...AND AFTER IT

LA COMMUNE NOW OCCUPIES A FOUR-METER PASSAGE, WEDGED 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 between them. At its start a small picture of washerwomen. It is a rare work in the museum to show working-class people, but has no connection with what is supposed to be the topic. 

Next to it is an account with the same bias as that of the textbook just described. As well, the letters are so small that the account is hard to read.  

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. It eats into a large part of La Commune's minuscule space.

In the area that remains:

• On one side of the passage, figures who were secondary at best:

The balloon painting on the left 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 now but little known then.

On the other side of the passage

• The announcements that stand out by their large black letters mean nothing to the spectator. The arrow points to a reflection of the Rochefort bust. 

• Under the proclamations are two small images of carnage: That behind the arrow is almost invisible and the firing squad is hard to see.  

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 is emphasis on the burning of the Tuileries and City Hall... 

The objects in the niche above the picture of ruined City Hall concern its past to emphasize its loss. 

...but nothing about destruction by 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 asked young guards how to find that exhibit.

They did not know

and had never heard of La Commune.

*    *    *

Next,

The museum of a working-class bastion backs down

THE MUSEUM OF A WORKING-CLASS BASTION BACKS DOWN

THE SAINT-DENIS CITY MUSEUM* DEVOTES ITS THIRD FLOOR TO LA COMMUNE, BUT ITS PRESENTATION HAS WEAKENED 

 

*This medieval town north of Paris is the site of the royal mausoleum. Industrialisation made it working class, Communist for a century (1921-2020), Social-Democratic now.  

On my first visit, toward 2015, a video clip on the métro platform announced the exhibit. At the museum I watched it in full.  

When I returned in 2020, the video was gone from both metro and museum. I was told that there was an equipment problem that would take a long time to fix. In May 2025, it was still gone.

# # #

Strong points

• Paintings of the time 

Marching Army by Alfred Rolls, 1871

The army plodding through the snow refers to the war with Prussia, but the scene is universal.

Anonymous

Communards continuing a killed comrade's aim fits the spirit of the sources.

• Photos and caricatures  

Communards awaiting trial at Versailles. Bismarck and Thiers watch over a stew of Parisians that a demon cooks.

• The point of view that Communards faced:

A Wedding during the Commune by Félix Guerie, no date

People without dignity

Left in the reserve:

• Rich and poor after the repression 

Paris after the Commune by Frédéric Dix, no date

• This photo

Blown up and seen figure by figure, the photos are even more poignant. But it has taken a high-school teacher, not the museum, to do so: Please click and scroll down.

• The museum exhibits this modern adaptation.  

La Commune - cadavres de combattants par Arnulf Rainer, 1929 

The splash of color lessens the impact and disrespects these young, small and terribly vulnerable men. 

                                                                                                                  

# # #

The slant is the same as that of the textbooks, street panels and the musée Carnavalet.   

• The exhibit of two almost interchangeable paintings when others are left out:

Exécution d'otages à la prison de La Roquette 1871 à 8h du soir by T. Harreguy 

Arrêt d'un officier par la Garde nationale fédérée à l'entrée de la Mairie [City Hall ] du 8e arrondissement [district ] by Emmanuel Massé, 1870

• This write-up:

Emmanuel Massé, portraitist and genre painter, here shows an officer of the Empire arrested at the 8th district city hall. Arrests were very frequent, as often by the Communards* as by the Versaillais who encircle Paris. The prisoners allowed pressure on the adverse camp and the summary executions nourished the insurgents' ardor in their desire for vengeance.*

*The real numbers: Hostages shot by a crowd, 51;  Monsignor Darboy and five others; about 20 that a prison director refuses to shoot.

Mistakes

• The subject cannot be an arrest by "the federated Guard" is impossible, since the painting is dated 1870 and the Guard was created on February 15, 1871. The arrest has to be by government police — the opposite of what's said.  

• The write-up equates Communard and Versaillais arrests. In fact, the Communards took 74 prisoners, the Versaillais a countless number.

• The information in the general descriptive panel could come out of a Versaillais account:

"Furious with the capitulating generals, the population improvises a tribunal that condemns them. That very evening, they are shot against a wall."

For that belief, please click.

Except for the works and documents of the time

we find the Versaillais slant,,

factual errors included.

End of this section.

*    *    *

Next,

6.3.3.

Two historians fight back

VI.3.3. TWO HISTORIANS FIGHT BACK

Menu: 6.3.3. Two historians fight back

BUT THEY ARE OUTSIDE THE ACADEMIC CIRCUIT

The late Michèle Audin was a university professor, but as a mathematician. Emmanuel Brandely is a high school teacher.

Discussion at a progressive bookstore on May 23 (2024), a date that calls up Bloody Week, May 22-28, (1871) next to a street where desperate fighting took place.

Bloody Week (2021)

Historians against the Commune (2024)

The time has come "to consider the human beings that were these cadavers with respect, to not let them disappear again — which means looking at who they were and what they did."

-- Michèle Audin, La Semaine sanglante, p.9.

*    *    *

 

Next,

"All I did was add"

6.3.3. "ALL I DID WAS ADD"

"OTHERS COULD HAVE DONE THE SAME IF THEY HAD WANTED TO," WROTE MICHÈLE AUDIN AFTER CONSULTING CEMETERY RECORDS 

 -- Letter to Emmanuel Brandely, note p.53

Right-wing accounts of the time and current, are based on The Convulsions of Paris by the reactionary Maxime du Camp, 1879: 

• He declares 6500 Communards dead during Bloody Week, an estimate based on burial records at the Père Lachaise cemetery.

• Robert Tombs follows du Camp's count by estimating 5,700 -7,400 dead. The British conservative is considered one of the foremost historians of La Commune, though it is not his specialty.

Audin concludes that the number will never be known, but that the 20,000-30,000 stated by survivors is realistic. Images of the time fit that opinion...

A view of Paris on May 24, 1871

   Illustration

 Passers-by remove the corpses, as required after an action.

Le Triomphe de l'ordre by Ernest Pichio, 1877 / zoom

"The Triumph of Order"

...as do the records that Audin studied.

They show 10,000 official burials in Parisian cemeteries during Bloody Week, which leaves out the multitude of cadavers that were not officially registered, were buried in suburban graveyards or in Versailles or burned or buried in mass graves. Construction workers came upon corpses until the turn of the century.

An excerpt from her Table of Contents: 

 

Emmanuel Brandely examines the current revisionism in Historiens contre la Commune (2024). 

Echoes of the Marseillaise: two centuries of the French Revolution, by the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm makes a comparable critique of the French Revolution (1989).

 

# # #

Quentin Deluermoz's citations (e.g. The Commune is above all transitivity and suspension, in "Communes," 2020, p. 70) recall the neon phrases of the installation that hides the rampart vestige at the Louvre. Is the opaque, pretentious language meant to conceal the conservatism that French historians used to reject?  

The turn to the right applies to historiography as a whole. It coincides with multinationals' rise, from about 1980.

But things may be changing.

*     *    * 

Next,

6.3.4.

Resistance emerges

 

6.3.4. RESISTANCE EMERGES

UNDER THE OLD REGIME HIERARCHY BY BIRTH WAS REINFORCED IN SO MANY WAYS THAT AN INSULT AMONG THE HUMBLE WAS, "YOUR FATHER WAS A VALET"

Mentalities changed when the economy did. "What gave you all that wealth? You took the trouble to be born," was the key line of a play to which Parisians flocked a few years before the Revolution, when capitalism had became impossible to contain.

Is something comparable happening now? Check the huge number of  protests Global Protest Tracker. Some are reactionary because anti-immigrant. But most are progressive.

*     *

In Paris, recent changes suggest an evolution. This mural made in 2024, which covers a third of a métro platform, defies social conflict's usual deletion, demonstrations are worldwide, and once-apolitical Americans rally at symbolic place de la Bastille... 

 Saint-Denis is the working-class suburb where crowds come for soccer games. 

Dark hues refer to the struggle for the eight-hour day.

Bright ones show the effect of that struggle now. 

    March 28, 2026 / Democrats Abroad

        

An hour after that event a massive demonstration for Gaza took place steps away, on the crossroad where workers built a barricade during their first great revolt:  

La Barricade du Faubourg Saint-Antoine by Gaspard Gobaut, 1848

                -- Musée Carnavalet, not exhibited

*     *

Today the conflict is between the globalized capitalists that the far-right backs and democratic socialists who provide solutions to problems that face us all.

Robert Reich

History that reveals 

the conservative way of seeing the past

and suggests a progressive alternative

is part of that fight.

End of this section.

*    *    * 

The next section,

VI.4.

Fraternity that worked