VI.3.2. THE VIEW NOW

Menu: 6.3.2. The view now

A TEACHER SWEEPS HER CLASS PAST THE TINY SPACE THAT THE MUSÉE CARNAVALET GIVES LA COMMUNE

She does not mention it.

These pages examine the shift to the right

in how French history is written.

• Whose violence? The comeback of the Versaillais myth 

• A page from a 2016 schoolbook

• Correct the errors, buttress the mindset

• The Carnavalet before renovation (in 2016-2022)...

• And after it

• The Saint-Denis museum follows the same evolution

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Whose violence? 

The comeback of the Versaillais myth 

WHOSE VIOLENCE? THE COMEBACK OF THE VERSAILLAIS MYTH

UNTIL THE 1980's, THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE ARMY'S BARBARISM AND LA COMMUNE'S PACIFISM SEEMED SELF-EVIDENT

Since then, La Commune has been "demystified" by emphasizing its rare executions and downplaying those of the army.  

# # #

Communard violence:

• La Commune did arrest 70 guards and clergymen at the start of the conflict in reprisal for Versailles killings, as bargaining chips and to slow down shootings,* that is, in self-defense.  

The Arrest of Monseigneur Darboy, newspaper illustration / zoom

*During her deportation Louise Michel met 31 Communards whom that halt in killing saved.  

• Except for the shootings of the Archbishop and five other hostages — inexcusable but due to Ferré alone — it ordered only nine executions, for reasons that are considered legitimate in wartime:  

1. A man who sold plans of a fort to Versailles, the only execution before Bloody Week.  

-- Lissagary, Annex XVI 

2. A man who tried to corrupt a Commune member. 

-- Vuillaume, The Shooting on Pont Neuf,  "Mes Cahiers Rouges" ("My Red Notebooks"), p.355

3.4.5. Three spies.

6.7.8.9. The commander accused of firing on the crowd at City Hall on January 22 and three policemen, also due to Ferré. Vuillaume thinks that Breton fanatics were responsible for that shooting, but since the commander said only that he "did his duty," Ferré's choice is understandable. 

-- Vuillaume, Gustave Chaudey, "My Red Notebooks," pp. 435-484

• The killings by mobs were due to panic. Commune members tried to stop them.

• A decree ordering shootings in reprisal was not applied. For the general absence of coercion, please click and scroll down. 

In short, the Communards executed 15 people, 14 during the anguish of Bloody Week. Of those, nine were legitimate in war.

Current revisionism 

emphasizes those few executions

and downplays army carnage: 

Please read on.

 

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Next, 

A page from a 2016 schoolbook

A PAGE FROM A 2016 SCHOOLBOOK

ERRORS WITH NO MENTION OF THE UNDERLYING ISSUES

OR OF LA COMMUNE'S ACHIEVEMENTS

 

Other schoolbooks may not have made as flagrant mistakes, but since the national programs are all the same, they would have had the same point of view. 

La Commune (1871)

• Pointless erudition: "Provisional Chief of the executive power:" No explanation is given for the clumsy title,* which takes up more than a full line in the short text.

 

* It left the form of government open, in hopes of restoring monarchy later.

• An unforgivable error: "The latter [Thiers] seizes the cannons to disarm the capital." No! He tries to do so, fails and flees, leaving the vacuum that allows La Commune. 

As well, what cannons? 

• A major omission:  It [The Commune] takes measures that are social (free schooling) and anti-clerical (nationalization of ecclesiastical property)." All western industrialized nations adopt those practices. Commune innovations that challenged the social hierarchy are left out. 

• Glossing over massacre: "In May during 'Bloody Week,' the army crushes the Parisian revolt, executing between 20,000 and 30,000 people." The worst massacre to take place in Europe until the Shoah obtains one line more than the ponderous Chief of the Executive title.

• It doesn't even get pages right: "That 'Commune of Paris,' inspired by socialist ideas (see p.227.)" There are no "socialist ideas" on that page. 

A choice of illustration shows that 

La Commune is seen mainly 

as a prelude to the Third Republic.

That it was as conservative as

 would have been a monarchy,

perhaps even more so,

is not said.

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Next,

Correct the errors, buttress the mindset

CORRECT THE ERRORS, BUTTRESS THE MINDSET

THE 2019 VERSION EMPHASIZES ELITES, HAS INDIVIDUALS REPLACE THE MASSES AND OMITS SOCIAL FORCES

French school programs follow a national pattern. So while the presentation changes according to editor, the point of view stays the same.

Versions of the 2019 program, which in 2025 had not changed: Left, top-hatted men behind the well-dressed woman underscore the privileged as a whole, while the soldiers in the trenches of World War I are alone. Right, isolated figures. 

La Commune, a civil war fought for exclusively political reasons: 

The Paris Commune:

A civil war (1871)

Legislative elections bring monarchists to power, who choose Adolphe Thiers as head of the government. Thiers allows the German army to have a march of triumph in Paris, chooses Versailles as the new capital and stops paying the National Guard. He is ready to sign peace with Germany.

• Nothing is said of : 

Economic issues that the siege has made dramatic: The end of the moratorium on rents, debts and pawnbrokers' sales would devastate the already starving poor, and the loss of a clientele of over 600 deputies, their families and servants by transferring the government to Versailles negatively impact businesses on the verge of bankruptcy.

2. Communards vs. "Versaillais"

In contrast to the provinces, Paris voted massively of republican candidates and for the pursuit of the war and against Thiers. Most of the Guard battalions refuse to accept the authority of Versailles.

Nothing about the generals' incompetence, the widespread suspicion of treason, the suicidal Buzenval attack, the shooting of January 23 and the belief that Versailles preferred peace with the Prussians than accepting Parisian social demands.

[Paris wants to] be free, govern itself, invent a new society: separate Church and State, secularize schools, liberate the press, open museums to the public.

Industrialization would have brought those changes in any case (except for the free museums): Transformative measures, notably women's cooperatives and worker-run enterprises whose owners had left, are omitted.

• Louise Michel is not only singled out but given a picture (more about that emphasis below): 

On March 18 1871, the drama explodes. Thiers orders the National Guard to take hold of the cannons on the Montmartre hillside. Furious, the Parisians oppose that, as does Louise Michel. Thiers orders his troops to leave the town, to besiege it. The whole city revolts and representatives of the Commune of Paris who adopt the red flag in replacement of the tricolor.

 

On violence

• Nothing is said of officers' encouraging carnage or presiding over extra-judicial shootings.

Wishing to get it over with, Versaillais troops enter Paris [and engage in a violence] without limits during Bloody Week (May 21-28 1871), leading to at least 10,000 dead. Judicial sessions succeed military repression with condemnations to death, to prison or else  — as for Louise Michel — to New-Caledonia (see chapter 8 p. 240).

•   "The Communards too plunge into a revolutionary logic of violence, with the execution of several hostages." That is, the six unjustified shootings. 

# # #

A single figure, Louise Michel, replaces all the Communards: 

Left, her arrest. Right, the fires associated with La Commune, with no mention of the army's equal responsibility.

           The Departure of Deportees on the Virginia, anonymous, end 19th century

   -- Musée d'art et d'histoire de Saint-Denis (exhibited)

Michel was one Communard among thousands of foot soldiers, not important enough to be included here though she was on the boat. She became well-known for her speeches and writings, but much later. 

# # #

Emphasis on individuals 

 echoes the omnipresent ads:

They are almost never set in a wider context

or as part of a group of more than a few.

Corner, rues de Tolbiac and Nationale, 13th

Downplaying La Commune resembles

inattention to left-wing rallies in the United States,

leading to a growing challenge of independent media. 

Close to a thousand demonstrators at Grand Central Station, April 8, 2025, in a demonstration that  only a small Turkish and small American station, Status Coup, covered. 

A similar awareness for history

is what these pages promote.

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Next, 

The Carnavalet before renovation (in 2016-2022)...

THE CARNAVALET BEFORE RENOVATION (in 2016-2022)...

IN 2010 THIS EYE-LEVEL PLAQUE WAS INSTANTLY VISIBLE

 

In 2016 it had been moved to a dark corner near the floor and I had to search to find it... 

"The fights that marked the end of the Commune were extremely violent, the Versailles troops shooting without judgement all the subjects they arrested. General Mac-Mahon, chief of operations, admitted 17,000 executions, a number that should doubtless be raised."

La Commune occupied two minuscule rooms at the back of the third floor. The first showed...

• Paintings of fires associated with Communards, by four luminous works that lit up the gloom:

The Fires of 1871 by Gustave Boulanger, 1871 / zoom

Zoom

Zoom

Zoom

As with earlier combat scenes, violence merged into the city scape. There was no reference to destruction by the army.  

• The only work from a Communard perspective:

  Execution of a Drummer Boy during the Commune by Alfred Roll / zoom

# # #

The second room was sunlit, 

and devoted to portraits 

of Versaillais generals or government leaders.

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Next,

And after it

AND AFTER IT

LA COMMUNE NOW OCCUPIES FOUR METERS, SANDWICHED BETWEEN SPACES ABOUT ELITES 

The first space is devoted to the Baron Haussmann...

The second to the privileged of 1900: 

# # #

La Commune is inserted in the short corridor that links those topics. It starts with an account whose errors don't matter because few people will read the small letters. 

The picture of washerwomen at the foot of the hill where La Commune began is a rare work to acknowledge the humble. Otherwise it has nothing to do with it.  

The 72 days of the Commune of Paris

(March 18 - May 28 1871)

The defeat leaves France divided. The decapitalization of Paris in March is rejected by the Parisian population. [No mention of social measures.] The national guards create a republican federation (hence the name "fédérés") and regroup on the heights of Montmartre and Belleville. [And throughout the underclass east, north and south]. Adolf Thiers, head of the executive power, orders that 277 cannons [no, 177: an error that reveals the writer's ignorance, as here and here] of Montmartre be taken back, but his troops retreat to Versailles. The political leader and writer Jules Vallès writes, "Paris is reconquered." [An individual replaces the humble population.] On March 26 a general council is elected, in homage to the insurrectional commune of 1792-1794. It is the first experience of communal self-government in [untrue for Paris and for a number of European cities] revolutionary history. The Commune is proclaimed on March 28. A number of measures are adopted (separation of Church and State, recognition of concubinage, election of officials and judges, citizens' control of officials, education of girls... ) [Skips measures that contest the social hierarchy]. But on May 21 mai, Thiers's army invades south-western Paris. The Communards set fire to a number of public buildings on May 23 and 24 [Nothing on army destructions]. 7000 - 10,000 people [a number that is much too low] die during Bloody Week (May 21-28 1871), which marks the end of the Commune.

• Then comes a work about communicating by balloon during the siege of Paris, a service whose cost reserved it to the wealthy. Huge, it eats into part of La Commune's minuscule space.

In what's left:

• On the right, portraits of a revolutionary leader who was absent because imprisoned at Versailles, of a woman who was a child at the time of La Commune, of a journalist who went over to the far right and of Louise Michel, who at the time was relatively obscure:

The balloon painting takes up part of the passage.

From left to right

• Auguste Blanqui. As a prisoner of Versailles he played no role in La Commune.

•  Jules Vallès's compagnon in the 1880's, who was 13 at the time of La Commune.

• Bust of the marquis Henri de Rochefort, a journalist who later changed sides.

• Louise Michel, obligatory.

On the other side of the passage...

• A space under a glass reflects the bust of the marquis. The announcements that stand out by their large black letters mean nothing to the spectator.

The arrow shows the bust's reflection.

• One must peer closely to see two small images of carnage: That behind the arrow is practically invisible and the photo's blur shows how hard it is to make out the larger picture of the firing squad. 

The museum renews the exhibit by replacing these with other images of army violence, which are as small and as difficult to decipher.

Around the corner, the usual emphasis on destruction by the Communards...

The small objects in the niche above the picture of ruined City Hall concern its past, not La Commune, unless to emphasize its destruction.

But nothing about that of the army.

# # #

I happened to be present when a high school class arrived. The teacher mentioned Baron Haussmann and the Second Empire, then walked through the passage without mentioning La Commune.

# # #

I have several times asked young guards

 how to find that exhibit.

They do not know

and have never heard of La Commune itself.

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Next,

The Saint-Denis museum follows the same evolution