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 without a separating space there had been a choice:

 The Cannons of the National Guard on the Montmartre hilltop, 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." 

Parliamentary Inquiry on the Insurrection of March 18, 1871, 

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

"Those are our cannons!"

Louise Michel, the Red Virgin

The generals do not consider conscripts though they know their loyalty shaky:

• 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 long delay for horses means contact with women at the early morning market. 

• There are no harnesses to haul the cannon when the horses finally arrive. The soldiers start to do so themselves, feeling that they are treated like animals.

At the same time,

 "All the women came into the street, with quite a few men...

...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 My Paris Commune, March 18 1871 (in French)

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:

The Red Virgin, 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:"

• 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.

"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 residents do not know Lecomte, and for the moment nothing happen to him: "The crowd was there, compact, noisy, but not hostile; the general had a quiet lunch with his officers..." 

-- Witness in My Paris Commune (please scroll down)

# # #

"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