ALMOST ALL THE PRIVILEGED, LIBERAL INTELLECTUALS INCLUDED, AGREED THAT:
- "The poor, trained to envy, to hate, to thirst for pillage... only the army holds them back"
-- The Red Specter, 1852, cited in "The Journal of the Commune," March 31, 1871
- "E. Cavaignac has served his country well:" title of the image below
General Eugène Cavaignac, the — republican — commander of the repression rides over a broken barricade.
He had asphyxiated Algerian villagers who had taken refuge in caves: "If those bandits retire to their caverns, copy General Cavaignac. Smoke them out like foxes."
He let the barricades spring up so as to mow them down with all possible ferocity.
* *
Exception: Marie de Flavigny, Countess d'Agoult, a member of the most venerable nobility and most cultured elite, who left husband, child and caste to run away with Liszt
(In 1835)
Franz Liszt improvises on the piano by Josef Danhauser, 1840 / zoom
Marie is at Liszt's feet; seated behind her, Alexandre Dumas and George Sand; standing, Berlioz, Paganini and Rossini.
Franz Liszt and Marie d'Agoult, side by side at the Musée Carnavalet
That artists were considered servants of the elite made Marie's shattering of the codes still more spectacular.
The couple had three children, but Liszt lost interest. The unattainable goddess was one thing, an outcast dependent on him another. Tolstoy tells a similar story in Anna Karenina.
Her personal revolt led to understanding that of others, and her History of the Revolution of 1848* echoes Karl Marx.
*Pen name Daniel Stern
The poor take power, maintain perfect order and give the new government three months — "three months of misery" — to accede to their sole demand, employment. They revolt when the Assembly, which owes them its jobs, goes back on its word.
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