THE CANNONS ON THE HILLS

GUARDS DEPOSIT THE CANNONS ON THE HEIGHTS OF 

MONTMARTRE AND BELLEVILLE, FROM WHICH THEY

DOMINATE THE TOWN

Signs of their importance:

• A Socialist newspaper's issue for the first Bastille Day, in 1883, associates a drawing of the people seizing the Bastille cannons with taking those of the government in 1871: 

     Cover of Le Cri du peuple, reproduced and commented in the blog Ma Commune de Paris

Former Communards choose the image in hommage to both La Commune and the Revolution. (The engraving shows only men moving the Bastille cannons, while in 1871 women, children and the elderly also seized them from the government.)

• A Soviet movie shows their menace:

# # #

For military, political and symbolic reasons the government makes retrieving the cannons a priority, but that's easier said than done:  

• Even in normal times, moving 371 bronze cannons from the outskirts would take two full days, 10,000 men and 15,000 horses. 

• Montmartre's distance and steep hill prevent building the arteries that appear elsewhere. Residents aligned on narrow streets would be able to cut horses' harnesses and block cannons' wheels:

• There is no space for soldiers to assemble and be isolated from the crowd.

• Conscripts' loyalty is uncertain: Those sent to suppress the February demonstrations at Bastille fraternize with the crowd, and some not only let guards seize the cannon, but help them seize arms in depots.

-- Tombs, 49-50

# # #

Miracle: The freezing, unpaid guards agree to return the cannons and the mayor of Montmartre* offers to negotiate the terms.

(On March 16)

*Clemenceau

Dans les tranchées ("In the Trenches") by Alphonse de Neuville, 1874 / zoom

On Friday March 17 the top generals meet Thiers and urge him to accept those talks. He is aware of the danger of mixing troops and population, having even included an illustration in his History of the French Revolution:

"The French guards delivered from the Abbey"  

They had been imprisoned for refusing to fire on the crowd in a tumult before taking the Bastille.

"Mixing with the population every day,* they [the Guards] succumbed to its seductions." 

-- Underlining added  .

*Like the conscripts billeted with Parisians during the siege.

But the Assembly's first meeting in Versailles will be on the next Monday, March 20, and Thiers needs a victory.

On Saturday March 18
 the people of Montmartre wake 
to find soldiers dragging the cannons down the hill.

End of this section.

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Next section,
VI.2.2.
Explosion