WHEN DEMONSTRATORS ARE KILLED IN A LARGELY UNARMED CROWD "THE PAVEMENTS ROSE UP OF THEMSELVES"
(ON JANUARY 22, 1871)
-- Louise Michel
Illustrated London Times / zoom
Demonstration and shooting at City Hall
Two weeks later, elections* give the far right two-thirds of Assembly seats:
*On February 8, so that a legally-elected government can sign the armistice and preliminary peace treaty.
- Most deputies are « small-town notables, obtuse châtelains, empty-headed musketeers, clerical dandies [...] in battle order against atheist, revolutionary Paris, which had founded three Republics and upset so many gods."
-- Lissagary
- The Assembly meets in Bordeaux (on February 12) and votes to move to Versailles — Paris is "decapitalized."
- Thiers becomes the "Chief of the Executive Power." The royalists leave the form of government vague so that the republic will signing the humiliating peace treaty: They can restore the kingship later.
A play on words makes the rooster a symbol of France: "gallus" — rooster in Latin — and "Gaul"
How the left sees Thiers
The rupture comes three weeks later:
(On March 8)- Garibaldi, the Italian revolutionary who had mobilized volunteers to defend the French Republic, is jeered and walks out.
- Victor Hugo tries to make a speech and a noble is so convulsed with fury that he mixes up his words and yells, "We refuse to yield the floor to Mr. Victor Hugo because he does not speak French."
Claretie
Garibaldi's departure, the prelude to schism.
The other left-wing deputies follow him,
leaving the Assembly entirely under far right control.
* * *
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