THE OFFICERS' RESPONSIBILITY

VERSAILLES BLAMES SOLDIERS FOR THE KILLINGS

Violent outbreaks happen, but are rare. Absence of looting and raping shows that most troops are under control.

-- Page based partly on the conclusions of Tombs and Milza

Cover image, The War Against Paris by Robert Tombs (1981)

Officers supervise summary judgements that take place wherever there has been fighting. Mass executions immediately follow, which Thiers approves:

Internet, no source mentioned

Shooting in the Lobau barracks 

Tombs says the executions are improvised and that Thiers's accord is unspoken. But a witness states that their organization was planned in advance, with his unequivocal consent.  

"He [the witness] said that the tribunals were set up at the end of the Commune, in preparation of the expected entry into Paris; that the number and location of those judgements were designated in advance, as well as the topographical limits of their jurisdiction; that he, Mr. Gabriel Ossude, had received his nomination at the hands of Mr. Thiers...  » 

-- Lissagary, Appendix XXVI

Behind City Hall, the Lobau barracks are part of the city's transformation for military reasons: Victor Hugo makes them notorious:

"A lugubrious sound fills the Lobau barracks: It is the thunder that opens and closes the tomb." 

   -- The Awful Year ("L'Année terrible")

         Insurgents Shot at the Lobau Barracks / zoom

-- The City Museum (Musée Carnavalet), not exhibited on the several times I visited

 

A plaque on the wall of the former barracks (now an administration building) recalls those shootings. 

Prisoners were judged at the venerable crossroad at Châtelet, then marched to the Lobau barracks by short straight avenue Victoria: the network built for repression was used for it — at last.  

A generation later, the remains of bodies were found buried in this park next to the Saint Jacques Tower. They must have been brought from the Lobau barracks.

The officers come from privileged backgrounds. They:

• Equate the demand for justice with anarchy. Tombs emphasizes the nobles' bigotry, but middle-class officers seem as ferocious (with some exceptions).

• Are inured to cruelty after fighting in Mexico and Algeria and consider scruffy opponents subhuman.

• Feel that the "scum" has humiliated them by its much greater combativeness during the war and by sending the officers from Paris, "their tails between their legs." 

-- Tombs

• Are outraged that "Those ignorant men showed that the people do not need the guardianship of those who say they alone can lead [...] that is what, perhaps, their adversaries will never forgive." 

-- Lefrançois 

  

Repressions punish people 

deemed subordinate by nature,

who have dared rebel.

Bloody Week is revenge as well. 

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Next,

The adversaries