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.

Ebay

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

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He 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 from a southern province (the Gironde) and is made Commander of the National Guard.

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

• Comes back when the Empire collapses and is made Commander of the National Guard again, in the last and hardest part of the siege. 

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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:

Zoom

City Museum (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 has...

• 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, he

• 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 continues by saying 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 (Stern say so in a note) and that Clément would dare appear at all and particularly in that garb, shows how little he understood his opponents.

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The lynchings

Clément is dragged to the top of the hill, where the guards have their headquarters and where 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

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Next,

Commemorations of the right and the left