WHEN DEMONSTRATORS ARE KILLED IN A LARGELY UNARMED CROWD "THE PAVEMENTS ROSE UP OF THEMSELVES"
(ON JANUARY 22, 1871)
-- Louise Michel
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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."
- Howls interrupt Hugo's speech and he too strides out, saying "I'm leaving this place and won't come back."
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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