CATHOLIC MARTYRS WHOM EVEN THE CHURCH FORGETS

FIVE DOMINICAN MONKS AND SEVEN LAY HELPERS, ALSO MASSACRED BY A PANICKED CROWD  

First their story is distorted, then it is left out.

-- Sources appear at the end of the page.  

 Crimes of the Commune / zoom

The Massacre of the Dominicans of Arcueil, May 25, Versailles montage

 

The story

• Monks run a high school in Arcueil, just beyond Paris's fortifications on the way to Versailles. They know the area is dangerous and could retire to Dominican headquarters, but stay to help the wounded.*

*During the siege, 1500 ; at the time of these events, 20 from both sides and since the lifting of the siege, about 300 students.

-- Les Dominicains d'Arcueil, Victimes during the Paris Commune...

         Adapted from a plan of the city's fortifications / zoom

• The reality of spies and traitors* bring all kinds of rumors, including that an underground passage links the school to Versailles. When the roof of a nearby château catches fire, Communards think the monks are signalling. The commander of the fort of Bicêtre comes to investigate. Though he is sure that the monks are innocent, he sends them and their secular aids, a group of 20, as prisoners to Bicêtre for their protection.

*Lissagary mentions a Versaillais list of 32 spies (Annexe XII). 

He replaces the battalion with the legendary 101, under Jean-Baptiste Sérizier.

• When it falls back to its base in the 13th it takes the prisoners with it, again for their protection. Guards and monks seem to get along: The monks, with one exception, do not try to escape though witnesses say it would have been easy (Vuillaume), and when around noon the guards alone are admitted, they bang on the city gates to be let in (Comte).

•  A terrified crowd surrounds the guards and monks. A shell falls in the courtyard, announcing an imminent attack. A hothead threatens to shoot the Communard leaders if they do not execute the monks. Sérizier sends the group to the jail a few minutes away; the warden is a friend and he thinks the prisoners will be safe. He leaves to fight "in the west." 

The warden receives a verbal message to send the prisoners into the street. He asks for a written command. It comes toward 4 p.m. and is the 13th's last Communard document. Forced out of the prison, monks and aids are shot by the crowd.

Du Camp, who was not there and does not state his source, says Sérizier is to blame, egged on by a pretty girl: "Du Camp writes novels, not history." says Vuillaume on another matter,* an opinion that applies here. 

*An explicit note in My Red Notebooks, "Haxo Street," p. 101

• The official view substitutes a firing squad for a hysterical crowd, as when La Commune began and when the 50 hostages were shot.

 

-- Arceuil history: Albert-le-Grand high school, 2008 (in French)

    

• Scapegoat

Jean-Baptiste Sérizier was the fiery Communist tanner who headed the 101st battalion that brought the monks into the city. More about those "demon" later.

He emphatically denied connection with the murders. But at his trial several people said they had seen him near the prison when the drama took place, and he was condemned for it and shot.

The trial's testimonials are often contradictory or untrue said Vuillaume, who found du Camp's account dotted with error as well.

Comte cites the archives to state that at the time of the shootings Sérizier was fighting in the west. 

"Paris's western horizon vanished under the smoke from the fires; the cannonade was so brutal that the whole ground shook." 

-- Du Camp (who here does speak from experience since that horror was everywhere)

"Why did I shoot?, I've often asked myself. I don't understand it. It's as if my gun took over..."

-- A participant's memory in Comte's account

Shattered by defeat and terrified by the approach of the army, here too the mob wreaks vengeance on helpless people whom they think back their fiendish opponents.

# # #

The 13th harbors a number of historical plaques and panels, but none recall the massacre.

•  A shopping mall occupies the prison site. There is space for a plaque but it is empty, including after a renovation (in 2022-2024) when adding it to the changes would have been easy: 

• The website of the nearby church, Saint-Anne de la Butte-aux-Cailles, mentions a "little monument" to the monks, which is gone. The priest with whom I spoke had not heard of it and though the church is vast and its walls empty, there is no reminder of the drama:

 The commemoration concerns a parish priest.

# # #

    

We, at least, can recall the Reverend Father Captier, the other monks and their lay helpers, men who were devoted, brave and kind.

     The Dominicains of Arcueil, victims.., 1871

Left to right: Fathers Thomas Bouard, Louis-Raphael Captier, Constant Delorme, Henri Contraut, P.-M. Chatagneret

Lay helpers:

Math teacher, Louis-Eugène-Antoine Gauquelin; Supervisor, François-Hermand Volant, Nursing orderly: François-Sébastien-Siméon Dintroz; Servants: Théodore Catala, Marie-Joseph Cheminal,  Aimé Gros, Antoine Gézelin Marce, Germain-Joseph Petit (age 22, former soldier with the last French army).

# # #

Sources (in French)

• Pro-Communard

Maxime Vuillaume, The Dominicains in "My red notebooks," pp. 358-71, toward 1910. This Communard survivor and journalist meticulously investigates events that had taken place four decades before, adding interviews with witnesses and records that had become available. He knew or had known most of the Communards mentioned, and identifies each in a footnote.

Gérard Conte, Elements of the history of the Commune in the 13th arrondissement, 1981, based on archival records.

• Anti-Communard (all on the web and in French)

The Catholic church of Paris, The Dominicains of Arcueil, Victims during the Commune of Paris, July 1871.

Maxime du Camp, The Convulsions of Paris: Prisons under the Commune, 1879, pp. 286-309. The basis to conservative accounts as a whole, by a man was decorated for his role in the repression of June. Many factual mistakes, says Vuillaume, and no mention of sources.

• A very short Wikipedia article does not mention Comte or Vuillaume among its sources.

# # #

That the Church should ignore these modern martyrs

suggests that the right still finds La Commune a threat.

 

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Next,

Whose violence? The come-back of the Versaillais myth