VI.2.2. EXPLOSION

MENU: 6.2.2. Explosion

WHEN THE GOVERNMENT FAILS TO TAKE BACK THE CANNONS AND FLEES, AN EXTRAORDINARY EXPERIMENT BEGINS 

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The upheaval breaks out

• "Betrayed!"

• Love humanizes an icon 

• Crowd and soldiers fraternize

• An unaware general steps into the fray

• Commemorations of the right and the left

• Thiers flees

• A visionary future 

*    *    *

Next,

"Betrayed!"

"BETRAYED!"

ON MARCH 18 TROOPS LEAVE THEIR BARRACKS AT 2 A.M.

TO SEIZE THE CANNONS BY SURPRISE 

No horses, no whinnies. The muffled sound of marching boots does not wake the sleeping city.

La Prise des cannons 18 mars 1871, "The Execution" by J-P Dethorey, 1994, Musée d'art et d'histoire de Saint-Denis

A guard on duty on the Montmartre hilltop asks to see the marching orders: A shot goes off and he is mortally wounded.

The New Babylon

He dies a week later, saying that his life is well worth the upheaval due to the shooting.

"Betrayed!" cries a schoolteacher as she tears up the slope. 

Louise Michel enters history:

Louise Michel, the Red Virgin, a graphic novel by Mary and Bryon Tolbat (La librairie Vuibert), 2016 (French version)

"In the lightening dawn the bell tolled; we rushed up the hill, knowing that at the summit an army was ready for battle. We expected to die for freedom.

We seemed transported above the earth. We dead, Paris would rise. At certain hours crowds are the human ocean's avant-garde. 

A white light enveloped the summit, a splendid dawn of deliverance."  

-- Louise Michel

Horses arrive later, and the soldiers start dragging the cannons toward town. When the crowd seizes them and hauls them back to the summit, they do not resist.

 

# # #

A soldier smoking and standing by becomes a stock figure: Many future Communards believe that the troops will not hurt them.

22 mai, 1871. Femme conduisant une mitrailleuse place Turenne, « Le Monde Illustré » / zoom (please scroll down)

 « Paris pendant la Commune : construction d'une barricade le 18 mars »

-- Claretie

# # #

Tolling bells spread the news and barricades spring up throughout the east, in spite of the wide, straight streets built to prevent them.

An officer is shot at the foot of the Montmartre hill:

(On place Pigalle)

Le Monde illustré, March 25 1871 / zoom (please scroll down)

Church bells toll and guards' drumbeats call to arms.

That ambiance explains what follows.

But first, Louise Michel.

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Next,
Love humanizes an icon

LOVE HUMANIZES AN ICON

LOUISE MICHEL SEEMS TO HAVE ONLY ONE DIMENSION:

HEROINE OF THE COMMUNE...

"I almost never slept, when I did it was anywhere or when there was nothing better to do; many others did the same." 

Biography: by Edith Thomas, 1971, pdf (in English),

Detailled summary (in French)

    Internet, now gone

"The people get only what they take."

Or "a grim, lumbering figure, stomping up and down the Commune's front line, a tunnel-vision revolutionary with no life beyond the cause."

-- Paris Babylon by Rupert Christiansen, p. 316 

-- Much more objective: Georges and Louise by Michel Ragon, 2000

An outsider and rebel from birth

Louise was the illegitimate child of a servant and the master's son, whose refusal to recognize her insulted her and her beloved mother. She was born a radical.

The excellent education given by her father's parents, chatelains, made her as inapt for a servile position as her birth for a respectable one. 

Teaching was the only professional opening but as she refused to swear allegiance to the Emperor, official establishments were closed to her. 

Her first exploit: founding a school for girls in poverty-stricken Montmartre.

• During the siege an ambulance driver, nurse, guard...

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"I was not such a bad soldier."

• During La Commune, a well-known orator

Jean Renoir's aunt would go to hear her. Vuillaume did not know her personally but mentions a speech. When guards took her for a spy they at first refused to believe who she was, which means that they had heard of her. 

• Deported to New Caledonia and amnestied with other survivors (in 1880), she returned to France and for the rest of her life defended the most vulnerable: prostitutes, delinquents, the insane.

• At her death she thought herself forgotten. But her funeral convoy attracted a crowd of 120,000, which helped unite the Socialist movement (in 1905):

 Louise Michel's Funeral Cortège by Albert Peters-Desreract, Musée d'art et d'histoire de Saint-Denis 

The bier merges with the crowd.

       Zoom (scroll way down) 

Postcard: the mayor of the suburb where she rests (Levallois-Perret) reads his speech.

Celebrity

• A park, a library and a metro have been named after her

The park, on the Montmartre hilltop where La Commune broke out.

The library, appropriately in the east (at 29 rue des Haies, 20th district)

The only métro stop named after one woman. 

• She is part of popular culture

In the restaurant Les Trois Frères, La Goutte d'Or.

The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games (in Paris, 2024)

# # #

But there's a contradiction: Her demand during La Commune that a hostage be shot each day contrasts with her legendary kindness, even climbing down from a barricade to rescue a cat.

Was that exaltation due to the man in her life, the fanatical 

Théophile Ferré?

     La Vierge rouge narration of Alain Decaux, YouTube 2019 

As police chief in La Commune's tragic last days, he had City Hall with its ceiling by Delacroix burned, ordered the execution of the kindly Archbishop of Paris with five other ecclesiastics and tried to have 20 more hostages shot (the prison director did not obey). 

He was as indifferent to his own life:

-- "These aren't sheets we're sleeping in, but shrouds."

-- "So what." 

Render him justice: at his trial he admitted his responsibilities, as other Commune members did not. He was shot.

He was not in love with Louise: "I shake your hand fraternally," he wrote her just before his death. 

-- Most information: Vuillaume (in French)

-- The director does not obey: 

Eléments d'histoire de la Commune du 13eme arrondissement by Gérard Comte, 1989

--Trial: Les Procès des communards by Jacques Rougerie, 1964

Michel's memoirs say little about La Commune.
Because of him? 

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Next,
Crowd and soldiers fraternize

CROWD AND SOLDIERS FRATERNIZE

 

LACK OF A SPACE TO ISOLATE TROOPS TRIGGERS THE UPHEAVAL

Letting soldiers and residents mix was "a great mistake" says

General Aurelle de Paladine, as if there had been a choice:

"Les Canons de la Garde nationale sur la butte Montmartre," Internet, no source named

"Women and children mingled with the troops crying, 'Don't fire on the people!' and 'Long live the army!' They were enveloped and did not have the strength to resist such ovations." 

-- Enquête parlementaire sur l'insurrection du 18 mars 1871, 

in "The Women Incendiaries" by Edith Thomas (1963)

"Those are our cannons!" "Thieves!" "Long live the Republic!"

Louise Michel, the Red Virgin

The generals know the conscripts' loyalty shaky, yet disrespect them: 

• No coffee is offered to soldiers woken up and sent by surprise into the glacial cold, and there are no provisions when they arrive.

• The horses take a long time to arrive, and are no harnesses to haul the cannon when they do. The soldiers start to do so themselves, feeling that they are treated like animals.

The wait for the horses let soldiers and population connect:

We slipped in among the soldiers. Can you believe that they had not even given coffee to those pour kids, before sending them to us! Then we brought them to eat and drink [...]. When their general told them to fire on us, they were glad to listen to the junior officer who told them not to!" 

-- A Montmartre resident

cited in Ma Commune de Paris, 18 mars 1871

Explosion

• The commander, Claude Lecomte, refuses to have the wounded guard taken to the hospital at the bottom of the hill. A medic does what he can, but the victim remains in the sight of all:

La Vierge rouge, narrator Alain Decaux, YouTube, 2019

• Men call the soldiers "brother." Women drape themselves over the cannons. Girls make eye contact. One by one the conscripts join the residents, to the crowd's applause.

-- Louise Michel

• Lecomte orders the troops to fire on the crowd  — three times — and says that he will shoot any soldiers who side with "that vermin:"

"Traitors!" "Give the order, captain. Shoot!"

• A junior officer cries out, "Don't fire on other French! Point your rifles toward the sky!" (The signal of refusing to fight)

* His name is Verdaguerre and Versailles will have him shot.

 

"What are you waiting for?" "Break ranks, boys! Join us!" "Come give me a kiss!" "Put down your arms!" "Don't shoot!"

"Put down your arms! Don't shoot!"

• The soldiers do so. Lecomte is arrested.

"Catch him!"

"So we're vermin, are we?" "He deserves to be shot, that one." "The officers, they are nothing but damned pigs, especially the old ones. They can kill heads of French families, but not fight the Prussians."

# # #

"The crowd was there, compact, noisy, but not hostile; the general had a quiet lunch with his officers..." 

-- Witness in Ma Commune de Paris (please scroll down)

But there has been a giant shift:

"March 18 could have belonged to the foreigner

allied with the kings, or to the people.

It belonged to the people." 

--  Louise Michel

*      *      *

Next,
An unaware general steps into the fray

AN UNAWARE GENERAL STEPS INTO THE FRAY

CLÉMENT-THOMAS, THE YOUNG REPUBLICAN WHO IN 

1830 INDIGNANTLY REFUSED THIERS'S ATTEMPT TO BRIBE HIM, COMES TO SPY AND IS ARRESTED...

As he sketched a barricade while dressed in civilian clothes.

"Général Clément Thomas, assassinated on March 18 by the Central Committee 1871"

# # #

He has become a general, is a friend of Victor Hugo's son, calls the Legion of Honor a "vanity trinket" and is a staunch republican.

He...

• Participates in several officers' conspiracies in the early 1830's, is jailed, escapes and lives in exile. 

 

• Returns after February '48, is elected deputy and is made Commander of the National Guard.

• Opposes the Second Empire, organises a revolt and is exiled. 

• Returns when the Empire collapses and becomes Commander of the National Guard again in the last and hardest part of the siege. 

# # #

But he has "a bill to pay:" In May 1848, as Commander of the Guard he led the arrest of the left's leaders...

-- "Bill to pay:" Louise Michel

Newspaper page sold on eBay

The conservative paper describes the "indescribable chaos at the Assembly" when five or six hundred left-wing "savages" break in. Clément is presented as the hero who restores conservative order.

And was decorated for his role in repressing June:

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Musée Carnavalet, not exhibited

"General Clément-Thomas, commander of the national guard at the taking of the barricade at Culture Sainte-Catherine on June 24 1848"

Recently he...

• Sent the guards to the disastrous battle of Buzenval, to "make a few hotheads cool down." 

"Belleville will not forget the useless massacre of national guards. Children cry on Rébeval Street, women scream on Renard Street, everywhere one brings back soldiers' corpses." 

-- Florent Rastel, memorialist, My Paris Commune  (in French)

• As Commander of the Guard...

• Insulted working-class volunteers as drunkards and cowards in press that the Prussians read.

• Arrested the beloved head of the Belleville troops (Gustave Flourens, to whom we will return).

• Had posters plastered throughout the city that were taken as "insults and threats" and provoked the demonstration and shooting that followed.

-- "Insults and threats," Louise Michel

• His superior, General Trochu, wrote that he acted with "most praiseworthy firmness" by firing over 600 officers of the Guard for "agitating noisily during the siege" (presumably for demanding a more vigorous fight against the Prussians).

--  Posthumous works, p. 653 (online in French)

• Trochu writes that he went to Montmartre "for observation," that is, to spy.* He is recognized as he sketches a barricade at the bottom of the hill. 

*Some texts state that he is recognized although wearing civilian dress (italics added). Precisely: It was common knowledge that in June officers had come so attired to observe the barricades (Daniel Stern say so in a note). That Clément would dare appear at all and particularly in that garb shows how little he understood his opponents.

# # #

The lynchings

Clément is dragged to the top of the hill where the cannons are kept, the guards have their headquarters and the crowd has massed since morning. "Fury rises, a gun goes off, others go off on their own." He cries "Vive la République!" and is riddled with 40 shots.

The mob drags out Lecomte. He says he has five children and begs for his life. Someone cries out, "If we don't kill him he'll kill us." He is shot too.

-- Louise Michel

 

We know little about Lecomte, more about Clément, who is courageous and sincere. Michel says, "He died well."

But he shares the myopia

of most middle-class republicans,

who do not grasp that since June 

they "dance on corpses."

-- Louise Michel

*     *    * 

Next,

Commemorations of the right and the left