VI.3.1. THE VICTORS' VIEW

6.3.1. Menu: The victors' view

EMBLEMATIC SITE, ODD MARKER

It focuses on an implausible shooting and leaves out La Commune.

Baroness Danute

The shooting of March 18, 1871

The bolding brings out data unknown to most readers.

After the failure of the night-time expedition to seize the cannons of the national guard by surprise, the first bloodletting took place during the evening of March 18, 1871. General Clément-Thomas, a staunch republican exiled under the Empire returned to participate in the defense of Paris after Sedan, is recognized on place Pigalle, despite his denials and his civilian dress: he seeks General Lecomte, arrested by the insurgents that morning, for having ordered the troops to fire on the crowd. Arrested too, he is taken to the the seat of the Central Committee situated at 6, rue des Rosiers (rebaptized rue de Chevalier de la Barre in 1907).

Condemned to death by a summary judgement, both are shot against the garden wall by their own soldiers. 

In brief

• A firing squad that makes no sense

• Versaillais propaganda that tells (part of) the truth

• "The hostages of the rue Haxo," the other highly publicized killing

• Catholic martyrs whom even the Church forgets

• "To the victors belong the spoils"

 Many of the 700 panels

 that a right-wing City Hall sponsored in 1992

turn people away from history

by their string of irrelevant data.

As well, the shooting of the generals

 "by their own soldiers" 

copies Versaillais invention.

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Next,

A firing squad that makes no sense

A FIRING SQUAD THAT MAKES NO SENSE

A MONTAGE SHOWS LA COMMUNE BORN OF MUTINY AND PREMEDITATED MURDER

The autopsy report shows the bullets shot from behind.* But even without that information one should know that posing such a photo in the midst of the drama would have been impossible given the matériel of the time, that it must be a montage and so suspect and especially, that so extraordinary an event must be explained...**

 *Pierre Milza, "L'Année terrible: La Commune," 2014.

**Conscripts have killed officers spontaneously, as before the October Revolution and during the Vietnam War, but I have never heard of them organizing their executions. 

  

Zoom

First of the series "The Crimes of the Commune," montages that Versailles commissioned from the royalist photographer Charles Edouard Appert. The next pages show others. 

Yet only Victor Hugo found it "curious" that troops shoot their generals. Even popular accounts favorable to La Commune it, skip but do not contest it, by including the firing squad  implicitly accept it.

 

• Marx says it due to conscripts' hostility to officers. Yet these soldiers had no reason to oppose Clément, who as head of the Parisian National Guard but had never been linked to the army. 

• The Soviet film The New Babylon skips the drama by having the Lecomte character tell the troops to abandon the cannons and return to Versailles, after which they will may go home. That is the exception mentioned earlier in a movie that otherwise follows the sources.

    The New Babylon 

• Raspou'team, whose street art commemorated La Commune's 140th anniversary, takes the montage at face value:

General Clément "who was already known for repressing the insurrection of 1848, is recognized while inspecting the barricades in civilian dress. Thomas and Lecomte are led to the rue des Rosiers, on the Montmartre hilltop. Both are shot. While about it, the National Guard parades under the windows." (The last sentence is an invention.)

• A graphic novel has Louise Michel oppose the illegal execution:

"No ! Wait for the Committee! This needs a court martial!" 

• A Bulgarian illustration captures the chaos, but keeps the firing squad:

 Gone from the web 

Execution of generals Thomas and Lecomte.

  

•  A televised series shows the crowd making up the firing squad, which erases mutiny but keeps premeditation.

-- Karambolage, "March 18, 1871" (in French)

• The 13th's historical journal* adopts it:

*Right-leaning but not deliberately biased. 

 

 La Commune de Paris,"Histoire et histories du 13e," n°7, June 2011

"General Lecomte is arrested then shot, rue des Rosiers, by his soldiers. General Clément Thomas suffers the same fate..."

# # #

Louise Michel on Clément's arrest: "the guns went off on their own."

Memories of June, the siege and its sufferings, the useless attempts to break it with their wounded and dead, the incompetence and suspected treason of generals, the shooting into a largely unarmed crowd, the launch of an attack that was sure to fail, the shameful capitulation, the firing of over 600 officers for "agitating noisily," the Prussian victory march without announcing the quid pro quo, the army's arrival by surprise when the cannons' return had been offered, the mortally-wounded guard...

The effect of tolling bells and drum rolls.

As well, Montmartrois villagers were not alone, since residents joined them from the bottom of the hill. The sense of personal responsibility is lost in a crowd: "It was as if my gun took over." 

In that context Lecomte refuses to have the wounded guard taken to the hospital, calls the furious residents "vermin" and orders his troops to fire on them —  three times.

Clément does not realize that having repressed the demonstration of May 1848, been decorated for his role in the June massacre and fired more than 600 officers for "agitating" means that "observing" in civilian clothes is to stroll into the lions' den.*  

*In History of the 1848 Revolution Marie Agoult (Daniel Stern) mentions officers attired in that way observing the June barricades. So the practice must have been common knowledge, and remembered. 

# # #

General Trochu imagines Clément "rushing to the scene as good soldiers go toward the fighting, believing, I am sure [...] that his notoriety as Commander of the National Guard and veteran of the republican cause would impress the hysterical crowds..."  

-- Posthumous works, p. 653 / online (in French)

By believing that "hysterical crowds"

will listen to a killer of the people closest to them,

the privileged show how completely they ignore

their "dancing on corpses."

Supposition:

The left does not wish to find

the soon-to-be-Communards

guilty of such crime.

It would be better to admit it,

while pointing out that the generals killings

was due to their myopia.

*     *     *

Next,

Versaillais propaganda that tells (part of) the truth

VERSAILLAIS PROPAGANDA THAT TELLS (PART OF) THE TRUTH

ONE "CRIME OF THE COMMUNE," DOES ILLUSTRATE REALITY, THOUGH NOT ALL OF IT

Théophile Ferré, the fanatic whom Louise Michel loved, did order the shootings of the Archbishop of Paris and five other prisoners.

     Assassination of the Hostages at the la Roquette Prison / zoom 

    -- Musée Carnavalet, not exhibited

Ferré was not present but as he ordered the execution, having an actor represent him is fair. Yet showing the other victims as clergy is propaganda, since most were policemen whose names happened to be first on the prison list (My Red Notebooks: a Bit of Truth on the Death of the Hostages, toward 1910). 

   By Robert Jefferson Bingham, toward 1860 / zoom

Monseigneur Georges Darboy was a kindly man of humble origin, who defended the poor and tried to limit Versailles's ferocity. 

# # #

Thiers was as responsible:

• The Communards wished to exchange Darboy for Auguste Blanqui, France's most famous revolutionary. 

     Portrait of Louis Blanqui by Eugène Appert, probably 1871 / zoom

• He is remembered for spending 35 years in prison and for the phrase "Neither god nor master:" 

Behind the Church of the Sacré-Cœur, a symbolic Commune site, 2016

 A poster in the washroom of a popular restaurant in La Goutte d'Or, 2020

Movie on a slave revolt, 2024

# # #

• When leaders of La Commune offered to exchange all 74 hostages for Blanqui alone, Thiers refused.

Neither God nor Master: Auguste Blanqui, the Jailed  by L. Kournwsky and M. Le Roy (Casterman), 2005

"You will get them on the sole condition of letting Blanqui go! 74 men in exchange for one ! Just say the word, and I will bring you all of them..

# # #

"Idiot!" cried Victor Hugo he heard that Ferré had given Thiers the high-profile martyr he sought, used again and again:   

    Photomontage by Ernest-Charles Appert, février 1872 / zoom

Monseigneur Darboy at the prison of La Roquette

Zoom

Zoom

Illustration from a painting by Henri Motte, Internet / disappeared

This painting was made in 1926...

May 24 1781, Execution of  Mgr Darboy and President Bonjean at la Roquette by Marie-Thérèse de la Fosse / zoom

And I heard a countess evoke

 the Archbishop's death with emotion

when a full century had passed.

*     *     *

Next,

"The hostages of the rue Haxo," the other highly publicized killing

"THE HOSTAGES OF THE RUE HAXO," THE OTHER HIGHLY PUBLICIZED KILLING

A MOB PANICKED BY THE ARMY ADVANCE AND ITS EXECUTIONS SHOOTS 50 PRISONERS. COMMUNE MEMBERS TRY BUT FAIL TO SAVE THEM

(On May 26)

-- Main source: My Red Notebooks, a Bit of Truth on the Death of the Hostages, pp. 68-127 (in French) by Maxime Vuillaume, toward 1910. He examined records, followed the route from prison to execution site and spoke with witnesses.

Another Crimes of the Commune montage

Of course the tragedy is used for propaganda: See the caption under the last picture here.

The horde seeks revenge on people who have no tie with the fighting but who side with Versailles: " 'They've been shooting our own in heaps! And you want to spare such people!' " cries an elderly combattant, aiming his revolver at a Commune official who tries to protect the prisoners.  

# # #

Commune soldiers demand that all remaining prisoners be handed over. With their platoon and about 30 "lost boys" they march with trumpets, singing a drinking song, through screaming crowds to empty terrain next to Belleville's eastern rampart.

The sight that rue Haxo presented was terrifying. Between howls of the mob one heard the clash of  battle. Fugitives rushed to the nearby gate in the rampart to try to cross the Prussian lines.  

Mixed with the whistling of bullets and the boom of shells were the sounds of German music just beyond the rampart buffer. 

-- Vuillaume, p.114

Commune officials have fallen back to a nearby inn, at 78 rue Haxo. From a corner window they see the crowd, the hostages and the empty terrain. They try to prevent the massacre. 

"Cournet, Délégué [Minister] of Security, ties on his red shawl and tries to speak. The crowd covers his voice. He is threatened.   

Varlin makes superhuman efforts. He asks his colleagues and several friends to join him in the space where the crowd is about to bring the prisoners.  

-- ' No,' Roulier [a cobbler, member of the Commission of Labor] objects. " 'It must not be said that members of the Commune were present.' "

 "All efforts to tear them [the hostages] from death were then useless. Those horrified by the useless disaster could only throw themselves into the battle or flee.[... ] 

Varlin went back to signing orders, to delivering orders and money for requisitions, with apparent calm.  

Suddenly shots broke out."  

# # #

 

A memorial at the Belleville cemetery honors the murdered

guards:

 

-- Cemeteries of France, The cemetery of Belleville (please scroll down)

# # #

The web account unhesitatingly accepts the Versaillais version, ignoring the terrified mob and the Commune members who beg it not to shoot. As well, errors show their disinterest:

"During the Commune, in reprisal for the massacres by Versaillais, 51 hostages, republican guards, policemen, priests and Jesuit fathers, the Abbot Planchet, were shot during Bloody Week by the fédérés on May 28 1871." The number of hostages was 50, though in the confusion a person in the crowd was also killed. The date was May 26. 

"The shooting took place behind the cemetery wall at the Villa des Otages, 85 rue de Haxo."The cemetery wall is a 10-minute walk from the site of the shooting. The writer takes the montage at face value, not bothering to visit the site.

# # #

Bias and error are all the more reason to appreciate

a panel that, exceptionally, 

gives accurate information and says what counts:

" ...on May 26, 1871, 50 hostages from the prison of la Roquette, mostly priests, Paris Guards and policemen, were taken there and slaughtered without judgement. [...]"

"Eugène Varlin and members of the Central Committee tried in vain to oppose the massacre. But nothing could stop the crowd, made desperate by the exactions and summary executions of the Versaillais, who were reconquering Paris street by street, house by house. 

Firing-squad shootings, first a few isolated shots then a long, long salvo that seemed never to end... (Jules Vallès, The Insurgent, 1885)" 

 .

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Next,

Catholic martyrs whom even the Church forgets