vuillaume continues to hide for a time, then manages to slip out of the city. 

That is another story of arbitrariness and pure luck. If you know French read My Red Notebooks, even if on La Commune you read nothing else.

# # #

The wine shop is now a restaurant. Walking by one night, I saw that it was still open:

Customers had left and the owner and friends were chatting at the bar: "I know it's late," I said, "but may I ask if you know for how long a restaurant as been here?"

They did not but when I explained the reason for my question and told them the story of Vuillaume and the officer, they listened attentively and posed for this photo.

*     *    *

Next,

The Latin Quarter after victory