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<p class="title">Hermann Duncker 1925</p>
<h3>Ferdinand Lassalle's Centenary</h3>
<h4>(April 11th, 1825)</h4>
<hr>
<p class="information">
<span class="info">Sources:</span> <em><a href="../../../history/international/comintern/inprecor/1925/v05n30-apr-09-1925-inprecor.pdf">International Press Correspondence</a></em>, Vol 5, No. 30, April 9, 1925, pp. 400-401; <em><a href="../../../history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1925/1925-ny/v02b-n098-NYE-may-07-Chi-n096-may-06-1925-DW-LOC.pdf">Daily Worker</a></em>, Vol. 2, No. 98, May 7, 1925, p. 6.<br>
<span class="info">Online Version:</span> Marxists Internet Archive 2021<br>
<span class="info">HTML Markup:</span> <a href="../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/zdravko.htm">Zdravko Saveski</a></p>
<hr>
<p>Does Ferdinand Lassalle belong to the ranks of great Communists from Marx to Lenin? It is true that Lassalle who was by seven years the younger, called himself Marx' disciple, looked up to Marx as the leader of the party and earnestly sought his friendship; nevertheless Lassalle was never a Marxist, either in his fundamental philosophical attitude or in his political tactics.</p>
<p>This became glaringly evident on various occasions, and only Lassalle's early death prevented Marx and Engels from publicly disowning him during his lifetime, and meting out political justice to him as to a Proudhon or a Bakunin. Later on, Marx, in a pitiless way, ran down Lassalle in a letter to Kugelmann (1865) and, in the marginal notes to the Gotha program, the program for an alliance between the Bebel-Liebknecht group at Eisenach and Lassalle's partisans (1875), he smashed the essential points of Lassalle's theory into smithereens.</p>
<p>The leaders of social democracy, which pretend to be Marxist, indeed concealed both condemnations from the mass of their members for many years. The marginal notes were only published 16 years later, the letter to Kugelmann 17 years after the other letters had been printed.</p>
<p>Even in the Marx-Engels correspondence certain very harsh expressions against Lassalle seem to have been suppressed by the publisher. This is how the socialist party of Germany guards against any wrong being done to its party saint Lassalle. As a matter of fact, the socialist party of Germany has much more in common with Lassalle than with Marx, although now it is far behind Lassalle in "practical politics" and can no longer claim to be heir to his views, for he was at least always a bitter opponent of the bourgeois party.</p>
<p>Lassalle was no doubt an eminent personality, a man of genius. Possessed of titanic ambition, of an extraordinary passion for work, of quick intellectual grasp, a clever and witty writer, one of the greatest orators of history - all qualities which made Lassalle prominent in the barren field of the intellectual life of the day in Germany, it is easy to understand how he must have struck all around hint, how such extraordinary homage and admiration was paid him. The greater men with whom he might have been compared, Marx and Engels, had been abroad since 1849, and were thus remote from Lassalle. Lassalle had remained in Germany as the last of the Mohicans of the Communist revolutionaries. No wonder that the self-consciousness which characterized him even in his youth gradually assumed dimensions which led to painful conflicts and thus modified even his view of life in a way which made it still more difficult for him to accept the materialistic conception of history. An idealistic conception of history was more in keeping with his mental attitude, one that regards the great personality as the bearer and manifestation of the spirit of his time and, in a certain sense, "makes history."</p>
<p>"You see here the remarkable spectacle of an agitation which has seized hold of the masses, which has roused a whole nation to take a stand passionately on one side or the other - all this emanating from the conscience of a single man." (Speech at the Dusseldorff trial, 1864.)</p>
<p>Thus Lassalle could, on one occasion (1860) write to Marx: "Hatred in the masses can accomplish anything. If only there are five people in the whole country who possess understanding also." This is a Nietzscheanism which defies all socialism and shows a complete want of understanding of the significance and the nature of a revolutionary "party." Lassalle is possessed by an "ideologism" - as Marx once called it - which constantly limits his social discernment. This had the most serious consequences in his idealistic worship of the state, and in this connection led to the worst derailments in practical politics.</p>
<p>Lassalle cannot boast of a completely uniform philosophical and political view of life. He was an eclectic in the grand style, who today was under the spell of Marx, tomorrow under that of Rodbertus, but was never free from that of Hegel . . . In a letter to Marx, Lassalle refers to Hegel's conception of history, "to which I subscribe in all essentials." The spirit, the spirit of the people, expresses itself in history, embodies itself in the moral community, the state. On one occasion, Lassalle refers to science as "a neutral territory, a sanctuary which must on no account be devastated by the storm of political hatred." It seems that the state is to Lassalle almost another such "neutral territory."</p>
<p>This does not indeed prevent Lassalle on the other hand, in one of his writings, from representing the "actual conditions of power" in a very telling way as the native soil of constitutions. Lassalle believes in revolution, but does not want to bring it about, but to "humanize and civilise it." Lassalle organizes the working class by the formation of the General German Labor Association on May 22, 1863, but emphatically declines the thought of a dictatorship of the proletariat. In his speech "The Worker's Reader" (1863) he protests against</p>
<p>"the enormity of having called upon the working classes to aim at a class supremacy over the other classes."</p>
<p>The liberation of the working clams can only be effected by the working class itself. Lassalle repeatedly violates even this essential Marxist doctrine of the later First international. Besides his passionate appeal to the working class, hope for help from above, for the help of the possessing classes, finally even for the help of "social monarchy," is constantly cropping up. This places Lassalle as a utopian socialist, back into pre-Marxist socialism.</p>
<p>"The fetters must be struck off your feet; but only in peace, thru the initiative of the intelligenzia and with the sympathetic help of the possessing class," exclaims Lassalle in his "Speech on the Labor Question" (1863) to the German proletariat.</p>
<p>How did Lassalle imagine the realization of socialism? Universal suffrage is to him the great instrument of peace which will make the state accessible to the wishes of the proletariat, without any necessity for the undesirable "wild proletarian revolution." The workers form productive associations, and the democratic state - possibly even the reactionary Prussian state will make the start! - contributes the capital. In this way, private capital will gradually be ousted by competition in a perfectly peaceful manner, and there will be no need for a brutal expropriation of the bourgeoisie. On the contrary:</p>
<p>"The worker will never forget that all property which has once been acquired is inviolable and lawful." (Labor Programme" 1862.)</p>
<p>This being Lassalle's fundamental attitude, it is easy to understand his so-called "tactical evolution." Lassalle wanted action, he wanted most of all to see universal suffrage established as the political foundation. The General German Labor Association developed too slowly for him. Bismark was already coquetting with the idea of universal suffrage. At this juncture Lassalle intervened personally in order to stimulate Bismarck, the junker, to quicker action in this direction, in order to make history! Lassalle had a series of private political discussions with Bismarck in the winter of 1863-64. And in the agitation of the last year of his life - Lassalle died on August 31, 1864 - he made more and more definite references to this help from above, in other words, from the extreme right.</p>
<p>"All extreme parties have a natural affinity for one another," he said is his speech at the trial for high treason in 1864. Lassalle for instance, addressed a telegraphic complaint to Bismarck with regard to the limitation of the right of assembly on the part of a progressive mayor, as he had also, as early as 1858, approached the "cartridge prince" with a personal petition - all actions which to a revolutionary like Marx would have seemed absolutely impossible. Marx indeed jeered, with bitter justification, at the "practical politician" Lassalle, who "wanted to play the part of the Marquis of Posa of the proletariat with the Philipp II of the Uckermark." (Letter to Kugelmann 1865.)</p>
<p>That which Lassalle with his own hand wrote in 1865 in his great letter to Marx and Engels about his Sickingen drama, came to pass in a terrible way on Lassalle himself:</p>
<p>"For in the final analysis, Sickingen's diplomatic amalgamation of his insurrection with his non-revolutionary action, and the failure of the former, arose just from the fact that he was unable in his heart to make a final break with the past, with which he himself was still connected and which he represented."</p>
<p>Lassalle's political legacy had further disastrous effects on German social democracy. It euphemized that attitude towards the bourgeois state which was finally, but in a more cynical way, expressed by revisionism and, since 1914, has been sanctioned before the whole world as the supreme political practical policy of the socialist party of Germany within the peaceful precincts of the coalition policy. Lassalle's nationalism and Bernstein's reformism form the theoretical points of support of opportunism against Marxism. It is thus no mere coincidence that is the present-day socialist party of Germany a new Lassalleism has been spreading for some time and that from that side the slogan is heard: Back to Lassalle! - whereas the class conscious proletariat of the Third international cries: Forward to Marx and Lenin!</p>
<br>
<hr class="end">
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Hermann Duncker 1925
Ferdinand Lassalle's Centenary
(April 11th, 1825)
Sources: International Press Correspondence, Vol 5, No. 30, April 9, 1925, pp. 400-401; Daily Worker, Vol. 2, No. 98, May 7, 1925, p. 6.
Online Version: Marxists Internet Archive 2021
HTML Markup: Zdravko Saveski
Does Ferdinand Lassalle belong to the ranks of great Communists from Marx to Lenin? It is true that Lassalle who was by seven years the younger, called himself Marx' disciple, looked up to Marx as the leader of the party and earnestly sought his friendship; nevertheless Lassalle was never a Marxist, either in his fundamental philosophical attitude or in his political tactics.
This became glaringly evident on various occasions, and only Lassalle's early death prevented Marx and Engels from publicly disowning him during his lifetime, and meting out political justice to him as to a Proudhon or a Bakunin. Later on, Marx, in a pitiless way, ran down Lassalle in a letter to Kugelmann (1865) and, in the marginal notes to the Gotha program, the program for an alliance between the Bebel-Liebknecht group at Eisenach and Lassalle's partisans (1875), he smashed the essential points of Lassalle's theory into smithereens.
The leaders of social democracy, which pretend to be Marxist, indeed concealed both condemnations from the mass of their members for many years. The marginal notes were only published 16 years later, the letter to Kugelmann 17 years after the other letters had been printed.
Even in the Marx-Engels correspondence certain very harsh expressions against Lassalle seem to have been suppressed by the publisher. This is how the socialist party of Germany guards against any wrong being done to its party saint Lassalle. As a matter of fact, the socialist party of Germany has much more in common with Lassalle than with Marx, although now it is far behind Lassalle in "practical politics" and can no longer claim to be heir to his views, for he was at least always a bitter opponent of the bourgeois party.
Lassalle was no doubt an eminent personality, a man of genius. Possessed of titanic ambition, of an extraordinary passion for work, of quick intellectual grasp, a clever and witty writer, one of the greatest orators of history - all qualities which made Lassalle prominent in the barren field of the intellectual life of the day in Germany, it is easy to understand how he must have struck all around hint, how such extraordinary homage and admiration was paid him. The greater men with whom he might have been compared, Marx and Engels, had been abroad since 1849, and were thus remote from Lassalle. Lassalle had remained in Germany as the last of the Mohicans of the Communist revolutionaries. No wonder that the self-consciousness which characterized him even in his youth gradually assumed dimensions which led to painful conflicts and thus modified even his view of life in a way which made it still more difficult for him to accept the materialistic conception of history. An idealistic conception of history was more in keeping with his mental attitude, one that regards the great personality as the bearer and manifestation of the spirit of his time and, in a certain sense, "makes history."
"You see here the remarkable spectacle of an agitation which has seized hold of the masses, which has roused a whole nation to take a stand passionately on one side or the other - all this emanating from the conscience of a single man." (Speech at the Dusseldorff trial, 1864.)
Thus Lassalle could, on one occasion (1860) write to Marx: "Hatred in the masses can accomplish anything. If only there are five people in the whole country who possess understanding also." This is a Nietzscheanism which defies all socialism and shows a complete want of understanding of the significance and the nature of a revolutionary "party." Lassalle is possessed by an "ideologism" - as Marx once called it - which constantly limits his social discernment. This had the most serious consequences in his idealistic worship of the state, and in this connection led to the worst derailments in practical politics.
Lassalle cannot boast of a completely uniform philosophical and political view of life. He was an eclectic in the grand style, who today was under the spell of Marx, tomorrow under that of Rodbertus, but was never free from that of Hegel . . . In a letter to Marx, Lassalle refers to Hegel's conception of history, "to which I subscribe in all essentials." The spirit, the spirit of the people, expresses itself in history, embodies itself in the moral community, the state. On one occasion, Lassalle refers to science as "a neutral territory, a sanctuary which must on no account be devastated by the storm of political hatred." It seems that the state is to Lassalle almost another such "neutral territory."
This does not indeed prevent Lassalle on the other hand, in one of his writings, from representing the "actual conditions of power" in a very telling way as the native soil of constitutions. Lassalle believes in revolution, but does not want to bring it about, but to "humanize and civilise it." Lassalle organizes the working class by the formation of the General German Labor Association on May 22, 1863, but emphatically declines the thought of a dictatorship of the proletariat. In his speech "The Worker's Reader" (1863) he protests against
"the enormity of having called upon the working classes to aim at a class supremacy over the other classes."
The liberation of the working clams can only be effected by the working class itself. Lassalle repeatedly violates even this essential Marxist doctrine of the later First international. Besides his passionate appeal to the working class, hope for help from above, for the help of the possessing classes, finally even for the help of "social monarchy," is constantly cropping up. This places Lassalle as a utopian socialist, back into pre-Marxist socialism.
"The fetters must be struck off your feet; but only in peace, thru the initiative of the intelligenzia and with the sympathetic help of the possessing class," exclaims Lassalle in his "Speech on the Labor Question" (1863) to the German proletariat.
How did Lassalle imagine the realization of socialism? Universal suffrage is to him the great instrument of peace which will make the state accessible to the wishes of the proletariat, without any necessity for the undesirable "wild proletarian revolution." The workers form productive associations, and the democratic state - possibly even the reactionary Prussian state will make the start! - contributes the capital. In this way, private capital will gradually be ousted by competition in a perfectly peaceful manner, and there will be no need for a brutal expropriation of the bourgeoisie. On the contrary:
"The worker will never forget that all property which has once been acquired is inviolable and lawful." (Labor Programme" 1862.)
This being Lassalle's fundamental attitude, it is easy to understand his so-called "tactical evolution." Lassalle wanted action, he wanted most of all to see universal suffrage established as the political foundation. The General German Labor Association developed too slowly for him. Bismark was already coquetting with the idea of universal suffrage. At this juncture Lassalle intervened personally in order to stimulate Bismarck, the junker, to quicker action in this direction, in order to make history! Lassalle had a series of private political discussions with Bismarck in the winter of 1863-64. And in the agitation of the last year of his life - Lassalle died on August 31, 1864 - he made more and more definite references to this help from above, in other words, from the extreme right.
"All extreme parties have a natural affinity for one another," he said is his speech at the trial for high treason in 1864. Lassalle for instance, addressed a telegraphic complaint to Bismarck with regard to the limitation of the right of assembly on the part of a progressive mayor, as he had also, as early as 1858, approached the "cartridge prince" with a personal petition - all actions which to a revolutionary like Marx would have seemed absolutely impossible. Marx indeed jeered, with bitter justification, at the "practical politician" Lassalle, who "wanted to play the part of the Marquis of Posa of the proletariat with the Philipp II of the Uckermark." (Letter to Kugelmann 1865.)
That which Lassalle with his own hand wrote in 1865 in his great letter to Marx and Engels about his Sickingen drama, came to pass in a terrible way on Lassalle himself:
"For in the final analysis, Sickingen's diplomatic amalgamation of his insurrection with his non-revolutionary action, and the failure of the former, arose just from the fact that he was unable in his heart to make a final break with the past, with which he himself was still connected and which he represented."
Lassalle's political legacy had further disastrous effects on German social democracy. It euphemized that attitude towards the bourgeois state which was finally, but in a more cynical way, expressed by revisionism and, since 1914, has been sanctioned before the whole world as the supreme political practical policy of the socialist party of Germany within the peaceful precincts of the coalition policy. Lassalle's nationalism and Bernstein's reformism form the theoretical points of support of opportunism against Marxism. It is thus no mere coincidence that is the present-day socialist party of Germany a new Lassalleism has been spreading for some time and that from that side the slogan is heard: Back to Lassalle! - whereas the class conscious proletariat of the Third international cries: Forward to Marx and Lenin!
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<h2>Ferdinand Lassalle</h2>
<h1>The Working Man’s Programme</h1>
<h4>(April 1862)</h4>
<hr>
<p class="information">
<span class="info">Written: </span>In German as a political lecture, delivered April 12<sup>th</sup>, 1862.<br>
Published in print as a contemporary pamphlet.<br>
<span class="info">Published in English: </span>1884.<br>
<span class="info">Translated by: </span>Edward Peters.<br>
<span class="info">Source: </span><i>The Working Man’s Programme.</i> The Modern Press, first edition, 1884, London, England. 59 pages.<br>
<span class="info">Transcription and Markup: </span>Bill Wright for marxists.org, February, 2023<br>
</p>
<h4><a href="translators-intro.html">Translator’s Introduction by Edward Peters</a></h4>
<hr class="infobot">
<p class="fst">
Gentlemen,
</p>
<p class="fst">
Having been asked to
give you a lecture, I thought that I should best meet your wishes by
choosing a theme which from its very nature must be deeply
interesting to you, and by treating it in the most thoroughly
scientific manner. I will therefore speak on the special connexion
that exists between the character of the present period of history in
which we are living and the idea of the working class. I have said
that my treatment of the subject should be purely scientific.
</p>
<p>
But scientific
treatment consists in nothing else than complete clearness, and
therefore a complete absence of presuppositions, that is to say, of
reasoning founded on unwarranted assumptions.
</p>
<p>
On account of this
entire absence of presuppositions with which we have to approach our
subject, it will be necessary at starting to have a clear
understanding of what we mean by a working man, or by the working
class. For on this point we dare not allow ourselves the benefit of a
presupposition, as if this were something perfectly well known. This
is far from being the case. The language of common life, on the
contrary, frequently attaches different meanings at different times
to the words working man and working class, and we must therefore at
the proper time get a clear understanding as to the sense in which we
intend to use these words. This however is not the right time. We
must on the contrary begin this lecture with another question.
</p>
<p>
Namely with the
following question. The working class is only one of the many classes
of which the community of citizens consists. Moreover working men
have existed at all times. How is it then possible, and what meaning
can be attached to the statement, that a special connexion exists
between the idea of this specified single class, and the principle of
the particular period of history in which we live?
</p>
<p>
In order to
understand this, it is requisite, gentlemen, to throw a glance at
history, at the past, which rightly understood, here as always,
explains the present and foreshows the outline of the future. We must
make this retrospect as brief, gentlemen, as possible, for we shall
otherwise run a risk of not reaching at all in the short time
allotted to us the real subject which we have met to consider. But
even in the face of this danger, we must take some such retrospective
view of the past, however cursory and confined to the most general
features, in order to understand the meaning of our question and of
our theme.
</p>
<p>
If then we go back
to the Middle Ages, we find that even at that time the same grades
and classes of the population were in existence, though certainly far
less developed than those of which the community of citizens consists
at the present day. But we find further that one grade and one
element was at that time the dominating one — namely the landed
interest.
</p>
<p>
It is the landed
interest, gentlemen, which in all respects bore sway in the Middle
Ages, which impressed its own specific stamp on all the arrangements
and on the whole life of that time; it is that which must be
proclaimed as the ruling principle of that period.
</p>
<p>
The reason of this,
namely that the landed interest was the ruling principle of that age,
is a very simple one. It lies — at least this reason may for the
present fully satisfy us — in the domestic and economic
constitution of the Middle Ages; in the conditions of production at
that period. Trade was at that time very slightly developed, and
industry still less so. The staple of the wealth of the community
consisted to an immensely preponderating degree in the produce of
agriculture.
</p>
<p>
Movable possessions
were at that time but little thought of in comparison with possession
of the land and the soil, and you may plainly see to what an extent
this was the case by the law of property, which always throws a clear
light on the economic condition of the periods in which it was
instituted. Thus for instance the law of property of the Middle Ages,
with the object of preserving family property from generation to
generation, and protecting it against dissipation, declares family
property or “Estate” to be inalienable without the consent of the
heirs. But by this family property or “Estate” is understood by
express limitation only <i>landed property.</i> Chattels (<i>fahrniss</i>),
on the contrary, as movable property was then called, were alienable
without the consent of the heirs. And, in general, all personal or
movable property was treated by the old German laws, not as an
independent reproductive property, or in short as <i>capital,</i> but
only as the <i>produce</i> of the land and the soil, like the crops
which are annually gathered from it, and it was put on a par with
these. <i>Landed property</i> alone was regularly treated, at that
time, as independent productive property. It was therefore only in
complete accordance with this state of things, and a simple
consequence of it, that the <i>landed interest</i> and those who had
it almost exclusively in their hands, that is, as you are aware, the
nobles and the clergy, formed the ruling factor of that society in
all respects.
</p>
<p>
To whatever
institutions of the middle ages we turn our eyes, <i>this</i>
phenomenon is everywhere apparent in them.
</p>
<p>
We will content
ourselves with a hasty glance at some of the most important of those
arrangements, in which the land interest comes forth as the ruling
principle.
</p>
<p>
First then let us
look at the organisation of the <i>public forces,</i> or the <i>feudal
system.</i> You know, gentlemen, that this was so constituted that
the king, princes, and lords ceded to other lords and knights certain
lands for their use, in consideration of which the recipients were
obliged solemnly to undertake the obligation of service in the field,
that is to say, of supporting their feudal lords in their wars or
quarrels, both in person and with their dependents.
</p>
<p>
Let us next look at
the organisation of the <i>public Rights,</i> or the <i>constitution
of the realm.</i> In the assembly of the German States the princely
class and the great landed interest were represented by the Counts of
the Empire and the clergy. The towns only enjoyed a seat and a vote
in that assembly if they had acquired the privileges of a free town
of the Empire.
</p>
<p>
To proceed, thirdly,
to the exemption of the great landed proprietors from taxation. Now
it is a characteristic and an ever recurring phenomenon, gentlemen,
that every ruling <i>privileged</i> class invariably seeks to throw
the burden of maintaining the existence of the State on the oppressed
classes which have no property; and they do this openly or covertly,
either directly or indirectly. When Richelieu in the year 1641
demanded six millions of francs from the clergy, as an extraordinary
tax to help the necessities of the State, the clergy, through the
mouth of the Archbishop of Sens, gave this characteristic answer —
“The ancient usage of the Church during its vigour was that the
people contributed its goods, the nobility its blood, the clergy its
prayers to the necessities of the State.”
</p>
<p>
Fourthly, we may
mention the contempt with which every other kind of labour than that
which was occupied with the land was socially regarded. To engage in
industrial undertakings, to gain money by a trade or profession, was
considered disgraceful, and dishonouring to the two privileged ruling
classes, the nobles and the clergy, for whom it was only deemed
honourable to derive their income from the possession of land.
</p>
<p>
These four great and
important facts, which determine the fundamental character of any
epoch, are amply sufficient for our purpose, and show how it was that
the <i>possession of land</i> everywhere fixed its impress on the
period of which we are treating, and formed its ruling principle.
</p>
<p>
So much was this the
case that even the movement of the <i>Peasants’ War</i> which broke
out in Germany in 1524, and spread all over Swabia, Franconia,
Alsace, Westphalia, and other parts of Germany, and was in appearance
thoroughly <i>revolutionary,</i> nevertheless was essentially
dependent on this same principle, was in fact therefore a <i>reactionary</i>
movement, in spite of its revolutionary mode of action. You are
aware, gentlemen, that the peasants at that time burnt down the
castles of the nobles, put the nobles themselves to death, made them
run the gauntlet through their spears, which was the cruel practice
in vogue at that time. And notwithstanding, in spite of this external
revolutionary varnish, the movement was essentially and throughout
reactionary.
</p>
<p>
For the new birth of
the relations of the State, the <i>German freedom,</i> which the
peasants wished to establish, was to consist according to them in
this, that the peculiar and privileged intermediate position which
the princes had assumed between the Emperor and the States should be
done away with, and that nothing should be represented in the German
Diet, excepting the free and independent possession of the land,
especially of the land held by the peasant class and by the knights —
neither of which had been hitherto represented — as well as that of
the nobles of every degree, namely of the Knights, Counts and then
existing Princes, without regard to the difference that had formerly
been made between them. The representation therefore was to be
confined to the landed possessions of the <i>nobles</i> on the one
side and those of the <i>peasants</i> on the other.
</p>
<p>
You see at once
then, gentlemen, that this plan ultimately proceeds simply on a
perfectly consistent and more regular carrying out of this principle,
which the epoch just then drawing near its close had taken as its
foundation — I say on a logically consistent, more complete and
regular carrying out of the principle that the possession of land
should be the ruling element, which alone should entitle any one to a
participation in the management of the State. That any one could
demand such participation on the ground that he was a <i>man,</i>
that he was a <i>reasonable being,</i> without the possession of any
land — of that the peasants had not the most distant idea! The
times were not yet ripe for this, the thoughts of men had not yet
become sufficiently revolutionary.
</p>
<p>
Thus, then, this
movement of the peasantry, which proceeded with such revolutionary
determination, was in its essence thoroughly <i>reactionary:</i> that
is to say, instead of resting on a new revolutionary principle, it
rested unconsciously on the old established principle of the period
which was at that very time <i>dying out;</i> and it was precisely
for this reason, because it was in fact <i>reactionary,</i> while it
believed itself to be revolutionary, that the peasant movement was
unsuccessful.
</p>
<p>
In opposition both
to the rising of the peasants and that of the nobles (under Franz von
Sickingen), both of which had <i>in common</i> the principle that
participation in the management of the State should depend, even more
strictly than had hitherto been the case, on the possession of the
land, the sovereign authority of the Princes, founded on the idea of
a State sovereignty independent of landed possessions, which was
making head at that time, was a relatively justifiable and
revolutionary force. This it was which gave it the power which led to
its victorious development, and to the suppression both of the
movement of the peasants and that of the nobles.
</p>
<p>
I have dwelt with
some emphasis on this point, gentlemen,— first, in order to prove
to you the reasonableness and the progress of freedom, in the
development of history, and that by an example from which it is by no
means obvious on a superficial survey; secondly, because historians
are far from having recognised this reactionary character of the
rising of the peasants, and the true cause of its failure which was
solely dependent upon that character, but on the contrary, deceived
by external appearances, hold the peasant war to have been a truly
revolutionary movement.
</p>
<p>
Thirdly, I have
dwelt upon it because this spectacle is constantly repeating itself
in all ages, that men who do not think clearly — and to this class,
gentlemen, those who are apparently most learned, and even professors
may belong, and, as the Church of St. Paul with its sad memorials has
shewn us, do extremely often belong — fall into the extraordinary
illusion of holding that which is only a more consistent and complete
expression of a period of history and an organisation of society <i>even
then passing away,</i> to be a <i>new revolutionary</i> principle.
</p>
<p>
Against such men and
such courses, which are revolutionary only in the <i>imagination</i>
of these men — for there will be plenty of them in the future as
there have been in the past — permit me, gentlemen, to put you on
your guard.
</p>
<p>
We may be allowed to
feel confident on these grounds that the numerous movements which
have been immediately, or within a short time, after momentary
successes, suppressed, which we find in history, and which may fill
many well meaning friends of the people who take a superficial view
of things with sad misgivings, have ever been revolutionary movements
only in the <i>imagination</i> of their promoters.
</p>
<p>
A <i>truly</i>
revolutionary movement, one which is founded on a really new
principle of thought, has <i>never</i> failed, at least in the long
run, as any one who thinks deeply may, to his comfort, prove to
himself from history.
</p>
<p>
I now resume the
thread of my argument.
</p>
<p>
As the Peasants’
War was revolutionary only in their imagination, so on the other hand
the progress of industry, the productive energy of the towns, the
constantly developing division of labour, and the <i>wealth of
capital,</i> which came into existence by these means, and which
accumulated exclusively in the hands of the bourgeoisie (because they
were the only class which engaged in production, and appropriated its
advantages to themselves) — these were the really and truly
revolutionary forces of that time.
</p>
<p>
The close of the
Middle Ages, and the commencement of modern history, is usually dated
from the Reformation, <i>i.e.</i> from the year 1517.
</p>
<p>
And in fact this is
correct, in the sense that in the two centuries which immediately
followed the Reformation, a change was slowly, gradually, and
imperceptibly taking place, which completely transformed the aspect
of society, and brought about in the heart of it a revolution, which
was only proclaimed, but not really created by what is called the
French Revolution in the year 1789.
</p>
<p>
Do you ask in what
this revolution consisted?
</p>
<p>
Nothing had been
changed in the <i>legal</i> position of the nobles. <i>By law</i> the
nobles and the clergy were the two ruling classes, the Bourgeoisie
remained everywhere the neglected and oppressed class. But if nothing
had been changed <i>de jure,</i> yet <i>de facto</i> the change that
had actually taken place in the relations of these classes was all
the more extraordinary.
</p>
<p>
Through the creation
and accumulation of capital, that is to say of moveable in opposition
to landed property, in the hands of the Bourgeoisie, the nobles had
sunk into complete insignificance; nay, often into real <i>dependence</i>
on this Bourgeoisie which had become rich. Already they were obliged,
if they wished to be somewhat on a par with them, to abandon all the
principles of their class, and to begin to make use of the same means
of obtaining money through industry, to which the Bourgeoisie owed
their wealth and therefore their actual power.
</p>
<p>
The Comedies of
Molière, who lived in
the time of Louis XIV, show us as early as that date a highly
interesting phenomenon, the noble of that day despising the rich
citizen, and at the same time playing the parasite at his table.
</p>
<p>
We see Louis XIV
himself, that proudest of kings, doffing his hat, and humbling
himself in his palace of Versailles before the Jew Samuel Bernard,
the Rothschild of that day, in order to induce him to grant a loan.
</p>
<p>
When [John] Law, the
famous Scotch financier, had formed the trading company or
joint-stock enterprise which had combined for the commercial
exploration of the banks of the Mississippi, Louisiana, the East
Indies, &c., the Regent of France himself was one of the
Directors — a member of a company of merchants! Yes, the Regent
found himself compelled in August 1717 to issue an edict, in which
it was ordained that the nobles might enter the naval and military
service of this trading company without any degradation to their
dignity! To that pass, then, had the proud and warlike feudal
nobility of France arrived, that they could become the armed
commissaries of the industrial commercial undertakings of the
Bourgeoisie who were carrying on their trade in every part of the
world at once.
</p>
<p>
In connexion with
this change of opinion, a kind of <i>materialism</i> had at that time
already developed itself, and a voracious and greedy struggling for
money and property, to which all moral ideas, nay what unhappily
appeals in general still more strongly to the privileged classes, all
class privileges, were prostituted. Under the same Regent of France,
Count Horn, one of the most distinguished nobles connected with the
first families of France, nay with the Regent himself, was broken on
the wheel as a common highway robber; and the Duchess of Orleans, a
German Princess, writes in a letter of the 29th November 1719, that
six of the most distinguished of the Court ladies had one day waylaid
the aforesaid Law (who at that time was the most courted and also the
busiest man in France, and whom consequently it was very difficult to
lay hold of) in the court of some building, in order to induce him to
give them some shares in a company he had established, after which
all France was running at that time, and whose value on the Exchange
was six or eight times as high as the nominal price at which they had
been issued by Law. The pressure exercised by these ladies with this
object proceeded to a degree which a regard to decency will not allow
me to particularise.
</p>
<p>
If you ask me again
what causes had rendered possible this development of industry, and
of the wealth of the Bourgeoisie thereby called into existence, I
could not give a complete answer to the question without largely
overstepping the limits of the time allotted to me. I will therefore
only briefly enumerate the most essential of these causes; namely,
the discovery of America and the enormous impulse thereby exercised
on production; the discovery of the sea route to the East Indies by
doubling the Cape of Good Hope, whereas formerly all trade with India
and the East was forced to take the overland route by Suez; the
discovery of the magnetic needle and the compass, and the greater
security thus given to all trade by sea, as well as greater speed and
diminution of the cost of insurance; the canals and paved roads
constructed in the interior of countries, which, by diminishing the
cost of transport, first made it possible to sell at a distance
numerous commodities which formerly were not worth the expense of
carriage; the greater security of the property of the citizens; the
regular course of justice; the invention of gunpowder, and the
breaking up of the feudal power of the nobles by the kings in
consequence of this invention; the dismissal of the spearmen and men
at arms of the nobles, in consequence of the destruction of their
castles and of their independent military power, nothing being now
left for these dependents but to seek admission to the workshops of
that time — <i>all</i> these events helped to drag on the triumphal
car of the Bourgeoisie!
</p>
<p>
All these events and
many others which could be enumerated are comprised however in <i>one</i>
consequence — the opening of great outlets, that is of extensive
regions where goods can be sold, and the accompanying diminution of
the cost of production and transport leads to production in vast
quantities, production for the market of the world, and this in turn
creates the necessity of <i>c</i><i>heap</i> production, which again
can only be satisfied by an ever-advancing division of labour, that
is by a separation of employment into its simplest mechanical
operations, ever carried further and further, and thus again calls
forth a production on an ever increasing scale.
</p>
<p>
We have thus
arrived, gentlemen, at the domain of reciprocal cause and effect.
Each of these facts calls the other into existence, and the latter
again reacts upon the former, and widens and enlarges its area.
</p>
<p>
Accordingly you will
clearly perceive that, the production of an article in enormous
quantities, its production for the market of the world, is, speaking
generally, easily accomplished only on the condition that the cost of
the production of this article shall be <i>moderate,</i> and also the
<i>transport</i> of it cheap enough not to raise its price
exorbitantly. For production in vast quantities requires an enormous
sale; and the extensive sale of any kind of produce is only rendered
possible by its cheapness, which makes it accessible to a large
number of purchasers. Cheapness of production and transport therefore
cause the production of wares of any kind to take place on a large
scale. But conversely, you will at once see that it is the production
of an article in large quantities which causes and increases
cheapness. A manufacturer for instance who sells two hundred thousand
pieces of cotton in the year, is enabled by purchasing his raw
materials cheaper on so large a scale, and also because the profits
on his capital and the expense of his plant and machinery are divided
between so large a number of pieces, he is enabled, I say, within
certain limits, to sell each piece much cheaper than a manufacturer
who only produces five thousand such pieces every year. The greater
cheapness of production leads therefore to production in larger
quantities, and this leads again to still greater cheapness, which
calls forth again a still larger production, which once more causes
further cheapness, and so on.
</p>
<p>
Precisely the same
thing happens with regard to the <i>division of labour,</i> which on
its side again is the necessary condition of extensive production and
of cheapness, for without it neither cheapness nor production on an
extensive scale would be possible.
</p>
<p>
The division of
labour which separates the process of production into a great number
of very simple and often purely mechanical operations requiring no
exercise of reason, and which causes separate workmen to be employed
for each one of these divided operations, would be quite impossible
without an extensive production of the articles in question; and is
therefore only called into existence and developed by such extensive
demand. Conversely this separation of labour into such simple
operations and manipulations, leads further (1) to an ever increasing
cheapness, (2) consequently to production on a greater and more
gigantic scale, ever spreading beyond this and that market till it
reaches the whole <i>market of the world,</i> and (3) by this means,
and through the new divisions which this extension renders possible
in the single operations of labour, to an ever increasing advance in
the division of labour itself.
</p>
<p>
Through this series
of reciprocal operations of cause and effect, an entire change took
place in the work of the community, and consequently in all the
relations of life of the community itself.
</p>
<p>
A brief view of the
nature of this revolution may be obtained by reducing it to the
following contrasts.
</p>
<p>
In the earlier part
of the Middle Ages, as only a very small number of costly products
could bear the enhanced price which would have been caused by their
transport, articles were only produced to supply the needs of the
locality in which the producers lived. This implied a very limited
market comprising only their immediate neighbourhood, the
requirements of which were for this very reason well known, fixed,
and uniform. The requirements or the demand <i>preceded</i> the offer
of the goods, and formed the <i>well known guide</i> to the amount of
goods offered for sale. Or in other words — the production of the
community was carried on mainly by handicrafts. For this is the
character of business carried on in a small way or by handicrafts, as
distinguished from that which is carried on in factories or on a
large scale, that either the demand is waited for, before the article
is produced; as for instance the tailor waits for my order before he
makes me a coat, the locksmith before he makes me a lock; or that at
least if many articles are manufactured beforehand, this production
in advance is limited to the minimum of the requirements of the
locality and its immediate neighbourhood, which are accurately known
by experience. For instance, a tinman makes a certain number of lamps
in advance, which he knows will be soon absorbed by the requirements
of the town.
</p>
<p>
The characteristic
quality, gentlemen, of a community which produces mainly in this
manner, is poverty, or at least only a moderate degree of prosperity,
and on the other hand a certain stability and fixedness of all
relations.
</p>
<p>
But now, through the
incessant reciprocal action which I have described to you, the work
of the community, and consequently all the relations of life
gradually assumed a totally opposite character. This was in germ the
same character which distinguishes the work of the community <i>to-day,</i>
through truly in a very different, in fact in an immensely developed
degree. In the gigantic development which has now been attained this
character may be thus indicated in opposition to the earlier one
which has been described: whereas formerly the demand preceded the
offer of the merchandise, and the production of it, and drew this
latter in its train, and determined it, formed its guide and its <i>well
known</i> measure, now on the contrary the production, the offer of
the goods precedes the demand, and seeks to <i>force</i> it into
existence. Goods are no longer produced for the locality, for the
ascertained needs of neighbouring markets, but for the markets of the
world. They are produced on the largest scale and for every part of
the world in general, to supply a need entirely unknown and not to be
measured, and the produce is able to force the demand for it into
being, provided that a single weapon is given to it, namely
<i>cheapness.</i> Cheapness is the weapon of production, with which
on the one hand it <i>conquers</i> the purchaser, and on the other
hand drives all other goods of the same kind out of the market, which
may be likewise pressed upon the purchaser, so that in fact under the
system of free competition, every producer may hope, however great
the quantity of goods he produces, to find a market for all these if
he is only able by the better arming of his wares with cheapness to
make the wares of his competitors unable to maintain the contest.
</p>
<p>
The prevailing
character of such a community is vast, immeasurable wealth, on the
other hand a great mobility of all relations, an almost constant,
anxious insecurity in the position of individuals and a very unequal
apportionment of the proceeds of production amongst those who work
together to secure them.
</p>
<p>
You see then,
gentlemen, how vast was the change which the quiet, revolutionary,
and undermining activity of industry, had imperceptibly wrought in
the structure of the community before the end of that century.
</p>
<p>
Although the actors
in the Peasants’ War had not yet ventured so much as to take up any
other <i>idea</i> than that of founding the State on the <i>possession
of land,</i> although they had not been able even in thought to free
themselves from the view that the possession of land was necessarily
the element that involved dominion over the State, and a
participation in this possession the condition of a participation in
this dominion, yet before the end of this century, the quiet,
unnoticed, revolutionary advance of industry had brought it to pass,
that the possession of land had been completely stripped of its
former importance, and in presence of the development of the new
means of production, of the wealth which this development fostered
and daily increased, and of the immense influence which it exercised
thereby on the whole population, and on its relations, as well as
upon the nobility itself, which had to a great extent become poor,
had sunk to a subordinate position.
</p>
<p>
The revolution had
therefore already entered into the vitals of the community, into
their <i>actual</i> relations, long before it broke out in France,
and it was only requisite to bring the change thus wrought to
<i>external recognition,</i> in order to give it a <i>moral</i>
sanction.
</p>
<p>
This, gentlemen, is
always the case in <i>all revolutions.</i> A revolution can never be
<i>made;</i> all that can ever be done is to add external <i>moral
recognition</i> to a revolution which has already entered into the
actual relations of a community, and to <i>carry it out accordingly.</i>
</p>
<p>
To set about to <i>make</i>
a revolution is the folly of immature minds which have no notion of
the laws of history.
</p>
<p>
And it is for this
reason equally foolish and childish to attempt to repress a
revolution which has once developed itself in the womb of a
community, and to oppose its moral recognition, or to utter against
such a community, or the individuals who assist at its birth, the
reproach that they are revolutionary. If the revolution has already
found its way into the community, into its actual relations, then
there is no help for it, it must come out and take its place in the
constitution of the community.
</p>
<p>
How this comes
about, and how far it had already happened in the period of which I
am speaking, you will best see by one fact which I will relate to
you.
</p>
<p>
I have already
spoken to you of the division of labour, the development of which
consists in separating all the processes of production, into a series
of very simple and mechanical operations, requiring no exercise of
reason.
</p>
<p>
Now as this division
is ever advancing further and further, it is at last discovered that
these single operations, as they are so simple and require no
exercise of reason, can be just as well and even better performed by
unreasoning agents; and accordingly in the year 1775, that is
fourteen years before the French Revolution, Arkwright invented in
England the first machine, his famous spinning jenny.
</p>
<p>
I am not going to
say that this machine produced the French Revolution. The invention
preceded it by far too short a time for this, and besides had not yet
been introduced into France; but it may truly be said that it
represented in itself, in a material form, the revolution which had
already actually entered into the community, and was already
developed there. This was itself, so to speak, the revolution which
had become a living force.
</p>
<p>
The reason of this
is very simple. You will have heard of the formation of the Guilds,
through which production was carried on in the Middle Ages.
</p>
<p>
I cannot here go
into the history of the Guilds of the Middle Ages, nor trace that of
the free competition which at the time of the French Revolution had
everywhere taken the place of the Guilds. I can only state the fact
in the form of an asseveration, that the system of Guilds of the
Middle Ages was inseparable from the other social arrangements of
that period. But if time does not allow me to lay before you clearly
the reasons of this inseparable connection, yet the fact itself
admits of an easy historical proof. The Guilds lasted through the
whole of the Middle Ages, and until the French Revolution. As early
as the year 1672 their abrogation was discussed in a German Diet —
but in vain, nay, in the year 1614 the Bourgeoisie demanded of the
Estates General, that is to say the French Parliament, the abolition
of the Guilds which already cramped them in all their manufactures.
This was likewise in vain. Nay further, thirteen years before the
Revolution, in the year 1776, a reforming minister in France, the
famous Turgot, did abolish Guilds. But the feudal privileged world of
the Middle Ages regarded itself, and it was perfectly right, in
danger of death, if privilege, its principle of life, ceased to
penetrate every class of society; and so the king was prevailed upon,
six months after the abolition of the Guilds, to withdraw his edict,
and restore them. In due time came the Revolution, and destroyed in
one day by the storming of the Bastille that for which Germany had
striven in vain since 1672, and France since 1614, that is for near
<i>two centuries,</i> to do away with by legal means.
</p>
<p>
You will perceive
from this, gentlemen, that however great are the advantages which
attend reforms conducted by legal methods, yet they have on all the
most important occasions, the one great drawback of an impotence
lasting for entire centuries, and on the other hand, that the
revolutionary method, terrible as are the drawbacks with which it
also is accompanied, has in spite of them the one advantage of
attaining speedily and energetically a practical result.
</p>
<p>
Now fix your eyes,
gentlemen, with me for a moment on the fact that the Guilds were
inseparably connected with the whole of the social arrangements of
the Middle Ages, and you will see at once how the first machine, the
spinning jenny which Arkwright invented, contained already in itself
a complete revolutionising of those social conditions.
</p>
<p>
For how could
production by means of machinery be possible under the system of
Guilds, by which the number of men and apprentices which a master
might keep was fixed by law in every locality? Again under this
system of Guilds, the different branches of industry were marked off
from one another in the most exact manner by law, and each master was
only allowed to undertake one of them, so that for example, for
hundreds of years the tailors who made clothes were engaged in
lawsuits with the tailors who mended them, the makers of nails, with
the locksmiths, in order to fix the limits which separated their
trades. Now under such a system of Guilds how could production be
carried on by machinery for which it was necessary that different
kinds of labour should be combined in the hand of one and the same
capitalist?
</p>
<p>
A stage had thus
been reached, at which production itself, by its steadily advancing
development, had brought into existence instruments of production
which were destined to shatter the whole existing system of society;
instruments of production and methods of production, which could find
no place or room for development in that system.
</p>
<p>
In this sense I say
that the first machine was already in itself a Revolution, for it
bore in its cogs and wheels, little as this could be seen from its
outward appearance, the germ of the whole of the new conditions of
society, founded upon free competition, which were to be developed
with the vigour and necessity of a living force.
</p>
<p>
And in the same way
it is possible, gentlemen, unless I am greatly mistaken, that many
phenomena which are to be seen at the present day, contain in
themselves a new condition of things, which they must of necessity
develop. This is entirely overlooked in judging of these phenomena
from the outside only, so that even the Goverment passes over them
without suspicion, while prosecuting insignificant agitators, nay
even considers them as necessary accompaniments of our culture,
greets them as the flower and outcome of it, and occasionally makes
speeches recognising and approving them.
</p>
<p>
After all this
discussion, gentlemen, you will now clearly comprehend the true
significance of the famous pamphlet which was published in 1788 the
year before the French Revolution by Abbé Siéyes,
and which is summed up in these words, “What is the third Estate?
Nothing! What ought it to be? Everything!”
</p>
<p>
The Bourgeoisie was
called the third Estate in France, because they formed the third
class, in contra-distinction to the two privileged classes, the
nobility and the clergy, and thus included the whole of the
nonprivileged population.
</p>
<p>
Siéyes
then thus formulated these two questions and answers. But their true
significance, as follows from what I have already said, might be
expressed more strikingly and correctly as follows —
</p>
<p class="quoteb">
“What is the third
Estate actually and in fact? Everything!
</p>
<p class="quoteb">
But what is it
legally or constitutionally? Nothing!”
</p>
<p>
The point is,
therefore, to make the <i>legal</i> position of the third class,
<i>identical</i> with its <i>actual</i> position; to obtain <i>legal</i>
sanction and recognition for its actual and existing significance,—
and this is precisely the work and the significance of the victorious
Revolution which broke out in France in 1789, and of the transforming
influence which it exercised over the other countries of Europe.
</p>
<p>
I am not going,
gentlemen, to enter upon the history of the French Revolution. We can
now only glance, and that in the most brief and cursory manner, which
is all that our time will allow, at the most important and decisive
points in the transition from one stage of society to another.
</p>
<p>
It is necessary here
then to ask the question, who constituted this third class, or the
Bourgeoisie, who by means of the French Revolution conquered the
privileged classes, and obtained the government of the State?
</p>
<p>
As this class stood
against the legally privileged classes of the community, so it
understood itself at that time, at the first moment, to be identified
with the whole people, and <i>its</i> interests to be identical with
the interests of the <i>whole of humanity.</i> To this was owed the
elevating and mighty enthusiasm which prevailed at that period. The
<i>rights of man</i> were proclaimed, and it appeared as if with the
freedom and the rule of the third Estate, all legal privileges had
disappeared from the community, and all differences founded upon them
had been swallowed up and absorbed in the one idea of the freedom of
man.
</p>
<p>
In the very
beginning of the movement, in April 1789, on the occasion of the
elections to the chambers which were convened by the king on the
understanding that the third class should this time send as many
representatives as the nobles and the clergy together, we find a
journal by no means revolutionary in character, writing as follows —
“Who can say whether the despotism of the Bourgeoisie will not
succeed to the pretended aristocracy of the nobles?”
</p>
<p>
But cries of this
kind were at that time drowned in the general enthusiasm.
</p>
<p>
Nevertheless we must
return to that question; we must put the question distinctly. —
Were the interest of the third class truly the interests of the <i>whole
of humanity,</i> or did this <i>third</i> class, the Bourgeoisie,
carry in its bosom yet another, a <i>fourth</i> class, from which it
desired to separate itself by law, and so to subject it to its
dominion?
</p>
<p>
It is now time,
gentlemen, that in order to avoid the danger of being exposed to
gross misinterpretation, I should explain clearly the meaning of the
word Bourgeoisie or upper Bourgeoisie, as the designation of a
<i>political party,</i> and the sense in which I use the word
Bourgeoisie.
</p>
<p>
In the German
language the word Bourgeoisie is usually translated as the burgher or
citizen class. But I do not use it in this sense; we are <i>all
citizens,</i> the working man, the poor citizen [Kleinbürger]
the rich citizen [Grossbürger]
and so forth. The word Bourgeoisie has on the contrary in the course
of history acquired a very <i>special political significance</i>
which I will now immediately explain to you.
</p>
<p>
The whole burgher or
not noble class, when the French Revolution occurred, divided itself,
and still remains divided, speaking generally, into <i>two</i>
subdivisions, namely in the first place, the class whose members
either entirely or mainly derive their income from their labour, and
who have either no capital, or a very modest one to assist them in
exercising a productive industry for the support of themselves and
their families. To this class belong therefore the working men, the
lower grade of citizens, handicraftsmen, and generally speaking the
peasants. The second class consists of those who dispose of large
private property, of a <i>large capital,</i> and by reason of such a
basis of capital, engage in production, or draw an income in the
shape of rents. These may be called the <i>rich citizens.</i> But a
rich citizen, gentlemen, is for that reason essentially no Bourgeois
at all.
</p>
<p>
If a nobleman seated
in his room, finds pleasure in the contemplation of his ancestors,
and of his landed property, no citizen has any thing to say against
it. But if this nobleman desires to make his ancestry or his landed
property the condition of a special rank and privilege in the State,
the condition of the power of directing the will of the State,—
then the indignation of the citizen is roused against the noble, and
he calls him a <i>feudalist.</i>
</p>
<p>
The same thing
exactly takes place with regard to the difference of property within
the citizen class.
</p>
<p>
That the rich
citizen seated in his chamber should find pleasure in contemplating
the great convenience and advantage which a large private property
brings to its possessor, nothing is more simple, nothing more natural
and legitimate than this.
</p>
<p>
The working man, and
the poor citizen, in a word, the whole of that class which is without
capital, is fully justified in demanding from the State that it
should direct its aim and all its endeavours towards the improvement
of the sorrowful and needy condition of the working classes, and to
the discovery of the means by which it may help to raise those by
whose hands all the riches with which our civilization delights to
adorn itself have been produced. To the same hands all those products
owe their existence, without which the whole community would perish
in a single day; it is, therefore the duty of the State to help these
to a more ample and assured wage, and so again to the possibility of
a rational education, and through this to an existence truly worthy
of man. Fully as the working classes are justified in demanding this
from the State, and in pointing out this as its true <i>aim,</i> so
on the other hand, the working man must and will never forget that
the right to all property once lawfully earned is thoroughly
legitimate and unassailable.
</p>
<p>
But if the rich
citizen, not contented with the <i>actual</i> advantages of large
possessions, desires to make the <i>p</i><i>roperty of the citizen,</i>
or his <i>capital,</i> the condition of power over the State, and of
participating in the direction of the will of the State and the
determination of its aims, <i>then</i> the rich citizen becomes a
bourgeois, <i>then</i> he makes the fact of possession a <i>legal</i>
condition of political power, <i>then</i> he characterises himself as
belonging to a <i>new privileged</i> class of the people, which now
desires to impress the overruling stamp of <i>its</i> privilege on
all the arrangements of society, <i>just as</i> the noble did in the
Middle Ages, as we have seen, with the privilege of the <i>possession
of land.</i>
</p>
<p>
The question then
which we have to raise with regard to the French Revolution, and the
period of history inaugurated by it, is this,— Has the third class
which came into power through the French Revolution, regarded itself
as a Bourgeoisie in this sense, and attempted successfully to subject
the people to its privileged political domination?
</p>
<p>
The answer must be
sought in the great facts of history, and this answer is <i>distinctly</i>
in the affirmative.
</p>
<p>
We can only cast a
rapid glance at the most important of these facts, which, however,
are amply sufficient to decide the question.
</p>
<p>
In the very first
decree issued in consequence of the French Revolution, namely, that
of the 3rd of September 1791 (Chapter I. sections 1 and 2), the
difference between active and passive citizens is set forth. Only the
active citizens are entitled to the franchise, and an active citizen,
according to this decree, is only one who pays <i>direct taxes</i> to
a certain amount, which is afterwards more precisely stated.
</p>
<p>
The amount of this
taxation was fixed with considerable moderation; it was to be only
the value of three days’ work, or if we estimate a days’ work at
the value of 10 silver groschen it would amount to a thaler (three
shillings). But what was far more important was this, that all who
served for wages were declared to be not <i>active citizens,</i> by
which definition the working class was expressly excluded from the
right of election. But after all in such questions as these it is not
the <i>amount</i> which is of importance but the <i>principle.</i>
</p>
<p>
A <i>census</i> was
introduced, that is to say a specified amount of <i>private property</i>
was, by means of the franchise — this first and most important of
all political rights — made the condition of participation in the
direction of the will of the State, and the determination of its
object.
</p>
<p>
All those who paid
no direct taxes at all, or a lesser amount than the above, or who
<i>worked for wages,</i> were excluded from exercising power over the
State, and reduced to an inferior subject class. <i>Private property</i>
or the <i>possession of capital</i> had become the condition of
sovereignty over the State, as <i>nobility </i>or <i>landed property</i>
had been in the Middle Ages.
</p>
<p>
This principle of
the census remains the leading principle of all the constitutions
which resulted from the French Revolution. The only exception was a
short period during which the French Republic of 1793 lasted, which
perished on account of its own want of definiteness, and of the
entire condition of society at that time, and on which I cannot enter
here more particularly.
</p>
<p>
Yes, following the
rule which is common to all principles, it was a necessary
consequence that the amount first fixed should soon develop itself
into a much larger one.
</p>
<p>
In the decree of
1814, 300 francs or 80 thalers, instead of the former amount of three
days’ labour, was fixed as the qualification of the franchise by
the charter granted by Louis XVIII. The Revolution of 1830 broke out,
and nevertheless, the law of the 19th of April 1831 enacts that a
payment of direct taxes to the amount of 200 francs or about 53
thalers, shall be the qualification of the franchise.
</p>
<p>
That which was
called, under Louis Phillipe and Guizot, the <i>“pays légal,”</i>
the country recognised by law, consisted of 200,000 men. There were
no more than 200,000 electors in France qualified by the amount of
their private property, and these bore rule over a country of thirty
millions of inhabitants.
</p>
<p>
We must here observe
that it is obviously a matter of indifference, whether the principle
of the census, the exclusion of those who have no property from the
franchise, is applied by the law in a <i>direct</i> and <i>open,</i>
or in some covert manner. The effect is always the same.
</p>
<p>
Thus the second
French Republic in the year 1850 could not possibly recall openly the
universal and direct right to the suffrage which had been once
declared, and which we shall consider presently in its operation. But
they partially effected their object by excluding from the franchise,
by the law of 31st May, 1850, all citizens who had not been domiciled
for at least three years without intermission in the same place. For,
as workmen in France are often forced by their circumstances to
change their abode, and to seek for employment in another commune,
they hoped, and with good reason, to exclude from the suffrage a very
considerable number of working men, who would be unable to prove a
continuous residence of three years in the same place.
</p>
<p>
We have here, then,
a Census in a disguised form.
</p>
<p>
Much worse, however,
do we fare in Prussia since the passing of the electoral law, which
divided electors into three classes. By this law, according to the
circumstances of different localities, three, ten, or thirty or more
electors of the third class who have no property, exercise only the
same voting power as a single large capitalist, a rich burgher who
belongs to the first electoral class. Consequently, in point of fact,
if the proportional numbers were on an average, for instance, as one
to ten, nine men in every ten of those who in the year 1848 possessed
the franchise, have lost it through this electoral law which formed
part of the charter of the year 1849, and now exercise it only in
appearance.
</p>
<p>
But in order to show
you how this law now actually works on an average, it is only
necessary to exhibit to you some figures which are drawn from the
official lists published by the Government.
</p>
<p>
In the year 1848 we
had in consequence of the right of universal suffrage then
introduced, 3,661,993 original electors.
</p>
<p>
By the electoral law
of 30th May, 1849, with its three classes, the number of electors was
in the first place reduced to 3,255,703 by depriving of the suffrage
all who had no fixed abode, or who received public alms. Thus 406,000
men were at once deprived of the franchise. This however was the
smallest part of the evil.
</p>
<p>
The remaining
3,255,000 electors were now to be divided, according to the electoral
laws, into three classes, and according to the official lists
prepared by the direction of the chartered electoral law of 1849 —
</p>
<table style="width:70%">
<tbody><tr>
<td>153,808</td>
<td rowspan="3">men belonged to the</td>
<td>1st class</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>409,945</td>
<td>2nd class</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2,691,950</td>
<td>3rd class</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p>
Now let us leave the
second class out of view, and compare only the first and the third,
the rich burghers and those who possessed no property, with one
another, and we find that 153,800 rich men exercised the same voting
power as 2,691,950 who belonged to the class of workmen, small
citizens, and peasants; that is to say, <i>one</i> rich man exercised
the same right of voting as <i>seventeen</i> who had no property. And
now if we take as our basis the fact, that in the year 1848 universal
suffrage was decreed by the law of the 8th April, so that at that
time 153,800 working men or small citizens were of equal weight at
the elections with 153,800 rich men, and consequently one man without
property was of equal weight with <i>one</i> rich man, it is clear
that now, when it takes <i>seventeen</i> poor men to counterbalance
the vote of one rich man, sixteen working men and small citizens out
of seventeen have had their legal right of voting wrested from them.
</p>
<p>
But even this,
gentlemen, bad as it is, is only the <i>average</i> effect. In
practice the matter assumes, in consequence of the varying
circumstances of different localities, a very different and far more
unfavourable aspect; and most unfavourable of all where the
inequalities of property are the greatest. Thus the district of
D<font face="Liberation Serif, serif">ü</font>sseldorf has 6356
electors of the first class and 166,300 of the third class;
twenty-six electors of the third class therefore exercise in that
place the same voting power as one rich man.
</p>
<p>
To return from this
digression to our main line of argument. We have shown, and have yet
to adduce further proofs, that since the Bourgeoisie attained to
power through the French Revolution, it has made <i>its own</i>
element, private property, the ruling principle of all the
arrangements of society; that the Bourgeoisie, behaving precisely as
the nobles did in the middle ages with regard to <i>landed property,</i>
now affix the predominant and exclusive impress of <i>its</i>
peculiar principle, private property or capital, the impress of <i>its</i>
privilege, upon all the arrangements of society. The parallel between
the nobility and the Bourgeoisie is in this respect complete.
</p>
<p>
In relation to the
most important and fundamental point, the composition of the State,
we have already seen this. As, in the middle ages, the possession of
land was the ruling principle of the representation in the German
Parliament, so now by means of the direct or the disguised census,
the payment of taxes, and consequently, as this is conditioned by the
capital which a man possesses, the <i>possession of capital, </i>is
ultimately that which determines the right of election to the
Chambers, and consequently the participation in power over the State.
</p>
<p>
And so with regard
to all the other arrangements in which I have proved to you that the
landed interest was the ruling principle in the Middle Ages.
</p>
<p>
I have drawn your
attention to the <i>freedom from taxation</i> of the nobles who then
possessed the land; and I told you that every dominant <i>privileged</i>
class endeavours to shift the burden of supporting the expenses of
the State on the oppressed classes who have no property.
</p>
<p>
The Bourgeoisie have
done precisely the same. It is true they cannot openly declare that
they intend to be free of taxation. The principle that they express
is on the contrary that every one should pay taxes according to his
income. But they attain to the same result in a <i>disguised</i>
form, at least as far as it goes, by the distinction between direct
and indirect taxes.
</p>
<p>
Direct taxes,
gentlemen, are those which like the classified income tax, or the
class taxes, are raised from income, and are therefore fixed
according to the amount of the income and capital. Indirect taxes, on
the other hand, are those which are imposed on needs of some kind,
for instance on salt, corn, beer, meat, fuel, or on the need of the
protection provided by law, on the cost of litigation, stamps, &c.
These are in most instances paid by the individual in the price of
the article, without his knowing or observing that he is paying any
tax when he pays for it, or that it is the <i>tax</i> which enhances
the price he pays for the article.
</p>
<p>
Now you are aware,
gentlemen, that one man who is twenty, fifty, or a hundred times as
rich as another, by no means requires on that account, twenty, fifty,
or a hundred times as much salt, bread or meat, nor drinks fifty or a
hundred times as much beer or wine, nor requires fifty or a hundred
times as much warmth, and therefore fuel, as a workman or poor
citizen.
</p>
<p>
Hence it follows
that all <i>indirect</i> taxes, instead of being adapted to
individuals according to the proportion of their capital and income,
are paid, in far the greater part, by the poorest and most destitute
classes of the nation. It is true that the Bourgeoisie did not
actually invent indirect taxation; it existed before. But the
Bourgeoisie were the first to develop it in an unprecedented degree
into a <i>system,</i> and laid upon it almost the whole burden of
supplying the necessities of the State.
</p>
<p>
In order to show you
this, I will glance by way of example at the revenue of Prussia for
the year 1855.
</p>
<p>
The total amount
received by the State in that year was in round numbers 108,930,000
thalers. From this we have to deduct 11,967,000 thalers the proceeds
of the domains and forests, that is to say, income derived from State
property which we need not reckon here. There remain, therefore,
about 97 millions of revenue from other sources. Of this revenue,
according to the budget, about 26 millions were raised by <i>direct</i>
taxation. But this is not true, and is only made to appear so because
our budget is not constructed on scientific principles, but is only
regulated by the manner in which the taxes are apparently collected.
Out of these 26 millions, 10 millions of land tax ought to be
deducted; for though they are certainly taken directly from the
possessor of the land, yet they are again added by him to the price
he demands for his corn; they are therefore actually paid by the
consumer of the corn, and are really an indirect tax. For the same
reason the tax on trades amounting to 2,900,000 thalers must be
deducted.
</p>
<p>
There only remains
as revenue <i>really</i> derived from direct taxation —
</p>
<table style="width:70%">
<tbody><tr>
<td>2,928,000</td>
<td rowspan="3">thalers</td>
<td>from classified income tax.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>7,884,000</td>
<td>from class taxes.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2,036,000</td>
<td>from surtax.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="3">Total 12,848,000 thalers.</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p>
Thus only 12,800,000
thalers, gentlemen, out of a revenue of 97 millions really proceed
from direct taxation. All that is collected beyond this 12,800,000
thalers (for we must not follow the unscientific classification of
the budget which does not reckon the proceeds of the salt monopoly,
amounting to 8,300,000 thalers, nor 8,849,000 thalers received as a
tax on litigation, as indirect taxes), all this balance I say, with
the exception of a few unimportant items of a special character, is
altogether raised from sources of revenue which are of the nature of
<i>indirect taxes,</i> that is to say they are raised by indirect
taxation.
</p>
<p>
Indirect taxation is
therefore, gentlemen, the institution by which the Bourgeoisie
creates the privilege of freedom from taxation for great capitalists,
and lays the cost of maintaining the existence of the State on the
poorer classes of the community.
</p>
<p>
At the same time I
beg you to observe, gentlemen, the remarkable contradiction, and
strange justice involved in this proceeding of laying the whole
burden of the expenses of the State on the <i>indirect taxes,</i> and
so on the <i>poor</i> people, but making the <i>direct taxes</i> the
criterion and condition of the right to the suffrage, that is to say
of the right to political power; while these direct taxes contribute
only the absurdly small proportion of 12 millions to the whole
revenue of 108 millions!
</p>
<p>
Moreover, I told
you, gentlemen, while speaking of the nobles of the Middle Ages, that
they held in social contempt all the activity and industry of the
burgher class.
</p>
<p>
Precisely the same
thing occurs to day. It is true that <i>every</i> kind of labour is
now held in high honour, and if a rag picker or a nightman became a
millionaire, he might be certain of being received with high honour
into society.
</p>
<p>
But with what social
contempt are they greeted, no matter in what way or how hard they
work, who have no private property to back them. This is a fact which
you have no need to learn from my lecture, but which, unhappily, you
can verify often enough by your own daily experience.
</p>
<p>
Nay, in many
respects the Bourgeoisie carries out more thoroughly and logically
the dominion of its own peculiar element and privileges, than did the
noble in the Middle Ages with respect to the landed interest.
</p>
<p>
The education of the
people — I speak here of the education of adults — was in the
Middle Ages left in the hands of the clergy. Since then the
newspapers have undertaken this office. But owing to the <i>caution</i>
money which the journals must deposit, and still more to the stamp
duty which is imposed on the newspapers here, in France, and in other
countries, to start a daily paper is a very expensive business that
can only be undertaken with the help of a large amount of capital; so
that by this means the possibility of appealing to the <i>thought of
the people,</i> of enlightening and leading them, has become a
privilege of the possessors of capital.
</p>
<p>
If this were not the
case, gentlemen, you would possess <i>very</i> different, and much
<i>better</i> journals!
</p>
<p>
It is interesting to
see, gentlemen, at what an early period this attempt of the richer
Bourgeoise to make the press one of the privileges of capital, showed
itself, and in what a naive undisguised form. On the 24th July, 1789,
a few days after the storming of the Bastille, and therefore soon
after the Bourgeoisie had seized upon political power, the
representatives of the Commune of Paris issued a decree by which the
printers were declared to be responsible for the publication of
pamphlets or leaflets written by authors <i>“sans existence
connue.”</i> The freedom of the press which was thus seized upon,
was to be allowed therefore only to writers of known means of
subsistence. <i>Property</i> appears therefore as the condition of
the freedom of the press, nay in fact of the morality of a writer!
This <i>naiveté</i>
of the first days of the rule of the Bourgeois, only expresses in an
artless and open way, what has been attained by the ingenious
contrivance of caution money and stamp duty in our day.
</p>
<p>
We must be satisfied
gentlemen, with these great and characteristic facts, which
corroborate the view we have taken of the Middle Ages.
</p>
<p>
We have now seen,
gentlemen, two periods of the world, each of which is dominated by
the ruling idea of a particular class of the community which
impresses its own principle on all the social arrangements of its
time.
</p>
<p>
First the idea of
nobility, or of the <i>possession of land</i> which forms the ruling
principle of the Middle Ages, and permeates all its institutions.
</p>
<p>
This period closed
with the French Revolution, although you will understand that,
especially in Germany, where the change was not brought about by the
people, but by very gradual and incomplete reforms introduced by the
Government, numerous and important extensions of that first period of
history have occurred, which even at the present day greatly hamper
the progress of the Bourgeoisie.
</p>
<p>
We saw in the next
place the period of history which begins at the eighteenth century
with the French Revolution, which has for its principle <i>large
private property,</i> or capital, and makes this into the privilege
which pervades all the arrangements of society, and is the condition
of participation in directing the will of the State and determining
its aims.
</p>
<p>
This period also,
little as outward appearances seem to show it, is virtually already
closed.
</p>
<p>
On the 24th February
1848, the dawn of a new period of history appeared.
</p>
<p>
For on that day in
France (that country in whose great struggles the victory or the
defeat of freedom means victory or defeat for the whole human race) a
revolution broke out which called a working man into the provisional
Government, declared that the object of the State was the improvement
of the lot of the working classes, and proclaimed the universal and
direct right to the suffrage, by which every citizen who had attained
his twenty-first year, without any reference to the amount of his
property, received an equal share in the government of the State in
the direction of its will and the determination of its aims.
</p>
<p>
You see, gentlemen,
that if the Revolution of 1789 was the Revolution of the <i>Tiers état,</i>
the <i>Third</i> class, it is now the <i>Fourth</i> class, which in
1789 was still enfolded within the third class and appeared to be
identical with it, which will now raise its principle to be the
dominating principle of the community, and cause all its arrangements
to be permeated by it.
</p>
<p>
But here, in the
domination of the fourth class comes to light this immense
difference, that the fourth class is the last and the outside of all,
the disinterested class of the community, which sets up and can set
up no further exclusive condition, either legal or actual, neither
nobility nor landed possessions nor the possession of capital, which
it could make into a new <i>privilege</i> and force upon the
arrangements of society.
</p>
<p>
We are <i>all</i>
working men in so far as we have even the <i>will</i> to make
ourselves useful in any way to the community.
</p>
<p>
This <i>Fourth</i>
class in whose heart therefore <i>no</i> germ of a new privilege is
contained, is for this very reason synonymous with the <i>whole human
race.</i> <i>Its</i> interest is in truth the interest of the <i>whole
of humanity,</i> its freedom is the freedom of humanity itself, and
its domination is the domination of <i>all.</i>
</p>
<p>
Whoever therefore
invokes the idea of the working class as the ruling principle of
society, in the sense in which I have explained it to you, does not
put forth a cry that divides and separates the classes of society. On
the contrary, he utters a cry of <i>reconciliation,</i> a cry which
embraces the whole of the community, a cry for doing away with all
the contradictions in every circle of society; a cry of <i>union</i>
in which all should join who do not wish for privileges and the
oppression of the people by privileged classes; a cry of <i>love</i>
which having once gone up from the heart of the people, will <i>for
ever remain the true cry of the people,</i> and whose meaning will
make it still a <i>cry of love,</i> even when it sounds the war cry
of the people.
</p>
<p>
We will now consider
the principle of the working class as the ruling principle of the
community only in three of its relations:—
</p>
<p>
(1) In relation to
the formal means of its realisation.
</p>
<p>
(2) In relation to
its moral significance.
</p>
<p>
(3) In relation to
the political conception of the object of the State, which is
inherent in that principle.
</p>
<p>
We cannot on this
occasion enter upon its other aspects, and even those to which we
have referred can be only very cursorily examined in the short time
that remains to us.
</p>
<p>
The formal means of
carrying out this principle is the universal and direct suffrage
which we have already discussed. I say universal and <i>direct</i>
suffrage, gentlemen, not that mere universal suffrage which we had in
the year 1848. The introduction of two degrees in the electoral act,
namely, original electors and electors simply, is nothing but an
ingenious method purposely introduced with the object of falsifying
as far as possible the will of the people by means of the electoral
act.
</p>
<p>
It is true that even
universal and direct suffrage is no magic wand, gentlemen, which is
able to protect you from temporary mistakes.
</p>
<p>
We have seen in
France two bad elections following one another, in 1848 and 1849. But
universal and direct suffrage is the <i>only</i> means which in the
long run of itself corrects the mistakes to which its momentary wrong
use may lead. It is that spear which heals the wounds itself has
made. It is impossible in the long run with universal and direct
suffrage that the elected body should be any other than the exact and
true likeness of the people which has elected it.
</p>
<p>
The people must
therefore at all times regard universal and direct suffrage as its
indispensable political weapon, as the most fundamental and important
of its demands.
</p>
<p>
I will now glance at
the <i>moral</i> significance of the principle of society which we
are considering.
</p>
<p>
It is possible that
the idea of converting the principle of the <i>lower classes</i> of
society into the ruling principle of the State and the community may
appear to be extremely dangerous and immoral, and to threaten the
destruction of morality and education by a “modern barbarism.”
</p>
<p>
And it is no wonder
that this idea should be so regarded at the present day since even
public opinion, gentlemen — I have already indicated by what means,
namely, the newspapers — receives its impressions from the mint of
<i>capital,</i> and from the hands of the privileged wealthy
Bourgeoisie.
</p>
<p>
Nevertheless this
fear is only a prejudice, and it can be proved on the contrary, that
the idea would exhibit the greatest advance and triumph of morality
that the history of the world has ever recorded.
</p>
<p>
That view is a
prejudice I repeat, and it is simply the prejudice of <i>the present
time</i> which is dominated by privilege.
</p>
<p>
At another time,
namely, that of the first French Republic of the year 1793 (of which
I have already told you that I cannot enter into further particulars
on this occasion, but that it was destined to perish by its own want
of definite aims) the <i>opposite</i> prejudice prevailed. It was
then a current dogma that all the upper classes were immoral and
corrupt, and that only the lower classes were good and moral. In the
new declaration of the rights of man issued by the French convention,
that powerful constituent assembly of France, this was actually laid
down by a special article, namely, article nineteen, which runs as
follows, “Toute institution qui ne suppose le peuple bon, et le
magistrat corruptible, est vicieuse.” “Every institution which
does not assume that the people are good and the magistracy
contemptible is vicious.” You see that this is exactly the opposite
to the happy faith now required, according to which there is no
greater sin than to doubt of the goodwill and the virtue of the
Government, while it is taken for granted that <i>the people</i> are
a sort of tiger and a sink of corruption.
</p>
<p>
At the time of which
we are speaking the opposite dogma had advanced so far, that almost
every one who had a whole coat on his back was thought to be a bad
man, or at least an object of suspicion; and virtue, purity, and
patriotic morality were thought to be possessed only by those who had
no decent clothes. It was the period of sansculottism.
</p>
<p>
This view,
gentlemen, is in fact founded on a <i>truth,</i> but it presents
itself in an <i>untrue</i> and <i>perverted</i> form. Now there is
nothing more dangerous than a truth which presents itself in an
untrue perverted form. For in whatever way we deal with it, we are
certain to go wrong. If we adopt such a truth in its untrue perverted
form, it will lead at certain times to most pernicious destruction,
as was the case with sansculottism. But if we regard the whole
statement as untrue on account of its untrue perverted form, then we
are much worse. For we have rejected a <i>truth,</i> and, in the case
before us, a truth without the recognition of which not a single
sound step in our political life can be taken.
</p>
<p>
The only course that
remains open to us, therefore, is to set aside the untrue and
perverted form of the statement, and to bring its true essence into
distinct relief.
</p>
<p>
The public opinion
of the present day is inclined, as I have said, to declare the whole
statement to be utterly untrue, and mere declamation on the part of
Rousseau and the French Revolution. But even if it were possible to
adopt the course of rejection in the case of Rousseau and the French
Revolution, it is quite impossible to do so in the case of one of the
greatest of German philosophers, the centenary of whose birth-day
will be celebrated in this town next month: I allude to the
philosopher Fichte, one of the greatest thinkers of all nations and
times.
</p>
<p>
Even Fichte declares
expressly in so many words, that the higher the rank the greater the
moral deterioration, that — these are his very words —
“Wickedness increases in proportion to the elevation of rank.”
</p>
<p>
But Fichte did not
develop the ultimate ground of this statement. He adduces, as the
ground of this corruption, the selfishness and egoism of the upper
classes. But then the question must immediately arise, whether
selfishness does not also prevail in the lower classes, or why it
should prevail less in these. Nay it must at first sight appear to be
an extraordinary paradox to assert that less selfishness should
prevail in the lower classes than in the higher, who have a
considerable advantage over them in education and training, which are
recognised as moralising elements.
</p>
<p>
The following is the
true ground of what as I said appears at first sight to be an
extraordinary paradox.
</p>
<p>
In a long period in
the past, as we have seen, the development of the people, which is
the life-breath of history, proceeds by an ever advancing abolition
of the privileges which guarantee to the higher classes their
position as higher and ruling classes. The desire to maintain this,
in other words their personal interest, brings therefore every member
of the higher classes who has not once for all by a high range of
vision elevated himself above his purely personal existence — and
you will understand, gentlemen, that this can never be more than a
very small number of exceptional characters — into a position
thoroughly <i>hostile</i> in principle to the development of the
people, to the progress of education and science, to the advance of
culture, to all the life-breath and victory of historic life.
</p>
<p>
It is this
opposition of the personal interest of the higher classes to the
development of the nation in culture which evokes the great and
necessary immorality of the higher classes. It is a life, whose daily
conditions you need only represent to yourselves, in order to
perceive the deep inward deterioration to which it must lead. To be
compelled daily to <i>oppose</i> all that is great and good, to be
obliged to <i>grieve</i> at its successes, to rejoice at its
failures, to restrain its further progress, to be obliged to undo or
to execrate the advantages it has already attained. It is to lead
their life as in the country of an <i>enemy</i> — and this enemy is
the moral community of their <i>own people,</i> amongst whom they
live, and <i>for</i> whom to strive constitutes all true morality. It
is to lead their lives, I say, as in the country of an <i>enemy;</i>
this enemy is their own people, and the fact that it is regarded and
treated as their enemy must generally at all events be cunningly
concealed, and this hostility must more or less artfully be covered
with a veil.
</p>
<p>
And to this we must
add that either they must do all this <i>against</i> the voice of
their own conscience and intelligence, or they must have stifled the
voice by habit so as not to be oppressed by it, or lastly they must
have never known this voice, never known anything different and
better than the religion of their own advantage!
</p>
<p>
This life,
gentlemen, leads therefore necessarily to a thorough depreciation and
contempt of all striving to realise an ideal, to a compassionate
smile at the bare mention of the great name of the Idea, to a deeply
seated want of sympathy and even antipathy to all that is beautiful
and great, to a complete swallowing up of every moral element in us,
by the one passion of selfish seeking for our own advantage, and of
immoderate desire for pleasure.
</p>
<p>
It is this
<i>opposition,</i> gentlemen, between personal interest and the
development of the nation in culture, which the lower classes,
happily for them, are <i>without.</i>
</p>
<p>
It is unfortunately
true that there is always enough of selfishness in the lower classes,
much more than there should be, but this selfishness of theirs,
wherever it is found, is the fault of single persons, of <i>individuals,</i>
and not the inevitable fault of the <i>class.</i>
</p>
<p>
A very reasonable
instinct warns the members of the lower classes, that so long as each
of them relates himself only to himself, and each one thinks only of
himself, he can hope for no important improvement in his position.
</p>
<p>
But the more
earnestly and deeply the lower classes of society strive after the
improvement of their condition as a class, the improvement of the <i>lot
of their class,</i> the more does this personal interest, instead of
opposing the movement of history and thereby being condemned to that
immorality of which we have spoken, assume a <i>direction</i> which
thoroughly accords with the development of the whole <i>people,</i>
with the victory of the <i>idea,</i> with the advance of <i>culture,</i>
with the living principle of history itself, which is none other than
the development of <i>freedom.</i> Or in other words, as we have
already seen, <i>its</i> interest is the interest of the entire human
race.
</p>
<p>
You are therefore in
this happy position, gentlemen, that instead of it being possible for
you to be dead to the idea, you are on the contrary urged to the
deepest sympathy for it by your own <i>personal interests.</i> You
are in the happy position that the idea which constitutes your true
personal interest, is one with the throbbing pulse of history, and
with the living principle of moral development. You are able
therefore to devote yourselves with <i>personal passion</i> to this
historical development, and to be certain that the more strongly this
<i>passion</i> grows and burns within you in the true sense in which
I have explained it to you, the higher is the moral position you have
attained.
</p>
<p>
These are the
reasons, gentlemen, why the dominion of the fourth class in the State
must produce such an efflorescence of morality, culture, and science,
as has not yet been witnessed in history.
</p>
<p>
But there is yet
another reason for this, one which is most intimately connected with
all the views I have explained to you, and forms their keystone.
</p>
<p>
The fourth estate
not only has a different formal political principle from that of the
Bourgeoisie, namely, the universal direct franchise, instead of the
census of the Bourgeoisie, and not only has through its position in
life a different relation to moral forces than the higher classes,
but has also — and partly in consequence of these — quite another
and a different conception of the moral <i>object of the State</i>
from that of the Bourgeoisie.
</p>
<p>
According to the
Bourgeoisie, the moral idea of the State is exclusively this, that
the unhindered exercise by himself of his own faculties should be
guaranteed to each individual.
</p>
<p>
If we were all
equally strong, equally clever, equally educated, and equally rich,
this might be regarded as a sufficient and a moral idea.
</p>
<p>
But since we neither
<i>are</i> nor <i>can be</i> thus equal, this idea is not
satisfactory, and therefore necessarily leads in its consequences to
deep immorality, for it leads to this, that the stronger, the
cleverer, and the richer fleece the weaker and pick their pockets.
</p>
<p>
The moral idea of
the State according to the working class on the contrary is this,
that the unhindered and free activity of individual powers exercised
by the individual is not <i>sufficient,</i> but that something <i>must
be added</i> to this in a morally ordered community — namely,
<i>solidarity</i> of interests, community and reciprocity in
development.
</p>
<p>
In accordance with
this difference, the Bourgeoisie conceive the moral object of the
State to consist solely and exclusively in the protection of the
personal freedom and the property of the individual.
</p>
<p>
This is a
policeman’s idea, gentlemen, a policeman’s idea for this reason,
because it represents to itself the State from the point of view of a
policeman [<i>nachtwächter</i>], whose whole function consists in preventing robbery and
burglary.<a id="fnta" href="#fnba">[a]</a> Unfortunately this policeman’s idea is not only familiar
to genuine liberals, but is even to be met with not unfrequently
among so-called democrats, owing to their defective imagination. If
the Bourgeoisie would express the logical inference from their idea,
they must maintain that according to it if there were no such thing
as robbers and thieves, the State itself would be entirely
superfluous.<a id="fnt1" href="#fnb1">[*]</a>
</p>
<p>
Very differently,
gentlemen, does the fourth estate regard the object of the State, for
it apprehends it in its true nature.
</p>
<p>
History, gentlemen,
is a struggle with nature; with the misery, the ignorance, the
poverty, the weakness, and consequent slavery in which we were
involved when the human race came upon the scene in the beginning of
history. The progressive <i>victory</i> over this weakness — this
is the development of freedom which history displays to us.
</p>
<p>
In this struggle we
should never have made one step forward, nor shall we ever advance
one step more by acting on the principle of <i>each one for himself,
each one alone.</i>
</p>
<p>
It is <i>the State</i>
whose function it is to carry on <i>this development of freedom,</i>
this development of the human race until its freedom is attained.
</p>
<p>
<i>The State</i> is
this unity of individuals into a moral whole, a unity which increases
a million-fold the strength of <i>all</i> the individuals who are
comprehended in it, and multiplies a million times the power which
would be at the disposal of them <i>all</i> as individuals.
</p>
<p>
The object of the
State, therefore, is not only to <i>protect</i> the personal freedom
and property of the individual with which he is supposed according to
the idea of the Bourgeoisie to have entered the State. On the
contrary, the object of the State is precisely this, to place the
individuals <i>through this</i> union in a position to attain to <i>such
objects,</i> and reach such a <i>stage of existence</i> as they <i>never</i>
could have reached as individuals; to make them capable of acquiring
an amount of <i>education, power,</i> and <i>freedom</i> which would
have been wholly unattainable by them as individuals.
</p>
<p>
Accordingly the
object of the State is to bring man to positive expansion, and
progressive development, in other words, to bring the destiny of man
— that is the culture of which the human race <i>is</i><i> capable</i>
— into <i>actual existence;</i> it is the <i>training and
development</i> of the human race to freedom.
</p>
<p>
This is the true
moral nature of the State, gentlemen, its true and high mission. So
much is this the case, that from the beginning of time through the
very <i>force</i> of events it has more or less been carried out by
the State without the exercise of will, and unconsciously even
against the will of its leaders.
</p>
<p>
But the working
class, gentlemen, the lower classes of the community in general,
through the helpless condition in which its members find themselves
placed as individuals, have always acquired the deep instinct, that
this is and must be the duty of the State, to help the individual by
means of the union of all to such a development as he would be
<i>incapable</i> of attaining as an individual.
</p>
<p>
A State therefore
which was ruled by the idea of the working class, would no longer be
driven, as all States have hitherto been, unconsciously and against
their will by the nature of things, and the force of circumstances,
but it would make this moral nature of the State its mission, with
perfect clearness of vision and complete consciousness. It would
complete with <i>unchecked desire</i> and perfect <i>consistency,</i>
that which hitherto has only been wrung in scanty and imperfect
fragments from wills that were opposed to it, and <i>for this very
reason</i> — though time does not permit me to explain in any
detail this necessary connection of cause and effect — it would
produce a soaring flight of the human spirit, a development of an
amount of happiness, culture, well-being, and freedom without example
in the history of the world, and in comparison with which, the most
favourable conditions that have existed in former times would appear
but dim shadows of the reality.
</p>
<p>
This it is,
gentlemen, which must be called the working man’s idea of the
State, his conception of the object of the State, which, as you see
is just as different from the bourgeois conception of the object of
the State, as the principle of the working class, of the claim of <i>all</i>
to direct the will of the State, or universal suffrage, is different
from the principle held by the Bourgeoisie, the census.
</p>
<p>
The series of ideas
which I have explained to you must be regarded as the idea of the
working class. It is this that I had in view when I spoke to you, at
the commencement of my lecture, of the connection of the particular
period of history in which we live with the idea of the working
class. It is <i>this</i> period of history beginning with February,
1848, to which has been allotted the task of bringing this idea of
the State into actual existence. We may congratulate ourselves,
gentlemen, that we have been born at a time which is destined to
witness the most glorious work of history, and that we are permitted
to take a part in accomplishing it.
</p>
<p>
But on all who
belong to the working class the duty of taking up an entirely new
attitude is imposed, if there is any truth in what I have said.
</p>
<p>
Nothing is more
calculated to impress upon a class a worthy and moral character, than
the consciousness that it is destined to become a ruling class, that
it is called upon to raise the principle of its class to the
principle of the entire age, to convert <i>its idea</i> into the
leading idea of the whole of society and thus to form this society by
impressing upon it its own character.
</p>
<p>
The high and
world-wide honour of this destiny must occupy all your thoughts.
Neither the load of the oppressed, nor the idle dissipation of the
thoughtless, nor even the harmless frivolity of the insignificant,
are henceforth becoming to you. You are the rock on which the Church
of the present is to be built.
</p>
<p>
It is the lofty
moral earnestness of <i>this</i> thought which must with devouring
exclusiveness possess your spirits, fill your minds, and shape your
whole lives, so as to make them worthy of it, conformable to it, and
always related to it. It is the moral earnestness of this thought
which must never leave you, but must be present to your heart in your
workshops during the hours of labour, in your leisure hours, during
your walks, at your meetings, and even when you stretch your limbs to
rest upon your hard couches, it is <i>this</i> thought which must
fill and occupy your minds till they lose themselves in dreams. The
more exclusively you immerse yourselves in the moral earnestness of
this thought, the more undividedly you give yourselves up to its
glowing fervour, by so much the more, be assured, will you <i>hasten
the time</i> within which our present period of history will have to
fulfil its task, so much the sooner will you bring about the
accomplishment of this task.
</p>
<p>
If there be only <i>two</i>
or <i>three</i> of you, gentlemen, who now hear me, in whom I should
be so happy as to have kindled the moral glow of this idea in its
depth as I feel it and have described it to you, then I should
already have reaped a rich harvest and a rich reward for my lecture.
</p>
<p>
Before all things,
gentlemen, your hearts must remain strangers to despondency and
doubt, to which a view of the events of history not sufficiently wide
for this idea may easily lead.
</p>
<p>
Thus for example it
is distinctly <i>not true</i> that the French Republic was destroyed
by the Coup d’ Etat of December 1851.
</p>
<p>
That which could not
last in France, that which really perished at that time was not <i>the</i>
Republic, but that Republic which, as I have already shown you,
abolished universal suffrage by the electoral law of the 30th of May
1850, and introduced a disguised census for the exclusion of the
working men. That was therefore the Bourgeois Republic, which desired
to impress the stamp of the Bourgeoisie, the domination of capital,
on the Republicanised State. <i>This</i> it was which enabled the
French usurper, with the pretence of restoring universal suffrage, to
destroy the Republic, which would otherwise have found an impregnable
bulwark in the breasts of the French working men.
</p>
<p>
That then which
really could not last in France, and was destroyed at that time was
not <i>the</i> Republic, but the <i>Bourgeois</i> Republic; and thus
it is established according to the true view of history, exactly as
in this example, that the period on which we entered in February
1848, tolerates no longer any State which, no matter whether in a
monarchical or republican form, desires to impress the ruling
political stamp of the third class on the community, or to maintain
it in itself.
</p>
<p>
From the lofty
mountain summits of science, gentlemen, the dawn of the new day is
seen earlier than below in the turmoil of daily life.
</p>
<p>
Have you ever
witnessed, gentlemen, a sunrise from a lofty mountain?
</p>
<p>
A purple streak
colours the extreme verge of the horizon blood red, announcing the
new light; mist and clouds gather, roll themselves into a mass, throw
themselves against the glow of morning, and succeed in covering its
rays for a moment. But no power in the world can avail to hinder the
slow and majestic rising of the sun itself, which an hour later
stands in the firmament visible to all, and giving light and warmth
to all the earth.
</p>
<p>
What an hour is in
this spectacle which nature presents to us every day, one or two
centuries are in the far more imposing spectacle of a sunrise in the
world’s history.
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr>
<h3>Footnote</h3>
<p class="endnote">
<a id="fnb1" href="#fnt1">[*]</a> This idea of the
State, which in fact does away with the State, and changes it into a
mere union of egoistic interests, is the idea of the State as
regarded by <i>liberalism,</i> and historically was produced by it.
It forms by the power which it has necessarily obtained and which
stands in direct relation to its superficiality, the true danger of
spiritual and moral decay, the true danger, which threatens us at
this day, of a “modern barbarism.” In Germany happily it is
strongly opposed by the ancient learning which has once for all
become the indestructible foundation of German thought. From this
proceeds the view “that it is necessary to enlarge the notion of
the State to the fullest extent to which in my opinion it is possible
to enlarge it, that <i>the State should be the organisation, in which
the whole virtue of man should realise itself.”</i> (Augustus
Boeth’s address to his University of the 22nd March, 1862.)
</p>
<hr>
<h3>Transcriber’s Note</h3>
<p class="endnote">
<a id="fnba" href="#fnta">[a]</a> An alternate, more literal translation for “policeman”
would be “night-watchman” (<i>nachtwächter</i>). This concept of a “night-watchman state,”
coined and mocked by Lassalle in this speech, has since been reclaimed as a desirable state of affairs by so-called “libertarians,”
“minarchists,” and other apologists for capitalist rule. —<i>New note by Bill Wright, transcriber.</i>
</p>
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MIA > Archive > Lassalle
Ferdinand Lassalle
The Working Man’s Programme
(April 1862)
Written: In German as a political lecture, delivered April 12th, 1862.
Published in print as a contemporary pamphlet.
Published in English: 1884.
Translated by: Edward Peters.
Source: The Working Man’s Programme. The Modern Press, first edition, 1884, London, England. 59 pages.
Transcription and Markup: Bill Wright for marxists.org, February, 2023
Translator’s Introduction by Edward Peters
Gentlemen,
Having been asked to
give you a lecture, I thought that I should best meet your wishes by
choosing a theme which from its very nature must be deeply
interesting to you, and by treating it in the most thoroughly
scientific manner. I will therefore speak on the special connexion
that exists between the character of the present period of history in
which we are living and the idea of the working class. I have said
that my treatment of the subject should be purely scientific.
But scientific
treatment consists in nothing else than complete clearness, and
therefore a complete absence of presuppositions, that is to say, of
reasoning founded on unwarranted assumptions.
On account of this
entire absence of presuppositions with which we have to approach our
subject, it will be necessary at starting to have a clear
understanding of what we mean by a working man, or by the working
class. For on this point we dare not allow ourselves the benefit of a
presupposition, as if this were something perfectly well known. This
is far from being the case. The language of common life, on the
contrary, frequently attaches different meanings at different times
to the words working man and working class, and we must therefore at
the proper time get a clear understanding as to the sense in which we
intend to use these words. This however is not the right time. We
must on the contrary begin this lecture with another question.
Namely with the
following question. The working class is only one of the many classes
of which the community of citizens consists. Moreover working men
have existed at all times. How is it then possible, and what meaning
can be attached to the statement, that a special connexion exists
between the idea of this specified single class, and the principle of
the particular period of history in which we live?
In order to
understand this, it is requisite, gentlemen, to throw a glance at
history, at the past, which rightly understood, here as always,
explains the present and foreshows the outline of the future. We must
make this retrospect as brief, gentlemen, as possible, for we shall
otherwise run a risk of not reaching at all in the short time
allotted to us the real subject which we have met to consider. But
even in the face of this danger, we must take some such retrospective
view of the past, however cursory and confined to the most general
features, in order to understand the meaning of our question and of
our theme.
If then we go back
to the Middle Ages, we find that even at that time the same grades
and classes of the population were in existence, though certainly far
less developed than those of which the community of citizens consists
at the present day. But we find further that one grade and one
element was at that time the dominating one — namely the landed
interest.
It is the landed
interest, gentlemen, which in all respects bore sway in the Middle
Ages, which impressed its own specific stamp on all the arrangements
and on the whole life of that time; it is that which must be
proclaimed as the ruling principle of that period.
The reason of this,
namely that the landed interest was the ruling principle of that age,
is a very simple one. It lies — at least this reason may for the
present fully satisfy us — in the domestic and economic
constitution of the Middle Ages; in the conditions of production at
that period. Trade was at that time very slightly developed, and
industry still less so. The staple of the wealth of the community
consisted to an immensely preponderating degree in the produce of
agriculture.
Movable possessions
were at that time but little thought of in comparison with possession
of the land and the soil, and you may plainly see to what an extent
this was the case by the law of property, which always throws a clear
light on the economic condition of the periods in which it was
instituted. Thus for instance the law of property of the Middle Ages,
with the object of preserving family property from generation to
generation, and protecting it against dissipation, declares family
property or “Estate” to be inalienable without the consent of the
heirs. But by this family property or “Estate” is understood by
express limitation only landed property. Chattels (fahrniss),
on the contrary, as movable property was then called, were alienable
without the consent of the heirs. And, in general, all personal or
movable property was treated by the old German laws, not as an
independent reproductive property, or in short as capital, but
only as the produce of the land and the soil, like the crops
which are annually gathered from it, and it was put on a par with
these. Landed property alone was regularly treated, at that
time, as independent productive property. It was therefore only in
complete accordance with this state of things, and a simple
consequence of it, that the landed interest and those who had
it almost exclusively in their hands, that is, as you are aware, the
nobles and the clergy, formed the ruling factor of that society in
all respects.
To whatever
institutions of the middle ages we turn our eyes, this
phenomenon is everywhere apparent in them.
We will content
ourselves with a hasty glance at some of the most important of those
arrangements, in which the land interest comes forth as the ruling
principle.
First then let us
look at the organisation of the public forces, or the feudal
system. You know, gentlemen, that this was so constituted that
the king, princes, and lords ceded to other lords and knights certain
lands for their use, in consideration of which the recipients were
obliged solemnly to undertake the obligation of service in the field,
that is to say, of supporting their feudal lords in their wars or
quarrels, both in person and with their dependents.
Let us next look at
the organisation of the public Rights, or the constitution
of the realm. In the assembly of the German States the princely
class and the great landed interest were represented by the Counts of
the Empire and the clergy. The towns only enjoyed a seat and a vote
in that assembly if they had acquired the privileges of a free town
of the Empire.
To proceed, thirdly,
to the exemption of the great landed proprietors from taxation. Now
it is a characteristic and an ever recurring phenomenon, gentlemen,
that every ruling privileged class invariably seeks to throw
the burden of maintaining the existence of the State on the oppressed
classes which have no property; and they do this openly or covertly,
either directly or indirectly. When Richelieu in the year 1641
demanded six millions of francs from the clergy, as an extraordinary
tax to help the necessities of the State, the clergy, through the
mouth of the Archbishop of Sens, gave this characteristic answer —
“The ancient usage of the Church during its vigour was that the
people contributed its goods, the nobility its blood, the clergy its
prayers to the necessities of the State.”
Fourthly, we may
mention the contempt with which every other kind of labour than that
which was occupied with the land was socially regarded. To engage in
industrial undertakings, to gain money by a trade or profession, was
considered disgraceful, and dishonouring to the two privileged ruling
classes, the nobles and the clergy, for whom it was only deemed
honourable to derive their income from the possession of land.
These four great and
important facts, which determine the fundamental character of any
epoch, are amply sufficient for our purpose, and show how it was that
the possession of land everywhere fixed its impress on the
period of which we are treating, and formed its ruling principle.
So much was this the
case that even the movement of the Peasants’ War which broke
out in Germany in 1524, and spread all over Swabia, Franconia,
Alsace, Westphalia, and other parts of Germany, and was in appearance
thoroughly revolutionary, nevertheless was essentially
dependent on this same principle, was in fact therefore a reactionary
movement, in spite of its revolutionary mode of action. You are
aware, gentlemen, that the peasants at that time burnt down the
castles of the nobles, put the nobles themselves to death, made them
run the gauntlet through their spears, which was the cruel practice
in vogue at that time. And notwithstanding, in spite of this external
revolutionary varnish, the movement was essentially and throughout
reactionary.
For the new birth of
the relations of the State, the German freedom, which the
peasants wished to establish, was to consist according to them in
this, that the peculiar and privileged intermediate position which
the princes had assumed between the Emperor and the States should be
done away with, and that nothing should be represented in the German
Diet, excepting the free and independent possession of the land,
especially of the land held by the peasant class and by the knights —
neither of which had been hitherto represented — as well as that of
the nobles of every degree, namely of the Knights, Counts and then
existing Princes, without regard to the difference that had formerly
been made between them. The representation therefore was to be
confined to the landed possessions of the nobles on the one
side and those of the peasants on the other.
You see at once
then, gentlemen, that this plan ultimately proceeds simply on a
perfectly consistent and more regular carrying out of this principle,
which the epoch just then drawing near its close had taken as its
foundation — I say on a logically consistent, more complete and
regular carrying out of the principle that the possession of land
should be the ruling element, which alone should entitle any one to a
participation in the management of the State. That any one could
demand such participation on the ground that he was a man,
that he was a reasonable being, without the possession of any
land — of that the peasants had not the most distant idea! The
times were not yet ripe for this, the thoughts of men had not yet
become sufficiently revolutionary.
Thus, then, this
movement of the peasantry, which proceeded with such revolutionary
determination, was in its essence thoroughly reactionary: that
is to say, instead of resting on a new revolutionary principle, it
rested unconsciously on the old established principle of the period
which was at that very time dying out; and it was precisely
for this reason, because it was in fact reactionary, while it
believed itself to be revolutionary, that the peasant movement was
unsuccessful.
In opposition both
to the rising of the peasants and that of the nobles (under Franz von
Sickingen), both of which had in common the principle that
participation in the management of the State should depend, even more
strictly than had hitherto been the case, on the possession of the
land, the sovereign authority of the Princes, founded on the idea of
a State sovereignty independent of landed possessions, which was
making head at that time, was a relatively justifiable and
revolutionary force. This it was which gave it the power which led to
its victorious development, and to the suppression both of the
movement of the peasants and that of the nobles.
I have dwelt with
some emphasis on this point, gentlemen,— first, in order to prove
to you the reasonableness and the progress of freedom, in the
development of history, and that by an example from which it is by no
means obvious on a superficial survey; secondly, because historians
are far from having recognised this reactionary character of the
rising of the peasants, and the true cause of its failure which was
solely dependent upon that character, but on the contrary, deceived
by external appearances, hold the peasant war to have been a truly
revolutionary movement.
Thirdly, I have
dwelt upon it because this spectacle is constantly repeating itself
in all ages, that men who do not think clearly — and to this class,
gentlemen, those who are apparently most learned, and even professors
may belong, and, as the Church of St. Paul with its sad memorials has
shewn us, do extremely often belong — fall into the extraordinary
illusion of holding that which is only a more consistent and complete
expression of a period of history and an organisation of society even
then passing away, to be a new revolutionary principle.
Against such men and
such courses, which are revolutionary only in the imagination
of these men — for there will be plenty of them in the future as
there have been in the past — permit me, gentlemen, to put you on
your guard.
We may be allowed to
feel confident on these grounds that the numerous movements which
have been immediately, or within a short time, after momentary
successes, suppressed, which we find in history, and which may fill
many well meaning friends of the people who take a superficial view
of things with sad misgivings, have ever been revolutionary movements
only in the imagination of their promoters.
A truly
revolutionary movement, one which is founded on a really new
principle of thought, has never failed, at least in the long
run, as any one who thinks deeply may, to his comfort, prove to
himself from history.
I now resume the
thread of my argument.
As the Peasants’
War was revolutionary only in their imagination, so on the other hand
the progress of industry, the productive energy of the towns, the
constantly developing division of labour, and the wealth of
capital, which came into existence by these means, and which
accumulated exclusively in the hands of the bourgeoisie (because they
were the only class which engaged in production, and appropriated its
advantages to themselves) — these were the really and truly
revolutionary forces of that time.
The close of the
Middle Ages, and the commencement of modern history, is usually dated
from the Reformation, i.e. from the year 1517.
And in fact this is
correct, in the sense that in the two centuries which immediately
followed the Reformation, a change was slowly, gradually, and
imperceptibly taking place, which completely transformed the aspect
of society, and brought about in the heart of it a revolution, which
was only proclaimed, but not really created by what is called the
French Revolution in the year 1789.
Do you ask in what
this revolution consisted?
Nothing had been
changed in the legal position of the nobles. By law the
nobles and the clergy were the two ruling classes, the Bourgeoisie
remained everywhere the neglected and oppressed class. But if nothing
had been changed de jure, yet de facto the change that
had actually taken place in the relations of these classes was all
the more extraordinary.
Through the creation
and accumulation of capital, that is to say of moveable in opposition
to landed property, in the hands of the Bourgeoisie, the nobles had
sunk into complete insignificance; nay, often into real dependence
on this Bourgeoisie which had become rich. Already they were obliged,
if they wished to be somewhat on a par with them, to abandon all the
principles of their class, and to begin to make use of the same means
of obtaining money through industry, to which the Bourgeoisie owed
their wealth and therefore their actual power.
The Comedies of
Molière, who lived in
the time of Louis XIV, show us as early as that date a highly
interesting phenomenon, the noble of that day despising the rich
citizen, and at the same time playing the parasite at his table.
We see Louis XIV
himself, that proudest of kings, doffing his hat, and humbling
himself in his palace of Versailles before the Jew Samuel Bernard,
the Rothschild of that day, in order to induce him to grant a loan.
When [John] Law, the
famous Scotch financier, had formed the trading company or
joint-stock enterprise which had combined for the commercial
exploration of the banks of the Mississippi, Louisiana, the East
Indies, &c., the Regent of France himself was one of the
Directors — a member of a company of merchants! Yes, the Regent
found himself compelled in August 1717 to issue an edict, in which
it was ordained that the nobles might enter the naval and military
service of this trading company without any degradation to their
dignity! To that pass, then, had the proud and warlike feudal
nobility of France arrived, that they could become the armed
commissaries of the industrial commercial undertakings of the
Bourgeoisie who were carrying on their trade in every part of the
world at once.
In connexion with
this change of opinion, a kind of materialism had at that time
already developed itself, and a voracious and greedy struggling for
money and property, to which all moral ideas, nay what unhappily
appeals in general still more strongly to the privileged classes, all
class privileges, were prostituted. Under the same Regent of France,
Count Horn, one of the most distinguished nobles connected with the
first families of France, nay with the Regent himself, was broken on
the wheel as a common highway robber; and the Duchess of Orleans, a
German Princess, writes in a letter of the 29th November 1719, that
six of the most distinguished of the Court ladies had one day waylaid
the aforesaid Law (who at that time was the most courted and also the
busiest man in France, and whom consequently it was very difficult to
lay hold of) in the court of some building, in order to induce him to
give them some shares in a company he had established, after which
all France was running at that time, and whose value on the Exchange
was six or eight times as high as the nominal price at which they had
been issued by Law. The pressure exercised by these ladies with this
object proceeded to a degree which a regard to decency will not allow
me to particularise.
If you ask me again
what causes had rendered possible this development of industry, and
of the wealth of the Bourgeoisie thereby called into existence, I
could not give a complete answer to the question without largely
overstepping the limits of the time allotted to me. I will therefore
only briefly enumerate the most essential of these causes; namely,
the discovery of America and the enormous impulse thereby exercised
on production; the discovery of the sea route to the East Indies by
doubling the Cape of Good Hope, whereas formerly all trade with India
and the East was forced to take the overland route by Suez; the
discovery of the magnetic needle and the compass, and the greater
security thus given to all trade by sea, as well as greater speed and
diminution of the cost of insurance; the canals and paved roads
constructed in the interior of countries, which, by diminishing the
cost of transport, first made it possible to sell at a distance
numerous commodities which formerly were not worth the expense of
carriage; the greater security of the property of the citizens; the
regular course of justice; the invention of gunpowder, and the
breaking up of the feudal power of the nobles by the kings in
consequence of this invention; the dismissal of the spearmen and men
at arms of the nobles, in consequence of the destruction of their
castles and of their independent military power, nothing being now
left for these dependents but to seek admission to the workshops of
that time — all these events helped to drag on the triumphal
car of the Bourgeoisie!
All these events and
many others which could be enumerated are comprised however in one
consequence — the opening of great outlets, that is of extensive
regions where goods can be sold, and the accompanying diminution of
the cost of production and transport leads to production in vast
quantities, production for the market of the world, and this in turn
creates the necessity of cheap production, which again
can only be satisfied by an ever-advancing division of labour, that
is by a separation of employment into its simplest mechanical
operations, ever carried further and further, and thus again calls
forth a production on an ever increasing scale.
We have thus
arrived, gentlemen, at the domain of reciprocal cause and effect.
Each of these facts calls the other into existence, and the latter
again reacts upon the former, and widens and enlarges its area.
Accordingly you will
clearly perceive that, the production of an article in enormous
quantities, its production for the market of the world, is, speaking
generally, easily accomplished only on the condition that the cost of
the production of this article shall be moderate, and also the
transport of it cheap enough not to raise its price
exorbitantly. For production in vast quantities requires an enormous
sale; and the extensive sale of any kind of produce is only rendered
possible by its cheapness, which makes it accessible to a large
number of purchasers. Cheapness of production and transport therefore
cause the production of wares of any kind to take place on a large
scale. But conversely, you will at once see that it is the production
of an article in large quantities which causes and increases
cheapness. A manufacturer for instance who sells two hundred thousand
pieces of cotton in the year, is enabled by purchasing his raw
materials cheaper on so large a scale, and also because the profits
on his capital and the expense of his plant and machinery are divided
between so large a number of pieces, he is enabled, I say, within
certain limits, to sell each piece much cheaper than a manufacturer
who only produces five thousand such pieces every year. The greater
cheapness of production leads therefore to production in larger
quantities, and this leads again to still greater cheapness, which
calls forth again a still larger production, which once more causes
further cheapness, and so on.
Precisely the same
thing happens with regard to the division of labour, which on
its side again is the necessary condition of extensive production and
of cheapness, for without it neither cheapness nor production on an
extensive scale would be possible.
The division of
labour which separates the process of production into a great number
of very simple and often purely mechanical operations requiring no
exercise of reason, and which causes separate workmen to be employed
for each one of these divided operations, would be quite impossible
without an extensive production of the articles in question; and is
therefore only called into existence and developed by such extensive
demand. Conversely this separation of labour into such simple
operations and manipulations, leads further (1) to an ever increasing
cheapness, (2) consequently to production on a greater and more
gigantic scale, ever spreading beyond this and that market till it
reaches the whole market of the world, and (3) by this means,
and through the new divisions which this extension renders possible
in the single operations of labour, to an ever increasing advance in
the division of labour itself.
Through this series
of reciprocal operations of cause and effect, an entire change took
place in the work of the community, and consequently in all the
relations of life of the community itself.
A brief view of the
nature of this revolution may be obtained by reducing it to the
following contrasts.
In the earlier part
of the Middle Ages, as only a very small number of costly products
could bear the enhanced price which would have been caused by their
transport, articles were only produced to supply the needs of the
locality in which the producers lived. This implied a very limited
market comprising only their immediate neighbourhood, the
requirements of which were for this very reason well known, fixed,
and uniform. The requirements or the demand preceded the offer
of the goods, and formed the well known guide to the amount of
goods offered for sale. Or in other words — the production of the
community was carried on mainly by handicrafts. For this is the
character of business carried on in a small way or by handicrafts, as
distinguished from that which is carried on in factories or on a
large scale, that either the demand is waited for, before the article
is produced; as for instance the tailor waits for my order before he
makes me a coat, the locksmith before he makes me a lock; or that at
least if many articles are manufactured beforehand, this production
in advance is limited to the minimum of the requirements of the
locality and its immediate neighbourhood, which are accurately known
by experience. For instance, a tinman makes a certain number of lamps
in advance, which he knows will be soon absorbed by the requirements
of the town.
The characteristic
quality, gentlemen, of a community which produces mainly in this
manner, is poverty, or at least only a moderate degree of prosperity,
and on the other hand a certain stability and fixedness of all
relations.
But now, through the
incessant reciprocal action which I have described to you, the work
of the community, and consequently all the relations of life
gradually assumed a totally opposite character. This was in germ the
same character which distinguishes the work of the community to-day,
through truly in a very different, in fact in an immensely developed
degree. In the gigantic development which has now been attained this
character may be thus indicated in opposition to the earlier one
which has been described: whereas formerly the demand preceded the
offer of the merchandise, and the production of it, and drew this
latter in its train, and determined it, formed its guide and its well
known measure, now on the contrary the production, the offer of
the goods precedes the demand, and seeks to force it into
existence. Goods are no longer produced for the locality, for the
ascertained needs of neighbouring markets, but for the markets of the
world. They are produced on the largest scale and for every part of
the world in general, to supply a need entirely unknown and not to be
measured, and the produce is able to force the demand for it into
being, provided that a single weapon is given to it, namely
cheapness. Cheapness is the weapon of production, with which
on the one hand it conquers the purchaser, and on the other
hand drives all other goods of the same kind out of the market, which
may be likewise pressed upon the purchaser, so that in fact under the
system of free competition, every producer may hope, however great
the quantity of goods he produces, to find a market for all these if
he is only able by the better arming of his wares with cheapness to
make the wares of his competitors unable to maintain the contest.
The prevailing
character of such a community is vast, immeasurable wealth, on the
other hand a great mobility of all relations, an almost constant,
anxious insecurity in the position of individuals and a very unequal
apportionment of the proceeds of production amongst those who work
together to secure them.
You see then,
gentlemen, how vast was the change which the quiet, revolutionary,
and undermining activity of industry, had imperceptibly wrought in
the structure of the community before the end of that century.
Although the actors
in the Peasants’ War had not yet ventured so much as to take up any
other idea than that of founding the State on the possession
of land, although they had not been able even in thought to free
themselves from the view that the possession of land was necessarily
the element that involved dominion over the State, and a
participation in this possession the condition of a participation in
this dominion, yet before the end of this century, the quiet,
unnoticed, revolutionary advance of industry had brought it to pass,
that the possession of land had been completely stripped of its
former importance, and in presence of the development of the new
means of production, of the wealth which this development fostered
and daily increased, and of the immense influence which it exercised
thereby on the whole population, and on its relations, as well as
upon the nobility itself, which had to a great extent become poor,
had sunk to a subordinate position.
The revolution had
therefore already entered into the vitals of the community, into
their actual relations, long before it broke out in France,
and it was only requisite to bring the change thus wrought to
external recognition, in order to give it a moral
sanction.
This, gentlemen, is
always the case in all revolutions. A revolution can never be
made; all that can ever be done is to add external moral
recognition to a revolution which has already entered into the
actual relations of a community, and to carry it out accordingly.
To set about to make
a revolution is the folly of immature minds which have no notion of
the laws of history.
And it is for this
reason equally foolish and childish to attempt to repress a
revolution which has once developed itself in the womb of a
community, and to oppose its moral recognition, or to utter against
such a community, or the individuals who assist at its birth, the
reproach that they are revolutionary. If the revolution has already
found its way into the community, into its actual relations, then
there is no help for it, it must come out and take its place in the
constitution of the community.
How this comes
about, and how far it had already happened in the period of which I
am speaking, you will best see by one fact which I will relate to
you.
I have already
spoken to you of the division of labour, the development of which
consists in separating all the processes of production, into a series
of very simple and mechanical operations, requiring no exercise of
reason.
Now as this division
is ever advancing further and further, it is at last discovered that
these single operations, as they are so simple and require no
exercise of reason, can be just as well and even better performed by
unreasoning agents; and accordingly in the year 1775, that is
fourteen years before the French Revolution, Arkwright invented in
England the first machine, his famous spinning jenny.
I am not going to
say that this machine produced the French Revolution. The invention
preceded it by far too short a time for this, and besides had not yet
been introduced into France; but it may truly be said that it
represented in itself, in a material form, the revolution which had
already actually entered into the community, and was already
developed there. This was itself, so to speak, the revolution which
had become a living force.
The reason of this
is very simple. You will have heard of the formation of the Guilds,
through which production was carried on in the Middle Ages.
I cannot here go
into the history of the Guilds of the Middle Ages, nor trace that of
the free competition which at the time of the French Revolution had
everywhere taken the place of the Guilds. I can only state the fact
in the form of an asseveration, that the system of Guilds of the
Middle Ages was inseparable from the other social arrangements of
that period. But if time does not allow me to lay before you clearly
the reasons of this inseparable connection, yet the fact itself
admits of an easy historical proof. The Guilds lasted through the
whole of the Middle Ages, and until the French Revolution. As early
as the year 1672 their abrogation was discussed in a German Diet —
but in vain, nay, in the year 1614 the Bourgeoisie demanded of the
Estates General, that is to say the French Parliament, the abolition
of the Guilds which already cramped them in all their manufactures.
This was likewise in vain. Nay further, thirteen years before the
Revolution, in the year 1776, a reforming minister in France, the
famous Turgot, did abolish Guilds. But the feudal privileged world of
the Middle Ages regarded itself, and it was perfectly right, in
danger of death, if privilege, its principle of life, ceased to
penetrate every class of society; and so the king was prevailed upon,
six months after the abolition of the Guilds, to withdraw his edict,
and restore them. In due time came the Revolution, and destroyed in
one day by the storming of the Bastille that for which Germany had
striven in vain since 1672, and France since 1614, that is for near
two centuries, to do away with by legal means.
You will perceive
from this, gentlemen, that however great are the advantages which
attend reforms conducted by legal methods, yet they have on all the
most important occasions, the one great drawback of an impotence
lasting for entire centuries, and on the other hand, that the
revolutionary method, terrible as are the drawbacks with which it
also is accompanied, has in spite of them the one advantage of
attaining speedily and energetically a practical result.
Now fix your eyes,
gentlemen, with me for a moment on the fact that the Guilds were
inseparably connected with the whole of the social arrangements of
the Middle Ages, and you will see at once how the first machine, the
spinning jenny which Arkwright invented, contained already in itself
a complete revolutionising of those social conditions.
For how could
production by means of machinery be possible under the system of
Guilds, by which the number of men and apprentices which a master
might keep was fixed by law in every locality? Again under this
system of Guilds, the different branches of industry were marked off
from one another in the most exact manner by law, and each master was
only allowed to undertake one of them, so that for example, for
hundreds of years the tailors who made clothes were engaged in
lawsuits with the tailors who mended them, the makers of nails, with
the locksmiths, in order to fix the limits which separated their
trades. Now under such a system of Guilds how could production be
carried on by machinery for which it was necessary that different
kinds of labour should be combined in the hand of one and the same
capitalist?
A stage had thus
been reached, at which production itself, by its steadily advancing
development, had brought into existence instruments of production
which were destined to shatter the whole existing system of society;
instruments of production and methods of production, which could find
no place or room for development in that system.
In this sense I say
that the first machine was already in itself a Revolution, for it
bore in its cogs and wheels, little as this could be seen from its
outward appearance, the germ of the whole of the new conditions of
society, founded upon free competition, which were to be developed
with the vigour and necessity of a living force.
And in the same way
it is possible, gentlemen, unless I am greatly mistaken, that many
phenomena which are to be seen at the present day, contain in
themselves a new condition of things, which they must of necessity
develop. This is entirely overlooked in judging of these phenomena
from the outside only, so that even the Goverment passes over them
without suspicion, while prosecuting insignificant agitators, nay
even considers them as necessary accompaniments of our culture,
greets them as the flower and outcome of it, and occasionally makes
speeches recognising and approving them.
After all this
discussion, gentlemen, you will now clearly comprehend the true
significance of the famous pamphlet which was published in 1788 the
year before the French Revolution by Abbé Siéyes,
and which is summed up in these words, “What is the third Estate?
Nothing! What ought it to be? Everything!”
The Bourgeoisie was
called the third Estate in France, because they formed the third
class, in contra-distinction to the two privileged classes, the
nobility and the clergy, and thus included the whole of the
nonprivileged population.
Siéyes
then thus formulated these two questions and answers. But their true
significance, as follows from what I have already said, might be
expressed more strikingly and correctly as follows —
“What is the third
Estate actually and in fact? Everything!
But what is it
legally or constitutionally? Nothing!”
The point is,
therefore, to make the legal position of the third class,
identical with its actual position; to obtain legal
sanction and recognition for its actual and existing significance,—
and this is precisely the work and the significance of the victorious
Revolution which broke out in France in 1789, and of the transforming
influence which it exercised over the other countries of Europe.
I am not going,
gentlemen, to enter upon the history of the French Revolution. We can
now only glance, and that in the most brief and cursory manner, which
is all that our time will allow, at the most important and decisive
points in the transition from one stage of society to another.
It is necessary here
then to ask the question, who constituted this third class, or the
Bourgeoisie, who by means of the French Revolution conquered the
privileged classes, and obtained the government of the State?
As this class stood
against the legally privileged classes of the community, so it
understood itself at that time, at the first moment, to be identified
with the whole people, and its interests to be identical with
the interests of the whole of humanity. To this was owed the
elevating and mighty enthusiasm which prevailed at that period. The
rights of man were proclaimed, and it appeared as if with the
freedom and the rule of the third Estate, all legal privileges had
disappeared from the community, and all differences founded upon them
had been swallowed up and absorbed in the one idea of the freedom of
man.
In the very
beginning of the movement, in April 1789, on the occasion of the
elections to the chambers which were convened by the king on the
understanding that the third class should this time send as many
representatives as the nobles and the clergy together, we find a
journal by no means revolutionary in character, writing as follows —
“Who can say whether the despotism of the Bourgeoisie will not
succeed to the pretended aristocracy of the nobles?”
But cries of this
kind were at that time drowned in the general enthusiasm.
Nevertheless we must
return to that question; we must put the question distinctly. —
Were the interest of the third class truly the interests of the whole
of humanity, or did this third class, the Bourgeoisie,
carry in its bosom yet another, a fourth class, from which it
desired to separate itself by law, and so to subject it to its
dominion?
It is now time,
gentlemen, that in order to avoid the danger of being exposed to
gross misinterpretation, I should explain clearly the meaning of the
word Bourgeoisie or upper Bourgeoisie, as the designation of a
political party, and the sense in which I use the word
Bourgeoisie.
In the German
language the word Bourgeoisie is usually translated as the burgher or
citizen class. But I do not use it in this sense; we are all
citizens, the working man, the poor citizen [Kleinbürger]
the rich citizen [Grossbürger]
and so forth. The word Bourgeoisie has on the contrary in the course
of history acquired a very special political significance
which I will now immediately explain to you.
The whole burgher or
not noble class, when the French Revolution occurred, divided itself,
and still remains divided, speaking generally, into two
subdivisions, namely in the first place, the class whose members
either entirely or mainly derive their income from their labour, and
who have either no capital, or a very modest one to assist them in
exercising a productive industry for the support of themselves and
their families. To this class belong therefore the working men, the
lower grade of citizens, handicraftsmen, and generally speaking the
peasants. The second class consists of those who dispose of large
private property, of a large capital, and by reason of such a
basis of capital, engage in production, or draw an income in the
shape of rents. These may be called the rich citizens. But a
rich citizen, gentlemen, is for that reason essentially no Bourgeois
at all.
If a nobleman seated
in his room, finds pleasure in the contemplation of his ancestors,
and of his landed property, no citizen has any thing to say against
it. But if this nobleman desires to make his ancestry or his landed
property the condition of a special rank and privilege in the State,
the condition of the power of directing the will of the State,—
then the indignation of the citizen is roused against the noble, and
he calls him a feudalist.
The same thing
exactly takes place with regard to the difference of property within
the citizen class.
That the rich
citizen seated in his chamber should find pleasure in contemplating
the great convenience and advantage which a large private property
brings to its possessor, nothing is more simple, nothing more natural
and legitimate than this.
The working man, and
the poor citizen, in a word, the whole of that class which is without
capital, is fully justified in demanding from the State that it
should direct its aim and all its endeavours towards the improvement
of the sorrowful and needy condition of the working classes, and to
the discovery of the means by which it may help to raise those by
whose hands all the riches with which our civilization delights to
adorn itself have been produced. To the same hands all those products
owe their existence, without which the whole community would perish
in a single day; it is, therefore the duty of the State to help these
to a more ample and assured wage, and so again to the possibility of
a rational education, and through this to an existence truly worthy
of man. Fully as the working classes are justified in demanding this
from the State, and in pointing out this as its true aim, so
on the other hand, the working man must and will never forget that
the right to all property once lawfully earned is thoroughly
legitimate and unassailable.
But if the rich
citizen, not contented with the actual advantages of large
possessions, desires to make the property of the citizen,
or his capital, the condition of power over the State, and of
participating in the direction of the will of the State and the
determination of its aims, then the rich citizen becomes a
bourgeois, then he makes the fact of possession a legal
condition of political power, then he characterises himself as
belonging to a new privileged class of the people, which now
desires to impress the overruling stamp of its privilege on
all the arrangements of society, just as the noble did in the
Middle Ages, as we have seen, with the privilege of the possession
of land.
The question then
which we have to raise with regard to the French Revolution, and the
period of history inaugurated by it, is this,— Has the third class
which came into power through the French Revolution, regarded itself
as a Bourgeoisie in this sense, and attempted successfully to subject
the people to its privileged political domination?
The answer must be
sought in the great facts of history, and this answer is distinctly
in the affirmative.
We can only cast a
rapid glance at the most important of these facts, which, however,
are amply sufficient to decide the question.
In the very first
decree issued in consequence of the French Revolution, namely, that
of the 3rd of September 1791 (Chapter I. sections 1 and 2), the
difference between active and passive citizens is set forth. Only the
active citizens are entitled to the franchise, and an active citizen,
according to this decree, is only one who pays direct taxes to
a certain amount, which is afterwards more precisely stated.
The amount of this
taxation was fixed with considerable moderation; it was to be only
the value of three days’ work, or if we estimate a days’ work at
the value of 10 silver groschen it would amount to a thaler (three
shillings). But what was far more important was this, that all who
served for wages were declared to be not active citizens, by
which definition the working class was expressly excluded from the
right of election. But after all in such questions as these it is not
the amount which is of importance but the principle.
A census was
introduced, that is to say a specified amount of private property
was, by means of the franchise — this first and most important of
all political rights — made the condition of participation in the
direction of the will of the State, and the determination of its
object.
All those who paid
no direct taxes at all, or a lesser amount than the above, or who
worked for wages, were excluded from exercising power over the
State, and reduced to an inferior subject class. Private property
or the possession of capital had become the condition of
sovereignty over the State, as nobility or landed property
had been in the Middle Ages.
This principle of
the census remains the leading principle of all the constitutions
which resulted from the French Revolution. The only exception was a
short period during which the French Republic of 1793 lasted, which
perished on account of its own want of definiteness, and of the
entire condition of society at that time, and on which I cannot enter
here more particularly.
Yes, following the
rule which is common to all principles, it was a necessary
consequence that the amount first fixed should soon develop itself
into a much larger one.
In the decree of
1814, 300 francs or 80 thalers, instead of the former amount of three
days’ labour, was fixed as the qualification of the franchise by
the charter granted by Louis XVIII. The Revolution of 1830 broke out,
and nevertheless, the law of the 19th of April 1831 enacts that a
payment of direct taxes to the amount of 200 francs or about 53
thalers, shall be the qualification of the franchise.
That which was
called, under Louis Phillipe and Guizot, the “pays légal,”
the country recognised by law, consisted of 200,000 men. There were
no more than 200,000 electors in France qualified by the amount of
their private property, and these bore rule over a country of thirty
millions of inhabitants.
We must here observe
that it is obviously a matter of indifference, whether the principle
of the census, the exclusion of those who have no property from the
franchise, is applied by the law in a direct and open,
or in some covert manner. The effect is always the same.
Thus the second
French Republic in the year 1850 could not possibly recall openly the
universal and direct right to the suffrage which had been once
declared, and which we shall consider presently in its operation. But
they partially effected their object by excluding from the franchise,
by the law of 31st May, 1850, all citizens who had not been domiciled
for at least three years without intermission in the same place. For,
as workmen in France are often forced by their circumstances to
change their abode, and to seek for employment in another commune,
they hoped, and with good reason, to exclude from the suffrage a very
considerable number of working men, who would be unable to prove a
continuous residence of three years in the same place.
We have here, then,
a Census in a disguised form.
Much worse, however,
do we fare in Prussia since the passing of the electoral law, which
divided electors into three classes. By this law, according to the
circumstances of different localities, three, ten, or thirty or more
electors of the third class who have no property, exercise only the
same voting power as a single large capitalist, a rich burgher who
belongs to the first electoral class. Consequently, in point of fact,
if the proportional numbers were on an average, for instance, as one
to ten, nine men in every ten of those who in the year 1848 possessed
the franchise, have lost it through this electoral law which formed
part of the charter of the year 1849, and now exercise it only in
appearance.
But in order to show
you how this law now actually works on an average, it is only
necessary to exhibit to you some figures which are drawn from the
official lists published by the Government.
In the year 1848 we
had in consequence of the right of universal suffrage then
introduced, 3,661,993 original electors.
By the electoral law
of 30th May, 1849, with its three classes, the number of electors was
in the first place reduced to 3,255,703 by depriving of the suffrage
all who had no fixed abode, or who received public alms. Thus 406,000
men were at once deprived of the franchise. This however was the
smallest part of the evil.
The remaining
3,255,000 electors were now to be divided, according to the electoral
laws, into three classes, and according to the official lists
prepared by the direction of the chartered electoral law of 1849 —
153,808
men belonged to the
1st class
409,945
2nd class
2,691,950
3rd class
Now let us leave the
second class out of view, and compare only the first and the third,
the rich burghers and those who possessed no property, with one
another, and we find that 153,800 rich men exercised the same voting
power as 2,691,950 who belonged to the class of workmen, small
citizens, and peasants; that is to say, one rich man exercised
the same right of voting as seventeen who had no property. And
now if we take as our basis the fact, that in the year 1848 universal
suffrage was decreed by the law of the 8th April, so that at that
time 153,800 working men or small citizens were of equal weight at
the elections with 153,800 rich men, and consequently one man without
property was of equal weight with one rich man, it is clear
that now, when it takes seventeen poor men to counterbalance
the vote of one rich man, sixteen working men and small citizens out
of seventeen have had their legal right of voting wrested from them.
But even this,
gentlemen, bad as it is, is only the average effect. In
practice the matter assumes, in consequence of the varying
circumstances of different localities, a very different and far more
unfavourable aspect; and most unfavourable of all where the
inequalities of property are the greatest. Thus the district of
Düsseldorf has 6356
electors of the first class and 166,300 of the third class;
twenty-six electors of the third class therefore exercise in that
place the same voting power as one rich man.
To return from this
digression to our main line of argument. We have shown, and have yet
to adduce further proofs, that since the Bourgeoisie attained to
power through the French Revolution, it has made its own
element, private property, the ruling principle of all the
arrangements of society; that the Bourgeoisie, behaving precisely as
the nobles did in the middle ages with regard to landed property,
now affix the predominant and exclusive impress of its
peculiar principle, private property or capital, the impress of its
privilege, upon all the arrangements of society. The parallel between
the nobility and the Bourgeoisie is in this respect complete.
In relation to the
most important and fundamental point, the composition of the State,
we have already seen this. As, in the middle ages, the possession of
land was the ruling principle of the representation in the German
Parliament, so now by means of the direct or the disguised census,
the payment of taxes, and consequently, as this is conditioned by the
capital which a man possesses, the possession of capital, is
ultimately that which determines the right of election to the
Chambers, and consequently the participation in power over the State.
And so with regard
to all the other arrangements in which I have proved to you that the
landed interest was the ruling principle in the Middle Ages.
I have drawn your
attention to the freedom from taxation of the nobles who then
possessed the land; and I told you that every dominant privileged
class endeavours to shift the burden of supporting the expenses of
the State on the oppressed classes who have no property.
The Bourgeoisie have
done precisely the same. It is true they cannot openly declare that
they intend to be free of taxation. The principle that they express
is on the contrary that every one should pay taxes according to his
income. But they attain to the same result in a disguised
form, at least as far as it goes, by the distinction between direct
and indirect taxes.
Direct taxes,
gentlemen, are those which like the classified income tax, or the
class taxes, are raised from income, and are therefore fixed
according to the amount of the income and capital. Indirect taxes, on
the other hand, are those which are imposed on needs of some kind,
for instance on salt, corn, beer, meat, fuel, or on the need of the
protection provided by law, on the cost of litigation, stamps, &c.
These are in most instances paid by the individual in the price of
the article, without his knowing or observing that he is paying any
tax when he pays for it, or that it is the tax which enhances
the price he pays for the article.
Now you are aware,
gentlemen, that one man who is twenty, fifty, or a hundred times as
rich as another, by no means requires on that account, twenty, fifty,
or a hundred times as much salt, bread or meat, nor drinks fifty or a
hundred times as much beer or wine, nor requires fifty or a hundred
times as much warmth, and therefore fuel, as a workman or poor
citizen.
Hence it follows
that all indirect taxes, instead of being adapted to
individuals according to the proportion of their capital and income,
are paid, in far the greater part, by the poorest and most destitute
classes of the nation. It is true that the Bourgeoisie did not
actually invent indirect taxation; it existed before. But the
Bourgeoisie were the first to develop it in an unprecedented degree
into a system, and laid upon it almost the whole burden of
supplying the necessities of the State.
In order to show you
this, I will glance by way of example at the revenue of Prussia for
the year 1855.
The total amount
received by the State in that year was in round numbers 108,930,000
thalers. From this we have to deduct 11,967,000 thalers the proceeds
of the domains and forests, that is to say, income derived from State
property which we need not reckon here. There remain, therefore,
about 97 millions of revenue from other sources. Of this revenue,
according to the budget, about 26 millions were raised by direct
taxation. But this is not true, and is only made to appear so because
our budget is not constructed on scientific principles, but is only
regulated by the manner in which the taxes are apparently collected.
Out of these 26 millions, 10 millions of land tax ought to be
deducted; for though they are certainly taken directly from the
possessor of the land, yet they are again added by him to the price
he demands for his corn; they are therefore actually paid by the
consumer of the corn, and are really an indirect tax. For the same
reason the tax on trades amounting to 2,900,000 thalers must be
deducted.
There only remains
as revenue really derived from direct taxation —
2,928,000
thalers
from classified income tax.
7,884,000
from class taxes.
2,036,000
from surtax.
Total 12,848,000 thalers.
Thus only 12,800,000
thalers, gentlemen, out of a revenue of 97 millions really proceed
from direct taxation. All that is collected beyond this 12,800,000
thalers (for we must not follow the unscientific classification of
the budget which does not reckon the proceeds of the salt monopoly,
amounting to 8,300,000 thalers, nor 8,849,000 thalers received as a
tax on litigation, as indirect taxes), all this balance I say, with
the exception of a few unimportant items of a special character, is
altogether raised from sources of revenue which are of the nature of
indirect taxes, that is to say they are raised by indirect
taxation.
Indirect taxation is
therefore, gentlemen, the institution by which the Bourgeoisie
creates the privilege of freedom from taxation for great capitalists,
and lays the cost of maintaining the existence of the State on the
poorer classes of the community.
At the same time I
beg you to observe, gentlemen, the remarkable contradiction, and
strange justice involved in this proceeding of laying the whole
burden of the expenses of the State on the indirect taxes, and
so on the poor people, but making the direct taxes the
criterion and condition of the right to the suffrage, that is to say
of the right to political power; while these direct taxes contribute
only the absurdly small proportion of 12 millions to the whole
revenue of 108 millions!
Moreover, I told
you, gentlemen, while speaking of the nobles of the Middle Ages, that
they held in social contempt all the activity and industry of the
burgher class.
Precisely the same
thing occurs to day. It is true that every kind of labour is
now held in high honour, and if a rag picker or a nightman became a
millionaire, he might be certain of being received with high honour
into society.
But with what social
contempt are they greeted, no matter in what way or how hard they
work, who have no private property to back them. This is a fact which
you have no need to learn from my lecture, but which, unhappily, you
can verify often enough by your own daily experience.
Nay, in many
respects the Bourgeoisie carries out more thoroughly and logically
the dominion of its own peculiar element and privileges, than did the
noble in the Middle Ages with respect to the landed interest.
The education of the
people — I speak here of the education of adults — was in the
Middle Ages left in the hands of the clergy. Since then the
newspapers have undertaken this office. But owing to the caution
money which the journals must deposit, and still more to the stamp
duty which is imposed on the newspapers here, in France, and in other
countries, to start a daily paper is a very expensive business that
can only be undertaken with the help of a large amount of capital; so
that by this means the possibility of appealing to the thought of
the people, of enlightening and leading them, has become a
privilege of the possessors of capital.
If this were not the
case, gentlemen, you would possess very different, and much
better journals!
It is interesting to
see, gentlemen, at what an early period this attempt of the richer
Bourgeoise to make the press one of the privileges of capital, showed
itself, and in what a naive undisguised form. On the 24th July, 1789,
a few days after the storming of the Bastille, and therefore soon
after the Bourgeoisie had seized upon political power, the
representatives of the Commune of Paris issued a decree by which the
printers were declared to be responsible for the publication of
pamphlets or leaflets written by authors “sans existence
connue.” The freedom of the press which was thus seized upon,
was to be allowed therefore only to writers of known means of
subsistence. Property appears therefore as the condition of
the freedom of the press, nay in fact of the morality of a writer!
This naiveté
of the first days of the rule of the Bourgeois, only expresses in an
artless and open way, what has been attained by the ingenious
contrivance of caution money and stamp duty in our day.
We must be satisfied
gentlemen, with these great and characteristic facts, which
corroborate the view we have taken of the Middle Ages.
We have now seen,
gentlemen, two periods of the world, each of which is dominated by
the ruling idea of a particular class of the community which
impresses its own principle on all the social arrangements of its
time.
First the idea of
nobility, or of the possession of land which forms the ruling
principle of the Middle Ages, and permeates all its institutions.
This period closed
with the French Revolution, although you will understand that,
especially in Germany, where the change was not brought about by the
people, but by very gradual and incomplete reforms introduced by the
Government, numerous and important extensions of that first period of
history have occurred, which even at the present day greatly hamper
the progress of the Bourgeoisie.
We saw in the next
place the period of history which begins at the eighteenth century
with the French Revolution, which has for its principle large
private property, or capital, and makes this into the privilege
which pervades all the arrangements of society, and is the condition
of participation in directing the will of the State and determining
its aims.
This period also,
little as outward appearances seem to show it, is virtually already
closed.
On the 24th February
1848, the dawn of a new period of history appeared.
For on that day in
France (that country in whose great struggles the victory or the
defeat of freedom means victory or defeat for the whole human race) a
revolution broke out which called a working man into the provisional
Government, declared that the object of the State was the improvement
of the lot of the working classes, and proclaimed the universal and
direct right to the suffrage, by which every citizen who had attained
his twenty-first year, without any reference to the amount of his
property, received an equal share in the government of the State in
the direction of its will and the determination of its aims.
You see, gentlemen,
that if the Revolution of 1789 was the Revolution of the Tiers état,
the Third class, it is now the Fourth class, which in
1789 was still enfolded within the third class and appeared to be
identical with it, which will now raise its principle to be the
dominating principle of the community, and cause all its arrangements
to be permeated by it.
But here, in the
domination of the fourth class comes to light this immense
difference, that the fourth class is the last and the outside of all,
the disinterested class of the community, which sets up and can set
up no further exclusive condition, either legal or actual, neither
nobility nor landed possessions nor the possession of capital, which
it could make into a new privilege and force upon the
arrangements of society.
We are all
working men in so far as we have even the will to make
ourselves useful in any way to the community.
This Fourth
class in whose heart therefore no germ of a new privilege is
contained, is for this very reason synonymous with the whole human
race. Its interest is in truth the interest of the whole
of humanity, its freedom is the freedom of humanity itself, and
its domination is the domination of all.
Whoever therefore
invokes the idea of the working class as the ruling principle of
society, in the sense in which I have explained it to you, does not
put forth a cry that divides and separates the classes of society. On
the contrary, he utters a cry of reconciliation, a cry which
embraces the whole of the community, a cry for doing away with all
the contradictions in every circle of society; a cry of union
in which all should join who do not wish for privileges and the
oppression of the people by privileged classes; a cry of love
which having once gone up from the heart of the people, will for
ever remain the true cry of the people, and whose meaning will
make it still a cry of love, even when it sounds the war cry
of the people.
We will now consider
the principle of the working class as the ruling principle of the
community only in three of its relations:—
(1) In relation to
the formal means of its realisation.
(2) In relation to
its moral significance.
(3) In relation to
the political conception of the object of the State, which is
inherent in that principle.
We cannot on this
occasion enter upon its other aspects, and even those to which we
have referred can be only very cursorily examined in the short time
that remains to us.
The formal means of
carrying out this principle is the universal and direct suffrage
which we have already discussed. I say universal and direct
suffrage, gentlemen, not that mere universal suffrage which we had in
the year 1848. The introduction of two degrees in the electoral act,
namely, original electors and electors simply, is nothing but an
ingenious method purposely introduced with the object of falsifying
as far as possible the will of the people by means of the electoral
act.
It is true that even
universal and direct suffrage is no magic wand, gentlemen, which is
able to protect you from temporary mistakes.
We have seen in
France two bad elections following one another, in 1848 and 1849. But
universal and direct suffrage is the only means which in the
long run of itself corrects the mistakes to which its momentary wrong
use may lead. It is that spear which heals the wounds itself has
made. It is impossible in the long run with universal and direct
suffrage that the elected body should be any other than the exact and
true likeness of the people which has elected it.
The people must
therefore at all times regard universal and direct suffrage as its
indispensable political weapon, as the most fundamental and important
of its demands.
I will now glance at
the moral significance of the principle of society which we
are considering.
It is possible that
the idea of converting the principle of the lower classes of
society into the ruling principle of the State and the community may
appear to be extremely dangerous and immoral, and to threaten the
destruction of morality and education by a “modern barbarism.”
And it is no wonder
that this idea should be so regarded at the present day since even
public opinion, gentlemen — I have already indicated by what means,
namely, the newspapers — receives its impressions from the mint of
capital, and from the hands of the privileged wealthy
Bourgeoisie.
Nevertheless this
fear is only a prejudice, and it can be proved on the contrary, that
the idea would exhibit the greatest advance and triumph of morality
that the history of the world has ever recorded.
That view is a
prejudice I repeat, and it is simply the prejudice of the present
time which is dominated by privilege.
At another time,
namely, that of the first French Republic of the year 1793 (of which
I have already told you that I cannot enter into further particulars
on this occasion, but that it was destined to perish by its own want
of definite aims) the opposite prejudice prevailed. It was
then a current dogma that all the upper classes were immoral and
corrupt, and that only the lower classes were good and moral. In the
new declaration of the rights of man issued by the French convention,
that powerful constituent assembly of France, this was actually laid
down by a special article, namely, article nineteen, which runs as
follows, “Toute institution qui ne suppose le peuple bon, et le
magistrat corruptible, est vicieuse.” “Every institution which
does not assume that the people are good and the magistracy
contemptible is vicious.” You see that this is exactly the opposite
to the happy faith now required, according to which there is no
greater sin than to doubt of the goodwill and the virtue of the
Government, while it is taken for granted that the people are
a sort of tiger and a sink of corruption.
At the time of which
we are speaking the opposite dogma had advanced so far, that almost
every one who had a whole coat on his back was thought to be a bad
man, or at least an object of suspicion; and virtue, purity, and
patriotic morality were thought to be possessed only by those who had
no decent clothes. It was the period of sansculottism.
This view,
gentlemen, is in fact founded on a truth, but it presents
itself in an untrue and perverted form. Now there is
nothing more dangerous than a truth which presents itself in an
untrue perverted form. For in whatever way we deal with it, we are
certain to go wrong. If we adopt such a truth in its untrue perverted
form, it will lead at certain times to most pernicious destruction,
as was the case with sansculottism. But if we regard the whole
statement as untrue on account of its untrue perverted form, then we
are much worse. For we have rejected a truth, and, in the case
before us, a truth without the recognition of which not a single
sound step in our political life can be taken.
The only course that
remains open to us, therefore, is to set aside the untrue and
perverted form of the statement, and to bring its true essence into
distinct relief.
The public opinion
of the present day is inclined, as I have said, to declare the whole
statement to be utterly untrue, and mere declamation on the part of
Rousseau and the French Revolution. But even if it were possible to
adopt the course of rejection in the case of Rousseau and the French
Revolution, it is quite impossible to do so in the case of one of the
greatest of German philosophers, the centenary of whose birth-day
will be celebrated in this town next month: I allude to the
philosopher Fichte, one of the greatest thinkers of all nations and
times.
Even Fichte declares
expressly in so many words, that the higher the rank the greater the
moral deterioration, that — these are his very words —
“Wickedness increases in proportion to the elevation of rank.”
But Fichte did not
develop the ultimate ground of this statement. He adduces, as the
ground of this corruption, the selfishness and egoism of the upper
classes. But then the question must immediately arise, whether
selfishness does not also prevail in the lower classes, or why it
should prevail less in these. Nay it must at first sight appear to be
an extraordinary paradox to assert that less selfishness should
prevail in the lower classes than in the higher, who have a
considerable advantage over them in education and training, which are
recognised as moralising elements.
The following is the
true ground of what as I said appears at first sight to be an
extraordinary paradox.
In a long period in
the past, as we have seen, the development of the people, which is
the life-breath of history, proceeds by an ever advancing abolition
of the privileges which guarantee to the higher classes their
position as higher and ruling classes. The desire to maintain this,
in other words their personal interest, brings therefore every member
of the higher classes who has not once for all by a high range of
vision elevated himself above his purely personal existence — and
you will understand, gentlemen, that this can never be more than a
very small number of exceptional characters — into a position
thoroughly hostile in principle to the development of the
people, to the progress of education and science, to the advance of
culture, to all the life-breath and victory of historic life.
It is this
opposition of the personal interest of the higher classes to the
development of the nation in culture which evokes the great and
necessary immorality of the higher classes. It is a life, whose daily
conditions you need only represent to yourselves, in order to
perceive the deep inward deterioration to which it must lead. To be
compelled daily to oppose all that is great and good, to be
obliged to grieve at its successes, to rejoice at its
failures, to restrain its further progress, to be obliged to undo or
to execrate the advantages it has already attained. It is to lead
their life as in the country of an enemy — and this enemy is
the moral community of their own people, amongst whom they
live, and for whom to strive constitutes all true morality. It
is to lead their lives, I say, as in the country of an enemy;
this enemy is their own people, and the fact that it is regarded and
treated as their enemy must generally at all events be cunningly
concealed, and this hostility must more or less artfully be covered
with a veil.
And to this we must
add that either they must do all this against the voice of
their own conscience and intelligence, or they must have stifled the
voice by habit so as not to be oppressed by it, or lastly they must
have never known this voice, never known anything different and
better than the religion of their own advantage!
This life,
gentlemen, leads therefore necessarily to a thorough depreciation and
contempt of all striving to realise an ideal, to a compassionate
smile at the bare mention of the great name of the Idea, to a deeply
seated want of sympathy and even antipathy to all that is beautiful
and great, to a complete swallowing up of every moral element in us,
by the one passion of selfish seeking for our own advantage, and of
immoderate desire for pleasure.
It is this
opposition, gentlemen, between personal interest and the
development of the nation in culture, which the lower classes,
happily for them, are without.
It is unfortunately
true that there is always enough of selfishness in the lower classes,
much more than there should be, but this selfishness of theirs,
wherever it is found, is the fault of single persons, of individuals,
and not the inevitable fault of the class.
A very reasonable
instinct warns the members of the lower classes, that so long as each
of them relates himself only to himself, and each one thinks only of
himself, he can hope for no important improvement in his position.
But the more
earnestly and deeply the lower classes of society strive after the
improvement of their condition as a class, the improvement of the lot
of their class, the more does this personal interest, instead of
opposing the movement of history and thereby being condemned to that
immorality of which we have spoken, assume a direction which
thoroughly accords with the development of the whole people,
with the victory of the idea, with the advance of culture,
with the living principle of history itself, which is none other than
the development of freedom. Or in other words, as we have
already seen, its interest is the interest of the entire human
race.
You are therefore in
this happy position, gentlemen, that instead of it being possible for
you to be dead to the idea, you are on the contrary urged to the
deepest sympathy for it by your own personal interests. You
are in the happy position that the idea which constitutes your true
personal interest, is one with the throbbing pulse of history, and
with the living principle of moral development. You are able
therefore to devote yourselves with personal passion to this
historical development, and to be certain that the more strongly this
passion grows and burns within you in the true sense in which
I have explained it to you, the higher is the moral position you have
attained.
These are the
reasons, gentlemen, why the dominion of the fourth class in the State
must produce such an efflorescence of morality, culture, and science,
as has not yet been witnessed in history.
But there is yet
another reason for this, one which is most intimately connected with
all the views I have explained to you, and forms their keystone.
The fourth estate
not only has a different formal political principle from that of the
Bourgeoisie, namely, the universal direct franchise, instead of the
census of the Bourgeoisie, and not only has through its position in
life a different relation to moral forces than the higher classes,
but has also — and partly in consequence of these — quite another
and a different conception of the moral object of the State
from that of the Bourgeoisie.
According to the
Bourgeoisie, the moral idea of the State is exclusively this, that
the unhindered exercise by himself of his own faculties should be
guaranteed to each individual.
If we were all
equally strong, equally clever, equally educated, and equally rich,
this might be regarded as a sufficient and a moral idea.
But since we neither
are nor can be thus equal, this idea is not
satisfactory, and therefore necessarily leads in its consequences to
deep immorality, for it leads to this, that the stronger, the
cleverer, and the richer fleece the weaker and pick their pockets.
The moral idea of
the State according to the working class on the contrary is this,
that the unhindered and free activity of individual powers exercised
by the individual is not sufficient, but that something must
be added to this in a morally ordered community — namely,
solidarity of interests, community and reciprocity in
development.
In accordance with
this difference, the Bourgeoisie conceive the moral object of the
State to consist solely and exclusively in the protection of the
personal freedom and the property of the individual.
This is a
policeman’s idea, gentlemen, a policeman’s idea for this reason,
because it represents to itself the State from the point of view of a
policeman [nachtwächter], whose whole function consists in preventing robbery and
burglary.[a] Unfortunately this policeman’s idea is not only familiar
to genuine liberals, but is even to be met with not unfrequently
among so-called democrats, owing to their defective imagination. If
the Bourgeoisie would express the logical inference from their idea,
they must maintain that according to it if there were no such thing
as robbers and thieves, the State itself would be entirely
superfluous.[*]
Very differently,
gentlemen, does the fourth estate regard the object of the State, for
it apprehends it in its true nature.
History, gentlemen,
is a struggle with nature; with the misery, the ignorance, the
poverty, the weakness, and consequent slavery in which we were
involved when the human race came upon the scene in the beginning of
history. The progressive victory over this weakness — this
is the development of freedom which history displays to us.
In this struggle we
should never have made one step forward, nor shall we ever advance
one step more by acting on the principle of each one for himself,
each one alone.
It is the State
whose function it is to carry on this development of freedom,
this development of the human race until its freedom is attained.
The State is
this unity of individuals into a moral whole, a unity which increases
a million-fold the strength of all the individuals who are
comprehended in it, and multiplies a million times the power which
would be at the disposal of them all as individuals.
The object of the
State, therefore, is not only to protect the personal freedom
and property of the individual with which he is supposed according to
the idea of the Bourgeoisie to have entered the State. On the
contrary, the object of the State is precisely this, to place the
individuals through this union in a position to attain to such
objects, and reach such a stage of existence as they never
could have reached as individuals; to make them capable of acquiring
an amount of education, power, and freedom which would
have been wholly unattainable by them as individuals.
Accordingly the
object of the State is to bring man to positive expansion, and
progressive development, in other words, to bring the destiny of man
— that is the culture of which the human race is capable
— into actual existence; it is the training and
development of the human race to freedom.
This is the true
moral nature of the State, gentlemen, its true and high mission. So
much is this the case, that from the beginning of time through the
very force of events it has more or less been carried out by
the State without the exercise of will, and unconsciously even
against the will of its leaders.
But the working
class, gentlemen, the lower classes of the community in general,
through the helpless condition in which its members find themselves
placed as individuals, have always acquired the deep instinct, that
this is and must be the duty of the State, to help the individual by
means of the union of all to such a development as he would be
incapable of attaining as an individual.
A State therefore
which was ruled by the idea of the working class, would no longer be
driven, as all States have hitherto been, unconsciously and against
their will by the nature of things, and the force of circumstances,
but it would make this moral nature of the State its mission, with
perfect clearness of vision and complete consciousness. It would
complete with unchecked desire and perfect consistency,
that which hitherto has only been wrung in scanty and imperfect
fragments from wills that were opposed to it, and for this very
reason — though time does not permit me to explain in any
detail this necessary connection of cause and effect — it would
produce a soaring flight of the human spirit, a development of an
amount of happiness, culture, well-being, and freedom without example
in the history of the world, and in comparison with which, the most
favourable conditions that have existed in former times would appear
but dim shadows of the reality.
This it is,
gentlemen, which must be called the working man’s idea of the
State, his conception of the object of the State, which, as you see
is just as different from the bourgeois conception of the object of
the State, as the principle of the working class, of the claim of all
to direct the will of the State, or universal suffrage, is different
from the principle held by the Bourgeoisie, the census.
The series of ideas
which I have explained to you must be regarded as the idea of the
working class. It is this that I had in view when I spoke to you, at
the commencement of my lecture, of the connection of the particular
period of history in which we live with the idea of the working
class. It is this period of history beginning with February,
1848, to which has been allotted the task of bringing this idea of
the State into actual existence. We may congratulate ourselves,
gentlemen, that we have been born at a time which is destined to
witness the most glorious work of history, and that we are permitted
to take a part in accomplishing it.
But on all who
belong to the working class the duty of taking up an entirely new
attitude is imposed, if there is any truth in what I have said.
Nothing is more
calculated to impress upon a class a worthy and moral character, than
the consciousness that it is destined to become a ruling class, that
it is called upon to raise the principle of its class to the
principle of the entire age, to convert its idea into the
leading idea of the whole of society and thus to form this society by
impressing upon it its own character.
The high and
world-wide honour of this destiny must occupy all your thoughts.
Neither the load of the oppressed, nor the idle dissipation of the
thoughtless, nor even the harmless frivolity of the insignificant,
are henceforth becoming to you. You are the rock on which the Church
of the present is to be built.
It is the lofty
moral earnestness of this thought which must with devouring
exclusiveness possess your spirits, fill your minds, and shape your
whole lives, so as to make them worthy of it, conformable to it, and
always related to it. It is the moral earnestness of this thought
which must never leave you, but must be present to your heart in your
workshops during the hours of labour, in your leisure hours, during
your walks, at your meetings, and even when you stretch your limbs to
rest upon your hard couches, it is this thought which must
fill and occupy your minds till they lose themselves in dreams. The
more exclusively you immerse yourselves in the moral earnestness of
this thought, the more undividedly you give yourselves up to its
glowing fervour, by so much the more, be assured, will you hasten
the time within which our present period of history will have to
fulfil its task, so much the sooner will you bring about the
accomplishment of this task.
If there be only two
or three of you, gentlemen, who now hear me, in whom I should
be so happy as to have kindled the moral glow of this idea in its
depth as I feel it and have described it to you, then I should
already have reaped a rich harvest and a rich reward for my lecture.
Before all things,
gentlemen, your hearts must remain strangers to despondency and
doubt, to which a view of the events of history not sufficiently wide
for this idea may easily lead.
Thus for example it
is distinctly not true that the French Republic was destroyed
by the Coup d’ Etat of December 1851.
That which could not
last in France, that which really perished at that time was not the
Republic, but that Republic which, as I have already shown you,
abolished universal suffrage by the electoral law of the 30th of May
1850, and introduced a disguised census for the exclusion of the
working men. That was therefore the Bourgeois Republic, which desired
to impress the stamp of the Bourgeoisie, the domination of capital,
on the Republicanised State. This it was which enabled the
French usurper, with the pretence of restoring universal suffrage, to
destroy the Republic, which would otherwise have found an impregnable
bulwark in the breasts of the French working men.
That then which
really could not last in France, and was destroyed at that time was
not the Republic, but the Bourgeois Republic; and thus
it is established according to the true view of history, exactly as
in this example, that the period on which we entered in February
1848, tolerates no longer any State which, no matter whether in a
monarchical or republican form, desires to impress the ruling
political stamp of the third class on the community, or to maintain
it in itself.
From the lofty
mountain summits of science, gentlemen, the dawn of the new day is
seen earlier than below in the turmoil of daily life.
Have you ever
witnessed, gentlemen, a sunrise from a lofty mountain?
A purple streak
colours the extreme verge of the horizon blood red, announcing the
new light; mist and clouds gather, roll themselves into a mass, throw
themselves against the glow of morning, and succeed in covering its
rays for a moment. But no power in the world can avail to hinder the
slow and majestic rising of the sun itself, which an hour later
stands in the firmament visible to all, and giving light and warmth
to all the earth.
What an hour is in
this spectacle which nature presents to us every day, one or two
centuries are in the far more imposing spectacle of a sunrise in the
world’s history.
Footnote
[*] This idea of the
State, which in fact does away with the State, and changes it into a
mere union of egoistic interests, is the idea of the State as
regarded by liberalism, and historically was produced by it.
It forms by the power which it has necessarily obtained and which
stands in direct relation to its superficiality, the true danger of
spiritual and moral decay, the true danger, which threatens us at
this day, of a “modern barbarism.” In Germany happily it is
strongly opposed by the ancient learning which has once for all
become the indestructible foundation of German thought. From this
proceeds the view “that it is necessary to enlarge the notion of
the State to the fullest extent to which in my opinion it is possible
to enlarge it, that the State should be the organisation, in which
the whole virtue of man should realise itself.” (Augustus
Boeth’s address to his University of the 22nd March, 1862.)
Transcriber’s Note
[a] An alternate, more literal translation for “policeman”
would be “night-watchman” (nachtwächter). This concept of a “night-watchman state,”
coined and mocked by Lassalle in this speech, has since been reclaimed as a desirable state of affairs by so-called “libertarians,”
“minarchists,” and other apologists for capitalist rule. —New note by Bill Wright, transcriber.
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<h2>N.M.</h2>
<h1>Russ. Oppositionists on Hunger Strike!</h1>
<h3>(1931)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1931/index.htm#tm31_31" target="new">Vol. IV No. 31 (Whole No. 90)</a>, 14 November 1931, p. 1.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst"><small>We give here a brief account of the brutal measures employed by the Stalinist bureaucrats and G.P.U. agents against the Left Opposition at Verchne-Uralsk where 130 Bolshevik-Leninists are held at an isolation camp. This savage treatment of the best revolutionists and Communists is meted out to the thousands of Left Oppositionists who are exiled and imprisoned in all parts of the Soviet Union.</small></p>
<p><small>The disappearance of Christian Rakovsky from Barnaoul, and whole present location is not known to this day, except to Stalin and his jailers, is arousing the indignation of revolutionists throughout the world. It is not known whether Rakovsky is alive or dead. This situation applies to others of the young and old Bolsheviks being persecuted by the Stalinist bureaucracy.</small></p>
<p><small>We demand a cessation of the persecution of the Left Opposition. The militant workers must insist upon a knowledge of Christian Rakovsky’s whereabouts. Stalin and his henchmen will not be permitted to ignore or forget their brutal actions, which include imprisonment, exile and murder of revolutionary Communists. Time will yet give a reckoning. – <em>Ed.</em></small></p>
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<p class="fst">MOSCOW. – At the isolation camp of Verchne-Uralsk, where 130 “Trotskyists” are kept, the repression was so severe that the prisoners answered by a hunger strike. This lasted eighteen days, after which the administration resorted to forcible feeding. The result was resistance, the use of brute force, shooting, with one comrade wounded, so far as we know. The treatment to which the prisoners are subjected is sufficiently described by the fact that thirty comrades are sick with scurvy.</p>
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N.M.
Russ. Oppositionists on Hunger Strike!
(1931)
From The Militant, Vol. IV No. 31 (Whole No. 90), 14 November 1931, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
We give here a brief account of the brutal measures employed by the Stalinist bureaucrats and G.P.U. agents against the Left Opposition at Verchne-Uralsk where 130 Bolshevik-Leninists are held at an isolation camp. This savage treatment of the best revolutionists and Communists is meted out to the thousands of Left Oppositionists who are exiled and imprisoned in all parts of the Soviet Union.
The disappearance of Christian Rakovsky from Barnaoul, and whole present location is not known to this day, except to Stalin and his jailers, is arousing the indignation of revolutionists throughout the world. It is not known whether Rakovsky is alive or dead. This situation applies to others of the young and old Bolsheviks being persecuted by the Stalinist bureaucracy.
We demand a cessation of the persecution of the Left Opposition. The militant workers must insist upon a knowledge of Christian Rakovsky’s whereabouts. Stalin and his henchmen will not be permitted to ignore or forget their brutal actions, which include imprisonment, exile and murder of revolutionary Communists. Time will yet give a reckoning. – Ed.
MOSCOW. – At the isolation camp of Verchne-Uralsk, where 130 “Trotskyists” are kept, the repression was so severe that the prisoners answered by a hunger strike. This lasted eighteen days, after which the administration resorted to forcible feeding. The result was resistance, the use of brute force, shooting, with one comrade wounded, so far as we know. The treatment to which the prisoners are subjected is sufficiently described by the fact that thirty comrades are sick with scurvy.
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<h2>N. Markin</h2>
<h4>How the 16th Party Congress Was Prepared</h4>
<h1>The Persecution of the Russian Bolshevik Opposition</h1>
<h3>(August 1930)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1930/index.htm#tm30_22" target="new">Vol. III No. 28</a>, 15 August 1930, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">Since the Spring of this year, the Stalinist leadership has again been compelled to pose as a task of the moment the question of the “extermination of the Opposition”. This task arises out of the fact that, in spite of the boastings to the contrary by the members of the apparatus, the Opposition lives, works and will continue to work. It is enough to run through the Soviet papers to be convinced that rarely does a nucleus meeting or Party conference take place without Oppositionists or semi-Oppositionists taking the floor. The apparatus struggle against the Left Opposition is developed exclusively by means of repression. In connection with this Congress, the repression mounted frightfully. The rotten monolithism of the top is guaranteed by the coercion, the arrests, the banishments at the bottom. The Solitaries replace the discussion that should have preceded the Congress. That is how the Congress of the Party was prepared.</p>
<p>The aim of this article is to give the genuine facts, particularly on the “preparations” for the Congress. In January-February there was a strong wave of arrests of Oppositionists, of comrades who sympathized with them, and even of comrades simply suspected of sympathizing with them. According to an approximate reckoning more or less correct, 300 comrades were arrested in Moscow alone. A large number of comrades arrested in the provinces passed through Moscow to the Butirskaia prison, coming mainly from the Ukraine, and especially from the Donbas (the proletarian mining district).<br>
</p>
<h4>Non-Party Workers Arrested</h4>
<p class="fst">At Butirki, there were a few dozen non-Party worker’s of Moscow, arrested for the sympathy they expressed for the Opposition, who are now deported to Siberia. Among the prisoners, there was also a certain percentage of capitulators, mainly of those who repented under the influence of a momentary weakness, and who subsequently declared, almost openly, that they had made a mistake. Many of them are no longer just deported, but sent to the Solitaries. They now demand from the capitulators not only the complete and absolute disavowal of their convictions but also that they disclose all their connections. For refusal – there is the Solitary (Zabrovskaia, Blumenfeld, and dozens of others).</p>
<p>The lengths to which they will go in arrests and deportations can be seen by the fact that among those arrested there is a big percentage of people arrested by chance, “seized” for reasons of relationship or simply because of saying Hello to an Oppositionist. That is how dozens of people were arrested who have no connection with the Opposition. (It frequently happens that they become real Oppositionists in prison or deportation!) During this period the Moscow comrades have distributed a leaflet and have assumed charge of a whole series of strikes which were provoked by the policy of the bureaucracy (in Serpuchov at Moscow, four factories of Mostriutaga and elsewhere). This has still further irritated the bureaucracy.</p>
<p>A wave of arrests that began at the end of the winter continued to rise up to the month of May. The number of persons arrested in this period is at least 500, without counting more than 100 arrested persons who were transported to the Solitaries. By this time the figure has further increased.</p>
<p>A remark must be made here. The Stalinist repression exercized against the Bolshevik-Leninists is distinguished from that practised against the Memilieviks and S.R.s. While the latter are simply isolated from the social life of the country, to hamper them in their counter-revolutionary action against the proletarian dictatorship for the Oppositionists who fight Centrism which upsets the dictatorship of the proletariat – the Stalinist course is directed toward their <em>moral strangulation and their physical extermination</em>.</p>
<p>Among the Oppositionists arrested in Winter were comrades Silov and Rabinovitch, who had unleashed against them the special hatred of the apparatus: <em>they have been shot</em>. How comrade Blumkin was shot before them – this crime is known to. the whole world.</p>
<p>The repression has been sharpened against all the deportees. A regime of horrors has been established: they have lost the right to work, that is, the right to serve, and by that they have acquired the right to be hungry. The official aid a deportee receives has long ago been reduced to 15 rubles ($7.50 a month) and that means hunger, and cold in winter. Since they have no right to be members of the cooperatives, they can frequently buy nothing, even with these 15 rubles; they live in lodgings without fire, remaining for weeks without warm food, often without light. Especially painful is the situation of the deportees in Narym, one of the most terrible places of deportation in Siberia. The Narym deportees are literally condemned to death by hunger. Moreover at Narym which, by the harshness of living conditions, is similar to a Solitary, they transport the Bolsheviks originally deported elsewhere, in an ever growing number. It is a course deliberately directed towards the physical extermination of the Opposition.</p>
<p>Over and above the material privations, every deportee is exposed to innumerable “little” vexations, the fruit of the absolute arbitrariness and impunity of the local G.P.U. The already tiny aid is kept back (a case is cited where it was withheld for four months and where the only reply to the demand for it was mockery of this sort: “Go to Moscow!” – that is: Capitulate! In a similar situation a comrade reduced to despair asked that he be led to a Solitary, and that is not the only instance); people simply suspected of knowing a deported Oppositionist are arrested, thus sowing terror among the local population in order to cast the Oppositionists into absolute isolation.</p>
<p>Systematic raids are organized, in which not only political works are seized From comrade L.S. Sosnovsky, in prison, his work on the agrarian policy of Centrism was seized; at comrade C.C. Rakovsky, his declaration to the Party was taken, etc.) – but also quotations from the works of Marx and Lenin. This is accompanied by a courier blockade so as to isolate the deportees politically. During the Congress, the G.P.U. did not let a single letter go through in order to prevent the elaboration of a collective declaration of the Opposition. But this did not succeed, and a declaration bearing the signatures of comrades Rakovsky, Moralov,, Kasparova and Kossior. was presented (all the deportees joined with it). In deportation the receipt of a letter is an event! We are not speaking even of political, but of family letters.</p>
<p>All the deportees live under the constant threat of being transferred to a Solitary (and this threat exists for the smallest thing: for instance, a delay of five minutes for the compulsory registration at the G.P.U.). Often they do not even give formal reasons. The real aim is to shatter the revolutionary intransigence of the Oppositionist. At the same time with an open tendency to transfer the points of deportation to the harshest regions of the North, the Solitaries are filled up more and more. Their number is always growing because those that exist are already full. The regime in the prisons and Solitaries is incomparably worse than that of deportation. In the prisons there is rarely any light (the windows are covered with an opaque panel), the damp cells are occupied by two or three times as many prisoners as the rules provide for; place is lacking for sleep, not only on the cots, but even on the floor.<br>
</p>
<h4>In the Solitaries</h4>
<p class="fst">What the sanitary conditions are is not difficult to judge. In their cells, the Oppositionists, kept separate from each other, are mixed up with counter-revolutionaries and criminals who not only detest our comrades as the representatives of Bolshevism but hate and jeer at them, casting upon them all the hatred they nurture against the Soviet power. The system of the G.P.U. – holding Oppositionists in common cells with criminals – did not even exist in the prisons of czarism. This system is applied only to Oppositionists, The Mensheviks (at Butyrki, for instance) enjoy all the rights of political prisoners; they are kept separate from criminals, their cell doors are open; they have a small library at their disposal.</p>
<p>The cells of the Oppositionists are closed, nowhere is visiting allowed them, they have no rights to anything sent from the outside. And in addition to all this, they are treated coarsely and laughed at. Under such a regime, hunger strikes break out without end, and sometimes last until a mortal end (let us remember the heroic death of comrade Butov). To the hunger strikes, to the minimum demands of the prisoners, the prison direction replies by having them systematically beaten, by soaking them with water in the bitter cold of winter, etc. Beatings are a system known in the prison of Kharkov, in the Verchnye-Uralsk Solitary, in the Leningrad prison, and in a whole number of others. It was through blows that comrade Haenrichsen was killed in the Leningrad prison.</p>
<p>The colony of Oppositionists deported at Tomsk has gathered a great deal of information on the absolutely terrible crimes Stalin has perpetrated against our comrades. It has presented a document of protest to which all the other colonies of deportees have rallied. In this document it is learned that hunger prevails in all the places of deportation for Oppositionists; it is established that for Bolsheviks, the conditions of Stalinist deportation are incomparably worse than those of czarism. Many deportees have become invalids (there are dozens of them) for lack of any medical succor, at Narym and similar places elsewhere. The seriously ill are not even transported to the nearest inhabited regions where a doctor might be found. When it is decided to transport an ill comrade, it is only when he is in a hopeless state. This winter, many comrades had their limbs frozen, and some had to undergo amputations because no medical aid was given them in time.</p>
<p>Babies, right after their birth, have been taken from their mother, and the latter sent into Solitaries (comrade Yanovskaia among others). The same document informs us that a new shooting of Oppositionists took place at Solovski; it is no rare thing for the G.P.U. now to pronounce sentences, not of 3 to 5 years, but of 10 years, in vengeance for the political conduct of a comrade. For instance, without any formal proof, comrade Golodni was condemned to 10 years in Solitary. In all the colonies of deportees, before the 16th Congress, comrades were arrested and sent to the Solitaries. We do not give here the names of the colonies nor the names of the comrades arrested; we will deal only with the most striking facts.<br>
</p>
<h4>A Hunger Strike in Ichim</h4>
<p class="fst">In May, at Ichim, the whole colony was arrested – 9 comrades – as well as 35 inhabitants of the city who, according to the accusation of the G.P.U., had been propagandized by Oppositionists. All are now in terrible condition, our comrades write us – they are locked up in the Sverdolsk prison. Two of them are seriously ill, they do not receive the political prisoner’s ration, they are locked up in different cells, and have been compelled to declare a hunger strike. How this hunger strike ended, and above all, what was subsequently the fate of the Ichim deportees, we do not know.</p>
<p>The comrades informing us, call this arrest together with 15 non-Oppositionists an “amalgam”, which means an artificial liaison for the purpose of discrediting our comrades by means of people alien to the Opposition. The destruction of the colony and the creation of a Thermidorian amalgam are the work of a provocateur. The provocations practised against the Opposition recently have assumed Homeric proportions.</p>
<p>Not only are the Opposition groups still filled with provocateurs, but these “operate” also in the deportation and in prison. There, their task is to disclose the most intransigent, to provoke decomposition by leading comrades to capitulate, etc. A provocateur showing himself under the mask of a “capitulator” is now a current phenomenon in the deportation.</p>
<p>That is how the colony of deportees at Kaminsk was destroyed. Two comrades, Stolovsky and Densov, were transferred to the Tomsk prison, the others, to the furthest corners of Siberia. This colony was dispersed only because it didn’t produce a single capitulator. In their declaration to the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U., the Kaminsk comrades showed how the cadres of the local Party organizations are recruited. Basing themselves on exact information, they name more than 30 members of the Party now occupying responsible posts who were agents of the White terror during the days of Kolchak and who shot Reds. These elements are leaders of this district to this very day. The Kolchakists are chiefly to be found in great numbers in the G.P.U. This fact throws a striking light on the question: who is carrying out the Stalinist policy which hounds the deported Bolsheviks, which aids in their extermination? Ex-Whites, and not accidentally!</p>
<p>At Rubtsevsk, Siberia, without any accusation being formulated against them, four Oppositionists were arrested: Abramsky, Antokolisky, Veskresensky, Evingelstaedt. From the Rubtsevsk prison, they sent a declaration to the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. on June 4, in which they said: “We can only consider this repressive act excercized against us only as a preparation by unusual means for the 16th Party Congress ...” “The repression will not halt the struggle for the redressment of the Party, just as the damage done will not prevent the Party from returning to the positions of Leninism”. What was subsequently the fate of the Rubtsevsk comrades is not known to us. But there is no doubt that they will be imprisoned in the Solitaries.</p>
<p>A similar destruction took place at Kansk (comrades Kusminsky and Landau), at Alma-Ata (comrades Goldin and others), at Slavgorod, Chimkent, and many other places. Raids have taken place everywhere. The impudent raid upon comrade Rakovsky has been told everywhere and is well known. Upon him, as the leader of the Russian Opposition, the Stalinists are concentrating their hatred. Seriously ill (afflicted with heart trouble and malaria), comrade Rakovsky, far from being sent to a more clement climate (as the doctors ordered) has been transported from Astrakan to Barnaoul. Comrade Rakovsky, who is 57 years old, of which 40 have been devoted to the struggle for Communism, passed a very painful Winter, his sick organism having to undergo cold of 40 to 50 degrees. The isolation in which he is held is more rigorous than for anybody else. The game of Stalin is clear: slowly but surely to finish off Rakovsky.<br>
</p>
<h4>Sosnovsky in Danger</h4>
<p class="fst">It is in an even more painful situation that another eminent leader of the Opposition, an old Bolshevik, comrade L.S. Sosnovsky is to be found. He is incarcerated in the Tomsk prison, in a regime of isolation more severe than any known in the czarist prisons for those condemned to death. No correspondence is allowed him, no authorized mail, no relation with the other prisoners; he must take his walks in company with a special agent of the G.P.U. The state of health of comrade Sosnovsky is critical. A prolonged imprisonment under such conditions means the end for him. It is under similar conditions than another old Bolshevik, E.D.Eltsin, is to be found (in the Supdalsk Solitary): this comrade is afflicted by spinal meningitis.</p>
<p>That is how the 16th Congress was prepared on the back of the Left Opposition. By using the power of coercion of the apparatus for factional ends, the Stalinist leadership has set this apparatus against the Left proletarian wing of the Party. Fire to the Left! the more terrible this fire will be, the clearer will appear in the eyes of the proletarians the lamentable bankruptcy of Centrist policy.</p>
<p>By hunger, by cold, by the blockade, by outrages, by blows and by shootings, Centrism aims to squeeze out of the weakest ones a capitulation, and the strongest ones it condemns to ruin. Only the working class can thwart this Thermidorian plan. There is its duty, there is its task. By making an end of the Left wing, Stalin will make an end of the October revolution. That must be understood, that must be prevented, that must not be permitted.</p>
<h4>* * * * *</h4>
<p class="fst">We take this occasion to inform the foreign comrades that in reply to the greetings of the international conference in Paris to the deported and imprisoned Russian Oppositionists, there have arrived in the editorial Board of the <strong>Bulletin of the Russian Opposition</strong> numerous greetings not only from the places of deportation but also from the Solitaries.</p>
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N. Markin
How the 16th Party Congress Was Prepared
The Persecution of the Russian Bolshevik Opposition
(August 1930)
From The Militant, Vol. III No. 28, 15 August 1930, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Since the Spring of this year, the Stalinist leadership has again been compelled to pose as a task of the moment the question of the “extermination of the Opposition”. This task arises out of the fact that, in spite of the boastings to the contrary by the members of the apparatus, the Opposition lives, works and will continue to work. It is enough to run through the Soviet papers to be convinced that rarely does a nucleus meeting or Party conference take place without Oppositionists or semi-Oppositionists taking the floor. The apparatus struggle against the Left Opposition is developed exclusively by means of repression. In connection with this Congress, the repression mounted frightfully. The rotten monolithism of the top is guaranteed by the coercion, the arrests, the banishments at the bottom. The Solitaries replace the discussion that should have preceded the Congress. That is how the Congress of the Party was prepared.
The aim of this article is to give the genuine facts, particularly on the “preparations” for the Congress. In January-February there was a strong wave of arrests of Oppositionists, of comrades who sympathized with them, and even of comrades simply suspected of sympathizing with them. According to an approximate reckoning more or less correct, 300 comrades were arrested in Moscow alone. A large number of comrades arrested in the provinces passed through Moscow to the Butirskaia prison, coming mainly from the Ukraine, and especially from the Donbas (the proletarian mining district).
Non-Party Workers Arrested
At Butirki, there were a few dozen non-Party worker’s of Moscow, arrested for the sympathy they expressed for the Opposition, who are now deported to Siberia. Among the prisoners, there was also a certain percentage of capitulators, mainly of those who repented under the influence of a momentary weakness, and who subsequently declared, almost openly, that they had made a mistake. Many of them are no longer just deported, but sent to the Solitaries. They now demand from the capitulators not only the complete and absolute disavowal of their convictions but also that they disclose all their connections. For refusal – there is the Solitary (Zabrovskaia, Blumenfeld, and dozens of others).
The lengths to which they will go in arrests and deportations can be seen by the fact that among those arrested there is a big percentage of people arrested by chance, “seized” for reasons of relationship or simply because of saying Hello to an Oppositionist. That is how dozens of people were arrested who have no connection with the Opposition. (It frequently happens that they become real Oppositionists in prison or deportation!) During this period the Moscow comrades have distributed a leaflet and have assumed charge of a whole series of strikes which were provoked by the policy of the bureaucracy (in Serpuchov at Moscow, four factories of Mostriutaga and elsewhere). This has still further irritated the bureaucracy.
A wave of arrests that began at the end of the winter continued to rise up to the month of May. The number of persons arrested in this period is at least 500, without counting more than 100 arrested persons who were transported to the Solitaries. By this time the figure has further increased.
A remark must be made here. The Stalinist repression exercized against the Bolshevik-Leninists is distinguished from that practised against the Memilieviks and S.R.s. While the latter are simply isolated from the social life of the country, to hamper them in their counter-revolutionary action against the proletarian dictatorship for the Oppositionists who fight Centrism which upsets the dictatorship of the proletariat – the Stalinist course is directed toward their moral strangulation and their physical extermination.
Among the Oppositionists arrested in Winter were comrades Silov and Rabinovitch, who had unleashed against them the special hatred of the apparatus: they have been shot. How comrade Blumkin was shot before them – this crime is known to. the whole world.
The repression has been sharpened against all the deportees. A regime of horrors has been established: they have lost the right to work, that is, the right to serve, and by that they have acquired the right to be hungry. The official aid a deportee receives has long ago been reduced to 15 rubles ($7.50 a month) and that means hunger, and cold in winter. Since they have no right to be members of the cooperatives, they can frequently buy nothing, even with these 15 rubles; they live in lodgings without fire, remaining for weeks without warm food, often without light. Especially painful is the situation of the deportees in Narym, one of the most terrible places of deportation in Siberia. The Narym deportees are literally condemned to death by hunger. Moreover at Narym which, by the harshness of living conditions, is similar to a Solitary, they transport the Bolsheviks originally deported elsewhere, in an ever growing number. It is a course deliberately directed towards the physical extermination of the Opposition.
Over and above the material privations, every deportee is exposed to innumerable “little” vexations, the fruit of the absolute arbitrariness and impunity of the local G.P.U. The already tiny aid is kept back (a case is cited where it was withheld for four months and where the only reply to the demand for it was mockery of this sort: “Go to Moscow!” – that is: Capitulate! In a similar situation a comrade reduced to despair asked that he be led to a Solitary, and that is not the only instance); people simply suspected of knowing a deported Oppositionist are arrested, thus sowing terror among the local population in order to cast the Oppositionists into absolute isolation.
Systematic raids are organized, in which not only political works are seized From comrade L.S. Sosnovsky, in prison, his work on the agrarian policy of Centrism was seized; at comrade C.C. Rakovsky, his declaration to the Party was taken, etc.) – but also quotations from the works of Marx and Lenin. This is accompanied by a courier blockade so as to isolate the deportees politically. During the Congress, the G.P.U. did not let a single letter go through in order to prevent the elaboration of a collective declaration of the Opposition. But this did not succeed, and a declaration bearing the signatures of comrades Rakovsky, Moralov,, Kasparova and Kossior. was presented (all the deportees joined with it). In deportation the receipt of a letter is an event! We are not speaking even of political, but of family letters.
All the deportees live under the constant threat of being transferred to a Solitary (and this threat exists for the smallest thing: for instance, a delay of five minutes for the compulsory registration at the G.P.U.). Often they do not even give formal reasons. The real aim is to shatter the revolutionary intransigence of the Oppositionist. At the same time with an open tendency to transfer the points of deportation to the harshest regions of the North, the Solitaries are filled up more and more. Their number is always growing because those that exist are already full. The regime in the prisons and Solitaries is incomparably worse than that of deportation. In the prisons there is rarely any light (the windows are covered with an opaque panel), the damp cells are occupied by two or three times as many prisoners as the rules provide for; place is lacking for sleep, not only on the cots, but even on the floor.
In the Solitaries
What the sanitary conditions are is not difficult to judge. In their cells, the Oppositionists, kept separate from each other, are mixed up with counter-revolutionaries and criminals who not only detest our comrades as the representatives of Bolshevism but hate and jeer at them, casting upon them all the hatred they nurture against the Soviet power. The system of the G.P.U. – holding Oppositionists in common cells with criminals – did not even exist in the prisons of czarism. This system is applied only to Oppositionists, The Mensheviks (at Butyrki, for instance) enjoy all the rights of political prisoners; they are kept separate from criminals, their cell doors are open; they have a small library at their disposal.
The cells of the Oppositionists are closed, nowhere is visiting allowed them, they have no rights to anything sent from the outside. And in addition to all this, they are treated coarsely and laughed at. Under such a regime, hunger strikes break out without end, and sometimes last until a mortal end (let us remember the heroic death of comrade Butov). To the hunger strikes, to the minimum demands of the prisoners, the prison direction replies by having them systematically beaten, by soaking them with water in the bitter cold of winter, etc. Beatings are a system known in the prison of Kharkov, in the Verchnye-Uralsk Solitary, in the Leningrad prison, and in a whole number of others. It was through blows that comrade Haenrichsen was killed in the Leningrad prison.
The colony of Oppositionists deported at Tomsk has gathered a great deal of information on the absolutely terrible crimes Stalin has perpetrated against our comrades. It has presented a document of protest to which all the other colonies of deportees have rallied. In this document it is learned that hunger prevails in all the places of deportation for Oppositionists; it is established that for Bolsheviks, the conditions of Stalinist deportation are incomparably worse than those of czarism. Many deportees have become invalids (there are dozens of them) for lack of any medical succor, at Narym and similar places elsewhere. The seriously ill are not even transported to the nearest inhabited regions where a doctor might be found. When it is decided to transport an ill comrade, it is only when he is in a hopeless state. This winter, many comrades had their limbs frozen, and some had to undergo amputations because no medical aid was given them in time.
Babies, right after their birth, have been taken from their mother, and the latter sent into Solitaries (comrade Yanovskaia among others). The same document informs us that a new shooting of Oppositionists took place at Solovski; it is no rare thing for the G.P.U. now to pronounce sentences, not of 3 to 5 years, but of 10 years, in vengeance for the political conduct of a comrade. For instance, without any formal proof, comrade Golodni was condemned to 10 years in Solitary. In all the colonies of deportees, before the 16th Congress, comrades were arrested and sent to the Solitaries. We do not give here the names of the colonies nor the names of the comrades arrested; we will deal only with the most striking facts.
A Hunger Strike in Ichim
In May, at Ichim, the whole colony was arrested – 9 comrades – as well as 35 inhabitants of the city who, according to the accusation of the G.P.U., had been propagandized by Oppositionists. All are now in terrible condition, our comrades write us – they are locked up in the Sverdolsk prison. Two of them are seriously ill, they do not receive the political prisoner’s ration, they are locked up in different cells, and have been compelled to declare a hunger strike. How this hunger strike ended, and above all, what was subsequently the fate of the Ichim deportees, we do not know.
The comrades informing us, call this arrest together with 15 non-Oppositionists an “amalgam”, which means an artificial liaison for the purpose of discrediting our comrades by means of people alien to the Opposition. The destruction of the colony and the creation of a Thermidorian amalgam are the work of a provocateur. The provocations practised against the Opposition recently have assumed Homeric proportions.
Not only are the Opposition groups still filled with provocateurs, but these “operate” also in the deportation and in prison. There, their task is to disclose the most intransigent, to provoke decomposition by leading comrades to capitulate, etc. A provocateur showing himself under the mask of a “capitulator” is now a current phenomenon in the deportation.
That is how the colony of deportees at Kaminsk was destroyed. Two comrades, Stolovsky and Densov, were transferred to the Tomsk prison, the others, to the furthest corners of Siberia. This colony was dispersed only because it didn’t produce a single capitulator. In their declaration to the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U., the Kaminsk comrades showed how the cadres of the local Party organizations are recruited. Basing themselves on exact information, they name more than 30 members of the Party now occupying responsible posts who were agents of the White terror during the days of Kolchak and who shot Reds. These elements are leaders of this district to this very day. The Kolchakists are chiefly to be found in great numbers in the G.P.U. This fact throws a striking light on the question: who is carrying out the Stalinist policy which hounds the deported Bolsheviks, which aids in their extermination? Ex-Whites, and not accidentally!
At Rubtsevsk, Siberia, without any accusation being formulated against them, four Oppositionists were arrested: Abramsky, Antokolisky, Veskresensky, Evingelstaedt. From the Rubtsevsk prison, they sent a declaration to the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. on June 4, in which they said: “We can only consider this repressive act excercized against us only as a preparation by unusual means for the 16th Party Congress ...” “The repression will not halt the struggle for the redressment of the Party, just as the damage done will not prevent the Party from returning to the positions of Leninism”. What was subsequently the fate of the Rubtsevsk comrades is not known to us. But there is no doubt that they will be imprisoned in the Solitaries.
A similar destruction took place at Kansk (comrades Kusminsky and Landau), at Alma-Ata (comrades Goldin and others), at Slavgorod, Chimkent, and many other places. Raids have taken place everywhere. The impudent raid upon comrade Rakovsky has been told everywhere and is well known. Upon him, as the leader of the Russian Opposition, the Stalinists are concentrating their hatred. Seriously ill (afflicted with heart trouble and malaria), comrade Rakovsky, far from being sent to a more clement climate (as the doctors ordered) has been transported from Astrakan to Barnaoul. Comrade Rakovsky, who is 57 years old, of which 40 have been devoted to the struggle for Communism, passed a very painful Winter, his sick organism having to undergo cold of 40 to 50 degrees. The isolation in which he is held is more rigorous than for anybody else. The game of Stalin is clear: slowly but surely to finish off Rakovsky.
Sosnovsky in Danger
It is in an even more painful situation that another eminent leader of the Opposition, an old Bolshevik, comrade L.S. Sosnovsky is to be found. He is incarcerated in the Tomsk prison, in a regime of isolation more severe than any known in the czarist prisons for those condemned to death. No correspondence is allowed him, no authorized mail, no relation with the other prisoners; he must take his walks in company with a special agent of the G.P.U. The state of health of comrade Sosnovsky is critical. A prolonged imprisonment under such conditions means the end for him. It is under similar conditions than another old Bolshevik, E.D.Eltsin, is to be found (in the Supdalsk Solitary): this comrade is afflicted by spinal meningitis.
That is how the 16th Congress was prepared on the back of the Left Opposition. By using the power of coercion of the apparatus for factional ends, the Stalinist leadership has set this apparatus against the Left proletarian wing of the Party. Fire to the Left! the more terrible this fire will be, the clearer will appear in the eyes of the proletarians the lamentable bankruptcy of Centrist policy.
By hunger, by cold, by the blockade, by outrages, by blows and by shootings, Centrism aims to squeeze out of the weakest ones a capitulation, and the strongest ones it condemns to ruin. Only the working class can thwart this Thermidorian plan. There is its duty, there is its task. By making an end of the Left wing, Stalin will make an end of the October revolution. That must be understood, that must be prevented, that must not be permitted.
* * * * *
We take this occasion to inform the foreign comrades that in reply to the greetings of the international conference in Paris to the deported and imprisoned Russian Oppositionists, there have arrived in the editorial Board of the Bulletin of the Russian Opposition numerous greetings not only from the places of deportation but also from the Solitaries.
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<h2>Leon Sedov</h2>
<h1><em>The Red Book</em></h1>
<h2><em>On the Moscow Trials</em></h2>
<hr noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="note"><small><strong>Published:</strong> Published by New Park Publications Ltd, 1980; available at <a href="http://www.indexbooks.co.uk">Index Books.</a><br>
First published in part in Russian in <strong>Byulletin Oppositsii</strong>, Nos.52-53, October 1936.<br>
Published in French as <strong>Le Livre Rouge sur les proces de Moscou</strong>, Paris, 1936<br>
<strong>Transcribed:</strong> For ETOL, September, 2000</small></p>
<hr noshade="noshade" size="1">
<br>
<br>
<h4>CONTENTS</h4>
<p class="tda">Introduction (Not yet available)<br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="foreword.htm">Foreword</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch01.htm">Why Did Stalin Need This Trial?</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch02.htm">The Stalinist Amalgams Were Foreseen</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch03.htm">The Assassination of Kirov</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch04.htm">Two Trials (January 1935-August 1936)</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch05.htm">The Defendants and Their Conduct Before the Court</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch06.htm">The Accused Who Were Not at the Trial</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch07.htm">Did a “Unified Center” Exist?</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch08.htm">When Exactly Was the “Unified Center” Created and When Did It Function</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch09.htm">What Really Did Exist?</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch10.htm">Marxism and Individual Terror</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch11.htm">Lenin, the First Terrorist</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch12.htm">The Attempts Which Did Not Take Place</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch13.htm">Copenhagen</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch14.htm">Trotsky’s “Contact” With the Defendants</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch15.htm">The Same Old Song to a New Tune</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch16.htm">Bogdan’s Suicide-Assassination</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch17.htm">The Prosecutor Vyshinsky</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch18.htm">The Tragic Compromise: For a Confession, Your Life</a><br>
</p>
<p class="tda"><a href="ch19.htm">After the Trial</a></p>
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<p class="link">Introduction | <a href="../../index.htm">Sedov Internet Archive</a></p>
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Leon Sedov
The Red Book
On the Moscow Trials
Published: Published by New Park Publications Ltd, 1980; available at Index Books.
First published in part in Russian in Byulletin Oppositsii, Nos.52-53, October 1936.
Published in French as Le Livre Rouge sur les proces de Moscou, Paris, 1936
Transcribed: For ETOL, September, 2000
CONTENTS
Introduction (Not yet available)
Foreword
Why Did Stalin Need This Trial?
The Stalinist Amalgams Were Foreseen
The Assassination of Kirov
Two Trials (January 1935-August 1936)
The Defendants and Their Conduct Before the Court
The Accused Who Were Not at the Trial
Did a “Unified Center” Exist?
When Exactly Was the “Unified Center” Created and When Did It Function
What Really Did Exist?
Marxism and Individual Terror
Lenin, the First Terrorist
The Attempts Which Did Not Take Place
Copenhagen
Trotsky’s “Contact” With the Defendants
The Same Old Song to a New Tune
Bogdan’s Suicide-Assassination
The Prosecutor Vyshinsky
The Tragic Compromise: For a Confession, Your Life
After the Trial
Introduction | Sedov Internet Archive
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<h2>N. Markin</h2>
<h1>The Life of the Exiled and<br>
Imprisoned Russian Opposition</h1>
<h3>(December 1930)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1930/index.htm#tm30_34" target="new">Vol. III No. 34</a>, 1 December 1930, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">The Fifteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U. (December 1927) placed the Opposition outside of the ranks of the Party and sanctioned the state repressive measures taken against it. In the course of 1928 thousands of Oppositionists were arrested and sent into exile. Despite all that, the curve of development of the Opposition for the entire year of 1928 was vigorously on the ascendant. At the beginning of 1929 the G.P.U. ferociously ransacked the Opposition organizations all over the U.S.S.R. Simultaneously the repression not only increased in quantity but also achieved a new quality: the creation of Solitaries; depriving the deported of their work, transferring them to unhealthy places, reducing their maintenance by half; the expulsion of comrade Trotsky; general provocation and so on. In the economic and political domain, the year 1929 was characterized by the accentuation of the Left zig-zag of Centrism, necessitated by the kulak grain strikes in 1928.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Crisis in the Opposition</h4>
<p class="fst">The combined influence of these two factors, the ruthless repression and a certain division brought about by the Left turn of Centrism – placed the Opposition before a grave crisis in the summer of 1929. A wave of capitulation passed over the places of deportation. In August 1929 comrade Rakovsky and others made their well known declaration. This declaration was an attempt to realize a united front with the Party. It established certain modifications of the official course, and based on these, expressed anew the desire to defend and to struggle for its ideas within the frame work of the Party, underlining at the same time that the only serious guarantee for the turn was a change of regime in the Party. Rakovsky’s declaration – as was evident – was rejected. This served as an additional test of the Party regime by showing the Opposition elements who were seriously doubtful all the superficiality and the insincerity of Centrism’s Leftward turn. The August declaration of Rakovsky brought into circulation extensive theses and submitted the policy of Centrism to a profound and compact criticism. The response of the apparatus to the declaration of Rakovsky forced the Opposition to declare again and precisely that it will not only continue, but enlarge and intensify its factional work.</p>
<p>In the same period comrades Rakovsky and Trotsky again put forth the question of the Party as the central problem of the revolution. Certain capitulators have deluded themselves (and deluded others) with pseudodialectic arguments, in the sense that the correction of the economic line will of itself entail an improvement of the regime in the Party. “It is an absurdity”, comrade Trotsky wrote to the Russian comrades, “to believe that the Five Year Plan can modify automatically the regime of the Party. On the contrary, the change of regime in the Party is not only the premise of ultimate successes, but also a certain guarantee against the dangers which grow more rapidly than the successes.” And on several later occasions: “The Party regime constitutes a mortal danger precisely towards economy.” Ravoksky and other Russian Opposition comrades wrote in the same vein.</p>
<p>However, the Left course of Centrism began, toward 1930, to transform itself into an ultra-Left policy which expressed itself in the “industrialization course”, and “complete collectivization.” The Left Opposition did not allow itself to be carried away by the Stalinist “dizziness.” On the question of our attitude towards the new ultra-Left course, it reenforced its cohesion, while holding to its previous strategy of collectivization and industrialization. The Russian Opposition launched the tactical slogan: Slow down! Retreat! This slogan was unanimously approved by the Russian Left Opposition. Later on, the new course was replaced by a still newer one, in which the elements of adventurist leaps were joined with those of panicky retreat. It is in such a situation that the Sixteenth Congress met, and brought about a new aggravation of the Party regime. “The preparation of Bonapartism, insofar as it concerns the Party, has been accomplished. In the Party the plebiscitary regime has been definitely installed,” comrade Trotsky wrote to the U.S.S.R.</p>
<p>For the Opposition, the preparation of the Congress expressed itself in a mad reenforcement of reprisals. <a id="f1" href="#n1" name="f1">[1]</a> The Opposition presented to the Congress a declaration “of the 7”: Rakovsky, Muralov, Kossior, Kasparova, Grunstein. Zinzadze, Aussem. All these comrades are Opposition leaders and among the oldest members of the Party. Some time before this declaration to the C.C., to the C.C.C. and to all the members of the Party, a long principle declaration called <em>The April declaration of the 4</em>: Rakovsky, Kossior, Kasparova, and Muralov. Around this declaration a vast polemic developed in the deportation camps and in secret (in the U.S.S.R.)<br>
</p>
<h4>The Ideological Life of the Opposition</h4>
<p class="fst">It must be said that from the day of its birth, the Opposition in deportation began to live an intense ideological life. Not only are timely economic, political, tactical and strategical questions profoundly studied and heatedly discussed, but even the most abstract problems of philosophy. The Solitaries have become revolutionary universities. Numerous serious Marxist works have been produced by the pens of deported Oppositionists. The ideological level of the Russian Opposition cadres may be considered, without any exaggeration, as exceptional. In ridding themselves of the capitulatory ballast, in gaining cohesion under the fire of repression, it is the firmest and most valiant revolutionists who have remained in the deportation.</p>
<p>During this current year, the exchange of ideas has been rendered very difficult by an almost complete postal blockade. That is why the study of questions often does not emerge from the limits of the isolated centers of the deportation.</p>
<p>Certain differences – though not of principle – have been provoked by the following theses in Rakovsky’s April declaration: “Before the Party is posed the question of supplying the country with food stuffs and with agricultural raw materials by reinforcing the construction of the Soviet farms, at the same time maintaining the rhythm of industrial development.” Some of the comrades found a contradiction to the slogan of “retreat” in these theses. Their argument can be summed up in this: “It is our duty to subject the bureaucratic rhythms to a merciless criticism and not to maintain them. The period of ultra-Left adventurism in the Centrist policy of industrialization is not yet at an end.”</p>
<p>On the other hand, the comrades who supported the theses of comrade Rakovsky countered with the following argument:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The period in which the articles and letters of Trotsky and Rakovsky (which called for beating a retreat and not for maintaining the rhythms) belong, is distinct from the period of the declaration ... In the present period, after the collapse of the ‘complete collectivization’, it is collectivization itself which is in danger. Not only is the ‘five-year plan in four years’ threatened but the realization of the ‘five-year plan altogether, and to support the slogan of a relaxation of the rhythm in such a situation is profoundly wrong.”</p>
<p class="fst">The Editors of the <strong>Bulletin of the Russian Opposition</strong> have not had the opportunity to express themselves fundamentally on this question, since it had not yet received the <em>April Declaration</em> at that time. They simply stressed that “it is of course understood that we are for the ‘maximum rhythms’ provided they are economically and politically possible,” and that it is not this question – despite all its seriousness – which is of decisive importance at present but rather that of the “methods of economic direction and of the life of the Party with whose aid the rhythms have been elaborated, realized and checked.”<br>
</p>
<h4>The Social Nature of the State</h4>
<p class="fst">Another question which has provoked a broad discussion is that of the social character and perspectives of the Soviet state, and the question which is bound up with this, namely, of the social essence of the Soviet bureaucracy (or of the degree of the divorce between the bureaucracy and the masses, as some of the comrades pose the question), a phenomenon hitherto unknown in history and which has consequently not been analyzed as yet by Marxist thought. To what degree can the bureaucracy be considered as a class, as an embryo of a class? Can it become a class? Such are the questions which are at the center of the analysis and discussion on the Soviet system. Evidently, it is not a question of a rigid, that is to say, of a metaphysical formula, but of the analysis of perspectives and the orientation of living processes. According to the Moscow correspondent of the <strong>Russian Bulletin</strong>, this tendency is indicated by comrade Rakovsky “as being the possible line of transformation of the proletarian state into a bureaucratic state with Communist vestiges.”</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The great merit,” writes the same correspondent, “of the documents written by comrade Rakovsky since 1928, is the profound penetration and entirely concrete analysis of his process. The new declaration in question, in enhancing this analysis and extending it to the new supplement of the Soviet bureaucracy – the nascent collective farm bureaucracy – interested in preserving the current state of affairs, not only establishes that bureaucratic atrophy threatens to denature the social content of the Soviet system in the U.S.S.R., but outlines in broad strokes the characteristics of the bureaucratic order which can follow the Soviet order, while remaining in the domain of real phenomena.”</p>
<p class="fst">Concerning the bureaucracy, comrade Rakovsky writes:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Under our very eyes, there has been formed, and is still being formed, a large class of rulers which has its own interior groupings, multiplied by means of premeditated cooptation, direct or indirect bureaucratic promotion, fictitious system of elections). The basic support of this original class is a sort, an original sort, of private property, namely, the possession of State power. The bureaucracy possess the state as private property wrote Marx. (<strong>Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law</strong>)”</p>
<p class="fst">The colony of deportees at X... formulates the question as follows:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“We are of the opinion that the bureaucracy is not a class and will never become one. We believe that the bureaucracy, the leading stratum of society, will degenerate that it is the germ of a class which will not be bureaucratic at all ... The bureaucracy is the germ of a capitalist class which dominates the state and possesses the means of productive collectively.”<br>
</p>
<h4>The Slogan of a Coalition C.C.</h4>
<p class="fst">Difference in tactics, and partially in principle, were evoked by another question. In one of his letters in May, Rakovsky issued the slogan of a <em>coalition</em> Central Committee (Left, Center and Right). Unfortunately, the inadequacy of our information does not permit us to a summarize the opinions on this point. A comrade writes:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“I believe that this slogan has a foundation (economy is balked), all the factions must take this fact into account and join in following a single tactical line in spite of the diversity of their strategical lines. This slogan can become popular among the masses. It is another question to know if there are any reasons for being optimistic about its possible realization. The general secretary (Stalin) will not join the coalition, and with Party opinion dispersed, it may not be able to exert enough pressure. However, these considerations are not a decisive argument against the slogan. We must work and fight for its realization. In this way we will point out the concrete road – naturally, an imperfect road, but the situation allows of no better one – for the concrete abolition of the <em>political monopoly</em> of the Centrists.”</p>
<p class="fst">Let us quote an extract from the theses of an authorized comrade, now incarcerated in Solitary:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The present state of the proletarian dictatorship can be characterized above all by the extreme nature of the bureaucratic degeneration of its apparatus and, so to speak, by the bureaucratic envelopment of the proletarian dictatorship.”</p>
<p class="fst">The theses say that the economic organs,</p>
<p class="quoteb">“seized by panic before the growing elements of catastrophe, seek to overtake this delay by incessantly exceeding the predetermined projects, above all, by excessive increase of the exploitation of the workers and the lowering of their living level ... As a result of the super-industrialization, the condition of the workers is worsening. The workers are obliged to adapt themselves to a reduction in real wages and the exhaustion of physical efforts.”</p>
<p class="fst">The theses define the policy of Centrism in the country in the following manner:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The political consequences of the peasant policy conducted, can throw back the Sovietization of the country for many years and make us return to the old times of War Communism. The whole policy will be discredited, and the most irremediable discredit will affect in principle, even the policy of collectivization and industrialization, that is all the teachings of Lenin.”</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The principal misfortune,” the theses say finally, “consists in the fact that, while there is a possibility of a reaction, and sometimes even of a decisive influence on the direction of policy by organizing the resistance of the Opposition in the proletarian sector of the Party to the sliding of Centrism to the Right, with the existing regime this resistance cannot take a sufficiently active form to permit making a radical end to this policy of the Right and ultra-Left leaps, and to realize the reformation of the Party leadership.”<br>
</p>
<h4>The Opposition’s Growth</h4>
<p class="fst">The above-quoted theses touch the decisive problem of the Russian Opposition, consequently, the future of the proletarian dictatorship in the U.S.S.R. All the facts show the sympathy existing in the working class towards our ideas, but the weakness of the Opposition organization prevents the crystallization of these sentiments and their necessary development. “Interest towards us is undubitably growing, we are weak, although we have numerous supporters.” In August, we heard from Kharkov: “One feels that a certain additional push is needed, a new experience, so that what is covered with ashes will flame up again. The work must be organized in a more regular and systematic manner, the <strong>Bulletin</strong> made to appear more regularly, and we need a well functioning internal organization. On this point, comrades in various sections believe that this push is not far off.”</p>
<p>In one of his last letters to the Russian Oppositionists comrade Trotsky raises the question in the following way:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Since the mass of the Party is definitely dispensed, then the sole means of heightening the chances for the development of the October revolution and Lenin’s Party by the <em>Reformist</em> road, requires <em>the creation of a well-functioning centralized organization of the Bolshevik-Leninists, armed with sufficient technical means for reacting systematically upon the dispersed public opinion of the Party ... A half-passive policy in the future would mean, not to mention other things, the gradual physical destruction of our best cadres.</em>”</p>
<p class="fst">The principal obstacle on this road is obviously the repression and above all provocation. The G.P.U. floods not only our isolated groups of deportees but also the prisons with provocateurs. Provocation is, Stalin’s main weapon against the Opposition. At the same time, as we have said, the ground for the development of the Left Opposition is very favorable. Facts like the election of a worker Oppositionist as chairman of the factory council, the refusal of the workers to elect another in spite of the rabid pressure of the apparatus, and finally his arrest by the G.P.U. (Mechanical Shops, Kharhov), the successful organization of collections among the workers on the Moscow-Kazan railway, upon their own initiative, for aid to the deportees and their families, the steady torrent of new deportees, the almost daily arrests of new Oppositionists, generally still members of the Party – all this proves that the Opposition is not stifled. And in spite of the incessant arrests, the G.P.U. cannot exhaust the reserves of the Opposition, since they are steadily renewed.<br>
</p>
<h4>New Deportations</h4>
<p class="fst">A special and very characteristic phenomenon is the arrest of capitulators, that is, of former Oppositionists who signed the declaration of Radek or Smirnov. Capitulators imprisoned and deported a second time are not isolated cases, but constitute a large phenomenon of their type. It shows, on one hand, that among the capitulators, after the return to Moscow, there is manifested again “relapses into Trotskyism”, and on the other, the great fear of the apparatus even for the cadavers of the Opposition – the capitulators.</p>
<p>In recent letters (October), the comrades communicate that these phenomena not only do not cease, but on the contrary increase. Capitulators are mentioned who arrived in deportation in September or October, that is, more than a year after their capitulation.</p>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<h3>Footnote</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="n1" href="#f1" name="n1">1.</a> We will not stop at this question, which has been sufficiently illuminated in the Opposition publications.</p>
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N. Markin
The Life of the Exiled and
Imprisoned Russian Opposition
(December 1930)
From The Militant, Vol. III No. 34, 1 December 1930, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Fifteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U. (December 1927) placed the Opposition outside of the ranks of the Party and sanctioned the state repressive measures taken against it. In the course of 1928 thousands of Oppositionists were arrested and sent into exile. Despite all that, the curve of development of the Opposition for the entire year of 1928 was vigorously on the ascendant. At the beginning of 1929 the G.P.U. ferociously ransacked the Opposition organizations all over the U.S.S.R. Simultaneously the repression not only increased in quantity but also achieved a new quality: the creation of Solitaries; depriving the deported of their work, transferring them to unhealthy places, reducing their maintenance by half; the expulsion of comrade Trotsky; general provocation and so on. In the economic and political domain, the year 1929 was characterized by the accentuation of the Left zig-zag of Centrism, necessitated by the kulak grain strikes in 1928.
The Crisis in the Opposition
The combined influence of these two factors, the ruthless repression and a certain division brought about by the Left turn of Centrism – placed the Opposition before a grave crisis in the summer of 1929. A wave of capitulation passed over the places of deportation. In August 1929 comrade Rakovsky and others made their well known declaration. This declaration was an attempt to realize a united front with the Party. It established certain modifications of the official course, and based on these, expressed anew the desire to defend and to struggle for its ideas within the frame work of the Party, underlining at the same time that the only serious guarantee for the turn was a change of regime in the Party. Rakovsky’s declaration – as was evident – was rejected. This served as an additional test of the Party regime by showing the Opposition elements who were seriously doubtful all the superficiality and the insincerity of Centrism’s Leftward turn. The August declaration of Rakovsky brought into circulation extensive theses and submitted the policy of Centrism to a profound and compact criticism. The response of the apparatus to the declaration of Rakovsky forced the Opposition to declare again and precisely that it will not only continue, but enlarge and intensify its factional work.
In the same period comrades Rakovsky and Trotsky again put forth the question of the Party as the central problem of the revolution. Certain capitulators have deluded themselves (and deluded others) with pseudodialectic arguments, in the sense that the correction of the economic line will of itself entail an improvement of the regime in the Party. “It is an absurdity”, comrade Trotsky wrote to the Russian comrades, “to believe that the Five Year Plan can modify automatically the regime of the Party. On the contrary, the change of regime in the Party is not only the premise of ultimate successes, but also a certain guarantee against the dangers which grow more rapidly than the successes.” And on several later occasions: “The Party regime constitutes a mortal danger precisely towards economy.” Ravoksky and other Russian Opposition comrades wrote in the same vein.
However, the Left course of Centrism began, toward 1930, to transform itself into an ultra-Left policy which expressed itself in the “industrialization course”, and “complete collectivization.” The Left Opposition did not allow itself to be carried away by the Stalinist “dizziness.” On the question of our attitude towards the new ultra-Left course, it reenforced its cohesion, while holding to its previous strategy of collectivization and industrialization. The Russian Opposition launched the tactical slogan: Slow down! Retreat! This slogan was unanimously approved by the Russian Left Opposition. Later on, the new course was replaced by a still newer one, in which the elements of adventurist leaps were joined with those of panicky retreat. It is in such a situation that the Sixteenth Congress met, and brought about a new aggravation of the Party regime. “The preparation of Bonapartism, insofar as it concerns the Party, has been accomplished. In the Party the plebiscitary regime has been definitely installed,” comrade Trotsky wrote to the U.S.S.R.
For the Opposition, the preparation of the Congress expressed itself in a mad reenforcement of reprisals. [1] The Opposition presented to the Congress a declaration “of the 7”: Rakovsky, Muralov, Kossior, Kasparova, Grunstein. Zinzadze, Aussem. All these comrades are Opposition leaders and among the oldest members of the Party. Some time before this declaration to the C.C., to the C.C.C. and to all the members of the Party, a long principle declaration called The April declaration of the 4: Rakovsky, Kossior, Kasparova, and Muralov. Around this declaration a vast polemic developed in the deportation camps and in secret (in the U.S.S.R.)
The Ideological Life of the Opposition
It must be said that from the day of its birth, the Opposition in deportation began to live an intense ideological life. Not only are timely economic, political, tactical and strategical questions profoundly studied and heatedly discussed, but even the most abstract problems of philosophy. The Solitaries have become revolutionary universities. Numerous serious Marxist works have been produced by the pens of deported Oppositionists. The ideological level of the Russian Opposition cadres may be considered, without any exaggeration, as exceptional. In ridding themselves of the capitulatory ballast, in gaining cohesion under the fire of repression, it is the firmest and most valiant revolutionists who have remained in the deportation.
During this current year, the exchange of ideas has been rendered very difficult by an almost complete postal blockade. That is why the study of questions often does not emerge from the limits of the isolated centers of the deportation.
Certain differences – though not of principle – have been provoked by the following theses in Rakovsky’s April declaration: “Before the Party is posed the question of supplying the country with food stuffs and with agricultural raw materials by reinforcing the construction of the Soviet farms, at the same time maintaining the rhythm of industrial development.” Some of the comrades found a contradiction to the slogan of “retreat” in these theses. Their argument can be summed up in this: “It is our duty to subject the bureaucratic rhythms to a merciless criticism and not to maintain them. The period of ultra-Left adventurism in the Centrist policy of industrialization is not yet at an end.”
On the other hand, the comrades who supported the theses of comrade Rakovsky countered with the following argument:
“The period in which the articles and letters of Trotsky and Rakovsky (which called for beating a retreat and not for maintaining the rhythms) belong, is distinct from the period of the declaration ... In the present period, after the collapse of the ‘complete collectivization’, it is collectivization itself which is in danger. Not only is the ‘five-year plan in four years’ threatened but the realization of the ‘five-year plan altogether, and to support the slogan of a relaxation of the rhythm in such a situation is profoundly wrong.”
The Editors of the Bulletin of the Russian Opposition have not had the opportunity to express themselves fundamentally on this question, since it had not yet received the April Declaration at that time. They simply stressed that “it is of course understood that we are for the ‘maximum rhythms’ provided they are economically and politically possible,” and that it is not this question – despite all its seriousness – which is of decisive importance at present but rather that of the “methods of economic direction and of the life of the Party with whose aid the rhythms have been elaborated, realized and checked.”
The Social Nature of the State
Another question which has provoked a broad discussion is that of the social character and perspectives of the Soviet state, and the question which is bound up with this, namely, of the social essence of the Soviet bureaucracy (or of the degree of the divorce between the bureaucracy and the masses, as some of the comrades pose the question), a phenomenon hitherto unknown in history and which has consequently not been analyzed as yet by Marxist thought. To what degree can the bureaucracy be considered as a class, as an embryo of a class? Can it become a class? Such are the questions which are at the center of the analysis and discussion on the Soviet system. Evidently, it is not a question of a rigid, that is to say, of a metaphysical formula, but of the analysis of perspectives and the orientation of living processes. According to the Moscow correspondent of the Russian Bulletin, this tendency is indicated by comrade Rakovsky “as being the possible line of transformation of the proletarian state into a bureaucratic state with Communist vestiges.”
“The great merit,” writes the same correspondent, “of the documents written by comrade Rakovsky since 1928, is the profound penetration and entirely concrete analysis of his process. The new declaration in question, in enhancing this analysis and extending it to the new supplement of the Soviet bureaucracy – the nascent collective farm bureaucracy – interested in preserving the current state of affairs, not only establishes that bureaucratic atrophy threatens to denature the social content of the Soviet system in the U.S.S.R., but outlines in broad strokes the characteristics of the bureaucratic order which can follow the Soviet order, while remaining in the domain of real phenomena.”
Concerning the bureaucracy, comrade Rakovsky writes:
“Under our very eyes, there has been formed, and is still being formed, a large class of rulers which has its own interior groupings, multiplied by means of premeditated cooptation, direct or indirect bureaucratic promotion, fictitious system of elections). The basic support of this original class is a sort, an original sort, of private property, namely, the possession of State power. The bureaucracy possess the state as private property wrote Marx. (Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law)”
The colony of deportees at X... formulates the question as follows:
“We are of the opinion that the bureaucracy is not a class and will never become one. We believe that the bureaucracy, the leading stratum of society, will degenerate that it is the germ of a class which will not be bureaucratic at all ... The bureaucracy is the germ of a capitalist class which dominates the state and possesses the means of productive collectively.”
The Slogan of a Coalition C.C.
Difference in tactics, and partially in principle, were evoked by another question. In one of his letters in May, Rakovsky issued the slogan of a coalition Central Committee (Left, Center and Right). Unfortunately, the inadequacy of our information does not permit us to a summarize the opinions on this point. A comrade writes:
“I believe that this slogan has a foundation (economy is balked), all the factions must take this fact into account and join in following a single tactical line in spite of the diversity of their strategical lines. This slogan can become popular among the masses. It is another question to know if there are any reasons for being optimistic about its possible realization. The general secretary (Stalin) will not join the coalition, and with Party opinion dispersed, it may not be able to exert enough pressure. However, these considerations are not a decisive argument against the slogan. We must work and fight for its realization. In this way we will point out the concrete road – naturally, an imperfect road, but the situation allows of no better one – for the concrete abolition of the political monopoly of the Centrists.”
Let us quote an extract from the theses of an authorized comrade, now incarcerated in Solitary:
“The present state of the proletarian dictatorship can be characterized above all by the extreme nature of the bureaucratic degeneration of its apparatus and, so to speak, by the bureaucratic envelopment of the proletarian dictatorship.”
The theses say that the economic organs,
“seized by panic before the growing elements of catastrophe, seek to overtake this delay by incessantly exceeding the predetermined projects, above all, by excessive increase of the exploitation of the workers and the lowering of their living level ... As a result of the super-industrialization, the condition of the workers is worsening. The workers are obliged to adapt themselves to a reduction in real wages and the exhaustion of physical efforts.”
The theses define the policy of Centrism in the country in the following manner:
“The political consequences of the peasant policy conducted, can throw back the Sovietization of the country for many years and make us return to the old times of War Communism. The whole policy will be discredited, and the most irremediable discredit will affect in principle, even the policy of collectivization and industrialization, that is all the teachings of Lenin.”
“The principal misfortune,” the theses say finally, “consists in the fact that, while there is a possibility of a reaction, and sometimes even of a decisive influence on the direction of policy by organizing the resistance of the Opposition in the proletarian sector of the Party to the sliding of Centrism to the Right, with the existing regime this resistance cannot take a sufficiently active form to permit making a radical end to this policy of the Right and ultra-Left leaps, and to realize the reformation of the Party leadership.”
The Opposition’s Growth
The above-quoted theses touch the decisive problem of the Russian Opposition, consequently, the future of the proletarian dictatorship in the U.S.S.R. All the facts show the sympathy existing in the working class towards our ideas, but the weakness of the Opposition organization prevents the crystallization of these sentiments and their necessary development. “Interest towards us is undubitably growing, we are weak, although we have numerous supporters.” In August, we heard from Kharkov: “One feels that a certain additional push is needed, a new experience, so that what is covered with ashes will flame up again. The work must be organized in a more regular and systematic manner, the Bulletin made to appear more regularly, and we need a well functioning internal organization. On this point, comrades in various sections believe that this push is not far off.”
In one of his last letters to the Russian Oppositionists comrade Trotsky raises the question in the following way:
“Since the mass of the Party is definitely dispensed, then the sole means of heightening the chances for the development of the October revolution and Lenin’s Party by the Reformist road, requires the creation of a well-functioning centralized organization of the Bolshevik-Leninists, armed with sufficient technical means for reacting systematically upon the dispersed public opinion of the Party ... A half-passive policy in the future would mean, not to mention other things, the gradual physical destruction of our best cadres.”
The principal obstacle on this road is obviously the repression and above all provocation. The G.P.U. floods not only our isolated groups of deportees but also the prisons with provocateurs. Provocation is, Stalin’s main weapon against the Opposition. At the same time, as we have said, the ground for the development of the Left Opposition is very favorable. Facts like the election of a worker Oppositionist as chairman of the factory council, the refusal of the workers to elect another in spite of the rabid pressure of the apparatus, and finally his arrest by the G.P.U. (Mechanical Shops, Kharhov), the successful organization of collections among the workers on the Moscow-Kazan railway, upon their own initiative, for aid to the deportees and their families, the steady torrent of new deportees, the almost daily arrests of new Oppositionists, generally still members of the Party – all this proves that the Opposition is not stifled. And in spite of the incessant arrests, the G.P.U. cannot exhaust the reserves of the Opposition, since they are steadily renewed.
New Deportations
A special and very characteristic phenomenon is the arrest of capitulators, that is, of former Oppositionists who signed the declaration of Radek or Smirnov. Capitulators imprisoned and deported a second time are not isolated cases, but constitute a large phenomenon of their type. It shows, on one hand, that among the capitulators, after the return to Moscow, there is manifested again “relapses into Trotskyism”, and on the other, the great fear of the apparatus even for the cadavers of the Opposition – the capitulators.
In recent letters (October), the comrades communicate that these phenomena not only do not cease, but on the contrary increase. Capitulators are mentioned who arrived in deportation in September or October, that is, more than a year after their capitulation.
Footnote
1. We will not stop at this question, which has been sufficiently illuminated in the Opposition publications.
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<h4><em>The New International</em>, February 1936</h4>
<p> </p>
<h2>N. Markin</h2>
<h1>The Stakhanovist Movement</h1>
<p class="from">From <em>New International</em>, <a href="../../issue.htm#ni36_02" target="new">Vol. 3 No. 1</a>, February 1936, pp. 9–13.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for <strong>ETOL</strong>.</p>
<p> </p>
<h4>Its real meaning and the bureaucratic distortions</h4>
<p class="fst">DURING THE night of August 31, Alexei Stakhanov, a coal miner, 29 years of age, peasant by birth, cut 102 tons of coal during a six-hour shift with a pneumatic drill, the average production being 6–7 tons. (The best average production in Europe [Poland, Ruhr] is about ten tons, and the maximum, 16–17 tons.) The “Stakhanovist movement” dates its birth from that day.</p>
<p>Shortly thereafter, the Soviet papers blazed with reports about other record-breaking feats. Boussygin, a smith (at the Gorki automotive plant) forges 112–127 crank-shafts an hour (while the smiths in the Ford plants produce 100 an hour). At turning wheels on a lathe, the norm being six pair a shift, a Stakhanovist worker turned out 12 pair which record was quickly surpassed: first by 15, then by 17 and 18 pair. In the Ural copper mines, a driller Ivanchikov produced during a single shift 970% of the norm, i.e., ten times the average productivity. That <em>day</em> he earned 320 rubles, that is to say, an amount representing almost twice the average <em>monthly</em> wage of a Soviet worker. The Vinogradov sisters, weavers by trade, from attending 70 looms passed to 144. In the Krivorog metallurgical basin, a Stakhanovist miner succeeded in surpassing the norm first 2,300%, then 2,500%! Stakhanov’s own record was beaten very quickly: the miner Gobatiuk produced 406 tons of coal during a single shift; a few days later, the driller Borisov produced almost 800 tons, passing all records, and over-fulfilling the norm 46 times!<br>
</p>
<h4>How Are the Records Attained?</h4>
<p class="fst">These are fantastic figures! Let us endeavor to examine whether they are real, what are the underlying causes for the results obtained, and by what means they are attained.</p>
<p>First of all we must make a general observation. During the recent years Soviet industry has grown enormously and has become enriched by a new and an advanced technology. But up to now the growth of Soviet industry has been expressed principally by quantitative indices, by increase in the <em>volume</em> of production. There has been an uninterrupted growth in the number of factories – often of the most modern type – and of the most perfected machines, but the <em>output per machine</em> has increased very slightly up to last year. In other words, the existing technology has been functioning on an extremely low level, yielding only a tiny fraction of what the very same technology yields in America or in Germany. It is precisely this low level of utilization of advanced technology that has created the very possibility of this dizzy leap in production. If a motor geared to 1,000 revolutions a minute is run only at 100 revolutions, it is relatively not difficult, under normal conditions, to speed it up to 1,000 revolutions, but it is very difficult (and frequently dangerous) to speed it up to, say, 1,050 revolutions. The motors of Soviet industry have been turning at a very low speed. This difference in level between the possibilities lodged in advanced technology and its extremely weak utilization was, in the sphere of production, the necessary preliminary condition for the Stakhanovist movement.</p>
<p>Let us examine in greater detail the work of Stakhanov himself. A driller, as Stakhanov relates, used to work no more than 2½ or 3 hours maximum with his pneumatic drill, and the rest of the time he had to do shoring, i.e., had to perform auxiliary tasks while the drill remained idle. During a working day of two shifts, the pneumatic drill was in use only 5–6 hours instead of 12. At the present time, Stakhanov’s drill functions during the full 6 hours (instead of 2½), and the work of shoring is performed by others. In other words, an elementary division of labor has been introduced, which has immediately yielded a very great increase in the productivity of labor. A number of other improvements have been introduced into the process of production itself with the resulting increase in efficiency. But the addition of auxiliary workers makes it necessary to introduce immediately important corrections into the records, a factor which Ordjonikidze himself recognized during the Stakhanovist Congress recently held in Moscow.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“It is sometimes thought that a single man [Stakhanov – <em>N.M.</em>] produced 102 tons. This is not true. These 102 tons were produced by an entire brigade.”</p>
<p class="fst">Thus, if the output attained is divided by the whole number of workers in the brigade, we obtain not the figure 100 tons or more per worker, but at the most 30 35 tons which, in comparison to the previously attained maximum productivity of 14 tons, represents a considerable increase but of far more modest proportions. We have here an increase in the productivity of labor from 2 to 2½ times, and not from 15 to 20 times.<br>
</p>
<h4>Irregularity of the Results</h4>
<p class="fst">Another essential cause for the <em>records</em> must be sought in the fact that we are dealing here not with an average workday under normal conditions of production, but with a very special preparation, often over a considerable period of time: and, moreover, the record-maker works in a state of extraordinary intensity, which of course he is unable to sustain for any considerable period of time. (We may note, as an interesting fact, that a <em>special</em> function has been created in the Stakhanovist brigade, that of a worker who relieves the tired men, a function which by its nature denotes a <em>particular</em> over-exertion of labor power.) Thus, the records, in their majority, are obtained under entirely special and artificial conditions, and by means of enormous intensity. That is why the records not only are unstable but also are not indicative, as a perspective, of a rise in the <em>average</em> productivity of labor.</p>
<p>In most cases, the records themselves bear a <em>unique</em> character. It is not without good cause that Ordjonikidze, when introducing one of the Stakhanovists, Sorokov, as a most extraordinary phenomenon, remarked at the Stakhanovist Congress (Nov. 14-17, 1935) that: “This comrade has made records not for a couple of days, but over a period of three months.” What a Stakhanovist succeeded in producing yesterday, he is unable to produce the next day. The basic causes for this are: the general lack of organization in industry, all sorts of disproportions within each individual plant, between different branches of industry, and so on. The brigade of the Stakhanovist Sukhorukov produces 150 carloads of coal one day, 80 carloads on the next, and so on, along the same feverish curve (<strong>Trud</strong>, Oct. 20, 1935). The brigade of the Stakhanovist Zhukov produces 80–90 tons of coal one day, and the next day only 8 tons (less than a tenth!), and a day later 92 tons, only to have the productivity drop again to 20 tons on the day following (<strong>Trud</strong>, Oct. 24, 1935). According to the newspapers, the causes for this are: hours of idleness due to a balky motor, poor functioning of the conveyor belt, etc., and probably also often clue to the over-fatigue of the Stakhanovist, worn out from the preceding day. At the Lenin locomotive construction plant the “successes of the Stakhanovists did not prove lasting. Just a few days later, the output of the lathers fell off sharply. Now there are days during which they do not even produce the norm.” (<strong>Trud</strong>, Nov. 1, 1935) At an investigation made among 20 miners who lagged behind, it was established that only one of them could be classified in the category of “loafers” while the others lagged behind because of lack of organization in production, and for other technical causes. The November 2 issue of <strong>Trud</strong> publishes interesting extracts from the “diary” of a Stakhanovist miner. From these notes, a salient fact emerges that out of <em>fifteen days</em>, the author of the diary worked only <em>two full days</em>; he did no work at all during five days, and worked only part time during the remainder, being continually shifted from one place to the next: either the machine was not ready or the coal seam was not prepared, or there was no timber for shoring, or there were no coal cars to load, and so on and so forth. The most famous record-holder after Stakhanov himself, Boussygin (already mentioned above) finds himself in a similar situation. Hardly had the newspapers broadcasted the news of his records (Boussygin, you see, has licked the smiths of Ford) when it turned out that Boussygin, the very next day “was unable to work full speed, his drill not having been properly prepared”. On the following day Boussygin “stood idle for two hours because the section administration had not prepared the drill, and had not changed the dies”. Still a day later Boussygin remained idle for 1½ hours, and in addition to this he began producing a “completely waste product. It was established that there was a mix-up in the grade of steel in the supply section” (<strong>Pravda</strong>, Nov. 23 and 24, 1935). This is the situation in which one of the most famous Stakhanovists finds himself, who works under exceptionally privileged conditions. Boussygin “raised such a row that the whole shop was aroused”, “Boussygin sounded the alarm”, “Boussygin went through the shop accompanied by the director”, Boussygin declares, “I have many points to bring up, many things will have to be altered”, and so on. Boussygin can take all these liberties; but the rank and file worker does not dare let out even a peep. The administration is naturally afraid of Boussygin and of other record-holders like him; places them in working conditions that are particularly favorable, provides them with special service and ahead of everybody else. One can without difficulty picture to himself the situation in which a rank and file worker, not a Stakhanovist, finds himself. Even <strong>Trud</strong> itself pleads: “We must not concern ourselves solely with the workers who have already made records.”</p>
<p>Again we see the entire unreality of the record of Boussygin – as well as of other record-holders – who, we are told, has apparently passed the American norms. Boussygin has succeeded several times in producing 127 crankshafts an hour while the smiths in Ford’s plants produce only 100, but the difference between them lies in this: that the Ford smiths do it every hour, yesterday as well as today, before yesterday and tomorrow – in other words it is the <em>average norm</em>, the American standard, and not a <em>record</em>. But Boussygin produces 127 in one hour, and during the next hour, possibly none at all.<br>
</p>
<h4>“Emulation”</h4>
<p class="fst">A regular ballyhoo has been raised about these records. A woman weaver, Odintsova, announces to the Stakhanovist Congress that she is preparing to take on 150 looms. The two women record-holders, the Vinogradov sisters yell out to her: “And we will take on 208 [laughter, applause].” Such incidents are numerous and the leaders in charge of the Congress laboriously fan this “sporting” spirit, approving it, provoking it, etc. It goes without saying that this ballyhoo, which accompanies the Stakhanovist movement, is an altogether unhealthy phenomenon, towards which the mass of the Soviet workers can not only have an entirely negative but also even a hostile attitude. Lenin once remarked on the subject of the records attained by American rationalization: “Under capitalism, this is a torture, or a trick.” There are elements of “torture and trick” in the Soviet records as well.</p>
<p>We have already pointed out the fact that these records are not indicative of a perspective of <em>growth</em> in average productivity. We shall now show, using as an example the mine in which Stakhanov works, how slight an effect these records have upon the average productivity. In this mine, aside from Stakhanov himself, also work a number of record-holders who have even “surpassed” him. The mine yielded 8,120 tons of coal in October as against 8,065 tons in September, that is to say, an increase of only seven-tenths of 1% in productivity. However, if we were to take into account not only the quantity of the coal mined but also the amount transported to the surface and loaded into cars, the growth would be even less. In other branches of industry an analogous situation obtains. Of course we must not lose sight of the fact that we are still at the beginnings of the movement.<br>
</p>
<h4>Why Has the Stakhanovist Movement Arisen?</h4>
<p class="fst">Is one to conclude from what has been said above that the Stakhanovist movement – considered not as a number of isolated records but as a movement for raising the productivity of labor – is a “bluff”, devoid of all perspectives? Not at all. In our opinion this movement, purged of the spirit of record-setting and of ballyhoo, has a great future before it. Let us endeavor to indicate the fundamental causes of it.</p>
<p>While we have pointed out the weak utilization of the new and often powerful technology as the basic cause for the very <em>possibility</em> of an important rise in the productivity of labor; while on the other hand, we have indicated the necessity of a sharply critical approach to the record-making results, there still remains to be answered a question of paramount importance: <em>Why</em> did the Stakhanovist movement “suddenly” spring up at the end of 1935? What served as the impetus for it? Why did it not arise, say, one or two years ago, when the advanced technology was already available?</p>
<p>In his remarkably platitudinous speech to the Stakhanovists, Stalin gave the following explanation of this phenomenon: “It has become happier and gayer to live. And when people live gaily, work proceeds apace.” (<strong>Pravda</strong>, Nov. 22, 1935.) The matter is a very simple one, it appears: the Soviet worker raises the productivity of labor out of “gaiety”, and he owes his gaiety of course to Stalin! Molotov, who subjected practically every speaker at the Congress to a stiff cross-examination, asking each one why he worked now with the Stakhanovist methods and not previously, supplied a more realistic estimate: “In many places, the immediate impetus to high productivity of labor on the part of the Stakhanovists was the mere desire to increase their wages.” (<strong>Pravda</strong>, Nov. 19, 1935.) America, which Stalin was not fated to discover, was thus shamefacedly discovered by Molotov.</p>
<p>Through all the dispatches in the press, through all the speeches of the Stakhanovists the <em>leit-motif</em> is: personal material interest. This is the fundamental stimulus of the Stakhanovist movement, and it is precisely (his, and this alone that assures its indubitable growth in the immediate future. These conditions of personal interest have been created only in the very recent period, in connection with the course toward the stabilization of the ruble, the elimination of the system of food cards, and the general normalization of the system of provisioning. Only a few months ago the amount earned in rubles played a relatively modest role in the worker’s budget, which was largely based upon the products distributed by the factory cooperative, and upon the factory kitchen, etc. Under these conditions a larger or smaller amount earned in rubles did not greatly matter. But, under the new conditions, when the ruble is once again becoming the “universal equivalent” of commodities – to be sure, a very imperfect and as yet unstable “equivalent”, but an equivalent nevertheless – the Soviet workers in the struggle for higher wages, are impelled to raise the productivity of their labor, because <em>piece-work wages</em> which have been introduced everywhere in the USSR automatically expresses in rubles the growth of the productivity of labor of every individual worker. <em>Piece-work rates</em>, which were introduced a long time ago, have become the prevailing wage form, both in industry and in transportation, even in those branches where it has created difficulties because of the collective, “brigade” character of the work. In the coal mining industry, for instance, piece-work was already the prevalent form, but there still frequently obtained the so-called brigade piece-work wages, that is, a brigade of workers received wages for the entire group for the amount produced by the brigade, and within the brigade the wages were divided almost equally. Now the transition is beginning – and it will indubitably be quickly effected wherever it has not been made as yet – to a <em>differential</em> piece-work rate, that is to say, each worker will receive pay in proportion to what he produces. <em>In proportion as the new technology has created the pre-condition for the Stakhanovist movement, the piece-work wage, under the conditions of the monetary reform, has effectively brought this movement into being</em>. And in the contradictory Soviet economic life with its elements of socialism and capitalism, the Stakhanovist movement has not only become economically necessary but to a certain extent also progressive – in that it raises the productivity of labor. It is of course not progressive in the sense that it “prepares the conditions for the transition from socialism [?] to communism [!!]” (Stalin, <strong>Pravda</strong>, Nov. 22, 1935); but in the sense that, within the framework of the existing transitional and contradictory economy, it prepares by means of <em>capitalist</em> methods the elementary pre-conditions for a socialist society. In the pre-Stalinist epoch, money and piece-work wages were never considered as categories either of communism, or even of socialism. Piece-work wages were defined by Marx “as the form of wages most suited to the <em>capitalist</em> mode of production.” (<strong>Capital</strong>) And only a bureaucrat who has lost the last shred of Marxian honesty can present this forced retreat from the allegedly already realized “socialism” back to money and piece-work wages (and consequently, to accentuating inequality to the over-exertion of labor power and to the lengthening of the working day) as “preparing the transition to communism”.</p>
<p>The introduction of piece work inevitably brings in its train a deep-going differentiation in the ranks of the Soviet working class itself. If this differentiation has been curbed until recently by the system of regulated provisioning – food cards, cooperatives and factory restaurants – then under the conditions of the passage to a monetary economy, it will take on the broadest development. There is hardly an advanced capitalist country where the difference in workers’ wages is as great as at present in the USSR In the mines, a non-Stakhanovist miner gets from 400 to 5oo rubles, a Stakhanovist more than 1,600 rubles. The auxiliary worker, who drives a team below, only gets 170 rubles if he is not a Stakhanovist and 400 rubles if he is (<strong>Pravda</strong>, Nov. 16, 1935), that is, one worker gets about ten times as much as another. And 170 rubles by no means represents the lowest wage, but the <em>average</em> wage, according to the data of Soviet statistics. Inhere are workers who earn no more than 150, 120 or even 100 rubles. A very skilled and specialized worker, Kaslov (motor construction factory at Gorky) earned, for <em>half</em> the month of October, 950 rubles, that is, more than u times the wage of the team driver and more than 16 times that of the worker who gets 120 rubles. The Stakhanovist textile workers get 500 rubles and more, the non-Stakhanovists, 150 rubles or less (<strong>Pravda</strong>, Nov. 18, 1936). The examples we give by no means indicate the extreme limits in the two directions. One could show without difficulty that the wages of the privileged layers of the working class (of the labor aristocracy in the true sense of the term) are 20 times higher, sometimes even more, than the wages of the poorly-paid layers. And if one takes the wages of specialists, the picture of the inequality becomes positively sinister. Ostrogliadov, the head engineer of a pit, who more than realizes the plan, gets 8,600 rubles a month; and he is a modest specialist, whose wages cannot, therefore, be considered exceptional. Thus, engineers often earn from 80 to 100 times as much as an unskilled worker. Such inequality is established now, 18 years after the October revolution, almost on the eve, according to Stalin, of the “passage from socialism to communism”!</p>
<p>And to this should be added other personal privileges of the Stakhanovists: places reserved for them in the rest homes and the sanatoria; lodging repairs: places for their children in the kindergartens (<strong>Trud</strong>, Oct. 23, 1935); free admittance to the movies; in addition, Stakhanovists are shaved without having to wait in line (Donbess, <strong>Trud</strong>, Nov. 11, 1936) ; they have the right to free lessons at home for themselves and their families (<strong>Trud</strong>, Nov. 2, 1935, and elsewhere), to free medical visits day and night, etc., etc.</p>
<p>We believe that the Stalinist leadership is putting the Stakhanovists in a very privileged position not only in order to encourage the rise in the productivity of labor, but for the purpose of <em>favoring</em>, just as <em>deliberately, the differentiation of the working class</em>, with the political aim of resting upon a base, much narrower no doubt, but also surer: the labor aristocracy.</p>
<p>The accentuated differentiation in the working class, the formation of an aristocracy emerging from it, sharpens extremely the internal antagonisms. Also, it is not surprising that the <em>Stakhanovist movement should be received in a hostile manner by the working mass</em>. This the Soviet press is unable to dissimulate. The hostility takes various forms: from joking to ... assassination. And among the mockers are found communist workers and even workers who hold small responsible posts in the party or the unions (<strong>Trud</strong>, Nov. 3, 1935).</p>
<p>The leaders summon to struggle against the “sabotagers”. The Stalinist Governor-General of the Ukraine, Postychev, declares: “The struggle against the sabotagers and those who are resisting the Stakhanovist movement ... is now one of the main sectors of the class struggle” (<strong>Pravda</strong>, Nov. 13, 1925). The lieutenant of Stalin at Leningrad, Zhdanov, says the same:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“In certain enterprises, the Stakhanovist movement has met with a certain resistance, even on the part of backward workers ... The party will stop at nothing to sweep out of the road of the victory of the Stakhanovist movement all those who resist it.” (<strong>Pravda</strong>, Nov. 18, 1935.)</p>
<p class="fst">Do these threats have an effect on the workers? Extracts which we give further on show us that in any case the workers are not inclined to yield without a fight wherever their vital interests are involved.</p>
<p><strong>Trud</strong> of Nov. 18 communicates that “in pit No. 5 the miner Kirilov beat up the section boss who demanded of him a good job of propping behind the Stakhanovist miner Zamsteyev”. Let us see what happened: the application of Stakhanovist methods in the coal pits led to a considerable reduction in the number of miners (for example, in the pit where Stakhanov works, their number was reduced from 36 to 24). Unemployment does not threaten them, but a part of them are transferred to the auxiliary work of propping, much more poorly paid. This is the situation in which the miner Kirilov found himself.</p>
<p>In the same number of <strong>Trud</strong> is related how two workers “conducted a malicious agitation against the Stakhanovist methods. Jagtirev sought to persuade the Stakhanovist worker Kurlitchev not to work. As a result the work on this section was impaired”. The Stakhanovists complain that it is only “when there is supervision that the work moves ahead.” (<strong>Trud</strong>, Sept. 24, 1925) In Odessa, in the heavy machinery construction plant, the worker, Poliakov hurled himself at the Stakhanovist Korenozh with an iron beam. Poliakov has been expelled from the trade union, driven from his job and it is planned to hand him over to a tribunal as an example. (<strong>Trud</strong>, Oct. 23, 1935) In Marionpole, in the Azorstal plant, two workers, Chisjakov and Khomenko were sentenced to four and two years imprisonment for having threatened to kill a Stakhanovist brigader. In the <em>Krasny Shtampovchik</em> plant, a Stakhanovist worker found a dirty broom on her loom with the following note: “To comrade Belozh: This bouquet of flowers is offered in honor of her realization of three norms.” (<strong>Trud</strong>, Nov. 1, 1925) Six days were needed to find those guilty. Among them was the shop steward, Muraviev. They were fired. But their superiors demanded that the matter be taken to the tribunal. <strong>Trud</strong> (Nov. 12, 1935) reports that “the textile workers, who have carried through their work intensively, have confronted and still confront great obstacles. Class struggle [!!] manifests itself at every step”. A small example: “... the windows of the stoop were opened to let out the bad air, thus soiling the factory”. In another factory: “The shuttle-boxes were soaped on dozens of looms. Behind all this are to be seen acts of sabotage. In the factory <em>Bolshevik</em> the shameless enemy [that is, the workers themselves. – <em>N.M.</em>] openly jeered the worker Udotzev, who operated 144 automatic looms.” A Stakhanovist worker relates how they jeered him: “They came to me saying: how thin you are! how pale you have become! are you slipping?”</p>
<p><strong>Izvestia</strong> of the 28th, reports that in section 25 of the Moscow box factory, the workers Kolnogorov, father and son, “reproached the Stakhanovist Solovin with having lowered the piece rates, they incited the workers Naumov and Kiepekin, who lived with the Kolmogorovs, to place lighted paper under Solovin’s feet, while he slept. This bestial act caused serious burns to Solovin. The criminals were arrested”.</p>
<p>In the Aviakhin factory, the worker Krikov regularly surpassed the norm while the more qualified workers produced less than he: “On October 14, everything became clear. Karpov said the following to Krikov: Don’t work so hard and don’t surpass the norm. Demand, on the contrary, that they raise the piece rates ...” Krikov reported this fact to the administration and the worker Karkov who was at first discharged, and was reinstated with a severe censure after having repented. (<strong>Pravda</strong>, Nov. 17, 1935)</p>
<p>The same number of <strong>Pravda</strong> relates that at Smolensk, “the backward workers began to persecute the Stakhanovist lather Likhoradov ... Things reached the point where a certain Sviridov broke a gear wheel and tore off Likharadov’s power belt”. Likhoradov himself says (<strong>Pravda</strong>, Nov. 17, 1935): “When I had made seven hoops [that is, exceeding considerably the norm. – <em>N.M.</em>], it created quite an affair. The hostile elements were ready to wallop me.”</p>
<p>The Soviet journals call the workers who resist the Stakhanovist movement “damagers”. “The favorite method of those who fight against the Stakhanovist movement consists in causing damages and in breaking the machinery,” writes <strong>Trud</strong>. <strong>Pravda</strong> (Nov. 3, 1935) communicates that in Tambov, four Stakhanovist workers, “arriving at work, found their tool boxes shattered and their tools stolen”. The struggle is so acute that on certain occasions, fortunately rare, it takes on the character of terroristic acts. “On the evening of October 23, the best Stakhanovist of the <strong>Trud</strong> factory, the locksmith Shmirev, was killed ... The criminals have been arrested.” (<strong>Pravda,</strong> Oct. 19. 1935) A few weeks later, <strong>Pravda</strong> announces that the “murderers have been sentenced to death by the military tribunal”.</p>
<p>In the Ivan pit, the best Stakhanovist, Nicolas Tsekhnov, was killed “in order to prevent the introduction of the Stakhanovist system in the section ... The criminals have been arrested.” (<strong>Izvestia</strong>, Oct. 30 and Nov. 2, 1935) We have already mentioned the fact that Stakhanovists often work at the expense of their neighbors. <strong>Trud</strong> (Oct. 23, 1935) communicates: “The Stakhanovist is overloaded with work; and his neighbor loafs.” The same journal says elsewhere: “The successes of the Stakhanovists have led to the reduction of the number of workers in certain branches: a new struggle has begun.” Shura Dimitrova, a Stakhanovist worker, declared squarely to the chairman of the factory committee: “This makes me sick. Either you fix it so that everybody has work to do or else you bring back the workers without my having to stop working like this.” It is not difficult to imagine what state of mind prevails in the plant under such conditions. The foreman of the <em>First of May</em> factory [in Leningrad], Soldatov, says: “When there weren’t any Stakhanovists, nobody loafed; and with the Stakhanovists, loafing has begun.” (<strong>Trud</strong>, Oct. 2b, 1935)</p>
<p>We have given such a large number of quotations in order to show all the acuteness of the struggle inside the working class on the Stakhanovist movement. If the Stakhanovist movement does not yet threaten the Soviet worker with unemployment – industry, in its powerful upswing, is still capable of absorbing all the working hands that are free – it does threaten them with unemployment on the job, with being shifted to auxiliary jobs, with physical over-tension, with wage reductions, etc. The further differentiation of the working class means the enhancement of economic inequality and antagonisms.</p>
<p>It would be absurd to think that the majority, or even a considerable portion of the working class, can become Stakhanovist. The rise in wages of the Stakhanovists is already, without doubt, the object of uneasiness in the bureaucracy. Occupied with the stabilization of the Soviet money, it cannot “fling” rubles in all directions. Stalin has declared openly that the present technical norms must be revised “as non-conformable any longer with the reality; turn back and put on the brakes ... they must be replaced with new, higher technical norms” which “are needed, moreover, in order to push the backward masses towards the more advanced”. That’s clear enough. These new norms, according to Stalin, must “pass somewhere between the present norms and those obtained by the Stakhanovs and the Boussygins. (<strong>Pravda</strong>, Nov. 22, 1935) And after the raising of the technical norms will undoubtedly follow a decrease in the piece rates, that is, a blow at the wage level. In a number of enterprises, the piece rates were reduced by the manager right after the first records of the Stakhanovists. That’s what the Soviet worker senses and that’s what alarms him. And he seeks the road of self-defense, and protests in his own way, as we have seen from the facts reported.</p>
<p>It is very probable that we are on the eve of serious defensive economic struggles of the working class in the USSR. This struggle will inevitably take on, at the beginning, a discordant and partisan character. The working class in the USSR has no trade unions, has no party. Those completely degenerated bureaucratic organization which call themselves trade unions, are considered by the bureaucrats themselves (those of other organizations) as a bankrupt appendix of the economic organisms of the state. This avowal is openly made in the Soviet press.</p>
<p>The questions of the defense of the economic interests of the working class in the USSR will, in the very near future, acquire an enormous importance. The workers will inevitably aspire to create <em>their</em> organizations, however primitive they may be, but at least capable of defending the direct interests of the workers in the field of the working day, of rest, of vacations and of wages, and to put up a wall against the pressure of the bureaucracy in the direction of intensification, under cover of the Stakhanovist movement or any other.</p>
<p>The task of the Bolshevik-Leninists is to help the working class of the USSR in this struggle against the enormous bureaucratic deviations in the field of the raising of the productivity of labor. Especially must the advanced Soviet worker be helped – on the basic of active participation in increasing the economic power of the country – to formulate correctly, to launch and to popularize among the masses demands, fundamental slogans, a sort of minimum program of the defense of the interests of the working class against the bureaucracy, its arbitrariness, its violations, its privileges, its corruption. It is very likely that on the basis of the industrial successes and of a certain rise in the standard of living of the masses, at least of its upper layers, – a rise lagging far behind the industrial gains – the Soviet worker, in this manner, that is, by the defense of his elementary economic interests, will once more associate himself with political struggle. Thus will be opened before the October revolution a perspective of regeneration.</p>
<p class="date">December 12, 1935</p>
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The New International, February 1936
N. Markin
The Stakhanovist Movement
From New International, Vol. 3 No. 1, February 1936, pp. 9–13.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Its real meaning and the bureaucratic distortions
DURING THE night of August 31, Alexei Stakhanov, a coal miner, 29 years of age, peasant by birth, cut 102 tons of coal during a six-hour shift with a pneumatic drill, the average production being 6–7 tons. (The best average production in Europe [Poland, Ruhr] is about ten tons, and the maximum, 16–17 tons.) The “Stakhanovist movement” dates its birth from that day.
Shortly thereafter, the Soviet papers blazed with reports about other record-breaking feats. Boussygin, a smith (at the Gorki automotive plant) forges 112–127 crank-shafts an hour (while the smiths in the Ford plants produce 100 an hour). At turning wheels on a lathe, the norm being six pair a shift, a Stakhanovist worker turned out 12 pair which record was quickly surpassed: first by 15, then by 17 and 18 pair. In the Ural copper mines, a driller Ivanchikov produced during a single shift 970% of the norm, i.e., ten times the average productivity. That day he earned 320 rubles, that is to say, an amount representing almost twice the average monthly wage of a Soviet worker. The Vinogradov sisters, weavers by trade, from attending 70 looms passed to 144. In the Krivorog metallurgical basin, a Stakhanovist miner succeeded in surpassing the norm first 2,300%, then 2,500%! Stakhanov’s own record was beaten very quickly: the miner Gobatiuk produced 406 tons of coal during a single shift; a few days later, the driller Borisov produced almost 800 tons, passing all records, and over-fulfilling the norm 46 times!
How Are the Records Attained?
These are fantastic figures! Let us endeavor to examine whether they are real, what are the underlying causes for the results obtained, and by what means they are attained.
First of all we must make a general observation. During the recent years Soviet industry has grown enormously and has become enriched by a new and an advanced technology. But up to now the growth of Soviet industry has been expressed principally by quantitative indices, by increase in the volume of production. There has been an uninterrupted growth in the number of factories – often of the most modern type – and of the most perfected machines, but the output per machine has increased very slightly up to last year. In other words, the existing technology has been functioning on an extremely low level, yielding only a tiny fraction of what the very same technology yields in America or in Germany. It is precisely this low level of utilization of advanced technology that has created the very possibility of this dizzy leap in production. If a motor geared to 1,000 revolutions a minute is run only at 100 revolutions, it is relatively not difficult, under normal conditions, to speed it up to 1,000 revolutions, but it is very difficult (and frequently dangerous) to speed it up to, say, 1,050 revolutions. The motors of Soviet industry have been turning at a very low speed. This difference in level between the possibilities lodged in advanced technology and its extremely weak utilization was, in the sphere of production, the necessary preliminary condition for the Stakhanovist movement.
Let us examine in greater detail the work of Stakhanov himself. A driller, as Stakhanov relates, used to work no more than 2½ or 3 hours maximum with his pneumatic drill, and the rest of the time he had to do shoring, i.e., had to perform auxiliary tasks while the drill remained idle. During a working day of two shifts, the pneumatic drill was in use only 5–6 hours instead of 12. At the present time, Stakhanov’s drill functions during the full 6 hours (instead of 2½), and the work of shoring is performed by others. In other words, an elementary division of labor has been introduced, which has immediately yielded a very great increase in the productivity of labor. A number of other improvements have been introduced into the process of production itself with the resulting increase in efficiency. But the addition of auxiliary workers makes it necessary to introduce immediately important corrections into the records, a factor which Ordjonikidze himself recognized during the Stakhanovist Congress recently held in Moscow.
“It is sometimes thought that a single man [Stakhanov – N.M.] produced 102 tons. This is not true. These 102 tons were produced by an entire brigade.”
Thus, if the output attained is divided by the whole number of workers in the brigade, we obtain not the figure 100 tons or more per worker, but at the most 30 35 tons which, in comparison to the previously attained maximum productivity of 14 tons, represents a considerable increase but of far more modest proportions. We have here an increase in the productivity of labor from 2 to 2½ times, and not from 15 to 20 times.
Irregularity of the Results
Another essential cause for the records must be sought in the fact that we are dealing here not with an average workday under normal conditions of production, but with a very special preparation, often over a considerable period of time: and, moreover, the record-maker works in a state of extraordinary intensity, which of course he is unable to sustain for any considerable period of time. (We may note, as an interesting fact, that a special function has been created in the Stakhanovist brigade, that of a worker who relieves the tired men, a function which by its nature denotes a particular over-exertion of labor power.) Thus, the records, in their majority, are obtained under entirely special and artificial conditions, and by means of enormous intensity. That is why the records not only are unstable but also are not indicative, as a perspective, of a rise in the average productivity of labor.
In most cases, the records themselves bear a unique character. It is not without good cause that Ordjonikidze, when introducing one of the Stakhanovists, Sorokov, as a most extraordinary phenomenon, remarked at the Stakhanovist Congress (Nov. 14-17, 1935) that: “This comrade has made records not for a couple of days, but over a period of three months.” What a Stakhanovist succeeded in producing yesterday, he is unable to produce the next day. The basic causes for this are: the general lack of organization in industry, all sorts of disproportions within each individual plant, between different branches of industry, and so on. The brigade of the Stakhanovist Sukhorukov produces 150 carloads of coal one day, 80 carloads on the next, and so on, along the same feverish curve (Trud, Oct. 20, 1935). The brigade of the Stakhanovist Zhukov produces 80–90 tons of coal one day, and the next day only 8 tons (less than a tenth!), and a day later 92 tons, only to have the productivity drop again to 20 tons on the day following (Trud, Oct. 24, 1935). According to the newspapers, the causes for this are: hours of idleness due to a balky motor, poor functioning of the conveyor belt, etc., and probably also often clue to the over-fatigue of the Stakhanovist, worn out from the preceding day. At the Lenin locomotive construction plant the “successes of the Stakhanovists did not prove lasting. Just a few days later, the output of the lathers fell off sharply. Now there are days during which they do not even produce the norm.” (Trud, Nov. 1, 1935) At an investigation made among 20 miners who lagged behind, it was established that only one of them could be classified in the category of “loafers” while the others lagged behind because of lack of organization in production, and for other technical causes. The November 2 issue of Trud publishes interesting extracts from the “diary” of a Stakhanovist miner. From these notes, a salient fact emerges that out of fifteen days, the author of the diary worked only two full days; he did no work at all during five days, and worked only part time during the remainder, being continually shifted from one place to the next: either the machine was not ready or the coal seam was not prepared, or there was no timber for shoring, or there were no coal cars to load, and so on and so forth. The most famous record-holder after Stakhanov himself, Boussygin (already mentioned above) finds himself in a similar situation. Hardly had the newspapers broadcasted the news of his records (Boussygin, you see, has licked the smiths of Ford) when it turned out that Boussygin, the very next day “was unable to work full speed, his drill not having been properly prepared”. On the following day Boussygin “stood idle for two hours because the section administration had not prepared the drill, and had not changed the dies”. Still a day later Boussygin remained idle for 1½ hours, and in addition to this he began producing a “completely waste product. It was established that there was a mix-up in the grade of steel in the supply section” (Pravda, Nov. 23 and 24, 1935). This is the situation in which one of the most famous Stakhanovists finds himself, who works under exceptionally privileged conditions. Boussygin “raised such a row that the whole shop was aroused”, “Boussygin sounded the alarm”, “Boussygin went through the shop accompanied by the director”, Boussygin declares, “I have many points to bring up, many things will have to be altered”, and so on. Boussygin can take all these liberties; but the rank and file worker does not dare let out even a peep. The administration is naturally afraid of Boussygin and of other record-holders like him; places them in working conditions that are particularly favorable, provides them with special service and ahead of everybody else. One can without difficulty picture to himself the situation in which a rank and file worker, not a Stakhanovist, finds himself. Even Trud itself pleads: “We must not concern ourselves solely with the workers who have already made records.”
Again we see the entire unreality of the record of Boussygin – as well as of other record-holders – who, we are told, has apparently passed the American norms. Boussygin has succeeded several times in producing 127 crankshafts an hour while the smiths in Ford’s plants produce only 100, but the difference between them lies in this: that the Ford smiths do it every hour, yesterday as well as today, before yesterday and tomorrow – in other words it is the average norm, the American standard, and not a record. But Boussygin produces 127 in one hour, and during the next hour, possibly none at all.
“Emulation”
A regular ballyhoo has been raised about these records. A woman weaver, Odintsova, announces to the Stakhanovist Congress that she is preparing to take on 150 looms. The two women record-holders, the Vinogradov sisters yell out to her: “And we will take on 208 [laughter, applause].” Such incidents are numerous and the leaders in charge of the Congress laboriously fan this “sporting” spirit, approving it, provoking it, etc. It goes without saying that this ballyhoo, which accompanies the Stakhanovist movement, is an altogether unhealthy phenomenon, towards which the mass of the Soviet workers can not only have an entirely negative but also even a hostile attitude. Lenin once remarked on the subject of the records attained by American rationalization: “Under capitalism, this is a torture, or a trick.” There are elements of “torture and trick” in the Soviet records as well.
We have already pointed out the fact that these records are not indicative of a perspective of growth in average productivity. We shall now show, using as an example the mine in which Stakhanov works, how slight an effect these records have upon the average productivity. In this mine, aside from Stakhanov himself, also work a number of record-holders who have even “surpassed” him. The mine yielded 8,120 tons of coal in October as against 8,065 tons in September, that is to say, an increase of only seven-tenths of 1% in productivity. However, if we were to take into account not only the quantity of the coal mined but also the amount transported to the surface and loaded into cars, the growth would be even less. In other branches of industry an analogous situation obtains. Of course we must not lose sight of the fact that we are still at the beginnings of the movement.
Why Has the Stakhanovist Movement Arisen?
Is one to conclude from what has been said above that the Stakhanovist movement – considered not as a number of isolated records but as a movement for raising the productivity of labor – is a “bluff”, devoid of all perspectives? Not at all. In our opinion this movement, purged of the spirit of record-setting and of ballyhoo, has a great future before it. Let us endeavor to indicate the fundamental causes of it.
While we have pointed out the weak utilization of the new and often powerful technology as the basic cause for the very possibility of an important rise in the productivity of labor; while on the other hand, we have indicated the necessity of a sharply critical approach to the record-making results, there still remains to be answered a question of paramount importance: Why did the Stakhanovist movement “suddenly” spring up at the end of 1935? What served as the impetus for it? Why did it not arise, say, one or two years ago, when the advanced technology was already available?
In his remarkably platitudinous speech to the Stakhanovists, Stalin gave the following explanation of this phenomenon: “It has become happier and gayer to live. And when people live gaily, work proceeds apace.” (Pravda, Nov. 22, 1935.) The matter is a very simple one, it appears: the Soviet worker raises the productivity of labor out of “gaiety”, and he owes his gaiety of course to Stalin! Molotov, who subjected practically every speaker at the Congress to a stiff cross-examination, asking each one why he worked now with the Stakhanovist methods and not previously, supplied a more realistic estimate: “In many places, the immediate impetus to high productivity of labor on the part of the Stakhanovists was the mere desire to increase their wages.” (Pravda, Nov. 19, 1935.) America, which Stalin was not fated to discover, was thus shamefacedly discovered by Molotov.
Through all the dispatches in the press, through all the speeches of the Stakhanovists the leit-motif is: personal material interest. This is the fundamental stimulus of the Stakhanovist movement, and it is precisely (his, and this alone that assures its indubitable growth in the immediate future. These conditions of personal interest have been created only in the very recent period, in connection with the course toward the stabilization of the ruble, the elimination of the system of food cards, and the general normalization of the system of provisioning. Only a few months ago the amount earned in rubles played a relatively modest role in the worker’s budget, which was largely based upon the products distributed by the factory cooperative, and upon the factory kitchen, etc. Under these conditions a larger or smaller amount earned in rubles did not greatly matter. But, under the new conditions, when the ruble is once again becoming the “universal equivalent” of commodities – to be sure, a very imperfect and as yet unstable “equivalent”, but an equivalent nevertheless – the Soviet workers in the struggle for higher wages, are impelled to raise the productivity of their labor, because piece-work wages which have been introduced everywhere in the USSR automatically expresses in rubles the growth of the productivity of labor of every individual worker. Piece-work rates, which were introduced a long time ago, have become the prevailing wage form, both in industry and in transportation, even in those branches where it has created difficulties because of the collective, “brigade” character of the work. In the coal mining industry, for instance, piece-work was already the prevalent form, but there still frequently obtained the so-called brigade piece-work wages, that is, a brigade of workers received wages for the entire group for the amount produced by the brigade, and within the brigade the wages were divided almost equally. Now the transition is beginning – and it will indubitably be quickly effected wherever it has not been made as yet – to a differential piece-work rate, that is to say, each worker will receive pay in proportion to what he produces. In proportion as the new technology has created the pre-condition for the Stakhanovist movement, the piece-work wage, under the conditions of the monetary reform, has effectively brought this movement into being. And in the contradictory Soviet economic life with its elements of socialism and capitalism, the Stakhanovist movement has not only become economically necessary but to a certain extent also progressive – in that it raises the productivity of labor. It is of course not progressive in the sense that it “prepares the conditions for the transition from socialism [?] to communism [!!]” (Stalin, Pravda, Nov. 22, 1935); but in the sense that, within the framework of the existing transitional and contradictory economy, it prepares by means of capitalist methods the elementary pre-conditions for a socialist society. In the pre-Stalinist epoch, money and piece-work wages were never considered as categories either of communism, or even of socialism. Piece-work wages were defined by Marx “as the form of wages most suited to the capitalist mode of production.” (Capital) And only a bureaucrat who has lost the last shred of Marxian honesty can present this forced retreat from the allegedly already realized “socialism” back to money and piece-work wages (and consequently, to accentuating inequality to the over-exertion of labor power and to the lengthening of the working day) as “preparing the transition to communism”.
The introduction of piece work inevitably brings in its train a deep-going differentiation in the ranks of the Soviet working class itself. If this differentiation has been curbed until recently by the system of regulated provisioning – food cards, cooperatives and factory restaurants – then under the conditions of the passage to a monetary economy, it will take on the broadest development. There is hardly an advanced capitalist country where the difference in workers’ wages is as great as at present in the USSR In the mines, a non-Stakhanovist miner gets from 400 to 5oo rubles, a Stakhanovist more than 1,600 rubles. The auxiliary worker, who drives a team below, only gets 170 rubles if he is not a Stakhanovist and 400 rubles if he is (Pravda, Nov. 16, 1935), that is, one worker gets about ten times as much as another. And 170 rubles by no means represents the lowest wage, but the average wage, according to the data of Soviet statistics. Inhere are workers who earn no more than 150, 120 or even 100 rubles. A very skilled and specialized worker, Kaslov (motor construction factory at Gorky) earned, for half the month of October, 950 rubles, that is, more than u times the wage of the team driver and more than 16 times that of the worker who gets 120 rubles. The Stakhanovist textile workers get 500 rubles and more, the non-Stakhanovists, 150 rubles or less (Pravda, Nov. 18, 1936). The examples we give by no means indicate the extreme limits in the two directions. One could show without difficulty that the wages of the privileged layers of the working class (of the labor aristocracy in the true sense of the term) are 20 times higher, sometimes even more, than the wages of the poorly-paid layers. And if one takes the wages of specialists, the picture of the inequality becomes positively sinister. Ostrogliadov, the head engineer of a pit, who more than realizes the plan, gets 8,600 rubles a month; and he is a modest specialist, whose wages cannot, therefore, be considered exceptional. Thus, engineers often earn from 80 to 100 times as much as an unskilled worker. Such inequality is established now, 18 years after the October revolution, almost on the eve, according to Stalin, of the “passage from socialism to communism”!
And to this should be added other personal privileges of the Stakhanovists: places reserved for them in the rest homes and the sanatoria; lodging repairs: places for their children in the kindergartens (Trud, Oct. 23, 1935); free admittance to the movies; in addition, Stakhanovists are shaved without having to wait in line (Donbess, Trud, Nov. 11, 1936) ; they have the right to free lessons at home for themselves and their families (Trud, Nov. 2, 1935, and elsewhere), to free medical visits day and night, etc., etc.
We believe that the Stalinist leadership is putting the Stakhanovists in a very privileged position not only in order to encourage the rise in the productivity of labor, but for the purpose of favoring, just as deliberately, the differentiation of the working class, with the political aim of resting upon a base, much narrower no doubt, but also surer: the labor aristocracy.
The accentuated differentiation in the working class, the formation of an aristocracy emerging from it, sharpens extremely the internal antagonisms. Also, it is not surprising that the Stakhanovist movement should be received in a hostile manner by the working mass. This the Soviet press is unable to dissimulate. The hostility takes various forms: from joking to ... assassination. And among the mockers are found communist workers and even workers who hold small responsible posts in the party or the unions (Trud, Nov. 3, 1935).
The leaders summon to struggle against the “sabotagers”. The Stalinist Governor-General of the Ukraine, Postychev, declares: “The struggle against the sabotagers and those who are resisting the Stakhanovist movement ... is now one of the main sectors of the class struggle” (Pravda, Nov. 13, 1925). The lieutenant of Stalin at Leningrad, Zhdanov, says the same:
“In certain enterprises, the Stakhanovist movement has met with a certain resistance, even on the part of backward workers ... The party will stop at nothing to sweep out of the road of the victory of the Stakhanovist movement all those who resist it.” (Pravda, Nov. 18, 1935.)
Do these threats have an effect on the workers? Extracts which we give further on show us that in any case the workers are not inclined to yield without a fight wherever their vital interests are involved.
Trud of Nov. 18 communicates that “in pit No. 5 the miner Kirilov beat up the section boss who demanded of him a good job of propping behind the Stakhanovist miner Zamsteyev”. Let us see what happened: the application of Stakhanovist methods in the coal pits led to a considerable reduction in the number of miners (for example, in the pit where Stakhanov works, their number was reduced from 36 to 24). Unemployment does not threaten them, but a part of them are transferred to the auxiliary work of propping, much more poorly paid. This is the situation in which the miner Kirilov found himself.
In the same number of Trud is related how two workers “conducted a malicious agitation against the Stakhanovist methods. Jagtirev sought to persuade the Stakhanovist worker Kurlitchev not to work. As a result the work on this section was impaired”. The Stakhanovists complain that it is only “when there is supervision that the work moves ahead.” (Trud, Sept. 24, 1925) In Odessa, in the heavy machinery construction plant, the worker, Poliakov hurled himself at the Stakhanovist Korenozh with an iron beam. Poliakov has been expelled from the trade union, driven from his job and it is planned to hand him over to a tribunal as an example. (Trud, Oct. 23, 1935) In Marionpole, in the Azorstal plant, two workers, Chisjakov and Khomenko were sentenced to four and two years imprisonment for having threatened to kill a Stakhanovist brigader. In the Krasny Shtampovchik plant, a Stakhanovist worker found a dirty broom on her loom with the following note: “To comrade Belozh: This bouquet of flowers is offered in honor of her realization of three norms.” (Trud, Nov. 1, 1925) Six days were needed to find those guilty. Among them was the shop steward, Muraviev. They were fired. But their superiors demanded that the matter be taken to the tribunal. Trud (Nov. 12, 1935) reports that “the textile workers, who have carried through their work intensively, have confronted and still confront great obstacles. Class struggle [!!] manifests itself at every step”. A small example: “... the windows of the stoop were opened to let out the bad air, thus soiling the factory”. In another factory: “The shuttle-boxes were soaped on dozens of looms. Behind all this are to be seen acts of sabotage. In the factory Bolshevik the shameless enemy [that is, the workers themselves. – N.M.] openly jeered the worker Udotzev, who operated 144 automatic looms.” A Stakhanovist worker relates how they jeered him: “They came to me saying: how thin you are! how pale you have become! are you slipping?”
Izvestia of the 28th, reports that in section 25 of the Moscow box factory, the workers Kolnogorov, father and son, “reproached the Stakhanovist Solovin with having lowered the piece rates, they incited the workers Naumov and Kiepekin, who lived with the Kolmogorovs, to place lighted paper under Solovin’s feet, while he slept. This bestial act caused serious burns to Solovin. The criminals were arrested”.
In the Aviakhin factory, the worker Krikov regularly surpassed the norm while the more qualified workers produced less than he: “On October 14, everything became clear. Karpov said the following to Krikov: Don’t work so hard and don’t surpass the norm. Demand, on the contrary, that they raise the piece rates ...” Krikov reported this fact to the administration and the worker Karkov who was at first discharged, and was reinstated with a severe censure after having repented. (Pravda, Nov. 17, 1935)
The same number of Pravda relates that at Smolensk, “the backward workers began to persecute the Stakhanovist lather Likhoradov ... Things reached the point where a certain Sviridov broke a gear wheel and tore off Likharadov’s power belt”. Likhoradov himself says (Pravda, Nov. 17, 1935): “When I had made seven hoops [that is, exceeding considerably the norm. – N.M.], it created quite an affair. The hostile elements were ready to wallop me.”
The Soviet journals call the workers who resist the Stakhanovist movement “damagers”. “The favorite method of those who fight against the Stakhanovist movement consists in causing damages and in breaking the machinery,” writes Trud. Pravda (Nov. 3, 1935) communicates that in Tambov, four Stakhanovist workers, “arriving at work, found their tool boxes shattered and their tools stolen”. The struggle is so acute that on certain occasions, fortunately rare, it takes on the character of terroristic acts. “On the evening of October 23, the best Stakhanovist of the Trud factory, the locksmith Shmirev, was killed ... The criminals have been arrested.” (Pravda, Oct. 19. 1935) A few weeks later, Pravda announces that the “murderers have been sentenced to death by the military tribunal”.
In the Ivan pit, the best Stakhanovist, Nicolas Tsekhnov, was killed “in order to prevent the introduction of the Stakhanovist system in the section ... The criminals have been arrested.” (Izvestia, Oct. 30 and Nov. 2, 1935) We have already mentioned the fact that Stakhanovists often work at the expense of their neighbors. Trud (Oct. 23, 1935) communicates: “The Stakhanovist is overloaded with work; and his neighbor loafs.” The same journal says elsewhere: “The successes of the Stakhanovists have led to the reduction of the number of workers in certain branches: a new struggle has begun.” Shura Dimitrova, a Stakhanovist worker, declared squarely to the chairman of the factory committee: “This makes me sick. Either you fix it so that everybody has work to do or else you bring back the workers without my having to stop working like this.” It is not difficult to imagine what state of mind prevails in the plant under such conditions. The foreman of the First of May factory [in Leningrad], Soldatov, says: “When there weren’t any Stakhanovists, nobody loafed; and with the Stakhanovists, loafing has begun.” (Trud, Oct. 2b, 1935)
We have given such a large number of quotations in order to show all the acuteness of the struggle inside the working class on the Stakhanovist movement. If the Stakhanovist movement does not yet threaten the Soviet worker with unemployment – industry, in its powerful upswing, is still capable of absorbing all the working hands that are free – it does threaten them with unemployment on the job, with being shifted to auxiliary jobs, with physical over-tension, with wage reductions, etc. The further differentiation of the working class means the enhancement of economic inequality and antagonisms.
It would be absurd to think that the majority, or even a considerable portion of the working class, can become Stakhanovist. The rise in wages of the Stakhanovists is already, without doubt, the object of uneasiness in the bureaucracy. Occupied with the stabilization of the Soviet money, it cannot “fling” rubles in all directions. Stalin has declared openly that the present technical norms must be revised “as non-conformable any longer with the reality; turn back and put on the brakes ... they must be replaced with new, higher technical norms” which “are needed, moreover, in order to push the backward masses towards the more advanced”. That’s clear enough. These new norms, according to Stalin, must “pass somewhere between the present norms and those obtained by the Stakhanovs and the Boussygins. (Pravda, Nov. 22, 1935) And after the raising of the technical norms will undoubtedly follow a decrease in the piece rates, that is, a blow at the wage level. In a number of enterprises, the piece rates were reduced by the manager right after the first records of the Stakhanovists. That’s what the Soviet worker senses and that’s what alarms him. And he seeks the road of self-defense, and protests in his own way, as we have seen from the facts reported.
It is very probable that we are on the eve of serious defensive economic struggles of the working class in the USSR. This struggle will inevitably take on, at the beginning, a discordant and partisan character. The working class in the USSR has no trade unions, has no party. Those completely degenerated bureaucratic organization which call themselves trade unions, are considered by the bureaucrats themselves (those of other organizations) as a bankrupt appendix of the economic organisms of the state. This avowal is openly made in the Soviet press.
The questions of the defense of the economic interests of the working class in the USSR will, in the very near future, acquire an enormous importance. The workers will inevitably aspire to create their organizations, however primitive they may be, but at least capable of defending the direct interests of the workers in the field of the working day, of rest, of vacations and of wages, and to put up a wall against the pressure of the bureaucracy in the direction of intensification, under cover of the Stakhanovist movement or any other.
The task of the Bolshevik-Leninists is to help the working class of the USSR in this struggle against the enormous bureaucratic deviations in the field of the raising of the productivity of labor. Especially must the advanced Soviet worker be helped – on the basic of active participation in increasing the economic power of the country – to formulate correctly, to launch and to popularize among the masses demands, fundamental slogans, a sort of minimum program of the defense of the interests of the working class against the bureaucracy, its arbitrariness, its violations, its privileges, its corruption. It is very likely that on the basis of the industrial successes and of a certain rise in the standard of living of the masses, at least of its upper layers, – a rise lagging far behind the industrial gains – the Soviet worker, in this manner, that is, by the defense of his elementary economic interests, will once more associate himself with political struggle. Thus will be opened before the October revolution a perspective of regeneration.
December 12, 1935
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<h2>M.</h2>
<h1>Another “Friend” of the Soviet Union</h1>
<h3>(December 1933)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1933/index.htm#tm33_57" target="new">Vol. VI No. 57</a>, 30 December 1933, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<br>
<p class="fst">The great wit of the bourgeoisie, George Bernard Shaw, has discovered a new love. Before the war It was the Fabian Society, the pinkest of all pink organizations. During the war he served God and Empire. Recently his love was the Soviet Union, whose hotels at last had hot water, and whose trains at last ran. And now it is Herr Hitler.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Describing Hitler as ‘a very able man’ Mr. Shaw said he had the genius to realize ‘that Germany had been kicked long enough.’ (<strong>New York Times</strong>)</p>
<p class="fst">We cannot blame Mr. Shaw. He always was just one thing – a bourgeois, a very clever and, at times, a caustically critical one, but none the less a bourgeois. And Mr. Shaw is perfectly right. Adolph is a great man – for the bourgeoisie. For the workers Hitler is hell incarnate.</p>
<p>The danger lies not in Mr. Shaw being a bourgeois, but in the willingness of so-called proletarian leaders to take him for something else. And the danger becomes disaster when the Stalinist leaders of the Comintern rely upon Mr. Shaw and his fellows as the “friends” and defenders of the Soviet Union. Shaw and his friends are only petty bourgeois or bourgeois masqueraders, and when they get tired or scared of the red get-up, they’ll change it for black, brown or blue. Henri Barbusse, Romain Rolland, Lord Marley, and all the rest will very probably disappear long before the battle which decides whether the <em>Horst Wessel</em> song shall be sung in Moscow’s streets by Hitler’s brown shirts – or whether the <em>Internationale</em> shall be heard in Berlin.</p>
<p>Mr. Shaw has shown these people the road. It is useless for Communists to blame them for taking it; they are what they are. But all workers must watch with suspicion those leaders of the Soviet Union, the whole Stalinist bureaucracy, who prefer such friends and defenders to the revolutionary proletariat.</p>
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M.
Another “Friend” of the Soviet Union
(December 1933)
From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 57, 30 December 1933, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The great wit of the bourgeoisie, George Bernard Shaw, has discovered a new love. Before the war It was the Fabian Society, the pinkest of all pink organizations. During the war he served God and Empire. Recently his love was the Soviet Union, whose hotels at last had hot water, and whose trains at last ran. And now it is Herr Hitler.
“Describing Hitler as ‘a very able man’ Mr. Shaw said he had the genius to realize ‘that Germany had been kicked long enough.’ (New York Times)
We cannot blame Mr. Shaw. He always was just one thing – a bourgeois, a very clever and, at times, a caustically critical one, but none the less a bourgeois. And Mr. Shaw is perfectly right. Adolph is a great man – for the bourgeoisie. For the workers Hitler is hell incarnate.
The danger lies not in Mr. Shaw being a bourgeois, but in the willingness of so-called proletarian leaders to take him for something else. And the danger becomes disaster when the Stalinist leaders of the Comintern rely upon Mr. Shaw and his fellows as the “friends” and defenders of the Soviet Union. Shaw and his friends are only petty bourgeois or bourgeois masqueraders, and when they get tired or scared of the red get-up, they’ll change it for black, brown or blue. Henri Barbusse, Romain Rolland, Lord Marley, and all the rest will very probably disappear long before the battle which decides whether the Horst Wessel song shall be sung in Moscow’s streets by Hitler’s brown shirts – or whether the Internationale shall be heard in Berlin.
Mr. Shaw has shown these people the road. It is useless for Communists to blame them for taking it; they are what they are. But all workers must watch with suspicion those leaders of the Soviet Union, the whole Stalinist bureaucracy, who prefer such friends and defenders to the revolutionary proletariat.
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<h2>N. Markin</h2>
<h4>Towards the XVI Congress of the C.P.S.U.</h4>
<h1>Dissolving the Communist Party into the Class</h1>
<h3>(March 1930)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1930/index.htm#tm30_22" target="new">Vol. III No. 22</a>, 7 June 1930, p. 8.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">At the end of January 1930, a new recruitment of workers into the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was proclaimed. The February issues of the <strong>Pravda</strong> are full of information about the “great upsurge”, about “the mass flocking of workers into the Party” etc. The Central Committee has already given the directives: “To get not less than half the Party membership from workers in industry until the Sixteenth Party Congress” (<strong>Pravda</strong>, Feb. 11). Translating this into the language of figures it means that in approximately two months the Party has to admit a minimum of about 150,000 new members. <a id="f1" href="#n1" name="f1">[1]</a> Up till now there are already about 200,000 applicants. In a few weeks the number of members and candidates in the Party will exceed 2 million.<br>
</p>
<h4>Collective Admission</h4>
<p class="fst">All the newspaper statements underline the collective character of submitting applications for admission to the Party. They enter in brigades, shifts, crafts, and even whole factories. Factory crafts, that is several hundred men, with the foremen at the head, and often even with the technicians and engineers, are poured into the Party. The nuclei grow, 100, 200 and more percent. Formally, the procedure for admission is, as always, individual, but in reality the admission is collective. The newspapers and the Party leaders insist that the commissions for recruitment rush with the formalities. The Central Recruiting Commission decided to “simplify the admission into the Party’’ (<strong>Pravda</strong>, March 4). This is why, in view of the purely formal character of the procedure, the percentage of rejected applicants is extremely insignificant. The lack of the least serious judgement of candidates, in a word, all this really anti-Party method of the campaign is already alarming the less short-sighted Communists.</p>
<p>The pursuit of high percentages (almost always fictitious) result in the fact that a recruiting agent, grabbing by the sleeve one who refuses to join the Party begins to persuade, advise, etc. As a result – a worker correspondent remarks in the <strong>Pravda</strong> – “political illiterates having insignificant industrial experience go into the Party”. What this policy leads to can be seen from the partial cleansing of the Party. For example, in one of the Donbas districts (Usovca) one third of the members in the industrial nuclei were expelled (<strong>Pravda</strong>, February 1). The results of the cleansing in Sumara speak still more eloquently that the apparatus has wiped out the boundary line between the Party and the class, taken into the Party a raw mass, which is not only not transformed in the Party melting pot but in view of the terrible condition of the inner-Party regime, is pushed away, either by expulsion, or by falling away. In place of those falling out, new raw material is poured in. The Party entrance and exit gates are wide open.<br>
</p>
<h4>A Premium on Political Illiteracy</h4>
<p class="fst">Almost the only, at any rate, the <em>decisive</em> criterion for admission into the Party is the question of the productive work and the “model discipline” of the applicant. ‘’The most important proof of fitness for admission into the Party, is the degree of the active participation of the workers in the shock brigades, in socialist competition, and their actually advanced role in industry” – these are the instructions of the C.C. of the C.P.S.U. (<strong>Pravda</strong>, Feb. 11). Did you participate in socialist competition? How many days were you absent from work? How much did you subscribe for the loan, and did you sell it? In what way do you help collectivization? These, and some more in the same spirit, are the questions that are asked of an applicant. There are no Party and political questions. (Even “classic” Trotskyism is absent.) One may think it is a matter of one’s admission into the cooperative or the trade union, this is the extent to which Party spirit is lacking. But what does the Stalinist apparatus need that for? It looks upon the new additions to the Party only as a “shock” support to the industrial organs. Lacking any kind of political outlook the adventurist leaders consider this – sometimes semi-compulsory (the chairman asks: “Who is against?” naturally, there aren’t any. All vote “for”.) inclusion of crafts and factories into the Party as a means of raising the productivity of labor, as a more successful realization of intensification and higher tempos. They are not concerned as to what becomes of the Party, or whether the Party exists as such.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Gap Between Leaders and Masses</h4>
<p class="fst">In December 1929 the influx of workers into the Party was still very low. But now, the <strong>Pravda</strong> states, “there is an unexpected great change”. The Party organizations are caught “unawares”. “At the factory something unexpected and unforeseen occurred: columns of workers sign up for the Party. The nucleus could in no way expect it” (<strong>Pravda</strong>). The writers and editors do not even notice what a fatal verdict this is for the Party regime, what a terrifying statement on the deterioration of all the Party tissues. If we assume, according to the apparatus – that there really is a mighty rise in the working class, and the apparatus sitting there does not know anything, “does not expect” anything, “does not foresee” anything, then it must be recognized that it is separated from the mass with an impenetrable partition. The fact in itself shows even to the blind, the depth of the abyss the apparatus has dug between itself and the mass.</p>
<p>The Kolomensk factory entered the Party almost in a collective body. Eight thousand workers from this factory already entered the Party. “The Kolomensk workers should be an example to the others” – appeals <strong>Pravda</strong>. It is therefore interesting to consider this factory in a few words. <a id="f2" href="#n2" name="f2">[2]</a> The Kolomensk factory produces machinery (tractors, locomotives, Diesels etc.), it is something over a hundred kilometres from Moscow. The proletarian staff of the factory was always considered in the Moscow Party organization as a backward one, and it really was. Over 70% of the workers are not only “bound” to the village, but they have their own cabin, cow, garden, etc. The brother, the father of a Kolomensk worker is a peasant, toe works in the factory and helps them – they own their holdings together. The psychology of an average Kolomensk worker is that of a peasant. He often considers his work in the factory as a support for his peasant holding. A Kolomensk worker resembles very little the Leningrad proletarian. It is this factory that became now the vanguard of the workers army, and Leningrad its rearguard. (Up to March 14 the Moscow district had over 90,000 applicants and the Leningrad about 30,000). And it is no accident. An explanation for this fact will be found not in the city, but in the village, and particularly in the “collective” policy. The collective pushed the Kolomensk, Podolsk and Mytishchensk worker into the Party. His peasant status decided. Without penetrating into the complicated problems of collectivization we nevertheless will point out that the element of insurance played no small role. “I will have to enter the collective anyway, then I may as well enter it as a Communist – there will be more privileges.” This way he hopes to get easier credits, inventory, etc. On the other hand – and this is the most important – the non-Party worker in the factory does not see any big difference between himself and the Party worker. Why shouldn’t I get into the Party, perhaps it will be easier – he asks himself. Depriving the Partyite, as well as the non-Party, of all rights, pressing them in the bureaucratic clamps, the usurpationist apparatus has made of both of them speechless executors.</p>
<p>Neither the non-Party nor the Party worker dares to decide, criticize, or deliberate. Opening wide the Party doors wipes out the distinction between the Party and the class. The Party ceases to be the vanguard, it ceases to be a Party. But this is precisely what the apparatus is striving for. <em>Simultaneously with the dissolution of the Party in the class, the apparatus rises above it all the more.</em> Both these processes are parallel, one supplementing the other. On the top the apparatus became a supra-Party institution, it is without control, it is infallible, it commands – the Party below ceases to exist. The further development of this process is the decay, the death of the Party as a Party – we must be frank about this, stating it with all determination.</p>
<p class="date"><em>March 30, 1930</em></p>
<hr class="section" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<h3>Footnotes</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="n1" href="#f1" name="n1">1.</a> During the year 1929, 200,000 workers entered the Party.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n2" href="#f2" name="n2">2.</a> The figures on the age of those in the factory entering the Party are very interesting. Most of them are 30–40 years old – this holds true for other places. Fifty percent of them have more than ten years of industrial experience. “The change that occurred among the older workers, those working in the factory for the last 20–30–40 years, is particularly gratifying,” <strong>Pravda</strong> writes. It is doubtful whether this fact is “particularly gratifying”. An old worker who was not shaken by the October, or the civil war – is advanced. The youth, the Comsomols, that is the most advanced and active part of the mass is lagging behind. This symptom is more alarming than “gratifying”.</p>
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N. Markin
Towards the XVI Congress of the C.P.S.U.
Dissolving the Communist Party into the Class
(March 1930)
From The Militant, Vol. III No. 22, 7 June 1930, p. 8.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
At the end of January 1930, a new recruitment of workers into the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was proclaimed. The February issues of the Pravda are full of information about the “great upsurge”, about “the mass flocking of workers into the Party” etc. The Central Committee has already given the directives: “To get not less than half the Party membership from workers in industry until the Sixteenth Party Congress” (Pravda, Feb. 11). Translating this into the language of figures it means that in approximately two months the Party has to admit a minimum of about 150,000 new members. [1] Up till now there are already about 200,000 applicants. In a few weeks the number of members and candidates in the Party will exceed 2 million.
Collective Admission
All the newspaper statements underline the collective character of submitting applications for admission to the Party. They enter in brigades, shifts, crafts, and even whole factories. Factory crafts, that is several hundred men, with the foremen at the head, and often even with the technicians and engineers, are poured into the Party. The nuclei grow, 100, 200 and more percent. Formally, the procedure for admission is, as always, individual, but in reality the admission is collective. The newspapers and the Party leaders insist that the commissions for recruitment rush with the formalities. The Central Recruiting Commission decided to “simplify the admission into the Party’’ (Pravda, March 4). This is why, in view of the purely formal character of the procedure, the percentage of rejected applicants is extremely insignificant. The lack of the least serious judgement of candidates, in a word, all this really anti-Party method of the campaign is already alarming the less short-sighted Communists.
The pursuit of high percentages (almost always fictitious) result in the fact that a recruiting agent, grabbing by the sleeve one who refuses to join the Party begins to persuade, advise, etc. As a result – a worker correspondent remarks in the Pravda – “political illiterates having insignificant industrial experience go into the Party”. What this policy leads to can be seen from the partial cleansing of the Party. For example, in one of the Donbas districts (Usovca) one third of the members in the industrial nuclei were expelled (Pravda, February 1). The results of the cleansing in Sumara speak still more eloquently that the apparatus has wiped out the boundary line between the Party and the class, taken into the Party a raw mass, which is not only not transformed in the Party melting pot but in view of the terrible condition of the inner-Party regime, is pushed away, either by expulsion, or by falling away. In place of those falling out, new raw material is poured in. The Party entrance and exit gates are wide open.
A Premium on Political Illiteracy
Almost the only, at any rate, the decisive criterion for admission into the Party is the question of the productive work and the “model discipline” of the applicant. ‘’The most important proof of fitness for admission into the Party, is the degree of the active participation of the workers in the shock brigades, in socialist competition, and their actually advanced role in industry” – these are the instructions of the C.C. of the C.P.S.U. (Pravda, Feb. 11). Did you participate in socialist competition? How many days were you absent from work? How much did you subscribe for the loan, and did you sell it? In what way do you help collectivization? These, and some more in the same spirit, are the questions that are asked of an applicant. There are no Party and political questions. (Even “classic” Trotskyism is absent.) One may think it is a matter of one’s admission into the cooperative or the trade union, this is the extent to which Party spirit is lacking. But what does the Stalinist apparatus need that for? It looks upon the new additions to the Party only as a “shock” support to the industrial organs. Lacking any kind of political outlook the adventurist leaders consider this – sometimes semi-compulsory (the chairman asks: “Who is against?” naturally, there aren’t any. All vote “for”.) inclusion of crafts and factories into the Party as a means of raising the productivity of labor, as a more successful realization of intensification and higher tempos. They are not concerned as to what becomes of the Party, or whether the Party exists as such.
The Gap Between Leaders and Masses
In December 1929 the influx of workers into the Party was still very low. But now, the Pravda states, “there is an unexpected great change”. The Party organizations are caught “unawares”. “At the factory something unexpected and unforeseen occurred: columns of workers sign up for the Party. The nucleus could in no way expect it” (Pravda). The writers and editors do not even notice what a fatal verdict this is for the Party regime, what a terrifying statement on the deterioration of all the Party tissues. If we assume, according to the apparatus – that there really is a mighty rise in the working class, and the apparatus sitting there does not know anything, “does not expect” anything, “does not foresee” anything, then it must be recognized that it is separated from the mass with an impenetrable partition. The fact in itself shows even to the blind, the depth of the abyss the apparatus has dug between itself and the mass.
The Kolomensk factory entered the Party almost in a collective body. Eight thousand workers from this factory already entered the Party. “The Kolomensk workers should be an example to the others” – appeals Pravda. It is therefore interesting to consider this factory in a few words. [2] The Kolomensk factory produces machinery (tractors, locomotives, Diesels etc.), it is something over a hundred kilometres from Moscow. The proletarian staff of the factory was always considered in the Moscow Party organization as a backward one, and it really was. Over 70% of the workers are not only “bound” to the village, but they have their own cabin, cow, garden, etc. The brother, the father of a Kolomensk worker is a peasant, toe works in the factory and helps them – they own their holdings together. The psychology of an average Kolomensk worker is that of a peasant. He often considers his work in the factory as a support for his peasant holding. A Kolomensk worker resembles very little the Leningrad proletarian. It is this factory that became now the vanguard of the workers army, and Leningrad its rearguard. (Up to March 14 the Moscow district had over 90,000 applicants and the Leningrad about 30,000). And it is no accident. An explanation for this fact will be found not in the city, but in the village, and particularly in the “collective” policy. The collective pushed the Kolomensk, Podolsk and Mytishchensk worker into the Party. His peasant status decided. Without penetrating into the complicated problems of collectivization we nevertheless will point out that the element of insurance played no small role. “I will have to enter the collective anyway, then I may as well enter it as a Communist – there will be more privileges.” This way he hopes to get easier credits, inventory, etc. On the other hand – and this is the most important – the non-Party worker in the factory does not see any big difference between himself and the Party worker. Why shouldn’t I get into the Party, perhaps it will be easier – he asks himself. Depriving the Partyite, as well as the non-Party, of all rights, pressing them in the bureaucratic clamps, the usurpationist apparatus has made of both of them speechless executors.
Neither the non-Party nor the Party worker dares to decide, criticize, or deliberate. Opening wide the Party doors wipes out the distinction between the Party and the class. The Party ceases to be the vanguard, it ceases to be a Party. But this is precisely what the apparatus is striving for. Simultaneously with the dissolution of the Party in the class, the apparatus rises above it all the more. Both these processes are parallel, one supplementing the other. On the top the apparatus became a supra-Party institution, it is without control, it is infallible, it commands – the Party below ceases to exist. The further development of this process is the decay, the death of the Party as a Party – we must be frank about this, stating it with all determination.
March 30, 1930
Footnotes
1. During the year 1929, 200,000 workers entered the Party.
2. The figures on the age of those in the factory entering the Party are very interesting. Most of them are 30–40 years old – this holds true for other places. Fifty percent of them have more than ten years of industrial experience. “The change that occurred among the older workers, those working in the factory for the last 20–30–40 years, is particularly gratifying,” Pravda writes. It is doubtful whether this fact is “particularly gratifying”. An old worker who was not shaken by the October, or the civil war – is advanced. The youth, the Comsomols, that is the most advanced and active part of the mass is lagging behind. This symptom is more alarming than “gratifying”.
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<h2>Leon Sedoff</h2>
<h1>Voroshilov Is Next!</h1>
<h3>(February 1938)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1938/index.htm#sa02_13" target="new">Vol. II No. 13</a>, 26 March 1938, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<table align="center" width="80%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3">
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<td>
<p class="c">(<em>The following was the last article written by comrade Leon Sedoff for the issue of the <strong>Bulletin of the Opposition</strong> which appeared a few days before his tragic death on Feb. 16.</em>)</p>
</td>
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</tbody></table>
<p class="fst">A series of symptoms, as well as fragmentary reports from the Soviet Union, have already indicated for some time that in the leading stratum a conflict is developing between the military apparatus and the G.P.U. After the military reforms of 1935, which greatly increased the specific gravity of the officers corps and linked it closely to the summits of the bureaucracy, the Army command felt more stable, stronger, and somewhat less dependent. But the decimation of the party apparatus by Stalin in 1936 could not fail to arouse uneasiness among the leaders of the Army. This uneasiness was dictated not by political considerations but by concern for the defense of the country which was being so dangerously sapped by the Stalinist purge.</p>
<p>Tukachevsky, Voroshilov, Gamarnik could not look on indifferently as the G.P.U. upset industry, especially that of armaments, by wholesale arrests, from government Commissars to qualified foremen. The army command could not but offer resistance to this frenzied purge, insofar as it began to affect the vital interest of defense. This resistance, probably quite strong from the beginning, necessarily became stronger as the G.P.U.</p>
<p>began to decimate the Red Army itself. The arrests of generals as important as Schmidt, Kuzmitchov, Putna, Primakov, the heads of the political sections of the Caucasus, the Far East, etc., of their aides, their friends, were certainly regarded by the Army command as discrediting and disorganizing the army itself. The Army chiefs entered into conflict with the G.P.U. and this conflict was doubtless aggravated by various other issues where the interests of the Commissariat of War clashed with those of the G.P.U.<br>
</p>
<h4>Conflict Really with Stalin</h4>
<p class="fst">Superficially, the struggle went on between the Army tops and G.P.U. Actually, it went on between the Army command and Stalin, although the generals probably did not realize this, at east at the outset. The subsequent course of events can only be explained, it seems to us, by the fact that Stalin held himself aloof in the first stages of the friction, giving an appearance of neutrality and that he even more probably, with his characteristic perfidy, egged the generals on. This attitude of Stalin’s could only pour oil on the fire.</p>
<p>The struggle between the military and the G.P.U., i.e., the interests of the defense of the country as opposed to the arbitrary rule of the G.P.U., undoubtedly contributed to the cohesion of the former, the strengthening of their mutual confidence, and the resumption of their activity. Meanwhile Yagoda and several others among the most odious chiefs of the G.P.U. fell into disgrace. To Tukachevsky, Yakir, Gamarnik, perhaps even to Voroshilov, the victory of Yezhov-Stalin might have seemed like their own victory over Yagoda. But Stalin; having played neutral and set the trap, gave Yezhov the signal for action. The military apparatus was decimated, its leaders and thousands of officers linked to them were shot.<br>
</p>
<h4>“German Orientation”</h4>
<p class="fst">(I do not stop here to consider the alleged German orientation of Tukachevsky and the others. This accusation, made out of whole cloth, has become a sort of ritual for Stalin when he suppresses his real or fancied enemies. In reality, to the extent that there exists a “German orientation” in the U.S.S.R., it is Stalin himself who embodies it. He is ready to support Hitler at any price in exchange for peace.)</p>
<p>If this explanation of the Tukachevsky affair, which seems to us to be only possible one, does not appear to offer anything essentially new, the most recent events shed new light on the personal role of Voroshilov. During the Tukachevsky affair, Voroshilov might have been supposed to be the accomplice of the Stalinist provocation, remaining for a time in the background and leaving the initiative to Tukachevsky, Gamarnik and the others. The whole past of Voroshilov, a mediocre man, lacking initiative and personally devoted to Stalin, offered support for this impression.</p>
<p>There was a serious fissure in 1929 in the relations between Stalin and Voroshilov, the latter (like Kalinin) displaying strong sympathy for the Right (Bukharin-Rykov). It was only to save his own neck that he joined Stalin against the Right.<br>
</p>
<h4>Got Out in Time</h4>
<p class="fst">Today there is reason to believe that Voroshilov himself was at the head of the alleged Tukachevsky plot. But as a member of the Political Bureau and closer to the center of political intrigue, and more experienced at the game of double-cross, Voroshilov sensed before the others where Stalin was heading. He had time to make an about-face at the last minute and so to save his life and his post by betraying, his comrades.</p>
<p>This was only a postponement, however. Stalin is suspicious, bitter and vindictive. No one has ever succeeded in regaining his confidence once lost. If Stalin is in no haste to finish with Voroshilov, it is because he understands the disastrous impression it would make in the U.S.S.R. and in. the world generally. It is quite probable that it is this consideration which determined the “grace” accorded to Voroshilov last June during the Tukachevsky affair. Faithful to his methods – slowly and gradually to prepare the mortal blow – Stalin began “encircling” Voroshilov soon after the Tukachevsky affair.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Military Councils</h4>
<p class="fst">The first step was the establishment of the Military Councils, i.e., of the collective principle in the Army command, a principle so harmful in the military sphere. This reform was dictated only by political considerations. The Military Councils provided Stalin with the means of reinforcing his control over the High Command of the Red Army and at the same time of decentralizing to some extent the over-powerful military apparatus by weakening the position of Voroshilov at its summit.</p>
<p>The same purpose – decentralizing and weakening the war commissariat – was served by a recent innovation: Withdrawal of the naval forces from the war commissariat and. the creation of an independent naval commissariat. The most privileged and qualified of the armed forces of the Soviet Union, the troops of the G.P.U. and the frontier guards, had already long since been removed from the sphere of authority of the war commissariat. Now the naval forces were taken away as well. The arguments advanced at the Supreme Council in favor of this reform seem scarcely convincing to us, especially at a time when all the great powers are snowing the tendency to concentrate in a single center the command of the land, sea and air forces. Moreover, the limited strength and nature of the Soviet fleet deprive it of any independent strategic importance and make of it an auxiliary instrument for the land forces.<br>
</p>
<h4>Decision Not New</h4>
<p>As for the decision to increase the naval forces, (adduced as a reason for the change), it is not new. This decision was made- several years ago and has been energetically carried out. In 1935 the reporter of the military department to the Congress of Soviets, Tukachevsky, devoted a good part of his report to the necessity for creating a strong fleet. (Since then an important step forward has been taken, at least in connection with the submarine fleet.) But neither in 1935 nor later did anyone raise the question of forming a special, autonomous department.</p>
<p>It is not by chance that a Moscow observer reported that this decision was a surprise to everyone. One need only, to confirm this, thumb through the Soviet press, especially the organ of the Army. But even if this step was sound in itself, that would mean, we believe, only that in this particular instance objective interests coincided with Stalin’s designs against Voroshilov. The flattering comments in the <strong>Red Star</strong> (organ of the Red Army) about Voroshilov <em>apropos</em> of the new reform are only a smokescreen to cover Stalin’s flanking movement.<br>
</p>
<h4>Appointment of Mekhlis</h4>
<p class="fst">The “encirclement” of Voroshilov is shown much more clearly in the appointment of Mekhlis, the probable successor to Voroshilov at the Defense Commissariat. By naming his horse a senator, Caligula wanted to humiliate the Senate. By appointing his lackey Mekhlis to the High Command, Stalin pursued less platonic aims. Former private secretary to Stalin, careerist without talent, specialist in lobby intrigues, executor of the basest designs of his master, Mekhlis’ strength derives solely from Stalin’s support. Mekhlis assistant Defense Commissar! Who would have thought it possible only six months ago? The more “enemies of the people” Stalin executes, the emptier grows the void around him. The reserves of the faithful are today limited to men of the type of Mekhlis.</p>
<p>Having lost last June his entire High Command, Voroshilov has remained suspended in midair. He subsequently submitted without protest to the disorganization of the Red Army, not even moving a finger when his last two assistants, Admiral Orlov and Gen. Alksnis were arrested when their turn came. (Both were “judges” of Tukachevsky. They did not survive their victim for long.) Today he accepts everything. He not only confirms automatically all the orders of his new assistant, but he does not even shrink from being photographed with this chief spy at his side.</p>
<p>In conclusion we mention a bit of interesting and wholly credible information provided by our murdered comrade Reiss – that the entire correspondence of Voroshilov is under the strict surveillance of the G.P.U. Stalin is methodically preparing, the “liquidation” of Voroshilov. It is obviously impossible to fix a time limit for it. Stalin himself does not yet know when it will come. Unforeseen circumstances may slow down or speed up this liquidation or even change the order in which the future victims will fall. We have already seen how Molotov, suspended for a long time by a hair, has succeeded in maintaining his position For how long? However that may be, neither. Voroshilov, nor Molotov, nor Litvinov – nor many others – will escape their fate.</p>
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Leon Sedov Archive | Trotskyist Writers Index | ETOL Main Page
Leon Sedoff
Voroshilov Is Next!
(February 1938)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. II No. 13, 26 March 1938, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
(The following was the last article written by comrade Leon Sedoff for the issue of the Bulletin of the Opposition which appeared a few days before his tragic death on Feb. 16.)
A series of symptoms, as well as fragmentary reports from the Soviet Union, have already indicated for some time that in the leading stratum a conflict is developing between the military apparatus and the G.P.U. After the military reforms of 1935, which greatly increased the specific gravity of the officers corps and linked it closely to the summits of the bureaucracy, the Army command felt more stable, stronger, and somewhat less dependent. But the decimation of the party apparatus by Stalin in 1936 could not fail to arouse uneasiness among the leaders of the Army. This uneasiness was dictated not by political considerations but by concern for the defense of the country which was being so dangerously sapped by the Stalinist purge.
Tukachevsky, Voroshilov, Gamarnik could not look on indifferently as the G.P.U. upset industry, especially that of armaments, by wholesale arrests, from government Commissars to qualified foremen. The army command could not but offer resistance to this frenzied purge, insofar as it began to affect the vital interest of defense. This resistance, probably quite strong from the beginning, necessarily became stronger as the G.P.U.
began to decimate the Red Army itself. The arrests of generals as important as Schmidt, Kuzmitchov, Putna, Primakov, the heads of the political sections of the Caucasus, the Far East, etc., of their aides, their friends, were certainly regarded by the Army command as discrediting and disorganizing the army itself. The Army chiefs entered into conflict with the G.P.U. and this conflict was doubtless aggravated by various other issues where the interests of the Commissariat of War clashed with those of the G.P.U.
Conflict Really with Stalin
Superficially, the struggle went on between the Army tops and G.P.U. Actually, it went on between the Army command and Stalin, although the generals probably did not realize this, at east at the outset. The subsequent course of events can only be explained, it seems to us, by the fact that Stalin held himself aloof in the first stages of the friction, giving an appearance of neutrality and that he even more probably, with his characteristic perfidy, egged the generals on. This attitude of Stalin’s could only pour oil on the fire.
The struggle between the military and the G.P.U., i.e., the interests of the defense of the country as opposed to the arbitrary rule of the G.P.U., undoubtedly contributed to the cohesion of the former, the strengthening of their mutual confidence, and the resumption of their activity. Meanwhile Yagoda and several others among the most odious chiefs of the G.P.U. fell into disgrace. To Tukachevsky, Yakir, Gamarnik, perhaps even to Voroshilov, the victory of Yezhov-Stalin might have seemed like their own victory over Yagoda. But Stalin; having played neutral and set the trap, gave Yezhov the signal for action. The military apparatus was decimated, its leaders and thousands of officers linked to them were shot.
“German Orientation”
(I do not stop here to consider the alleged German orientation of Tukachevsky and the others. This accusation, made out of whole cloth, has become a sort of ritual for Stalin when he suppresses his real or fancied enemies. In reality, to the extent that there exists a “German orientation” in the U.S.S.R., it is Stalin himself who embodies it. He is ready to support Hitler at any price in exchange for peace.)
If this explanation of the Tukachevsky affair, which seems to us to be only possible one, does not appear to offer anything essentially new, the most recent events shed new light on the personal role of Voroshilov. During the Tukachevsky affair, Voroshilov might have been supposed to be the accomplice of the Stalinist provocation, remaining for a time in the background and leaving the initiative to Tukachevsky, Gamarnik and the others. The whole past of Voroshilov, a mediocre man, lacking initiative and personally devoted to Stalin, offered support for this impression.
There was a serious fissure in 1929 in the relations between Stalin and Voroshilov, the latter (like Kalinin) displaying strong sympathy for the Right (Bukharin-Rykov). It was only to save his own neck that he joined Stalin against the Right.
Got Out in Time
Today there is reason to believe that Voroshilov himself was at the head of the alleged Tukachevsky plot. But as a member of the Political Bureau and closer to the center of political intrigue, and more experienced at the game of double-cross, Voroshilov sensed before the others where Stalin was heading. He had time to make an about-face at the last minute and so to save his life and his post by betraying, his comrades.
This was only a postponement, however. Stalin is suspicious, bitter and vindictive. No one has ever succeeded in regaining his confidence once lost. If Stalin is in no haste to finish with Voroshilov, it is because he understands the disastrous impression it would make in the U.S.S.R. and in. the world generally. It is quite probable that it is this consideration which determined the “grace” accorded to Voroshilov last June during the Tukachevsky affair. Faithful to his methods – slowly and gradually to prepare the mortal blow – Stalin began “encircling” Voroshilov soon after the Tukachevsky affair.
The Military Councils
The first step was the establishment of the Military Councils, i.e., of the collective principle in the Army command, a principle so harmful in the military sphere. This reform was dictated only by political considerations. The Military Councils provided Stalin with the means of reinforcing his control over the High Command of the Red Army and at the same time of decentralizing to some extent the over-powerful military apparatus by weakening the position of Voroshilov at its summit.
The same purpose – decentralizing and weakening the war commissariat – was served by a recent innovation: Withdrawal of the naval forces from the war commissariat and. the creation of an independent naval commissariat. The most privileged and qualified of the armed forces of the Soviet Union, the troops of the G.P.U. and the frontier guards, had already long since been removed from the sphere of authority of the war commissariat. Now the naval forces were taken away as well. The arguments advanced at the Supreme Council in favor of this reform seem scarcely convincing to us, especially at a time when all the great powers are snowing the tendency to concentrate in a single center the command of the land, sea and air forces. Moreover, the limited strength and nature of the Soviet fleet deprive it of any independent strategic importance and make of it an auxiliary instrument for the land forces.
Decision Not New
As for the decision to increase the naval forces, (adduced as a reason for the change), it is not new. This decision was made- several years ago and has been energetically carried out. In 1935 the reporter of the military department to the Congress of Soviets, Tukachevsky, devoted a good part of his report to the necessity for creating a strong fleet. (Since then an important step forward has been taken, at least in connection with the submarine fleet.) But neither in 1935 nor later did anyone raise the question of forming a special, autonomous department.
It is not by chance that a Moscow observer reported that this decision was a surprise to everyone. One need only, to confirm this, thumb through the Soviet press, especially the organ of the Army. But even if this step was sound in itself, that would mean, we believe, only that in this particular instance objective interests coincided with Stalin’s designs against Voroshilov. The flattering comments in the Red Star (organ of the Red Army) about Voroshilov apropos of the new reform are only a smokescreen to cover Stalin’s flanking movement.
Appointment of Mekhlis
The “encirclement” of Voroshilov is shown much more clearly in the appointment of Mekhlis, the probable successor to Voroshilov at the Defense Commissariat. By naming his horse a senator, Caligula wanted to humiliate the Senate. By appointing his lackey Mekhlis to the High Command, Stalin pursued less platonic aims. Former private secretary to Stalin, careerist without talent, specialist in lobby intrigues, executor of the basest designs of his master, Mekhlis’ strength derives solely from Stalin’s support. Mekhlis assistant Defense Commissar! Who would have thought it possible only six months ago? The more “enemies of the people” Stalin executes, the emptier grows the void around him. The reserves of the faithful are today limited to men of the type of Mekhlis.
Having lost last June his entire High Command, Voroshilov has remained suspended in midair. He subsequently submitted without protest to the disorganization of the Red Army, not even moving a finger when his last two assistants, Admiral Orlov and Gen. Alksnis were arrested when their turn came. (Both were “judges” of Tukachevsky. They did not survive their victim for long.) Today he accepts everything. He not only confirms automatically all the orders of his new assistant, but he does not even shrink from being photographed with this chief spy at his side.
In conclusion we mention a bit of interesting and wholly credible information provided by our murdered comrade Reiss – that the entire correspondence of Voroshilov is under the strict surveillance of the G.P.U. Stalin is methodically preparing, the “liquidation” of Voroshilov. It is obviously impossible to fix a time limit for it. Stalin himself does not yet know when it will come. Unforeseen circumstances may slow down or speed up this liquidation or even change the order in which the future victims will fall. We have already seen how Molotov, suspended for a long time by a hair, has succeeded in maintaining his position For how long? However that may be, neither. Voroshilov, nor Molotov, nor Litvinov – nor many others – will escape their fate.
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Last updated: 23 April 2015
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./articles/Robeson-Paul/https:..www.marxists.org.archive.robeson.1953.01.x01 | <body>
<p class="title">Paul Robeson</p>
<h1>Thoughts on Winning the Stalin Peace Prize</h1>
<hr>
<p class="information">
<span class="info">Originally Published:</span> <em>Freedom</em>, January 1953<br>
<span class="info">Transcription:</span> <a href="http://www.mltranslations.org/index.htm">Marxist-Leninist Translations and Reprints</a><br>
<span class="info">HTML Markup:</span> Brian Reid<br>
<span class="info">Public Domain:</span> Marxists Internet Archive (2009). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.</p>
<hr>
<p class="fst">
Many friends have asked me how it feels to have received one of the International Stalin Prizes’ “for strengthening peace among peoples.” Usually I say—as most prize winners do—“It’s a great honor.” But of course, this award deserves more than just passing acknowledgment.
</p>
<p>
Through the years I have received my share of recognition for efforts in the fields of sports, the arts, the struggle for full citizenship for the Negro people, labor’s rights and the fight for peace. No single award, however, involved so many people or such grave issues as this one.
</p>
<p>
The prize is truly an international award. The committee of judges includes the Soviet academician, D. V. Skobeltsyn, president; vicepresidents Kuo Mo-djo of China and Louis Aragon of France; and the following members: Martin Anderson Nexo, the greatest modern Danish humanist; John Bernal of England; Pablo Neruda of Chile, one of the world’s greatest poets; Jan Demborsky of Poland; Michael Sadovyany of Roumania; and A. A. Fadyeev, a leading Soviet novelist.
</p>
<p>
And the prize winners include outstanding figures from many lands. It is a matter of pride to share the award with such distinguished leaders as Yves Farge of France; Sayfuddin Kichloo, spokesman for the All-Indian Congress of Peace; Eliza Branco, a leader of the Fedn. of Brazilian Women; Johannes Becher, one of the foremost writers of the German Democratic Republic; Rev. James Endicott, fearless Canadian minister and fighter for peace, and Ilya Ehrenberg, the leading Soviet novelist and journalist.
</p>
<p>
Most important, it must be clear that I cannot accept this award in a personal way. In the words of an editorial written by A. A. Fadyeev in <em>Pravda</em>: “The names of the laureates of the International Stalin Prizes are again witnesses to the fact that the movement for peace is continuously growing, broadening and strengthening. In the ranks of the active fighters against the threat of war, new millions of people of every race and nationality are taking their place, people of the most widely differing political and religious convictions. . . . The awards to Eliza Branco and Paul Robeson reflect the important historical fact that broader and broader sections of the masses of the Western Hemisphere are rising to struggle for freedom and independence, for peace and progress; peoples that endure the full weight of the attempts of imperialist reaction to strangle the movement of the masses against a new pillaging war, being prepared by American billionaires and millionaires.”
</p>
<p>
I accept the award, therefore, in the name and on behalf of these new millions who are moving into the organized fight for peace in our hemisphere and especially in the United States.
</p>
<p>
One of the most decisive steps in the development of the peace movement in our country was taken in connection with the Peking and Vienna Congresses of Peace.
</p>
<p>
The American Peace movement reached out its hands across the borders to join with the millions of peace fighters in the world peace movement. Gradually it has become crystal clear that the mighty strength of the world movement representing peoples of all lands is strength for us here. As Americans, preserving the best of our traditions, we have the right—nay the duty—to fight for participation in the forward march of humanity.
</p>
<p>
We must join with the tens of millions all over the world who see in peace our most sacred responsibility. Once we are joined together in the fight for peace we will have to talk to each other and tell the truth about each other. How else can peace be won?
</p>
<p>
I have always insisted—and will insist, even more in the future on my right to tell the truth as I know it about the Soviet peoples: of their deep desires and hopes for peace, of their peaceful pursuits of reconstruction from the ravages of war, as in historic Stalingrad; and to tell of the heroic efforts of the friendly peoples in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, great, new China and North Korea—to explain, to answer the endless falsehoods of the warmongering press with clarity and courage.
</p>
<p>
In this framework we can make clear what co-existence means. It means living in peace and friendship with another kind of society—a fully integrated society where the people control their destinies, where poverty and illiteracy have been eliminated and where new kinds of human beings develop in the framework of a new level of social living.
</p>
<p>
The telling of these truths is an important part of our work in building a strong and broad peace movement in the United States.
</p>
<p>
Like any other people, like fathers, mothers, sons and daughters in every land, when the issue of peace or war has been put squarely to the American people, they have registered for peace. Whatever the confusions, however great the hysteria, millions voted for the Stockholm petition, millions more wanted to. At every step the vast majority have expressed horror at the idea of an aggressive war.
</p>
<p>
In fact, because of this deep desire for peace, the ruling class leaders of this land, from 1945 on, stepped up the hysteria and propaganda to drive into American minds the false notion that danger threatened them from the East. This propaganda began before the blood of precious human beings stopped flowing in the mighty struggle against fascism.
</p>
<p>
I, myself, was in Europe in 1945, singing to the troops. And already one heard rumblings of the necessity of America’s preparing for war against the Soviet Union, our gallant ally. And at home in the United States we found continued and increased persecution, first of leaders of the Communist Party, and then of all honest anti-fascists.
</p>
<p>
But the deep desire for peace remained with the American people. Wallace was hailed by vast throngs when he resigned from Truman’s cabinet in protest against the war-mongering of the then Secretary of State James Byrnes, now the Negro-hating governor of South Carolina. Seven to eight million peace lovers put Wallace on the ballot in almost all of the 48 states in 1948. The cry for peace forced Truman to take over (demogogically, of course) the Progressive Party platform. In addition he hinted he would send Vinson, one of his trusted lieutenants, to Moscow, to talk peace.
</p>
<p>
We know how Truman betrayed the American people in their hopes for peace, how he betrayed the Negro people in their thirst for equal rights, how he tore up the Bill of Rights and subjected the whole American people to a reign of FBI-terrorization.
</p>
<p>
The Korean war has always been an unpopular war among the American people. We remember the unforgivable trickery in the use of the United Nations to further the purposes of “American century” imperialists in that land—quite comparable to the taking of Texas from Mexico, the rape of Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Hawaii. At one point American peace sentiment helped to stop Truman from pursuing use of the atom bomb in Korea and helped force the recall of MacArthur.
</p>
<p>
Yet in 1952 the American people again allowed themselves to be taken in—this time by Eisenhower. He, too, promised in the campaign to do all he could to end the Korean slaughter. The vote shows that millions of American believed him. But already he has betrayed their trust and moves as fast as possible toward an extension of the war. There are real threats of attempting to support France on a major scale in Indo-China. All this comes as no surprise if one looks at those who guide him—Dulles, one of the architects of the whole Far Eastern policy; Dewey, the man so feared in 1948, and certainly unchanged, and the whole array of American Big Business at its worst.
</p>
<p>
All these factors become increasingly clear to great sections of the American people and certainly present a tremendous challenge to the peace forces in this land. If we move swiftly, correctly, courageously, a mighty united front of the people can be built for peace. The latent but growing sentiment can be harnessed, organized.
</p>
<p>
I am especially confident that the Negro people can be won for the fight for peace. Having voted mainly for Stevenson, they have little to expect from Eisenhower, especially an Eisenhower partly dependent upon the Dixiecrat South—sworn enemies of the Negro people. We know that war would mean an end to our struggle for civil rights, FEPC, the right to vote, an anti-lynching law, abolition of segregation.
</p>
<p>
And today the Negro people watch Africa and Asia and closely follow the liberation struggles of the rising peoples in these lands. We watch the United Nations and see the U.S.A. join with the western imperialist nations to stifle the liberation struggles. We cannot help but see that it is Vishinsky and the spokesman of the Eastern European Peoples Democracies who defend and vote for the interests of the African and Asian peoples.
</p>
<p>
I know that if the peace movement takes its message boldly to the Negro people a powerful force can be secured in pursuit of the greatest goal of all mankind. And the same is true of labor and the great democratic sections of our population.
</p>
<p>
Yes, peace can and must be won, to save the world from the terrible destruction of World War III. The prize which I have just received will spur me on to greater efforts than ever before to serve the cause of peace and to aid in building a triumphant peace movement in the United States.
</p>
<br>
<hr>
<p class="footer">
<a href="../../index.htm">Paul Robeson Archive</a>
</p>
</body> |
Paul Robeson
Thoughts on Winning the Stalin Peace Prize
Originally Published: Freedom, January 1953
Transcription: Marxist-Leninist Translations and Reprints
HTML Markup: Brian Reid
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2009). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Many friends have asked me how it feels to have received one of the International Stalin Prizes’ “for strengthening peace among peoples.” Usually I say—as most prize winners do—“It’s a great honor.” But of course, this award deserves more than just passing acknowledgment.
Through the years I have received my share of recognition for efforts in the fields of sports, the arts, the struggle for full citizenship for the Negro people, labor’s rights and the fight for peace. No single award, however, involved so many people or such grave issues as this one.
The prize is truly an international award. The committee of judges includes the Soviet academician, D. V. Skobeltsyn, president; vicepresidents Kuo Mo-djo of China and Louis Aragon of France; and the following members: Martin Anderson Nexo, the greatest modern Danish humanist; John Bernal of England; Pablo Neruda of Chile, one of the world’s greatest poets; Jan Demborsky of Poland; Michael Sadovyany of Roumania; and A. A. Fadyeev, a leading Soviet novelist.
And the prize winners include outstanding figures from many lands. It is a matter of pride to share the award with such distinguished leaders as Yves Farge of France; Sayfuddin Kichloo, spokesman for the All-Indian Congress of Peace; Eliza Branco, a leader of the Fedn. of Brazilian Women; Johannes Becher, one of the foremost writers of the German Democratic Republic; Rev. James Endicott, fearless Canadian minister and fighter for peace, and Ilya Ehrenberg, the leading Soviet novelist and journalist.
Most important, it must be clear that I cannot accept this award in a personal way. In the words of an editorial written by A. A. Fadyeev in Pravda: “The names of the laureates of the International Stalin Prizes are again witnesses to the fact that the movement for peace is continuously growing, broadening and strengthening. In the ranks of the active fighters against the threat of war, new millions of people of every race and nationality are taking their place, people of the most widely differing political and religious convictions. . . . The awards to Eliza Branco and Paul Robeson reflect the important historical fact that broader and broader sections of the masses of the Western Hemisphere are rising to struggle for freedom and independence, for peace and progress; peoples that endure the full weight of the attempts of imperialist reaction to strangle the movement of the masses against a new pillaging war, being prepared by American billionaires and millionaires.”
I accept the award, therefore, in the name and on behalf of these new millions who are moving into the organized fight for peace in our hemisphere and especially in the United States.
One of the most decisive steps in the development of the peace movement in our country was taken in connection with the Peking and Vienna Congresses of Peace.
The American Peace movement reached out its hands across the borders to join with the millions of peace fighters in the world peace movement. Gradually it has become crystal clear that the mighty strength of the world movement representing peoples of all lands is strength for us here. As Americans, preserving the best of our traditions, we have the right—nay the duty—to fight for participation in the forward march of humanity.
We must join with the tens of millions all over the world who see in peace our most sacred responsibility. Once we are joined together in the fight for peace we will have to talk to each other and tell the truth about each other. How else can peace be won?
I have always insisted—and will insist, even more in the future on my right to tell the truth as I know it about the Soviet peoples: of their deep desires and hopes for peace, of their peaceful pursuits of reconstruction from the ravages of war, as in historic Stalingrad; and to tell of the heroic efforts of the friendly peoples in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, great, new China and North Korea—to explain, to answer the endless falsehoods of the warmongering press with clarity and courage.
In this framework we can make clear what co-existence means. It means living in peace and friendship with another kind of society—a fully integrated society where the people control their destinies, where poverty and illiteracy have been eliminated and where new kinds of human beings develop in the framework of a new level of social living.
The telling of these truths is an important part of our work in building a strong and broad peace movement in the United States.
Like any other people, like fathers, mothers, sons and daughters in every land, when the issue of peace or war has been put squarely to the American people, they have registered for peace. Whatever the confusions, however great the hysteria, millions voted for the Stockholm petition, millions more wanted to. At every step the vast majority have expressed horror at the idea of an aggressive war.
In fact, because of this deep desire for peace, the ruling class leaders of this land, from 1945 on, stepped up the hysteria and propaganda to drive into American minds the false notion that danger threatened them from the East. This propaganda began before the blood of precious human beings stopped flowing in the mighty struggle against fascism.
I, myself, was in Europe in 1945, singing to the troops. And already one heard rumblings of the necessity of America’s preparing for war against the Soviet Union, our gallant ally. And at home in the United States we found continued and increased persecution, first of leaders of the Communist Party, and then of all honest anti-fascists.
But the deep desire for peace remained with the American people. Wallace was hailed by vast throngs when he resigned from Truman’s cabinet in protest against the war-mongering of the then Secretary of State James Byrnes, now the Negro-hating governor of South Carolina. Seven to eight million peace lovers put Wallace on the ballot in almost all of the 48 states in 1948. The cry for peace forced Truman to take over (demogogically, of course) the Progressive Party platform. In addition he hinted he would send Vinson, one of his trusted lieutenants, to Moscow, to talk peace.
We know how Truman betrayed the American people in their hopes for peace, how he betrayed the Negro people in their thirst for equal rights, how he tore up the Bill of Rights and subjected the whole American people to a reign of FBI-terrorization.
The Korean war has always been an unpopular war among the American people. We remember the unforgivable trickery in the use of the United Nations to further the purposes of “American century” imperialists in that land—quite comparable to the taking of Texas from Mexico, the rape of Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Hawaii. At one point American peace sentiment helped to stop Truman from pursuing use of the atom bomb in Korea and helped force the recall of MacArthur.
Yet in 1952 the American people again allowed themselves to be taken in—this time by Eisenhower. He, too, promised in the campaign to do all he could to end the Korean slaughter. The vote shows that millions of American believed him. But already he has betrayed their trust and moves as fast as possible toward an extension of the war. There are real threats of attempting to support France on a major scale in Indo-China. All this comes as no surprise if one looks at those who guide him—Dulles, one of the architects of the whole Far Eastern policy; Dewey, the man so feared in 1948, and certainly unchanged, and the whole array of American Big Business at its worst.
All these factors become increasingly clear to great sections of the American people and certainly present a tremendous challenge to the peace forces in this land. If we move swiftly, correctly, courageously, a mighty united front of the people can be built for peace. The latent but growing sentiment can be harnessed, organized.
I am especially confident that the Negro people can be won for the fight for peace. Having voted mainly for Stevenson, they have little to expect from Eisenhower, especially an Eisenhower partly dependent upon the Dixiecrat South—sworn enemies of the Negro people. We know that war would mean an end to our struggle for civil rights, FEPC, the right to vote, an anti-lynching law, abolition of segregation.
And today the Negro people watch Africa and Asia and closely follow the liberation struggles of the rising peoples in these lands. We watch the United Nations and see the U.S.A. join with the western imperialist nations to stifle the liberation struggles. We cannot help but see that it is Vishinsky and the spokesman of the Eastern European Peoples Democracies who defend and vote for the interests of the African and Asian peoples.
I know that if the peace movement takes its message boldly to the Negro people a powerful force can be secured in pursuit of the greatest goal of all mankind. And the same is true of labor and the great democratic sections of our population.
Yes, peace can and must be won, to save the world from the terrible destruction of World War III. The prize which I have just received will spur me on to greater efforts than ever before to serve the cause of peace and to aid in building a triumphant peace movement in the United States.
Paul Robeson Archive
|
./articles/Robeson-Paul/https:..www.marxists.org.archive.robeson.1955.04.bandung | <body>
<p class="title">Paul Robeson</p>
<h1>Message of Greetings to the Bandung Conference</h1>
<h5>April, 1955</h5>
<p> </p>
<hr>
<p class="information">
<span class="info">Source:</span>
<em>Spotlight on Africa</em>, (Vol.. XIV, No. 4) April 1955; pp. 16-18.
Published by The Council on African Affairs, Suite 6, 139 West 125th
Street, New York, NY, USA.<br>
<span class="info">Transcription:</span> Juan Fajardo.<br>
<span class="info">Fair Use:</span> Marxists Internet Archive (2023). </p>
<hr>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p></p>
<p class="fst">PAUL ROBESON, Chairman of African Affairs, in his Message of Greetings to the Asian-African Conference, said in part:</p>
<p>“Heartfelt greeting to all of you, peoples come from the shores of the Ganges and the Nile, the Yangtze and the Niger, nations of the vast Pacific waters, greetings on this historic occasion.</p>
<p>“It is my profound conviction that the very fact of the convening of the Conference of Asian and African nations at Bandung, Indonesia, in itself will be recorded as an historic turning-point in all world affairs. A new vista of human advancement in all spheres of life has been opened by t his assembly. Conceived, convoked, and attended by representatives of the great majority of the world’s population in Asia and Africa who have long been subjected to colonial serfdom and foreign domination, the Asian-African Conference signalizes the power and the determination of the peoples of these two great continents to decide their own destiny, to achieve and defend their sovereign independence, to control the rich resources of their own lands, and to contribute to the promotion of world peace and cooperation.</p>
<p>“The time has come when the colored peopled of the world will no longer allow the great natural wealth of their countries to be exploited and expropriated by the Western world while they are beset by hunger, disease, and poverty. It is clearly evident that these evils <em>can</em> be eradicated and that the economic, social and cultural advancement of whole populations of hundreds of millions of people <em>can</em> be rapidly achieved, once modern science and industrialization are applied and directed toward raising the general level of well-being of people rather than toward the enrichment of individuals and corporations. The possibility and practicability of such rapid social advancement have been attested by those who have objectively examined the history of the Soviet Union since 1917 and developments during the last decade in the countries of Eastern Europe, in China, and in newly emancipated Asian countries such as India.</p>
<p>“I have long had a deep and abiding interest in the cultural relations of Asia and Africa. Years ago I began my studies of African and Asian languages and learned about the rich and age-old cultures of these mother continents of human civilization. The living evidence of the ancient kinship of Africa and Asia is seen in the language structures, in the arts and philosophies of the two continents. Increased exchange of such closely related cultures cannot help but bring into flower a richer, more vibrant voicing of the highest aspirations of colored peoples the world over.</p>
<p>“Indeed, the fact that the Asian and African nations, possessing similar yet different cultures, have come together to solve their common problems must stand as a shining example to the rest of the world. Discussion and mutual respect are the first ingredients for the development of peace between nations. If other nations of the world follow the example set by the Asian-African nations, there can be developed an alternative to the policy of force and an end to the H-Bomb war. The people of Asia and Africa have a direct interest in such a development since it is a well-known fact that thermonuclear weapons have been used only against the peoples of Asia. There is at present a threat to once more use them against an Asian people.</p>
<p>“I fully endorse the objectives of the Conference to prevent any such catastrophe, which would inevitably bring about suffering and annihilation to all the peoples of the world. Throughout the world all decent people must applaud the aims of the Conference to make the maximum contribution of the Asian and African countries to the cause of world peace.</p>
<p>“One of the most important causes of world tension has been and continues to be the imperialist enslavement of nations. Peace in Asia is directly linked with the problems of freedom and full sovereign rights for the nations of Asia. As for Africa, most of the vast continent, as we know, still groans in chains. In North Africa, in Kenya, East Africa, and in other areas imperialist terror has been unleashed in an attempt to keep freedom-aspiring peoples in subjection. South Africa feels the lash of the redoubled racist fury of her white ruling class. But this is the time of liberation, and Africa too shall shout in freedom and glory. Soon. <em>Yes, now, in our day</em>!”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
</p><hr>
<p class="footer">
<a href="../../index.htm">Paul Robeson Archive</a>
</p>
</body> |
Paul Robeson
Message of Greetings to the Bandung Conference
April, 1955
Source:
Spotlight on Africa, (Vol.. XIV, No. 4) April 1955; pp. 16-18.
Published by The Council on African Affairs, Suite 6, 139 West 125th
Street, New York, NY, USA.
Transcription: Juan Fajardo.
Fair Use: Marxists Internet Archive (2023).
PAUL ROBESON, Chairman of African Affairs, in his Message of Greetings to the Asian-African Conference, said in part:
“Heartfelt greeting to all of you, peoples come from the shores of the Ganges and the Nile, the Yangtze and the Niger, nations of the vast Pacific waters, greetings on this historic occasion.
“It is my profound conviction that the very fact of the convening of the Conference of Asian and African nations at Bandung, Indonesia, in itself will be recorded as an historic turning-point in all world affairs. A new vista of human advancement in all spheres of life has been opened by t his assembly. Conceived, convoked, and attended by representatives of the great majority of the world’s population in Asia and Africa who have long been subjected to colonial serfdom and foreign domination, the Asian-African Conference signalizes the power and the determination of the peoples of these two great continents to decide their own destiny, to achieve and defend their sovereign independence, to control the rich resources of their own lands, and to contribute to the promotion of world peace and cooperation.
“The time has come when the colored peopled of the world will no longer allow the great natural wealth of their countries to be exploited and expropriated by the Western world while they are beset by hunger, disease, and poverty. It is clearly evident that these evils can be eradicated and that the economic, social and cultural advancement of whole populations of hundreds of millions of people can be rapidly achieved, once modern science and industrialization are applied and directed toward raising the general level of well-being of people rather than toward the enrichment of individuals and corporations. The possibility and practicability of such rapid social advancement have been attested by those who have objectively examined the history of the Soviet Union since 1917 and developments during the last decade in the countries of Eastern Europe, in China, and in newly emancipated Asian countries such as India.
“I have long had a deep and abiding interest in the cultural relations of Asia and Africa. Years ago I began my studies of African and Asian languages and learned about the rich and age-old cultures of these mother continents of human civilization. The living evidence of the ancient kinship of Africa and Asia is seen in the language structures, in the arts and philosophies of the two continents. Increased exchange of such closely related cultures cannot help but bring into flower a richer, more vibrant voicing of the highest aspirations of colored peoples the world over.
“Indeed, the fact that the Asian and African nations, possessing similar yet different cultures, have come together to solve their common problems must stand as a shining example to the rest of the world. Discussion and mutual respect are the first ingredients for the development of peace between nations. If other nations of the world follow the example set by the Asian-African nations, there can be developed an alternative to the policy of force and an end to the H-Bomb war. The people of Asia and Africa have a direct interest in such a development since it is a well-known fact that thermonuclear weapons have been used only against the peoples of Asia. There is at present a threat to once more use them against an Asian people.
“I fully endorse the objectives of the Conference to prevent any such catastrophe, which would inevitably bring about suffering and annihilation to all the peoples of the world. Throughout the world all decent people must applaud the aims of the Conference to make the maximum contribution of the Asian and African countries to the cause of world peace.
“One of the most important causes of world tension has been and continues to be the imperialist enslavement of nations. Peace in Asia is directly linked with the problems of freedom and full sovereign rights for the nations of Asia. As for Africa, most of the vast continent, as we know, still groans in chains. In North Africa, in Kenya, East Africa, and in other areas imperialist terror has been unleashed in an attempt to keep freedom-aspiring peoples in subjection. South Africa feels the lash of the redoubled racist fury of her white ruling class. But this is the time of liberation, and Africa too shall shout in freedom and glory. Soon. Yes, now, in our day!”
Paul Robeson Archive
|
./articles/Robeson-Paul/https:..www.marxists.org.reference.archive.stalin.biographies.1953.04.x01 | <body>
<p class="title">Paul Robeson</p>
<h1>To You Beloved Comrade</h1>
<hr>
<p class="information">
<span class="info">Originally Published:</span> <em>New World Review</em>, April, 1953<br>
<span class="info">Transcription:</span> <a href="http://www.mltranslations.org/index.htm">Marxist-Leninist Translations and Reprints</a><br>
<span class="info">HTML Markup:</span> Brian Reid<br>
<span class="info">Public Domain:</span> Marxists Internet Archive (2008). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.</p>
<hr>
<p class="fst">
There is no richer store of human experience than the folk tales, folk poems and songs of a people. In many, the heroes are always fully recognizable humans—only larger and more embracing in dimension. So it is with the Russian, Chinese. and the African folk-lore.
</p>
<p>
In 1937, a highly expectant audience of Moscow citizens—workers, artists, youth, farmers from surrounding towns—crowded the Bolshoy Theater. They awaited a performance by the Uzbek National Theater, headed by the highly gifted Tamara Khanum. The orchestra was a large one with instruments ancient and modern. How exciting would be the blending of the music of the rich culture of Moussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khrennikov, Gliere—with that of the beautiful music of the Uzbeks, stemming from an old and proud civilization.
</p>
<p>
Suddenly everyone stood—began to applaud—to cheer—and to smile. The children waved.
</p>
<p>
In a box to the right—smiling and applauding the audience—as well as the artists on the stage—stood the great Stalin.
</p>
<p>
I remember the tears began to quietly flow and I too smiled and waved. Here was clearly a man who seemed to embrace all. So kindly—I can never forget that warm feeling of kindliness and also a feeling of sureness. Here was one who was wise and good—the world and especially the socialist world was fortunate indeed to have his daily guidance. I lifted high my son Paul to wave to this world leader, and his leader. For Paul, Jr. had entered school in Moscow, in the land of the Soviets.
</p>
<p>
The wonderful performance began, unfolding new delights at every turn—ensemble and individual, vocal and orchestral, classic and folk-dancing of amazing originality. Could it be possible that a few years before in 1900—in 1915—these people had been semi-serfs—their cultural expression forbidden, their rich heritage almost lost under tsarist oppression’s heel?
</p>
<p>
So here one witnessed in the field of the arts—a culture national in form, socialist in content. Here was a people quite comparable to some of the tribal folk of Asia—quite comparable to the proud Yoruba or Basuto of West and East Africa, but now their lives flowering anew within the socialist way of life twenty years matured under the guidance of Lenin and Stalin. And in this whole area of development of national minorities—of their relation to the Great Russians—Stalin had played and was playing a most decisive role.
</p>
<p>
I was later to travel—to see with my own eyes what could happen to so-called backward peoples. In the West (in England, in Belgium, France, Portugal, Holland)—the Africans, the Indians (East and West), many of the Asian peoples were considered so backward that centuries, perhaps, would have to pass before these so-called ’colonials’ could become a part of modern society.
</p>
<p>
But in the Soviet Union, Yakuts, Nenetses, Kirgiz, Tadzhiks—had respect and were helped to advance with unbelievable rapidity in this socialist land. No empty promises, such as colored folk continuously hear in the United States, but deeds. For example, the transforming of the desert in Uzbekistan into blooming acres of cotton. And an old friend of mine, Mr. Golden, trained under Carver at Tuskegee, played a prominent role in cotton production. In 1949, I saw his daughter, now grown and in the university—a proud Soviet citizen.
</p>
<p>
Today in Korea—in Southeast Asia—in Latin America and the West Indies, in the Middle East—in Africa, one sees tens of millions of long oppressed colonial peoples surging toward freedom. What courage—what sacrifice—what determination never to rest until victory!
</p>
<p>
And arrayed against them, the combined powers of the so-called Free West, headed by the greedy, profit-hungry, war-minded industrialists and financial barons of our America. The illusion of an “American Century” blinds them for the immediate present to the clear fact that civilization has passed them by—that we now live in a people’s century—that the star shines brightly in the East of Europe and of the world. Colonial peoples today look to the Soviet Socialist Republics. They see how under the great Stalin millions like themselves have found a new life. They see that aided and guided by the example of the Soviet Union, led by their Mao Tse-tung, a new China adds its mighty power to the true and expanding socialist way of life. They see formerly semi-colonial Eastern European nations building new People’s Democracies, based upon the people’s power with the people shaping their own destinies. So much of this progress stems from the magnificent leadership, theoretical and practical, given by their friend Joseph Stalin.
</p>
<p>
They have sung—sing now and will sing his praise—in song and story. Slava - slava - slava - Stalin, Glory to Stalin. Forever will his name be honored and beloved in all lands.
</p>
<p>
In all spheres of modern life the influence of Stalin reaches wide and deep. From his last simply written but vastly discerning and comprehensive document, back through the years, his contributions to the science of our world society remain invaluable. One reverently speaks of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin—the shapers of humanity’s richest present and future.
</p>
<p>
Yes, through his deep humanity, by his wise understanding, he leaves us a rich and monumental heritage. Most importantly—he has charted the direction of our present and future struggles. He has pointed the way to peace—to friendly co-existence—to the exchange of mutual scientific and cultural contributions—to the end of war and destruction. How consistently, how patiently, he labored for peace and ever increasing abundance, with what deep kindliness and wisdom. He leaves tens of millions all over the earth bowed in heart-aching grief.
</p>
<p>
But, as he well knew, the struggle continues. So, inspired by his noble example, let us lift our heads slowly but proudly high and march forward in the fight for peace—for a rich and rewarding life for all.
</p>
<p>
In the inspired words of Lewis Allan, our progressive lyricist—
</p>
<p class="indentb">
To you Beloved Comrade, we make this solemn vow<br>
The fight will go on—the fight will still go on.<br>
Sleep well, Beloved Comrade, our work will just begin.<br>
The fight will go on—till we win—until we win.
</p>
<hr>
<p class="skip"> </p>
<p class="footer">
<a href="../../../../../../archive/robeson/index.htm">Paul Robeson Archive</a><br>
<a href="../../../bios.htm">Biographies & Tributes</a><br>
<a href="../../../index.htm">J. V. Stalin Archive</a>
</p>
</body> |
Paul Robeson
To You Beloved Comrade
Originally Published: New World Review, April, 1953
Transcription: Marxist-Leninist Translations and Reprints
HTML Markup: Brian Reid
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2008). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
There is no richer store of human experience than the folk tales, folk poems and songs of a people. In many, the heroes are always fully recognizable humans—only larger and more embracing in dimension. So it is with the Russian, Chinese. and the African folk-lore.
In 1937, a highly expectant audience of Moscow citizens—workers, artists, youth, farmers from surrounding towns—crowded the Bolshoy Theater. They awaited a performance by the Uzbek National Theater, headed by the highly gifted Tamara Khanum. The orchestra was a large one with instruments ancient and modern. How exciting would be the blending of the music of the rich culture of Moussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khrennikov, Gliere—with that of the beautiful music of the Uzbeks, stemming from an old and proud civilization.
Suddenly everyone stood—began to applaud—to cheer—and to smile. The children waved.
In a box to the right—smiling and applauding the audience—as well as the artists on the stage—stood the great Stalin.
I remember the tears began to quietly flow and I too smiled and waved. Here was clearly a man who seemed to embrace all. So kindly—I can never forget that warm feeling of kindliness and also a feeling of sureness. Here was one who was wise and good—the world and especially the socialist world was fortunate indeed to have his daily guidance. I lifted high my son Paul to wave to this world leader, and his leader. For Paul, Jr. had entered school in Moscow, in the land of the Soviets.
The wonderful performance began, unfolding new delights at every turn—ensemble and individual, vocal and orchestral, classic and folk-dancing of amazing originality. Could it be possible that a few years before in 1900—in 1915—these people had been semi-serfs—their cultural expression forbidden, their rich heritage almost lost under tsarist oppression’s heel?
So here one witnessed in the field of the arts—a culture national in form, socialist in content. Here was a people quite comparable to some of the tribal folk of Asia—quite comparable to the proud Yoruba or Basuto of West and East Africa, but now their lives flowering anew within the socialist way of life twenty years matured under the guidance of Lenin and Stalin. And in this whole area of development of national minorities—of their relation to the Great Russians—Stalin had played and was playing a most decisive role.
I was later to travel—to see with my own eyes what could happen to so-called backward peoples. In the West (in England, in Belgium, France, Portugal, Holland)—the Africans, the Indians (East and West), many of the Asian peoples were considered so backward that centuries, perhaps, would have to pass before these so-called ’colonials’ could become a part of modern society.
But in the Soviet Union, Yakuts, Nenetses, Kirgiz, Tadzhiks—had respect and were helped to advance with unbelievable rapidity in this socialist land. No empty promises, such as colored folk continuously hear in the United States, but deeds. For example, the transforming of the desert in Uzbekistan into blooming acres of cotton. And an old friend of mine, Mr. Golden, trained under Carver at Tuskegee, played a prominent role in cotton production. In 1949, I saw his daughter, now grown and in the university—a proud Soviet citizen.
Today in Korea—in Southeast Asia—in Latin America and the West Indies, in the Middle East—in Africa, one sees tens of millions of long oppressed colonial peoples surging toward freedom. What courage—what sacrifice—what determination never to rest until victory!
And arrayed against them, the combined powers of the so-called Free West, headed by the greedy, profit-hungry, war-minded industrialists and financial barons of our America. The illusion of an “American Century” blinds them for the immediate present to the clear fact that civilization has passed them by—that we now live in a people’s century—that the star shines brightly in the East of Europe and of the world. Colonial peoples today look to the Soviet Socialist Republics. They see how under the great Stalin millions like themselves have found a new life. They see that aided and guided by the example of the Soviet Union, led by their Mao Tse-tung, a new China adds its mighty power to the true and expanding socialist way of life. They see formerly semi-colonial Eastern European nations building new People’s Democracies, based upon the people’s power with the people shaping their own destinies. So much of this progress stems from the magnificent leadership, theoretical and practical, given by their friend Joseph Stalin.
They have sung—sing now and will sing his praise—in song and story. Slava - slava - slava - Stalin, Glory to Stalin. Forever will his name be honored and beloved in all lands.
In all spheres of modern life the influence of Stalin reaches wide and deep. From his last simply written but vastly discerning and comprehensive document, back through the years, his contributions to the science of our world society remain invaluable. One reverently speaks of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin—the shapers of humanity’s richest present and future.
Yes, through his deep humanity, by his wise understanding, he leaves us a rich and monumental heritage. Most importantly—he has charted the direction of our present and future struggles. He has pointed the way to peace—to friendly co-existence—to the exchange of mutual scientific and cultural contributions—to the end of war and destruction. How consistently, how patiently, he labored for peace and ever increasing abundance, with what deep kindliness and wisdom. He leaves tens of millions all over the earth bowed in heart-aching grief.
But, as he well knew, the struggle continues. So, inspired by his noble example, let us lift our heads slowly but proudly high and march forward in the fight for peace—for a rich and rewarding life for all.
In the inspired words of Lewis Allan, our progressive lyricist—
To you Beloved Comrade, we make this solemn vow
The fight will go on—the fight will still go on.
Sleep well, Beloved Comrade, our work will just begin.
The fight will go on—till we win—until we win.
Paul Robeson Archive
Biographies & Tributes
J. V. Stalin Archive
|
./articles/Robeson-Paul/https:..www.marxists.org.archive.robeson.1955.06.25 | <body>
<p class="title">Paul Robeson</p>
<h1>Message of Greetings to the Congress of the People</h1>
<h5>Kliptown, Johannesburg, 25th and 26th of June, 1955</h5>
<p> </p>
<hr>
<p class="information">
<span class="info">Source:</span>
<i>Messages to the Congress of the People, Kliptown, Johannesburg, 25th and 26th
of June, 1955</i>,
<a href="http://historicalpapers-atom.wits.ac.za/ad1812-eg3-2-3-3-001-jpeg-pdf">http://historicalpapers-atom.wits.ac.za/ad1812-eg3-2-3-3-001-jpeg-pdf</a>
(Wits University Research Archives, University of the Witswatersrand,
South Africa), pages 2-3.<br>
<span class="info">Transcription:</span> Juan Fajardo.<br>
<span class="info">Fair Use:</span> Marxists Internet Archive (2023). </p>
<hr>
<p> </p>
<p class="fst">From:</p>
<p class="fst">Paul Robeson: United States of America:</p>
<p>Heartfelt greetings to you all – African, European, Indian and Coloured – rallying for freedom at the Congress of the People.</p>
<p>The history-making Bandung Conference of Asian and African nations has focused the eyes of the world upon you, and its resolution in your behalf reflected the sympathy and support which your struggles have evoked in the hearts of freedom-lovers everywhere.</p>
<p>Bandung, where more than half the world’s peoples spoke out in united opposition to colonialism and racialism, and for the policy of peaceful co-existence, was vivid evidence that the old order of imperialist rule and white supremacy is doomed. Yes, here was a demonstration to the whole world that this is truly an epoch of liberation.</p>
<p>That conference of the 29 Asian and African powers has had a profound effect upon public opinion here in the United States, and its meaning was especially noted by the Negro people who are linked with Africa by the bonds of kinship and with oppressed people everywhere by the bonds of common aspirations. This growing interest among our people will surely evoke much greater support and assistance for you, and no doubt those of us who have long been devoted to your cause will be joined in this good work by many others.</p>
<p>Our struggle here for equal rights for the Negro people continues and grows stronger despite the stubborn resistance of those who once enslaved us and who are determined to maintain the system of oppression and exploitation which has denied us true freedom in all the years since the overthrow of chattel slavery.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court decision which outlawed Jim Crow schools last year is defied by the rulers of the Southern States, and our people face a long and difficult struggle to gain – in deed as well as on paper – the right to unsegregated education for our children. Likewise, the struggle for equal rights in employment, housing, political representation and in all other matters continues to be waged by the Negro people and our allies among the common people of America.</p>
<p>Here, as in your homeland, leaders of the liberation movement are persecuted, and repressive attacks are being made against American supporters of your cause. But despite all difficulties, full freedom shall be won – in Mississippi, U.S.A., and in South Africa.</p>
<p>The teachings of Frederick Douglass, great Negro leader of the anti-slavery movement, inspire and guide us.</p>
<p>“If there is no struggle,” he declared, “there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing the ground. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.”</p>
<p>Certainly, the great victories of our times – the rise of a free and mighty China linked with the great Soviet Union and the new democracies of Europe, the winning of independence by India, Burma, Indonesia and other former colonies – are living proof that the people’s demands, backed by their united strength, must be granted.</p>
<p>Be assured, dear friends in South Africa, that your struggles are closer to my heart than ever before, and that I shall continue with increased devotion and energy, to rally support for Africa’s freedom.</p>
<p>Claimed by her people, liberated Africa shall soon – yes, in our day – rise to greatness in the world; and the flowering of her culture from the ancient roots of glory, shall enrich the culture of the world.</p>
<p>Brothers and sisters of the Congress of the People – with the deepest admiration for your courage, I salute you. With all my love, I clasp your hands.</p>
<p> </p>
<p></p>
<p>
</p><p>
</p><hr>
<p class="footer">
<a href="../../index.htm">Paul Robeson Archive</a>
</p>
</body> |
Paul Robeson
Message of Greetings to the Congress of the People
Kliptown, Johannesburg, 25th and 26th of June, 1955
Source:
Messages to the Congress of the People, Kliptown, Johannesburg, 25th and 26th
of June, 1955,
http://historicalpapers-atom.wits.ac.za/ad1812-eg3-2-3-3-001-jpeg-pdf
(Wits University Research Archives, University of the Witswatersrand,
South Africa), pages 2-3.
Transcription: Juan Fajardo.
Fair Use: Marxists Internet Archive (2023).
From:
Paul Robeson: United States of America:
Heartfelt greetings to you all – African, European, Indian and Coloured – rallying for freedom at the Congress of the People.
The history-making Bandung Conference of Asian and African nations has focused the eyes of the world upon you, and its resolution in your behalf reflected the sympathy and support which your struggles have evoked in the hearts of freedom-lovers everywhere.
Bandung, where more than half the world’s peoples spoke out in united opposition to colonialism and racialism, and for the policy of peaceful co-existence, was vivid evidence that the old order of imperialist rule and white supremacy is doomed. Yes, here was a demonstration to the whole world that this is truly an epoch of liberation.
That conference of the 29 Asian and African powers has had a profound effect upon public opinion here in the United States, and its meaning was especially noted by the Negro people who are linked with Africa by the bonds of kinship and with oppressed people everywhere by the bonds of common aspirations. This growing interest among our people will surely evoke much greater support and assistance for you, and no doubt those of us who have long been devoted to your cause will be joined in this good work by many others.
Our struggle here for equal rights for the Negro people continues and grows stronger despite the stubborn resistance of those who once enslaved us and who are determined to maintain the system of oppression and exploitation which has denied us true freedom in all the years since the overthrow of chattel slavery.
The Supreme Court decision which outlawed Jim Crow schools last year is defied by the rulers of the Southern States, and our people face a long and difficult struggle to gain – in deed as well as on paper – the right to unsegregated education for our children. Likewise, the struggle for equal rights in employment, housing, political representation and in all other matters continues to be waged by the Negro people and our allies among the common people of America.
Here, as in your homeland, leaders of the liberation movement are persecuted, and repressive attacks are being made against American supporters of your cause. But despite all difficulties, full freedom shall be won – in Mississippi, U.S.A., and in South Africa.
The teachings of Frederick Douglass, great Negro leader of the anti-slavery movement, inspire and guide us.
“If there is no struggle,” he declared, “there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing the ground. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.”
Certainly, the great victories of our times – the rise of a free and mighty China linked with the great Soviet Union and the new democracies of Europe, the winning of independence by India, Burma, Indonesia and other former colonies – are living proof that the people’s demands, backed by their united strength, must be granted.
Be assured, dear friends in South Africa, that your struggles are closer to my heart than ever before, and that I shall continue with increased devotion and energy, to rally support for Africa’s freedom.
Claimed by her people, liberated Africa shall soon – yes, in our day – rise to greatness in the world; and the flowering of her culture from the ancient roots of glory, shall enrich the culture of the world.
Brothers and sisters of the Congress of the People – with the deepest admiration for your courage, I salute you. With all my love, I clasp your hands.
Paul Robeson Archive
|
./articles/Robeson-Paul/https:..www.marxists.org.archive.robeson.1935.01.15 | <body>
<p class="title">Paul Robeson</p>
<h1>“I Am at Home”</h1>
<hr>
<p class="information">
<span class="info">Originally Published:</span> <em>Daily Worker</em>, January 15, 1935<br>
<span class="info">Transcription:</span> <a href="http://www.mltranslations.org/index.htm">Marxist-Leninist Translations and Reprints</a><br>
<span class="info">HTML Markup:</span> Brian Reid<br>
<span class="info">Public Domain:</span> Marxists Internet Archive (2009). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.</p>
<hr>
<p class="fst">
Moscow, U.S.S.R.—“This is Paul Robeson, the greatest American singer!” declared the famous film director, Eisenstein, introducing Robeson to a reception in his honor, attended by nearly all the celebrities in Moscow’s theatre and art world. The reception was given in the “House of the Kino,” palatial club house of the workers of the movie industry.
</p>
<p>
I repeat the words of Eisenstein, master of ceremonies at the reception, not by way of informing the public as to who Robeson is, for that is well enough known, but to show the tone of the feeling of the workers and the artists of the Soviet Union towards this visiting Negro singer, son of a slave in the United States—to show the wholehearted appreciation of these Russian sons of serfs who now are freed by their own efforts.
</p>
<p>
The reception was long and brilliant and lasted until about 2 a.m. But somehow in the course of it, Robeson found time to answer a few questions from the <em>Daily Worker</em> correspondent.
</p>
<p>
I began with the obvious: “Have you noticed a race question in the Soviet Union?”
</p>
<p>
An undercurrent of laughter rumbled under Robeson’s big mellow voice as he answered: “Only that it seems to work to my advantage!”
</p>
<p>
And then he explained. He has been studying the Soviet Union for two years, studying the Russian language also for that length of time, has been a regular reader of the <em>Pravda</em> and <em>Isvestia</em> for months, and knows something about the solution of the race question here. He knows that the Soviet theory is that all races are equal—really equal, socially equal, too, as well as economically and politically. He expressed delight but no surprise when I informed him of the election to the Moscow Soviet of the American Negro, Robinson, working in the First State Ball Bearing Plant here.
</p>
<p>
But what he admitted he had not been expecting was the simple, wholehearted, affectionate welcome that lay in store for him. Robeson declares himself that he knows he has made a sufficient place for himself by his singing and acting, that even in the capitalist world some of the bitterest aspects of Jim-Crowism and white chauvinism are not applied to him. But it is just this feeling that a condescending exception has been made of him that is missing here. Here there is just the enthusiastic joy of Russian workers and artists, they or their fathers also once slaves of capitalist and landlord, who now welcome in addition a man they feel is a brother artist from abroad, coming with a real desire to honestly know and understand the new life they have made for themselves.
</p>
<p>
“I was not prepared for the happiness I see on every face in Moscow,” said Robeson. “I was aware that there was no starvation here, but I was not prepared for the bounding life; the feeling of safety and abundance and freedom that I find here, wherever I turn. I was not prepared for the endless friendliness, which surrounded me from the moment I crossed the border. I had a technically irregular passport, but all this was brushed aside by the eager helpfulness of the border authorities. And this joy and happiness and friendliness, this utter absence of any embarrassment over a ‘race question’ is all the more keenly felt by me because of the day I spent in Berlin on the way here, and that was a day of horror—in an atmosphere of hatred, fear and suspicion.”
</p>
<p>
Commenting on the recent execution after court-martial of a number of counter-revolutionary terrorists, Robeson declared roundly: “From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet Government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot!
</p>
<p>
“It is the government’s duty to put down any opposition to this really free society with a firm hand,” he continued, “and I hope they will always do it, for I already regard myself at home here. This is home to me. I feel more kinship to the Russian people under their new society than I ever felt anywhere else. It is obvious that there is no terror here, that all the masses of every race are contented and support their government.”
</p>
<p>
Robeson commented on the absence of slums, on the huge building of workers’ apartments in the factory districts, such districts as are invariably slums in capitalist cities. He declared that he will make an extensive study of the club life of the Soviet worker, especially as the clubs are centers of instrumental and vocal musical training, and of dramatic art.
</p>
<p>
[Robeson has developed a theory, based on his knowledge of Central Asian folk music and drama, and on his recent three months experience in Africa in connection with the filming of a motion picture scenario based on African life, that a new vehicle of expression, not drama, and not opera, can be evolved from these arts of primitive peoples. He sees certain underlying consistent bases in all this art of primitive civilizations. He hopes to supplement his observations by a study of Chinese folk music and drama.
</p>
<p>
He has selected the Soviet Union as a most proper center from which to conduct his researches, and as the only country giving him unstintedly the social and other environment in which he can systematically complete his research and work towards this new form of artistic expression. He says that he intends to remain in the Soviet Union until about the middle of January, then will have to return to England for the final completion of the film of African life and to wind up his other affairs there. Then sometime during 1935 he will come with his whole family to the Soviet Union for a prolonged stay, working on his researches and on the first steps of the new form of drama and opera, meanwhile singing and acting in the Soviet theatres and moving pictures.]
</p>
<p>
At the reception given in his honor here, Robeson sang, besides several Negro workers’ songs and spirituals, four selections in the Russian language: two from the opera “Boris Godunov,” one old folk song and a Cossack lullaby. Hearty applause and the voiced opinion of those present testified to his progress in the rather difficult Russian language.
</p>
<p>
He has deliberately and for a long time been laying plans and preparing to move to the U.S.S.R. as the most suitable center for the important work of artistic innovation which he has in mind, and because he had decided on the basis of much evidence that it is a place where a man may do such work with greatest freedom and facility. He said in his interview that he is more than satisfied that the Soviet Union is just such a place.
</p>
<br>
<hr>
<p class="footer">
<a href="../../index.htm">Paul Robeson Archive</a>
</p>
</body> |
Paul Robeson
“I Am at Home”
Originally Published: Daily Worker, January 15, 1935
Transcription: Marxist-Leninist Translations and Reprints
HTML Markup: Brian Reid
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2009). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Moscow, U.S.S.R.—“This is Paul Robeson, the greatest American singer!” declared the famous film director, Eisenstein, introducing Robeson to a reception in his honor, attended by nearly all the celebrities in Moscow’s theatre and art world. The reception was given in the “House of the Kino,” palatial club house of the workers of the movie industry.
I repeat the words of Eisenstein, master of ceremonies at the reception, not by way of informing the public as to who Robeson is, for that is well enough known, but to show the tone of the feeling of the workers and the artists of the Soviet Union towards this visiting Negro singer, son of a slave in the United States—to show the wholehearted appreciation of these Russian sons of serfs who now are freed by their own efforts.
The reception was long and brilliant and lasted until about 2 a.m. But somehow in the course of it, Robeson found time to answer a few questions from the Daily Worker correspondent.
I began with the obvious: “Have you noticed a race question in the Soviet Union?”
An undercurrent of laughter rumbled under Robeson’s big mellow voice as he answered: “Only that it seems to work to my advantage!”
And then he explained. He has been studying the Soviet Union for two years, studying the Russian language also for that length of time, has been a regular reader of the Pravda and Isvestia for months, and knows something about the solution of the race question here. He knows that the Soviet theory is that all races are equal—really equal, socially equal, too, as well as economically and politically. He expressed delight but no surprise when I informed him of the election to the Moscow Soviet of the American Negro, Robinson, working in the First State Ball Bearing Plant here.
But what he admitted he had not been expecting was the simple, wholehearted, affectionate welcome that lay in store for him. Robeson declares himself that he knows he has made a sufficient place for himself by his singing and acting, that even in the capitalist world some of the bitterest aspects of Jim-Crowism and white chauvinism are not applied to him. But it is just this feeling that a condescending exception has been made of him that is missing here. Here there is just the enthusiastic joy of Russian workers and artists, they or their fathers also once slaves of capitalist and landlord, who now welcome in addition a man they feel is a brother artist from abroad, coming with a real desire to honestly know and understand the new life they have made for themselves.
“I was not prepared for the happiness I see on every face in Moscow,” said Robeson. “I was aware that there was no starvation here, but I was not prepared for the bounding life; the feeling of safety and abundance and freedom that I find here, wherever I turn. I was not prepared for the endless friendliness, which surrounded me from the moment I crossed the border. I had a technically irregular passport, but all this was brushed aside by the eager helpfulness of the border authorities. And this joy and happiness and friendliness, this utter absence of any embarrassment over a ‘race question’ is all the more keenly felt by me because of the day I spent in Berlin on the way here, and that was a day of horror—in an atmosphere of hatred, fear and suspicion.”
Commenting on the recent execution after court-martial of a number of counter-revolutionary terrorists, Robeson declared roundly: “From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet Government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot!
“It is the government’s duty to put down any opposition to this really free society with a firm hand,” he continued, “and I hope they will always do it, for I already regard myself at home here. This is home to me. I feel more kinship to the Russian people under their new society than I ever felt anywhere else. It is obvious that there is no terror here, that all the masses of every race are contented and support their government.”
Robeson commented on the absence of slums, on the huge building of workers’ apartments in the factory districts, such districts as are invariably slums in capitalist cities. He declared that he will make an extensive study of the club life of the Soviet worker, especially as the clubs are centers of instrumental and vocal musical training, and of dramatic art.
[Robeson has developed a theory, based on his knowledge of Central Asian folk music and drama, and on his recent three months experience in Africa in connection with the filming of a motion picture scenario based on African life, that a new vehicle of expression, not drama, and not opera, can be evolved from these arts of primitive peoples. He sees certain underlying consistent bases in all this art of primitive civilizations. He hopes to supplement his observations by a study of Chinese folk music and drama.
He has selected the Soviet Union as a most proper center from which to conduct his researches, and as the only country giving him unstintedly the social and other environment in which he can systematically complete his research and work towards this new form of artistic expression. He says that he intends to remain in the Soviet Union until about the middle of January, then will have to return to England for the final completion of the film of African life and to wind up his other affairs there. Then sometime during 1935 he will come with his whole family to the Soviet Union for a prolonged stay, working on his researches and on the first steps of the new form of drama and opera, meanwhile singing and acting in the Soviet theatres and moving pictures.]
At the reception given in his honor here, Robeson sang, besides several Negro workers’ songs and spirituals, four selections in the Russian language: two from the opera “Boris Godunov,” one old folk song and a Cossack lullaby. Hearty applause and the voiced opinion of those present testified to his progress in the rather difficult Russian language.
He has deliberately and for a long time been laying plans and preparing to move to the U.S.S.R. as the most suitable center for the important work of artistic innovation which he has in mind, and because he had decided on the basis of much evidence that it is a place where a man may do such work with greatest freedom and facility. He said in his interview that he is more than satisfied that the Soviet Union is just such a place.
Paul Robeson Archive
|
./articles/Robeson-Paul/https:..www.marxists.org.archive.robeson.1956.06.12 | <body>
<p class="title">Paul Robeson</p>
<h1>“You Are the Un-Americans, and You Ought to be Ashamed of Yourselves”</h1>
<h3>Testimony of Paul Robeson before the House Committee on Un-American Activities</h3>
<h5>June 12, 1956</h5>
<hr>
<p class="information">
<span class="info">Source:</span> Congress, House, Committee on Un-American Activities, <em>Investigation of the Unauthorized Use of U.S. Passports</em>, 84th Congress, Part 3, June 12, 1956; in <em>Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938-1968</em>, Eric Bentley, ed. (New York: Viking Press, 1971), 770.<br>
<span class="info">Transcription:</span> <a href="http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6440">History Matters</a><br>
<span class="info">HTML Markup:</span> Brian Reid<br>
<span class="info">Fair Use:</span> Marxists Internet Archive (2010). </p>
<hr>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN<sup class="anote"><a href="#1" name="1b">1</a></sup>:</strong> The Committee will be in order. This morning the Committee resumes its series of hearings on the vital issue of the use of American passports as travel documents in furtherance of the objectives of the Communist conspiracy. . . .
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS<sup class="anote"><a href="#2" name="2b">2</a></sup>:</strong> Now, during the course of the process in which you were applying for this passport, in July of 1954, were you requested to submit a non-Communist affidavit?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> We had a long discussion—with my counsel, who is in the room, Mr. [Leonard B.] Boudin—with the State Department, about just such an affidavit and I was very precise not only in the application but with the State Department, headed by Mr. Henderson and Mr. McLeod, that under no conditions would I think of signing any such affidavit, that it is a complete contradiction of the rights of American citizens.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Did you comply with the requests?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I certainly did not and I will not.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Are you now a member of the Communist Party?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Oh please, please, please.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. SCHERER<sup class="anote"><a href="#3" name="3b">3</a></sup>:</strong> Please answer, will you, Mr. Robeson?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> What is the Communist Party? What do you mean by that?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. SCHERER:</strong> I ask that you direct the witness to answer the question.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> What do you mean by the Communist Party? As far as I know it is a legal party like the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Do you mean a party of people who have sacrificed for my people, and for all Americans and workers, that they can live in dignity? Do you mean that party?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Are you now a member of the Communist Party?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Would you like to come to the ballot box when I vote and take out the ballot and see?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Mr. Chairman, I respectfully suggest that the witness be ordered and directed to answer that question.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> You are directed to answer the question.
</p>
<p class="fst">
(<em>The witness consulted with his counsel</em>.)
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I stand upon the Fifth Amendment of the American Constitution.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Do you mean you invoke the Fifth Amendment?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I invoke the Fifth Amendment.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Do you honestly apprehend that if you told this Committee truthfully—
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I have no desire to consider anything. I invoke the Fifth Amendment, and it is none of your business what I would like to do, and I invoke the Fifth Amendment. And forget it.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> You are directed to answer that question.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>MR. ROBESON:</strong> I invoke the Fifth Amendment, and so I am answering it, am I not?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> I respectfully suggest the witness be ordered and directed to answer the question as to whether or not he honestly apprehends, that if he gave us a truthful answer to this last principal question, he would be supplying information which might be used against him in a criminal proceeding.
</p>
<p class="fst">
(<em>The witness consulted with his counsel</em>.)
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> You are directed to answer that question, Mr. Robeson.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Gentlemen, in the first place, wherever I have been in the world, Scandinavia, England, and many places, the first to die in the struggle against Fascism were the Communists and I laid many wreaths upon graves of Communists. It is not criminal, and the Fifth Amendment has nothing to do with criminality. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Warren, has been very clear on that in many speeches, that the Fifth Amendment does not have anything to do with the inference of criminality. I invoke the Fifth Amendment.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Have you ever been known under the name of “John Thomas”?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Oh, please, does somebody here want—are you suggesting—do you want me to be put up for perjury some place? “John Thomas”! My name is Paul Robeson, and anything I have to say, or stand for, I have said in public all over the world, and that is why I am here today.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. SCHERER:</strong> I ask that you direct the witness to answer the question. He is making a speech.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. FRIEDMAN:</strong> Excuse me, Mr. Arens, may we have the photographers take their pictures, and then desist, because it is rather nerve-racking for them to be there.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> They will take the pictures.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I am used to it and I have been in moving pictures. Do you want me to pose for it good? Do you want me to smile? I cannot smile when I am talking to him.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> I put it to you as a fact, and ask you to affirm or deny the fact, that your Communist Party name was “John Thomas.”
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I invoke the Fifth Amendment. This is really ridiculous.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Now, tell this Committee whether or not you know Nathan Gregory Silvermaster.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. SCHERER:</strong> Mr. Chairman, this is not a laughing matter.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> It is a laughing matter to me, this is really complete nonsense.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Have you ever known Nathan Gregory Silvermaster?
</p>
<p class="fst">
(<em>The witness consulted with his counsel</em>.)
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I invoke the Fifth Amendment.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Do you honestly apprehend that if you told whether you know Nathan Gregory Silvermaster you would be supplying information that could be used against you in a criminal proceeding?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I have not the slightest idea what you are talking about. I invoke the Fifth—
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> I suggest, Mr. Chairman, that the witness be directed to answer that question.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> You are directed to answer the question.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I invoke the Fifth.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. SCHERER:</strong> The witness talks very loud when he makes a speech, but when he invokes the Fifth Amendment I cannot hear him.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I invoked the Fifth Amendment very loudly. You know I am an actor, and I have medals for diction.
</p>
<p class="fst">
. . . .
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Oh, gentlemen, I thought I was here about some passports.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> We will get into that in just a few moments.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> This is complete nonsense.
</p>
<p class="fst">
. . . .
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> This is legal. This is not only legal but usual. By a unanimous vote, this Committee has been instructed to perform this very distasteful task.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> To whom am I talking?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> You are speaking to the Chairman of this Committee.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Mr. Walter?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> Yes.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> The Pennsylvania Walter?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> That is right.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Representative of the steelworkers?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> That is right.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Of the coal-mining workers and not United States Steel, by any chance? A great patriot.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> That is right.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> You are the author of all of the bills that are going to keep all kinds of decent people out of the country.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> No, only your kind.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Colored people like myself, from the West Indies and all kinds. And just the Teutonic Anglo-Saxon stock that you would let come in.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> We are trying to make it easier to get rid of your kind, too.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> You do not want any colored people to come in?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> Proceed. . . .
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Could I say that the reason that I am here today, you know, from the mouth of the State Department itself, is: I should not be allowed to travel because I have struggled for years for the independence of the colonial peoples of Africa. For many years I have so labored and I can say modestly that my name is very much honored all over Africa, in my struggles for their independence. That is the kind of independence like Sukarno got in Indonesia. Unless we are double-talking, then these efforts in the interest of Africa would be in the same context. The other reason that I am here today, again from the State Department and from the court record of the court of appeals, is that when I am abroad I speak out against the injustices against the Negro people of this land. I sent a message to the Bandung Conference and so forth. That is why I am here. This is the basis, and I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist, I am being tried for fighting for the rights of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America. My mother was born in your state, Mr. Walter, and my mother was a Quaker, and my ancestors in the time of Washington baked bread for George Washington’s troops when they crossed the Delaware, and my own father was a slave. I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full citizens in this country. And they are not. They are not in Mississippi. And they are not in Montgomery, Alabama. And they are not in Washington. They are nowhere, and that is why I am here today. You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers, and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers too. And that is why I am here today. . . .
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Did you make a trip to Europe in 1949 and to the Soviet Union?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Yes, I made a trip. To England. And I sang.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Where did you go?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I went first to England, where I was with the Philadelphia Orchestra, one of two American groups which was invited to England. I did a long concert tour in England and Denmark and Sweden, and I also sang for the Soviet people, one of the finest musical audiences in the world. Will you read what the Porgy and Bess people said? They never heard such applause in their lives. One of the most musical peoples in the world, and the great composers and great musicians, very cultured people, and Tolstoy, and—
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> We know all of that.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> They have helped our culture and we can learn a lot.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Did you go to Paris on that trip?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I went to Paris.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> And while you were in Paris, did you tell an audience there that the American Negro would never go to war against the Soviet government?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> May I say that is slightly out of context? May I explain to you what I did say? I remember the speech very well, and the night before, in London, and do not take the newspaper, take me: I made the speech, gentlemen, Mr. So-and-So. It happened that the night before, in London, before I went to Paris . . . and will you please listen?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> We are listening.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Two thousand students from various parts of the colonial world, students who since then have become very important in their governments, in places like Indonesia and India, and in many parts of Africa, two thousand students asked me and Mr. [Dr. Y. M.] Dadoo, a leader of the Indian people in South Africa, when we addressed this conference, and remember I was speaking to a peace conference, they asked me and Mr. Dadoo to say there that they were struggling for peace, that they did not want war against anybody. Two thousand students who came from populations that would range to six or seven hundred million people.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. KEARNEY<sup class="anote"><a href="#4" name="4b">4</a></sup>:</strong> Do you know anybody who wants war?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> They asked me to say in their name that they did not want war. That is what I said. No part of my speech made in Paris says fifteen million American Negroes would do anything. I said it was my feeling that the American people would struggle for peace, and that has since been underscored by the President of these United States. Now, in passing, I said—
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. KEARNEY:</strong> Do you know of any people who want war?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Listen to me. I said it was unthinkable to me that any people would take up arms, in the name of an Eastland, to go against anybody. Gentlemen, I still say that. This United States Government should go down to Mississippi and protect my people. That is what should happen.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> Did you say what was attributed to you?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I did not say it in that context.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> I lay before you a document containing an article, “I Am Looking for Full Freedom,” by Paul Robeson, in a publication called the <em>Worker</em>, dated July 3, 1949.
</p>
<p class="fst">
“At the Paris Conference I said it was unthinkable that the Negro people of America or elsewhere in the world could be drawn into war with the Soviet Union.”
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Is that saying the Negro people would do anything? I said it is unthinkable. I did not say that there [in Paris]: I said that in the <em>Worker</em>.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> “I repeat it with hundredfold emphasis: they will not.”
</p>
<p class="fst">
Did you say that?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I did not say that in Paris, I said that in America. And, gentlemen, they have not yet done so, and it is quite clear that no Americans, no people in the world probably, are going to war with the Soviet Union. So I was rather prophetic, was I not?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> On that trip to Europe, did you go to Stockholm?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I certainly did, and I understand that some people in the American Embassy tried to break up my concert. They were not successful.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> While you were in Stockholm, did you make a little speech?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I made all kinds of speeches, yes.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Let me read you a quotation.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Let me listen.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Do so, please.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I am a lawyer.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. KEARNEY:</strong> It would be a revelation if you would listen to counsel.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> In good company, I usually listen, but you know people wander around in such fancy places. Would you please let me read my statement at some point?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> We will consider your statement.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> “I do not hesitate one second to state clearly and unmistakably: I belong to the American resistance movement which fights against American imperialism, just as the resistance movement fought against Hitler.”
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Just like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman were underground railroaders, and fighting for our freedom, you bet your life.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> I am going to have to insist that you listen to these questions.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>MR. ROBESON:</strong> I am listening.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> “If the American warmongers fancy that they could win America’s millions of Negroes for a war against those countries (<em>i.e.</em>, the Soviet Union and the peoples’ democracies) then they ought to understand that this will never be the case. Why should the Negroes ever fight against the only nations of the world where racial discrimination is prohibited, and where the people can live freely? Never! I can assure you, they will never fight against either the Soviet Union or the peoples’ democracies.”
</p>
<p class="fst">
Did you make that statement?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I do not remember that. But what is perfectly clear today is that nine hundred million other colored people have told you that they will not. Four hundred million in India, and millions everywhere, have told you, precisely, that the colored people are not going to die for anybody: they are going to die for their independence. We are dealing not with fifteen million colored people, we are dealing with hundreds of millions.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. KEARNEY:</strong> The witness has answered the question and he does not have to make a speech. . . .
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being. Where I did not feel the pressure of color as I feel [it] in this Committee today.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. SCHERER:</strong> Why do you not stay in Russia?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you. And no Fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear? I am for peace with the Soviet Union, and I am for peace with China, and I am not for peace or friendship with the Fascist Franco, and I am not for peace with Fascist Nazi Germans. I am for peace with decent people.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. SCHERER:</strong> You are here because you are promoting the Communist cause.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I am here because I am opposing the neo-Fascist cause which I see arising in these committees. You are like the Alien [and] Sedition Act, and Jefferson could be sitting here, and Frederick Douglass could be sitting here, and Eugene Debs could be here.
</p>
<p class="fst">
. . . .
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> Now, what prejudice are you talking about? You were graduated from Rutgers and you were graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. I remember seeing you play football at Lehigh.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> We beat Lehigh.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> And we had a lot of trouble with you.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> That is right. DeWysocki was playing in my team.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> There was no prejudice against you. Why did you not send your son to Rutgers?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Just a moment. This is something that I challenge very deeply, and very sincerely: that the success of a few Negroes, including myself or Jackie Robinson can make up—and here is a study from Columbia University—for seven hundred dollars a year for thousands of Negro families in the South. My father was a slave, and I have cousins who are sharecroppers, and I do not see my success in terms of myself. That is the reason my own success has not meant what it should mean: I have sacrificed literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars for what I believe in.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> While you were in Moscow, did you make a speech lauding Stalin?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I do not know.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Did you say, in effect, that Stalin was a great man, and Stalin had done much for the Russian people, for all of the nations of the world, for all working people of the earth? Did you say something to that effect about Stalin when you were in Moscow?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I cannot remember.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Do you have a recollection of praising Stalin?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I said a lot about Soviet people, fighting for the peoples of the earth.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Did you praise Stalin?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I do not remember.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Have you recently changed your mind about Stalin?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Whatever has happened to Stalin, gentlemen, is a question for the Soviet Union, and I would not argue with a representative of the people who, in building America, wasted sixty to a hundred million lives of my people, black people drawn from Africa on the plantations. You are responsible, and your forebears, for sixty million to one hundred million black people dying in the slave ships and on the plantations, and don’t ask me about anybody, please.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> I am glad you called our attention to that slave problem. While you were in Soviet Russia, did you ask them there to show you the slave labor camps?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> You have been so greatly interested in slaves, I should think that you would want to see that.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> The slaves I see are still in a kind of semiserfdom. I am interested in the place I am, and in the country that can do something about it. As far as I know, about the slave camps, they were Fascist prisoners who had murdered millions of the Jewish people, and who would have wiped out millions of the Negro people, could they have gotten a hold of them. That is all I know about that.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Tell us whether or not you have changed your opinion in the recent past about Stalin.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I have told you, mister, that I would not discuss anything with the people who have murdered sixty million of my people, and I will not discuss Stalin with you.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> You would not, of course, discuss with us the slave labor camps in Soviet Russia.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I will discuss Stalin when I may be among the Russian people some day, singing for them, I will discuss it there. It is their problem.
</p>
<p class="fst">
. . . .
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Now I would invite your attention, if you please, to the <em>Daily Worker</em> of June 29, 1949, with reference to a get-together with you and Ben Davis. Do you know Ben Davis?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> One of my dearest friends, one of the finest Americans you can imagine, born of a fine family, who went to Amherst and was a great man.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> The answer is yes?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Nothing could make me prouder than to know him.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> That answers the question.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ARENS:</strong> Did I understand you to laud his patriotism?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I say that he is as patriotic an American as there can be, and you gentlemen belong with the Alien and Sedition Acts, and you are the nonpatriots, and you are the un-Americans, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> Just a minute, the hearing is now adjourned.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I should think it would be.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> I have endured all of this that I can.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> Can I read my statement?
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>THE CHAIRMAN:</strong> No, you cannot read it. The meeting is adjourned.
</p>
<p class="fst">
<strong>Mr. ROBESON:</strong> I think it should be, and you should adjourn this forever, that is what I would say. . . .
</p><p class="skip"> </p>
<h3>Notes</h3>
<p class="fst"><a href="#1b" name="1">1.</a>
Rep. Francis Eugene Walter (D-PA), Chairman the House Un-American Activities Committee, 1955-1965.
</p>
<p class="fst"><a href="#2b" name="2">2.</a> Richard Arens—Director of Staff for the House Un-American Activities Committee.
</p>
<p class="fst"><a href="#3b" name="3">3.</a> Rep. Gordon H. Scherer (R-OH), member of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
</p>
<p class="fst"><a href="#4b" name="4">4.</a> Rep. Bernard W. Kearney (R-NY), member of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
</p><hr>
<p class="footer">
<a href="../../index.htm">Paul Robeson Archive</a>
</p>
</body> |
Paul Robeson
“You Are the Un-Americans, and You Ought to be Ashamed of Yourselves”
Testimony of Paul Robeson before the House Committee on Un-American Activities
June 12, 1956
Source: Congress, House, Committee on Un-American Activities, Investigation of the Unauthorized Use of U.S. Passports, 84th Congress, Part 3, June 12, 1956; in Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938-1968, Eric Bentley, ed. (New York: Viking Press, 1971), 770.
Transcription: History Matters
HTML Markup: Brian Reid
Fair Use: Marxists Internet Archive (2010).
THE CHAIRMAN1: The Committee will be in order. This morning the Committee resumes its series of hearings on the vital issue of the use of American passports as travel documents in furtherance of the objectives of the Communist conspiracy. . . .
Mr. ARENS2: Now, during the course of the process in which you were applying for this passport, in July of 1954, were you requested to submit a non-Communist affidavit?
Mr. ROBESON: We had a long discussion—with my counsel, who is in the room, Mr. [Leonard B.] Boudin—with the State Department, about just such an affidavit and I was very precise not only in the application but with the State Department, headed by Mr. Henderson and Mr. McLeod, that under no conditions would I think of signing any such affidavit, that it is a complete contradiction of the rights of American citizens.
Mr. ARENS: Did you comply with the requests?
Mr. ROBESON: I certainly did not and I will not.
Mr. ARENS: Are you now a member of the Communist Party?
Mr. ROBESON: Oh please, please, please.
Mr. SCHERER3: Please answer, will you, Mr. Robeson?
Mr. ROBESON: What is the Communist Party? What do you mean by that?
Mr. SCHERER: I ask that you direct the witness to answer the question.
Mr. ROBESON: What do you mean by the Communist Party? As far as I know it is a legal party like the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. Do you mean a party of people who have sacrificed for my people, and for all Americans and workers, that they can live in dignity? Do you mean that party?
Mr. ARENS: Are you now a member of the Communist Party?
Mr. ROBESON: Would you like to come to the ballot box when I vote and take out the ballot and see?
Mr. ARENS: Mr. Chairman, I respectfully suggest that the witness be ordered and directed to answer that question.
THE CHAIRMAN: You are directed to answer the question.
(The witness consulted with his counsel.)
Mr. ROBESON: I stand upon the Fifth Amendment of the American Constitution.
Mr. ARENS: Do you mean you invoke the Fifth Amendment?
Mr. ROBESON: I invoke the Fifth Amendment.
Mr. ARENS: Do you honestly apprehend that if you told this Committee truthfully—
Mr. ROBESON: I have no desire to consider anything. I invoke the Fifth Amendment, and it is none of your business what I would like to do, and I invoke the Fifth Amendment. And forget it.
THE CHAIRMAN: You are directed to answer that question.
MR. ROBESON: I invoke the Fifth Amendment, and so I am answering it, am I not?
Mr. ARENS: I respectfully suggest the witness be ordered and directed to answer the question as to whether or not he honestly apprehends, that if he gave us a truthful answer to this last principal question, he would be supplying information which might be used against him in a criminal proceeding.
(The witness consulted with his counsel.)
THE CHAIRMAN: You are directed to answer that question, Mr. Robeson.
Mr. ROBESON: Gentlemen, in the first place, wherever I have been in the world, Scandinavia, England, and many places, the first to die in the struggle against Fascism were the Communists and I laid many wreaths upon graves of Communists. It is not criminal, and the Fifth Amendment has nothing to do with criminality. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Warren, has been very clear on that in many speeches, that the Fifth Amendment does not have anything to do with the inference of criminality. I invoke the Fifth Amendment.
Mr. ARENS: Have you ever been known under the name of “John Thomas”?
Mr. ROBESON: Oh, please, does somebody here want—are you suggesting—do you want me to be put up for perjury some place? “John Thomas”! My name is Paul Robeson, and anything I have to say, or stand for, I have said in public all over the world, and that is why I am here today.
Mr. SCHERER: I ask that you direct the witness to answer the question. He is making a speech.
Mr. FRIEDMAN: Excuse me, Mr. Arens, may we have the photographers take their pictures, and then desist, because it is rather nerve-racking for them to be there.
THE CHAIRMAN: They will take the pictures.
Mr. ROBESON: I am used to it and I have been in moving pictures. Do you want me to pose for it good? Do you want me to smile? I cannot smile when I am talking to him.
Mr. ARENS: I put it to you as a fact, and ask you to affirm or deny the fact, that your Communist Party name was “John Thomas.”
Mr. ROBESON: I invoke the Fifth Amendment. This is really ridiculous.
Mr. ARENS: Now, tell this Committee whether or not you know Nathan Gregory Silvermaster.
Mr. SCHERER: Mr. Chairman, this is not a laughing matter.
Mr. ROBESON: It is a laughing matter to me, this is really complete nonsense.
Mr. ARENS: Have you ever known Nathan Gregory Silvermaster?
(The witness consulted with his counsel.)
Mr. ROBESON: I invoke the Fifth Amendment.
Mr. ARENS: Do you honestly apprehend that if you told whether you know Nathan Gregory Silvermaster you would be supplying information that could be used against you in a criminal proceeding?
Mr. ROBESON: I have not the slightest idea what you are talking about. I invoke the Fifth—
Mr. ARENS: I suggest, Mr. Chairman, that the witness be directed to answer that question.
THE CHAIRMAN: You are directed to answer the question.
Mr. ROBESON: I invoke the Fifth.
Mr. SCHERER: The witness talks very loud when he makes a speech, but when he invokes the Fifth Amendment I cannot hear him.
Mr. ROBESON: I invoked the Fifth Amendment very loudly. You know I am an actor, and I have medals for diction.
. . . .
Mr. ROBESON: Oh, gentlemen, I thought I was here about some passports.
Mr. ARENS: We will get into that in just a few moments.
Mr. ROBESON: This is complete nonsense.
. . . .
THE CHAIRMAN: This is legal. This is not only legal but usual. By a unanimous vote, this Committee has been instructed to perform this very distasteful task.
Mr. ROBESON: To whom am I talking?
THE CHAIRMAN: You are speaking to the Chairman of this Committee.
Mr. ROBESON: Mr. Walter?
THE CHAIRMAN: Yes.
Mr. ROBESON: The Pennsylvania Walter?
THE CHAIRMAN: That is right.
Mr. ROBESON: Representative of the steelworkers?
THE CHAIRMAN: That is right.
Mr. ROBESON: Of the coal-mining workers and not United States Steel, by any chance? A great patriot.
THE CHAIRMAN: That is right.
Mr. ROBESON: You are the author of all of the bills that are going to keep all kinds of decent people out of the country.
THE CHAIRMAN: No, only your kind.
Mr. ROBESON: Colored people like myself, from the West Indies and all kinds. And just the Teutonic Anglo-Saxon stock that you would let come in.
THE CHAIRMAN: We are trying to make it easier to get rid of your kind, too.
Mr. ROBESON: You do not want any colored people to come in?
THE CHAIRMAN: Proceed. . . .
Mr. ROBESON: Could I say that the reason that I am here today, you know, from the mouth of the State Department itself, is: I should not be allowed to travel because I have struggled for years for the independence of the colonial peoples of Africa. For many years I have so labored and I can say modestly that my name is very much honored all over Africa, in my struggles for their independence. That is the kind of independence like Sukarno got in Indonesia. Unless we are double-talking, then these efforts in the interest of Africa would be in the same context. The other reason that I am here today, again from the State Department and from the court record of the court of appeals, is that when I am abroad I speak out against the injustices against the Negro people of this land. I sent a message to the Bandung Conference and so forth. That is why I am here. This is the basis, and I am not being tried for whether I am a Communist, I am being tried for fighting for the rights of my people, who are still second-class citizens in this United States of America. My mother was born in your state, Mr. Walter, and my mother was a Quaker, and my ancestors in the time of Washington baked bread for George Washington’s troops when they crossed the Delaware, and my own father was a slave. I stand here struggling for the rights of my people to be full citizens in this country. And they are not. They are not in Mississippi. And they are not in Montgomery, Alabama. And they are not in Washington. They are nowhere, and that is why I am here today. You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers, and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers too. And that is why I am here today. . . .
Mr. ARENS: Did you make a trip to Europe in 1949 and to the Soviet Union?
Mr. ROBESON: Yes, I made a trip. To England. And I sang.
Mr. ARENS: Where did you go?
Mr. ROBESON: I went first to England, where I was with the Philadelphia Orchestra, one of two American groups which was invited to England. I did a long concert tour in England and Denmark and Sweden, and I also sang for the Soviet people, one of the finest musical audiences in the world. Will you read what the Porgy and Bess people said? They never heard such applause in their lives. One of the most musical peoples in the world, and the great composers and great musicians, very cultured people, and Tolstoy, and—
THE CHAIRMAN: We know all of that.
Mr. ROBESON: They have helped our culture and we can learn a lot.
Mr. ARENS: Did you go to Paris on that trip?
Mr. ROBESON: I went to Paris.
Mr. ARENS: And while you were in Paris, did you tell an audience there that the American Negro would never go to war against the Soviet government?
Mr. ROBESON: May I say that is slightly out of context? May I explain to you what I did say? I remember the speech very well, and the night before, in London, and do not take the newspaper, take me: I made the speech, gentlemen, Mr. So-and-So. It happened that the night before, in London, before I went to Paris . . . and will you please listen?
Mr. ARENS: We are listening.
Mr. ROBESON: Two thousand students from various parts of the colonial world, students who since then have become very important in their governments, in places like Indonesia and India, and in many parts of Africa, two thousand students asked me and Mr. [Dr. Y. M.] Dadoo, a leader of the Indian people in South Africa, when we addressed this conference, and remember I was speaking to a peace conference, they asked me and Mr. Dadoo to say there that they were struggling for peace, that they did not want war against anybody. Two thousand students who came from populations that would range to six or seven hundred million people.
Mr. KEARNEY4: Do you know anybody who wants war?
Mr. ROBESON: They asked me to say in their name that they did not want war. That is what I said. No part of my speech made in Paris says fifteen million American Negroes would do anything. I said it was my feeling that the American people would struggle for peace, and that has since been underscored by the President of these United States. Now, in passing, I said—
Mr. KEARNEY: Do you know of any people who want war?
Mr. ROBESON: Listen to me. I said it was unthinkable to me that any people would take up arms, in the name of an Eastland, to go against anybody. Gentlemen, I still say that. This United States Government should go down to Mississippi and protect my people. That is what should happen.
THE CHAIRMAN: Did you say what was attributed to you?
Mr. ROBESON: I did not say it in that context.
Mr. ARENS: I lay before you a document containing an article, “I Am Looking for Full Freedom,” by Paul Robeson, in a publication called the Worker, dated July 3, 1949.
“At the Paris Conference I said it was unthinkable that the Negro people of America or elsewhere in the world could be drawn into war with the Soviet Union.”
Mr. ROBESON: Is that saying the Negro people would do anything? I said it is unthinkable. I did not say that there [in Paris]: I said that in the Worker.
Mr. ARENS: “I repeat it with hundredfold emphasis: they will not.”
Did you say that?
Mr. ROBESON: I did not say that in Paris, I said that in America. And, gentlemen, they have not yet done so, and it is quite clear that no Americans, no people in the world probably, are going to war with the Soviet Union. So I was rather prophetic, was I not?
Mr. ARENS: On that trip to Europe, did you go to Stockholm?
Mr. ROBESON: I certainly did, and I understand that some people in the American Embassy tried to break up my concert. They were not successful.
Mr. ARENS: While you were in Stockholm, did you make a little speech?
Mr. ROBESON: I made all kinds of speeches, yes.
Mr. ARENS: Let me read you a quotation.
Mr. ROBESON: Let me listen.
Mr. ARENS: Do so, please.
Mr. ROBESON: I am a lawyer.
Mr. KEARNEY: It would be a revelation if you would listen to counsel.
Mr. ROBESON: In good company, I usually listen, but you know people wander around in such fancy places. Would you please let me read my statement at some point?
THE CHAIRMAN: We will consider your statement.
Mr. ARENS: “I do not hesitate one second to state clearly and unmistakably: I belong to the American resistance movement which fights against American imperialism, just as the resistance movement fought against Hitler.”
Mr. ROBESON: Just like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman were underground railroaders, and fighting for our freedom, you bet your life.
THE CHAIRMAN: I am going to have to insist that you listen to these questions.
MR. ROBESON: I am listening.
Mr. ARENS: “If the American warmongers fancy that they could win America’s millions of Negroes for a war against those countries (i.e., the Soviet Union and the peoples’ democracies) then they ought to understand that this will never be the case. Why should the Negroes ever fight against the only nations of the world where racial discrimination is prohibited, and where the people can live freely? Never! I can assure you, they will never fight against either the Soviet Union or the peoples’ democracies.”
Did you make that statement?
Mr. ROBESON: I do not remember that. But what is perfectly clear today is that nine hundred million other colored people have told you that they will not. Four hundred million in India, and millions everywhere, have told you, precisely, that the colored people are not going to die for anybody: they are going to die for their independence. We are dealing not with fifteen million colored people, we are dealing with hundreds of millions.
Mr. KEARNEY: The witness has answered the question and he does not have to make a speech. . . .
Mr. ROBESON: In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being. Where I did not feel the pressure of color as I feel [it] in this Committee today.
Mr. SCHERER: Why do you not stay in Russia?
Mr. ROBESON: Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you. And no Fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear? I am for peace with the Soviet Union, and I am for peace with China, and I am not for peace or friendship with the Fascist Franco, and I am not for peace with Fascist Nazi Germans. I am for peace with decent people.
Mr. SCHERER: You are here because you are promoting the Communist cause.
Mr. ROBESON: I am here because I am opposing the neo-Fascist cause which I see arising in these committees. You are like the Alien [and] Sedition Act, and Jefferson could be sitting here, and Frederick Douglass could be sitting here, and Eugene Debs could be here.
. . . .
THE CHAIRMAN: Now, what prejudice are you talking about? You were graduated from Rutgers and you were graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. I remember seeing you play football at Lehigh.
Mr. ROBESON: We beat Lehigh.
THE CHAIRMAN: And we had a lot of trouble with you.
Mr. ROBESON: That is right. DeWysocki was playing in my team.
THE CHAIRMAN: There was no prejudice against you. Why did you not send your son to Rutgers?
Mr. ROBESON: Just a moment. This is something that I challenge very deeply, and very sincerely: that the success of a few Negroes, including myself or Jackie Robinson can make up—and here is a study from Columbia University—for seven hundred dollars a year for thousands of Negro families in the South. My father was a slave, and I have cousins who are sharecroppers, and I do not see my success in terms of myself. That is the reason my own success has not meant what it should mean: I have sacrificed literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars for what I believe in.
Mr. ARENS: While you were in Moscow, did you make a speech lauding Stalin?
Mr. ROBESON: I do not know.
Mr. ARENS: Did you say, in effect, that Stalin was a great man, and Stalin had done much for the Russian people, for all of the nations of the world, for all working people of the earth? Did you say something to that effect about Stalin when you were in Moscow?
Mr. ROBESON: I cannot remember.
Mr. ARENS: Do you have a recollection of praising Stalin?
Mr. ROBESON: I said a lot about Soviet people, fighting for the peoples of the earth.
Mr. ARENS: Did you praise Stalin?
Mr. ROBESON: I do not remember.
Mr. ARENS: Have you recently changed your mind about Stalin?
Mr. ROBESON: Whatever has happened to Stalin, gentlemen, is a question for the Soviet Union, and I would not argue with a representative of the people who, in building America, wasted sixty to a hundred million lives of my people, black people drawn from Africa on the plantations. You are responsible, and your forebears, for sixty million to one hundred million black people dying in the slave ships and on the plantations, and don’t ask me about anybody, please.
Mr. ARENS: I am glad you called our attention to that slave problem. While you were in Soviet Russia, did you ask them there to show you the slave labor camps?
THE CHAIRMAN: You have been so greatly interested in slaves, I should think that you would want to see that.
Mr. ROBESON: The slaves I see are still in a kind of semiserfdom. I am interested in the place I am, and in the country that can do something about it. As far as I know, about the slave camps, they were Fascist prisoners who had murdered millions of the Jewish people, and who would have wiped out millions of the Negro people, could they have gotten a hold of them. That is all I know about that.
Mr. ARENS: Tell us whether or not you have changed your opinion in the recent past about Stalin.
Mr. ROBESON: I have told you, mister, that I would not discuss anything with the people who have murdered sixty million of my people, and I will not discuss Stalin with you.
Mr. ARENS: You would not, of course, discuss with us the slave labor camps in Soviet Russia.
Mr. ROBESON: I will discuss Stalin when I may be among the Russian people some day, singing for them, I will discuss it there. It is their problem.
. . . .
Mr. ARENS: Now I would invite your attention, if you please, to the Daily Worker of June 29, 1949, with reference to a get-together with you and Ben Davis. Do you know Ben Davis?
Mr. ROBESON: One of my dearest friends, one of the finest Americans you can imagine, born of a fine family, who went to Amherst and was a great man.
THE CHAIRMAN: The answer is yes?
Mr. ROBESON: Nothing could make me prouder than to know him.
THE CHAIRMAN: That answers the question.
Mr. ARENS: Did I understand you to laud his patriotism?
Mr. ROBESON: I say that he is as patriotic an American as there can be, and you gentlemen belong with the Alien and Sedition Acts, and you are the nonpatriots, and you are the un-Americans, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
THE CHAIRMAN: Just a minute, the hearing is now adjourned.
Mr. ROBESON: I should think it would be.
THE CHAIRMAN: I have endured all of this that I can.
Mr. ROBESON: Can I read my statement?
THE CHAIRMAN: No, you cannot read it. The meeting is adjourned.
Mr. ROBESON: I think it should be, and you should adjourn this forever, that is what I would say. . . .
Notes
1.
Rep. Francis Eugene Walter (D-PA), Chairman the House Un-American Activities Committee, 1955-1965.
2. Richard Arens—Director of Staff for the House Un-American Activities Committee.
3. Rep. Gordon H. Scherer (R-OH), member of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
4. Rep. Bernard W. Kearney (R-NY), member of the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Paul Robeson Archive
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./articles/Lissagaray-Prosper/https:..www.marxists.org.history.france.archive.lissagaray.ch09 | <body>
<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter IX<br>
The Commune at Lyons, St. Etienne and Creuzot</h1>
<p class="quoteb">All parts of France have united and rallied around the Assembly and the government. (Circular from Thiers to the Provinces, evening of the 23rd.)</p>
<p>What was the state of the provinces?</p>
<p>For some days, without any of the Parisian journals, they lived upon lying despatches of M. Thiers, 103 then looked at the signatures to the proclamations of the Central Committee, and finding there neither the Left nor the democratic paragons, said, ‘Who are these unknown men?’ The Republican bourgeois, misinformed on the events occurring during the siege of Paris — very cleverly hoodwinked, too, by the Conservative press — cried, like their fathers who in their time had said, ‘Pitt and Coburg’, when unable to comprehend popular movements, ‘These unknown men can be nothing but Bonapartists.’ The people alone showed true instinct.</p>
<p>The Paris Commune found its first echo at Lyons. This was a necessary reverberation. Since the advent of the Assembly the workmen found themselves watched. The municipal councillors, weak men, some of them, almost to reaction, had lowered the red flag under the pretext that ‘the proud flag of resistance a <em>outrance </em>should not survive the humiliation of France’. The clumsy trick had not deceived the people, who, at the Guilloti�re, mounted guard round their flag. The new prefect, Valentin, an ex-officer as brutal as vulgar, a kind of Cl�ment-Thomas, sufficiently forewarned the people what sort of Republic was in store for them.</p>
<p>On the 19th, at the first news, Republicans were on the alert, nor did they hide their sympathy for Paris. The next day Valentin issued a provocative proclamation, seized the Parisian journals, and refused to communicate any despatches. On the 21st, in the municipal council, some of the members grew indignant, and one said, ‘Let us at least have the courage to be the Commune of Lyons.’ On the 22nd, at mid-day, eight hundred delegates of the National Guard assembled at the Palais de St. Pierre. A motion was put proposing to choose between Paris and Versailles. A citizen just arrived from Paris explained the movement there, and many wanted the meeting to declare itself immediately for Paris. The Assembly finally sent delegates to the H�tel-de-Ville to ask for the extension of the municipal liberties, the appointment of the mayor as chief of the National Guard, and his investiture with the functions of prefect.</p>
<p>The municipal council was just sitting. The mayor, H�non, a wooden-headed relic of 1848, opposed all resistance to Versailles. The mayor of the Guilloti�re, Crestin, a known Republican, demanded that they should at least protest. Others wanted the council to extend its prerogatives. H�non threatened to tender his resignation if they went on like that, and proposed they should repair to the prefect, who was then convoking the reactionary battalions.</p>
<p>The delegates of the Palais de St. Pierre arrived, and were roughly received by H�non. One deputation succeeded another, always meeting with the same rebuffs. However, during this time the battalions of Brotteaux and La Guilloti�re were preparing, and at eight o'clock a dense mass filled the Place des Terreaux in front of the H�tel-de-Ville, crying, ‘<em>Vive la Commune! </em>Down with Versailles!’ The reactionary battalions did not respond to the prefect’s appeal.</p>
<p>Part of the council had met again at nine o'clock, while the others, together with H�non, were still wrangling with the delegates. After an answer from the mayor, which left them no hope of coming to an understanding, the delegates invaded the council-chamber, and the crowd, apprised of this, rushed into the H�tel-de-Ville. The delegates, sitting down round the council table, named Crestin mayor of Lyons. He refused, and, summoned to give his reasons, declared that the direction of the movement belonged to those who had initiated it. After a great uproar, the National Guards acclaimed a Communal Commission, at the head of which they placed five municipal councillors — Crestin, Durand, Bouvatier, Perret and Velay. The delegates sent for Valentin, and asked him if he were for Versailles. He answered that his proclamation could leave no doubt on that head whereupon he was put under arrest. Then they decided on the proclamation of the Commune, the dissolution of the municipal council, the dismissal of the prefect and of the general of the National Guard, who was to be replaced by Ricciotti Garibaldi, noted alike by — his name and his services in the army of the Vosges. These resolutions were announced to the people and hailed with cheers. The red flag was again unfurled from the balcony.</p>
<p>The next day, the 23rd March, early in the morning, the five councillors named the evening before backed out, thus obliging the insurgents to present themselves single-handed to Lyons and the neighbouring towns. ‘The Commune’, they said, ‘must demand for Lyons the right to impose and administer her own taxes, to have her own police, and to dispose of her National Guard, which is to occupy all posts and forts.’ This rather meagre programme was a little further expanded by the committees of the National Guard and the Republican Alliance: ‘With the Commune, the taxes will be lightened, the public money will no longer be squandered, social institutions demanded by the working-class will be founded. Much misery and suffering will be alleviated pending the final disappearance of that hideous social evil, pauperism.’ Insufficient proclamations these, inconclusive, mute as to the danger of the Republic and the clerical conspiracy, the only levers by which the lower middle-class might have been roused.</p>
<p>So the Commission found itself isolated. It had taken the fort of Charpennes, accumulated cartridges, set the cannons and machine guns round the H�tel-de-Ville; but the popular battalions, except two or three, had withdrawn without leaving a picket, and the resistance was being organized. General Crouzat at the station picked up all the soldiers, marines, and mobiles dispersed about Lyons. H�non named Bouras a general of the National Guard. The officers of the battalions of order protested against the Commune, and placed themselves at the disposition of the municipal council, which sat in the, cabinet of the mayor, close to the Commission.</p>
<p>Forgetting it had dissolved the Council the evening before it invited the Council to hold their sitting in the ordinary council-room. They arrived at four o'clock. The Commission gave up the place to them, National Guards occupying that part of the room reserved to the public. Had there been some vigour in this middle class, some foreboding of the Conservative atrocities, the Republican councillors would have taken the lead of this popular movement; but they were still, some of them, the same mercantile aristocrats, chary of their gold and their persons during the war of national defence; the others, the same overweening Radicals who had always striven for the subordination instead of the emancipation of the working-class. While they were deliberating without coming to any resolution, the assistants, growing impatient, uttered a few exclamations shocking to their lordliness, and they brusquely raised the sitting in order to go and draw up an address with H�non.</p>
<p>In the evening two delegates of the Central Committee of Paris arrived at the club of the Rue Duguesclin. They were taken to the H�tel-de-Ville, where from the large balcony they harangue the mass, who answered with cries of ‘<em>Vive Paris! Vive la Commune! </em>and Ricciotti’s name was again acclaimed.</p>
<p>But this was only a demonstration. The delegates were themselves too inexperienced to keep alive and direct this movement. On the 24th there remained on the Place de Terreaux but a few groups of idlers. The <em>rappel </em>sounded in vain. The four important journals of Lyons, Radical, Liberal and Clerical, ‘energetically repudiated all connivance with the Parisian, Lyonese, and other insurrections'; and General Crouzat spread the rumour that the Prussians, camping at Dijon, threatened to occupy Lyons within twenty-four hours if order were not re-established. The Commission, more and more deserted, again turned to the Council, which now held its sitting at the Bourse, proposing to hand over the administration to them. The Council refused to treat. ‘No,’ said the mayor, ‘We will never accept the Commune.’ And as the mobiles from Belfort were announced, the Council decided to give them a solemn reception. This was a declaration of war.</p>
<p>The parley had been going on the whole afternoon until late into the evening. Little by little the H�tel-de-Ville grew empty, and the members of the Commission disappeared. At four o'clock in the morning the only two who remained cancelled their powers,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n104"> [104]</a></sup> dismissed the sentries who guarded the prefect, and left the Hotel-de-Ville. The next day Lyons found her Commune gone.</p>
<p>On the same evening, when dying out at Lyons, the revolutionary movement burst forth at St. Etienne Since the 31st October, when they had almost succeeded in officially proclaiming the Commune, the Socialists had not ceased calling for it, despite the resistance, and even the threats, of the municipal council.</p>
<p>There were two Republican centres — the Committee of the National Guard, spurred on by the revolutionary club of the Rue de la Vierge, and the Republican Alliance at the head of the advanced Republicans. The municipal council was, with one or two exceptions, composed of those Radicals who knew not how to resist the people without being crushed by the reaction. The Committee and the Alliance agreed to ask for its renewal.</p>
<p>The 18th March was enthusiastically welcomed by the workmen. The Radical organ, <em>L'Eclaireur, </em>said, without drawing any conclusion: ‘If the Assembly prevails, the Republic is done for; if, on the other hand, the deputies of Paris separate from the Central Committee, they must have a good reason for it.’ The people went straight on. On the 23rd the Club de la Vierge sent delegates to the H�tel-de-Ville to ask for the Commune. The mayor promised to submit the question to his colleagues. The Alliance also came to demand the adjunction to the council of a certain number of delegates.</p>
<p>The next day, the 24th, the delegations returned. The Council tendered their resignation, and declared they would only officiate till their replacement by the electors, to be convoked with the briefest delay. This was a defeat, for the same day the prefect ad <em>interim, </em>Morellet, urged the population not to proclaim the Commune. but to respect the authority of the Assembly. At seven o'clock in the evening a company of the National Guard took over sentry duty to the cries of ‘<em>Vive la Commune!’ </em>The Central Committee invited the Alliance to join them in taking possession of the H�tel-de-Ville. The Radicals refused, saying that the promise of the Council sufficed; that the movements of Paris and Lyons were of a vague character, and that it was necessary to affirm order and public tranquillity.</p>
<p>During these negotiations the people had assembled at the Club de la Vierge, accusing the first delegates of weakness, resolved to send others, and to accompany them, so that they could not give way. At ten o'clock two columns of 400 men each drew up before the railings at the H�tel-de-Ville. These had been closed by order of the new prefect, M. De l'Esp�e, manager of an iron works, who had just then arrived, eager to subdue the disturbers. But the people began pulling down the railings, and it was necessary to let in their delegates. They found the mayor and Morellet, asked for the Commune, and provisionally the convening of a popular commission. The mayor refused, the former prefect obstinately tried to demonstrate that the Commune was a Prussian invention. Hopeless of convincing the delegates, he went to warn M. De l'Esp�e — the prefecture being contiguous to the <em>mairie — </em>and both then making off by the garden, succeeded in rejoining General Lavoye, the commander of the garrison.</p>
<p>At midnight the delegates, unable to obtain anything, declared that nobody would be allowed to leave the H�tel-de-Ville, and proceeding to the rails, told the demonstrators to reflect. Some ran off in quest of arms, others penetrated into the Salles des Prudhommes, where they held a meeting. The night passed tumultuously. The delegates, who had just learned the miscarriage of the movement at Lyons wavered. The people threatened and were for beating the <em>rappel. </em>The mayor refused. At last, at seven o'clock, he found an expedient, and promised to propose a plebiscite on the establishment of the Commune. A delegate read this declaration to the people, who at once withdrew from the H�tel-de-Ville.</p>
<p>At the same moment M. De l'Esp�e conceived the brilliant idea of beating the <em>rappel, </em>which the people had in vain asked for since midnight. He picked up some National Guards on the side of order, re-entered the now empty H�tel-de-Ville, and promulgated his victory. The municipal council informing him of the morning’s agreement, De l'Esp�e refused to fix the date of the elections. Besides, said he, the general had promised him the aid of the garrison.</p>
<p>At eleven o'clock the prefect’s call to arms had reassembled all the popular battalions. Groups formed before the H�tel-de-Ville, crying ‘<em>Vive la Commune!’ </em>De l'Esp�e sent for his troops, consisting of 250 foot-soldiers and two squadrons of hussars, who came up sluggishly. The multitude surrounded them; the Council protested; and the prefect had to discharge his warriors, there remaining to face the crowd only a line of firemen, and in the H�tel-de-Ville two companies, of which but one was favourable to the party of order.</p>
<p>Towards mid-day a delegation summoned the Council to keep their promise. The councillors present — only few in number — were not averse to accepting as coadjutors two delegates from each company, but De l'Esp�e formally declared against any concession. At four o'clock a very numerous delegation from the Committee presented itself. The prefect spoke of retrenching and of strengthening the gates for defence; but the firemen raised the butt end of their muskets, opened the passage, and De l'Esp�e had to receive some of the delegates.</p>
<p>The crowd outside waxed unruly, impatient at these useless parleys. At half-past four the workmen from the manufactory of arms arrived, when a shot was fired from one of the houses of the square, killing Lyonnet, a working man. A hundred shots answered; the drums beat, the trumpets sounded the charge, and the battalions rushed into the H�tel-de-Ville, while others searched the house whence the attack was supposed to have come.</p>
<p>At the noise of the firing the prefect broke off the conference and tried to escape as on the night before, mistook his way, was recognised and seized, together with the deputy of the <em>procureur de la R�publique, </em>brought back with the latter into the large hall, and shown from the balcony. The crowd hooted him, convinced that he had given the order to fire upon the people. One of the reactionary guards, M. De Ventavon, on his flight from the <em>mairie</em>, was taken for the murderer of Lyonnet, and carried about on the litter on which the corpse had just been transported to the hospital.</p>
<p>The prefect and the procureur’s deputy were left in the large hall in the midst of exasperated men. Many accused De l'Esp�e of having provoked the shooting down of the miners of Aubin under the Empire. He protested, stating that he had been director of the mines of Archambault, not those of Aubin. Little by little, the crowd, tired out, dispersed, and at eight o'clock about forty guards only remained in the hall. The prisoners took some food, when the president of the Commune, which was constituting itself in a neighbouring room, seeing everything calm, also withdrew. At nine o'clock the crowd returned, crying ‘<em>La Commune! La Commune! Sign!’ </em>De l'Esp�e offered to sign his resignation, but added that he did so under compulsion. The prisoners were in the charge of two men, Victoire and Fillon, the latter an old exile, quite distracted, who turned now st the crowd, now against the prisoners. At ten o'clock, being d pressed by the throng of people, Fillon, as in a dream, faced about, fired two shots from his revolver, killing his friend Victoire and wounding a drummer. Instantaneously the muskets were levelled at him, and Fillon and De l'Esp�e fell dead. The deputy, covered by the corpse of Fillon, escaped the discharge. The next day he and M. De Ventavon were set free.</p>
<p>During the evening a Commission constituted itself, chosen from amongst the officers of the National Guards and the habitual orators of the Club de la Vierge. It had the station occupied, took possession of the telegraph, seized the cartridges of the powder-magazine, and convoked the electors for the 29th. ‘The Commune,’ it said, ‘does not mean incendiarism, nor theft, nor pillage, as so many are pleased to give out, but the conquest of the franchises and the independence ravished from us by imperial and monarchical legislation; it is the true basis of the Republic.’ This was the whole preamble. In this hive of industry, surrounded by the thousands of miners of la Ricamarie and Firminy, they found not a word to say on the social question. The Commission only knew how to beat the <em>rappel</em>, which as at Lyons, was not responded to.</p>
<p>The next day, Sunday, the town, calm and curious, read the proclamation of the Commune, posted up side by side with the appeals of the general and of the procureur. While this latter, as became a good Radical, spoke of a Bonapartist plot, the general invited the Council to withdraw its resignation. He went to the councillors, who had taken refuge in the barracks, and said to them, ‘My soldiers won’t fight, but I have a thousand chassepots. If you will make use of them, forward!’ The councillors protested their unfitness for military exploits; but at the same time, as at Lyons, refused to communicate with the H�tel-de-Ville, considering ‘that one can only treat with honest men’.</p>
<p>On the 27th the Alliance and <em>L'Eclaireur</em> altogether withdrew, and the Commission gradually dwindled down. In the evening, the few faithful still holding out received two young men, whom the delegates from the Central Committee at Lyons had sent. They urged resistance; but the H�tel-de-Ville was being deserted, and on the morning of the 28th there were only about a hundred left. At six o'clock General Lavoye presented himself with the francs-tireurs of the Vosges and some’ troops come from Montbrison. The National Guards, on his appeal to lay down their arms in order to avoid blood-shed, consented to evacuate the <em>mairie</em>.</p>
<p>Numerous arrests were made. The Conservatives overwhelmed the Commune with the customary insults, and recounted that cannibals had been seen amongst the murderers of the prefect. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n105">[105]</a></sup> <em>L'Eclaireur</em> did not fail to demonstrate that the movement was purely Bonapartist. The working men felt themselves vanquished, and at the solemn funeral of M. De L'Esp�e not loud but deep curses were uttered.</p>
<p><img src="pics/sbirna1.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Sbirna" border="1" align="left"></p>
<p>At Creuzot, also the proletarians were defeated. Yet the Socialists administered the town from the 4th September, the mayor, Durnay, being a former workman at the iron works. On the 25th, at the news from Lyons, they spoke of proclaiming the Commune. At their review on the 26th the National Guards cried ‘<em>Vive la Commune!’ </em>and the crowd accompanied them to the Place de la Mairie, held by the colonel of cuirassiers, Gerhardt, He ordered the foot-soldiers to fire. They refused. He then ordered the cavalry to charge; but the guards levelled their bayonets and invaded the <em>mairie. </em>Dumay pronounced the abolition of the Versailles Government, proclaimed the Commune, and the red flag was hoisted.</p>
<p>But there, as everywhere else, the people did not move. The commander of Creuzot came back the next day with a reinforcement, dispersed the crowd, which was standing curious and passive in the square, and took possession of the <em>mairie.</em></p>
<p>In four days all the revolutionary centres of the east, Lyons, St. Etienne, and Creuzot, were lost to the Commune.</p>
<p class="skip"> </p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="footer">
<a href="glossary.htm">Glossary</a> |
<a href="index.htm">Contents</a> |
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</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter IX
The Commune at Lyons, St. Etienne and Creuzot
All parts of France have united and rallied around the Assembly and the government. (Circular from Thiers to the Provinces, evening of the 23rd.)
What was the state of the provinces?
For some days, without any of the Parisian journals, they lived upon lying despatches of M. Thiers, 103 then looked at the signatures to the proclamations of the Central Committee, and finding there neither the Left nor the democratic paragons, said, ‘Who are these unknown men?’ The Republican bourgeois, misinformed on the events occurring during the siege of Paris — very cleverly hoodwinked, too, by the Conservative press — cried, like their fathers who in their time had said, ‘Pitt and Coburg’, when unable to comprehend popular movements, ‘These unknown men can be nothing but Bonapartists.’ The people alone showed true instinct.
The Paris Commune found its first echo at Lyons. This was a necessary reverberation. Since the advent of the Assembly the workmen found themselves watched. The municipal councillors, weak men, some of them, almost to reaction, had lowered the red flag under the pretext that ‘the proud flag of resistance a outrance should not survive the humiliation of France’. The clumsy trick had not deceived the people, who, at the Guilloti�re, mounted guard round their flag. The new prefect, Valentin, an ex-officer as brutal as vulgar, a kind of Cl�ment-Thomas, sufficiently forewarned the people what sort of Republic was in store for them.
On the 19th, at the first news, Republicans were on the alert, nor did they hide their sympathy for Paris. The next day Valentin issued a provocative proclamation, seized the Parisian journals, and refused to communicate any despatches. On the 21st, in the municipal council, some of the members grew indignant, and one said, ‘Let us at least have the courage to be the Commune of Lyons.’ On the 22nd, at mid-day, eight hundred delegates of the National Guard assembled at the Palais de St. Pierre. A motion was put proposing to choose between Paris and Versailles. A citizen just arrived from Paris explained the movement there, and many wanted the meeting to declare itself immediately for Paris. The Assembly finally sent delegates to the H�tel-de-Ville to ask for the extension of the municipal liberties, the appointment of the mayor as chief of the National Guard, and his investiture with the functions of prefect.
The municipal council was just sitting. The mayor, H�non, a wooden-headed relic of 1848, opposed all resistance to Versailles. The mayor of the Guilloti�re, Crestin, a known Republican, demanded that they should at least protest. Others wanted the council to extend its prerogatives. H�non threatened to tender his resignation if they went on like that, and proposed they should repair to the prefect, who was then convoking the reactionary battalions.
The delegates of the Palais de St. Pierre arrived, and were roughly received by H�non. One deputation succeeded another, always meeting with the same rebuffs. However, during this time the battalions of Brotteaux and La Guilloti�re were preparing, and at eight o'clock a dense mass filled the Place des Terreaux in front of the H�tel-de-Ville, crying, ‘Vive la Commune! Down with Versailles!’ The reactionary battalions did not respond to the prefect’s appeal.
Part of the council had met again at nine o'clock, while the others, together with H�non, were still wrangling with the delegates. After an answer from the mayor, which left them no hope of coming to an understanding, the delegates invaded the council-chamber, and the crowd, apprised of this, rushed into the H�tel-de-Ville. The delegates, sitting down round the council table, named Crestin mayor of Lyons. He refused, and, summoned to give his reasons, declared that the direction of the movement belonged to those who had initiated it. After a great uproar, the National Guards acclaimed a Communal Commission, at the head of which they placed five municipal councillors — Crestin, Durand, Bouvatier, Perret and Velay. The delegates sent for Valentin, and asked him if he were for Versailles. He answered that his proclamation could leave no doubt on that head whereupon he was put under arrest. Then they decided on the proclamation of the Commune, the dissolution of the municipal council, the dismissal of the prefect and of the general of the National Guard, who was to be replaced by Ricciotti Garibaldi, noted alike by — his name and his services in the army of the Vosges. These resolutions were announced to the people and hailed with cheers. The red flag was again unfurled from the balcony.
The next day, the 23rd March, early in the morning, the five councillors named the evening before backed out, thus obliging the insurgents to present themselves single-handed to Lyons and the neighbouring towns. ‘The Commune’, they said, ‘must demand for Lyons the right to impose and administer her own taxes, to have her own police, and to dispose of her National Guard, which is to occupy all posts and forts.’ This rather meagre programme was a little further expanded by the committees of the National Guard and the Republican Alliance: ‘With the Commune, the taxes will be lightened, the public money will no longer be squandered, social institutions demanded by the working-class will be founded. Much misery and suffering will be alleviated pending the final disappearance of that hideous social evil, pauperism.’ Insufficient proclamations these, inconclusive, mute as to the danger of the Republic and the clerical conspiracy, the only levers by which the lower middle-class might have been roused.
So the Commission found itself isolated. It had taken the fort of Charpennes, accumulated cartridges, set the cannons and machine guns round the H�tel-de-Ville; but the popular battalions, except two or three, had withdrawn without leaving a picket, and the resistance was being organized. General Crouzat at the station picked up all the soldiers, marines, and mobiles dispersed about Lyons. H�non named Bouras a general of the National Guard. The officers of the battalions of order protested against the Commune, and placed themselves at the disposition of the municipal council, which sat in the, cabinet of the mayor, close to the Commission.
Forgetting it had dissolved the Council the evening before it invited the Council to hold their sitting in the ordinary council-room. They arrived at four o'clock. The Commission gave up the place to them, National Guards occupying that part of the room reserved to the public. Had there been some vigour in this middle class, some foreboding of the Conservative atrocities, the Republican councillors would have taken the lead of this popular movement; but they were still, some of them, the same mercantile aristocrats, chary of their gold and their persons during the war of national defence; the others, the same overweening Radicals who had always striven for the subordination instead of the emancipation of the working-class. While they were deliberating without coming to any resolution, the assistants, growing impatient, uttered a few exclamations shocking to their lordliness, and they brusquely raised the sitting in order to go and draw up an address with H�non.
In the evening two delegates of the Central Committee of Paris arrived at the club of the Rue Duguesclin. They were taken to the H�tel-de-Ville, where from the large balcony they harangue the mass, who answered with cries of ‘Vive Paris! Vive la Commune! and Ricciotti’s name was again acclaimed.
But this was only a demonstration. The delegates were themselves too inexperienced to keep alive and direct this movement. On the 24th there remained on the Place de Terreaux but a few groups of idlers. The rappel sounded in vain. The four important journals of Lyons, Radical, Liberal and Clerical, ‘energetically repudiated all connivance with the Parisian, Lyonese, and other insurrections'; and General Crouzat spread the rumour that the Prussians, camping at Dijon, threatened to occupy Lyons within twenty-four hours if order were not re-established. The Commission, more and more deserted, again turned to the Council, which now held its sitting at the Bourse, proposing to hand over the administration to them. The Council refused to treat. ‘No,’ said the mayor, ‘We will never accept the Commune.’ And as the mobiles from Belfort were announced, the Council decided to give them a solemn reception. This was a declaration of war.
The parley had been going on the whole afternoon until late into the evening. Little by little the H�tel-de-Ville grew empty, and the members of the Commission disappeared. At four o'clock in the morning the only two who remained cancelled their powers, [104] dismissed the sentries who guarded the prefect, and left the Hotel-de-Ville. The next day Lyons found her Commune gone.
On the same evening, when dying out at Lyons, the revolutionary movement burst forth at St. Etienne Since the 31st October, when they had almost succeeded in officially proclaiming the Commune, the Socialists had not ceased calling for it, despite the resistance, and even the threats, of the municipal council.
There were two Republican centres — the Committee of the National Guard, spurred on by the revolutionary club of the Rue de la Vierge, and the Republican Alliance at the head of the advanced Republicans. The municipal council was, with one or two exceptions, composed of those Radicals who knew not how to resist the people without being crushed by the reaction. The Committee and the Alliance agreed to ask for its renewal.
The 18th March was enthusiastically welcomed by the workmen. The Radical organ, L'Eclaireur, said, without drawing any conclusion: ‘If the Assembly prevails, the Republic is done for; if, on the other hand, the deputies of Paris separate from the Central Committee, they must have a good reason for it.’ The people went straight on. On the 23rd the Club de la Vierge sent delegates to the H�tel-de-Ville to ask for the Commune. The mayor promised to submit the question to his colleagues. The Alliance also came to demand the adjunction to the council of a certain number of delegates.
The next day, the 24th, the delegations returned. The Council tendered their resignation, and declared they would only officiate till their replacement by the electors, to be convoked with the briefest delay. This was a defeat, for the same day the prefect ad interim, Morellet, urged the population not to proclaim the Commune. but to respect the authority of the Assembly. At seven o'clock in the evening a company of the National Guard took over sentry duty to the cries of ‘Vive la Commune!’ The Central Committee invited the Alliance to join them in taking possession of the H�tel-de-Ville. The Radicals refused, saying that the promise of the Council sufficed; that the movements of Paris and Lyons were of a vague character, and that it was necessary to affirm order and public tranquillity.
During these negotiations the people had assembled at the Club de la Vierge, accusing the first delegates of weakness, resolved to send others, and to accompany them, so that they could not give way. At ten o'clock two columns of 400 men each drew up before the railings at the H�tel-de-Ville. These had been closed by order of the new prefect, M. De l'Esp�e, manager of an iron works, who had just then arrived, eager to subdue the disturbers. But the people began pulling down the railings, and it was necessary to let in their delegates. They found the mayor and Morellet, asked for the Commune, and provisionally the convening of a popular commission. The mayor refused, the former prefect obstinately tried to demonstrate that the Commune was a Prussian invention. Hopeless of convincing the delegates, he went to warn M. De l'Esp�e — the prefecture being contiguous to the mairie — and both then making off by the garden, succeeded in rejoining General Lavoye, the commander of the garrison.
At midnight the delegates, unable to obtain anything, declared that nobody would be allowed to leave the H�tel-de-Ville, and proceeding to the rails, told the demonstrators to reflect. Some ran off in quest of arms, others penetrated into the Salles des Prudhommes, where they held a meeting. The night passed tumultuously. The delegates, who had just learned the miscarriage of the movement at Lyons wavered. The people threatened and were for beating the rappel. The mayor refused. At last, at seven o'clock, he found an expedient, and promised to propose a plebiscite on the establishment of the Commune. A delegate read this declaration to the people, who at once withdrew from the H�tel-de-Ville.
At the same moment M. De l'Esp�e conceived the brilliant idea of beating the rappel, which the people had in vain asked for since midnight. He picked up some National Guards on the side of order, re-entered the now empty H�tel-de-Ville, and promulgated his victory. The municipal council informing him of the morning’s agreement, De l'Esp�e refused to fix the date of the elections. Besides, said he, the general had promised him the aid of the garrison.
At eleven o'clock the prefect’s call to arms had reassembled all the popular battalions. Groups formed before the H�tel-de-Ville, crying ‘Vive la Commune!’ De l'Esp�e sent for his troops, consisting of 250 foot-soldiers and two squadrons of hussars, who came up sluggishly. The multitude surrounded them; the Council protested; and the prefect had to discharge his warriors, there remaining to face the crowd only a line of firemen, and in the H�tel-de-Ville two companies, of which but one was favourable to the party of order.
Towards mid-day a delegation summoned the Council to keep their promise. The councillors present — only few in number — were not averse to accepting as coadjutors two delegates from each company, but De l'Esp�e formally declared against any concession. At four o'clock a very numerous delegation from the Committee presented itself. The prefect spoke of retrenching and of strengthening the gates for defence; but the firemen raised the butt end of their muskets, opened the passage, and De l'Esp�e had to receive some of the delegates.
The crowd outside waxed unruly, impatient at these useless parleys. At half-past four the workmen from the manufactory of arms arrived, when a shot was fired from one of the houses of the square, killing Lyonnet, a working man. A hundred shots answered; the drums beat, the trumpets sounded the charge, and the battalions rushed into the H�tel-de-Ville, while others searched the house whence the attack was supposed to have come.
At the noise of the firing the prefect broke off the conference and tried to escape as on the night before, mistook his way, was recognised and seized, together with the deputy of the procureur de la R�publique, brought back with the latter into the large hall, and shown from the balcony. The crowd hooted him, convinced that he had given the order to fire upon the people. One of the reactionary guards, M. De Ventavon, on his flight from the mairie, was taken for the murderer of Lyonnet, and carried about on the litter on which the corpse had just been transported to the hospital.
The prefect and the procureur’s deputy were left in the large hall in the midst of exasperated men. Many accused De l'Esp�e of having provoked the shooting down of the miners of Aubin under the Empire. He protested, stating that he had been director of the mines of Archambault, not those of Aubin. Little by little, the crowd, tired out, dispersed, and at eight o'clock about forty guards only remained in the hall. The prisoners took some food, when the president of the Commune, which was constituting itself in a neighbouring room, seeing everything calm, also withdrew. At nine o'clock the crowd returned, crying ‘La Commune! La Commune! Sign!’ De l'Esp�e offered to sign his resignation, but added that he did so under compulsion. The prisoners were in the charge of two men, Victoire and Fillon, the latter an old exile, quite distracted, who turned now st the crowd, now against the prisoners. At ten o'clock, being d pressed by the throng of people, Fillon, as in a dream, faced about, fired two shots from his revolver, killing his friend Victoire and wounding a drummer. Instantaneously the muskets were levelled at him, and Fillon and De l'Esp�e fell dead. The deputy, covered by the corpse of Fillon, escaped the discharge. The next day he and M. De Ventavon were set free.
During the evening a Commission constituted itself, chosen from amongst the officers of the National Guards and the habitual orators of the Club de la Vierge. It had the station occupied, took possession of the telegraph, seized the cartridges of the powder-magazine, and convoked the electors for the 29th. ‘The Commune,’ it said, ‘does not mean incendiarism, nor theft, nor pillage, as so many are pleased to give out, but the conquest of the franchises and the independence ravished from us by imperial and monarchical legislation; it is the true basis of the Republic.’ This was the whole preamble. In this hive of industry, surrounded by the thousands of miners of la Ricamarie and Firminy, they found not a word to say on the social question. The Commission only knew how to beat the rappel, which as at Lyons, was not responded to.
The next day, Sunday, the town, calm and curious, read the proclamation of the Commune, posted up side by side with the appeals of the general and of the procureur. While this latter, as became a good Radical, spoke of a Bonapartist plot, the general invited the Council to withdraw its resignation. He went to the councillors, who had taken refuge in the barracks, and said to them, ‘My soldiers won’t fight, but I have a thousand chassepots. If you will make use of them, forward!’ The councillors protested their unfitness for military exploits; but at the same time, as at Lyons, refused to communicate with the H�tel-de-Ville, considering ‘that one can only treat with honest men’.
On the 27th the Alliance and L'Eclaireur altogether withdrew, and the Commission gradually dwindled down. In the evening, the few faithful still holding out received two young men, whom the delegates from the Central Committee at Lyons had sent. They urged resistance; but the H�tel-de-Ville was being deserted, and on the morning of the 28th there were only about a hundred left. At six o'clock General Lavoye presented himself with the francs-tireurs of the Vosges and some’ troops come from Montbrison. The National Guards, on his appeal to lay down their arms in order to avoid blood-shed, consented to evacuate the mairie.
Numerous arrests were made. The Conservatives overwhelmed the Commune with the customary insults, and recounted that cannibals had been seen amongst the murderers of the prefect. [105] L'Eclaireur did not fail to demonstrate that the movement was purely Bonapartist. The working men felt themselves vanquished, and at the solemn funeral of M. De L'Esp�e not loud but deep curses were uttered.
At Creuzot, also the proletarians were defeated. Yet the Socialists administered the town from the 4th September, the mayor, Durnay, being a former workman at the iron works. On the 25th, at the news from Lyons, they spoke of proclaiming the Commune. At their review on the 26th the National Guards cried ‘Vive la Commune!’ and the crowd accompanied them to the Place de la Mairie, held by the colonel of cuirassiers, Gerhardt, He ordered the foot-soldiers to fire. They refused. He then ordered the cavalry to charge; but the guards levelled their bayonets and invaded the mairie. Dumay pronounced the abolition of the Versailles Government, proclaimed the Commune, and the red flag was hoisted.
But there, as everywhere else, the people did not move. The commander of Creuzot came back the next day with a reinforcement, dispersed the crowd, which was standing curious and passive in the square, and took possession of the mairie.
In four days all the revolutionary centres of the east, Lyons, St. Etienne, and Creuzot, were lost to the Commune.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XXXI<br>
The Commune’s last stand</h1>
<p class="quoteb">Major S�goyer was captured by the scoundrels who were defending the Bastille, and, without respect for the laws of war, was immediately shot. (Thiers to the Prefects, 27th May.)</p>
<p>The soldiers continuing their nocturnal surprises, got hold of the deserted barricades of the Rue d'Aubervilliers and the Boulevard de la Chapelle. On the side of the Bastille they occupied the barricade of the Rue St. Antoine at the corner of the Rue Castex, the Gare de Lyons, and the Mazas prison; in the third, all the abandoned defences of the market and of the Square du Temple. They reached the first houses of the Boulevard Voltaire, and established themselves at the Magasins R�unis.</p>
<p>In the darkness of the night a Versaillese officer was surprised by our outposts of the Bastille and shot; ‘without respecting the laws of war, ‘said M. Thiers the next day. As though during the four days that he had been mercilessly shooting thousands of prisoners, old men, women, and children, M. Thiers obeyed any other law than that of the savages.</p>
<p>The attack recommenced at daybreak. At La Villete the Versaillese, crossing the Rue d'Aubervilliers; turned and occupied the abandoned gasworks; in the centre, they got as far as the Cirque Napol�on; on the right, in the twelfth arrondissement, they invaded the bastions nearest the river without a struggle: One detachment went up the embankment of the Vincennes Railway and occupied the station, while another took possession of the Boulevard Mazas, the Avenue Lacu�e, and penetrated into the Faubourg St. Antoine. The Bastille was thus close pressed on its right flank, while the troops of the Place Royale attacked it on the left by the Boulevard Beaumarchais.</p>
<p>The sun did not shine forth. This five days’ cannonade had drawn on the rainfall that usually accompanies great battles. The firing had lost its sharp, quick voice, but rolled on in muffled tones. The men, harassed, wet to the skin, hardly distinguished through the misty veil the point whence the attack came. The shells of a Versaillese battery established at the Gare d'Orl�ans disturbed the entrance of the Faubourg St. Antoine. At seven o'clock the presence of soldiers at the top of the faubourg was announced. The Federals hurried thither with their cannon. If they do not hold out, the Bastille will be taken.</p>
<p>They did hold out. The Rue d'Aligre and the Avenue Lacu�e vied with each other in devotion. Entrenched in the houses, the Federals fell, but neither yielded nor retreated; and, thanks to their selfsacrifice, the Bastille for six hours still disputed its shattered barricades and ruined houses. Each stone had its legend in this estuary of the Revolution. Here encased in the wall is a bullet launched in 1789 against the fortress. Leaning against the same wall the sons of the combatants of June fought for the same pavement as their fathers. Here the conservatives of 1848 gave vent to their rage; but what was their fury compared with that of 1871? The house at the corner of the Rue de la Roquette, the angle of the Rue de Charenton, disappeared like the scenery of a theatre, and amidst these ruins, under these burning beams, some men fired their cannon, and twenty times raised up the red flag, as often overthrown by the Versaillese balls. Powerless as it well knew to triumph over an entire army, the old glorious place will at least succumb honourably.</p>
<p>How many were there at mid-day? Hundreds, since at night hundreds of corpses lay around the chief barricade. In the Rue Crozatier they were dead; they were dead too in the Rue d'Aligre, killed in the struggle or after the combat. And how they died! In the Rue Crozatier an artilleryman of the army, gone over to the people on the 18th March, was surrounded. ‘We are going to shoot you,’ cried the soldiers. He, shrugging his shoulders, answered, ‘We can only die once!’ Farther on an old man was struggling; the officer by a refinement of cruelty wanted to shoot him upon a heap of filth. ‘I fought bravely,’ said the old man; ‘I have the right not to die in the mire.’</p>
<p><img src="pics/milliere.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Milliere" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p>Indeed they died well everywhere. That same day Milli�re, arrested on the left bank of the Seine, was taken to Cissey’s staff. This Imperialist general, ruined by the vilest debauchery, and who terminated his Ministerial career, by treachery, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n194">[194]</a></sup> had made of his headquarters at the Luxembourg one of the slaughter-houses of the left bank. Milli�re’s role during the Commune had been one of mere conciliation, and his polemic in the journals entirely one of doctrine, and of a most elevated character; but the hatred of the officers for every Socialist, the hatred of Jules Favre, lay in wait for him. The assassin, the staff-captain Garcin,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n195">[195]</a></sup> has recounted his crime, head erect.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n196">[196]</a></sup> Before history we must let him speak.</p>
<p>‘Milli�re was brought in when we were breakfasting with the general at the restaurant De Tournon, near the Luxembourg. We heard a great noise, and went out. I was told, “It is Mili�re.” I took care that the crowd did not take justice into its own hands. He did not come into the Luxembourg; he was stopped at the gate. I addressed myself to him, and said, “You are Milli�re?'’ “Yes, but you know that I am a deputy.” “That may be, but I think you have lost your character of deputy. Besides, there is a deputy amongst us, M. de Quinsonnas, who will recognize you.”</p>
<p>‘I then said to Milli�re that the general’s orders were that he was to be shot. He said to me, “Why?”</p>
<p>‘I answered him, “I only know your name. I have read articles by you that have revolted me” [probably the articles on Jules Favre]. “You are a viper, to be crushed underfoot. You detest society.” He stopped, saying, with a significant air, “Oh, yes! I indeed hate this society.” “Well, it will remove you from its bosom; you are going to be shot.” “This is summary justice, barbarity, cruelty.” “And all the cruelty you have committed, do you take that for nothing? At any rate, since you say you are Milli�re, there is nothing else to be done.”</p>
<p>‘The general had ordered that he was to be shot at the Panth�on, on his knees, to ask pardon of society for all the ill he had done. He refused to be shot kneeling. I said to him, “It is the order; you will be shot on your knees, and not otherwise.” He played a little comedy, opening his coat, and baring his breast before the firing party. I said to him, “You are acting; you want them to say how you died; die quietly, that will be the best.” “I am free in my own interest and for the sake of my Cause to do as I like.” “So be it; kneel down.” Then he said to me, “I will only do so if you force me down by two men.” I had him forced on his knees, and then his execution was proceeded with. He cried, “<em>Vive l'humanit�</em>!” He was about to cry something else when he fell dead.’ <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n197">[197]</a></sup></p>
<p>An officer ascended the steps, approached the corpse, and discharged his chassep�t into the left temple. Milli�re’s head rebounded, and, falling back, burst open, black with powder, seemed to look at the frontispiece of the monument.</p>
<p>‘<em>Vive l'humanit�!’ </em>The word implies two causes. ‘I care as much for the liberty of other people as for that of France,’ said a Federal to a reactionary.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n198">[198]</a></sup> In 1871, as in 1793, Paris combats for all the oppressed.</p>
<p>The Bastille succumbed about two o'clock. La Villette still struggled on. In the morning the barricade at the corner of the boulevard and of the Rue de Flandre had been surrendered by its commander. The Federals concentrated in the rear along the line of the canal, and barricaded the Rue de Crim�e. The Rotonde, destined to support the principal shock, was reinforced by a barricade on the quay of the, Loire. The 269th, which for two days had withstood the enemy, recommenced the struggle behind the new positions. This line from La Villette being of great extent, Ranvier and Passedouet went to fetch reinforcements in the twentieth arrondissement, where the remnants of all the battalions took refuge.</p>
<p>They crowded round the <em>mairie, </em>that distributed lodgings and orders for food. Near the church the wagons and horses were noisily put up. The headquarters and different services were established in the Rue Haxo at the Cit� Vincennes, a series of constructions intersected by gardens.</p>
<p>The very numerous barricades in the inextricable streets of M�nilmontant were almost all turned against the boulevard. The strategical route, which on this point overlooks the P�re la Chaise, the Buttes Chaumont, and the exterior boulevard, was not even guarded.</p>
<p>From the heights of the ramparts the Prussians were discernible in arms. According to the terms of a convention previously concluded between Versailles and the Prince of Saxony, the German army since Monday surrounded Paris on the north and east. It had cut off the Railway of the North, manned the canal line from St. Denis, posted sentinels from St. Denis to Charenton, erected barricades on all the routes. From five o'clock in the evening of Thursday 5,000 Bavarians marched down from Fontenay, Nogent, and Charenton, forming an impenetrable cordon from the Marne to Montreuil; and during the evening another corps of 5,000 men occupied Vincennes, with eighty artillery pieces. At nine o'clock they surrounded the fort and disarmed the Federals, who wanted to return to Paris. They did still better-trapped the game for Versailles. Already during the siege the Prussians had given an indirect support to the Versaillese army; their cynical collusion with the French conservatives showed itself undisguised during the eight days of May. Of all M. Thiers’ crimes, one of the most odious will certainly be his introducing the conquerors of France into our civil discords, and begging their help in order to crush Paris.</p>
<p>Towards mid-day fire broke out in the west part of the docks of La Villette, an immense warehouse of petroleum, oil and combustible matters, set alight by the shells from both sides. This conflagration forced us to leave the barricades of the Rues de Flandre and Riquet. The Versaillese, attempting to traverse the canal in boats, were stopped by the barricades of the Rue de Crim�e and the Rotonde.</p>
<p>Vinoy continued to ascend the twelfth arrondissement after having left the few thousand men necessary for the perquisitions and executions at the Bastille. The barricade of the Rue de Reuilly, at the corner of the Faubourg St. Antoine, held out a few hours against the soldiers who shelled it from the Boulevard Mazas. At the same time the Versaillese, marching along the Boulevard Mazas and the Rue Picpus, moved towards the Place du Tr�ne, which they tried to outflank by the ramparts. The artillery prepared and covered their slightest movement. Generally they charged the pieces at the corner of the roads they wanted to reduce, advanced them, fired, and drew them back again under shelter. The Federals could only reach this invisible enemy from the heights; but it was impossible to centralize the artillery of the Commune, for each barricade wanted to possess its gun without caring where it carried.</p>
<p>There was no longer authority of any kind. At the headquarters there was a pell-mell of bewildered officers. The march of the enemy was only known by the arrival of the survivors of the battalions. Such was the confusion, that in this place, mortal to traitors, there might be seen, in a general’s uniform, Du Bisson, turned out of La Villette. The few members of the Council to be met with in the twentieth arrondissement wandered about at random, absolutely ignored; but they had not foregone deliberating. On the Friday there were twelve of them in the Rue Haxo, when the Central Committee arrived and claimed the dictatorship. It was given them, in spite of some who protested, Varlin being added to their number. The Committee of Public Safety was no longer heard of.</p>
<p>The only one of its members who played any part was Ranvier, splendidly energetic in the combats. During these days he was the soul of La Villette and Belleville, urging on the men, watching over everything. On the 26th he issued a proclamation: ‘Citizens of the twentieth arrondissement! if we succumb you know what fate is in store for you. To arms! Be vigilant, above all in the night. I ask you to execute our orders faithfully. Lend your support to the nineteenth arrondissement; help it to repulse the enemy. There lies your safety. Do not wait for Belleville itself to be attacked. Forward then. <em>Vive la R�publique!’</em></p>
<p>But very few read or obeyed. The shells from Montmartre, which from the day before crushed BelIville and M�nilmontant, the cries, the sight of the wounded, dragging themselves from house to house in search of succour, the too evident signs of the approaching end, precipitated the ordinary phenomena of defeat. The people became fierce and suspicious. Any individual without a uniform ran the risk of being shot if he had not a well-known name to recommend him. The news that came from all points of Paris augmented the anguish and despair. It was known that the soldiers gave no quarter; that they despatched the wounded, killing even doctors; <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n199">[199]</a></sup> that every individual taken in a National Guard’s uniform, shod with regulation boots, or whose clothes showed traces of stripes recently unstitched, was shot in the street or in the yard of his house; that the combatants who surrendered, under the promise of having their lives spared, were massacred; that thousands of men, women, children, and aged people were taken to Versailles bareheaded, and often killed on the way; that it sufficed to be related to a combatant, or to offer him a refuge in order to share his fate; the numberless executions of so-called petroleuses were recounted.</p>
<p>About six o'clock forty-eight gendarmes, ecclesiastics, and civilians marched up the Rue Haxo between a detachment of Federals. At first they were supposed to be prisoners recently taken, and marched on in the midst of perfect silence. But the rumour spread that they were the hostages of La Roquette, and that they were being led to death. The crowd grew larger, followed, harangued, but did not strike them. At half-past six the cortege reached the Cit� Vincennes; the gates closed upon them, and the crowd dispersed in the neighbouring grounds.</p>
<p>The escort tumultuously pushed the hostages against a kind of trench at the foot of a wall. The chassep�ts were being levelled, when a member of the Council said, ‘What are you doing? There is a powder-magazine here; you will blow us up.’ He thus hoped to delay the execution. Others, quite distracted, went from group to group, attempting to discuss, to appease the wrath. They were repulsed, menaced, and their notoriety hardly sufficed to save them from death.</p>
<p>The chassep�ts went off on all sides; by degrees the hostages fell. outside the crowd applauded. And yet for two days the soldiers taken prisoners passed through Belleville without exciting a murmur; but these gendarmes, these spies, these priests, who for fully twenty years had trampled upon Paris, represented the Empire, the bourgeoisie, the massacres under their most hateful forms.</p>
<p>The same morning Jecker, the accomplice of Morny, had been shot. The Council had not known how to punish him; the justice of the people alighted upon him. A platoon of four Federals went to fetch him at La Roquette. He appeared to resign himself quietly, and even chatted on the way. ‘You are mistaken,’ said he, ‘if you think I did a good piece of business. Those people cheated me.’ He was executed in the open grounds adjoining the P�re la Chaise from the side of Charonne.</p>
<p>During this day the troops did not execute any great movements. The corps Douay and Clinchant were stationed on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. The double barricade in the rear of Bataclan stopped the invasion of the Boulevard Voltaire; a Versaillese general was killed in the Rue St. S�bastian; the Place du Trone still held out by means of the Philippe-Auguste barricade. The Rotonde and docks of La Villette also prolonged their resistance. Towards the close of the day the conflagration spread to the part of the docks nearest the <em>mairie.</em></p>
<p>In the evening, the army hedged in the defence between the fortifications and a curved line which from the slaughter-houses of La Villette extended to the gate of Vincennes, passing by the St. Martin Canal , the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, and the Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine-Ladmirault and Vinoy occupying the two extremities, Douay and Clinchant the centre.</p>
<p>The night of the Friday to Saturday was sombre and feverish in M�nilmontant and Belleville, ravaged by the shells. At the turning of each street the sentinels demanded the watchword (Bouchotte-Belleville), and often even that did not suffice, and one had to prove being sent upon an errand. Every leader of a barricade claimed the right to stop your passage. The remainder of the battalions continued arriving in disorder, and encumbered all the houses. The majority, finding no shelter, rested in the open air amidst the shells, always saluted with cries of ‘<em>Vive la Commune!’</em></p>
<p>In the Grande Rue de Belleville some National Guards carried coffins on their crossed muskets, men preceding them with torches, the drums beating. These combatants, who amidst the shells silently interred their comrades, appeared in touching grandeur. They were themselves at the gates of death.</p>
<p>In the night the barricades of the Rue d'Allemagne were abandoned. A thousand men at the utmost had for two days kept in check Ladmirault’s 25,000 soldiers. Almost all these brave men were sedentary guards and children.</p>
<p>The humid glimmer of the Saturday morning discovered a sinister prospect. The fog was dense and penetrating, the soil steeped in moisture. Clouds of white smoke rose slowly above the rain, it was the firing. The Federals shivered under their drenched cloaks.</p>
<p>Since daybreak barricades of the strategic route, the gates of Montreuil and Bagnolet, were occupied by the troops, who without resistance invaded Charonne. At seven o'clock they established themselves in the Place du Tr�ne, whose defences had been abandoned. At the entrance of the Boulevard Voltaire the Versaillese erected a battery of six pieces against the <em>mairie </em>of the eleventh arrondissement. Henceforth certain of victory, the officers wanted to triumph noisily. This barricade against which they fired during the whole day of the 27th, had but two pieces of the most irregular projection. Many a Versaillese shell strayed to the legs of the statue of Voltaire, who, with his sardonic smile, seemed to remind his bourgeois descendants of the <em>beau tapage </em>he had promised them.</p>
<p>At La Villette the soldiers deviated from the line on all sides, passed by the fortifications and attacked the Rues Puebla and De Crim�e. Their left, still engaged in the upper part of the tenth arrondissement, endeavoured to gain possession of all its streets leading to the Boulevard de la Villette. Their batteries of the Rue de Flandre, of the ramparts and the Rotonde united their fire to that of Montmartre, and overwhelmed the Buttes Chaumont with shells. The barricade of the Rue Puebla yielded towards ten o'clock. A sailor who had remained alone, hidden behind the paving-stones, awaited the Versaillese, discharged his revolver at them, and then, hatchet in hand, dashed into the midst of their ranks. The enemy deployed in all the adjacent streets up to the Rue M�nadier, steadily held by our tirailleurs. At the Place des F�tes two of our pieces covered the Rue de Crim�e and protected our right flank.</p>
<p>At eleven o'clock nine or ten members of the Council met in the Rue Haxo. One of them, Jules Allix, whom his colleagues had been obliged to shut up as mad during the Commune, came up radiant. According to him, all was for the best; the quarters of the centre were dismantled; they had only to descend thither. Others thought that by surrendering themselves to the Prussians, who would deliver them up to Versailles, they might put an end to the massacres. One or two members demonstrated the absurdity of this hope, and that besides the Federals would allow no one to leave Paris. They were not listened to. A solemn note was being drawn up, when Ranvier, who wandered about in all corners picking up men one by one for the defence of the Buttes Chaumont, broke in upon their deliberations, exclaiming, ‘Why do you not go and fight instead of discussing!’ They dispersed in different directions, and this was the last meeting of these men of everlasting deliberations.</p>
<p>At this moment the Versaillese occupied Bastion 16. At mid-day the rumour spread that the troops were issuing by the Rue de Paris and the ramparts. A crowd of men and women, driven from their houses by the shells, beset the gate of Romainville, asking with loud cries to be allowed to flee into the neighbouring fields. At one o'clock the drawbridge was lowered in order to give passage to the fugitives. The crowd dashed out and dispersed in the houses of the Village des Lilas. As some women and children attempted to push on further and to cross the barricade thrown up in the middle of the road, the sergeant of gendarmerie of Romainville threw himself upon them, crying to the Prussians, ‘Fire! come, fire on this <em>canaille!’ </em>A Prussian soldier fired, wounding a woman.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the drawbridge had been raised. About four o'clock Colonel Parent, on horseback, and preceded by a trumpet, dared on his own authority to go and ask the Prussian troops for permission to pass. Useless degradation. The officer answered that he had no orders, and that he would refer to St. Denis.</p>
<p>The same day the member of the Council, Arnold, who still believed in an American intervention, went to take a letter for Mr. Washburne to the German outposts. He was conducted from one officer to another, received rather rudely, and sent back with the promise that his letter would be forwarded to the ambassador.</p>
<p>Near two o'clock several Versaillese battalions, having swept the strategic route, reached the Rue de Crim�e by the Rue des Lilas and the open grounds of the fortifications, but were stopped in the Rue de Bellevue. From the Place du March� three cannon joined their fire to that of the Place des F�tes in order to protect the Buttes Chaumont. These pieces were the whole day served by only five artillerymen, their arms bare, without witnesses, needing neither a leader nor orders. At five o'clock the cannon of the Buttes were silent, having no more ammunition, and their gunners rejoined the skirmishers of the Rues M�andier, Fessart, and Des Annelets.</p>
<p>At five o'clock Ferr� brought up to the Rue Haxo the line soldiers of the Prince Eug�ne Barracks, removed since Wednesday to the prison of La Petite Roquette, which had just been evacuated, as also the Grande Roquette. The crowd looked at them, not uttering a single threat, for they felt no hatred for the soldiers, who belonged, like themselves, to the people. They were quartered in Belleville church. Their arrival caused a fatal diversion. The people ran up to see them pass, and the Place des F�tes was dismantled. The Versaillese came up, occupied it, and the last defenders of the Buttes fell back on the Faubourg du Temple and the Rue de Paris.</p>
<p>While our front was yielding we were attacked from the rear. Since four o'clock in the afternoon the Versaillese had been laying siege to the P�re la Chaise, which enclosed no more than 200 Federals, resolute, but without discipline or foresight. The officers had been unable to make them embattle the walls. Five thousand Versaillese approached the enceinte from all sides, while the artillery of the bastion furrowed the interior. The pieces of the Commune had scarcely any ammunition since the afternoon. At six o'clock the Versailese, not daring, in spite of their numbers, to scale the enceinte, cannonaded the large gate of the cemetery, which soon gave way, notwithstanding the barricade propping it up. Then began a desperate struggle. Sheltered behind the tombs, the Federals disputed their refuge foot by foot; they closed in with the enemy in frightful hand-to-hand scuffles; in the vaults they fought with side-arms. Foes rolled and died in the same grave. The darkness that set in early did not end the despair.</p>
<p>On the Saturday evening there only remained to the Federals part of the eleventh and twentieth arrondissements. The Versaillese camped in the Place des F�tes, Rue Fessart, Rue Pradier up to Rue Rebeval, where, as on the boulevard, they were detained. The quadrilateral comprised between the Rue de Faubourg du Temple, the Rue Folie M�ricourt, the Rue de la Roquette and the exterior boulevard was in part occupied by the Federals. Douay and Clinchant awaited on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir the moment when Vinoy and Ladmirault would have carried the heights, and thus forced the Federals against the guns.</p>
<p>What a night for the few combatants of the last hours! It rained in torrents. The conflagration of La Villette lit up this gloom with its blinding glare. The shells continued to pound Belleville; they even reached as far as Bagnolet and wounded some Prussian soldiers.</p>
<p>The wounded arrived in large numbers at the <em>mairie </em>of the twentieth arrondissement. There were neither doctors, nor medicines, nor mattresses, nor blankets, and the unhappy people expired without succour. Some spies, surprised in the dress of National Guards, were there and then shot in the court. The <em>Vengeurs de Flourens </em>arrived, headed by their captain, a fine, handsome young fellow, reeling in his saddle. The cantini�re, delirious, a handkerchief tied round her bleeding brow, swore, called the men together with the cry of a wounded lioness. From between the convulsive hands the guns went off at random. The noise of the wagons, the threats, the lamentations, the fusillades, the whizzing of the shells, mingled in a maddening tumult, and who in those frightful hours did not feel his reason giving way? Every moment brought with it a new disaster. One guard rushed up and said, ‘The Pradier barricade is abandoned!’ another, ‘We want men in the Rue Rebeval,’ a third, ‘They are fleeing in the Rue des Pr�s.’ To hear these deathknells there were but a few members of the Council present, among whom were Trinquet, Ferr�, Varlin and Ranvier. Desperate of their powerlessness, broken down by these eight days, without sleep and without hope, the strongest were lost in grief.</p>
<p>From four o'clock Vinoy and Ladmirault launched their troops along the ramparts on the defenceless strategic route, and soon effected a junction at the Romainville gate. Towards five o'clock the troops occupied the barricade of the Rue Rebeval in the Boulevard de la Villette, and by the Rue Vincent and the Passage du Renard attacked the barricades of the Rue de Paris from behind. The <em>mairie </em>of the twentieth arrondissement was not taken till eight o'clock. The barricade of the Rue de Paris at the corner of the boulevard was defended by the commander of the 191st and five or six guards, who held out till their ammunition was exhausted.</p>
<p>A column set out from the Boulevard Philippe-Auguste, penetrated into the Roquette towards nine o'clock, and released the hostages who were there. Masters of the P�re la Chaise from the day before, the Versaillese might at least from nine o'clock in the evening have penetrated into the abandoned prison. This delay of twelve hours sufficiently shows their contempt for the lives of the hostages. Four of the latter — among whom was the Bishop Surat — who had made their escape in the afternoon of Saturday, had been retaken at the neighbouring barricades and shot before the Petite Roquette.</p>
<p>At nine o'clock the resistance was reduced to the small square formed by the Rues du Faubourg du Temple, Des Trois Bornes, Des Trois Couronnes, and the Boulevard de Belleville. Two or three streets of the twentieth arrondissement still struggled ion, among others the Rue Ramponeau. A small phalanx of fifty men, led by Varlin, Ferr�, and Gambon, their red scarfs round their waists, their chassep�ts slung across their shoulders, marched down the Rue des Champs, and from the twentieth arrondissement came out on the boulevard. A gigantic Garibaldian carried an immense red flag in front of them. They entered the eleventh arrondissement. Varlin and his colleagues were going to defend the barricade of the Rue du Faubourg du Temple and of the Rue Fontaine au Roi. From the front it was inaccessible; the Versaillese, masters of the St. Louis Hospital, succeeded in turning it by the Rues St. Maur and Bichat.</p>
<p>At ten o'clock the Federals had almost no cannon left, and twothirds of the army hemmed them in. What mattered it? In the Rue du Faubourg du Temple, Rue Oberkampf, Rue St. Maur, Rue Parmentier, they still wanted to fight. There were barricades not to be overturned and houses without exits. The Versaillese artillery shelled them till the Federals had used up their ammunition. Their last cartridge spent, overwhelmed by shells, they threw themselves upon the muskets bristling around them.</p>
<p>By degrees the firing was lulled, all was silent. About ten o'clock the last Federal cannon was discharged in the Rue du Paris, which the Versaillese had taken. The piece, charged with double shot, with a terrible crash exhaled the last sigh of the Paris Commune.</p>
<p>The last barricade of the May days was in the Rue Ramponeau. For a quarter of an hour a single Federal defended it. Thrice he broke the staff of the Versaillese flag hoisted on the barricade of the Rue de Paris. As a reward for his courage, this last soldier of the Commune succeeded in escaping.</p>
<p>At eleven o'clock all was over. The Place de la Concorde had held out two days, the Butte aux Cailles two, La Villette three, the Boulevard Voltaire two days and a half. Of the seventy-nine members of the Council filling functions on the 21st of May, one, Delescluze, had died on the barricades; two, J. Durand and R. Rigault, had been shot; two, Brunel and Vermorel (who died some days after at Versailles),100 were severely wounded; three, Oudet, Protot, Frankel, slightly. The Versaillese had lost few men. We had 3,000 killed or wounded. The losses of the army in June, 1848, and the resistance of the insurgents had been relatively more serious. But the insurgents of June had only to face 30,000 men; those of May combated against 130,000 soldiers. The struggle of June lasted only three days; that of the Federals eight weeks. On the eve of June the revolutionary army was intact; on the 21st May it was decimated. The most valiant defenders had fallen at the advance posts. What might not these 15,000 men, uselessly sacrificed outside the town, have done within Paris? What might not the brave men of Neuilly, Asni�res, Issy, Vanves, Cachan, have done at the Panth�on and Montmartre?</p>
<p>The occupation of the fort of Vincennes took place on Monday the 29th. This fort, disarmed in conformity with the stipulations of the treaty of peace, had been unable to take any part in the strife. Its garrison consisted of 350 men and twenty-four officers, commanded by the <em>chef-de-l�gion </em>Faltot, a veteran of the wars of Poland and of Garibaldi, one of the most active men on the 18th March. He was offered a perfectly secure asylum, but answered that honour forbade his deserting his companions in arms.</p>
<p>On the Saturday a Versaillese staff colonel came to negotiate a capitulation. Faltot demanded free passes, not for himself, but for some of his officers of foreign nationality, and on the refusal of the Versaillese, Faltot committed the fault of applying to the Germans. But MacMahon, foreseeing a siege, had solicited the assistance of the Prince of Saxony, and the German was on the lookout on behalf of his brother officer .<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n201">[201]</a></sup> During the negotiations General Vinoy had managed to hold communication with the place, where a few disreputable individuals offered to reduce the intractable Federals. Among the latter was Merlet, <em>garde-g�n�ral </em>of engineering and artillery, ex-noncommissioned officer, able, energetic, and quite resolved to blow up the place rather than surrender it. The powder-magazine contained 1,000 kilogrammes of powder and 400,000 cartridges.</p>
<p>On Sunday, at eight o'clock in the morning, a shot sounded in Merlet’s chamber. His room was entered, and he was found lying on the ground, his head pierced by the ball of a revolver. The disorder of the room attested a struggle; and a captain of the 99th, released later on by the Versaillese, B — , admitted that he had dispersed the elements of the electric battery by means of which Merlet intended to spring the fort.</p>
<p>On Monday towards mid-day the Versaillese colonel renewed the proposal for a surrender. For twenty-four hours the struggle had been over in Paris. The officers deliberated; it was agreed that the gates should be opened, and at three o'clock the Versaillese entered. The garrison, having laid down their arms, had drawn up at the end of the court. Nine officers were incarcerated apart.</p>
<p>In the night, in the ditches, a hundred yards from the spot where the Duke of Enghien had fallen, these nine officers formed a line before a firing party. One of them, Colonel Delorme, turned to the Versaillese in command with the words, ‘Feel my pulse; see if I am afraid.’</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XXXI
The Commune’s last stand
Major S�goyer was captured by the scoundrels who were defending the Bastille, and, without respect for the laws of war, was immediately shot. (Thiers to the Prefects, 27th May.)
The soldiers continuing their nocturnal surprises, got hold of the deserted barricades of the Rue d'Aubervilliers and the Boulevard de la Chapelle. On the side of the Bastille they occupied the barricade of the Rue St. Antoine at the corner of the Rue Castex, the Gare de Lyons, and the Mazas prison; in the third, all the abandoned defences of the market and of the Square du Temple. They reached the first houses of the Boulevard Voltaire, and established themselves at the Magasins R�unis.
In the darkness of the night a Versaillese officer was surprised by our outposts of the Bastille and shot; ‘without respecting the laws of war, ‘said M. Thiers the next day. As though during the four days that he had been mercilessly shooting thousands of prisoners, old men, women, and children, M. Thiers obeyed any other law than that of the savages.
The attack recommenced at daybreak. At La Villete the Versaillese, crossing the Rue d'Aubervilliers; turned and occupied the abandoned gasworks; in the centre, they got as far as the Cirque Napol�on; on the right, in the twelfth arrondissement, they invaded the bastions nearest the river without a struggle: One detachment went up the embankment of the Vincennes Railway and occupied the station, while another took possession of the Boulevard Mazas, the Avenue Lacu�e, and penetrated into the Faubourg St. Antoine. The Bastille was thus close pressed on its right flank, while the troops of the Place Royale attacked it on the left by the Boulevard Beaumarchais.
The sun did not shine forth. This five days’ cannonade had drawn on the rainfall that usually accompanies great battles. The firing had lost its sharp, quick voice, but rolled on in muffled tones. The men, harassed, wet to the skin, hardly distinguished through the misty veil the point whence the attack came. The shells of a Versaillese battery established at the Gare d'Orl�ans disturbed the entrance of the Faubourg St. Antoine. At seven o'clock the presence of soldiers at the top of the faubourg was announced. The Federals hurried thither with their cannon. If they do not hold out, the Bastille will be taken.
They did hold out. The Rue d'Aligre and the Avenue Lacu�e vied with each other in devotion. Entrenched in the houses, the Federals fell, but neither yielded nor retreated; and, thanks to their selfsacrifice, the Bastille for six hours still disputed its shattered barricades and ruined houses. Each stone had its legend in this estuary of the Revolution. Here encased in the wall is a bullet launched in 1789 against the fortress. Leaning against the same wall the sons of the combatants of June fought for the same pavement as their fathers. Here the conservatives of 1848 gave vent to their rage; but what was their fury compared with that of 1871? The house at the corner of the Rue de la Roquette, the angle of the Rue de Charenton, disappeared like the scenery of a theatre, and amidst these ruins, under these burning beams, some men fired their cannon, and twenty times raised up the red flag, as often overthrown by the Versaillese balls. Powerless as it well knew to triumph over an entire army, the old glorious place will at least succumb honourably.
How many were there at mid-day? Hundreds, since at night hundreds of corpses lay around the chief barricade. In the Rue Crozatier they were dead; they were dead too in the Rue d'Aligre, killed in the struggle or after the combat. And how they died! In the Rue Crozatier an artilleryman of the army, gone over to the people on the 18th March, was surrounded. ‘We are going to shoot you,’ cried the soldiers. He, shrugging his shoulders, answered, ‘We can only die once!’ Farther on an old man was struggling; the officer by a refinement of cruelty wanted to shoot him upon a heap of filth. ‘I fought bravely,’ said the old man; ‘I have the right not to die in the mire.’
Indeed they died well everywhere. That same day Milli�re, arrested on the left bank of the Seine, was taken to Cissey’s staff. This Imperialist general, ruined by the vilest debauchery, and who terminated his Ministerial career, by treachery, [194] had made of his headquarters at the Luxembourg one of the slaughter-houses of the left bank. Milli�re’s role during the Commune had been one of mere conciliation, and his polemic in the journals entirely one of doctrine, and of a most elevated character; but the hatred of the officers for every Socialist, the hatred of Jules Favre, lay in wait for him. The assassin, the staff-captain Garcin,[195] has recounted his crime, head erect.[196] Before history we must let him speak.
‘Milli�re was brought in when we were breakfasting with the general at the restaurant De Tournon, near the Luxembourg. We heard a great noise, and went out. I was told, “It is Mili�re.” I took care that the crowd did not take justice into its own hands. He did not come into the Luxembourg; he was stopped at the gate. I addressed myself to him, and said, “You are Milli�re?'’ “Yes, but you know that I am a deputy.” “That may be, but I think you have lost your character of deputy. Besides, there is a deputy amongst us, M. de Quinsonnas, who will recognize you.”
‘I then said to Milli�re that the general’s orders were that he was to be shot. He said to me, “Why?”
‘I answered him, “I only know your name. I have read articles by you that have revolted me” [probably the articles on Jules Favre]. “You are a viper, to be crushed underfoot. You detest society.” He stopped, saying, with a significant air, “Oh, yes! I indeed hate this society.” “Well, it will remove you from its bosom; you are going to be shot.” “This is summary justice, barbarity, cruelty.” “And all the cruelty you have committed, do you take that for nothing? At any rate, since you say you are Milli�re, there is nothing else to be done.”
‘The general had ordered that he was to be shot at the Panth�on, on his knees, to ask pardon of society for all the ill he had done. He refused to be shot kneeling. I said to him, “It is the order; you will be shot on your knees, and not otherwise.” He played a little comedy, opening his coat, and baring his breast before the firing party. I said to him, “You are acting; you want them to say how you died; die quietly, that will be the best.” “I am free in my own interest and for the sake of my Cause to do as I like.” “So be it; kneel down.” Then he said to me, “I will only do so if you force me down by two men.” I had him forced on his knees, and then his execution was proceeded with. He cried, “Vive l'humanit�!” He was about to cry something else when he fell dead.’ [197]
An officer ascended the steps, approached the corpse, and discharged his chassep�t into the left temple. Milli�re’s head rebounded, and, falling back, burst open, black with powder, seemed to look at the frontispiece of the monument.
‘Vive l'humanit�!’ The word implies two causes. ‘I care as much for the liberty of other people as for that of France,’ said a Federal to a reactionary.[198] In 1871, as in 1793, Paris combats for all the oppressed.
The Bastille succumbed about two o'clock. La Villette still struggled on. In the morning the barricade at the corner of the boulevard and of the Rue de Flandre had been surrendered by its commander. The Federals concentrated in the rear along the line of the canal, and barricaded the Rue de Crim�e. The Rotonde, destined to support the principal shock, was reinforced by a barricade on the quay of the, Loire. The 269th, which for two days had withstood the enemy, recommenced the struggle behind the new positions. This line from La Villette being of great extent, Ranvier and Passedouet went to fetch reinforcements in the twentieth arrondissement, where the remnants of all the battalions took refuge.
They crowded round the mairie, that distributed lodgings and orders for food. Near the church the wagons and horses were noisily put up. The headquarters and different services were established in the Rue Haxo at the Cit� Vincennes, a series of constructions intersected by gardens.
The very numerous barricades in the inextricable streets of M�nilmontant were almost all turned against the boulevard. The strategical route, which on this point overlooks the P�re la Chaise, the Buttes Chaumont, and the exterior boulevard, was not even guarded.
From the heights of the ramparts the Prussians were discernible in arms. According to the terms of a convention previously concluded between Versailles and the Prince of Saxony, the German army since Monday surrounded Paris on the north and east. It had cut off the Railway of the North, manned the canal line from St. Denis, posted sentinels from St. Denis to Charenton, erected barricades on all the routes. From five o'clock in the evening of Thursday 5,000 Bavarians marched down from Fontenay, Nogent, and Charenton, forming an impenetrable cordon from the Marne to Montreuil; and during the evening another corps of 5,000 men occupied Vincennes, with eighty artillery pieces. At nine o'clock they surrounded the fort and disarmed the Federals, who wanted to return to Paris. They did still better-trapped the game for Versailles. Already during the siege the Prussians had given an indirect support to the Versaillese army; their cynical collusion with the French conservatives showed itself undisguised during the eight days of May. Of all M. Thiers’ crimes, one of the most odious will certainly be his introducing the conquerors of France into our civil discords, and begging their help in order to crush Paris.
Towards mid-day fire broke out in the west part of the docks of La Villette, an immense warehouse of petroleum, oil and combustible matters, set alight by the shells from both sides. This conflagration forced us to leave the barricades of the Rues de Flandre and Riquet. The Versaillese, attempting to traverse the canal in boats, were stopped by the barricades of the Rue de Crim�e and the Rotonde.
Vinoy continued to ascend the twelfth arrondissement after having left the few thousand men necessary for the perquisitions and executions at the Bastille. The barricade of the Rue de Reuilly, at the corner of the Faubourg St. Antoine, held out a few hours against the soldiers who shelled it from the Boulevard Mazas. At the same time the Versaillese, marching along the Boulevard Mazas and the Rue Picpus, moved towards the Place du Tr�ne, which they tried to outflank by the ramparts. The artillery prepared and covered their slightest movement. Generally they charged the pieces at the corner of the roads they wanted to reduce, advanced them, fired, and drew them back again under shelter. The Federals could only reach this invisible enemy from the heights; but it was impossible to centralize the artillery of the Commune, for each barricade wanted to possess its gun without caring where it carried.
There was no longer authority of any kind. At the headquarters there was a pell-mell of bewildered officers. The march of the enemy was only known by the arrival of the survivors of the battalions. Such was the confusion, that in this place, mortal to traitors, there might be seen, in a general’s uniform, Du Bisson, turned out of La Villette. The few members of the Council to be met with in the twentieth arrondissement wandered about at random, absolutely ignored; but they had not foregone deliberating. On the Friday there were twelve of them in the Rue Haxo, when the Central Committee arrived and claimed the dictatorship. It was given them, in spite of some who protested, Varlin being added to their number. The Committee of Public Safety was no longer heard of.
The only one of its members who played any part was Ranvier, splendidly energetic in the combats. During these days he was the soul of La Villette and Belleville, urging on the men, watching over everything. On the 26th he issued a proclamation: ‘Citizens of the twentieth arrondissement! if we succumb you know what fate is in store for you. To arms! Be vigilant, above all in the night. I ask you to execute our orders faithfully. Lend your support to the nineteenth arrondissement; help it to repulse the enemy. There lies your safety. Do not wait for Belleville itself to be attacked. Forward then. Vive la R�publique!’
But very few read or obeyed. The shells from Montmartre, which from the day before crushed BelIville and M�nilmontant, the cries, the sight of the wounded, dragging themselves from house to house in search of succour, the too evident signs of the approaching end, precipitated the ordinary phenomena of defeat. The people became fierce and suspicious. Any individual without a uniform ran the risk of being shot if he had not a well-known name to recommend him. The news that came from all points of Paris augmented the anguish and despair. It was known that the soldiers gave no quarter; that they despatched the wounded, killing even doctors; [199] that every individual taken in a National Guard’s uniform, shod with regulation boots, or whose clothes showed traces of stripes recently unstitched, was shot in the street or in the yard of his house; that the combatants who surrendered, under the promise of having their lives spared, were massacred; that thousands of men, women, children, and aged people were taken to Versailles bareheaded, and often killed on the way; that it sufficed to be related to a combatant, or to offer him a refuge in order to share his fate; the numberless executions of so-called petroleuses were recounted.
About six o'clock forty-eight gendarmes, ecclesiastics, and civilians marched up the Rue Haxo between a detachment of Federals. At first they were supposed to be prisoners recently taken, and marched on in the midst of perfect silence. But the rumour spread that they were the hostages of La Roquette, and that they were being led to death. The crowd grew larger, followed, harangued, but did not strike them. At half-past six the cortege reached the Cit� Vincennes; the gates closed upon them, and the crowd dispersed in the neighbouring grounds.
The escort tumultuously pushed the hostages against a kind of trench at the foot of a wall. The chassep�ts were being levelled, when a member of the Council said, ‘What are you doing? There is a powder-magazine here; you will blow us up.’ He thus hoped to delay the execution. Others, quite distracted, went from group to group, attempting to discuss, to appease the wrath. They were repulsed, menaced, and their notoriety hardly sufficed to save them from death.
The chassep�ts went off on all sides; by degrees the hostages fell. outside the crowd applauded. And yet for two days the soldiers taken prisoners passed through Belleville without exciting a murmur; but these gendarmes, these spies, these priests, who for fully twenty years had trampled upon Paris, represented the Empire, the bourgeoisie, the massacres under their most hateful forms.
The same morning Jecker, the accomplice of Morny, had been shot. The Council had not known how to punish him; the justice of the people alighted upon him. A platoon of four Federals went to fetch him at La Roquette. He appeared to resign himself quietly, and even chatted on the way. ‘You are mistaken,’ said he, ‘if you think I did a good piece of business. Those people cheated me.’ He was executed in the open grounds adjoining the P�re la Chaise from the side of Charonne.
During this day the troops did not execute any great movements. The corps Douay and Clinchant were stationed on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir. The double barricade in the rear of Bataclan stopped the invasion of the Boulevard Voltaire; a Versaillese general was killed in the Rue St. S�bastian; the Place du Trone still held out by means of the Philippe-Auguste barricade. The Rotonde and docks of La Villette also prolonged their resistance. Towards the close of the day the conflagration spread to the part of the docks nearest the mairie.
In the evening, the army hedged in the defence between the fortifications and a curved line which from the slaughter-houses of La Villette extended to the gate of Vincennes, passing by the St. Martin Canal , the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, and the Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine-Ladmirault and Vinoy occupying the two extremities, Douay and Clinchant the centre.
The night of the Friday to Saturday was sombre and feverish in M�nilmontant and Belleville, ravaged by the shells. At the turning of each street the sentinels demanded the watchword (Bouchotte-Belleville), and often even that did not suffice, and one had to prove being sent upon an errand. Every leader of a barricade claimed the right to stop your passage. The remainder of the battalions continued arriving in disorder, and encumbered all the houses. The majority, finding no shelter, rested in the open air amidst the shells, always saluted with cries of ‘Vive la Commune!’
In the Grande Rue de Belleville some National Guards carried coffins on their crossed muskets, men preceding them with torches, the drums beating. These combatants, who amidst the shells silently interred their comrades, appeared in touching grandeur. They were themselves at the gates of death.
In the night the barricades of the Rue d'Allemagne were abandoned. A thousand men at the utmost had for two days kept in check Ladmirault’s 25,000 soldiers. Almost all these brave men were sedentary guards and children.
The humid glimmer of the Saturday morning discovered a sinister prospect. The fog was dense and penetrating, the soil steeped in moisture. Clouds of white smoke rose slowly above the rain, it was the firing. The Federals shivered under their drenched cloaks.
Since daybreak barricades of the strategic route, the gates of Montreuil and Bagnolet, were occupied by the troops, who without resistance invaded Charonne. At seven o'clock they established themselves in the Place du Tr�ne, whose defences had been abandoned. At the entrance of the Boulevard Voltaire the Versaillese erected a battery of six pieces against the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement. Henceforth certain of victory, the officers wanted to triumph noisily. This barricade against which they fired during the whole day of the 27th, had but two pieces of the most irregular projection. Many a Versaillese shell strayed to the legs of the statue of Voltaire, who, with his sardonic smile, seemed to remind his bourgeois descendants of the beau tapage he had promised them.
At La Villette the soldiers deviated from the line on all sides, passed by the fortifications and attacked the Rues Puebla and De Crim�e. Their left, still engaged in the upper part of the tenth arrondissement, endeavoured to gain possession of all its streets leading to the Boulevard de la Villette. Their batteries of the Rue de Flandre, of the ramparts and the Rotonde united their fire to that of Montmartre, and overwhelmed the Buttes Chaumont with shells. The barricade of the Rue Puebla yielded towards ten o'clock. A sailor who had remained alone, hidden behind the paving-stones, awaited the Versaillese, discharged his revolver at them, and then, hatchet in hand, dashed into the midst of their ranks. The enemy deployed in all the adjacent streets up to the Rue M�nadier, steadily held by our tirailleurs. At the Place des F�tes two of our pieces covered the Rue de Crim�e and protected our right flank.
At eleven o'clock nine or ten members of the Council met in the Rue Haxo. One of them, Jules Allix, whom his colleagues had been obliged to shut up as mad during the Commune, came up radiant. According to him, all was for the best; the quarters of the centre were dismantled; they had only to descend thither. Others thought that by surrendering themselves to the Prussians, who would deliver them up to Versailles, they might put an end to the massacres. One or two members demonstrated the absurdity of this hope, and that besides the Federals would allow no one to leave Paris. They were not listened to. A solemn note was being drawn up, when Ranvier, who wandered about in all corners picking up men one by one for the defence of the Buttes Chaumont, broke in upon their deliberations, exclaiming, ‘Why do you not go and fight instead of discussing!’ They dispersed in different directions, and this was the last meeting of these men of everlasting deliberations.
At this moment the Versaillese occupied Bastion 16. At mid-day the rumour spread that the troops were issuing by the Rue de Paris and the ramparts. A crowd of men and women, driven from their houses by the shells, beset the gate of Romainville, asking with loud cries to be allowed to flee into the neighbouring fields. At one o'clock the drawbridge was lowered in order to give passage to the fugitives. The crowd dashed out and dispersed in the houses of the Village des Lilas. As some women and children attempted to push on further and to cross the barricade thrown up in the middle of the road, the sergeant of gendarmerie of Romainville threw himself upon them, crying to the Prussians, ‘Fire! come, fire on this canaille!’ A Prussian soldier fired, wounding a woman.
Meanwhile the drawbridge had been raised. About four o'clock Colonel Parent, on horseback, and preceded by a trumpet, dared on his own authority to go and ask the Prussian troops for permission to pass. Useless degradation. The officer answered that he had no orders, and that he would refer to St. Denis.
The same day the member of the Council, Arnold, who still believed in an American intervention, went to take a letter for Mr. Washburne to the German outposts. He was conducted from one officer to another, received rather rudely, and sent back with the promise that his letter would be forwarded to the ambassador.
Near two o'clock several Versaillese battalions, having swept the strategic route, reached the Rue de Crim�e by the Rue des Lilas and the open grounds of the fortifications, but were stopped in the Rue de Bellevue. From the Place du March� three cannon joined their fire to that of the Place des F�tes in order to protect the Buttes Chaumont. These pieces were the whole day served by only five artillerymen, their arms bare, without witnesses, needing neither a leader nor orders. At five o'clock the cannon of the Buttes were silent, having no more ammunition, and their gunners rejoined the skirmishers of the Rues M�andier, Fessart, and Des Annelets.
At five o'clock Ferr� brought up to the Rue Haxo the line soldiers of the Prince Eug�ne Barracks, removed since Wednesday to the prison of La Petite Roquette, which had just been evacuated, as also the Grande Roquette. The crowd looked at them, not uttering a single threat, for they felt no hatred for the soldiers, who belonged, like themselves, to the people. They were quartered in Belleville church. Their arrival caused a fatal diversion. The people ran up to see them pass, and the Place des F�tes was dismantled. The Versaillese came up, occupied it, and the last defenders of the Buttes fell back on the Faubourg du Temple and the Rue de Paris.
While our front was yielding we were attacked from the rear. Since four o'clock in the afternoon the Versaillese had been laying siege to the P�re la Chaise, which enclosed no more than 200 Federals, resolute, but without discipline or foresight. The officers had been unable to make them embattle the walls. Five thousand Versaillese approached the enceinte from all sides, while the artillery of the bastion furrowed the interior. The pieces of the Commune had scarcely any ammunition since the afternoon. At six o'clock the Versailese, not daring, in spite of their numbers, to scale the enceinte, cannonaded the large gate of the cemetery, which soon gave way, notwithstanding the barricade propping it up. Then began a desperate struggle. Sheltered behind the tombs, the Federals disputed their refuge foot by foot; they closed in with the enemy in frightful hand-to-hand scuffles; in the vaults they fought with side-arms. Foes rolled and died in the same grave. The darkness that set in early did not end the despair.
On the Saturday evening there only remained to the Federals part of the eleventh and twentieth arrondissements. The Versaillese camped in the Place des F�tes, Rue Fessart, Rue Pradier up to Rue Rebeval, where, as on the boulevard, they were detained. The quadrilateral comprised between the Rue de Faubourg du Temple, the Rue Folie M�ricourt, the Rue de la Roquette and the exterior boulevard was in part occupied by the Federals. Douay and Clinchant awaited on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir the moment when Vinoy and Ladmirault would have carried the heights, and thus forced the Federals against the guns.
What a night for the few combatants of the last hours! It rained in torrents. The conflagration of La Villette lit up this gloom with its blinding glare. The shells continued to pound Belleville; they even reached as far as Bagnolet and wounded some Prussian soldiers.
The wounded arrived in large numbers at the mairie of the twentieth arrondissement. There were neither doctors, nor medicines, nor mattresses, nor blankets, and the unhappy people expired without succour. Some spies, surprised in the dress of National Guards, were there and then shot in the court. The Vengeurs de Flourens arrived, headed by their captain, a fine, handsome young fellow, reeling in his saddle. The cantini�re, delirious, a handkerchief tied round her bleeding brow, swore, called the men together with the cry of a wounded lioness. From between the convulsive hands the guns went off at random. The noise of the wagons, the threats, the lamentations, the fusillades, the whizzing of the shells, mingled in a maddening tumult, and who in those frightful hours did not feel his reason giving way? Every moment brought with it a new disaster. One guard rushed up and said, ‘The Pradier barricade is abandoned!’ another, ‘We want men in the Rue Rebeval,’ a third, ‘They are fleeing in the Rue des Pr�s.’ To hear these deathknells there were but a few members of the Council present, among whom were Trinquet, Ferr�, Varlin and Ranvier. Desperate of their powerlessness, broken down by these eight days, without sleep and without hope, the strongest were lost in grief.
From four o'clock Vinoy and Ladmirault launched their troops along the ramparts on the defenceless strategic route, and soon effected a junction at the Romainville gate. Towards five o'clock the troops occupied the barricade of the Rue Rebeval in the Boulevard de la Villette, and by the Rue Vincent and the Passage du Renard attacked the barricades of the Rue de Paris from behind. The mairie of the twentieth arrondissement was not taken till eight o'clock. The barricade of the Rue de Paris at the corner of the boulevard was defended by the commander of the 191st and five or six guards, who held out till their ammunition was exhausted.
A column set out from the Boulevard Philippe-Auguste, penetrated into the Roquette towards nine o'clock, and released the hostages who were there. Masters of the P�re la Chaise from the day before, the Versaillese might at least from nine o'clock in the evening have penetrated into the abandoned prison. This delay of twelve hours sufficiently shows their contempt for the lives of the hostages. Four of the latter — among whom was the Bishop Surat — who had made their escape in the afternoon of Saturday, had been retaken at the neighbouring barricades and shot before the Petite Roquette.
At nine o'clock the resistance was reduced to the small square formed by the Rues du Faubourg du Temple, Des Trois Bornes, Des Trois Couronnes, and the Boulevard de Belleville. Two or three streets of the twentieth arrondissement still struggled ion, among others the Rue Ramponeau. A small phalanx of fifty men, led by Varlin, Ferr�, and Gambon, their red scarfs round their waists, their chassep�ts slung across their shoulders, marched down the Rue des Champs, and from the twentieth arrondissement came out on the boulevard. A gigantic Garibaldian carried an immense red flag in front of them. They entered the eleventh arrondissement. Varlin and his colleagues were going to defend the barricade of the Rue du Faubourg du Temple and of the Rue Fontaine au Roi. From the front it was inaccessible; the Versaillese, masters of the St. Louis Hospital, succeeded in turning it by the Rues St. Maur and Bichat.
At ten o'clock the Federals had almost no cannon left, and twothirds of the army hemmed them in. What mattered it? In the Rue du Faubourg du Temple, Rue Oberkampf, Rue St. Maur, Rue Parmentier, they still wanted to fight. There were barricades not to be overturned and houses without exits. The Versaillese artillery shelled them till the Federals had used up their ammunition. Their last cartridge spent, overwhelmed by shells, they threw themselves upon the muskets bristling around them.
By degrees the firing was lulled, all was silent. About ten o'clock the last Federal cannon was discharged in the Rue du Paris, which the Versaillese had taken. The piece, charged with double shot, with a terrible crash exhaled the last sigh of the Paris Commune.
The last barricade of the May days was in the Rue Ramponeau. For a quarter of an hour a single Federal defended it. Thrice he broke the staff of the Versaillese flag hoisted on the barricade of the Rue de Paris. As a reward for his courage, this last soldier of the Commune succeeded in escaping.
At eleven o'clock all was over. The Place de la Concorde had held out two days, the Butte aux Cailles two, La Villette three, the Boulevard Voltaire two days and a half. Of the seventy-nine members of the Council filling functions on the 21st of May, one, Delescluze, had died on the barricades; two, J. Durand and R. Rigault, had been shot; two, Brunel and Vermorel (who died some days after at Versailles),100 were severely wounded; three, Oudet, Protot, Frankel, slightly. The Versaillese had lost few men. We had 3,000 killed or wounded. The losses of the army in June, 1848, and the resistance of the insurgents had been relatively more serious. But the insurgents of June had only to face 30,000 men; those of May combated against 130,000 soldiers. The struggle of June lasted only three days; that of the Federals eight weeks. On the eve of June the revolutionary army was intact; on the 21st May it was decimated. The most valiant defenders had fallen at the advance posts. What might not these 15,000 men, uselessly sacrificed outside the town, have done within Paris? What might not the brave men of Neuilly, Asni�res, Issy, Vanves, Cachan, have done at the Panth�on and Montmartre?
The occupation of the fort of Vincennes took place on Monday the 29th. This fort, disarmed in conformity with the stipulations of the treaty of peace, had been unable to take any part in the strife. Its garrison consisted of 350 men and twenty-four officers, commanded by the chef-de-l�gion Faltot, a veteran of the wars of Poland and of Garibaldi, one of the most active men on the 18th March. He was offered a perfectly secure asylum, but answered that honour forbade his deserting his companions in arms.
On the Saturday a Versaillese staff colonel came to negotiate a capitulation. Faltot demanded free passes, not for himself, but for some of his officers of foreign nationality, and on the refusal of the Versaillese, Faltot committed the fault of applying to the Germans. But MacMahon, foreseeing a siege, had solicited the assistance of the Prince of Saxony, and the German was on the lookout on behalf of his brother officer .[201] During the negotiations General Vinoy had managed to hold communication with the place, where a few disreputable individuals offered to reduce the intractable Federals. Among the latter was Merlet, garde-g�n�ral of engineering and artillery, ex-noncommissioned officer, able, energetic, and quite resolved to blow up the place rather than surrender it. The powder-magazine contained 1,000 kilogrammes of powder and 400,000 cartridges.
On Sunday, at eight o'clock in the morning, a shot sounded in Merlet’s chamber. His room was entered, and he was found lying on the ground, his head pierced by the ball of a revolver. The disorder of the room attested a struggle; and a captain of the 99th, released later on by the Versaillese, B — , admitted that he had dispersed the elements of the electric battery by means of which Merlet intended to spring the fort.
On Monday towards mid-day the Versaillese colonel renewed the proposal for a surrender. For twenty-four hours the struggle had been over in Paris. The officers deliberated; it was agreed that the gates should be opened, and at three o'clock the Versaillese entered. The garrison, having laid down their arms, had drawn up at the end of the court. Nine officers were incarcerated apart.
In the night, in the ditches, a hundred yards from the spot where the Duke of Enghien had fallen, these nine officers formed a line before a firing party. One of them, Colonel Delorme, turned to the Versaillese in command with the words, ‘Feel my pulse; see if I am afraid.’
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XXI<br>
Paris bombarded: Rossel flees</h1>
<p><img src="pics/delescluze.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Delescluze" border="1" align="left"></p>
<p class="quoteb">The greatest infamy in living memory is now being enacted. Paris is being bombarded. (Proclamation of the Government of National Defence on the Prussian bombardment.)<br>
We have crushed a whole district of Paris. (Thiers to the National Assembly, Session of 5th August, 1871.)</p>
<p>We must leave this heroic atmosphere to return to the quarrels of the Council and of the Central Committee. Why did they not hold their sittings at the Muette or under the eyes of the public?<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n152">[152]</a></sup> The shells of Montretour, which had just unmasked its powerful battery, and the severe attitude of the people, would no doubt have made them unite against the common enemy. He had begun to batter a breach in their ranks.</p>
<p>On the 8th May, in the morning, seventy naval guns began to attack the enceinte from the bastion 60 to the Point du Jour. The shells of Clamart already reached the Quai de Javelle, and the battery of Breteuil covered the Grenelle quarter with projectiles. In a few hours half Passy had become uninhabitable.</p>
<p>M. Thiers accompanied his shells with a proclamation: ‘Parisians, the Government will not bombard Paris, as the men of the Commune will not fail to tell you. It will discharge its cannon.... It knows, it would have understood, even if you had not said so on all sides, that as soon as the soldiers cross the enceinte you will rally round the national flag.’ And he invited the Parisians to open the gates to h im. What was the action of the Council in reply to this appeal to treason?</p>
<p>On the 8th it entered upon a random discussion on the minutes of its sittings’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n153">[153]</a></sup> and the publicity of the latter, which one member of the majority wanted to suppress altogether. The minority complained of the Central Committee, which had encroached upon all services in spite of the Commission of War; it had driven away Varlin from the commissariat, entirely reorganized by him. They asked whether the Government called itself Central Committee or Commune. F�lix Pyat justified himself by accusing Rossel. ‘It is not the fault of the Committee of Public Safety if Rossel has neither the strength nor the intelligence to keep the Central Committee within its functions.’ The friends of Rossel answered, accusing Pyat of continually interfering even in purely military questions. If the Moulin Saquet had been surprised, it was because Wroblewski, who commanded on that side, received a formal order from F�lix Pyat to repair to Issy. ‘It is false,’ said Pyat; ‘I have never given such an order.’ They let him thoroughly enmesh himself, and then produced the order, written entirely in his own hand. He took hold of it, turned it round, feigned astonishment, and was finally obliged to confess.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n154">[154]</a></sup> The discussion then reverted to the Central Committee — were they to dissolve it, arrest its members, or surrender to it the administration of the War Office? The Council, as usual, did not dare to decide, and, after a confused debate, confirmed by the resolution of the 3rd May — the Central Committee will be held subordinate to the Military Commission.</p>
<p>At this very moment strange scenes were enacted at the War Office. The <em>chefs-de-l�gion, </em>who were stirring more and more against Rossel, had that day resolved to ask him for the report of all the decisions he was about to take with respect to the National Guard. Rossel knew of their project. In the evening, when they arrived at the Ministry, they found in its court an armed platoon, and beheld Rossel watching them from his window. ‘You are audacious,’ said he; ‘do you know that this platoon is here to shoot you?’ They, without appearing to care much: ‘There is no need of audacity; we simply come to speak to you of the organization of the National Guard.’ Rossel relaxed, went to the window, gave orders to the platoon to re-enter. This burlesque demonstration did not miss its effect. The <em>chefs-de-l�gion </em>disputed the project on the regiments point by point, demonstrating its impossibility. Tired of arguing, Rossel said to them, ‘I am fully aware that I have no forces, but I affirm you have not either. You have, say you? Well, give me the proof. To-morrow, at eleven o'clock, bring me 12,000 men to the Place de la Concorde, and I will try to do something.’ He wanted to make an attack by the Clamart station. The <em>chefs-de-l�gion </em>engaged to find the men, and spent the whole night in search of them.</p>
<p>While these contests went on, the fort of Issy was being evacuated. Since the morning it had been reduced to the last extremity. Any of its defenders who approached the guns was a dead man. In the evening the officers assembled, and came to the conclusion that they could no longer hold out. Thereupon the men, driven away from all sides by the shells, massed themselves under the entrance vault, when a shell from the Moulin de Pierre fell in their midst, killing sixteen of them. Rist, Julien, and several others, who were stubbornly bent upon holding these ruins, were at last obliged to yield. About seven o'clock the evacuation began. The commander, Lisbonne, one of the members of the first Central Committee, a man of extraordinary courage, covered the retreat amidst a shower of bullets.</p>
<p>A few hours later, the Versaillese, crossing the Seine, established themselves before Boulogne in front of the bastions of the Point du Jour, and opened a trench three hundred yards from the enceinte. All that night and the whole morning of the 9th the War Office and the Committee of Public Safety knew nothing of the evacuation of the fort.</p>
<p>On the 9th, at mid-day, the battalions asked for by Rossel were drawn up along the Place de la Concorde. Rossel arrived on horseback, hardly looked at the front lines, and then addressed the <em>chefs-de-l�gion, ‘</em>There are not enough men here for me;’ and at once turning about, rode off to the War Office, where he was informed of the evacuation of the fort of Issy. He seized his pen, wrote, ‘The tricolor floats from the fort of Issy, abandoned yesterday evening by the garrison,’ and, without apprising the Council or the Committee of Public Safety, gave the order to post up ten thousand copies of these two lines, while six thousand was the number usually printed.</p>
<p>He next sent in his resignation: ‘Citizens, members of the Commune, I feel myself incapable of any longer bearing the responsibility of a command where every one deliberates and no one obeys. The Central Committee of Artillery has deliberated and prescribed nothing. The Commune has deliberated and resolved upon nothing. The Central Committee deliberates and has not yet known how to act. During this delay the enemy has hemmed in the fort of Issy by imprudent attacks, for which I would punish him if I had the smallest military force at my disposal.’ He then recounted in his own fashion, and very inaccurately, the evacuation of the fort, the review on the Place de la Concorde; said that, instead of the 12,000 men promised, there were only 7,000,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n155">[155]</a></sup> and concluded: ‘Thus the nullity of the Committee of Artillery prevented the organization of the artillery; the hesitation of the Central Committee stopped the administration; the paltry pre-occupations of the <em>chefs-de-l�gion </em>paralysed the mobilization of the troops. My predecessor committed the fault of struggling against this absurd situation. I retire, and have the honour to ask you for a cell at Mazas.’</p>
<p>He thus thought to clear his military reputation, but point by point he might have been categorically answered. Why did you accept this ‘absurd’ situation with which you were thoroughly conversant? Why did you make no conditions on entering the Ministry on the 1st April, no condition to the Council on the 2nd and 3rd May? Why did you send away at least 7,000 men this morning, when you pretend not to have ‘the smallest military force’ at your disposal? Why did you know nothing for fifteen hours of the evacuation of a fort whose straits it was your duty to watch from hour to hour? Where is your second line of defence? Why has no work been done at Montmartre and the Panth�on?</p>
<p>Rossel might perhaps have addressed his reproaches to the Council, but he committed an unpardonable fault in sending his letters to the newspapers. Thus in less than two hours he had disheartened 8,000 combatants, spread panic, stigmatized the brave men of Issy, denounced the weakness of the defence to the enemy, and that at the very moment when the Versaillese were rejoicing over the taking of Issy.</p>
<p>There everyone was merry-making. M. Thiers and MacMahon harangued the soldiers, who, singing, brought back the few pieces found in the fort. The Assembly suspended its sittings and came into the marble court to applaud these children of the people who thought themselves victors. M. Thiers a month later said from the tribune, ‘When I see these sons of our sod, strangers often to an education that elevates, die for you, for us, I am profoundly touched.’ Touching emotion this of the hunter before his pack. Remember this avowal and the sort of men for whom you die, sons of the sod!</p>
<p>And at the H�tel-de-Ville they were still disputing! Rigault recriminated. The majority of the Council had named him procureur of the Commune in spite of his culpable levity at the Prefecture. The discussion was growing angry when Delescluze entered hastily and exclaimed, ‘You discuss when it has been proclaimed that the tricolor floats from the fort of Issy. I make an appeal to you all. I had hoped that France would be saved by Paris and Europe by France. The Commune is pregnant with a power of revolutionary instinct capable of saving the country. Cast aside to-day all your animosities. We must save the country. The Committee of Public Safety has not answered our expectations. It has been an obstacle instead of a stimulus. With what is it occupying itself? With individual appointments instead of general measures. A decree signed Meillet names this citizen himself governor of the fort of Bicetre. We had a man there, a soldier,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n156">[156]</a></sup> who was thought too severe. It is desirable that all were as severe as he. Your Committee of Public Safety is undone, crushed beneath the weight of the memories attached to it. I say it must disappear.’</p>
<p>The Assembly, thus brought back to a sense of its duty, resolved into a secret committee, thoroughly discussing the Committee of Public Safety. What had it done for a week past? Installed the Central Committee at the War Office, increased the disorder, sustained two disasters. Its members lost themselves in details or else did amateur service. One deserted the H�tel-de-Ville to go and shut himself up in a fort; if at least it had been that of Issy or of Vanves! F�lix Pyat passed the greater part of his time in the office of the <em>Vengeur, </em>there venting his spleen in long-winded articles. A member of the Committee of Public Safety endeavoured to defend it by pleading the vagueness of its attributes. He was answered that Article 3 of the decree gave the Committee full powers over all the Commissions. Finally, after many hours, they decided to renew the Committee at once; to appoint a civil delegate to the War Office; to draw up a proclamation; to meet, save in cases of emergency, only three times a week; to establish the new Committee permanently at the H�tel-de-Ville, while the other members of the Council were to stay regularly in their respective arrondissements. Delescluze was named Delegate at War.</p>
<p>In the evening, at ten o'clock, there was a second meeting for the nomination of the new Committee. The majority voted F�lix Pyat, quite exasperated at the attacks of the afternoon, to the chair. He opened the sitting by demanding the arrest of Rossel. Cleverly grouping together appearances which seemed proofs to the suspicious, he made Rossel the scapegoat of the faults of the Committee, turning the anger of the Council against him. For half an hour he disparaged the absent man, whom he would not have dared attack to his face. ‘I told you, citizens, that he was a traitor. You would not believe me. You are young, you did not, like our paragons of the Convention, know how to mistrust military power.’ This reminiscence ravished the Romanticists. They had but one dream — to be Conventionnels. So difficult was it for this revolution of proletarians to rid itself of bourgeois tinsel.</p>
<p>The ire of Pyat was not wanted to convince the Assembly. Rossel’s act was culpable in the eyes of the least prejudiced. His arrest was decreed unanimously, less two votes, and the Commission of War received the order to carry it out.</p>
<p>They next passed to the nomination of the Committee. The minority, a little reassured by the election of Delescluze and Jourde, which seemed to acknowledge the right of the Council to appoint the delegates, resolved to take part in the vote, and asked for a place in the list of the majority. This was an excellent occasion to efface all differences, to re-establish union against Versailles. But the perfidious promptings of F�lix Pyat had induced the Romanticists to look upon their colleagues of the minority as veritable reactionaries. After his speech the sitting was suspended; little by little the members of the minority found themselves alone in the council-hall. They looked for their colleagues and surprised them in a neighbouring room deliberating apart. After a violent altercation they all returned to the Council.</p>
<p>A member of the minority demanded that they should put an end to these shameful divisions. A Romanticist answered by asking for the arrest of the factious minority, and the President, Pyat, was about to empty the vials of his wrath, when Malon cried to him, ‘Silence! you are the evil genius of this revolution. Do not continue to spread your venomous suspicions, to stir up discords. It is your influence that is ruining the Commune!’ And Arnold, one of the founders of the Central Committee, ‘It is still these fellows of 1848 who will undo the revolution.’</p>
<p>But it was too late now to engage in the struggle, and the minority was to expiate its doctrinairism and maladroitness. The whole list of the majority passed; Ranvier, Arnaud, Gamlon, Delescluze and Eudes. The nomination of Delescluze to the War Office having left a vacancy, there was after two days a second vote, and the minority proposed Varlin. The majority, abusing their victory, committed the impropriety of preferring Billioray, a most worthless member.</p>
<p>The Council broke up at one o'clock in the morning. ‘Did not we do them? and what do you think of the way I managed the business?’ said F�lix Pyat to his friends on leaving the chair.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n157">[157]</a></sup> This honest mandatory, altogether absorbed in the work of ‘doing’ his colleagues, had forgotten to verify the capture of the fort of Issy. And that same evening, twenty-six hours after the evacuation, the H�tel-de-Ville posted up on the doors of the <em>mairies</em>, ‘It is false that the tricolor floats on the fort of Issy. The Versaillese do not and shall not occupy it.’ This contradiction was as good as Trochu’s apropos of Metz.</p>
<p>During these tempests at the H�tel-de-Ville the Central Committee had sent for Rossel, reproached him with the poster of the afternoon, and the unusual number of copies printed. He defended himself acrimoniously. ‘It was my duty. The greater the danger, the greater the duty to make it known to the people.’ Yet he had done nothing of the kind on the surprise of the Moulin-Saquet. After his departure the Committee deliberated at length. Someone said, ‘We are lost if we get no dictatorship.’ For some days this idea was uppermost in the Committee. The latter voted quite seriously that there should be a dictator, and that the dictator was to be Rossel. A deputation of five members gravely went to fetch him; he came down to the Committee, pretended to reflect, and finally said, ‘It is too late. I am no longer delegate. I have sent in my resignation.’ Some waxing angry with him, he rebuked them and left. In his office he found the Commission of War, Delescluze, Tridon, Avrial, Johannard, Varlin and Arnold, who had just arrived.</p>
<p>Delescluze explained their mission. Rossel listened very calmly; said that though the decree was unjust, he submitted to it. He then described the military situation, the rivalries of all kinds that had continually clogged him, the weakness of the Council. ‘It has not known,’ said he, ‘how to utilize the Central Committee, nor how to break it at the opportune time. Our resources are quite sufficient, and I am ready, for my own part, to assume all responsibility, but on the condition of being supported by a strong and homogeneous power. I could not in the face of history take upon myself the responsibility for certain necessary repressions without the assent and support of the Commune.’ He spoke at great length in that clear and nervous style that twice in the Council had won over his most decided adversaries. The Commission, much struck by his arguments, withdrew to another room. Delescluze declared that he could not make up his mind to arrest Rossel till the Council had heard him. His colleagues were of the same opinion, and left the ex-delegate under the guard of Avrial and Johannard, who the next morning conducted him to the H�tel-de-Ville. Avrial stayed with Rossel in the questor’s office, while Johannard went to apprise the Council of their arrival.</p>
<p>Some wanted Rossel to be heard; the greater number, distrustful of themselves, were afraid lest his voice should again bring round the Council, maintained that his hearing was contrary to equity, and cited the example of Cluseret, who had been arrested without being heard, as though one injustice could sanction another. The admission of Rossel was refused.</p>
<p>Charles G�rardin, a member of the Council, repaired to the questor’s office. ‘What has the Commune decided?’ said Avrial. ‘Nothing yet,’ answered G�rardin, who nevertheless had just left the sitting, and seeing Avrial’s revolver on the table, he said to Rossel, ‘Your guardian fulfils his duty conscientiously.’ ‘I do not suppose,’ answered Rossel hurriedly, ‘that this precaution concerns me. Besides, Citizen Avrial, I give you my word of honour as a soldier that I shall not seek to escape.’</p>
<p>Avrial, very tired of his post as sentry, had already asked the Council to relieve him. Receiving no answer, he thought he might leave his prisoner under the guard of a member of the Committee of Public Safety — for G�rardin had not yet been discharged from his functions — and he proceeded to the Council. When he returned, Rossel and G�rardin were gone. The ambitious young man had slunk like a weasel out of this civil war into which he had heedlessly thrown himself.</p>
<p>One may divine whether Pyat was sparing of adjectives against the fugitive. The new Committee having just been informed of the discovery of two conspiracies, launched a desperate proclamation: ‘Treason had slipped into our ranks. The abandonment of the fort of Issy announced in an impious poster by the wretch who surrendered it, was only the first act of the drama. A monarchical insurrection in our midst coinciding with the surrender of one of our gates was to follow. All the threads of the dark plot are now in our hands. Most of the culprits are arrested. Let all eyes be open, all arms ready to strike the traitors!’</p>
<p>This was going off into melodrama when cold blood and precision were wanted. And the Committee boasted strangely when it pretended to have arrested ‘most of the culprits’ and that it held ‘in its hands all the threads of the dark plot.’</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XXI
Paris bombarded: Rossel flees
The greatest infamy in living memory is now being enacted. Paris is being bombarded. (Proclamation of the Government of National Defence on the Prussian bombardment.)
We have crushed a whole district of Paris. (Thiers to the National Assembly, Session of 5th August, 1871.)
We must leave this heroic atmosphere to return to the quarrels of the Council and of the Central Committee. Why did they not hold their sittings at the Muette or under the eyes of the public?[152] The shells of Montretour, which had just unmasked its powerful battery, and the severe attitude of the people, would no doubt have made them unite against the common enemy. He had begun to batter a breach in their ranks.
On the 8th May, in the morning, seventy naval guns began to attack the enceinte from the bastion 60 to the Point du Jour. The shells of Clamart already reached the Quai de Javelle, and the battery of Breteuil covered the Grenelle quarter with projectiles. In a few hours half Passy had become uninhabitable.
M. Thiers accompanied his shells with a proclamation: ‘Parisians, the Government will not bombard Paris, as the men of the Commune will not fail to tell you. It will discharge its cannon.... It knows, it would have understood, even if you had not said so on all sides, that as soon as the soldiers cross the enceinte you will rally round the national flag.’ And he invited the Parisians to open the gates to h im. What was the action of the Council in reply to this appeal to treason?
On the 8th it entered upon a random discussion on the minutes of its sittings’[153] and the publicity of the latter, which one member of the majority wanted to suppress altogether. The minority complained of the Central Committee, which had encroached upon all services in spite of the Commission of War; it had driven away Varlin from the commissariat, entirely reorganized by him. They asked whether the Government called itself Central Committee or Commune. F�lix Pyat justified himself by accusing Rossel. ‘It is not the fault of the Committee of Public Safety if Rossel has neither the strength nor the intelligence to keep the Central Committee within its functions.’ The friends of Rossel answered, accusing Pyat of continually interfering even in purely military questions. If the Moulin Saquet had been surprised, it was because Wroblewski, who commanded on that side, received a formal order from F�lix Pyat to repair to Issy. ‘It is false,’ said Pyat; ‘I have never given such an order.’ They let him thoroughly enmesh himself, and then produced the order, written entirely in his own hand. He took hold of it, turned it round, feigned astonishment, and was finally obliged to confess.[154] The discussion then reverted to the Central Committee — were they to dissolve it, arrest its members, or surrender to it the administration of the War Office? The Council, as usual, did not dare to decide, and, after a confused debate, confirmed by the resolution of the 3rd May — the Central Committee will be held subordinate to the Military Commission.
At this very moment strange scenes were enacted at the War Office. The chefs-de-l�gion, who were stirring more and more against Rossel, had that day resolved to ask him for the report of all the decisions he was about to take with respect to the National Guard. Rossel knew of their project. In the evening, when they arrived at the Ministry, they found in its court an armed platoon, and beheld Rossel watching them from his window. ‘You are audacious,’ said he; ‘do you know that this platoon is here to shoot you?’ They, without appearing to care much: ‘There is no need of audacity; we simply come to speak to you of the organization of the National Guard.’ Rossel relaxed, went to the window, gave orders to the platoon to re-enter. This burlesque demonstration did not miss its effect. The chefs-de-l�gion disputed the project on the regiments point by point, demonstrating its impossibility. Tired of arguing, Rossel said to them, ‘I am fully aware that I have no forces, but I affirm you have not either. You have, say you? Well, give me the proof. To-morrow, at eleven o'clock, bring me 12,000 men to the Place de la Concorde, and I will try to do something.’ He wanted to make an attack by the Clamart station. The chefs-de-l�gion engaged to find the men, and spent the whole night in search of them.
While these contests went on, the fort of Issy was being evacuated. Since the morning it had been reduced to the last extremity. Any of its defenders who approached the guns was a dead man. In the evening the officers assembled, and came to the conclusion that they could no longer hold out. Thereupon the men, driven away from all sides by the shells, massed themselves under the entrance vault, when a shell from the Moulin de Pierre fell in their midst, killing sixteen of them. Rist, Julien, and several others, who were stubbornly bent upon holding these ruins, were at last obliged to yield. About seven o'clock the evacuation began. The commander, Lisbonne, one of the members of the first Central Committee, a man of extraordinary courage, covered the retreat amidst a shower of bullets.
A few hours later, the Versaillese, crossing the Seine, established themselves before Boulogne in front of the bastions of the Point du Jour, and opened a trench three hundred yards from the enceinte. All that night and the whole morning of the 9th the War Office and the Committee of Public Safety knew nothing of the evacuation of the fort.
On the 9th, at mid-day, the battalions asked for by Rossel were drawn up along the Place de la Concorde. Rossel arrived on horseback, hardly looked at the front lines, and then addressed the chefs-de-l�gion, ‘There are not enough men here for me;’ and at once turning about, rode off to the War Office, where he was informed of the evacuation of the fort of Issy. He seized his pen, wrote, ‘The tricolor floats from the fort of Issy, abandoned yesterday evening by the garrison,’ and, without apprising the Council or the Committee of Public Safety, gave the order to post up ten thousand copies of these two lines, while six thousand was the number usually printed.
He next sent in his resignation: ‘Citizens, members of the Commune, I feel myself incapable of any longer bearing the responsibility of a command where every one deliberates and no one obeys. The Central Committee of Artillery has deliberated and prescribed nothing. The Commune has deliberated and resolved upon nothing. The Central Committee deliberates and has not yet known how to act. During this delay the enemy has hemmed in the fort of Issy by imprudent attacks, for which I would punish him if I had the smallest military force at my disposal.’ He then recounted in his own fashion, and very inaccurately, the evacuation of the fort, the review on the Place de la Concorde; said that, instead of the 12,000 men promised, there were only 7,000,[155] and concluded: ‘Thus the nullity of the Committee of Artillery prevented the organization of the artillery; the hesitation of the Central Committee stopped the administration; the paltry pre-occupations of the chefs-de-l�gion paralysed the mobilization of the troops. My predecessor committed the fault of struggling against this absurd situation. I retire, and have the honour to ask you for a cell at Mazas.’
He thus thought to clear his military reputation, but point by point he might have been categorically answered. Why did you accept this ‘absurd’ situation with which you were thoroughly conversant? Why did you make no conditions on entering the Ministry on the 1st April, no condition to the Council on the 2nd and 3rd May? Why did you send away at least 7,000 men this morning, when you pretend not to have ‘the smallest military force’ at your disposal? Why did you know nothing for fifteen hours of the evacuation of a fort whose straits it was your duty to watch from hour to hour? Where is your second line of defence? Why has no work been done at Montmartre and the Panth�on?
Rossel might perhaps have addressed his reproaches to the Council, but he committed an unpardonable fault in sending his letters to the newspapers. Thus in less than two hours he had disheartened 8,000 combatants, spread panic, stigmatized the brave men of Issy, denounced the weakness of the defence to the enemy, and that at the very moment when the Versaillese were rejoicing over the taking of Issy.
There everyone was merry-making. M. Thiers and MacMahon harangued the soldiers, who, singing, brought back the few pieces found in the fort. The Assembly suspended its sittings and came into the marble court to applaud these children of the people who thought themselves victors. M. Thiers a month later said from the tribune, ‘When I see these sons of our sod, strangers often to an education that elevates, die for you, for us, I am profoundly touched.’ Touching emotion this of the hunter before his pack. Remember this avowal and the sort of men for whom you die, sons of the sod!
And at the H�tel-de-Ville they were still disputing! Rigault recriminated. The majority of the Council had named him procureur of the Commune in spite of his culpable levity at the Prefecture. The discussion was growing angry when Delescluze entered hastily and exclaimed, ‘You discuss when it has been proclaimed that the tricolor floats from the fort of Issy. I make an appeal to you all. I had hoped that France would be saved by Paris and Europe by France. The Commune is pregnant with a power of revolutionary instinct capable of saving the country. Cast aside to-day all your animosities. We must save the country. The Committee of Public Safety has not answered our expectations. It has been an obstacle instead of a stimulus. With what is it occupying itself? With individual appointments instead of general measures. A decree signed Meillet names this citizen himself governor of the fort of Bicetre. We had a man there, a soldier,[156] who was thought too severe. It is desirable that all were as severe as he. Your Committee of Public Safety is undone, crushed beneath the weight of the memories attached to it. I say it must disappear.’
The Assembly, thus brought back to a sense of its duty, resolved into a secret committee, thoroughly discussing the Committee of Public Safety. What had it done for a week past? Installed the Central Committee at the War Office, increased the disorder, sustained two disasters. Its members lost themselves in details or else did amateur service. One deserted the H�tel-de-Ville to go and shut himself up in a fort; if at least it had been that of Issy or of Vanves! F�lix Pyat passed the greater part of his time in the office of the Vengeur, there venting his spleen in long-winded articles. A member of the Committee of Public Safety endeavoured to defend it by pleading the vagueness of its attributes. He was answered that Article 3 of the decree gave the Committee full powers over all the Commissions. Finally, after many hours, they decided to renew the Committee at once; to appoint a civil delegate to the War Office; to draw up a proclamation; to meet, save in cases of emergency, only three times a week; to establish the new Committee permanently at the H�tel-de-Ville, while the other members of the Council were to stay regularly in their respective arrondissements. Delescluze was named Delegate at War.
In the evening, at ten o'clock, there was a second meeting for the nomination of the new Committee. The majority voted F�lix Pyat, quite exasperated at the attacks of the afternoon, to the chair. He opened the sitting by demanding the arrest of Rossel. Cleverly grouping together appearances which seemed proofs to the suspicious, he made Rossel the scapegoat of the faults of the Committee, turning the anger of the Council against him. For half an hour he disparaged the absent man, whom he would not have dared attack to his face. ‘I told you, citizens, that he was a traitor. You would not believe me. You are young, you did not, like our paragons of the Convention, know how to mistrust military power.’ This reminiscence ravished the Romanticists. They had but one dream — to be Conventionnels. So difficult was it for this revolution of proletarians to rid itself of bourgeois tinsel.
The ire of Pyat was not wanted to convince the Assembly. Rossel’s act was culpable in the eyes of the least prejudiced. His arrest was decreed unanimously, less two votes, and the Commission of War received the order to carry it out.
They next passed to the nomination of the Committee. The minority, a little reassured by the election of Delescluze and Jourde, which seemed to acknowledge the right of the Council to appoint the delegates, resolved to take part in the vote, and asked for a place in the list of the majority. This was an excellent occasion to efface all differences, to re-establish union against Versailles. But the perfidious promptings of F�lix Pyat had induced the Romanticists to look upon their colleagues of the minority as veritable reactionaries. After his speech the sitting was suspended; little by little the members of the minority found themselves alone in the council-hall. They looked for their colleagues and surprised them in a neighbouring room deliberating apart. After a violent altercation they all returned to the Council.
A member of the minority demanded that they should put an end to these shameful divisions. A Romanticist answered by asking for the arrest of the factious minority, and the President, Pyat, was about to empty the vials of his wrath, when Malon cried to him, ‘Silence! you are the evil genius of this revolution. Do not continue to spread your venomous suspicions, to stir up discords. It is your influence that is ruining the Commune!’ And Arnold, one of the founders of the Central Committee, ‘It is still these fellows of 1848 who will undo the revolution.’
But it was too late now to engage in the struggle, and the minority was to expiate its doctrinairism and maladroitness. The whole list of the majority passed; Ranvier, Arnaud, Gamlon, Delescluze and Eudes. The nomination of Delescluze to the War Office having left a vacancy, there was after two days a second vote, and the minority proposed Varlin. The majority, abusing their victory, committed the impropriety of preferring Billioray, a most worthless member.
The Council broke up at one o'clock in the morning. ‘Did not we do them? and what do you think of the way I managed the business?’ said F�lix Pyat to his friends on leaving the chair.[157] This honest mandatory, altogether absorbed in the work of ‘doing’ his colleagues, had forgotten to verify the capture of the fort of Issy. And that same evening, twenty-six hours after the evacuation, the H�tel-de-Ville posted up on the doors of the mairies, ‘It is false that the tricolor floats on the fort of Issy. The Versaillese do not and shall not occupy it.’ This contradiction was as good as Trochu’s apropos of Metz.
During these tempests at the H�tel-de-Ville the Central Committee had sent for Rossel, reproached him with the poster of the afternoon, and the unusual number of copies printed. He defended himself acrimoniously. ‘It was my duty. The greater the danger, the greater the duty to make it known to the people.’ Yet he had done nothing of the kind on the surprise of the Moulin-Saquet. After his departure the Committee deliberated at length. Someone said, ‘We are lost if we get no dictatorship.’ For some days this idea was uppermost in the Committee. The latter voted quite seriously that there should be a dictator, and that the dictator was to be Rossel. A deputation of five members gravely went to fetch him; he came down to the Committee, pretended to reflect, and finally said, ‘It is too late. I am no longer delegate. I have sent in my resignation.’ Some waxing angry with him, he rebuked them and left. In his office he found the Commission of War, Delescluze, Tridon, Avrial, Johannard, Varlin and Arnold, who had just arrived.
Delescluze explained their mission. Rossel listened very calmly; said that though the decree was unjust, he submitted to it. He then described the military situation, the rivalries of all kinds that had continually clogged him, the weakness of the Council. ‘It has not known,’ said he, ‘how to utilize the Central Committee, nor how to break it at the opportune time. Our resources are quite sufficient, and I am ready, for my own part, to assume all responsibility, but on the condition of being supported by a strong and homogeneous power. I could not in the face of history take upon myself the responsibility for certain necessary repressions without the assent and support of the Commune.’ He spoke at great length in that clear and nervous style that twice in the Council had won over his most decided adversaries. The Commission, much struck by his arguments, withdrew to another room. Delescluze declared that he could not make up his mind to arrest Rossel till the Council had heard him. His colleagues were of the same opinion, and left the ex-delegate under the guard of Avrial and Johannard, who the next morning conducted him to the H�tel-de-Ville. Avrial stayed with Rossel in the questor’s office, while Johannard went to apprise the Council of their arrival.
Some wanted Rossel to be heard; the greater number, distrustful of themselves, were afraid lest his voice should again bring round the Council, maintained that his hearing was contrary to equity, and cited the example of Cluseret, who had been arrested without being heard, as though one injustice could sanction another. The admission of Rossel was refused.
Charles G�rardin, a member of the Council, repaired to the questor’s office. ‘What has the Commune decided?’ said Avrial. ‘Nothing yet,’ answered G�rardin, who nevertheless had just left the sitting, and seeing Avrial’s revolver on the table, he said to Rossel, ‘Your guardian fulfils his duty conscientiously.’ ‘I do not suppose,’ answered Rossel hurriedly, ‘that this precaution concerns me. Besides, Citizen Avrial, I give you my word of honour as a soldier that I shall not seek to escape.’
Avrial, very tired of his post as sentry, had already asked the Council to relieve him. Receiving no answer, he thought he might leave his prisoner under the guard of a member of the Committee of Public Safety — for G�rardin had not yet been discharged from his functions — and he proceeded to the Council. When he returned, Rossel and G�rardin were gone. The ambitious young man had slunk like a weasel out of this civil war into which he had heedlessly thrown himself.
One may divine whether Pyat was sparing of adjectives against the fugitive. The new Committee having just been informed of the discovery of two conspiracies, launched a desperate proclamation: ‘Treason had slipped into our ranks. The abandonment of the fort of Issy announced in an impious poster by the wretch who surrendered it, was only the first act of the drama. A monarchical insurrection in our midst coinciding with the surrender of one of our gates was to follow. All the threads of the dark plot are now in our hands. Most of the culprits are arrested. Let all eyes be open, all arms ready to strike the traitors!’
This was going off into melodrama when cold blood and precision were wanted. And the Committee boasted strangely when it pretended to have arrested ‘most of the culprits’ and that it held ‘in its hands all the threads of the dark plot.’
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XXXVI<br>
The balance-sheet of bourgeois vengeance</h1>
<p><img src="pics/lemel.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Lemel" border="1" align="left"></p>
<p class="quoteb">The deported men are happier than our soldiers, for our soldiers have fighting to do, while the deportee lives in the midst of the flowers in his garden. (Speech against amnesty by Admiral Fourichon, Navy Minister, session of 17th May, 1876.)</p>
<p class="quoteb">It is above all the Republicans who must be adverse to the amnesty. (Victor Lefranc, session of 18th May, 1876.)</p>
<p>Two days’ journey from France there is a colony eager for hands, rich enough to enrich thousands of families. After every victory over Parisian workmen the bourgeoisie has always preferred throwing its victims to the antipodes to fecundating Algeria with them. The Republic of 1848 had Nouka-Hiva; the Versaillese Assembly, New Caledonia. It was to this rock, six thousand leagues from their native land, that it decided to transport those condemned for life. ‘The Council of the Government,’ said the reporter on the law, ‘gives the transported a family and a home.’ The machine-gun was more honest. </p>
<p>Those condemned to transportation were huddled together into four depots, Fort Boyard, St. Martin de R�, Ol�ron, and Qu�lern, where for long months they languished between despair and hope, which never abandon political victims. One day, when they believed themselves almost forgotten, a brutal call resounded. To the surgery! A doctor looked at them, questioned them, did not listen to their answers, and said, ‘Fit for departure !’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n256">[256]</a></sup> And then farewell family, country, society, human life, <em>en route </em>for the sepulchre of the antipodes. And happy he who was condemned to transportation only. He could for a last time press a friendly hand, see tears in kindly eyes, give a last kiss. But the galley-slave of the Commune will only see the taskmaster. At the call of the whistle he must undress, be searched, then have the livery of the voyage thrown him, and, without a farewell, ascend the floating prison.</p>
<p>The transport ship was a moving pontoon. Large cages built on the gun-deck shut in the prisoners. In the night these became centres of infection. In the daytime, the uncaged people had but one-half hour to come up on the deck and breathe a little fresh air. Around the cages the jailers stood grumbling, punishing with the black hole the slightest infringement of the rules. Some unhappy beings made the whole voyage at the bottom of the hold, sometimes almost naked, for having refused to comply with a caprice. The women, like the men, were sent to the black hole; the nuns who watched them were worse than the jailers. For five months they had to live in this promiscuous fashion in the cage, in the filth of their neighbours, fed upon biscuits often musty, on bacon, on almost salt water; now burnt by the tropics, now frozen by the cold of the South, or by the spray dashing over the gun-deck. And what spectres arrived! When the <em>Orne </em>dropped anchor off Melbourne there were 360 sick of scurvy out of 588 prisoners .<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n257">[257]</a></sup> They inspired even the rough colonials of Australia with pity. The inhabitants of Melbourne came to succour them, collecting in a few hours 40,000 francs. The commander of the <em>Orne </em>refused to transmit the sum to the prisoners, even in the shape of clothes, tools, and simple necessities.</p>
<p>The <em>Dana� </em>was the first ship that set sail, on the 3rd May, 1872; the <em>Guerri�re, Garonne, Var, Sibylle, Orne, Calvados, Virginie, </em>etc., followed. By the 1st July, 1875, 3,859 prisoners had landed in New Caledonia. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n258">[258]</a></sup></p>
<p>This Caledonian sepulchre has three circles: the peninsula Ducos, not far from Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia, for those condemned to transportation in a fortress — 805 men and 6 women; the Ile des Pins, thirty miles south-east of the principal island, for those condemned to simple transportation — 2,795 men and 13 women; and, quite in the background, worse than death, the penal settlement of the Ile Nou, for 240 galley-slaves.</p>
<p>The peninsula Ducos, a narrow neck of land commanded by cannon, with its mouth guarded by soldiers, without a watercourse, without verdure, is traversed by and hills and swampy valleys. For all shelter the condemned found a few dilapidated hovels; for all furniture, a saucepan and a hammock. The Ile des Pins, a tableland, its centre perfectly desolate, is bounded by fertile plains, but in the hands of the Marist monks, who exploit the labour of the natives. Nothing was prepared for the reception of the condemned. The first who arrived wandered about in the woods; only very long after did they receive poor tents and hammocks. The natives, incited by the missionaries, fled from them, or sold them provisions at enormous prices.</p>
<p>The administration was to have provided the indispensable clothing. None of the prescribed rules was observed. The k�pis and boots were soon worn out, and the immense majority of the condemned having no means whatever, had to bear the sun and the rainy season bare-headed and bare-footed. They had neither tobacco nor soap; there was no brandy to mix with the brackish water.</p>
<p>The prisoners did not lose heart at this beginning. Laborious, active, with that universal aptitude of the Parisian workman, they felt themselves equal to overcoming the first difficulties. The reporter on the law had extolled the thousand revenues of New Caledonia fisheries, cattle-breeding, the working of mines — and represented this compulsory emigration as the founding of a new French Empire in the Pacific. The condemned hoped to make themselves a home in this far-off land. These proletarians were free of the false dignity affected by the proscribed bourgeois; far from refusing work, they sought for it. In the Ile des Pins there were a hospital, an aqueduct, administrative warehouses to be finished, a large road to be constructed; 2,000 condemned presented themselves; 800 only were employed, and their wages never exceeded 85 centimes a day. Some of those rebuffed by the Administration then demanded concessions of territory; they were granted a few yards of land,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n259">[259]</a></sup> and at exorbitant prices some seeds and tools. With the greatest efforts they could hardly make the soil yield a few vegetables. The others, who possessed nothing, applied to private industry, offering their services to the trades-people of Noumea. But the colony, stifled by the military regime, hampered by bureaucratic officials, and of very limited resources besides, could only furnish work to about 500 at the most. Moreover, many of them who had undertaken farming were obliged to give it up very soon and return to the Ile des Pins.</p>
<p>This was the golden age of the transportation. Towards the middle of 1873 a despatch of the Minister of Marine reached Noumea. Ile Versaillese Government suspended all administrative credits in support of the state works. ‘If one admitted,’ said he, ‘the right to labour of the convict, one would soon see the renewal of the scandalous example of the national workshops of 1848.’ Perfectly logical this. Versailles owes no means of labour to those it has deprived of their liberty to labour. So the workshops were closed. The woods of the Ile des Pins offered valuable supplies to the cabinet-makers, and some of the condemned manufactured furniture much in request at Noumea. They were ordered to discontinue. And on the 13th December the Minister of Marine dared to pronounce from the tribune that the majority of the condemned refused every kind of work .<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n260">[260]</a></sup></p>
<p>At the very moment that the Administration thus curtailed the life of the transported, it summoned their wives to the Ministry of Marine, where the most charming picture of New Caledonia was exhibited to them. They were to find there, on their arrival, a house, a piece of land, seeds, and tools. Most of them, suspecting some snare, refused to set out unless invited by their husbands. Sixty-nine, however, were inveigled, and embarked on board the <em>F�n�lon</em> with women sent forth by the Public Assistance Office as helpmates for the colonials. These unfortunate wives of the convicts, on landing, found only the despair and misery of their husbands. The Government refused to send them back again.</p>
<p>Thus there are thousands of men accustomed to work, to activity of mind, penned up, idle and miserable, some in the narrow peninsula, others in the Ile des Pins, without clothes, ill-fed, under orders executed by brutes<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n261">[261]</a></sup> revolver in hand, hardly in connection with the world, save for a few rare letters, and these are even delayed for three weeks at Noumea. In the beginning endless reveries, then discouragement and sombre despair; cases of madness occurred, at last death. The first one set free was the teacher Verdure, member of the Council of the Commune. The commissar of the court-martial had accused him of but one crime: ‘He was a philanthropic Utopian.’ He wanted to open a school in the peninsula; permission was refused him. Useless, far from his wife and daughter, he languished and died. One morning in 1873 the jailers and the priests saw in the winding pathway that leads to the cemetery a coffin covered with flowers carried by some of the condemned. Behind them walked 800 friends in a deep silence. ‘The coffin,’ one of them has told us, ‘was lowered into the grave. A friend spoke a few words of farewell; each one threw in his little red flower, cried, “<em>Vive la R�publique! Vive la Commune</em>!” and all was over.’ In November, in the lie des Pins, Albert Grandier, one of the staff of the <em>Rappel, </em>died. His heart had remained in France, with a sister whom he adored. Every day he went to the sea-shore to wait for her; so he became mad. The Administration refused to admit him into an asylum. He escaped from the friends who guarded him, and one morning was found dead of cold in the swamps, not far from the road that leads to the sea.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n262">[262]</a></sup></p>
<p>These at least have the consolation of suffering with their equals. But the convicts chained in the sink of the scoundrels! ‘I know but one penal colony,’ replied the Republican Minister, Victor Lefranc, to a mother begging for her son. And there is indeed but one penal colony, where heroes like Trinquet and Lisbonne, men all compact of devotion and probity like Fontaine, Roques, the mayor of Puteaux (so many names press forward that I am ashamed to mention a few), journalists of high character like Brissac and Humbert, some whose sole crime was to have carried out a warrant of arrest, have been chained for five years to assassins and thieves, enduring their insults. and bound at night to the same camp-bed. The Versaillese want more than the body; they must attaint the rebellious mind, surround it with an atmosphere of stench and vice, in order to make it fail and founder. The ‘felons’ of the Commune, assimilated to criminals, subjected to the same labour, to the same rule of the stick and whip, are beset by the special hatred of the jailers, who incite the convicts against them From time to time a letter escapes, and even reaches us. Thus writes a member of the Council of the Commune, a man of thirty-three, at one time in robust health:</p>
<p class="quoteb">St. Louis. </p>
<p class="quoteb">... The work of the camp is considered the most severe. It includes the digging up of stones, earthworks, etc. It is only interrupted on the Sunday morning for the religious service. For nourishment we have coffee without sugar at five o'clock in the morning, 700 grammes of bread, and 100 grammes of beans; in the evening a small piece of beef; and, finally, 69 centilitres of wine a week. When I am able to buy a quarter of a pound of bread, my health leaves less to be desired. Already several of ours are no more. Many are attacked with anaemia. Fifteen out of sixty in St. Louis are at the hospital. All this would be nothing if there were not that commingling with men of infamous passions. There are fifty of us in one compartment. As to the employments, shops, and offices, the Communards are excluded from these.</p>
<p>Another writes:</p>
<p class="quoteb">Ile Nou, 15th February. </p>
<p class="quoteb">I isolate myself as much as I can, but there are hours when I must be in the compound on pain of death. There are hours when I must defend my rations from the voracity of my companions, when I must submit to the familiarity of a Mano or of a Lathauer.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n263">[263]</a></sup> This is horrible, and I blush with shame when I think that I have become almost insensible to all this infamy. These wretches are cowards, and are not the least of our tormentors. It is enough to drive one mad, and I believe that many amongst us will become so. Berezowski, this unfortunate man, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n264">[264]</a></sup> who has suffered so much for eight years, is almost demented, and it is painful to look upon him. it is terrible and I dare not think of this. How many months, years, are we still to pass in this penal colony? I tremble at the thought. Despite all, believe that I shall not allow myself to be crushed; my conscience is tranquil, and I am strong. My health alone could betray me and be vanquished, but of myself I am sure, and shall never swerve.</p>
<p>A third:</p>
<p class="quoteb">I have suffered much; the penal settlement of Toulon, the chains, the convicts’ dress, and, what is still worse, the ignoble contact of the criminals — all this I have had to bear with. I have, it is true, one consolation for so much suffering — my tranquil conscience, the love of my old parents, and the esteem of men such as you .... How many times have I been discouraged! What despair, what doubts have seized me! I believed in mankind, and all my illusions have been lost one by one; a great change has come over me, and I have almost failed to resist so many disillusions.</p>
<p>Yet another:</p>
<p class="quoteb">I do not deceive myself; these years are entirely lost for me; not only is my health undermined, but I feel myself getting lower every day. This life is really too hard to bear, without books (save those of the Marne library), in this filthy penal settlement, exposed to all insults, to all blows; shut up in caves; in the workshops treated as beasts; insulted by our jailers and our comrades of the chain, we must submit to it all without a murmur, the slightest infringement entailing terrible punishment — the cell, quarter ration of bread, irons, thumbscrews, the lash. It is ignominious, and I shudder at the thought of it. Many of our comrades are in double chains in the correction platoon, subjected to the hardest labour, dying of hunger, driven on with blows of a cane, often with revolver-shots, unable to communicate with us, who cannot even pass them a mouthful of bread. It is terrible, and I am afraid all this will not end very soon. But protestations will be made; we shall not be abandoned; it would be horrible if we were left here. I am unable to work, so I am right in saying that these years are completely lost, and this drives me to despair; yet I was willing to learn; but what is to be done without books and without a guide? We are almost without news. Still we know that the Republic is affirming itself from day to day; our hope is there, but I dare not believe it; we have had so many deceptions.</p>
<p>How many live today? It is not known. Maroteau left in March, 1875. The Commission of Pardons had increased his sentence; commuted Satory to the Ile Nou. At twenty-five years of age he died in the penal colony for two articles, when the jackals of the Versaillese press, whose every line has demanded and obtained carnage, sway our Paris. To the last moment his courage did not forsake him. ‘It is not a great affair to die,’ said he to the friends who surrounded his deathbed; ‘but I should have preferred the stake of Satory to this filthy pallet. My friends, think of me! What will become of my mother?’</p>
<p>Hear this knell tolled by one of the convicts:</p>
<p class="quoteb">Ile Nou (Limekiln Works), 18th April.</p>
<p class="quoteb">I cannot help saying that many friends are dying, and that this month five have succumbed.</p>
<p class="quoteb">15th May. </p>
<p class="quoteb">Old Audant, one of the transported of the 2nd December, has been for ever released from his chain. He was sickly, old (fifty-nine), and our labour had overcome him. One day, tired out, attacked by acute bronchitis, he was unable to get up; still he was obliged to recommence his work. Two days after he asked for the visit of the doctor. He got the dungeon. Five days after he died in the hospital; and a few days later on, another, Gobert, followed him to the tomb.</p>
<p class="quoteb">Canala, 25th December.</p>
<p class="quoteb">... Add to that the death of old and good friends. After Maroteau, Morten, Mars, Lecolle, whom we buried a month ago.</p>
<p>They die, but none have faltered. The political convicts are men; they succeed in remaining in the pitch without being debased. It is the general inspector Raboul who has allowed this avowal to escape him. What is the Christian martyr’s vaunted heroism of an hour in comparison with these men, who each day, in the indefatigable, merciless clutches of the jailers, maintain unbent their revolutionary faith and their dignity?</p>
<p>And do we even know all their sufferings? Chance alone has raised a corner of the veil. On the 19th March, 1874, Rochefort, Jourde, Paschal Grousset, and three others, condemned to transportation, succeeded in escaping on board an Australian ship. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n265">[265]</a></sup> They landed safely in Australia, and the information they brought with them has thrown a little light upon the den. It was then we learnt that the convicts of the Commune had suffered additional tortures; that the torture of the thumbscrews, which mutilated the hands, is still in use at the penal colony; that four convicts had been shot at the Ile des Pins for a simple assault, which would have been punished by a few months’ imprisonment by ordinary tribunals; that the severity and insults of the jailers seemed intended to cause a rising which would permit of all those condemned to transportation being sent to the penal colony. The convicts had to pay dearly for these revelations. The Versaillese Government immediately sent out the Rear-Admiral Ribourt, and the torture-screw was turned more tightly than ever.</p>
<p>Those who had obtained permission to sojourn in the principal island were again shut up in the peninsula Ducos or the Ile des Pins; fishing was prohibited; every sealed letter confiscated; the right to fetch wood in the forest for cooking food suppressed. The jailers redoubled their brutality, fired at the convicts who went beyond bounds, or who had not returned to their huts at the regulation hour. Some merchants of Noumea, accused of having facilitated the escape of Rochefort and his friends, were expelled from the isle.</p>
<p>Ribourt had brought the dismissal of the governor, La Richerie, former governor of Cayenne, who by dint of rapine had made a great fortune in New Caledonia. Of course it was not for his dishonesty, but for the escape of the 19th March that he was punished. The provisional government was confided to Colonel Alleyron, who had become famous by the massacres of May. Alleyron decreed that every prisoner was to give the State half-a-day’s labour, on pain of receiving only the strictly indispensable food, 700 grammes of bread, I centiletre of oil, and 60 grammes of dried vegetables. As the prisoners protested, he began by applying the decree to fifty-seven persons, of whom four were women.</p>
<p>For the women were subjected to the same rigorous treatment as the men, and they had courageously demanded the right of sharing the common lot of all. Louise Michel and Lemel, whom they had wanted to separate from their comrades, declared that they would kill themselves if the law were violated. Insulted by the jailers, abused sometimes in the order of the day of the commander of the peninsula, scarcely provided with dresses, more than once they had been obliged to put on men’s clothes.</p>
<p>The arrival at the beginning of 1876 of the new governor, De Pritzbuer, terminated the short but brilliant career of Alleyron. Pritzbuer, a renegade of Protestantism turned arrant Jesuit, and sent to New Caldeonia through the Jesuitical tendencies of the Ministry, found ways and means with his mawkish airs to even aggravate the misery of the convicts. He was guided in this task by Colonel Charri�re, general director of the New Caledonian Penitentiary, who declared the criminals of the penal settlement much more honourable than the political convicts. Pritzbuer renewed the order of his predecessor, adding that those of the convicts who in one year should not have been able to create for themselves sufficient resources would no longer receive full rations; and, finally, that the Administration intended exonerating itself at the end of a certain time of all expenses with regard to the convicts. An agent was appointed to act as intermediary between them and the traders of Noumea. But all the decrees in the world cannot extend the commerce or industry of a country without natural resources. It has been said, been proved a hundred times, that New Caledonia has no employment for these thousands of men, who would prosper in a vital and flourishing colony. Those few who could be employed have proved their intelligence, and have carried off several medals or been honourably mentioned at the exhibition of Noumea. The less favoured — hundreds of them — suffer under the blow of the decree of 1875. In reality, the immense majority of those condemned to transportation are now subjected to hard labour. The regulations put into force since the escape of Rochefort have never been mitigated. The wives, the mothers of the convicts, are only allowed to communicate with them at rare intervals, and under the eye of the jailers. More than one has been expelled from the colony.</p>
<p>Despite so many efforts to break them, the honour of the majority of the prisoners has not yielded; far more, it is an example to others. Although the courts-martial have mixed up with the condemned of the Commune a bad element, totally foreign to this revolution, common misdemeanours are very rare. Their condemnation for political misdemeanour, the contact with the best workmen, has even re-made the conscience of many men with but sorry antecedents. The majority of the condemned are punished only for infringements of the rules or for attempts to escape; attempts almost always condemned to failure beforehand. How fly without money and without confederates? There have been but fifteen successful escapes. Towards the middle of March, 1875, twenty prisoners of the Ile des Pins, amongst whom were the member of the Council of the Commune, Rastoul, fled in a bark which they had secretly constructed. Their fate has never been known, but a few days after their flight the wreck of a craft was found amongst the reefs. In November, 1876, Trinquet and some of his comrades managed to abscond in a steamboat. They were pursued, overtaken. Two threw themselves into the sea to escape their pursuers. One died; the other, Trinquet, was restored to life and the penal settlement.</p>
<p>Before such abysses of misery the exiles must not speak of their sufferings, but they may say in a word that they have not sullied the honour of the Cause. Thousands of workmen, with their families, thrown helpless, without resources, into a strange country, speaking a foreign language, employees, professors, still more forlorn, have succeeded by dint of energy in gaining a livelihood. The workmen of the Commune of Paris have won an honourable place in the workshops of foreign countries. They have even, especially in Belgium, rendered prosperous industries till then languishing; they have imparted to certain manufactures the secret of Parisian taste. The proscription of the Communards, like that of the Protestants formerly, has thrown across the frontiers a part of the national wealth. The exiles of the so-called liberal professions, often more unfortunate than the workmen, have not shown less courage. Some fill posts of confidence; one perhaps condemned to death as an incendiary or to hard labour for pillage, is a teacher in a large college or exaniines the candidates for Government schools. Despite the difficulty at the commencement, sickness, slackness of work, not one exile has given way, and not a single condemnation before the police court has occurred. Not a single woman has fallen. Yet it is the women who bear the greater share of the common misery. Amongst these thousands of exiles there have been discovered but two or three spies; and there was only one, Landeck, to get up a journal of denunciations more vile than the Figaro. justice was soon done, for no proscription has been more careful of its dignity. One ex-member of the Council of the Commune had to defend himself before the refugees for having received money from the deputies of the Extreme Left. Never was the commemorative meeting of the 18th March better attended than that of 1876 during the debate on the amnesty, for one and all would have blushed to hide their colours at such a moment. No doubt, like any other proscription, that of 1871 has its groups and its animosities, but all these opinions disappear behind the red flag escorting the coffin of a comrade. No doubt there have been virulent manifestoes, which, however, only affect their authors. Finally, these exiles have not forgotten their brothers of New Caledonia, and they have opened a permanent subscription for them, which has its centre in London. Poor help, no doubt; but this mite from the exiles goes and says to the unfortunate convict of the Commune, ‘Courage, brother! thy comrades do not forget thee; they honour thee.’ It is the hand of the wounded held out to the dying.</p>
<p>Twenty-five thousand men, women, and children killed during the battle or after; three thousand at least dead in the prisons, the pontoons, the forts, or m consequence of maladies contracted during their captivity; thirteen thousand seven hundred condemned, most of them for life; seventy thousand women, children, and old men deprived of their natural supporters or thrown out of Prance; one hundred and eleven thousand victims at least — that is the balance-sheet of bourgeois vengeance for the solitary insurrection of the 18th March.</p>
<p>What a lesson of revolutionary vigour given to the working men! The governing classes shoot <em>en masse </em>without taking the trouble to select the hostages. Their vengeance lasts not an hour; neither years nor victims appease it, they make of it an administrative function, methodical and continuous.</p>
<p>For four years the Rural Assembly allowed the courts-martial to work, and the Liberal element, which so many elections had sent up in great force, at once followed the track of the Rurals. One or two motions for amnesty were burked by the previous question. In the month of January, 1876, when the Rural Assembly broke up, it had removed a few convicts from one part of New Caledonia to another, shortened a few terms of imprisonment, and given full pardon to six hundred persons, condemned to the lightest penalties. The Caledonian reservoir remained intact.</p>
<p>But at the general elections the people did not forget the vanquished. In all the large towns <em>Amnesty </em>was the watchword, it was inscribed at the head of all the democratic programmes; at all the public meetings the question was put to the candidates. The Radicals, tears in their eyes and their hands on their fraternal hearts, pledged themselves to ask for a free and complete amnesty; even the Liberals promised ‘to wipe out the last traces of our civil discords,’ as the bourgeoisie is wont to say when it condescends to have the pavingstones cleaned which itself has reddened with blood.</p>
<p>The elections of February, 1876, were Republican. The famous Gambettist layers had come to the surface. A crowd of lawyers, Liberal landlords, had carried away the provinces in the name of liberty, reforms, appeasement. The Minister of the reaction, Buffet, was beaten along the whole line, even in Rural corners. The Radical papers declared the democratic Republic once for all founded; and one of these in its enthusiasm cried, ‘May we be cursed if we do not close the era of revolutions!’</p>
<p>The hopes for amnesty became now a certainty. No doubt this was the boon by which the reparative Chamber would signalise its joyous advent. A convoy of convicts was about to set sail for New Caledonia. Victor Hugo summoned the President, MacMahon, to adjourn the departure until the discussion and the certainly favourable decision of the two Chambers. A petition, hurriedly organized, in a few days had over a hundred thousand signatures. Soon the question of the amnesty effaced all others, and the Ministry insisted upon an immediate discussion.</p>
<p>Five propositions had been laid on the table. One only demanded the full and complete amnesty. The others excepted the crimes qualified as common crimes, and amongst which were classed newspaper articles. The Chamber appointed a commission to draw up a report. Seven commissioners out of ten declared against all the propositions.</p>
<p>The new layers were manifesting themselves. It was always this same middle-class, bare of ideas and courage, hard to the people, timid before Caesar, pettifogging and jesuitical. The workmen already shot down in June, 1848, by an Assembly of Republicans were to see in 1876 a Republican Assembly rivet the chain forged by the Rurals.</p>
<p>The motion for a full and complete amnesty was supported by those same Radicals who had combated the Commune or abetted M. Thiers. They were now the democratic lions of a Paris without a Socialist press, without popular tribunes, without a history of the Commune, watched by the courts-martial, always on the look-out for more victims, bereft of all revolutionary electors. In this town which he had helped to bleed, there were arrondissements which disputed the honour of electing Louis Blanc. The deputy of Montmartre was the same man who, on the 18th March, had congratulated Lecomte on the capture of the cannon, M. Cl�menceau.</p>
<p>He made a jejune, garbled, timid expos� of the immediate causes of the 18th March, but took good care not to touch upon the veritable causes. Other Radicals, in order to make the vanquished more interesting, strove to lower them. ‘You are absolutely mistaken as to the character of this revolution,’ said M. Lockroy very grandly. ‘You see m it a social revolution, where there has really been only a fit of hysterics and an attack of fever.’ M. Floquet, nominated in the most revolutionary arrondissement, the one in which Delescluze had fallen, called the movement ‘detestable.’ M. Marcou wisely declared that the Commune was ‘an anachronism.’</p>
<p>No one even in the Extreme Left dared courageously to tell the country the truth. ‘Yes; they were right to cling to their arms, these Parisians, who remembered June and December; yes, they were right to maintain that the monarchists were plotting for a revolution; yes, they were right to struggle to the death against the advent of the priest.’ No one dared to speak of the massacres, to call the Government to account for the bloodshed. They were even less outspoken than the <em>Enquete Parlementaire. </em>It is evident from this weak and superficial discussion that they only wanted to redeem their word given to their electors.</p>
<p>To advocates who stooped so low the answer was easy enough. As M. Thiers and Jules Favre had done on the 21st March, 1871, the Minister Dufaure pertinently set forth the true question at issue. ‘No, gentlemen,’ said he, ‘this was not a communal movement; this was in its ideas, its thoughts, and even in its acts, the most radical revolution which has ever been undertaken in the world.’ And the reporter of the Commission: ‘There have been hours in our contemporary history when amnesty may have been a necessity, but the insurrection of the 18th March cannot from any point of view be compared with our civil wars. I see a formidable insurrection, a criminal insurrection, an insurrection against all society. No, nothing obliges us to give back to the condemned of the Commune the rights of citizens.’ The immense majority applauded Dufaure, singing the praises of the courtsmartial, and not a Radical had the courage to protest, to defy the Minister to produce a single document, a single regular judgment. It would be easy to retort to this Extreme Left: ‘Silence, pharisees, who allow the people to be massacred and then come supplicating for them; mute or hostile during the battle, grandiloquent after their defeat.’ Admiral Fourichon denied that the convicts of the Commune are put on the same footing as the others; denied their ill-treatment; said the convicts lived in a very garden of flowers. Some intransigents having stated that, ‘The torture has been re-established,’ this delicious answer was vouchsafed them, ‘It is we whom you put to the torture.’</p>
<p>On the 18th May, 1876, 396 noes against 50 ayes rejected the full and complete amnesty. Gambetta did not vote. The next day they discussed one proposition of amnesty, which excluded those condemned for acts qualified as common crimes by the courts-martial.</p>
<p>The Commission again rejected this motion, saying that it must be left to the mercy of the Government, which had promised a considerable number of pardons. The Radicals discussed a little to save appearances. M. Floquet said, ‘It is not on a question of generosity and mercy that we should ever doubt of the intentions of the Government,’ and the proposition was thrown over.</p>
<p>Two days after, in the Senate, Victor Hugo asked for the amnesty in a speech in which he drew a comparison between the defenders of the Commune and the men of the 2nd December. His proposition was not even discussed.</p>
<p>Two months after, MacMahon completed this hypocritical comedy by writing to the Minister-at-War, ‘Henceforth no more prosecutions are to take place unless commanded by the unanimous sentiment of honest people.’ The honest officers understood. The condemnations continued. Some persons condemned by default, who had ventured to return to France on the strength of the hopes of the first days, had been captured; the sentences against them were confirmed. The organizers of working men’s groups were mercilessly struck when their connection with the Commune could be established. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n266">[266]</a></sup> In November, 1876, the courts-martial pronounced sentences of death .<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n267">[267]</a></sup></p>
<p>This merciless tenacity alarmed public opinion to such an extent that the Radicals were again obliged to bestir themselves a little. Towards the end of 1876 they demanded that the Chamber should put a stop to the prosecutions, or at least limit them. An illusory law was voted; the Senate threw it out; our Liberals reckoned upon that.</p>
<p>The mercy of MacMahon was on a par with the rest. The day after the rejection of the motion for an amnesty, Dufaure had installed a consulting Commission of Pardons, composed of functionaries and reactionaries carefully culled by himself. The penitentiary establishments in France then contained 1,600 persons condemned for participation in the Commune, and the number of the transports rose to about 4,400. The new commission continued the system of the former one, commuted some penalties, granted pardons of a few weeks or a few months, even liberated two or three condemned who were dead. A year after its institution it had recalled from New Caledonia a hundred at the utmost of the least interesting of the prisoners.</p>
<p>Thus the Liberal Chamber continued the vengeance of the Rural Assembly; thus the bourgeois Republic appeared to the working men as hostile to their rights, more implacable perhaps than the Monarchists, justifying the remark of one of M. Thiers’ Ministers, ‘It is above all the Republicans who must be adverse to the amnesty.’ Once again there was justified the instinct of the people on the 18th March, when they perceived in the conservative republic held out to them by M. Thiers an anonymous oppression worse than the Imperialist yoke.</p>
<p>At the present time, six years after the massacres, near fifteen thousand men, women, and children are maintained in New Caledonia or in exile .<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n268">[268]</a></sup></p>
<p>What hope remains? None. The bourgeoisie has been too much frightened. The cries for amnesty, the blazoned-forth elections, will not disquiet the conservative republicans or monarchists. All the apparent concessions will only be so many snares. The most valiant, the most devoted, will die in the penal colony, in the Peninsula Ducos, in the Ile des Pins.</p>
<p>It belongs to the workmen to do their duty so far as it is possible today.</p>
<p>The Irish, after the Fenian insurrection, opened hundreds of public subscriptions for the benefit of the victims. Near �1,200 were devoted to their defence before the tribunals. The three men hanged at Manchester received on the morning of their death the formal promise that their families should want for nothing. This promise was kept. The parents of the one, the wife of the other, were provided for, the children were educated, dowered. In Ireland alone the donations for the families exceeded �5,000. When the partial amnesty was granted, all Irish people rushed forward to help the amnestied. A single paper, the <em>Irishman, </em>in a few weeks received �1,000, for the most part in penny and sixpenny subscriptions. In one single donation the Irish of America sent them �4,000, and the poorest of the poor Irish, the emigrants of New Zealand, over �240. And this was not the outburst of one day. In 1874 the Political Prisoners’ Family Fund still received �425. The total of the subscriptions exceed �10,000. Finally, in 1876, a few Fenians chartered a vessel and carried off some of their comrades still retained in Australia.</p>
<p>In France all the subscriptions for the families of the condemned of the Commune have not exceeded �8,000. The Irish victims numbered only a few hundreds; those of Versailles must be counted by thousands.</p>
<p>Nothing has been done for the transported ‘convicts’. The Greppos, Louis Blancs and Co., who, without mandate, without any surveillance, have arrogated to themselves the right of centralizing the subscriptions, of distributing them at Pleasure, have thus formed themselves a retinue out of the families of those whom they had betrayed. They have refused to transmit anything to the convicts, that is to say, to the most necessitous, who, six thousand leagues from France, pine away without resources and with no possibility of work.</p>
<p>Do you understand, working men, you who are free? You now know what the whole situation is and what the men are. Remember the vanquished not for a day, but at all hours. Women, you whose devotion sustains and elevates their courage, let the agony of the prisoners haunt you like an everlasting nightmare. Let all workshops every week put something aside from their wages. Let the subscriptions no longer be sent to the Versaillese committee, but made over to loyal hands. Let the Socialist party attest its principles of international solidarity and its power by saving those who have fallen for it.</p>
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<a href="glossary.htm">Glossary</a> |
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XXXVI
The balance-sheet of bourgeois vengeance
The deported men are happier than our soldiers, for our soldiers have fighting to do, while the deportee lives in the midst of the flowers in his garden. (Speech against amnesty by Admiral Fourichon, Navy Minister, session of 17th May, 1876.)
It is above all the Republicans who must be adverse to the amnesty. (Victor Lefranc, session of 18th May, 1876.)
Two days’ journey from France there is a colony eager for hands, rich enough to enrich thousands of families. After every victory over Parisian workmen the bourgeoisie has always preferred throwing its victims to the antipodes to fecundating Algeria with them. The Republic of 1848 had Nouka-Hiva; the Versaillese Assembly, New Caledonia. It was to this rock, six thousand leagues from their native land, that it decided to transport those condemned for life. ‘The Council of the Government,’ said the reporter on the law, ‘gives the transported a family and a home.’ The machine-gun was more honest.
Those condemned to transportation were huddled together into four depots, Fort Boyard, St. Martin de R�, Ol�ron, and Qu�lern, where for long months they languished between despair and hope, which never abandon political victims. One day, when they believed themselves almost forgotten, a brutal call resounded. To the surgery! A doctor looked at them, questioned them, did not listen to their answers, and said, ‘Fit for departure !’[256] And then farewell family, country, society, human life, en route for the sepulchre of the antipodes. And happy he who was condemned to transportation only. He could for a last time press a friendly hand, see tears in kindly eyes, give a last kiss. But the galley-slave of the Commune will only see the taskmaster. At the call of the whistle he must undress, be searched, then have the livery of the voyage thrown him, and, without a farewell, ascend the floating prison.
The transport ship was a moving pontoon. Large cages built on the gun-deck shut in the prisoners. In the night these became centres of infection. In the daytime, the uncaged people had but one-half hour to come up on the deck and breathe a little fresh air. Around the cages the jailers stood grumbling, punishing with the black hole the slightest infringement of the rules. Some unhappy beings made the whole voyage at the bottom of the hold, sometimes almost naked, for having refused to comply with a caprice. The women, like the men, were sent to the black hole; the nuns who watched them were worse than the jailers. For five months they had to live in this promiscuous fashion in the cage, in the filth of their neighbours, fed upon biscuits often musty, on bacon, on almost salt water; now burnt by the tropics, now frozen by the cold of the South, or by the spray dashing over the gun-deck. And what spectres arrived! When the Orne dropped anchor off Melbourne there were 360 sick of scurvy out of 588 prisoners .[257] They inspired even the rough colonials of Australia with pity. The inhabitants of Melbourne came to succour them, collecting in a few hours 40,000 francs. The commander of the Orne refused to transmit the sum to the prisoners, even in the shape of clothes, tools, and simple necessities.
The Dana� was the first ship that set sail, on the 3rd May, 1872; the Guerri�re, Garonne, Var, Sibylle, Orne, Calvados, Virginie, etc., followed. By the 1st July, 1875, 3,859 prisoners had landed in New Caledonia. [258]
This Caledonian sepulchre has three circles: the peninsula Ducos, not far from Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia, for those condemned to transportation in a fortress — 805 men and 6 women; the Ile des Pins, thirty miles south-east of the principal island, for those condemned to simple transportation — 2,795 men and 13 women; and, quite in the background, worse than death, the penal settlement of the Ile Nou, for 240 galley-slaves.
The peninsula Ducos, a narrow neck of land commanded by cannon, with its mouth guarded by soldiers, without a watercourse, without verdure, is traversed by and hills and swampy valleys. For all shelter the condemned found a few dilapidated hovels; for all furniture, a saucepan and a hammock. The Ile des Pins, a tableland, its centre perfectly desolate, is bounded by fertile plains, but in the hands of the Marist monks, who exploit the labour of the natives. Nothing was prepared for the reception of the condemned. The first who arrived wandered about in the woods; only very long after did they receive poor tents and hammocks. The natives, incited by the missionaries, fled from them, or sold them provisions at enormous prices.
The administration was to have provided the indispensable clothing. None of the prescribed rules was observed. The k�pis and boots were soon worn out, and the immense majority of the condemned having no means whatever, had to bear the sun and the rainy season bare-headed and bare-footed. They had neither tobacco nor soap; there was no brandy to mix with the brackish water.
The prisoners did not lose heart at this beginning. Laborious, active, with that universal aptitude of the Parisian workman, they felt themselves equal to overcoming the first difficulties. The reporter on the law had extolled the thousand revenues of New Caledonia fisheries, cattle-breeding, the working of mines — and represented this compulsory emigration as the founding of a new French Empire in the Pacific. The condemned hoped to make themselves a home in this far-off land. These proletarians were free of the false dignity affected by the proscribed bourgeois; far from refusing work, they sought for it. In the Ile des Pins there were a hospital, an aqueduct, administrative warehouses to be finished, a large road to be constructed; 2,000 condemned presented themselves; 800 only were employed, and their wages never exceeded 85 centimes a day. Some of those rebuffed by the Administration then demanded concessions of territory; they were granted a few yards of land,[259] and at exorbitant prices some seeds and tools. With the greatest efforts they could hardly make the soil yield a few vegetables. The others, who possessed nothing, applied to private industry, offering their services to the trades-people of Noumea. But the colony, stifled by the military regime, hampered by bureaucratic officials, and of very limited resources besides, could only furnish work to about 500 at the most. Moreover, many of them who had undertaken farming were obliged to give it up very soon and return to the Ile des Pins.
This was the golden age of the transportation. Towards the middle of 1873 a despatch of the Minister of Marine reached Noumea. Ile Versaillese Government suspended all administrative credits in support of the state works. ‘If one admitted,’ said he, ‘the right to labour of the convict, one would soon see the renewal of the scandalous example of the national workshops of 1848.’ Perfectly logical this. Versailles owes no means of labour to those it has deprived of their liberty to labour. So the workshops were closed. The woods of the Ile des Pins offered valuable supplies to the cabinet-makers, and some of the condemned manufactured furniture much in request at Noumea. They were ordered to discontinue. And on the 13th December the Minister of Marine dared to pronounce from the tribune that the majority of the condemned refused every kind of work .[260]
At the very moment that the Administration thus curtailed the life of the transported, it summoned their wives to the Ministry of Marine, where the most charming picture of New Caledonia was exhibited to them. They were to find there, on their arrival, a house, a piece of land, seeds, and tools. Most of them, suspecting some snare, refused to set out unless invited by their husbands. Sixty-nine, however, were inveigled, and embarked on board the F�n�lon with women sent forth by the Public Assistance Office as helpmates for the colonials. These unfortunate wives of the convicts, on landing, found only the despair and misery of their husbands. The Government refused to send them back again.
Thus there are thousands of men accustomed to work, to activity of mind, penned up, idle and miserable, some in the narrow peninsula, others in the Ile des Pins, without clothes, ill-fed, under orders executed by brutes[261] revolver in hand, hardly in connection with the world, save for a few rare letters, and these are even delayed for three weeks at Noumea. In the beginning endless reveries, then discouragement and sombre despair; cases of madness occurred, at last death. The first one set free was the teacher Verdure, member of the Council of the Commune. The commissar of the court-martial had accused him of but one crime: ‘He was a philanthropic Utopian.’ He wanted to open a school in the peninsula; permission was refused him. Useless, far from his wife and daughter, he languished and died. One morning in 1873 the jailers and the priests saw in the winding pathway that leads to the cemetery a coffin covered with flowers carried by some of the condemned. Behind them walked 800 friends in a deep silence. ‘The coffin,’ one of them has told us, ‘was lowered into the grave. A friend spoke a few words of farewell; each one threw in his little red flower, cried, “Vive la R�publique! Vive la Commune!” and all was over.’ In November, in the lie des Pins, Albert Grandier, one of the staff of the Rappel, died. His heart had remained in France, with a sister whom he adored. Every day he went to the sea-shore to wait for her; so he became mad. The Administration refused to admit him into an asylum. He escaped from the friends who guarded him, and one morning was found dead of cold in the swamps, not far from the road that leads to the sea.[262]
These at least have the consolation of suffering with their equals. But the convicts chained in the sink of the scoundrels! ‘I know but one penal colony,’ replied the Republican Minister, Victor Lefranc, to a mother begging for her son. And there is indeed but one penal colony, where heroes like Trinquet and Lisbonne, men all compact of devotion and probity like Fontaine, Roques, the mayor of Puteaux (so many names press forward that I am ashamed to mention a few), journalists of high character like Brissac and Humbert, some whose sole crime was to have carried out a warrant of arrest, have been chained for five years to assassins and thieves, enduring their insults. and bound at night to the same camp-bed. The Versaillese want more than the body; they must attaint the rebellious mind, surround it with an atmosphere of stench and vice, in order to make it fail and founder. The ‘felons’ of the Commune, assimilated to criminals, subjected to the same labour, to the same rule of the stick and whip, are beset by the special hatred of the jailers, who incite the convicts against them From time to time a letter escapes, and even reaches us. Thus writes a member of the Council of the Commune, a man of thirty-three, at one time in robust health:
St. Louis.
... The work of the camp is considered the most severe. It includes the digging up of stones, earthworks, etc. It is only interrupted on the Sunday morning for the religious service. For nourishment we have coffee without sugar at five o'clock in the morning, 700 grammes of bread, and 100 grammes of beans; in the evening a small piece of beef; and, finally, 69 centilitres of wine a week. When I am able to buy a quarter of a pound of bread, my health leaves less to be desired. Already several of ours are no more. Many are attacked with anaemia. Fifteen out of sixty in St. Louis are at the hospital. All this would be nothing if there were not that commingling with men of infamous passions. There are fifty of us in one compartment. As to the employments, shops, and offices, the Communards are excluded from these.
Another writes:
Ile Nou, 15th February.
I isolate myself as much as I can, but there are hours when I must be in the compound on pain of death. There are hours when I must defend my rations from the voracity of my companions, when I must submit to the familiarity of a Mano or of a Lathauer.[263] This is horrible, and I blush with shame when I think that I have become almost insensible to all this infamy. These wretches are cowards, and are not the least of our tormentors. It is enough to drive one mad, and I believe that many amongst us will become so. Berezowski, this unfortunate man, [264] who has suffered so much for eight years, is almost demented, and it is painful to look upon him. it is terrible and I dare not think of this. How many months, years, are we still to pass in this penal colony? I tremble at the thought. Despite all, believe that I shall not allow myself to be crushed; my conscience is tranquil, and I am strong. My health alone could betray me and be vanquished, but of myself I am sure, and shall never swerve.
A third:
I have suffered much; the penal settlement of Toulon, the chains, the convicts’ dress, and, what is still worse, the ignoble contact of the criminals — all this I have had to bear with. I have, it is true, one consolation for so much suffering — my tranquil conscience, the love of my old parents, and the esteem of men such as you .... How many times have I been discouraged! What despair, what doubts have seized me! I believed in mankind, and all my illusions have been lost one by one; a great change has come over me, and I have almost failed to resist so many disillusions.
Yet another:
I do not deceive myself; these years are entirely lost for me; not only is my health undermined, but I feel myself getting lower every day. This life is really too hard to bear, without books (save those of the Marne library), in this filthy penal settlement, exposed to all insults, to all blows; shut up in caves; in the workshops treated as beasts; insulted by our jailers and our comrades of the chain, we must submit to it all without a murmur, the slightest infringement entailing terrible punishment — the cell, quarter ration of bread, irons, thumbscrews, the lash. It is ignominious, and I shudder at the thought of it. Many of our comrades are in double chains in the correction platoon, subjected to the hardest labour, dying of hunger, driven on with blows of a cane, often with revolver-shots, unable to communicate with us, who cannot even pass them a mouthful of bread. It is terrible, and I am afraid all this will not end very soon. But protestations will be made; we shall not be abandoned; it would be horrible if we were left here. I am unable to work, so I am right in saying that these years are completely lost, and this drives me to despair; yet I was willing to learn; but what is to be done without books and without a guide? We are almost without news. Still we know that the Republic is affirming itself from day to day; our hope is there, but I dare not believe it; we have had so many deceptions.
How many live today? It is not known. Maroteau left in March, 1875. The Commission of Pardons had increased his sentence; commuted Satory to the Ile Nou. At twenty-five years of age he died in the penal colony for two articles, when the jackals of the Versaillese press, whose every line has demanded and obtained carnage, sway our Paris. To the last moment his courage did not forsake him. ‘It is not a great affair to die,’ said he to the friends who surrounded his deathbed; ‘but I should have preferred the stake of Satory to this filthy pallet. My friends, think of me! What will become of my mother?’
Hear this knell tolled by one of the convicts:
Ile Nou (Limekiln Works), 18th April.
I cannot help saying that many friends are dying, and that this month five have succumbed.
15th May.
Old Audant, one of the transported of the 2nd December, has been for ever released from his chain. He was sickly, old (fifty-nine), and our labour had overcome him. One day, tired out, attacked by acute bronchitis, he was unable to get up; still he was obliged to recommence his work. Two days after he asked for the visit of the doctor. He got the dungeon. Five days after he died in the hospital; and a few days later on, another, Gobert, followed him to the tomb.
Canala, 25th December.
... Add to that the death of old and good friends. After Maroteau, Morten, Mars, Lecolle, whom we buried a month ago.
They die, but none have faltered. The political convicts are men; they succeed in remaining in the pitch without being debased. It is the general inspector Raboul who has allowed this avowal to escape him. What is the Christian martyr’s vaunted heroism of an hour in comparison with these men, who each day, in the indefatigable, merciless clutches of the jailers, maintain unbent their revolutionary faith and their dignity?
And do we even know all their sufferings? Chance alone has raised a corner of the veil. On the 19th March, 1874, Rochefort, Jourde, Paschal Grousset, and three others, condemned to transportation, succeeded in escaping on board an Australian ship. [265] They landed safely in Australia, and the information they brought with them has thrown a little light upon the den. It was then we learnt that the convicts of the Commune had suffered additional tortures; that the torture of the thumbscrews, which mutilated the hands, is still in use at the penal colony; that four convicts had been shot at the Ile des Pins for a simple assault, which would have been punished by a few months’ imprisonment by ordinary tribunals; that the severity and insults of the jailers seemed intended to cause a rising which would permit of all those condemned to transportation being sent to the penal colony. The convicts had to pay dearly for these revelations. The Versaillese Government immediately sent out the Rear-Admiral Ribourt, and the torture-screw was turned more tightly than ever.
Those who had obtained permission to sojourn in the principal island were again shut up in the peninsula Ducos or the Ile des Pins; fishing was prohibited; every sealed letter confiscated; the right to fetch wood in the forest for cooking food suppressed. The jailers redoubled their brutality, fired at the convicts who went beyond bounds, or who had not returned to their huts at the regulation hour. Some merchants of Noumea, accused of having facilitated the escape of Rochefort and his friends, were expelled from the isle.
Ribourt had brought the dismissal of the governor, La Richerie, former governor of Cayenne, who by dint of rapine had made a great fortune in New Caledonia. Of course it was not for his dishonesty, but for the escape of the 19th March that he was punished. The provisional government was confided to Colonel Alleyron, who had become famous by the massacres of May. Alleyron decreed that every prisoner was to give the State half-a-day’s labour, on pain of receiving only the strictly indispensable food, 700 grammes of bread, I centiletre of oil, and 60 grammes of dried vegetables. As the prisoners protested, he began by applying the decree to fifty-seven persons, of whom four were women.
For the women were subjected to the same rigorous treatment as the men, and they had courageously demanded the right of sharing the common lot of all. Louise Michel and Lemel, whom they had wanted to separate from their comrades, declared that they would kill themselves if the law were violated. Insulted by the jailers, abused sometimes in the order of the day of the commander of the peninsula, scarcely provided with dresses, more than once they had been obliged to put on men’s clothes.
The arrival at the beginning of 1876 of the new governor, De Pritzbuer, terminated the short but brilliant career of Alleyron. Pritzbuer, a renegade of Protestantism turned arrant Jesuit, and sent to New Caldeonia through the Jesuitical tendencies of the Ministry, found ways and means with his mawkish airs to even aggravate the misery of the convicts. He was guided in this task by Colonel Charri�re, general director of the New Caledonian Penitentiary, who declared the criminals of the penal settlement much more honourable than the political convicts. Pritzbuer renewed the order of his predecessor, adding that those of the convicts who in one year should not have been able to create for themselves sufficient resources would no longer receive full rations; and, finally, that the Administration intended exonerating itself at the end of a certain time of all expenses with regard to the convicts. An agent was appointed to act as intermediary between them and the traders of Noumea. But all the decrees in the world cannot extend the commerce or industry of a country without natural resources. It has been said, been proved a hundred times, that New Caledonia has no employment for these thousands of men, who would prosper in a vital and flourishing colony. Those few who could be employed have proved their intelligence, and have carried off several medals or been honourably mentioned at the exhibition of Noumea. The less favoured — hundreds of them — suffer under the blow of the decree of 1875. In reality, the immense majority of those condemned to transportation are now subjected to hard labour. The regulations put into force since the escape of Rochefort have never been mitigated. The wives, the mothers of the convicts, are only allowed to communicate with them at rare intervals, and under the eye of the jailers. More than one has been expelled from the colony.
Despite so many efforts to break them, the honour of the majority of the prisoners has not yielded; far more, it is an example to others. Although the courts-martial have mixed up with the condemned of the Commune a bad element, totally foreign to this revolution, common misdemeanours are very rare. Their condemnation for political misdemeanour, the contact with the best workmen, has even re-made the conscience of many men with but sorry antecedents. The majority of the condemned are punished only for infringements of the rules or for attempts to escape; attempts almost always condemned to failure beforehand. How fly without money and without confederates? There have been but fifteen successful escapes. Towards the middle of March, 1875, twenty prisoners of the Ile des Pins, amongst whom were the member of the Council of the Commune, Rastoul, fled in a bark which they had secretly constructed. Their fate has never been known, but a few days after their flight the wreck of a craft was found amongst the reefs. In November, 1876, Trinquet and some of his comrades managed to abscond in a steamboat. They were pursued, overtaken. Two threw themselves into the sea to escape their pursuers. One died; the other, Trinquet, was restored to life and the penal settlement.
Before such abysses of misery the exiles must not speak of their sufferings, but they may say in a word that they have not sullied the honour of the Cause. Thousands of workmen, with their families, thrown helpless, without resources, into a strange country, speaking a foreign language, employees, professors, still more forlorn, have succeeded by dint of energy in gaining a livelihood. The workmen of the Commune of Paris have won an honourable place in the workshops of foreign countries. They have even, especially in Belgium, rendered prosperous industries till then languishing; they have imparted to certain manufactures the secret of Parisian taste. The proscription of the Communards, like that of the Protestants formerly, has thrown across the frontiers a part of the national wealth. The exiles of the so-called liberal professions, often more unfortunate than the workmen, have not shown less courage. Some fill posts of confidence; one perhaps condemned to death as an incendiary or to hard labour for pillage, is a teacher in a large college or exaniines the candidates for Government schools. Despite the difficulty at the commencement, sickness, slackness of work, not one exile has given way, and not a single condemnation before the police court has occurred. Not a single woman has fallen. Yet it is the women who bear the greater share of the common misery. Amongst these thousands of exiles there have been discovered but two or three spies; and there was only one, Landeck, to get up a journal of denunciations more vile than the Figaro. justice was soon done, for no proscription has been more careful of its dignity. One ex-member of the Council of the Commune had to defend himself before the refugees for having received money from the deputies of the Extreme Left. Never was the commemorative meeting of the 18th March better attended than that of 1876 during the debate on the amnesty, for one and all would have blushed to hide their colours at such a moment. No doubt, like any other proscription, that of 1871 has its groups and its animosities, but all these opinions disappear behind the red flag escorting the coffin of a comrade. No doubt there have been virulent manifestoes, which, however, only affect their authors. Finally, these exiles have not forgotten their brothers of New Caledonia, and they have opened a permanent subscription for them, which has its centre in London. Poor help, no doubt; but this mite from the exiles goes and says to the unfortunate convict of the Commune, ‘Courage, brother! thy comrades do not forget thee; they honour thee.’ It is the hand of the wounded held out to the dying.
Twenty-five thousand men, women, and children killed during the battle or after; three thousand at least dead in the prisons, the pontoons, the forts, or m consequence of maladies contracted during their captivity; thirteen thousand seven hundred condemned, most of them for life; seventy thousand women, children, and old men deprived of their natural supporters or thrown out of Prance; one hundred and eleven thousand victims at least — that is the balance-sheet of bourgeois vengeance for the solitary insurrection of the 18th March.
What a lesson of revolutionary vigour given to the working men! The governing classes shoot en masse without taking the trouble to select the hostages. Their vengeance lasts not an hour; neither years nor victims appease it, they make of it an administrative function, methodical and continuous.
For four years the Rural Assembly allowed the courts-martial to work, and the Liberal element, which so many elections had sent up in great force, at once followed the track of the Rurals. One or two motions for amnesty were burked by the previous question. In the month of January, 1876, when the Rural Assembly broke up, it had removed a few convicts from one part of New Caledonia to another, shortened a few terms of imprisonment, and given full pardon to six hundred persons, condemned to the lightest penalties. The Caledonian reservoir remained intact.
But at the general elections the people did not forget the vanquished. In all the large towns Amnesty was the watchword, it was inscribed at the head of all the democratic programmes; at all the public meetings the question was put to the candidates. The Radicals, tears in their eyes and their hands on their fraternal hearts, pledged themselves to ask for a free and complete amnesty; even the Liberals promised ‘to wipe out the last traces of our civil discords,’ as the bourgeoisie is wont to say when it condescends to have the pavingstones cleaned which itself has reddened with blood.
The elections of February, 1876, were Republican. The famous Gambettist layers had come to the surface. A crowd of lawyers, Liberal landlords, had carried away the provinces in the name of liberty, reforms, appeasement. The Minister of the reaction, Buffet, was beaten along the whole line, even in Rural corners. The Radical papers declared the democratic Republic once for all founded; and one of these in its enthusiasm cried, ‘May we be cursed if we do not close the era of revolutions!’
The hopes for amnesty became now a certainty. No doubt this was the boon by which the reparative Chamber would signalise its joyous advent. A convoy of convicts was about to set sail for New Caledonia. Victor Hugo summoned the President, MacMahon, to adjourn the departure until the discussion and the certainly favourable decision of the two Chambers. A petition, hurriedly organized, in a few days had over a hundred thousand signatures. Soon the question of the amnesty effaced all others, and the Ministry insisted upon an immediate discussion.
Five propositions had been laid on the table. One only demanded the full and complete amnesty. The others excepted the crimes qualified as common crimes, and amongst which were classed newspaper articles. The Chamber appointed a commission to draw up a report. Seven commissioners out of ten declared against all the propositions.
The new layers were manifesting themselves. It was always this same middle-class, bare of ideas and courage, hard to the people, timid before Caesar, pettifogging and jesuitical. The workmen already shot down in June, 1848, by an Assembly of Republicans were to see in 1876 a Republican Assembly rivet the chain forged by the Rurals.
The motion for a full and complete amnesty was supported by those same Radicals who had combated the Commune or abetted M. Thiers. They were now the democratic lions of a Paris without a Socialist press, without popular tribunes, without a history of the Commune, watched by the courts-martial, always on the look-out for more victims, bereft of all revolutionary electors. In this town which he had helped to bleed, there were arrondissements which disputed the honour of electing Louis Blanc. The deputy of Montmartre was the same man who, on the 18th March, had congratulated Lecomte on the capture of the cannon, M. Cl�menceau.
He made a jejune, garbled, timid expos� of the immediate causes of the 18th March, but took good care not to touch upon the veritable causes. Other Radicals, in order to make the vanquished more interesting, strove to lower them. ‘You are absolutely mistaken as to the character of this revolution,’ said M. Lockroy very grandly. ‘You see m it a social revolution, where there has really been only a fit of hysterics and an attack of fever.’ M. Floquet, nominated in the most revolutionary arrondissement, the one in which Delescluze had fallen, called the movement ‘detestable.’ M. Marcou wisely declared that the Commune was ‘an anachronism.’
No one even in the Extreme Left dared courageously to tell the country the truth. ‘Yes; they were right to cling to their arms, these Parisians, who remembered June and December; yes, they were right to maintain that the monarchists were plotting for a revolution; yes, they were right to struggle to the death against the advent of the priest.’ No one dared to speak of the massacres, to call the Government to account for the bloodshed. They were even less outspoken than the Enquete Parlementaire. It is evident from this weak and superficial discussion that they only wanted to redeem their word given to their electors.
To advocates who stooped so low the answer was easy enough. As M. Thiers and Jules Favre had done on the 21st March, 1871, the Minister Dufaure pertinently set forth the true question at issue. ‘No, gentlemen,’ said he, ‘this was not a communal movement; this was in its ideas, its thoughts, and even in its acts, the most radical revolution which has ever been undertaken in the world.’ And the reporter of the Commission: ‘There have been hours in our contemporary history when amnesty may have been a necessity, but the insurrection of the 18th March cannot from any point of view be compared with our civil wars. I see a formidable insurrection, a criminal insurrection, an insurrection against all society. No, nothing obliges us to give back to the condemned of the Commune the rights of citizens.’ The immense majority applauded Dufaure, singing the praises of the courtsmartial, and not a Radical had the courage to protest, to defy the Minister to produce a single document, a single regular judgment. It would be easy to retort to this Extreme Left: ‘Silence, pharisees, who allow the people to be massacred and then come supplicating for them; mute or hostile during the battle, grandiloquent after their defeat.’ Admiral Fourichon denied that the convicts of the Commune are put on the same footing as the others; denied their ill-treatment; said the convicts lived in a very garden of flowers. Some intransigents having stated that, ‘The torture has been re-established,’ this delicious answer was vouchsafed them, ‘It is we whom you put to the torture.’
On the 18th May, 1876, 396 noes against 50 ayes rejected the full and complete amnesty. Gambetta did not vote. The next day they discussed one proposition of amnesty, which excluded those condemned for acts qualified as common crimes by the courts-martial.
The Commission again rejected this motion, saying that it must be left to the mercy of the Government, which had promised a considerable number of pardons. The Radicals discussed a little to save appearances. M. Floquet said, ‘It is not on a question of generosity and mercy that we should ever doubt of the intentions of the Government,’ and the proposition was thrown over.
Two days after, in the Senate, Victor Hugo asked for the amnesty in a speech in which he drew a comparison between the defenders of the Commune and the men of the 2nd December. His proposition was not even discussed.
Two months after, MacMahon completed this hypocritical comedy by writing to the Minister-at-War, ‘Henceforth no more prosecutions are to take place unless commanded by the unanimous sentiment of honest people.’ The honest officers understood. The condemnations continued. Some persons condemned by default, who had ventured to return to France on the strength of the hopes of the first days, had been captured; the sentences against them were confirmed. The organizers of working men’s groups were mercilessly struck when their connection with the Commune could be established. [266] In November, 1876, the courts-martial pronounced sentences of death .[267]
This merciless tenacity alarmed public opinion to such an extent that the Radicals were again obliged to bestir themselves a little. Towards the end of 1876 they demanded that the Chamber should put a stop to the prosecutions, or at least limit them. An illusory law was voted; the Senate threw it out; our Liberals reckoned upon that.
The mercy of MacMahon was on a par with the rest. The day after the rejection of the motion for an amnesty, Dufaure had installed a consulting Commission of Pardons, composed of functionaries and reactionaries carefully culled by himself. The penitentiary establishments in France then contained 1,600 persons condemned for participation in the Commune, and the number of the transports rose to about 4,400. The new commission continued the system of the former one, commuted some penalties, granted pardons of a few weeks or a few months, even liberated two or three condemned who were dead. A year after its institution it had recalled from New Caledonia a hundred at the utmost of the least interesting of the prisoners.
Thus the Liberal Chamber continued the vengeance of the Rural Assembly; thus the bourgeois Republic appeared to the working men as hostile to their rights, more implacable perhaps than the Monarchists, justifying the remark of one of M. Thiers’ Ministers, ‘It is above all the Republicans who must be adverse to the amnesty.’ Once again there was justified the instinct of the people on the 18th March, when they perceived in the conservative republic held out to them by M. Thiers an anonymous oppression worse than the Imperialist yoke.
At the present time, six years after the massacres, near fifteen thousand men, women, and children are maintained in New Caledonia or in exile .[268]
What hope remains? None. The bourgeoisie has been too much frightened. The cries for amnesty, the blazoned-forth elections, will not disquiet the conservative republicans or monarchists. All the apparent concessions will only be so many snares. The most valiant, the most devoted, will die in the penal colony, in the Peninsula Ducos, in the Ile des Pins.
It belongs to the workmen to do their duty so far as it is possible today.
The Irish, after the Fenian insurrection, opened hundreds of public subscriptions for the benefit of the victims. Near �1,200 were devoted to their defence before the tribunals. The three men hanged at Manchester received on the morning of their death the formal promise that their families should want for nothing. This promise was kept. The parents of the one, the wife of the other, were provided for, the children were educated, dowered. In Ireland alone the donations for the families exceeded �5,000. When the partial amnesty was granted, all Irish people rushed forward to help the amnestied. A single paper, the Irishman, in a few weeks received �1,000, for the most part in penny and sixpenny subscriptions. In one single donation the Irish of America sent them �4,000, and the poorest of the poor Irish, the emigrants of New Zealand, over �240. And this was not the outburst of one day. In 1874 the Political Prisoners’ Family Fund still received �425. The total of the subscriptions exceed �10,000. Finally, in 1876, a few Fenians chartered a vessel and carried off some of their comrades still retained in Australia.
In France all the subscriptions for the families of the condemned of the Commune have not exceeded �8,000. The Irish victims numbered only a few hundreds; those of Versailles must be counted by thousands.
Nothing has been done for the transported ‘convicts’. The Greppos, Louis Blancs and Co., who, without mandate, without any surveillance, have arrogated to themselves the right of centralizing the subscriptions, of distributing them at Pleasure, have thus formed themselves a retinue out of the families of those whom they had betrayed. They have refused to transmit anything to the convicts, that is to say, to the most necessitous, who, six thousand leagues from France, pine away without resources and with no possibility of work.
Do you understand, working men, you who are free? You now know what the whole situation is and what the men are. Remember the vanquished not for a day, but at all hours. Women, you whose devotion sustains and elevates their courage, let the agony of the prisoners haunt you like an everlasting nightmare. Let all workshops every week put something aside from their wages. Let the subscriptions no longer be sent to the Versaillese committee, but made over to loyal hands. Let the Socialist party attest its principles of international solidarity and its power by saving those who have fallen for it.
Glossary |
Contents
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./articles/Lissagaray-Prosper/https:..www.marxists.org.history.france.archive.lissagaray.ch30 | <body>
<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XXX<br>
The Left bank falls</h1>
<p>A few thousand men could not indefinitely hold a line of battle several miles long. When night had set in, many Federals abandoned their barricades in order to snatch a little rest. The Versaillese, who were on the look-out, took possession of their defences, and the glimmering of dawn saw the tricolor where on the eve had floated the red flag.</p>
<p>In the darkness the Federals evacuated the greater part of the tenth arrondissement, whose artillery pieces were transported to the Ch�teau d'Eau. Brunel and the brave <em>pupilles de la Commune </em>still stood their ground in the Rue Magnan and on the Quai Jemappes, the troops holding the top of the Boulevard Magenta.</p>
<p>On the left bank, the Versaillese erected batteries at the Place d'Enfer, the Luxembourg, and Bastion 81. More than fifty cannon and machine-guns were levelled at the Butte aux Cailles; for, despairing of taking it by assault, Cissey wished to crush it with his artillery. Wroblewski, on his side, did not remain inactive. Besides the 175th and 176th battalions, he had under his command the legendary 101st, which was to the troops of the Commune what the 32nd brigade had been to the army of Italy. Since the 3rd April the 101st had not rested. Day and night, their guns hot, they had roamed about the trenches, the villages, the fields; the Versaillese of Neuilly, of Asni�res, ten times fled before them. They had taken three cannon from them, which, like faithful mastiffs, followed them everywhere. All citizens of the thirteenth arrondissement and the Mouffetard quarter, undisciplined, undisciplinable, wild, rough, their clothes and flag torn, obeying only one order, that to march forward, mutineering when inactive, when hardly out of fire rendering it necessary to plunge them into it again. S�rizier commanded, or rather accompanied them; for indeed their rage was their only commander. While at the front they attempted surprises, seized outposts, kept the soldiers in alarm, Wroblewski, uncovered on his right since the taking of the Panth�on, secured his communications with the Seine by a barricade on the Bridge of Austerlitz, and furnished the Place Jeanne d'Arc with cannon, in order to check the troops who might venture along the railway station.</p>
<p>That day M. Thiers dared to telegraph to the provinces that Marshal MacMahon had just, for the last time, summoned the Federals to surrender. This was an odious lie added to so many others. Like Cavaignac in 1848, M. Thiers, on the contrary, wanted to prolong the battle. He knew that his shells were setting Paris on fire, that the massacre of the prisoners, of the wounded, would fatally entail that of the hostages. But what cared he for the fate of a few priests and a few gendarmes? What cared the bourgeoisie if it triumphed amidst ruins — if on these ruins it could write, ‘Paris waged war with the privileged; Paris is no more!’</p>
<p>The H�tel-de-Ville and the Panth�on in the power of the troops, their whole efforts concentrated upon the Ch�teau d'Eau, the Bastille, and the Butte aux Cailles. At four o'clock Clinchant resumed his march towards the Ch�teau d'Eau. One column, setting out from the Rue Paradis, went up the Rues du Ch�teau d'Eau and De Bondy; another advanced against the barricade of the Boulevards Magenta and Strasbourg; while a third from the Rue des Jeuneurs pushed on between the boulevards and the Rue Turbigo. The Douay corps on the right supported this movement, and endeavoured to remount the third arrondissement by the Rues Charlot and de Saintonge. Vinoy advanced towards the Bastille by the small streets that abut upon the Rue St. Antoine, the quays of the right and of the left banks. Cissey, with more modest strategy, shelled the Butte aux Cailles, before which his men had so often turned tail.</p>
<p><img src="pics/wroblewski.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Wroblewski" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p>Painful scenes were enacted in the forts. Wroblewski, whose left wing was covered by them, relied for their preservation upon the energy of the member of the Council who had assumed the functions of delegate. The evening before the commander of Montrouge had abandoned that fort and had retreated to Bic�tre with his garrison. The fort of Bic�tre did not hold out much longer. The battalions declared that they wanted to return to the town in order to defend their districts, and the delegate, in spite of his threats, was unable to retain them; so, after having spiked their guns, the whole garrison returned to Paris. The Versaillese occupied the two evacuated forts, and there at once erected batteries against the fort of Ivry and the Butte aux Cailles.</p>
<p>The general attack on the Butte did not begin till midday. The Versaillese followed the ramparts as far as the Avenue d'Italie and the Route de Choisy, with the view of making sure of the Place d'Italie, which they attacked from the side of the Gobelins. The Avenues d'Italie and de Choisy were defended by powerful barricades which they could not dream of forcing; but that of the Boulevard St. Marcel, protected on one side by the conflagration of the Gobelins, could be taken by the numerous gardens intersecting this quarter, and the Versaillese succeeded in doing this. They first took possession of the Rue des Cordilli�res St. Marcel, where twenty Federals who refused to surrender were massacred, and then entered the gardens. For three hours a prolonged and obstinate firing enveloped the Butte aux Cailles, battered down by the Versaillese cannon, six times as numerous as Wroblewski’s.</p>
<p>The garrison of Ivry arrived towards one o'clock. On leaving the fort they had let off a mine which sprung two bastions. Soon after the Versaillese penetrated into the abandoned fort, and then there was no struggle, as M. Thiers tried to make it appear in one of those bulletins in which he very cleverly intermingled truth and falsehood.</p>
<p>Towards ten o'clock on the right bank the Versaillese reached the barricade of the Faubourg St. Denis, near the St. Lazare prison, outflanked and shot seventeen Federals. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n193">[193]</a></sup> Thence they went to occupy the St. Laurent barricade at the junction of the Boulevard Sebastopol, erected batteries against the Ch�teau d'Eau, and by the Rue des R�collets gained the Quai Valmy. On the night, their advance on to the Boulevard St. Martin was retarded by the Rue de Lanery, against which they fired from the Ambigu-Comique Th�atre. In the third arrondissement they were stopped in the Rue Meslay, Rue Nazareth, Rue du Vert-Bois, Rue Charlot, Rue de Saintonge.</p>
<p>The second arrondissement, invaded from all sides, was still disputing its Rue Montorgueuil. Nearer the Seine, Vinoy succeeded in entering the Grenier d'Abondance by circuitous streets, and in order to dislodge him the Federals set fire to this building, which overlooks the Bastille.</p>
<p><em>Three o'clock — </em>The Versaillese invaded the thirteenth arrondissement more and more. Their shells falling upon the prison of the Avenue d'Italie, the Federals evacuated it, at the same time taking out the prisoners, amongst whom were the Dominicans of Arcueil, who had been brought back to Paris with the garrison of Bic�tre. The sight of these men, doubly odious, exasperated the combatants, whose guns, so to say, spontaneously went off, and a dozen of the apostles of the Inquisition fell under the bullets at the moment they were running away by the Avenue. All the other prisoners were respected.</p>
<p>Since the morning Wroblewski had received the order to fall back upon the eleventh arrondissement. He persisted in holding out, and had shifted the centre of his resistance a little further to the rear, to the Place Jeanne d'Arc. But the Versaillese, masters of the Avenue des Gobelins, made their junction with the columns of the Avenues d'Italie and Choisy in the thirteenth arrondissement. One of their detachments, continuing to file along the rampart, reached the embankment of the Orleans Railway, and the red-coats were already showing themselves on the Boulevard St. Marcel. Wroblewski, almost hemmed in on all sides, was at last forced to consent to a retreat. Moreover, the subaltern chiefs had, like their general, received the order to fall back; and so, protected by the fire of the Austerlitz Bridge, the able defender of the Butte aux Cailles passed the Seine in good order with his cannon and a thousand men. A certain number of Federals, who obstinately remained behind in the thirteenth arrondissement, were surrounded and taken prisoners.</p>
<p>The Versaillese did not dare to disturb Wroblewski’s retreat, although they held part of the Boulevard St. Marcel, the Orleans Station, and their gunboats were ascending the Seine. The latter were delayed for a moment at the entrance of the St. Martin’s Canal, but putting on full steam, they overcame the obstacle, and in the evening lent assistance in the attack on the eleventh arrondissement.</p>
<p>The whole left bank now belonged to the enemy; the Bastille and the Ch�teau d'Eau became the centre of the combat.</p>
<p>In the Boulevard Voltaire might now be seen all the true-hearted men who had not perished, or whose presence was not indispensable in their quarters. One of the most active was Vermorel, who during the whole struggle showed a courage composed at once of fire and coolness. On horseback, his red scarf tied round him, he rode from barricade to barricade, encouraging the men, fetching and bringing reinforcements. At the <em>mairie </em>another meeting was held towards twelve o'clock. Twenty-two members of the Council were present; about ten more were defending their arrondissements, the others had disappeared. Arnold explained that the evening before, the secretary of Mr. Washburne, the ambassador of the United States, had come to offer the mediation of the Germans. The Commune, he said, had now only to send commissaries to Vincennes in order to regulate the conditions of an armistice. The secretary, introduced to the meeting, renewed this declaration, and the discussion began. Delescluze showed great reluctance to accept this plan. What motive induced the foreigner to intervene? To put an end to the conflagration and preserve their guarantee, he was answered. But their guarantee was the Versaillese Government, whose triumph was no longer doubtful at this moment. Others gravely asserted that the inveterate defence of Paris had inspired the Prussian with admiration. No one asked whether this insensate proposition did not hide some snare; if the pretended secretary were not a simple spy. They clung like drowning men to this last chance of salvation. Arnold even set forth the basis of an armistice similar to that of the Central Committee. Four of the members present, and amongst them Delescluze, were charged to accompany the American secretary to Vincennes.</p>
<p>At three o'clock they reached the gate of Vincennes, but the commisar of police refused to let them pass. They showed their scarfs, their cards of members of the Council. The commissar insisted upon a safe-conduct from the Commission of Public Safety. While the discussion was going on some Federals came up. ‘Where are you going?’ said they. ‘To Vincennes.’ ‘Why?’ ‘On a mission.’ A painful controversy ensued. The Federals thought the members of the Council wanted to abscond, and they were even about to ill-use them, when someone recognized Delescluze. His name saved the others; but the commissar still insisted upon a safe-conduct.</p>
<p>One of the delegates ran off to the <em>mairie </em>of the eleventh arrondissement to procure it, but, even on Ferr�’s order, the guards refused to lower the drawbridge. Delescluze addressed them and said that the common weal of all was at stake; but prayers and threats proved alike unable to overcome the idea of a defection. Delescluze came back shivering all over. For one moment he had been suspected of cowardice; this was to him a death-blow.</p>
<p>Before the <em>mairie</em> he found a crowd shouting at some flags, surmounted by eagles, which had just, they said, been taken from the Versaillese. Wounded were’ being brought from the Bastille. Mademoiselle Dimitriev, wounded herself, supported Frankel, wounded at the barricade of the Faubourg St. Antoine. Wroblewski just arriving from the Butte aux Cailles, Delescluze offered him the command-in-chief. ‘Have you a few thousand resolute men?’ asked Wroblewski. ‘A few hundred at most,’ answered the delegate. Wroblewski could not accept any responsibility of command under such unequal conditions, and continued to fight as a simple soldier. He was the only general of the Commune who had showed the qualities of a chef-de-corps. He always asked to have those battalions sent him which everybody else declined, undertaking to utilize them.</p>
<p>The attack was coming nearer and nearer the Ch�teau d'Eau. This square, constructed with the object of checking the faubourgs, and opening into eight large avenues, had not been really fortified. The Versaillese, masters of the Folies-Dramatiques Th�atre and of the Rue du Ch�teau d'Eau, attacked it by skirting the Prince Eug�ne Barracks. House by house they tore the Rue Magnan from the <em>pupilles de la Commune. </em>Brunel, after facing the enemy for four days, fell wounded in the thigh. The <em>pupilles </em>carried him away on a litter across the Place du Ch�teau d'Eau amidst a shower of bullets.</p>
<p>From the Rue Magnan the Versaillese soon reached the barracks, and the Federals, too few in number to defend this vast monument, had to evacuate it.</p>
<p>The fall of this position uncovered the Rue Turbigo, thus enabling the Versaillese to occupy the whole upper part of the third arrondissement, and to surround the Conservatoire des Arts et M�tiers. After a rather long struggle the Federals abandoned the barricade of the Conservatoire, leaving behind them a loaded machine-gun. A woman also remained. As soon as the soldiers were within range she discharged the machine-gun at them.</p>
<p>The barricades of the Boulevards Voltaire and Dejazet’s Theatre had henceforth to sustain the whole fire of the Prince Eug�ne Barracks, the Boulevard Magenta, the Boulevard St. Martin, the Rue du Temple, and the Rue Turbigo. Behind their fragile shelter the Federals gallantly received this avalanche. How many men have been called heroes who never showed a hundredth part of this simple courage, without any stage effects, without a history, which shone forth during these days in a thousand places in Paris! At the Ch�teau d'Eau a young girl of nineteen, rosy and charming, with black, curling hair, dressed as a marine fusilier, fought desperately a whole day. At the same place a lieutenant was killed in front of the barricade; a child of fifteen, Dauteuille, went to pick up the k�pi of the dead man in the thick of the bullets, and brought it back amidst the cheers of his companions.</p>
<p>For in the battle of the streets, as in the open field, the children proved themselves as brave as the men. At a barricade of the Faubourg du Temple the most indefatigable gunner was a child. The barricade taken, all its defenders were shot, and the child’s turn also came. He asked for three minutes’ respite; ‘so that he could take his mother, who lived opposite, his silver watch, <em>In order that she might at least not lose everything.’ </em>The officer, involuntarily moved, let him go, not thinking to see him again; but three minutes after the child cried, ‘Here I am!’ jumped on to the pavement, and nimbly leant against the wall near the corpses of his comrades. Paris will never die as long as she brings forth such people.</p>
<p>The Place du Ch�teau d'Eau was ravaged as by a cyclone. The walls crumbled beneath the shells and bombs; enormous blocks were thrown up; the lions of the fountains perforated or overthrown, the basin surmounting it shattered. Fire burst out from twenty houses. The trees were leafless, and their broken branches hung like limbs all but parted from the main body. The gardens, turned up, sent forth clouds of dust. The invisible hand of death alighted upon each stone.</p>
<p>At a quarter to seven, near the <em>mairie </em>of the eleventh arrondissement, we saw Delescluze, Jourde, and about a hundred Federals marching in the direction of the Ch�teau d'Eau. Delescluze wore his ordinary dress, black hat, coat, and trousers, his red scarf, inconspicuous was was his wont, tied round his waist. Without arms, he leant on a cane. Apprehensive of some panic at the Ch�teau d'Eau, we followed the delegate. Some of us stopped at the St. Ambrose Church to get arms. We then met a merchant from Alsace, who, exasperated at those who had betrayed his country, had been fighting for five days, and had just been severely wounded; farther on, Lisbonne, who, like Brunel, having too often defied death, had at last fallen at the Ch�teau d'Eau; he was being brought back almost dead; and finally, Vermorel, wounded by the side of Lisbonne, whom Theisz and Jaclard were carrying off on a litter, leaving behind him large drops of blood. We thus remained a little behind Delescluze. At about eighty yards from the barricade the guards who accompanied him kept back, for the projectiles obscured the entrance of the boulevard.</p>
<p>Delescluze still walked forward. Behold the scene; we have witnessed it; let it be engraved in the annals of history. The sun was setting. The old exile, unmindful whether he was followed, still advanced at the same pace, the only living being on the road. Arrived at the barricade, he bent off to the left and mounted upon the paving-stones.</p>
<p>For the last time his austere face, framed in his white beard, appeared to us turned towards death. Suddenly Delescluze disappeared. He had fallen as if thunderstricken on the Place du Ch�teau d'Eau.</p>
<p>Some men tried to raise him. Three out of four fell dead. The only thing to be thought of now was the barricade, the rallying of its few defenders. A member of the Council, Johannard, almost in the middle of the boulevard, raising his gun, and weeping with rage, cried to those who hesitated, ‘No! you are not worthy of defending the Commune!’ Night set in. We returned heart-broken, leaving, abandoned to the outrages of an adversary without respect for death, the body of our friend.</p>
<p>He had forewarned no one, not even his most intimate friends. Silent, having for confidant only his severe conscience, Delescluze walked to the barricade as the old Montagnards went to the scaffold. An eventful life had exhausted his strength; he had but a breath left, and he gave it. The Versaillese have stolen his body, but his memory will remain enshrined in the heart of the people as long as France shall be the mother-country of the Revolution. He lived only for justice. That was his talent, his science, the pole-star of his life. He proclaimed her, confessed her, through thirty years of exile, prisons, insult, disdaining the persecutions that crushed him. A Jacobin, he fell with the men of the people to defend her. It was his recompense to die for her, his hands free, in the open daylight, at his own time, not afflicted by the sight of the executioner.</p>
<p>Compare the conduct of the Minister of War of the Commune with the cowardice of the Bonapartist Minister and generals escaping death by surrendering their swords.</p>
<p>The whole evening the Versaillese attacked the entrance of the Boulevard Voltaire, protected by the conflagration of the two corner houses. On the side of the Bastille they did not get beyond the Place Royale, but they were breaking into the twelfth arrondissement. Under the shelter of the wall of the quay, they had in the course of the day penetrated beneath the Austerlitz Bridge; in the evening, protected by their gunboats and the batteries of the Jardin des Plantes, they pushed as far as Mazas.</p>
<p>Our right wing held out better. The Versaillese had not been able to proceed further than the Eastern Railway line. From afar they attacked the Rue d'Aubervilliers, aided by the fire of the Rotonde. Ranvier vigorously shelled Montmartre, when a despatch from the Committee of Public Safety informed him that the red flag was floating from the Moulin de la Galette. Ranvier, unable to believe this, refused to cease firing.</p>
<p>In the evening the Versaillese formed in front of the Federals a broken line, commencing from the Eastern Railway, passing the Ch�teau d'Eau and the Bastille, and ending at the Lyons Railway. There remained to the Commune but two arrondissements intact, the nineteenth and twentieth, and about half of the eleventh and twelfth.</p>
<p>The Paris of Versailles no longer presented a civilized aspect. Fear, hate, and fiendish brutishness smothered all feelings of humanity. It was a universal ‘furious madness,’ said the <em>Si�cle </em>of the 26th. ‘One no longer distinguishes the just from the unjust, the innocent from the guilty. The life of citizens weighs no more than a hair. For a cry, for a word, one is arrested, shot.’ The ventilators of the cellars were blocked up by order of the army, which wanted to give credit to the legend of the petroleuses. The National Guards of order crept out from their lurking-places, proud of their armlets, offering their services to the officers, ransacking the houses, requesting the honour of presiding at the shootings. In the tenth arrondissement the former mayor, Dubail, assisted by the commander of the 109th battalion, led the soldiers to hunt those who had formerly been under his administration. Thanks to the <em>brassardiers, </em>the tide of prisoners swelled so that it became necessary to centralize the carnage. The victims were pushed into the <em>mairies, </em>the barracks, the public edifices, where prevotal courts were organized, and shot in troops. When the firingsquad proved insufficient the machine-gun mowed them down. All did not die at once, and in the night there arose from these bleeding heaps ghastly cries of agony.</p>
<p>The shades of night brought back the spectacle of the conflagrations. Where the rays of the sun had only shown sombre clouds, Pyramids of fire now appeared. The Grenier d'Abondance illuminated the Seine far beyond the fortifications. The column of the Bastille, entirely perforated by the shells, which had set its covering of crowns and flags on fire, blazed like a. gigantic torch. The Boulevard Voltaire was burning on the side of the Ch�teau d'Eau.</p>
<p>The death of Delescluze had been so simple and so rapid, that even at the <em>mairie </em>of the eleventh arrondissement it was doubted. Towards midnight some members of the Council agreed to evacuate the <em>mairie.</em></p>
<p>What! always fly before powder and shot! Is the Bastille taken? Does not the Boulevard Voltaire still hold out? The whole strategy of the Committee of Public Safety, its whole plan of battle, was to retreat. At two o'clock in the morning, when a member of the Commune was wanted to support the barricade of the Ch�teau d'Eau, only Gambon was found, asleep in a corner. An officer awoke him and begged his pardon. The worthy Republican answered, ‘It is as well it should be I as another; I have lived,’ and he departed. But the balls already swept the Boulevard Voltaire up to the St. Ambrose Church. The barricade was deserted.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XXX
The Left bank falls
A few thousand men could not indefinitely hold a line of battle several miles long. When night had set in, many Federals abandoned their barricades in order to snatch a little rest. The Versaillese, who were on the look-out, took possession of their defences, and the glimmering of dawn saw the tricolor where on the eve had floated the red flag.
In the darkness the Federals evacuated the greater part of the tenth arrondissement, whose artillery pieces were transported to the Ch�teau d'Eau. Brunel and the brave pupilles de la Commune still stood their ground in the Rue Magnan and on the Quai Jemappes, the troops holding the top of the Boulevard Magenta.
On the left bank, the Versaillese erected batteries at the Place d'Enfer, the Luxembourg, and Bastion 81. More than fifty cannon and machine-guns were levelled at the Butte aux Cailles; for, despairing of taking it by assault, Cissey wished to crush it with his artillery. Wroblewski, on his side, did not remain inactive. Besides the 175th and 176th battalions, he had under his command the legendary 101st, which was to the troops of the Commune what the 32nd brigade had been to the army of Italy. Since the 3rd April the 101st had not rested. Day and night, their guns hot, they had roamed about the trenches, the villages, the fields; the Versaillese of Neuilly, of Asni�res, ten times fled before them. They had taken three cannon from them, which, like faithful mastiffs, followed them everywhere. All citizens of the thirteenth arrondissement and the Mouffetard quarter, undisciplined, undisciplinable, wild, rough, their clothes and flag torn, obeying only one order, that to march forward, mutineering when inactive, when hardly out of fire rendering it necessary to plunge them into it again. S�rizier commanded, or rather accompanied them; for indeed their rage was their only commander. While at the front they attempted surprises, seized outposts, kept the soldiers in alarm, Wroblewski, uncovered on his right since the taking of the Panth�on, secured his communications with the Seine by a barricade on the Bridge of Austerlitz, and furnished the Place Jeanne d'Arc with cannon, in order to check the troops who might venture along the railway station.
That day M. Thiers dared to telegraph to the provinces that Marshal MacMahon had just, for the last time, summoned the Federals to surrender. This was an odious lie added to so many others. Like Cavaignac in 1848, M. Thiers, on the contrary, wanted to prolong the battle. He knew that his shells were setting Paris on fire, that the massacre of the prisoners, of the wounded, would fatally entail that of the hostages. But what cared he for the fate of a few priests and a few gendarmes? What cared the bourgeoisie if it triumphed amidst ruins — if on these ruins it could write, ‘Paris waged war with the privileged; Paris is no more!’
The H�tel-de-Ville and the Panth�on in the power of the troops, their whole efforts concentrated upon the Ch�teau d'Eau, the Bastille, and the Butte aux Cailles. At four o'clock Clinchant resumed his march towards the Ch�teau d'Eau. One column, setting out from the Rue Paradis, went up the Rues du Ch�teau d'Eau and De Bondy; another advanced against the barricade of the Boulevards Magenta and Strasbourg; while a third from the Rue des Jeuneurs pushed on between the boulevards and the Rue Turbigo. The Douay corps on the right supported this movement, and endeavoured to remount the third arrondissement by the Rues Charlot and de Saintonge. Vinoy advanced towards the Bastille by the small streets that abut upon the Rue St. Antoine, the quays of the right and of the left banks. Cissey, with more modest strategy, shelled the Butte aux Cailles, before which his men had so often turned tail.
Painful scenes were enacted in the forts. Wroblewski, whose left wing was covered by them, relied for their preservation upon the energy of the member of the Council who had assumed the functions of delegate. The evening before the commander of Montrouge had abandoned that fort and had retreated to Bic�tre with his garrison. The fort of Bic�tre did not hold out much longer. The battalions declared that they wanted to return to the town in order to defend their districts, and the delegate, in spite of his threats, was unable to retain them; so, after having spiked their guns, the whole garrison returned to Paris. The Versaillese occupied the two evacuated forts, and there at once erected batteries against the fort of Ivry and the Butte aux Cailles.
The general attack on the Butte did not begin till midday. The Versaillese followed the ramparts as far as the Avenue d'Italie and the Route de Choisy, with the view of making sure of the Place d'Italie, which they attacked from the side of the Gobelins. The Avenues d'Italie and de Choisy were defended by powerful barricades which they could not dream of forcing; but that of the Boulevard St. Marcel, protected on one side by the conflagration of the Gobelins, could be taken by the numerous gardens intersecting this quarter, and the Versaillese succeeded in doing this. They first took possession of the Rue des Cordilli�res St. Marcel, where twenty Federals who refused to surrender were massacred, and then entered the gardens. For three hours a prolonged and obstinate firing enveloped the Butte aux Cailles, battered down by the Versaillese cannon, six times as numerous as Wroblewski’s.
The garrison of Ivry arrived towards one o'clock. On leaving the fort they had let off a mine which sprung two bastions. Soon after the Versaillese penetrated into the abandoned fort, and then there was no struggle, as M. Thiers tried to make it appear in one of those bulletins in which he very cleverly intermingled truth and falsehood.
Towards ten o'clock on the right bank the Versaillese reached the barricade of the Faubourg St. Denis, near the St. Lazare prison, outflanked and shot seventeen Federals. [193] Thence they went to occupy the St. Laurent barricade at the junction of the Boulevard Sebastopol, erected batteries against the Ch�teau d'Eau, and by the Rue des R�collets gained the Quai Valmy. On the night, their advance on to the Boulevard St. Martin was retarded by the Rue de Lanery, against which they fired from the Ambigu-Comique Th�atre. In the third arrondissement they were stopped in the Rue Meslay, Rue Nazareth, Rue du Vert-Bois, Rue Charlot, Rue de Saintonge.
The second arrondissement, invaded from all sides, was still disputing its Rue Montorgueuil. Nearer the Seine, Vinoy succeeded in entering the Grenier d'Abondance by circuitous streets, and in order to dislodge him the Federals set fire to this building, which overlooks the Bastille.
Three o'clock — The Versaillese invaded the thirteenth arrondissement more and more. Their shells falling upon the prison of the Avenue d'Italie, the Federals evacuated it, at the same time taking out the prisoners, amongst whom were the Dominicans of Arcueil, who had been brought back to Paris with the garrison of Bic�tre. The sight of these men, doubly odious, exasperated the combatants, whose guns, so to say, spontaneously went off, and a dozen of the apostles of the Inquisition fell under the bullets at the moment they were running away by the Avenue. All the other prisoners were respected.
Since the morning Wroblewski had received the order to fall back upon the eleventh arrondissement. He persisted in holding out, and had shifted the centre of his resistance a little further to the rear, to the Place Jeanne d'Arc. But the Versaillese, masters of the Avenue des Gobelins, made their junction with the columns of the Avenues d'Italie and Choisy in the thirteenth arrondissement. One of their detachments, continuing to file along the rampart, reached the embankment of the Orleans Railway, and the red-coats were already showing themselves on the Boulevard St. Marcel. Wroblewski, almost hemmed in on all sides, was at last forced to consent to a retreat. Moreover, the subaltern chiefs had, like their general, received the order to fall back; and so, protected by the fire of the Austerlitz Bridge, the able defender of the Butte aux Cailles passed the Seine in good order with his cannon and a thousand men. A certain number of Federals, who obstinately remained behind in the thirteenth arrondissement, were surrounded and taken prisoners.
The Versaillese did not dare to disturb Wroblewski’s retreat, although they held part of the Boulevard St. Marcel, the Orleans Station, and their gunboats were ascending the Seine. The latter were delayed for a moment at the entrance of the St. Martin’s Canal, but putting on full steam, they overcame the obstacle, and in the evening lent assistance in the attack on the eleventh arrondissement.
The whole left bank now belonged to the enemy; the Bastille and the Ch�teau d'Eau became the centre of the combat.
In the Boulevard Voltaire might now be seen all the true-hearted men who had not perished, or whose presence was not indispensable in their quarters. One of the most active was Vermorel, who during the whole struggle showed a courage composed at once of fire and coolness. On horseback, his red scarf tied round him, he rode from barricade to barricade, encouraging the men, fetching and bringing reinforcements. At the mairie another meeting was held towards twelve o'clock. Twenty-two members of the Council were present; about ten more were defending their arrondissements, the others had disappeared. Arnold explained that the evening before, the secretary of Mr. Washburne, the ambassador of the United States, had come to offer the mediation of the Germans. The Commune, he said, had now only to send commissaries to Vincennes in order to regulate the conditions of an armistice. The secretary, introduced to the meeting, renewed this declaration, and the discussion began. Delescluze showed great reluctance to accept this plan. What motive induced the foreigner to intervene? To put an end to the conflagration and preserve their guarantee, he was answered. But their guarantee was the Versaillese Government, whose triumph was no longer doubtful at this moment. Others gravely asserted that the inveterate defence of Paris had inspired the Prussian with admiration. No one asked whether this insensate proposition did not hide some snare; if the pretended secretary were not a simple spy. They clung like drowning men to this last chance of salvation. Arnold even set forth the basis of an armistice similar to that of the Central Committee. Four of the members present, and amongst them Delescluze, were charged to accompany the American secretary to Vincennes.
At three o'clock they reached the gate of Vincennes, but the commisar of police refused to let them pass. They showed their scarfs, their cards of members of the Council. The commissar insisted upon a safe-conduct from the Commission of Public Safety. While the discussion was going on some Federals came up. ‘Where are you going?’ said they. ‘To Vincennes.’ ‘Why?’ ‘On a mission.’ A painful controversy ensued. The Federals thought the members of the Council wanted to abscond, and they were even about to ill-use them, when someone recognized Delescluze. His name saved the others; but the commissar still insisted upon a safe-conduct.
One of the delegates ran off to the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement to procure it, but, even on Ferr�’s order, the guards refused to lower the drawbridge. Delescluze addressed them and said that the common weal of all was at stake; but prayers and threats proved alike unable to overcome the idea of a defection. Delescluze came back shivering all over. For one moment he had been suspected of cowardice; this was to him a death-blow.
Before the mairie he found a crowd shouting at some flags, surmounted by eagles, which had just, they said, been taken from the Versaillese. Wounded were’ being brought from the Bastille. Mademoiselle Dimitriev, wounded herself, supported Frankel, wounded at the barricade of the Faubourg St. Antoine. Wroblewski just arriving from the Butte aux Cailles, Delescluze offered him the command-in-chief. ‘Have you a few thousand resolute men?’ asked Wroblewski. ‘A few hundred at most,’ answered the delegate. Wroblewski could not accept any responsibility of command under such unequal conditions, and continued to fight as a simple soldier. He was the only general of the Commune who had showed the qualities of a chef-de-corps. He always asked to have those battalions sent him which everybody else declined, undertaking to utilize them.
The attack was coming nearer and nearer the Ch�teau d'Eau. This square, constructed with the object of checking the faubourgs, and opening into eight large avenues, had not been really fortified. The Versaillese, masters of the Folies-Dramatiques Th�atre and of the Rue du Ch�teau d'Eau, attacked it by skirting the Prince Eug�ne Barracks. House by house they tore the Rue Magnan from the pupilles de la Commune. Brunel, after facing the enemy for four days, fell wounded in the thigh. The pupilles carried him away on a litter across the Place du Ch�teau d'Eau amidst a shower of bullets.
From the Rue Magnan the Versaillese soon reached the barracks, and the Federals, too few in number to defend this vast monument, had to evacuate it.
The fall of this position uncovered the Rue Turbigo, thus enabling the Versaillese to occupy the whole upper part of the third arrondissement, and to surround the Conservatoire des Arts et M�tiers. After a rather long struggle the Federals abandoned the barricade of the Conservatoire, leaving behind them a loaded machine-gun. A woman also remained. As soon as the soldiers were within range she discharged the machine-gun at them.
The barricades of the Boulevards Voltaire and Dejazet’s Theatre had henceforth to sustain the whole fire of the Prince Eug�ne Barracks, the Boulevard Magenta, the Boulevard St. Martin, the Rue du Temple, and the Rue Turbigo. Behind their fragile shelter the Federals gallantly received this avalanche. How many men have been called heroes who never showed a hundredth part of this simple courage, without any stage effects, without a history, which shone forth during these days in a thousand places in Paris! At the Ch�teau d'Eau a young girl of nineteen, rosy and charming, with black, curling hair, dressed as a marine fusilier, fought desperately a whole day. At the same place a lieutenant was killed in front of the barricade; a child of fifteen, Dauteuille, went to pick up the k�pi of the dead man in the thick of the bullets, and brought it back amidst the cheers of his companions.
For in the battle of the streets, as in the open field, the children proved themselves as brave as the men. At a barricade of the Faubourg du Temple the most indefatigable gunner was a child. The barricade taken, all its defenders were shot, and the child’s turn also came. He asked for three minutes’ respite; ‘so that he could take his mother, who lived opposite, his silver watch, In order that she might at least not lose everything.’ The officer, involuntarily moved, let him go, not thinking to see him again; but three minutes after the child cried, ‘Here I am!’ jumped on to the pavement, and nimbly leant against the wall near the corpses of his comrades. Paris will never die as long as she brings forth such people.
The Place du Ch�teau d'Eau was ravaged as by a cyclone. The walls crumbled beneath the shells and bombs; enormous blocks were thrown up; the lions of the fountains perforated or overthrown, the basin surmounting it shattered. Fire burst out from twenty houses. The trees were leafless, and their broken branches hung like limbs all but parted from the main body. The gardens, turned up, sent forth clouds of dust. The invisible hand of death alighted upon each stone.
At a quarter to seven, near the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement, we saw Delescluze, Jourde, and about a hundred Federals marching in the direction of the Ch�teau d'Eau. Delescluze wore his ordinary dress, black hat, coat, and trousers, his red scarf, inconspicuous was was his wont, tied round his waist. Without arms, he leant on a cane. Apprehensive of some panic at the Ch�teau d'Eau, we followed the delegate. Some of us stopped at the St. Ambrose Church to get arms. We then met a merchant from Alsace, who, exasperated at those who had betrayed his country, had been fighting for five days, and had just been severely wounded; farther on, Lisbonne, who, like Brunel, having too often defied death, had at last fallen at the Ch�teau d'Eau; he was being brought back almost dead; and finally, Vermorel, wounded by the side of Lisbonne, whom Theisz and Jaclard were carrying off on a litter, leaving behind him large drops of blood. We thus remained a little behind Delescluze. At about eighty yards from the barricade the guards who accompanied him kept back, for the projectiles obscured the entrance of the boulevard.
Delescluze still walked forward. Behold the scene; we have witnessed it; let it be engraved in the annals of history. The sun was setting. The old exile, unmindful whether he was followed, still advanced at the same pace, the only living being on the road. Arrived at the barricade, he bent off to the left and mounted upon the paving-stones.
For the last time his austere face, framed in his white beard, appeared to us turned towards death. Suddenly Delescluze disappeared. He had fallen as if thunderstricken on the Place du Ch�teau d'Eau.
Some men tried to raise him. Three out of four fell dead. The only thing to be thought of now was the barricade, the rallying of its few defenders. A member of the Council, Johannard, almost in the middle of the boulevard, raising his gun, and weeping with rage, cried to those who hesitated, ‘No! you are not worthy of defending the Commune!’ Night set in. We returned heart-broken, leaving, abandoned to the outrages of an adversary without respect for death, the body of our friend.
He had forewarned no one, not even his most intimate friends. Silent, having for confidant only his severe conscience, Delescluze walked to the barricade as the old Montagnards went to the scaffold. An eventful life had exhausted his strength; he had but a breath left, and he gave it. The Versaillese have stolen his body, but his memory will remain enshrined in the heart of the people as long as France shall be the mother-country of the Revolution. He lived only for justice. That was his talent, his science, the pole-star of his life. He proclaimed her, confessed her, through thirty years of exile, prisons, insult, disdaining the persecutions that crushed him. A Jacobin, he fell with the men of the people to defend her. It was his recompense to die for her, his hands free, in the open daylight, at his own time, not afflicted by the sight of the executioner.
Compare the conduct of the Minister of War of the Commune with the cowardice of the Bonapartist Minister and generals escaping death by surrendering their swords.
The whole evening the Versaillese attacked the entrance of the Boulevard Voltaire, protected by the conflagration of the two corner houses. On the side of the Bastille they did not get beyond the Place Royale, but they were breaking into the twelfth arrondissement. Under the shelter of the wall of the quay, they had in the course of the day penetrated beneath the Austerlitz Bridge; in the evening, protected by their gunboats and the batteries of the Jardin des Plantes, they pushed as far as Mazas.
Our right wing held out better. The Versaillese had not been able to proceed further than the Eastern Railway line. From afar they attacked the Rue d'Aubervilliers, aided by the fire of the Rotonde. Ranvier vigorously shelled Montmartre, when a despatch from the Committee of Public Safety informed him that the red flag was floating from the Moulin de la Galette. Ranvier, unable to believe this, refused to cease firing.
In the evening the Versaillese formed in front of the Federals a broken line, commencing from the Eastern Railway, passing the Ch�teau d'Eau and the Bastille, and ending at the Lyons Railway. There remained to the Commune but two arrondissements intact, the nineteenth and twentieth, and about half of the eleventh and twelfth.
The Paris of Versailles no longer presented a civilized aspect. Fear, hate, and fiendish brutishness smothered all feelings of humanity. It was a universal ‘furious madness,’ said the Si�cle of the 26th. ‘One no longer distinguishes the just from the unjust, the innocent from the guilty. The life of citizens weighs no more than a hair. For a cry, for a word, one is arrested, shot.’ The ventilators of the cellars were blocked up by order of the army, which wanted to give credit to the legend of the petroleuses. The National Guards of order crept out from their lurking-places, proud of their armlets, offering their services to the officers, ransacking the houses, requesting the honour of presiding at the shootings. In the tenth arrondissement the former mayor, Dubail, assisted by the commander of the 109th battalion, led the soldiers to hunt those who had formerly been under his administration. Thanks to the brassardiers, the tide of prisoners swelled so that it became necessary to centralize the carnage. The victims were pushed into the mairies, the barracks, the public edifices, where prevotal courts were organized, and shot in troops. When the firingsquad proved insufficient the machine-gun mowed them down. All did not die at once, and in the night there arose from these bleeding heaps ghastly cries of agony.
The shades of night brought back the spectacle of the conflagrations. Where the rays of the sun had only shown sombre clouds, Pyramids of fire now appeared. The Grenier d'Abondance illuminated the Seine far beyond the fortifications. The column of the Bastille, entirely perforated by the shells, which had set its covering of crowns and flags on fire, blazed like a. gigantic torch. The Boulevard Voltaire was burning on the side of the Ch�teau d'Eau.
The death of Delescluze had been so simple and so rapid, that even at the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement it was doubted. Towards midnight some members of the Council agreed to evacuate the mairie.
What! always fly before powder and shot! Is the Bastille taken? Does not the Boulevard Voltaire still hold out? The whole strategy of the Committee of Public Safety, its whole plan of battle, was to retreat. At two o'clock in the morning, when a member of the Commune was wanted to support the barricade of the Ch�teau d'Eau, only Gambon was found, asleep in a corner. An officer awoke him and begged his pardon. The worthy Republican answered, ‘It is as well it should be I as another; I have lived,’ and he departed. But the balls already swept the Boulevard Voltaire up to the St. Ambrose Church. The barricade was deserted.
Glossary |
Contents |
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<h3>Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</h3>
<h1>Glossary</h1>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information"><span class="info">Arrondissements</span> — The 20 administrative districts, each with a mayor, into which Paris was divided.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Brassardiers</span> — Arm-band wearers.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Cantiniere</span> — Canteen woman attached to each battalion.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Catafalques</span> — Decorated coffins used in funeral processions.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Chassepots</span> — An early type of rifle.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Code Napoleon</span> — The French legal code upholding bourgeois property and rights drawn up under Napoleon I but still the basis of the French legal system.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Corps Legislatif</span> — Legislative Assembly.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Enceinte</span> — The wall around the old city of Paris.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Faubourgs</span> — Suburbs.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Feuilles-de-route</span> — Travel document issued to a soldier giving the route to be followed and destination, and used for passing from one army unit to another.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Franc-tireurs</span> — Irregular soldiers.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Gallicans</span> — The Church faction which wanted the independence of the Church in France and questioned the appointment of bishops. (Cf. Ultramontanes below.)</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Girondists</span> — The right wing of the Revolution in 1793, opposed by the Jacobins.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">H�tel-de-Ville</span> — The central town hall of Paris.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Lettres de cachet</span> — The famous order by which the monarchs of the old regime could have people imprisoned indefinitely in the Bastille or other prisons.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Lev�e en masse</span> — The general mobilisation of the populace for battle.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Mairie</span> — Town hall of each arrondissement.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Montagnards</span> — A name for the Jacobins — the left wing of the bourgeois revolution — deriving from the high benches they occupied in the revolutionary assembly of 1791-2.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Octrois</span> — Local taxes levied at the city limits.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Pekin</span> — Term for civilian used by the military.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Procureur de la R�publique</span> — Public Prosecutor.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Pupilles de la Commune</span> — Orphans — largely of men who had died in the fighting — who were taken care of by the Commune.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Rappel</span> — The call to arms.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Rurales</span> — Provincials.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Sbirri — </span>Police thugs.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Sergents-de-ville</span> — Municipal police.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Tabellionat</span> — Scriveners (a category of members of the legal profession).</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Tirailleurs</span> — Riflemen.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Turcos</span> — Algerian units of the French army, so called by the Russians in the Crimean War who took them for Turks.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Ultra-montanes</span> — Church faction which looked to Rome.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info">Vareuse</span> — Cross-fastening jacket.</p>
<p class="skip"> </p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="footer">
<a href="index.htm">Contents</a> |
<a href="notes.htm">Notes</a> |
<a href="appendix.htm">Appendix</a><br>
<a href="../../../../archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/index.htm">The Civil War in France</a> |
<a href="../../paris-commune/index.htm">Paris Commune Archive</a>
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</body> |
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Glossary
Arrondissements — The 20 administrative districts, each with a mayor, into which Paris was divided.
Brassardiers — Arm-band wearers.
Cantiniere — Canteen woman attached to each battalion.
Catafalques — Decorated coffins used in funeral processions.
Chassepots — An early type of rifle.
Code Napoleon — The French legal code upholding bourgeois property and rights drawn up under Napoleon I but still the basis of the French legal system.
Corps Legislatif — Legislative Assembly.
Enceinte — The wall around the old city of Paris.
Faubourgs — Suburbs.
Feuilles-de-route — Travel document issued to a soldier giving the route to be followed and destination, and used for passing from one army unit to another.
Franc-tireurs — Irregular soldiers.
Gallicans — The Church faction which wanted the independence of the Church in France and questioned the appointment of bishops. (Cf. Ultramontanes below.)
Girondists — The right wing of the Revolution in 1793, opposed by the Jacobins.
H�tel-de-Ville — The central town hall of Paris.
Lettres de cachet — The famous order by which the monarchs of the old regime could have people imprisoned indefinitely in the Bastille or other prisons.
Lev�e en masse — The general mobilisation of the populace for battle.
Mairie — Town hall of each arrondissement.
Montagnards — A name for the Jacobins — the left wing of the bourgeois revolution — deriving from the high benches they occupied in the revolutionary assembly of 1791-2.
Octrois — Local taxes levied at the city limits.
Pekin — Term for civilian used by the military.
Procureur de la R�publique — Public Prosecutor.
Pupilles de la Commune — Orphans — largely of men who had died in the fighting — who were taken care of by the Commune.
Rappel — The call to arms.
Rurales — Provincials.
Sbirri — Police thugs.
Sergents-de-ville — Municipal police.
Tabellionat — Scriveners (a category of members of the legal profession).
Tirailleurs — Riflemen.
Turcos — Algerian units of the French army, so called by the Russians in the Crimean War who took them for Turks.
Ultra-montanes — Church faction which looked to Rome.
Vareuse — Cross-fastening jacket.
Contents |
Notes |
Appendix
The Civil War in France |
Paris Commune Archive
|
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<p><img src="pics/delescluze.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="delescluze, member of the commune's committee of public safety" border="1" align="left"></p>
<h1>Chapter II<br>
The coalition opens fire on Paris</h1>
<p class="quoteb">The Republic was threatened by the Assembly, it was said. Gentlemen, when the insurrection broke out, the Assembly was noted politically by only two acts: nominating the head of the executive power and accepting a republican cabinet. (Speech against amnesty by Larcy of the Centre Left, session of 18th May, 1876.)</p>
<p>To the rural plebiscite the Parisian National Guard had answered by their federation; to the threats of the monarchists, to the projects of decapitalization, by the demonstration of the Bastille; to D'Aurelles’ appointment, by the resolutions of the 3rd March. What the perils of the siege had not been able to effect the Assembly had brought about — the union of the middle class with the proletariat. The immense majority of Paris looked upon the growing army of the Republic without regret. On the 3rd the Minister of the Interior, Picard, having denounced ‘the anonymous Central Committee,’ and called upon ‘all good citizens to stifle these culpable demonstrations,’ no one stirred. Besides, the accusation was ridiculous. The Committee showed itself in the open day, sent its minutes to the papers, and had only held a demonstration to save Paris from a catastrophe. It answered the next day: ‘The Committee is not anonymous; it is the union of the representatives of free men aspiring to the solidarity of all the members of the National Guard. Its acts have always been signed. It repels with contempt the calumnies which accuse it of inciting to pillage and civil war.’ The signatures followed.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n72">[72]</a></sup></p>
<p>The leaders of the coalition saw clearly which way events were drifting. The republican army each day increased its arsenal of muskets, and especially of cannon. There were now pieces of ordnance at ten different places — at the Barri�re d'Italie, at the Faubourg St. Antoine, at the Buttes Montmartre. Red posters informed Paris of the formation of the Central Committee of the federation of the National Guards, and invited citizens to organize in each arrondissement committees of battalions and councils of legions, and to appoint the delegates to the Central Committee. The ensemble, the ardour of the movement seemed to bear witness to the powerful organization of the Central Committee. A few days more and the answer of the people would be complete if a blow were not struck at once.</p>
<p>What they misunderstood was the stout heart of the enemy. The victory of the 22nd January blinded them. They believed in the stories of their journals, in the cowardice of the National Guards, in the bragging of Ducrot, who, in the bureaux of the Assembly swore eternal hatred to the demagogues, but for whom, he said, he would have conquered.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n73">[73]</a></sup> The bullies of the reaction fancied they could swallow Paris at a mouthful.</p>
<p>The operation was conducted with clerical skill, method, and discipline. Legitimists and Orleanists, disagreeing. as to the name of the monarch, had accepted the compromise of Thiers, an equal share in the Government, which was called ‘the pact of Bordeaux.’ Besides, against Paris there could be no division.</p>
<p>From the commencement of March the provincial papers held forth at the same time, speaking of incendiarism and pillage in Paris. On the 4th there was but one rumour in the bureaux of the Assembly — that an insurrection had broken out; that the telegraphic communications were cut off; that General Vinoy had retreated to the left bank of the Seine. The Government, which propagated these rumours <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n74">[74]</a></sup> despatched four deputies, who were also mayors, to Paris. They arrived on the 5th, and found Paris perfectly calm, even gay.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n75">[75]</a></sup> The mayors and adjuncts, assembled by the Minister of the Interior, attested to the tranquillity of the town. But Picard, no doubt in the conspiracy, said, ‘This tranquillity is only apparent. We must act.’ And the ultra-Conservative Vautrain added, ‘We must take the bull by the horns and arrest the Central Committee.'</p>
<p>The Right never ceased baiting the bull. Sneers, provocations, insults, were showered upon Paris and her representatives. Some among them, Rochefort, Tridon, Malon, and Ranc, when withdrawing after the vote mutilating the country, were followed by cries of ‘Pleasant journey to you.’ Victor Hugo defending Garibaldi was hooted. Delescluze demanding the impeachment of the members of the National Defence was no better listened to. Jules Simon declared that he would maintain the law against association. On the 10th the breach was opened. A resolution was passed that Paris should no longer be the capital, and that the Assembly should sit at Versailles.</p>
<p>This was calling forth the Commune, for Paris could not remain at the same time without a Government and without a municipality. The field of battle once found, despair was to supply it with an army. The Government had already decided to continue the pay of the National Guards to those only who should ask for it. The Assembly decreed that the bills due on the 13th November, 1870, should be made payable on the 13th March, that is, in three days. The Minister Dufaure obstinately refused any concession on this point. Notwithstanding the urgent appeals of Milli�re, the Assembly refused to pass any protective bill for the tenants whose house-rents had been due for six months. Two or three hundred thousand workmen, shopkeepers, model makers, small manufacturers working in their own lodgings, who had spent their little stock of money and could not yet earn any more, all business being at a standstill, were thus thrown upon the tender mercies of the landlord, of hunger and bankruptcy. From the 13th to the 17th of March 150,000 bills were dishonoured. Finally, the Right obliged M. Thiers to declare from the tribune ‘that the Assembly could proceed to its deliberations at Versailles without fearing the paying stones of rioters,’ thus constraining him to act at once, for the deputies were to meet again at Versailles on the 20th.</p>
<p>D'Aurelles commenced operations against the National Guard, declaring he would submit it to rigorous discipline and purge it of its bad elements. ‘My first duty,’ said his order of the day, ‘is to secure the respect due to law and property'— this eternal provocation on the part of the bourgeoisie when lifted to supreme power by revolutionary events.</p>
<p>The other senators also joined in. On the 7th Vinoy threw into the streets with a pittance of eight shillings a head the twenty-one thousand mobiles of the Seine. On the 11th, the day on which Paris learnt of her decapitation and the ruinous decrees, Vinoy suppressed six Republican journals, four of which, <em>Le Cri du Peuple, Le Mot</em> <em>d'Ordre, Le P�re Duch�ne</em>, and <em>Le Vengeur, </em>had a circulation of 200,000. The same day the court-martial which judged the accused of the 31st October condemned several to death, among others Flourens and Blanqui. Thus everybody was hit — bourgeois, republicans, revolutionaries. This Assembly of Bordeaux, the deadly foe of Paris, a stranger to her in sentiment, mind, and language, seemed a Government of foreigners. The commercial quarters as well as the faubourgs rang with a general outcry against it. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n76">[76]</a></sup></p>
<p>From this time the last hesitation disappeared. The mayor of Montmartre, Cl�menceau, had been intriguing for several days to effect the surrender of the cannon, and he had even found officers disposed to capitulate; but the battalion protested, and on the 12th, when D'Aurelles sent his teams, the guards refused to deliver the pieces. Picard, making an attempt at firmness, sent for Courty, saying, ‘The members of the Central Committee are risking their heads,’ and obtained a quasi-promise. The Committee expelled Courty.</p>
<p>It had since the 6th met at the hall of the Corderie. Although keeping aloof from, and entirely independent of, the three other groups, the reputation of the place was useful to it. It gave evidence of good policy and baffled the intrigues of the commandant, Du Bisson, an officer who had served abroad and been employed in undertakings of an equivocal character, and who was trying to constitute a Central Committee from above with the battalion leaders. The Central Committee sent three delegates to this group, where they met with lively opposition. One chief of battalion, Barberet, showed himself particularly restive; but another, Faltot, carried away the Assembly, saying, ‘I am going over to the people.’ The fusion was concluded on the 10th, the day of the general meeting of the delegates. The Committee presented its weekly report. It recounted the events of the last days, the nomination of D'Aurelles, the menaces of Picard, remarking very justly, ‘That which we are, events have made us: the reiterated attacks of a press hostile to democracy have taught it, the menaces of the Government have confirmed it; we are the inexorable barrier raised against every attempt at the overthrow of the Republic.’ The delegates were invited to push forward the elections of the Central Committee. An appeal to the army was drawn up: ‘Soldiers, children of the people! Let us unite to serve the Republic. Kings and emperors have done us harm enough.’ The next day the soldiers lately arrived from the army of the Loire gathered in front of these red posters, which bore the names and addresses of all the members of the Committee.</p>
<p>The Revolution, bereft of its newspapers spoke now through posters, of the greatest variety of colour and opinion, plastered on all the walls. Flourens and Blanqui, condemned in contumacy, posted up their protestations. Sub-committees were being formed in all the popular arrondissements. That of the thirteenth arrondissement had for its leader a young iron founder, Duval, a man of cold and commanding energy. The sub-committee of the Rue des Rosiers surrounded their cannon by a ditch and had them guarded day and night.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n77">[77]</a></sup> All these committees quashed the orders of D'Aurelles and were the true commanders of the National Guard.</p>
<p>No doubt Paris was roused, ready to redeem her abdication during the siege. This Paris, lean and oppressed by want, adjourned peace and business, thinking only of the Republic. The provisional Central Committee, without troubling itself about Vinoy, who had demanded the arrest of all its members, presented itself on the 15th at the general assembly of the Vauxhall. Two hundred and fifteen battalions were represented, and acclaimed Garibaldi as commander-in-chief of the National Guard. An orator, Lullier, led the Assembly astray. He was an ex-naval officer, completely crack-brained, with a semblance of military instruction, and when not heated by alcohol having intervals of lucidity which might deceive any one. He was named commanding colonel of the artillery. Then came the names of those elected members of the Central Committee, about thirty in all, for several arrondissements had not yet voted. This was the regular Central Committee which was to be installed at the H�tel-de-Ville. Many of those elected had formed part of the preceding commission. The others were all equally obscure, belonging to the proletariat and small middle class, known only to their battalions.</p>
<p><img src="pics/hotel-de-ville.jpg" hspace="12" vspace="2" alt="The Hotel-de-Ville" align="right" border="1">
What mattered their obscurity? The Central Committee was not a Government at the head of a party. It had no Utopia to initiate. A very simple idea, fear of the monarchy, could alone have grouped together so many battalions. The National Guard constituted itself an assurance company against a <em>coup-d'�tat; </em>for if Thiers and his agents repeated the word ‘Republic,’ their own party and the Assembly cried <em>Vive le Roi! </em>The Central Committee was a sentinel, that was all.</p>
<p>The storm was gathering; all was uncertain. The International convoked the Socialist deputies to ask them what to do. But no attack was planned, nor even suggested. The Central Committee formally declared that the first shot would not be fired by the people, and that they would only defend themselves in case of aggression.</p>
<p>The aggressor, M. Thiers, arrived on the 15th. For a long time he had foreseen that it would be necessary to engage in a terrible struggle with Paris; but he intended acting at his own good time, to retake the town when disposing of an army of forty thousand men, well picked, carefully kept aloof from the Parisians. This plan has been revealed by a general officer. At that moment Thiers had only the mere wreck of an army.</p>
<p>The 230,000 men disarmed by the capitulation, mostly mobiles or men having finished their term of service, had been sent home in hot haste, as they would only have swelled the Parisian army. Already some mobiles, marines, and soldiers had laid the basis of a republican association with the National Guards. There remained to Vinoy only the division allowed him by the Prussians and 3,000 sergeants-de-ville or gendarmes, in all 15,000 men, rather ill-conditioned. Lef� sent him a few thousand men picked up in the armies of the Loire and of the North, but they arrived slowly, almost without cadres, harassed, and disgusted at the service. At Vinoy’s very first review they were on the point of mutinying. They left them straggling through Paris, abandoned, mixing with the Parisians, who succoured them, the women bringing them soup and blankets to their huts, where they were freezing. In fact, on the 19th the Government had only about 25,000 men, without cohesion and discipline, two-thirds of them gained over to the faubourgs.</p>
<p>How disarm 100,000 men with this mob? For, to carry off the cannon, it was necessary to disarm the National Guard. The Parisians were no longer novices in warfare. ‘Having taken our cannon,’ they said, ‘they will make our muskets useless.’ The coalition would listen to nothing. Hardly arrived, they urged M. Thiers to act, to lance the abscess at once. The financiers — no doubt the same who had precipitated the war to give fresh impulse to their jobbery<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n78">[78]</a></sup> — said to him, ‘You will never be able to carry out financial operations if you don’t make an end of these scoundrels.'<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n79">[79]</a></sup> All these declared the taking of the cannon would be mere child’s play.</p>
<p>They were indeed hardly watched, but because the National Guard knew them to be in a safe place. It would suffice to pull up a few paving stones to prevent their removal down the narrow steep streets of Montmartre. On the first alarm all Paris would hasten to the rescue. This had been seen on the 16th. when gendarmes presented themselves to take from the Place des Vosges the cannon promised Vautrain. The National Guards arrived from all sides and unscrewed the pieces, and the shopkeepers of the Rue des Tournelles commenced unpaving the street.</p>
<p>An attack was nonsensical, and it was this that determined Paris remain on the defensive. But M. Thiers saw nothing, neither disaffection of the middle classes nor the deep irritation of faubourgs. The little man, a dupe all his life, even of a MacMahon prompted by the approach of the 20th March, spurred on by Jules Favre and Picard, who, since the failure of the 31st of October, believed the revolutionaries incapable of any serious action, and jealous to play the part of a Bonaparte, threw himself head foremost into the venture. On the 17th he held a council, and, without calculating his forces or those of the enemy, without forewarning the mayors — Picard had formally promised them not to attempt to use force without consulting them — without listening to the chiefs of the bourgeois battalions, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n80">[80]</a></sup> this Government, too weak to arrest even the twenty-five members of the Central Committee, gave the order to carry off two hundred and fifty cannon <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n81">[81]</a></sup> guarded by all Paris.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter II
The coalition opens fire on Paris
The Republic was threatened by the Assembly, it was said. Gentlemen, when the insurrection broke out, the Assembly was noted politically by only two acts: nominating the head of the executive power and accepting a republican cabinet. (Speech against amnesty by Larcy of the Centre Left, session of 18th May, 1876.)
To the rural plebiscite the Parisian National Guard had answered by their federation; to the threats of the monarchists, to the projects of decapitalization, by the demonstration of the Bastille; to D'Aurelles’ appointment, by the resolutions of the 3rd March. What the perils of the siege had not been able to effect the Assembly had brought about — the union of the middle class with the proletariat. The immense majority of Paris looked upon the growing army of the Republic without regret. On the 3rd the Minister of the Interior, Picard, having denounced ‘the anonymous Central Committee,’ and called upon ‘all good citizens to stifle these culpable demonstrations,’ no one stirred. Besides, the accusation was ridiculous. The Committee showed itself in the open day, sent its minutes to the papers, and had only held a demonstration to save Paris from a catastrophe. It answered the next day: ‘The Committee is not anonymous; it is the union of the representatives of free men aspiring to the solidarity of all the members of the National Guard. Its acts have always been signed. It repels with contempt the calumnies which accuse it of inciting to pillage and civil war.’ The signatures followed.[72]
The leaders of the coalition saw clearly which way events were drifting. The republican army each day increased its arsenal of muskets, and especially of cannon. There were now pieces of ordnance at ten different places — at the Barri�re d'Italie, at the Faubourg St. Antoine, at the Buttes Montmartre. Red posters informed Paris of the formation of the Central Committee of the federation of the National Guards, and invited citizens to organize in each arrondissement committees of battalions and councils of legions, and to appoint the delegates to the Central Committee. The ensemble, the ardour of the movement seemed to bear witness to the powerful organization of the Central Committee. A few days more and the answer of the people would be complete if a blow were not struck at once.
What they misunderstood was the stout heart of the enemy. The victory of the 22nd January blinded them. They believed in the stories of their journals, in the cowardice of the National Guards, in the bragging of Ducrot, who, in the bureaux of the Assembly swore eternal hatred to the demagogues, but for whom, he said, he would have conquered.[73] The bullies of the reaction fancied they could swallow Paris at a mouthful.
The operation was conducted with clerical skill, method, and discipline. Legitimists and Orleanists, disagreeing. as to the name of the monarch, had accepted the compromise of Thiers, an equal share in the Government, which was called ‘the pact of Bordeaux.’ Besides, against Paris there could be no division.
From the commencement of March the provincial papers held forth at the same time, speaking of incendiarism and pillage in Paris. On the 4th there was but one rumour in the bureaux of the Assembly — that an insurrection had broken out; that the telegraphic communications were cut off; that General Vinoy had retreated to the left bank of the Seine. The Government, which propagated these rumours [74] despatched four deputies, who were also mayors, to Paris. They arrived on the 5th, and found Paris perfectly calm, even gay.[75] The mayors and adjuncts, assembled by the Minister of the Interior, attested to the tranquillity of the town. But Picard, no doubt in the conspiracy, said, ‘This tranquillity is only apparent. We must act.’ And the ultra-Conservative Vautrain added, ‘We must take the bull by the horns and arrest the Central Committee.'
The Right never ceased baiting the bull. Sneers, provocations, insults, were showered upon Paris and her representatives. Some among them, Rochefort, Tridon, Malon, and Ranc, when withdrawing after the vote mutilating the country, were followed by cries of ‘Pleasant journey to you.’ Victor Hugo defending Garibaldi was hooted. Delescluze demanding the impeachment of the members of the National Defence was no better listened to. Jules Simon declared that he would maintain the law against association. On the 10th the breach was opened. A resolution was passed that Paris should no longer be the capital, and that the Assembly should sit at Versailles.
This was calling forth the Commune, for Paris could not remain at the same time without a Government and without a municipality. The field of battle once found, despair was to supply it with an army. The Government had already decided to continue the pay of the National Guards to those only who should ask for it. The Assembly decreed that the bills due on the 13th November, 1870, should be made payable on the 13th March, that is, in three days. The Minister Dufaure obstinately refused any concession on this point. Notwithstanding the urgent appeals of Milli�re, the Assembly refused to pass any protective bill for the tenants whose house-rents had been due for six months. Two or three hundred thousand workmen, shopkeepers, model makers, small manufacturers working in their own lodgings, who had spent their little stock of money and could not yet earn any more, all business being at a standstill, were thus thrown upon the tender mercies of the landlord, of hunger and bankruptcy. From the 13th to the 17th of March 150,000 bills were dishonoured. Finally, the Right obliged M. Thiers to declare from the tribune ‘that the Assembly could proceed to its deliberations at Versailles without fearing the paying stones of rioters,’ thus constraining him to act at once, for the deputies were to meet again at Versailles on the 20th.
D'Aurelles commenced operations against the National Guard, declaring he would submit it to rigorous discipline and purge it of its bad elements. ‘My first duty,’ said his order of the day, ‘is to secure the respect due to law and property'— this eternal provocation on the part of the bourgeoisie when lifted to supreme power by revolutionary events.
The other senators also joined in. On the 7th Vinoy threw into the streets with a pittance of eight shillings a head the twenty-one thousand mobiles of the Seine. On the 11th, the day on which Paris learnt of her decapitation and the ruinous decrees, Vinoy suppressed six Republican journals, four of which, Le Cri du Peuple, Le Mot d'Ordre, Le P�re Duch�ne, and Le Vengeur, had a circulation of 200,000. The same day the court-martial which judged the accused of the 31st October condemned several to death, among others Flourens and Blanqui. Thus everybody was hit — bourgeois, republicans, revolutionaries. This Assembly of Bordeaux, the deadly foe of Paris, a stranger to her in sentiment, mind, and language, seemed a Government of foreigners. The commercial quarters as well as the faubourgs rang with a general outcry against it. [76]
From this time the last hesitation disappeared. The mayor of Montmartre, Cl�menceau, had been intriguing for several days to effect the surrender of the cannon, and he had even found officers disposed to capitulate; but the battalion protested, and on the 12th, when D'Aurelles sent his teams, the guards refused to deliver the pieces. Picard, making an attempt at firmness, sent for Courty, saying, ‘The members of the Central Committee are risking their heads,’ and obtained a quasi-promise. The Committee expelled Courty.
It had since the 6th met at the hall of the Corderie. Although keeping aloof from, and entirely independent of, the three other groups, the reputation of the place was useful to it. It gave evidence of good policy and baffled the intrigues of the commandant, Du Bisson, an officer who had served abroad and been employed in undertakings of an equivocal character, and who was trying to constitute a Central Committee from above with the battalion leaders. The Central Committee sent three delegates to this group, where they met with lively opposition. One chief of battalion, Barberet, showed himself particularly restive; but another, Faltot, carried away the Assembly, saying, ‘I am going over to the people.’ The fusion was concluded on the 10th, the day of the general meeting of the delegates. The Committee presented its weekly report. It recounted the events of the last days, the nomination of D'Aurelles, the menaces of Picard, remarking very justly, ‘That which we are, events have made us: the reiterated attacks of a press hostile to democracy have taught it, the menaces of the Government have confirmed it; we are the inexorable barrier raised against every attempt at the overthrow of the Republic.’ The delegates were invited to push forward the elections of the Central Committee. An appeal to the army was drawn up: ‘Soldiers, children of the people! Let us unite to serve the Republic. Kings and emperors have done us harm enough.’ The next day the soldiers lately arrived from the army of the Loire gathered in front of these red posters, which bore the names and addresses of all the members of the Committee.
The Revolution, bereft of its newspapers spoke now through posters, of the greatest variety of colour and opinion, plastered on all the walls. Flourens and Blanqui, condemned in contumacy, posted up their protestations. Sub-committees were being formed in all the popular arrondissements. That of the thirteenth arrondissement had for its leader a young iron founder, Duval, a man of cold and commanding energy. The sub-committee of the Rue des Rosiers surrounded their cannon by a ditch and had them guarded day and night.[77] All these committees quashed the orders of D'Aurelles and were the true commanders of the National Guard.
No doubt Paris was roused, ready to redeem her abdication during the siege. This Paris, lean and oppressed by want, adjourned peace and business, thinking only of the Republic. The provisional Central Committee, without troubling itself about Vinoy, who had demanded the arrest of all its members, presented itself on the 15th at the general assembly of the Vauxhall. Two hundred and fifteen battalions were represented, and acclaimed Garibaldi as commander-in-chief of the National Guard. An orator, Lullier, led the Assembly astray. He was an ex-naval officer, completely crack-brained, with a semblance of military instruction, and when not heated by alcohol having intervals of lucidity which might deceive any one. He was named commanding colonel of the artillery. Then came the names of those elected members of the Central Committee, about thirty in all, for several arrondissements had not yet voted. This was the regular Central Committee which was to be installed at the H�tel-de-Ville. Many of those elected had formed part of the preceding commission. The others were all equally obscure, belonging to the proletariat and small middle class, known only to their battalions.
What mattered their obscurity? The Central Committee was not a Government at the head of a party. It had no Utopia to initiate. A very simple idea, fear of the monarchy, could alone have grouped together so many battalions. The National Guard constituted itself an assurance company against a coup-d'�tat; for if Thiers and his agents repeated the word ‘Republic,’ their own party and the Assembly cried Vive le Roi! The Central Committee was a sentinel, that was all.
The storm was gathering; all was uncertain. The International convoked the Socialist deputies to ask them what to do. But no attack was planned, nor even suggested. The Central Committee formally declared that the first shot would not be fired by the people, and that they would only defend themselves in case of aggression.
The aggressor, M. Thiers, arrived on the 15th. For a long time he had foreseen that it would be necessary to engage in a terrible struggle with Paris; but he intended acting at his own good time, to retake the town when disposing of an army of forty thousand men, well picked, carefully kept aloof from the Parisians. This plan has been revealed by a general officer. At that moment Thiers had only the mere wreck of an army.
The 230,000 men disarmed by the capitulation, mostly mobiles or men having finished their term of service, had been sent home in hot haste, as they would only have swelled the Parisian army. Already some mobiles, marines, and soldiers had laid the basis of a republican association with the National Guards. There remained to Vinoy only the division allowed him by the Prussians and 3,000 sergeants-de-ville or gendarmes, in all 15,000 men, rather ill-conditioned. Lef� sent him a few thousand men picked up in the armies of the Loire and of the North, but they arrived slowly, almost without cadres, harassed, and disgusted at the service. At Vinoy’s very first review they were on the point of mutinying. They left them straggling through Paris, abandoned, mixing with the Parisians, who succoured them, the women bringing them soup and blankets to their huts, where they were freezing. In fact, on the 19th the Government had only about 25,000 men, without cohesion and discipline, two-thirds of them gained over to the faubourgs.
How disarm 100,000 men with this mob? For, to carry off the cannon, it was necessary to disarm the National Guard. The Parisians were no longer novices in warfare. ‘Having taken our cannon,’ they said, ‘they will make our muskets useless.’ The coalition would listen to nothing. Hardly arrived, they urged M. Thiers to act, to lance the abscess at once. The financiers — no doubt the same who had precipitated the war to give fresh impulse to their jobbery[78] — said to him, ‘You will never be able to carry out financial operations if you don’t make an end of these scoundrels.'[79] All these declared the taking of the cannon would be mere child’s play.
They were indeed hardly watched, but because the National Guard knew them to be in a safe place. It would suffice to pull up a few paving stones to prevent their removal down the narrow steep streets of Montmartre. On the first alarm all Paris would hasten to the rescue. This had been seen on the 16th. when gendarmes presented themselves to take from the Place des Vosges the cannon promised Vautrain. The National Guards arrived from all sides and unscrewed the pieces, and the shopkeepers of the Rue des Tournelles commenced unpaving the street.
An attack was nonsensical, and it was this that determined Paris remain on the defensive. But M. Thiers saw nothing, neither disaffection of the middle classes nor the deep irritation of faubourgs. The little man, a dupe all his life, even of a MacMahon prompted by the approach of the 20th March, spurred on by Jules Favre and Picard, who, since the failure of the 31st of October, believed the revolutionaries incapable of any serious action, and jealous to play the part of a Bonaparte, threw himself head foremost into the venture. On the 17th he held a council, and, without calculating his forces or those of the enemy, without forewarning the mayors — Picard had formally promised them not to attempt to use force without consulting them — without listening to the chiefs of the bourgeois battalions, [80] this Government, too weak to arrest even the twenty-five members of the Central Committee, gave the order to carry off two hundred and fifty cannon [81] guarded by all Paris.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XX<br>
Rossel replaces Cluseret</h1>
<p><img src="pics/rossel.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Rossel" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p>The last act of the second Executive Commission was to name Rossel delegate at War. On the same evening (the 30th April) it sent for him. He came at once, recited the history of famous sieges, and promised to make Paris impregnable. No one asked him for a written plan, and there and then, as on the stage, his nomination was signed. He forthwith wrote to the Council, ‘I accept these difficult functions, but I want your entire support in order not to succumb under the weight of these circumstances.’</p>
<p>Rossel knew these circumstances through and through. For twenty-five days chief of the general staff, he was the best-informed man in Paris as to all her military resources. He was familiar with the members of the Council, of the Central Committee, the officers, the effective forces, the character of the troops he undertook to lead.</p>
<p>At the outset he struck a wrong chord in his answer to the Versaillese officer who had summoned the fort of Issy to surrender. ‘My dear comrade, the first time you permit yourself to send us such an insolent summons, I shall have your flag of truce shot. Your devoted comrade. ‘The cynical levity smacked of the condottiere. Certainly he who threatened to shoot an innocent soldier, and bestowed his <em>dear, </em>his <em>devoted comrade </em>upon a collaborator of Galiffet, was foreign to the great heart of Paris and her civil war.</p>
<p>No man understood Paris, the National Guard, less than Rossel. He imagined that the <em>P�re Duchesne </em>was the real mouthpiece of the workmen. Hardly raised to the Ministry, he spoke of putting the National Guard into barracks, of cannonading the runaways; he wanted to dismember the legions and form them into regiments, with colonels named by himself. The Central Committee, to which the <em>chefs-de-l�gion </em>belonged, protested, and the battalions complained to the Council, which sent for Rossel. He set forth his project in a professional way in sober, precise words, so different from the Pyatical declamations, that the Council believed it beheld a man and was charmed. Still his project was the breaking-up of the National Guard, and the Council no more than the Executive Commission got a general plan of defence from him. He certainly demanded that the municipalities should be charged with concentration of arms, the horses, and prosecution of the refractory, but he made no condition <em>sine qua non.</em></p>
<p>He sent in no report on the military situation. He gave orders for the construction of a second enceinte of barricades, and of three citadels at Montmartre, the Trocadero, and the Panth�on, but never personally concerned himself about their execution. He extended the command of General Wroblewski over all troops and forts on the left bank, but three days after restricted it again to bestow it upon La C�cilia, who had none of the qualities necessary in a superior commander. He never gave the generals any instructions for attack or defence. Despite certain fits and starts, he had in reality so little energy that he named Eudes commander of the second active reserve at the very moment when, against formal orders, this latter left the fort of Issy, which he had commanded since the reoccupation.</p>
<p>The Versaillese had recommenced firing with perfect fury. The shells, the bombs, battered the casemates, the grapeshot paved the trenches with iron. In the night of the lst-2nd, the Versaillese, always proceeding by nocturnal surprises, attacked the station of Clamart, which was taken almost without a struggle, and the castle of Issy, which they had to conquer foot by foot. On the morning of the 2nd the fort again found itself in the same situation as three days before. A part of the village of Issy was even in the hands of the soldiers. During the day the francs-tireurs of Paris dislodged them at the point of the bayonet. Eudes, who in vain demanded reinforcements, went to the War Office to declare that he would not remain if Wetzel were not discharged. Wetzel was replaced by La C�cilia, but Eudes did not return to the fort, and left the command to the chief of his staff.</p>
<p>Thus since the 3rd it was evident that everything would go on as under Cluseret, and the Central Committee grew bolder. It had been thrown more and more into the shade, for the Commission of War kept it at a distance. Its sittings, more and more confused and void, were little attended-by about ten members, sometimes even by less.</p>
<p>The enterprise of Rossel against the legions gave it back a little authority and daring. On the 3rd, in accord with the <em>chefs-de-l�gion, </em>they resolved to ask the Council for the direction and administration of the War Office: Rossel got wind of the affair, and had one of its members arrested; the others in great numbers, the <em>chefs-de-l�gion </em>with their sabres at their sides, went up to the H�tel-de-Ville, where they were received by F�lix Pyat, deeply moved by the odd conceit that they came to lay hands on him. ‘Nothing is getting along at the War Office,’ said they. ‘All the services are in disorder. The Central Committee offers itself to direct them. The delegate will conduct the operations, the Committee will see to the administration.’ F�lix Pyat approved of the idea and submitted it to the Council. The minority took umbrage at the pretensions of the Committee, and even spoke of having them arrested. The majority left the matter to the Committee of Public Safety, which issued a decree admitting the co-operation of the Central Committee. Rossel accepted the situation and announced it to the chiefs of corps. The Commission of War continued, in spite of all this, to squabble with the Committee.</p>
<p>Our men paid dearly for these small office revolutions. Tired out, badly commanded, they were negligent of their watches, and thus exposed to every surprise. The most terrible one took place in the night of the 3rd-4th May at the redoubt of the Moulin Saquet, held by 500 men at that moment. They were sleeping in their tents, when the Versaillese, having seized the sentinels, entered the redoubt and butchered about fifty Federals. The soldiers pierced the tents with their bayonets, slashing the corpses, and then made off with five pieces and 200 prisoners. The captain of the 55th was accused of having betrayed the pass word. The truth is not known, as incredible fact! — the Council never inquired into the affair.</p>
<p>M. Thiers announced this ‘elegant <em>coup-de-main</em>’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n147">[147]</a></sup> in a bantering despatch to the effect that they had killed two hundred men; that ‘such was the victory the Commune might announce in its bulletins.’ The prisoners, taken to Versailles, were received by the elegant rabble who killed time in the caf�s of St. Germain, now become the headquarters of high-life prostitution, or who went to the heights to see the shells battering the walls and the Parisians. But what were these insipid amusements by the side of a convoy of prisoners, whom they could beat, spit upon, and revile, a thousand times renewing the agonies of Math�?</p>
<p>The simply bestial ferocity of the soldiers was much less horrible.</p>
<p>These poor wretches firmly believed that the Federals were thieves or Prussians, and that they tortured their prisoners. There were some who, taken to Paris, for a long time refused all nourishment in dread of poison. The officers propagated these horrible stories; some even believed them. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n148">[148]</a></sup> The greater part, arriving from Germany in a state of extreme irritation against Paris, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n149">[149]</a></sup> said publicly, ‘We shall give these scoundrels no quarter,’ and they set the example of summary executions. On the 25th April, at the Belle-Epine, near Ville-Juif, four National Guards, surprised by mounted chasseurs, called upon to surrender, laid down their arms. The soldiers were leading them when an officer appeared, and, without further ado, discharged his revolver at them. Two were killed; the two others, left for dead, were able to drag themselves as far as the neighbouring trenches, where one of them expired.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n150">[150]</a></sup> The fourth was transported to the ambulance. Paris, erstwhile besieged by the Prussians, was now tracked by tigers.</p>
<p>These sinister forebodings of the lot reserved to the vanquished made the Council indignant, but did not enlighten it. The disorder grew greater with the danger. Rossel set nothing going. Pyat, whom he had often silenced with a word, abhorred him, and never ceased undermining his authority. ‘You see this man,’ said he to the Romanticists, ‘well, he is a traitor — a Caesarian! After the Trochu plan, the Rossel plan.’ On the 8th May he had the direction of the military operations transferred to Dombrowski, leaving only nominal functions to Rossel, who, apprised of this that same evening, hurried to the Committee of Public Safety and forced it to revoke the decree.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n151">[151]</a></sup> On the 4th F�lix Pyat sent orders to General Wroblewski without informing Rossel. The next day Rossel complained to the Council of the Committee of Public Safety of this mischievous interference, which embroiled everything. ‘Under these circumstances I cannot be responsible,’ said he, and demanded the publicity of the sittings, as he had always been received in private audience. Instead of forcing him to communicate his plan, they amused themselves with making him pass a sort of Freemason examination. The antediluvian Miot asked him what were his democratic antecedents. Rossel extricated himself very cleverly. ‘I will not tell you that I have studied the question of social reforms profoundly, but I abominate this society which has just betrayed France in so dastardly a way. I do not know what will be the new order of Socialism. I like it on trust, and it will anyhow be better than the old one.’ Everybody put him the questions he chose personally, and not through the medium of the president. He answered them all with sangfroid and precision, disarming all their scruples, and carried away cheers, but nothing more.</p>
<p>Had he possessed the strong head he was credited with, he would long since have fathomed the situation, understood that for this struggle without precedent new tactics were wanted, found a field of battle for these improvised soldiers, organized the internal defence and awaited Versailles from the heights of Montmartre, the Trocadero, and Mont-Val�rien. But he dreamt of battles, was at bottom but a bookish soldier, original only in speech and style. While always complaining of want of discipline and of men, he allowed the best blood of Paris to be shed in the sterile struggles without the town, in heroic challenges at Neuilly, Vanves, and Issy.</p>
<p>At Issy above all. It was no longer a fort, hardly a strong position, but a medley of earth and rubble-work battered by shells. The staved-in casemates opened a view upon the country, the powder magazines were laid bare half of Bastion 3 was in the moat, and one could drive up to the breach in a carriage. Ten pieces at most answered the fire of sixty Versaillese ordnance pieces, while the fusillade of the trenches aimed at the embrasures killed almost all our artillerymen. On the 3rd the Versaillese renewed their summons to surrender, they were answered with the word of Cambronne. The chief of the general staff left by Eudes had also made off, but happily the fort remained in the valiant hands of the engineer Rist and of Julien, commander of the 14th battalion of the eleventh arrondissement. It is to them and to the Federals who stood by them that the honour of this prodigious defence belongs. Here are a few notes from their military journal.</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>4th May. — </em>We are receiving explosive balls that burst with the noise of percussion-caps. The wagons do not come; food is scanty and the shells of seven centimetres, our best pieces, will soon fail us. The reinforcements promised every day do not appear. Two chiefs of battalions have been to Rossel. He received them very badly, and said that he had the right to shoot them for having abandoned their post. They explained our situation. Rossel answered that a fort defends itself with the bayonet and quoted the work of Carnot. Still he has promised ‘reinforcements. The Freemasons have planted their banner on our ramparts. The Versaillese knocked it down in an instant. Our ambulances are full; the prison and corridor that lead to it are crammed with corpses. An ambulance omnibus arrives in the evening. We put in as many of our wounded as possible. During its passage from the fort to Issy the Versaillese pepper it with balls.</p>
<p class="quoteb">5th. — The fire of the enemy does not cease for a moment. Our embrasures no longer exist; the pieces of the front still answer. At two o'clock we receive ten wagons of seven centimetre shells. Rossel has come. He looked at the works of the Versaillese for a long time. The <em>enfants-perdus </em>who serve the pieces of Bastion 5 are losing many men; they remain steadfast. There are now in the dungeons corpses two yards deep. All our trenches, riddled by artillery, have been evacuated. The trench of the Versaillese is sixty yards from the counterscarp. They push on more and more. The necessary precautions are taken in case of an attack to-night. All the flank pieces are loaded with grapeshot, We have two machine-guns above the platform to sweep at once the moat and the glacis.</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>6th. — </em>The battery of Fleury regularly discharges its six rounds on us every five minutes. A cantini�re has just been brought to the ambulance, wounded in the left side of the groin. For four days past three women have gone into the thickest of the fire to tend the wounded. This one is dying and bids us remember her two little children. No more food. We eat only horse-flesh. Evening: the rampart is untenable.</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>7th. — </em>We are receiving as many as ten shells a minute. The ramparts are totally uncovered. All the pieces, save two or three, are dismounted. The Versaillese works almost touch us. There are thirty more dead. We are about to be surrounded.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XX
Rossel replaces Cluseret
The last act of the second Executive Commission was to name Rossel delegate at War. On the same evening (the 30th April) it sent for him. He came at once, recited the history of famous sieges, and promised to make Paris impregnable. No one asked him for a written plan, and there and then, as on the stage, his nomination was signed. He forthwith wrote to the Council, ‘I accept these difficult functions, but I want your entire support in order not to succumb under the weight of these circumstances.’
Rossel knew these circumstances through and through. For twenty-five days chief of the general staff, he was the best-informed man in Paris as to all her military resources. He was familiar with the members of the Council, of the Central Committee, the officers, the effective forces, the character of the troops he undertook to lead.
At the outset he struck a wrong chord in his answer to the Versaillese officer who had summoned the fort of Issy to surrender. ‘My dear comrade, the first time you permit yourself to send us such an insolent summons, I shall have your flag of truce shot. Your devoted comrade. ‘The cynical levity smacked of the condottiere. Certainly he who threatened to shoot an innocent soldier, and bestowed his dear, his devoted comrade upon a collaborator of Galiffet, was foreign to the great heart of Paris and her civil war.
No man understood Paris, the National Guard, less than Rossel. He imagined that the P�re Duchesne was the real mouthpiece of the workmen. Hardly raised to the Ministry, he spoke of putting the National Guard into barracks, of cannonading the runaways; he wanted to dismember the legions and form them into regiments, with colonels named by himself. The Central Committee, to which the chefs-de-l�gion belonged, protested, and the battalions complained to the Council, which sent for Rossel. He set forth his project in a professional way in sober, precise words, so different from the Pyatical declamations, that the Council believed it beheld a man and was charmed. Still his project was the breaking-up of the National Guard, and the Council no more than the Executive Commission got a general plan of defence from him. He certainly demanded that the municipalities should be charged with concentration of arms, the horses, and prosecution of the refractory, but he made no condition sine qua non.
He sent in no report on the military situation. He gave orders for the construction of a second enceinte of barricades, and of three citadels at Montmartre, the Trocadero, and the Panth�on, but never personally concerned himself about their execution. He extended the command of General Wroblewski over all troops and forts on the left bank, but three days after restricted it again to bestow it upon La C�cilia, who had none of the qualities necessary in a superior commander. He never gave the generals any instructions for attack or defence. Despite certain fits and starts, he had in reality so little energy that he named Eudes commander of the second active reserve at the very moment when, against formal orders, this latter left the fort of Issy, which he had commanded since the reoccupation.
The Versaillese had recommenced firing with perfect fury. The shells, the bombs, battered the casemates, the grapeshot paved the trenches with iron. In the night of the lst-2nd, the Versaillese, always proceeding by nocturnal surprises, attacked the station of Clamart, which was taken almost without a struggle, and the castle of Issy, which they had to conquer foot by foot. On the morning of the 2nd the fort again found itself in the same situation as three days before. A part of the village of Issy was even in the hands of the soldiers. During the day the francs-tireurs of Paris dislodged them at the point of the bayonet. Eudes, who in vain demanded reinforcements, went to the War Office to declare that he would not remain if Wetzel were not discharged. Wetzel was replaced by La C�cilia, but Eudes did not return to the fort, and left the command to the chief of his staff.
Thus since the 3rd it was evident that everything would go on as under Cluseret, and the Central Committee grew bolder. It had been thrown more and more into the shade, for the Commission of War kept it at a distance. Its sittings, more and more confused and void, were little attended-by about ten members, sometimes even by less.
The enterprise of Rossel against the legions gave it back a little authority and daring. On the 3rd, in accord with the chefs-de-l�gion, they resolved to ask the Council for the direction and administration of the War Office: Rossel got wind of the affair, and had one of its members arrested; the others in great numbers, the chefs-de-l�gion with their sabres at their sides, went up to the H�tel-de-Ville, where they were received by F�lix Pyat, deeply moved by the odd conceit that they came to lay hands on him. ‘Nothing is getting along at the War Office,’ said they. ‘All the services are in disorder. The Central Committee offers itself to direct them. The delegate will conduct the operations, the Committee will see to the administration.’ F�lix Pyat approved of the idea and submitted it to the Council. The minority took umbrage at the pretensions of the Committee, and even spoke of having them arrested. The majority left the matter to the Committee of Public Safety, which issued a decree admitting the co-operation of the Central Committee. Rossel accepted the situation and announced it to the chiefs of corps. The Commission of War continued, in spite of all this, to squabble with the Committee.
Our men paid dearly for these small office revolutions. Tired out, badly commanded, they were negligent of their watches, and thus exposed to every surprise. The most terrible one took place in the night of the 3rd-4th May at the redoubt of the Moulin Saquet, held by 500 men at that moment. They were sleeping in their tents, when the Versaillese, having seized the sentinels, entered the redoubt and butchered about fifty Federals. The soldiers pierced the tents with their bayonets, slashing the corpses, and then made off with five pieces and 200 prisoners. The captain of the 55th was accused of having betrayed the pass word. The truth is not known, as incredible fact! — the Council never inquired into the affair.
M. Thiers announced this ‘elegant coup-de-main’[147] in a bantering despatch to the effect that they had killed two hundred men; that ‘such was the victory the Commune might announce in its bulletins.’ The prisoners, taken to Versailles, were received by the elegant rabble who killed time in the caf�s of St. Germain, now become the headquarters of high-life prostitution, or who went to the heights to see the shells battering the walls and the Parisians. But what were these insipid amusements by the side of a convoy of prisoners, whom they could beat, spit upon, and revile, a thousand times renewing the agonies of Math�?
The simply bestial ferocity of the soldiers was much less horrible.
These poor wretches firmly believed that the Federals were thieves or Prussians, and that they tortured their prisoners. There were some who, taken to Paris, for a long time refused all nourishment in dread of poison. The officers propagated these horrible stories; some even believed them. [148] The greater part, arriving from Germany in a state of extreme irritation against Paris, [149] said publicly, ‘We shall give these scoundrels no quarter,’ and they set the example of summary executions. On the 25th April, at the Belle-Epine, near Ville-Juif, four National Guards, surprised by mounted chasseurs, called upon to surrender, laid down their arms. The soldiers were leading them when an officer appeared, and, without further ado, discharged his revolver at them. Two were killed; the two others, left for dead, were able to drag themselves as far as the neighbouring trenches, where one of them expired.[150] The fourth was transported to the ambulance. Paris, erstwhile besieged by the Prussians, was now tracked by tigers.
These sinister forebodings of the lot reserved to the vanquished made the Council indignant, but did not enlighten it. The disorder grew greater with the danger. Rossel set nothing going. Pyat, whom he had often silenced with a word, abhorred him, and never ceased undermining his authority. ‘You see this man,’ said he to the Romanticists, ‘well, he is a traitor — a Caesarian! After the Trochu plan, the Rossel plan.’ On the 8th May he had the direction of the military operations transferred to Dombrowski, leaving only nominal functions to Rossel, who, apprised of this that same evening, hurried to the Committee of Public Safety and forced it to revoke the decree.[151] On the 4th F�lix Pyat sent orders to General Wroblewski without informing Rossel. The next day Rossel complained to the Council of the Committee of Public Safety of this mischievous interference, which embroiled everything. ‘Under these circumstances I cannot be responsible,’ said he, and demanded the publicity of the sittings, as he had always been received in private audience. Instead of forcing him to communicate his plan, they amused themselves with making him pass a sort of Freemason examination. The antediluvian Miot asked him what were his democratic antecedents. Rossel extricated himself very cleverly. ‘I will not tell you that I have studied the question of social reforms profoundly, but I abominate this society which has just betrayed France in so dastardly a way. I do not know what will be the new order of Socialism. I like it on trust, and it will anyhow be better than the old one.’ Everybody put him the questions he chose personally, and not through the medium of the president. He answered them all with sangfroid and precision, disarming all their scruples, and carried away cheers, but nothing more.
Had he possessed the strong head he was credited with, he would long since have fathomed the situation, understood that for this struggle without precedent new tactics were wanted, found a field of battle for these improvised soldiers, organized the internal defence and awaited Versailles from the heights of Montmartre, the Trocadero, and Mont-Val�rien. But he dreamt of battles, was at bottom but a bookish soldier, original only in speech and style. While always complaining of want of discipline and of men, he allowed the best blood of Paris to be shed in the sterile struggles without the town, in heroic challenges at Neuilly, Vanves, and Issy.
At Issy above all. It was no longer a fort, hardly a strong position, but a medley of earth and rubble-work battered by shells. The staved-in casemates opened a view upon the country, the powder magazines were laid bare half of Bastion 3 was in the moat, and one could drive up to the breach in a carriage. Ten pieces at most answered the fire of sixty Versaillese ordnance pieces, while the fusillade of the trenches aimed at the embrasures killed almost all our artillerymen. On the 3rd the Versaillese renewed their summons to surrender, they were answered with the word of Cambronne. The chief of the general staff left by Eudes had also made off, but happily the fort remained in the valiant hands of the engineer Rist and of Julien, commander of the 14th battalion of the eleventh arrondissement. It is to them and to the Federals who stood by them that the honour of this prodigious defence belongs. Here are a few notes from their military journal.
4th May. — We are receiving explosive balls that burst with the noise of percussion-caps. The wagons do not come; food is scanty and the shells of seven centimetres, our best pieces, will soon fail us. The reinforcements promised every day do not appear. Two chiefs of battalions have been to Rossel. He received them very badly, and said that he had the right to shoot them for having abandoned their post. They explained our situation. Rossel answered that a fort defends itself with the bayonet and quoted the work of Carnot. Still he has promised ‘reinforcements. The Freemasons have planted their banner on our ramparts. The Versaillese knocked it down in an instant. Our ambulances are full; the prison and corridor that lead to it are crammed with corpses. An ambulance omnibus arrives in the evening. We put in as many of our wounded as possible. During its passage from the fort to Issy the Versaillese pepper it with balls.
5th. — The fire of the enemy does not cease for a moment. Our embrasures no longer exist; the pieces of the front still answer. At two o'clock we receive ten wagons of seven centimetre shells. Rossel has come. He looked at the works of the Versaillese for a long time. The enfants-perdus who serve the pieces of Bastion 5 are losing many men; they remain steadfast. There are now in the dungeons corpses two yards deep. All our trenches, riddled by artillery, have been evacuated. The trench of the Versaillese is sixty yards from the counterscarp. They push on more and more. The necessary precautions are taken in case of an attack to-night. All the flank pieces are loaded with grapeshot, We have two machine-guns above the platform to sweep at once the moat and the glacis.
6th. — The battery of Fleury regularly discharges its six rounds on us every five minutes. A cantini�re has just been brought to the ambulance, wounded in the left side of the groin. For four days past three women have gone into the thickest of the fire to tend the wounded. This one is dying and bids us remember her two little children. No more food. We eat only horse-flesh. Evening: the rampart is untenable.
7th. — We are receiving as many as ten shells a minute. The ramparts are totally uncovered. All the pieces, save two or three, are dismounted. The Versaillese works almost touch us. There are thirty more dead. We are about to be surrounded.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h2>Publisher’s Note</h2>
<p>Eleanor Marx’s translation of Lissagaray’s <em>History </em>was made from a manuscript revised by the author and approved by Karl Marx. Lissagaray himself regarded it as the definitive edition of his work. Editing has therefore been confined to a minimum, though some minor mis-translations from the original French have been corrected and a number of anachronistic terms, generally derived directly from the French, have been revised to make their meaning clearer. Other French terms recurring in the text are expanded in the glossary provided.</p>
<p>Lissagaray’s own appendices and notes, which contain valuable documentation of the events described, are reproduced in full. A general index has been added to this edition together with a full index of names enabling the reader to identify the hundreds of protagonists who appear in the book.</p>
<p>Lissagaray's own part in the Commune was modest; he followed its course as a jouranlist and a barricade fighter and was, as he tells us,‘neither member, nor officer, nor functionary of the Commune’.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Publisher’s Note
Eleanor Marx’s translation of Lissagaray’s History was made from a manuscript revised by the author and approved by Karl Marx. Lissagaray himself regarded it as the definitive edition of his work. Editing has therefore been confined to a minimum, though some minor mis-translations from the original French have been corrected and a number of anachronistic terms, generally derived directly from the French, have been revised to make their meaning clearer. Other French terms recurring in the text are expanded in the glossary provided.
Lissagaray’s own appendices and notes, which contain valuable documentation of the events described, are reproduced in full. A general index has been added to this edition together with a full index of names enabling the reader to identify the hundreds of protagonists who appear in the book.
Lissagaray's own part in the Commune was modest; he followed its course as a jouranlist and a barricade fighter and was, as he tells us,‘neither member, nor officer, nor functionary of the Commune’.
New Park Publications
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XXVII<br>
The invasion continues</h1>
<p><img src="pics/thiers2.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Thiers" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p class="quoteb">The generals who commanded the entry into Paris are great military men.’ (Thiers to the National Assembly 22 May 1871)</p>
<p>At two o'clock Dombrowski arrived at the H�tel-de-Ville, pale, dejected, his chest bruised with stones ploughed up by shot. He told the Committee of Public Safety of the entry of the Versaillese, the surprise of Passy, his useless efforts to rally the men. As he was pressed for news, as they appeared astonished at such a rapid invasion, so little did the Committee know of the military situation, Dombrowski, who misunderstood them, exclaimed, ‘What! the Committee of Public Safety takes me for a traitor! My life belongs to the Commune.’ His gesture, his voice, testified to his bitter despair.</p>
<p>The morning was warm and bright as the day before. The call to arms, the tocsin, set three or four thousand men on foot, who hurried towards the Tuileries, the Hotel-de-Ville, and the War Office; but hundreds of others at that moment had abandoned their posts, left Passy, and emptied the fifteenth arrondissement. The Federals of Petit-Vanves came back to Paris at five o'clock, and seeing the Trocadero occupied by the Versaillese, refused to hold out. On the left bank, at the St. Clothilde Square, some officers attempted to stop them, but were repulsed by the guards. ‘It is now a war of barricades,’ said they; ‘everyone to his quarter.’ At the L�gion d'Honneur they forced their way; the proclamation of Delescluze had released them.</p>
<p>Thus began that fatal proclamation posted up on all the walls:</p>
<p class="quoteb">Enough of militarism! No more staff-officers with their gold-embroidered uniforms! Make way for the people, for the combatants bare-armed! The hour of the revolutionary war has struck! The people know nothing of learned manoeuvres. But when they have a gun in their hands, a pavement under their feet, they fear not all the strategists of the monarchical school!</p>
<p>When the Minister of War thus stigmatizes all discipline, who will henceforth obey? When he repudiates all method, who will listen to reason? Thus we shall see hundreds of men refusing to quit the pavement of their street, paying no heed to the neighbouring quarter in agonies, remaining motionless up to the last hour waiting for the army to come and overwhelm them.</p>
<p>At five o'clock in the morning the official retreat began. The chief of the general staff, Henri Prodhomme, had the War Office precipitately evacuated, without carrying off or destroying the papers. The next day they fell into the hands of the Versaillese, and furnished the courts-martial with thousands of victims.</p>
<p>On leaving the Ministry, Delescluze met Brunel, who, set at liberty only the evening before, had at once rallied his legion, and now came to offer his services, for he was one of those men of convictions too strong to be shaken by the most cruel injustice. Delescluze gave him the order to defend the Place de la Concorde. Brunel repaired thither, and disposed 150 tirailleurs, three pieces of 4 cm., one of 12 and two of 7 on the terrace of, the Tuileries and by the bank of the river. He provided the St. Florentin redoubt with a machine-gun and a piece of 4; that of the Rue Royale, at the entrance of the Place de la Concorde, with two pieces of 12.</p>
<p>In front of Brunel, at the Place Beauvan, some men of the 8th legion made vain efforts to stop the fugitives from Passy and Auteuil, and then betook themselves to put the quarter in a fit state of defence. Barricades were thrown up in the Faubourg St. Honor� as far as the English Embassy, in the Rue de Suresne and Ville-Leveque; obstacles were heaped up at the Place St. Augustin, the opening of the Boulevard Haussmann, and in front of the Boulevard Malesherbes, when the Versaillese presented themselves.</p>
<p>Early in the morning they had begun their onward march. At half-past five Douai, Clinchant, and Ladmirault, passing along the ramparts, set foot on the Avenue de la Grande Arm�e. The artillery, men of the Porte-Maillot, turning round, beheld in their rear the Versaillese, their neighbours for some ten hours. Not a sentinel had denounced them. Monteret marched off his men by the Ternes; then, alone with a child, charged one of the cannon of the Porte-Maillot. fired his last round at the enemy, and succeeded in escaping by the Batignolles.</p>
<p>The Douai column remounted the Avenue as far as the barricade in front of the Arc de Triomphe, which they took without a struggle, the Federals hardly having time to carry off the cannon that were to have surmounted the Arc de Triomphe. The soldiers marched up the quay, and ventured onto the silent Place de la Concorde; suddenly the terrace of the Tuileries lit up; the Versaillese, received with a pointblank volley, fled as far as the Palais de I'Industrie, leaving many dead.</p>
<p>On the left the soldiers occupied the abandoned Elys�e, and by the Rues Morny and Abbatucci emerged on the Place St. Augustin, where the barricades, hardly begun, could not resist, and towards half-past seven the Versaillese installed themselves at the Pepiniere Barracks. The Federals formed a second line in the rear, closing the Boulevard Malesherbes at the top of the Rue Boissy d'Anglas.</p>
<p>On the left of Douai, Clinchant and Ladmirault continued their movement along the ramparts. The important works at the gates of Bineau, Courcelles, Asnieres and Clichy, directed against the fortifications. became useless, and the Ternes were occupied without striking a blow. At the same time one of the Clinchant divisions passed by the outer ramparts. The Federal battalions on duty at Neuilly, Levallois-Perret, and St. Ouen were assailed with balls from the rear — (this was the first intimation they got of the entry of the Versaillese) — and many Federals were taken prisoners. Others succeeded in returning to Paris by the gates of Bineau, Asnieres, and Clichy, spreading panic and rumours of treason in the seventeenth arrondissement.</p>
<p>The rappel had been beaten all night in the Batignolles, and had called out the sedentary guards and the youths. A battalion of engineers rushed forward to encounter Clinchant’s skirmishers, and began firing in front of the Parc Monceaux and the Place Wagram, when the National Guards, deceived by their red trousers, opened a deadly fire upon them. They retreated and laid bare the Parc, which the Versaillese occupied, and then pushed on to the Batignolles.</p>
<p>There they were stopped by barricades rising on all sides; on the left, from the Place Clichy to the Rue L�vis; in the centre, in the Rues Lebouteux, La Condamine, and Des Dames; on the right, La Fourche, the rival position of the Place Clichy, had been fortified, and soon the Batignolles formed a serious outwork for Montmartre, our principal fortress.</p>
<p>The latter, for seventeen hours,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n179">[179]</a></sup> had looked silently on the entry of the troops of Versailles. In the morning the columns of Douai and Ladmirault, their artillery and their waggons, had met each other, and become entangled on the Place du Trocadero. A few shells from Montmartre<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n180">[180]</a></sup> would have changed this confusion into a rout, and the least check met with by the troops on their entry would have been for Paris a second 18th March; but the cannon of the Buttes remained mute.</p>
<p>Monstrous negligence, which alone would suffice to condemn the Council, the War Office, and the delegates of Montmartre. Eightyfive cannon and about twenty machine-guns were lying there, dirty, pell-mell, and no one during these eight weeks had even thought Of cleaning them. Projectiles of 7 cm. abounded, but there were no cartridges. At the Moulin de la Galette three pieces of 24 cm. alone were supplied with carriages, but there were neither parapets, blindages, nor even platforms. At nine o'clock in the morning they had not yet fired; after the first discharge the recoil overthrew the carriages, and much time was required to set them up again. These three pieces themselves had very little ammunition. Of fortifications or earthworks there were none; merely a few barricades at the foot of the external boulevards had been begun. At nine o'clock La C�cilia sent to Montmartre, and found the defence in this disgraceful state. He immediately addressed despatches to the H�tel-de-Ville, conjuring the members of the Council to come themselves, or at least to send reinforcements of men and munitions.</p>
<p>A similar thing occurred at the same time on the left bank at the Ecole Militaire. Face to face with its park of artillery, the Versaillese since one o'clock in the morning were manoeuvring on the Trocadero without a single cannon shot being fired at them. What, then, was the governor of the Ecole about?</p>
<p>At daybreak the Langourian brigade attacked the huts of the Champ-de-Mars. The Federals defended themselves several hours, and were only dislodged by the shells of the Trocadero, which enkindled a conflagration.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n181">[181]</a></sup> They then fell back upon the Ecole, and for a long time checking the effort of the troops, gave the seventeenth arrondissment time to rise. The quay as far as the L�gion d'Honneur, the Rues de Lille, De I'Universit�, and the Boulevard St. Germain up to the Rue Solferino were being barricaded. Half-a-dozen of the armlet conspirators, led by Durouchoux and Vrignault, were coming down the Rue du Bac at great speed, when a member of the Council, Siscard, arrested them before the Petit St. Thomas. A bullet struck Durouchoux, his acolytes carried him away, and took advantage of the occasion not to appear again. The Rue de Beaune, Verneuil, and St. P�res were put in a state of defence, and a barricade was thrown up in the Rue de Sevres at the Abbaye-au-Bois.</p>
<p>On the right Cissey’s soldiers descended the Rue de Vaugirard without hindrance as far as the Avenue du Maine; another column filed off along the railway, and at half-past six reached the Montparnasse station. This position, Of supreme importance, had been utterly neglected; about twenty men defended it, and they were soon short of cartridges, and obliged to retreat to the Rue de Rennes, where, under the fire of the troops, they constructed a barricade at the top of the Rue du Vieux Colombier. On his extreme right Cissey occupied the Vanves gate and lined the whole railway of the west.</p>
<p>Paris rose to the roar of the cannon and read the proclamation of Delescluze. The shops were at once shut up again, the boulevards remained empty, and Paris, the old insurgent, resumed her combative physiognomy. Despatch riders dashed through the streets, and remainders of battalions came to the H�tel-de-Ville, where the Central Committee, the Committee of Artillery, and all the military services were concentrated.</p>
<p>At nine o'clock twenty members of the Council had assembled. A miracle! There was F�Iix Pyat, who had cried ‘To arms!’ in his paper that very morning. He had put on his patriarchal air. ‘Well, my friends, our last hour has come. Oh, for myself what matters it! My hair is grey, my career run out. What more glorious end could I hope for than that of the barricade. But when I see around me so many in the prime of youth, I tremble for the future of the Revolution!’ Then he demanded that the names of the members present should be entered, in order to mark out distinctly those true to their duty. He signed his name, and, with tears in his eyes, the old comedian trotted off to a hiding-place, surpassing by his last cowardice all his former villainies.</p>
<p>A sterile meeting this, spent in discussing the news of the day; no impulsion given, no system of defence propounded. The Federals were left to their own inspirations — left to look after themselves. During the whole past night neither Dombrowski, nor the War Office, nor the Hotel-de-Ville had thought of the battalions outside the town. Henceforth each corps had nothing to expect but from its own initiative, from the resources it might be able to create and the intelligence of its leaders.</p>
<p>In default of direction proclamations abounded. ‘Let good citizens rise l To the barricades! The enemy is within our walls. No hesitation. Forward, for the Commune and for liberty. To arms!’</p>
<p>‘Let Paris bristle up with barricades, and from behind these improvised ramparts still hurl at her enemies her cry of war, of pride, of defiance, but also of victory; for Paris with her barricades cannot be wiped out.’</p>
<p>Great words; nothing but words.</p>
<p><em>Mid-day — </em>General Cissey had turned on the Ecole Militaire, and thereby forced its last defenders. The soldiers invaded the Esplanade des Invalides and entered the Rue Grenelle St. Germain, when the Ecole d'Etat-major exploded and put them to flight. Two of our cannon flanked the Rue de I'Universit�; four gunboats, anchored under the Pont-Royal, opened fire on the Trocadero. In the centre, in the eighth arrondissement, the Versaillese skirmished. At the Batignolles they did not advance, but their shells harassed the Rue L�vis. We also lost many men in the Rue Cardinet, where children were fighting furiously.</p>
<p>Malon and Jaclard, who directed this part of the defence, had since morning in vain applied to Montmartre for reinforcements; so towards one o'clock they themselves went in search of them. Not one of the staff-officers could give them the slightest information. The Federals were wandering about the streets or chatting in small groups. Malon wanted to take them back with him, but they refused, reserving themselves, they said, for the defence of their own quarter. The cannon of the Buttes were mute, being short of cartridges; the Hotel-de-Ville had sent only words.</p>
<p>Still there were two generals on the heights, Cluseret and La C�cilia, the ex-delegate melancholily airing his somnolent incapacity, while La C�cilia, unknown in this quarter, at once found himself powerless.</p>
<p>Two o'clock — The H�tel-de-Ville had again assumed its grand aspect of March. On the right the Committee of Public Safety and on the left the War Office were overrun. The Central Committee was multiplying its orders and exclaiming against the incapacity of the members of the Council, though itself incapable of setting forth a single precise idea. The Committee of Artillery, more beset than ever, could not yet make out its cannon, did no know to whom to give them, and often refused pieces for the most important positions.</p>
<p>The delegates of the Congress of Lyons, conducted by Jules Amigues and Larroque, came to offer their intervention, but they had no mandate, and id not even know whether M. Thiers would admit them. They were received rather coldly. Besides, many at the Hotel-de-ViIle believed in victory, and almost rejoiced at the entry of the Versaillese; for indeed Paris seemed to be rising.</p>
<p>The barricades increased quickly. That of the Rue de Rivoli, which was to protect the Hotel-de-Ville, was erected at the entrance of the St. Jacques Square, at the corner of the Rue St. Denis. Fifty workmen did the mason-work, while swarms of children brought wheelbarrows full of earth from the square. This work, several yards deep, six yards high, with trenches, embrasures and an outwork, as solid as the Florentin redoubt, which had taken weeks to raise, was finished in a few hours — an example this of what an intelligent effort at the right time might have done for the defence of Paris. In the ninth arrondissement, the Rues Auber, De la Chauss�e d'Antin, De Ch�teaudun, the cross-roads of the Faubourg Montmartre, Notre Dame de Lorette, De la Trinit�, and the Rue des Martyrs were being unpaved. The broad approaches, La Chapelle, Buttes Chaumont, Belleville, M�ndmontant, the Rue de la Roquette, the Bastile, the Boulevards Voltaire and Richard Lenoir, the Place du Chateau d'Eau, the broad boulevards especially from the Porte St. Denis; and on the left bank the whole length of the Boulevard St. Michel, the Panth�on, the Rue St. Jacques, the Gobelins, and the principal avenues of the thirteenth arrondissement, were being barricaded. A great many of these works of defence were never finished.</p>
<p>While Paris was preparing for the last struggle, Versailles was wild with joy. The Assembly had met at an early hour, and M. Thiers would not leave to any of his Ministers the glory of announcing the first butcheries in Paris. His appearance on the tribune was hailed by ferocious cheers. ‘The cause of justice, order, humanity, and civilization has triumphed,’ screamed the little man. ‘The generals who have conducted the entry into Paris are great men of war. The expiation be complete. It will take place in the name of the law, by the law, with the law.’ The Chamber, understanding this promise of carnage, to a man, and by a unanimous vote, Right, Left, Centre, Clericals, Republicans, Monarchists, swore that ‘the Versailles army and chief of the executive power had merited well of the country.’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n182">[182]</a></sup> sitting was at once raised, the deputies rushing off to the Lanterne Diog�ne, Ch�tillon, and Mont-Val�rien, to all the heights whence they could, as from an immense Colosseum, observe the butchery of Paris without incurring the least danger. The population of idlers accompanied them, and on this Versailles road deputies, courtesans, women of the world, journalists, functionaries stung by the same craving, sometimes crammed into the same carriage, displayed before the Prussians and France the spectacle of a saturnalia of the bourgeoisie.</p>
<p>After eight o'clock the army ceased to advance, save in the eighth arrondissement, where the barricade before the English Embassy was turned by the gardens. Our line of the Faubourg St. Germain resisted from the Seine to the Mont-Parnasse station, which we were cannonading.</p>
<p>With nightfall the shooting slackened, but the shelling still went on. A red light glared in the Tuileries; the Ministry of Finance was burning. It had during the whole day received part of the Versaillese shells, destined for the terrace of the Tuileries, and the papers piled up in its upper storeys had taken fire. The firemen of the Commune had at first extinguished this conflagration, interfering with the defence of the St. Florentin redoubt, but it had soon lit up again, and become unquenchable.</p>
<p>Then began those nights of horror, where, amidst the roaring of the cannon, by the glimmer of burning houses, men sought each other in pools of blood. The Paris of the revolt had at length been roused. Her battalions descended towards the Hotel-de-Ville headed by bands and the red flag. Small in number, a battalion perhaps two hundred strong, but resolute, these Federals marched on in silence; there were seen also, muskets on their shoulders, those men, devoted to the Social Revolution, whom personal jealousy had kept at a distance. But in this hour none thought of such recriminations. Because of the incapacity of the chiefs ought the soldiers to desert their flag? The Paris of 1871 represented against Versailles the Social Revolution and the new destinies of the nation; one must be against or for her despite the faults committed. Cowards only abstained. All the true revolutionaries rose, even those who had no illusions as to the issue of the struggle, eager to defy death in the service of their immortal cause .</p>
<p>Ten o'clock — We proceeded to the Hotel-de-Ville. An irritated group of Federals had just arrested Dombrowski. The general, without any command since morning, had repaired with his officers to the outposts of St. Ouen, and believing his role terminated, wanted in the night to ride through the Prussian ranks and gain the frontier. A commander, who was afterwards shot as a traitor, had incited his men against the general under the pretext that he was betraying them. Led before the Committee of Public Safety, Dombrowski indignantly exclaimed, ‘They say I have betrayed!’ The members of the Committee welcomed him affectionately, and the incident had no further consequences.</p>
<p>Messengers arrived at the War Office from all the points of the battle. A great number of guards and officers issued orders and despatches in the midst of a continual bustle. The inner courts were full of waggons and carriages, the horses all ready harnessed; munitions were being taken out or brought in, and not the least sign of discouragement, or even of anxiety, was visible, but everywhere an almost gay activity.</p>
<p>The streets and boulevards, with the exception of the invaded quarters, had been lighted as usual. At the entrance of the Faubourg Montmartre the light ceased abruptly, giving it the appearance of an enormous black hole. This obscurity was guarded by Federal sentinels, uttering every now and then their cry, ‘Passez au large!’ Beyond this only a menacing silence. These shadows moving about in the night seemed to assume gigantic forms; one fancied oneself haunted by a sinister dream; the bravest were appalled.</p>
<p>There were nights more noisy, more glaring, more grandiose, when the conflagrations and the cannonade enveloped Paris, but none made a more lugubrious impression. A night of meditation this, the vigil of battle. We sought each other in the gloom, spoke softly, giving and taking comfort. At the cross-roads we consulted each other in order to examine our positions, and then to work! Now for the spade and the — paving-stones! Let the earth be heaped up where the shells may flatten themselves against it; let the mattresses thrown from the windows shelter the combatants. Henceforth there is to be no more rest; let the stones cemented with hate press against each other like the shoulders of men arrayed for the battlefield. The enemy has taken us by surprise, defenceless. May he tomorrow encounter a Saragossa or a Moscow!</p>
<p>Every passer-by was requisitioned. ‘Come, citizen, lend a hand for the Republic!’ At the Bastille and in the interior boulevards one met crowds of workers, some digging the earth, others carrying the paving-stones; children using spades and mattocks as big as themselves. The women encouraged the men; the delicate hand of the young girl raised the heavy pickaxe that fell with a sharp sound, emitting fiery sparks. It took an hour to seriously break through the soil. What matter! they will spend their night at it. On the Tuesday evening, at the intersection of the Square St. Jacques and the Boulevard Sebastopol, many <em>dames de la halle</em> <span class="context">[market women]</span> worked for a long time, filling earth sacks and wicker baskets.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n183">[183]</a></sup> </p>
<p>And these were no longer the traditional redoubts two storeys high. Save four or five in the Rue St. Honor� and the Rue de Rivoli, the barricades of May consisted of a few paving-stones hardly a man’s height; behind these sometimes a cannon or a machine-gun; and in the midst, wedged in by two paving-stones, the red flag, the colour of vengeance. Behind these shreds of ramparts thirty men held regiments in check.</p>
<p>If this general effort had been directed by the least thought of combination, if Montmartre and the Panth�on had crossed their fires, the Versaillese army would have melted away in Paris; but the Federals, without directions, without military knowledge, saw no further than just their own quarter, or even their own streets; so that instead of 200 strategical, solid barricades, easy to defend with 7,000 or 8,000 men, hundreds were scattered about which it was impossible to arm sufficiently. The general mistake was a belief that they would be attacked from the front; while the Versaillese, thanks to their numbers. everywhere executed flank movements.</p>
<p>In the evening the Versaillese line extended from the station of the Batignolles to the extremity of the Railway of the West on the left bank, passing by the St. Lazare Station, the P�piniere Barracks, the British Embassy, the Palais de I'Industrie, the Corps L�gislatif, the Rue de Bourgogne, the Boulevard des Invalides, and the Montparnasse Station. To face the invader there were but embryo barricades. If with one effort he were to break through this line still so weak, he would surprise the centre quite disarmed. But these 130,000 men did not dare to. Soldiers and chiefs were afraid of Paris. They fancied the streets would open, the houses fall upon them; as witness the fable of the torpedoes, of the mines under the sewers, invented later on to justify their indecision.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n184">[184]</a></sup> On the Monday evening, masters of several arrondissements, they still trembled, fearful of some terrible surprise. They needed all the tranquillity of the night to recover from their conquest, and convince themselves that the Committee of Defence, despite their boasting, had neither foreseen nor prepared anything.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XXVII
The invasion continues
The generals who commanded the entry into Paris are great military men.’ (Thiers to the National Assembly 22 May 1871)
At two o'clock Dombrowski arrived at the H�tel-de-Ville, pale, dejected, his chest bruised with stones ploughed up by shot. He told the Committee of Public Safety of the entry of the Versaillese, the surprise of Passy, his useless efforts to rally the men. As he was pressed for news, as they appeared astonished at such a rapid invasion, so little did the Committee know of the military situation, Dombrowski, who misunderstood them, exclaimed, ‘What! the Committee of Public Safety takes me for a traitor! My life belongs to the Commune.’ His gesture, his voice, testified to his bitter despair.
The morning was warm and bright as the day before. The call to arms, the tocsin, set three or four thousand men on foot, who hurried towards the Tuileries, the Hotel-de-Ville, and the War Office; but hundreds of others at that moment had abandoned their posts, left Passy, and emptied the fifteenth arrondissement. The Federals of Petit-Vanves came back to Paris at five o'clock, and seeing the Trocadero occupied by the Versaillese, refused to hold out. On the left bank, at the St. Clothilde Square, some officers attempted to stop them, but were repulsed by the guards. ‘It is now a war of barricades,’ said they; ‘everyone to his quarter.’ At the L�gion d'Honneur they forced their way; the proclamation of Delescluze had released them.
Thus began that fatal proclamation posted up on all the walls:
Enough of militarism! No more staff-officers with their gold-embroidered uniforms! Make way for the people, for the combatants bare-armed! The hour of the revolutionary war has struck! The people know nothing of learned manoeuvres. But when they have a gun in their hands, a pavement under their feet, they fear not all the strategists of the monarchical school!
When the Minister of War thus stigmatizes all discipline, who will henceforth obey? When he repudiates all method, who will listen to reason? Thus we shall see hundreds of men refusing to quit the pavement of their street, paying no heed to the neighbouring quarter in agonies, remaining motionless up to the last hour waiting for the army to come and overwhelm them.
At five o'clock in the morning the official retreat began. The chief of the general staff, Henri Prodhomme, had the War Office precipitately evacuated, without carrying off or destroying the papers. The next day they fell into the hands of the Versaillese, and furnished the courts-martial with thousands of victims.
On leaving the Ministry, Delescluze met Brunel, who, set at liberty only the evening before, had at once rallied his legion, and now came to offer his services, for he was one of those men of convictions too strong to be shaken by the most cruel injustice. Delescluze gave him the order to defend the Place de la Concorde. Brunel repaired thither, and disposed 150 tirailleurs, three pieces of 4 cm., one of 12 and two of 7 on the terrace of, the Tuileries and by the bank of the river. He provided the St. Florentin redoubt with a machine-gun and a piece of 4; that of the Rue Royale, at the entrance of the Place de la Concorde, with two pieces of 12.
In front of Brunel, at the Place Beauvan, some men of the 8th legion made vain efforts to stop the fugitives from Passy and Auteuil, and then betook themselves to put the quarter in a fit state of defence. Barricades were thrown up in the Faubourg St. Honor� as far as the English Embassy, in the Rue de Suresne and Ville-Leveque; obstacles were heaped up at the Place St. Augustin, the opening of the Boulevard Haussmann, and in front of the Boulevard Malesherbes, when the Versaillese presented themselves.
Early in the morning they had begun their onward march. At half-past five Douai, Clinchant, and Ladmirault, passing along the ramparts, set foot on the Avenue de la Grande Arm�e. The artillery, men of the Porte-Maillot, turning round, beheld in their rear the Versaillese, their neighbours for some ten hours. Not a sentinel had denounced them. Monteret marched off his men by the Ternes; then, alone with a child, charged one of the cannon of the Porte-Maillot. fired his last round at the enemy, and succeeded in escaping by the Batignolles.
The Douai column remounted the Avenue as far as the barricade in front of the Arc de Triomphe, which they took without a struggle, the Federals hardly having time to carry off the cannon that were to have surmounted the Arc de Triomphe. The soldiers marched up the quay, and ventured onto the silent Place de la Concorde; suddenly the terrace of the Tuileries lit up; the Versaillese, received with a pointblank volley, fled as far as the Palais de I'Industrie, leaving many dead.
On the left the soldiers occupied the abandoned Elys�e, and by the Rues Morny and Abbatucci emerged on the Place St. Augustin, where the barricades, hardly begun, could not resist, and towards half-past seven the Versaillese installed themselves at the Pepiniere Barracks. The Federals formed a second line in the rear, closing the Boulevard Malesherbes at the top of the Rue Boissy d'Anglas.
On the left of Douai, Clinchant and Ladmirault continued their movement along the ramparts. The important works at the gates of Bineau, Courcelles, Asnieres and Clichy, directed against the fortifications. became useless, and the Ternes were occupied without striking a blow. At the same time one of the Clinchant divisions passed by the outer ramparts. The Federal battalions on duty at Neuilly, Levallois-Perret, and St. Ouen were assailed with balls from the rear — (this was the first intimation they got of the entry of the Versaillese) — and many Federals were taken prisoners. Others succeeded in returning to Paris by the gates of Bineau, Asnieres, and Clichy, spreading panic and rumours of treason in the seventeenth arrondissement.
The rappel had been beaten all night in the Batignolles, and had called out the sedentary guards and the youths. A battalion of engineers rushed forward to encounter Clinchant’s skirmishers, and began firing in front of the Parc Monceaux and the Place Wagram, when the National Guards, deceived by their red trousers, opened a deadly fire upon them. They retreated and laid bare the Parc, which the Versaillese occupied, and then pushed on to the Batignolles.
There they were stopped by barricades rising on all sides; on the left, from the Place Clichy to the Rue L�vis; in the centre, in the Rues Lebouteux, La Condamine, and Des Dames; on the right, La Fourche, the rival position of the Place Clichy, had been fortified, and soon the Batignolles formed a serious outwork for Montmartre, our principal fortress.
The latter, for seventeen hours,[179] had looked silently on the entry of the troops of Versailles. In the morning the columns of Douai and Ladmirault, their artillery and their waggons, had met each other, and become entangled on the Place du Trocadero. A few shells from Montmartre[180] would have changed this confusion into a rout, and the least check met with by the troops on their entry would have been for Paris a second 18th March; but the cannon of the Buttes remained mute.
Monstrous negligence, which alone would suffice to condemn the Council, the War Office, and the delegates of Montmartre. Eightyfive cannon and about twenty machine-guns were lying there, dirty, pell-mell, and no one during these eight weeks had even thought Of cleaning them. Projectiles of 7 cm. abounded, but there were no cartridges. At the Moulin de la Galette three pieces of 24 cm. alone were supplied with carriages, but there were neither parapets, blindages, nor even platforms. At nine o'clock in the morning they had not yet fired; after the first discharge the recoil overthrew the carriages, and much time was required to set them up again. These three pieces themselves had very little ammunition. Of fortifications or earthworks there were none; merely a few barricades at the foot of the external boulevards had been begun. At nine o'clock La C�cilia sent to Montmartre, and found the defence in this disgraceful state. He immediately addressed despatches to the H�tel-de-Ville, conjuring the members of the Council to come themselves, or at least to send reinforcements of men and munitions.
A similar thing occurred at the same time on the left bank at the Ecole Militaire. Face to face with its park of artillery, the Versaillese since one o'clock in the morning were manoeuvring on the Trocadero without a single cannon shot being fired at them. What, then, was the governor of the Ecole about?
At daybreak the Langourian brigade attacked the huts of the Champ-de-Mars. The Federals defended themselves several hours, and were only dislodged by the shells of the Trocadero, which enkindled a conflagration.[181] They then fell back upon the Ecole, and for a long time checking the effort of the troops, gave the seventeenth arrondissment time to rise. The quay as far as the L�gion d'Honneur, the Rues de Lille, De I'Universit�, and the Boulevard St. Germain up to the Rue Solferino were being barricaded. Half-a-dozen of the armlet conspirators, led by Durouchoux and Vrignault, were coming down the Rue du Bac at great speed, when a member of the Council, Siscard, arrested them before the Petit St. Thomas. A bullet struck Durouchoux, his acolytes carried him away, and took advantage of the occasion not to appear again. The Rue de Beaune, Verneuil, and St. P�res were put in a state of defence, and a barricade was thrown up in the Rue de Sevres at the Abbaye-au-Bois.
On the right Cissey’s soldiers descended the Rue de Vaugirard without hindrance as far as the Avenue du Maine; another column filed off along the railway, and at half-past six reached the Montparnasse station. This position, Of supreme importance, had been utterly neglected; about twenty men defended it, and they were soon short of cartridges, and obliged to retreat to the Rue de Rennes, where, under the fire of the troops, they constructed a barricade at the top of the Rue du Vieux Colombier. On his extreme right Cissey occupied the Vanves gate and lined the whole railway of the west.
Paris rose to the roar of the cannon and read the proclamation of Delescluze. The shops were at once shut up again, the boulevards remained empty, and Paris, the old insurgent, resumed her combative physiognomy. Despatch riders dashed through the streets, and remainders of battalions came to the H�tel-de-Ville, where the Central Committee, the Committee of Artillery, and all the military services were concentrated.
At nine o'clock twenty members of the Council had assembled. A miracle! There was F�Iix Pyat, who had cried ‘To arms!’ in his paper that very morning. He had put on his patriarchal air. ‘Well, my friends, our last hour has come. Oh, for myself what matters it! My hair is grey, my career run out. What more glorious end could I hope for than that of the barricade. But when I see around me so many in the prime of youth, I tremble for the future of the Revolution!’ Then he demanded that the names of the members present should be entered, in order to mark out distinctly those true to their duty. He signed his name, and, with tears in his eyes, the old comedian trotted off to a hiding-place, surpassing by his last cowardice all his former villainies.
A sterile meeting this, spent in discussing the news of the day; no impulsion given, no system of defence propounded. The Federals were left to their own inspirations — left to look after themselves. During the whole past night neither Dombrowski, nor the War Office, nor the Hotel-de-Ville had thought of the battalions outside the town. Henceforth each corps had nothing to expect but from its own initiative, from the resources it might be able to create and the intelligence of its leaders.
In default of direction proclamations abounded. ‘Let good citizens rise l To the barricades! The enemy is within our walls. No hesitation. Forward, for the Commune and for liberty. To arms!’
‘Let Paris bristle up with barricades, and from behind these improvised ramparts still hurl at her enemies her cry of war, of pride, of defiance, but also of victory; for Paris with her barricades cannot be wiped out.’
Great words; nothing but words.
Mid-day — General Cissey had turned on the Ecole Militaire, and thereby forced its last defenders. The soldiers invaded the Esplanade des Invalides and entered the Rue Grenelle St. Germain, when the Ecole d'Etat-major exploded and put them to flight. Two of our cannon flanked the Rue de I'Universit�; four gunboats, anchored under the Pont-Royal, opened fire on the Trocadero. In the centre, in the eighth arrondissement, the Versaillese skirmished. At the Batignolles they did not advance, but their shells harassed the Rue L�vis. We also lost many men in the Rue Cardinet, where children were fighting furiously.
Malon and Jaclard, who directed this part of the defence, had since morning in vain applied to Montmartre for reinforcements; so towards one o'clock they themselves went in search of them. Not one of the staff-officers could give them the slightest information. The Federals were wandering about the streets or chatting in small groups. Malon wanted to take them back with him, but they refused, reserving themselves, they said, for the defence of their own quarter. The cannon of the Buttes were mute, being short of cartridges; the Hotel-de-Ville had sent only words.
Still there were two generals on the heights, Cluseret and La C�cilia, the ex-delegate melancholily airing his somnolent incapacity, while La C�cilia, unknown in this quarter, at once found himself powerless.
Two o'clock — The H�tel-de-Ville had again assumed its grand aspect of March. On the right the Committee of Public Safety and on the left the War Office were overrun. The Central Committee was multiplying its orders and exclaiming against the incapacity of the members of the Council, though itself incapable of setting forth a single precise idea. The Committee of Artillery, more beset than ever, could not yet make out its cannon, did no know to whom to give them, and often refused pieces for the most important positions.
The delegates of the Congress of Lyons, conducted by Jules Amigues and Larroque, came to offer their intervention, but they had no mandate, and id not even know whether M. Thiers would admit them. They were received rather coldly. Besides, many at the Hotel-de-ViIle believed in victory, and almost rejoiced at the entry of the Versaillese; for indeed Paris seemed to be rising.
The barricades increased quickly. That of the Rue de Rivoli, which was to protect the Hotel-de-Ville, was erected at the entrance of the St. Jacques Square, at the corner of the Rue St. Denis. Fifty workmen did the mason-work, while swarms of children brought wheelbarrows full of earth from the square. This work, several yards deep, six yards high, with trenches, embrasures and an outwork, as solid as the Florentin redoubt, which had taken weeks to raise, was finished in a few hours — an example this of what an intelligent effort at the right time might have done for the defence of Paris. In the ninth arrondissement, the Rues Auber, De la Chauss�e d'Antin, De Ch�teaudun, the cross-roads of the Faubourg Montmartre, Notre Dame de Lorette, De la Trinit�, and the Rue des Martyrs were being unpaved. The broad approaches, La Chapelle, Buttes Chaumont, Belleville, M�ndmontant, the Rue de la Roquette, the Bastile, the Boulevards Voltaire and Richard Lenoir, the Place du Chateau d'Eau, the broad boulevards especially from the Porte St. Denis; and on the left bank the whole length of the Boulevard St. Michel, the Panth�on, the Rue St. Jacques, the Gobelins, and the principal avenues of the thirteenth arrondissement, were being barricaded. A great many of these works of defence were never finished.
While Paris was preparing for the last struggle, Versailles was wild with joy. The Assembly had met at an early hour, and M. Thiers would not leave to any of his Ministers the glory of announcing the first butcheries in Paris. His appearance on the tribune was hailed by ferocious cheers. ‘The cause of justice, order, humanity, and civilization has triumphed,’ screamed the little man. ‘The generals who have conducted the entry into Paris are great men of war. The expiation be complete. It will take place in the name of the law, by the law, with the law.’ The Chamber, understanding this promise of carnage, to a man, and by a unanimous vote, Right, Left, Centre, Clericals, Republicans, Monarchists, swore that ‘the Versailles army and chief of the executive power had merited well of the country.’[182] sitting was at once raised, the deputies rushing off to the Lanterne Diog�ne, Ch�tillon, and Mont-Val�rien, to all the heights whence they could, as from an immense Colosseum, observe the butchery of Paris without incurring the least danger. The population of idlers accompanied them, and on this Versailles road deputies, courtesans, women of the world, journalists, functionaries stung by the same craving, sometimes crammed into the same carriage, displayed before the Prussians and France the spectacle of a saturnalia of the bourgeoisie.
After eight o'clock the army ceased to advance, save in the eighth arrondissement, where the barricade before the English Embassy was turned by the gardens. Our line of the Faubourg St. Germain resisted from the Seine to the Mont-Parnasse station, which we were cannonading.
With nightfall the shooting slackened, but the shelling still went on. A red light glared in the Tuileries; the Ministry of Finance was burning. It had during the whole day received part of the Versaillese shells, destined for the terrace of the Tuileries, and the papers piled up in its upper storeys had taken fire. The firemen of the Commune had at first extinguished this conflagration, interfering with the defence of the St. Florentin redoubt, but it had soon lit up again, and become unquenchable.
Then began those nights of horror, where, amidst the roaring of the cannon, by the glimmer of burning houses, men sought each other in pools of blood. The Paris of the revolt had at length been roused. Her battalions descended towards the Hotel-de-Ville headed by bands and the red flag. Small in number, a battalion perhaps two hundred strong, but resolute, these Federals marched on in silence; there were seen also, muskets on their shoulders, those men, devoted to the Social Revolution, whom personal jealousy had kept at a distance. But in this hour none thought of such recriminations. Because of the incapacity of the chiefs ought the soldiers to desert their flag? The Paris of 1871 represented against Versailles the Social Revolution and the new destinies of the nation; one must be against or for her despite the faults committed. Cowards only abstained. All the true revolutionaries rose, even those who had no illusions as to the issue of the struggle, eager to defy death in the service of their immortal cause .
Ten o'clock — We proceeded to the Hotel-de-Ville. An irritated group of Federals had just arrested Dombrowski. The general, without any command since morning, had repaired with his officers to the outposts of St. Ouen, and believing his role terminated, wanted in the night to ride through the Prussian ranks and gain the frontier. A commander, who was afterwards shot as a traitor, had incited his men against the general under the pretext that he was betraying them. Led before the Committee of Public Safety, Dombrowski indignantly exclaimed, ‘They say I have betrayed!’ The members of the Committee welcomed him affectionately, and the incident had no further consequences.
Messengers arrived at the War Office from all the points of the battle. A great number of guards and officers issued orders and despatches in the midst of a continual bustle. The inner courts were full of waggons and carriages, the horses all ready harnessed; munitions were being taken out or brought in, and not the least sign of discouragement, or even of anxiety, was visible, but everywhere an almost gay activity.
The streets and boulevards, with the exception of the invaded quarters, had been lighted as usual. At the entrance of the Faubourg Montmartre the light ceased abruptly, giving it the appearance of an enormous black hole. This obscurity was guarded by Federal sentinels, uttering every now and then their cry, ‘Passez au large!’ Beyond this only a menacing silence. These shadows moving about in the night seemed to assume gigantic forms; one fancied oneself haunted by a sinister dream; the bravest were appalled.
There were nights more noisy, more glaring, more grandiose, when the conflagrations and the cannonade enveloped Paris, but none made a more lugubrious impression. A night of meditation this, the vigil of battle. We sought each other in the gloom, spoke softly, giving and taking comfort. At the cross-roads we consulted each other in order to examine our positions, and then to work! Now for the spade and the — paving-stones! Let the earth be heaped up where the shells may flatten themselves against it; let the mattresses thrown from the windows shelter the combatants. Henceforth there is to be no more rest; let the stones cemented with hate press against each other like the shoulders of men arrayed for the battlefield. The enemy has taken us by surprise, defenceless. May he tomorrow encounter a Saragossa or a Moscow!
Every passer-by was requisitioned. ‘Come, citizen, lend a hand for the Republic!’ At the Bastille and in the interior boulevards one met crowds of workers, some digging the earth, others carrying the paving-stones; children using spades and mattocks as big as themselves. The women encouraged the men; the delicate hand of the young girl raised the heavy pickaxe that fell with a sharp sound, emitting fiery sparks. It took an hour to seriously break through the soil. What matter! they will spend their night at it. On the Tuesday evening, at the intersection of the Square St. Jacques and the Boulevard Sebastopol, many dames de la halle [market women] worked for a long time, filling earth sacks and wicker baskets.[183]
And these were no longer the traditional redoubts two storeys high. Save four or five in the Rue St. Honor� and the Rue de Rivoli, the barricades of May consisted of a few paving-stones hardly a man’s height; behind these sometimes a cannon or a machine-gun; and in the midst, wedged in by two paving-stones, the red flag, the colour of vengeance. Behind these shreds of ramparts thirty men held regiments in check.
If this general effort had been directed by the least thought of combination, if Montmartre and the Panth�on had crossed their fires, the Versaillese army would have melted away in Paris; but the Federals, without directions, without military knowledge, saw no further than just their own quarter, or even their own streets; so that instead of 200 strategical, solid barricades, easy to defend with 7,000 or 8,000 men, hundreds were scattered about which it was impossible to arm sufficiently. The general mistake was a belief that they would be attacked from the front; while the Versaillese, thanks to their numbers. everywhere executed flank movements.
In the evening the Versaillese line extended from the station of the Batignolles to the extremity of the Railway of the West on the left bank, passing by the St. Lazare Station, the P�piniere Barracks, the British Embassy, the Palais de I'Industrie, the Corps L�gislatif, the Rue de Bourgogne, the Boulevard des Invalides, and the Montparnasse Station. To face the invader there were but embryo barricades. If with one effort he were to break through this line still so weak, he would surprise the centre quite disarmed. But these 130,000 men did not dare to. Soldiers and chiefs were afraid of Paris. They fancied the streets would open, the houses fall upon them; as witness the fable of the torpedoes, of the mines under the sewers, invented later on to justify their indecision.[184] On the Monday evening, masters of several arrondissements, they still trembled, fearful of some terrible surprise. They needed all the tranquillity of the night to recover from their conquest, and convince themselves that the Committee of Defence, despite their boasting, had neither foreseen nor prepared anything.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter X<br>
The Commune at Marseilles, Toulouse and Narbonne</h1>
<p>Since the elections of the 8th February, the advent of the reactionists, the nomination of M. Thiers, the patched-up and shameful peace, the monarchy in prospect, the defiances and the defeats were as bitterly resented by the valiant town of Marseilles as by Paris. There the news of the 18th March fell upon a powder-magazine. Nevertheless, further details were looked for, when the 22nd brought the famous despatch of Rouher-Canrobert.</p>
<p><img src="pics/cremieux.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Cremieux" border="1" align="left"></p>
<p>The clubs, playing a great part in the ardent life of Marseilles, were at once thronged. The prudent and methodical Radicals went to the club of the National Guard; the popular elements met at the El Dorado. There they applauded Gaston Cr�mieux, an elegant and effeminate speaker, now and then happy at epigrammatic turns, as, for instance, at Bordeaux. Gambetta owed him his election at Marseilles under the Empire. Cr�mieux at once hurried to the club of the National Guard, denounced Versailles, told them they could not allow the Republic to perish, but ought to act. The club, though highly indignant at the despatch, cautioned him against over-hastiness. The proclamations of the Central Committee, they said, did not announce any clearly defined politics. Signed by unknown names, they might well proceed from Bonapartists.</p>
<p>This Jacobin argument was ridiculous at Marseilles, where the despatch of M. Thiers had given the signal for the commotion. Who smacked of Bonapartism — these unknown men rising against Versailles, or M. Thiers patronizing Rouher and his Ministers, and boasting of Canrobert’s offer?</p>
<p>After a speech of Bouchet, the deputy of the <em>procureur de la R�publique, </em>Gaston Cremieux reconsidered his first impulsive step, and accompanied by the delegates of the club, repaired to the El Dorado. There he read and made comments upon the <em>Officiel</em> of Paris, which he had got from the prefect, and calmed the excitement. ‘The Government of Versailles have raised their crutch against what they call the insurrection of Paris; but it has broken in their hands, and their attempt has brought forth the Commune. Let us swear that we are united for the defence of the Government of Paris, the only one that we recognize’. They separated, ready for resistance, but resolved to bide their time.</p>
<p>Thus the excited population still checked itself when the prefect goaded it by the most stupid of provocations. This Admiral Cosnier, a distinguished naval officer, but politically a mere cipher, quite out of his element in these surroundings, where he had only just arrived, was the passive tool of the reaction, which since the 4th September had already several times fallen out with the National Guard — the civiques — who had proclaimed the Commune and expelled the Jesuits. The Rev. Father Tissier, though absent, was still its leader. The moderation of the town he mistook for cowardice. Like M. Thiers on the 17th he believed himself strong enough to make a brilliant stroke.</p>
<p>In the evening the Admiral held council with the mayor, Bories, an old wreck of 1848, who had dabbled in all the clerico-liberal coalitions, the <em>procureur de la R�publique, </em>Guibert, a timid trimmer, and General Espivent de la Villeboisnet, one of those cruel caricatures in which the civil wars of South America abound. An obtuse Legitimist, a besotted zealot, the Syllabus incarnate, a carpet knight and former member of the Mixed Commissions of 1851, <span class="context">[The ‘Syllabus of Modem Errors’ was a papal document condemning all forms of liberalism. The Mixed Commissions were in fact set up in January 1852 after Louis Napoleon’s coup d'etat of the previous December. They consisted of prefects, prosecutors and selected officers to try oppositionists in areas placed under a state of siege. The accused were not allowed witnesses or counsel. 20,000 people were sentenced, and about half of them transported to North Africa and Cayenne.]</span> during the war he had been expelled from Lille by the people, indignant alike at his utter incapacity and his antecedents. He brought the council the mot d'ordre of the priests and reactionaries, and proposed convoking the National Guards to make an armed demonstration in favour of Versailles. He would have asked for more, no doubt, but the garrison was solely composed of remnants of the army of the East and of a few disbanded artillery men. Cosnier, quite led astray, approved of the demonstration, and gave orders to the mayor and to the colonel of the National Guards to prepare for it.</p>
<p>On the 23rd March, at seven o'clock in the morning, the call to arms sounded. The ingenious idea of the prefect had spread over the town, and the popular battalions made ready to do it honour. From ten o'clock they arrived at the Cours du Chapitre, and the artillery of the National Guard was drawn up along the Cours St. Louis. At twelve, francs-tireurs , National Guards, soldiers of all arms mingling, gathered in the Cours Belzunce. Soon all the battalions of the Belle-de Mai and of Endourre <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n106">[106]</a></sup> mustered in full strength, while the battalions of order remained invisible.</p>
<p>The municipal council, taking fright, disavowed the demonstration and posted up a Republican address. The club of the National Guard joined the council and demanded the return of the Assembly to Paris and the exclusion from public functions of all the accomplices of the Empire. The deputy of the procureur, Bouchet, tendered his resignation.</p>
<p>All this time the battalions were marching up and down crying ‘<em>Vive </em>Paris!’ Popular orators harangued them, and the club, apprehensive of an imminent explosion, sent Gaston Cr�mieux, Bouchet, and Frayssinet, to ask the prefect to break up the ranks and communicate the despatches from Paris. The delegates were discussing with Cosnier, when a terrific clamour rose from without. The prefecture was besieged.</p>
<p>At four o'clock the battalions, on foot for six hours, had moved, headed by their drums. Twelve or thirteen thousand men having marched through the Canebi�re and the Rue St. F�rreol drew up before the prefecture. The delegates of the club tried to parley, when a shot was fired, and the crowd, rushing into the prefecture, arrested the prefect, his two secretaries, and General Ollivier. Gaston Cremieux appeared on the balcony, spoke of the rights of Paris, and recommended the maintenance of order. The crowd cheered, but still continued to enter and ask for arms. G. Cr�mieux had two columns formed and sent them to the iron works of Menpenti, whose guns were surrendered.</p>
<p>During this tumult a Commission of six members was formed: G. Cr�mieux, Job, Etienne, a street-porter, Maviel, a shoemaker, Gaillard, a mechanic, and Allerini, who deliberated in the midst of the crowd. Cr�mieux proposed setting at liberty the prisoners just made, but from all sides they cried, ‘Keep them as sureties.’ The Admiral was conducted into a neighbouring room, closely watched, and strange mania of all these popular movements — asked for his resignation. Cosnier, quite out of his latitude, signed what he was asked for. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n107">[107]</a></sup></p>
<p>The Commission posted up a proclamation that all the powers were concentrated in its hands, and feeling the necessity of strengthening itself, invited the municipal council and the club of the National Guard to send three delegates each. The council named David Bosc, Desservy, and Sidore; the club, Bouchet, Cartoux, and Fulg�ras. The next day they made a moderate proclamation: ‘Marseilles has wished to prevent the civil war provoked by the circulars of Versailles. Marseilles will support a regularly constituted Republican Government sitting in the capital. The Departmental Commission, formed with the agreement of all Republican groups, will watch over the Republic till a new authority emanating from a regular Government sitting at Paris relieves it.’</p>
<p>The names of the municipal council and of the club reassured the middle-class. The reactionaries continued drawing in their horns, and the army had evacuated the town during the night. Leaving the prefect in the trap into which he had thrust him, the coward Espivent, on the investment of the prefecture, went to hide himself at the mistress’s of a commander of the National Guard named Spir, on whom he afterwards conferred the knighthood of the Legion of Honour for this service to moral order. At midnight he sneaked off and rejoined the troops, who, without hindrance from the people, lulled into security by their victory, reached the village of Aubagne, about seventeen kilometres from Marseilles.</p>
<p>Thus Marseilles was entirely in the hands of the people. The victory was even too complete for heads prone to exultation. That ‘city of the sun’ is not propitious to soft tints; its sky, its fields, its men all affect crude colours. On the 24th the civil guards hoisted the red flag and already deemed the Commission too lukewarm. Sidore, Desservy and Fulg�ras, regardless of their duty, kept aloof from the prefecture; Cartoux had gone to Paris for information, and so the whole burden weighed upon Bosc and Bouchet, who with Gaston Cr�mieux, strove to regularise the movement. Having said that the red flag was inopportune, and the detention of the hostages useless, they soon became suspected and menaced. On the evening of the 24th, Bouchet, quite discouraged, gave in his resignation, but, on Cr�mieux’s complaint to the club of the National Guard, consented to resume his post.</p>
<p>These disagreements were already bruited about the town, and on the 25th the Commission was obliged to announce that ‘the most perfect accord united it with the municipal council.’ But the latter on the same day declared itself the only existing power, and called upon the National Guard to rouse from apathy. Trimming between the reaction and the people, it began that miserable play that was to end in ignominy.</p>
<p>While the Liberals were imitating the Tirards and the deputies of the extreme Left, to whom Dufaure referred in his despatches, Espivent in every point copied General Thiers. He had rifled all the administrative departments of Marseilles. The treasury office of the garrison had been shuffled off to Aubagne. Fifteen hundred Garibaldians of the army of the Vosges and soldiers who were rejoining their depots in Africa were left without bread, without pay, without <em>feuilles-de-routes, </em>and would have remained without refuge if Gaston Cr�mieux and Bouchet had not caused a provisional quarter-master to be named by the council. Thanks to the Commission, those who had shed their blood for France received bread and shelter. Gaston Cremieux said to them in an address, ‘You will remember when the time comes, the fraternal hand that we have held out to you.’ He was a mild enthusiast, who beheld the revolution under rather a bucolic aspect.</p>
<p>On the 26th the isolation of the Commission became more obvious. No one armed against it, but no one joined it. Almost all the mayors of the department refused to post up its proclamations, and at Arles a demonstration in favour of the red flag miscarried. The fiery spirits at the prefecture did nothing to explain the import of the flag which they had unfurled, and, in the midst of this dull calm, in view of Marseilles looking on curiously, it hung from the campanile of the prefecture motionless and mute as an enigma.</p>
<p>The capital of the south-west also saw its insurrection die out. Toulouse had vibrated at the thunder-burst of the 18th March. In the Faubourg St. Cyprien there was an intelligent and valiant working men’s population that formed the very sinews of the National Guard, and had since the 19th relieved the watch to the cries of ‘<em>Vive</em> Paris!’ A few revolutionaries summoned the prefect, Duportal, to pronounce for or against Paris. For a month the <em>Emancipation</em>, which he directed, had made a campaign against the rurals, and he had even in a public meeting emphasized his Republican views. But he was not the man to take the initiative, and refused to break with Versailles. The clubs, however, beset him, obliging the officers of the National Guard to take an oath to defend the Republic, and asked for cartridges. M. Thiers, seeing that Duportal would after all follow their lead, named as prefect K�ratry, the former prefect of police of the 4th September. He arrived on the night of the 21st-22nd at the house of the general of the division, Nansouty, and being told that the garrison consisted of only 600 disbanded men, and that the whole National Guard would declare for Duportal, he beat his retreat on Agen.</p>
<p>On the 23rd the National Guard prepared a demonstration in order to take possession of the arsenal, when Duportal and the mayor rushed off to the Capitol, the H�tel-de-Ville of Toulouse. The mayor declared that the intended review was not to take place, and Duportal that he would tender his resignation rather than pronounce for the movement. But the generals, afraid of this outbreak of the faubourg, took refuge in the arsenal. The mayor and the municipal council, understanding it would no longer do to continue their Platonic role, fled in their turn, and hence Duportal, left alone in this prefecture, shone forth as a great revolutionary, and therefore all the more worthy of the sympathy of the National Guard. He exerted himself to reassure the generals, went to the arsenal, intimated there his firm resolution to maintain order in the name of the Government of Versailles, the only one he recognised as legitimate, and was so successful that they advised M. Thiers to keep him in his post. K�ratry, availing himself of his declaration, requested his aid to take possession of the prefecture, and Duportal gave him a rendezvous before the officers of the mobiles and of the National Guard, convoked for the next day, the 24th. K�ratry understood and remained at Agen.</p>
<p>The object of this meeting was to find the volunteers against Paris asked for by the Assembly. Four officers of mobiles out of sixty offered their services to Versailles. The officers of the National Guard did not come to the prefecture, but, on the contrary, prepared at that same moment a demonstration against K�ratry. At one o'clock 2,000 men were assembled in the Place du Capitole, and, their banner flying, repaired to the prefecture, where Duportal received their officers. One of them declared that, far from supporting the Assembly, they were ready to march against it, and that if M. Thiers did not make peace with Paris they would proclaim the Commune. At this name cries burst forth from all corners of the room, ‘<em>Vive la Commune! Vive </em>Paris!’ The officers, growing hot, decreed the arrest of K�ratry, proclaimed the Commune, and summoned Duportal to place himself at their head. He tried to back out, and proposed to act only as the officious prompter of the chiefs of the Commune; but the officers, inveighing against defection, induced him to come out to the square of the prefecture, where he was acclaimed by the National Guard, and they proceeded to the Capitol.</p>
<p>Hardly arrived in the large hall, the leaders seemed much embarrassed. They offered the presidency in turn to the mayor, to other municipal councillors, who slunk away, and to Duportal, who got off by drawing up a manifesto, which was read from the large balcony. ‘The Commune of Toulouse,’ it said, ‘declares for the Republic one and indivisible, urges the deputies of Paris to be the intermediaries between the Government and the great town, and summons M. Thiers to dissolve the Assembly.’ The mass cheered this milk-and-water Commune, which believed in the deputies of the Left and the oppression of M. Thiers by the rural majority.</p>
<p>In the evening some officers of the National Guard appointed an Executive Commission, composed, with two or three exceptions, of mere talkers; in this the principal leaders of the movement did not figure. It contented itself with posting up the manifesto, and neglected the smallest precautions, even that of occupying the railway station. The generals, nevertheless, did not dare to stir from their arsenal, where they were joined on the 26th by the first president of the court and the procureur-general, who launched an address calling upon the population to rally round them. The National Guard wanted to answer by storming the arsenal, and already the faubourg flocked to the Capitol. But the Commission preferred to negotiate, sent word to the arsenal that it would dissolve if the Government appointed a Republican prefect in the stead of K�ratry and entirely abandoned Duportal, who, it is true, had done nothing. The negotiations lasted all the evening, and the National Guard, tired out, deceived by their chiefs, and fancying everything settled, returned to their homes.</p>
<p>K�ratry, well informed of all these failures, arrived the next day at the railway station with three squadrons of cavalry, proceeded to the arsenal, broke off the negotiations, and gave the order to march. At one o'clock the Versaillese army, 200 cavalry and 600 ill-assorted soldiers strong, opened its campaign. ‘One column occupied the St. Cyprien Bridge, in order to separate the town from the faubourg, another proceeded to the prefecture, and the third, with Nansouty, K�ratry, and the magistrates, marched on the Capitol.</p>
<p>About 300 men filled the courts, the windows, and the terrace. The Versaillese deployed their troops and placed six guns in line at about sixty yards from the edifice, thus recklessly exposing their infantry and artillery men to the muskets of the insurgents. The first president of the court and the procureur-general advanced to parley, but obtained nothing. K�ratry read the riot act, his voice being drowned by cries. A single blank-cartridge volley would have scared soldiers and artillery men, who might besides have been harassed on both flanks. But the leaders had fled from the Capitol. The courage of a few men might still have brought about a fight, when the Republican Association interposed, persuaded the guards to retreat, and saved K�ratry. The prefecture was taken just as easily, and that same evening K�ratry installed himself there. The members of the Executive Commission the next day published a manifesto of such platitude as to secure them impunity, and one of them got himself named mayor by K�ratry.</p>
<p>Thus the generous working men of Toulouse, who had risen to the cry of ‘<em>Vive Paris!’ </em>were left in the lurch by those who had raised the insurrection. A disastrous check this for Paris, for the whole south would have followed the example of Toulouse if victorious.</p>
<p>The man of thought and energy, wanting in all these movements, appeared in the insurrection of Narbonne. The old city, Gallic in its enthusiasm, Roman in its tenacity, is the true centre of democracy in the department of Aude. Nowhere during the war had a more vigorous protest been entered against the shortcomings of Gambetta. For this very reason the National Guards of Narbonne had not yet received their muskets, when those of Carcassonne had long since been armed. At the news of the 18th March, Narbonne did not hesitate, but declared for Paris. To proclaim the Commune, an exile of the Empire, a man of strong convictions and firm character, Digeon, was at once applied to. Digeon, as modest as he was resolute, offered the direction of the movement to his comrade in exile, Marcou, the recognized chief of the democracy in the Aude, one of the most ardent opponents of Gambetta during the war. Marcou, a crafty lawyer, afraid of compromising himself, and dreading the energy of Digeon in the chief town of the department, induced him to leave for Narbonne. Digeon arrived there on the 23rd, and first thought of converting the municipal council to the principles of the Commune. But on the refusal of the mayor, Raynal, to summon the council, the people, out of all patience, invaded the H�tel-de-Ville on the evening of the 24th, and arming themselves with the muskets held by the municipality, installed Digeon and his friends. He appeared on the balcony, proclaimed the Commune of Narbonne united to that of Paris, and immediately proceeded to take measures of defence.</p>
<p>The following day Raynal tried to rally the garrison, and some companies formed before the H�tel-de-Ville; but the people, especially the women, worthy of the Parisian sisters, disarmed the soldiers. A captain and a lieutenant were retained as hostages; the rest of the garrison went and shut itself up in the St. Bernard Barracks. As Raynal still continued stirring up resistance, the people arrested him on the 26th; and Digeon, with the three hostages, at the head of a detachment of Federals, went to take possession of the prefecture, placing pickets at the railway station and telegraph office. To get arms he forced the arsenal, where, despite their lieutenant, who commanded them to fire, the soldiers surrendered their guns. The same day the delegates from the neighbouring Communes arrived, and Digeon set to work to generalize the movement.</p>
<p>He had clearly understood that the departmental insurrections would soon founder if not well combined, and he wanted to hold out a helping hand to the rising of Toulouse and of Marseilles. B�ziers and Cette had already promised him their support, and he was preparing to leave for B�ziers, when, on the 28th, two companies of Turcos arrived, soon followed by other troops sent from Montpellier, Toulouse, and Perpignan. From this moment Digeon was obliged to ,sand on the defensive. He had barricades thrown up, reinforced the posts, and ordered the Federals always to await the attacks and to aim at the officers.</p>
<p> We shall return to this subject later on. Paris now recalls us. The ‘other provincial movements were but momentary vibrations. On the 28th, when Paris was still elated with victory, all the Communes of France were already swept away save those of Marseilles and Narbonne.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter X
The Commune at Marseilles, Toulouse and Narbonne
Since the elections of the 8th February, the advent of the reactionists, the nomination of M. Thiers, the patched-up and shameful peace, the monarchy in prospect, the defiances and the defeats were as bitterly resented by the valiant town of Marseilles as by Paris. There the news of the 18th March fell upon a powder-magazine. Nevertheless, further details were looked for, when the 22nd brought the famous despatch of Rouher-Canrobert.
The clubs, playing a great part in the ardent life of Marseilles, were at once thronged. The prudent and methodical Radicals went to the club of the National Guard; the popular elements met at the El Dorado. There they applauded Gaston Cr�mieux, an elegant and effeminate speaker, now and then happy at epigrammatic turns, as, for instance, at Bordeaux. Gambetta owed him his election at Marseilles under the Empire. Cr�mieux at once hurried to the club of the National Guard, denounced Versailles, told them they could not allow the Republic to perish, but ought to act. The club, though highly indignant at the despatch, cautioned him against over-hastiness. The proclamations of the Central Committee, they said, did not announce any clearly defined politics. Signed by unknown names, they might well proceed from Bonapartists.
This Jacobin argument was ridiculous at Marseilles, where the despatch of M. Thiers had given the signal for the commotion. Who smacked of Bonapartism — these unknown men rising against Versailles, or M. Thiers patronizing Rouher and his Ministers, and boasting of Canrobert’s offer?
After a speech of Bouchet, the deputy of the procureur de la R�publique, Gaston Cremieux reconsidered his first impulsive step, and accompanied by the delegates of the club, repaired to the El Dorado. There he read and made comments upon the Officiel of Paris, which he had got from the prefect, and calmed the excitement. ‘The Government of Versailles have raised their crutch against what they call the insurrection of Paris; but it has broken in their hands, and their attempt has brought forth the Commune. Let us swear that we are united for the defence of the Government of Paris, the only one that we recognize’. They separated, ready for resistance, but resolved to bide their time.
Thus the excited population still checked itself when the prefect goaded it by the most stupid of provocations. This Admiral Cosnier, a distinguished naval officer, but politically a mere cipher, quite out of his element in these surroundings, where he had only just arrived, was the passive tool of the reaction, which since the 4th September had already several times fallen out with the National Guard — the civiques — who had proclaimed the Commune and expelled the Jesuits. The Rev. Father Tissier, though absent, was still its leader. The moderation of the town he mistook for cowardice. Like M. Thiers on the 17th he believed himself strong enough to make a brilliant stroke.
In the evening the Admiral held council with the mayor, Bories, an old wreck of 1848, who had dabbled in all the clerico-liberal coalitions, the procureur de la R�publique, Guibert, a timid trimmer, and General Espivent de la Villeboisnet, one of those cruel caricatures in which the civil wars of South America abound. An obtuse Legitimist, a besotted zealot, the Syllabus incarnate, a carpet knight and former member of the Mixed Commissions of 1851, [The ‘Syllabus of Modem Errors’ was a papal document condemning all forms of liberalism. The Mixed Commissions were in fact set up in January 1852 after Louis Napoleon’s coup d'etat of the previous December. They consisted of prefects, prosecutors and selected officers to try oppositionists in areas placed under a state of siege. The accused were not allowed witnesses or counsel. 20,000 people were sentenced, and about half of them transported to North Africa and Cayenne.] during the war he had been expelled from Lille by the people, indignant alike at his utter incapacity and his antecedents. He brought the council the mot d'ordre of the priests and reactionaries, and proposed convoking the National Guards to make an armed demonstration in favour of Versailles. He would have asked for more, no doubt, but the garrison was solely composed of remnants of the army of the East and of a few disbanded artillery men. Cosnier, quite led astray, approved of the demonstration, and gave orders to the mayor and to the colonel of the National Guards to prepare for it.
On the 23rd March, at seven o'clock in the morning, the call to arms sounded. The ingenious idea of the prefect had spread over the town, and the popular battalions made ready to do it honour. From ten o'clock they arrived at the Cours du Chapitre, and the artillery of the National Guard was drawn up along the Cours St. Louis. At twelve, francs-tireurs , National Guards, soldiers of all arms mingling, gathered in the Cours Belzunce. Soon all the battalions of the Belle-de Mai and of Endourre [106] mustered in full strength, while the battalions of order remained invisible.
The municipal council, taking fright, disavowed the demonstration and posted up a Republican address. The club of the National Guard joined the council and demanded the return of the Assembly to Paris and the exclusion from public functions of all the accomplices of the Empire. The deputy of the procureur, Bouchet, tendered his resignation.
All this time the battalions were marching up and down crying ‘Vive Paris!’ Popular orators harangued them, and the club, apprehensive of an imminent explosion, sent Gaston Cr�mieux, Bouchet, and Frayssinet, to ask the prefect to break up the ranks and communicate the despatches from Paris. The delegates were discussing with Cosnier, when a terrific clamour rose from without. The prefecture was besieged.
At four o'clock the battalions, on foot for six hours, had moved, headed by their drums. Twelve or thirteen thousand men having marched through the Canebi�re and the Rue St. F�rreol drew up before the prefecture. The delegates of the club tried to parley, when a shot was fired, and the crowd, rushing into the prefecture, arrested the prefect, his two secretaries, and General Ollivier. Gaston Cremieux appeared on the balcony, spoke of the rights of Paris, and recommended the maintenance of order. The crowd cheered, but still continued to enter and ask for arms. G. Cr�mieux had two columns formed and sent them to the iron works of Menpenti, whose guns were surrendered.
During this tumult a Commission of six members was formed: G. Cr�mieux, Job, Etienne, a street-porter, Maviel, a shoemaker, Gaillard, a mechanic, and Allerini, who deliberated in the midst of the crowd. Cr�mieux proposed setting at liberty the prisoners just made, but from all sides they cried, ‘Keep them as sureties.’ The Admiral was conducted into a neighbouring room, closely watched, and strange mania of all these popular movements — asked for his resignation. Cosnier, quite out of his latitude, signed what he was asked for. [107]
The Commission posted up a proclamation that all the powers were concentrated in its hands, and feeling the necessity of strengthening itself, invited the municipal council and the club of the National Guard to send three delegates each. The council named David Bosc, Desservy, and Sidore; the club, Bouchet, Cartoux, and Fulg�ras. The next day they made a moderate proclamation: ‘Marseilles has wished to prevent the civil war provoked by the circulars of Versailles. Marseilles will support a regularly constituted Republican Government sitting in the capital. The Departmental Commission, formed with the agreement of all Republican groups, will watch over the Republic till a new authority emanating from a regular Government sitting at Paris relieves it.’
The names of the municipal council and of the club reassured the middle-class. The reactionaries continued drawing in their horns, and the army had evacuated the town during the night. Leaving the prefect in the trap into which he had thrust him, the coward Espivent, on the investment of the prefecture, went to hide himself at the mistress’s of a commander of the National Guard named Spir, on whom he afterwards conferred the knighthood of the Legion of Honour for this service to moral order. At midnight he sneaked off and rejoined the troops, who, without hindrance from the people, lulled into security by their victory, reached the village of Aubagne, about seventeen kilometres from Marseilles.
Thus Marseilles was entirely in the hands of the people. The victory was even too complete for heads prone to exultation. That ‘city of the sun’ is not propitious to soft tints; its sky, its fields, its men all affect crude colours. On the 24th the civil guards hoisted the red flag and already deemed the Commission too lukewarm. Sidore, Desservy and Fulg�ras, regardless of their duty, kept aloof from the prefecture; Cartoux had gone to Paris for information, and so the whole burden weighed upon Bosc and Bouchet, who with Gaston Cr�mieux, strove to regularise the movement. Having said that the red flag was inopportune, and the detention of the hostages useless, they soon became suspected and menaced. On the evening of the 24th, Bouchet, quite discouraged, gave in his resignation, but, on Cr�mieux’s complaint to the club of the National Guard, consented to resume his post.
These disagreements were already bruited about the town, and on the 25th the Commission was obliged to announce that ‘the most perfect accord united it with the municipal council.’ But the latter on the same day declared itself the only existing power, and called upon the National Guard to rouse from apathy. Trimming between the reaction and the people, it began that miserable play that was to end in ignominy.
While the Liberals were imitating the Tirards and the deputies of the extreme Left, to whom Dufaure referred in his despatches, Espivent in every point copied General Thiers. He had rifled all the administrative departments of Marseilles. The treasury office of the garrison had been shuffled off to Aubagne. Fifteen hundred Garibaldians of the army of the Vosges and soldiers who were rejoining their depots in Africa were left without bread, without pay, without feuilles-de-routes, and would have remained without refuge if Gaston Cr�mieux and Bouchet had not caused a provisional quarter-master to be named by the council. Thanks to the Commission, those who had shed their blood for France received bread and shelter. Gaston Cremieux said to them in an address, ‘You will remember when the time comes, the fraternal hand that we have held out to you.’ He was a mild enthusiast, who beheld the revolution under rather a bucolic aspect.
On the 26th the isolation of the Commission became more obvious. No one armed against it, but no one joined it. Almost all the mayors of the department refused to post up its proclamations, and at Arles a demonstration in favour of the red flag miscarried. The fiery spirits at the prefecture did nothing to explain the import of the flag which they had unfurled, and, in the midst of this dull calm, in view of Marseilles looking on curiously, it hung from the campanile of the prefecture motionless and mute as an enigma.
The capital of the south-west also saw its insurrection die out. Toulouse had vibrated at the thunder-burst of the 18th March. In the Faubourg St. Cyprien there was an intelligent and valiant working men’s population that formed the very sinews of the National Guard, and had since the 19th relieved the watch to the cries of ‘Vive Paris!’ A few revolutionaries summoned the prefect, Duportal, to pronounce for or against Paris. For a month the Emancipation, which he directed, had made a campaign against the rurals, and he had even in a public meeting emphasized his Republican views. But he was not the man to take the initiative, and refused to break with Versailles. The clubs, however, beset him, obliging the officers of the National Guard to take an oath to defend the Republic, and asked for cartridges. M. Thiers, seeing that Duportal would after all follow their lead, named as prefect K�ratry, the former prefect of police of the 4th September. He arrived on the night of the 21st-22nd at the house of the general of the division, Nansouty, and being told that the garrison consisted of only 600 disbanded men, and that the whole National Guard would declare for Duportal, he beat his retreat on Agen.
On the 23rd the National Guard prepared a demonstration in order to take possession of the arsenal, when Duportal and the mayor rushed off to the Capitol, the H�tel-de-Ville of Toulouse. The mayor declared that the intended review was not to take place, and Duportal that he would tender his resignation rather than pronounce for the movement. But the generals, afraid of this outbreak of the faubourg, took refuge in the arsenal. The mayor and the municipal council, understanding it would no longer do to continue their Platonic role, fled in their turn, and hence Duportal, left alone in this prefecture, shone forth as a great revolutionary, and therefore all the more worthy of the sympathy of the National Guard. He exerted himself to reassure the generals, went to the arsenal, intimated there his firm resolution to maintain order in the name of the Government of Versailles, the only one he recognised as legitimate, and was so successful that they advised M. Thiers to keep him in his post. K�ratry, availing himself of his declaration, requested his aid to take possession of the prefecture, and Duportal gave him a rendezvous before the officers of the mobiles and of the National Guard, convoked for the next day, the 24th. K�ratry understood and remained at Agen.
The object of this meeting was to find the volunteers against Paris asked for by the Assembly. Four officers of mobiles out of sixty offered their services to Versailles. The officers of the National Guard did not come to the prefecture, but, on the contrary, prepared at that same moment a demonstration against K�ratry. At one o'clock 2,000 men were assembled in the Place du Capitole, and, their banner flying, repaired to the prefecture, where Duportal received their officers. One of them declared that, far from supporting the Assembly, they were ready to march against it, and that if M. Thiers did not make peace with Paris they would proclaim the Commune. At this name cries burst forth from all corners of the room, ‘Vive la Commune! Vive Paris!’ The officers, growing hot, decreed the arrest of K�ratry, proclaimed the Commune, and summoned Duportal to place himself at their head. He tried to back out, and proposed to act only as the officious prompter of the chiefs of the Commune; but the officers, inveighing against defection, induced him to come out to the square of the prefecture, where he was acclaimed by the National Guard, and they proceeded to the Capitol.
Hardly arrived in the large hall, the leaders seemed much embarrassed. They offered the presidency in turn to the mayor, to other municipal councillors, who slunk away, and to Duportal, who got off by drawing up a manifesto, which was read from the large balcony. ‘The Commune of Toulouse,’ it said, ‘declares for the Republic one and indivisible, urges the deputies of Paris to be the intermediaries between the Government and the great town, and summons M. Thiers to dissolve the Assembly.’ The mass cheered this milk-and-water Commune, which believed in the deputies of the Left and the oppression of M. Thiers by the rural majority.
In the evening some officers of the National Guard appointed an Executive Commission, composed, with two or three exceptions, of mere talkers; in this the principal leaders of the movement did not figure. It contented itself with posting up the manifesto, and neglected the smallest precautions, even that of occupying the railway station. The generals, nevertheless, did not dare to stir from their arsenal, where they were joined on the 26th by the first president of the court and the procureur-general, who launched an address calling upon the population to rally round them. The National Guard wanted to answer by storming the arsenal, and already the faubourg flocked to the Capitol. But the Commission preferred to negotiate, sent word to the arsenal that it would dissolve if the Government appointed a Republican prefect in the stead of K�ratry and entirely abandoned Duportal, who, it is true, had done nothing. The negotiations lasted all the evening, and the National Guard, tired out, deceived by their chiefs, and fancying everything settled, returned to their homes.
K�ratry, well informed of all these failures, arrived the next day at the railway station with three squadrons of cavalry, proceeded to the arsenal, broke off the negotiations, and gave the order to march. At one o'clock the Versaillese army, 200 cavalry and 600 ill-assorted soldiers strong, opened its campaign. ‘One column occupied the St. Cyprien Bridge, in order to separate the town from the faubourg, another proceeded to the prefecture, and the third, with Nansouty, K�ratry, and the magistrates, marched on the Capitol.
About 300 men filled the courts, the windows, and the terrace. The Versaillese deployed their troops and placed six guns in line at about sixty yards from the edifice, thus recklessly exposing their infantry and artillery men to the muskets of the insurgents. The first president of the court and the procureur-general advanced to parley, but obtained nothing. K�ratry read the riot act, his voice being drowned by cries. A single blank-cartridge volley would have scared soldiers and artillery men, who might besides have been harassed on both flanks. But the leaders had fled from the Capitol. The courage of a few men might still have brought about a fight, when the Republican Association interposed, persuaded the guards to retreat, and saved K�ratry. The prefecture was taken just as easily, and that same evening K�ratry installed himself there. The members of the Executive Commission the next day published a manifesto of such platitude as to secure them impunity, and one of them got himself named mayor by K�ratry.
Thus the generous working men of Toulouse, who had risen to the cry of ‘Vive Paris!’ were left in the lurch by those who had raised the insurrection. A disastrous check this for Paris, for the whole south would have followed the example of Toulouse if victorious.
The man of thought and energy, wanting in all these movements, appeared in the insurrection of Narbonne. The old city, Gallic in its enthusiasm, Roman in its tenacity, is the true centre of democracy in the department of Aude. Nowhere during the war had a more vigorous protest been entered against the shortcomings of Gambetta. For this very reason the National Guards of Narbonne had not yet received their muskets, when those of Carcassonne had long since been armed. At the news of the 18th March, Narbonne did not hesitate, but declared for Paris. To proclaim the Commune, an exile of the Empire, a man of strong convictions and firm character, Digeon, was at once applied to. Digeon, as modest as he was resolute, offered the direction of the movement to his comrade in exile, Marcou, the recognized chief of the democracy in the Aude, one of the most ardent opponents of Gambetta during the war. Marcou, a crafty lawyer, afraid of compromising himself, and dreading the energy of Digeon in the chief town of the department, induced him to leave for Narbonne. Digeon arrived there on the 23rd, and first thought of converting the municipal council to the principles of the Commune. But on the refusal of the mayor, Raynal, to summon the council, the people, out of all patience, invaded the H�tel-de-Ville on the evening of the 24th, and arming themselves with the muskets held by the municipality, installed Digeon and his friends. He appeared on the balcony, proclaimed the Commune of Narbonne united to that of Paris, and immediately proceeded to take measures of defence.
The following day Raynal tried to rally the garrison, and some companies formed before the H�tel-de-Ville; but the people, especially the women, worthy of the Parisian sisters, disarmed the soldiers. A captain and a lieutenant were retained as hostages; the rest of the garrison went and shut itself up in the St. Bernard Barracks. As Raynal still continued stirring up resistance, the people arrested him on the 26th; and Digeon, with the three hostages, at the head of a detachment of Federals, went to take possession of the prefecture, placing pickets at the railway station and telegraph office. To get arms he forced the arsenal, where, despite their lieutenant, who commanded them to fire, the soldiers surrendered their guns. The same day the delegates from the neighbouring Communes arrived, and Digeon set to work to generalize the movement.
He had clearly understood that the departmental insurrections would soon founder if not well combined, and he wanted to hold out a helping hand to the rising of Toulouse and of Marseilles. B�ziers and Cette had already promised him their support, and he was preparing to leave for B�ziers, when, on the 28th, two companies of Turcos arrived, soon followed by other troops sent from Montpellier, Toulouse, and Perpignan. From this moment Digeon was obliged to ,sand on the defensive. He had barricades thrown up, reinforced the posts, and ordered the Federals always to await the attacks and to aim at the officers.
We shall return to this subject later on. Paris now recalls us. The ‘other provincial movements were but momentary vibrations. On the 28th, when Paris was still elated with victory, all the Communes of France were already swept away save those of Marseilles and Narbonne.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XXIV<br>
The new Committee at work</h1>
<p><img src="pics/wroblewski.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Wroblewski.jpg" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p>At the advent of the new Committee on the 10th May our military situation had not changed within the line from St. Ouen to Neuilly, where both sides faced each other on the same level; but it was becoming serious from La Muette. The powerful battery of Montretout, that of Meudon, of Mont-Val�rien, covered Passy with shells and greatly injured the ramparts. The Versaillese trenches extended from Boulogne to the Seine. Their skirmishers were pressing upon the village of Issy, and occupied the trenches between the fort and that of Vanves, which they tried to cut off from Montrouge. The negligence of the defence was still the same. The ramparts from La Muette to the fort of Vanves were hardly armed; our gunboats bore almost alone the fire of Meudon, Clamart, and Val-Fleury.</p>
<p>The first act of the new Committee was to order the demolition of M. Thiers’ house. This giddy act helped the bombarder to a palace, which the Assembly voted him the day after. Then the Committee issued its proclamation: ‘Treason had slipped into ...’ etc.</p>
<p>Delescluze issued one on his own account. He dragged himself along, panting for breath, and might well say, ‘If I consulted only my strength I should have declined this function. The situation is grave; but when I contemplate the sublime future in store for our children, even though it should not be given us to reap what we have sown, I shall still enthusiastically hail the revolution of the 18th March.’</p>
<p>On entering the Ministry, he found the Central Committee also elaborating a proclamation. ‘The Central Committee declares that it is its duty not to allow this revolution of the 18th March, which it had so well begun, to succumb. It will unsparingly break down all resistance. It is determined to make an end of all controversies, put down the malignants, quell rivalry, ignorance and incapacity.’ This was to speak more authoritatively than the Council, and, above all, to flatter itself strangely.</p>
<p>From the first night it was necessary to repair a disaster. The fort of Vanves, upon which all the fires formerly directed against Issy were now concentrated, had become almost untenable, and its commander had evacuated it. Wroblewski, informed of this, took the command from La C�cilia, who had fallen ill, and in the night of the 10th to the 11th hurried thither at the head of the 187th and the 105th battalions of the celebrated 11th legion, which up to the last day did not cease to supply the defence with men. At four o'clock in the morning Wroblewski appeared before the embankment where the Versaillese were stationed, charged them at the point of the bayonet, put them to flight, took some prisoners, and recovered the fort. Once more our brave Federals showed what they could do when properly commanded.</p>
<p>During the day the Versaillese recommenced the bombardment. They overwhelmed the Des Oiseaux convent and the whole village of Issy, whose principal street was now one heap of ruins, with shells and grenades filled with potassium picrate. On the night of the 12th to the 13th they surprised the Lyc�e of Vanves, and on the 13th they attacked the seminary of Issy. For five days Brunei exhausted himself in trying to bring a little order into the defence of this village. Rossel had sent for this brave member of the Council, whom the jealousy of coteries kept at a distance, and said to him, ‘The situation of Issy is almost lost; will you undertake its defence?’ Brunei devoted himself, threw up barricades, asked for artillery (there were only four pieces), and new battalions to relieve the 2,000 men who had held out for forty-one days.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n172">[172]</a></sup> They only sent him two or three hundred men. He tried to make something of these, and fortified the seminary, which the Federals, under a hailstorm of shells, were unable to hold. Brunei organized a second line of defence in the houses of the village, and in the evening repaired to the War Office, where Delescluze wanted him to attend the Council of War.</p>
<p>It was the first and only Council of War held under the Commune. Dombrowski, Wroblewski and La C�cilia were present. Dombrowski, very enthusiastic, spoke of raising 100,000 men. Wroblewski, more practical, proposed to concentrate all the efforts uselessly spent at Neuilly against the trenches of the south. After a long debate no conclusion was come to. When Brunei arrived the sitting was already raised; so he was obliged to go and look for Delescluze at the H�tel-de-Ville, and then he retraced his steps to Issy. At the gate of Versailles he perceived his battalions on the other side of the rampart. These, deaf to their chiefs, had evacuated the village and wanted to re-enter the town. Brunel forbade the lowering of the drawbridge, and tried to get out by the gates of Vanves, where they refused to let him pass. He returned to the War Office, explained the situation, asked for men, wandered about the whole night looking for some, and at four o'clock in the morning set out with 150 Federals, but found the village entirely occupied by the Versaillese. The officers of Issy were tried by court-martial. Brunel gave evidence, and complained bitterly of the culpable carelessness which had paralysed the defence. For answer he was arrested.</p>
<p>He spoke but too truly. The disorder of the War Office rendered all resistance chimerical. Delescluze had brought only his devotion. Of a weak character despite his apparent rigidity, he was at the mercy of the general staff, still directed by Prodhomme, who, surviving all his chiefs, had succeeded in making himself thought indispensable. The Central Committee, emboldened by the timidity of the Council, intruded everywhere, published decrees, ordered the payment of expenses without submitting them to the control of the Military Commission. The members of the Commission, men of intelligence, but belonging to the minority, complained to the Committee of Public Safety, which replaced them by Romanticists. The dispute went on all the same, and waxed so violent that rumours of a rupture between the Council and the Central Committee spread amongst the legions.</p>
<p>The Versaillese, on their part, still pushed on. In the night of the 13th to the 14th the fort of Vanves, which now only fired occasional volleys, was quite extinguished, and could no more be rekindled. The garrison, cut off on all sides, retired by the quarries of Montrouge, and the Versaillese occupied what remained of the fort. There was again an ovation at Versailles.</p>
<p>On the 16th May we had not a single man from the left bank to the Petit Vanves, where about 2,000 Federals, under the command of La C�cilia and Lisbonne, were encamped. We attempted to retake the village of Issy, but were repulsed. Henceforth the enemy could continue his approaches and arm the two bastions of the fort of Issy that faced the town. His fire, counteracted for a moment by the ramparts, now showed a marked superiority, and joined the batteries that crushed the sixteenth arrondissement. This unfortunate quarter was now taken, attacked from the front and the flank by nearly a hundred ordnance pieces. It was indeed time to think of the defence of the interior. Delescluze extended the powers of the three generals to the quarters of the town contiguous to their command; he disbanded the battalion of the barricades, which had been of no utility whatever; he confided the works to the military engineers, and made an appeal to the navvies. But all his decrees remained so much waste paper or were crossed by others. When the delegate offered the navvies 3 francs 50 centimes, the Committee of Public Safety, in the same column of the <em>Officiel, </em>offered them 3 francs 75 centimes.</p>
<p>The Committee of Public Safety contributed to the defence by a decree obliging all the inhabitants of Paris to provide themselves with an identity card, whose production might be requested by a National Guard — as impracticable and unpractised a decree as that on the refractory recruits. The H�tel-de-Ville awed nobody; behind its big words impotence made itself felt. On the 12th, some battalions having surrounded the Bank and wanting to make a search, old Beslay prevented them doing so, and the terrible dictators of the Committee of Public Safety disavowed their own agent. The public chaffed — a terrible thing! A last blow, and it was all over with the authority of the Commune; and this blow came from the minority.</p>
<p>The latter was exasperated at seeing its most capable members expelled from the services — Vermorel from the Commission of Public Safety, Longuet from the <em>Officiel, </em>Varlin from the Commissariat — and was struck with dismay at the disorder of the War Office. It had the unfortunate idea of denying its own responsibility, prepared a manifesto, and brought it to the sitting of the 15th. The majority, forewarned, with the exception of four or five members, kept away. The minority had their absence verified, and instead of waiting for the next sitting, sent the declaration to the papers. ‘The Commune,’ it said, ‘has abdicated its power into the hands of a dictatorship, to which it has given the name of Committee of Public Safety. The majority has declared itself irresponsible by its vote. The minority, on the contrary, affirms that the Commune owes it to the revolutionary movement to accept all responsibilities. As to ourselves, we claim the right of being alone answerable for our acts without screening ourselves behind a supreme dictatorship. We withdraw to our arrondissements. Convinced that the question of the war takes the lead over all others, we shall spend the time left us by our municipal functions in the midst of our brothers of the National Guard.’</p>
<p>A great fault this, and altogether inexcusable. The minority had not the right to cry out about a dictatorship, having voted, without making any express reserve, for the second Committee. It had not the right to say that the elected delegates of the people were encroaching upon its sovereignty, for this concentration of power was quite accidental, necessitated by the battle, and leaving the principle of the people’s sovereignty intact under ordinary circumstances. It would have been more dignified to openly disavow the acts of the Committee, and then propose something better themselves. It would have been logical, since ‘the question of the war took the lead over all others,’ not to thus morally weaken the defence by deserting the Hotel-de-Ville. It was not with a view to retain them in their arrondissements that the arrondissements had sent delegates to the Council.</p>
<p>Several members of the minority brought the question before public meetings, which called on them to return to their posts. Those of the fourth arrondissement gave an explanation in the The�tre-Lyrique, in which they said ‘that their guiding principle was that the Commune was to be only the executive agent of the public will, manifesting itself continually, and indicating day by day what was to be done to secure the triumph of the revolution.’ No doubt that principle was correct, and the revolution can only be made safe by the direct legislation of the people. But was this a time to legislate when the cannon ruled supreme? And in the midst of the fire, is the ‘executive agent’ to expect that the soldier who does battle for him will also bring him ideas?</p>
<p>The Versaillese journals crowed over this manifesto. Many of those who had signed it understood their mistake, and fifteen of them presented themselves at the sitting of the 17th. The Council had never been so numerous; the roll-call was answered by sixty-six members. The Council was first taken up with a proposition prompted by a traitor. Barral de Montaut, chief of the staff of the 7th legion, had just published that the Versaillese of Vanves had shot an ambulance woman of the Commune. Urbain, urged by Montaut, who had managed to gain his friendship, asked that, as reprisal, five hostages should be shot in the interior of Paris, and five at the advanced posts. The Council passed to the order of the day. Immediately after this incident, a member of the majority challenged those of the minority. He demonstrated without any difficulty the futility of the reasons invoked in their manifesto, and, growing warm, called his adversaries Girondists. ‘What! Girondists!’ answered Frankel, ‘one can see that you go to bed at night and get up in the morning with the <em>Moniteur </em>of 1793, else you would know the difference there is between us Socialist Revolutionaries and the Girondists.’ The discussion became heated. Vall�s, who had signed the manifesto, said, ‘I have declared that we must come to an understanding with the majority; but they must also respect the minority, which is a force;’ and he demanded that all forces should be turned against the enemy. Citizen Miot answered severely from the profound depths of his beard. A member of the majority spoke of conciliation; immediately F�lix Pyat, to incense their ire, asked for the reading of the manifesto. In vain Vaillant said, with sense and justice, ‘When our colleagues come back to us disavowing their programme, we must not put it under their eyes to engage them to persevere in their faults,’ and a conciliatory order of the day was beaten by that of Miot, drawn up in terms offensive to the minority.</p>
<p>Suddenly a tremendous explosion interrupted the dispute. Billioray rushed into the room with the news that the cartridge factory of the Avenue Rapp had just blown up.</p>
<p>The whole east of Paris was shaken. A pyramid of flame, of molten lead, human remains, burning timber and bullets burst forth from the Champ-de-Mars to an enormous height, and showered down upon the environs. Four houses fell in; more than forty persons were wounded, and the catastrophe would have been still more terrible if the firemen of the Commune had not torn wagons of cartridges and barrels of gunpowder from the midst of the flames. A maddened crowd gathered, and believed in a crime; a few individuals were arrested, and an artilleryman was taken to the Ecole Militaire.</p>
<p>Who was the culprit? Nobody knows. Neither the Council nor the procureur of the Commune examined the affair. Yet the Committee of Public Safety announced in a proclamation that it held four of the culprits, and Delescluze that the case was to be sent before the court-martial. No more was heard about it , although it was as much the duty as the interest of the Council to throw light upon this affair. A serious inquest would probably have revealed a crime. The women, who usually left the factory at seven o'clock, had been on that day dismissed at six o'clock. It has been seen that Charpentier asked Corbin for dynamite; it might have been very useful to the conspirators to spread panic with one stroke at the War Office, the Ecole Militaire, the artillery park and the huts of the Champ-de-Mars, which were always occupied by a few Federals.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n173">[173]</a></sup> Paris firmly believed in a plot. The reactionaries said, ‘This is the revenge for the Vend�me column’. <span class="context">[column erected in 1805 in honour of Napoleon’s victories. Became a symbol of Bonapartism]</span></p>
<p>It had been pulled down the evening before with great ceremony. Its demolition, the idea of which had become quite current during the first siege,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n174">[174]</a></sup> was decreed on the 12th April.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n175">[175]</a></sup> This inspiration, popular, humane, profound, showing that a war of classes was to supersede the war of nations, aimed at the same time a blow at the ephemeral triumph of the Prussian. The rather expensive preparations, costing almost 15,000 francs, had been much protracted, owing to the lukewarmness of the engineer and the continual efforts to suborn the workmen. On the 16th May, at two o'clock, an immense crowd thronged all the neighbouring streets, rather anxious as to the result of the operation. The reactionaries foretold all sorts of catastrophes; the engineer, on the contrary, affirmed that there would be no shock; that the column would break to pieces during its descent. He had sawn it horizontally a little above the pedestal; a slanting groove was to facilitate the fall backwards upon a vast bed of faggots, sand and dung, accumulated in the direction of the Rue de la Paix.</p>
<p>A rope attached to the summit of the column was twisted round a capstan fixed at the entrance of the street. The square was crowded with National Guards; the windows, the roofs were filled with curious spectators. In default of MM. Jules Simon and Ferry, erstwhile warm partisans of the operation, M. Glais-Bizoin congratulated the new prefect of police, Ferre, who had just taken the place of Cournet, and confided to him that for forty years it had been his ardent desire to see the expiatory monument demolished. The bands played the <em>Marseillaise, </em>the capstan turned about, the pulley broke, and a man was wounded. Already rumours of treason circulated among the crowd, but a second pulley was soon supplied. At a quarter past five an officer appeared on the balustrade for some time, waved a tricolor flag, then fixed it on the rails. At half-past five the capstan again turned, and a few minutes after the extremity of the column slowly displaced itself, the shaft little by little gave way, then, suddenly reeling to and fro, broke and fell with a low moan. The head of Bonaparte rolled on the ground, and his parricidal arm lay detached from the trunk. An immense acclamation, as that of a people freed from a yoke, burst forth. The ruins were climbed upon and saluted by enthusiastic cries, and the red flag floated from the purified Pedestal, which on that day had become the altar of the human race.</p>
<p>The people wanted to divide among themselves the fragments of the column, but were prevented by the inopportune interference of the Council members present. A week afterwards, the Versaillese picked them up. One of the first acts of the victorious bourgeoisie was to again raise this enormous block, the symbol of their sovereignty. To lift up Caesar on his pedestal they needed a scaffolding of 30,000 corpses. Like the mothers under the First Empire, may those of our days never look upon this bronze without weeping.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XXIV
The new Committee at work
At the advent of the new Committee on the 10th May our military situation had not changed within the line from St. Ouen to Neuilly, where both sides faced each other on the same level; but it was becoming serious from La Muette. The powerful battery of Montretout, that of Meudon, of Mont-Val�rien, covered Passy with shells and greatly injured the ramparts. The Versaillese trenches extended from Boulogne to the Seine. Their skirmishers were pressing upon the village of Issy, and occupied the trenches between the fort and that of Vanves, which they tried to cut off from Montrouge. The negligence of the defence was still the same. The ramparts from La Muette to the fort of Vanves were hardly armed; our gunboats bore almost alone the fire of Meudon, Clamart, and Val-Fleury.
The first act of the new Committee was to order the demolition of M. Thiers’ house. This giddy act helped the bombarder to a palace, which the Assembly voted him the day after. Then the Committee issued its proclamation: ‘Treason had slipped into ...’ etc.
Delescluze issued one on his own account. He dragged himself along, panting for breath, and might well say, ‘If I consulted only my strength I should have declined this function. The situation is grave; but when I contemplate the sublime future in store for our children, even though it should not be given us to reap what we have sown, I shall still enthusiastically hail the revolution of the 18th March.’
On entering the Ministry, he found the Central Committee also elaborating a proclamation. ‘The Central Committee declares that it is its duty not to allow this revolution of the 18th March, which it had so well begun, to succumb. It will unsparingly break down all resistance. It is determined to make an end of all controversies, put down the malignants, quell rivalry, ignorance and incapacity.’ This was to speak more authoritatively than the Council, and, above all, to flatter itself strangely.
From the first night it was necessary to repair a disaster. The fort of Vanves, upon which all the fires formerly directed against Issy were now concentrated, had become almost untenable, and its commander had evacuated it. Wroblewski, informed of this, took the command from La C�cilia, who had fallen ill, and in the night of the 10th to the 11th hurried thither at the head of the 187th and the 105th battalions of the celebrated 11th legion, which up to the last day did not cease to supply the defence with men. At four o'clock in the morning Wroblewski appeared before the embankment where the Versaillese were stationed, charged them at the point of the bayonet, put them to flight, took some prisoners, and recovered the fort. Once more our brave Federals showed what they could do when properly commanded.
During the day the Versaillese recommenced the bombardment. They overwhelmed the Des Oiseaux convent and the whole village of Issy, whose principal street was now one heap of ruins, with shells and grenades filled with potassium picrate. On the night of the 12th to the 13th they surprised the Lyc�e of Vanves, and on the 13th they attacked the seminary of Issy. For five days Brunei exhausted himself in trying to bring a little order into the defence of this village. Rossel had sent for this brave member of the Council, whom the jealousy of coteries kept at a distance, and said to him, ‘The situation of Issy is almost lost; will you undertake its defence?’ Brunei devoted himself, threw up barricades, asked for artillery (there were only four pieces), and new battalions to relieve the 2,000 men who had held out for forty-one days.[172] They only sent him two or three hundred men. He tried to make something of these, and fortified the seminary, which the Federals, under a hailstorm of shells, were unable to hold. Brunei organized a second line of defence in the houses of the village, and in the evening repaired to the War Office, where Delescluze wanted him to attend the Council of War.
It was the first and only Council of War held under the Commune. Dombrowski, Wroblewski and La C�cilia were present. Dombrowski, very enthusiastic, spoke of raising 100,000 men. Wroblewski, more practical, proposed to concentrate all the efforts uselessly spent at Neuilly against the trenches of the south. After a long debate no conclusion was come to. When Brunei arrived the sitting was already raised; so he was obliged to go and look for Delescluze at the H�tel-de-Ville, and then he retraced his steps to Issy. At the gate of Versailles he perceived his battalions on the other side of the rampart. These, deaf to their chiefs, had evacuated the village and wanted to re-enter the town. Brunel forbade the lowering of the drawbridge, and tried to get out by the gates of Vanves, where they refused to let him pass. He returned to the War Office, explained the situation, asked for men, wandered about the whole night looking for some, and at four o'clock in the morning set out with 150 Federals, but found the village entirely occupied by the Versaillese. The officers of Issy were tried by court-martial. Brunel gave evidence, and complained bitterly of the culpable carelessness which had paralysed the defence. For answer he was arrested.
He spoke but too truly. The disorder of the War Office rendered all resistance chimerical. Delescluze had brought only his devotion. Of a weak character despite his apparent rigidity, he was at the mercy of the general staff, still directed by Prodhomme, who, surviving all his chiefs, had succeeded in making himself thought indispensable. The Central Committee, emboldened by the timidity of the Council, intruded everywhere, published decrees, ordered the payment of expenses without submitting them to the control of the Military Commission. The members of the Commission, men of intelligence, but belonging to the minority, complained to the Committee of Public Safety, which replaced them by Romanticists. The dispute went on all the same, and waxed so violent that rumours of a rupture between the Council and the Central Committee spread amongst the legions.
The Versaillese, on their part, still pushed on. In the night of the 13th to the 14th the fort of Vanves, which now only fired occasional volleys, was quite extinguished, and could no more be rekindled. The garrison, cut off on all sides, retired by the quarries of Montrouge, and the Versaillese occupied what remained of the fort. There was again an ovation at Versailles.
On the 16th May we had not a single man from the left bank to the Petit Vanves, where about 2,000 Federals, under the command of La C�cilia and Lisbonne, were encamped. We attempted to retake the village of Issy, but were repulsed. Henceforth the enemy could continue his approaches and arm the two bastions of the fort of Issy that faced the town. His fire, counteracted for a moment by the ramparts, now showed a marked superiority, and joined the batteries that crushed the sixteenth arrondissement. This unfortunate quarter was now taken, attacked from the front and the flank by nearly a hundred ordnance pieces. It was indeed time to think of the defence of the interior. Delescluze extended the powers of the three generals to the quarters of the town contiguous to their command; he disbanded the battalion of the barricades, which had been of no utility whatever; he confided the works to the military engineers, and made an appeal to the navvies. But all his decrees remained so much waste paper or were crossed by others. When the delegate offered the navvies 3 francs 50 centimes, the Committee of Public Safety, in the same column of the Officiel, offered them 3 francs 75 centimes.
The Committee of Public Safety contributed to the defence by a decree obliging all the inhabitants of Paris to provide themselves with an identity card, whose production might be requested by a National Guard — as impracticable and unpractised a decree as that on the refractory recruits. The H�tel-de-Ville awed nobody; behind its big words impotence made itself felt. On the 12th, some battalions having surrounded the Bank and wanting to make a search, old Beslay prevented them doing so, and the terrible dictators of the Committee of Public Safety disavowed their own agent. The public chaffed — a terrible thing! A last blow, and it was all over with the authority of the Commune; and this blow came from the minority.
The latter was exasperated at seeing its most capable members expelled from the services — Vermorel from the Commission of Public Safety, Longuet from the Officiel, Varlin from the Commissariat — and was struck with dismay at the disorder of the War Office. It had the unfortunate idea of denying its own responsibility, prepared a manifesto, and brought it to the sitting of the 15th. The majority, forewarned, with the exception of four or five members, kept away. The minority had their absence verified, and instead of waiting for the next sitting, sent the declaration to the papers. ‘The Commune,’ it said, ‘has abdicated its power into the hands of a dictatorship, to which it has given the name of Committee of Public Safety. The majority has declared itself irresponsible by its vote. The minority, on the contrary, affirms that the Commune owes it to the revolutionary movement to accept all responsibilities. As to ourselves, we claim the right of being alone answerable for our acts without screening ourselves behind a supreme dictatorship. We withdraw to our arrondissements. Convinced that the question of the war takes the lead over all others, we shall spend the time left us by our municipal functions in the midst of our brothers of the National Guard.’
A great fault this, and altogether inexcusable. The minority had not the right to cry out about a dictatorship, having voted, without making any express reserve, for the second Committee. It had not the right to say that the elected delegates of the people were encroaching upon its sovereignty, for this concentration of power was quite accidental, necessitated by the battle, and leaving the principle of the people’s sovereignty intact under ordinary circumstances. It would have been more dignified to openly disavow the acts of the Committee, and then propose something better themselves. It would have been logical, since ‘the question of the war took the lead over all others,’ not to thus morally weaken the defence by deserting the Hotel-de-Ville. It was not with a view to retain them in their arrondissements that the arrondissements had sent delegates to the Council.
Several members of the minority brought the question before public meetings, which called on them to return to their posts. Those of the fourth arrondissement gave an explanation in the The�tre-Lyrique, in which they said ‘that their guiding principle was that the Commune was to be only the executive agent of the public will, manifesting itself continually, and indicating day by day what was to be done to secure the triumph of the revolution.’ No doubt that principle was correct, and the revolution can only be made safe by the direct legislation of the people. But was this a time to legislate when the cannon ruled supreme? And in the midst of the fire, is the ‘executive agent’ to expect that the soldier who does battle for him will also bring him ideas?
The Versaillese journals crowed over this manifesto. Many of those who had signed it understood their mistake, and fifteen of them presented themselves at the sitting of the 17th. The Council had never been so numerous; the roll-call was answered by sixty-six members. The Council was first taken up with a proposition prompted by a traitor. Barral de Montaut, chief of the staff of the 7th legion, had just published that the Versaillese of Vanves had shot an ambulance woman of the Commune. Urbain, urged by Montaut, who had managed to gain his friendship, asked that, as reprisal, five hostages should be shot in the interior of Paris, and five at the advanced posts. The Council passed to the order of the day. Immediately after this incident, a member of the majority challenged those of the minority. He demonstrated without any difficulty the futility of the reasons invoked in their manifesto, and, growing warm, called his adversaries Girondists. ‘What! Girondists!’ answered Frankel, ‘one can see that you go to bed at night and get up in the morning with the Moniteur of 1793, else you would know the difference there is between us Socialist Revolutionaries and the Girondists.’ The discussion became heated. Vall�s, who had signed the manifesto, said, ‘I have declared that we must come to an understanding with the majority; but they must also respect the minority, which is a force;’ and he demanded that all forces should be turned against the enemy. Citizen Miot answered severely from the profound depths of his beard. A member of the majority spoke of conciliation; immediately F�lix Pyat, to incense their ire, asked for the reading of the manifesto. In vain Vaillant said, with sense and justice, ‘When our colleagues come back to us disavowing their programme, we must not put it under their eyes to engage them to persevere in their faults,’ and a conciliatory order of the day was beaten by that of Miot, drawn up in terms offensive to the minority.
Suddenly a tremendous explosion interrupted the dispute. Billioray rushed into the room with the news that the cartridge factory of the Avenue Rapp had just blown up.
The whole east of Paris was shaken. A pyramid of flame, of molten lead, human remains, burning timber and bullets burst forth from the Champ-de-Mars to an enormous height, and showered down upon the environs. Four houses fell in; more than forty persons were wounded, and the catastrophe would have been still more terrible if the firemen of the Commune had not torn wagons of cartridges and barrels of gunpowder from the midst of the flames. A maddened crowd gathered, and believed in a crime; a few individuals were arrested, and an artilleryman was taken to the Ecole Militaire.
Who was the culprit? Nobody knows. Neither the Council nor the procureur of the Commune examined the affair. Yet the Committee of Public Safety announced in a proclamation that it held four of the culprits, and Delescluze that the case was to be sent before the court-martial. No more was heard about it , although it was as much the duty as the interest of the Council to throw light upon this affair. A serious inquest would probably have revealed a crime. The women, who usually left the factory at seven o'clock, had been on that day dismissed at six o'clock. It has been seen that Charpentier asked Corbin for dynamite; it might have been very useful to the conspirators to spread panic with one stroke at the War Office, the Ecole Militaire, the artillery park and the huts of the Champ-de-Mars, which were always occupied by a few Federals.[173] Paris firmly believed in a plot. The reactionaries said, ‘This is the revenge for the Vend�me column’. [column erected in 1805 in honour of Napoleon’s victories. Became a symbol of Bonapartism]
It had been pulled down the evening before with great ceremony. Its demolition, the idea of which had become quite current during the first siege,[174] was decreed on the 12th April.[175] This inspiration, popular, humane, profound, showing that a war of classes was to supersede the war of nations, aimed at the same time a blow at the ephemeral triumph of the Prussian. The rather expensive preparations, costing almost 15,000 francs, had been much protracted, owing to the lukewarmness of the engineer and the continual efforts to suborn the workmen. On the 16th May, at two o'clock, an immense crowd thronged all the neighbouring streets, rather anxious as to the result of the operation. The reactionaries foretold all sorts of catastrophes; the engineer, on the contrary, affirmed that there would be no shock; that the column would break to pieces during its descent. He had sawn it horizontally a little above the pedestal; a slanting groove was to facilitate the fall backwards upon a vast bed of faggots, sand and dung, accumulated in the direction of the Rue de la Paix.
A rope attached to the summit of the column was twisted round a capstan fixed at the entrance of the street. The square was crowded with National Guards; the windows, the roofs were filled with curious spectators. In default of MM. Jules Simon and Ferry, erstwhile warm partisans of the operation, M. Glais-Bizoin congratulated the new prefect of police, Ferre, who had just taken the place of Cournet, and confided to him that for forty years it had been his ardent desire to see the expiatory monument demolished. The bands played the Marseillaise, the capstan turned about, the pulley broke, and a man was wounded. Already rumours of treason circulated among the crowd, but a second pulley was soon supplied. At a quarter past five an officer appeared on the balustrade for some time, waved a tricolor flag, then fixed it on the rails. At half-past five the capstan again turned, and a few minutes after the extremity of the column slowly displaced itself, the shaft little by little gave way, then, suddenly reeling to and fro, broke and fell with a low moan. The head of Bonaparte rolled on the ground, and his parricidal arm lay detached from the trunk. An immense acclamation, as that of a people freed from a yoke, burst forth. The ruins were climbed upon and saluted by enthusiastic cries, and the red flag floated from the purified Pedestal, which on that day had become the altar of the human race.
The people wanted to divide among themselves the fragments of the column, but were prevented by the inopportune interference of the Council members present. A week afterwards, the Versaillese picked them up. One of the first acts of the victorious bourgeoisie was to again raise this enormous block, the symbol of their sovereignty. To lift up Caesar on his pedestal they needed a scaffolding of 30,000 corpses. Like the mothers under the First Empire, may those of our days never look upon this bronze without weeping.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XI<br>
The Council of the Commune wavers</h1>
<p>The Place de l'H�tel-de-Ville was still astir when the newly elected members of the Commune assembled in the municipal council-hall.</p>
<p>The ballot had returned sixteen mayors, adjuncts, and Liberals of all shades, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n108">[108]</a></sup> a few Radicals, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n109">[109]</a></sup> and about sixty revolutionaries of all sorts. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n110">[110]</a></sup> </p>
<p>How came these latter to be chosen? All must be told, and virile truth at last substituted for the stale flattery of the old romantic school styling itself ‘revolutionary’. There might be something more terrible than the defeat: to misconstrue or to forget its causes.</p>
<p>Responsibility weighs heavily enough upon the elected, but we must not charge it all to one side — the electors also have their share of it.</p>
<p>The Central Committee had told the people on Sunday the 19th, ‘Prepare for your communal elections.’ They thus had a whole week in which to frame a mandate and select their mandatories. No doubt the resistance of the mayors and the occupation of the military posts kept away many of the revolutionary electors from their arrondissements, but there still remained enough citizens to conduct the work of selection.</p>
<p>Never had a mandate been more indispensable, for the question at issue was to give Paris a communal constitution acceptable to all France. Never did Paris stand in such need of enlightened and practical men, capable at once of negotiating and of combating.</p>
<p>Yet there was never less preparatory discussion. A few men only recalled to prudence a people habitually so over-scrupulous in electoral matters, and which had just made a revolution to get rid of their representatives. The Committee of the twenty arrondissements issued a manifesto very pertinent in several points, and which might have served as an outline; the two delegates at the Home Office tried, through an article in the <em>Officiel</em>, to impress Paris with the importance of her vote. Not a single assembly framed the general programme of Paris; only two or three arrondissements gave some sort of mandate.</p>
<p>Instead of voting for a programme, they voted for names. Those who had demanded the Commune, made a mark at the Corderie or during the siege, were elected without being asked for further explanations, some even twice, like Flourens, in spite of the blunders of the 31st October. Only seven or eight, and those not the best, of the obscure men of the Central Committee were named, the latter, it is true, having decided not to present itself for election. The public meetings in many arrondissements sent up the most violent talkers, romanticists sprung up during the siege, and lacking all knowledge of practical life. Nowhere were the candidates put to any test. In the ardour of the struggle they took no thought for the morrow. One might have fancied that the object in view was a simple demonstration, not the founding of a new order of things.</p>
<p>Twenty-four workmen only were elected, and of these a third belonged rather to the public meetings than to the International or the working men’s societies. The other delegates of the people were chosen from the middle-class and the so-called liberal professions, accountants, publicists — there were as many as twelve of these doctors and lawyers. These, save a few really studious men, whether veterans or new-comers, were as ignorant as the workmen of the political and administrative mechanism of the bourgeoisie, albeit full of their own personality. The safety of the Central Committee lay in this, that it was unadorned with great men, each one provided with a formula of his own. The Council of the Commune, on the contrary, abounded in chapels, groups, semi-celebrities, and hence endless competition and rivalry.</p>
<p>Thus the precipitation and heedlessness of the revolutionary electors sent up to the H�tel-de-Ville a majority of men, most of them devoted, but chosen without discernment, and, into the bargain, abandoned them to their own inspirations, to their whims, without any determined mandate to restrain and guide them in the struggle entered upon.</p>
<p>Time and experience would no doubt have corrected this negligence, but time was wanting. The people never hold sway but for an hour, and woe to them if they are not then ready, armed from head to foot. The elections of the 26th March were irreparable.</p>
<p>Only about sixty of those elected were present at the first sitting. At its opening, the Central Committee came to congratulate the Council. The chairman by seniority, Beslay, a capitalist of a fraternizing turn of mind, made the opening speech. He very happily defined this young revolution: ‘The enfranchisement of the Commune of Paris is the enfranchisement of all the communes of the Republic. Your adversaries have said that you have struck the Republic. It is as with the pile, to be driven deeper into the earth. The Republic of 1793 was a soldier, who wanted to centralize all the forces of the nation; the Republic of 1871 is a workman, who above all wants liberty to construct peace. The Commune will occupy itself with all that is local, the Department with what is regional, the Government with what is national. Let us not overstep this limit, and the country and the Government will be happy and proud to applaud this revolution.’ This was the naive illusion of an old man, who, nevertheless, had had the experience of a long political life. This programme, so moderate in its form, was nothing less than the death-knell of the great bourgeoisie, as shown during this very sitting.</p>
<p>There were already some jarring notes. The violent and the giddy-headed launched out into random motions, and wanted the Commune to declare itself omnipotent. Tirard, elected by his arrondissement, took advantage of this occasion to withdraw, stating that his mandate was purely municipal, that he could not recognize the political character of the Commune; gave in his resignation, and ironically bade farewell to the Council: ‘I leave you my sincere good wishes; may you succeed in your task,’ etc.</p>
<p>The insolence of this dishonest man, who for eight days had been busy in fomenting civil war and now threw up the mandate solicited in his address to the electors, evoked general indignation. The more impatient wanted to have him arrested, others to declare his mandate forfeited. He escaped scot-free because he had said at the Versailles tribune, ‘When you enter the H�tel-de-Ville, you are not sure to return from it.’</p>
<p>This incident no doubt induced the Council to vote the secrecy of their sittings, their awkward pretext being that the Commune was not a parliament. This decision produced a very bad effect, violating the best traditions of the great Commune of 1792-93, as it gave the Council the appearance of a conspiracy, and it was found necessary to quash it two weeks after, when the newspapers abounded in fantastic reports, as a natural consequence of the secret sittings. But the publicity never consisted in anything but the insertion of curtailed reports in the <em>Officiel. </em>The Council never admitted the public, whose presence would have prevented many errors.</p>
<p><img src="pics/lefrancais.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Lefrancais" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p>The next day the Council subdivided itself into commissions charged with the various services. A Military Commission, and others of Finance, Justice, Public Safety, Labour and Exchange, Provisions, Foreign Affairs, Public Services, and Education were named. The Executive Commission was composed of Lefran�ais, Duval, F�lix Pyat, Bergert, Tridon, Eudes, and Vaillant, of whom Duval, Bergeret, and Eudes also belonged to the Military Commission.</p>
<p>It had just been voted that all decrees should be signed <em>The Commune — </em>a vote too soon forgotten — when the delegates of the Central Committee were announced. After waiting half an hour they were introduced. ‘Citizens,’ said their spokesman, ‘the Central Committee comes to hand over to you its revolutionary powers. We resume the functions defined by our statutes.’</p>
<p>This was the moment for the Council to affirm its authority. The only representative of the population, alone responsible, it should now have absorbed all powers, not tolerating the co-existence of a Committee which was sure always to remember the paramount position it had held and strive to recover it. In the previous sitting, the Council had done justice to the Central Committee in voting that they had deserved well of Paris and the Republic, and now taking them at their word, ought to have declared that the role of the Committee had come to an end. Instead of an authoritative decision in this sense, recriminations were resorted to.</p>
<p>A member of the Council recalled the promise of the Central Committee to dissolve after the elections. Unless they aimed at power, there was no necessity for the maintenance of their organization. Varlin and Beslay defended the existence of the Committee, which was combated by Jourde and Rigault. The delegates, who would have yielded to a peremptory word, held out against this weakness. ‘This is,’ they said, ‘the Federation that has saved the Republic. The last word is not yet said. To dissolve this organization is to break your strength. The Central Committee does not pretend to share in the government. It remains the bond of union between you and the National Guard, the right hand of the Revolution. We again become what we were, the great <em>conseil de famille </em>of the National Guard.’</p>
<p>This simile made a marked impression. The debate was prolonged, and the delegates of the Committee withdrew, no conclusion having been arrived at.</p>
<p>Thereupon, without preamble, like a Jack-in-the-box, F�lix Pyat Jumped up and proposed the abolition of the conscription.</p>
<p>On the 3rd March he had stolen away from the National Assembly, as he had on the 31st October deserted the H�tel-de-Ville, and, a few days after, sneaked out of prison. On the 18th March he did not stir, while Delescluze had joined the revolution from the first day. F�lix Pyat waited for the triumph, and on the eve of the elections came to beat the drum before the Committee, ‘which teaches modesty to the proudest name and inspires men of genius with a feeling of inferiority.’ Elected by about 12,000 votes in the tenth arrondissement, he was now forward to take his seat at the H�tel-de-Ville.</p>
<p>The hour awaited for twenty years had at last struck; he was about to tread the boards. Amidst the crowd of dramatists, miracle-workers, romanticists, visionaries, and Jacobin relics, trailing since 1830 at the heels of the social revolution, his business had been that of appeals to regicide and revolutionary insurgency, of epistles, allegories, toasts, invocations, evocations, pieces of rhetoric on the events of the day, tinkering with the old Montagnard wares, and doing them up with a little humanitarian varnish. Under the Empire his rabid manifestoes had been the joy of the police and of the Bonapartist journals, excellent sops to throw to the people, who could not extract from them a practical idea or a grain of sense. This intoxication was more than half-feigned. The dishevelled madman of the stage behind the scenes turned crafty and wary to a degree. At bottom he was only a splenetic sceptic, sincere only in his self-idolatry. He came to the Commune his pockets crammed with decrees.</p>
<p>When he read his motion, it was lustily cheered by the romanticists and passed at once. Yet still in the morning the Council had intimated nothing of the sort, but only stated in the proclamation in which they presented themselves to Paris: ‘Today the decision on house-rents, tomorrow that on the overdue bills, the public services re-established and simplified, and the National Guards reorganized, these are our first acts.’ And now it abruptly encroached upon national affairs. Commune in the morning, Constituent Assembly in the evening.</p>
<p>If they wanted to change the revolution from a communal into a national one, they ought to have said so, boldly set forth their whole programme, and demonstrated to France the necessity of their attempt. But what signified this decree, improvised at random, without a preliminary declaration and without a sequel? This <em>quid pro quo </em>was not even taken up. Under pretext of avoiding parliamentarism, the matters at issue were hurried over.</p>
<p>Then the Council decreed the general exemption of rents due between October, 1870, and July, 1871. Versailles had offered only delays; this was contrary to equity. The Council exempted rents for the good reason that property ought to bear its share of the general sacrifices; but it did not exempt a lot of industrialists who had made scandalous profits during the siege. This was contrary to justice.</p>
<p>Finally, they neglected to announce themselves to the provinces, already so forsaken by the Central Committee. A commission had certainly been charged to draw up an address, but its work had not pleased, and another one had been named, so that what with one commission and another, the programme of the Commune was kept in suspense for twenty-two days, and the Council had allowed all the insurrections of the provinces to die out without giving them any advice or ideas.</p>
<p>These encroachments, this disorder, disturbed Paris with the thought that the new power had neither very clear ideas nor consciousness of the situation. The Liberal fraction of the Council took advantage of this pretext to withdraw. If their convention of the 20th had been sincere, if they had cared for the destinies of Paris, the mayor and adjuncts elected would have courageously stood by their mandates. Like those of the provinces, they deserted, but were still more culpable, since they had not protested against their elections. Many had never been seen at the H�tel-de-Ville; others wrung their hands, lamenting, ‘Where are we going?’ Some shammed mortal illness: ‘You see 1 am at my last gasp.’ Those who have been most abusive since, then sought for humble evasions. Not one broke boldly.</p>
<p>Their resignations,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n111"> [111]</a></sup> the double elections, left twenty-two seats vacant on the 30th, when the Council verified the credentials. Faithful to the best traditions of the French Republic, it admitted the Hungarian Frankel, one of the most intelligent members of the International, elected in the thirteenth arrondissement. Six candidates had not received the eighth part of the votes required by the law of 1849; the Council passed by this irregularity because the arrondissements of these candidates, composed of reactionary quarters, were emptying themselves from day to day.</p>
<p>The men of order, twice chastised, continued migrating to Versailles, which they stocked with a new store of rancour and rhodomontades. The town had assumed a warlike aspect; all announced that the struggle was near at hand. Already M. Thiers had cut off Paris from France. On the eve of the April term, the 3 1 st March, the director of the general post-office, Rampont, belying the word of honour he had given the delegate of the Central Committee, Thiesz, made off after having disorganized the postal service, and M. Thiers suppressed all the goods trains and kept back all correspondence destined for Paris.</p>
<p>On the 1st April he officially announced war. ‘The Assembly,’ he telegraphed to the prefects, ‘is sitting at Versailles, where the organization of one of the finest armies that France has ever possessed is being completed. Good citizens may then take heart and hope for the end of a struggle which will be sad but short.’ A cynical boast of that same bourgeoisie which had refused to organize armies against the Prussians. ‘One of the finest armies,’ was as yet only the rabble of the 18th March, strengthened by five or six regiments; about 35,000 men, with 3,000 horses, and 5,000 gendarmes or sergents-de-ville, the only corps that had any solidity.</p>
<p>Paris would not believe in the existence even of this army. The popular papers demanded a sortie, speaking of the journey to Versailles as a promenade. The most impetuous was the <em>Vengeur, </em>in which F�lix Pyat furiously shook his cap and bells. He exhorted the Commune ‘to press Versailles. Poor Versailles! it no longer remembers the 5th and 6th October, 1789, when the women of the Commune alone sufficed to catch its king.’ On the morning of Sunday the 2nd April the same member of the Executive Commission announced to Paris: ‘Yesterday at Versailles the soldiers, requested to vote by <em>aye </em>or <em>no </em>if they were to march on Paris, answered No!’</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XI
The Council of the Commune wavers
The Place de l'H�tel-de-Ville was still astir when the newly elected members of the Commune assembled in the municipal council-hall.
The ballot had returned sixteen mayors, adjuncts, and Liberals of all shades, [108] a few Radicals, [109] and about sixty revolutionaries of all sorts. [110]
How came these latter to be chosen? All must be told, and virile truth at last substituted for the stale flattery of the old romantic school styling itself ‘revolutionary’. There might be something more terrible than the defeat: to misconstrue or to forget its causes.
Responsibility weighs heavily enough upon the elected, but we must not charge it all to one side — the electors also have their share of it.
The Central Committee had told the people on Sunday the 19th, ‘Prepare for your communal elections.’ They thus had a whole week in which to frame a mandate and select their mandatories. No doubt the resistance of the mayors and the occupation of the military posts kept away many of the revolutionary electors from their arrondissements, but there still remained enough citizens to conduct the work of selection.
Never had a mandate been more indispensable, for the question at issue was to give Paris a communal constitution acceptable to all France. Never did Paris stand in such need of enlightened and practical men, capable at once of negotiating and of combating.
Yet there was never less preparatory discussion. A few men only recalled to prudence a people habitually so over-scrupulous in electoral matters, and which had just made a revolution to get rid of their representatives. The Committee of the twenty arrondissements issued a manifesto very pertinent in several points, and which might have served as an outline; the two delegates at the Home Office tried, through an article in the Officiel, to impress Paris with the importance of her vote. Not a single assembly framed the general programme of Paris; only two or three arrondissements gave some sort of mandate.
Instead of voting for a programme, they voted for names. Those who had demanded the Commune, made a mark at the Corderie or during the siege, were elected without being asked for further explanations, some even twice, like Flourens, in spite of the blunders of the 31st October. Only seven or eight, and those not the best, of the obscure men of the Central Committee were named, the latter, it is true, having decided not to present itself for election. The public meetings in many arrondissements sent up the most violent talkers, romanticists sprung up during the siege, and lacking all knowledge of practical life. Nowhere were the candidates put to any test. In the ardour of the struggle they took no thought for the morrow. One might have fancied that the object in view was a simple demonstration, not the founding of a new order of things.
Twenty-four workmen only were elected, and of these a third belonged rather to the public meetings than to the International or the working men’s societies. The other delegates of the people were chosen from the middle-class and the so-called liberal professions, accountants, publicists — there were as many as twelve of these doctors and lawyers. These, save a few really studious men, whether veterans or new-comers, were as ignorant as the workmen of the political and administrative mechanism of the bourgeoisie, albeit full of their own personality. The safety of the Central Committee lay in this, that it was unadorned with great men, each one provided with a formula of his own. The Council of the Commune, on the contrary, abounded in chapels, groups, semi-celebrities, and hence endless competition and rivalry.
Thus the precipitation and heedlessness of the revolutionary electors sent up to the H�tel-de-Ville a majority of men, most of them devoted, but chosen without discernment, and, into the bargain, abandoned them to their own inspirations, to their whims, without any determined mandate to restrain and guide them in the struggle entered upon.
Time and experience would no doubt have corrected this negligence, but time was wanting. The people never hold sway but for an hour, and woe to them if they are not then ready, armed from head to foot. The elections of the 26th March were irreparable.
Only about sixty of those elected were present at the first sitting. At its opening, the Central Committee came to congratulate the Council. The chairman by seniority, Beslay, a capitalist of a fraternizing turn of mind, made the opening speech. He very happily defined this young revolution: ‘The enfranchisement of the Commune of Paris is the enfranchisement of all the communes of the Republic. Your adversaries have said that you have struck the Republic. It is as with the pile, to be driven deeper into the earth. The Republic of 1793 was a soldier, who wanted to centralize all the forces of the nation; the Republic of 1871 is a workman, who above all wants liberty to construct peace. The Commune will occupy itself with all that is local, the Department with what is regional, the Government with what is national. Let us not overstep this limit, and the country and the Government will be happy and proud to applaud this revolution.’ This was the naive illusion of an old man, who, nevertheless, had had the experience of a long political life. This programme, so moderate in its form, was nothing less than the death-knell of the great bourgeoisie, as shown during this very sitting.
There were already some jarring notes. The violent and the giddy-headed launched out into random motions, and wanted the Commune to declare itself omnipotent. Tirard, elected by his arrondissement, took advantage of this occasion to withdraw, stating that his mandate was purely municipal, that he could not recognize the political character of the Commune; gave in his resignation, and ironically bade farewell to the Council: ‘I leave you my sincere good wishes; may you succeed in your task,’ etc.
The insolence of this dishonest man, who for eight days had been busy in fomenting civil war and now threw up the mandate solicited in his address to the electors, evoked general indignation. The more impatient wanted to have him arrested, others to declare his mandate forfeited. He escaped scot-free because he had said at the Versailles tribune, ‘When you enter the H�tel-de-Ville, you are not sure to return from it.’
This incident no doubt induced the Council to vote the secrecy of their sittings, their awkward pretext being that the Commune was not a parliament. This decision produced a very bad effect, violating the best traditions of the great Commune of 1792-93, as it gave the Council the appearance of a conspiracy, and it was found necessary to quash it two weeks after, when the newspapers abounded in fantastic reports, as a natural consequence of the secret sittings. But the publicity never consisted in anything but the insertion of curtailed reports in the Officiel. The Council never admitted the public, whose presence would have prevented many errors.
The next day the Council subdivided itself into commissions charged with the various services. A Military Commission, and others of Finance, Justice, Public Safety, Labour and Exchange, Provisions, Foreign Affairs, Public Services, and Education were named. The Executive Commission was composed of Lefran�ais, Duval, F�lix Pyat, Bergert, Tridon, Eudes, and Vaillant, of whom Duval, Bergeret, and Eudes also belonged to the Military Commission.
It had just been voted that all decrees should be signed The Commune — a vote too soon forgotten — when the delegates of the Central Committee were announced. After waiting half an hour they were introduced. ‘Citizens,’ said their spokesman, ‘the Central Committee comes to hand over to you its revolutionary powers. We resume the functions defined by our statutes.’
This was the moment for the Council to affirm its authority. The only representative of the population, alone responsible, it should now have absorbed all powers, not tolerating the co-existence of a Committee which was sure always to remember the paramount position it had held and strive to recover it. In the previous sitting, the Council had done justice to the Central Committee in voting that they had deserved well of Paris and the Republic, and now taking them at their word, ought to have declared that the role of the Committee had come to an end. Instead of an authoritative decision in this sense, recriminations were resorted to.
A member of the Council recalled the promise of the Central Committee to dissolve after the elections. Unless they aimed at power, there was no necessity for the maintenance of their organization. Varlin and Beslay defended the existence of the Committee, which was combated by Jourde and Rigault. The delegates, who would have yielded to a peremptory word, held out against this weakness. ‘This is,’ they said, ‘the Federation that has saved the Republic. The last word is not yet said. To dissolve this organization is to break your strength. The Central Committee does not pretend to share in the government. It remains the bond of union between you and the National Guard, the right hand of the Revolution. We again become what we were, the great conseil de famille of the National Guard.’
This simile made a marked impression. The debate was prolonged, and the delegates of the Committee withdrew, no conclusion having been arrived at.
Thereupon, without preamble, like a Jack-in-the-box, F�lix Pyat Jumped up and proposed the abolition of the conscription.
On the 3rd March he had stolen away from the National Assembly, as he had on the 31st October deserted the H�tel-de-Ville, and, a few days after, sneaked out of prison. On the 18th March he did not stir, while Delescluze had joined the revolution from the first day. F�lix Pyat waited for the triumph, and on the eve of the elections came to beat the drum before the Committee, ‘which teaches modesty to the proudest name and inspires men of genius with a feeling of inferiority.’ Elected by about 12,000 votes in the tenth arrondissement, he was now forward to take his seat at the H�tel-de-Ville.
The hour awaited for twenty years had at last struck; he was about to tread the boards. Amidst the crowd of dramatists, miracle-workers, romanticists, visionaries, and Jacobin relics, trailing since 1830 at the heels of the social revolution, his business had been that of appeals to regicide and revolutionary insurgency, of epistles, allegories, toasts, invocations, evocations, pieces of rhetoric on the events of the day, tinkering with the old Montagnard wares, and doing them up with a little humanitarian varnish. Under the Empire his rabid manifestoes had been the joy of the police and of the Bonapartist journals, excellent sops to throw to the people, who could not extract from them a practical idea or a grain of sense. This intoxication was more than half-feigned. The dishevelled madman of the stage behind the scenes turned crafty and wary to a degree. At bottom he was only a splenetic sceptic, sincere only in his self-idolatry. He came to the Commune his pockets crammed with decrees.
When he read his motion, it was lustily cheered by the romanticists and passed at once. Yet still in the morning the Council had intimated nothing of the sort, but only stated in the proclamation in which they presented themselves to Paris: ‘Today the decision on house-rents, tomorrow that on the overdue bills, the public services re-established and simplified, and the National Guards reorganized, these are our first acts.’ And now it abruptly encroached upon national affairs. Commune in the morning, Constituent Assembly in the evening.
If they wanted to change the revolution from a communal into a national one, they ought to have said so, boldly set forth their whole programme, and demonstrated to France the necessity of their attempt. But what signified this decree, improvised at random, without a preliminary declaration and without a sequel? This quid pro quo was not even taken up. Under pretext of avoiding parliamentarism, the matters at issue were hurried over.
Then the Council decreed the general exemption of rents due between October, 1870, and July, 1871. Versailles had offered only delays; this was contrary to equity. The Council exempted rents for the good reason that property ought to bear its share of the general sacrifices; but it did not exempt a lot of industrialists who had made scandalous profits during the siege. This was contrary to justice.
Finally, they neglected to announce themselves to the provinces, already so forsaken by the Central Committee. A commission had certainly been charged to draw up an address, but its work had not pleased, and another one had been named, so that what with one commission and another, the programme of the Commune was kept in suspense for twenty-two days, and the Council had allowed all the insurrections of the provinces to die out without giving them any advice or ideas.
These encroachments, this disorder, disturbed Paris with the thought that the new power had neither very clear ideas nor consciousness of the situation. The Liberal fraction of the Council took advantage of this pretext to withdraw. If their convention of the 20th had been sincere, if they had cared for the destinies of Paris, the mayor and adjuncts elected would have courageously stood by their mandates. Like those of the provinces, they deserted, but were still more culpable, since they had not protested against their elections. Many had never been seen at the H�tel-de-Ville; others wrung their hands, lamenting, ‘Where are we going?’ Some shammed mortal illness: ‘You see 1 am at my last gasp.’ Those who have been most abusive since, then sought for humble evasions. Not one broke boldly.
Their resignations, [111] the double elections, left twenty-two seats vacant on the 30th, when the Council verified the credentials. Faithful to the best traditions of the French Republic, it admitted the Hungarian Frankel, one of the most intelligent members of the International, elected in the thirteenth arrondissement. Six candidates had not received the eighth part of the votes required by the law of 1849; the Council passed by this irregularity because the arrondissements of these candidates, composed of reactionary quarters, were emptying themselves from day to day.
The men of order, twice chastised, continued migrating to Versailles, which they stocked with a new store of rancour and rhodomontades. The town had assumed a warlike aspect; all announced that the struggle was near at hand. Already M. Thiers had cut off Paris from France. On the eve of the April term, the 3 1 st March, the director of the general post-office, Rampont, belying the word of honour he had given the delegate of the Central Committee, Thiesz, made off after having disorganized the postal service, and M. Thiers suppressed all the goods trains and kept back all correspondence destined for Paris.
On the 1st April he officially announced war. ‘The Assembly,’ he telegraphed to the prefects, ‘is sitting at Versailles, where the organization of one of the finest armies that France has ever possessed is being completed. Good citizens may then take heart and hope for the end of a struggle which will be sad but short.’ A cynical boast of that same bourgeoisie which had refused to organize armies against the Prussians. ‘One of the finest armies,’ was as yet only the rabble of the 18th March, strengthened by five or six regiments; about 35,000 men, with 3,000 horses, and 5,000 gendarmes or sergents-de-ville, the only corps that had any solidity.
Paris would not believe in the existence even of this army. The popular papers demanded a sortie, speaking of the journey to Versailles as a promenade. The most impetuous was the Vengeur, in which F�lix Pyat furiously shook his cap and bells. He exhorted the Commune ‘to press Versailles. Poor Versailles! it no longer remembers the 5th and 6th October, 1789, when the women of the Commune alone sufficed to catch its king.’ On the morning of Sunday the 2nd April the same member of the Executive Commission announced to Paris: ‘Yesterday at Versailles the soldiers, requested to vote by aye or no if they were to march on Paris, answered No!’
Glossary |
Contents |
next chapter
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./articles/Lissagaray-Prosper/https:..www.marxists.org.archive.marx.works.1871.civil-war-france.index | <body>
<p class="title">Marx/Engels Internet Archive</p>
<blockquote>
<div class="border">
<h1>The Civil War in France</h1>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information"><span class="info">Written:</span> July 1870 - May
1871;<br>
<span class="info">First Published:</span> 1871;<br>
<span class="info">Source:</span> English Edition of 1871;<br>
<span class="info">Transcription/Markup:</span> Zodiac & Brian
Baggins;<br>
<span class="info">Proofed:</span> and corrected by Matthew Carmody 2009.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="skip">�</p>
<h4>Contents</h4>
<p class="index"><a href="intro.htm">Introduction</a></p>
<p class="index"><a href="ch01.htm">[The Begining of the Franco-Prussian
War]</a> </p>
<p class="index"><a href="ch02.htm">[Prussian Occupation of France]</a> </p>
<p class="index"><a href="ch03.htm">[France Capitulates & the Government
of Thiers]</a> </p>
<p class="index"><a href="ch04.htm">[Paris Workers’ Revolution &
Thiers’ Reactionary Massacres]</a> </p>
<p class="index"><a href="ch05.htm">[The Paris Commune]</a> </p>
<p class="index"><a href="ch06.htm">[The Fall of Paris]</a> </p>
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<h4>Appendix</h4>
<p class="indentb"><a href="postscript.htm">Engels 1891 Postscript</a><br>
<a href="news.htm">News stories</a> describing some of the last massacres<br>
<a href="../../1871/letters/71_04_17.htm">Marx’s Letters to Dr.
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War</a><br>
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of the Civil War</a><br>
<a href="../../../../../history/france/archive/lissagaray/index.htm">History
of Paris Commune</a> by Lissagaray, 1876<br>
<a href="photos.htm">Picture Gallery</a>;</p>
<p class="index"><a href="drafts/index.htm">[First and Second Drafts]</a></p>
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<p class="indentb"><a href="publication-notes.htm">Notes on Publication</a></p>
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<a href="http://www.erythrospress.com/store/communards.html" target="_top">Communards: <span style="font-weight: normal;">The Story of the Paris Commune of 1871,
As Told by Those Who Fought for It.</span></a><br>
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Marx/Engels Internet Archive
The Civil War in France
Written: July 1870 - May
1871;
First Published: 1871;
Source: English Edition of 1871;
Transcription/Markup: Zodiac & Brian
Baggins;
Proofed: and corrected by Matthew Carmody 2009.
�
Contents
Introduction
[The Begining of the Franco-Prussian
War]
[Prussian Occupation of France]
[France Capitulates & the Government
of Thiers]
[Paris Workers’ Revolution &
Thiers’ Reactionary Massacres]
[The Paris Commune]
[The Fall of Paris]
Appendix
Engels 1891 Postscript
News stories describing some of the last massacres
Marx’s Letters to Dr.
Kugelmann (April, 1871)
Franco-Prussian
War
Timeline
of the Civil War
History
of Paris Commune by Lissagaray, 1876
Picture Gallery;
[First and Second Drafts]
�
Notes on Publication
The Civil War in France in mobi eBook format
Communards: The Story of the Paris Commune of 1871,
As Told by Those Who Fought for It.
Revolutionary France | Letters on France
Marx/Engels on France | Marx/Engels Library
�
|
./articles/Lissagaray-Prosper/https:..www.marxists.org.history.france.archive.lissagaray.ch04 | <body>
<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter IV<br>
The Central Committee calls for elections</h1>
<p class="quoteb">Our broken hearts appeal to yours. (Mayors and adjuncts of Paris and deputies of the Seine to the National Guard. and all Citizens.)</p>
<p>Paris only became aware of her victory on the morning of the 19th of March. What a change in the scene, even after all the scene-shifting in the drama enacted during these last seven months! The red flag floated above the H�tel-de-Ville. With the early morning mists the army, the Government, the Administration had evaporated. From the depths of the Bastille, from the obscure Rue Basfroi, the Central Committee was lifted to the summits of Paris in the sight of all the world. Thus on the 4th September the Empire had vanished; thus the deputies of the Left had picked up a derelict power.</p>
<p>The Committee, to its great honour, had only one thought, to restore its power to Paris. Had it been sectarian, hatching decrees, the movement would have ended like that of the 31st October. Happily it was composed of newcomers, without a past, and without political pretensions; men of the small middle-class, as well as workmen, shopkeepers, commercial clerks, mechanics, sculptors, architects, caring little for systems, anxious above all to save the Republic. At this giddy height they had but one idea to sustain them, that of securing to Paris her municipality.</p>
<p>Under the Empire this was one of the favourite schemes of the Left, by which it had mainly won over the Parisian petty bourgeoisie, much humiliated at the sight of Governmental nominees enthroned at the H�tel-de-Ville for full eighty years. Even the most pacific amongst them were shocked, scandalized by the incessant increase of the budget, the multiplied loans, and the financial swindling of Haussmann. And how they applauded Picard, revindicating for the largest and most enlightened city of France at least the rights enjoyed by the smallest village, or when he defied the Pasha of the Seine to produce regular accounts! — Towards the end of the Empire, the idea of an elective municipal council had taken root; it had to a certain extent been put into practice during the siege, and now its total realization could alone console Paris for her decentralization.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the popular masses, insensible to the bourgeois ideal of a municipal council, were bent on the Commune. They had called for it during the siege as an arm against the foreign enemy; they still called for it as a lever for uprooting despotism and misery. What did they care for a council, even elective, but without real liberties and fettered to the state — without authority over the administration of schools and hospitals, justice and police, and altogether unfit for grappling with the social slavery of its fellow-citizens? What the people strove for was a political form allowing them to work for the amelioration of their condition. They had seen all the constitutions and all the representative governments run counter to the will of the so-called represented elector, and the state power, grown more and more despotic, deprive the workman even of the right to defend his labour, and this power, which has ordained even the very air to be breathed, always refusing to interfere in capitalist brigandage. After so many failures, they were fully convinced that the actual governmental and legislative regime was from its very nature unable to emancipate the working man. This emancipation they expected from the autonomous Commune, sovereign within the limits compatible with the maintenance of the national unity. The communal constitution was to substitute for the representative lording it over his elector the strictly responsible mandatory. The old state power grafted upon the country, feeding upon its substance, usurping supremacy on the foundation of divided and antagonistic interests, organizing for the benefit of the few, justice, finance, army, and police, was to be superseded by a delegation of all the autonomous communes.</p>
<p>Thus the municipal question, appealing to the legitimate susceptibilities of the one, to the bold aspirations of the other, gathered all classes round the Central Committee.</p>
<p>At half-past eight they held their first sitting in the same room where Trochu had been enthroned. The president was a young man of about thirty-two; Eduard Moreau, a small commission agent. ‘He was not in favour,’ he said, ‘of sitting at the H�tel-de-Ville , but since they were there, it was necessary at once to regularize their situation, tell Paris what they wanted, proceed to the elections within the briefest term possible, provide for the public services, and protect the town from a surprise.’</p>
<p>Two of his colleagues immediately said, ‘We must first march on Versailles, disperse the Assembly, and appeal to France, to pronounce.’</p>
<p>Another, the author of the Vauxhall motion, said, ‘No. We have only the mandate to secure the rights of Paris. If the provinces share our views, let them imitate our example.’</p>
<p>Some wanted to consummate the revolution before referring to the electors. Others opposed this vague suggestion. The Committee decided to proceed at once to the elections, and charged Moreau to draw up an appeal. While it was being signed, a member of the Committee arrived, saying, ‘Citizens, we have just been told that most of the members of the Government are still in Paris; an attempt at resistance is being organized in the first and second arrondissements; the soldiers are leaving for Versailles. We must take prompt measures to lay hands on the Ministers, disperse the hostile battalions, and prevent the enemy from leaving the town.’</p>
<p>In fact, Jules Favre and Picard had hardly left Paris. The clearing of the Ministries was publicly going on; columns of soldiers were still marching off through the gates of the left bank. But the Committee continued signing, neglecting this traditional precaution — the shutting of the gates — and lost itself in the elections. It saw not — very few saw as yet — that this was a death struggle with the Assembly of Versailles.</p>
<p>The Committee, distributing the work to be done, appointed the delegates who were to take possession of the Ministries and direct the various services. Some of these delegates were chosen outside the Committee, from amongst those who were reputed men of action, or the revolutionaries. Some one having spoken of an increase of pay, his colleagues indignantly answered, ‘We are not here to imitate the Government of the Defence. We have lived till now on our pay; it will still suffice.’ Arrangements were made for the permanent presence of some members at the H�tel-de-Ville, and then they adjourned at one o’clock.</p>
<p>Outside the joyous clamour of the people enlivened the streets. A spring sun smiled on the Parisians. This was their first day of consolation and of hope for eight months. Before the barricades of the H�tel-de-Ville, at the Buttes Montmartre, in all the boulevards, onlookers were thronging. Who then spoke of civil war? Only the <em>Journal Offtciel. </em>It recounted the events in its own way. ‘The Government had exhausted every means of conciliation,’ and in a despairing appeal to the National Guard it said, ‘A committee taking the name of Central Committee has assassinated in cold blood the Generals C1�ment-Thomas and Lecomte. Who are the members of this Committee? Communists, Bonapartists, or Prussians? Will you take upon yourselves the responsibility of these assassinations?’ These lamentations of runaways moved only a few companies of the centre. Yet — a grave symptom this — the young bourgeois of the Polytechnic School came to the <em>mairie </em>of the second arrondissement, where the mayors had flocked, and the university students, till now the advanced guard of all our revolutions, pronounced against the Committee.</p>
<p>For this revolution was made by proletarians. Who were they? What did they want? At two o’clock every one hurried to see the wall-posters of the Committee just issued from the Imprimerie Nationale. ‘Citizens, the people of Paris, calm and impassible in their strength, have awaited without fear, as without provocation, the shameless fools who want to touch our Republic. Let Paris and France together lay the foundation of a true Republic, the only Government which will for ever close the era of revolutions. The people of Paris is convoked to make its elections.’ And turning to the National Guard: ‘You have charged us to organize the defence of Paris and of your rights. Our mandate has now expired. Prepare, and at once make your communal elections. Meanwhile we shall, in the name of the people, hold the H�tel-de-Ville.’ Twenty names<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n90">[90]</a></sup> followed, which, save three or four, Assi, Lullier, and Varlin, were only known through the posters of the last few days. Since the morning of the 10th August, 1792, Paris has not seen in her H�tel-de-Ville such an advent of obscure men.</p>
<p>And yet their posters were respected, their battalions circulated freely. They took possession of the posts; at one o’clock the Ministries of Finance and of the Interior; at two o’clock the Naval and War Offices, the telegraph, the <em>Journal Officiel, </em>and Duval was installed at the Prefecture de Police. And they had hit the mark. What indeed could be said against this new-born power whose first word was its own abdication?</p>
<p>Everything around them bore a warlike aspect. Let us cross the half-open barricades of the Rue de Rivoli. Twenty thousand men camped in the square of the H�tel-de-Ville, bread stuck on the end of their muskets. Fifty ordnance pieces, cannon, and machine-guns drawn up along the fa�ade served as the statuary around the town hall. The court and staircases were encumbered with guards taking their meals, the large Salle du Tr�ne swarming with officers, guards, and civilians. In the hall on the left, which was used by the staff, the noise subsided. The room by the river-side, at the corner of the edifice, was the ante-chamber of the Committee. About fifty men were writing there, bending over a long table. There discipline and silence reigned. We were far from the anarchists of the 31st October. From time to time the door, guarded by two sentinels, opened to a member of the Committee who carried orders or made inquiries.</p>
<p>The sitting had recommenced. A member asked the Committee to protest against the executions of Cldment-Thomas and Lecomte, to which it was entirely foreign. ‘Take care not to disavow the people,’ answered another, ‘for fear they in turn should disavow you.’ A third said, the <em>Journal Officiel</em> declares the execution took place under our eyes. We must stop these calumnies. The people and the bourgeoisie have joined hands in this revolution. This union must be maintained. You want everybody to take part in the elections. “Well, then,’ he was apostrophized, ‘abandon the people in order to gain the bourgeoisie; the people will withdraw, and you will see if it is with the bourgeois that revolutions are made.’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n91">[91]</a></sup></p>
<p>The Committee decided that a note should be inserted in the <em>Journal Officiel</em> to re-establish the truth. Eduard Moreau proposed and read the draft of a manifesto, which was adopted.</p>
<p>The Committee were discussing the date and mode of the elections when it was informed that a large meeting of the chiefs of battalions, the mayors and deputies of the Seine was being held at the <em>mairie</em> of the third arrondissement. M. Thiers during the morning, had given over to the union of the mayors the provisional administration of Paris, and they were trying their authority on the National Guard. The Committee was assured that they intended to convoke the electors.</p>
<p>‘If it is so,’ said several members, ‘we must come to an agreement with them to make the situation regular.’ Others, remembering the siege, simply wanted to have them arrested. One member said, ‘If we wish to have France with us, we must not frighten her. Think what an effect the arrest of the deputies and mayors would produce, and what, on the other hand, the effect of their adhesion would be.’ Another, ‘It is important to collect an imposing number of voters. All Paris will go to the ballot-boxes if the representatives and mayors join us.’ ‘Say rather,’ cried an impetuous colleague, ‘that you are not equal to your position; that your only preoccupation is to disengage yourselves.’ They finally decided to send Arnold to the <em>mairie</em> as delegate.</p>
<p>He was badly enough received. The most radical adjuncts and deputies, Socialists like Millière and Malon, flatly declared against the H�tel-de-Ville, appalled at the dangerous initiative of the people. Many too said, ‘Who are these unknown men?’
<img src="pics/milliere.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Milliere" border="1" align="right">
Even at the Corderie, Internationalists and former members of the Committee of the twenty arrondissements maintained a diffident attitude. However, the meeting decided to send commissioners to the H�tel-de-Ville. for, whether they liked it or not, there was the power.</p>
<p>The Central Committee had, in the meantime, fixed the elections for the Wednesday, decreed the raising of the state of siege, the abolition of the court-martials, and amnesty for all political crimes and offences. It held a third sitting at eight o’clock to receive the commissioners. These were the deputies Cl�menceau, Milli�re, Tolain, Cournet, Malon, and Lockroy, the mayors Bonvalet and Mottu, the adjuncts Murat, Jaclard, and L�o Meillet.</p>
<p>Cl�menceau, half accomplice, half dupe of M. Thiers’ <em>coup-d’�tat</em>, in his quality of mayor and deputy, was the spokesman. He was prolix and pedantic. ‘The insurrection has been undertaken upon an illegitimate motive; the cannon belong to the State. The Central Committee is without a mandate and in no wise holds Paris. Numerous battalions were gathering round the deputies and mayors. Soon the Committee will become ridiculous and its decrees will be despised. Besides, Paris has no right to revolt against France, and must absolutely acknowledge the authority of the Assembly. The Committee has but one other way of getting out of the difficulty — to submit to the union of the deputies and mayors, who are resolved to obtain from the Assembly the satisfaction claimed by Paris.’</p>
<p>He was frequently interrupted during this speech. What! They dared speak of an insurrection! Who had begun the civil war, attacked first? What had the National Guards done but answer a nocturnal aggression, taken back cannon paid for by themselves? What had the Central Committee done but follow the people and occupy the deserted H�tel-de-Ville?</p>
<p>A member of the Committee said, ‘The Central Committee has received a regular, imperative mandate. This mandate forbids them to allow the Government or the Assembly to touch their liberties or the Republic. Now the Assembly has never ceased putting the existence of the Republic in question. It has placed a dishonoured general at our head, decapitalized Paris, tried to ruin her commerce. It has sneered at our sufferings, denied the devotion, the courage, the abnegation Paris has shown during the siege, hooted her best-loved representatives, Garibaldi and Victor Hugo. The plot against the Republic is evident. The attempt was commenced by gagging the press; they hoped to terminate it by the disarming of our battalions. Yes, our case was one of legitimate defence. If we have bowed our heads under this new affront, there was an end of the Republic. You have just spoken of the Assembly of France. The mandate of the Assembly has expired. As to France, we had not the pretension of dictating her laws — we have too often suffered under hers — but we will not submit to her rural plebiscites. You see it; the question is no longer to know which of our mandate is the most regular. We say to you the revolution is made; but we are not usurper s. We wish to call upon Paris to name her representatives. Will you aid us, and proceed with us to consult the elections? We eagerly accept your cooperation.’ As he spoke of autonomous communes and their federation, ‘Have a care,’ said Milli�re, ‘if you unfurl this flag they will launch all France upon Paris, and I foresee days fatal as those of June <span class="context">[1848]</span>. The hour of the social revolution has not yet struck. Progress is obtained by slower marches. Descend from the heights where you have placed yourselves. Victorious today, your insurrection may be vanquished tomorrow. Make as much of it as you can, but do not hesitate to content yourselves with little. I adjure you to leave the field open to the union of the mayors and deputies; your confidence will be well placed.’</p>
<p>One of the Committee: ‘Since the social revolution has been spoken of, I declare our mandate does not go so far.’ (Others of the Committee, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ ‘No! No!’) ‘You have spoken of a federation, of Paris as a free town. Our duty is more simple. It is to proceed to the elections. The people will afterwards decide on their action. As to yielding to the deputies and mayors, this is impossible. They are unpopular and have no authority in the Assembly. The elections will take place with or without their concurrence. Will they help us? We will receive them with open arms. If not, we shall do without them, and, if they attempt to obstruct our way, we shall know how to reduce them to impotency.’</p>
<p>The delegates resisted. The discussion grew hot. ‘But, in fine,’ said Cl�menceau, ‘what are your claims? Do you confine your mandate to asking the Assembly for a municipal council?’</p>
<p>Many of the Committee: ‘No! No!’ ‘We want,’ said Varlin, ‘not only the election of the municipal council, but real municipal liberties, the suppression of the prefecture of police, the right of the National Guard to name its own leaders and to reorganize itself, the proclamation of the Republic as the legal Government, the pure and simple remittance of the rents due, an equitable law on overdue bills, and the Parisian territory banned the army.’</p>
<p>Malon: ‘I share your aspirations, but the situation is perilous. It is clear that the Assembly will listen to nothing as long as the Committee occupies the H�tel-de-Ville. If, on the contrary, Paris entrusts herself again to her legal representatives, I believe they could do more than you.’</p>
<p>The discussion was protracted until half-past ten; the Committee defending its right to proceed to the elections, the delegates their pretension of superseding the Committee. They at last agreed that the Committee should send four of its members to the second arrondissement. Varlin, Moreau, Arnold, and Jourde were appointed.</p>
<p>There they found the whole staff of Liberalism:
<img src="pics/blanc-louis.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Louis Blanc" border="1" align="right">
deputies, mayors, and adjuncts; Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, Carnot, Peyrat, Tirard, Floquet, Desmarets, Vautrain, and Dubail, about sixty altogether. The cause of the people there had a few partisans, sincere, but terribly dismayed by the uncertain future. The mayor of the second arrondissement, Tirard, presided, a Liberal, nervous, haughty, one of those who had helped to paralyse Paris in the hands of Trochu. In his evidence before the Rural Committee of Inquiry, he has mutilated, travestied this sitting, where the Radico-Liberal bourgeoisie laid bare all its baseness. We shall now, for the instruction of and in justice to the people, give the plain truth.</p>
<p>The delegates: ‘The Central Committee does not wish anything better than to come to an agreement with the municipalities, if they will proceed with the elections.’</p>
<p>Schoelcher, Tirard, Peyrat, Louis Blanc, all the Radicals and Liberals in chorus: ‘The municipalities will not treat with the Central Committee. There is only one authority — the union of the mayors invested with the delegation by the Government.’</p>
<p>The delegates: ‘Let us not discuss the point. The Central Committee exists. We have been named by the National Guard and we hold the H�tel-de-Ville. Will you proceed to make the elections?’</p>
<p>‘But what is your programme?’</p>
<p>Varlin set it forth . He was attacked from all sides. The four delegates had to face twenty assailants. The great argument of the Liberals was that Paris could not convoke herself, but ought to wait for the permission of the Assembly. A reminiscence this of the times of the siege, when they fell prone before the Government of the Defence.</p>
<p>The delegates affirmed, on the contrary: ‘The people has the right to convoke itself. It is an undeniable right, which it has more than once made use of in our history in moments of great peril, and at present we are passing through such a crisis, since the Assembly of Versailles is making for monarchy.’</p>
<p>Then recriminations followed: ‘You are now face to face with force,’ said the delegates. ‘Beware of letting loose a civil war by your resistance.’ ‘It is you who want a civil war,’ replied the Liberals. At midnight Moreau and Arnold, quite disheartened, withdrew. Their colleagues were about to follow, when some adjuncts entreated them to stay. ‘We promise,’ said the mayors and deputies, ‘to make every effort to obtain the municipal elections with the shortest delay.’ ‘Very well,’ answered the delegates, ‘but we maintain our position; we want guarantees.’ The deputies and mayors, growing obstinate, pretended that Paris must surrender unconditionally. Jourde was about to retire, when some of the adjuncts again detained him. For a moment they seemed to be coming to an understanding. The Committee was to give up all the administrative services to the mayors, and let them occupy one part of the H�tel-de-Ville; itself, however, was to continue sitting there, to retain the exclusive direction of the National Guard, and to watch over the security of the town. This agreement only required to be confirmed by the issue of a common proclamation, but when the heading of the latter came to be discussed, the contest grew more violent than before. The delegates proposed, ‘The deputies, mayors, and adjuncts, in accord with the Central Committee.’ These gentlemen, on the contrary, desired to hide themselves behind a mask. For an hour Louis Blanc, Tirard, and Schoelcher overwhelmed the delegates with indignities. Louis Blanc cried to them, ‘You are insurgents against a most freely elected Assembly. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n92">[92]</a></sup> We, the regular mandatories, we cannot avow a transaction with insurgents. We should be willing to prevent a civil war, but not to appear as your auxiliaries in the eyes of France.’ Jourde answered the manikin that this transaction, in order to be accepted by the people of Paris, must be publicly consented to, and, despairing of making anything out of this meeting, withdrew.</p>
<p>And amongst this elite of the liberal bourgeoisie, former exiles, publicists, historians of our revolutions, not one indignant voice protested, ‘Let us cease these cruel disputes, this barking at a revolution. Woe to us if we do not recognize the force manifesting itself through unknown men! The Jacobins of 1794 denied it, and they perished; the Montagnards of 1848 abandoned it, and they perished; the Left under the Empire, the Government of the National Defence, disdained it, and our integrity as a nation has perished. Let us open our eyes, our hearts; let us break out of the beaten track. No; we will not widen the gulf that the days of June, 1848, and the Empire have placed between us and the workmen. No; with the disasters of France in view, we shall not allow her living forces still in reserve to be touched. The more abnormal, monstrous our situation is, the more we are bound to find the solution, even under the eye of the Prussian. You, the Central Committee, who are the spokesmen of Paris, we, who are listened to by Republican France, we will mark out a field for common action. You supply the force, the broad aspirations, we the knowledge of realities and their inexorable behests. We shall present to the Assembly this charter free from all Utopian views, equally regardful of the rights of the nation and of those of the capital. If the Assembly rejects it, we shall be the first to make the elections, to ask for your suffrage. And when France sees Paris raising her force counterpoised by prudence at her H�tel-de-Ville, vigorous newcomers allied with men of old repute, the only possible bulwark against royalists and clericals, she will rise as in the days of the Federation, and at her voice Versailles will have to yield.’</p>
<p>But what was to be expected of men who had not even been able to pluck up sufficient courage to wrench Paris from Trochu? Varlin single-handed had to stand their combined attack. Exhausted, worn out — this contest had lasted five hours — he at last gave way, but under protest. On returning to the H�tel-de-Ville, he recovered all his wonted energy, his calm intelligence, and told the Committee he now saw the snare, and advised it to reject the pretensions of the mayors and deputies.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter IV
The Central Committee calls for elections
Our broken hearts appeal to yours. (Mayors and adjuncts of Paris and deputies of the Seine to the National Guard. and all Citizens.)
Paris only became aware of her victory on the morning of the 19th of March. What a change in the scene, even after all the scene-shifting in the drama enacted during these last seven months! The red flag floated above the H�tel-de-Ville. With the early morning mists the army, the Government, the Administration had evaporated. From the depths of the Bastille, from the obscure Rue Basfroi, the Central Committee was lifted to the summits of Paris in the sight of all the world. Thus on the 4th September the Empire had vanished; thus the deputies of the Left had picked up a derelict power.
The Committee, to its great honour, had only one thought, to restore its power to Paris. Had it been sectarian, hatching decrees, the movement would have ended like that of the 31st October. Happily it was composed of newcomers, without a past, and without political pretensions; men of the small middle-class, as well as workmen, shopkeepers, commercial clerks, mechanics, sculptors, architects, caring little for systems, anxious above all to save the Republic. At this giddy height they had but one idea to sustain them, that of securing to Paris her municipality.
Under the Empire this was one of the favourite schemes of the Left, by which it had mainly won over the Parisian petty bourgeoisie, much humiliated at the sight of Governmental nominees enthroned at the H�tel-de-Ville for full eighty years. Even the most pacific amongst them were shocked, scandalized by the incessant increase of the budget, the multiplied loans, and the financial swindling of Haussmann. And how they applauded Picard, revindicating for the largest and most enlightened city of France at least the rights enjoyed by the smallest village, or when he defied the Pasha of the Seine to produce regular accounts! — Towards the end of the Empire, the idea of an elective municipal council had taken root; it had to a certain extent been put into practice during the siege, and now its total realization could alone console Paris for her decentralization.
On the other hand, the popular masses, insensible to the bourgeois ideal of a municipal council, were bent on the Commune. They had called for it during the siege as an arm against the foreign enemy; they still called for it as a lever for uprooting despotism and misery. What did they care for a council, even elective, but without real liberties and fettered to the state — without authority over the administration of schools and hospitals, justice and police, and altogether unfit for grappling with the social slavery of its fellow-citizens? What the people strove for was a political form allowing them to work for the amelioration of their condition. They had seen all the constitutions and all the representative governments run counter to the will of the so-called represented elector, and the state power, grown more and more despotic, deprive the workman even of the right to defend his labour, and this power, which has ordained even the very air to be breathed, always refusing to interfere in capitalist brigandage. After so many failures, they were fully convinced that the actual governmental and legislative regime was from its very nature unable to emancipate the working man. This emancipation they expected from the autonomous Commune, sovereign within the limits compatible with the maintenance of the national unity. The communal constitution was to substitute for the representative lording it over his elector the strictly responsible mandatory. The old state power grafted upon the country, feeding upon its substance, usurping supremacy on the foundation of divided and antagonistic interests, organizing for the benefit of the few, justice, finance, army, and police, was to be superseded by a delegation of all the autonomous communes.
Thus the municipal question, appealing to the legitimate susceptibilities of the one, to the bold aspirations of the other, gathered all classes round the Central Committee.
At half-past eight they held their first sitting in the same room where Trochu had been enthroned. The president was a young man of about thirty-two; Eduard Moreau, a small commission agent. ‘He was not in favour,’ he said, ‘of sitting at the H�tel-de-Ville , but since they were there, it was necessary at once to regularize their situation, tell Paris what they wanted, proceed to the elections within the briefest term possible, provide for the public services, and protect the town from a surprise.’
Two of his colleagues immediately said, ‘We must first march on Versailles, disperse the Assembly, and appeal to France, to pronounce.’
Another, the author of the Vauxhall motion, said, ‘No. We have only the mandate to secure the rights of Paris. If the provinces share our views, let them imitate our example.’
Some wanted to consummate the revolution before referring to the electors. Others opposed this vague suggestion. The Committee decided to proceed at once to the elections, and charged Moreau to draw up an appeal. While it was being signed, a member of the Committee arrived, saying, ‘Citizens, we have just been told that most of the members of the Government are still in Paris; an attempt at resistance is being organized in the first and second arrondissements; the soldiers are leaving for Versailles. We must take prompt measures to lay hands on the Ministers, disperse the hostile battalions, and prevent the enemy from leaving the town.’
In fact, Jules Favre and Picard had hardly left Paris. The clearing of the Ministries was publicly going on; columns of soldiers were still marching off through the gates of the left bank. But the Committee continued signing, neglecting this traditional precaution — the shutting of the gates — and lost itself in the elections. It saw not — very few saw as yet — that this was a death struggle with the Assembly of Versailles.
The Committee, distributing the work to be done, appointed the delegates who were to take possession of the Ministries and direct the various services. Some of these delegates were chosen outside the Committee, from amongst those who were reputed men of action, or the revolutionaries. Some one having spoken of an increase of pay, his colleagues indignantly answered, ‘We are not here to imitate the Government of the Defence. We have lived till now on our pay; it will still suffice.’ Arrangements were made for the permanent presence of some members at the H�tel-de-Ville, and then they adjourned at one o’clock.
Outside the joyous clamour of the people enlivened the streets. A spring sun smiled on the Parisians. This was their first day of consolation and of hope for eight months. Before the barricades of the H�tel-de-Ville, at the Buttes Montmartre, in all the boulevards, onlookers were thronging. Who then spoke of civil war? Only the Journal Offtciel. It recounted the events in its own way. ‘The Government had exhausted every means of conciliation,’ and in a despairing appeal to the National Guard it said, ‘A committee taking the name of Central Committee has assassinated in cold blood the Generals C1�ment-Thomas and Lecomte. Who are the members of this Committee? Communists, Bonapartists, or Prussians? Will you take upon yourselves the responsibility of these assassinations?’ These lamentations of runaways moved only a few companies of the centre. Yet — a grave symptom this — the young bourgeois of the Polytechnic School came to the mairie of the second arrondissement, where the mayors had flocked, and the university students, till now the advanced guard of all our revolutions, pronounced against the Committee.
For this revolution was made by proletarians. Who were they? What did they want? At two o’clock every one hurried to see the wall-posters of the Committee just issued from the Imprimerie Nationale. ‘Citizens, the people of Paris, calm and impassible in their strength, have awaited without fear, as without provocation, the shameless fools who want to touch our Republic. Let Paris and France together lay the foundation of a true Republic, the only Government which will for ever close the era of revolutions. The people of Paris is convoked to make its elections.’ And turning to the National Guard: ‘You have charged us to organize the defence of Paris and of your rights. Our mandate has now expired. Prepare, and at once make your communal elections. Meanwhile we shall, in the name of the people, hold the H�tel-de-Ville.’ Twenty names[90] followed, which, save three or four, Assi, Lullier, and Varlin, were only known through the posters of the last few days. Since the morning of the 10th August, 1792, Paris has not seen in her H�tel-de-Ville such an advent of obscure men.
And yet their posters were respected, their battalions circulated freely. They took possession of the posts; at one o’clock the Ministries of Finance and of the Interior; at two o’clock the Naval and War Offices, the telegraph, the Journal Officiel, and Duval was installed at the Prefecture de Police. And they had hit the mark. What indeed could be said against this new-born power whose first word was its own abdication?
Everything around them bore a warlike aspect. Let us cross the half-open barricades of the Rue de Rivoli. Twenty thousand men camped in the square of the H�tel-de-Ville, bread stuck on the end of their muskets. Fifty ordnance pieces, cannon, and machine-guns drawn up along the fa�ade served as the statuary around the town hall. The court and staircases were encumbered with guards taking their meals, the large Salle du Tr�ne swarming with officers, guards, and civilians. In the hall on the left, which was used by the staff, the noise subsided. The room by the river-side, at the corner of the edifice, was the ante-chamber of the Committee. About fifty men were writing there, bending over a long table. There discipline and silence reigned. We were far from the anarchists of the 31st October. From time to time the door, guarded by two sentinels, opened to a member of the Committee who carried orders or made inquiries.
The sitting had recommenced. A member asked the Committee to protest against the executions of Cldment-Thomas and Lecomte, to which it was entirely foreign. ‘Take care not to disavow the people,’ answered another, ‘for fear they in turn should disavow you.’ A third said, the Journal Officiel declares the execution took place under our eyes. We must stop these calumnies. The people and the bourgeoisie have joined hands in this revolution. This union must be maintained. You want everybody to take part in the elections. “Well, then,’ he was apostrophized, ‘abandon the people in order to gain the bourgeoisie; the people will withdraw, and you will see if it is with the bourgeois that revolutions are made.’[91]
The Committee decided that a note should be inserted in the Journal Officiel to re-establish the truth. Eduard Moreau proposed and read the draft of a manifesto, which was adopted.
The Committee were discussing the date and mode of the elections when it was informed that a large meeting of the chiefs of battalions, the mayors and deputies of the Seine was being held at the mairie of the third arrondissement. M. Thiers during the morning, had given over to the union of the mayors the provisional administration of Paris, and they were trying their authority on the National Guard. The Committee was assured that they intended to convoke the electors.
‘If it is so,’ said several members, ‘we must come to an agreement with them to make the situation regular.’ Others, remembering the siege, simply wanted to have them arrested. One member said, ‘If we wish to have France with us, we must not frighten her. Think what an effect the arrest of the deputies and mayors would produce, and what, on the other hand, the effect of their adhesion would be.’ Another, ‘It is important to collect an imposing number of voters. All Paris will go to the ballot-boxes if the representatives and mayors join us.’ ‘Say rather,’ cried an impetuous colleague, ‘that you are not equal to your position; that your only preoccupation is to disengage yourselves.’ They finally decided to send Arnold to the mairie as delegate.
He was badly enough received. The most radical adjuncts and deputies, Socialists like Millière and Malon, flatly declared against the H�tel-de-Ville, appalled at the dangerous initiative of the people. Many too said, ‘Who are these unknown men?’
Even at the Corderie, Internationalists and former members of the Committee of the twenty arrondissements maintained a diffident attitude. However, the meeting decided to send commissioners to the H�tel-de-Ville. for, whether they liked it or not, there was the power.
The Central Committee had, in the meantime, fixed the elections for the Wednesday, decreed the raising of the state of siege, the abolition of the court-martials, and amnesty for all political crimes and offences. It held a third sitting at eight o’clock to receive the commissioners. These were the deputies Cl�menceau, Milli�re, Tolain, Cournet, Malon, and Lockroy, the mayors Bonvalet and Mottu, the adjuncts Murat, Jaclard, and L�o Meillet.
Cl�menceau, half accomplice, half dupe of M. Thiers’ coup-d’�tat, in his quality of mayor and deputy, was the spokesman. He was prolix and pedantic. ‘The insurrection has been undertaken upon an illegitimate motive; the cannon belong to the State. The Central Committee is without a mandate and in no wise holds Paris. Numerous battalions were gathering round the deputies and mayors. Soon the Committee will become ridiculous and its decrees will be despised. Besides, Paris has no right to revolt against France, and must absolutely acknowledge the authority of the Assembly. The Committee has but one other way of getting out of the difficulty — to submit to the union of the deputies and mayors, who are resolved to obtain from the Assembly the satisfaction claimed by Paris.’
He was frequently interrupted during this speech. What! They dared speak of an insurrection! Who had begun the civil war, attacked first? What had the National Guards done but answer a nocturnal aggression, taken back cannon paid for by themselves? What had the Central Committee done but follow the people and occupy the deserted H�tel-de-Ville?
A member of the Committee said, ‘The Central Committee has received a regular, imperative mandate. This mandate forbids them to allow the Government or the Assembly to touch their liberties or the Republic. Now the Assembly has never ceased putting the existence of the Republic in question. It has placed a dishonoured general at our head, decapitalized Paris, tried to ruin her commerce. It has sneered at our sufferings, denied the devotion, the courage, the abnegation Paris has shown during the siege, hooted her best-loved representatives, Garibaldi and Victor Hugo. The plot against the Republic is evident. The attempt was commenced by gagging the press; they hoped to terminate it by the disarming of our battalions. Yes, our case was one of legitimate defence. If we have bowed our heads under this new affront, there was an end of the Republic. You have just spoken of the Assembly of France. The mandate of the Assembly has expired. As to France, we had not the pretension of dictating her laws — we have too often suffered under hers — but we will not submit to her rural plebiscites. You see it; the question is no longer to know which of our mandate is the most regular. We say to you the revolution is made; but we are not usurper s. We wish to call upon Paris to name her representatives. Will you aid us, and proceed with us to consult the elections? We eagerly accept your cooperation.’ As he spoke of autonomous communes and their federation, ‘Have a care,’ said Milli�re, ‘if you unfurl this flag they will launch all France upon Paris, and I foresee days fatal as those of June [1848]. The hour of the social revolution has not yet struck. Progress is obtained by slower marches. Descend from the heights where you have placed yourselves. Victorious today, your insurrection may be vanquished tomorrow. Make as much of it as you can, but do not hesitate to content yourselves with little. I adjure you to leave the field open to the union of the mayors and deputies; your confidence will be well placed.’
One of the Committee: ‘Since the social revolution has been spoken of, I declare our mandate does not go so far.’ (Others of the Committee, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ ‘No! No!’) ‘You have spoken of a federation, of Paris as a free town. Our duty is more simple. It is to proceed to the elections. The people will afterwards decide on their action. As to yielding to the deputies and mayors, this is impossible. They are unpopular and have no authority in the Assembly. The elections will take place with or without their concurrence. Will they help us? We will receive them with open arms. If not, we shall do without them, and, if they attempt to obstruct our way, we shall know how to reduce them to impotency.’
The delegates resisted. The discussion grew hot. ‘But, in fine,’ said Cl�menceau, ‘what are your claims? Do you confine your mandate to asking the Assembly for a municipal council?’
Many of the Committee: ‘No! No!’ ‘We want,’ said Varlin, ‘not only the election of the municipal council, but real municipal liberties, the suppression of the prefecture of police, the right of the National Guard to name its own leaders and to reorganize itself, the proclamation of the Republic as the legal Government, the pure and simple remittance of the rents due, an equitable law on overdue bills, and the Parisian territory banned the army.’
Malon: ‘I share your aspirations, but the situation is perilous. It is clear that the Assembly will listen to nothing as long as the Committee occupies the H�tel-de-Ville. If, on the contrary, Paris entrusts herself again to her legal representatives, I believe they could do more than you.’
The discussion was protracted until half-past ten; the Committee defending its right to proceed to the elections, the delegates their pretension of superseding the Committee. They at last agreed that the Committee should send four of its members to the second arrondissement. Varlin, Moreau, Arnold, and Jourde were appointed.
There they found the whole staff of Liberalism:
deputies, mayors, and adjuncts; Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, Carnot, Peyrat, Tirard, Floquet, Desmarets, Vautrain, and Dubail, about sixty altogether. The cause of the people there had a few partisans, sincere, but terribly dismayed by the uncertain future. The mayor of the second arrondissement, Tirard, presided, a Liberal, nervous, haughty, one of those who had helped to paralyse Paris in the hands of Trochu. In his evidence before the Rural Committee of Inquiry, he has mutilated, travestied this sitting, where the Radico-Liberal bourgeoisie laid bare all its baseness. We shall now, for the instruction of and in justice to the people, give the plain truth.
The delegates: ‘The Central Committee does not wish anything better than to come to an agreement with the municipalities, if they will proceed with the elections.’
Schoelcher, Tirard, Peyrat, Louis Blanc, all the Radicals and Liberals in chorus: ‘The municipalities will not treat with the Central Committee. There is only one authority — the union of the mayors invested with the delegation by the Government.’
The delegates: ‘Let us not discuss the point. The Central Committee exists. We have been named by the National Guard and we hold the H�tel-de-Ville. Will you proceed to make the elections?’
‘But what is your programme?’
Varlin set it forth . He was attacked from all sides. The four delegates had to face twenty assailants. The great argument of the Liberals was that Paris could not convoke herself, but ought to wait for the permission of the Assembly. A reminiscence this of the times of the siege, when they fell prone before the Government of the Defence.
The delegates affirmed, on the contrary: ‘The people has the right to convoke itself. It is an undeniable right, which it has more than once made use of in our history in moments of great peril, and at present we are passing through such a crisis, since the Assembly of Versailles is making for monarchy.’
Then recriminations followed: ‘You are now face to face with force,’ said the delegates. ‘Beware of letting loose a civil war by your resistance.’ ‘It is you who want a civil war,’ replied the Liberals. At midnight Moreau and Arnold, quite disheartened, withdrew. Their colleagues were about to follow, when some adjuncts entreated them to stay. ‘We promise,’ said the mayors and deputies, ‘to make every effort to obtain the municipal elections with the shortest delay.’ ‘Very well,’ answered the delegates, ‘but we maintain our position; we want guarantees.’ The deputies and mayors, growing obstinate, pretended that Paris must surrender unconditionally. Jourde was about to retire, when some of the adjuncts again detained him. For a moment they seemed to be coming to an understanding. The Committee was to give up all the administrative services to the mayors, and let them occupy one part of the H�tel-de-Ville; itself, however, was to continue sitting there, to retain the exclusive direction of the National Guard, and to watch over the security of the town. This agreement only required to be confirmed by the issue of a common proclamation, but when the heading of the latter came to be discussed, the contest grew more violent than before. The delegates proposed, ‘The deputies, mayors, and adjuncts, in accord with the Central Committee.’ These gentlemen, on the contrary, desired to hide themselves behind a mask. For an hour Louis Blanc, Tirard, and Schoelcher overwhelmed the delegates with indignities. Louis Blanc cried to them, ‘You are insurgents against a most freely elected Assembly. [92] We, the regular mandatories, we cannot avow a transaction with insurgents. We should be willing to prevent a civil war, but not to appear as your auxiliaries in the eyes of France.’ Jourde answered the manikin that this transaction, in order to be accepted by the people of Paris, must be publicly consented to, and, despairing of making anything out of this meeting, withdrew.
And amongst this elite of the liberal bourgeoisie, former exiles, publicists, historians of our revolutions, not one indignant voice protested, ‘Let us cease these cruel disputes, this barking at a revolution. Woe to us if we do not recognize the force manifesting itself through unknown men! The Jacobins of 1794 denied it, and they perished; the Montagnards of 1848 abandoned it, and they perished; the Left under the Empire, the Government of the National Defence, disdained it, and our integrity as a nation has perished. Let us open our eyes, our hearts; let us break out of the beaten track. No; we will not widen the gulf that the days of June, 1848, and the Empire have placed between us and the workmen. No; with the disasters of France in view, we shall not allow her living forces still in reserve to be touched. The more abnormal, monstrous our situation is, the more we are bound to find the solution, even under the eye of the Prussian. You, the Central Committee, who are the spokesmen of Paris, we, who are listened to by Republican France, we will mark out a field for common action. You supply the force, the broad aspirations, we the knowledge of realities and their inexorable behests. We shall present to the Assembly this charter free from all Utopian views, equally regardful of the rights of the nation and of those of the capital. If the Assembly rejects it, we shall be the first to make the elections, to ask for your suffrage. And when France sees Paris raising her force counterpoised by prudence at her H�tel-de-Ville, vigorous newcomers allied with men of old repute, the only possible bulwark against royalists and clericals, she will rise as in the days of the Federation, and at her voice Versailles will have to yield.’
But what was to be expected of men who had not even been able to pluck up sufficient courage to wrench Paris from Trochu? Varlin single-handed had to stand their combined attack. Exhausted, worn out — this contest had lasted five hours — he at last gave way, but under protest. On returning to the H�tel-de-Ville, he recovered all his wonted energy, his calm intelligence, and told the Committee he now saw the snare, and advised it to reject the pretensions of the mayors and deputies.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XV<br>
The Commune’s first combats</h1>
<p>The rout of the 3rd April daunted the timorous but exalted the fervent. Battalions inert until then rose; the armament of the forts no longer lagged. Save Issy and Vanves, rather damaged, the forts were intact. All Paris soon heard these fine cannon of seven, which Trouchu had disdained, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n119">[119]</a></sup> firing so lustily and with such correct aim, that on the evening of the 4th the Versaillese were obliged to evacuate the plateau of Chatillon. The trenches that protected the forts were manned. Les Moulineaux, Clamart, Le Val-Fleury resounded with the shooting. To the right we reoccupied Courbevoie, and the bridge of Neuilly was barricaded.</p>
<p>Thence we continued to threaten Versailles. Vinoy received the order to take Neuilly. On the morning of the 6th, Mont-Val�rien, recently armed with 24-pounders, opened fire on Courbevoie. After six hours of bombardment the Federals evacuated the cross-roads and took up a position behind the large barricade of the bridge of Neuilly. The Versaillese cannonaded it while it was protected by the Porte-Maillot.</p>
<p>This Porte-Maillot, which has become legendary, had only a few cannon exposed to the fire from above of Mont-Val�rien. For fortyeight days the Commune found men to hold this untenable post. Their courage electrified all. The crowd went to the Arc-de-Triomphe to see them, and the boys hardly waited for the explosion to run after the fragments of shells.</p>
<p>The Parisian intrepidity soon reappeared in the first skirmishes. The bourgeois papers themselves regretted that so much ardour should not have been spent on the Prussians. The panic of the 3rd April had witnessed heroic deeds, and the Council, happily inspired, wanted to give the defenders of the Commune a funeral worthy of them. It appealed to the people. On the 6th, at two o'clock, an innumerable multitude hurried up to the Beaujon Hospital, whither the dead had been transported. Many, shot after the combat, bore on their arms the marks left by cords. There were heart-rending scenes. Morthers and wives bending over these bodies uttered cries of fury and vows of vengeance. Three immense catafalques, each containing thirty-five coffins, covered with black crape, adorned with red flags, drawn by eight horses each, slowly rolled towards the great boulevards, preceded by trumpets and the <em>Vengeurs de Paris. </em>Delescluze and five members of the Commune, with their red scarfs on and bare-headed, walked as chief mourners. Behind them followed the relations of the victims, the widows of to-day supported by those of to-morrow. Thousands upon thousands, men, women, and children, immortelles in their button-holes, silent, solemn, marched to the sound of the muffled drums. At intervals subdued strains of music burst forth like the spontaneous mutterings of sorrow too long contained. On the great boulevards we numbered 200,000, and 100,000 pale faces looked down upon us from the windows. The women sobbed, many fainted. This <em>Via Sacra </em>of the Revolution, the scene of so many woes and so many joys, has perhaps never witnessed such a communion of hearts. Delescluze exclaimed in ecstasy, ‘What an admirable people! Will they still say that we are a handful of malcontents?’ At the Pere la Chaise he advanced to the common grave. Wrinkled, stooping, sustained only by his indomitable faith, this dying man saluted the dead. ‘I will make you no long speeches; these have already cost us too dear <em>... </em>Justice for the families of the victims; justice for the great town which, after five months of siege, betrayed by its Government, still holds in its hands the future of humanity <em>... </em>Let us not weep for our brothers who have fallen heroically, but let us swear to continue their work, and to save Liberty, the Commune, the Republic!’</p>
<p>The following day the Versaillese shelled the barricade and the Avenue of Neuilly. The inhabitants, whom they had not the humanity to forewarn, were obliged to take refuge in their cellars. Towards half-past four the fire of the Versaillese ceased, and the Federals were snatching a little rest, when the soldiers emerged <em>en masse </em>on the bridge. The Federals, surprised, attempted to arrest their progress, wounding one general and killing two, one of whom, Besson, was responsible for the surprise of Beaumont L'Argonne during the march on Sedan. But the soldiers in overwhelming force succeeded in pushing as far as the old park of Neuilly.</p>
<p>The loss of this outlet was all the more serious that Bergeret, in a letter published in the <em>Officiel</em>, had answered for Neuilly. The Executive Commission replaced him by the Pole Dombrowski, whom Garibaldi had demanded for his general staff during the war in the Vosges. Bergeret’s staff protested, and their bickerings led to the arrest of their chief by the Council, already grown suspicious. The National Guard itself showed some distrust of the new general. The Commission had to present him to Paris, and, misinformed, invented a legend in his favour. Dombrowski was not long in making it good.</p>
<p>The same day the Federals of Neuilly beheld a young man, of small stature, in a modest uniform, slowly inspecting the vanguards in the thick of the fire. It was Dombrowski. Instead of the explosive glowing French bravery, they saw the cool and, as it were, unconscious courage of the Slav. In a few hours the new chief had conquered all his men. The able officer soon revealed himself. On the 9th, during the night, with two battalions from Montmartre, Dombrowski, accompanied by Vermorel, took the Versaillese by surprise at Asni�res, drove them off, seized their cannon, and from the ironclad railway carriages cannonaded Courbevoie and the bridge of Neuilly from the flank At the same time his brother stormed the castle of B�con, that commands the road from Asni�res to Courbevoie. Vinoy having tried to retake this post on the night of the 12th-13th, his men were Shamefully repulsed, and fled to Courbevoie as fast as their legs would carry them.</p>
<p>Paris was ignorant of this success, so defective was the service of the general staff. This brilliant attack was the deed of one man, just as the defence of the forts was the spontaneous work of the National Guard. There was as yet no direction. Whoever cared to rush into some venture did so; whoever wanted cannon or reinforcements went to ask for them at the Place Vend�me, at the Central Committee, at the H�tel-de-Ville, of the generalissimo Cluseret.</p>
<p>The latter had made his debut with a blunder, calling out only the unmarried men from seventeen to thirty-five, thus depriving the Commune of its most energetic defenders, the grey-headed men, the first and last under fire in all our insurrections. Three days after, this ‘,,,decree had to be revoked. On the 5th, in his report to the Council, this ,profound strategist announced that the attack of Versailles masked a movement for occupying the forts of the right bank, at that moment in the hands of the Prussians. Like Trochu, he blamed the cannonades of the last few days, for squandering, as he said, the munitions. And this when Paris abounded in powder and shell; when her young troops should have been amused and sustained by artillery; when the Versaillese of Chatillon, incessantly pursued by our fire, were obliged to remove every night; when an uninterrupted cannonade alone could save Neuilly.</p>
<p>The Council was no wiser in its measures of defence. It decreed compulsory service and the disarmament of the refractory; but the perquisitions, made at random, without the assistance of the police, did not procure a man or a hundred muskets the more. It voted life-pensions to the widows, to the parents of the Federals killed in combat, to their children an annuity till the age of eighteen, and adopted the orphans. Excellent measures these, raising the spirits of the combatants, only they assumed the Commune would be victorious. Was it not better, as in the cases of Duval and Dombrowski, to give at once a few thousand francs to those having a right to them? In fact, these unfortunate pensioners received but fifty francs from the Commune.</p>
<p>These measures, incomplete, ill-managed, implied a want of study and of reflection. The members came to the Council as to a public meeting, without any preparation, there to proceed without any method. The decrees of the day before were forgotten, questions only half solved. The Council created councils of war and court-martials, and allowed the Central Committee to regulate the procedure and the penalties; it organized one-half of the medical service and Cluseret the other; it suppressed the title of general, and the superior officers retained it, the delegate at War conferring it on them. In the middle of a sitting, F�lix Pyat bounded from his chair to demand the abolition of the Vend�me column, while Dombrowski was making desperate appeals for reinforcements.</p>
<p>He had hardly 2,500 men to hold Neuilly, Asni�res, and the whole peninsula of Gennevilliers, while the Versaillese were accumulating their best troops against him. From the 14th to 17th April they cannonaded the castle of B�con and on the morning of the 17th attacked it with a brigade. The 250 Federals who occupied it held out for six hours, and the survivors fell back upon Asni�res, where panic entered with them. Dombrowski, Okolwitz, and a few sturdy men hastened thither, succeeded in re-establishing a little order and fortified the bridge-head. Dombrowski asking for reinforcements, the War Office sent him only a few companies. The following day our vanguard was surprised by strong detachments, and the cannon of Courbevoie battered Asni�res. After a well-contested struggle, towards ten o'clock several battalions, worn out, abandoned the southern part of the village. In the northern part the combat was desperate. Dombrowski, in spite of telegram after telegram, received only 300 men. At five o'clock in the evening the Versaillese made a great effort, and the Federals, exhausted, fearing for their retreat, threw themselves upon the bridge of boats, which they crossed in disorder.</p>
<p>The reactionary journals made much ado about this retreat. Paris was stirred by it. This fierce obstinacy of the combat began to open the eyes of the optimists. Till then many persons believed it all some dreadful misunderstanding and formed groups of conciliation. How many thousands in Paris failed to understand the plan of M. Thiers and the coalition till the day of the final massacre! On the 4th April some manufacturers and tradesmen had created the National Union of the Syndical Chambers, and taken for their programme, maintenance and enfranchisement of the Republic, and acknowledgment of the municipal franchises of Paris. The same day, in the Quartier des Ecoles, professors, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and students posted up a manifesto demanding a democratic, lay Republic, an autonomous Commune and the federation of the communes. An analogous group posted up a letter to M. Thiers: ‘You believe in a riot, and you find yourself brought face to face with precise and universal convictions. The immense majority of Paris demands the Republic as a right superior to all discussion. Paris has seen in the whole conduct of the Assembly the premeditated design of re-establishing the monarchy.’ Some dignitaries of the Freemason lodges appealed at once to Versailles and to the Council: ‘Stop the effusion of such precious blood.’</p>
<p>Finally, a certain number of those mayors and adjuncts who had not capitulated till the eleventh hour, like Floquet, Corbon, Bonvalet, etc., pompously got up the Republican Union League for the Rights of Paris. Now they asked for the recognition of the Republic, the right of Paris to govern herself, and the custody of the town exclusively confided to the National Guard; all that the Commune had wanted all that they had contended against from the 19th to the 25th of March.</p>
<p>Other groups were forming. All agreed on two points — the consolidation of the Republic and the recognition of the rights of Paris.</p>
<p><img src="pics/detainees.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Detainees" border="1" align="left"></p>
<p>Almost all the Communal journals reproduced this programme, and the Republican journals accepted it. The deputies of Paris were the last to speak, and then only to fall foul of Paris. In that lachrymose and jesuitical tone with which he has travestied history, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n120">[120]</a></sup> in those longwinded sentimental periods which serve to mask the aridity of his heart and the pettiness of his mind, that king of gnomes Louis Blanc, wrote in the name of his colleagues: ‘Not one member of the majority has as yet questioned the Republican principle ... As to those engaged in the insurrection, we tell them that they ought to have shuddered at the thought of aggravating, of prolonging the scourge of the foreign occupation by adding thereto the scourge of civil discords.’</p>
<p>It is this that M. Thiers repeated word for word to the first conciliators, the delegates of the <em>Union Syndicale, </em>who applied to him on the 8th May: ‘Let the insurrection disarm; the Assembly cannot disarm. But Paris wants the Republic. The Republic exists; by my honour, so long as I am in power, it will not succumb. But Paris wants municipal franchises. The Chamber is preparing a law for all communes; Paris will get neither more nor less.’ The delegates read a project of compromise which spoke of a general amnesty and a suspension of arms. M. Thiers let them read on, did not formally contest a single article, and the delegates returned to Paris convinced that they had discovered the basis of an arrangement.</p>
<p>They had hardly left when M. Thiers rushed off to the Assembly, which had just endowed all communes with the right of electing their mayors. M. Thiers ascended the tribune, demanding that this right should be restricted to towns of less than 20,000 souls. They cried to him, ‘It is already voted.’ He persisted, declaring that ‘in a republic the Government must be all the better armed because order is the more difficult to maintain;’ threatened to hand in his resignation, and forced the Assembly to annul its vote.</p>
<p>On the 10th, the League of the Rights of Paris sounded the trumpet and had a solemn declaration posted up: ‘Let the Government give up assailing the facts accomplished on the 18th March. Let the general re-election of the Commune be proceeded with <em>... </em>If the Government of Versailles remains deaf to these legitimate demands, let it be well understood that all Paris will rise to defend them.” <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n121">[121]</a></sup> The next day the delegates of the League went to Versailles, and M. Thiers took up his old refrain, ‘Let Paris disarm’ and would hear neither of an armistice nor of an amnesty. ‘Pardon shall be extended’ said he, ‘To those who will disarm, save to the assassins of Cl�ment-Thomas and Lecomte.’ This was to reserve himself the choice of a few thousands. In short, he wanted to be replaced in his position of the 18th March with victory into the bargain. The same day he said to the delegates of the Masonic lodges, ‘Address yourselves to the Commune; what is wanted is the submission of the insurgents, and not the resignation of legal power.’ To facilitate this submission, the next day the <em>Officiel </em>of Versailles compared Paris to the plain of Marathon infested by a band of ‘brigands and assassins.’ On the 13th, a deputy, Brunet, having asked whether the Government would or would not make peace with Paris, the Assembly adjourned this interpellation for a month.</p>
<p>The League, thus well whipped, went on the 14th to the Hotel-de-Ville. The Council, foreign to all these negotiations, left them entirely free, and had only forbidden a meeting announced at the Bourse by ill-disguised Tirards. It contented itself with opposing to the League its declaration of the 10th: ‘You have said that if Versailles remained deaf all Paris would rise. Versailles has remained deaf. arise.’ And to make Paris the judge, the Council loyally published in <em>its Officiel </em>the report of the conciliators.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XV
The Commune’s first combats
The rout of the 3rd April daunted the timorous but exalted the fervent. Battalions inert until then rose; the armament of the forts no longer lagged. Save Issy and Vanves, rather damaged, the forts were intact. All Paris soon heard these fine cannon of seven, which Trouchu had disdained, [119] firing so lustily and with such correct aim, that on the evening of the 4th the Versaillese were obliged to evacuate the plateau of Chatillon. The trenches that protected the forts were manned. Les Moulineaux, Clamart, Le Val-Fleury resounded with the shooting. To the right we reoccupied Courbevoie, and the bridge of Neuilly was barricaded.
Thence we continued to threaten Versailles. Vinoy received the order to take Neuilly. On the morning of the 6th, Mont-Val�rien, recently armed with 24-pounders, opened fire on Courbevoie. After six hours of bombardment the Federals evacuated the cross-roads and took up a position behind the large barricade of the bridge of Neuilly. The Versaillese cannonaded it while it was protected by the Porte-Maillot.
This Porte-Maillot, which has become legendary, had only a few cannon exposed to the fire from above of Mont-Val�rien. For fortyeight days the Commune found men to hold this untenable post. Their courage electrified all. The crowd went to the Arc-de-Triomphe to see them, and the boys hardly waited for the explosion to run after the fragments of shells.
The Parisian intrepidity soon reappeared in the first skirmishes. The bourgeois papers themselves regretted that so much ardour should not have been spent on the Prussians. The panic of the 3rd April had witnessed heroic deeds, and the Council, happily inspired, wanted to give the defenders of the Commune a funeral worthy of them. It appealed to the people. On the 6th, at two o'clock, an innumerable multitude hurried up to the Beaujon Hospital, whither the dead had been transported. Many, shot after the combat, bore on their arms the marks left by cords. There were heart-rending scenes. Morthers and wives bending over these bodies uttered cries of fury and vows of vengeance. Three immense catafalques, each containing thirty-five coffins, covered with black crape, adorned with red flags, drawn by eight horses each, slowly rolled towards the great boulevards, preceded by trumpets and the Vengeurs de Paris. Delescluze and five members of the Commune, with their red scarfs on and bare-headed, walked as chief mourners. Behind them followed the relations of the victims, the widows of to-day supported by those of to-morrow. Thousands upon thousands, men, women, and children, immortelles in their button-holes, silent, solemn, marched to the sound of the muffled drums. At intervals subdued strains of music burst forth like the spontaneous mutterings of sorrow too long contained. On the great boulevards we numbered 200,000, and 100,000 pale faces looked down upon us from the windows. The women sobbed, many fainted. This Via Sacra of the Revolution, the scene of so many woes and so many joys, has perhaps never witnessed such a communion of hearts. Delescluze exclaimed in ecstasy, ‘What an admirable people! Will they still say that we are a handful of malcontents?’ At the Pere la Chaise he advanced to the common grave. Wrinkled, stooping, sustained only by his indomitable faith, this dying man saluted the dead. ‘I will make you no long speeches; these have already cost us too dear ... Justice for the families of the victims; justice for the great town which, after five months of siege, betrayed by its Government, still holds in its hands the future of humanity ... Let us not weep for our brothers who have fallen heroically, but let us swear to continue their work, and to save Liberty, the Commune, the Republic!’
The following day the Versaillese shelled the barricade and the Avenue of Neuilly. The inhabitants, whom they had not the humanity to forewarn, were obliged to take refuge in their cellars. Towards half-past four the fire of the Versaillese ceased, and the Federals were snatching a little rest, when the soldiers emerged en masse on the bridge. The Federals, surprised, attempted to arrest their progress, wounding one general and killing two, one of whom, Besson, was responsible for the surprise of Beaumont L'Argonne during the march on Sedan. But the soldiers in overwhelming force succeeded in pushing as far as the old park of Neuilly.
The loss of this outlet was all the more serious that Bergeret, in a letter published in the Officiel, had answered for Neuilly. The Executive Commission replaced him by the Pole Dombrowski, whom Garibaldi had demanded for his general staff during the war in the Vosges. Bergeret’s staff protested, and their bickerings led to the arrest of their chief by the Council, already grown suspicious. The National Guard itself showed some distrust of the new general. The Commission had to present him to Paris, and, misinformed, invented a legend in his favour. Dombrowski was not long in making it good.
The same day the Federals of Neuilly beheld a young man, of small stature, in a modest uniform, slowly inspecting the vanguards in the thick of the fire. It was Dombrowski. Instead of the explosive glowing French bravery, they saw the cool and, as it were, unconscious courage of the Slav. In a few hours the new chief had conquered all his men. The able officer soon revealed himself. On the 9th, during the night, with two battalions from Montmartre, Dombrowski, accompanied by Vermorel, took the Versaillese by surprise at Asni�res, drove them off, seized their cannon, and from the ironclad railway carriages cannonaded Courbevoie and the bridge of Neuilly from the flank At the same time his brother stormed the castle of B�con, that commands the road from Asni�res to Courbevoie. Vinoy having tried to retake this post on the night of the 12th-13th, his men were Shamefully repulsed, and fled to Courbevoie as fast as their legs would carry them.
Paris was ignorant of this success, so defective was the service of the general staff. This brilliant attack was the deed of one man, just as the defence of the forts was the spontaneous work of the National Guard. There was as yet no direction. Whoever cared to rush into some venture did so; whoever wanted cannon or reinforcements went to ask for them at the Place Vend�me, at the Central Committee, at the H�tel-de-Ville, of the generalissimo Cluseret.
The latter had made his debut with a blunder, calling out only the unmarried men from seventeen to thirty-five, thus depriving the Commune of its most energetic defenders, the grey-headed men, the first and last under fire in all our insurrections. Three days after, this ‘,,,decree had to be revoked. On the 5th, in his report to the Council, this ,profound strategist announced that the attack of Versailles masked a movement for occupying the forts of the right bank, at that moment in the hands of the Prussians. Like Trochu, he blamed the cannonades of the last few days, for squandering, as he said, the munitions. And this when Paris abounded in powder and shell; when her young troops should have been amused and sustained by artillery; when the Versaillese of Chatillon, incessantly pursued by our fire, were obliged to remove every night; when an uninterrupted cannonade alone could save Neuilly.
The Council was no wiser in its measures of defence. It decreed compulsory service and the disarmament of the refractory; but the perquisitions, made at random, without the assistance of the police, did not procure a man or a hundred muskets the more. It voted life-pensions to the widows, to the parents of the Federals killed in combat, to their children an annuity till the age of eighteen, and adopted the orphans. Excellent measures these, raising the spirits of the combatants, only they assumed the Commune would be victorious. Was it not better, as in the cases of Duval and Dombrowski, to give at once a few thousand francs to those having a right to them? In fact, these unfortunate pensioners received but fifty francs from the Commune.
These measures, incomplete, ill-managed, implied a want of study and of reflection. The members came to the Council as to a public meeting, without any preparation, there to proceed without any method. The decrees of the day before were forgotten, questions only half solved. The Council created councils of war and court-martials, and allowed the Central Committee to regulate the procedure and the penalties; it organized one-half of the medical service and Cluseret the other; it suppressed the title of general, and the superior officers retained it, the delegate at War conferring it on them. In the middle of a sitting, F�lix Pyat bounded from his chair to demand the abolition of the Vend�me column, while Dombrowski was making desperate appeals for reinforcements.
He had hardly 2,500 men to hold Neuilly, Asni�res, and the whole peninsula of Gennevilliers, while the Versaillese were accumulating their best troops against him. From the 14th to 17th April they cannonaded the castle of B�con and on the morning of the 17th attacked it with a brigade. The 250 Federals who occupied it held out for six hours, and the survivors fell back upon Asni�res, where panic entered with them. Dombrowski, Okolwitz, and a few sturdy men hastened thither, succeeded in re-establishing a little order and fortified the bridge-head. Dombrowski asking for reinforcements, the War Office sent him only a few companies. The following day our vanguard was surprised by strong detachments, and the cannon of Courbevoie battered Asni�res. After a well-contested struggle, towards ten o'clock several battalions, worn out, abandoned the southern part of the village. In the northern part the combat was desperate. Dombrowski, in spite of telegram after telegram, received only 300 men. At five o'clock in the evening the Versaillese made a great effort, and the Federals, exhausted, fearing for their retreat, threw themselves upon the bridge of boats, which they crossed in disorder.
The reactionary journals made much ado about this retreat. Paris was stirred by it. This fierce obstinacy of the combat began to open the eyes of the optimists. Till then many persons believed it all some dreadful misunderstanding and formed groups of conciliation. How many thousands in Paris failed to understand the plan of M. Thiers and the coalition till the day of the final massacre! On the 4th April some manufacturers and tradesmen had created the National Union of the Syndical Chambers, and taken for their programme, maintenance and enfranchisement of the Republic, and acknowledgment of the municipal franchises of Paris. The same day, in the Quartier des Ecoles, professors, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and students posted up a manifesto demanding a democratic, lay Republic, an autonomous Commune and the federation of the communes. An analogous group posted up a letter to M. Thiers: ‘You believe in a riot, and you find yourself brought face to face with precise and universal convictions. The immense majority of Paris demands the Republic as a right superior to all discussion. Paris has seen in the whole conduct of the Assembly the premeditated design of re-establishing the monarchy.’ Some dignitaries of the Freemason lodges appealed at once to Versailles and to the Council: ‘Stop the effusion of such precious blood.’
Finally, a certain number of those mayors and adjuncts who had not capitulated till the eleventh hour, like Floquet, Corbon, Bonvalet, etc., pompously got up the Republican Union League for the Rights of Paris. Now they asked for the recognition of the Republic, the right of Paris to govern herself, and the custody of the town exclusively confided to the National Guard; all that the Commune had wanted all that they had contended against from the 19th to the 25th of March.
Other groups were forming. All agreed on two points — the consolidation of the Republic and the recognition of the rights of Paris.
Almost all the Communal journals reproduced this programme, and the Republican journals accepted it. The deputies of Paris were the last to speak, and then only to fall foul of Paris. In that lachrymose and jesuitical tone with which he has travestied history, [120] in those longwinded sentimental periods which serve to mask the aridity of his heart and the pettiness of his mind, that king of gnomes Louis Blanc, wrote in the name of his colleagues: ‘Not one member of the majority has as yet questioned the Republican principle ... As to those engaged in the insurrection, we tell them that they ought to have shuddered at the thought of aggravating, of prolonging the scourge of the foreign occupation by adding thereto the scourge of civil discords.’
It is this that M. Thiers repeated word for word to the first conciliators, the delegates of the Union Syndicale, who applied to him on the 8th May: ‘Let the insurrection disarm; the Assembly cannot disarm. But Paris wants the Republic. The Republic exists; by my honour, so long as I am in power, it will not succumb. But Paris wants municipal franchises. The Chamber is preparing a law for all communes; Paris will get neither more nor less.’ The delegates read a project of compromise which spoke of a general amnesty and a suspension of arms. M. Thiers let them read on, did not formally contest a single article, and the delegates returned to Paris convinced that they had discovered the basis of an arrangement.
They had hardly left when M. Thiers rushed off to the Assembly, which had just endowed all communes with the right of electing their mayors. M. Thiers ascended the tribune, demanding that this right should be restricted to towns of less than 20,000 souls. They cried to him, ‘It is already voted.’ He persisted, declaring that ‘in a republic the Government must be all the better armed because order is the more difficult to maintain;’ threatened to hand in his resignation, and forced the Assembly to annul its vote.
On the 10th, the League of the Rights of Paris sounded the trumpet and had a solemn declaration posted up: ‘Let the Government give up assailing the facts accomplished on the 18th March. Let the general re-election of the Commune be proceeded with ... If the Government of Versailles remains deaf to these legitimate demands, let it be well understood that all Paris will rise to defend them.” [121] The next day the delegates of the League went to Versailles, and M. Thiers took up his old refrain, ‘Let Paris disarm’ and would hear neither of an armistice nor of an amnesty. ‘Pardon shall be extended’ said he, ‘To those who will disarm, save to the assassins of Cl�ment-Thomas and Lecomte.’ This was to reserve himself the choice of a few thousands. In short, he wanted to be replaced in his position of the 18th March with victory into the bargain. The same day he said to the delegates of the Masonic lodges, ‘Address yourselves to the Commune; what is wanted is the submission of the insurgents, and not the resignation of legal power.’ To facilitate this submission, the next day the Officiel of Versailles compared Paris to the plain of Marathon infested by a band of ‘brigands and assassins.’ On the 13th, a deputy, Brunet, having asked whether the Government would or would not make peace with Paris, the Assembly adjourned this interpellation for a month.
The League, thus well whipped, went on the 14th to the Hotel-de-Ville. The Council, foreign to all these negotiations, left them entirely free, and had only forbidden a meeting announced at the Bourse by ill-disguised Tirards. It contented itself with opposing to the League its declaration of the 10th: ‘You have said that if Versailles remained deaf all Paris would rise. Versailles has remained deaf. arise.’ And to make Paris the judge, the Council loyally published in its Officiel the report of the conciliators.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XXXIII<br>
The fate of the prisoners</h1>
<p><img src="pics/executions.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Executions" border="1" align="left"></p>
<p class="quoteb">The cause of justice, order, humanity and civilization has triumphed. (Thiers to the National Assembly.)</p>
<p>Happy the dead! They had not to mount the Calvary of the prisoners.</p>
<p>From the wholesale shootings one may guess the number of arrests. It was a furious razzia; men, women, children, Parisians, provincials, foreigners, a crowd of people of all sexes and all ages, of all parties and all conditions. All the lodgers of a house, all the inhabitants of a street, were carried off in a body. A suspicion, a word, a doubtful attitude were sufficient to cause one to be seized by the soldiers. From the 2 1st to the 30th May they thus picked up 40,000 persons.</p>
<p>These prisoners were formed into long chains, sometimes free, sometimes, as in June, 1848, bound by cords so as to form only one body. Whoever refused to walk on was pricked with the bayonet, and, if he resisted, shot on the spot, sometimes attached to a horse’s tail . <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n224">[224]</a></sup> In front of the churches of the rich quarters the captives were forced to kneel down, bareheaded, amidst an infamous mob of lackeys, fashionable folk, and prostitutes, crying, ‘Death! death! Do not go any further; shoot them here!’ At the Champs-Elys�es they wanted to break lines to taste blood.</p>
<p>The prisoners were sent on to Versailles. Gallifet awaited them at La Muette. In the town he escorted the chains, halting under the windows of the aristocratic clubs in order to earn plaudits and hurrahs. At the gates of Paris he levied his tithe, walked past the ranks, and, with his look of a famished wolf, ‘You seem intelligent,’ said <em>he </em>to some one; ‘step out of the ranks.’ ‘You have a watch,’ said he to another; ‘you must have been a functionary of the Commune,’ and he placed him apart. On the 26th, in one single convoy, he chose eightythree men and three women, made them draw up along the talus of the fortifications and had them shot .<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n225">[225]</a></sup> Then he said to their comrades, ‘My name is Gallifet. Your journals in Paris had sullied me enough. I take my revenge.’ On Sunday, the 28th, he said, ‘Let those who have white hairs step out from the ranks.’ One hundred and eleven captives advanced. ‘You,’ continued Gallifet, ‘you have seen June, 1848; you are more culpable than the others,’ and he had their corpses thrown over into the fortifications.</p>
<p>This purgation over, the convoys entered upon the route to Versailles, pressed between two lines of cavalry. It looked like the population of a city dragged away by fierce hordes. Lads, grey-bearded men, soldiers, dandies, all and every condition; the most delicate and the most rude confounded in the same vortex. There were many women, some with manacles on their hands; one with her baby, pressing its mother’s neck with its frightened little hands; another, her arm broken, her blouse stained with blood; another depressed, clinging to the arm of her more vigorous neighbour; another in a statuesque attitude, defying pain and insults; always that woman of the people, who, after having carried the bread to the trenches and given consolation to the dying, hopeless — ‘weary of giving birth to unhappy souls’ — longed for liberating death.</p>
<p>Their attitude, which inspired foreign journals with admiration,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n226">[226]</a></sup> exasperated the Versaillese ferocity. ‘In seeing the convoys of insurgent women,’ said the <em>Figaro</em> ‘one feels in spite of oneself a kind of pity; but one is reassured by thinking that all the brothels of the capital have been thrown open by the National Guards, who patronized them, and that the majority of these ladies were inhabitants of these establishments.’</p>
<p>Panting, covered with filth, idiotic with fatigue, hunger, and thirst, burnt by the sun, the convoys dragged themselves along for hours in the over-heated dust of the roads, harassed by the cries, the blows from the mounted chasseurs. The Prussians had not thus cruelly treated these soldiers when, prisoners themselves some months before, they had been led away from Sedan or Metz. The captives who fell were sometimes shot, sometimes they were only thrown into the carts that followed.</p>
<p>At the entry into Versailles the crowd awaited them, always the <em>�lite </em>of French society, deputies, functionaries, priests, officers, women of all sorts. The fury of the 4th April and the preceding convoys were as much surpassed as the sea swells at the equinoctial tide. The Avenues de Paris and de St. Cloud were lined by savages, who followed the convoys with vociferations, blows, covered them with filth and broken pieces of bottle. ‘One sees,’ said the Liberal-Conservative newspaper, the <em>Si�cle, </em>of the 30th May, ‘women, not prostitutes, but elegant ladies, insult the prisoners on their passage, and even strike them with their sunshades.’ Woe to whoever did not insult the vanquished! Woe to him who allowed a movement of commiseration to escape him! He was at once seized, led to the post,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n227">[227]</a></sup> or else simply forced into the convoy. Frightful retrogression of human nature, all the more hideous in that it contrasted with the elegance of the costume l Prussian officers came from St. Denis once more to see what governing classes they had had to oppose them.</p>
<p>The first convoys were promenaded about as a spectacle in the streets of Versailles; others were stationed for hours at the torrid Place d'Armes, a few steps from the large trees, whose shade was refused them. The prisoners were then distributed in four depots, the cellars of the Grandes-Ecuries, the Orangerie of the castle, the docks of Satory, and the riding-school of the Ecole de St. Cyr. Into these damp, nauseous cellars, where light and air only penetrated by some narrow openings, men, children, of whom some were not more than ten years old, were crowded without straw during the first days. When they did get some, it was soon reduced to mere dung. No water to wash with; no means of changing their rags, as the relations who brought linen were brutally sent back. Twice a day, in a trough, they got a yellowish liquid, a porridge. The gendarmes sold tobacco at exorbitant prices, and confiscated it in order to sell it over again. There were no doctors. Gangrene attacked the wounded; opthalmia broke out; deliriousness became chronic. In the night were heard the shrieks of the feverstricken and the mad. Opposite, the gendarmes remained impassive, their guns loaded.</p>
<p>Even these horrors were outdone by the Fosse-aux-Lions, a vault without air, absolutely dark, the antechamber of the tomb, under the large red marble staircase of the terrace. Whoever was noted as dangerous, or whoever had simply displeased the corporal, was thrown into it. The most robust could only bear up against it a few days. On leaving it, giddy, the mind a blank, dazzled by the broad daylight, they swooned. Happy he who met the look of his wife. The wives of the captives pressed against the outer rails of the Orangerie, striving to distinguish some one amidst the dimly seen herd. They tore their hair, implored the gendarmes, who thrust them back, struck them, called them infamous names.</p>
<p>The open-air hell was the docks of the plateau of Satory, a vast parallelogram enclosed by walls. The soil is clayey, and the least rain soaks it. The first arrivals were placed within the buildings, which could contain about thirteen hundred persons, the others remained outside, bareheaded, for their hats had been knocked off at Paris or at Versailles. The gendarmes were on duty, being more reliable, more hardened than the soldiers.</p>
<p>On the Thursday evening at eight o'clock a convoy, composed chiefly of women, arrived at the dock. ‘Many of us,’ one of them has reported to me, the wife of a <em>chef-de-l�gion, ‘</em>had died on the way; we had had nothing since morning.</p>
<p>‘It was still daylight. We saw a great multitude of prisoners. The women were apart in a hut at the entrance. We joined them.</p>
<p>‘We were told that there was a pond, and, dying of thirst, we rushed thither. The first who drank uttered a loud cry, vomited. “Oh, the wretches! they make us drink the blood of our own people.” For since evening the wounded went there to bathe their wounds; but thirst tormented us so cruelly, that some had the courage to rinse out their mouths with this bloody water.</p>
<p>‘The hut was already full, and we were made to lie on the earth in groups of about 200. An officer came and said to us, “Vile creatures! listen to the order I give. Gendarmes, the first who moves, fire on these — !”</p>
<p>‘At ten o'clock we heard reports quite near. We jumped up. “Lie down, wretches!” cried the gendarmes, taking aim at us. It was some prisoners being shot a few steps from us. We thought the balls would pass through our heads. The gendarmes who had just been shooting came to relieve our guardians. We remained the whole night watched by men heated with carriage. They grumbled at those who writhed with terror and cold. “Do not be impatient; your turn is coming.” At daybreak we saw the dead. The gendarmes said to each other, “Oh! isn’t this a jolly vintage?”</p>
<p>‘In the evening the prisoners heard a sound of spades and hammers in the wall of the south. The shootings, the menaces had maddened them. They awaited death from all sides and in every shape; they thought that this time they were going to be blown up. Holes opened and machine-guns appeared, some of which were discharged.’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n228">[228]</a></sup> </p>
<p>On Friday evening a storm of several hours broke out above the camp. The prisoners were forced, on pain of being shot, to lie down all night in the mud. About twenty died of cold.</p>
<p>The camp of Satory soon became the Longchamp of Versailles high life. Captain Aubrey did the honours with the ladies, the deputies, the literary men, showing them his subjects grovelling in the mud, devouring a few biscuits, taking tumblers of water from the pond into which the gendarmes stood on no ceremony in relieving themselves. Some, going mad, dashed their heads against the walls; others howled, tearing their beards and hair. A fetid cloud arose from this living mass of rags and horrors. ‘There are,’ said the <em>Ind�pendence Fran�aise, ‘</em>several thousands of people poisoned with dirt and vermin spreading infection of a kilometre around. Cannon are levelled at these wretches penned up like wild beasts. The inhabitants of Paris are afraid of the epidemic resulting from the burying of the insurgents killed in the town. Those whom the <em>Officiel</em> of Paris called the rurals are much more afraid of the epidemic resulting from the presence of the live insurgents at Satory.’</p>
<p>Those are the honest people of Versailles, who had just caused the triumph of ‘the cause of justice, order, humanity, and civilisation.’ How good and humane, despite the bombardment and the sufferings of the siege, those <em>brigands </em>of Paris had been, above all by the side of these <em>honest people! </em>Who ever ill-treated a prisoner in the Paris of the Commune? What woman perished or was insulted? What obscure corner of the Parisian prisons had hidden a single one of the thousand tortures which displayed themselves in broad daylight at Versailles?</p>
<p>From the 24th May to the first days of June the convoys did not cease flowing into this abyss. The arrests went on in large hauls by day and night. The sergents-de-ville accompanied the soldiers, and, under the pretext of perquisitions, forced the locks, appropriating objects of value. Several officers, were in the sequel condemned for the embezzlement of objects seized .<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n229">[229]</a></sup> They arrested not only the persons compromised in the late affairs, those who were denounced by their uniforms, or documents found in the <em>mairies </em>and at the War Office, but whoever was known for his republican opinions. They arrested, too, the purveyors of the Commune, and even the musicians, who had never crossed the ramparts. The ambulance attendants shared the same fate. And yet during the siege a delegate of the Commune, having inspected the ambulances of the press, had said to the personnel, ‘I am aware that most of you are the friends of the Government of Versailles, but I hope you may live long enough to recognize your mistake. I do not trouble myself to know whether the lancets at the service of the wounded are royalist or republican. I see that you do your task worthily. I thank you for it. I shall report it to the Commune.’</p>
<p>Some poor wretches had taken refuge in the Catacombs. They were hunted by torchlight. The police agents, assisted by dogs, fired at every suspicious shadow. Hunts were organized in the forests near Paris. The police watched all the stations, all the ports Of France. Passports had to be renewed and checked at Versailles. The masters of boats were under supervision. On the 26th Jules Favre had solemnly asked the foreign powers for the extradition of the fugitives, under the pretext that the battle of the streets was not a political act.</p>
<p>Extradition flourished at Paris. Fear closed all doors. No shelter was there for the fugitives. Few friends were left — no comrades. Everywhere pitiless refusals or denunciations. Doctors renewed the infamies of 1834, and delivered up the wounded .<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n230">[230]</a></sup> Every cowardly instinct rose to the surface, and Paris disclosed sloughs of infamy whose existence she had not suspected even under the Empire. The honest people, masters of the streets, had their rivals, their creditors, arrested as Communards, and formed committees of inquiry in their arrondissements. The Commune had rejected denunciators; the police of order received them with open arms. The denunciations rose to the fabulous height of 399,823, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n231">[231]</a></sup> of which a twentieth at most were signed.</p>
<p>A very considerable part of these denunciations issued from the press. For several weeks it did not cease stirring the rage and panic of the bourgeoisie. M. Thiers, reviving one of the absurdities of June, 1848, in a bulletin spoke of ‘poisonous liquids collected in order to poison the soldiers.’ All the inventions of that time were again taken up, appropriated to the hour, and horribly amplified; chambers in the sewers with wires all prepared, 8,000 petroleuses enrolled, houses marked with a stamp for burning, pumps, injectors, eggs filled with petroleum, poisoned balls, roasted gendarmes, hanged sailors, violated women, prostitutes requisitioned, endless thefts — all was printed, and the gulls believed all. Some journals had the speciality of false orders for arson;<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n232">[232]</a></sup> false signatures, of which the originals could never be produced, but which were to be admitted as positive evidence by the courts-martial and honest historians. When it fancied the of the bourgeoisie was flagging, the press fanned it again, each journal outbidding the other in villainy. ‘Paris, we know,’ said the <em>Bien Public, ‘</em>asks for nothing better than to go to sleep again; though we should trouble her, we will awaken her.’ And on the 8th June the Figaro still drew up plans of carnage.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n233">[233]</a></sup> The revolutionary writer who will take the pains to collect in a volume extracts from the reactionary press of May and June, 1871, from the Parliamentary inquiries, the bourgeois pamphlets, and histories of the Commune — a mixture as monstrous as that of the witches’ cauldron — will do more for the edification and the future justice of the people than a whole band of mouthing agitators.</p>
<p>There were, to French honour, some traits of generosity, and even heroism, amidst this epidemic of cowardice. Vermorel, wounded, was taken in by the wife of a concierge, who succeeded for a few hours in passing him off for her son. The mother of a Versaillese soldier gave several members of the Council of the Commune an asylum. A great number of insurgents were saved by unknown people; and yet it was during the first days a matter of death, afterwards of transportation, to shelter the vanquished. The women once again showed their great heart.</p>
<p>The average of arrests kept up in June and July to a hundred a day. At Belleville, M�nilmontant, in the thirteenth arrondissement, in certain streets, there were only old women left. The Versaillese, in their lying returns, have admitted 38,568 prisoners, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n234">[234]</a></sup> amongst whom were 1,058 women and 651 children, of whom forty-seven were thirteen years of age, twenty-one twelve, four ten, and one seven,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n235">[235]</a></sup> as though they had by some secret method counted the herds whom they fed at the troughs. The number of those arrested very probably reached 50,000 men.</p>
<p>The errors were numberless. Some women of that <em>beau monde </em>who went with dilated nostrils to contemplate the corpses of the Federals were included in the razzias, and led off to Satory, where, their clothes in rags, devoured by vermin, they figured very well as the imaginary petroleuses of their journals.</p>
<p>Thousands of individuals were obliged to hide; thousands gained the frontier. An idea of the general losses may be gathered from the fact that at the by-elections of July there were 100,000 less electors than in February.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n236">[236]</a></sup> Parisian industry was crushed by it. Most of the workmen who gave this branch of manufacture its artistic <em>cachet </em>perished, were arrested, or emigrated in masses. In the month of October the municipal council proved in an official report that certain industries were obliged to refuse orders for want of hands.</p>
<p>The savageness of the searches, the number of the arrests, joined to the despair of the defeat, tore from this town — bled to the last drop of blood — some supreme convulsions. At Belleville, at Montmartre, in the thirteenth arrondissement, shots were fired from houses. At the Caf� du Helder, in the Rue de Rennes, the Rue de la Paix, Place de la Madeleine, soldiers and officers fell, struck by invisible hands; near the P�pini�re Barracks a general was shot at. The Versaillese journals wondered, with naive impudence, that popular fury was not calmed, and could not understand ‘what reason, even the most futile, of hatred one could have for soldiers who had the most inoffensive look in the world’ (<em>La Cloche</em>).</p>
<p>The Left followed to the very end the line it had traced out for itself on the 19th March. Having prevented the provinces from coming to the rescue of Paris and voted its thanks to the army, it also joined its maledictions to those of the provincials. Louis Blanc, who in 1877 was to defend the red flag, wrote to the <em>Figaro </em>to stigmatize the vanquished, to bow down before their judges, and declare ‘the public indignation legitimate.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n237">[237]</a></sup> This Extreme Left. which five years later grew enthusiastic for the amnesty, would not hear the death-groans of the 20,000 shot, nor even, though but a hundred yards from them, the shrieks from the Orangerie. In June, 1848, the sombre imprecation of Lammennais fell upon the massacres, and Pierre Leroux defended the insurgents. The great philosophers of the Rural Assembly, Catholic or Positivist, were all one against the working men. Gambetta, delighted at being rid of the Socialists, hurried back from St. Sebastien, and in a solemn speech at Bordeaux declared that the Government which had been able to crush Paris ‘had even by that proved itself legitimate.’</p>
<p>There were some men of courage in the provinces. The <em>Droits de l'Homme </em>of Montpelier, the <em>Emancipation </em>of Toulouse, the <em>National du Loiret, </em>and several advanced journals recounted the assassinations of the conquerors. Most of these journals were prosecuted and suppressed. Some movements took plate; a commencement of riots at Pamiers (Ari�ge) and at Voiron (Is�re). At Lyons the army was confined in its barracks, and the prefect, Valentin, had the town closed in order to arrest the fugitives of Paris. There were arrests at Bordeaux.</p>
<p>At Brussels Victor Hugo protested against the declaration of the Belgian government, which promised to deliver up the fugitives. Louis Blanc and Schoelcher wrote him a letter full of blame, and his house was stoned by a fashionable mob. Bebel in the German Parliament and Whalley in the House of Commons denounced the Versaillese fury. Garcia Lopez said from the tribune of the Cortes, ‘We admire this great revolution, which no one can appreciate justly today.’</p>
<p>The working men of foreign countries solemnized the obsequies of their brothers of Paris. At London, Brussels, Zurich, Geneva, Leipzig, and Berlin, monster meetings proclaimed themselves in accord with the Commune, devoted the slaughterers to universal execration, and declared accomplices of these crimes the Governments which had not made any remonstrances. All the Socialist journals glorified the struggle of the vanquished. The great voice of the International recounted their effort in an eloquent address<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n238">[238]</a></sup> and confided their memory to the workmen of the whole world.</p>
<p>On the triumphal entry of Moltke at the head of the victorious Prussian army into Berlin, the workmen received them with hurrahs for the Commune, and at several places the people were charged by the cavalry.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XXXIII
The fate of the prisoners
The cause of justice, order, humanity and civilization has triumphed. (Thiers to the National Assembly.)
Happy the dead! They had not to mount the Calvary of the prisoners.
From the wholesale shootings one may guess the number of arrests. It was a furious razzia; men, women, children, Parisians, provincials, foreigners, a crowd of people of all sexes and all ages, of all parties and all conditions. All the lodgers of a house, all the inhabitants of a street, were carried off in a body. A suspicion, a word, a doubtful attitude were sufficient to cause one to be seized by the soldiers. From the 2 1st to the 30th May they thus picked up 40,000 persons.
These prisoners were formed into long chains, sometimes free, sometimes, as in June, 1848, bound by cords so as to form only one body. Whoever refused to walk on was pricked with the bayonet, and, if he resisted, shot on the spot, sometimes attached to a horse’s tail . [224] In front of the churches of the rich quarters the captives were forced to kneel down, bareheaded, amidst an infamous mob of lackeys, fashionable folk, and prostitutes, crying, ‘Death! death! Do not go any further; shoot them here!’ At the Champs-Elys�es they wanted to break lines to taste blood.
The prisoners were sent on to Versailles. Gallifet awaited them at La Muette. In the town he escorted the chains, halting under the windows of the aristocratic clubs in order to earn plaudits and hurrahs. At the gates of Paris he levied his tithe, walked past the ranks, and, with his look of a famished wolf, ‘You seem intelligent,’ said he to some one; ‘step out of the ranks.’ ‘You have a watch,’ said he to another; ‘you must have been a functionary of the Commune,’ and he placed him apart. On the 26th, in one single convoy, he chose eightythree men and three women, made them draw up along the talus of the fortifications and had them shot .[225] Then he said to their comrades, ‘My name is Gallifet. Your journals in Paris had sullied me enough. I take my revenge.’ On Sunday, the 28th, he said, ‘Let those who have white hairs step out from the ranks.’ One hundred and eleven captives advanced. ‘You,’ continued Gallifet, ‘you have seen June, 1848; you are more culpable than the others,’ and he had their corpses thrown over into the fortifications.
This purgation over, the convoys entered upon the route to Versailles, pressed between two lines of cavalry. It looked like the population of a city dragged away by fierce hordes. Lads, grey-bearded men, soldiers, dandies, all and every condition; the most delicate and the most rude confounded in the same vortex. There were many women, some with manacles on their hands; one with her baby, pressing its mother’s neck with its frightened little hands; another, her arm broken, her blouse stained with blood; another depressed, clinging to the arm of her more vigorous neighbour; another in a statuesque attitude, defying pain and insults; always that woman of the people, who, after having carried the bread to the trenches and given consolation to the dying, hopeless — ‘weary of giving birth to unhappy souls’ — longed for liberating death.
Their attitude, which inspired foreign journals with admiration,[226] exasperated the Versaillese ferocity. ‘In seeing the convoys of insurgent women,’ said the Figaro ‘one feels in spite of oneself a kind of pity; but one is reassured by thinking that all the brothels of the capital have been thrown open by the National Guards, who patronized them, and that the majority of these ladies were inhabitants of these establishments.’
Panting, covered with filth, idiotic with fatigue, hunger, and thirst, burnt by the sun, the convoys dragged themselves along for hours in the over-heated dust of the roads, harassed by the cries, the blows from the mounted chasseurs. The Prussians had not thus cruelly treated these soldiers when, prisoners themselves some months before, they had been led away from Sedan or Metz. The captives who fell were sometimes shot, sometimes they were only thrown into the carts that followed.
At the entry into Versailles the crowd awaited them, always the �lite of French society, deputies, functionaries, priests, officers, women of all sorts. The fury of the 4th April and the preceding convoys were as much surpassed as the sea swells at the equinoctial tide. The Avenues de Paris and de St. Cloud were lined by savages, who followed the convoys with vociferations, blows, covered them with filth and broken pieces of bottle. ‘One sees,’ said the Liberal-Conservative newspaper, the Si�cle, of the 30th May, ‘women, not prostitutes, but elegant ladies, insult the prisoners on their passage, and even strike them with their sunshades.’ Woe to whoever did not insult the vanquished! Woe to him who allowed a movement of commiseration to escape him! He was at once seized, led to the post,[227] or else simply forced into the convoy. Frightful retrogression of human nature, all the more hideous in that it contrasted with the elegance of the costume l Prussian officers came from St. Denis once more to see what governing classes they had had to oppose them.
The first convoys were promenaded about as a spectacle in the streets of Versailles; others were stationed for hours at the torrid Place d'Armes, a few steps from the large trees, whose shade was refused them. The prisoners were then distributed in four depots, the cellars of the Grandes-Ecuries, the Orangerie of the castle, the docks of Satory, and the riding-school of the Ecole de St. Cyr. Into these damp, nauseous cellars, where light and air only penetrated by some narrow openings, men, children, of whom some were not more than ten years old, were crowded without straw during the first days. When they did get some, it was soon reduced to mere dung. No water to wash with; no means of changing their rags, as the relations who brought linen were brutally sent back. Twice a day, in a trough, they got a yellowish liquid, a porridge. The gendarmes sold tobacco at exorbitant prices, and confiscated it in order to sell it over again. There were no doctors. Gangrene attacked the wounded; opthalmia broke out; deliriousness became chronic. In the night were heard the shrieks of the feverstricken and the mad. Opposite, the gendarmes remained impassive, their guns loaded.
Even these horrors were outdone by the Fosse-aux-Lions, a vault without air, absolutely dark, the antechamber of the tomb, under the large red marble staircase of the terrace. Whoever was noted as dangerous, or whoever had simply displeased the corporal, was thrown into it. The most robust could only bear up against it a few days. On leaving it, giddy, the mind a blank, dazzled by the broad daylight, they swooned. Happy he who met the look of his wife. The wives of the captives pressed against the outer rails of the Orangerie, striving to distinguish some one amidst the dimly seen herd. They tore their hair, implored the gendarmes, who thrust them back, struck them, called them infamous names.
The open-air hell was the docks of the plateau of Satory, a vast parallelogram enclosed by walls. The soil is clayey, and the least rain soaks it. The first arrivals were placed within the buildings, which could contain about thirteen hundred persons, the others remained outside, bareheaded, for their hats had been knocked off at Paris or at Versailles. The gendarmes were on duty, being more reliable, more hardened than the soldiers.
On the Thursday evening at eight o'clock a convoy, composed chiefly of women, arrived at the dock. ‘Many of us,’ one of them has reported to me, the wife of a chef-de-l�gion, ‘had died on the way; we had had nothing since morning.
‘It was still daylight. We saw a great multitude of prisoners. The women were apart in a hut at the entrance. We joined them.
‘We were told that there was a pond, and, dying of thirst, we rushed thither. The first who drank uttered a loud cry, vomited. “Oh, the wretches! they make us drink the blood of our own people.” For since evening the wounded went there to bathe their wounds; but thirst tormented us so cruelly, that some had the courage to rinse out their mouths with this bloody water.
‘The hut was already full, and we were made to lie on the earth in groups of about 200. An officer came and said to us, “Vile creatures! listen to the order I give. Gendarmes, the first who moves, fire on these — !”
‘At ten o'clock we heard reports quite near. We jumped up. “Lie down, wretches!” cried the gendarmes, taking aim at us. It was some prisoners being shot a few steps from us. We thought the balls would pass through our heads. The gendarmes who had just been shooting came to relieve our guardians. We remained the whole night watched by men heated with carriage. They grumbled at those who writhed with terror and cold. “Do not be impatient; your turn is coming.” At daybreak we saw the dead. The gendarmes said to each other, “Oh! isn’t this a jolly vintage?”
‘In the evening the prisoners heard a sound of spades and hammers in the wall of the south. The shootings, the menaces had maddened them. They awaited death from all sides and in every shape; they thought that this time they were going to be blown up. Holes opened and machine-guns appeared, some of which were discharged.’[228]
On Friday evening a storm of several hours broke out above the camp. The prisoners were forced, on pain of being shot, to lie down all night in the mud. About twenty died of cold.
The camp of Satory soon became the Longchamp of Versailles high life. Captain Aubrey did the honours with the ladies, the deputies, the literary men, showing them his subjects grovelling in the mud, devouring a few biscuits, taking tumblers of water from the pond into which the gendarmes stood on no ceremony in relieving themselves. Some, going mad, dashed their heads against the walls; others howled, tearing their beards and hair. A fetid cloud arose from this living mass of rags and horrors. ‘There are,’ said the Ind�pendence Fran�aise, ‘several thousands of people poisoned with dirt and vermin spreading infection of a kilometre around. Cannon are levelled at these wretches penned up like wild beasts. The inhabitants of Paris are afraid of the epidemic resulting from the burying of the insurgents killed in the town. Those whom the Officiel of Paris called the rurals are much more afraid of the epidemic resulting from the presence of the live insurgents at Satory.’
Those are the honest people of Versailles, who had just caused the triumph of ‘the cause of justice, order, humanity, and civilisation.’ How good and humane, despite the bombardment and the sufferings of the siege, those brigands of Paris had been, above all by the side of these honest people! Who ever ill-treated a prisoner in the Paris of the Commune? What woman perished or was insulted? What obscure corner of the Parisian prisons had hidden a single one of the thousand tortures which displayed themselves in broad daylight at Versailles?
From the 24th May to the first days of June the convoys did not cease flowing into this abyss. The arrests went on in large hauls by day and night. The sergents-de-ville accompanied the soldiers, and, under the pretext of perquisitions, forced the locks, appropriating objects of value. Several officers, were in the sequel condemned for the embezzlement of objects seized .[229] They arrested not only the persons compromised in the late affairs, those who were denounced by their uniforms, or documents found in the mairies and at the War Office, but whoever was known for his republican opinions. They arrested, too, the purveyors of the Commune, and even the musicians, who had never crossed the ramparts. The ambulance attendants shared the same fate. And yet during the siege a delegate of the Commune, having inspected the ambulances of the press, had said to the personnel, ‘I am aware that most of you are the friends of the Government of Versailles, but I hope you may live long enough to recognize your mistake. I do not trouble myself to know whether the lancets at the service of the wounded are royalist or republican. I see that you do your task worthily. I thank you for it. I shall report it to the Commune.’
Some poor wretches had taken refuge in the Catacombs. They were hunted by torchlight. The police agents, assisted by dogs, fired at every suspicious shadow. Hunts were organized in the forests near Paris. The police watched all the stations, all the ports Of France. Passports had to be renewed and checked at Versailles. The masters of boats were under supervision. On the 26th Jules Favre had solemnly asked the foreign powers for the extradition of the fugitives, under the pretext that the battle of the streets was not a political act.
Extradition flourished at Paris. Fear closed all doors. No shelter was there for the fugitives. Few friends were left — no comrades. Everywhere pitiless refusals or denunciations. Doctors renewed the infamies of 1834, and delivered up the wounded .[230] Every cowardly instinct rose to the surface, and Paris disclosed sloughs of infamy whose existence she had not suspected even under the Empire. The honest people, masters of the streets, had their rivals, their creditors, arrested as Communards, and formed committees of inquiry in their arrondissements. The Commune had rejected denunciators; the police of order received them with open arms. The denunciations rose to the fabulous height of 399,823, [231] of which a twentieth at most were signed.
A very considerable part of these denunciations issued from the press. For several weeks it did not cease stirring the rage and panic of the bourgeoisie. M. Thiers, reviving one of the absurdities of June, 1848, in a bulletin spoke of ‘poisonous liquids collected in order to poison the soldiers.’ All the inventions of that time were again taken up, appropriated to the hour, and horribly amplified; chambers in the sewers with wires all prepared, 8,000 petroleuses enrolled, houses marked with a stamp for burning, pumps, injectors, eggs filled with petroleum, poisoned balls, roasted gendarmes, hanged sailors, violated women, prostitutes requisitioned, endless thefts — all was printed, and the gulls believed all. Some journals had the speciality of false orders for arson;[232] false signatures, of which the originals could never be produced, but which were to be admitted as positive evidence by the courts-martial and honest historians. When it fancied the of the bourgeoisie was flagging, the press fanned it again, each journal outbidding the other in villainy. ‘Paris, we know,’ said the Bien Public, ‘asks for nothing better than to go to sleep again; though we should trouble her, we will awaken her.’ And on the 8th June the Figaro still drew up plans of carnage.[233] The revolutionary writer who will take the pains to collect in a volume extracts from the reactionary press of May and June, 1871, from the Parliamentary inquiries, the bourgeois pamphlets, and histories of the Commune — a mixture as monstrous as that of the witches’ cauldron — will do more for the edification and the future justice of the people than a whole band of mouthing agitators.
There were, to French honour, some traits of generosity, and even heroism, amidst this epidemic of cowardice. Vermorel, wounded, was taken in by the wife of a concierge, who succeeded for a few hours in passing him off for her son. The mother of a Versaillese soldier gave several members of the Council of the Commune an asylum. A great number of insurgents were saved by unknown people; and yet it was during the first days a matter of death, afterwards of transportation, to shelter the vanquished. The women once again showed their great heart.
The average of arrests kept up in June and July to a hundred a day. At Belleville, M�nilmontant, in the thirteenth arrondissement, in certain streets, there were only old women left. The Versaillese, in their lying returns, have admitted 38,568 prisoners, [234] amongst whom were 1,058 women and 651 children, of whom forty-seven were thirteen years of age, twenty-one twelve, four ten, and one seven,[235] as though they had by some secret method counted the herds whom they fed at the troughs. The number of those arrested very probably reached 50,000 men.
The errors were numberless. Some women of that beau monde who went with dilated nostrils to contemplate the corpses of the Federals were included in the razzias, and led off to Satory, where, their clothes in rags, devoured by vermin, they figured very well as the imaginary petroleuses of their journals.
Thousands of individuals were obliged to hide; thousands gained the frontier. An idea of the general losses may be gathered from the fact that at the by-elections of July there were 100,000 less electors than in February.[236] Parisian industry was crushed by it. Most of the workmen who gave this branch of manufacture its artistic cachet perished, were arrested, or emigrated in masses. In the month of October the municipal council proved in an official report that certain industries were obliged to refuse orders for want of hands.
The savageness of the searches, the number of the arrests, joined to the despair of the defeat, tore from this town — bled to the last drop of blood — some supreme convulsions. At Belleville, at Montmartre, in the thirteenth arrondissement, shots were fired from houses. At the Caf� du Helder, in the Rue de Rennes, the Rue de la Paix, Place de la Madeleine, soldiers and officers fell, struck by invisible hands; near the P�pini�re Barracks a general was shot at. The Versaillese journals wondered, with naive impudence, that popular fury was not calmed, and could not understand ‘what reason, even the most futile, of hatred one could have for soldiers who had the most inoffensive look in the world’ (La Cloche).
The Left followed to the very end the line it had traced out for itself on the 19th March. Having prevented the provinces from coming to the rescue of Paris and voted its thanks to the army, it also joined its maledictions to those of the provincials. Louis Blanc, who in 1877 was to defend the red flag, wrote to the Figaro to stigmatize the vanquished, to bow down before their judges, and declare ‘the public indignation legitimate.[237] This Extreme Left. which five years later grew enthusiastic for the amnesty, would not hear the death-groans of the 20,000 shot, nor even, though but a hundred yards from them, the shrieks from the Orangerie. In June, 1848, the sombre imprecation of Lammennais fell upon the massacres, and Pierre Leroux defended the insurgents. The great philosophers of the Rural Assembly, Catholic or Positivist, were all one against the working men. Gambetta, delighted at being rid of the Socialists, hurried back from St. Sebastien, and in a solemn speech at Bordeaux declared that the Government which had been able to crush Paris ‘had even by that proved itself legitimate.’
There were some men of courage in the provinces. The Droits de l'Homme of Montpelier, the Emancipation of Toulouse, the National du Loiret, and several advanced journals recounted the assassinations of the conquerors. Most of these journals were prosecuted and suppressed. Some movements took plate; a commencement of riots at Pamiers (Ari�ge) and at Voiron (Is�re). At Lyons the army was confined in its barracks, and the prefect, Valentin, had the town closed in order to arrest the fugitives of Paris. There were arrests at Bordeaux.
At Brussels Victor Hugo protested against the declaration of the Belgian government, which promised to deliver up the fugitives. Louis Blanc and Schoelcher wrote him a letter full of blame, and his house was stoned by a fashionable mob. Bebel in the German Parliament and Whalley in the House of Commons denounced the Versaillese fury. Garcia Lopez said from the tribune of the Cortes, ‘We admire this great revolution, which no one can appreciate justly today.’
The working men of foreign countries solemnized the obsequies of their brothers of Paris. At London, Brussels, Zurich, Geneva, Leipzig, and Berlin, monster meetings proclaimed themselves in accord with the Commune, devoted the slaughterers to universal execration, and declared accomplices of these crimes the Governments which had not made any remonstrances. All the Socialist journals glorified the struggle of the vanquished. The great voice of the International recounted their effort in an eloquent address[238] and confided their memory to the workmen of the whole world.
On the triumphal entry of Moltke at the head of the victorious Prussian army into Berlin, the workmen received them with hurrahs for the Commune, and at several places the people were charged by the cavalry.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XXIII<br>
The ‘Lefts’ betray Paris</h1>
<p><img src="pics/blanc-louis.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Louis Blanc" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p class="quoteb">We took Paris with cannons and politics. (Thiers, Inquiry into <em>the 18th of March</em>.)</p>
<p>Who was the great conspirator against Paris? The Extreme Left.</p>
<p>On the 19th March, what remained to M. Thiers wherewith to govern France? He had neither an army, nor cannon, nor the large towns. These possessed arms, and their workmen were on the alert. If that lower middle-class which makes the provinces endorse the revolutions of the metropolis had followed the movement, imitated their kindred of Paris, M. Thiers could not have opposed to them a single regiment. In order to subsist, retain the provinces, and induce them to provide the soldiers and the cannon that were to reduce Paris, what were the resources of the leader of the bourgeoisie? A word and a handful of men. The word was Republic; the men, the recognized leaders of the Republican party.</p>
<p>Though the dull rurals barked at the mere name of the Republic, and refused to insert it in their proclamations, M. Thiers, more cunning, mouthed it lustily, and distorting the votes of the Assembly,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n164">[164]</a></sup> gave it out as the watchword to his underlings. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n165">[165]</a></sup> Since the first risings all the provincial officials had the same refrain: ‘We defend the Republic against the factions.’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n166">[166]</a></sup> </p>
<p>This was certainly something; but the rural votes, the past of M. Thiers, clashed with these Republican protestations. The former heroes of the National Defence were no longer acceptable as securities even for the provinces. M. Thiers was well aware of it, and invoked the purest of the pure, the experienced men returned from exile. Their prestige was still intact in the eyes of the provincial democrats. M. Thiers met them in the lobbies, told them they held the fate of the Republic in their hands, flattered their senile vanity, and inveigled them so successfully, that, from the 23rd,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n167">[167]</a></sup> they served him as bottle-holders. When the middle-class republicans of the provinces beheld the profound Louis Blanc, the intelligent Schoelcher, and the most famous grumblers of the radical vanguard fly to Versailles, and insult the Central Committee, and, on the other hand, received neither programme nor able emissaries from Paris, they turned away, and let the flame enkindled by the workmen die out.</p>
<p>The shelling of the 3rd April roused them a little. On the 5th, the municipal council of Lille, composed of Republican notabilities, spoke of conciliation, and called upon M. Thiers to affirm the Republic. That of Lyons drew up a like address; St. Omer sent delegates to Versailles; Troyes declared that it was ‘heart and soul with the heroic citizens who fought for their republican convictions.’ M�con summoned the Government and the Assembly to put an end to this struggle by the recognition of republican institutions. The Dr�me, the Var, Vaucluse, the Ardeche, the Loire, Savoy, the H�rault, the Gers, and the Eastern Pyr�n�es, twenty departments, issued similar addresses. The workmen of Rouen declared their adhesion to the Commune; the workmen of Havre, rebuffed by the bourgeois Republicans. constituted an independent group. On the 16th April, at Grenoble, 600 men, women, and children went to the station to prevent the departure of the troops and munitions for Versailles. On the 18th, at Nimes, the people, headed by a red flag, marched through the town to the cry of ‘<em>Vive la Commune! Vive Paris! </em>Down with Versailles!’ On the 16th, 17th, 18th, there were disturbances at Bordeaux. Some police agents were imprisoned, some officers ill-treated, the infantry barracks pelted with stones, the people crying, ‘<em>Vive Paris! </em>Death to the traitors!’ The movement even spread to the agricultural classes. At Saincoin in the Cher, at the Charit�-sur-Loire, at Pouilly in the Nievre, the National Guards in arms carried about the red flag. Cosne followed on the 18th, Fleury-sur-Loire on the 19th. The red flag was permanently hoisted in the Ariege; at Foix they stopped the transport of the cannon; at Varilhes they tried to run the munition trains off the lines. At P�rigueux, the workmen of the railway station seized the machine-guns.</p>
<p>On the 15th April five delegates from the municipal council of Lyons presented themselves to M. Thiers. He protested his devotion to the Republic, swore that the Assembly should not turn into a Constituent Assembly. If he chose his functionaries outside the Republicans, it was in order to treat all parties with consideration in the interest of the Republic itself. He defended it against the men of the H�tel-de-Ville, its worst enemies, said he; the delegates might assure themselves of this even in Paris, and he was quite ready to furnish them with safe-conducts. Besides, if Lyons dared to stir, 30,000 men were ready to quell it.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n168">[168]</a></sup> This was his typical speech. All the deputations received the same answer, given with such an air of bonhommie and such complacent familiarity as quite to overwhelm the provincials.</p>
<p>From the presidency they proceeded to the luminaries of the Extreme Left, Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, Adam, and other eminent democrats, who endorsed M. Thiers’ words. These gentlemen, if condescending to admit that the cause of Paris was not altogether wrong, declared it ill-begun and compromised by a criminal combat. When Paris once disarmed they would see what could be done. Opportunism is not of yesterday’s growth. It was born<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n169">[169]</a></sup> into the world on the 19th March, 1871, had Louis Blanc & Co. for godfathers, and was baptized in the blood of 30,000 Parisians. ‘With whom should they treat in Paris?’ asked Louis Blanc. ‘Without speaking of Bonapartist and Prussian intrigues, the people who were there striving to seize the government were fanatics, fools, or rogues.’ <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n170">[170]</a></sup> And all the Radicals bridled up: ‘Should we not be at Paris if Paris were in the right?’ The majority of the delegates, lawyers, doctors, business men, brought up in veneration of these shining lights, hearing besides the young men speaking like the pontiffs, went back to the provinces, and as the Left preached to them, preached in turn that it was necessary to abandon the Commune in order to save the Republic. A few of them had visited Paris; but seeing the divisions of the H�tel-de-Ville, often received by men unable to formulate their ideas, threatened by F�lix Pyat in the <em>Vengeur, </em>they came back convinced that nothing could emerge from this disorder. When they again passed through Versailles the deputies of the Left triumphed. ‘Well, what did we tell you?’ Even Martin-Bernard gave his electors the ass’s kick.</p>
<p>At Paris there were people who could not believe in such barefaced treachery on the part of the Left, and still adjured them. ‘What are you about at Versailles when Versailles is bombarding Paris?’ said an address of the end of April. ‘What figure can you cut in the midst of these colleagues who assassinate your electors? If you persist in remaining amongst the enemies of Paris, at least do not make yourselves their accomplices by your silence. What! you allow M. Thiers to write to the departments, “<em>The insurgents are emptying the principal houses of Paris in order to put the furniture to sale</em>,” and you do not ascend the tribune to protest! What! the whole Bonapartist and rural press may inundate the departments with infamous articles, in which they affirm that at Paris murder, violation, and theft reign supreme, and you are silent! What! M. Thiers may assert that his gendarmes do not assassinate the prisoners; you cannot be ignorant of these atrocious executions, and you are silent! Ascend the tribune; tell the departments the truth, which the enemies of the Commune conceal from them. But our enemies, are they yours also?’</p>
<p>A useless appeal, which the cowardice of the Left knew how to elude. Louis Blanc, in his Tartuffe style, exclaimed, ‘0 civil war! hideous struggle! The cannon thunder! People are killing each other and dying; and those in the Assembly who would willingly give their life to see this sanguinary problem pacifically resolved are condemned to the torture of not being able to make an act, utter a cry, speak a word.’ Since the birth of the French Assemblies so ignominious a Left had never been seen. The spectacle of the prisoners smitten, reviled, spat upon, was unable to draw a protest from these wretched Parisian deputies. One only, Tolain, asked for an explanation on the assassination at the Belle-Epine. Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, Greppo, Adam, Langlois, Brisson, etc., the G�rontes and the Scapins, sanctimoniously contemplated their bombarded electors, and, fully aware of the facile forgetfulness of Paris, dreamt of their future re-election.</p>
<p>Their calumnies succeeded in stifling the action but not the anguish of the provinces. With heart and soul the workmen of France were with Paris. The employees at the railway stations harangued the soldiers on their passage, adjuring them to raise the butt-ends of their guns; the official posters were torn down during the night; the large centres sent their addresses by the hundred; all the Republican papers demanded peace, sought for some method of conciliation between Paris and Versailles.</p>
<p>Paris and Versailles! The agitation becoming chronic, M. Thiers launched forth Dufaure, the Chapelier <span class="context">[author of a law of 1791 prohibiting strikes]</span> of the modern bourgeoisie, one of the most odious executors of its dirty work. He enjoined his procureurs to prosecute all the writers countenancing the Commune, ‘that dictatorship usurped by foreigners and ticket-of-leave men, which signalizes its reign by burglary, breaking open private houses in the dead of night and by force of arms,’ and to lay hands upon ‘the conciliators who entreat the Assembly to hold out its noble hand to the blood-stained hand of its enemies.’ Versailles thus hoped to strike terror at the moment of the municipal elections, which took place on the 30th April.</p>
<p>They were everywhere Republican. These provinces, which had risen against Paris in June, 1848, and in the elections of 1849, did not send a hundred volunteers in 1871, and would only fight the Assembly. At Thiers (Puy-de-Dome) the people occupied the H�tel-de-Ville, hoisted the red flag, and seized the telegraphs. There occurred disturbances at Souppe, Nemours, Ch�teau-Landau, in the arrondissement of Fontainebleau. At Dordives (Loiret) the Communards planted a poplar surmounted by the red flag in front of the <em>mairie</em>. At Montargies they raised the red flag, put up posters bearing the appeal of the Commune to the rural districts, and forced a solicitor who had tried to tear down the poster to ask pardon on his knees. At Coulommiers (Seine-et-Marne) a demonstration took place to the cries of ‘<em>Vive la R�publique! Vive la Commune!'’</em></p>
<p>Lyons rose in insurrection. Since the 24th March the tricolor lorded it here, save at the Guilloti�re,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n171">[171]</a></sup> where the people maintained the red one. The Council on its return to the H�tel-de-Ville had demanded the recognition of the rights of Paris, the election of a Constituent Assembly, and named an officer of francs-tireurs, Bourras, commander of the National Guard. While the Council multiplied its addresses and its applications to M. Thiers, the National Guard was again stirring. It presented a programme to the municipal council, which officially rejected it. The rebuff met by the delegates sent to Versailles increased the irritation. When the communal elections were announced for the 30th April, the revolutionary element maintained that the municipal law voted by the Assembly was null and void, because that Assembly had not the rights of a constituent one. Two delegates from Paris summoned the mayor, H�non, to postpone the elections; and one of the actors in the affray of the 28th September, Gaspard Blanc, reappeared on the scene. The Radicals, always upon the scent of Bonapartism, have made much ado about the presence of that personage. However, at that time he was as yet but a madcap, and only in exile put on the Imperialist livery. On the 27th, at the Brotteaux, in a large public meeting, abstention from voting was decided upon. All the committees of the Guilloti�re followed, and in a public sitting of the 29th resolved to oppose the vote.</p>
<p>On the 30th, the day of the elections, from six o'clock in the morning the rappel was beaten at the Guilloti�re; armed citizens carried off the ballot-boxes, and posted sentinels at the entrance of the hall A proclamation was posted up: ‘The city of Lyons can no longer’,look on while her sister the heroic city of Paris is being strangled. The Lyonnese revolutionaries have with one accord named a Provisional Commission. Its members are above all determined, rather than sustain defeat, to make one heap of ruins of a town cowardly enough to allow the assassination of Paris and the Republic.’ The Place de la Mairie was thronged with an excited crowd; the mayor, Crestin, and his adjutant, who attempted to interfere, were not listened to, and a Revolutionary Commission installed itself in the <em>mairie</em>.</p>
<p>Bourras sent an order to the commanders of the Guilloti�re to unite their battalions. They drew up towards two o'clock in the Des Brosses court. A great number of guards disapproved the movement, yet no one was willing to be the soldier of Versailles. The crowd surrounded them, and finally broke the ranks; about a hundred, led by their captain, went to the <em>mairie</em> to hoist their red field-colours. The mayor was sent for, and the Commission called upon him to join the movement; but he refused, as he had done on the 22nd March. Suddenly the cannon thundered.</p>
<p>H�non and his council, as they did the month before, would have liked to temporize; while Valentin and Crouzat dreamt of Espivent. At five o'clock the 38th of the line came out by the bridge of the Guilloti�re; the crowd penetrated into the ranks of the soldiers, conjuring them not to fire, and the officers were constrained to take back their men to the barracks. During this time the Guilloti�re was fortifying itself. A large barricade, extending from the storehouses of the Nouveau-Monde to the angle of the <em>mairie</em>, barred the Grande Rue; another was thrown up at the entrance of the Rue des Trois Rois; a third on a level with the Rue de Chabrol.</p>
<p>At half-past six the 38th came out of their barracks, but this time watched by a battalion of chasseurs. Valentin, Crouzat, and the <em>procureur de la r�publique</em> marched at their head. In front of the <em>mairie</em> the Riot Act was read; some shots answered it, wounding the prefect. The cavalry swept the Des Brosses court and the Place de la <em>Mairie</em>, while two pieces of cannon opened fire on the edifice. Its doors soon gave way and the occupants abandoned it. The troops entered after having killed the sentinel, intent upon mounting guard to the very last. It has been said that five insurgents, taken by surprise in the interior of the building, were killed by a Versaillese officer with shots from his revolver.</p>
<p>The struggle continued during part of the night in the neighbouring streets, and the soldiers, deceived by the darkness, killed about a hundred of their own men. The losses of the Communards were less great. By three o'clock in the morning all was over.</p>
<p>At the Croix-Rousse some citizens had invaded the <em>mairie </em>and scattered the voting-papers; the check of the Guilloti�re cut short their resistance.</p>
<p>The Versaillese took advantage of this victory to disarm the battalions of the Guilloti�re; but the population refused, rallying round the victors. Some monarchists had been elected during the day, but everybody considering the elections of the 30th null and void, they were obliged to submit to a second ballot, and not one of them was re-elected. The movement in favour of Paris continued.</p>
<p>These newly-elected republican councillors might have effectively counterbalanced the authority of Versailles; the advanced press encouraged them. The <em>Tribune </em>of Bordeaux had the honour first to propose a congress of all the towns of France, for the purpose of terminating the civil war, assuring the municipal franchises, and consolidating the Republic. The municipal council of Lyons issued an identical programme, inviting all the municipalities to send delegates to Lyons. On the 4th May the delegates of the councils of the principal towns of the H�rault met at Montpellier. The <em>Libert� </em>of the H�rault, in a warm appeal reproduced by fifty newspapers, convoked the departmental press to a congress. A common action was about to take the place of the incoherent agitations of the last few weeks. If the provinces understood their own strength, the time, their wants — if they found a group of men equal to the occasion, Versailles, taken between Paris and the departments, would have been obliged to capitulate to Republican France. M. Thiers, with a vivid presentiment of the danger, affected the attitude of a strong Government, and energetically forbade the congresses. ‘The Government would betray the Assembly, France, civilization,’ said the <em>Officiel </em>of the 8th May, ‘if it allowed the assizes of Communism and of the rebellion to constitute themselves by the side of the regular power issued from universal suffrage.’ Picard, speaking from the tribune on the instigation of the congress, said, ‘Never was there a more criminal attempt than theirs. Outside the Assembly there exists no right.’ The <em>procureurs-g�n�raux</em> and the prefects received the order to prevent all meetings. Some members of the <em>Ligue des Droits de Paris </em>on their way to Bordeaux were arrested.</p>
<p>More was not needed to frighten the Radicals. The organizers of the congress of Bordeaux held their peace; those of Lyons wrote a piteous address to Versailles, to the effect that they had only intended convoking an assembly of the notables. M. Thiers, having attained his object, disdained to prosecute them, even allowed the delegates of eighteen departments to draw up their grievances, and seriously declare that they ‘made that one of the two combatants responsible who should refuse their conditions.’ And yet they might feel proud. Their chief had done less, Gambetta had retired to Spain, to St. Sebastien, and there, mute, without a sign of sympathy for those who sacrificed themselves for the Republic, he in a cynical <em>far niente</em> <span class="context">[do-nothing]</span> awaited the issue of the civil war.</p>
<p>Thus the middle class of the provinces missed a rare chance of conquering their liberties, of again taking up their grand role of 1792. It became obvious how much its blood and its intelligence had been impoverished by a long political vassalage and the complete absence of all municipal life. From the 19th March to the 5th April they had forsaken the workmen, when by seconding their efforts they might have saved and continued the Revolution. When at last they wanted to pronounce, they found themselves alone, the toy and laughing-stock of their enemies. Such is their history since Robespierre.</p>
<p>So on the 10th May M. Thiers entirely mastered the situation. Making use of all arms, of corruption as well as of patriotism, lying in his telegrams, making his journals lie, by turns familiar and haughty in his interviews with the deputations, putting forward now his gendarmes, now the deputies of the Left, he had succeeded in baffling all attempts at conciliation. He had j us t signed the peace of Frankfort, and, free on this side. rid of the provinces, he remained alone face to face with Paris.</p>
<p>It was time. Five weeks of siege had exhausted the patience of the rurals; the suspicions of the first days were reviving; they fancied that the ‘petty bourgeois’ was procrastinating in order to spare Paris. The <em>Union des Syndicats </em>had just published a report of a new interview, in which M. Thiers had seemed to relax. A deputy of the Right rushed to the tribune accusing M. Thiers of putting off the entry into Paris. He answered curtly, ‘The opening by our army of trenches only six hundred yards from Paris does not signify that we do not want to enter there.’ The following day, 12th May, the Right returned to the charge. Was it true that M. Thiers had said to the mayor of Bordeaux, ‘If the insurgents will cease hostilities the gates of Paris shall be flung wide open for a week for all except the assassins of the generals?’ Could it be that the Government intended withdrawing some Parisians out of the clutches of the Assembly? M. Thiers inveighed, whined. ‘You select the day when I am exiled, on which my house is being pulled down. It is an indignity. I am obliged to command terrible acts; I command them. I must have a vote of confidence.’ At last, nettled out of patience, he retorted upon the rural growls with a snarl. ‘I tell you that there are among you imprudent men, who are in too great a hurry. They must have another eight days. At the end of these eight days there will be no more danger, and the task will be proportionate to their courage and to their capacity.’</p>
<p>Eight days! Do you hear, members of the Commune?</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XXIII
The ‘Lefts’ betray Paris
We took Paris with cannons and politics. (Thiers, Inquiry into the 18th of March.)
Who was the great conspirator against Paris? The Extreme Left.
On the 19th March, what remained to M. Thiers wherewith to govern France? He had neither an army, nor cannon, nor the large towns. These possessed arms, and their workmen were on the alert. If that lower middle-class which makes the provinces endorse the revolutions of the metropolis had followed the movement, imitated their kindred of Paris, M. Thiers could not have opposed to them a single regiment. In order to subsist, retain the provinces, and induce them to provide the soldiers and the cannon that were to reduce Paris, what were the resources of the leader of the bourgeoisie? A word and a handful of men. The word was Republic; the men, the recognized leaders of the Republican party.
Though the dull rurals barked at the mere name of the Republic, and refused to insert it in their proclamations, M. Thiers, more cunning, mouthed it lustily, and distorting the votes of the Assembly,[164] gave it out as the watchword to his underlings. [165] Since the first risings all the provincial officials had the same refrain: ‘We defend the Republic against the factions.’[166]
This was certainly something; but the rural votes, the past of M. Thiers, clashed with these Republican protestations. The former heroes of the National Defence were no longer acceptable as securities even for the provinces. M. Thiers was well aware of it, and invoked the purest of the pure, the experienced men returned from exile. Their prestige was still intact in the eyes of the provincial democrats. M. Thiers met them in the lobbies, told them they held the fate of the Republic in their hands, flattered their senile vanity, and inveigled them so successfully, that, from the 23rd,[167] they served him as bottle-holders. When the middle-class republicans of the provinces beheld the profound Louis Blanc, the intelligent Schoelcher, and the most famous grumblers of the radical vanguard fly to Versailles, and insult the Central Committee, and, on the other hand, received neither programme nor able emissaries from Paris, they turned away, and let the flame enkindled by the workmen die out.
The shelling of the 3rd April roused them a little. On the 5th, the municipal council of Lille, composed of Republican notabilities, spoke of conciliation, and called upon M. Thiers to affirm the Republic. That of Lyons drew up a like address; St. Omer sent delegates to Versailles; Troyes declared that it was ‘heart and soul with the heroic citizens who fought for their republican convictions.’ M�con summoned the Government and the Assembly to put an end to this struggle by the recognition of republican institutions. The Dr�me, the Var, Vaucluse, the Ardeche, the Loire, Savoy, the H�rault, the Gers, and the Eastern Pyr�n�es, twenty departments, issued similar addresses. The workmen of Rouen declared their adhesion to the Commune; the workmen of Havre, rebuffed by the bourgeois Republicans. constituted an independent group. On the 16th April, at Grenoble, 600 men, women, and children went to the station to prevent the departure of the troops and munitions for Versailles. On the 18th, at Nimes, the people, headed by a red flag, marched through the town to the cry of ‘Vive la Commune! Vive Paris! Down with Versailles!’ On the 16th, 17th, 18th, there were disturbances at Bordeaux. Some police agents were imprisoned, some officers ill-treated, the infantry barracks pelted with stones, the people crying, ‘Vive Paris! Death to the traitors!’ The movement even spread to the agricultural classes. At Saincoin in the Cher, at the Charit�-sur-Loire, at Pouilly in the Nievre, the National Guards in arms carried about the red flag. Cosne followed on the 18th, Fleury-sur-Loire on the 19th. The red flag was permanently hoisted in the Ariege; at Foix they stopped the transport of the cannon; at Varilhes they tried to run the munition trains off the lines. At P�rigueux, the workmen of the railway station seized the machine-guns.
On the 15th April five delegates from the municipal council of Lyons presented themselves to M. Thiers. He protested his devotion to the Republic, swore that the Assembly should not turn into a Constituent Assembly. If he chose his functionaries outside the Republicans, it was in order to treat all parties with consideration in the interest of the Republic itself. He defended it against the men of the H�tel-de-Ville, its worst enemies, said he; the delegates might assure themselves of this even in Paris, and he was quite ready to furnish them with safe-conducts. Besides, if Lyons dared to stir, 30,000 men were ready to quell it.[168] This was his typical speech. All the deputations received the same answer, given with such an air of bonhommie and such complacent familiarity as quite to overwhelm the provincials.
From the presidency they proceeded to the luminaries of the Extreme Left, Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, Adam, and other eminent democrats, who endorsed M. Thiers’ words. These gentlemen, if condescending to admit that the cause of Paris was not altogether wrong, declared it ill-begun and compromised by a criminal combat. When Paris once disarmed they would see what could be done. Opportunism is not of yesterday’s growth. It was born[169] into the world on the 19th March, 1871, had Louis Blanc & Co. for godfathers, and was baptized in the blood of 30,000 Parisians. ‘With whom should they treat in Paris?’ asked Louis Blanc. ‘Without speaking of Bonapartist and Prussian intrigues, the people who were there striving to seize the government were fanatics, fools, or rogues.’ [170] And all the Radicals bridled up: ‘Should we not be at Paris if Paris were in the right?’ The majority of the delegates, lawyers, doctors, business men, brought up in veneration of these shining lights, hearing besides the young men speaking like the pontiffs, went back to the provinces, and as the Left preached to them, preached in turn that it was necessary to abandon the Commune in order to save the Republic. A few of them had visited Paris; but seeing the divisions of the H�tel-de-Ville, often received by men unable to formulate their ideas, threatened by F�lix Pyat in the Vengeur, they came back convinced that nothing could emerge from this disorder. When they again passed through Versailles the deputies of the Left triumphed. ‘Well, what did we tell you?’ Even Martin-Bernard gave his electors the ass’s kick.
At Paris there were people who could not believe in such barefaced treachery on the part of the Left, and still adjured them. ‘What are you about at Versailles when Versailles is bombarding Paris?’ said an address of the end of April. ‘What figure can you cut in the midst of these colleagues who assassinate your electors? If you persist in remaining amongst the enemies of Paris, at least do not make yourselves their accomplices by your silence. What! you allow M. Thiers to write to the departments, “The insurgents are emptying the principal houses of Paris in order to put the furniture to sale,” and you do not ascend the tribune to protest! What! the whole Bonapartist and rural press may inundate the departments with infamous articles, in which they affirm that at Paris murder, violation, and theft reign supreme, and you are silent! What! M. Thiers may assert that his gendarmes do not assassinate the prisoners; you cannot be ignorant of these atrocious executions, and you are silent! Ascend the tribune; tell the departments the truth, which the enemies of the Commune conceal from them. But our enemies, are they yours also?’
A useless appeal, which the cowardice of the Left knew how to elude. Louis Blanc, in his Tartuffe style, exclaimed, ‘0 civil war! hideous struggle! The cannon thunder! People are killing each other and dying; and those in the Assembly who would willingly give their life to see this sanguinary problem pacifically resolved are condemned to the torture of not being able to make an act, utter a cry, speak a word.’ Since the birth of the French Assemblies so ignominious a Left had never been seen. The spectacle of the prisoners smitten, reviled, spat upon, was unable to draw a protest from these wretched Parisian deputies. One only, Tolain, asked for an explanation on the assassination at the Belle-Epine. Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, Greppo, Adam, Langlois, Brisson, etc., the G�rontes and the Scapins, sanctimoniously contemplated their bombarded electors, and, fully aware of the facile forgetfulness of Paris, dreamt of their future re-election.
Their calumnies succeeded in stifling the action but not the anguish of the provinces. With heart and soul the workmen of France were with Paris. The employees at the railway stations harangued the soldiers on their passage, adjuring them to raise the butt-ends of their guns; the official posters were torn down during the night; the large centres sent their addresses by the hundred; all the Republican papers demanded peace, sought for some method of conciliation between Paris and Versailles.
Paris and Versailles! The agitation becoming chronic, M. Thiers launched forth Dufaure, the Chapelier [author of a law of 1791 prohibiting strikes] of the modern bourgeoisie, one of the most odious executors of its dirty work. He enjoined his procureurs to prosecute all the writers countenancing the Commune, ‘that dictatorship usurped by foreigners and ticket-of-leave men, which signalizes its reign by burglary, breaking open private houses in the dead of night and by force of arms,’ and to lay hands upon ‘the conciliators who entreat the Assembly to hold out its noble hand to the blood-stained hand of its enemies.’ Versailles thus hoped to strike terror at the moment of the municipal elections, which took place on the 30th April.
They were everywhere Republican. These provinces, which had risen against Paris in June, 1848, and in the elections of 1849, did not send a hundred volunteers in 1871, and would only fight the Assembly. At Thiers (Puy-de-Dome) the people occupied the H�tel-de-Ville, hoisted the red flag, and seized the telegraphs. There occurred disturbances at Souppe, Nemours, Ch�teau-Landau, in the arrondissement of Fontainebleau. At Dordives (Loiret) the Communards planted a poplar surmounted by the red flag in front of the mairie. At Montargies they raised the red flag, put up posters bearing the appeal of the Commune to the rural districts, and forced a solicitor who had tried to tear down the poster to ask pardon on his knees. At Coulommiers (Seine-et-Marne) a demonstration took place to the cries of ‘Vive la R�publique! Vive la Commune!'’
Lyons rose in insurrection. Since the 24th March the tricolor lorded it here, save at the Guilloti�re,[171] where the people maintained the red one. The Council on its return to the H�tel-de-Ville had demanded the recognition of the rights of Paris, the election of a Constituent Assembly, and named an officer of francs-tireurs, Bourras, commander of the National Guard. While the Council multiplied its addresses and its applications to M. Thiers, the National Guard was again stirring. It presented a programme to the municipal council, which officially rejected it. The rebuff met by the delegates sent to Versailles increased the irritation. When the communal elections were announced for the 30th April, the revolutionary element maintained that the municipal law voted by the Assembly was null and void, because that Assembly had not the rights of a constituent one. Two delegates from Paris summoned the mayor, H�non, to postpone the elections; and one of the actors in the affray of the 28th September, Gaspard Blanc, reappeared on the scene. The Radicals, always upon the scent of Bonapartism, have made much ado about the presence of that personage. However, at that time he was as yet but a madcap, and only in exile put on the Imperialist livery. On the 27th, at the Brotteaux, in a large public meeting, abstention from voting was decided upon. All the committees of the Guilloti�re followed, and in a public sitting of the 29th resolved to oppose the vote.
On the 30th, the day of the elections, from six o'clock in the morning the rappel was beaten at the Guilloti�re; armed citizens carried off the ballot-boxes, and posted sentinels at the entrance of the hall A proclamation was posted up: ‘The city of Lyons can no longer’,look on while her sister the heroic city of Paris is being strangled. The Lyonnese revolutionaries have with one accord named a Provisional Commission. Its members are above all determined, rather than sustain defeat, to make one heap of ruins of a town cowardly enough to allow the assassination of Paris and the Republic.’ The Place de la Mairie was thronged with an excited crowd; the mayor, Crestin, and his adjutant, who attempted to interfere, were not listened to, and a Revolutionary Commission installed itself in the mairie.
Bourras sent an order to the commanders of the Guilloti�re to unite their battalions. They drew up towards two o'clock in the Des Brosses court. A great number of guards disapproved the movement, yet no one was willing to be the soldier of Versailles. The crowd surrounded them, and finally broke the ranks; about a hundred, led by their captain, went to the mairie to hoist their red field-colours. The mayor was sent for, and the Commission called upon him to join the movement; but he refused, as he had done on the 22nd March. Suddenly the cannon thundered.
H�non and his council, as they did the month before, would have liked to temporize; while Valentin and Crouzat dreamt of Espivent. At five o'clock the 38th of the line came out by the bridge of the Guilloti�re; the crowd penetrated into the ranks of the soldiers, conjuring them not to fire, and the officers were constrained to take back their men to the barracks. During this time the Guilloti�re was fortifying itself. A large barricade, extending from the storehouses of the Nouveau-Monde to the angle of the mairie, barred the Grande Rue; another was thrown up at the entrance of the Rue des Trois Rois; a third on a level with the Rue de Chabrol.
At half-past six the 38th came out of their barracks, but this time watched by a battalion of chasseurs. Valentin, Crouzat, and the procureur de la r�publique marched at their head. In front of the mairie the Riot Act was read; some shots answered it, wounding the prefect. The cavalry swept the Des Brosses court and the Place de la Mairie, while two pieces of cannon opened fire on the edifice. Its doors soon gave way and the occupants abandoned it. The troops entered after having killed the sentinel, intent upon mounting guard to the very last. It has been said that five insurgents, taken by surprise in the interior of the building, were killed by a Versaillese officer with shots from his revolver.
The struggle continued during part of the night in the neighbouring streets, and the soldiers, deceived by the darkness, killed about a hundred of their own men. The losses of the Communards were less great. By three o'clock in the morning all was over.
At the Croix-Rousse some citizens had invaded the mairie and scattered the voting-papers; the check of the Guilloti�re cut short their resistance.
The Versaillese took advantage of this victory to disarm the battalions of the Guilloti�re; but the population refused, rallying round the victors. Some monarchists had been elected during the day, but everybody considering the elections of the 30th null and void, they were obliged to submit to a second ballot, and not one of them was re-elected. The movement in favour of Paris continued.
These newly-elected republican councillors might have effectively counterbalanced the authority of Versailles; the advanced press encouraged them. The Tribune of Bordeaux had the honour first to propose a congress of all the towns of France, for the purpose of terminating the civil war, assuring the municipal franchises, and consolidating the Republic. The municipal council of Lyons issued an identical programme, inviting all the municipalities to send delegates to Lyons. On the 4th May the delegates of the councils of the principal towns of the H�rault met at Montpellier. The Libert� of the H�rault, in a warm appeal reproduced by fifty newspapers, convoked the departmental press to a congress. A common action was about to take the place of the incoherent agitations of the last few weeks. If the provinces understood their own strength, the time, their wants — if they found a group of men equal to the occasion, Versailles, taken between Paris and the departments, would have been obliged to capitulate to Republican France. M. Thiers, with a vivid presentiment of the danger, affected the attitude of a strong Government, and energetically forbade the congresses. ‘The Government would betray the Assembly, France, civilization,’ said the Officiel of the 8th May, ‘if it allowed the assizes of Communism and of the rebellion to constitute themselves by the side of the regular power issued from universal suffrage.’ Picard, speaking from the tribune on the instigation of the congress, said, ‘Never was there a more criminal attempt than theirs. Outside the Assembly there exists no right.’ The procureurs-g�n�raux and the prefects received the order to prevent all meetings. Some members of the Ligue des Droits de Paris on their way to Bordeaux were arrested.
More was not needed to frighten the Radicals. The organizers of the congress of Bordeaux held their peace; those of Lyons wrote a piteous address to Versailles, to the effect that they had only intended convoking an assembly of the notables. M. Thiers, having attained his object, disdained to prosecute them, even allowed the delegates of eighteen departments to draw up their grievances, and seriously declare that they ‘made that one of the two combatants responsible who should refuse their conditions.’ And yet they might feel proud. Their chief had done less, Gambetta had retired to Spain, to St. Sebastien, and there, mute, without a sign of sympathy for those who sacrificed themselves for the Republic, he in a cynical far niente [do-nothing] awaited the issue of the civil war.
Thus the middle class of the provinces missed a rare chance of conquering their liberties, of again taking up their grand role of 1792. It became obvious how much its blood and its intelligence had been impoverished by a long political vassalage and the complete absence of all municipal life. From the 19th March to the 5th April they had forsaken the workmen, when by seconding their efforts they might have saved and continued the Revolution. When at last they wanted to pronounce, they found themselves alone, the toy and laughing-stock of their enemies. Such is their history since Robespierre.
So on the 10th May M. Thiers entirely mastered the situation. Making use of all arms, of corruption as well as of patriotism, lying in his telegrams, making his journals lie, by turns familiar and haughty in his interviews with the deputations, putting forward now his gendarmes, now the deputies of the Left, he had succeeded in baffling all attempts at conciliation. He had j us t signed the peace of Frankfort, and, free on this side. rid of the provinces, he remained alone face to face with Paris.
It was time. Five weeks of siege had exhausted the patience of the rurals; the suspicions of the first days were reviving; they fancied that the ‘petty bourgeois’ was procrastinating in order to spare Paris. The Union des Syndicats had just published a report of a new interview, in which M. Thiers had seemed to relax. A deputy of the Right rushed to the tribune accusing M. Thiers of putting off the entry into Paris. He answered curtly, ‘The opening by our army of trenches only six hundred yards from Paris does not signify that we do not want to enter there.’ The following day, 12th May, the Right returned to the charge. Was it true that M. Thiers had said to the mayor of Bordeaux, ‘If the insurgents will cease hostilities the gates of Paris shall be flung wide open for a week for all except the assassins of the generals?’ Could it be that the Government intended withdrawing some Parisians out of the clutches of the Assembly? M. Thiers inveighed, whined. ‘You select the day when I am exiled, on which my house is being pulled down. It is an indignity. I am obliged to command terrible acts; I command them. I must have a vote of confidence.’ At last, nettled out of patience, he retorted upon the rural growls with a snarl. ‘I tell you that there are among you imprudent men, who are in too great a hurry. They must have another eight days. At the end of these eight days there will be no more danger, and the task will be proportionate to their courage and to their capacity.’
Eight days! Do you hear, members of the Commune?
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<p><img src="pics/garibaldi.jpg" hspace="12" align="right" alt="garibaldi" border="1"></p>
<h1>Chapter I<br>
The Prussians enter Paris</h1>
<p class="quoteb">Neither the head of the executive power, nor the National Assembly, supporting and strengthening one another, did anything to provoke the Paris insurrection. (Dufaure’s speech against amnesty, session of 18th May, 1876.)</p>
<p>The invasion brought back the <em>Chambre introuvable </em>of 1816 <span class="context">[ultra-right wing parliament under the Bourbon restoration in 1816]</span>. After having dreamt of a regenerated France soaring towards the light, to feel oneself hurled back half a century, under the yoke of the Jesuits of the Congregation, of the brutal rurals! There were men who lost heart. Many spoke of expatriating themselves. The thoughtless said, ‘The Chamber will only last a day, since it has no mandate but to decide on peace and war.’ Those, however, who had watched the progress of the conspiracy and the leading part taken in it by the clergy, knew beforehand that these men would not allow France to escape their clutches before they crushed her.</p>
<p>Men just escaped from famine-stricken but ardent Paris found in the Bordeaux Assembly the Coblentz of the first emigration, but this time invested with the power to glut rancours that had been accumulating for forty years. Clericals and Conservatives were for the first time allowed, without the interference of either emperor or king, to trample to their hearts’ content on atheistic, revolutionary Paris, which had so often shaken off their yoke and baffled their schemes. At the first sitting their choler burst out. At the farther end of the hall, sitting alone on his bench, shunned by all, an old man rose and asked to address the Assembly. Under his cloak glared a red shirt. It was Garibaldi. At the call of his name, he wished to answer, to say in a few words that he resigned the mandate with which Paris had honoured him. His voice drowned in howls. He remained standing, raising his hand, but the insults redoubled. The chastisement, however, was at hand. ‘Rural majority! disgrace of France!’ cried from the gallery, a young vibrating voice, that of Gaston Cr�mieux, of Marseilles. The deputies rose threatening. Hundreds of ‘Bravos’ answered from the galleries, overwhelming the rurals. After the sitting the crowd cheered Garibaldi and hooted his insulters. The National Guard presented arms, despite the rage of M. Thiers, who under the peristyle railed at the commanding officer. The next day the people returned, forming lines in front of the theatre, and forced the reactionary deputies to undergo their republican cheers. But they knew their strength, and from the beginning of the sittings opened their attack. One of the rurals, pointing to the representatives of Paris, cried, ‘They are stained with the blood of civil war!’ And when one of these representatives cried, <em>Vive la R�publique! </em>the majority hooted him, saying, ‘You are only a fraction of the country.’ On the next day the Chamber was surrounded by troops, who kept off the republicans.</p>
<p>At the same time the Conservative papers united in their hissings against Paris, denying even her sufferings. The National Guard, they said, had fled before the Prussians; its only exploits had been the 31st October and 22nd January. These calumnies fructified in the provinces, long since prepared to receive them. Such was their ignorance of the siege, that they had named some of them several times — Trochu, Ducrot, Ferry, Pelletan, Garnier-Pages, Emmanuel Arago — to whom Paris had refused a single vote.</p>
<p>It was the duty of the Parisian representatives to clear up this darkness, to recount the siege, to denounce the men responsible for the failure of the defence, to explain the significance of the Parisian vote, to unfurl the flag of republican France against the clerico-monarchical coalition. They remained silent, contenting themselves with puerile party meetings, from which Delescluze turned away as heartbroken as from the Assembly of the Paris mayors. Our Epimenides of 1848 answered with stereotyped humanitarian phrases the clashing of arms of the enemy, who all the while affirmed his programme: to patch up a peace, to bury the Republic, and for that purpose to checkmate Paris. Thiers was named chief of the executive power with general acclamation, and chose for his Ministers Jules Favre, Jules Simon, Picard and Lefl�, who might still pass muster with the provincial republicans.</p>
<p>These elections, these menaces, these insults to Garibaldi, to the Paris representatives; Thiers, the incarnation of the Parliamentary monarchy, as first magistrate of the Republic — blow after blow was struck at Paris, a feverish, hardly revictualled Paris, hungering still more for liberty than bread. This then was the reward for five months of suffering and endurance. These provinces, which Paris had invoked in vain during the whole siege, dared now to brand her with cowardice, to throw her back from Bismark to Chambord. Well, then, Paris was resolved to defend herself even against France. The new, imminent danger, the hard experience of the siege, had exalted her energy and endowed the great town with one collective soul.</p>
<p>Already, towards the end of January, some republicans, and also some bourgeois intriguers in search of a mandate, had tried to group the National Guards with a view to the elections. A large meeting, presided over by Courty, a merchant of the third arrondissement, had been held in the Cirque. They had there drawn up a list, decided to meet again to deliberate in case of double electoral returns, and had named a committee charged to convoke all the companies regularly. This second meeting was held on the 15th in the Vauxhall, Douan� Street. But who then thought of the elections? One single thought prevailed: the union of all Parisian forces against the triumphant rurals. The National Guard represented all the manhood of Paris. The clear, simple, essentially French idea of confederating the battalions had long been in every mind. It was received with acclamation and resolved that the confederate battalions should be grouped round a Central Committee.</p>
<p>A commission during the same sitting was charged to elaborate the statutes. Each arrondissement represented — eighteen out of twenty — named a commissar. Who were these men? The agitators, the revolutionaries of La Corderie, the Socialists? No; there was not a known name amongst them. All those elected were men of the middle classes, shopkeepers, employees, strangers to the coteries, till now for the most part strangers even to politics.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n64">[64]</a></sup> Courty, the president, was known only since the meeting at the Cirque. From the first day the idea of the federation appeared what it was — universal, not sectarian, and therefore powerful. The next day, Cl�ment-Thomas declared to the Government that he could no longer be answerable for the National Guard, and sent in his resignation. He was provisionally replaced by Vinoy.</p>
<p>On the 24th, in the Vauxhall, before 2,000 delegates and guards, the commission read the statutes it had drawn up, and pressed the delegates to proceed immediately to the election of the Central Committee. The Assembly was tempestuous, disquiet, little inclined for calm deliberations. Each of the last eight days had brought with it more insulting menaces from Bordeaux. They were going, it was said, to disarm the battalions, suppress the thirty sous, the only resource of the working men, and exact at once the arrears of rent and overdue commercial bills. Besides, the armistice, prolonged for a week, was to expire on the 26th, and the papers announced that the Prussians would enter Paris on the 27th. For a week this nightmare had weighed on all the patriots. The meeting, too, proceeded at once to consider these burning questions. Varlin proposed: The National Guard only recognizes the leaders elected by itself. Another: The National Guard protests through the Central Committee against any attempt at disarmament, and declares that in case of need it will offer armed resistance. Both propositions were voted unanimously. And now, was Paris to submit to the entry of the Prussians, to let them parade her boulevards? It could not even be discussed. The whole assembly, springing up over-excited, raised one cry of war. Some warnings of prudence are disdained. Yes, they would oppose their arms to the entry of the Prussians. The proposition would be submitted by the delegates to their respective companies. And adjourning to the 3rd March, the meeting broke up its sitting and marched <em>en masse</em> to the Bastille, carrying along with it a great number of soldiers and mobiles.</p>
<p>Since the morning, Paris, fearing the loss of her liberty, had gathered round her revolutionary column, as she had before crowded round the statue of Strasbourg when trembling for France. The battalions marched past, headed by drums and flags, covering the rails and pedestal with crowns of immortelles. From time to time a delegate ascended the plinth, and from this tribune of bronze harangued the people, who answered with cries of <em>Vive la R�publique! </em>Suddenly a red flag was carried through the crowd into the monument, reappearing soon after at the balustrade. A formidable cry saluted it, followed by a long silence. A man, climbing the cupola, had the daring to go and fix it in the hand of the statue of Liberty surmounting the column. Thus, amidst the frantic cheering of the people, for the first time since 1848, the flag of equality overshadowed this spot, redder than its flag by the blood of a thousand martyrs.</p>
<p>The following day the pilgrimages were continued, not only by National Guards, but by the soldiers and mobiles. The army gave way to the inspiration of Paris. The mobiles arrived preceded by their quartermasters carrying large black crowns; the trumpeters, posted at each corner of the pedestal, saluted them, and the crowd cheered them to the echo. Women dressed in black suspended a tricolour flag bearing the inscription, ‘The republican women to the martyrs.’ When the pedestal was covered, the crowns and flowers soon wound themselves entirely round the bust, encircling it from top to bottom with yellow and black flowers, red and tricolour oriflammes, symbols of mourning for the past and hope in the future.</p>
<p>On the 26th the demonstrations became innumerable and irritated. A police agent, surprised taking down the names of the battalions, was seized and thrown into the Seine. Twenty-five battalions marched past, sombre, a prey to a terrible anguish. The armistice was about to expire and the <em>Journal Officiel </em>did not speak of a prorogation. The journals announced the entry of the German army by the Champs-Elys�es for the next day. The Government was sending the troops to the left bank of the Seine and clearing out the Palace de l'Industrie. They forgot only the cannons of the National Guards accumulated at the Place Wagram and at Passy. Already the carelessness of the capitulationists had delivered 12,000 more muskets to the Prussians than were stipulated for.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n65">[65]</a></sup> Who could tell if the latter would not stretch out their hands to these fine pieces, cast with the flesh and blood of the Parisians, marked with the numbers of the battalions?<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n66">[66]</a></sup> Spontaneously all Paris rose. The bourgeois battalions of Passy, in accord with the municipality, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n67">[67]</a></sup> set the example, drawing the pieces of the Ranelagh to the Parc Monceaux. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n68">[68]</a></sup> Other battalions came to fetch their cannon in the Park Wagram, wheeling them by the Rues St. Honor� and Rivoli to the Place des Vosges, under the protection of the Bastdle.</p>
<p>During the day the troop sent by Vinoy to the Bastille had fraternized with the people. In the evening, the rappel, the tocsin, the trumpets had thrown thousands of armed men into the streets, who came to mass themselves at the Bastille, the Ch�teau d'Eau, and the Rue de Rivoli. The prison of St. P�lagie was forced and Brunel set free. At two o'clock in the morning, forty thousand men remounted the Champs-Elys�es, and the Avenue de la Grande Arm�e, silent, in good order, to encounter the Prussians. They waited till daybreak. On their return, the battalions of Montmartre seized all the cannon they found on their way, and took them to the mairie of the eighteenth arrondissement and to the Boulevard Omano.</p>
<p>To this feverish but chivalrous outburst Vinoy could only oppose an order of the day stigmatizing it. And this Government that insulted Paris, asked her to immolate herself for France! A proclamation posted up on the morning of the 27th announced the prolongation of the armistice, and for the 1st of March the occupation of the Champs-Elys�es by 30,000 Germans.</p>
<p>At two o'clock the commission charged to draw up the statutes for a Central Committee held a sitting at the <em>mairie</em> of the third arrondissement. Some of its members since the evening before, considering themselves invested with powers by the situation, had tried to organize a permanent sub-committee in this <em>mairie; </em>but not being numerous enough, they had adjourned until the next day and consulted the chiefs of the battalions. The sitting, presided over by Captain Bergeret, was stormy. The delegates of the battalion of Montmartre, who had established a committee of their own in the Rue des Rosiers, would speak only of fighting, showed their <em>mandats imp�ratifs, </em>and recalled the resolution of the Vauxhall. It was almost unanimously resolved to take up arms against the Prussians. The mayor, Bonvalet, rather uneasy at having such guests, had the <em>mairie</em> surrounded, and, half by persuasion, half by force, succeeded in getting rid of them.</p>
<p>During the whole day the faubourgs had armed and seized the munitions; the rampart pieces were remounted on their carriages; the mobiles, forgetting that they were prisoners of war, went to retake their arms. In the evening one crowd inveigled the marines of La Pepini�re Barracks and led them to the Bastille to fraternize with the people.</p>
<p>A catastrophe was inevitable but for the courage of a few men who dared to oppose this dangerous current. All the societies that met at the Place de la Corderie, the Central Committee of the twenty arrondissements, the International, and the Federation, looked with reserve upon this Central Committee, composed of unknown men, who had never taken part in the revolutionary campaigns. On leaving the <em>mairie</em> of the third arrondissement, some delegates of battalions who belonged to the sections of the International came to the Corderie to tell of the sitting and the desperate resolution come to. Every exertion was made to pacify them, and speakers were sent to the Vauxhall, where a large meeting was being held; they succeeded in making themselves heard. Many other citizens made great efforts to recall the people to reason. The next morning, the 28th. the three groups of the Corderie published a manifesto conjuring the working men to beware. ‘Every attack,’ said they, ‘would serve to expose the people to the blows of the enemies of the Revolution, who would drown all social demands in a sea of blood.’ Pressed on all sides, the Central Committee was obliged to yield, as it announced in a proclamation signed by twenty-nine names. ‘Every aggression would result in the immediate overthrow of the Republic. Barricades will be established all round the quarters to be occupied by the enemy, so he will parade in a camp shut out from our town.’ This was the first official appearance of the Central Committee. The twenty-nine unknown men<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n69">[69]</a></sup> capable of thus pacifying the National Guard were applauded even by the bourgeoisie, who did not seem to wonder at their power.</p>
<p>The Prussians entered Paris on the 1st March. This Paris which the people had taken possession of was no longer the Paris of the nobles and the great bourgeoisie of 1815. Black flags hung from the houses, but the deserted streets, the closed shops, the dried-up fountains, the veiled statues of the Place de la Concorde, the gas not lighted at night, still more pregnantly announced a town in its agony. Prostitutes who ventured into the quarters of the enemy were publicly whipped. A caf� in the Champs-Elys�es which had opened its doors to the victors was ransacked. There was but one <em>grand seigneur</em> in the Faubourg St. Germain to offer his house to the Prussians.</p>
<p>Paris was still wincing under this affront, when a new avalanche of insults poured down upon her from Bordeaux. Not only had the Assembly not found a word or act to help her in this painful crisis, but its papers, the <em>Journal Officiel </em>at their head, were indignant that she should have thought of defending herself against the Prussians. A proposition was being signed in the bureaux to fix the seat of the Assembly outside of Paris. The projected law on overdue bills and house-rents opened the prospect of numberless failures. Peace had been accepted, hurriedly voted like an ordinary business. Alsace, the greater part of Lorraine, 1,600,000 Frenchmen tom from their fatherland, five milliards to pay, the forts to the east of Paris to be-occupied till the payment of the first 500,000,000 francs, and the departments of the East till the entire payment; this was what Trochu, Favre, and the coalition cost us, the price for which Bismarck permitted us the <em>Chambre introuvable. </em>And to console Paris for so much disgrace, M. Thiers appointed as General of the National Guard the incapable and brutal commander of the first army of the Loire, D'Aurelles de Paladines. Two senators, Vinoy and D'Aurelles, two Bonapartists, at the head of Republican Paris — this was too much. All Paris had the presentiment of a <em>coup-d'�itat</em>. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n70">[70]</a></sup></p>
<p>That evening there were large groups gathered in the boulevards. The National Guards, refusing to acknowledge D'Aurelles as their commander, proposed the appointment of Garibaldi. On the 3rd two hundred battalions sent their delegates to Vauxhall. Matters began with the reading of the statutes. The preamble declared the Republic ‘the only Government by law and justice superior to universal suffrage, which is its offspring.’ ‘The delegates,’ said Article 6, ‘must prevent every attempt whose object would be the overthrow of the Republic.’ The Central Committee was composed of three delegates for each arrondissement, elected by the companies, battalions, legions and of the <em>chefs-de-l�gion</em>.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n71">[71]</a></sup> While awaiting the regular election, the meeting there and then named a provisional executive committee. Varlin, Pindy, Jacques Durand, and some other Socialists of the Corderie formed part of it, an understanding having been come to between the Central Committee, or rather the commission which had drawn up the statutes, and the three groups of the Corderie. Varlin carried a unanimous vote on the immediate re-election of the officers of the National Guard. Another motion was put: ‘That the department of the Seine constitute itself an independent republic in case of the Assembly attempting to decapitalize Paris,’ — a motion unsound in its conception, faultily drawn up, which seemed to isolate Paris from the rest of France — an anti-revolutionist, anti-Parisian idea, cruelly exploited against the Commune. Who then was to feed Paris if not the provinces? Who was to save our peasants if not Paris? But Paris had been confined to solitary life for six months; she alone to the last moment had declared for the continuation of the struggle at any price, alone affirmed the Republic by a vote. Her abandonment, the vote of the provinces, the rural majority, made so many men ready to die for the universal republic, fancy that the Republic might be shut up within Paris.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter I
The Prussians enter Paris
Neither the head of the executive power, nor the National Assembly, supporting and strengthening one another, did anything to provoke the Paris insurrection. (Dufaure’s speech against amnesty, session of 18th May, 1876.)
The invasion brought back the Chambre introuvable of 1816 [ultra-right wing parliament under the Bourbon restoration in 1816]. After having dreamt of a regenerated France soaring towards the light, to feel oneself hurled back half a century, under the yoke of the Jesuits of the Congregation, of the brutal rurals! There were men who lost heart. Many spoke of expatriating themselves. The thoughtless said, ‘The Chamber will only last a day, since it has no mandate but to decide on peace and war.’ Those, however, who had watched the progress of the conspiracy and the leading part taken in it by the clergy, knew beforehand that these men would not allow France to escape their clutches before they crushed her.
Men just escaped from famine-stricken but ardent Paris found in the Bordeaux Assembly the Coblentz of the first emigration, but this time invested with the power to glut rancours that had been accumulating for forty years. Clericals and Conservatives were for the first time allowed, without the interference of either emperor or king, to trample to their hearts’ content on atheistic, revolutionary Paris, which had so often shaken off their yoke and baffled their schemes. At the first sitting their choler burst out. At the farther end of the hall, sitting alone on his bench, shunned by all, an old man rose and asked to address the Assembly. Under his cloak glared a red shirt. It was Garibaldi. At the call of his name, he wished to answer, to say in a few words that he resigned the mandate with which Paris had honoured him. His voice drowned in howls. He remained standing, raising his hand, but the insults redoubled. The chastisement, however, was at hand. ‘Rural majority! disgrace of France!’ cried from the gallery, a young vibrating voice, that of Gaston Cr�mieux, of Marseilles. The deputies rose threatening. Hundreds of ‘Bravos’ answered from the galleries, overwhelming the rurals. After the sitting the crowd cheered Garibaldi and hooted his insulters. The National Guard presented arms, despite the rage of M. Thiers, who under the peristyle railed at the commanding officer. The next day the people returned, forming lines in front of the theatre, and forced the reactionary deputies to undergo their republican cheers. But they knew their strength, and from the beginning of the sittings opened their attack. One of the rurals, pointing to the representatives of Paris, cried, ‘They are stained with the blood of civil war!’ And when one of these representatives cried, Vive la R�publique! the majority hooted him, saying, ‘You are only a fraction of the country.’ On the next day the Chamber was surrounded by troops, who kept off the republicans.
At the same time the Conservative papers united in their hissings against Paris, denying even her sufferings. The National Guard, they said, had fled before the Prussians; its only exploits had been the 31st October and 22nd January. These calumnies fructified in the provinces, long since prepared to receive them. Such was their ignorance of the siege, that they had named some of them several times — Trochu, Ducrot, Ferry, Pelletan, Garnier-Pages, Emmanuel Arago — to whom Paris had refused a single vote.
It was the duty of the Parisian representatives to clear up this darkness, to recount the siege, to denounce the men responsible for the failure of the defence, to explain the significance of the Parisian vote, to unfurl the flag of republican France against the clerico-monarchical coalition. They remained silent, contenting themselves with puerile party meetings, from which Delescluze turned away as heartbroken as from the Assembly of the Paris mayors. Our Epimenides of 1848 answered with stereotyped humanitarian phrases the clashing of arms of the enemy, who all the while affirmed his programme: to patch up a peace, to bury the Republic, and for that purpose to checkmate Paris. Thiers was named chief of the executive power with general acclamation, and chose for his Ministers Jules Favre, Jules Simon, Picard and Lefl�, who might still pass muster with the provincial republicans.
These elections, these menaces, these insults to Garibaldi, to the Paris representatives; Thiers, the incarnation of the Parliamentary monarchy, as first magistrate of the Republic — blow after blow was struck at Paris, a feverish, hardly revictualled Paris, hungering still more for liberty than bread. This then was the reward for five months of suffering and endurance. These provinces, which Paris had invoked in vain during the whole siege, dared now to brand her with cowardice, to throw her back from Bismark to Chambord. Well, then, Paris was resolved to defend herself even against France. The new, imminent danger, the hard experience of the siege, had exalted her energy and endowed the great town with one collective soul.
Already, towards the end of January, some republicans, and also some bourgeois intriguers in search of a mandate, had tried to group the National Guards with a view to the elections. A large meeting, presided over by Courty, a merchant of the third arrondissement, had been held in the Cirque. They had there drawn up a list, decided to meet again to deliberate in case of double electoral returns, and had named a committee charged to convoke all the companies regularly. This second meeting was held on the 15th in the Vauxhall, Douan� Street. But who then thought of the elections? One single thought prevailed: the union of all Parisian forces against the triumphant rurals. The National Guard represented all the manhood of Paris. The clear, simple, essentially French idea of confederating the battalions had long been in every mind. It was received with acclamation and resolved that the confederate battalions should be grouped round a Central Committee.
A commission during the same sitting was charged to elaborate the statutes. Each arrondissement represented — eighteen out of twenty — named a commissar. Who were these men? The agitators, the revolutionaries of La Corderie, the Socialists? No; there was not a known name amongst them. All those elected were men of the middle classes, shopkeepers, employees, strangers to the coteries, till now for the most part strangers even to politics.[64] Courty, the president, was known only since the meeting at the Cirque. From the first day the idea of the federation appeared what it was — universal, not sectarian, and therefore powerful. The next day, Cl�ment-Thomas declared to the Government that he could no longer be answerable for the National Guard, and sent in his resignation. He was provisionally replaced by Vinoy.
On the 24th, in the Vauxhall, before 2,000 delegates and guards, the commission read the statutes it had drawn up, and pressed the delegates to proceed immediately to the election of the Central Committee. The Assembly was tempestuous, disquiet, little inclined for calm deliberations. Each of the last eight days had brought with it more insulting menaces from Bordeaux. They were going, it was said, to disarm the battalions, suppress the thirty sous, the only resource of the working men, and exact at once the arrears of rent and overdue commercial bills. Besides, the armistice, prolonged for a week, was to expire on the 26th, and the papers announced that the Prussians would enter Paris on the 27th. For a week this nightmare had weighed on all the patriots. The meeting, too, proceeded at once to consider these burning questions. Varlin proposed: The National Guard only recognizes the leaders elected by itself. Another: The National Guard protests through the Central Committee against any attempt at disarmament, and declares that in case of need it will offer armed resistance. Both propositions were voted unanimously. And now, was Paris to submit to the entry of the Prussians, to let them parade her boulevards? It could not even be discussed. The whole assembly, springing up over-excited, raised one cry of war. Some warnings of prudence are disdained. Yes, they would oppose their arms to the entry of the Prussians. The proposition would be submitted by the delegates to their respective companies. And adjourning to the 3rd March, the meeting broke up its sitting and marched en masse to the Bastille, carrying along with it a great number of soldiers and mobiles.
Since the morning, Paris, fearing the loss of her liberty, had gathered round her revolutionary column, as she had before crowded round the statue of Strasbourg when trembling for France. The battalions marched past, headed by drums and flags, covering the rails and pedestal with crowns of immortelles. From time to time a delegate ascended the plinth, and from this tribune of bronze harangued the people, who answered with cries of Vive la R�publique! Suddenly a red flag was carried through the crowd into the monument, reappearing soon after at the balustrade. A formidable cry saluted it, followed by a long silence. A man, climbing the cupola, had the daring to go and fix it in the hand of the statue of Liberty surmounting the column. Thus, amidst the frantic cheering of the people, for the first time since 1848, the flag of equality overshadowed this spot, redder than its flag by the blood of a thousand martyrs.
The following day the pilgrimages were continued, not only by National Guards, but by the soldiers and mobiles. The army gave way to the inspiration of Paris. The mobiles arrived preceded by their quartermasters carrying large black crowns; the trumpeters, posted at each corner of the pedestal, saluted them, and the crowd cheered them to the echo. Women dressed in black suspended a tricolour flag bearing the inscription, ‘The republican women to the martyrs.’ When the pedestal was covered, the crowns and flowers soon wound themselves entirely round the bust, encircling it from top to bottom with yellow and black flowers, red and tricolour oriflammes, symbols of mourning for the past and hope in the future.
On the 26th the demonstrations became innumerable and irritated. A police agent, surprised taking down the names of the battalions, was seized and thrown into the Seine. Twenty-five battalions marched past, sombre, a prey to a terrible anguish. The armistice was about to expire and the Journal Officiel did not speak of a prorogation. The journals announced the entry of the German army by the Champs-Elys�es for the next day. The Government was sending the troops to the left bank of the Seine and clearing out the Palace de l'Industrie. They forgot only the cannons of the National Guards accumulated at the Place Wagram and at Passy. Already the carelessness of the capitulationists had delivered 12,000 more muskets to the Prussians than were stipulated for.[65] Who could tell if the latter would not stretch out their hands to these fine pieces, cast with the flesh and blood of the Parisians, marked with the numbers of the battalions?[66] Spontaneously all Paris rose. The bourgeois battalions of Passy, in accord with the municipality, [67] set the example, drawing the pieces of the Ranelagh to the Parc Monceaux. [68] Other battalions came to fetch their cannon in the Park Wagram, wheeling them by the Rues St. Honor� and Rivoli to the Place des Vosges, under the protection of the Bastdle.
During the day the troop sent by Vinoy to the Bastille had fraternized with the people. In the evening, the rappel, the tocsin, the trumpets had thrown thousands of armed men into the streets, who came to mass themselves at the Bastille, the Ch�teau d'Eau, and the Rue de Rivoli. The prison of St. P�lagie was forced and Brunel set free. At two o'clock in the morning, forty thousand men remounted the Champs-Elys�es, and the Avenue de la Grande Arm�e, silent, in good order, to encounter the Prussians. They waited till daybreak. On their return, the battalions of Montmartre seized all the cannon they found on their way, and took them to the mairie of the eighteenth arrondissement and to the Boulevard Omano.
To this feverish but chivalrous outburst Vinoy could only oppose an order of the day stigmatizing it. And this Government that insulted Paris, asked her to immolate herself for France! A proclamation posted up on the morning of the 27th announced the prolongation of the armistice, and for the 1st of March the occupation of the Champs-Elys�es by 30,000 Germans.
At two o'clock the commission charged to draw up the statutes for a Central Committee held a sitting at the mairie of the third arrondissement. Some of its members since the evening before, considering themselves invested with powers by the situation, had tried to organize a permanent sub-committee in this mairie; but not being numerous enough, they had adjourned until the next day and consulted the chiefs of the battalions. The sitting, presided over by Captain Bergeret, was stormy. The delegates of the battalion of Montmartre, who had established a committee of their own in the Rue des Rosiers, would speak only of fighting, showed their mandats imp�ratifs, and recalled the resolution of the Vauxhall. It was almost unanimously resolved to take up arms against the Prussians. The mayor, Bonvalet, rather uneasy at having such guests, had the mairie surrounded, and, half by persuasion, half by force, succeeded in getting rid of them.
During the whole day the faubourgs had armed and seized the munitions; the rampart pieces were remounted on their carriages; the mobiles, forgetting that they were prisoners of war, went to retake their arms. In the evening one crowd inveigled the marines of La Pepini�re Barracks and led them to the Bastille to fraternize with the people.
A catastrophe was inevitable but for the courage of a few men who dared to oppose this dangerous current. All the societies that met at the Place de la Corderie, the Central Committee of the twenty arrondissements, the International, and the Federation, looked with reserve upon this Central Committee, composed of unknown men, who had never taken part in the revolutionary campaigns. On leaving the mairie of the third arrondissement, some delegates of battalions who belonged to the sections of the International came to the Corderie to tell of the sitting and the desperate resolution come to. Every exertion was made to pacify them, and speakers were sent to the Vauxhall, where a large meeting was being held; they succeeded in making themselves heard. Many other citizens made great efforts to recall the people to reason. The next morning, the 28th. the three groups of the Corderie published a manifesto conjuring the working men to beware. ‘Every attack,’ said they, ‘would serve to expose the people to the blows of the enemies of the Revolution, who would drown all social demands in a sea of blood.’ Pressed on all sides, the Central Committee was obliged to yield, as it announced in a proclamation signed by twenty-nine names. ‘Every aggression would result in the immediate overthrow of the Republic. Barricades will be established all round the quarters to be occupied by the enemy, so he will parade in a camp shut out from our town.’ This was the first official appearance of the Central Committee. The twenty-nine unknown men[69] capable of thus pacifying the National Guard were applauded even by the bourgeoisie, who did not seem to wonder at their power.
The Prussians entered Paris on the 1st March. This Paris which the people had taken possession of was no longer the Paris of the nobles and the great bourgeoisie of 1815. Black flags hung from the houses, but the deserted streets, the closed shops, the dried-up fountains, the veiled statues of the Place de la Concorde, the gas not lighted at night, still more pregnantly announced a town in its agony. Prostitutes who ventured into the quarters of the enemy were publicly whipped. A caf� in the Champs-Elys�es which had opened its doors to the victors was ransacked. There was but one grand seigneur in the Faubourg St. Germain to offer his house to the Prussians.
Paris was still wincing under this affront, when a new avalanche of insults poured down upon her from Bordeaux. Not only had the Assembly not found a word or act to help her in this painful crisis, but its papers, the Journal Officiel at their head, were indignant that she should have thought of defending herself against the Prussians. A proposition was being signed in the bureaux to fix the seat of the Assembly outside of Paris. The projected law on overdue bills and house-rents opened the prospect of numberless failures. Peace had been accepted, hurriedly voted like an ordinary business. Alsace, the greater part of Lorraine, 1,600,000 Frenchmen tom from their fatherland, five milliards to pay, the forts to the east of Paris to be-occupied till the payment of the first 500,000,000 francs, and the departments of the East till the entire payment; this was what Trochu, Favre, and the coalition cost us, the price for which Bismarck permitted us the Chambre introuvable. And to console Paris for so much disgrace, M. Thiers appointed as General of the National Guard the incapable and brutal commander of the first army of the Loire, D'Aurelles de Paladines. Two senators, Vinoy and D'Aurelles, two Bonapartists, at the head of Republican Paris — this was too much. All Paris had the presentiment of a coup-d'�itat. [70]
That evening there were large groups gathered in the boulevards. The National Guards, refusing to acknowledge D'Aurelles as their commander, proposed the appointment of Garibaldi. On the 3rd two hundred battalions sent their delegates to Vauxhall. Matters began with the reading of the statutes. The preamble declared the Republic ‘the only Government by law and justice superior to universal suffrage, which is its offspring.’ ‘The delegates,’ said Article 6, ‘must prevent every attempt whose object would be the overthrow of the Republic.’ The Central Committee was composed of three delegates for each arrondissement, elected by the companies, battalions, legions and of the chefs-de-l�gion.[71] While awaiting the regular election, the meeting there and then named a provisional executive committee. Varlin, Pindy, Jacques Durand, and some other Socialists of the Corderie formed part of it, an understanding having been come to between the Central Committee, or rather the commission which had drawn up the statutes, and the three groups of the Corderie. Varlin carried a unanimous vote on the immediate re-election of the officers of the National Guard. Another motion was put: ‘That the department of the Seine constitute itself an independent republic in case of the Assembly attempting to decapitalize Paris,’ — a motion unsound in its conception, faultily drawn up, which seemed to isolate Paris from the rest of France — an anti-revolutionist, anti-Parisian idea, cruelly exploited against the Commune. Who then was to feed Paris if not the provinces? Who was to save our peasants if not Paris? But Paris had been confined to solitary life for six months; she alone to the last moment had declared for the continuation of the struggle at any price, alone affirmed the Republic by a vote. Her abandonment, the vote of the provinces, the rural majority, made so many men ready to die for the universal republic, fancy that the Republic might be shut up within Paris.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XVIII<br>
The work of the Commune</h1>
<p><img src="pics/cluseret.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Cluseret" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p>The insufficiency and the weakness of the Executive Commission became so shocking, that on the 20th the Council decided to replace it by the delegates of the nine commissions, amongst whom it had distributed its different functions. These commissions were renewed the same day. In general they were rather neglected; and how could one man attend to the daily sittings of the H�tel-de-Ville, to his commission and his <em>mairie</em>? For the Council had charged its members with the administration of their respective arrondissements; and the real work of the several commissions weighed on the delegates who had presided over them from their origin, and for the most part were not changed on the 20th April. They continued to act, as heretofore, almost single-handed. Before proceeding with our narrative we will look more closely into their doings.</p>
<p>Two delegations required only good-will — those of the victualling department and of the public or municipal services. The provisioning of the town was carried on through the neutral zone, where M. Thiers, however anxious to starve Paris, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n131">[131]</a></sup> could not prevent a regular supply of food. All the foremen having remained at their posts, the municipal services did not suffer. Four delegations — Finance, War, Public Safety, Exterior — required special aptitude. The three others, Education, justice, Labour and Exchange, had to propound the philosophical principles of this revolution. All the delegates save Frankel, a workman, belonged to the lower middle-class.</p>
<p>The Commission of Finance centred in Jourde, who, with his inexhaustible garrulity, had eclipsed the too modest Varlin. The task imposed was to procure every morning 675,000 francs for the payment of the services, to feed 250,000 persons, and find the sinews of war. Besides the 4,658,000 francs in the coffers of the Treasury, 214 millions in shares and other effects had been found in the Finance Office; but Jourde could not or would not negotiate them, and to fill his exchequer he had to lay hold of the revenues of all the administrations — the telegraph and postal offices, the octrois, direct contributions, custom house offices, markets, tobacco, registration and stamps, municipal funds and the railway duties. The bank, little by little, paid back the 9,400,000 francs due to the town, and even parted with 7,290,000 francs on its own account. From the 20th March to the 30th April, twenty-six millions were thus scraped together. During the same period the War Office alone absorbed over twenty. The Intendance received 1,813,000 francs, all the municipalities together 1,446,000, the Interior 103,000, Marine 29,000, justice 5,500, Commerce 50,000, Education 1,000 only, Exterior 112,000, Firemen 100,000, National Library 80,000 Commission of Barricades 44,500, L'Imprimerie Nationale 100,000, the Association of Tailors and Shoemakers 24,882. These proportions remained almost the same from the 1st May to the fall of the Commune. The expenses of the second period rose to about twenty millions. The sum total of the expenses of the Commune was about 46,300,000 francs, of which 16,696,000 were supplied by the bank, and the rest by the various services, the octrois yielding nearly twelve millions.</p>
<p>Most of these Services were under the superintendence of workmen or former subordinate employees, and were all carried on with a fourth part of their ordinary numerical strength. The director of the postal department, Theisz, a chaser, found the Service quite disorganized, the divisional offices closed, the stamps hidden away or carried off, the material, seals, the carts, etc. taken away, and the coffers empty. Notices posted up in the hall and courts ordered the employees to proceed to Versailles on pain of dismissal, but Theisz acted with promptitude and energy. When the subordinate employees who had not been forewarned came as usual to organize the mail service, he addressed them, discussed with them, and had the doors shut. Little by little they gave way. Some functionaries who were Socialists also lent their help, and the direction of the various services was entrusted to the head-clerks. The divisional offices were opened, and in forty-eight hours the collection and distribution of letters for Paris reorganized. As to the letters destined for the provinces, clever agents threw them into the offices of St. Denis and ten miles round, while for the introduction of letters into Paris every latitude was given to private initiative. A superior council was instituted, which raised the wages of postmen, sorters, porters and office caretakers, shortened the time of service as supernumeraries, and decided that the ability of the employees should be tested for the future by means of tests and examinations.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n132">[132]</a></sup> </p>
<p>The Mint, directed by Cam�linat, a bronze-mounter, one of the most active members of the International, manufactured the postage stamps. At the Mint, as at the general post-office, the Versaillese director and principal employees had first parleyed, then made off. Cam�linat, supported by some friends, bravely took this place, had the works continued, and every one contributing his professional experience, improvements in the machinery as well as new methods were introduced. The bank, which concealed its bullion, was obliged to furnish about 110,000 francs’ worth, immediately coined into five-franc pieces. A new coin-plate was engraved, and was about to be put into use, when the Versaillese entered Paris.</p>
<p>The department of Public Assistance also depended on that of the Finances. A man of the greatest merit, Treilhard, an old exile of 1851, reorganized this administration, which he found entirely out of order. Some doctors and agents of the service had abandoned the hospitals; the director and the steward of the Petits-M�nages at Issy had fled, thus reducing many of their pensioners to go out begging. Some employees forced our wounded to wait before the doors of the hospital, while the sisters of mercy tried to make them blush for their glorious wounds; but Treilhard soon put all in order, and, for the second time since 1792, the sick and the infirm found friends in their guardians and blessed the Commune. This kind-hearted, intellectual man, who was assassinated by a Versaillese officer on the 24th May at the Panth�on, has left a very elaborate report on the suppression of bureaux of charity, which chain the poor to the Government and to the clergy. He proposed having them replaced by a bureau of assistance in each arrondissement, under the direction of a communal committee.</p>
<p>The Telegraph Office, Registration, and Domains, cleverly directed by the honest Fontaine; the Service of Contributions, entirely re-established by Faillet and Combault; the National Printing Press, which Debock reorganized and administered with remarkable dexterity,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n133"> [133]</a></sup> and the other departments connected with that of Finance, ordinarily reserved to the great bourgeoisie, were managed with skill and economy — the maximum salary, 6,000 francs, was never reached — by workmen, subordinate employees; and this is not the least of their crimes in the eyes of the Versaillese bourgeoisie.</p>
<p>Compared with the Finance department, that of War was a region of darkness and utter confusion. Officers and guards encumbered the offices of the Ministry, some demanding munitions and victuals, others complaining of not being relieved. They were sent back to the Place Vend�me, maintained in the teeth of common sense, and directed by the rather equivocal colonel, Henri Prudhomme. On the floor below, the Central Committee, installed there by Cluseret, bustled, spent time and breath in endless sittings, found fault with the delegate at war, amused itself with creating new insignia, received the malcontents of the Ministry, asked returns from the general staff, claimed to give advice on military operations. In its turn, the Committee of Artillery, founded on the 18th March, wrangled about the disposal of the cannon with the War Office. The latter had the pieces of the Champ-de-Mars and the Committee those of Montmartre. Attempts at creating a central park of artillery, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n134">[134]</a></sup> or even at learning the exact number of the ordnance pieces, were made in vain. Pieces of long range remained to the last moment lying along the ramparts, while the forts had only pieces of seven and twelve centimetres to answer the huge cannon of Marine, and often the munitions sent were not of corresponding calibre. The commissariat, assailed by adventurers of all sorts, took their stores haphazardly. The construction of the barricades, which were to form a second and third enceinte, instituted on the 9th April, had been left to a crotchety fellow, starting jobs everywhere without method and against the plans of his superiors. All the other Services were conducted in the same style, without fixed principles, without limitation of their respective provinces, the wheels of the machine not working within one another. In this concert without a conductor, each instrumentalist played what he liked, confusing his own score with his neighbour’s.</p>
<p>A firm and supple hand would soon have restored harmony. The Central Committee, despite its assumption of lecturing the Commune, which it said was ‘its daughter and must not be allowed to go astray,’ was now only an assemblage of talkers devoid of all authority. It had, to a great extent, been renewed since the establishment of the Commune, and the much-contested elections to it — for many aspired to the title of member — had given a majority of flighty, heedless men.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n135">[135]</a></sup> In its present state this Committee derived its whole importance from the jealousy of the Council. The Committee of Artillery, monopolized by brawlers, would have yielded at once to the slightest pressure. The commissariat and the other services depended entirely upon the action of the delegate at War.</p>
<p>The phantom general, stretched on his sofa, hatched orders, circulars, now melancholy, now commanding, and never stirred a finger to watch over their execution. If some member of the Council came to rouse him, ‘What are you doing? Such-and-such a place is in peril,’ he answered loftily, ‘All my precautions are taken; give my combinations time to be accomplished,’ and turned over again. One day he bullied the Central Committee, which left the Ministry to go and sulk in the Rue de l'Entrep�t; a week later he went after the same Committee, reinstating it at the War Office. Vain to shamelessness, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n136">[136]</a></sup> he showed sham letters from Todleben proposing plans of defence, and spent his time in posing to correspondents of foreign journals. With an affectation of pride, he never put on a uniform, which, however, at that time was the true dress of the proletarian. It took the Council almost a month to recognize that this pithless braggart was only a disappointed officer of the standing army, his airs of an innovator notwithstanding.</p>
<p>Many hopes turned to his chief-of-staff, Rossel, a young Radical, twenty-eight years old, self-restrained, puritanical, who was sowing his revolutionary wild oats. A captain of engineers in the army of Metz, he had attempted to resist Bazaine, and escaped from the Prussians. Gambetta had appointed him colonel of engineers at the camp of Nevers, where he was still lingering on the 18th March. He was dazzled; saw in Paris the future of France, and his own; threw up his commission and hurried thither, where some friends placed him in the 17th Legion. He was haughty, soon became unpopular, and was arrested on the 3rd April. Two members of the Council, Malon and Charles G�rardin, had him set free and presented him to Cluseret, by whom he was accepted as chief of the general staff. Rossel, fancying that the Central Committee was a power, made up to it, appeared to ask it for advice, and sought out the men he thought popular. His coldness, his technical vocabulary, Pis clearness of speech, his get up as a great man, enchanted the bureaux, but those who studied him more closely noticed his unsteady look, the infallible sign of a perturbed spirit. By degrees the young revolutionary officer became the fashion, and his consular bearing did not displease the public, sickened at the flabbiness of Cluseret.</p>
<p>Nothing, however, justified this infatuation. Chief of the general staff since the 5th April, he allowed all the Services to shift for themselves; the only one in some measure organized, the Control of General Information, was the work of Moreau, who every morning furnished the War Office and the Commune with detailed, and often very picturesque, reports on the military operations and the moral condition of Paris.</p>
<p>This was about all the police the Commune had. The Commission of Public Safety, which should have thrown light upon the most secret recesses, emitted only a fitful glimmering.</p>
<p>The Central Committee had appointed Raoul Rigault, a young man of twenty-four, much mixed up in the revolutionary movement, as civil delegate to the prefecture of police, but under the severe direction of Duval. Rigault well kept in hand might have made a very good subaltern, and so long as Duval lived he did not go wrong. The unpardonable fault of the Council was to place him at the head of a service where the slightest mistake was more dangerous than at the advanced posts. His friends, who, with the exception of a small number, Ferr�, Regnard, and two or three others, were as young and as giddy-headed as himself, discharged in a boyish way the most delicate functions. The Commission of Public Safety, which ought to have superintended Rigault, only followed his example. There, above all, did they live as boon companions, apparently unaware of having assumed the guardianship of, and the responsibility for, 100,000 lives.</p>
<p>No wonder the mice were soon seen playing round the prefecture of police. Papers suppressed in the morning were on sale in the evening in the streets; the conspirators wormed themselves into all the services without exciting the suspicion of Rigault or his companions. They never discovered anything; it was always necessary to do it for them. They made arrests like military marches in the daytime, with large reinforcements of National Guards. After the decree on the hostages, they had only managed to lay hands on four or five ecclesiastics of mark: the Gallican Archbishop Darboy, an arrant Bonapartist; his grand-vicar, Lagarde; the curate of the Madeleine; Deguerry, a kind of De Morny in cassock; the Abb� Allard, the Bishop of Surat; and a few Jesuits of nerve. Chance only delivered into their hands the president of the Court of Appeal, Bonjean,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n137">[137]</a></sup> and Jecker, the famous inventor of the expedition to Mexico. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n138">[138]</a></sup> </p>
<p>This culpable heedlessness, which the people have paid for with their blood, was the salvation of criminals. Some National Guards had brought to light the mysteries of the Picpus convent, discovered three unfortunate women shut up in grated cages, strange instruments,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n139">[139]</a></sup> corselets of iron, straps, racks, which smacked strangely of the Inquisition, a treatise on abortion, and two skulls still covered with hair. One of the prisoners, the only one whose reason had not given way, said that she had been in this cage for ten years. The police contented themselves with sending the nuns to St. Lazare.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n140">[140]</a></sup> Some inhabitants of the tenth arrondissement had discovered feminine skeletons in the caves of the St. Laurent Church. The prefecture only made a show of inquiry that ended in nothing.</p>
<p>However, in the midst of all these faults, the humanitarian idea revealed itself, so thoroughly sound was this popular revolution. The chief of the Bureau of Public Safety, making an appeal to the public for the victims of the war, said, ‘The Commune has sent bread to ninety-two wives of those who are killing us. The widows belong to no party. The Republic has bread for every misery and care for all the orphans.’ Admirable words these, worthy of Chalier and of Chaumette. The prefecture, overrun by denunciations, declared that it would take no account of the anonymous ones. ‘The man,’ said the <em>Officiel</em>, ‘who does not dare to sign a denunciation serves a personal rancour and not the public interest.’ The hostages were allowed to obtain from without food, linen, books, papers, to be visited by their friends, and to receive the reporters of foreign journals. An offer was even made M. Thiers to exchange the hostages of greatest mark, the Archbishop, Deguerry, Bonjean, and Lagarde, for Blanqui alone. To conduct this negotiation the Vicar-General was sent to Versailles, after having sworn to the Archbishop and the delegate to return to his prison in case of non-success. But M. Thiers thought that Blanqui would give a head to the movement, while the Ultramontanes, eagerly covetous of the episcopal seat of Paris, took good care not to save the Gallican Darboy, whose death would be a double profit, leaving them a rich inheritance, and giving them at small expense a martyr. M. Thiers refused, and Lagarde remained at Versailles.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n141">[141]</a></sup> The Council did not punish the Archbishop for his want of faith, and a few days after set his sister at liberty. Never even in the days of despair was the privilege of women forgotten. The culpable nuns of Picpus and the other religieuses conducted to St. Lazare were confined in a special part of the building.</p>
<p>The prefecture and the delegation of Justice also evinced their humanity in ameliorating the service of the prisons. The Council in its turn, striving to guarantee individual liberty, decreed that every arrest should be immediately notified to the delegate of justice, and that no perquisition should be made without a regular warrant. National Guards, misinformed, having arrested certain individuals reputed suspicious, the Council declared in the <em>Officiel </em>that every arbitrary act would be followed by a dismissal and immediate prosecution. A battalion looking for arms at the gas company’s thought itself authorized to seize the cash-box; the Council at once had the sum returned. The commisar of police who arrested Gustave Chaudey, arraigned for having commanded fire on the 22nd January, had also seized the money of the prisoner; the Council dismissed the commissar. To prevent all abuse of power, it ordered an inquiry into the state of the prisoners and the motives of their detention, at the same time authorizing all its members to visit the prisoners. Rigault thereupon sent in his resignation, which was accepted, for he was beginning to weary everybody, and Delescluze had been obliged to rebuke him. His pranks filled the columns of the Versaillese journals, always on the look-out for scandals. They accused this childish policeman of terrorizing Paris, and represented the members of the Council, who refused to endorse the condemnations of the court martial, as assassins. The Figarist historians have kept up this legend. That vile bourgeoisie, which bent its head under the 30,000 arrests of December, the <em>lettres de cachet </em>of the Empire, and applauded the 50,000 arrests of May, still howls about the 800 or 900 arrests made under the Commune. They never exceeded this figure in two months of strife, and two-thirds of those arrested were only imprisoned a few days, many only a few hours. But the provinces, only fed with news by the Versaillese press, believed in its inventions, amplified in the circulars of M. Thiers telegraphing to the prefects: ‘The insurgents are emptying the principal houses of Paris in order to put the furniture to sale.’</p>
<p>To enlighten the provinces and provoke their intervention, such was the role of the delegation of the Exterior, which, under an ill-chosen title, was only second in importance to that of War. Since the 4th April — (I shall afterwards recount these movements) — the departments had been stirring. Save that of Marseilles, in part disarmed, the National Guard everywhere had guns. In the centre, east, west and south, powerful diversions might easily have been made, the stations occupied, and thereby the reinforcements and artillery destined for Versailles arrested.</p>
<p>The delegation contented itself with sending some few emissaries, without knowledge of the localities they were sent to, without tact and without authority. It was even exploited by traitors, who pocketed its money and handed over its instructions to Versailles. Well-known Republicans, familiar with the habits of the provinces, offered their services in vain. There. as elsewhere, it was necessary to be a favourite. Finally, for the work of enlightening and rousing France to insurrection, only a sum of 100,000 francs was allowed.</p>
<p>The delegation put forth only a small number of manifestoes, one a true and eloquent r�sum� of the Parisian revolution, and two addresses to the peasants, one by Madame Andr� L�o, simple, fervent, quite within the reach of the peasantry: ‘Brother, you are being deceived. Our interests are the same. What I ask for, you wish it too. The affranchisement which I demand is yours.... What Paris after all wants is the land for the peasant, the instrument for the workmen.’ This good seed was carried away in free balloons, which, by a cleverly-contrived mechanism, from time to time dropped the printed papers. How many were lost, fell among thorns!</p>
<p>This delegation, created only for the exterior, entirely forgot the rest of the world. Throughout all Europe the working-classes eagerly awaited news from Paris, were in their hearts fellow-combatants of the great town, now become their capital, multiplied their meetings, processions, and addresses. Their papers, poor for the most part, courageously struggled against the calumnies of the bourgeois press. The duty of the delegation was to hold out a hand to these priceless auxiliaries: it did nothing. Some of these papers exhausted their last means in defence of the Commune, which allowed its defenders to succumb for want of bread.</p>
<p>The delegation, without experience, without resources, could not fight against the astute cleverness of M. Thiers. It showed great zeal in Protecting foreigners, and sent the rich silver plate of the Ministry to the Mint, but it did almost no real work.</p>
<p>Now we come to the delegations of vital importance. Since, by the force of events, the Commune had’ become the champion of the Revolution, it ought to have proclaimed the aspirations of the century, and, if it was to die, leave at least their testament on its tomb. It would have sufficed to state lucidly the whole range of institutions demanded for forty years by the revolutionary party.</p>
<p>The delegate of Justice, a lawyer, had only to make a summary of the reforms long since demanded by all Socialists. It was the part of a Proletarian revolution to show the aristocracy of our judicial system the despotic and antiquated doctrines of the Code Napoleon; the sovereign people hardly ever judging themselves, but judged by a caste issued from another authority than their own, the absurd hierarchy of judges and tribunals, the <em>tabellionat, </em>the procureurs, 400,000 notaries, solicitors, sheriffs’ officers, registrars, bailiffs, advocates and lawyers, draining national wealth to the amount of many hundreds of millions. It was, above all, for a revolution made in the name of the Commune to endow the Commune with a tribunal at which the people, restored to their rights, should judge by jury all cases, civil and commercial, misdemeanours as well as crimes; a final tribunal, without any appeal but for informalities, to state how solicitors, registrars, sheriffs, may be rendered useless, and the notaries replaced by simple registration officers. The delegate mostly limited himself to appointing notaries, sheriffs’ officers, and bailiffs, provided with a fixed salary — very useless appointments in a time of war, and which, besides, had the fault of consecrating the principle of the necessity for such officers. Scarcely anything progressive came of it. It was decreed that, in case of arrests, the minutes were to state the motives and the names of the witnesses to be called, while the papers, valuables and effects of the prisoners were to be deposited at the Suitors’ Fund. Another decree ordered the directors of lunatic asylums to send the nominal and explanatory statement concerning their patients within four days. If the Council had thrown some light on these institutions, which veil so many crimes, humanity would have been its debtor. However, these decrees were never executed.</p>
<p>Did practical instinct make up for want of science on the part of the delegation? Did it shed light upon the mysteries of the caves of Picpus, the skeletons of St. Laurent? It seemed to take no notice of them, and the reaction made merry at these supposed discoveries. The delegation even missed the opportunity of winning over to the Commune, if only for one day, all Republicans of France. Jecker was in their power. Rich, brave, audacious, he had always lived certain of impunity, since bourgeois legality inflicts no chastisement for crimes like the Mexican expedition. The Revolution alone could smite him. Nothing was more easy than to proceed against him. Jecker, pretending to have been the dupe of the Empire, craved to make revelations. In a public court, before twelve jurors chosen at random, in the face of the world, through him the Mexican expedition might have been sifted, the intrigues of the clergy unveiled, the pockets of the thieves turned out; it might have been shown how the Empress, Miramon, and Morny had set the plot on foot, in what cause and for what men France had lost seas of blood and hundreds of millions. Afterwards the expiation might have been accomplished in the open day, on the Place de la Concorde, in face of the Tuileries. Poets, who rarely get shot, would perhaps have sighed, but the people, the eternal victim, would have applauded, and said, ‘The Revolution alone does justice.’ They neglected even to question Jecker.</p>
<p>The delegation at the Education Department was bound to write one of the finest pages of the Commune, for after so many years of study and experiments this question should spring forth ready armed from a truly revolutionary brain. The delegation has not left a memoir, a sketch, an address, a line, to bear witness for it in the future. Yet the delegate was a doctor, a student of the German universities. He contented himself with suppressing the crucifixes in the schoolrooms and making an appeal to all those who had studied the question of teaching. A commission was charged with organizing primary and professional instruction, whose work consisted in announcing the opening of a school on the 6th May. Another commission for the education of women was named on the day the Versaillese entered Paris.</p>
<p>The administrative action of the delegate was confined to impracticable decrees and a few appointments. Two devoted and talented men, Elis�e Reclus and B. Gastineau, were charged with the reorganization of the National Library. They forbade the lending of books, thus putting an end to the scandalous practice by which a privileged few carved out a private library from public collections. The federation of artists, presided over by Courbet, elected member of the Council on the 16th April, occupied itself with the reopening and superintendence of the museums.</p>
<p>Nothing would be known of the ideas of this revolution on education were it not for a few circulars of the municipalities. Many had reopened the schools abandoned by the Congregationists and the municipal teachers, or driven away the priests who had remained. The municipality of the twentieth arrondissement clothed and fed the children; that of the fourth said, ‘To teach children to love and respect their fellow-creatures, to inspire them with a love of justice, to teach them that they must instruct themselves in the interests of all, such are the principles of morality on which the future communal education will be based.’ ‘The teachers of the schools and infant asylums,’ declared the municipality of the seventeenth arrondissement, ‘will for the future exclusively employ the experimental and scientific method, that which always starts from facts, physical, moral, intellectual.’ But these vague formulae could not make amends for the want of a complete programme.</p>
<p>Who, then, will speak for the people? The delegation of Labour and Exchange. Exclusively composed of revolutionary socialists, its purpose was, ‘The study of all the reforms to be introduced into the public services of the Commune or into the relations of the working men and women with their employers; the revision of the commercial code and custom-house duties; the revision of all direct and indirect taxes, the establishment of statistics of labour.’ It intended collecting from the citizens themselves the materials for the decrees to be submitted to the Commune.</p>
<p>The delegate to this department, Leo Frankel, procured the assistance of a commission of initiative composed of working men. Registers for offers and demands of work were opened in all the arrondissements. At the request of many journey-men bakers night-work was suppressed, a measure of hygiene as much as of morality. The delegation prepared a project for the suppression of pawnshops, a decree concerning stoppages of wages, and supported the decree relative to work-shops abandoned by their runaway masters.</p>
<p>Their plan gratuitously returned the pledged objects to the victims of war and to the necessitous. Those who might refuse to confess this latter title were to receive their pledges in exchange for a promise of repayment in five years. The report terminated with these words: ‘It is well understood that the suppression of the pawnshops is to be succeeded by a social organization giving serious guarantees of support to the workmen thrown out of employment. The establishment of the Commune necessitates institutions protecting the workmen from the exploitation of capital.’</p>
<p>The decree that abolished stoppages from salaries and wages put an end to one of the most crying iniquities of the capitalist regime, these fines often being inflicted on the most futile pretext by the employer himself, who is thus at once judge and plaintiff.</p>
<p>The decree relative to the deserted workshops made restitution to the masses, dispossessed for centuries, of the property of their own labour. A commission of inquiry named by the Trade Union Chambers was to draw up the statistics and the inventory of the deserted workshops to be given back into the hands of the workmen. Thus ‘the expropriators were in their turn expropriated.’ The nineteenth century will not pass away without having begun this revolution; every progress in machinery brings it nearer. The more the exploitation of labour concentrates itself in a few hands, the more the working multitude are massed together and disciplined. Soon, conscious and united, the producing class will, like the young France of 1789, have to confront but a handful of privileged appropriators. The most inveterate revolutionary socialist is the monopolist.</p>
<p>No doubt this decree contained voids and stood in need of an elaborate explanation, especially on the subject of the co-operative societies to which the workshops were to be handed over. It was no more than the other applicable in this hour of strife, and required a number of supplementary decrees; but it at least gave some idea of the claims of the working class, and had it nothing else on its credit side, by the mere creation of the Commission for Labour and Exchange, the revolution of the 18th March would have done more for the workmen than all the bourgeois Assemblies of France since the 5th May, 1789.</p>
<p>The delegation for Labour wanted to look carefully into the contracts of the commissariat. It demonstrated that in the case of contracts adjudicated to the lowest bidder, the running down of prices falls upon wages and not on the profit of the contractor. ‘And the Commune is blind enough to lend itself to such manoeuvres,’ said the report, ‘and at this very moment, when the working man dares death rather than submit any longer to this exploitation.’ The delegate demanded that the estimate of charges should specify the cost of labour, that the orders should be preference be given to the workmen’s corporations, and the contracting prices fixed by arbitration between the commissariat, the Trade Union Chamber of the corporation, and the delegate for Labour.</p>
<p>To overlook the financial administration of all the delegations, the Council in the month of May instituted a superior commission charged to audit their accounts. It decreed that functionaries or contractors guilty of peculation or theft should be punished with death.</p>
<p>In short, save for the delegation for Labour, where they did work, the basic delegations were unequal to their task. All committed the same fault. For two months they had in their hands the archives of the bourgeoisie since 1789. There was the Cour des Comptes (a judicial board of accounts) to disclose the mysteries of official robbery; the Council of State, the dark deliberations of despotism; the Prefecture of Police, the scandalous under-currents of social power; the Ministry of Justice, the servility and crimes of the most oppressive of all classes. In the H�tel-de-Ville there lay deposited the still unexplored records of the first Revolution, of those of 1815, 1830, 1848, and all diplomatists of Europe dreaded the opening of the portfolios at the Foreign Office. They might have laid bare before the eyes of the people the intimate history of the Revolution, the Directory, the first Empire, the monarchy of July, 1848, and of Napoleon III. They published only two or three instalments.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n142">[142]</a></sup> The delegates slept by the side of these treasures, heedless, as it seemed, of their value.</p>
<p>The Radicals, seeing these lawyers, these doctors, these publicists, who allowed Jecker to remain mute and the Cour des Comptes closed, would not believe in such ignorance, and still affect to unriddle the enigma with the word ‘Bonapartism’. A stupid accusation, given the lie by a thousand proofs. For the honour even of the delegates the bitter truth must be told. Their ignorance was not simulated, but only too real. To a great extent it was the offspring of past oppression.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XVIII
The work of the Commune
The insufficiency and the weakness of the Executive Commission became so shocking, that on the 20th the Council decided to replace it by the delegates of the nine commissions, amongst whom it had distributed its different functions. These commissions were renewed the same day. In general they were rather neglected; and how could one man attend to the daily sittings of the H�tel-de-Ville, to his commission and his mairie? For the Council had charged its members with the administration of their respective arrondissements; and the real work of the several commissions weighed on the delegates who had presided over them from their origin, and for the most part were not changed on the 20th April. They continued to act, as heretofore, almost single-handed. Before proceeding with our narrative we will look more closely into their doings.
Two delegations required only good-will — those of the victualling department and of the public or municipal services. The provisioning of the town was carried on through the neutral zone, where M. Thiers, however anxious to starve Paris, [131] could not prevent a regular supply of food. All the foremen having remained at their posts, the municipal services did not suffer. Four delegations — Finance, War, Public Safety, Exterior — required special aptitude. The three others, Education, justice, Labour and Exchange, had to propound the philosophical principles of this revolution. All the delegates save Frankel, a workman, belonged to the lower middle-class.
The Commission of Finance centred in Jourde, who, with his inexhaustible garrulity, had eclipsed the too modest Varlin. The task imposed was to procure every morning 675,000 francs for the payment of the services, to feed 250,000 persons, and find the sinews of war. Besides the 4,658,000 francs in the coffers of the Treasury, 214 millions in shares and other effects had been found in the Finance Office; but Jourde could not or would not negotiate them, and to fill his exchequer he had to lay hold of the revenues of all the administrations — the telegraph and postal offices, the octrois, direct contributions, custom house offices, markets, tobacco, registration and stamps, municipal funds and the railway duties. The bank, little by little, paid back the 9,400,000 francs due to the town, and even parted with 7,290,000 francs on its own account. From the 20th March to the 30th April, twenty-six millions were thus scraped together. During the same period the War Office alone absorbed over twenty. The Intendance received 1,813,000 francs, all the municipalities together 1,446,000, the Interior 103,000, Marine 29,000, justice 5,500, Commerce 50,000, Education 1,000 only, Exterior 112,000, Firemen 100,000, National Library 80,000 Commission of Barricades 44,500, L'Imprimerie Nationale 100,000, the Association of Tailors and Shoemakers 24,882. These proportions remained almost the same from the 1st May to the fall of the Commune. The expenses of the second period rose to about twenty millions. The sum total of the expenses of the Commune was about 46,300,000 francs, of which 16,696,000 were supplied by the bank, and the rest by the various services, the octrois yielding nearly twelve millions.
Most of these Services were under the superintendence of workmen or former subordinate employees, and were all carried on with a fourth part of their ordinary numerical strength. The director of the postal department, Theisz, a chaser, found the Service quite disorganized, the divisional offices closed, the stamps hidden away or carried off, the material, seals, the carts, etc. taken away, and the coffers empty. Notices posted up in the hall and courts ordered the employees to proceed to Versailles on pain of dismissal, but Theisz acted with promptitude and energy. When the subordinate employees who had not been forewarned came as usual to organize the mail service, he addressed them, discussed with them, and had the doors shut. Little by little they gave way. Some functionaries who were Socialists also lent their help, and the direction of the various services was entrusted to the head-clerks. The divisional offices were opened, and in forty-eight hours the collection and distribution of letters for Paris reorganized. As to the letters destined for the provinces, clever agents threw them into the offices of St. Denis and ten miles round, while for the introduction of letters into Paris every latitude was given to private initiative. A superior council was instituted, which raised the wages of postmen, sorters, porters and office caretakers, shortened the time of service as supernumeraries, and decided that the ability of the employees should be tested for the future by means of tests and examinations.[132]
The Mint, directed by Cam�linat, a bronze-mounter, one of the most active members of the International, manufactured the postage stamps. At the Mint, as at the general post-office, the Versaillese director and principal employees had first parleyed, then made off. Cam�linat, supported by some friends, bravely took this place, had the works continued, and every one contributing his professional experience, improvements in the machinery as well as new methods were introduced. The bank, which concealed its bullion, was obliged to furnish about 110,000 francs’ worth, immediately coined into five-franc pieces. A new coin-plate was engraved, and was about to be put into use, when the Versaillese entered Paris.
The department of Public Assistance also depended on that of the Finances. A man of the greatest merit, Treilhard, an old exile of 1851, reorganized this administration, which he found entirely out of order. Some doctors and agents of the service had abandoned the hospitals; the director and the steward of the Petits-M�nages at Issy had fled, thus reducing many of their pensioners to go out begging. Some employees forced our wounded to wait before the doors of the hospital, while the sisters of mercy tried to make them blush for their glorious wounds; but Treilhard soon put all in order, and, for the second time since 1792, the sick and the infirm found friends in their guardians and blessed the Commune. This kind-hearted, intellectual man, who was assassinated by a Versaillese officer on the 24th May at the Panth�on, has left a very elaborate report on the suppression of bureaux of charity, which chain the poor to the Government and to the clergy. He proposed having them replaced by a bureau of assistance in each arrondissement, under the direction of a communal committee.
The Telegraph Office, Registration, and Domains, cleverly directed by the honest Fontaine; the Service of Contributions, entirely re-established by Faillet and Combault; the National Printing Press, which Debock reorganized and administered with remarkable dexterity, [133] and the other departments connected with that of Finance, ordinarily reserved to the great bourgeoisie, were managed with skill and economy — the maximum salary, 6,000 francs, was never reached — by workmen, subordinate employees; and this is not the least of their crimes in the eyes of the Versaillese bourgeoisie.
Compared with the Finance department, that of War was a region of darkness and utter confusion. Officers and guards encumbered the offices of the Ministry, some demanding munitions and victuals, others complaining of not being relieved. They were sent back to the Place Vend�me, maintained in the teeth of common sense, and directed by the rather equivocal colonel, Henri Prudhomme. On the floor below, the Central Committee, installed there by Cluseret, bustled, spent time and breath in endless sittings, found fault with the delegate at war, amused itself with creating new insignia, received the malcontents of the Ministry, asked returns from the general staff, claimed to give advice on military operations. In its turn, the Committee of Artillery, founded on the 18th March, wrangled about the disposal of the cannon with the War Office. The latter had the pieces of the Champ-de-Mars and the Committee those of Montmartre. Attempts at creating a central park of artillery, [134] or even at learning the exact number of the ordnance pieces, were made in vain. Pieces of long range remained to the last moment lying along the ramparts, while the forts had only pieces of seven and twelve centimetres to answer the huge cannon of Marine, and often the munitions sent were not of corresponding calibre. The commissariat, assailed by adventurers of all sorts, took their stores haphazardly. The construction of the barricades, which were to form a second and third enceinte, instituted on the 9th April, had been left to a crotchety fellow, starting jobs everywhere without method and against the plans of his superiors. All the other Services were conducted in the same style, without fixed principles, without limitation of their respective provinces, the wheels of the machine not working within one another. In this concert without a conductor, each instrumentalist played what he liked, confusing his own score with his neighbour’s.
A firm and supple hand would soon have restored harmony. The Central Committee, despite its assumption of lecturing the Commune, which it said was ‘its daughter and must not be allowed to go astray,’ was now only an assemblage of talkers devoid of all authority. It had, to a great extent, been renewed since the establishment of the Commune, and the much-contested elections to it — for many aspired to the title of member — had given a majority of flighty, heedless men.[135] In its present state this Committee derived its whole importance from the jealousy of the Council. The Committee of Artillery, monopolized by brawlers, would have yielded at once to the slightest pressure. The commissariat and the other services depended entirely upon the action of the delegate at War.
The phantom general, stretched on his sofa, hatched orders, circulars, now melancholy, now commanding, and never stirred a finger to watch over their execution. If some member of the Council came to rouse him, ‘What are you doing? Such-and-such a place is in peril,’ he answered loftily, ‘All my precautions are taken; give my combinations time to be accomplished,’ and turned over again. One day he bullied the Central Committee, which left the Ministry to go and sulk in the Rue de l'Entrep�t; a week later he went after the same Committee, reinstating it at the War Office. Vain to shamelessness, [136] he showed sham letters from Todleben proposing plans of defence, and spent his time in posing to correspondents of foreign journals. With an affectation of pride, he never put on a uniform, which, however, at that time was the true dress of the proletarian. It took the Council almost a month to recognize that this pithless braggart was only a disappointed officer of the standing army, his airs of an innovator notwithstanding.
Many hopes turned to his chief-of-staff, Rossel, a young Radical, twenty-eight years old, self-restrained, puritanical, who was sowing his revolutionary wild oats. A captain of engineers in the army of Metz, he had attempted to resist Bazaine, and escaped from the Prussians. Gambetta had appointed him colonel of engineers at the camp of Nevers, where he was still lingering on the 18th March. He was dazzled; saw in Paris the future of France, and his own; threw up his commission and hurried thither, where some friends placed him in the 17th Legion. He was haughty, soon became unpopular, and was arrested on the 3rd April. Two members of the Council, Malon and Charles G�rardin, had him set free and presented him to Cluseret, by whom he was accepted as chief of the general staff. Rossel, fancying that the Central Committee was a power, made up to it, appeared to ask it for advice, and sought out the men he thought popular. His coldness, his technical vocabulary, Pis clearness of speech, his get up as a great man, enchanted the bureaux, but those who studied him more closely noticed his unsteady look, the infallible sign of a perturbed spirit. By degrees the young revolutionary officer became the fashion, and his consular bearing did not displease the public, sickened at the flabbiness of Cluseret.
Nothing, however, justified this infatuation. Chief of the general staff since the 5th April, he allowed all the Services to shift for themselves; the only one in some measure organized, the Control of General Information, was the work of Moreau, who every morning furnished the War Office and the Commune with detailed, and often very picturesque, reports on the military operations and the moral condition of Paris.
This was about all the police the Commune had. The Commission of Public Safety, which should have thrown light upon the most secret recesses, emitted only a fitful glimmering.
The Central Committee had appointed Raoul Rigault, a young man of twenty-four, much mixed up in the revolutionary movement, as civil delegate to the prefecture of police, but under the severe direction of Duval. Rigault well kept in hand might have made a very good subaltern, and so long as Duval lived he did not go wrong. The unpardonable fault of the Council was to place him at the head of a service where the slightest mistake was more dangerous than at the advanced posts. His friends, who, with the exception of a small number, Ferr�, Regnard, and two or three others, were as young and as giddy-headed as himself, discharged in a boyish way the most delicate functions. The Commission of Public Safety, which ought to have superintended Rigault, only followed his example. There, above all, did they live as boon companions, apparently unaware of having assumed the guardianship of, and the responsibility for, 100,000 lives.
No wonder the mice were soon seen playing round the prefecture of police. Papers suppressed in the morning were on sale in the evening in the streets; the conspirators wormed themselves into all the services without exciting the suspicion of Rigault or his companions. They never discovered anything; it was always necessary to do it for them. They made arrests like military marches in the daytime, with large reinforcements of National Guards. After the decree on the hostages, they had only managed to lay hands on four or five ecclesiastics of mark: the Gallican Archbishop Darboy, an arrant Bonapartist; his grand-vicar, Lagarde; the curate of the Madeleine; Deguerry, a kind of De Morny in cassock; the Abb� Allard, the Bishop of Surat; and a few Jesuits of nerve. Chance only delivered into their hands the president of the Court of Appeal, Bonjean,[137] and Jecker, the famous inventor of the expedition to Mexico. [138]
This culpable heedlessness, which the people have paid for with their blood, was the salvation of criminals. Some National Guards had brought to light the mysteries of the Picpus convent, discovered three unfortunate women shut up in grated cages, strange instruments,[139] corselets of iron, straps, racks, which smacked strangely of the Inquisition, a treatise on abortion, and two skulls still covered with hair. One of the prisoners, the only one whose reason had not given way, said that she had been in this cage for ten years. The police contented themselves with sending the nuns to St. Lazare.[140] Some inhabitants of the tenth arrondissement had discovered feminine skeletons in the caves of the St. Laurent Church. The prefecture only made a show of inquiry that ended in nothing.
However, in the midst of all these faults, the humanitarian idea revealed itself, so thoroughly sound was this popular revolution. The chief of the Bureau of Public Safety, making an appeal to the public for the victims of the war, said, ‘The Commune has sent bread to ninety-two wives of those who are killing us. The widows belong to no party. The Republic has bread for every misery and care for all the orphans.’ Admirable words these, worthy of Chalier and of Chaumette. The prefecture, overrun by denunciations, declared that it would take no account of the anonymous ones. ‘The man,’ said the Officiel, ‘who does not dare to sign a denunciation serves a personal rancour and not the public interest.’ The hostages were allowed to obtain from without food, linen, books, papers, to be visited by their friends, and to receive the reporters of foreign journals. An offer was even made M. Thiers to exchange the hostages of greatest mark, the Archbishop, Deguerry, Bonjean, and Lagarde, for Blanqui alone. To conduct this negotiation the Vicar-General was sent to Versailles, after having sworn to the Archbishop and the delegate to return to his prison in case of non-success. But M. Thiers thought that Blanqui would give a head to the movement, while the Ultramontanes, eagerly covetous of the episcopal seat of Paris, took good care not to save the Gallican Darboy, whose death would be a double profit, leaving them a rich inheritance, and giving them at small expense a martyr. M. Thiers refused, and Lagarde remained at Versailles.[141] The Council did not punish the Archbishop for his want of faith, and a few days after set his sister at liberty. Never even in the days of despair was the privilege of women forgotten. The culpable nuns of Picpus and the other religieuses conducted to St. Lazare were confined in a special part of the building.
The prefecture and the delegation of Justice also evinced their humanity in ameliorating the service of the prisons. The Council in its turn, striving to guarantee individual liberty, decreed that every arrest should be immediately notified to the delegate of justice, and that no perquisition should be made without a regular warrant. National Guards, misinformed, having arrested certain individuals reputed suspicious, the Council declared in the Officiel that every arbitrary act would be followed by a dismissal and immediate prosecution. A battalion looking for arms at the gas company’s thought itself authorized to seize the cash-box; the Council at once had the sum returned. The commisar of police who arrested Gustave Chaudey, arraigned for having commanded fire on the 22nd January, had also seized the money of the prisoner; the Council dismissed the commissar. To prevent all abuse of power, it ordered an inquiry into the state of the prisoners and the motives of their detention, at the same time authorizing all its members to visit the prisoners. Rigault thereupon sent in his resignation, which was accepted, for he was beginning to weary everybody, and Delescluze had been obliged to rebuke him. His pranks filled the columns of the Versaillese journals, always on the look-out for scandals. They accused this childish policeman of terrorizing Paris, and represented the members of the Council, who refused to endorse the condemnations of the court martial, as assassins. The Figarist historians have kept up this legend. That vile bourgeoisie, which bent its head under the 30,000 arrests of December, the lettres de cachet of the Empire, and applauded the 50,000 arrests of May, still howls about the 800 or 900 arrests made under the Commune. They never exceeded this figure in two months of strife, and two-thirds of those arrested were only imprisoned a few days, many only a few hours. But the provinces, only fed with news by the Versaillese press, believed in its inventions, amplified in the circulars of M. Thiers telegraphing to the prefects: ‘The insurgents are emptying the principal houses of Paris in order to put the furniture to sale.’
To enlighten the provinces and provoke their intervention, such was the role of the delegation of the Exterior, which, under an ill-chosen title, was only second in importance to that of War. Since the 4th April — (I shall afterwards recount these movements) — the departments had been stirring. Save that of Marseilles, in part disarmed, the National Guard everywhere had guns. In the centre, east, west and south, powerful diversions might easily have been made, the stations occupied, and thereby the reinforcements and artillery destined for Versailles arrested.
The delegation contented itself with sending some few emissaries, without knowledge of the localities they were sent to, without tact and without authority. It was even exploited by traitors, who pocketed its money and handed over its instructions to Versailles. Well-known Republicans, familiar with the habits of the provinces, offered their services in vain. There. as elsewhere, it was necessary to be a favourite. Finally, for the work of enlightening and rousing France to insurrection, only a sum of 100,000 francs was allowed.
The delegation put forth only a small number of manifestoes, one a true and eloquent r�sum� of the Parisian revolution, and two addresses to the peasants, one by Madame Andr� L�o, simple, fervent, quite within the reach of the peasantry: ‘Brother, you are being deceived. Our interests are the same. What I ask for, you wish it too. The affranchisement which I demand is yours.... What Paris after all wants is the land for the peasant, the instrument for the workmen.’ This good seed was carried away in free balloons, which, by a cleverly-contrived mechanism, from time to time dropped the printed papers. How many were lost, fell among thorns!
This delegation, created only for the exterior, entirely forgot the rest of the world. Throughout all Europe the working-classes eagerly awaited news from Paris, were in their hearts fellow-combatants of the great town, now become their capital, multiplied their meetings, processions, and addresses. Their papers, poor for the most part, courageously struggled against the calumnies of the bourgeois press. The duty of the delegation was to hold out a hand to these priceless auxiliaries: it did nothing. Some of these papers exhausted their last means in defence of the Commune, which allowed its defenders to succumb for want of bread.
The delegation, without experience, without resources, could not fight against the astute cleverness of M. Thiers. It showed great zeal in Protecting foreigners, and sent the rich silver plate of the Ministry to the Mint, but it did almost no real work.
Now we come to the delegations of vital importance. Since, by the force of events, the Commune had’ become the champion of the Revolution, it ought to have proclaimed the aspirations of the century, and, if it was to die, leave at least their testament on its tomb. It would have sufficed to state lucidly the whole range of institutions demanded for forty years by the revolutionary party.
The delegate of Justice, a lawyer, had only to make a summary of the reforms long since demanded by all Socialists. It was the part of a Proletarian revolution to show the aristocracy of our judicial system the despotic and antiquated doctrines of the Code Napoleon; the sovereign people hardly ever judging themselves, but judged by a caste issued from another authority than their own, the absurd hierarchy of judges and tribunals, the tabellionat, the procureurs, 400,000 notaries, solicitors, sheriffs’ officers, registrars, bailiffs, advocates and lawyers, draining national wealth to the amount of many hundreds of millions. It was, above all, for a revolution made in the name of the Commune to endow the Commune with a tribunal at which the people, restored to their rights, should judge by jury all cases, civil and commercial, misdemeanours as well as crimes; a final tribunal, without any appeal but for informalities, to state how solicitors, registrars, sheriffs, may be rendered useless, and the notaries replaced by simple registration officers. The delegate mostly limited himself to appointing notaries, sheriffs’ officers, and bailiffs, provided with a fixed salary — very useless appointments in a time of war, and which, besides, had the fault of consecrating the principle of the necessity for such officers. Scarcely anything progressive came of it. It was decreed that, in case of arrests, the minutes were to state the motives and the names of the witnesses to be called, while the papers, valuables and effects of the prisoners were to be deposited at the Suitors’ Fund. Another decree ordered the directors of lunatic asylums to send the nominal and explanatory statement concerning their patients within four days. If the Council had thrown some light on these institutions, which veil so many crimes, humanity would have been its debtor. However, these decrees were never executed.
Did practical instinct make up for want of science on the part of the delegation? Did it shed light upon the mysteries of the caves of Picpus, the skeletons of St. Laurent? It seemed to take no notice of them, and the reaction made merry at these supposed discoveries. The delegation even missed the opportunity of winning over to the Commune, if only for one day, all Republicans of France. Jecker was in their power. Rich, brave, audacious, he had always lived certain of impunity, since bourgeois legality inflicts no chastisement for crimes like the Mexican expedition. The Revolution alone could smite him. Nothing was more easy than to proceed against him. Jecker, pretending to have been the dupe of the Empire, craved to make revelations. In a public court, before twelve jurors chosen at random, in the face of the world, through him the Mexican expedition might have been sifted, the intrigues of the clergy unveiled, the pockets of the thieves turned out; it might have been shown how the Empress, Miramon, and Morny had set the plot on foot, in what cause and for what men France had lost seas of blood and hundreds of millions. Afterwards the expiation might have been accomplished in the open day, on the Place de la Concorde, in face of the Tuileries. Poets, who rarely get shot, would perhaps have sighed, but the people, the eternal victim, would have applauded, and said, ‘The Revolution alone does justice.’ They neglected even to question Jecker.
The delegation at the Education Department was bound to write one of the finest pages of the Commune, for after so many years of study and experiments this question should spring forth ready armed from a truly revolutionary brain. The delegation has not left a memoir, a sketch, an address, a line, to bear witness for it in the future. Yet the delegate was a doctor, a student of the German universities. He contented himself with suppressing the crucifixes in the schoolrooms and making an appeal to all those who had studied the question of teaching. A commission was charged with organizing primary and professional instruction, whose work consisted in announcing the opening of a school on the 6th May. Another commission for the education of women was named on the day the Versaillese entered Paris.
The administrative action of the delegate was confined to impracticable decrees and a few appointments. Two devoted and talented men, Elis�e Reclus and B. Gastineau, were charged with the reorganization of the National Library. They forbade the lending of books, thus putting an end to the scandalous practice by which a privileged few carved out a private library from public collections. The federation of artists, presided over by Courbet, elected member of the Council on the 16th April, occupied itself with the reopening and superintendence of the museums.
Nothing would be known of the ideas of this revolution on education were it not for a few circulars of the municipalities. Many had reopened the schools abandoned by the Congregationists and the municipal teachers, or driven away the priests who had remained. The municipality of the twentieth arrondissement clothed and fed the children; that of the fourth said, ‘To teach children to love and respect their fellow-creatures, to inspire them with a love of justice, to teach them that they must instruct themselves in the interests of all, such are the principles of morality on which the future communal education will be based.’ ‘The teachers of the schools and infant asylums,’ declared the municipality of the seventeenth arrondissement, ‘will for the future exclusively employ the experimental and scientific method, that which always starts from facts, physical, moral, intellectual.’ But these vague formulae could not make amends for the want of a complete programme.
Who, then, will speak for the people? The delegation of Labour and Exchange. Exclusively composed of revolutionary socialists, its purpose was, ‘The study of all the reforms to be introduced into the public services of the Commune or into the relations of the working men and women with their employers; the revision of the commercial code and custom-house duties; the revision of all direct and indirect taxes, the establishment of statistics of labour.’ It intended collecting from the citizens themselves the materials for the decrees to be submitted to the Commune.
The delegate to this department, Leo Frankel, procured the assistance of a commission of initiative composed of working men. Registers for offers and demands of work were opened in all the arrondissements. At the request of many journey-men bakers night-work was suppressed, a measure of hygiene as much as of morality. The delegation prepared a project for the suppression of pawnshops, a decree concerning stoppages of wages, and supported the decree relative to work-shops abandoned by their runaway masters.
Their plan gratuitously returned the pledged objects to the victims of war and to the necessitous. Those who might refuse to confess this latter title were to receive their pledges in exchange for a promise of repayment in five years. The report terminated with these words: ‘It is well understood that the suppression of the pawnshops is to be succeeded by a social organization giving serious guarantees of support to the workmen thrown out of employment. The establishment of the Commune necessitates institutions protecting the workmen from the exploitation of capital.’
The decree that abolished stoppages from salaries and wages put an end to one of the most crying iniquities of the capitalist regime, these fines often being inflicted on the most futile pretext by the employer himself, who is thus at once judge and plaintiff.
The decree relative to the deserted workshops made restitution to the masses, dispossessed for centuries, of the property of their own labour. A commission of inquiry named by the Trade Union Chambers was to draw up the statistics and the inventory of the deserted workshops to be given back into the hands of the workmen. Thus ‘the expropriators were in their turn expropriated.’ The nineteenth century will not pass away without having begun this revolution; every progress in machinery brings it nearer. The more the exploitation of labour concentrates itself in a few hands, the more the working multitude are massed together and disciplined. Soon, conscious and united, the producing class will, like the young France of 1789, have to confront but a handful of privileged appropriators. The most inveterate revolutionary socialist is the monopolist.
No doubt this decree contained voids and stood in need of an elaborate explanation, especially on the subject of the co-operative societies to which the workshops were to be handed over. It was no more than the other applicable in this hour of strife, and required a number of supplementary decrees; but it at least gave some idea of the claims of the working class, and had it nothing else on its credit side, by the mere creation of the Commission for Labour and Exchange, the revolution of the 18th March would have done more for the workmen than all the bourgeois Assemblies of France since the 5th May, 1789.
The delegation for Labour wanted to look carefully into the contracts of the commissariat. It demonstrated that in the case of contracts adjudicated to the lowest bidder, the running down of prices falls upon wages and not on the profit of the contractor. ‘And the Commune is blind enough to lend itself to such manoeuvres,’ said the report, ‘and at this very moment, when the working man dares death rather than submit any longer to this exploitation.’ The delegate demanded that the estimate of charges should specify the cost of labour, that the orders should be preference be given to the workmen’s corporations, and the contracting prices fixed by arbitration between the commissariat, the Trade Union Chamber of the corporation, and the delegate for Labour.
To overlook the financial administration of all the delegations, the Council in the month of May instituted a superior commission charged to audit their accounts. It decreed that functionaries or contractors guilty of peculation or theft should be punished with death.
In short, save for the delegation for Labour, where they did work, the basic delegations were unequal to their task. All committed the same fault. For two months they had in their hands the archives of the bourgeoisie since 1789. There was the Cour des Comptes (a judicial board of accounts) to disclose the mysteries of official robbery; the Council of State, the dark deliberations of despotism; the Prefecture of Police, the scandalous under-currents of social power; the Ministry of Justice, the servility and crimes of the most oppressive of all classes. In the H�tel-de-Ville there lay deposited the still unexplored records of the first Revolution, of those of 1815, 1830, 1848, and all diplomatists of Europe dreaded the opening of the portfolios at the Foreign Office. They might have laid bare before the eyes of the people the intimate history of the Revolution, the Directory, the first Empire, the monarchy of July, 1848, and of Napoleon III. They published only two or three instalments.[142] The delegates slept by the side of these treasures, heedless, as it seemed, of their value.
The Radicals, seeing these lawyers, these doctors, these publicists, who allowed Jecker to remain mute and the Cour des Comptes closed, would not believe in such ignorance, and still affect to unriddle the enigma with the word ‘Bonapartism’. A stupid accusation, given the lie by a thousand proofs. For the honour even of the delegates the bitter truth must be told. Their ignorance was not simulated, but only too real. To a great extent it was the offspring of past oppression.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XXXIV<br>
The trials of the Communards</h1>
<p class="quoteb">Conciliation is the angel descending after the storm. (Dufaure to the National Assembly, 26th April, 1871.)</p>
<p>The human lakes of Versailles and Satory were soon overflowing. From the first days of June the prisoners were filed off to the seaports and crowded into cattle-wagons, the awnings of which, hermetically closed, let in no breath of air. In a corner was a heap of biscuits; but themselves thrown upon this heap, the prisoners had soon reduced it to mere crumbs. For twenty-four hours, and sometimes thirty-two hours, they remained without anything to drink. They fought in this throng for a little air, a little room. Some, maddened, flung themselves upon their comrades.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n239">[239]</a></sup> One day at La Fert�-Bemard cries were uttered in a wagon. The chief of the escort stopped the convoy; the sergeants-de-ville discharged their revolvers through the awning. Silence ensued, and the rolling coffins set out again at full speed.</p>
<p>From the month of June to the month of September 28,000 prisoners were thus thrown into the harbours, the forts and the oceanic isles, from Cherbourg to the Gironde. Twenty-five pontoons took in 20,000, the forts and isles 8,087.</p>
<p>On the pontoons tortures were inflicted by regulation. The traditions of June and of December were religiously observed with the victims of 1871. The prisoners, penned in cages made of wooden planks and iron bars, received only a dim light through the nailed down port-holes. Ventilation there was none. From the first hours the exhalations were unbearable. The sentinels walked up and down in this menagerie with the order to fire at the slightest alarm. Cannon charged with grapeshot overlooked the batteries. There were neither hammocks nor blankets, and for all food some biscuits, bread, and beans, but no wine or tobacco. The inhabitants of Brest and Cherbourg having sent some provisions and little luxuries, the officers sent them back.</p>
<p>This cruelty relaxed somewhat after a time. The prisoners received a hammock for every two, some shirts, some blouses, and now and then some wine. They were allowed to wash, to come on to the deck to snatch a little fresh air. The sailors showed some humanity, but the marines were still the same bandits as in the days of May, and the crew was often obliged to tear the prisoners from them.</p>
<p>The regime of the pontoons varied according to the officers. At Brest the second officer, commander of the <em>Ville de Lyon, </em>forbade the insulting of the prisoners; while the master-at-arms of the <em>Breslau</em> treated them like convicts. At Cherbourg one of the lieutenants of the <em>Tage</em>, Cl�menceau, was ferocious. The commander of the <em>Bayard</em> turned his vessel into a diminutive Orangerie. This ship had witnessed the most abominable acts perhaps that have sullied the history of the French navy. Absolute silence was the rule on board. As soon as anyone spoke in the cages the sentry menaced and several times shot. For a complaint, or mere forgetfulness of a rule, the prisoners were tied to the bars of their cages by the ankles and wrists. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n240">[240]</a></sup></p>
<p>The dungeons on shore were as terrible as the pontoons. At Qu�lern as many as forty prisoners were shut up in the same casemate. The lower ones were deadly. The cesspools emptied into them, and in the morning the faecal matter covered the floor some two inches deep. By the side of these was salubrious unoccupied accommodation, but they would not remove the prisoners thither. One day M. Jules Simon came, thought that his former electors were looking but poorly, and decided that recourse must be taken to severity. Elis�e Reclus had opened a school, and tried to raise out of their ignorance a hundred and fifty-one prisoners who could neither read nor write. The Minister of Public Education had the classes stopped, and had the small library, which the prisoners had got together by making the greatest sacrifices, closed.</p>
<p>The prisoners of the forts, like those of the pontoons, were fed on biscuits and bacon; later on, soup and broth were added on Sundays; knives and forks were forbidden; it cost several days’ struggle to get spoons. The profit of the sutler, which, according to the list of charges, ought to be limited to a tenth, reached as much as five hundred per cent.</p>
<p>At the Fort Boyard men and women were packed into the same enclosure, separated only by a screen. The women were forced to perform their ablutions under the eyes of the sentinels. Sometimes their husbands were in the neighbouring compartment. ‘We noticed,’ wrote a prisoner, ‘a young and beautiful woman, twenty years old, who fainted every time she was forced to undress.’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n241">[241]</a></sup></p>
<p>According to much evidence which we have received, the most cruel prison was that of St. Marcouf. The prisoners remained there for over six months, deprived of air, light, and tobacco, forbidden to speak, having for their only nourishment the crumbs of brown biscuits and rancid fat. All were attacked with scurvy.</p>
<p>This continual severity got the better of the most robust constitutions; there were in consequence 2,000 sick in the hospitals. The official reports admit 1,179 dead out of 33,665 civil prisoners. This figure is evidently below the truth. During the first days at Versailles a certain number of individuals were killed, and others died without being counted. There were no statistics before the transfer to the pontoons. There is no exaggeration in saying that 2,000 prisoners died while in the hands of the Versaillese. A great number perished afterwards of anaemia, and of maladies contracted during their captivity.</p>
<p>Some idea of the tortures of the pontoons and the forts, far from the surveillance of public opinion, may be gathered from those that were openly displayed at Versailles,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n242">[242]</a></sup> under the eyes of the Government the Chamber, and the Radicals. Colonel Gaillard, chief of military justice, had said to the soldiers who guarded the prisoners of the Chantiers, ‘As soon as you see any one move, raising their arms, fire; it is I who give you the order.’</p>
<p>At the Grenier d'Abondance of the Western Railway there were eight hundred women. For weeks and weeks they slept on straw, were unable to change their linen. At the slightest noise, a quarrel, the guards threw themselves upon them, struck them, more especially on the breasts. Charles Mercereau, a former Cent-Garde, the governor of this sink, had those that displeased him tied down and then beat them with his cane. He led about over his dominions the ladies of Versailles, covetous of petroleuses, and before them said to his victims, ‘Come, hussies, cast down your eyes.’ And indeed that was the least our Federal women could do before these worthy persons.</p>
<p>Prostitutes, carried off in the razzias, and carefully kept there in order to spy upon the other prisoners, publicly abandoned themselves to the guardians. The protests of the women of the Commune were punished by blows with cords. With a refinement of infamy, the</p>
<p>Versaillese wished to bow down these valiant women to the level of the others. All the prisoners were subjected to inspection.</p>
<p>Dignity and outraged nature revenged themselves by terrible cries. ‘Where is my father? Where my husband? and my son? What! alone, quite alone, and all these cowards against me! I, the mother, the laborious wife, subjected to the whip, insult, and sullied by these unclean hands for having defended liberty!’ Many went mad. All passed through their hours of madness. Those who were pregnant miscarried or brought forth still-born children.</p>
<p>The priests were no more wanting in the prisons than at the shootings. The chaplain of Richemont said to the prisoners, ‘I know that I am here in a forest of Bondy’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n243">[243]</a></sup> but my duty,’ etc. On the day of St. Magdalene the Bishop of Algiers, making a delicate allusion to the saint of the day, said to them, ‘That they were all Magdalenes, but not repentant; that Magdalene had neither burned nor assassinated;’ and uttering other evangelical amenities.</p>
<p>The children were shut up in a part of the women’s prison, and were just as brutally treated. A corporal, the secretary of Mercereau, kicked open the stomach of a boy; another received the bastinado, and lingered for a long time at the infirmary. The son of Ranvier, twelve years old, was cruelly beaten for refusing to betray the hiding-place of his father.</p>
<p>All these unfortunate prisoners of the pontoons, the forts, and the houses of correction were for several months devoured by vermin before their cases were inquired into. The Versaillese Moloch held more victims than he could digest. After the first days of June he disgorged 1,090 persons reclaimed by the reactionaries. But how to draw up indictments against 36,000 prisoners? It was all very well for Dufaure to let loose all the police agents of the Empire into the prisons; in the month of August only 4,000 prisoners had been interrogated.</p>
<p>Still it was necessary to satiate the rage of the bourgeoisie, which wanted a sensational trial. A few celebrities who had escaped the massacre had been taken, some members of the Council of the Commune, of the Central Committee, Rossel, Rochefort, etc. M. Thiers and Dufaure got up a grand performance.</p>
<p>The trial was to be the model to serve as a type for the jurisprudence of the courts-martial, for the prisoners were to be judged by the same soldiers who had conquered them. The old procureur and his president applied all their pettifogging cunning to lowering the debate.</p>
<p>They refused the character of political men to the accused, and reduced the insurrection to an ordinary crime, thus securing to themselves the right of cutting short effective defences, and the advantage of condemnations to the penal colony and to death, which the hypocritical bourgeoisie pretends to have abolished in political cases.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n244">[244]</a></sup> The third court-martial was carefully selected. The commissar chosen was Gaveau, a base fanatic, who had shown signs of mental derangement and had struck the prisoners in the streets of Versailles; the president, Merlin, a colonel of engineers, one of the capitulationists of Bazaine’s army; the rest an assortment of trusty Bonapartists. Sedan and Metz were going to judge Paris.</p>
<p>The ceremony commenced on the 7th August, in a large hall containing two thousand seats. Personages of rank reclined in the red velvet arm-chairs; deputies occupied three hundred seats; the remainder belonged to the bourgeois of note, to ‘worthy’ families, to the aristocracy of prostitution, and to the howling press. The talking journalists, the brilliant dresses, the smiling faces, the toyings with fans, the gay bouquets, the opera-glasses pointed in all directions, reminded one of the most elegant first-night performances. The staff officers, in full uniform, smartly conducted the ladies to their seats, not forgetting to make the indispensable bow.</p>
<p>All this scum boiled over when the prisoners appeared. There were seventeen: Ferr�, Assi, Jourde, Paschal Grousset, R�gere, Billioray, Courbet, Urbain, Victor Cl�ment, Trinquet, Champy, Rastoul, Verdure, Decamps, Parent, members of the Council of the Commune; Ferrat and Lullier, members of the Central Committee.</p>
<p><img src="pics/ferre.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Ferre" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p>Gaveau read the accusation act. This revolution was born of two plots, that of the revolutionary party and that of the International; Paris had risen on the 18th March, in answer to the appeal of a few scoundrels; the Central Committee had ordered the execution of Lecomte and Cl�ment-Thomas; the demonstration of the Place Vend�me was an unarmed demonstration; the head-surgeon of the army had been assassinated while making a supreme appeal to conciliation; the Commune had committed thefts of all kinds; the implements of the nuns of Picpus were transformed into instruments of orthopaedy; the explosion of the Rapp magazines was the work of the Commune; desirous of kindling violent hatred of the enemy in the hearts of the Federals, Ferr� had presided at the execution of the hostages of La Roquette, set fire to the Ministry of Finance, as was proved by the facsimile of an order written in his hand, ‘<em>Burn Finances!’ </em>Each one of the members of the Council of the Commune had to answer for facts relating to his particular functions and collectively for all the decrees issued. This indictment, worthy of a low police agent, communicated beforehand to M. Thiers, indeed made of the cause a simple affair of robbery and arson.</p>
<p>It took up a whole sitting. The next day, Ferr�, interrogated the first, refused to answer, and laid his conclusions upon the table. ‘The conclusions of the incendiary Ferr� are of no moment!’ cried Gaveau, and the witnesses against him were called. Fourteen out of twentyfour belonged to the police; the others were priests or Government employees. An expert in handwriting, celebrated at the lawcourts for his blunders, affirmed that the order ‘<em>Burn Finances’ </em>was certainly in Ferr�’s hand. In vain the accused demanded that the signature of this order should be compared with his, which figured very often in the jail register; that at least the original should be produced, and not the facsimile. Gaveau exclaimed indignantly, ‘Why, this is want of confidence!’</p>
<p>Thus set to rights from the outset as to the plot and the character of their judges, the accused might have declined every debate; they committed the fault of accepting it. If even they had proudly proclaimed their political character! But it was not so; some even denied it. Almost all, confining themselves to their personal defence, abandoned the Revolution of the 18th March, whose mandate they had solicited or accepted. Their preoccupation for their own safety betrayed itself by sad defections. But from the very dock of the accused the voice of the people thus denied arose avengingly. A workman of that brave Parisian race, the first in labour, study, and combat, a member of the Council of the Commune, intelligent and convinced, modest in the Council, one of the foremost in the struggle, the shoemaker Trinquet, proclaimed the honour of having fulfilled his mandate to the end. ‘I was,’ said he, ‘sent to the Commune by my co-citizens; I have paid with my person; I have been to the barricades, and I regret not having died there; I should not today assist at this sad spectacle of colleagues who, after having taken their share in the action, will no longer bear their part of the responsibility. I am an insurgent; I do not deny it.’</p>
<p>The examinations were drawn out with fastidious slowness during seventeen sittings. Always the same public of soldiers, bourgeois, courtesans, hissing the accused; the same witnesses, priests, police agents, and functionaries; the same fury in the accusation. the same cynicism in the tribunal, the same howling of the press. The massacres had not glutted this. It yelled at the accused, demanded their death, and every day dragged them through the mire of its reports.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n245">[245]</a></sup> Foreign correspondents were revolted. <em>The Standard</em>, a great reviler of the Commune, said, ‘Anything more scandalous than the tone of the demi-monde press during this trial it is impossible to imagine.’ Some of the accused having asked for the protection of the president, Merlin took up the defence of the newspapers.</p>
<p>Then came the prosecutor’s address to the court. Gaveau to remain true to his instructions, was to demonstrate that Paris had fought for six weeks in order to enable a few individuals to steal the remainder of the public chests, to bum some houses, and to shoot a few gendarmes. This epauletted limb of the law overthrew as a soldier all the arguments he built up as a magistrate. ‘The Commune, ‘he said, ‘had acted as a Government,’ and five minutes after he refused the members of the Council of the Commune the character of political men. Passing in review the different accused, he said of Ferr�, ‘I should be wasting my time and yours by discussing the numerous charges weighing upon him,’ of Jourde, ‘The figures he has given you are quite imaginary. I shall not trespass upon your time by discussing them.’ During the battle in the streets Jourde had received the order of the Committee of Public Safety to remit a thousand francs to every member of the Council. About thirty only had received this sum. Gaveau said, ‘They divided millions amongst each other;’ and a man of his sort must have believed this. What sovereign has ever abandoned power without carrying off millions? He lengthily accused Grousset of having stolen paper in order to print his newspaper; another of having lived with a mistress. A coarse <em>lansquenet</em>, incapable of understanding that the more he lowered the men the greater he made this Revolution, so vital despite all defections and incapacities.</p>
<p>The audience emphasised this accusation with frantic applause. At the conclusion there were calls as in a theatre. Merlin gave Ferr�’s advocate permission to speak, but Ferr� declared he wished to defend himself, and commenced reading:</p>
<p class="fst"><em>Ferr�: ‘</em>After the conclusion of the treaty of peace consequent upon the shameful capitulation of Paris, the Republic was in danger, the men who had succeeded the Empire fallen in the midst of mire and blood’ — </p>
<p class="fst"><em>Merlin: </em>Fallen in the midst of mire and blood! Here I must stop you. Was not your Government in the same situation?</p>
<p class="fst"><em>Ferr�</em>: ‘Clung to power, and, though overwhelmed by public contempt, they prepared in the dark a coup-d'�tat; they persisted in refusing Paris the election of her municipal council’ — </p>
<p class="fst"><em>Gaveau</em>: This is not true.</p>
<p class="fst"><em>Merlin</em>: What you are saying, Ferr�, is false. Continue, but at the third time I shall stop you.</p>
<p class="fst"><em>Ferr�</em>: ‘The honest and sincere journals were suppressed, the best patriots condemned to death’ — </p>
<p class="fst"><em>Gaveau</em>: The prisoner cannot go on reading this. I shall ask for the application of the law.</p>
<p class="fst"><em>Ferr�</em>: ‘The Royalists were preparing for the partition of France. At last, in the night of the 18th March, they believed themselves ready, and attempted to disarm the National Guard, and the wholesale arrest of Republicans’ — </p>
<p class="fst"><em>Merlin</em>: Come, sit down. I allow your advocate to speak.</p>
<p>(The advocate of Ferr� demanded that his client might be allowed to read the last sentences of his declaration, and Merlin gave way.)</p>
<p class="fst"><em>Ferr�</em>: ‘A member of the Commune, I am in the hands of its victors. They want my head; they may take it. I will never save my life by cowardice. Free I have lived, so I will die. I add but one word. Fortune is capricious; I confide to the future the care of my memory and my revenge.’</p>
<p class="fst"><em>Merlin</em>: The memory of an assassin!</p>
<p class="fst"><em>Gaveau</em>: Such manifestoes should be sent to the penal colony.</p>
<p class="fst"><em>Merlin</em>: All this does not answer to the acts for which you are here.</p>
<p class="fst"><em>Ferr�</em>: This means that I accept the fate that is in store for me.</p>
<p>During this duel between Merlin and Ferr� the hall had remained silent. Ferocious hisses burst forth when Ferr� concluded. The president was obliged to raise the sitting, and the judges were going out when a barrister demanded that notice should be taken for the defence that the president had called Ferr� ‘assassin’.</p>
<p>The hisses of the audience answered. The advocate indignantly turned to the tribunal, to the seats of the press, to the public. Cries of rage arose from all corners of the hall, drowning his voice for several minutes. Merlin, who was radiant, at last obtained silence, and answered cavalierly, ‘I acknowledge that I made use of the expression of w ich the advocate spoke. The court takes notice of your conclusions.’</p>
<p>The day before, as a barrister remarked to him, ‘We are all answerable, not to the public opinion of today, but to history, which will judge us;’ Merlin had cynically answered, ‘History! At that epoch we shall no longer be here!’ The French bourgeoisie had found its Jeffries.</p>
<p>Early the next day the hall was crowded. The curiosity of the public, the anxiety of the judges, were extreme. Gaveau, in order to accuse his adversaries of all crimes at once, had for two days talked politics, history, socialism. It would have sufficed to answer each one of his arguments, in order to give the cause that political character which he denied it, if one of the prisoners were at last to rouse up, and, less careful of his person than of the Commune, follow up the accusation step by step, oppose to the grotesque theories of conspiracy the eternal provocation of the privileged classes; describe Paris offering herself to the Government of National Defence, betrayed by it, then attacked by Versailles, abandoned; the proletarians reorganizing all the services of this great city, and in a state of war, surrounded by treason, governing for two months without police spies and without executions, remaining poor in sight of the milliards of the bank; if he were to confront the sixty-three hostages with the 20,000 assassinated, unveil the pontoons, the jails, swarming with 40,000 unfortunate beings; take the world to witness in the name of truth, of justice, of the future, and make of the accused Commune the accuser.</p>
<p>The president might have interrupted him, the cries of the public drowned his appeal, the court after the first words declared him outlawed. Such a man, reduced to silence, would, like Danton gagged, find a gesture, a cry, which should pierce the walls and hurl his anathema at the head of the tribunal.</p>
<p>The vanquished missed this revenge. Instead of presenting a collective defence or of maintaining a silence which would have saved their dignity, the accused entrusted themselves to the barristers. Each one of these gentlemen stretched a point to save his client even at the expense of his brother lawyers. One barrister was also the Figaro’s and the confidant of the Empress; another, one of the demonstrators of the Place Vend�me, begged the court not to confound his cause with that of the scoundrel’s near him. There were scandalous pleadings. This debasement disarmed neither the tribunal nor the public. Every moment Gaveau bounded out of his arm-chair. ‘You are an insolent fellow,’ said he to a lawyer. ‘If there is anything absurd here, it is you.’ The audience applauded, ever ready to pounce upon the prisoners. On the 31st August its fury rose to such a pitch that Merlin threatened to have the court cleared.</p>
<p>On the 2nd September the court feigned to deliberate the whole day. At nine o'clock in the evening it returned to the sitting, and Merlin read the judgment. Ferr� and Lullier were condemned to death; Trinquet and Urbain to hard labour for life; Assi, Billioray, Champy, Regere, Grousset, Verdure, Ferrat to transportation in a fortress; Courbet to six months’ and Victor Cl�ment to three months’ imprisonment. Decamps and Parent were acquitted. The audience retired much disappointed at having got only two condemnations to death.</p>
<p>As a fact, this judicial performance had proved nothing. Could the Revolution of the 18th March be appreciated from the conduct of secondary actors, and Delescluze, Varlin, Vermorel, Tridon, Moreau, and many others, by the attitude of Lullier, Decamps, Victor Cl�ment, or Billioray? And even if the hearing of Ferr� and Trinquet had not proved that there had been men in the Council of the Commune, what then did the defection of the majority show if not that this movement was the work of all, not of a few great minds; that in this crisis the people only had been great, they only revolutionary; that the Revolution was to be found in the people, not in the Government of the Commune?</p>
<p>The bourgeoisie, on the contrary, had displayed all its hideousness. The audience, the tribunal, had been on the same level. Some witnesses had manifestly perjured themselves. During the debates, in the lobbies, in the caf�s, all the ragamuffins who had endeavoured to dupe the Commune impudently ascribed to themselves the success of the army. The <em>Figaro, </em>having opened a subscription for Ducatel, had picked up 100,000 francs and an order of the L�gion d'Honneur for him. Allured by this success, all the conspirators demanded their aims and their order. The partisans of Beaufond-Lasnier, those of Charpentier-Domalain, fell out, recounted their prowess, each and all swearing that he had betrayed better than his rivals.</p>
<p>While society was being avenged at Versailles, the Court of Assizes of Paris avenged the honour of Jules Favre. Immediately after the Commune, the Minister for Foreign Affairs had had M. Laluy� arrested, who was guilty of having communicated to Milli�re the documents published in the <em>Vengeur. </em>The honest Minister, not having succeeded in getting his enemy shot as a Communard, summoned him before the assizes for libel. Here the former member of the Government of National Defence, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, the deputy of Paris, publicly confessed that he had committed forgeries, but he pleaded having done so to secure his children a fortune. This touching avowal melted the <em>patres familias</em> of the jury, and Laluy� was condemned to imprisonment for one year. Some months later he died at Sainte P�Iagie. Jules Favre was terribly lucky. In less than six months the firing squad and the dungeon had delivered him of two redoubtable enemies.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n246">[246]</a></sup></p>
<p>While the third court-martial was quarrelling with the lawyers, the fourth hurried through its business without more ado. On the 16th August, almost immediately after its opening, it had already pronounced two sentences of death. If the one court had its Jeffries, the other had its Trestaillon in Colonel Boisdenemetz, a kind of wild boar, a drunkard, seeing all red, a wit at times, and correspondent of the <em>Figaro. </em>On the 4th September some women were brought before him, accused of setting fire to the L�gion d'Honneur. This was the trial of the petroleuses. The eight thousand enrolled furies who had been announced by the newspapers of order were reduced to the number of five. The cross-examination proved that the so-called petroleuses were only admirably kind-hearted ambulance nurses. One of them, R�tiffe, said, ‘I should have looked after a soldier of Versailles as wen as a National Guard.’ ‘Why,’ another was asked, ‘did you remain when all the battalion ran away?’ ‘There were wounded and dying,’ answered she simply. The witnesses for the prosecution themselves declared that they had not seen any of them kindle fire; but their fate was decided beforehand. Between two sittings Boisdenemetz cried in a caf�, ‘Death to all these trulls!’</p>
<p>Three barristers out of five had deserted the bar. ‘Where are they?’ said the president. ‘They have asked to be allowed to absent themselves to go to the country,’ answered the commissar. The court charged soldiers with the defence of these poor women. One of them, the Quatermaster Bordelais, made this fine speech: ‘I defer to the wisdom of the tribunal.’</p>
<p>His client, Su�tens, was condemned to death, as were also R�tiffe and Marchais, ‘for having attempted to change the form of the Government;’ the two others to transportation and confinement. One of the condemned, turning to the officer who read the sentence, cried to him in a heartrending voice, ‘And who will feed my child?’</p>
<p>‘Thy child! See, he is here!’</p>
<p>Some days after, before this same Boisdenemetz, fifteen children of Paris appeared; the eldest was sixteen years old, the youngest, so small that he could hardly be seen in the dock of prisoners, was eleven. They wore blue blouses and military k�pis. </p>
<p>‘Druet,’ said the soldier, ‘what did your father do?’ </p>
<p>‘He was a mechanic.’ </p>
<p>‘Why did you not work like him?’ </p>
<p>‘Because there was no work for me.’ </p>
<p>‘Bouverat, why did you join the <em>Pupilles de la Commune?’ </em></p>
<p><em>‘</em>To get something to eat.’ </p>
<p>‘You have been arrested for vagrancy?’ </p>
<p>‘Yes, twice; the second time for stealing a pair of stockings.’ </p>
<p>‘Cagnoncle, you were <em>Enfant de la Commune?’ </em></p>
<p><em>‘</em>Yes, sir.’ </p>
<p>‘Why did you leave your family?’ </p>
<p>‘Because they had no bread.’ </p>
<p>‘Did you discharge many shots?’ </p>
<p>‘About fifty.’ </p>
<p>‘Lescot, why did you leave your mother?’ </p>
<p>‘Because she could not keep me.’ </p>
<p>‘How many children were there of you?’ </p>
<p>‘Three.’ </p>
<p>‘You have been wounded?’ </p>
<p>‘Yes, by a ball in the head.’ </p>
<p>‘Leberg, you have been with a master, and you were surprised taking the cash-box. How much did you take?’ </p>
<p>‘Ten sous.’ </p>
<p>‘Did not that money burn your hands?’ </p>
<p>And you, red-handed man! these words, do they not burn your lips? Sinister fools! who do not understand that before these children, thrown into the streets without education, without hope, through the necessity you have made for them, the culprit is you, lace-bedecked soldier, you, the public minister of a society in which children twelve years old, capable and willing to work, are forced to steal in order to get a pair of stockings, and have no other alternative than to fall beneath bullets or die of hunger!</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XXXIV
The trials of the Communards
Conciliation is the angel descending after the storm. (Dufaure to the National Assembly, 26th April, 1871.)
The human lakes of Versailles and Satory were soon overflowing. From the first days of June the prisoners were filed off to the seaports and crowded into cattle-wagons, the awnings of which, hermetically closed, let in no breath of air. In a corner was a heap of biscuits; but themselves thrown upon this heap, the prisoners had soon reduced it to mere crumbs. For twenty-four hours, and sometimes thirty-two hours, they remained without anything to drink. They fought in this throng for a little air, a little room. Some, maddened, flung themselves upon their comrades.[239] One day at La Fert�-Bemard cries were uttered in a wagon. The chief of the escort stopped the convoy; the sergeants-de-ville discharged their revolvers through the awning. Silence ensued, and the rolling coffins set out again at full speed.
From the month of June to the month of September 28,000 prisoners were thus thrown into the harbours, the forts and the oceanic isles, from Cherbourg to the Gironde. Twenty-five pontoons took in 20,000, the forts and isles 8,087.
On the pontoons tortures were inflicted by regulation. The traditions of June and of December were religiously observed with the victims of 1871. The prisoners, penned in cages made of wooden planks and iron bars, received only a dim light through the nailed down port-holes. Ventilation there was none. From the first hours the exhalations were unbearable. The sentinels walked up and down in this menagerie with the order to fire at the slightest alarm. Cannon charged with grapeshot overlooked the batteries. There were neither hammocks nor blankets, and for all food some biscuits, bread, and beans, but no wine or tobacco. The inhabitants of Brest and Cherbourg having sent some provisions and little luxuries, the officers sent them back.
This cruelty relaxed somewhat after a time. The prisoners received a hammock for every two, some shirts, some blouses, and now and then some wine. They were allowed to wash, to come on to the deck to snatch a little fresh air. The sailors showed some humanity, but the marines were still the same bandits as in the days of May, and the crew was often obliged to tear the prisoners from them.
The regime of the pontoons varied according to the officers. At Brest the second officer, commander of the Ville de Lyon, forbade the insulting of the prisoners; while the master-at-arms of the Breslau treated them like convicts. At Cherbourg one of the lieutenants of the Tage, Cl�menceau, was ferocious. The commander of the Bayard turned his vessel into a diminutive Orangerie. This ship had witnessed the most abominable acts perhaps that have sullied the history of the French navy. Absolute silence was the rule on board. As soon as anyone spoke in the cages the sentry menaced and several times shot. For a complaint, or mere forgetfulness of a rule, the prisoners were tied to the bars of their cages by the ankles and wrists. [240]
The dungeons on shore were as terrible as the pontoons. At Qu�lern as many as forty prisoners were shut up in the same casemate. The lower ones were deadly. The cesspools emptied into them, and in the morning the faecal matter covered the floor some two inches deep. By the side of these was salubrious unoccupied accommodation, but they would not remove the prisoners thither. One day M. Jules Simon came, thought that his former electors were looking but poorly, and decided that recourse must be taken to severity. Elis�e Reclus had opened a school, and tried to raise out of their ignorance a hundred and fifty-one prisoners who could neither read nor write. The Minister of Public Education had the classes stopped, and had the small library, which the prisoners had got together by making the greatest sacrifices, closed.
The prisoners of the forts, like those of the pontoons, were fed on biscuits and bacon; later on, soup and broth were added on Sundays; knives and forks were forbidden; it cost several days’ struggle to get spoons. The profit of the sutler, which, according to the list of charges, ought to be limited to a tenth, reached as much as five hundred per cent.
At the Fort Boyard men and women were packed into the same enclosure, separated only by a screen. The women were forced to perform their ablutions under the eyes of the sentinels. Sometimes their husbands were in the neighbouring compartment. ‘We noticed,’ wrote a prisoner, ‘a young and beautiful woman, twenty years old, who fainted every time she was forced to undress.’[241]
According to much evidence which we have received, the most cruel prison was that of St. Marcouf. The prisoners remained there for over six months, deprived of air, light, and tobacco, forbidden to speak, having for their only nourishment the crumbs of brown biscuits and rancid fat. All were attacked with scurvy.
This continual severity got the better of the most robust constitutions; there were in consequence 2,000 sick in the hospitals. The official reports admit 1,179 dead out of 33,665 civil prisoners. This figure is evidently below the truth. During the first days at Versailles a certain number of individuals were killed, and others died without being counted. There were no statistics before the transfer to the pontoons. There is no exaggeration in saying that 2,000 prisoners died while in the hands of the Versaillese. A great number perished afterwards of anaemia, and of maladies contracted during their captivity.
Some idea of the tortures of the pontoons and the forts, far from the surveillance of public opinion, may be gathered from those that were openly displayed at Versailles,[242] under the eyes of the Government the Chamber, and the Radicals. Colonel Gaillard, chief of military justice, had said to the soldiers who guarded the prisoners of the Chantiers, ‘As soon as you see any one move, raising their arms, fire; it is I who give you the order.’
At the Grenier d'Abondance of the Western Railway there were eight hundred women. For weeks and weeks they slept on straw, were unable to change their linen. At the slightest noise, a quarrel, the guards threw themselves upon them, struck them, more especially on the breasts. Charles Mercereau, a former Cent-Garde, the governor of this sink, had those that displeased him tied down and then beat them with his cane. He led about over his dominions the ladies of Versailles, covetous of petroleuses, and before them said to his victims, ‘Come, hussies, cast down your eyes.’ And indeed that was the least our Federal women could do before these worthy persons.
Prostitutes, carried off in the razzias, and carefully kept there in order to spy upon the other prisoners, publicly abandoned themselves to the guardians. The protests of the women of the Commune were punished by blows with cords. With a refinement of infamy, the
Versaillese wished to bow down these valiant women to the level of the others. All the prisoners were subjected to inspection.
Dignity and outraged nature revenged themselves by terrible cries. ‘Where is my father? Where my husband? and my son? What! alone, quite alone, and all these cowards against me! I, the mother, the laborious wife, subjected to the whip, insult, and sullied by these unclean hands for having defended liberty!’ Many went mad. All passed through their hours of madness. Those who were pregnant miscarried or brought forth still-born children.
The priests were no more wanting in the prisons than at the shootings. The chaplain of Richemont said to the prisoners, ‘I know that I am here in a forest of Bondy’[243] but my duty,’ etc. On the day of St. Magdalene the Bishop of Algiers, making a delicate allusion to the saint of the day, said to them, ‘That they were all Magdalenes, but not repentant; that Magdalene had neither burned nor assassinated;’ and uttering other evangelical amenities.
The children were shut up in a part of the women’s prison, and were just as brutally treated. A corporal, the secretary of Mercereau, kicked open the stomach of a boy; another received the bastinado, and lingered for a long time at the infirmary. The son of Ranvier, twelve years old, was cruelly beaten for refusing to betray the hiding-place of his father.
All these unfortunate prisoners of the pontoons, the forts, and the houses of correction were for several months devoured by vermin before their cases were inquired into. The Versaillese Moloch held more victims than he could digest. After the first days of June he disgorged 1,090 persons reclaimed by the reactionaries. But how to draw up indictments against 36,000 prisoners? It was all very well for Dufaure to let loose all the police agents of the Empire into the prisons; in the month of August only 4,000 prisoners had been interrogated.
Still it was necessary to satiate the rage of the bourgeoisie, which wanted a sensational trial. A few celebrities who had escaped the massacre had been taken, some members of the Council of the Commune, of the Central Committee, Rossel, Rochefort, etc. M. Thiers and Dufaure got up a grand performance.
The trial was to be the model to serve as a type for the jurisprudence of the courts-martial, for the prisoners were to be judged by the same soldiers who had conquered them. The old procureur and his president applied all their pettifogging cunning to lowering the debate.
They refused the character of political men to the accused, and reduced the insurrection to an ordinary crime, thus securing to themselves the right of cutting short effective defences, and the advantage of condemnations to the penal colony and to death, which the hypocritical bourgeoisie pretends to have abolished in political cases.[244] The third court-martial was carefully selected. The commissar chosen was Gaveau, a base fanatic, who had shown signs of mental derangement and had struck the prisoners in the streets of Versailles; the president, Merlin, a colonel of engineers, one of the capitulationists of Bazaine’s army; the rest an assortment of trusty Bonapartists. Sedan and Metz were going to judge Paris.
The ceremony commenced on the 7th August, in a large hall containing two thousand seats. Personages of rank reclined in the red velvet arm-chairs; deputies occupied three hundred seats; the remainder belonged to the bourgeois of note, to ‘worthy’ families, to the aristocracy of prostitution, and to the howling press. The talking journalists, the brilliant dresses, the smiling faces, the toyings with fans, the gay bouquets, the opera-glasses pointed in all directions, reminded one of the most elegant first-night performances. The staff officers, in full uniform, smartly conducted the ladies to their seats, not forgetting to make the indispensable bow.
All this scum boiled over when the prisoners appeared. There were seventeen: Ferr�, Assi, Jourde, Paschal Grousset, R�gere, Billioray, Courbet, Urbain, Victor Cl�ment, Trinquet, Champy, Rastoul, Verdure, Decamps, Parent, members of the Council of the Commune; Ferrat and Lullier, members of the Central Committee.
Gaveau read the accusation act. This revolution was born of two plots, that of the revolutionary party and that of the International; Paris had risen on the 18th March, in answer to the appeal of a few scoundrels; the Central Committee had ordered the execution of Lecomte and Cl�ment-Thomas; the demonstration of the Place Vend�me was an unarmed demonstration; the head-surgeon of the army had been assassinated while making a supreme appeal to conciliation; the Commune had committed thefts of all kinds; the implements of the nuns of Picpus were transformed into instruments of orthopaedy; the explosion of the Rapp magazines was the work of the Commune; desirous of kindling violent hatred of the enemy in the hearts of the Federals, Ferr� had presided at the execution of the hostages of La Roquette, set fire to the Ministry of Finance, as was proved by the facsimile of an order written in his hand, ‘Burn Finances!’ Each one of the members of the Council of the Commune had to answer for facts relating to his particular functions and collectively for all the decrees issued. This indictment, worthy of a low police agent, communicated beforehand to M. Thiers, indeed made of the cause a simple affair of robbery and arson.
It took up a whole sitting. The next day, Ferr�, interrogated the first, refused to answer, and laid his conclusions upon the table. ‘The conclusions of the incendiary Ferr� are of no moment!’ cried Gaveau, and the witnesses against him were called. Fourteen out of twentyfour belonged to the police; the others were priests or Government employees. An expert in handwriting, celebrated at the lawcourts for his blunders, affirmed that the order ‘Burn Finances’ was certainly in Ferr�’s hand. In vain the accused demanded that the signature of this order should be compared with his, which figured very often in the jail register; that at least the original should be produced, and not the facsimile. Gaveau exclaimed indignantly, ‘Why, this is want of confidence!’
Thus set to rights from the outset as to the plot and the character of their judges, the accused might have declined every debate; they committed the fault of accepting it. If even they had proudly proclaimed their political character! But it was not so; some even denied it. Almost all, confining themselves to their personal defence, abandoned the Revolution of the 18th March, whose mandate they had solicited or accepted. Their preoccupation for their own safety betrayed itself by sad defections. But from the very dock of the accused the voice of the people thus denied arose avengingly. A workman of that brave Parisian race, the first in labour, study, and combat, a member of the Council of the Commune, intelligent and convinced, modest in the Council, one of the foremost in the struggle, the shoemaker Trinquet, proclaimed the honour of having fulfilled his mandate to the end. ‘I was,’ said he, ‘sent to the Commune by my co-citizens; I have paid with my person; I have been to the barricades, and I regret not having died there; I should not today assist at this sad spectacle of colleagues who, after having taken their share in the action, will no longer bear their part of the responsibility. I am an insurgent; I do not deny it.’
The examinations were drawn out with fastidious slowness during seventeen sittings. Always the same public of soldiers, bourgeois, courtesans, hissing the accused; the same witnesses, priests, police agents, and functionaries; the same fury in the accusation. the same cynicism in the tribunal, the same howling of the press. The massacres had not glutted this. It yelled at the accused, demanded their death, and every day dragged them through the mire of its reports.[245] Foreign correspondents were revolted. The Standard, a great reviler of the Commune, said, ‘Anything more scandalous than the tone of the demi-monde press during this trial it is impossible to imagine.’ Some of the accused having asked for the protection of the president, Merlin took up the defence of the newspapers.
Then came the prosecutor’s address to the court. Gaveau to remain true to his instructions, was to demonstrate that Paris had fought for six weeks in order to enable a few individuals to steal the remainder of the public chests, to bum some houses, and to shoot a few gendarmes. This epauletted limb of the law overthrew as a soldier all the arguments he built up as a magistrate. ‘The Commune, ‘he said, ‘had acted as a Government,’ and five minutes after he refused the members of the Council of the Commune the character of political men. Passing in review the different accused, he said of Ferr�, ‘I should be wasting my time and yours by discussing the numerous charges weighing upon him,’ of Jourde, ‘The figures he has given you are quite imaginary. I shall not trespass upon your time by discussing them.’ During the battle in the streets Jourde had received the order of the Committee of Public Safety to remit a thousand francs to every member of the Council. About thirty only had received this sum. Gaveau said, ‘They divided millions amongst each other;’ and a man of his sort must have believed this. What sovereign has ever abandoned power without carrying off millions? He lengthily accused Grousset of having stolen paper in order to print his newspaper; another of having lived with a mistress. A coarse lansquenet, incapable of understanding that the more he lowered the men the greater he made this Revolution, so vital despite all defections and incapacities.
The audience emphasised this accusation with frantic applause. At the conclusion there were calls as in a theatre. Merlin gave Ferr�’s advocate permission to speak, but Ferr� declared he wished to defend himself, and commenced reading:
Ferr�: ‘After the conclusion of the treaty of peace consequent upon the shameful capitulation of Paris, the Republic was in danger, the men who had succeeded the Empire fallen in the midst of mire and blood’ —
Merlin: Fallen in the midst of mire and blood! Here I must stop you. Was not your Government in the same situation?
Ferr�: ‘Clung to power, and, though overwhelmed by public contempt, they prepared in the dark a coup-d'�tat; they persisted in refusing Paris the election of her municipal council’ —
Gaveau: This is not true.
Merlin: What you are saying, Ferr�, is false. Continue, but at the third time I shall stop you.
Ferr�: ‘The honest and sincere journals were suppressed, the best patriots condemned to death’ —
Gaveau: The prisoner cannot go on reading this. I shall ask for the application of the law.
Ferr�: ‘The Royalists were preparing for the partition of France. At last, in the night of the 18th March, they believed themselves ready, and attempted to disarm the National Guard, and the wholesale arrest of Republicans’ —
Merlin: Come, sit down. I allow your advocate to speak.
(The advocate of Ferr� demanded that his client might be allowed to read the last sentences of his declaration, and Merlin gave way.)
Ferr�: ‘A member of the Commune, I am in the hands of its victors. They want my head; they may take it. I will never save my life by cowardice. Free I have lived, so I will die. I add but one word. Fortune is capricious; I confide to the future the care of my memory and my revenge.’
Merlin: The memory of an assassin!
Gaveau: Such manifestoes should be sent to the penal colony.
Merlin: All this does not answer to the acts for which you are here.
Ferr�: This means that I accept the fate that is in store for me.
During this duel between Merlin and Ferr� the hall had remained silent. Ferocious hisses burst forth when Ferr� concluded. The president was obliged to raise the sitting, and the judges were going out when a barrister demanded that notice should be taken for the defence that the president had called Ferr� ‘assassin’.
The hisses of the audience answered. The advocate indignantly turned to the tribunal, to the seats of the press, to the public. Cries of rage arose from all corners of the hall, drowning his voice for several minutes. Merlin, who was radiant, at last obtained silence, and answered cavalierly, ‘I acknowledge that I made use of the expression of w ich the advocate spoke. The court takes notice of your conclusions.’
The day before, as a barrister remarked to him, ‘We are all answerable, not to the public opinion of today, but to history, which will judge us;’ Merlin had cynically answered, ‘History! At that epoch we shall no longer be here!’ The French bourgeoisie had found its Jeffries.
Early the next day the hall was crowded. The curiosity of the public, the anxiety of the judges, were extreme. Gaveau, in order to accuse his adversaries of all crimes at once, had for two days talked politics, history, socialism. It would have sufficed to answer each one of his arguments, in order to give the cause that political character which he denied it, if one of the prisoners were at last to rouse up, and, less careful of his person than of the Commune, follow up the accusation step by step, oppose to the grotesque theories of conspiracy the eternal provocation of the privileged classes; describe Paris offering herself to the Government of National Defence, betrayed by it, then attacked by Versailles, abandoned; the proletarians reorganizing all the services of this great city, and in a state of war, surrounded by treason, governing for two months without police spies and without executions, remaining poor in sight of the milliards of the bank; if he were to confront the sixty-three hostages with the 20,000 assassinated, unveil the pontoons, the jails, swarming with 40,000 unfortunate beings; take the world to witness in the name of truth, of justice, of the future, and make of the accused Commune the accuser.
The president might have interrupted him, the cries of the public drowned his appeal, the court after the first words declared him outlawed. Such a man, reduced to silence, would, like Danton gagged, find a gesture, a cry, which should pierce the walls and hurl his anathema at the head of the tribunal.
The vanquished missed this revenge. Instead of presenting a collective defence or of maintaining a silence which would have saved their dignity, the accused entrusted themselves to the barristers. Each one of these gentlemen stretched a point to save his client even at the expense of his brother lawyers. One barrister was also the Figaro’s and the confidant of the Empress; another, one of the demonstrators of the Place Vend�me, begged the court not to confound his cause with that of the scoundrel’s near him. There were scandalous pleadings. This debasement disarmed neither the tribunal nor the public. Every moment Gaveau bounded out of his arm-chair. ‘You are an insolent fellow,’ said he to a lawyer. ‘If there is anything absurd here, it is you.’ The audience applauded, ever ready to pounce upon the prisoners. On the 31st August its fury rose to such a pitch that Merlin threatened to have the court cleared.
On the 2nd September the court feigned to deliberate the whole day. At nine o'clock in the evening it returned to the sitting, and Merlin read the judgment. Ferr� and Lullier were condemned to death; Trinquet and Urbain to hard labour for life; Assi, Billioray, Champy, Regere, Grousset, Verdure, Ferrat to transportation in a fortress; Courbet to six months’ and Victor Cl�ment to three months’ imprisonment. Decamps and Parent were acquitted. The audience retired much disappointed at having got only two condemnations to death.
As a fact, this judicial performance had proved nothing. Could the Revolution of the 18th March be appreciated from the conduct of secondary actors, and Delescluze, Varlin, Vermorel, Tridon, Moreau, and many others, by the attitude of Lullier, Decamps, Victor Cl�ment, or Billioray? And even if the hearing of Ferr� and Trinquet had not proved that there had been men in the Council of the Commune, what then did the defection of the majority show if not that this movement was the work of all, not of a few great minds; that in this crisis the people only had been great, they only revolutionary; that the Revolution was to be found in the people, not in the Government of the Commune?
The bourgeoisie, on the contrary, had displayed all its hideousness. The audience, the tribunal, had been on the same level. Some witnesses had manifestly perjured themselves. During the debates, in the lobbies, in the caf�s, all the ragamuffins who had endeavoured to dupe the Commune impudently ascribed to themselves the success of the army. The Figaro, having opened a subscription for Ducatel, had picked up 100,000 francs and an order of the L�gion d'Honneur for him. Allured by this success, all the conspirators demanded their aims and their order. The partisans of Beaufond-Lasnier, those of Charpentier-Domalain, fell out, recounted their prowess, each and all swearing that he had betrayed better than his rivals.
While society was being avenged at Versailles, the Court of Assizes of Paris avenged the honour of Jules Favre. Immediately after the Commune, the Minister for Foreign Affairs had had M. Laluy� arrested, who was guilty of having communicated to Milli�re the documents published in the Vengeur. The honest Minister, not having succeeded in getting his enemy shot as a Communard, summoned him before the assizes for libel. Here the former member of the Government of National Defence, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, the deputy of Paris, publicly confessed that he had committed forgeries, but he pleaded having done so to secure his children a fortune. This touching avowal melted the patres familias of the jury, and Laluy� was condemned to imprisonment for one year. Some months later he died at Sainte P�Iagie. Jules Favre was terribly lucky. In less than six months the firing squad and the dungeon had delivered him of two redoubtable enemies.[246]
While the third court-martial was quarrelling with the lawyers, the fourth hurried through its business without more ado. On the 16th August, almost immediately after its opening, it had already pronounced two sentences of death. If the one court had its Jeffries, the other had its Trestaillon in Colonel Boisdenemetz, a kind of wild boar, a drunkard, seeing all red, a wit at times, and correspondent of the Figaro. On the 4th September some women were brought before him, accused of setting fire to the L�gion d'Honneur. This was the trial of the petroleuses. The eight thousand enrolled furies who had been announced by the newspapers of order were reduced to the number of five. The cross-examination proved that the so-called petroleuses were only admirably kind-hearted ambulance nurses. One of them, R�tiffe, said, ‘I should have looked after a soldier of Versailles as wen as a National Guard.’ ‘Why,’ another was asked, ‘did you remain when all the battalion ran away?’ ‘There were wounded and dying,’ answered she simply. The witnesses for the prosecution themselves declared that they had not seen any of them kindle fire; but their fate was decided beforehand. Between two sittings Boisdenemetz cried in a caf�, ‘Death to all these trulls!’
Three barristers out of five had deserted the bar. ‘Where are they?’ said the president. ‘They have asked to be allowed to absent themselves to go to the country,’ answered the commissar. The court charged soldiers with the defence of these poor women. One of them, the Quatermaster Bordelais, made this fine speech: ‘I defer to the wisdom of the tribunal.’
His client, Su�tens, was condemned to death, as were also R�tiffe and Marchais, ‘for having attempted to change the form of the Government;’ the two others to transportation and confinement. One of the condemned, turning to the officer who read the sentence, cried to him in a heartrending voice, ‘And who will feed my child?’
‘Thy child! See, he is here!’
Some days after, before this same Boisdenemetz, fifteen children of Paris appeared; the eldest was sixteen years old, the youngest, so small that he could hardly be seen in the dock of prisoners, was eleven. They wore blue blouses and military k�pis.
‘Druet,’ said the soldier, ‘what did your father do?’
‘He was a mechanic.’
‘Why did you not work like him?’
‘Because there was no work for me.’
‘Bouverat, why did you join the Pupilles de la Commune?’
‘To get something to eat.’
‘You have been arrested for vagrancy?’
‘Yes, twice; the second time for stealing a pair of stockings.’
‘Cagnoncle, you were Enfant de la Commune?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Why did you leave your family?’
‘Because they had no bread.’
‘Did you discharge many shots?’
‘About fifty.’
‘Lescot, why did you leave your mother?’
‘Because she could not keep me.’
‘How many children were there of you?’
‘Three.’
‘You have been wounded?’
‘Yes, by a ball in the head.’
‘Leberg, you have been with a master, and you were surprised taking the cash-box. How much did you take?’
‘Ten sous.’
‘Did not that money burn your hands?’
And you, red-handed man! these words, do they not burn your lips? Sinister fools! who do not understand that before these children, thrown into the streets without education, without hope, through the necessity you have made for them, the culprit is you, lace-bedecked soldier, you, the public minister of a society in which children twelve years old, capable and willing to work, are forced to steal in order to get a pair of stockings, and have no other alternative than to fall beneath bullets or die of hunger!
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<h2>E. Belfort Bax</h2>
<h1>Lissagary’s <em>History of the Commune</em> <small><small><a id="f1" href="#n1" name="f1">[1]</a></small></small></h1>
<h3>(4 December 1886)</h3>
<hr class="infotop" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="info"><em><strong>History of the Commune</strong></em>, <strong>Commonweal</strong>, 4th Dec 1886, p.283 (review).<br>
Transcribed by Ted Crawford<br>
Marked up by <a href="../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Marxists’ Internet Archive</strong>.</p>
<hr class="infobot" size="1" noshade="noshade">
<p class="fst">This important work has at last appeared in English, and we do not hesitate to say that it ought to be in the hands of every Socialist. The history of the Commune, as presented in the generally unbiased narrative of Lissagaray, bears a profound moral with it. It is the story of the struggle of noble enthusiasm, genuine disinterestedness and devotion, and, in the ordinary sense great opportunities with foolish vanity, personal squabbles, inefficiency of organisation, and pedantry, resulting in the ascendancy of the latter, and consequent general collapse. The Versaillaise entered upon a victory already prepared for them. And it will be so again in the next great popular movement, should due subordination of function and organisation not be able to keep the whip hand of mere confusion, cliquishness and faddism. But the moral to be drawn is of more immediate application than to the next popular rising. To compare small matters with great, there are Socialist organisatians (save the mark!) in existence to day which are literally qualifying for disaster when the time comes. We see precisely the same elements at work in them which caused the fall of the Commune with the horrors of the “bloody week.” Again and again as he reads the story of the tragedy of ’71, the friend of the Cause feels inclined to wring his hands over the opportunities lost. Lost because everything was in confusion, nearly everybody was wanting to do everybody else’s work, and consequently doing no work at all, and in many cases doubtless with the best intentions. Even at the supreme hour, when the Versaillese were actually inside Paris, there was a chance of rolling back the invasion by means of a cross fire between Montmartre and the Pantheon, had these portions been properly fortified and garrisoned; but there was no one there. Again, when the Commune was in death throes, street after street was sacrificed because officers and others carrying important messages were stopped and forced to assist in the ordinary work of barricade making the last defences being thus literally immolated before a false and idiotic notion of equality.</p>
<p>We wish that every true Socialist at heart whose head is led astray by disintegrative tendencies would read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the important lessons of this volume. The cause was wrecked in 1871, in great part at least, not because of spies or traitors, for there were marvellously few of those who took any prominent part in the movement who can fairly be accused of sinister motives, or of attempts to make personal gain out of it but because of well-meaning conceited, faddy, cantankerous persons, who wasted time in long winded speeches about personal matters, etc., and who would neither do any work themselves nor let any one else do it. Other follies there were of course, although they were doubtless partly caused by the above, such as making decrees and not getting them respected. The case of the hostages was one of the most fatal of these. Had the archbishop been shot on the first corroboration of the fact that Federal prisoners were being butchered at Versailles, the butcheries might have been checked. As it was, he was reserved only to be shot after there was no good to be got by shooting him at all, save to give the civilised world an opportunity of displaying its capacities in shamming horror. The translation of the book, we should say, is excellent.</p>
<p class="author">E.B. Bax</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Note</h3>
<p class="note"><a id="n1" href="#f1" name="n1">1.</a> This book was, of course, translated by Eleanor Marx.</p>
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MIA > Archive > Bax
E. Belfort Bax
Lissagary’s History of the Commune [1]
(4 December 1886)
History of the Commune, Commonweal, 4th Dec 1886, p.283 (review).
Transcribed by Ted Crawford
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
This important work has at last appeared in English, and we do not hesitate to say that it ought to be in the hands of every Socialist. The history of the Commune, as presented in the generally unbiased narrative of Lissagaray, bears a profound moral with it. It is the story of the struggle of noble enthusiasm, genuine disinterestedness and devotion, and, in the ordinary sense great opportunities with foolish vanity, personal squabbles, inefficiency of organisation, and pedantry, resulting in the ascendancy of the latter, and consequent general collapse. The Versaillaise entered upon a victory already prepared for them. And it will be so again in the next great popular movement, should due subordination of function and organisation not be able to keep the whip hand of mere confusion, cliquishness and faddism. But the moral to be drawn is of more immediate application than to the next popular rising. To compare small matters with great, there are Socialist organisatians (save the mark!) in existence to day which are literally qualifying for disaster when the time comes. We see precisely the same elements at work in them which caused the fall of the Commune with the horrors of the “bloody week.” Again and again as he reads the story of the tragedy of ’71, the friend of the Cause feels inclined to wring his hands over the opportunities lost. Lost because everything was in confusion, nearly everybody was wanting to do everybody else’s work, and consequently doing no work at all, and in many cases doubtless with the best intentions. Even at the supreme hour, when the Versaillese were actually inside Paris, there was a chance of rolling back the invasion by means of a cross fire between Montmartre and the Pantheon, had these portions been properly fortified and garrisoned; but there was no one there. Again, when the Commune was in death throes, street after street was sacrificed because officers and others carrying important messages were stopped and forced to assist in the ordinary work of barricade making the last defences being thus literally immolated before a false and idiotic notion of equality.
We wish that every true Socialist at heart whose head is led astray by disintegrative tendencies would read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the important lessons of this volume. The cause was wrecked in 1871, in great part at least, not because of spies or traitors, for there were marvellously few of those who took any prominent part in the movement who can fairly be accused of sinister motives, or of attempts to make personal gain out of it but because of well-meaning conceited, faddy, cantankerous persons, who wasted time in long winded speeches about personal matters, etc., and who would neither do any work themselves nor let any one else do it. Other follies there were of course, although they were doubtless partly caused by the above, such as making decrees and not getting them respected. The case of the hostages was one of the most fatal of these. Had the archbishop been shot on the first corroboration of the fact that Federal prisoners were being butchered at Versailles, the butcheries might have been checked. As it was, he was reserved only to be shot after there was no good to be got by shooting him at all, save to give the civilised world an opportunity of displaying its capacities in shamming horror. The translation of the book, we should say, is excellent.
E.B. Bax
Note
1. This book was, of course, translated by Eleanor Marx.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XXII<br>
Conspiracies against the Commune</h1>
<p><img src="pics/arnold-georges.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Georges Arnold" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p>The Commune had given rise to the various trades of the plotmonger, the betrayer of gates, the conspiracy-broker. Vulgar sharpers, Jonathan Wilds <span class="context">[character in a novel by Henry Fielding]</span> of the gutter, whom a shadow of police would have scared away, they had no other strength than the weakness of the prefecture and the carelessness of the delegations. The evidence relative to them is to a certain extent still in the keeping of the Versaillese; but they have themselves published a good deal, often borne witness against each other, and what with private information, what with the opportunities offered by our exile, we shall be able to penetrate into this realm of blackguardism.</p>
<p>From the end of March they levied contributions upon all the Ministries of Versailles, offering for a few sous to surrender some of the gates of Paris or to kidnap the members of the Council. By degrees they were more or less classed. The colonel of the staff, Corbin, was charged with the organisation of the faithful National Guards still at Paris. The commander of a reactionary battalion, Charpentier, a former drill officer of St. Cyr, offered him his services, was accepted, and presented a few of his cronies, Durouchoux, Demay, and Gallimard. Their instructions were to recruit clandestine battalions, who were to occupy the strategic points of the town on the day when the general attack would summons all the Federals to the ramparts. A naval officer, Domalain, offered at that moment to surprise Montmartre, the H�tel-de-Ville, the Place Vend�me, and the commissariat, with a few thousand volunteers, whom he professed to have at hand. He entered into partnership with Charpentier.</p>
<p>They bestirred themselves with might and main, grouped an astonishing number of persons around official posts, and soon gave notice of 6,000 men and 150 artillery men provided with spiking machines. All these brave ones only waited for a signal. In the meanwhile, money was of course wanted to keep up their zeal, and Charpentier and Domalain, through the agency of Durouchoux, indeed drew several hundred thousand francs from the Versaillese.</p>
<p>Towards the end of April they found a redoubtable rival in Le Mere de Beaufond, an ex-naval officer and governor of Cayenne ad interim. Instead of drumming up for bourgeois recruits, an idea he declared ridiculous, Beaufond proposed paralysing the resistance by means of clever agents who should provoke defections and disorganize the services. His plan, quite in accord with M. Thiers’ notions, was favourably looked upon at Versailles, which gave him full powers. He took as helpmates two men of resolution, Laroque, a clerk at the bank, and Lasnier, an ex-officer of Schoelcher’s legion.</p>
<p>Besides these, the Ministry had still other bloodhounds — the Alsatian Aronshonne, colonel of a free corps during the war, cashiered by his men, who at Tours had accused him of theft; Franzini, later on extradited by England and condemned as a swindler, Barral de Montaut, who boldly presented himself at the War Office, and, thanks to his aplomb, got himself named chief of the seventh legion; the Abb� Cellini, chaplain of one knows not what fleet, patronized by Jules Simon; last, the noble-minded conspirators, the great generals disdained by the revolution, Lullier, Du Bisson, Ganier d'Abin. These honest Republicans could not allow the Commune to ruin the Republic. If they accepted money from Versailles, it was only with a view to saving Paris and the Republican party from the men of the H�tel-deVille. They wanted to overthrow the Commune, but betray it, oh! no, by no means!</p>
<p>One Briere St.-Lagier framed comprehensive reports on all these knights, and M. Thiers’ secretary, Troncin-Dumersan, condemned three years after as swindler, travelled backwards and forwards between Paris and Versailles, brought the money, superintended and held in his hand all the threads of these multifarious conspiracies, the one being often carried on behind the back of the other.</p>
<p>Thence continual collisions. The ragamuffins mutually denounced each other. Briere de St.-Lagier wrote: ‘I beg M. le Ministre de I'Int�rieur to have M. Le Mere de Beaufond watched. I strongly suspect him of being a Bonapartist. The money he has received has</p>
<p>been used to a great extent to pay his debts.’ By way of compensation another report said, ‘I suspect MM. Domalain, Charpentier, and Briere de St.-Lagier. They often meet at Peter’s, and instead of occupying themselves with the great cause of the deliverance, imitate Pantaguruel. <span class="context">[pleasure-loving character in a book by Rabelais]</span> They pass for Orleanists.’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n158">[158]</a></sup> </p>
<p>The most venturesome of these enterprisers, Beaufond, managed to enter into relations with the general staff of Colonel Henri Prodhomme, with the Ecole Militaire, commanded by Vonot, and with the War Office, where the chief of the artillery, Guyet, contrived to embroil the service of the munitions. His agents, Lasnier and Laroque, worked upon a certain Muley, who, having circumvented the Central Committee, got himself named chief of the seventeenth legion, and to some extent disabled it. An officer of artillery, Captain Piguier, placed at their disposal by the Ministry, traced the plan of the barricades, and one of the band could write on the 8th May, ‘No torpedoes are laid; the army may enter to the flourish of trumpets.’ Now they had recourse to direct subornation; now acting the part of fervent Communards, they knew how to draw out information; while the imprudence of the functionaries singularly facilitated their task. Staff officers, service chiefs, fond of assuming consequential airs, discussed the most delicate matters in the caf�s of the boulevards, full of spies.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n159">[159]</a></sup> Cournet, who had succeeded Rigault at the prefecture of police, despite the gravity of his deportment, did not better the service of general security. Lullier, twice arrested, each time escaping, openly spoke in the caf�s of sweeping away the Commune. Troncin-Dumersan, known for twenty years as the police agent of the Ministry of the Interior, freely walked along the boulevards, passing his retainers in full view. The contractors charged with the fortification of Montmartre every day found new pretexts to defer the opening of the works; the Br�a Church remained intact; the undertaker of the demolition of the expiatory monument managed to put it off till the entry of the troops. Chance alone discovered the <em>brassard </em>(armlet) plot, and the fidelity of Dombrowski disclosed that of Vaysset.</p>
<p>This commercial agent had gone to Versailles to propose to the Ministry an operation of revictualling. Shown out, he again turned up, but this time with the offer to bribe Dombrowski. Under the patronage of Admiral Saisset — more crazy than ever — he got up his enterprise in the shape of a commercial society, found shareholders, twenty thousand francs for the incidental expenses, and entered into communication with an aide-de-camp of Dombrowski’s named Hutzinger, afterwards employed by the Versaillese police as spy amongst the exiles in London. Vaysset told him that Versailles would give Dombrowski a million if the general surrendered the gates under his command. Dombrowski at once apprised the Committee of Public Safety, and proposed to allow one or two Versaillese army corps to enter the town and then to crush them by battalions lying in ambush. The Committee would not risk this venture, but ordered Dombrowski to follow up the negotiation.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n160">[160]</a></sup> Hutzinger accompanied Vaysset to Versailles, saw Saisset, who offered to surrender himself as hostage in guarantee of the execution of the promises made to Dombrowski. The admiral was even, on a certain night, to repair secretly to the Place Vend�me, and the Committee of Public Safety, forewarned, was preparing to arrest him, when Barth�lemy St. Hilaire dissuaded Saisset from this new blunder.</p>
<p>Then M. Thiers began to abandon the hope of taking the town by surprise. This was his hobby of the first days of May. Upon the faith of a bailiff, who promised to get the Dauphine gate surrendered by his friend Laporte, chief of the sixteenth legion, M. Thiers had built up a whole plan in spite of the repugnance of MacMahon and of the army, eager for a triumphal entry.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n161">[161]</a></sup> During the night of the 3rd May the whole active army and part of the reserve were set on foot, and General Thiers went to sleep at Sevres. At midnight the troops were massed in the Bois de Boulogne before the lower lake, their eyes fixed on the closed gates. The latter were to be thrown open by a reactionary company which had formed at Passy under the orders of W�ry, a lieutenant of the thirty-eighth, acting as deputy of his former commander, Lavigne. But the intelligent conspirators had forgotten to warn Lavigne, and the company that was to relieve the Federals having had no order from their superior, suspected an ambush, and refused the service. Thus the trusty watch was not relieved. At dawn, after waiting in vain for several hours, the troops returned to their cantonments. Two days after, Laporte was arrested and set free again, much too soon.</p>
<p>Beaufond, taking up the bailiffs plan, guaranteed the surrender of the gates of Auteuil and Dauphine for the night of the 12th to the 13th May. M. Thiers, again caught, forwarded all the scaling gear, and several detachments were directed towards the Point du Jour, while the army held itself in readiness to follow. But at the last moment the profound combinations of the conspirators were foiled,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n162">[162]</a></sup> and, as on the 3rd, the army had to turn tail. This attempt was known to the Committee of Public Safety, who had known nothing of the first one.</p>
<p>Lasnier was arrested the next day. The Committee had just laid hands upon the tricolor armlets which the National Guards of order were to have worn on the entry of the army. The woman Legros, who made them, neglected to pay the girls in her employ. One of them, believing that the work was done on account of the Commune, went to ask for her wages at the H�tel-de-Ville. Inquiries made at the woman Legros’ put them on the traces of Beaufond and his accomplices. Beaufond and Laroque managed to hide; Troncin-Dumersan packed off to Versailles. Charpentier thus remained master of the field. Corbin urged him to organize his men by tens and hundreds, and traced him out a whole plan by which to get possession of the H�tel-de-Ville immediately after the entry of the troops. Charpentier, always imperturbable, diverted him day by day by news of fresh conquests, spoke of 20,000 recruits, asked for dynamite to blow up the houses,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n163">[163]</a></sup> and in true Pantagruelic style gobbled up the considerable sums made over to him by Durouchoux.</p>
<p>After all, the whole gang of conspirators did not succeed in surrendering one single gate, but they lent considerable aid in disorganizing the services. Still great care should be taken in availing oneself of their reports, often inflated with imaginary successes to justify the disbursement of the hundreds of thousands of francs that they pocketed.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XXII
Conspiracies against the Commune
The Commune had given rise to the various trades of the plotmonger, the betrayer of gates, the conspiracy-broker. Vulgar sharpers, Jonathan Wilds [character in a novel by Henry Fielding] of the gutter, whom a shadow of police would have scared away, they had no other strength than the weakness of the prefecture and the carelessness of the delegations. The evidence relative to them is to a certain extent still in the keeping of the Versaillese; but they have themselves published a good deal, often borne witness against each other, and what with private information, what with the opportunities offered by our exile, we shall be able to penetrate into this realm of blackguardism.
From the end of March they levied contributions upon all the Ministries of Versailles, offering for a few sous to surrender some of the gates of Paris or to kidnap the members of the Council. By degrees they were more or less classed. The colonel of the staff, Corbin, was charged with the organisation of the faithful National Guards still at Paris. The commander of a reactionary battalion, Charpentier, a former drill officer of St. Cyr, offered him his services, was accepted, and presented a few of his cronies, Durouchoux, Demay, and Gallimard. Their instructions were to recruit clandestine battalions, who were to occupy the strategic points of the town on the day when the general attack would summons all the Federals to the ramparts. A naval officer, Domalain, offered at that moment to surprise Montmartre, the H�tel-de-Ville, the Place Vend�me, and the commissariat, with a few thousand volunteers, whom he professed to have at hand. He entered into partnership with Charpentier.
They bestirred themselves with might and main, grouped an astonishing number of persons around official posts, and soon gave notice of 6,000 men and 150 artillery men provided with spiking machines. All these brave ones only waited for a signal. In the meanwhile, money was of course wanted to keep up their zeal, and Charpentier and Domalain, through the agency of Durouchoux, indeed drew several hundred thousand francs from the Versaillese.
Towards the end of April they found a redoubtable rival in Le Mere de Beaufond, an ex-naval officer and governor of Cayenne ad interim. Instead of drumming up for bourgeois recruits, an idea he declared ridiculous, Beaufond proposed paralysing the resistance by means of clever agents who should provoke defections and disorganize the services. His plan, quite in accord with M. Thiers’ notions, was favourably looked upon at Versailles, which gave him full powers. He took as helpmates two men of resolution, Laroque, a clerk at the bank, and Lasnier, an ex-officer of Schoelcher’s legion.
Besides these, the Ministry had still other bloodhounds — the Alsatian Aronshonne, colonel of a free corps during the war, cashiered by his men, who at Tours had accused him of theft; Franzini, later on extradited by England and condemned as a swindler, Barral de Montaut, who boldly presented himself at the War Office, and, thanks to his aplomb, got himself named chief of the seventh legion; the Abb� Cellini, chaplain of one knows not what fleet, patronized by Jules Simon; last, the noble-minded conspirators, the great generals disdained by the revolution, Lullier, Du Bisson, Ganier d'Abin. These honest Republicans could not allow the Commune to ruin the Republic. If they accepted money from Versailles, it was only with a view to saving Paris and the Republican party from the men of the H�tel-deVille. They wanted to overthrow the Commune, but betray it, oh! no, by no means!
One Briere St.-Lagier framed comprehensive reports on all these knights, and M. Thiers’ secretary, Troncin-Dumersan, condemned three years after as swindler, travelled backwards and forwards between Paris and Versailles, brought the money, superintended and held in his hand all the threads of these multifarious conspiracies, the one being often carried on behind the back of the other.
Thence continual collisions. The ragamuffins mutually denounced each other. Briere de St.-Lagier wrote: ‘I beg M. le Ministre de I'Int�rieur to have M. Le Mere de Beaufond watched. I strongly suspect him of being a Bonapartist. The money he has received has
been used to a great extent to pay his debts.’ By way of compensation another report said, ‘I suspect MM. Domalain, Charpentier, and Briere de St.-Lagier. They often meet at Peter’s, and instead of occupying themselves with the great cause of the deliverance, imitate Pantaguruel. [pleasure-loving character in a book by Rabelais] They pass for Orleanists.’[158]
The most venturesome of these enterprisers, Beaufond, managed to enter into relations with the general staff of Colonel Henri Prodhomme, with the Ecole Militaire, commanded by Vonot, and with the War Office, where the chief of the artillery, Guyet, contrived to embroil the service of the munitions. His agents, Lasnier and Laroque, worked upon a certain Muley, who, having circumvented the Central Committee, got himself named chief of the seventeenth legion, and to some extent disabled it. An officer of artillery, Captain Piguier, placed at their disposal by the Ministry, traced the plan of the barricades, and one of the band could write on the 8th May, ‘No torpedoes are laid; the army may enter to the flourish of trumpets.’ Now they had recourse to direct subornation; now acting the part of fervent Communards, they knew how to draw out information; while the imprudence of the functionaries singularly facilitated their task. Staff officers, service chiefs, fond of assuming consequential airs, discussed the most delicate matters in the caf�s of the boulevards, full of spies.[159] Cournet, who had succeeded Rigault at the prefecture of police, despite the gravity of his deportment, did not better the service of general security. Lullier, twice arrested, each time escaping, openly spoke in the caf�s of sweeping away the Commune. Troncin-Dumersan, known for twenty years as the police agent of the Ministry of the Interior, freely walked along the boulevards, passing his retainers in full view. The contractors charged with the fortification of Montmartre every day found new pretexts to defer the opening of the works; the Br�a Church remained intact; the undertaker of the demolition of the expiatory monument managed to put it off till the entry of the troops. Chance alone discovered the brassard (armlet) plot, and the fidelity of Dombrowski disclosed that of Vaysset.
This commercial agent had gone to Versailles to propose to the Ministry an operation of revictualling. Shown out, he again turned up, but this time with the offer to bribe Dombrowski. Under the patronage of Admiral Saisset — more crazy than ever — he got up his enterprise in the shape of a commercial society, found shareholders, twenty thousand francs for the incidental expenses, and entered into communication with an aide-de-camp of Dombrowski’s named Hutzinger, afterwards employed by the Versaillese police as spy amongst the exiles in London. Vaysset told him that Versailles would give Dombrowski a million if the general surrendered the gates under his command. Dombrowski at once apprised the Committee of Public Safety, and proposed to allow one or two Versaillese army corps to enter the town and then to crush them by battalions lying in ambush. The Committee would not risk this venture, but ordered Dombrowski to follow up the negotiation.[160] Hutzinger accompanied Vaysset to Versailles, saw Saisset, who offered to surrender himself as hostage in guarantee of the execution of the promises made to Dombrowski. The admiral was even, on a certain night, to repair secretly to the Place Vend�me, and the Committee of Public Safety, forewarned, was preparing to arrest him, when Barth�lemy St. Hilaire dissuaded Saisset from this new blunder.
Then M. Thiers began to abandon the hope of taking the town by surprise. This was his hobby of the first days of May. Upon the faith of a bailiff, who promised to get the Dauphine gate surrendered by his friend Laporte, chief of the sixteenth legion, M. Thiers had built up a whole plan in spite of the repugnance of MacMahon and of the army, eager for a triumphal entry.[161] During the night of the 3rd May the whole active army and part of the reserve were set on foot, and General Thiers went to sleep at Sevres. At midnight the troops were massed in the Bois de Boulogne before the lower lake, their eyes fixed on the closed gates. The latter were to be thrown open by a reactionary company which had formed at Passy under the orders of W�ry, a lieutenant of the thirty-eighth, acting as deputy of his former commander, Lavigne. But the intelligent conspirators had forgotten to warn Lavigne, and the company that was to relieve the Federals having had no order from their superior, suspected an ambush, and refused the service. Thus the trusty watch was not relieved. At dawn, after waiting in vain for several hours, the troops returned to their cantonments. Two days after, Laporte was arrested and set free again, much too soon.
Beaufond, taking up the bailiffs plan, guaranteed the surrender of the gates of Auteuil and Dauphine for the night of the 12th to the 13th May. M. Thiers, again caught, forwarded all the scaling gear, and several detachments were directed towards the Point du Jour, while the army held itself in readiness to follow. But at the last moment the profound combinations of the conspirators were foiled,[162] and, as on the 3rd, the army had to turn tail. This attempt was known to the Committee of Public Safety, who had known nothing of the first one.
Lasnier was arrested the next day. The Committee had just laid hands upon the tricolor armlets which the National Guards of order were to have worn on the entry of the army. The woman Legros, who made them, neglected to pay the girls in her employ. One of them, believing that the work was done on account of the Commune, went to ask for her wages at the H�tel-de-Ville. Inquiries made at the woman Legros’ put them on the traces of Beaufond and his accomplices. Beaufond and Laroque managed to hide; Troncin-Dumersan packed off to Versailles. Charpentier thus remained master of the field. Corbin urged him to organize his men by tens and hundreds, and traced him out a whole plan by which to get possession of the H�tel-de-Ville immediately after the entry of the troops. Charpentier, always imperturbable, diverted him day by day by news of fresh conquests, spoke of 20,000 recruits, asked for dynamite to blow up the houses,[163] and in true Pantagruelic style gobbled up the considerable sums made over to him by Durouchoux.
After all, the whole gang of conspirators did not succeed in surrendering one single gate, but they lent considerable aid in disorganizing the services. Still great care should be taken in availing oneself of their reports, often inflated with imaginary successes to justify the disbursement of the hundreds of thousands of francs that they pocketed.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XXIX<br>
On the barricades</h1>
<p class="quoteb">Our valiant soldiers conduct themselves in such a manner as to inspire foreign countries with the highest esteem and admiration. (Thiers’ speech to the National Assembly, 24th May, 1871.)</p>
<h3><img src="pics/parismay71.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Paris May 1871" border="1"></h3>
<p>The defenders of the barricades, already without reinforcements and munitions, were now left even without food, and altogether thrown on the resources of the neighbourhood. Many, quite worn out, went in search of some nourishment; their comrades, not seeing them return, grew desperate, while the leaders of the barricades strained themselves to keep them back.</p>
<p>At nine o'clock Brunel received the order to evacuate the Rue Royale. He went to the Tuileries to tell Bergeret that he could still hold out, but at midnight the Committee of Public Safety again sent him a formal order to retreat. Forced to abandon the post he had so well defended for two days, the brave commander first removed his wounded and then his cannon by the Rue St. Florentin. The Federals followed; when at the top of the Rue Castiglione, they were assailed by shots.</p>
<p>It was the Versaillese, who, masters of the Rue de la Paix and the Rue Neuve des Capucines, had invaded the Place Vend�me, entirely deserted, and by the H�tel-du-Rhin turned the barricade of the Rue Castiglione. Brunel’s Federals, abandoning the Rue de Rivoli, forced the rails of the garden, went up the quays, and regained the H�tel-de-Ville. The enemy did not dare to pursue them, and only at daybreak occupied the Ministry of Marine, long since abandoned.</p>
<p>The rest of the night the cannon were silent. The H�tel-de-Ville had lost its animation. The Federals slept in the square; in the offices the members of the committees and the officers snatched a few moments of repose. At three o'clock a staff officer arrived from Notre Dame, occupied by a detachment of Federals. He came to tell the Committee of Public Safety that the H�tel-Dieu harboured eight hundred sick, who might suffer from the proximity of the struggle, and the Committee commanded the evacuation of the cathedral in order to save these unfortunate people.</p>
<p>And now the sun rose, eclipsing the glare of the conflagrations; the day dawned radiant, but with no ray of hope for the Commune. Paris had no longer a right wing; her centre was broken; to assume the offensive was impossible. The prolongation of her resistance could now only serve to bear witness to her faith.</p>
<p>Early in the morning the Versaillese moved on all points. They pushed towards the Louvre, the Palais-Royal, the Bank, the Comptoir d'Escompte, the Montholon Square, the Boulevard Ornano, and the line of the Northern Railway. From four o'clock they cannonaded the Palais-Royal, round which desperate battles were being fought. By seven o'clock they were at the Bank and at the Bourse; thence they descended to St. Eustache, where they met an obstinate resistance. Many children fought with the men; and when the Federals were outflanked and massacred, these children had the honour not to be excepted.</p>
<p>On the left bank the troops with difficulty marched up the quays and all that part of the sixth arrondissement bordering upon the Seine. In the centre, the barricade of the Croix-Rouge had been evacuated during the night, like that of the Rue de Rennes, which thirty men had held for two days. The Versaillese were then able to enter the Rues d'Assas and Notre-dame-des-Champs. On the extreme right they reached the Val de Grace, and advanced against the Panth�on.</p>
<p>At eight o'clock about fifteen members of the Council assembled at the H�tel-de-Ville and decided to evacuate it. Two only protested. The third arrondissement, intersected by narrow and well-barricaded streets, sheltered the flank of the H�tel-de-Ville, which defied every attack from the front and by the quays. Under such conditions of defence to fall back was to fly, to strip the Commune of the little prestige still remaining to it; but no more than the days before were they able to collect two sound ideas. They feared everything, because ignorant of everything. Already the commander of the Palais Royal had received the order to evacuate that edifice, after having set it on fire. He had protested, and declared he could still hold out, but the order was repeated. Such was the state of bewilderment, that a member proposed a retreat on Belleville. They might as well abandon the Ch�teau d'Eau and the Bastille at once. As usual, the time was spent in small-talk. The governor of the H�tel-de-Ville went backwards and forwards impatient.</p>
<p>Suddenly the flames burst forth from the summit of the belfry; an hour after the H�tel-de-Ville was but one glow. The old edifice, witness of so many perjuries, where the people have so often installed powers that have afterwards shot them down, now cracked and fell with its true master. With the noise of the crumbling pavilions, of the toppling vaults and chimneys, of the dull detonations and the loud explosions, mingled the sharp reports of the cannon from the large St. Jacques barricade, that swept the Rue de Rivoli.</p>
<p>The War Office and all the services moved off to the <em>mairie </em>of the eleventh arrondissement. Delescluze had protested against the desertion of the H�tel-de-Ville, and predicted that this retreat would discourage many combatants.</p>
<p>The next day they left the Imprimerie Nationale, where the <em>Officiel </em>of the Commune appeared on the 24th for the last time. Like an <em>Officiel </em>that respects itself, it was a day behind time; it contained the proclamations of the day before and a few details of the battle, but not beyond the Tuesday morning.</p>
<p>This flight from the H�tel-de-Ville, cutting the defence in two, increased the difficulty of the communications. The staff officers who had not disappeared reached the new headquarters with great trouble; they were stopped at every barricade and constrained to carry paving-stones. On producing their despatches pleading urgency, they were answered, ‘Today there are no more epaulettes.’ The anger they had inspired for a long time broke out this very morning. In the Rue Sedaine, near the Place Voltaire, a young officer of the general staff, the Count de Beaufort, was recognized by the guards of the 166th battalion, whom he had threatened some days before at the War Office. Arrested for having tried to violate the orders of the post, Beaufort, losing his temper, had flung out a menace to purge the battalion. Now, the day before, near the Madeleine, the battalion had lost sixty men, and believed in a revenge on the part of Beaufort. This officer was arrested and conducted before a court-martial, which installed itself in a shop of the Boulevard Voltaire. Beaufort produced such certificates that the accusation was abandoned. Nevertheless, the judges decided that he was to serve in the battalion as a simple guard. Some of those present objected and named him captain. He came out triumphant. The crowd, ignorant of his explanation, grumbled on seeing him free. A guard rushed at him, and Beaufort was imprudent enough to draw out his revolver. He was immediately seized and thrown back into the shop. The chief of the general staff did not dare to come to the rescue of his officer. Delescluze hurried up, asked for a respite, said that Beaufort should be judged; but the crowd would not hear of it, and it was necessary to yield in order to prevent a terrible affray. Beaufort was conducted to the open space situated behind the <em>mairie </em>and shot.</p>
<p>Close by this outburst of fury at the P�re la Chaise, Dombrowski was receiving the last honours. His corpse had been transported thither in the night, and during the passage to the Bastille a touching scene had taken place. The Federals of these barricades had stopped the cortege and placed the corpse at the foot of the July column; some men, torches in their hands, formed into a circle, and all the Federals, one after the other, came to place a last kiss on the brow of the general, while the drums beat a salute. The body, enveloped in a red flag, was then put into the coffin. Vermorel, the general’s brother, his aides-de-camp, and about 200 guards were standing up bareheaded. ‘There is he,’ cried Vermorel, ‘who was accused of treachery! One of the first, he has given his life for the Commune. And we, what are we doing here instead of imitating him?’ He went on stigmatizing cowardice and panics. His speech, usually intricate, now flowed from him, heated by passion, like molten metal. ‘Let us swear to leave here only to seek death!’ This was his last word; he was to keep it. The cannon a few steps off had at intervals covered his voice; few of the men present but shed tears.</p>
<p>Happy those who may have such funerals! Happy those buried during the battle saluted by their cannon, wept over by their friends.</p>
<p>At that same moment the Versaillese agent who had flattered himself he could corrupt Dombrowski was being shot. Towards mid-day the Versaillese, vigorously pushing their attack on the left bank had stormed the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Institute, the Mint, which its director, Cam�linat, left only at the last minute. On the point of being shut up in the Ile Notre Dame, Ferr� had given the order to evacuate the Prefecture of Police and to destroy it. The 450 prisoners arrested for slight offences were, however, first set at liberty; one only, Vaysset, was retained and shot on the Pont-Neuf before the statue of Henry IV. Just before his death he uttered these strange words, ‘You will answer for my death to the Comte de Fabrice.’ <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n187">[187]</a></sup></p>
<p>The Versaillese, neglecting the Prefecture, entered the Rue Tarranes and the contiguous streets. They were held in check for two hours at the barricade of the Place de l'Abbaye, which the inhabitants of the quarter helped to outflank. Eighteen Federals were shot. More to the right the troops penetrated into the Place St. Sulpice, where they occupied the <em>mairie </em>of the sixth arrondissement; thence they entered the Rue St. Sulpice on one side, and on the other penetrated by the Rue de Vaugirard into the garden of the Luxembourg. After two days of struggle the brave Federals of the Rue Vavin fell back, and on their retreat blew up the powder-magazine of the Luxembourg garden. The commotion for a moment suspended the combat. The Palace of Luxembourg was not defended. Some soldiers crossed the garden, broke down the rails facing the Rue Soufflot, traversed the boulevard, and surprised the first barricade in that street.</p>
<p>Three barricades were raised before the Panth�on; the first at the entrance of the Rue Soufflot — it had just been taken; the second in the centre; the third extending from the <em>mairie </em>of the fifth arrondissement to the Ecole de Droit. Varlin and Lisbonne, hardly escaped from the Croix-Rouge, had hastened up again to face the enemy. Unfortunately the Federals would listen to no chief, remained on the defensive, and, instead of attacking the handful of soldiers exposed at the entrance of the Rue Soufflot, gave the reinforcements time to arrive.</p>
<p>The bulk of the Versaillese reached the Boulevard St. Michel by the Rues Racine and De l'Ecole de M�decine, which women had defended. The St. Michel Bridge ceased firing for want of ammunition, so that the soldiers were able to pass over the boulevard in a body, and got as far as the Place Maubert, while at the same time on the right they remounted the Rue Mouffetard. At four o'clock the height of Sainte Genevieve, well-nigh abandoned, was invaded by all its slopes and its few defenders dispersed. Thus the Panth�on, like Montmartre, fell almost without a struggle. As at Montmartre, too, the massacres commenced immediately. Forty prisoners were shot one after the other in the Rue St. Jacques, under the eyes of and by the orders of a colonel.</p>
<p>Rigault was killed in this neighbourhood. The soldiers, seeing a Federal officer knocking at the door of a house in the Rue Gay-Lussac, fired without hitting him. The door opened and Rigault went in. The soldiers followed at full speed, rushed into the house, seized the landlord, who proved his identity, and hastened to deliver up Rigault. The soldiers were dragging him to the Luxembourg, when, in the Rue Royal-Collard, a Versaillese staff colonel met the escort, and asked the name of the prisoner. Rigault bravely answered, ‘<em>Vive la Commune! </em>Down with assassins!’ He was immediately thrown against a wall and shot. May this courageous end be counted to him!</p>
<p>When the fall of the Panth�on, so valiantly defended in June, 1848, became known in the <em>mairie </em>of the eleventh arrondissement, they at once cried out against traitors; but what then had the Council and the Committee of Public Safety done for the defence of this capital post? At the <em>mairie, </em>as at the H�tel-de-Ville, they were deliberating.</p>
<p>At two o'clock the members of the Council, of the Central Committee, superior officers, and the chiefs of the services were assembled in the library. Delescluze spoke first, amidst a profound silence, for the least whisper would have covered his dying voice. He said all was not lost; that they must make a great effort, and hold out to the last. Cheers interrupted him. He called upon each one to state his opinion. ‘I propose,’ said he, ‘that the members of the Commune, engirded with their scarfs, shall make a review of all the battalions that can be assembled on the Boulevard Voltaire. We shall then at their head proceed to the points to be conquered.’</p>
<p>The idea appeared grand, and transported those present. Never since the sitting when he had said that certain delegates of the people would know how to die at their post, had Delescluze so profoundly moved all hearts. The distant firing, the cannon of the P�re la Chaise, the confused clamours of the battalions surrounding the <em>mairie, </em>blended with, and at times drowned his voice. Behold, in the midst of this defeat, this old man upright, his eyes luminous, his right hand raised defying despair, these armed men fresh from the battle suspending their breath to listen to this voice which seemed to ascend from the tomb. There was no scene more solemn in the thousand tragedies of that day.</p>
<p>There was a superabundance of most vigorous resolutions. Open on the table lay a large case of dynamite; an imprudent gesture might explode the <em>mairie</em>. They spoke of cutting off the bridges, of upheaving the sewers. What was the use of this tall talking? Very different munitions were needed now. Where is the engineer-in-chief who had said that at his bidding an abyss would open and swallow up the enemy? He is gone. Gone too the chief of the general staff. Since the execution of Beaufort, he has felt an ill wind blowing for his epaulettes. More motions were made, and motions will still be made to the end. The Central Committee condescended to declare that it would subordinate itself to the Committee of Public Safety. It seemed settled at last that the chief of the 11th legion was to group all the Federals who had taken refuge in the eleventh arrondissement; perhaps he might succeed in forming the columns of which Delescluze had spoken.</p>
<p>The Delegate for War then visited the defences. Solid preparations were being made at the Bastille. In the Rue St. Antoine, at the entrance of the square, a barricade provided with three pieces of artillery was being finished; another at the entrance of the faubourg covered the Rues de Charenton and de la Rouquette; but here, as everywhere else, the flanks were not guarded. Cartridges and shells were piled up along the houses, exposed to all projectiles. The approaches to the eleventh arrondissement were hastily armed, and at the intersection of the Boulevards Voltaire and Richard-Lenoir a barricade was being thrown up with casks, paving stones, and large bales of paper. This work, inaccessible from the front, was also to be turned. Before it, at the entrance of the Boulevards Voltaire, Place du Ch�teau d'Eau, a wall of paving-stones two yards high was raised. Behind this mortal rampart, assisted by two pieces of cannon, the Federals for twenty-four hours stopped all the Versaillese columns setting foot on the Place du Ch�teau d'Eau. On the right, the bottom of the Rues Oberkampf, d'Angouleme and du Faubourg du Temple, the Rue Fontaine-au-Roi, and the Avenue des Amandiers were already on the defensive. Higher up, in the tenth arrondissement, Brunel, arrived that same morning from the Rue Royale, was again to the fore, like Lisbonne, like Varlin, eager for new perils. A large barricade cut off the intersection of the Boulevards Magenta and Strasbourg; the Rue du Ch�teau d'Eau was barred, and the works of the Porte St. Martin and St. Denis, at which they had worked day and night, were filling with combatants.</p>
<p>Towards ten o'clock the Versaillese had been able to gain possession of the Northern Railway station by turning the Rue Stephenson and the barricades of the Rue de Dunkerque; but the Strasbourg Railway, the second line of defence of La Villette, withstood their shock, and our artillery harassed them greatly. On the Buttes Chaumont, Ranvier, who directed the defence of these quarters, had established three howitzers of 12cm., two pieces of 7 near the Temple de la Sybille, and two pieces of 7 on the lower hill, while five cannon flanked the Rue Puebla and protected the Rotonde. At the Carri�res d'Am�rique there were two batteries of three pieces; the pieces of the P�re la Chaise fired incessantly at the invaded quarters, seconded by cannon of large calibre at bastion 24.</p>
<p>The ninth arrondissement filled with the sound of firing. We lost much ground in the Faubourg Poissinni�re. Despite their success in the Halles, the Versaillese were not able to get into the third arrondissement, sheltered by the long arm of the Boulevard Sebastopol, and we commanded the Rue Turbigo by the Prince Eug�ne Barracks. The second arrondissement, almost totally occupied, still held out on the banks of the Seine; from the Pont-Neuf the barricades of the Avenue Victoria and Quai de Gevres resisted till night. Our gunboats having been abandoned, the enemy seized and re-armed them.</p>
<p>The only success of our defence was at the Butte aux Cailles, where, under the impulsion of Wroblewski, it changed into the offensive. During the night the Versaillese had examined our positions, and at daybreak they mounted to the assault. The Federals did not wait for them, and rushed forward to meet them. Four times the Versaillese were repulsed, four times they returned; four times they retreated, and the soldiers, discouraged, no longer obeyed their officers.</p>
<p>Thus La Villette and the Butte aux Cailles, the two extremities of our defence, kept their ground; but what gaps all along the line! Of Paris, all theirs on Sunday, the Federals now only possessed the eleventh, twelfth, nineteenth, and twentieth arrondissements, and a part only of the third, fifth, and thirteenth.</p>
<p>On that day the massacres took that furious flight which in a few hours left St. Bartholomew’s Day far behind. Till then only the Federals or the people denounced had been killed; now the soldiers knew neither friend nor foe. When the Versaillese fixed his eye upon you, you must die; when he searched a house, nothing escaped him. “These are no longer soldiers accomplishing a duty,” said a conservative journal, <em>La France. </em>And indeed these were hyenas, thirsting for blood and pillage. In some places it sufficed to have a watch to be shot. The corpses were searched, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n188">[188]</a></sup> and the correspondents of foreign newspapers called those thefts the last perquisition. And the same day M. Thiers had the effrontery to tell the Assembly: “Our valiant soldiers conduct themselves in such a manner as to inspire foreign countries with the highest esteem and admiration.”</p>
<p>Then, too, was invented that legend of the petroleuses, which, born of fear and propagated by the press, cost hundreds of unfortunate women their lives. The rumour was spread that furies were throwing burning petroleum into the cellars. Every woman who was badly dressed, or carrying a milk-can, a pail, an empty bottle, was pointed out as a petroleuse, her clothes torn to tatters, she was pushed against the nearest wall, and killed with revolver-shots. The monstrously idiotic side of the legend is that the petroleuses were supposed to operate in the quarters occupied by the army.</p>
<p>The fugitives from the invaded quarters brought the news of these massacres to the <em>mairie</em> of the eleventh arrondissement. There, within smaller compass and more menacing, reigned the same confusion as at the H�tel-de-Ville. The narrow courts were full of wagons, cartridges, and powder; every step of the principal staircase was occupied by women sewing sacks for the barricades. In the Salle des Mariages, whither Ferr� had removed the office of Public Safety, the delegate, assisted by two secretaries, gave orders, signed free passes, questioned the people brought to him with the greatest calm, and pronounced his decisions in a polite, soft, and low voice. Farther on, in the rooms occupied by the War Office, some officers and chiefs of services received and expedited despatches; some of them, as at the H�tel-de-Ville, doing their duty with perfect sangfroid. At this hour certain men revealed extraordinary strength of character, especially among the secondary actors of the movement. They felt that all was lost, that they were about to die, perhaps even at the hands of their own people, for the fever of suspicion had reached its utmost degree of paroxysm; yet they remained in the furnace, their hearts calm, their minds lucid. Never had a Government, with the exception of that of the National Defence, more resources, more intelligence, more heroism at its disposal than the Council of the Commune; never was there one so inferior to its electors.</p>
<p>At half-past seven a great noise was heard before the prison of La Roquette, where the day before the three hundred hostages, detained until then at Mazas, had been transported. Amidst a crowd of guards, exasperated at the massacres, stood a delegate of the Public Safety Commission, who said, ‘Since they shoot our men, six hostages shall be executed. Who will form the platoon?’ ‘I! I!’ was cried from all sides. One advanced and said, ‘I avenge my father,’ another, ‘I avenge my brother.’ ‘As for me,’ said a guard, ‘they have shot my wife.’ Each one brought forward his right to vengeance. Thirty men were chosen and entered the prison.</p>
<p>The delegate looked over the jail register, pointed out the Archbishop Darboy, the President Bonjean, the banker Jecker, the Jesuits Allard, Clerc, and Ducoudray; at the last moment Jecker was replaced by the Cur� Deguerry.</p>
<p>They were taken to the exercise-ground. Darboy stammered out, ‘I am not the enemy of the Commune. I have done all I could. I have written twice to Versailles.’ He recovered a little when he saw death was inevitable. Bonjean could not keep on his legs. ‘Who condemns us?’ said he. ‘The justice of the people.’ ‘0h, this is not the right one,’ replied the president. One of the priests threw himself against the sentry-box and uncovered his breast. They were led further on, and, turning a corner, — met the firing-party. Some men harangued them; the delegate at once ordered silence. The hostages placed themselves against the wall, and the officer of the platoon said to them, ‘It is not we whom you must accuse of your death, but the Versaillese, who are shooting the prisoners.’ He then gave the signal and the guns were fired. The hostages fell back in one line, at an equal distance from each other. Darboy alone remained standing, wounded in the head, one hand raised. A second volley laid him by the side of the others. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n189">[189]</a></sup></p>
<p>The blind justice of revolutions punishes in the first-comers the accumulated crimes of their caste.</p>
<p>At eight o'clock the Versaillese closed in upon the barricade of the Porte St. Martin. Their shells had long since set the theatre on fire, and the Federals, pressed by this conflagration, were obliged to fall back.</p>
<p>That night the Versaillese bivouacked in front of the Strasbourg Railway, the Rue St. Denis, the H�tel-de-Ville (occupied towards nine o'clock by Vinoy’s troops), the Ecole Polytechnique, the Madelonnettes, and the Monsouris Park. They presented a kind of fan, of which the fixed point was formed by the Pont-au-Change, the right side by the thirteenth arrondissement, the left by the streets of the Fauborg St. Martin and the Rue de Flandre, the arc by the fortifications. The fan was about to close at Belleville, which formed the centre.</p>
<p>Paris continued to burn furiously. The Porte St. Martin, the St. Eustache Church, the Rue Royale, the Rue de Rivoli, the Tuileries, the Palais-Royale, the H�tel-de-Ville, the Theatre-Lyrique, the left bank from the L�gion d'Honneur up to the Palais de Justice and the Prefecture de Police, stood out bright red in the darkness of night. The caprices of the fire displayed a blazing architecture of arches, cupolas, spectral edifices. Great volumes of smoke, clouds of sparks flying into the air, attested formidable explosions; every minute stars lit up and died out again in the horizon. These were the cannon of the fort of Bic�tre, of the P�re la Chaise, and the Buttes Chaumont, which fired on the invaded quarters. The Versaillese batteries answered from the Panth�on, the Trocad�ro, and Montmartre. Now the reports followed each other at regular intervals; now there was a continuous thunder along the whole line. They aimed at random, blindly, madly. The shells often exploded in the midst of their career; the whole town was enveloped in a whirl of flame and smoke.</p>
<p>What men this handful of combatants, who, without leaders without hope, without retreat, disputed their last pavements as though they implied victory! The hypocritical reaction has charged them with the crime of incendiarism, as if in war fire were not a legitimate arm; as if the Versaillese shells had not set fire to at least as many edifices as those of the Federals; as if the private speculation of certain men of order had not its share in the ruins. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n190">[190]</a></sup> And that same bourgeois who spoke of ‘burning everything<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n191">[191]</a></sup> before the Prussians, calls this people scoundrels because they preferred to bury themselves in the ruins rather than abandon their faith, their property, their families, to a coalition of despots a thousand times more cruel and more lasting than the foreigner.</p>
<p>At eleven o'clock two officers entered Delescluze’s room and informed him of the execution of the hostages. He listened to the recital without ceasing to write, and then only asked, ‘How did they die?’ When the officers were gone, Delescluze turned to the friend who was working with him, and, hiding his face in his hands, ‘What a war!’ cried he, ‘what a war!’ But he knew revolutions too well to lose himself in bootless reflections, and, mastering his emotion, he claimed, ‘We shall know how to die!’</p>
<p>During the whole night despatches succeeded each other without intermission, all demanding cannon and men under the threat of abandoning such or such a position.</p>
<p>But where to find cannon? And men began to be as rare as the bronze.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XXIX
On the barricades
Our valiant soldiers conduct themselves in such a manner as to inspire foreign countries with the highest esteem and admiration. (Thiers’ speech to the National Assembly, 24th May, 1871.)
The defenders of the barricades, already without reinforcements and munitions, were now left even without food, and altogether thrown on the resources of the neighbourhood. Many, quite worn out, went in search of some nourishment; their comrades, not seeing them return, grew desperate, while the leaders of the barricades strained themselves to keep them back.
At nine o'clock Brunel received the order to evacuate the Rue Royale. He went to the Tuileries to tell Bergeret that he could still hold out, but at midnight the Committee of Public Safety again sent him a formal order to retreat. Forced to abandon the post he had so well defended for two days, the brave commander first removed his wounded and then his cannon by the Rue St. Florentin. The Federals followed; when at the top of the Rue Castiglione, they were assailed by shots.
It was the Versaillese, who, masters of the Rue de la Paix and the Rue Neuve des Capucines, had invaded the Place Vend�me, entirely deserted, and by the H�tel-du-Rhin turned the barricade of the Rue Castiglione. Brunel’s Federals, abandoning the Rue de Rivoli, forced the rails of the garden, went up the quays, and regained the H�tel-de-Ville. The enemy did not dare to pursue them, and only at daybreak occupied the Ministry of Marine, long since abandoned.
The rest of the night the cannon were silent. The H�tel-de-Ville had lost its animation. The Federals slept in the square; in the offices the members of the committees and the officers snatched a few moments of repose. At three o'clock a staff officer arrived from Notre Dame, occupied by a detachment of Federals. He came to tell the Committee of Public Safety that the H�tel-Dieu harboured eight hundred sick, who might suffer from the proximity of the struggle, and the Committee commanded the evacuation of the cathedral in order to save these unfortunate people.
And now the sun rose, eclipsing the glare of the conflagrations; the day dawned radiant, but with no ray of hope for the Commune. Paris had no longer a right wing; her centre was broken; to assume the offensive was impossible. The prolongation of her resistance could now only serve to bear witness to her faith.
Early in the morning the Versaillese moved on all points. They pushed towards the Louvre, the Palais-Royal, the Bank, the Comptoir d'Escompte, the Montholon Square, the Boulevard Ornano, and the line of the Northern Railway. From four o'clock they cannonaded the Palais-Royal, round which desperate battles were being fought. By seven o'clock they were at the Bank and at the Bourse; thence they descended to St. Eustache, where they met an obstinate resistance. Many children fought with the men; and when the Federals were outflanked and massacred, these children had the honour not to be excepted.
On the left bank the troops with difficulty marched up the quays and all that part of the sixth arrondissement bordering upon the Seine. In the centre, the barricade of the Croix-Rouge had been evacuated during the night, like that of the Rue de Rennes, which thirty men had held for two days. The Versaillese were then able to enter the Rues d'Assas and Notre-dame-des-Champs. On the extreme right they reached the Val de Grace, and advanced against the Panth�on.
At eight o'clock about fifteen members of the Council assembled at the H�tel-de-Ville and decided to evacuate it. Two only protested. The third arrondissement, intersected by narrow and well-barricaded streets, sheltered the flank of the H�tel-de-Ville, which defied every attack from the front and by the quays. Under such conditions of defence to fall back was to fly, to strip the Commune of the little prestige still remaining to it; but no more than the days before were they able to collect two sound ideas. They feared everything, because ignorant of everything. Already the commander of the Palais Royal had received the order to evacuate that edifice, after having set it on fire. He had protested, and declared he could still hold out, but the order was repeated. Such was the state of bewilderment, that a member proposed a retreat on Belleville. They might as well abandon the Ch�teau d'Eau and the Bastille at once. As usual, the time was spent in small-talk. The governor of the H�tel-de-Ville went backwards and forwards impatient.
Suddenly the flames burst forth from the summit of the belfry; an hour after the H�tel-de-Ville was but one glow. The old edifice, witness of so many perjuries, where the people have so often installed powers that have afterwards shot them down, now cracked and fell with its true master. With the noise of the crumbling pavilions, of the toppling vaults and chimneys, of the dull detonations and the loud explosions, mingled the sharp reports of the cannon from the large St. Jacques barricade, that swept the Rue de Rivoli.
The War Office and all the services moved off to the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement. Delescluze had protested against the desertion of the H�tel-de-Ville, and predicted that this retreat would discourage many combatants.
The next day they left the Imprimerie Nationale, where the Officiel of the Commune appeared on the 24th for the last time. Like an Officiel that respects itself, it was a day behind time; it contained the proclamations of the day before and a few details of the battle, but not beyond the Tuesday morning.
This flight from the H�tel-de-Ville, cutting the defence in two, increased the difficulty of the communications. The staff officers who had not disappeared reached the new headquarters with great trouble; they were stopped at every barricade and constrained to carry paving-stones. On producing their despatches pleading urgency, they were answered, ‘Today there are no more epaulettes.’ The anger they had inspired for a long time broke out this very morning. In the Rue Sedaine, near the Place Voltaire, a young officer of the general staff, the Count de Beaufort, was recognized by the guards of the 166th battalion, whom he had threatened some days before at the War Office. Arrested for having tried to violate the orders of the post, Beaufort, losing his temper, had flung out a menace to purge the battalion. Now, the day before, near the Madeleine, the battalion had lost sixty men, and believed in a revenge on the part of Beaufort. This officer was arrested and conducted before a court-martial, which installed itself in a shop of the Boulevard Voltaire. Beaufort produced such certificates that the accusation was abandoned. Nevertheless, the judges decided that he was to serve in the battalion as a simple guard. Some of those present objected and named him captain. He came out triumphant. The crowd, ignorant of his explanation, grumbled on seeing him free. A guard rushed at him, and Beaufort was imprudent enough to draw out his revolver. He was immediately seized and thrown back into the shop. The chief of the general staff did not dare to come to the rescue of his officer. Delescluze hurried up, asked for a respite, said that Beaufort should be judged; but the crowd would not hear of it, and it was necessary to yield in order to prevent a terrible affray. Beaufort was conducted to the open space situated behind the mairie and shot.
Close by this outburst of fury at the P�re la Chaise, Dombrowski was receiving the last honours. His corpse had been transported thither in the night, and during the passage to the Bastille a touching scene had taken place. The Federals of these barricades had stopped the cortege and placed the corpse at the foot of the July column; some men, torches in their hands, formed into a circle, and all the Federals, one after the other, came to place a last kiss on the brow of the general, while the drums beat a salute. The body, enveloped in a red flag, was then put into the coffin. Vermorel, the general’s brother, his aides-de-camp, and about 200 guards were standing up bareheaded. ‘There is he,’ cried Vermorel, ‘who was accused of treachery! One of the first, he has given his life for the Commune. And we, what are we doing here instead of imitating him?’ He went on stigmatizing cowardice and panics. His speech, usually intricate, now flowed from him, heated by passion, like molten metal. ‘Let us swear to leave here only to seek death!’ This was his last word; he was to keep it. The cannon a few steps off had at intervals covered his voice; few of the men present but shed tears.
Happy those who may have such funerals! Happy those buried during the battle saluted by their cannon, wept over by their friends.
At that same moment the Versaillese agent who had flattered himself he could corrupt Dombrowski was being shot. Towards mid-day the Versaillese, vigorously pushing their attack on the left bank had stormed the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the Institute, the Mint, which its director, Cam�linat, left only at the last minute. On the point of being shut up in the Ile Notre Dame, Ferr� had given the order to evacuate the Prefecture of Police and to destroy it. The 450 prisoners arrested for slight offences were, however, first set at liberty; one only, Vaysset, was retained and shot on the Pont-Neuf before the statue of Henry IV. Just before his death he uttered these strange words, ‘You will answer for my death to the Comte de Fabrice.’ [187]
The Versaillese, neglecting the Prefecture, entered the Rue Tarranes and the contiguous streets. They were held in check for two hours at the barricade of the Place de l'Abbaye, which the inhabitants of the quarter helped to outflank. Eighteen Federals were shot. More to the right the troops penetrated into the Place St. Sulpice, where they occupied the mairie of the sixth arrondissement; thence they entered the Rue St. Sulpice on one side, and on the other penetrated by the Rue de Vaugirard into the garden of the Luxembourg. After two days of struggle the brave Federals of the Rue Vavin fell back, and on their retreat blew up the powder-magazine of the Luxembourg garden. The commotion for a moment suspended the combat. The Palace of Luxembourg was not defended. Some soldiers crossed the garden, broke down the rails facing the Rue Soufflot, traversed the boulevard, and surprised the first barricade in that street.
Three barricades were raised before the Panth�on; the first at the entrance of the Rue Soufflot — it had just been taken; the second in the centre; the third extending from the mairie of the fifth arrondissement to the Ecole de Droit. Varlin and Lisbonne, hardly escaped from the Croix-Rouge, had hastened up again to face the enemy. Unfortunately the Federals would listen to no chief, remained on the defensive, and, instead of attacking the handful of soldiers exposed at the entrance of the Rue Soufflot, gave the reinforcements time to arrive.
The bulk of the Versaillese reached the Boulevard St. Michel by the Rues Racine and De l'Ecole de M�decine, which women had defended. The St. Michel Bridge ceased firing for want of ammunition, so that the soldiers were able to pass over the boulevard in a body, and got as far as the Place Maubert, while at the same time on the right they remounted the Rue Mouffetard. At four o'clock the height of Sainte Genevieve, well-nigh abandoned, was invaded by all its slopes and its few defenders dispersed. Thus the Panth�on, like Montmartre, fell almost without a struggle. As at Montmartre, too, the massacres commenced immediately. Forty prisoners were shot one after the other in the Rue St. Jacques, under the eyes of and by the orders of a colonel.
Rigault was killed in this neighbourhood. The soldiers, seeing a Federal officer knocking at the door of a house in the Rue Gay-Lussac, fired without hitting him. The door opened and Rigault went in. The soldiers followed at full speed, rushed into the house, seized the landlord, who proved his identity, and hastened to deliver up Rigault. The soldiers were dragging him to the Luxembourg, when, in the Rue Royal-Collard, a Versaillese staff colonel met the escort, and asked the name of the prisoner. Rigault bravely answered, ‘Vive la Commune! Down with assassins!’ He was immediately thrown against a wall and shot. May this courageous end be counted to him!
When the fall of the Panth�on, so valiantly defended in June, 1848, became known in the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement, they at once cried out against traitors; but what then had the Council and the Committee of Public Safety done for the defence of this capital post? At the mairie, as at the H�tel-de-Ville, they were deliberating.
At two o'clock the members of the Council, of the Central Committee, superior officers, and the chiefs of the services were assembled in the library. Delescluze spoke first, amidst a profound silence, for the least whisper would have covered his dying voice. He said all was not lost; that they must make a great effort, and hold out to the last. Cheers interrupted him. He called upon each one to state his opinion. ‘I propose,’ said he, ‘that the members of the Commune, engirded with their scarfs, shall make a review of all the battalions that can be assembled on the Boulevard Voltaire. We shall then at their head proceed to the points to be conquered.’
The idea appeared grand, and transported those present. Never since the sitting when he had said that certain delegates of the people would know how to die at their post, had Delescluze so profoundly moved all hearts. The distant firing, the cannon of the P�re la Chaise, the confused clamours of the battalions surrounding the mairie, blended with, and at times drowned his voice. Behold, in the midst of this defeat, this old man upright, his eyes luminous, his right hand raised defying despair, these armed men fresh from the battle suspending their breath to listen to this voice which seemed to ascend from the tomb. There was no scene more solemn in the thousand tragedies of that day.
There was a superabundance of most vigorous resolutions. Open on the table lay a large case of dynamite; an imprudent gesture might explode the mairie. They spoke of cutting off the bridges, of upheaving the sewers. What was the use of this tall talking? Very different munitions were needed now. Where is the engineer-in-chief who had said that at his bidding an abyss would open and swallow up the enemy? He is gone. Gone too the chief of the general staff. Since the execution of Beaufort, he has felt an ill wind blowing for his epaulettes. More motions were made, and motions will still be made to the end. The Central Committee condescended to declare that it would subordinate itself to the Committee of Public Safety. It seemed settled at last that the chief of the 11th legion was to group all the Federals who had taken refuge in the eleventh arrondissement; perhaps he might succeed in forming the columns of which Delescluze had spoken.
The Delegate for War then visited the defences. Solid preparations were being made at the Bastille. In the Rue St. Antoine, at the entrance of the square, a barricade provided with three pieces of artillery was being finished; another at the entrance of the faubourg covered the Rues de Charenton and de la Rouquette; but here, as everywhere else, the flanks were not guarded. Cartridges and shells were piled up along the houses, exposed to all projectiles. The approaches to the eleventh arrondissement were hastily armed, and at the intersection of the Boulevards Voltaire and Richard-Lenoir a barricade was being thrown up with casks, paving stones, and large bales of paper. This work, inaccessible from the front, was also to be turned. Before it, at the entrance of the Boulevards Voltaire, Place du Ch�teau d'Eau, a wall of paving-stones two yards high was raised. Behind this mortal rampart, assisted by two pieces of cannon, the Federals for twenty-four hours stopped all the Versaillese columns setting foot on the Place du Ch�teau d'Eau. On the right, the bottom of the Rues Oberkampf, d'Angouleme and du Faubourg du Temple, the Rue Fontaine-au-Roi, and the Avenue des Amandiers were already on the defensive. Higher up, in the tenth arrondissement, Brunel, arrived that same morning from the Rue Royale, was again to the fore, like Lisbonne, like Varlin, eager for new perils. A large barricade cut off the intersection of the Boulevards Magenta and Strasbourg; the Rue du Ch�teau d'Eau was barred, and the works of the Porte St. Martin and St. Denis, at which they had worked day and night, were filling with combatants.
Towards ten o'clock the Versaillese had been able to gain possession of the Northern Railway station by turning the Rue Stephenson and the barricades of the Rue de Dunkerque; but the Strasbourg Railway, the second line of defence of La Villette, withstood their shock, and our artillery harassed them greatly. On the Buttes Chaumont, Ranvier, who directed the defence of these quarters, had established three howitzers of 12cm., two pieces of 7 near the Temple de la Sybille, and two pieces of 7 on the lower hill, while five cannon flanked the Rue Puebla and protected the Rotonde. At the Carri�res d'Am�rique there were two batteries of three pieces; the pieces of the P�re la Chaise fired incessantly at the invaded quarters, seconded by cannon of large calibre at bastion 24.
The ninth arrondissement filled with the sound of firing. We lost much ground in the Faubourg Poissinni�re. Despite their success in the Halles, the Versaillese were not able to get into the third arrondissement, sheltered by the long arm of the Boulevard Sebastopol, and we commanded the Rue Turbigo by the Prince Eug�ne Barracks. The second arrondissement, almost totally occupied, still held out on the banks of the Seine; from the Pont-Neuf the barricades of the Avenue Victoria and Quai de Gevres resisted till night. Our gunboats having been abandoned, the enemy seized and re-armed them.
The only success of our defence was at the Butte aux Cailles, where, under the impulsion of Wroblewski, it changed into the offensive. During the night the Versaillese had examined our positions, and at daybreak they mounted to the assault. The Federals did not wait for them, and rushed forward to meet them. Four times the Versaillese were repulsed, four times they returned; four times they retreated, and the soldiers, discouraged, no longer obeyed their officers.
Thus La Villette and the Butte aux Cailles, the two extremities of our defence, kept their ground; but what gaps all along the line! Of Paris, all theirs on Sunday, the Federals now only possessed the eleventh, twelfth, nineteenth, and twentieth arrondissements, and a part only of the third, fifth, and thirteenth.
On that day the massacres took that furious flight which in a few hours left St. Bartholomew’s Day far behind. Till then only the Federals or the people denounced had been killed; now the soldiers knew neither friend nor foe. When the Versaillese fixed his eye upon you, you must die; when he searched a house, nothing escaped him. “These are no longer soldiers accomplishing a duty,” said a conservative journal, La France. And indeed these were hyenas, thirsting for blood and pillage. In some places it sufficed to have a watch to be shot. The corpses were searched, [188] and the correspondents of foreign newspapers called those thefts the last perquisition. And the same day M. Thiers had the effrontery to tell the Assembly: “Our valiant soldiers conduct themselves in such a manner as to inspire foreign countries with the highest esteem and admiration.”
Then, too, was invented that legend of the petroleuses, which, born of fear and propagated by the press, cost hundreds of unfortunate women their lives. The rumour was spread that furies were throwing burning petroleum into the cellars. Every woman who was badly dressed, or carrying a milk-can, a pail, an empty bottle, was pointed out as a petroleuse, her clothes torn to tatters, she was pushed against the nearest wall, and killed with revolver-shots. The monstrously idiotic side of the legend is that the petroleuses were supposed to operate in the quarters occupied by the army.
The fugitives from the invaded quarters brought the news of these massacres to the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement. There, within smaller compass and more menacing, reigned the same confusion as at the H�tel-de-Ville. The narrow courts were full of wagons, cartridges, and powder; every step of the principal staircase was occupied by women sewing sacks for the barricades. In the Salle des Mariages, whither Ferr� had removed the office of Public Safety, the delegate, assisted by two secretaries, gave orders, signed free passes, questioned the people brought to him with the greatest calm, and pronounced his decisions in a polite, soft, and low voice. Farther on, in the rooms occupied by the War Office, some officers and chiefs of services received and expedited despatches; some of them, as at the H�tel-de-Ville, doing their duty with perfect sangfroid. At this hour certain men revealed extraordinary strength of character, especially among the secondary actors of the movement. They felt that all was lost, that they were about to die, perhaps even at the hands of their own people, for the fever of suspicion had reached its utmost degree of paroxysm; yet they remained in the furnace, their hearts calm, their minds lucid. Never had a Government, with the exception of that of the National Defence, more resources, more intelligence, more heroism at its disposal than the Council of the Commune; never was there one so inferior to its electors.
At half-past seven a great noise was heard before the prison of La Roquette, where the day before the three hundred hostages, detained until then at Mazas, had been transported. Amidst a crowd of guards, exasperated at the massacres, stood a delegate of the Public Safety Commission, who said, ‘Since they shoot our men, six hostages shall be executed. Who will form the platoon?’ ‘I! I!’ was cried from all sides. One advanced and said, ‘I avenge my father,’ another, ‘I avenge my brother.’ ‘As for me,’ said a guard, ‘they have shot my wife.’ Each one brought forward his right to vengeance. Thirty men were chosen and entered the prison.
The delegate looked over the jail register, pointed out the Archbishop Darboy, the President Bonjean, the banker Jecker, the Jesuits Allard, Clerc, and Ducoudray; at the last moment Jecker was replaced by the Cur� Deguerry.
They were taken to the exercise-ground. Darboy stammered out, ‘I am not the enemy of the Commune. I have done all I could. I have written twice to Versailles.’ He recovered a little when he saw death was inevitable. Bonjean could not keep on his legs. ‘Who condemns us?’ said he. ‘The justice of the people.’ ‘0h, this is not the right one,’ replied the president. One of the priests threw himself against the sentry-box and uncovered his breast. They were led further on, and, turning a corner, — met the firing-party. Some men harangued them; the delegate at once ordered silence. The hostages placed themselves against the wall, and the officer of the platoon said to them, ‘It is not we whom you must accuse of your death, but the Versaillese, who are shooting the prisoners.’ He then gave the signal and the guns were fired. The hostages fell back in one line, at an equal distance from each other. Darboy alone remained standing, wounded in the head, one hand raised. A second volley laid him by the side of the others. [189]
The blind justice of revolutions punishes in the first-comers the accumulated crimes of their caste.
At eight o'clock the Versaillese closed in upon the barricade of the Porte St. Martin. Their shells had long since set the theatre on fire, and the Federals, pressed by this conflagration, were obliged to fall back.
That night the Versaillese bivouacked in front of the Strasbourg Railway, the Rue St. Denis, the H�tel-de-Ville (occupied towards nine o'clock by Vinoy’s troops), the Ecole Polytechnique, the Madelonnettes, and the Monsouris Park. They presented a kind of fan, of which the fixed point was formed by the Pont-au-Change, the right side by the thirteenth arrondissement, the left by the streets of the Fauborg St. Martin and the Rue de Flandre, the arc by the fortifications. The fan was about to close at Belleville, which formed the centre.
Paris continued to burn furiously. The Porte St. Martin, the St. Eustache Church, the Rue Royale, the Rue de Rivoli, the Tuileries, the Palais-Royale, the H�tel-de-Ville, the Theatre-Lyrique, the left bank from the L�gion d'Honneur up to the Palais de Justice and the Prefecture de Police, stood out bright red in the darkness of night. The caprices of the fire displayed a blazing architecture of arches, cupolas, spectral edifices. Great volumes of smoke, clouds of sparks flying into the air, attested formidable explosions; every minute stars lit up and died out again in the horizon. These were the cannon of the fort of Bic�tre, of the P�re la Chaise, and the Buttes Chaumont, which fired on the invaded quarters. The Versaillese batteries answered from the Panth�on, the Trocad�ro, and Montmartre. Now the reports followed each other at regular intervals; now there was a continuous thunder along the whole line. They aimed at random, blindly, madly. The shells often exploded in the midst of their career; the whole town was enveloped in a whirl of flame and smoke.
What men this handful of combatants, who, without leaders without hope, without retreat, disputed their last pavements as though they implied victory! The hypocritical reaction has charged them with the crime of incendiarism, as if in war fire were not a legitimate arm; as if the Versaillese shells had not set fire to at least as many edifices as those of the Federals; as if the private speculation of certain men of order had not its share in the ruins. [190] And that same bourgeois who spoke of ‘burning everything[191] before the Prussians, calls this people scoundrels because they preferred to bury themselves in the ruins rather than abandon their faith, their property, their families, to a coalition of despots a thousand times more cruel and more lasting than the foreigner.
At eleven o'clock two officers entered Delescluze’s room and informed him of the execution of the hostages. He listened to the recital without ceasing to write, and then only asked, ‘How did they die?’ When the officers were gone, Delescluze turned to the friend who was working with him, and, hiding his face in his hands, ‘What a war!’ cried he, ‘what a war!’ But he knew revolutions too well to lose himself in bootless reflections, and, mastering his emotion, he claimed, ‘We shall know how to die!’
During the whole night despatches succeeded each other without intermission, all demanding cannon and men under the threat of abandoning such or such a position.
But where to find cannon? And men began to be as rare as the bronze.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
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<h1>Preface</h1>
<p>The history of the Third Estate was to have been the prologue to this history. But time presses; the victims are gliding into their graves; the perfidies of the Radicals threaten to surpass the worn-out calumnies of the Monarchists. I limit myself for the present to the strictly necessary introduction.</p>
<p>Who made the Revolution of the 18th March? What part was taken by the Central Committee? What was the Commune? How comes it that 100,000 Frenchmen are lost to their country? Who is responsible? legions of witnesses will answer.</p>
<p>No doubt it is an exile who speaks, but an exile who has been neither member, nor officer, nor functionary of the Commune; who for five years has sifted the evidence; who has not ventured upon a single assertion without accumulated proofs; who sees the victor on the look-out for the slightest inaccuracy to deny all the rest; who knows no better plea for the vanquished than the simple and sincere recital of their history.</p>
<p>This history, besides, is due to their children, to all the workingmen of the earth. The child has the right to know the reason of the paternal defeats, the Socialist party the campaign of its flag in all countries. He who tells the people revolutionary legends, he who amuses therewith sensational stories, is as criminal as the geographer who would draw up false charts for navigators.</p>
<p>London, November 1877</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Preface
The history of the Third Estate was to have been the prologue to this history. But time presses; the victims are gliding into their graves; the perfidies of the Radicals threaten to surpass the worn-out calumnies of the Monarchists. I limit myself for the present to the strictly necessary introduction.
Who made the Revolution of the 18th March? What part was taken by the Central Committee? What was the Commune? How comes it that 100,000 Frenchmen are lost to their country? Who is responsible? legions of witnesses will answer.
No doubt it is an exile who speaks, but an exile who has been neither member, nor officer, nor functionary of the Commune; who for five years has sifted the evidence; who has not ventured upon a single assertion without accumulated proofs; who sees the victor on the look-out for the slightest inaccuracy to deny all the rest; who knows no better plea for the vanquished than the simple and sincere recital of their history.
This history, besides, is due to their children, to all the workingmen of the earth. The child has the right to know the reason of the paternal defeats, the Socialist party the campaign of its flag in all countries. He who tells the people revolutionary legends, he who amuses therewith sensational stories, is as criminal as the geographer who would draw up false charts for navigators.
London, November 1877
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<h3>Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</h3>
<p> </p>
<h1>Appendices</h1>
<p> </p>
<a name="a01"></a>
<h3>I</h3>
<p class="information">The Central Committee found in the War Office, and the <em>Officiel</em> of the Commune published on the 25th April, the following letter from the supreme commander of the artillery of the army to General Suzanne:</p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="fst">Paris<br>
12th December 1870 </p>
<p>My dear Suzanne,</p>
<p>I have not found among the young auxiliaries your protege Hetzel, but only a M. Hessel. Is it he who is meant?</p>
<p>Tell me frankly what you desire, and I will do it. I will attach him to my staff, where he will be bored, having nothing to do, or else I will send him to Mont Valerien, where he will run less risk than at Paris (this for the parents), and where he will have the air of firing cannons into the air, according to Noel’s method.</p>
<p>Unbutton — your mouth, of course.</p>
<p class="sig">Yours,<br>
<em>Guiod</em></p>
<p class="information">The Noel mentioned at that time commanded Mount Valerien.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a02"></a>
<h3>II</h3>
<p class="information">The role of the Central Committee during the day of the 18th March. (Extract from an account addressed to the author by a member of the Central Committee)</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>I would remind you that the members of the Committee had separated at about half-past three in the morning of the 17th to the 18th. Before raising the sitting it had been decided that the meeting of the following day should take place at eleven o'clock in the evening, at a school requisitioned for the purpose in the Rue Basfroi.</p>
<p>Despite the lateness of the hour, nothing had transpired as to the movements which the Government had decided upon, and the Committee having only just constituted itself for the examination of its powers and the distribution of the commissions, had received no information which might have led it to suppose the imminence of the peril. Its military commission had not yet begun to work; it had taken possession of the documents, notes, and minutes of the former one, and that was all.</p>
<p>You know how Paris woke up on the morning of the 18th. The members of the Committee heard of the events of the night through public rumours and the official posters. For my own part, aroused at about eight o'clock, I hurried on my clothes, and repaired to the Rue Basfroi, crossing the Place de la Bastille, occupied by the Guard of Paris. I had hardly entered the Rue de la Roquette when I saw that the people were beginning to organize the defence. A barricade was being commenced at the corner of the Rue Neuve de Lappe. A little higher up I was refused passage, in spite of the declaration which I made of my quality of member of the Central Committee. I was obliged to go up the Rue de Charonne, the faubourg, and come back in the direction of the Rue St. Bernard. No work was going on as yet in the Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine, but the excitement there was great. At last, towards half-past ten o'clock, I reached the Rue Basfroi, which was barricaded at both outlets, with the exception of an opening reserved for the cannon drawn up in the open grounds of this street, which were taken away one by one to the different barricades in course of erection.</p>
<p>I succeeded, not without difficulty, in getting into a school-room, where some of my colleagues were gathered. Citizens Assi, Prudhomme, Rousseau, Gouhier, Lavalette, Geresme, Bouit, and Fougeret were there. Just as I entered, a staff sub-lieutenant, arrested in the Rue St. Maur, was being led in. He was examined. Next a gendarme was brought, but the only papers found in his possession were notices transmitted to one of the <em>mairies</em>. X. looked after this business, and had organized a sort of prison in the courtyard. I also saw a march past of about fifteen individuals, military and civil, arrested by the people. In. the meantime I learnt that Bergeret had been sent to take the command of Montmartre, where he had been named <em>chef-de-l�gion </em>the day before. Varlin, who came immediately after me, had set out again in order to organize the defence of the Batignolles. Arnold also put in his appearance for a moment, and then went to place himself at the head of his battalion. The Committee had added Citizens Audoyneau, Ferrat and Billioray to its numbers.</p>
<p>At midday the course events would take was still waited for, and nothing was decided upon. I begged some of my colleagues to leave X. to his useless interrogations, and to come and to deliberate in another room, the one we occupied having by degrees been invaded by persons who were strangers to the Committee. As soon as we were installed, we asked for some citizens willing to serve as our general staff, and to inform us is to the situation in the different quarters. A great number presented themselves. We sent them in all directions, to tell our colleagues to hurry on as much as possible the construction of the barricades, to muster the National Guard, to take the command of it, and to specify the points whither we were to forward our communications.</p>
<p>Of our messengers only four returned. He whom we had sent to the twentieth arrondissement informed us that the rallying point was in the Rue de Paris and at Menilmontant, in front of the new <em>mairie</em>. Varlin had great trouble in grouping the National Guards of the Batignolles. One staff had mustered forces at the Place du Trone, and had repaired to the Neuilly Barracks, but the soldiers had closed the gates, and assumed a menacing attitude. Brunel, together with Lisbonne, was preparing to threaten the barracks of the Ch�teau d'Eau.</p>
<p>Other accounts apprised us that the orders of the Committee were being waited for. Duval had established himself at the Panth�on, and waited. Faltot sent us a note in these words: ‘I have five or six battalions in the Rue de S�vres; what am I to do?’ Pindy had taken possession of the <em>mairie</em> of the third arrondissement, and was mustering the battalions devoted to the Committee. As soon as we had got this intelligence some dispositions for the attack were taken.</p>
<p>While these resolutions were being discussed Lullier had come to place himself at the disposal of the Committee. The Committee had given him no formal order, and confined itself to telling him that all forces available for the taking of the H�tel-de-Ville were being mustered.</p>
<p>In order to assure the transmission of the orders, each one of the members then present — others had come up, but I could not say who — undertook to carry them to a designated point. So at three o'clock the Committee broke up, leaving Assi and two other members as a permanent sub-committee at the Rue Basfroi.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a03"></a>
<h3>III</h3>
<p class="information">Here is a letter from one of them, later a most violent enemy of this Revolution, M. M�line, general secretary of the Ministry of Justice, written on the 30th March, to the president of the Council of the Commune:</p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="fst">Ville de Paris<br>
(First Arrondissement, <em>Mairie</em> of the Louvre)</p>
<p class="fst">Citizen President,</p>
<p>I no longer possess sufficient physical strength after prolonged fatigues to combat in the midst of our Assembly, which is destined to discuss so many grave questions. I beg you then to accept my resignation, and my sincere hopes that the Assembly may consolidate the Republic.</p>
<p>Receive, Citizen President, the expression of my fraternal sentiments,</p>
<p class="sig"><em>Jules M�line</em><br>
30th March, 1871.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a04"></a>
<h3>IV</h3>
<p class="information">Here is a letter addressed to the Delegate at War:</p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="fst">Citizen,</p>
<p>Excuse my addressing you these lines, and be so kind as to take into consideration the request which I address to you.</p>
<p>I have three sons in the ranks of the National Guard — the eldest in the 197th battalion, the second in the 126th, and the third in the 97th. As to myself, I am in the 177th.</p>
<p>However, there yet remains to me one son, who is the youngest. He will soon be sixteen years old, and desires with all his heart to be enrolled in no matter what battalion; for he has sworn to his brothers and to me that he will take arms to sustain our young Republic against the hangmen of Versailles.</p>
<p>We have all agreed, and we have sworn an oath to revenge him who should fall under the fratricidal balls of our enemies.</p>
<p>Citizen, take then the last of my sons. I offer him with all my heart to the Republican fatherland. Do with him as you wish, place him in a battalion of your choice, and you will make me a thousand times happy. — Accept, citizen, my fraternal salutation,</p>
<p class="sig"><em>Auguste Joulon, </em><br>
Guard of the 177th Battalion. </p>
<p class="sig">18 Avenue d'Italie, Paris,<br>
12th May 1871.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a05"></a>
<h3>V</h3>
<p class="information">Instances of their courage abound in the journals of the time. One quotation taken at hazard from <i>La Commune</i> of the 12th April:</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>On Thursday, the 6th, at the moment when the 26th battalion of St. Ouen defended the barricade of the cross-roads, a child, V. Thiebault, fourteen years old, ran up amidst the balls in order to give the defenders something to drink. The shells having forced the Federals to fall back, they were about to sacrifice the victuals of the battalion, when the child, in spite of the shells, sprang towards a barrel of wine, which he stayed in, crying, ‘At any rate they shall not drink our wine.’ At the same instant, seizing the rifle of a Federal</p>
<p>who had just fallen, he charged it, took aim, and killed an officer of gendarmes. Then perceiving a wagon with two horses harnessed to it, whose driver had just been wounded, he mounted the horses and saved the wagon. — Eug�ne L�on Vanvi�re, thirteen and a half years old, contrived to save the guns at the outpost of the Porte-Meillot, in spite of his wound.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a06"></a>
<h3>VI</h3>
<p class="information">The prefect of police, Valentin, sent the following circular to the commissaries of the different railway stations:</p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="sig">Versailles, <br>
15th April 1871</p>
<p>The chief of the executive power has just decided that, dating from today, all victualling trains and all supplies of provisions directed to Paris shall be stopped.</p>
<p>I beg you to take all measures you may deem needful for the execution of this decree at once. You are to examine with the most vigilant attention all the railway trains, all the carriages destined for Paris, and you will send back to the purveyors all the provisions you may discover.</p>
<p>You will for this purpose concert with ... etc.</p>
<p>The delegate to the functions of prefect of police.</p>
<p class="sig">Valentin</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a07"></a>
<h3>VII</h3>
<p class="information">Extract from an account addressed to the author by Theisz:</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>... Accompanied by Frankel and one of my brothers, I proceeded to the General Post-Office, which was still occupied by the National Guards of order. I was immediately received by M. Rampont, surrounded by the Board of Administration. M. Rampont at first declared that he did not recognize the authority of the Central Committee, which had appointed me; but I think this was a merely formal precaution, for he began to parley immediately. I told him that the Government of the 4th September, which had named him, was also born of a revolutionary movement, and that notwithstanding this he had accepted his post. During this discussion he told us that he was a Mutualist-Socialist, a partisan of Proudhon’s ideas, and consequently hostile to Communist ideas, which had just triumphed with the Revolution of the 18th March. I answered that the Revolution of the 18th March was not the triumph of a Socialist school, but the prelude of a social transformation fettered by no particular school, and that I myself belonged to the mutualist school. After a long conversation, in which he declared himself ready to acknowledge the authority of the Commune, which was to be named in two or three days, he proposed to me to submit the following undertaking to the Central Committee. Till the day when the Commune should have decided, he engaged to remain at the head of the Post-Office; he accepted the control of two delegates of the Committee. I communicated this proposal to Vaillant and A. Arnaud (who had made over to me my nomination), in order that they might inform the Committee. I waited in vain for an answer.</p>
<p>The Commune met. The second day, perhaps, I broached the question of the Post-Office. It was to be comprised in the order of the day, but always in the confused way which one finds in the order of these debates, when, on the 30th March, a workman came to apprise Pindy that the administration of the Post-Office was deserting. The Commune immediately voted my nomination, and gave me the order to have the office occupied. Chardon set out at the head of a battalion, accompanied by Vermorel and myself. It was seven or eight o'clock in the evening. The work was done, and only a small number of employees remained. Some gave us a sympathetic welcome, others seemed indifferent. Chardon left a guard, and I spent the night alone in the office.</p>
<p>The next day, at three o'clock in the morning, I walked through the rooms and courts where the employees were arriving for the first delivery. A manuscript notice, posted in all the rooms and courts, ordered the employees to abandon their services, and repair to Versailles, under pain of dismissal. I tore down these posters and exhorted the men to remain true to their posts. There was at first some indecision, then a few made up their minds to rally round me.</p>
<p>At eight o'clock other employees came; at nine o'clock still more. They formed groups in the large court, talked, discussed, some beat a retreat, and their example was about to be followed.</p>
<p>I had the doors closed, and militarily occupied by guards; and I went from group to group, discussing, threatening. At last I gave the order to each one to return to his respective bureau. Thereupon a valued auxiliary came up, Citizen A — an employee at the Post — Office, a Socialist, for whom I had a letter from a friend. There was a momentary hesitation. The father of a family, much respected, sure of an early promotion, he was about to risk an advantageous place. But his hesitation lasted only a few seconds. He promised me his assistance, and he gave it me faithfully up to the last day. He brought me into relation with Citizen B — , who soon became my second. Both of them furnished me with information of the greatest utility concerning this department, of which I did not know the most simple details.</p>
<p>All the heads of departments had abandoned their posts; so, too, had the second head clerks, save one, who immediately had himself put on the sick-list. A — and B — got together some friends, head clerks, who for a long time had done all the work of the heads of departments. Citizen C — was placed at the head of the postal service for Paris.</p>
<p>All the divisional offices, save two, had been closed and abandoned. The stock had been carried off, the cash-box emptied, as was proved by the minutes drawn up by a commissar of the Commune, with the assistance of several well-known people of the quarter, amongst whom was M. Brelay, since named deputy of Paris. Postage stamps were wanting. The carts had set off for Versailles.</p>
<p>A., B., and some others of an indefatigable zeal, had the divisional offices opened by locksmiths in the presence of the commissars of the quarter, and installed well-meaning citizens, whose apprenticeship they superintended. But there was a stoppage of two days in the delivery of letters, which gave rise to public grumbling, and I was obliged to explain the facts in a poster. At the end of forty-eight hours A. and B. had reorganized the collection and delivery of letters.</p>
<p>All the citizens whose services had been accepted as auxiliaries received provisionally, till their capacities could be judged of, a salary of five francs a day.</p>
<p>By chance we found some postage-stamps of ten centimes at the bottom of a chest. Camelinat, appointed the director of the Mint, sent for the plates and the stock, and forthwith began manufacturing stamps.</p>
<p>During the first days bundles of letters from Paris destined for the provinces were taken in by the receiving officer of Sceaux, who no doubt was without precise instructions; then the blockade was completed. The sending of letters to the provinces became the object of a daily struggle. Secret agents went to throw them into boxes of the offices for ten miles round. The letters of Paris for Paris alone were stamped with date-marks. Those sent to the provinces by our smugglers only had the postage-stamp, which did not permit of their being distinguished from the others. When Versailles found out the manoeuvre, it changed the dotting of the stamps. We were quits at Paris by sending off the letters of importance without prepayment, and procuring stamps from the offices of Versailles.</p>
<p>If the offices for the letters to be sent out of Paris could still work, those for the collection of the letters from abroad were at a stand-still. The letters from the provinces accumulated at Versailles. Some men of business set up agencies, where, for a very high fee, the letters which they went to fetch at Versailles might be obtained. These people exploited the population, but we could not supersede them, and we were obliged to shut our eyes. We contented ourselves with reducing the profits somewhat, by deducting from each letter the postage of Paris for Paris, without their being able on that account to raise the sum fixed by their advertisements.</p>
<p>The efforts of Versailles to disorganize the reconstituted postal services were several times baffled, thanks to the vigilance of our two inspectors. However, we could not prevent the success of all their attempts at subornation.</p>
<p>From the first days of April we instituted a council at the post-office, composed of the delegate, his secretary, the general secretary, all the heads of services, two inspectors, and two head postmen. The postmen, <em>gardiens de bureaux, </em>and sorters had their wages raised, very little, alas! for our receipts, considerably reduced, did not allow us to be very liberal.</p>
<p>We decided upon the suppression, if not absolute, at least partial, of the time for serving as supernumerary, which was reduced to the strictly necessary time. The aptness of the workmen had henceforth to be proved by tests and examinations, as also the quantity and quality of their labour.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a08"></a>
<h3>VIII</h3>
<p class="information">The limits of this Appendix oblige me to make a r�sum� of the extremely interesting accounts by Faillet and Louis Debock on the direct taxes and the National Printing Office:</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>In the evening of the 24th March Faillet and Combault (of the International) presented themselves at the administration of the direct taxes. On the written declaration that he yielded to menaces, the director handed them over the keys. Citizen X., who was thoroughly acquainted with the administrative movement, placed himself very promptly at their disposal.</p>
<p>The original register and other materials for the collection of taxes had disappeared. It was decided that the taxes should be gathered according to the list of 1869. The personnel of the forty collectorships, the valuers, the employees, to make up the list, had fled. The collectors were replaced by forty citizens, some working men belonging to the International, the others clerks of commercial houses or government offices. Some of the old officials who had not withdrawn were retained, but under the superintendence of a safe man. The presence of Citizen X. decided a great number of employees to come and work under the new directors.</p>
<p>The service of the direct taxes was composed — for the <em>interior</em>, of a director, a general administrator, a general secretary, two sub-secretaries, one chief of the bureaux of taxes and lists, a head accountant, five other accountants, and two inspectors of the collecting offices; for the <em>exterior, </em>of forty tax-gatherers, each one assisted by two or three clerks, a bearer of summonses, and an agent with his accountants at the bonded warehouse for wine.</p>
<p>Once or twice a week the director made a round in all the collector’s offices, which the inspectors visited every day. Each tax-gatherer brought the cashier of the direction the receipts of the day before. The cashier every evening laid the returns before the administration, and made over to the Central Pay Office of the Finance Department all that was not needed for the general expenses of the service.</p>
<p>The service ceased on the Saturday evening, 25th May. A hundred clerks, not thinking their whole duty to the Commune done, formed a corps of scouts, whose post was established in the presbytery of the Temple des Billettes.</p>
<p>On the 18th March, at five o'clock in the evening, Pindy and Louis Debock presented themselves with a battalion at the National Printing Office, and established themselves there. The director Haur�au came down, tried to negotiate, and then went up again to his apartments. Haur�au took advantage of the occasion to protest his republicanism, said he was a former editor of the <em>National, </em>a friend of Marrast, Arago, etc., and that the movement of the 18th March had no <em>raison d'�tre </em>whatever. A few days were allowed him for removing.</p>
<p>The whole personnel was maintained, with the exception of the director, the sub-director, the overseer, and the chief of the works, Felix Deren�mesnil, who was cordially detested for his brutality and injustice. These spread abroad that the Central Committee had no money, and that the workmen would not be paid. Debock answered by an order of the day posted up in the workshops, guaranteeing the wages in the name of the Central Committee.</p>
<p>At the end of March, on the injunction of Versailles, all the employees and heads of the services, with very few exceptions, abandoned the printing-office after having received their salaries. The new director took advantage of this to have the new foremen of the workshops appointed by the workmen themselves. The places of managers of the printing-press were put up for competition. As the administration of the Rue Pagevin threw obstacles into the way of posting up the decrees and proclamations, Debock advised the workmen bill-stickers to organize themselves. They did so; their wages increased by 25 per cent, and the printing-office saved 200 francs a day.</p>
<p>The bulk of the salaries was greatly reduced; that of the lower clerks and workmen increased. On the 18th March a fortnight’s salary was due to the working men and women, and a week’s to the employees. The Commune discharged these arrears. Versailles, victorious, refused to pay the few days’ wages due to the workmen. Yet the Versailles administration found the stock intact and in perfect order.</p>
<p>The budget of monthly expenses before the 18th March rose to 120,000 francs, of which 23,000 were absorbed by the salaries of the functionaries, employees etc. After this date the expenses did not reach 20,000 francs a week, the expenses of postering included.</p>
<p>After the Commune the Union Republicaine announced in the journals that it had saved the Archives and the National Printing-Office from the flames. This was a lie, as proved by the order sent on the 24th May to the Archives at the request of Debock.</p>
<p class="quoteb">Order. — The archives not to be burnt. — The colonel commanding the H�tel-de-Ville, Pindy.</p>
<p>AS to the printing-office, it was occupied by Debock up to the invasion of the quarter. In the night of the 24th he sent to ask the Committee of Public</p>
<p>Safety for the documents, papers, and articles necessary for the composition of the Journal <em>Officiel. </em>The next day, having received no answer, and the Versaillese pressing forward, he repaired to Belleville, where the three proclamations or posters which appeared on the following days were printed by his order.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a09"></a>
<h3>IX</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p>Certainly the Communal principle must have been very strong in itself to have held sixty days against such fools. (‘Behind the Scenes at the Commune’, <em>Fraser’s Magazine, December, </em>1872.)</p>
<p>To conquer was so easy and simple, that it needed the double dose of vanity and ignorance with which the feeble brains of the majority of the Commune were stuffed to baulk the people of its victory. (’the Paris Commune of 1871’, <em>Fraser’s Magazine, March, </em>1873.)</p>
<p>He (Delescluze) had only once dared to attack me to my face, but it resulted m so much discomfiture to himself, and he came out of the affair so crestfallen, that for the future he confined himself to plotting against us behind my back, while to my face he was as civil as possible. ('Behind the Scenes at the Commune’, <em>Fraser’s Magazine, </em>December, 1872.)</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a10"></a>
<h3>X</h3>
<p class="information">At the trial of the members of the Commune, the advocate of Assi read a letter which the prisoners in Germany had sent his client.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>Citizen Assi — So you no longer think, with the Central Committee of the crapulous, that we are tired of your farces and evolutions without an aim and without limits ... Woe to you, sink of the people! All possible reverses will accumulate upon you, and give you, as the whole result of your acts deprived of common-sense and capacity, the hatred of the prisoners confined in Germany, and the severe punishment which the admired representatives of all France will mercilessly inflict upon you. Once over the frontier, the last of the prisoners will go and plunge into the heart of the guilty the dagger which is to give back security to the legal government. Be prepared for the sentence which all the prisoners in Germany have in store for you.... Death to the insurgents! Death to the infernal Committee! Tremble, brigands!</p>
<p>Seen and approved by all the prisoners of Magdebourg, Erfurt, Coblentz, Mayence, Berlin, etc.</p>
<p class="sig">The signatures follow.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a11"></a>
<h3>XI</h3>
<p class="information">One of Laroque’s reports concluded thus:</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>I send you the names of the friends of order and of the agents who have rendered the greatest service. Jules Masse, P. Verdier, Sigismond, Galle, Tarjest, Honobede, Toussaint, Arthur Sellion, Jullia Francisque Baltead, E. Philips, Salowhicht, Maniel, Dolsand (42nd battalion), Rollin, Verox (seminarist), D'Anthome, Somm�, Cremonaty, Tascher de la Pagerie, Josephine Legros, Jupiter (police agent), the manager of the Caf� de Suede, the proprietor of the Caf� de Madrid, Lucia, Hermance, Am�lie, little Celestine of the Caf� des Princes, Camille and Laura (Caf� Peters), Madame du Valdy (Faubourg Si. Germain), Leynhass (brewer).</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a12"></a>
<h3>XII</h3>
<p class="information">This is what had passed between the Committee of Public Safety and Dombrowski. (Extract from an account addressed to the author by a member of the Committee of Public Safety):</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>The latter came to us one evening and informed us that through the instrumentality of one of his officers (Hutzinger), Versailles had made overtures to him, and asked him to appoint a rendezvous. He demanded of us whether something could not be got out of this for the Commune. We resolved to let him try the interview on condition that he should tell us all that passed. That evening we charged somebody to follow and arrest him if he yielded. From this time Dombrowski was closely watched — it is thanks to this surveillance that he was not carried off by the Versaillese who made use of a woman to allure him to the neighbourhood of the Luxembourg — and I declare we learnt nothing that was of a nature to weaken our confidence in him.</p>
<p>He came the next day, and told us that a million was offered him on condition that he would betray one of the gates. He gave us the names of those he had seen; amongst others, there was a confectioner of the Place de la Bourse, the address of the suborners (8 Rue de la Michaudi�re) and announced another rendezvous for the next day.... He explained to us how he would entice a few thousand Versaillese into Paris to make them prisoners. Pyat and I opposed this attempt. He did not insist, but demanded that the next day 20,000 men and some howitzers should be provided for him. He had decided on attracting the Versaillese troops by a surprise within reach of the fortifications.... Of the 20,000 men, 3,000 or 4,000 only could be mustered, and instead of 500 artillerists, there came only fifty.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a13"></a>
<h3>XIII</h3>
<p class="information">Here is an extract from the report addressed to the Municipal Council of Toulouse by the delegates sent to Versailles to M. Thiers and the deputies of the Extreme Left to inquire into the situation:</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>We went then for information to the members of the Extreme Left; Martin Bernard, the companion and friend of Barbes, Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, etc.</p>
<p>M. Louis Blanc gave us the most precise information. It is useless, said he to us, to again attempt conciliation; there is too much animosity on both sides. Besides, with whom could one treat in Paris? These different and hostile forces dispute for power.</p>
<p>First there is the <em>Commune, </em>the result of an election at which only a small number of electors took part, composed chiefly of unknown men, of doubtful capacities, and sometimes even of doubtful honour.</p>
<p>In the second place a <em>Committee of Public Safety </em>named by the Commune, but soon coming to a violent rupture with it because it wanted to direct dictatorially.</p>
<p>In the third place, the <em>Central Committee, </em>formed during the siege, and principally composed of agents of the International, solely occupied with cosmopolitan interests, and caring very little for Parisian or French interests; it is this Central Committee which disposes of the cannon and the munitions, in one word, of almost all the material forces.</p>
<p>To all this must be added the Bonapartist and Prussian influences, whose more or less apparent action it is easy to trace in all three powers.</p>
<p>The Parisian insurrection (continued M. Louis Blanc) is legitimate in its motives and in its first aim — the demand for the municipal franchise of Paris. But the intervention of the Central Committee and the pretension manifested of governing all the other Communes of the Republic, have quite altered its character. Finally, the insurrection in the presence of the Prussian army, ready to enter Paris if the Commune is victorious, is altogether condemnable, and must be condemned by every true Republican. This is why the mayors of Paris, the Left of the Assembly, and the Extreme Left, have not hesitated to protest against an insurrection which the presence of the Prussian army and other circumstances might render criminal.</p>
<p>M. Martin Bernard held the same language, and spoke almost in the same terms. ‘If Barb�s still lived,’ cried he, ‘his heart would have been rent, and he too would have condemned this fatal insurrection.'</p>
<p>All the other persons whom we have been able to see — MM. Henri Martin, Barth�lemy St. Hilaire, Humbert, Victor Lefranc, etc., have spoken to us in the same way, and this unanimity could not but make a deep impression upon us.</p>
<p class="information">(Thiers and Jules Favre themselves have calumniated Paris less than Louis Blanc. The first says in the Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. II. p. 15: ‘It is not true, as has been asserted, that I had great difficulties with the Prussian Government concerning the Commune, or that it had any predilection for the latter.’ Jules Favre, Vol. II, p. 49; ‘I have seen nothing that could authorize me to accuse either the Bonapartists or Prussia. General Trochu has been mistaken. I have seen nothing that could authorize me to accuse the Bonapartists of having fomented the ]8th March. After the insurrection of the ]8th March, I spent my time in refusing the offers which were made me by the Prussians to assist in the overthrow of the Commune.')</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a14"></a>
<h3>XIV</h3>
<p class="information">This is the textual copy of a report addressed to the Versaillese general staff:</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>The <em>mot d'ordre </em>has been tampered with on the 17th, 18th, and 19th. We had that of Versailles (General Douai’s corps).</p>
<p>There has been an explosion at the Rapp powder magazine, as I have already reported to you. There were some dead, and many wounded.</p>
<p>A commissar of police of the Commission of Safety has made about forty arrests. Those made on account of the explosion are estimated to be about 125.</p>
<p>Seargeant Toussaint (3rd battery, 2nd squadron) has been arrested by the Commune. It is said that this brave officer is shot.</p>
<p>The sick, according to our information, had been taken away either the day before or on the morning of the day of the catastrophe to the H�tel des Invalides. The work-women. and not the men, were sent home earlier that day.</p>
<p>The official of the Audit Office of the Hospital du Gros-Caillou, M. Bernard, has behaved very well.</p>
<p>1 recommend to the good-will of M. le Ministre, MM. Janvier, Bertalon, Mauduit, Morelli, and Sigismond, men enjoying an excellent reputation.</p>
<p>They desire the cross or an important’ collectorship.</p>
<p>Signal services have been rendered by Madame Brosset, and by Mademoiselle Gigaud. It is at the latter’s house that I hid for eight days when Rigault’s people were searching for me.</p>
<p>This woman is very devoted; she lives in the Quartier du Gros Caillou, Rue Dominique St. Germain. She is the daughter of an ex-officer. She would be glad to have a tobacconist’s shop. (<em>Report of Commander Jerriait, Ex-Chief of Squadron</em>.)</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a15"></a>
<h3>XV</h3>
<p class="information">A categorical deposition of this fact was made by M. E. Belgrand, Director of the Service of Public Roads, before the Commission of Inquiry into the 18th March ('Vol. III, p. 352-353):</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>The insurgents attempted nothing with the sewers. In short, I may affirm that from the 18th March up to the entry of the troops into Paris there was no attempt at all as to the sewers; that no chambers had been established there; that no incendiary or explosive matters had been introduced, nor wires destined to set fire to mines or to incendiary matters.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a16"></a>
<h3>XVI</h3>
<p class="information">The Bien Public, M. Thiers’ organ directed by Vrignault, published in its number of the 23rd June, 1871:</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>All Paris has preserved the souvenir of that terrible cannonade directed from Montmartre during the last three days of the civil war against the Buttes Chaumont, Belleville, and the Pere Lachaise. Here are some very correct details of what was happening then at the summit of the Butte, behind the batteries at No. 6 Rue des Rosiers.</p>
<p>There had been installed in this house, so sadly celebrated, a provostship, presided over by a captain of Chasseurs. As the inhabitants of the quarter rivalled each other in zeal in denouncing the insurgents, the arrests were numerous. As the prisoners arrived they were questioned.</p>
<p>They were forced to kneel down, bare-headed, in silence, before the wall at the foot of which the unfortunate Generals Lecomte and Clement-Thomas had been assassinated. They remained thus a few hours, till others came to take their place. Soon, to lessen what might be cruel in this <em>amende honorable, </em>the prisoners were allowed to sit down in the shade, but always opposite the wall, the aspect of which prepared them for death, and shortly after the principal culprits amongst them were shot.</p>
<p>They were taken a few steps from there to the slope of the hill, at the spot where during the siege a battery overlooked the St. Denis route. It is there too that Varlin was conducted, whom they had great trouble in protecting from the violence of the crowd. Varlin had confessed his name, and made no efforts to escape the fate that awaited him; he died game. V. B.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a17"></a>
<h3>XVII</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p>The day before, at five o'clock, at the moment when the baggage of the War Office arrived at the H�tel-de-Ville, in the Avenue Victoria, two guards,</p>
<p>carrying a chest, were assailed with a hatchet, by an individual dressed in a blouse and wearing a cap. One of the Federals fell dead. The assassin, immediately seized hold of, cried, ‘You are done for! you are done for! Give me back my hatchet and I shall recommence.’ On this madman the commissar of police of the H�tel-de-Ville found papers and the <em>livret, </em>proving that he had served in the <em>sergents-de-ville.</em></p>
<p>During the evening of Tuesday, an individual, wearing the uniform of an officer of a free corps, came to ask for orders at the H�tel-de-Ville. A commandant of the same corps entered the hall and saw this officer, and not recognizing him, asked his name. The latter grew confused: ‘But no, you are not one of my men,’ said the commandant. The individual was arrested, and found to be the bearer of Versaillese instructions and orders.</p>
<p>Treason assumed all shapes. The same morning at Belleville, Place des Fetes, Ranvier and Frankel heard a drummer reading the Federal Guards the order not to leave their arrondissements. Ranvier, interrogating the drummer, learned that the order emanated from General du Bisson.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a18"></a>
<h3>XVIII</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p>Colonel Gaillard, chief of the military prisons, interrogated by the <em>Commision d'Enquete </em>as to the objects of value found on the insurgents, answered: ‘I can give you no information on this head. There were valuables which have not been sent to Versailles. A few days ago I saw a minister of Denmark. He came to inquire what had become of a sum of 100,000 francs seized on one of his compatriots who had been shot near the H�tel-de-Ville. His minister told me he had been unable to obtain any information. Many things happened in Paris of which we know nothing.’ (<em>Enquete sur le 18 Mars, Colonel Gaillard</em>, Vol. 2, p. 246.)</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a19"></a>
<h3>XIX</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p>Shall we ever know of all the spurious speculators, the commercial men with no resources left, the men at the brink of bankruptcy, who made use of the conflagrations in order to settle scores? How many cried ‘Death!’ who had themselves just set the petroleum on fire.</p>
<p>On the 10th March, 1877, the assize court of the Seine sentenced to ten years’ hard labour a ruined Bonapartist, Prieur de la Comble, found guilty of having set fire to his house, with the object of getting a heavy premium from the companies where he was insured. He had prepared his crime with the greatest <em>sangfroid, </em>painted the walls, saturated the hangings with petroleum, made sure of nine different centres of fire. His father, a former mayor Of the</p>
<p>first arrondissement, had failed to the amount of 1,800,000 francs, and at the end of the Empire there had been proceedings of bankruptcy instituted against him. Now, on the 24th May, 1871, the house of the accused in the Rue du Louvre, that of his father in the Rue de Rivoli, that of the assignee of the failure in the Boulevard Sebastopol, were consumed, and owing to these triple conflagrations the account-books and vouchers disappeared. This fact was only mentioned before the assize court, and the president confined himself to saying that it was odd. He took good care not to interrogate Prieur; and one knows that the presidents of assize courts are not usually chary of sifting the antecedents of the accused.</p>
<p>The motive of this extraordinary reticence is that no blame was to be thrown upon the army and the courts-martial, which had shot or condemned some <em>petroleuses for </em>the burning of these very houses set on fire by Prieur de la Comble.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a20"></a>
<h3>XX</h3>
<p class="information">The death of Milli�re is recounted as follows by M. Louis Mie, Conseiller-General of the Dordogne, Municipal Councillor of Perigeux and deputy of Bordeaux to the Chamber:</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>A picket of soldiers emerged from the Rue de Vaugirard on our left. They marched in two ranks. In the midst of them was Milli�re.</p>
<p>He was dressed exactly as I had seen him some months before at Bordeaux on the tribune of the Assembly and in the Republican Circle — black trousers, dark-blue overcoat, tight and buttoned up, a high black hat.</p>
<p>The picket stopped before the door of the Luxembourg. One of the soldiers, who held his rifle by the end of the barrel, cried, ‘It is I who took him! it is I who am entitled to shoot him!’ There were about a hundred persons there of both sexes and of all ages. Many cried, ‘Death to him! shoot him!'</p>
<p>A National Guard, wearing a tricolor armlet, seized hold of Milli�re by the wrist, led him into the corner on the right, and placed him against the wall, then he retired. Milli�re uncovered himself, placed his hat on the pedestal of the column, crossed his arms on his breast, and calm and cool looked at the troops. He waited.</p>
<p>Round us the soldiers were being questioned. ‘Who is it?’ one of them was asked, and I heard him answer, ‘It is Mayer.'</p>
<p>A priest came out of the Luxembourg; he wore a straight-cut cassock and a high hat. Advancing towards Milli�re, he spoke a few words to him and pointed to heaven.</p>
<p>Without ostentation, but with a very firm and calm attitude, Milli�re appeared to thank him, and shook his head in sign of refusal. The priest retired.</p>
<p>Two officers came out from the palace and addressed themselves to the prisoner. One of them, whom the first seemed to guide, spoke to him for a minute or two. We heard the sound or voices without understanding the words exchanged, then I heard this command: ‘To the Pantheon!'</p>
<p>The picket re-formed round Milli�re, who put on his hat, and the cortege remounted the Rue de Vaugirard in the direction of the Pantheon.</p>
<p>We reached the rails at the same time as the picket. The door opened and shut upon them. Placing my feet on the stone balustrade, I passed my two arms round the top of the bars; my head overlooked them, for thew railings are low. By my side a soldier, the sentry of the interior, answered some prostitutes who were questioning him; his elbow, leaning against the rails, touched mine.</p>
<p>The picket of the troop had stopped and almost leant against the closed door. Milli�re was led between the two columns of the centre. Arriving at the spot where he was to die, and after having ascended the last step of the stain, he exchanged a few words with the officer. Searching in the pocket of his overcoat, which he had just unbuttoned, he took out an object, which I believed to be a letter, and handed it over to him, as also a watch and a locket. The officer took them, then seized hold of Milli�re and placed him in such a manner that he should be shot from behind. The latter turned round with a brusque movement, and, his arms crossed, faced the troop. This is the only movement of indignation or of anger that I saw him make.</p>
<p>.Some more words were exchanged; Milli�re seemed to be refusing to obey an order. The officer came down. The instant after, a soldier seized him who was to be shot by the shoulder and forced him to bend his knee upon the flagstone.</p>
<p>Half the rifles of the platoon only were levelled at him; the others remained in the arms of the soldiers. During this time, believing his last moment come, Milli�re three times uttered the cry, ‘<em>Vive la Republique!'</em></p>
<p>The officer approaching the picket of the troop, ordered the rifles, which had been too hurriedly lowered, to be raised again, and then he pointed out with his sword how the order to fire would be given.</p>
<p>‘<em>Vive le Peuple! Vive l'humanit�’ </em>cried Milli�re.</p>
<p>The soldier on sentry, whose elbow touched my arm, answered the last words by these: ‘<em>On va t'en foutre de l'humanite!</em>’ I had hardly heard them when Milli�re fell as if thunder-stricken.</p>
<p>A military man, whom I believe to have been a non-commissioned officer, went UP the steps, approached the corpse, lowered his rifle, and fired point-blank near the left temple. The explosion was so violent that the head of Milli�re bounded, and appeared as if twisted back. The rain for three-quarters of an hour had beaten against his face; the cloud of powder fixed itself there.</p>
<p>Lying on his side, his hands joined, his clothes open and thrown into disorder by the fall, his head blackened, as if burst open, seeming to look at the frontispiece of the monument, his corpse was something terrible to behold ...</p>
<p class="information">Madame Milli�re having instituted judiciary proceedings against Staff-Captain Garcin, the murderer of her husband, the trial was cut short by the following letter:</p>
<p class="sig">Versailles,<br>
30th June, 1873.</p>
<p>Captain Garcin of the General Staff attached to the 2nd corps, has during the second siege of Paris only executed the orders given him by his superiors. He can thus in no way be made responsible for deeds which were the result of these orders. The responsibility rests exclusively upon those who have given the orders.</p>
<p class="sig">The Minister at War <br>
<em>De Cissey</em></p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a21"></a>
<h3>XXI</h3>
<p class="information">To the number of the innocent victims of our civil discords we have the sorrow to add the name of a young man, twenty-seven years old, M. Faneau, a doctor of medicine.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>Dr. Faneau had worked from the beginning of the war in the International ambulances. During the whole siege of Paris he did not cease tending the wounded with zealous devotion.</p>
<p>After the revolution of the 18th March he remained in Paris, and resumed his service in the ambulances.</p>
<p>On the 25th May he was on duty at the Grand Seminaire de St. Sulpice, where the Federals had established an ambulance.</p>
<p>When the army had taken possession of the cross-roads of the Croix Rouge, it advanced as far as the Place.</p>
<p>A company of line soldiers came up to the door of the seminary, where floated the flag of Geneva.</p>
<p>The officer who commanded asked to speak to the chief of the ambulance. Dr. Faneau, who filled this function, presented himself.</p>
<p>‘Are there any Federals here?’ the officer asked him.</p>
<p>‘I have only wounded,’ answered M. Faneau, ‘they are Federals, but they have been in my ambulance for several days.'</p>
<p>At the moment when he was concluding these words, a shot was fired from one of the windows of the first storey, and struck a soldier.</p>
<p>This shot was discharged by one of the wounded Federals, who had dragged himself from his bed to the window. [<em>The </em>Siecle, <em>in search of attenuating circumstances for the army, had invented this more than phantasmagorial incident. — L</em>.]</p>
<p>Immediately the officer, exasperated, threw himself upon Dr. Faneau, crying to him, ‘You lie, you have set a snare for us; you are the friend of these rascals; you are going to be shot.'</p>
<p>Dr. Faneau understood that it would be in vain to attempt to justify himself; also, he offered no resistance to the firing-party.</p>
<p>Some minutes after the unfortunate Young man fell, struck by ten bullets.</p>
<p>We knew Dr. Faneau, and we can affirm that, far from sympathizing with the members of the Commune, he deplored their fatal errors, and waited with impatience for the re-establishment of order. (<em>Le Siecle</em>.)</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a22"></a>
<h3>XXII</h3>
<p class="information">In the National of the 29th May appeared the following:</p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="fst">Paris, 28th May 1871 <br>
Sir,</p>
<p>Last Friday, at the time when corpses were being picked up in the Boulevard St. Michel, some individuals of nineteen to twenty-five years old, dressed as well-to-do people, were seated with gay women inside, and at the doors of certain cafes of this boulevard, indulging with these in scandalous merrymaking. — Accept, Monsieur le R�dacteur, etc.,</p>
<p class="sig">55 Boulevard D'Enfer. <br>
<em>Duhamel.</em></p>
<p class="information">The facts mentioned above were repeated every day.</p>
<p class="information">The Journal de Paris, a Versaillese journal suppressed by the Commune, wrote:</p>
<p>The manner in which the population of Paris manifested its satisfaction yesterday was rather more than frivolous, and we fear it will grow worse as time progresses. Paris has now a f�te-day appearance, which is sadly out of place; and unless we are to be called the Parisians of the decline, this sort of thing must come to an end.</p>
<p class="information">Then he quoted the passage from Tacitus:</p>
<p>‘Yet on the morrow of that horrible struggle, even before it was completely over, Rome, degraded and corrupt, began once more to wallow in the voluptuous slough which was destroying its body and polluting its soul — <em>alibi proelia et vulnera, alibi balnea popinaeque — </em>(here fights and wounds, there baths and restaurants.)'</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a23"></a>
<h3>XXIII</h3>
<p class="information">The Versaillese journals confessed to 1600 prisoners buried in the P�re Lachaise.</p>
<p class="information">The <em>Opinion Nationale</em> of the 10th June said:</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>We do not wish to leave the P�re Lachaise without saluting with a look of Christian compassion these deep trenches, where lie entombed pell-mell the insurgents taken under arms, and those who would not surrender.</p>
<p>They have expiated their criminal folly by an act of summary justice. May God pity and have mercy upon them!</p>
<p>Let us rectify, in passing, the exaggerated rumours which have been spread on the subject of the executions at the P�re Lachaise and in the environs.</p>
<p>It appears from certain information — we might almost venture to say official statements — that there have only been buried in that cemetery, <em>shot </em>or killed fighting, <em>sixteen hundred men in all.</em></p>
<p class="information">But the following account of the executions of La Roquette has been given me by an eye-witness, who barely escaped death:</p>
<p>I had returned to my house on the Saturday evening. Sunday morning, on crossing the Boulevard du Prince Eug�ne, I was taken in a razzia. We were conducted to La Roquette. A chief of battalion was standing at the entrance. He surveyed us; then, with a nod of the, head, said, ‘To the right,’ or ‘To the left.’ I was sent to the left. ‘Your affair is settled,’ the soldiers said to us; ‘you are going to be shot, <em>canailles!’ </em>We were ordered to throw away our matches if we had any about us, and then the signal was given to march on.</p>
<p>I was the last of the file, and by the side of the sergeant who conducted us. He looked at me. ‘Who are you?’ he asked me. ‘A professor. I was taken this morning as I came out of my house.’ No doubt my accent, the elegance of my clothes, struck him, for he added, ‘Have you any papers?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Come!’ and he took me back before the chief of battalion. ‘Commander,’ said he, ‘there is a mistake. This young man has his papers.’ ‘All right,’ answered the officer, without looking at me, ‘to the right.'</p>
<p>The sergeant led me off. As we went along, he explained to me that the prisoners taken to the left were shot. We had already got to a door on the right, when a soldier ran after us: ‘Sergeant, the commandant says you are to take back this man to the left.'</p>
<p>Fatigue, despair at the defeat, the enervation caused by so much anguish, deprived me of all strength to dispute my life. ‘Well, shoot me,’ said I to the sergeant, ‘for you it will be but a crime the more! only return these papers to my family,’ and I turned to the left.</p>
<p>I already perceived a long file of men drawn up against a wall, others lying on the ground. Opposite them three priests read in their breviaries the prayers of the dying. A few steps more and I was dead, when suddenly I was seized hold of by the arm. It was my sergeant. He took me back by force to the officer. ‘Commandant,’ said he, ‘we cannot shoot this man. He has his papers!” Let me see,’ said the officer. I handed over my pocket-book, which contained a card as employee at the Ministry of Commerce during the first siege. ‘To the right,’ said the commandant.</p>
<p>There were soon more than 3,000 prisoners on the right. All Sunday and part — of the night detonations resounded by the side of us. On Monday morning a platoon came in. ‘Fifty men,’ said the sergeant. We thought we were going to be shot by parties, and no one stirred. The soldiers took the first fifty they came across. I was of the number. We were taken to the famous left side.</p>
<p>On a space which seemed to us endless we saw heaps of corpses. ‘Pick up all this rubbish,’ said the sergeants to us, ‘and put them into these carts.’ We raised up these corpses covered with blood and mud. The soldiers made frightful jokes: ‘See what grimaces they cut,’ and with their heels crushed some face. It seemed to me that some were still living. We told the soldiers so, but they answered, ‘Come, come! get on!’ Certainly some died under the earth. We put 1,907 corpses into these carts.</p>
<p class="information">The <em>Libert�</em> of the 4th June said:</p>
<p>The governor of La Roquette during the Commune, and his acolytes, were shot on the very scene of their exploits.</p>
<p>For the other National Guards arrested in this neighbourhood, and whose number exceeded 4,000, a provisional court-martial was installed in the Roquette itself. A commissar of police and police security agents were charged with the first examination. Those appointed to be shot were sent into the interior; they were killed from behind while they were walking along, and their bodies were thrown onto the nearest heap. All these monsters had the faces of bandits; the exceptions were to be regretted.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a24"></a>
<h3>XXIV</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p>At the time of the trial of the members of the Council of the Commune before the third court-martial sitting at Versailles, a certain M. Gabriel Ossude came to give evidence as witness against Jourde, in whose arrest he was concerned, he said, in his quality of provost of the seventh arrondissement, and as Colonel Merlin, president of the court, seemed astonished that such a function should have devolved upon a civilian, M. Ossude entered into very precise explanations, which I remember perfectly. </p>
<p>He declared that towards the end of the Commune the prevotal courts had been instituted by the Government of Versailles in view of the early entry of the troops into Paris; that the number and the seats of the exceptional tribunals had been arranged beforehand, as well as the topographical limits of their jurisdictions; that he (M. Gabriel Ossude) had received his nomination from the hands of M. Thiers, although he held no rank in the army, but as captain of the seventeenth battalion of the National Guard. (<em>Letter of Ulysse Parent, </em>Rappel, <em>March 19, 1877</em>.)</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a25"></a>
<h3>XXV</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p>Near the Ecole Militaire the scene is at this moment very affecting; prisoners are continually being led there, and their trial is <em>terminated </em>beforehand. It consists only in detonation s. (<em>Siecle, 28th May</em>.)</p>
<p>The courts-martial functioned in Paris with unheard-of activity at several special points. At the Lobau Barracks, at the Ecole Militaire, the shooting is permanently heard. It is the settling of accounts with those wretches who openly took part in the struggle. (<em>Libert�, 30th May</em>.)</p>
<p>Since morning (Sunday, 28th May) a strong cordon is being formed round the theatre (Ch�telet); where a court-martial is permanently established. From time to time one sees a band of fifteen to twenty individuals coming out, composed of National Guards, civilians, <em>women and children fifteen to sixteen years old.</em></p>
<p>These individuals are condemned to death. They march two by two, escorted by a platoon of chasseurs, who lead and bring up the rear. This cortege goes up the Quai de Gevres and enters the Republican Barracks in the Place Lobau. A minute after one hears from within the fire of platoons and successive musketry discharges; it is the sentence of the court-martial which has just been executed.</p>
<p>The detachment of chasseurs returns to the Chatelet to fetch other prisoners. The crowd seems deeply impressed on hearing the noise of the shootings. (Journal des D�bats, <em>30th May, 1871</em>)</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a26"></a>
<h3>XXVI</h3>
<p class="information">A journal of the Belgian bourgeoisie, the <em>Erode</em>, one of the most violent against the Commune, allowed this avowal to escape it.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>The majority have met death like the Arabs after battle, with indifference, with contempt, without hatred, without anger, without insult to their executioners.</p>
<p>All the soldiers who took part in these executions, and whom I have questioned, have been unanimous in their accounts.</p>
<p>One of them said to me, ‘We shot about forty of these <em>canailles </em>at Passy. They all died like soldiers. Some crossed their arms, and stood head erect. Others opened their tunics and cried to us, ‘Fire! we are not afraid of death.'</p>
<p>Not one of those whom we have shot trembled. I especially remember an artillerist, who by himself did us more harm than a whole battalion. He was alone serving a piece of cannon. During three-quarters of an hour he peppered us with grape shot, and he killed and wounded not a few of my comrades. At last he was overwhelmed. We had turned his barricade.</p>
<p>I still see him. He was a strongly-built man. He was bathed in perspiration from the service he had done during three-quarters of an hour. ‘Your turn now,’ said he to us. ‘I have merited shooting, but I shall die game.'</p>
<p>Another soldier of General Clinchant’s corps told me how his company had led to the ramparts eighty-four insurgents taken bearing arms.</p>
<p>They all placed themselves in a line, he said to me, as if they were going to exercise. Not one faltered. One of them who had a handsome face, wore trousers in fine cloth tucked into his boots, and a Zouave’s belt round his waist, said to us calmly, ‘Try to aim at my chest; be careful not to touch my head.’ We all fired, but the poor fellow had half of his head carried away. <em>A functionary of Versailles made me the following recital:</em></p>
<p>During the day, Sunday, I made an excursion to Paris. I went by the Th��tre du Chatelet towards the smoking ruins of the H�tel-de-Ville, when I was surrounded and carried along by the stream of a crowd which was following a convoy of prisoners.</p>
<p>I found among them the same men whom I had seen in the battalions of the siege of Paris. Almost all seemed to me to be working men.</p>
<p>Their faces betrayed neither despair nor despondency nor emotion. They walked on with a firm, resolute step, and they seemed to me so indifferent to their fate that I thought they expected to be released. I was entirely mistaken. These men had been taken in the morning at Menilmontant, and knew whither they were being led. Arrived at the Lobau Barracks, the cavalry officers who preceded the escort had a semicircle formed, and prevented the curious from advancing.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a27"></a>
<h3>XXVII</h3>
<p class="information">One of the most ignoble barkers of Versailles, Francisque Sarcey, wrote in the Gaulois of the 13th June:</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>Men who are quite cool, of whose judgment and word I cannot doubt, have spoken to me with an astonishment mingled with horror of the scenes they had seen, seen with their own eyes, and which rendered me rather meditative.</p>
<p>Young women, pretty of face, and dressed in silk dresses, came down into the street, and a revolver in their hands, fired at random, and then said with proud mien, elevated voice, eyes full of hatred, ‘Shoot me at once!’ One of them. who had been taken in a house whence they had fired from the windows, was about to be bound in order to be taken to Versailles and judged there.</p>
<p>‘Come,’ said she, ‘save me the trouble of the journey!’ And placing herself against a wall, her arms spread open, her breast bare, she seemed to solicit to provoke death.</p>
<p>All those who have been seen executed thus summarily by furious soldiers</p>
<p>have died, insults on their tongues, with a laugh of contempt, like martyrs, who in sacrificing themselves accomplish a great duty.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a28"></a>
<h3>XXVIII</h3>
<p class="information">At the time of an action entered against M. Raspail, fils, in 1876, for his pamphlet in favour of an amnesty, the following letter, addressed to him by M. Herv� de Saisy, senator, was read in court.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>I cannot, for motives of discretion bearing on divers persons, repeat in this letter the recital which I made you <em>viva voce </em>on the occasion of which you remind me. However, I wish to answer your courteous appeal by repeating here the words which served as a reason for the iniquitous order by which the life of M. Cernuschi was menaced, during the day on which the troops took possession of the prison of Sainte P�lagie and the Jardin des Plantes.</p>
<p>These are the words pronounced by the general of division who gave the order of summary execution. Learning that Cernuschi had repaired to the prison, at the door of which I saw his carriage, he said to some one, whom I cannot mention, ‘Ah! it is Cernuschi, the man of the 100,000 francs of the plebiscite. Return to the prison, and let him be shot within five minutes.'</p>
<p>Five minutes represented the time that would be required by the bearer of the order in going to the prison from the Cedre du Jussieu, whence the general watched the phases of the combat.</p>
<p>At first I did not understand this st~ phrase, but some moments after I remembered that it was the expression of a political vengeance which was about to be exercised against M. Cernuschi for having offered 100,000 francs for the propaganda which the Opposition was to make during the final plebiscite of the Empire.</p>
<p>Profoundly indignant at what I had just heard, I was fortunate enough to bring about a fortuitous incident to which the already condemned victim owed his salvation.</p>
<p>Such are the details I am able to furnish you, with.</p>
<p class="sig">Herv� De Saisy.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a29"></a>
<h3>XXIX</h3>
<p class="information">From the <em>Echo de la Dordogne</em>, 19th June, 1871:</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>Some journals of Paris have repeated that Tony Moilin had been condemned and shot for having been taken arms in hand on the 27th May. This report is incorrect.</p>
<p>One single fact was Tony Moilin reproached with: that of having on the 18th March taken possession of the <em>mairie </em>of his arrondissement, and having thus had a share in giving the signal for. the insurrection. He was shown a kind of dismissal given by him on that day to M. H�risson, the mayor whom he had replaced. No witness was heard.</p>
<p>Moilin admitted the fact; then he added that he had exercised the function of mayor during hardly two days; that at the end of this time, little in accord with the men of the Commune, he had voluntarily ceased to appear at the <em>mairie, </em>where he had been immediately replaced.</p>
<p>The court-martial asked Moilin to account for his time and his acts since the day of the entry of the army of Versailles into Paris. He answered that, known for a long time, especially through the Blois trial and by his writings, as one of the leaders of the Socialist party, having no answer for taking possession of the <em>mairie </em>of the eighth arrondissement on the 18th March, fearing a too summary justice and the fury of the first moments, he had sought and found shelter at a friend’s, and that, from the Monday morning tin the Saturday night; ... that on the Saturday evening, the 27th May, this friend had asked his guest to leave his retreat, and that on leaving this inhospitable house, discouraged, not seeking any longer to defend his liberty, nor even his life, he had returned to his home, where, on the denunciation of his porter and his neighbours, he had been almost directly afterwards arrested and taken before the court-martial at the Luxembourg.</p>
<p>To this recital was confined the defence of Tony Moilin, who was immediately condemned to death. The court-martial <em>condescended to tell him that the fact of du mairie, the only one he could be reproached with, had in itself not much importance, and did not merit death, but that he was one of the leaders of the Socialist party, dangerous through his talents, his character, and his influence over the masses; one of those men, in short, of whom a prudent and wise Government mot rid itself when it finds a legitimate occasion to do so.</em></p>
<p>Tony Moilin could only be satisfied with the urbanity (sic) of the members of the court. Without any difficulty a respite of twelve hours was granted to him in order that he might make his testament, write a few words of farewell to his father, and finally give his name to the woman who had, during the Blois trial and since, shown him the greatest devotion. These duties fulfilled, on the 28th May, in the morning, Tony Moilin was led into the garden a few steps from the palace and shot. His body, which his widow claimed, the surrender of which had been at first promised, was refused her.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a30"></a>
<h3>XXX </h3>
<p class="information">This assassination also stands to the debit account of Garcin. Let us again allow him to speak.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>Billioray at first attempted to deny his identity. He wanted to rush upon a soldier; he was a man of athletic strength .... He defended himself, he foamed with rage. There was hardly time to interrogate him. He began some tale about money, whose place of concealment he could indicate. He spoke of 150,000 francs; then he interrupted himself, in order to say to me, ‘I see you are going to have me shot. It is useless for me to say any more.’ I said to him, ‘You persist?’ ‘Yes.’ He was shot. (<em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. II, p. 234</em>.)</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a31"></a>
<h3>XXXI</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p><em>Account by a Military Surgeon published in the </em>Gaulois.</p>
<p>The event took Place on Thursday 25th May, at a few minutes past six in the evening, in the small Rue des Pr�tres-Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. Valles was coming out of the Th��tre du Ch�telet, led off by the firing-party charged to shoot him. He wore a black coat, and light trousers of a yellowish shade. He wore no hat; and his beard, which he had shaved but lately, was very short, and already getting grey.</p>
<p>On entering the lane where the ominous sentence was to be carried out, the sentiment of self-preservation gave him back the energy which seemed to have abandoned him. He wanted to fly; but, held back by the soldiers, he got into a horrible fury, crying ‘Murder!’ writhing, seizing his executioners by the throat, biting them, offering, in one word, a desperate resistance.</p>
<p>The soldiers were beginning to be embarrassed and a little moved at this horrible struggle, when one of them passing behind gave him such a furious blow in the loins with the butt-end of his gun that the unfortunate man fell with a low groan.</p>
<p>No doubt the spinal column was broken. They then fired some shots with their revolvers straight into his body, and pierced him with bayonet thrusts. As he was still breathing, one of the executioners approached and discharged his chassepot into his ear. Part of the skull burst open; his body was abandoned in the gutter till someone came to pick it up.</p>
<p>It is then that the spectators of this scene approached, and despite the wounds that disfigured him, were able to establish his identity.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a32"></a>
<h3>XXXII</h3>
<p class="information">The Radical of the 30th May, 1872, published the following letter from an employee at St. Thomas d'Acquin, who during the Commune had rendered the Versaillese the service of preventing the firing of the cannons of 8 cm breechloaders:</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>To Monsieur le Comte Daru,</p>
<p>President of the Committee of Inquiry into the Insurrection of the 18th March,</p>
<p>Versailles.</p>
<p>Monsieur le President,</p>
<p>I have just read in a book, which is entitled <em>Enqu�te Parlementaire sur l'Insurrection du 18 Mars, </em>under the head, <em>Evidence of witnesses, </em>the following evidence by the Staff-Captain Garcin:</p>
<p>‘All those who were arrested under arms were shot during the first moments, that is to say, during the combat. But when we were masters of the left bank there were no more executions.'</p>
<p>In the report of Marshal MacMahon on the operations of the army of Versailles against insurgent Paris, I find the following declaration:</p>
<p>‘In the evening of the 25th May the whole left bank was in our power, as also the bridges of the Seine.'</p>
<p>The evidence of Captain Garcin is unfortunately contrary to the truth. Four days after the 25th May my son and fourteen other unhappy victims were killed at the Dupleix Barracks, situated on the left bank, near the Ecole Militaire.</p>
<p>On the 31st August I addressed the Minister of Justice a complaint on this subject, of which I send you a correct copy. After having related the facts with regard to my son, I demanded that the law should search for and punish the culprits.</p>
<p>Up to the present time the law has remained deaf to my claims, notwithstanding the publicity I have given this complaint, in order to prove the disappearance of my child.</p>
<p>If it were true, as Captain Garcin declares, that orders had been given by the general commander-in-chief of the troops of the left bank to put an end to these executions after the evening of the 25th May; if again it were true that Marshal MacMahon had by his despatch of the 28th May given the order to suspend all executions, as the Colonel presiding over the court-martial at the trial of the members of the Commune declared — the officer of the gendarmerie, named Roncol, who ordered the massacres at the Dupleix Barracks, and his accomplices should have been prosecuted for having, in contempt of the orders of the chief of the army, had unfortunate people killed who had taken no part in the combat.</p>
<p>Thus, horrible fact, in the morning of the 29th May, while I was giving up the cannon at St. Thomas d'Acquin, which my son and I had sworn on our honour to preserve for the state, and for which we had risked our lives, my son was being massacred at the end of a stable by those who ought to have protected him.</p>
<p>In consequence of these facts, which I have just made public, I beg Monsieur le Pr�sident to be so obliging as to have the evidence of Captain Garcin rectified, which is on this point of the executions entirely contrary to truth. — I have the honour, Monsieur le Pr�sident, etc.,</p>
<p class="sig">G. Laudet</p>
<p>The correct copy of this was addressed in a registered letter of the 28th March, 1872, under the number 158, to M. le Comte Daru, who has acknowledged the receipt of it.</p>
<p class="sig"><em>G. Laudet.</em><br>
Paris, 23rd May 1872.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a33"></a>
<h3>XXXIII</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p>It is in the Bois de Boulogne that those condemned to death by the court-martial will for the future be executed. Whenever the number of the condemned shall exceed ten men the execution platoons will be replaced by a machine-gun. (<em>Paris Journal, 9th June</em>.)</p>
<p>All circulation is forbidden in the Bois de Boulogne.</p>
<p>One is forbidden to enter there, unless accompanied by a platoon of soldiers, and still more forbidden to come out again. (<em>Paris-Journal, 15th June</em>.)</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a34"></a>
<h3>XXXIV</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p>One man, a swarthy, burly fellow, with a shock head of black hair, sat down at the corner of the Rue de la Paix and declined to go any further, shaking his fist at the people and grinding his teeth. After several attempts at coercive measures, one of the soldiers lost all patience, and drove his bayonet twice into his body, telling him to get up and walk on like the rest. As might have been expected, this method was not successful, and so he was seized and placed on a horse, from which he speedily threw himself, and was then tied to its tail, and dragged along the ground after the manner of Brunhilda. He soon became faint from loss of blood, and having thus been reduced to a quiescent state, was bundled into an ambulance wagon, and carried off amid the shouts and execrations of the populace. — (Times, <em>31st May</em>.)</p>
<p>Another prisoner, who had also refused to march, was dragged by the hands and hair of the head along the road. (<em>Times, 30th May</em>.)</p>
<p>Near the Parc Monceaux a husband and wife were seized, and ordered to march forward towards the Place Vendome, a distance of a mile and a half. They were both of them invalids and unable to walk so far. The woman sat down on the kerbstone, and declined to move a step in spite of her husband’s entreaties that she would try. She persisted in her refusal, and they both knelt down together, begging the gendarmes who accompanied them to shoot them at once if shot they were to be. Twenty revolvers were fired, but they still breathed, and it was only at the second discharge that they finally sank down dead. The gendarmes then rode away, leaving the bodies as they had fallen. (<em>Times, 29th May.</em>)</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a35"></a>
<h3>XXXV</h3>
<p class="information">The conservative Paper, the Tricolor, said on the 31st May:</p>
<hr class="end">
<p>Sunday morning, the 24th, out of more than <em>two thousand </em>Federals, one hundred and eleven of them have been shot in the ditches of Passy, and that under circumstances which show that the victory [the conclusion of this nonsensical phrase must be given in the original] <em>�tait entr�e dans toute la maturit� de la situation.</em></p>
<p><em>‘</em>Let those who have white hairs step out from the ranks!’ said General Gallifet, who presided at the execution, and the number of grey-headed Federals amounted to one hundred and eleven!</p>
<p>For these the aggravating circumstance was having been contemporaries of June, 1848.</p>
<p>There is here a new <em>retro-synopante </em>theory which might take us a long way back.</p>
<p><em>The </em>Libert� <em>of Brussels published the following declaration, signed by eyewitnesses, of the facts which had occurred at La Muette on the 26th May, 1871:</em></p>
<p>On the 26th of last May we formed part of the column of prisoners who had left the Boulevard Malesherbes at eight o'clock in the morning in the direction of Versailles. W e stopped at the Chateau of La Muette, where General Gallifet, after having dismounted from his horse, passed into our ranks, and then making a choice, he pointed out to the troops eighty-three men and three women. They were taken away along the talus of the fortifications and shot before us. After this exploit the General said to us: ‘<em>My name is Gallifet. Your journals in Paris have sullied me enough. I take my revenge.'</em></p>
<p>Thence we were directed to Versailles, where during the journey we were again obliged to assist at frightful executions of two women and three men, who, falling down exhausted and being unable to keep up with the column, were killed with bayonet-thrusts by the <em>sergents de ville </em>forming our escort.</p>
<p><em>The names followed, with the professions and addresses of the signers, to the number of eleven.</em></p>
<p>The column of prisoners halted in the Avenue Uhrich and was drawn up four or five deep on the footway facing to the road. General the Marquis de Gallifet and his staff, who had preceded us there, dismounted, and commenced an inspection from the left of the line and near where I was. Walking down slowly, and eyeing the ranks as if at an inspection, the General stopped here and there, tapping a man on the shoulder or beckoning him out of the rear-ranks. In most cases, without further parley, the individual thus selected was marched out into the centre of the road, where a small supplementary column was thus soon formed.... They evidently knew too well that their last hour had come, and it was fearfully interesting to see their different demeanours. One, already wounded, his shirt soaked with blood, sat down in the road and howled with anguish; ... others wept in silence; two soldiers, presumed deserters, pale but collected, appealed to all the other prisoners as to whether they had ever seen them amongst their ranks; some smiled defiantly ... It was an awful thing to see one man thus picking out a batch of his fellow-creatures to be put to a violent death in a few minutes without</p>
<p>further trial.... A few paces from where I stood, a mounted officer pointed out to General Gallifet a man and woman for some particular offence. The woman, rushing out of the ranks, threw herself on her knees and with outstretched arms implored mercy, and protested her innocence in passionate terms. The General waited for a pause, and then, with most impassable face and unmoved demeanour, said: ‘Madame, I have visited every theatre in Paris; your acting will have no effect on me’ (<em>ce n'est la peine de jouer la com�die</em>)<em>... </em>I followed the General closely down the line, still a prisoner, but honoured with a special escort of two chasseurs-a-cheval, and endeavoured to arrive at what guided him in his selections. The result of my observations was that it was not a good thing on that day to be noticeably taller, dirtier, cleaner, older or uglier than one’s neighbour. One individual in particular struck me as probably owing his speedy release from the ills of this world to his having a broken nose on what might have been otherwise an ordinary face, and being unable from his height to conceal it. Over a hundred being thus chosen, a firing party told off, and the column resumed its marching, leaving them behind. In a few minutes afterwards, a dropping fire in our rear commenced, and continued for over a quarter of an hour. It was the execution of these summarily convicted wretches. (<em>Daily News, 8th June, 1871</em>)</p>
<p>Yesterday (Sunday 28th May) about one o'clock, General Gallifet appeared at the head of a column of 6,000 prisoners . . Upon their haggard countenances and in their downcast eyes there was no ray of hope to be seen. They were evidently prepared for the worst fate, and dragged listlessly along, as though it were not worth while to walk to Versailles to be shot when an immediate execution might save them the trouble. M. de Gallifet seemed to be of the same opinion, and a little beyond the Arc-de-Triomphe he halted the column, selected eighty-two, and had them shot there and then. A little after this a band of twenty Pompiers were marched into the Parc Monceaux and executed. (<em>Times, 31st May, 1871</em>)</p>
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<a name="a36"></a>
<h3>XXXVI</h3>
<p class="information">Here is a copy of a letter addressed to Me Versaillese general staff, and probably still in its possession, bearing the number 28 bis:</p>
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<p class="fst">To the Chief of the General Staff<br>
General,</p>
<p>I have been mistaken for a M. de Beaufond, and this annoys me all the more in that negligences committed by him are imputed to me.</p>
<p>I have certainly not wasted my time during this period of fifteen days. I have organized quite a legion of combatants. Their order is to run away at the approach of the troops, and thus to throw the ranks of the Federals into disorder.</p>
<p>The means indicated by the Committee of A seems to be practicable. I will make use of it. With only one hundred drunkards one can do many a thing.</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="a37"></a>
<h3>XXXVII</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information">This, according to the, of course, very approximate report of General Appert, is the contingent furnished by the different professions:</p>
<p>528 jewellers, 124 pasteboard makers, 210 hatters, 328 carpenters, 1,065 clerks, 1,491 shoemakers, 206 dressmakers, 172 gilders, 636 cabinet makers, 1,598 commercial employees, 98 instrument makers, 227 tin-workers, 224 founders, 182 engrave rs, 179 watchmakers, 819 compositors, 159 stained paper printers, 106 teachers, 2,901 day labourers, 2,293 bricklayers, 1,659 joiners, 193 lace-makers, 863 house-painters, 106 bookbinders, 283 sculptors, 2,664 locksmiths and mechanicians, 681 tailors, 347 tanners, 157 moulers, 766 stone-cutters.</p>
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<a name="a38"></a>
<h3>XXXVIII</h3>
<hr class="end">
<p>Notably in the affair of the spy of the Hautes-Bruy�res, for which several persons had already been condemned. This spy — a young man of twenty, and not a child, as the reactionaries have stated — had attracted the shells of the enemy to the Federal positions. Brought before a court-martial, composed of La C�cilia, commander of the army corps, of Johannard, delegate of the Commune, and of all the chiefs of battalions, he admitted having taken the Versaillese the plan of the Federal positions, and having received twenty francs as reward. He was unanimously condemned to death. At the moment of the execution, Johannard and Grandier, La C�cilia’s aide-de-camp, explained to the condemned man that he would be pardoned if he would reveal the name of his accomplice, an inhabitant of Montrouge. He replied, ‘You are brigands. Je vous emm . . .’ This fact, odiously travestied, has furnished for his <em>Annus Terrible, </em>as unjust to Johannard as to S�rizier, one of the men shot at Satory. The great poet owes himself a disclaimer.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Appendices
I
The Central Committee found in the War Office, and the Officiel of the Commune published on the 25th April, the following letter from the supreme commander of the artillery of the army to General Suzanne:
Paris
12th December 1870
My dear Suzanne,
I have not found among the young auxiliaries your protege Hetzel, but only a M. Hessel. Is it he who is meant?
Tell me frankly what you desire, and I will do it. I will attach him to my staff, where he will be bored, having nothing to do, or else I will send him to Mont Valerien, where he will run less risk than at Paris (this for the parents), and where he will have the air of firing cannons into the air, according to Noel’s method.
Unbutton — your mouth, of course.
Yours,
Guiod
The Noel mentioned at that time commanded Mount Valerien.
II
The role of the Central Committee during the day of the 18th March. (Extract from an account addressed to the author by a member of the Central Committee)
I would remind you that the members of the Committee had separated at about half-past three in the morning of the 17th to the 18th. Before raising the sitting it had been decided that the meeting of the following day should take place at eleven o'clock in the evening, at a school requisitioned for the purpose in the Rue Basfroi.
Despite the lateness of the hour, nothing had transpired as to the movements which the Government had decided upon, and the Committee having only just constituted itself for the examination of its powers and the distribution of the commissions, had received no information which might have led it to suppose the imminence of the peril. Its military commission had not yet begun to work; it had taken possession of the documents, notes, and minutes of the former one, and that was all.
You know how Paris woke up on the morning of the 18th. The members of the Committee heard of the events of the night through public rumours and the official posters. For my own part, aroused at about eight o'clock, I hurried on my clothes, and repaired to the Rue Basfroi, crossing the Place de la Bastille, occupied by the Guard of Paris. I had hardly entered the Rue de la Roquette when I saw that the people were beginning to organize the defence. A barricade was being commenced at the corner of the Rue Neuve de Lappe. A little higher up I was refused passage, in spite of the declaration which I made of my quality of member of the Central Committee. I was obliged to go up the Rue de Charonne, the faubourg, and come back in the direction of the Rue St. Bernard. No work was going on as yet in the Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine, but the excitement there was great. At last, towards half-past ten o'clock, I reached the Rue Basfroi, which was barricaded at both outlets, with the exception of an opening reserved for the cannon drawn up in the open grounds of this street, which were taken away one by one to the different barricades in course of erection.
I succeeded, not without difficulty, in getting into a school-room, where some of my colleagues were gathered. Citizens Assi, Prudhomme, Rousseau, Gouhier, Lavalette, Geresme, Bouit, and Fougeret were there. Just as I entered, a staff sub-lieutenant, arrested in the Rue St. Maur, was being led in. He was examined. Next a gendarme was brought, but the only papers found in his possession were notices transmitted to one of the mairies. X. looked after this business, and had organized a sort of prison in the courtyard. I also saw a march past of about fifteen individuals, military and civil, arrested by the people. In. the meantime I learnt that Bergeret had been sent to take the command of Montmartre, where he had been named chef-de-l�gion the day before. Varlin, who came immediately after me, had set out again in order to organize the defence of the Batignolles. Arnold also put in his appearance for a moment, and then went to place himself at the head of his battalion. The Committee had added Citizens Audoyneau, Ferrat and Billioray to its numbers.
At midday the course events would take was still waited for, and nothing was decided upon. I begged some of my colleagues to leave X. to his useless interrogations, and to come and to deliberate in another room, the one we occupied having by degrees been invaded by persons who were strangers to the Committee. As soon as we were installed, we asked for some citizens willing to serve as our general staff, and to inform us is to the situation in the different quarters. A great number presented themselves. We sent them in all directions, to tell our colleagues to hurry on as much as possible the construction of the barricades, to muster the National Guard, to take the command of it, and to specify the points whither we were to forward our communications.
Of our messengers only four returned. He whom we had sent to the twentieth arrondissement informed us that the rallying point was in the Rue de Paris and at Menilmontant, in front of the new mairie. Varlin had great trouble in grouping the National Guards of the Batignolles. One staff had mustered forces at the Place du Trone, and had repaired to the Neuilly Barracks, but the soldiers had closed the gates, and assumed a menacing attitude. Brunel, together with Lisbonne, was preparing to threaten the barracks of the Ch�teau d'Eau.
Other accounts apprised us that the orders of the Committee were being waited for. Duval had established himself at the Panth�on, and waited. Faltot sent us a note in these words: ‘I have five or six battalions in the Rue de S�vres; what am I to do?’ Pindy had taken possession of the mairie of the third arrondissement, and was mustering the battalions devoted to the Committee. As soon as we had got this intelligence some dispositions for the attack were taken.
While these resolutions were being discussed Lullier had come to place himself at the disposal of the Committee. The Committee had given him no formal order, and confined itself to telling him that all forces available for the taking of the H�tel-de-Ville were being mustered.
In order to assure the transmission of the orders, each one of the members then present — others had come up, but I could not say who — undertook to carry them to a designated point. So at three o'clock the Committee broke up, leaving Assi and two other members as a permanent sub-committee at the Rue Basfroi.
III
Here is a letter from one of them, later a most violent enemy of this Revolution, M. M�line, general secretary of the Ministry of Justice, written on the 30th March, to the president of the Council of the Commune:
Ville de Paris
(First Arrondissement, Mairie of the Louvre)
Citizen President,
I no longer possess sufficient physical strength after prolonged fatigues to combat in the midst of our Assembly, which is destined to discuss so many grave questions. I beg you then to accept my resignation, and my sincere hopes that the Assembly may consolidate the Republic.
Receive, Citizen President, the expression of my fraternal sentiments,
Jules M�line
30th March, 1871.
IV
Here is a letter addressed to the Delegate at War:
Citizen,
Excuse my addressing you these lines, and be so kind as to take into consideration the request which I address to you.
I have three sons in the ranks of the National Guard — the eldest in the 197th battalion, the second in the 126th, and the third in the 97th. As to myself, I am in the 177th.
However, there yet remains to me one son, who is the youngest. He will soon be sixteen years old, and desires with all his heart to be enrolled in no matter what battalion; for he has sworn to his brothers and to me that he will take arms to sustain our young Republic against the hangmen of Versailles.
We have all agreed, and we have sworn an oath to revenge him who should fall under the fratricidal balls of our enemies.
Citizen, take then the last of my sons. I offer him with all my heart to the Republican fatherland. Do with him as you wish, place him in a battalion of your choice, and you will make me a thousand times happy. — Accept, citizen, my fraternal salutation,
Auguste Joulon,
Guard of the 177th Battalion.
18 Avenue d'Italie, Paris,
12th May 1871.
V
Instances of their courage abound in the journals of the time. One quotation taken at hazard from La Commune of the 12th April:
On Thursday, the 6th, at the moment when the 26th battalion of St. Ouen defended the barricade of the cross-roads, a child, V. Thiebault, fourteen years old, ran up amidst the balls in order to give the defenders something to drink. The shells having forced the Federals to fall back, they were about to sacrifice the victuals of the battalion, when the child, in spite of the shells, sprang towards a barrel of wine, which he stayed in, crying, ‘At any rate they shall not drink our wine.’ At the same instant, seizing the rifle of a Federal
who had just fallen, he charged it, took aim, and killed an officer of gendarmes. Then perceiving a wagon with two horses harnessed to it, whose driver had just been wounded, he mounted the horses and saved the wagon. — Eug�ne L�on Vanvi�re, thirteen and a half years old, contrived to save the guns at the outpost of the Porte-Meillot, in spite of his wound.
VI
The prefect of police, Valentin, sent the following circular to the commissaries of the different railway stations:
Versailles,
15th April 1871
The chief of the executive power has just decided that, dating from today, all victualling trains and all supplies of provisions directed to Paris shall be stopped.
I beg you to take all measures you may deem needful for the execution of this decree at once. You are to examine with the most vigilant attention all the railway trains, all the carriages destined for Paris, and you will send back to the purveyors all the provisions you may discover.
You will for this purpose concert with ... etc.
The delegate to the functions of prefect of police.
Valentin
VII
Extract from an account addressed to the author by Theisz:
... Accompanied by Frankel and one of my brothers, I proceeded to the General Post-Office, which was still occupied by the National Guards of order. I was immediately received by M. Rampont, surrounded by the Board of Administration. M. Rampont at first declared that he did not recognize the authority of the Central Committee, which had appointed me; but I think this was a merely formal precaution, for he began to parley immediately. I told him that the Government of the 4th September, which had named him, was also born of a revolutionary movement, and that notwithstanding this he had accepted his post. During this discussion he told us that he was a Mutualist-Socialist, a partisan of Proudhon’s ideas, and consequently hostile to Communist ideas, which had just triumphed with the Revolution of the 18th March. I answered that the Revolution of the 18th March was not the triumph of a Socialist school, but the prelude of a social transformation fettered by no particular school, and that I myself belonged to the mutualist school. After a long conversation, in which he declared himself ready to acknowledge the authority of the Commune, which was to be named in two or three days, he proposed to me to submit the following undertaking to the Central Committee. Till the day when the Commune should have decided, he engaged to remain at the head of the Post-Office; he accepted the control of two delegates of the Committee. I communicated this proposal to Vaillant and A. Arnaud (who had made over to me my nomination), in order that they might inform the Committee. I waited in vain for an answer.
The Commune met. The second day, perhaps, I broached the question of the Post-Office. It was to be comprised in the order of the day, but always in the confused way which one finds in the order of these debates, when, on the 30th March, a workman came to apprise Pindy that the administration of the Post-Office was deserting. The Commune immediately voted my nomination, and gave me the order to have the office occupied. Chardon set out at the head of a battalion, accompanied by Vermorel and myself. It was seven or eight o'clock in the evening. The work was done, and only a small number of employees remained. Some gave us a sympathetic welcome, others seemed indifferent. Chardon left a guard, and I spent the night alone in the office.
The next day, at three o'clock in the morning, I walked through the rooms and courts where the employees were arriving for the first delivery. A manuscript notice, posted in all the rooms and courts, ordered the employees to abandon their services, and repair to Versailles, under pain of dismissal. I tore down these posters and exhorted the men to remain true to their posts. There was at first some indecision, then a few made up their minds to rally round me.
At eight o'clock other employees came; at nine o'clock still more. They formed groups in the large court, talked, discussed, some beat a retreat, and their example was about to be followed.
I had the doors closed, and militarily occupied by guards; and I went from group to group, discussing, threatening. At last I gave the order to each one to return to his respective bureau. Thereupon a valued auxiliary came up, Citizen A — an employee at the Post — Office, a Socialist, for whom I had a letter from a friend. There was a momentary hesitation. The father of a family, much respected, sure of an early promotion, he was about to risk an advantageous place. But his hesitation lasted only a few seconds. He promised me his assistance, and he gave it me faithfully up to the last day. He brought me into relation with Citizen B — , who soon became my second. Both of them furnished me with information of the greatest utility concerning this department, of which I did not know the most simple details.
All the heads of departments had abandoned their posts; so, too, had the second head clerks, save one, who immediately had himself put on the sick-list. A — and B — got together some friends, head clerks, who for a long time had done all the work of the heads of departments. Citizen C — was placed at the head of the postal service for Paris.
All the divisional offices, save two, had been closed and abandoned. The stock had been carried off, the cash-box emptied, as was proved by the minutes drawn up by a commissar of the Commune, with the assistance of several well-known people of the quarter, amongst whom was M. Brelay, since named deputy of Paris. Postage stamps were wanting. The carts had set off for Versailles.
A., B., and some others of an indefatigable zeal, had the divisional offices opened by locksmiths in the presence of the commissars of the quarter, and installed well-meaning citizens, whose apprenticeship they superintended. But there was a stoppage of two days in the delivery of letters, which gave rise to public grumbling, and I was obliged to explain the facts in a poster. At the end of forty-eight hours A. and B. had reorganized the collection and delivery of letters.
All the citizens whose services had been accepted as auxiliaries received provisionally, till their capacities could be judged of, a salary of five francs a day.
By chance we found some postage-stamps of ten centimes at the bottom of a chest. Camelinat, appointed the director of the Mint, sent for the plates and the stock, and forthwith began manufacturing stamps.
During the first days bundles of letters from Paris destined for the provinces were taken in by the receiving officer of Sceaux, who no doubt was without precise instructions; then the blockade was completed. The sending of letters to the provinces became the object of a daily struggle. Secret agents went to throw them into boxes of the offices for ten miles round. The letters of Paris for Paris alone were stamped with date-marks. Those sent to the provinces by our smugglers only had the postage-stamp, which did not permit of their being distinguished from the others. When Versailles found out the manoeuvre, it changed the dotting of the stamps. We were quits at Paris by sending off the letters of importance without prepayment, and procuring stamps from the offices of Versailles.
If the offices for the letters to be sent out of Paris could still work, those for the collection of the letters from abroad were at a stand-still. The letters from the provinces accumulated at Versailles. Some men of business set up agencies, where, for a very high fee, the letters which they went to fetch at Versailles might be obtained. These people exploited the population, but we could not supersede them, and we were obliged to shut our eyes. We contented ourselves with reducing the profits somewhat, by deducting from each letter the postage of Paris for Paris, without their being able on that account to raise the sum fixed by their advertisements.
The efforts of Versailles to disorganize the reconstituted postal services were several times baffled, thanks to the vigilance of our two inspectors. However, we could not prevent the success of all their attempts at subornation.
From the first days of April we instituted a council at the post-office, composed of the delegate, his secretary, the general secretary, all the heads of services, two inspectors, and two head postmen. The postmen, gardiens de bureaux, and sorters had their wages raised, very little, alas! for our receipts, considerably reduced, did not allow us to be very liberal.
We decided upon the suppression, if not absolute, at least partial, of the time for serving as supernumerary, which was reduced to the strictly necessary time. The aptness of the workmen had henceforth to be proved by tests and examinations, as also the quantity and quality of their labour.
VIII
The limits of this Appendix oblige me to make a r�sum� of the extremely interesting accounts by Faillet and Louis Debock on the direct taxes and the National Printing Office:
In the evening of the 24th March Faillet and Combault (of the International) presented themselves at the administration of the direct taxes. On the written declaration that he yielded to menaces, the director handed them over the keys. Citizen X., who was thoroughly acquainted with the administrative movement, placed himself very promptly at their disposal.
The original register and other materials for the collection of taxes had disappeared. It was decided that the taxes should be gathered according to the list of 1869. The personnel of the forty collectorships, the valuers, the employees, to make up the list, had fled. The collectors were replaced by forty citizens, some working men belonging to the International, the others clerks of commercial houses or government offices. Some of the old officials who had not withdrawn were retained, but under the superintendence of a safe man. The presence of Citizen X. decided a great number of employees to come and work under the new directors.
The service of the direct taxes was composed — for the interior, of a director, a general administrator, a general secretary, two sub-secretaries, one chief of the bureaux of taxes and lists, a head accountant, five other accountants, and two inspectors of the collecting offices; for the exterior, of forty tax-gatherers, each one assisted by two or three clerks, a bearer of summonses, and an agent with his accountants at the bonded warehouse for wine.
Once or twice a week the director made a round in all the collector’s offices, which the inspectors visited every day. Each tax-gatherer brought the cashier of the direction the receipts of the day before. The cashier every evening laid the returns before the administration, and made over to the Central Pay Office of the Finance Department all that was not needed for the general expenses of the service.
The service ceased on the Saturday evening, 25th May. A hundred clerks, not thinking their whole duty to the Commune done, formed a corps of scouts, whose post was established in the presbytery of the Temple des Billettes.
On the 18th March, at five o'clock in the evening, Pindy and Louis Debock presented themselves with a battalion at the National Printing Office, and established themselves there. The director Haur�au came down, tried to negotiate, and then went up again to his apartments. Haur�au took advantage of the occasion to protest his republicanism, said he was a former editor of the National, a friend of Marrast, Arago, etc., and that the movement of the 18th March had no raison d'�tre whatever. A few days were allowed him for removing.
The whole personnel was maintained, with the exception of the director, the sub-director, the overseer, and the chief of the works, Felix Deren�mesnil, who was cordially detested for his brutality and injustice. These spread abroad that the Central Committee had no money, and that the workmen would not be paid. Debock answered by an order of the day posted up in the workshops, guaranteeing the wages in the name of the Central Committee.
At the end of March, on the injunction of Versailles, all the employees and heads of the services, with very few exceptions, abandoned the printing-office after having received their salaries. The new director took advantage of this to have the new foremen of the workshops appointed by the workmen themselves. The places of managers of the printing-press were put up for competition. As the administration of the Rue Pagevin threw obstacles into the way of posting up the decrees and proclamations, Debock advised the workmen bill-stickers to organize themselves. They did so; their wages increased by 25 per cent, and the printing-office saved 200 francs a day.
The bulk of the salaries was greatly reduced; that of the lower clerks and workmen increased. On the 18th March a fortnight’s salary was due to the working men and women, and a week’s to the employees. The Commune discharged these arrears. Versailles, victorious, refused to pay the few days’ wages due to the workmen. Yet the Versailles administration found the stock intact and in perfect order.
The budget of monthly expenses before the 18th March rose to 120,000 francs, of which 23,000 were absorbed by the salaries of the functionaries, employees etc. After this date the expenses did not reach 20,000 francs a week, the expenses of postering included.
After the Commune the Union Republicaine announced in the journals that it had saved the Archives and the National Printing-Office from the flames. This was a lie, as proved by the order sent on the 24th May to the Archives at the request of Debock.
Order. — The archives not to be burnt. — The colonel commanding the H�tel-de-Ville, Pindy.
AS to the printing-office, it was occupied by Debock up to the invasion of the quarter. In the night of the 24th he sent to ask the Committee of Public
Safety for the documents, papers, and articles necessary for the composition of the Journal Officiel. The next day, having received no answer, and the Versaillese pressing forward, he repaired to Belleville, where the three proclamations or posters which appeared on the following days were printed by his order.
IX
Certainly the Communal principle must have been very strong in itself to have held sixty days against such fools. (‘Behind the Scenes at the Commune’, Fraser’s Magazine, December, 1872.)
To conquer was so easy and simple, that it needed the double dose of vanity and ignorance with which the feeble brains of the majority of the Commune were stuffed to baulk the people of its victory. (’the Paris Commune of 1871’, Fraser’s Magazine, March, 1873.)
He (Delescluze) had only once dared to attack me to my face, but it resulted m so much discomfiture to himself, and he came out of the affair so crestfallen, that for the future he confined himself to plotting against us behind my back, while to my face he was as civil as possible. ('Behind the Scenes at the Commune’, Fraser’s Magazine, December, 1872.)
X
At the trial of the members of the Commune, the advocate of Assi read a letter which the prisoners in Germany had sent his client.
Citizen Assi — So you no longer think, with the Central Committee of the crapulous, that we are tired of your farces and evolutions without an aim and without limits ... Woe to you, sink of the people! All possible reverses will accumulate upon you, and give you, as the whole result of your acts deprived of common-sense and capacity, the hatred of the prisoners confined in Germany, and the severe punishment which the admired representatives of all France will mercilessly inflict upon you. Once over the frontier, the last of the prisoners will go and plunge into the heart of the guilty the dagger which is to give back security to the legal government. Be prepared for the sentence which all the prisoners in Germany have in store for you.... Death to the insurgents! Death to the infernal Committee! Tremble, brigands!
Seen and approved by all the prisoners of Magdebourg, Erfurt, Coblentz, Mayence, Berlin, etc.
The signatures follow.
XI
One of Laroque’s reports concluded thus:
I send you the names of the friends of order and of the agents who have rendered the greatest service. Jules Masse, P. Verdier, Sigismond, Galle, Tarjest, Honobede, Toussaint, Arthur Sellion, Jullia Francisque Baltead, E. Philips, Salowhicht, Maniel, Dolsand (42nd battalion), Rollin, Verox (seminarist), D'Anthome, Somm�, Cremonaty, Tascher de la Pagerie, Josephine Legros, Jupiter (police agent), the manager of the Caf� de Suede, the proprietor of the Caf� de Madrid, Lucia, Hermance, Am�lie, little Celestine of the Caf� des Princes, Camille and Laura (Caf� Peters), Madame du Valdy (Faubourg Si. Germain), Leynhass (brewer).
XII
This is what had passed between the Committee of Public Safety and Dombrowski. (Extract from an account addressed to the author by a member of the Committee of Public Safety):
The latter came to us one evening and informed us that through the instrumentality of one of his officers (Hutzinger), Versailles had made overtures to him, and asked him to appoint a rendezvous. He demanded of us whether something could not be got out of this for the Commune. We resolved to let him try the interview on condition that he should tell us all that passed. That evening we charged somebody to follow and arrest him if he yielded. From this time Dombrowski was closely watched — it is thanks to this surveillance that he was not carried off by the Versaillese who made use of a woman to allure him to the neighbourhood of the Luxembourg — and I declare we learnt nothing that was of a nature to weaken our confidence in him.
He came the next day, and told us that a million was offered him on condition that he would betray one of the gates. He gave us the names of those he had seen; amongst others, there was a confectioner of the Place de la Bourse, the address of the suborners (8 Rue de la Michaudi�re) and announced another rendezvous for the next day.... He explained to us how he would entice a few thousand Versaillese into Paris to make them prisoners. Pyat and I opposed this attempt. He did not insist, but demanded that the next day 20,000 men and some howitzers should be provided for him. He had decided on attracting the Versaillese troops by a surprise within reach of the fortifications.... Of the 20,000 men, 3,000 or 4,000 only could be mustered, and instead of 500 artillerists, there came only fifty.
XIII
Here is an extract from the report addressed to the Municipal Council of Toulouse by the delegates sent to Versailles to M. Thiers and the deputies of the Extreme Left to inquire into the situation:
We went then for information to the members of the Extreme Left; Martin Bernard, the companion and friend of Barbes, Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, etc.
M. Louis Blanc gave us the most precise information. It is useless, said he to us, to again attempt conciliation; there is too much animosity on both sides. Besides, with whom could one treat in Paris? These different and hostile forces dispute for power.
First there is the Commune, the result of an election at which only a small number of electors took part, composed chiefly of unknown men, of doubtful capacities, and sometimes even of doubtful honour.
In the second place a Committee of Public Safety named by the Commune, but soon coming to a violent rupture with it because it wanted to direct dictatorially.
In the third place, the Central Committee, formed during the siege, and principally composed of agents of the International, solely occupied with cosmopolitan interests, and caring very little for Parisian or French interests; it is this Central Committee which disposes of the cannon and the munitions, in one word, of almost all the material forces.
To all this must be added the Bonapartist and Prussian influences, whose more or less apparent action it is easy to trace in all three powers.
The Parisian insurrection (continued M. Louis Blanc) is legitimate in its motives and in its first aim — the demand for the municipal franchise of Paris. But the intervention of the Central Committee and the pretension manifested of governing all the other Communes of the Republic, have quite altered its character. Finally, the insurrection in the presence of the Prussian army, ready to enter Paris if the Commune is victorious, is altogether condemnable, and must be condemned by every true Republican. This is why the mayors of Paris, the Left of the Assembly, and the Extreme Left, have not hesitated to protest against an insurrection which the presence of the Prussian army and other circumstances might render criminal.
M. Martin Bernard held the same language, and spoke almost in the same terms. ‘If Barb�s still lived,’ cried he, ‘his heart would have been rent, and he too would have condemned this fatal insurrection.'
All the other persons whom we have been able to see — MM. Henri Martin, Barth�lemy St. Hilaire, Humbert, Victor Lefranc, etc., have spoken to us in the same way, and this unanimity could not but make a deep impression upon us.
(Thiers and Jules Favre themselves have calumniated Paris less than Louis Blanc. The first says in the Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. II. p. 15: ‘It is not true, as has been asserted, that I had great difficulties with the Prussian Government concerning the Commune, or that it had any predilection for the latter.’ Jules Favre, Vol. II, p. 49; ‘I have seen nothing that could authorize me to accuse either the Bonapartists or Prussia. General Trochu has been mistaken. I have seen nothing that could authorize me to accuse the Bonapartists of having fomented the ]8th March. After the insurrection of the ]8th March, I spent my time in refusing the offers which were made me by the Prussians to assist in the overthrow of the Commune.')
XIV
This is the textual copy of a report addressed to the Versaillese general staff:
The mot d'ordre has been tampered with on the 17th, 18th, and 19th. We had that of Versailles (General Douai’s corps).
There has been an explosion at the Rapp powder magazine, as I have already reported to you. There were some dead, and many wounded.
A commissar of police of the Commission of Safety has made about forty arrests. Those made on account of the explosion are estimated to be about 125.
Seargeant Toussaint (3rd battery, 2nd squadron) has been arrested by the Commune. It is said that this brave officer is shot.
The sick, according to our information, had been taken away either the day before or on the morning of the day of the catastrophe to the H�tel des Invalides. The work-women. and not the men, were sent home earlier that day.
The official of the Audit Office of the Hospital du Gros-Caillou, M. Bernard, has behaved very well.
1 recommend to the good-will of M. le Ministre, MM. Janvier, Bertalon, Mauduit, Morelli, and Sigismond, men enjoying an excellent reputation.
They desire the cross or an important’ collectorship.
Signal services have been rendered by Madame Brosset, and by Mademoiselle Gigaud. It is at the latter’s house that I hid for eight days when Rigault’s people were searching for me.
This woman is very devoted; she lives in the Quartier du Gros Caillou, Rue Dominique St. Germain. She is the daughter of an ex-officer. She would be glad to have a tobacconist’s shop. (Report of Commander Jerriait, Ex-Chief of Squadron.)
XV
A categorical deposition of this fact was made by M. E. Belgrand, Director of the Service of Public Roads, before the Commission of Inquiry into the 18th March ('Vol. III, p. 352-353):
The insurgents attempted nothing with the sewers. In short, I may affirm that from the 18th March up to the entry of the troops into Paris there was no attempt at all as to the sewers; that no chambers had been established there; that no incendiary or explosive matters had been introduced, nor wires destined to set fire to mines or to incendiary matters.
XVI
The Bien Public, M. Thiers’ organ directed by Vrignault, published in its number of the 23rd June, 1871:
All Paris has preserved the souvenir of that terrible cannonade directed from Montmartre during the last three days of the civil war against the Buttes Chaumont, Belleville, and the Pere Lachaise. Here are some very correct details of what was happening then at the summit of the Butte, behind the batteries at No. 6 Rue des Rosiers.
There had been installed in this house, so sadly celebrated, a provostship, presided over by a captain of Chasseurs. As the inhabitants of the quarter rivalled each other in zeal in denouncing the insurgents, the arrests were numerous. As the prisoners arrived they were questioned.
They were forced to kneel down, bare-headed, in silence, before the wall at the foot of which the unfortunate Generals Lecomte and Clement-Thomas had been assassinated. They remained thus a few hours, till others came to take their place. Soon, to lessen what might be cruel in this amende honorable, the prisoners were allowed to sit down in the shade, but always opposite the wall, the aspect of which prepared them for death, and shortly after the principal culprits amongst them were shot.
They were taken a few steps from there to the slope of the hill, at the spot where during the siege a battery overlooked the St. Denis route. It is there too that Varlin was conducted, whom they had great trouble in protecting from the violence of the crowd. Varlin had confessed his name, and made no efforts to escape the fate that awaited him; he died game. V. B.
XVII
The day before, at five o'clock, at the moment when the baggage of the War Office arrived at the H�tel-de-Ville, in the Avenue Victoria, two guards,
carrying a chest, were assailed with a hatchet, by an individual dressed in a blouse and wearing a cap. One of the Federals fell dead. The assassin, immediately seized hold of, cried, ‘You are done for! you are done for! Give me back my hatchet and I shall recommence.’ On this madman the commissar of police of the H�tel-de-Ville found papers and the livret, proving that he had served in the sergents-de-ville.
During the evening of Tuesday, an individual, wearing the uniform of an officer of a free corps, came to ask for orders at the H�tel-de-Ville. A commandant of the same corps entered the hall and saw this officer, and not recognizing him, asked his name. The latter grew confused: ‘But no, you are not one of my men,’ said the commandant. The individual was arrested, and found to be the bearer of Versaillese instructions and orders.
Treason assumed all shapes. The same morning at Belleville, Place des Fetes, Ranvier and Frankel heard a drummer reading the Federal Guards the order not to leave their arrondissements. Ranvier, interrogating the drummer, learned that the order emanated from General du Bisson.
XVIII
Colonel Gaillard, chief of the military prisons, interrogated by the Commision d'Enquete as to the objects of value found on the insurgents, answered: ‘I can give you no information on this head. There were valuables which have not been sent to Versailles. A few days ago I saw a minister of Denmark. He came to inquire what had become of a sum of 100,000 francs seized on one of his compatriots who had been shot near the H�tel-de-Ville. His minister told me he had been unable to obtain any information. Many things happened in Paris of which we know nothing.’ (Enquete sur le 18 Mars, Colonel Gaillard, Vol. 2, p. 246.)
XIX
Shall we ever know of all the spurious speculators, the commercial men with no resources left, the men at the brink of bankruptcy, who made use of the conflagrations in order to settle scores? How many cried ‘Death!’ who had themselves just set the petroleum on fire.
On the 10th March, 1877, the assize court of the Seine sentenced to ten years’ hard labour a ruined Bonapartist, Prieur de la Comble, found guilty of having set fire to his house, with the object of getting a heavy premium from the companies where he was insured. He had prepared his crime with the greatest sangfroid, painted the walls, saturated the hangings with petroleum, made sure of nine different centres of fire. His father, a former mayor Of the
first arrondissement, had failed to the amount of 1,800,000 francs, and at the end of the Empire there had been proceedings of bankruptcy instituted against him. Now, on the 24th May, 1871, the house of the accused in the Rue du Louvre, that of his father in the Rue de Rivoli, that of the assignee of the failure in the Boulevard Sebastopol, were consumed, and owing to these triple conflagrations the account-books and vouchers disappeared. This fact was only mentioned before the assize court, and the president confined himself to saying that it was odd. He took good care not to interrogate Prieur; and one knows that the presidents of assize courts are not usually chary of sifting the antecedents of the accused.
The motive of this extraordinary reticence is that no blame was to be thrown upon the army and the courts-martial, which had shot or condemned some petroleuses for the burning of these very houses set on fire by Prieur de la Comble.
XX
The death of Milli�re is recounted as follows by M. Louis Mie, Conseiller-General of the Dordogne, Municipal Councillor of Perigeux and deputy of Bordeaux to the Chamber:
A picket of soldiers emerged from the Rue de Vaugirard on our left. They marched in two ranks. In the midst of them was Milli�re.
He was dressed exactly as I had seen him some months before at Bordeaux on the tribune of the Assembly and in the Republican Circle — black trousers, dark-blue overcoat, tight and buttoned up, a high black hat.
The picket stopped before the door of the Luxembourg. One of the soldiers, who held his rifle by the end of the barrel, cried, ‘It is I who took him! it is I who am entitled to shoot him!’ There were about a hundred persons there of both sexes and of all ages. Many cried, ‘Death to him! shoot him!'
A National Guard, wearing a tricolor armlet, seized hold of Milli�re by the wrist, led him into the corner on the right, and placed him against the wall, then he retired. Milli�re uncovered himself, placed his hat on the pedestal of the column, crossed his arms on his breast, and calm and cool looked at the troops. He waited.
Round us the soldiers were being questioned. ‘Who is it?’ one of them was asked, and I heard him answer, ‘It is Mayer.'
A priest came out of the Luxembourg; he wore a straight-cut cassock and a high hat. Advancing towards Milli�re, he spoke a few words to him and pointed to heaven.
Without ostentation, but with a very firm and calm attitude, Milli�re appeared to thank him, and shook his head in sign of refusal. The priest retired.
Two officers came out from the palace and addressed themselves to the prisoner. One of them, whom the first seemed to guide, spoke to him for a minute or two. We heard the sound or voices without understanding the words exchanged, then I heard this command: ‘To the Pantheon!'
The picket re-formed round Milli�re, who put on his hat, and the cortege remounted the Rue de Vaugirard in the direction of the Pantheon.
We reached the rails at the same time as the picket. The door opened and shut upon them. Placing my feet on the stone balustrade, I passed my two arms round the top of the bars; my head overlooked them, for thew railings are low. By my side a soldier, the sentry of the interior, answered some prostitutes who were questioning him; his elbow, leaning against the rails, touched mine.
The picket of the troop had stopped and almost leant against the closed door. Milli�re was led between the two columns of the centre. Arriving at the spot where he was to die, and after having ascended the last step of the stain, he exchanged a few words with the officer. Searching in the pocket of his overcoat, which he had just unbuttoned, he took out an object, which I believed to be a letter, and handed it over to him, as also a watch and a locket. The officer took them, then seized hold of Milli�re and placed him in such a manner that he should be shot from behind. The latter turned round with a brusque movement, and, his arms crossed, faced the troop. This is the only movement of indignation or of anger that I saw him make.
.Some more words were exchanged; Milli�re seemed to be refusing to obey an order. The officer came down. The instant after, a soldier seized him who was to be shot by the shoulder and forced him to bend his knee upon the flagstone.
Half the rifles of the platoon only were levelled at him; the others remained in the arms of the soldiers. During this time, believing his last moment come, Milli�re three times uttered the cry, ‘Vive la Republique!'
The officer approaching the picket of the troop, ordered the rifles, which had been too hurriedly lowered, to be raised again, and then he pointed out with his sword how the order to fire would be given.
‘Vive le Peuple! Vive l'humanit�’ cried Milli�re.
The soldier on sentry, whose elbow touched my arm, answered the last words by these: ‘On va t'en foutre de l'humanite!’ I had hardly heard them when Milli�re fell as if thunder-stricken.
A military man, whom I believe to have been a non-commissioned officer, went UP the steps, approached the corpse, lowered his rifle, and fired point-blank near the left temple. The explosion was so violent that the head of Milli�re bounded, and appeared as if twisted back. The rain for three-quarters of an hour had beaten against his face; the cloud of powder fixed itself there.
Lying on his side, his hands joined, his clothes open and thrown into disorder by the fall, his head blackened, as if burst open, seeming to look at the frontispiece of the monument, his corpse was something terrible to behold ...
Madame Milli�re having instituted judiciary proceedings against Staff-Captain Garcin, the murderer of her husband, the trial was cut short by the following letter:
Versailles,
30th June, 1873.
Captain Garcin of the General Staff attached to the 2nd corps, has during the second siege of Paris only executed the orders given him by his superiors. He can thus in no way be made responsible for deeds which were the result of these orders. The responsibility rests exclusively upon those who have given the orders.
The Minister at War
De Cissey
XXI
To the number of the innocent victims of our civil discords we have the sorrow to add the name of a young man, twenty-seven years old, M. Faneau, a doctor of medicine.
Dr. Faneau had worked from the beginning of the war in the International ambulances. During the whole siege of Paris he did not cease tending the wounded with zealous devotion.
After the revolution of the 18th March he remained in Paris, and resumed his service in the ambulances.
On the 25th May he was on duty at the Grand Seminaire de St. Sulpice, where the Federals had established an ambulance.
When the army had taken possession of the cross-roads of the Croix Rouge, it advanced as far as the Place.
A company of line soldiers came up to the door of the seminary, where floated the flag of Geneva.
The officer who commanded asked to speak to the chief of the ambulance. Dr. Faneau, who filled this function, presented himself.
‘Are there any Federals here?’ the officer asked him.
‘I have only wounded,’ answered M. Faneau, ‘they are Federals, but they have been in my ambulance for several days.'
At the moment when he was concluding these words, a shot was fired from one of the windows of the first storey, and struck a soldier.
This shot was discharged by one of the wounded Federals, who had dragged himself from his bed to the window. [The Siecle, in search of attenuating circumstances for the army, had invented this more than phantasmagorial incident. — L.]
Immediately the officer, exasperated, threw himself upon Dr. Faneau, crying to him, ‘You lie, you have set a snare for us; you are the friend of these rascals; you are going to be shot.'
Dr. Faneau understood that it would be in vain to attempt to justify himself; also, he offered no resistance to the firing-party.
Some minutes after the unfortunate Young man fell, struck by ten bullets.
We knew Dr. Faneau, and we can affirm that, far from sympathizing with the members of the Commune, he deplored their fatal errors, and waited with impatience for the re-establishment of order. (Le Siecle.)
XXII
In the National of the 29th May appeared the following:
Paris, 28th May 1871
Sir,
Last Friday, at the time when corpses were being picked up in the Boulevard St. Michel, some individuals of nineteen to twenty-five years old, dressed as well-to-do people, were seated with gay women inside, and at the doors of certain cafes of this boulevard, indulging with these in scandalous merrymaking. — Accept, Monsieur le R�dacteur, etc.,
55 Boulevard D'Enfer.
Duhamel.
The facts mentioned above were repeated every day.
The Journal de Paris, a Versaillese journal suppressed by the Commune, wrote:
The manner in which the population of Paris manifested its satisfaction yesterday was rather more than frivolous, and we fear it will grow worse as time progresses. Paris has now a f�te-day appearance, which is sadly out of place; and unless we are to be called the Parisians of the decline, this sort of thing must come to an end.
Then he quoted the passage from Tacitus:
‘Yet on the morrow of that horrible struggle, even before it was completely over, Rome, degraded and corrupt, began once more to wallow in the voluptuous slough which was destroying its body and polluting its soul — alibi proelia et vulnera, alibi balnea popinaeque — (here fights and wounds, there baths and restaurants.)'
XXIII
The Versaillese journals confessed to 1600 prisoners buried in the P�re Lachaise.
The Opinion Nationale of the 10th June said:
We do not wish to leave the P�re Lachaise without saluting with a look of Christian compassion these deep trenches, where lie entombed pell-mell the insurgents taken under arms, and those who would not surrender.
They have expiated their criminal folly by an act of summary justice. May God pity and have mercy upon them!
Let us rectify, in passing, the exaggerated rumours which have been spread on the subject of the executions at the P�re Lachaise and in the environs.
It appears from certain information — we might almost venture to say official statements — that there have only been buried in that cemetery, shot or killed fighting, sixteen hundred men in all.
But the following account of the executions of La Roquette has been given me by an eye-witness, who barely escaped death:
I had returned to my house on the Saturday evening. Sunday morning, on crossing the Boulevard du Prince Eug�ne, I was taken in a razzia. We were conducted to La Roquette. A chief of battalion was standing at the entrance. He surveyed us; then, with a nod of the, head, said, ‘To the right,’ or ‘To the left.’ I was sent to the left. ‘Your affair is settled,’ the soldiers said to us; ‘you are going to be shot, canailles!’ We were ordered to throw away our matches if we had any about us, and then the signal was given to march on.
I was the last of the file, and by the side of the sergeant who conducted us. He looked at me. ‘Who are you?’ he asked me. ‘A professor. I was taken this morning as I came out of my house.’ No doubt my accent, the elegance of my clothes, struck him, for he added, ‘Have you any papers?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Come!’ and he took me back before the chief of battalion. ‘Commander,’ said he, ‘there is a mistake. This young man has his papers.’ ‘All right,’ answered the officer, without looking at me, ‘to the right.'
The sergeant led me off. As we went along, he explained to me that the prisoners taken to the left were shot. We had already got to a door on the right, when a soldier ran after us: ‘Sergeant, the commandant says you are to take back this man to the left.'
Fatigue, despair at the defeat, the enervation caused by so much anguish, deprived me of all strength to dispute my life. ‘Well, shoot me,’ said I to the sergeant, ‘for you it will be but a crime the more! only return these papers to my family,’ and I turned to the left.
I already perceived a long file of men drawn up against a wall, others lying on the ground. Opposite them three priests read in their breviaries the prayers of the dying. A few steps more and I was dead, when suddenly I was seized hold of by the arm. It was my sergeant. He took me back by force to the officer. ‘Commandant,’ said he, ‘we cannot shoot this man. He has his papers!” Let me see,’ said the officer. I handed over my pocket-book, which contained a card as employee at the Ministry of Commerce during the first siege. ‘To the right,’ said the commandant.
There were soon more than 3,000 prisoners on the right. All Sunday and part — of the night detonations resounded by the side of us. On Monday morning a platoon came in. ‘Fifty men,’ said the sergeant. We thought we were going to be shot by parties, and no one stirred. The soldiers took the first fifty they came across. I was of the number. We were taken to the famous left side.
On a space which seemed to us endless we saw heaps of corpses. ‘Pick up all this rubbish,’ said the sergeants to us, ‘and put them into these carts.’ We raised up these corpses covered with blood and mud. The soldiers made frightful jokes: ‘See what grimaces they cut,’ and with their heels crushed some face. It seemed to me that some were still living. We told the soldiers so, but they answered, ‘Come, come! get on!’ Certainly some died under the earth. We put 1,907 corpses into these carts.
The Libert� of the 4th June said:
The governor of La Roquette during the Commune, and his acolytes, were shot on the very scene of their exploits.
For the other National Guards arrested in this neighbourhood, and whose number exceeded 4,000, a provisional court-martial was installed in the Roquette itself. A commissar of police and police security agents were charged with the first examination. Those appointed to be shot were sent into the interior; they were killed from behind while they were walking along, and their bodies were thrown onto the nearest heap. All these monsters had the faces of bandits; the exceptions were to be regretted.
XXIV
At the time of the trial of the members of the Council of the Commune before the third court-martial sitting at Versailles, a certain M. Gabriel Ossude came to give evidence as witness against Jourde, in whose arrest he was concerned, he said, in his quality of provost of the seventh arrondissement, and as Colonel Merlin, president of the court, seemed astonished that such a function should have devolved upon a civilian, M. Ossude entered into very precise explanations, which I remember perfectly.
He declared that towards the end of the Commune the prevotal courts had been instituted by the Government of Versailles in view of the early entry of the troops into Paris; that the number and the seats of the exceptional tribunals had been arranged beforehand, as well as the topographical limits of their jurisdictions; that he (M. Gabriel Ossude) had received his nomination from the hands of M. Thiers, although he held no rank in the army, but as captain of the seventeenth battalion of the National Guard. (Letter of Ulysse Parent, Rappel, March 19, 1877.)
XXV
Near the Ecole Militaire the scene is at this moment very affecting; prisoners are continually being led there, and their trial is terminated beforehand. It consists only in detonation s. (Siecle, 28th May.)
The courts-martial functioned in Paris with unheard-of activity at several special points. At the Lobau Barracks, at the Ecole Militaire, the shooting is permanently heard. It is the settling of accounts with those wretches who openly took part in the struggle. (Libert�, 30th May.)
Since morning (Sunday, 28th May) a strong cordon is being formed round the theatre (Ch�telet); where a court-martial is permanently established. From time to time one sees a band of fifteen to twenty individuals coming out, composed of National Guards, civilians, women and children fifteen to sixteen years old.
These individuals are condemned to death. They march two by two, escorted by a platoon of chasseurs, who lead and bring up the rear. This cortege goes up the Quai de Gevres and enters the Republican Barracks in the Place Lobau. A minute after one hears from within the fire of platoons and successive musketry discharges; it is the sentence of the court-martial which has just been executed.
The detachment of chasseurs returns to the Chatelet to fetch other prisoners. The crowd seems deeply impressed on hearing the noise of the shootings. (Journal des D�bats, 30th May, 1871)
XXVI
A journal of the Belgian bourgeoisie, the Erode, one of the most violent against the Commune, allowed this avowal to escape it.
The majority have met death like the Arabs after battle, with indifference, with contempt, without hatred, without anger, without insult to their executioners.
All the soldiers who took part in these executions, and whom I have questioned, have been unanimous in their accounts.
One of them said to me, ‘We shot about forty of these canailles at Passy. They all died like soldiers. Some crossed their arms, and stood head erect. Others opened their tunics and cried to us, ‘Fire! we are not afraid of death.'
Not one of those whom we have shot trembled. I especially remember an artillerist, who by himself did us more harm than a whole battalion. He was alone serving a piece of cannon. During three-quarters of an hour he peppered us with grape shot, and he killed and wounded not a few of my comrades. At last he was overwhelmed. We had turned his barricade.
I still see him. He was a strongly-built man. He was bathed in perspiration from the service he had done during three-quarters of an hour. ‘Your turn now,’ said he to us. ‘I have merited shooting, but I shall die game.'
Another soldier of General Clinchant’s corps told me how his company had led to the ramparts eighty-four insurgents taken bearing arms.
They all placed themselves in a line, he said to me, as if they were going to exercise. Not one faltered. One of them who had a handsome face, wore trousers in fine cloth tucked into his boots, and a Zouave’s belt round his waist, said to us calmly, ‘Try to aim at my chest; be careful not to touch my head.’ We all fired, but the poor fellow had half of his head carried away. A functionary of Versailles made me the following recital:
During the day, Sunday, I made an excursion to Paris. I went by the Th��tre du Chatelet towards the smoking ruins of the H�tel-de-Ville, when I was surrounded and carried along by the stream of a crowd which was following a convoy of prisoners.
I found among them the same men whom I had seen in the battalions of the siege of Paris. Almost all seemed to me to be working men.
Their faces betrayed neither despair nor despondency nor emotion. They walked on with a firm, resolute step, and they seemed to me so indifferent to their fate that I thought they expected to be released. I was entirely mistaken. These men had been taken in the morning at Menilmontant, and knew whither they were being led. Arrived at the Lobau Barracks, the cavalry officers who preceded the escort had a semicircle formed, and prevented the curious from advancing.
XXVII
One of the most ignoble barkers of Versailles, Francisque Sarcey, wrote in the Gaulois of the 13th June:
Men who are quite cool, of whose judgment and word I cannot doubt, have spoken to me with an astonishment mingled with horror of the scenes they had seen, seen with their own eyes, and which rendered me rather meditative.
Young women, pretty of face, and dressed in silk dresses, came down into the street, and a revolver in their hands, fired at random, and then said with proud mien, elevated voice, eyes full of hatred, ‘Shoot me at once!’ One of them. who had been taken in a house whence they had fired from the windows, was about to be bound in order to be taken to Versailles and judged there.
‘Come,’ said she, ‘save me the trouble of the journey!’ And placing herself against a wall, her arms spread open, her breast bare, she seemed to solicit to provoke death.
All those who have been seen executed thus summarily by furious soldiers
have died, insults on their tongues, with a laugh of contempt, like martyrs, who in sacrificing themselves accomplish a great duty.
XXVIII
At the time of an action entered against M. Raspail, fils, in 1876, for his pamphlet in favour of an amnesty, the following letter, addressed to him by M. Herv� de Saisy, senator, was read in court.
I cannot, for motives of discretion bearing on divers persons, repeat in this letter the recital which I made you viva voce on the occasion of which you remind me. However, I wish to answer your courteous appeal by repeating here the words which served as a reason for the iniquitous order by which the life of M. Cernuschi was menaced, during the day on which the troops took possession of the prison of Sainte P�lagie and the Jardin des Plantes.
These are the words pronounced by the general of division who gave the order of summary execution. Learning that Cernuschi had repaired to the prison, at the door of which I saw his carriage, he said to some one, whom I cannot mention, ‘Ah! it is Cernuschi, the man of the 100,000 francs of the plebiscite. Return to the prison, and let him be shot within five minutes.'
Five minutes represented the time that would be required by the bearer of the order in going to the prison from the Cedre du Jussieu, whence the general watched the phases of the combat.
At first I did not understand this st~ phrase, but some moments after I remembered that it was the expression of a political vengeance which was about to be exercised against M. Cernuschi for having offered 100,000 francs for the propaganda which the Opposition was to make during the final plebiscite of the Empire.
Profoundly indignant at what I had just heard, I was fortunate enough to bring about a fortuitous incident to which the already condemned victim owed his salvation.
Such are the details I am able to furnish you, with.
Herv� De Saisy.
XXIX
From the Echo de la Dordogne, 19th June, 1871:
Some journals of Paris have repeated that Tony Moilin had been condemned and shot for having been taken arms in hand on the 27th May. This report is incorrect.
One single fact was Tony Moilin reproached with: that of having on the 18th March taken possession of the mairie of his arrondissement, and having thus had a share in giving the signal for. the insurrection. He was shown a kind of dismissal given by him on that day to M. H�risson, the mayor whom he had replaced. No witness was heard.
Moilin admitted the fact; then he added that he had exercised the function of mayor during hardly two days; that at the end of this time, little in accord with the men of the Commune, he had voluntarily ceased to appear at the mairie, where he had been immediately replaced.
The court-martial asked Moilin to account for his time and his acts since the day of the entry of the army of Versailles into Paris. He answered that, known for a long time, especially through the Blois trial and by his writings, as one of the leaders of the Socialist party, having no answer for taking possession of the mairie of the eighth arrondissement on the 18th March, fearing a too summary justice and the fury of the first moments, he had sought and found shelter at a friend’s, and that, from the Monday morning tin the Saturday night; ... that on the Saturday evening, the 27th May, this friend had asked his guest to leave his retreat, and that on leaving this inhospitable house, discouraged, not seeking any longer to defend his liberty, nor even his life, he had returned to his home, where, on the denunciation of his porter and his neighbours, he had been almost directly afterwards arrested and taken before the court-martial at the Luxembourg.
To this recital was confined the defence of Tony Moilin, who was immediately condemned to death. The court-martial condescended to tell him that the fact of du mairie, the only one he could be reproached with, had in itself not much importance, and did not merit death, but that he was one of the leaders of the Socialist party, dangerous through his talents, his character, and his influence over the masses; one of those men, in short, of whom a prudent and wise Government mot rid itself when it finds a legitimate occasion to do so.
Tony Moilin could only be satisfied with the urbanity (sic) of the members of the court. Without any difficulty a respite of twelve hours was granted to him in order that he might make his testament, write a few words of farewell to his father, and finally give his name to the woman who had, during the Blois trial and since, shown him the greatest devotion. These duties fulfilled, on the 28th May, in the morning, Tony Moilin was led into the garden a few steps from the palace and shot. His body, which his widow claimed, the surrender of which had been at first promised, was refused her.
XXX
This assassination also stands to the debit account of Garcin. Let us again allow him to speak.
Billioray at first attempted to deny his identity. He wanted to rush upon a soldier; he was a man of athletic strength .... He defended himself, he foamed with rage. There was hardly time to interrogate him. He began some tale about money, whose place of concealment he could indicate. He spoke of 150,000 francs; then he interrupted himself, in order to say to me, ‘I see you are going to have me shot. It is useless for me to say any more.’ I said to him, ‘You persist?’ ‘Yes.’ He was shot. (Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. II, p. 234.)
XXXI
Account by a Military Surgeon published in the Gaulois.
The event took Place on Thursday 25th May, at a few minutes past six in the evening, in the small Rue des Pr�tres-Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois. Valles was coming out of the Th��tre du Ch�telet, led off by the firing-party charged to shoot him. He wore a black coat, and light trousers of a yellowish shade. He wore no hat; and his beard, which he had shaved but lately, was very short, and already getting grey.
On entering the lane where the ominous sentence was to be carried out, the sentiment of self-preservation gave him back the energy which seemed to have abandoned him. He wanted to fly; but, held back by the soldiers, he got into a horrible fury, crying ‘Murder!’ writhing, seizing his executioners by the throat, biting them, offering, in one word, a desperate resistance.
The soldiers were beginning to be embarrassed and a little moved at this horrible struggle, when one of them passing behind gave him such a furious blow in the loins with the butt-end of his gun that the unfortunate man fell with a low groan.
No doubt the spinal column was broken. They then fired some shots with their revolvers straight into his body, and pierced him with bayonet thrusts. As he was still breathing, one of the executioners approached and discharged his chassepot into his ear. Part of the skull burst open; his body was abandoned in the gutter till someone came to pick it up.
It is then that the spectators of this scene approached, and despite the wounds that disfigured him, were able to establish his identity.
XXXII
The Radical of the 30th May, 1872, published the following letter from an employee at St. Thomas d'Acquin, who during the Commune had rendered the Versaillese the service of preventing the firing of the cannons of 8 cm breechloaders:
To Monsieur le Comte Daru,
President of the Committee of Inquiry into the Insurrection of the 18th March,
Versailles.
Monsieur le President,
I have just read in a book, which is entitled Enqu�te Parlementaire sur l'Insurrection du 18 Mars, under the head, Evidence of witnesses, the following evidence by the Staff-Captain Garcin:
‘All those who were arrested under arms were shot during the first moments, that is to say, during the combat. But when we were masters of the left bank there were no more executions.'
In the report of Marshal MacMahon on the operations of the army of Versailles against insurgent Paris, I find the following declaration:
‘In the evening of the 25th May the whole left bank was in our power, as also the bridges of the Seine.'
The evidence of Captain Garcin is unfortunately contrary to the truth. Four days after the 25th May my son and fourteen other unhappy victims were killed at the Dupleix Barracks, situated on the left bank, near the Ecole Militaire.
On the 31st August I addressed the Minister of Justice a complaint on this subject, of which I send you a correct copy. After having related the facts with regard to my son, I demanded that the law should search for and punish the culprits.
Up to the present time the law has remained deaf to my claims, notwithstanding the publicity I have given this complaint, in order to prove the disappearance of my child.
If it were true, as Captain Garcin declares, that orders had been given by the general commander-in-chief of the troops of the left bank to put an end to these executions after the evening of the 25th May; if again it were true that Marshal MacMahon had by his despatch of the 28th May given the order to suspend all executions, as the Colonel presiding over the court-martial at the trial of the members of the Commune declared — the officer of the gendarmerie, named Roncol, who ordered the massacres at the Dupleix Barracks, and his accomplices should have been prosecuted for having, in contempt of the orders of the chief of the army, had unfortunate people killed who had taken no part in the combat.
Thus, horrible fact, in the morning of the 29th May, while I was giving up the cannon at St. Thomas d'Acquin, which my son and I had sworn on our honour to preserve for the state, and for which we had risked our lives, my son was being massacred at the end of a stable by those who ought to have protected him.
In consequence of these facts, which I have just made public, I beg Monsieur le Pr�sident to be so obliging as to have the evidence of Captain Garcin rectified, which is on this point of the executions entirely contrary to truth. — I have the honour, Monsieur le Pr�sident, etc.,
G. Laudet
The correct copy of this was addressed in a registered letter of the 28th March, 1872, under the number 158, to M. le Comte Daru, who has acknowledged the receipt of it.
G. Laudet.
Paris, 23rd May 1872.
XXXIII
It is in the Bois de Boulogne that those condemned to death by the court-martial will for the future be executed. Whenever the number of the condemned shall exceed ten men the execution platoons will be replaced by a machine-gun. (Paris Journal, 9th June.)
All circulation is forbidden in the Bois de Boulogne.
One is forbidden to enter there, unless accompanied by a platoon of soldiers, and still more forbidden to come out again. (Paris-Journal, 15th June.)
XXXIV
One man, a swarthy, burly fellow, with a shock head of black hair, sat down at the corner of the Rue de la Paix and declined to go any further, shaking his fist at the people and grinding his teeth. After several attempts at coercive measures, one of the soldiers lost all patience, and drove his bayonet twice into his body, telling him to get up and walk on like the rest. As might have been expected, this method was not successful, and so he was seized and placed on a horse, from which he speedily threw himself, and was then tied to its tail, and dragged along the ground after the manner of Brunhilda. He soon became faint from loss of blood, and having thus been reduced to a quiescent state, was bundled into an ambulance wagon, and carried off amid the shouts and execrations of the populace. — (Times, 31st May.)
Another prisoner, who had also refused to march, was dragged by the hands and hair of the head along the road. (Times, 30th May.)
Near the Parc Monceaux a husband and wife were seized, and ordered to march forward towards the Place Vendome, a distance of a mile and a half. They were both of them invalids and unable to walk so far. The woman sat down on the kerbstone, and declined to move a step in spite of her husband’s entreaties that she would try. She persisted in her refusal, and they both knelt down together, begging the gendarmes who accompanied them to shoot them at once if shot they were to be. Twenty revolvers were fired, but they still breathed, and it was only at the second discharge that they finally sank down dead. The gendarmes then rode away, leaving the bodies as they had fallen. (Times, 29th May.)
XXXV
The conservative Paper, the Tricolor, said on the 31st May:
Sunday morning, the 24th, out of more than two thousand Federals, one hundred and eleven of them have been shot in the ditches of Passy, and that under circumstances which show that the victory [the conclusion of this nonsensical phrase must be given in the original] �tait entr�e dans toute la maturit� de la situation.
‘Let those who have white hairs step out from the ranks!’ said General Gallifet, who presided at the execution, and the number of grey-headed Federals amounted to one hundred and eleven!
For these the aggravating circumstance was having been contemporaries of June, 1848.
There is here a new retro-synopante theory which might take us a long way back.
The Libert� of Brussels published the following declaration, signed by eyewitnesses, of the facts which had occurred at La Muette on the 26th May, 1871:
On the 26th of last May we formed part of the column of prisoners who had left the Boulevard Malesherbes at eight o'clock in the morning in the direction of Versailles. W e stopped at the Chateau of La Muette, where General Gallifet, after having dismounted from his horse, passed into our ranks, and then making a choice, he pointed out to the troops eighty-three men and three women. They were taken away along the talus of the fortifications and shot before us. After this exploit the General said to us: ‘My name is Gallifet. Your journals in Paris have sullied me enough. I take my revenge.'
Thence we were directed to Versailles, where during the journey we were again obliged to assist at frightful executions of two women and three men, who, falling down exhausted and being unable to keep up with the column, were killed with bayonet-thrusts by the sergents de ville forming our escort.
The names followed, with the professions and addresses of the signers, to the number of eleven.
The column of prisoners halted in the Avenue Uhrich and was drawn up four or five deep on the footway facing to the road. General the Marquis de Gallifet and his staff, who had preceded us there, dismounted, and commenced an inspection from the left of the line and near where I was. Walking down slowly, and eyeing the ranks as if at an inspection, the General stopped here and there, tapping a man on the shoulder or beckoning him out of the rear-ranks. In most cases, without further parley, the individual thus selected was marched out into the centre of the road, where a small supplementary column was thus soon formed.... They evidently knew too well that their last hour had come, and it was fearfully interesting to see their different demeanours. One, already wounded, his shirt soaked with blood, sat down in the road and howled with anguish; ... others wept in silence; two soldiers, presumed deserters, pale but collected, appealed to all the other prisoners as to whether they had ever seen them amongst their ranks; some smiled defiantly ... It was an awful thing to see one man thus picking out a batch of his fellow-creatures to be put to a violent death in a few minutes without
further trial.... A few paces from where I stood, a mounted officer pointed out to General Gallifet a man and woman for some particular offence. The woman, rushing out of the ranks, threw herself on her knees and with outstretched arms implored mercy, and protested her innocence in passionate terms. The General waited for a pause, and then, with most impassable face and unmoved demeanour, said: ‘Madame, I have visited every theatre in Paris; your acting will have no effect on me’ (ce n'est la peine de jouer la com�die)... I followed the General closely down the line, still a prisoner, but honoured with a special escort of two chasseurs-a-cheval, and endeavoured to arrive at what guided him in his selections. The result of my observations was that it was not a good thing on that day to be noticeably taller, dirtier, cleaner, older or uglier than one’s neighbour. One individual in particular struck me as probably owing his speedy release from the ills of this world to his having a broken nose on what might have been otherwise an ordinary face, and being unable from his height to conceal it. Over a hundred being thus chosen, a firing party told off, and the column resumed its marching, leaving them behind. In a few minutes afterwards, a dropping fire in our rear commenced, and continued for over a quarter of an hour. It was the execution of these summarily convicted wretches. (Daily News, 8th June, 1871)
Yesterday (Sunday 28th May) about one o'clock, General Gallifet appeared at the head of a column of 6,000 prisoners . . Upon their haggard countenances and in their downcast eyes there was no ray of hope to be seen. They were evidently prepared for the worst fate, and dragged listlessly along, as though it were not worth while to walk to Versailles to be shot when an immediate execution might save them the trouble. M. de Gallifet seemed to be of the same opinion, and a little beyond the Arc-de-Triomphe he halted the column, selected eighty-two, and had them shot there and then. A little after this a band of twenty Pompiers were marched into the Parc Monceaux and executed. (Times, 31st May, 1871)
XXXVI
Here is a copy of a letter addressed to Me Versaillese general staff, and probably still in its possession, bearing the number 28 bis:
To the Chief of the General Staff
General,
I have been mistaken for a M. de Beaufond, and this annoys me all the more in that negligences committed by him are imputed to me.
I have certainly not wasted my time during this period of fifteen days. I have organized quite a legion of combatants. Their order is to run away at the approach of the troops, and thus to throw the ranks of the Federals into disorder.
The means indicated by the Committee of A seems to be practicable. I will make use of it. With only one hundred drunkards one can do many a thing.
XXXVII
This, according to the, of course, very approximate report of General Appert, is the contingent furnished by the different professions:
528 jewellers, 124 pasteboard makers, 210 hatters, 328 carpenters, 1,065 clerks, 1,491 shoemakers, 206 dressmakers, 172 gilders, 636 cabinet makers, 1,598 commercial employees, 98 instrument makers, 227 tin-workers, 224 founders, 182 engrave rs, 179 watchmakers, 819 compositors, 159 stained paper printers, 106 teachers, 2,901 day labourers, 2,293 bricklayers, 1,659 joiners, 193 lace-makers, 863 house-painters, 106 bookbinders, 283 sculptors, 2,664 locksmiths and mechanicians, 681 tailors, 347 tanners, 157 moulers, 766 stone-cutters.
XXXVIII
Notably in the affair of the spy of the Hautes-Bruy�res, for which several persons had already been condemned. This spy — a young man of twenty, and not a child, as the reactionaries have stated — had attracted the shells of the enemy to the Federal positions. Brought before a court-martial, composed of La C�cilia, commander of the army corps, of Johannard, delegate of the Commune, and of all the chiefs of battalions, he admitted having taken the Versaillese the plan of the Federal positions, and having received twenty francs as reward. He was unanimously condemned to death. At the moment of the execution, Johannard and Grandier, La C�cilia’s aide-de-camp, explained to the condemned man that he would be pardoned if he would reveal the name of his accomplice, an inhabitant of Montrouge. He replied, ‘You are brigands. Je vous emm . . .’ This fact, odiously travestied, has furnished for his Annus Terrible, as unjust to Johannard as to S�rizier, one of the men shot at Satory. The great poet owes himself a disclaimer.
Contents |
Notes |
Glossary
The Civil War in France |
Paris Commune Archive
|
./articles/Lissagaray-Prosper/https:..www.marxists.org.history.france.archive.lissagaray.ch08 | <body>
<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter VIII<br>
Proclamation of the Commune</h1>
<p class="quoteb">A considerable part of the population and the National Guard of Paris calls on the support of the departments for the re-establishment of order. (Circular from Thiers to the Prefects, 27th March.)</p>
<p>This week ended with the triumph of Paris. Paris-Commune again resumed her part as the capital of France, again became the national initiator. For the tenth time since 1789 the workmen put France upon the right track.</p>
<p>The bayonets of Prussia had laid bare our country, such as eighty years of bourgeois domination had left it — a Goliath at the mercy of his driver.</p>
<p>Paris broke the thousand fetters which bound France down to the ground, like Gulliver a prey to ants; restored the circulation to her paralysed limbs; said, ‘The life of the whole nation exists in each of her smallest organisms; the unity of the hive, and not that of the barracks. The organic cell of the French Republic is the municipality, the commune.’</p>
<p>The Lazarus of the Empire and of the siege resuscitated, having torn the napkin from his brow and shaken off the grave-clothes, was about to begin a new existence with the regenerated Communes of France in his train. This new life gave to all Paris a youthful aspect. Those who had despaired a month before were now full of enthusiasm. Strangers addressed each other and shook hands. For indeed we were not strangers, but bound together by the same. faith and the same aspirations.</p>
<p>Sunday the 26th was a day of joy and sunshine. Paris breathed again, happy like one just escaped from death or great peril. At Versailles the streets looked gloomy, gendarmes occupied the station, brutally demanded passports, confiscated all the journals of Paris, and at the slightest expression of sympathy for the town arrested you. At Paris everybody could enter freely. The streets swarmed with people, the caf�s were noisy; the same lad cried out the <em>Paris Journal</em> and the <em>Commune; </em>the attacks against the H�tel-de-Ville, the protestation of a few malcontents, were posted on the walls by the side of the posters of the Central Committee. The people were without anger because without fear. The voting paper had replaced the chassepot.</p>
<p>Picard’s bill only gave Paris sixty municipal councillors, three for each arrondissement, whatever might be its population. Thus the 150,000 inhabitants of the eleventh arrondissement had the same number of representatives as the 45,000 of the sixteenth. The Central Committee had decreed that there was to be a councillor for every 20,000 inhabitants, and for each fraction of 10,000; ninety in all. The elections were to be conducted with the lists of February and in the usual manner; only the Committee had expressed the wish that for the future open voting should be considered the only mode worthy of democratic principles. All the faubourgs obeyed, and gave an open vote. The electors of the St. Antoine quarter formed in long columns, and, headed by a red flag, their voting papers stuck in their hats, filed before the column of the Bastille, and in the same order marched to their sections.</p>
<p>The adhesion and convocation of the mayors dissipating all scruple, also made the bourgeois quarters vote. The elections became legal since plenipotentiaries of the Government had given their consent. Two hundred and eighty-seven thousand men voted, relatively a far greater number than in the elections of February; for since the opening of the gates after the siege, a great part of the leisured classes had rushed to the provinces, there to recover their health.</p>
<p>The elections were conducted in a way becoming a free people. At the approach to the halls, no police, no intrigues. And yet M. Thiers dared telegraph to the provinces: ‘The elections will take place to-day without liberty and without moral authority.’ The liberty was so absolute that in all Paris not one single protestation occurred.</p>
<p><img src="pics/longuet.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Charles Longuet" border="1" align="left"></p>
<p>The moderate papers even commended the articles of the <em>Officiel</em>, in which the delegate Longuet set forth the role of the future Communal Assembly: ‘Above all, it must define its mandate, fix the boundaries of its attributes. Its first work must be the discussion and the drawing up of its charter. This done, it must consider the means of having that statute of the municipal autonomy recognized and guaranteed by the central power.’ The plainness, the prudence, the moderation which marked all official acts was beginning to move the most obdurate. Only the hatred of the Versaillese did not abate. That same day M. Thiers cried from the tribune, ‘No, France will not let those wretches triumph who would drown her in blood.’</p>
<p>The next day 200,000 ‘wretches’ came to the H�tel-de-Ville there to install their chosen representatives, the battalion drums beating, the banners surmounted by the Phrygian cap and with red fringe round the muskets; their ranks, swelled by soldiers of the line, artillerymen, and marines faithful to Paris, came down from all the streets to the Place de Greve like the thousand streams of a great river. In the middle of the H�tel-de-Ville, against the central door, a large platform was raised. Above it towered the bust of the Republic, a red scarf slung round it. Immense red streamers beat against the frontal and the belfry, like tongues of fire announcing the good news to France. A hundred battalions thronged the square, and piled their bayonets, lit up by the sun, in front of the H�tel-de-Ville. The other battalions that could not get into the place lined the streets up to the Boulevard de Sebastopol and to the quays. The banners were grouped in front of the platform, some tricolour, all with red tassels, symbolizing the advent of the people. While the square was filling, songs burst forth, the bands played the <em>Marseillaise </em>and the <em>Chant du D�part, </em>trumpets sounded the charge, and the cannon of the old Commune thundered on the quay.</p>
<p>Suddenly the noise subsided. The members of the Central Committee and of the Commune, their red scarfs over their shoulders, appeared on the platform. Ranvier said, ‘Citizens, my heart is too full of joy to make a speech. Permit me only to thank the people of Paris for the great example they have given the world.’ A member of the Committee announced the names of those elected. The drums beat a salute, the bands and two hundred thousand voices chimed in with the <em>Marseillaise. </em>Ranvier, in an interval of silence, cried out, ‘In the name of the People the Commune is proclaimed.’</p>
<p>A thousandfold echo answered, “<em>Vive la Commune!’ </em>Caps were flung up on the ends of bayonets, flags fluttered in the air. From the windows, on the roofs, thousands of hands waved handkerchiefs.. The quick reports of the cannon, the bands, the drums, blended in one formidable vibration. All hearts leaped with joy, all eyes filled with tears. Never since the great Federation had Paris been thus moved.</p>
<p>The filing off was very cleverly managed by Brunel, who, while having the square evacuated on the one hand, brought in those battalions that were outside, all equally anxious to acclaim the Commune. Before the bust of the Republic the flags were lowered, the officers saluted with their sabres, the men raised their muskets. Not until seven o'clock did the last procession pass by.</p>
<p>The agents of M. Thiers returned in dismay to tell him, ‘It was really the whole of Paris that took part in the demonstration.’ And the Central Committee might well exclaim in its enthusiasm, ‘To-day Paris opened a fresh page in the book of history, and there inscribed her powerful name. Let the spies of Versailles, who are prowling around us, go and tell their masters what the common movement of an entire population means. Let these spies carry back to them the image of the magnificent spectacle of a people recovering their sovereignty.’</p>
<p>This lightning would have made the blind see. 187,000 voters. 200,000 men with the same watchword. This was not a secret committee, a handful of factious rioters and bandits, as had been said for ten days. Here was an immense force at the service of a definite idea communal independence, the intellectual life of France — an invaluable force in this time of universal anaemia. a godsend as precious as the compass saved from the wreck and saving the survivors. This was one of those great historical turning-points when a people may be remoulded.</p>
<p>Liberals, if it was in good faith that you called for decentralization under the Empire; Republicans, if you have understood June, 1848, and December, 1851; Radicals, if you really want the self-government of the people — listen to this new voice, avail yourselves of this marvellous opportunity.</p>
<p>But the Prussian! What does it matter? Why not forge arms under the eye of the enemy? Bourgeois, was it not in sight of the foreigner that your ancestor Etienne Marcel tried to remake France? And your Convention, did not it fast act in the very midst of the hurricane?</p>
<p>What did they answer? Death to Paris!</p>
<p>The red sun of civil discord melts veneer and all masks. There they are side by side as in 1791, 1794, and 1848, Monarchists, Clericals, Liberals, Radicals, all of them, their hands raised against the people — one army in different uniforms. Their decentralization is rural and capitalist federalism; their self-government, the exploitation of the budget by themselves, just as the whole political science of their statesmen consists only in massacre and the state of siege.</p>
<p>What bourgeoisie in the world after such immense disasters would not with careful heed have tended such a reservoir of living force?</p>
<p>They, seeing this Paris capable of engendering a new world, her heart swelled with the best blood of France, had but one thought — to bleed Paris.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter VIII
Proclamation of the Commune
A considerable part of the population and the National Guard of Paris calls on the support of the departments for the re-establishment of order. (Circular from Thiers to the Prefects, 27th March.)
This week ended with the triumph of Paris. Paris-Commune again resumed her part as the capital of France, again became the national initiator. For the tenth time since 1789 the workmen put France upon the right track.
The bayonets of Prussia had laid bare our country, such as eighty years of bourgeois domination had left it — a Goliath at the mercy of his driver.
Paris broke the thousand fetters which bound France down to the ground, like Gulliver a prey to ants; restored the circulation to her paralysed limbs; said, ‘The life of the whole nation exists in each of her smallest organisms; the unity of the hive, and not that of the barracks. The organic cell of the French Republic is the municipality, the commune.’
The Lazarus of the Empire and of the siege resuscitated, having torn the napkin from his brow and shaken off the grave-clothes, was about to begin a new existence with the regenerated Communes of France in his train. This new life gave to all Paris a youthful aspect. Those who had despaired a month before were now full of enthusiasm. Strangers addressed each other and shook hands. For indeed we were not strangers, but bound together by the same. faith and the same aspirations.
Sunday the 26th was a day of joy and sunshine. Paris breathed again, happy like one just escaped from death or great peril. At Versailles the streets looked gloomy, gendarmes occupied the station, brutally demanded passports, confiscated all the journals of Paris, and at the slightest expression of sympathy for the town arrested you. At Paris everybody could enter freely. The streets swarmed with people, the caf�s were noisy; the same lad cried out the Paris Journal and the Commune; the attacks against the H�tel-de-Ville, the protestation of a few malcontents, were posted on the walls by the side of the posters of the Central Committee. The people were without anger because without fear. The voting paper had replaced the chassepot.
Picard’s bill only gave Paris sixty municipal councillors, three for each arrondissement, whatever might be its population. Thus the 150,000 inhabitants of the eleventh arrondissement had the same number of representatives as the 45,000 of the sixteenth. The Central Committee had decreed that there was to be a councillor for every 20,000 inhabitants, and for each fraction of 10,000; ninety in all. The elections were to be conducted with the lists of February and in the usual manner; only the Committee had expressed the wish that for the future open voting should be considered the only mode worthy of democratic principles. All the faubourgs obeyed, and gave an open vote. The electors of the St. Antoine quarter formed in long columns, and, headed by a red flag, their voting papers stuck in their hats, filed before the column of the Bastille, and in the same order marched to their sections.
The adhesion and convocation of the mayors dissipating all scruple, also made the bourgeois quarters vote. The elections became legal since plenipotentiaries of the Government had given their consent. Two hundred and eighty-seven thousand men voted, relatively a far greater number than in the elections of February; for since the opening of the gates after the siege, a great part of the leisured classes had rushed to the provinces, there to recover their health.
The elections were conducted in a way becoming a free people. At the approach to the halls, no police, no intrigues. And yet M. Thiers dared telegraph to the provinces: ‘The elections will take place to-day without liberty and without moral authority.’ The liberty was so absolute that in all Paris not one single protestation occurred.
The moderate papers even commended the articles of the Officiel, in which the delegate Longuet set forth the role of the future Communal Assembly: ‘Above all, it must define its mandate, fix the boundaries of its attributes. Its first work must be the discussion and the drawing up of its charter. This done, it must consider the means of having that statute of the municipal autonomy recognized and guaranteed by the central power.’ The plainness, the prudence, the moderation which marked all official acts was beginning to move the most obdurate. Only the hatred of the Versaillese did not abate. That same day M. Thiers cried from the tribune, ‘No, France will not let those wretches triumph who would drown her in blood.’
The next day 200,000 ‘wretches’ came to the H�tel-de-Ville there to install their chosen representatives, the battalion drums beating, the banners surmounted by the Phrygian cap and with red fringe round the muskets; their ranks, swelled by soldiers of the line, artillerymen, and marines faithful to Paris, came down from all the streets to the Place de Greve like the thousand streams of a great river. In the middle of the H�tel-de-Ville, against the central door, a large platform was raised. Above it towered the bust of the Republic, a red scarf slung round it. Immense red streamers beat against the frontal and the belfry, like tongues of fire announcing the good news to France. A hundred battalions thronged the square, and piled their bayonets, lit up by the sun, in front of the H�tel-de-Ville. The other battalions that could not get into the place lined the streets up to the Boulevard de Sebastopol and to the quays. The banners were grouped in front of the platform, some tricolour, all with red tassels, symbolizing the advent of the people. While the square was filling, songs burst forth, the bands played the Marseillaise and the Chant du D�part, trumpets sounded the charge, and the cannon of the old Commune thundered on the quay.
Suddenly the noise subsided. The members of the Central Committee and of the Commune, their red scarfs over their shoulders, appeared on the platform. Ranvier said, ‘Citizens, my heart is too full of joy to make a speech. Permit me only to thank the people of Paris for the great example they have given the world.’ A member of the Committee announced the names of those elected. The drums beat a salute, the bands and two hundred thousand voices chimed in with the Marseillaise. Ranvier, in an interval of silence, cried out, ‘In the name of the People the Commune is proclaimed.’
A thousandfold echo answered, “Vive la Commune!’ Caps were flung up on the ends of bayonets, flags fluttered in the air. From the windows, on the roofs, thousands of hands waved handkerchiefs.. The quick reports of the cannon, the bands, the drums, blended in one formidable vibration. All hearts leaped with joy, all eyes filled with tears. Never since the great Federation had Paris been thus moved.
The filing off was very cleverly managed by Brunel, who, while having the square evacuated on the one hand, brought in those battalions that were outside, all equally anxious to acclaim the Commune. Before the bust of the Republic the flags were lowered, the officers saluted with their sabres, the men raised their muskets. Not until seven o'clock did the last procession pass by.
The agents of M. Thiers returned in dismay to tell him, ‘It was really the whole of Paris that took part in the demonstration.’ And the Central Committee might well exclaim in its enthusiasm, ‘To-day Paris opened a fresh page in the book of history, and there inscribed her powerful name. Let the spies of Versailles, who are prowling around us, go and tell their masters what the common movement of an entire population means. Let these spies carry back to them the image of the magnificent spectacle of a people recovering their sovereignty.’
This lightning would have made the blind see. 187,000 voters. 200,000 men with the same watchword. This was not a secret committee, a handful of factious rioters and bandits, as had been said for ten days. Here was an immense force at the service of a definite idea communal independence, the intellectual life of France — an invaluable force in this time of universal anaemia. a godsend as precious as the compass saved from the wreck and saving the survivors. This was one of those great historical turning-points when a people may be remoulded.
Liberals, if it was in good faith that you called for decentralization under the Empire; Republicans, if you have understood June, 1848, and December, 1851; Radicals, if you really want the self-government of the people — listen to this new voice, avail yourselves of this marvellous opportunity.
But the Prussian! What does it matter? Why not forge arms under the eye of the enemy? Bourgeois, was it not in sight of the foreigner that your ancestor Etienne Marcel tried to remake France? And your Convention, did not it fast act in the very midst of the hurricane?
What did they answer? Death to Paris!
The red sun of civil discord melts veneer and all masks. There they are side by side as in 1791, 1794, and 1848, Monarchists, Clericals, Liberals, Radicals, all of them, their hands raised against the people — one army in different uniforms. Their decentralization is rural and capitalist federalism; their self-government, the exploitation of the budget by themselves, just as the whole political science of their statesmen consists only in massacre and the state of siege.
What bourgeoisie in the world after such immense disasters would not with careful heed have tended such a reservoir of living force?
They, seeing this Paris capable of engendering a new world, her heart swelled with the best blood of France, had but one thought — to bleed Paris.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XVI<br>
The Manifesto and the germs of defeat</h1>
<p>For the second time the situation was distinctly marked out. If the Council did not know how to define the Commune, was it not in the most unmistakable manner, and before the eyes of all Paris, declared to mean a camp of rebels by the fighting, the bombardment, the fury of the Versaillese, and the rebuff of the conciliators? The by-elections of the 16th April — death, double election returns, and resignations had given thirty-one vacant seats — revealed the effective forces of the insurrection. The illusion of the 26th March had vanished; the votes were now taken under fire. Also the journals of the Commune and the delegates of the Syndical Chambers in vain summoned the electors to the ballot-box. Out of 146,000 who had mustered in these arrondissements at the election of the 26th March, there came now only 61,000. The arrondissements of the councillors who had deserted their seats gave 16,000 instead of 51,000 votes.</p>
<p>It was now or never the moment to explain their programme to France. The Executive Commission had on the 6th, in an address to the provinces, protested against the calumnies of Versailles, but had confined itself to the statement that Paris fought for all France, and had not set forth any programme. The Republican protestations of M. Thiers, the hostility of the extreme Left, the desultory decrees, had completely led astray the provinces. It was necessary to set them right at once. On the 19th, a commission charged to draw up a programme presented its work, or rather the work of another. Sad and characteristic symbol this; the declaration of the Commune did not emanate from the Council, its twelve publicists notwithstanding. Of the five members charged to draw up the draft, only Delescluze contributed some passages; the technical part was the work of a journalist, Pierre Denis.</p>
<p>In the <em>Cri du Peuple </em>he had taken up and formulated as a law the whim of <em>Paris a free town, </em>hatched in the first gush of passion of the Vauxhall meetings. According to this legislator, Paris was to become a Hanseatic town, crowning herself with all liberties, and from the height of her proud fortress say to the enchained communes of France, ‘Imitate me if you can; but mind, I shall do nothing for you but set an example.’ This charming plan had turned the heads of several members of the Council, and too many traces of it were visible in the declaration.</p>
<p>‘What does Paris demand?’ it said. ‘The recognition of the Republic. Absolute autonomy of the Commune extended to all localities of France. The inherent rights of the Commune are: the vote of the communal budget; the settlement and repartition of taxes; the direction of the local services; the organization of its magistracy, of its internal police, and of education; the administration of communal goods; the choice and permanent right of control over the communal magistrates and functionaries; the absolute guarantee of individual liberty, of the liberty of conscience and the liberty of labour; the organization of urban defence and of the National Guard; the Commune alone charged with the surveillance and assurance of the free and just exercise of the right of meeting and of publicity ... Paris wants nothing more .. on condition of finding in the great central administration, the delegation of the federated communes, the realization and practical application of the same principle.’</p>
<p>What were to be the powers of that central delegation, the reciprocal obligations of the Communes? The declaration did not state these. According to this text, every locality was to possess the right to shut itself up within its autonomy. But what to expect of autonomy in Lower Brittany, in nine-tenths of the French Communes, more than half of which have not 600 inhabitants, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n122">[122]</a></sup> if even the Parisian declaration violated the most elementary rights, charged the Commune with the surveillance of the <em>just </em>exercise of the right of meeting and of publicity, forgetting to mention the right of association? It is notorious, it has been proved but too well. The rural autonomous communes would be a monster with a thousand suckers attached to the flank of the Revolution.</p>
<p>No! Thousands of mutes and blind are not fitted to conclude a social pact. Weak, unorganized, bound by a thousand trammels, the people of the country can only be saved by the towns, and the people of the towns guided by Paris. The failure of all the provincial insurrections, even of the large towns, had sufficiently testified this. When the declaration said, ‘Unity such as has been imposed upon us until to-day by the Empire, the monarchy and parliamentarism is only despotic, unintelligent centralization,’ it laid bare the cancer that devours France; but when it added, ‘Political unity, as understood by Paris, is the voluntary association of all local initiative,’ it showed that it knew nothing whatever of the provinces.</p>
<p>The declaration continued, in the style of an address, sometimes to the point: ‘Paris works and suffers for all France, whose intellectual, moral, administrative, and economical regeneration she prepares by her combats and her sufferings.... The communal revolution, commenced by the popular initiative of the 18th March, inaugurates a new era.’ But in all this there was nothing definite. Why not, taking up the formula of the 28th March, ‘To the commune what is communal, to the nation what is national,’ define the future commune, sufficiently extended to endow it with political life, sufficiently limited to allow its citizens easily to combine their social action, the commune of 15,000 to 20,000 souls, the canton-commune, and clearly set forth its rights and those of France? They did not even speak of federating the large towns for the conquest of their common enfranchisement. Such as it was, this programme, obscure, incomplete, impossible in many points, could not, in spite of some generous ideas, contribute much to the enlightenment of the provinces.</p>
<p>It was only a draft. No doubt the Council was going to discuss it. It was voted after the first reading. No debate, hardly an observation. This assembly, which gave four days to the discussion on overdue commercial bills, had not one sitting for the study of this declaration, its programme in case of victory, its testament if it succumbed.</p>
<p>To make things worse, a new malady infected the Council, the germs of which, sown for some days, were brought to full maturity by the complementary elections. The Romanticists gave rise to the Casuists, and both came to loggerheads on the verification of the new mandates.</p>
<p>On the 30th March the Council had validated six elections with a relative majority. The reporter on the election of the 16th proposed declaring all those candidates elected who had received an absolute majority. The Casuists grew indignant. ‘This would be,’ said they, ‘the worst blow that any Government had dealt universal suffrage.’</p>
<p>But it was impossible to go on continually convoking the electors. Three of the most devoted arrondissements had given no result; one of them, the thirteenth, being deprived of its best men, then fighting at the advanced posts. A new ballot would only set forth in bolder relief the isolation of the Commune; and then, is the moment of the fight, when the battalion is decimated, deprived of its chief, the opportune time for insisting upon a regular promotion)</p>
<p>The discussion was very warm, for in this outlawed H�tel-de-Ville there sat outrageous legality-mongers. Paris was to be strangled by their saving principles. Already, in the name of holy autonomy, which forbade intervention with the autonomy of one’s neighbour, the Executive Commission had refused to arm the communes round Paris that asked to march against Versailles. M. Thiers took no more efficient measure to isolate Paris.</p>
<p>Twenty-six voices against thirteen voted the conclusions of the report. Twenty elections only were declared valid,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n123"> [123]</a></sup> which was illogical; one with less than 1,100 votes was admitted, another with 2,500 rejected. All the elections should have been declared valid, or none at all. Four of the new delegates were journalists, six only workmen. Eleven sent by the public meetings came to strengthen the Romanticists. Two whose elections had been validated by the Council refused to sit because they had not obtained the eighth part of the votes. The author of the admirable <em>Propos de Labi�nus,</em><span class="context">[a book dealing with the abuses of the Second Empire]</span> Rogeard, allowed himself to be deceived by a false scruple of legality — the only weakness of this generous man, who devoted to the Commune his pure and brilliant eloquence. His resignation deprived the Council of a man of common sense, but once more served to unmask the apocalyptic F�lix Pyat.</p>
<p><img src="pics/pyat-felix.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Felix Pyat" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p>Since the 1st April, scenting the coming storm and professing the same horror for blows as Panurge, F�lix Pyat had attempted to leave Paris, sent in his resignation as member of the Executive Commission to the Council, and declared his presence at Versailles indispensable. The Versaillese hussars making the sortie too perilous, he had condescended to stay, but at the same time assuming two masks, one for the H�tel-de-Ville, the other for the public. In the Council, at the secret sittings, he urged violent measures with the vivacity of a wild cat; in the <em>Vengeur </em>he held forth pontifically, shaking his grey hairs, saying, ‘To the ballot-box, not to Versailles!’ In his own paper he had two faces. If he wanted the journals suppressed, he signed ‘Le Vengeur'; if he wanted to cajole, he signed F�lix Pyat. The defeat of Asni�res struck him again with fear, and anew he looked out for a loophole. The resignation of Rogeard opened it. Under the shelter of this pure name F�lix Pyat slipped in his resignation. ‘The Commune has violated the law,’ wrote he. ‘I do not want to be an accomplice.’ And, to debar himself from any return to the Council, he involved the dignity of the latter. If, said he, it persisted, he would be forced, to his great regret, to send in his resignation ‘<em>before the victory.'</em></p>
<p>He had counted on stealing away as from the Assembly of Bordeaux; but his roguery disgusted the Council. The <em>Vengeur </em>had just condemned the suppression of several reactionary papers demanded many and many a time by F�lix Pyat. Vermorel denounced this duplicity. One Member: ‘It has been said here that resignations would be considered as treason.’ Another: ‘A man must not leave his post when that post is one of peril and of honour.’ A third formally demanded the arrest of F�lix Pyat. ‘I regret,’ said another, ‘that it has not been distinctly laid down that resignation can only be tendered to the electors themselves.’ And Delescluze added, ‘Nobody has the right to withdraw for personal rancour or because some measure does not chime in with his ideal. Do you then believe that every one approves what is done here? Yes; there are members who have remained, and who will remain till the end, notwithstanding the insults hurled at us. For myself, 1 am decided to remain at my post, and if we do not see victory, we shall not be the last to fall on the ramparts or on the steps of the H�tel-de-Ville.’</p>
<p>These manly words were received with prolonged cheers. No one’s devotion was more meritorious. The habits of Delescluze, grave and laborious, his high aspirations, alienated him more than any other from many of his colleagues, light-headed idlers, prone to personal bickerings. One day, weary of this chaos, he wanted to resign. It sufficed to tell him that his withdrawal would be very prejudicial to the cause of the people to persuade him to remain, and await, not victory — as well as F�lix Pyat he knew that impossible — but the death that makes the future fruitful.</p>
<p>F�lix Pyat, so lashed from all sides, not daring to snap at Delescluze, turned round upon Vermorel, whom for all argument he called ‘spy'; and as Vermorel was a member of the Commission of Public Safety, accused him in the <em>Vengeur </em>of putting out of the way evidence accumulated against him at the prefecture of police. This member of the hare species called Vermorel a ‘worm.’ Such was his mode of discussion. Under the veil of literary refinement lurked the amenities of Billingsgate. In 1848, in the <em>Constituante, </em>he called Proudhon ‘<em>swine'; </em>and in 1871 in the <em>Commune, </em>he called Tridon ‘<em>dunghill.’ </em>He was the only member of this Assembly, where there were workmen of rude professions, who introduced ribaldry into the discussions.</p>
<p>Vermorel, replying in the <em>Cri du Peuple, </em>easily floored him. The electors of F�lix Pyat sent him three summations to remain at his post: ‘You are a soldier; you must stay in the breach. It is we alone who have the right to revoke you.’ Ferreted out by his mandatories, threatened with arrest by the Council, this Greek chose the lesser danger, and re-entered the H�tel-de-Ville in mincing attitude.</p>
<p>Versailles was jubilant at these miserable triflings. For the first time the public became acquainted with the interior of the Council, its infinitesimal coteries, made up of purely personal friendships or antipathies. Whoever belonged to such a group got thorough support, whatever his blunders. Far more; in order to be allowed to serve the Commune, it was necessary to belong to such a confraternity. Many sincerely devoted men offered themselves, tried democrats, intelligent employees, deserters from the Government, even Republican officers. They were overweeningly met by some incapable upstarts of yesterday, whose devotion was not to outlast the 20th May. And yet the insufficiency of the personnel and the want of talent each day became more overwhelming. The members of the Council complained that nothing was getting on. The Executive Commission did not know how to command, nor its subordinate how to obey; the Council devolved power and retained it at the same time, interfered every moment with the slightest details of the service; conducted the government, the administration, and the defence like the sortie of the 3rd April.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XVI
The Manifesto and the germs of defeat
For the second time the situation was distinctly marked out. If the Council did not know how to define the Commune, was it not in the most unmistakable manner, and before the eyes of all Paris, declared to mean a camp of rebels by the fighting, the bombardment, the fury of the Versaillese, and the rebuff of the conciliators? The by-elections of the 16th April — death, double election returns, and resignations had given thirty-one vacant seats — revealed the effective forces of the insurrection. The illusion of the 26th March had vanished; the votes were now taken under fire. Also the journals of the Commune and the delegates of the Syndical Chambers in vain summoned the electors to the ballot-box. Out of 146,000 who had mustered in these arrondissements at the election of the 26th March, there came now only 61,000. The arrondissements of the councillors who had deserted their seats gave 16,000 instead of 51,000 votes.
It was now or never the moment to explain their programme to France. The Executive Commission had on the 6th, in an address to the provinces, protested against the calumnies of Versailles, but had confined itself to the statement that Paris fought for all France, and had not set forth any programme. The Republican protestations of M. Thiers, the hostility of the extreme Left, the desultory decrees, had completely led astray the provinces. It was necessary to set them right at once. On the 19th, a commission charged to draw up a programme presented its work, or rather the work of another. Sad and characteristic symbol this; the declaration of the Commune did not emanate from the Council, its twelve publicists notwithstanding. Of the five members charged to draw up the draft, only Delescluze contributed some passages; the technical part was the work of a journalist, Pierre Denis.
In the Cri du Peuple he had taken up and formulated as a law the whim of Paris a free town, hatched in the first gush of passion of the Vauxhall meetings. According to this legislator, Paris was to become a Hanseatic town, crowning herself with all liberties, and from the height of her proud fortress say to the enchained communes of France, ‘Imitate me if you can; but mind, I shall do nothing for you but set an example.’ This charming plan had turned the heads of several members of the Council, and too many traces of it were visible in the declaration.
‘What does Paris demand?’ it said. ‘The recognition of the Republic. Absolute autonomy of the Commune extended to all localities of France. The inherent rights of the Commune are: the vote of the communal budget; the settlement and repartition of taxes; the direction of the local services; the organization of its magistracy, of its internal police, and of education; the administration of communal goods; the choice and permanent right of control over the communal magistrates and functionaries; the absolute guarantee of individual liberty, of the liberty of conscience and the liberty of labour; the organization of urban defence and of the National Guard; the Commune alone charged with the surveillance and assurance of the free and just exercise of the right of meeting and of publicity ... Paris wants nothing more .. on condition of finding in the great central administration, the delegation of the federated communes, the realization and practical application of the same principle.’
What were to be the powers of that central delegation, the reciprocal obligations of the Communes? The declaration did not state these. According to this text, every locality was to possess the right to shut itself up within its autonomy. But what to expect of autonomy in Lower Brittany, in nine-tenths of the French Communes, more than half of which have not 600 inhabitants, [122] if even the Parisian declaration violated the most elementary rights, charged the Commune with the surveillance of the just exercise of the right of meeting and of publicity, forgetting to mention the right of association? It is notorious, it has been proved but too well. The rural autonomous communes would be a monster with a thousand suckers attached to the flank of the Revolution.
No! Thousands of mutes and blind are not fitted to conclude a social pact. Weak, unorganized, bound by a thousand trammels, the people of the country can only be saved by the towns, and the people of the towns guided by Paris. The failure of all the provincial insurrections, even of the large towns, had sufficiently testified this. When the declaration said, ‘Unity such as has been imposed upon us until to-day by the Empire, the monarchy and parliamentarism is only despotic, unintelligent centralization,’ it laid bare the cancer that devours France; but when it added, ‘Political unity, as understood by Paris, is the voluntary association of all local initiative,’ it showed that it knew nothing whatever of the provinces.
The declaration continued, in the style of an address, sometimes to the point: ‘Paris works and suffers for all France, whose intellectual, moral, administrative, and economical regeneration she prepares by her combats and her sufferings.... The communal revolution, commenced by the popular initiative of the 18th March, inaugurates a new era.’ But in all this there was nothing definite. Why not, taking up the formula of the 28th March, ‘To the commune what is communal, to the nation what is national,’ define the future commune, sufficiently extended to endow it with political life, sufficiently limited to allow its citizens easily to combine their social action, the commune of 15,000 to 20,000 souls, the canton-commune, and clearly set forth its rights and those of France? They did not even speak of federating the large towns for the conquest of their common enfranchisement. Such as it was, this programme, obscure, incomplete, impossible in many points, could not, in spite of some generous ideas, contribute much to the enlightenment of the provinces.
It was only a draft. No doubt the Council was going to discuss it. It was voted after the first reading. No debate, hardly an observation. This assembly, which gave four days to the discussion on overdue commercial bills, had not one sitting for the study of this declaration, its programme in case of victory, its testament if it succumbed.
To make things worse, a new malady infected the Council, the germs of which, sown for some days, were brought to full maturity by the complementary elections. The Romanticists gave rise to the Casuists, and both came to loggerheads on the verification of the new mandates.
On the 30th March the Council had validated six elections with a relative majority. The reporter on the election of the 16th proposed declaring all those candidates elected who had received an absolute majority. The Casuists grew indignant. ‘This would be,’ said they, ‘the worst blow that any Government had dealt universal suffrage.’
But it was impossible to go on continually convoking the electors. Three of the most devoted arrondissements had given no result; one of them, the thirteenth, being deprived of its best men, then fighting at the advanced posts. A new ballot would only set forth in bolder relief the isolation of the Commune; and then, is the moment of the fight, when the battalion is decimated, deprived of its chief, the opportune time for insisting upon a regular promotion)
The discussion was very warm, for in this outlawed H�tel-de-Ville there sat outrageous legality-mongers. Paris was to be strangled by their saving principles. Already, in the name of holy autonomy, which forbade intervention with the autonomy of one’s neighbour, the Executive Commission had refused to arm the communes round Paris that asked to march against Versailles. M. Thiers took no more efficient measure to isolate Paris.
Twenty-six voices against thirteen voted the conclusions of the report. Twenty elections only were declared valid, [123] which was illogical; one with less than 1,100 votes was admitted, another with 2,500 rejected. All the elections should have been declared valid, or none at all. Four of the new delegates were journalists, six only workmen. Eleven sent by the public meetings came to strengthen the Romanticists. Two whose elections had been validated by the Council refused to sit because they had not obtained the eighth part of the votes. The author of the admirable Propos de Labi�nus,[a book dealing with the abuses of the Second Empire] Rogeard, allowed himself to be deceived by a false scruple of legality — the only weakness of this generous man, who devoted to the Commune his pure and brilliant eloquence. His resignation deprived the Council of a man of common sense, but once more served to unmask the apocalyptic F�lix Pyat.
Since the 1st April, scenting the coming storm and professing the same horror for blows as Panurge, F�lix Pyat had attempted to leave Paris, sent in his resignation as member of the Executive Commission to the Council, and declared his presence at Versailles indispensable. The Versaillese hussars making the sortie too perilous, he had condescended to stay, but at the same time assuming two masks, one for the H�tel-de-Ville, the other for the public. In the Council, at the secret sittings, he urged violent measures with the vivacity of a wild cat; in the Vengeur he held forth pontifically, shaking his grey hairs, saying, ‘To the ballot-box, not to Versailles!’ In his own paper he had two faces. If he wanted the journals suppressed, he signed ‘Le Vengeur'; if he wanted to cajole, he signed F�lix Pyat. The defeat of Asni�res struck him again with fear, and anew he looked out for a loophole. The resignation of Rogeard opened it. Under the shelter of this pure name F�lix Pyat slipped in his resignation. ‘The Commune has violated the law,’ wrote he. ‘I do not want to be an accomplice.’ And, to debar himself from any return to the Council, he involved the dignity of the latter. If, said he, it persisted, he would be forced, to his great regret, to send in his resignation ‘before the victory.'
He had counted on stealing away as from the Assembly of Bordeaux; but his roguery disgusted the Council. The Vengeur had just condemned the suppression of several reactionary papers demanded many and many a time by F�lix Pyat. Vermorel denounced this duplicity. One Member: ‘It has been said here that resignations would be considered as treason.’ Another: ‘A man must not leave his post when that post is one of peril and of honour.’ A third formally demanded the arrest of F�lix Pyat. ‘I regret,’ said another, ‘that it has not been distinctly laid down that resignation can only be tendered to the electors themselves.’ And Delescluze added, ‘Nobody has the right to withdraw for personal rancour or because some measure does not chime in with his ideal. Do you then believe that every one approves what is done here? Yes; there are members who have remained, and who will remain till the end, notwithstanding the insults hurled at us. For myself, 1 am decided to remain at my post, and if we do not see victory, we shall not be the last to fall on the ramparts or on the steps of the H�tel-de-Ville.’
These manly words were received with prolonged cheers. No one’s devotion was more meritorious. The habits of Delescluze, grave and laborious, his high aspirations, alienated him more than any other from many of his colleagues, light-headed idlers, prone to personal bickerings. One day, weary of this chaos, he wanted to resign. It sufficed to tell him that his withdrawal would be very prejudicial to the cause of the people to persuade him to remain, and await, not victory — as well as F�lix Pyat he knew that impossible — but the death that makes the future fruitful.
F�lix Pyat, so lashed from all sides, not daring to snap at Delescluze, turned round upon Vermorel, whom for all argument he called ‘spy'; and as Vermorel was a member of the Commission of Public Safety, accused him in the Vengeur of putting out of the way evidence accumulated against him at the prefecture of police. This member of the hare species called Vermorel a ‘worm.’ Such was his mode of discussion. Under the veil of literary refinement lurked the amenities of Billingsgate. In 1848, in the Constituante, he called Proudhon ‘swine'; and in 1871 in the Commune, he called Tridon ‘dunghill.’ He was the only member of this Assembly, where there were workmen of rude professions, who introduced ribaldry into the discussions.
Vermorel, replying in the Cri du Peuple, easily floored him. The electors of F�lix Pyat sent him three summations to remain at his post: ‘You are a soldier; you must stay in the breach. It is we alone who have the right to revoke you.’ Ferreted out by his mandatories, threatened with arrest by the Council, this Greek chose the lesser danger, and re-entered the H�tel-de-Ville in mincing attitude.
Versailles was jubilant at these miserable triflings. For the first time the public became acquainted with the interior of the Council, its infinitesimal coteries, made up of purely personal friendships or antipathies. Whoever belonged to such a group got thorough support, whatever his blunders. Far more; in order to be allowed to serve the Commune, it was necessary to belong to such a confraternity. Many sincerely devoted men offered themselves, tried democrats, intelligent employees, deserters from the Government, even Republican officers. They were overweeningly met by some incapable upstarts of yesterday, whose devotion was not to outlast the 20th May. And yet the insufficiency of the personnel and the want of talent each day became more overwhelming. The members of the Council complained that nothing was getting on. The Executive Commission did not know how to command, nor its subordinate how to obey; the Council devolved power and retained it at the same time, interfered every moment with the slightest details of the service; conducted the government, the administration, and the defence like the sortie of the 3rd April.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XXXII<br>
The Versaillese fury</h1>
<p class="quoteb">We are honest men: justice will be done in accordance with the ordinary laws. (Thiers to the National Assembly, 22nd May 1871. </p>
<p class="quoteb">Honest, honest Iago! (Shakespeare.)</p>
<p>Order reigned in Paris. Everywhere ruins, death, sinister crepitations. The officers walked provokingly about clashing their sabres; the non-commissioned officers imitated their arrogance. The soldiers bivouacked in all the large roads. Some, stupefied by fatigue and camage, slept on the pavement; others prepared their soup by the side of the corpses, singing the songs of their native homes.</p>
<p>The tricolor flag hung from all the windows in order to prevent house-searches. Guns, cartridge-boxes, uniforms, were piled up in the gutters of the popular quarters. Before the doors sat women leaning their heads upon their hands, looking fixedly before them, waiting for a son or a husband who was never to return.</p>
<p>In the rich quarters the joy knew no bounds. The runaways of the two sieges, the demonstrators of the Place Vend�me, many emigrants of Versailles, had again taken possession of the boulevards. Since the Thursday this kid-glove populace followed the prisoners, acclaiming the gendarmes who conducted the convoys ‘<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n202">[202]</a></sup> applauding at the sight of the blood-covered vans.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n203">[203]</a></sup> The civilians strove to outdo the military in levity. Such a one, who had ventured no further than the Caf� du Helder, recounted the taking of the Ch�teau d'Eau, bragged of having shot his dozen prisoners. Elegant and joyous women, as in a pleasure trip, betook themselves to the corpses, and, to enjoy the sight of the valorous dead, with the ends of sunshades raised their last coverings.</p>
<p>‘Inhabitants of Paris,’ said MacMahon on the 28th at mid-day, ‘Paris is delivered! Today the struggle is over. Order, labour, security are about to revive.’</p>
<p>‘Paris delivered’ was parcelled into four commands under the orders of General Vinoy, Ladmirault, Cissey, Douay, and once more placed under the regime of the state of siege raised by the Commune. There was no longer any government at Paris than the army which massacred Paris. The passers-by were constrained to demolish the barricades, and any sign of impatience brought with it an arrest, any imprecation death. It was posted up that any one in the possession of arms would immediately be sent before a court-martial; that any house from which shots were fired would be given over to summary execution. All public places were closed at eleven o'clock. Henceforth officers in uniform alone could circulate freely. Mounted patrols thronged the streets. Entrance into the town became difficult, to leave it impossible. The tradespeople not being allowed to go backwards and forwards, victuals were on the point of failing.</p>
<p>‘The struggle over,’ the army transformed itself into a vast platoon of executioners. On the Sunday more than 5,000 prisoners taken in the neighbourhood of the P�re la Chaise were led to the prison of La Roquette. A chief of Battalion standing at the entrance surveyed the prisoners and said, ‘To the right,’ or ‘To the left.’ Those to the left were to be shot. Their pockets emptied, they were drawn up along a wall and then slaughtered. Opposite the wall two or three priests bending over their breviaries mumbled the prayers for the dying.</p>
<p>From the Sunday to the Monday morning in La Roquette alone more than 1,900 persons were thus murdered .<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n204">[204]</a></sup> Blood flowed in large pools in the gutters of the prison. The same slaughter took place at the Ecole Militaire and the Parc Monceaux.</p>
<p>It was butchery, nothing more, nothing less. At other places the prisoners were conducted before the prevotal courts, with which Paris swarmed since the Monday. These had not sprung up at random, and, as has been believed, in the midst of the fury of the struggle. It was proved before the courts-martial that the number and seats of these prevotal courts, with their respective jurisdictions, had been appointed at Versailles before the entry of the troops .<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n205">[205]</a></sup> One of the most celebrated was that of the Ch�telet Theatre, where Colonel Vabre officiated. Thousands of prisoners who were led there were first of all penned in upon the stage and in the auditorium, under the guns of the soldiers placed in the boxes; then, little by little, like sheep driven to the door of the slaughter-house, from wing to wing they were pushed to the saloon, where, round a large table, officers of the army and the honest National Guard were seated ‘<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n206">[206]</a></sup> their sabres between their legs, cigars in their mouths. The examination lasted a quarter of a minute. ‘Did you take arms? Did you serve the Commune? Show your hands.’ If the resolute attitude of a prisoner betrayed a combatant, if his face was unpleasant, without asking for his name, his profession, without entering any note upon any register, he was <em>classed. ‘</em>You?’ was said to the next one, and so on to the end of the file, without excepting the women, children, and old men. When by a caprice a prisoner was spared, he was said to be <em>ordinary, </em>and reserved for Versailles. No one was liberated.</p>
<p>The <em>classed </em>ones were at once delivered to the executioners, who led them into the nearest garden or court. From the Ch�telet, for instance, they were taken to the Lebau Barracks.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n207">[207]</a></sup> There the doors were no sooner closed than the gendarmes fired, without even grouping their victims before a platoon. Some, only wounded, ran along by the walls, the gendarmes chasing and shooting at them till they fell dead. Moreau of the Central Committee perished in one of these gangs. Surprised on the Thursday evening in the Rue de Rivoli, he was conducted into the garden and placed against a terrace. There were so many victims, that the soldiers, tired out, were obliged to rest their guns actually against the sufferers. The wall of the terrace was covered with brains; the executioners waded through pools of blood.</p>
<p>The massacre was thus carried on, methodically organized, at the Caserne Dupleix, the Lyc�e Bonaparte, the Northern and Eastern Railway Stations, the Jardin des Plantes, in many <em>mairies</em> and barracks, at the same time as in the abattoirs. Large open vans came to fetch the corpses, and went to empty them in the square or any open space in the neighbourhood.</p>
<p>The victims died simply, without fanfaronade.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n208">[208]</a></sup> Many crossed their arms before the muskets, and themselves commanded the fire. Women and children followed their husbands and their fathers, crying to the soldiers, ‘Shoot us with them!’ And they were shot. Women, till then strangers to the struggle, were seen to come down into the streets, enraged by these butcheries, strike the officers and then throw themselves against a wall waiting for death.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n209">[209]</a></sup></p>
<p>In June, 1848, Cavaignac had promised pardon, and he massacred. M. Thiers had sworn by the law, and he gave the army carte-blanche. The officers returned from Germany might now glut to their hearts’ content their wrath against that Paris which had insulted them by not capitulating; the Bonapartists revenge on the Republicans the old hatreds of the Empire; the boys just fresh from St. Cyr serve their apprenticeship of insolence upon the <em>p�kins. </em>A general (Cissey most probably) gave the order to shoot M. Cernuschi, whose crime consisted in having offered 100,000 francs for the anti-plebiscitary campaign of 1870.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n210">[210]</a></sup> Any individual of some popular notoriety was sure to die. Dr. Tony Moilin, who had played no part during the Commune, but had been implicated in several political trials during the Empire, was in a few moments judged and condemned to death; ‘not’, his judges condescended to tell him, ‘that he had committed any act that merited death, but because he was a chief of the Socialist party, one of those men of whom a prudent and wise Government must rid itself when it finds a legitimate occasion.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n211">[211]</a></sup> The Radicals of the Chamber, whose hatred of the Commune had been most clearly demonstrated, did not dare to set foot in Paris for fear of being included in the massacres.</p>
<p><img src="pics/billioray.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Billioray" border="1" align="left"></p>
<p>The army, having neither police nor precise information, killed at random. Any passer-by calling a man by a revolutionary name caused him to be shot by soldiers eager to get the premium. At Grenelle they shot a pseudo-Billioray ‘<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n212">[212]</a></sup> notwithstanding his despairing protests; at the Place Vend�me they shot a pseudo-Brunel in the apartments of Madame Fould. The Gaulois published the recital by a military surgeon who <em>knew </em>Vall�s, and was present at his execution ‘<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n213">[213]</a></sup> an eye-witness declared he had seen Lefran�ais shot on the Thursday in the Rue de la Banque. The real Billioray was tried in the month of August; Brunel, Vall�s, and Lefran�ais succeeded in escaping from France. Members and functionaries of the Commune were thus shot, and often several times over, in the persons of individuals who resembled them more or less.</p>
<p>Varlin, alas! was not to escape. On Sunday, the 28th May, he was recognized in the Rue Lafayette, and led, or rather dragged, to the foot of the Buttes Montmartre before the commanding general. The Versaillese sent him to be shot in the Rue des Rosiers. For an hour, a mortal hour, Varlin was dragged through the streets of Montmartre, his hands tied behind his back, under a shower of blows and insults. His young, thoughtful head, that had never harboured other thoughts than of fraternity, slashed open by the sabres, was soon but one mass of blood, of mangled flesh, the eye protruding from the orbit. On reaching the Rue des Rosiers, he no longer walked; he was carried.</p>
<p>They set him down to shoot him. The wretches dismembered his corpse with blows of the butt-ends of their muskets.</p>
<p>The Mount of Martyrs has no more glorious one than Varlin. May he too be enshrined in the great heart of the working-class! Varlin’s whole life was an example. He had quite alone, by the mere force of his will, educated himself, giving to study the rare hours left him in the evening after the workshop; learning not with the view to push into the bourgeoisie, as many others did, but to instruct and enfranchise the people. He was the heart and soul of the working men’s associations at the end of the Empire. Indefatigable, modest, speaking little, always at the right moment, and then enlightening a confused discussion with a word, he had preserved that revolutionary instinct which is often blunted in educated workmen. One of the first on the 18th March, labouring during the whole Commune, he was at the barricades to the last. His death is all to the honour of the workmen. It is to Varlin and to Delescluze that this history should be dedicated, if there were room in the frontispiece for any other name than that of Paris.</p>
<p>The Versaillese journalists spat on his corpse; said that some hundreds of thousands of francs had been found on him.’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n214">[214]</a></sup> Returned to Paris behind the army, they followed it like jackals. Those of the demi-monde, above all, were mad with a sanguinary hysteria. The coalition of the 21st March was re-made. All uttered one howl against the vanquished workmen. Far from moderating the massacre, they encouraged it, published the names, the hiding-places of those who were to be killed, unflagging in inventions calculated to keep up the furious terror of the bourgeoisie. After every shooting they cried encore.</p>
<p>I quote at random, and could quote pages: ‘We must make a Communard hunt’ (<em>Bien Public</em>). ‘Not one of the malefactors in whose hands Paris has been for two months will be considered as a political man. They will be treated like the brigands they are, like the most frightful monsters ever seen in the history of humanity. Many journals speak of re-erecting the scaffold ‘destroyed by them, in order not even to do them the honour of shooting them’ (<em>Moniteur Universal</em>). ‘Come, honest people, an effort to make an end of this international democratic vermin’ (<em>Figaro</em>). ‘These men, who have killed for the sake of killing and stealing, are taken, and we should answer, Mercy! These hideous women, who stabbed the breast of dying officers, are taken. and we should cry, Mercy!’ (<em>Patrie</em>).<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n215">[215]</a></sup></p>
<p>To encourage the hangmen, if that were necessary, the press threw them crowns.</p>
<p>‘What an admirable attitude is that of our officers and soldiers!’ said the Figaro. ‘It is only to the French soldier that it is given to recover so quickly and so well.’ ‘What an honour!’ cried the <em>Journal des D�bats. ‘</em>Our army has avenged its disasters by an inestimable victory.’</p>
<p>Thus the army wreaked on Paris revenge for its defeats. Paris was an enemy like Prussia, and all the less to be spared that the army had its prestige to reconquer. To complete the similitude, after the victory there was a triumph. The Romans never adjudged it after the civil struggles. M. Thiers was not ashamed, under the eye of the foreigner, before still smoking Paris, to parade his troops in a grand review. Who then will dare to blame the Federals for having resisted the army of Versailles as they would have the Prussians?</p>
<p>And when did foreigners show such fury ?<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n216">[216]</a></sup> Death even seemed to whet their rancour. On Sunday, the 28th, near the <em>mairie</em> of the eleventh arrondissment, about fifty prisoners had just been shot. Urged not by an unworthy curiosity, but by the earnest desire to know the truth, we went, at the risk of being recognized, as far as the corpses lying on the pavement. A woman lay there, her skirts turned up; from her ripped-up body protruded the entrails, which a marine-fusilier amused himself by dividing with the end of his bayonet. The officers, a few steps off, let him do this. The victors, in order to dishonour these corpses, had placed inscriptions on their breasts, ‘assassin’, ‘thief’, ‘drunkard’, and stuck the necks of bottles into the mouths of some of them.</p>
<p>How to justify this savagery? The official reports only mention very few deaths among the Versaillese — 877 during the whole time of the operations, from the 3rd April up to the 28th May .<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n217">[217]</a></sup> The Versaillese fury had then no excuse for these reprisals. When a handful of exasperated men, to avenge thousands of their brothers, shoot sixtythree of their most inveterate enemies<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n218">[218]</a></sup> out of nearly 300 whom they had in their hands, the hypocritical reaction veils its face and protests in the name of justice. What, then, will this justice say when those shall be judged who methodically, without any anxiety as to the issue of the combat, and, above all, the battle over, shot 20,000 persons, of whom three-fourths had not taken part in the fight? Still some flashes of humanity were shown by the soldiers, and some were seen coming back from the executions their heads bowed down; but the officers never slackened for one second in their ferocity. Even after the Sunday they still slaughtered the prisoners, shouted ‘Bravo!’ at the executions. The courage of the victims they called insolence.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n219">[219]</a></sup> Let them be responsible before Paris, France, the new generation, for these deeds of infamy.</p>
<p>At last the smell of the carnage began to choke even the most frantic. The plague was coming, if pity did not. Myriads of flesh-flies flew up from the putrefied corpses. The streets were full of dead birds. The <em>Avenir Lib�ral </em>singing the praises of MacMahon’s proclamations, applied the words of Flechier; ‘He hides himself, but his glory finds him out.’ The glory of the Turenne of 1871 betrayed him even up to the Seine .<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n220">[220]</a></sup> In certain streets the corpses encumbered the pathway, looking at the passers-by from out of their dead eyes. In the Faubourg St. Antoine they were to be seen everywhere in heaps, half white with chloride of lime. At the Polytechnic School they occupied a space of 100 yards long and three deep. At Passy, which was not one of the great centres of execution, there were 1, 100 near the Trocadero. These, covered over by a thin shroud of earth, also showed their ghastly profiles. ‘Who does not recollect,’ said the <em>Temps</em>, ‘even though he had seen it but one moment, the square, no, the charnel of the Tour St. Jacques? From the midst of this moist soil, recently turned up by the spade, here and there look out heads, arms, feet, and hands. The profiles of corpses, dressed in the uniform of National Guards, were seen impressed against the ground. It was hideous. A decayed, sickening odour arose from this garden, and occasionally at some places it became fetid.’ The rain and heat having precipitated the putrefaction, the swollen bodies reappeared. The glory of MacMahon displayed itself too well. The journals were taking fright. ‘These wretches,’ said one of them, ‘who have done us so much harm during their lives, must not be allowed to do so still after their death.’ And those that had instigated the massacre cried ‘Enough!’</p>
<p>‘Let us not kill any more,’ said the <em>Paris Journal</em> of the 2nd June, ‘even the assassins, even the incendiaries. Let us not kill any more. It is not their pardon we ask for, but a respite.’ ‘Enough executions, enough blood, enough victims,’ said the <em>Nationale </em>of the 1st June. And the <em>Opinion Nationale </em>of the same day: ‘A serious examination of the accused is imperative. One would like to see only the really guilty die.’</p>
<p>The executions abated, and the sweeping off began. Carriages of all kinds, vans, omnibuses, came to pick up the corpses and traversed the town. Since the great plagues of London and Marseilles, such cart-loads of human flesh had not been seen. These exhumations proved that a great number of people had been buried alive. Imperfectly shot, and thrown with the heaps of dead into the common grave, they had eaten earth, and showed the contortions of their violent agony. Certain corpses were taken up in pieces. It was necessary to shut them as soon as possible into closed wagons, and to take them with the utmost speed to the cemeteries, where immense graves of lime swallowed up these putrid masses.</p>
<p>The cemetries of Paris absorbed all they could. The victims, placed side by side, without any other covering than their clothes, filled enormous ditches at the P�re la Chaise, Montmartre, Mont-Parnasse, where the people in pious rememberance will annually come as pilgrims. Others, more unfortunate, were carried out of the town. At Charonne, Bagnolet, Bic�tre, etc. the trenches dug during the first siege were utilized. ‘There nothing is to be feared of the cadaverous emanations,’ said <em>La Libert� ‘</em>an impure blood will water the soil of the labourer, fecundating it. The deceased delegate at war will be able to pass a review of his faithful followers at the hour of midnight; the watchword will be <em>Incendiarism and assassination</em>.’ Women by the side of the lugubrious trench endeavoured to recognize these remains. The police waited that their grief should betray them, in order to arrest those ‘females of insurgents.’</p>
<p>The burying of such a large number of corpses soon became too difficult, and they were burnt in the casemates of the fortifications; but for want of draught the combustion was incomplete, and the bodies were reduced to a pulp. At the Buttes Chaumont the corpses, piled up in enormous heaps, inundated with petroleum, were burnt in the open air.</p>
<p>The wholesale massacres lasted up to the first days of June, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n221">[221]</a></sup> and the summary executions up to the middle of that month. For a long time mysterious dramas were enacted in the Bois de Boulogne .<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n222">[222]</a></sup> Never will the exact number of the victims of the Bloody Week be known. The chief of military justice admitted 17,000 shot, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n223">[223]</a></sup> the municipal council of Paris paid the expenses of burial of 17,000 corpses; but a great number were killed out of Paris or burnt. There is no exaggeration in saying 20,000 at least.</p>
<p>Many battlefields have numbered more dead, but these at least had fallen in the fury of the combat. The century has not witnessed such a slaughtering after the battle; there is nothing to equal it in the history of our civil struggles. St. Bartholomew’s Day, June 1848, the 2nd December, would form but an episode of the massacres of May. Even the great executioners of Rome and modern times pale before the Duke of Magenta. The hecatombs of the Asiatic victors, the fetes of Dahomey alone could give some idea of this butchery of proletarians.</p>
<p>Such was the repression ‘by the laws, with the laws.’ And during these atrocities of incomparably worse than Bulgarian type, the bourgeoisie, raising to heaven its bloody hands, undertook to incite the whole world against this people, who, after two months of domination and the massacre of thousands of their own, had shed the blood of sixty-three prisoners.</p>
<p>All social powers covered the death-rattle of the victims by their applause. The priests, those great consecrators of assassination, celebrated the victory in a solemn service, at which the entire Assembly assisted. The reign of the <em>Gesu</em> was about to commence.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XXXII
The Versaillese fury
We are honest men: justice will be done in accordance with the ordinary laws. (Thiers to the National Assembly, 22nd May 1871.
Honest, honest Iago! (Shakespeare.)
Order reigned in Paris. Everywhere ruins, death, sinister crepitations. The officers walked provokingly about clashing their sabres; the non-commissioned officers imitated their arrogance. The soldiers bivouacked in all the large roads. Some, stupefied by fatigue and camage, slept on the pavement; others prepared their soup by the side of the corpses, singing the songs of their native homes.
The tricolor flag hung from all the windows in order to prevent house-searches. Guns, cartridge-boxes, uniforms, were piled up in the gutters of the popular quarters. Before the doors sat women leaning their heads upon their hands, looking fixedly before them, waiting for a son or a husband who was never to return.
In the rich quarters the joy knew no bounds. The runaways of the two sieges, the demonstrators of the Place Vend�me, many emigrants of Versailles, had again taken possession of the boulevards. Since the Thursday this kid-glove populace followed the prisoners, acclaiming the gendarmes who conducted the convoys ‘[202] applauding at the sight of the blood-covered vans.[203] The civilians strove to outdo the military in levity. Such a one, who had ventured no further than the Caf� du Helder, recounted the taking of the Ch�teau d'Eau, bragged of having shot his dozen prisoners. Elegant and joyous women, as in a pleasure trip, betook themselves to the corpses, and, to enjoy the sight of the valorous dead, with the ends of sunshades raised their last coverings.
‘Inhabitants of Paris,’ said MacMahon on the 28th at mid-day, ‘Paris is delivered! Today the struggle is over. Order, labour, security are about to revive.’
‘Paris delivered’ was parcelled into four commands under the orders of General Vinoy, Ladmirault, Cissey, Douay, and once more placed under the regime of the state of siege raised by the Commune. There was no longer any government at Paris than the army which massacred Paris. The passers-by were constrained to demolish the barricades, and any sign of impatience brought with it an arrest, any imprecation death. It was posted up that any one in the possession of arms would immediately be sent before a court-martial; that any house from which shots were fired would be given over to summary execution. All public places were closed at eleven o'clock. Henceforth officers in uniform alone could circulate freely. Mounted patrols thronged the streets. Entrance into the town became difficult, to leave it impossible. The tradespeople not being allowed to go backwards and forwards, victuals were on the point of failing.
‘The struggle over,’ the army transformed itself into a vast platoon of executioners. On the Sunday more than 5,000 prisoners taken in the neighbourhood of the P�re la Chaise were led to the prison of La Roquette. A chief of Battalion standing at the entrance surveyed the prisoners and said, ‘To the right,’ or ‘To the left.’ Those to the left were to be shot. Their pockets emptied, they were drawn up along a wall and then slaughtered. Opposite the wall two or three priests bending over their breviaries mumbled the prayers for the dying.
From the Sunday to the Monday morning in La Roquette alone more than 1,900 persons were thus murdered .[204] Blood flowed in large pools in the gutters of the prison. The same slaughter took place at the Ecole Militaire and the Parc Monceaux.
It was butchery, nothing more, nothing less. At other places the prisoners were conducted before the prevotal courts, with which Paris swarmed since the Monday. These had not sprung up at random, and, as has been believed, in the midst of the fury of the struggle. It was proved before the courts-martial that the number and seats of these prevotal courts, with their respective jurisdictions, had been appointed at Versailles before the entry of the troops .[205] One of the most celebrated was that of the Ch�telet Theatre, where Colonel Vabre officiated. Thousands of prisoners who were led there were first of all penned in upon the stage and in the auditorium, under the guns of the soldiers placed in the boxes; then, little by little, like sheep driven to the door of the slaughter-house, from wing to wing they were pushed to the saloon, where, round a large table, officers of the army and the honest National Guard were seated ‘[206] their sabres between their legs, cigars in their mouths. The examination lasted a quarter of a minute. ‘Did you take arms? Did you serve the Commune? Show your hands.’ If the resolute attitude of a prisoner betrayed a combatant, if his face was unpleasant, without asking for his name, his profession, without entering any note upon any register, he was classed. ‘You?’ was said to the next one, and so on to the end of the file, without excepting the women, children, and old men. When by a caprice a prisoner was spared, he was said to be ordinary, and reserved for Versailles. No one was liberated.
The classed ones were at once delivered to the executioners, who led them into the nearest garden or court. From the Ch�telet, for instance, they were taken to the Lebau Barracks.[207] There the doors were no sooner closed than the gendarmes fired, without even grouping their victims before a platoon. Some, only wounded, ran along by the walls, the gendarmes chasing and shooting at them till they fell dead. Moreau of the Central Committee perished in one of these gangs. Surprised on the Thursday evening in the Rue de Rivoli, he was conducted into the garden and placed against a terrace. There were so many victims, that the soldiers, tired out, were obliged to rest their guns actually against the sufferers. The wall of the terrace was covered with brains; the executioners waded through pools of blood.
The massacre was thus carried on, methodically organized, at the Caserne Dupleix, the Lyc�e Bonaparte, the Northern and Eastern Railway Stations, the Jardin des Plantes, in many mairies and barracks, at the same time as in the abattoirs. Large open vans came to fetch the corpses, and went to empty them in the square or any open space in the neighbourhood.
The victims died simply, without fanfaronade.[208] Many crossed their arms before the muskets, and themselves commanded the fire. Women and children followed their husbands and their fathers, crying to the soldiers, ‘Shoot us with them!’ And they were shot. Women, till then strangers to the struggle, were seen to come down into the streets, enraged by these butcheries, strike the officers and then throw themselves against a wall waiting for death.[209]
In June, 1848, Cavaignac had promised pardon, and he massacred. M. Thiers had sworn by the law, and he gave the army carte-blanche. The officers returned from Germany might now glut to their hearts’ content their wrath against that Paris which had insulted them by not capitulating; the Bonapartists revenge on the Republicans the old hatreds of the Empire; the boys just fresh from St. Cyr serve their apprenticeship of insolence upon the p�kins. A general (Cissey most probably) gave the order to shoot M. Cernuschi, whose crime consisted in having offered 100,000 francs for the anti-plebiscitary campaign of 1870.[210] Any individual of some popular notoriety was sure to die. Dr. Tony Moilin, who had played no part during the Commune, but had been implicated in several political trials during the Empire, was in a few moments judged and condemned to death; ‘not’, his judges condescended to tell him, ‘that he had committed any act that merited death, but because he was a chief of the Socialist party, one of those men of whom a prudent and wise Government must rid itself when it finds a legitimate occasion.[211] The Radicals of the Chamber, whose hatred of the Commune had been most clearly demonstrated, did not dare to set foot in Paris for fear of being included in the massacres.
The army, having neither police nor precise information, killed at random. Any passer-by calling a man by a revolutionary name caused him to be shot by soldiers eager to get the premium. At Grenelle they shot a pseudo-Billioray ‘[212] notwithstanding his despairing protests; at the Place Vend�me they shot a pseudo-Brunel in the apartments of Madame Fould. The Gaulois published the recital by a military surgeon who knew Vall�s, and was present at his execution ‘[213] an eye-witness declared he had seen Lefran�ais shot on the Thursday in the Rue de la Banque. The real Billioray was tried in the month of August; Brunel, Vall�s, and Lefran�ais succeeded in escaping from France. Members and functionaries of the Commune were thus shot, and often several times over, in the persons of individuals who resembled them more or less.
Varlin, alas! was not to escape. On Sunday, the 28th May, he was recognized in the Rue Lafayette, and led, or rather dragged, to the foot of the Buttes Montmartre before the commanding general. The Versaillese sent him to be shot in the Rue des Rosiers. For an hour, a mortal hour, Varlin was dragged through the streets of Montmartre, his hands tied behind his back, under a shower of blows and insults. His young, thoughtful head, that had never harboured other thoughts than of fraternity, slashed open by the sabres, was soon but one mass of blood, of mangled flesh, the eye protruding from the orbit. On reaching the Rue des Rosiers, he no longer walked; he was carried.
They set him down to shoot him. The wretches dismembered his corpse with blows of the butt-ends of their muskets.
The Mount of Martyrs has no more glorious one than Varlin. May he too be enshrined in the great heart of the working-class! Varlin’s whole life was an example. He had quite alone, by the mere force of his will, educated himself, giving to study the rare hours left him in the evening after the workshop; learning not with the view to push into the bourgeoisie, as many others did, but to instruct and enfranchise the people. He was the heart and soul of the working men’s associations at the end of the Empire. Indefatigable, modest, speaking little, always at the right moment, and then enlightening a confused discussion with a word, he had preserved that revolutionary instinct which is often blunted in educated workmen. One of the first on the 18th March, labouring during the whole Commune, he was at the barricades to the last. His death is all to the honour of the workmen. It is to Varlin and to Delescluze that this history should be dedicated, if there were room in the frontispiece for any other name than that of Paris.
The Versaillese journalists spat on his corpse; said that some hundreds of thousands of francs had been found on him.’[214] Returned to Paris behind the army, they followed it like jackals. Those of the demi-monde, above all, were mad with a sanguinary hysteria. The coalition of the 21st March was re-made. All uttered one howl against the vanquished workmen. Far from moderating the massacre, they encouraged it, published the names, the hiding-places of those who were to be killed, unflagging in inventions calculated to keep up the furious terror of the bourgeoisie. After every shooting they cried encore.
I quote at random, and could quote pages: ‘We must make a Communard hunt’ (Bien Public). ‘Not one of the malefactors in whose hands Paris has been for two months will be considered as a political man. They will be treated like the brigands they are, like the most frightful monsters ever seen in the history of humanity. Many journals speak of re-erecting the scaffold ‘destroyed by them, in order not even to do them the honour of shooting them’ (Moniteur Universal). ‘Come, honest people, an effort to make an end of this international democratic vermin’ (Figaro). ‘These men, who have killed for the sake of killing and stealing, are taken, and we should answer, Mercy! These hideous women, who stabbed the breast of dying officers, are taken. and we should cry, Mercy!’ (Patrie).[215]
To encourage the hangmen, if that were necessary, the press threw them crowns.
‘What an admirable attitude is that of our officers and soldiers!’ said the Figaro. ‘It is only to the French soldier that it is given to recover so quickly and so well.’ ‘What an honour!’ cried the Journal des D�bats. ‘Our army has avenged its disasters by an inestimable victory.’
Thus the army wreaked on Paris revenge for its defeats. Paris was an enemy like Prussia, and all the less to be spared that the army had its prestige to reconquer. To complete the similitude, after the victory there was a triumph. The Romans never adjudged it after the civil struggles. M. Thiers was not ashamed, under the eye of the foreigner, before still smoking Paris, to parade his troops in a grand review. Who then will dare to blame the Federals for having resisted the army of Versailles as they would have the Prussians?
And when did foreigners show such fury ?[216] Death even seemed to whet their rancour. On Sunday, the 28th, near the mairie of the eleventh arrondissment, about fifty prisoners had just been shot. Urged not by an unworthy curiosity, but by the earnest desire to know the truth, we went, at the risk of being recognized, as far as the corpses lying on the pavement. A woman lay there, her skirts turned up; from her ripped-up body protruded the entrails, which a marine-fusilier amused himself by dividing with the end of his bayonet. The officers, a few steps off, let him do this. The victors, in order to dishonour these corpses, had placed inscriptions on their breasts, ‘assassin’, ‘thief’, ‘drunkard’, and stuck the necks of bottles into the mouths of some of them.
How to justify this savagery? The official reports only mention very few deaths among the Versaillese — 877 during the whole time of the operations, from the 3rd April up to the 28th May .[217] The Versaillese fury had then no excuse for these reprisals. When a handful of exasperated men, to avenge thousands of their brothers, shoot sixtythree of their most inveterate enemies[218] out of nearly 300 whom they had in their hands, the hypocritical reaction veils its face and protests in the name of justice. What, then, will this justice say when those shall be judged who methodically, without any anxiety as to the issue of the combat, and, above all, the battle over, shot 20,000 persons, of whom three-fourths had not taken part in the fight? Still some flashes of humanity were shown by the soldiers, and some were seen coming back from the executions their heads bowed down; but the officers never slackened for one second in their ferocity. Even after the Sunday they still slaughtered the prisoners, shouted ‘Bravo!’ at the executions. The courage of the victims they called insolence.[219] Let them be responsible before Paris, France, the new generation, for these deeds of infamy.
At last the smell of the carnage began to choke even the most frantic. The plague was coming, if pity did not. Myriads of flesh-flies flew up from the putrefied corpses. The streets were full of dead birds. The Avenir Lib�ral singing the praises of MacMahon’s proclamations, applied the words of Flechier; ‘He hides himself, but his glory finds him out.’ The glory of the Turenne of 1871 betrayed him even up to the Seine .[220] In certain streets the corpses encumbered the pathway, looking at the passers-by from out of their dead eyes. In the Faubourg St. Antoine they were to be seen everywhere in heaps, half white with chloride of lime. At the Polytechnic School they occupied a space of 100 yards long and three deep. At Passy, which was not one of the great centres of execution, there were 1, 100 near the Trocadero. These, covered over by a thin shroud of earth, also showed their ghastly profiles. ‘Who does not recollect,’ said the Temps, ‘even though he had seen it but one moment, the square, no, the charnel of the Tour St. Jacques? From the midst of this moist soil, recently turned up by the spade, here and there look out heads, arms, feet, and hands. The profiles of corpses, dressed in the uniform of National Guards, were seen impressed against the ground. It was hideous. A decayed, sickening odour arose from this garden, and occasionally at some places it became fetid.’ The rain and heat having precipitated the putrefaction, the swollen bodies reappeared. The glory of MacMahon displayed itself too well. The journals were taking fright. ‘These wretches,’ said one of them, ‘who have done us so much harm during their lives, must not be allowed to do so still after their death.’ And those that had instigated the massacre cried ‘Enough!’
‘Let us not kill any more,’ said the Paris Journal of the 2nd June, ‘even the assassins, even the incendiaries. Let us not kill any more. It is not their pardon we ask for, but a respite.’ ‘Enough executions, enough blood, enough victims,’ said the Nationale of the 1st June. And the Opinion Nationale of the same day: ‘A serious examination of the accused is imperative. One would like to see only the really guilty die.’
The executions abated, and the sweeping off began. Carriages of all kinds, vans, omnibuses, came to pick up the corpses and traversed the town. Since the great plagues of London and Marseilles, such cart-loads of human flesh had not been seen. These exhumations proved that a great number of people had been buried alive. Imperfectly shot, and thrown with the heaps of dead into the common grave, they had eaten earth, and showed the contortions of their violent agony. Certain corpses were taken up in pieces. It was necessary to shut them as soon as possible into closed wagons, and to take them with the utmost speed to the cemeteries, where immense graves of lime swallowed up these putrid masses.
The cemetries of Paris absorbed all they could. The victims, placed side by side, without any other covering than their clothes, filled enormous ditches at the P�re la Chaise, Montmartre, Mont-Parnasse, where the people in pious rememberance will annually come as pilgrims. Others, more unfortunate, were carried out of the town. At Charonne, Bagnolet, Bic�tre, etc. the trenches dug during the first siege were utilized. ‘There nothing is to be feared of the cadaverous emanations,’ said La Libert� ‘an impure blood will water the soil of the labourer, fecundating it. The deceased delegate at war will be able to pass a review of his faithful followers at the hour of midnight; the watchword will be Incendiarism and assassination.’ Women by the side of the lugubrious trench endeavoured to recognize these remains. The police waited that their grief should betray them, in order to arrest those ‘females of insurgents.’
The burying of such a large number of corpses soon became too difficult, and they were burnt in the casemates of the fortifications; but for want of draught the combustion was incomplete, and the bodies were reduced to a pulp. At the Buttes Chaumont the corpses, piled up in enormous heaps, inundated with petroleum, were burnt in the open air.
The wholesale massacres lasted up to the first days of June, [221] and the summary executions up to the middle of that month. For a long time mysterious dramas were enacted in the Bois de Boulogne .[222] Never will the exact number of the victims of the Bloody Week be known. The chief of military justice admitted 17,000 shot, [223] the municipal council of Paris paid the expenses of burial of 17,000 corpses; but a great number were killed out of Paris or burnt. There is no exaggeration in saying 20,000 at least.
Many battlefields have numbered more dead, but these at least had fallen in the fury of the combat. The century has not witnessed such a slaughtering after the battle; there is nothing to equal it in the history of our civil struggles. St. Bartholomew’s Day, June 1848, the 2nd December, would form but an episode of the massacres of May. Even the great executioners of Rome and modern times pale before the Duke of Magenta. The hecatombs of the Asiatic victors, the fetes of Dahomey alone could give some idea of this butchery of proletarians.
Such was the repression ‘by the laws, with the laws.’ And during these atrocities of incomparably worse than Bulgarian type, the bourgeoisie, raising to heaven its bloody hands, undertook to incite the whole world against this people, who, after two months of domination and the massacre of thousands of their own, had shed the blood of sixty-three prisoners.
All social powers covered the death-rattle of the victims by their applause. The priests, those great consecrators of assassination, celebrated the victory in a solemn service, at which the entire Assembly assisted. The reign of the Gesu was about to commence.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter VI<br>
Reorganization of the Public Services</h1>
<p class="quoteb">I thought the Paris insurgents would be unable to steer their own ship.<br>
(Jules Favre, <em>Inquiry into the 18th of March</em>.)</p>
<p>Thus no agreement had been come to, only one of the four delegates having, from sheer weariness, given way to a certain extent. So on the morning of the 20th, when the mayor Bonvalet and two adjuncts sent by the mayors came to take possession of the H�tel-de-Ville, the members of the Committee unanimously exclaimed, ‘We have not treated.’ But Bonvalet, feigning to believe in a regular agreement, continued, ‘The deputies are today going to ask for the municipal franchises. Their negotiations cannot succeed if the administration of Paris is not given up to the mayors. On pain of frustrating the efforts which will save you, you must fulfil the engagements of your delegates.’</p>
<p>One of the Committee: ‘Our delegates received no mandate to enter into such engagements for us. We do not ask to be saved.’</p>
<p>Another: ‘The weakness of the deputies and of the mayors is one of the causes of the revolution. If the Committee abandons its position and disarms, the Assembly will grant nothing.’</p>
<p>Another: ‘I have just come from the Corderie. The Committee of the second arrondissement is holding a sitting, and it adjures the Central Committee to remain at its post till the elections.’</p>
<p>Others were about to speak, when Bonvalet declared that he had come to take possession of the H�tel-de-Ville, not to discuss, and walked off. His superciliousness confirmed the worst suspicions. Those who the evening before had been favourable to making terms said, ‘These men want to betray us.’ Behind the mayors the Committee beheld the implacable reaction. In any case, to ask them for the H�tel-de-Ville was to ask their fives, for the National Guards would have believed them traitors, and punished them on the spot. In one word, compromise had become impossible. The <em>Journal Officiel</em>, for the first time in the hands of the people, and the news posters had spoken.</p>
<p>‘The election of the municipal council will take place on Wednesday next, 22nd March,’ decreed the Central Committee. And in a manifesto it said, ‘The offspring of a Republic whose device bears the great word Fraternity, the Central Committee pardons its traducers, but it would convince the honest people who have believed their calumnies through ignorance. It has not been secret, for its members have signed their names to all its proclamations. It has not been unknown, for it was a free expression of the suffrage of 215 battalions. It has not been the fomenter of disorder, for the National Guard has committed no excess. And yet provocations have not been wanting. The Government calumniated Paris and set on the provinces against her, wished to impose on us a general, attempted to disarm us, and said to Paris, “Thou hast shown thyself heroic, we are afraid of thee, hence we will tear from thee the crown of the capital of France.” What has the Central Committee done in answer to these attacks? It has founded the Federation, preached moderation, generosity. One of the greatest causes of anger against us is the obscurity of our names. Alas! many names were known, well known, and this notoriety has been fatal to us. Notoriety is cheaply gained; often hollow phrases or a little cowardice suffice; recent events have proved this. Now that our object is attained, we say to the people, who esteemed us enough to listen to the advice that has often clashed with their impatience, “Here is the mandate you entrusted to us.” There, where our personal interest commences, our duty ends. Do your will. You have freed yourselves. Obscure a few days ago, obscure we shall return to your ranks, and show our governors that it is possible to descend the steps of your H�tel-de-Ville, head erect, with the certainty of receiving at the bottom the pressure of your loyal and hardy hands.’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n93">[93]</a></sup> By the side of the proclamation of an eloquence so vivid and so novel the deputies and the mayors posted up a few dry and colourless lines, where they promised to demand of the Assembly that same day the election of all the chiefs of the National Guard and the establishment of a municipal council.</p>
<p>At Versailles they found a wildly excited crowd. The terrified functionaries who arrived from Paris spread terror about them, and five or six insurrections were announced from the provinces. The coalition was dismayed. Paris victorious, the Government in flight this was not what had been promised. These conspirators, blown up by the mine which they had themselves sprung, raised the cry of conspiracy, spoke of taking refuge at Bourges. Picard had certainly telegraphed to all the provinces, ‘The, army, to the number of 40,000 men, is concentrated at Versailles;’ but the only army to be seen was straggling bands of soldiers wandering about the streets. All Vinoy had been able to do was to place a few posts along the routes of Ch�tillon and S�vres, and protect the approaches to the Assembly with a few machine-guns.</p>
<p>The President, Gr�vy, who during the whole war had cowered in the provinces, sullenly hostile to the defence, opened the sitting by stigmatizing this criminal insurrection ‘which no pretext could extenuate.’ Then the deputies of the Seine commenced a procession towards the tribune. Instead of a collective manifesto, they laid before the Assembly a series of fragmentary propositions, without connection; without general views, and without a preamble to explain them. First a bill convoking with the least delay the elections of Paris, then another granting to the National Guard the election of its chiefs. Milli�re alone thought of the overdue commercial bills, and proposed to prolong them for six months.</p>
<p>Till then exclamations only and half-muttered insults had been levelled at Paris, but no formal act of accusation. In the evening sitting a deputy applied this requisite. Trochu made a sortie. In this monstrous scene, which a Shakespeare only could depict, the gloomy man who had softly slipped the great town into the hands of William, threw his own treason upon the revolutionaries, accusing them of having almost a dozen times brought the Prussians into Paris. And the Assembly, grateful for his services, his hatred, giving him the crown he merited, covered him with applause. Another came to fan this rage. The evening before the National Guards had arrested two generals in uniform in a train arriving from Orl�ans. One of them was Chanzy, unknown to the crowd, who took him for D’Aurelles. They could not have been released without endangering their lives, but a deputy, Turquet, who accompanied them, was immediately set free. He rushed off to the Chamber, told them a fairy tale, and affected to be much moved in speaking of his companions. ‘I hope,’ said the hypocrite, ‘that they will not be assassinated.’ This story was accompanied by the furious yelling of the Assembly. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n94">[94]</a></sup> </p>
<p><img src="pics/thiers1.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Thiers" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p>From the first sitting one could see what the struggle between Versailles and Paris was to be. The monarchical conspirators, abandoning their dream for a moment, hastened to do the most urgent work first: to save themselves from the Revolution. They surrounded M. Thiers and promised him their absolute support to crush Paris. Thus this Ministry, that a truly National Assembly would have impeached, became, even through its crime, all-powerful. Scarcely recovered from the fright of their stampede, M. Thiers and his Ministers dared to play the swaggerers. And indeed, would not the provinces hasten to their rescue, as in June, 1848? And proletarians without political education, without administration, without money, how could they be able ‘to steer their barque’?</p>
<p>In 1831 the proletarians, masters of Lyons, had failed in their attempt at self-government, and how much greater was the difficulty for those of Paris! All new powers had until then found the administrative machine in working order, in readiness for the victor. On the 20th March the Central Committee found it taken to pieces. At the signal from Versailles the majority of functionaries had abandoned their posts. Taxes, street inspection, lighting, markets, public charity, telegraphs, all the respiratory and digestive apparatus of the town of 1,600,000 souls, everything had to be extemporized. Certain mayors had carried off the seals, the registers, and the cash of their <em>mairies</em>. The military intendance left without a farthing six thousand sick in the hospitals and ambulances.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n95">[95]</a></sup> M. Thiers had tried to disorganize even the management of the cemeteries.</p>
<p>Poor man! who never knew anything of our Paris, of her inexhaustible strength, her marvellous elasticity. The Central Committee received support from all sides. The committees of arrondissements furnished a personnel to the <em>mairies</em>; some of the lower middle class lent their experience, and the most important services were set to rights in no time by men of common sense and energy, which soon proved superior to routine. The employees who had remained at their posts in order to hand over the funds to Versailles were soon discovered and obliged to flee.</p>
<p>The Central Committee overcame a more menacing difficulty. Three hundred thousand persons without work, without resources of any kind, were waiting for the thirty sous upon which they had lived for the last seven months. On the 19th, Varlin and Jourde, delegates to the finance department, took possession of that Ministry. The coffers, according to the statement of accounts handed over to them, contained 4,600,000 francs; but the keys were at Versailles, and, in view of the movement for conciliation then being carried on, the delegates did not dare to force the locks. The next day they went to ask Rothschild to open them a credit at the bank, and he sent word that the funds would be advanced. The same day the Central Committee broached the question more forcibly, and sent three delegates to the bank to request the necessary advances. They were answered that a million was placed at the disposition of Varlin and Jourde, who at six o’clock in the evening were received by the governor, M. Rouland. ‘I expected your visit,’ he said. ‘On the morning following a change of Government, the bank has always to find the money for the newcomers. It is not my business to judge events; the Bank of France has nothing to do with politics. You are a <em>de facto</em> Government, and the bank gives you for today a million. Only be so kind as to mention in your receipt that this sum has been requisitioned on account of the town of Paris. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n96">[96]</a></sup> The delegates took away a million francs in bank notes. All the employees of the Ministry of Finance had disappeared since the morning, but with the help of a few friends the sum was rapidly divided among the paying officers. At ten o’clock the delegates were able to tell the Central Committee that the pay was being distributed in all the arrondissements.</p>
<p>The bank acted prudently: the Central Committee firmly held Paris. The mayors and deputies had not been able to unite more than three or four hundred men, although they had charged Admiral Saisset with the organization of the resistance. The Committee was so sure of its strength that it had the barricades demolished. Everybody came to it, the garrison of Vincennes spontaneously surrendering themselves with the fort. Its victory was too complete, for it was perilous, obliging it to disperse its troops in order to take possession of the abandoned forts on the south. Lullier, entrusted with this mission, had the forts of Ivry, Bic�tre, Montrouge, Vanves, and Issy occupied on the 19th and 20th. The last to which he sent the National Guard, Mont-Val�rien, was the key of Paris, and, at that time, of Versailles.</p>
<p>For thirty-six hours the impregnable fortress had remained empty. On the evening of the 18th, after the order of evacuation, it had to defend it only twenty muskets and some chasseurs of Vincennes, interned there for mutiny. The same evening they burst open the locks of the fortress and returned to Paris.</p>
<p>When the evacuation of Mont-Val�rien became known at Versailles, generals and deputies begged M. Thiers to have it reoccupied. He obstinately refused, declaring this fort had no strategical value. During the whole day of the 19th they still failed. At last Vinoy, in his turn, urged by them, succeeded on the 20th, at one o’clock in the morning, in wresting an order from M. Thiers. A column was immediately despatched, and at mid-day a thousand soldiers occupied the fortress. Not until evening, at eight o’clock, did the battalions of Ternes present themselves; the governor easily got rid of their officers. Lullier, on making his report to the Central Committee, said he had occupied all the forts, and even named the battalion which, according to him, was then in possession of Mont-Val�rien.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter VI
Reorganization of the Public Services
I thought the Paris insurgents would be unable to steer their own ship.
(Jules Favre, Inquiry into the 18th of March.)
Thus no agreement had been come to, only one of the four delegates having, from sheer weariness, given way to a certain extent. So on the morning of the 20th, when the mayor Bonvalet and two adjuncts sent by the mayors came to take possession of the H�tel-de-Ville, the members of the Committee unanimously exclaimed, ‘We have not treated.’ But Bonvalet, feigning to believe in a regular agreement, continued, ‘The deputies are today going to ask for the municipal franchises. Their negotiations cannot succeed if the administration of Paris is not given up to the mayors. On pain of frustrating the efforts which will save you, you must fulfil the engagements of your delegates.’
One of the Committee: ‘Our delegates received no mandate to enter into such engagements for us. We do not ask to be saved.’
Another: ‘The weakness of the deputies and of the mayors is one of the causes of the revolution. If the Committee abandons its position and disarms, the Assembly will grant nothing.’
Another: ‘I have just come from the Corderie. The Committee of the second arrondissement is holding a sitting, and it adjures the Central Committee to remain at its post till the elections.’
Others were about to speak, when Bonvalet declared that he had come to take possession of the H�tel-de-Ville, not to discuss, and walked off. His superciliousness confirmed the worst suspicions. Those who the evening before had been favourable to making terms said, ‘These men want to betray us.’ Behind the mayors the Committee beheld the implacable reaction. In any case, to ask them for the H�tel-de-Ville was to ask their fives, for the National Guards would have believed them traitors, and punished them on the spot. In one word, compromise had become impossible. The Journal Officiel, for the first time in the hands of the people, and the news posters had spoken.
‘The election of the municipal council will take place on Wednesday next, 22nd March,’ decreed the Central Committee. And in a manifesto it said, ‘The offspring of a Republic whose device bears the great word Fraternity, the Central Committee pardons its traducers, but it would convince the honest people who have believed their calumnies through ignorance. It has not been secret, for its members have signed their names to all its proclamations. It has not been unknown, for it was a free expression of the suffrage of 215 battalions. It has not been the fomenter of disorder, for the National Guard has committed no excess. And yet provocations have not been wanting. The Government calumniated Paris and set on the provinces against her, wished to impose on us a general, attempted to disarm us, and said to Paris, “Thou hast shown thyself heroic, we are afraid of thee, hence we will tear from thee the crown of the capital of France.” What has the Central Committee done in answer to these attacks? It has founded the Federation, preached moderation, generosity. One of the greatest causes of anger against us is the obscurity of our names. Alas! many names were known, well known, and this notoriety has been fatal to us. Notoriety is cheaply gained; often hollow phrases or a little cowardice suffice; recent events have proved this. Now that our object is attained, we say to the people, who esteemed us enough to listen to the advice that has often clashed with their impatience, “Here is the mandate you entrusted to us.” There, where our personal interest commences, our duty ends. Do your will. You have freed yourselves. Obscure a few days ago, obscure we shall return to your ranks, and show our governors that it is possible to descend the steps of your H�tel-de-Ville, head erect, with the certainty of receiving at the bottom the pressure of your loyal and hardy hands.’[93] By the side of the proclamation of an eloquence so vivid and so novel the deputies and the mayors posted up a few dry and colourless lines, where they promised to demand of the Assembly that same day the election of all the chiefs of the National Guard and the establishment of a municipal council.
At Versailles they found a wildly excited crowd. The terrified functionaries who arrived from Paris spread terror about them, and five or six insurrections were announced from the provinces. The coalition was dismayed. Paris victorious, the Government in flight this was not what had been promised. These conspirators, blown up by the mine which they had themselves sprung, raised the cry of conspiracy, spoke of taking refuge at Bourges. Picard had certainly telegraphed to all the provinces, ‘The, army, to the number of 40,000 men, is concentrated at Versailles;’ but the only army to be seen was straggling bands of soldiers wandering about the streets. All Vinoy had been able to do was to place a few posts along the routes of Ch�tillon and S�vres, and protect the approaches to the Assembly with a few machine-guns.
The President, Gr�vy, who during the whole war had cowered in the provinces, sullenly hostile to the defence, opened the sitting by stigmatizing this criminal insurrection ‘which no pretext could extenuate.’ Then the deputies of the Seine commenced a procession towards the tribune. Instead of a collective manifesto, they laid before the Assembly a series of fragmentary propositions, without connection; without general views, and without a preamble to explain them. First a bill convoking with the least delay the elections of Paris, then another granting to the National Guard the election of its chiefs. Milli�re alone thought of the overdue commercial bills, and proposed to prolong them for six months.
Till then exclamations only and half-muttered insults had been levelled at Paris, but no formal act of accusation. In the evening sitting a deputy applied this requisite. Trochu made a sortie. In this monstrous scene, which a Shakespeare only could depict, the gloomy man who had softly slipped the great town into the hands of William, threw his own treason upon the revolutionaries, accusing them of having almost a dozen times brought the Prussians into Paris. And the Assembly, grateful for his services, his hatred, giving him the crown he merited, covered him with applause. Another came to fan this rage. The evening before the National Guards had arrested two generals in uniform in a train arriving from Orl�ans. One of them was Chanzy, unknown to the crowd, who took him for D’Aurelles. They could not have been released without endangering their lives, but a deputy, Turquet, who accompanied them, was immediately set free. He rushed off to the Chamber, told them a fairy tale, and affected to be much moved in speaking of his companions. ‘I hope,’ said the hypocrite, ‘that they will not be assassinated.’ This story was accompanied by the furious yelling of the Assembly. [94]
From the first sitting one could see what the struggle between Versailles and Paris was to be. The monarchical conspirators, abandoning their dream for a moment, hastened to do the most urgent work first: to save themselves from the Revolution. They surrounded M. Thiers and promised him their absolute support to crush Paris. Thus this Ministry, that a truly National Assembly would have impeached, became, even through its crime, all-powerful. Scarcely recovered from the fright of their stampede, M. Thiers and his Ministers dared to play the swaggerers. And indeed, would not the provinces hasten to their rescue, as in June, 1848? And proletarians without political education, without administration, without money, how could they be able ‘to steer their barque’?
In 1831 the proletarians, masters of Lyons, had failed in their attempt at self-government, and how much greater was the difficulty for those of Paris! All new powers had until then found the administrative machine in working order, in readiness for the victor. On the 20th March the Central Committee found it taken to pieces. At the signal from Versailles the majority of functionaries had abandoned their posts. Taxes, street inspection, lighting, markets, public charity, telegraphs, all the respiratory and digestive apparatus of the town of 1,600,000 souls, everything had to be extemporized. Certain mayors had carried off the seals, the registers, and the cash of their mairies. The military intendance left without a farthing six thousand sick in the hospitals and ambulances.[95] M. Thiers had tried to disorganize even the management of the cemeteries.
Poor man! who never knew anything of our Paris, of her inexhaustible strength, her marvellous elasticity. The Central Committee received support from all sides. The committees of arrondissements furnished a personnel to the mairies; some of the lower middle class lent their experience, and the most important services were set to rights in no time by men of common sense and energy, which soon proved superior to routine. The employees who had remained at their posts in order to hand over the funds to Versailles were soon discovered and obliged to flee.
The Central Committee overcame a more menacing difficulty. Three hundred thousand persons without work, without resources of any kind, were waiting for the thirty sous upon which they had lived for the last seven months. On the 19th, Varlin and Jourde, delegates to the finance department, took possession of that Ministry. The coffers, according to the statement of accounts handed over to them, contained 4,600,000 francs; but the keys were at Versailles, and, in view of the movement for conciliation then being carried on, the delegates did not dare to force the locks. The next day they went to ask Rothschild to open them a credit at the bank, and he sent word that the funds would be advanced. The same day the Central Committee broached the question more forcibly, and sent three delegates to the bank to request the necessary advances. They were answered that a million was placed at the disposition of Varlin and Jourde, who at six o’clock in the evening were received by the governor, M. Rouland. ‘I expected your visit,’ he said. ‘On the morning following a change of Government, the bank has always to find the money for the newcomers. It is not my business to judge events; the Bank of France has nothing to do with politics. You are a de facto Government, and the bank gives you for today a million. Only be so kind as to mention in your receipt that this sum has been requisitioned on account of the town of Paris. [96] The delegates took away a million francs in bank notes. All the employees of the Ministry of Finance had disappeared since the morning, but with the help of a few friends the sum was rapidly divided among the paying officers. At ten o’clock the delegates were able to tell the Central Committee that the pay was being distributed in all the arrondissements.
The bank acted prudently: the Central Committee firmly held Paris. The mayors and deputies had not been able to unite more than three or four hundred men, although they had charged Admiral Saisset with the organization of the resistance. The Committee was so sure of its strength that it had the barricades demolished. Everybody came to it, the garrison of Vincennes spontaneously surrendering themselves with the fort. Its victory was too complete, for it was perilous, obliging it to disperse its troops in order to take possession of the abandoned forts on the south. Lullier, entrusted with this mission, had the forts of Ivry, Bic�tre, Montrouge, Vanves, and Issy occupied on the 19th and 20th. The last to which he sent the National Guard, Mont-Val�rien, was the key of Paris, and, at that time, of Versailles.
For thirty-six hours the impregnable fortress had remained empty. On the evening of the 18th, after the order of evacuation, it had to defend it only twenty muskets and some chasseurs of Vincennes, interned there for mutiny. The same evening they burst open the locks of the fortress and returned to Paris.
When the evacuation of Mont-Val�rien became known at Versailles, generals and deputies begged M. Thiers to have it reoccupied. He obstinately refused, declaring this fort had no strategical value. During the whole day of the 19th they still failed. At last Vinoy, in his turn, urged by them, succeeded on the 20th, at one o’clock in the morning, in wresting an order from M. Thiers. A column was immediately despatched, and at mid-day a thousand soldiers occupied the fortress. Not until evening, at eight o’clock, did the battalions of Ternes present themselves; the governor easily got rid of their officers. Lullier, on making his report to the Central Committee, said he had occupied all the forts, and even named the battalion which, according to him, was then in possession of Mont-Val�rien.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XXVIII<br>
The street battles continue</h1>
<p><img src="pics/guns.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Guns" border="1" align="left"></p>
<p>The defenders of the barricades slept on their paving-stones. The hostile outposts were on the watch. At the Batignolles the Versaillese reconnaissance carried off a sentinel. The Federal cried out with all his might<em>, ‘Vive la Commune!’ </em>and his comrades, thus warned, were able to put themselves on their guard. He was shot there and then. In like manner fell D'Assas and Barra.</p>
<p>At two o'clock La C�cilia, accompanied by the members of the Council, Lefran�ais, Vermorel and Johannard, and the journalists Alphonse Humbert and G. Maroteau, brought up a reinforcement of 100 men to the Batignolles. To Malon’s reproaches for having left the quarter without succour the whole day, the General answered, ‘I am not obeyed.’</p>
<p><em>Three o'clock</em> — To the barricades! The Commune is not dead! The fresh morning air bathes the fatigued faces and revives hope. The enemy’s cannonade along the whole line salutes the break of day. The artillery men of the Commune, from Mont-Parnasse to the Buttes Montmartre, which seem awaking, answered as well as they could.</p>
<p>Ladmirault, almost motionless the day before, now launched his men along the fortifications, taking all the gates from Neuilly to St. Ouen in the rear. On his right, Clinchant attacked by the same movement all the barricades of the Batignolles. The Rue Cardinet yielded first, then the Rues Noblet, Truffaut, La Condamine, and the lower Avenue of Clichy. Suddenly the gate of St. Ouen opened, and the Versaillese poured into Paris; it was the Montaudon division, which since evening had been operating in the exterior. The Prussians had surrendered the neutral zone, and so, with the help of Bismarck, Clinchant and Ladmirault were able to take the Buttes by the two flanks.</p>
<p>Nearly surrounded in the <em>mairie </em>of the seventeenth arrondissement, Malon ordered the retreat on Montmartre, whither a detachment <em>of </em>twenty-five women, come to offer their services under the conduct <em>of </em>the citoyennes Dimitriev and Louise Michel, were also sent.</p>
<p>Clinchant, pursuing his route, was arrested by the barricade <em>of </em>the Place Clichy. To reduce these badly disposed paving-stones, behind which hardly fifty men were fighting, required the combined effort <em>of </em>the Versaillese <em>of </em>the Rue de St. P�tersbourg and the tirailleurs <em>of </em>the College Chaptal. The Federals, having no more shells, charged with stones and bitumen; their powder exhausted, they fell back upon the Rue des Carri�res, and Ladmirault, master <em>of </em>the St. Ouen Avenue, turned on their barricade by the Montmartre Cemetery. About twenty guards refused to surrender, and were at once shot by the Versaillese.</p>
<p>In the rear, the Des Epinettes district still held out for a time; at last all resistance ceased, and about nine o'clock the entire Batignolles belonged to the army.</p>
<p>The H�tel-de-Ville knew nothing yet <em>of </em>the progress <em>of </em>the troops when Vermorel rushed thither in search <em>of </em>munitions for Montmartre. As he was setting out at the head <em>of </em>the wagons he met Ferr�, and, with the smile familiar to him, said, ‘Well, Ferr�, the members <em>of </em>the minority fight.’ ‘The members <em>of </em>the majority will do their duty,’ answered Ferr�. Generous emulation <em>of </em>these men, who were both devoted to the people, and who were to die so nobly.</p>
<p>Vermorel could not take his wagons as far as Montmartre, the Versaillese already surrounding the heights. Masters <em>of </em>the Batignolles, they had but to stretch out their hand to seize upon Montmartre. The Buttes seemed dead; during the night panic had hurried on its underhand work; the battalions, one after the other, had grown smaller, vanished. Individuals seen later on in the ranks <em>of </em>the army had stirred defections, spread false news, and every moment arrested civil and military chiefs, under the pretext that they were betraying. Only about a hundred men lined the north side <em>of </em>the hill; a few barricades had been commenced in the night, but without spirit; the women alone had shown any ardour.</p>
<p>Cluseret had, according to his usual habit, gone off in a huff. Despite his despatches and the promises <em>of </em>the H�tel-de-Ville, La C�cilia had received neither reinforcements nor munitions. At nine o'clock, no longer hearing the cannon of the Buttes, he hurried up, and found the gunners gone. The runaways from the Batignolles arriving at ten o'clock only brought in panic. The Versaillese might have presented themselves; there were not 200 combatants there to receive them.</p>
<p>MacMahon, however, only dared attempt the assault with his best troops, so redoubtable was this position, so great the renown of Montmartre. Two entire army corps assailed it by the Rues Lepic, Mercadet, and the Chauss�e Clignancourt. From time to time some shots were fired from a few houses; forthwith frightened columns came to a standstill and began regular sieges. These 20,000 men, who completely surrounded Montmartre, helped by the artillery established on the platform of the enceinte, took three hours to climb these positions, defended without method by a few dozen tirailleurs.</p>
<p>At eleven o'clock the cemetery was taken, and shortly afterwards the troops reached the Ch�teau-Rouge. In the environs there were some shootings, but the few obstinate men who still fought were soon killed, or withdrew discouraged at their isolation. The Versailles, scrambling up to the Buttes by all the slopes that lead to them, at midday installed themselves at the Moulin de la Galette, descended by the Place St. Pierre to the <em>mairie, </em>and occupied the whole of the eighteenth arrondissement without any resistance.</p>
<p>Thus without a battle, without an assault, without even a protestation <em>of </em>despair, was this impregnable fortress abandoned, from which a few hundred resolute men might have kept the whole Versaillese army in check, and constrained the Assembly to come to terms.</p>
<p>Hardly arrived at Montmartre, the Versaillese staff offered a holocaust to the fighters <em>of </em>Lecomte and Cl�ment-Thomas. Forty-two men, three women, and four children were conducted to No. 6 in the Rue des Rosiers and forced to kneel bare-headed before the wall, at the foot <em>of </em>which the generals had been executed on the 18th March; then they were killed. A woman, who held her child in her arms, refused to kneel down, and cried to her companions, ‘Show these wretches that you know how to die ‘upright.’</p>
<p>On the following day these massacres continued. Each batch <em>of </em>prisoners halted some time before this wall, marked with bullets, and were then despatched on the slope of the Buttes that overlooks the St. Denis route.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n185">[185]</a></sup></p>
<p>The Batignolles and Montmartre witnessed the first wholesale massacres. Every individual wearing a uniform or regulation boots was shot., as a matter of course, without questions put, without explanations given. Thus the Versaillese had been assassinating since the morning in the Place des Batignolles, Place de L'H�tel-de-Ville, and at the gate of Clichy. The Parc Monceaux was their principal slaughter-house in the seventeenth arrondissement. At Montmartre the centres of massacre were the Buttes, the Elys�e, of which every step was strewn with corpses, and the exterior boulevards.</p>
<p>A few steps from Montmartre the catastrophe was not known. At the Place Blanche the women’s barricade held out for several hours against Clinchant’s soldiers; they then retreated towards the Pigalle barricade, which fell at about two o'clock. Its leader was led before a Versaillese chief of battalion. ‘Who are you?’ asked the officer. ‘L�veque, mason, member of the Central Committee.’ The Versaillese discharged his revolver in his face; the soldiers finished him.</p>
<p>On the other bank of the Seine our resistance was more successful. The Versaillese had been able since morning to occupy the Babylone Barracks and L'Abbaye-au-Bois, but Varlin stopped them at the cross-roads of the Croix-Rouge. This cross-road will remain celebrated in the defence of Paris. All the streets that open into it had been powerfully barricaded, and this stronghold was only abandoned when fire and shells had reduced it to a heap of ruins. On the banks of the river, the Rues de l'Universit�, St. Dominique, St. Germain, and de Grenelle, the 67th, 135th, 138th, and 147th battalions, supported by the <em>enfants perdus </em>and <em>les tirailleurs, </em>resisted obstinately. In the Rue de Rennes and on the adjoining boulevards the Versaillese exhausted their strength. In the Rue Vavin, where Lisbonne conducted the defence, the resistance was prodigious; for two days this advanced sentinel kept back the invasion from the Luxembourg.</p>
<p>We were less secure on our extreme left. The Versaillese had early in the day surrounded the Mont-Parnasse Cemetery, which we held with a handful of men. Near the restaurant Richefeu, the Federals, allowing the enemy to approach, unmasked their machine-guns; but in vain, for the Versaillese were numerous enough to surround the few defenders of the cemetery on all sides, and soon stormed it. From there, passing by the ramparts of the fourteenth arrondissement, they arrived at the Place St. Pierre. The fortifications of the Avenue d'Italie and of the Route de Ch�tillon, long since carefully prepared, but still against the ramparts, were taken in the rear by the Chaus�e du Maine, and the whole defence of the cross-roads of the Quatre-Chemins was concentrated round the church. From the top of the steeple about a dozen Federals of Montrouge supported the barricade that barred two-thirds of the Chauss�e du Maine, held by thirty men for several hours. At last, their cartridges exhausted, the tricolor flag was hoisted at the <em>mairie, </em>at the same hour that it floated above the Buttes Montmartre. Henceforth the route to the Place d'Enfer was open, and the Versaillese arrived there after having undergone the fire from the Observatoire, where some Federals had made a stand.</p>
<p>Behind these lines thus forced other defences were thrown up, thanks to the care of Wroblewski. The day before, the general, receiving the order to evacuate the forts, had answered, ‘Is it treachery or a misunderstanding? I will not evacuate.’ Montmartre taken, the general went to Delescluze, urging him to transfer the defence to the left bank. The Seine, the forts, the Panth�on, the Bievre, formed, in his opinion, a safe citadel, with the open fields for a retreat; a very just conception this with regular troops, but one cannot at will displace the heart of an insurrection, and the Federals were more and more bent on remaining in their own quarters.</p>
<p>Wroblewski returned to his headquarters, assembled the commanders of the forts, prescribed all the dispositions to be taken for their defence, and came back to resume the command of the left bank, given him by earlier decrees. But on sending orders to the Panth�on, he was answered that Lisbonne commanded there. Wroblewski, undeterred, placed the section left to him in a state of defence. He installed a battery of eight pieces and two batteries of four on the Butte-aux-Cailles, a dominant position between the Panth�on and the forts; he fortified the Boulevards d'Italie, de l'H�pital, and de la Gare. His headquarters were established at the Mairie des Gobelins, and his reserve at the Place d'Italie, Place Jeanne d'Arc, and at Bercy.</p>
<p>At the other extremities of Paris the fourteenth and twentieth arrondissements also prepared their defence. The brave Passedouet had replaced Du Bisson, who still dared to present himself as <em>chefde-legion </em>of La Villette. They barricaded the Grande Rue de la Chapelle behind the Strasbourg Railway, the Rues d'Aubervilliers, de Flandre, and the canal, so as to form five lines of defence, protected on the flank by the boulevards and the fortifications. Cannon were placed in the Rue Riquet at the gasworks, while rampart pieces were carried by the men on to the Buttes Chaumont and others to the Rue de Puebla. A battery of six was mounted on the height of the P�re la Chaise, covering Paris with its rumbling reports.</p>
<p>A mute and desolate Paris. As on the day before, the shops remained closed, and the streets, bleached by the sun, looked empty and menacing. Despatch riders riding at full speed, pieces of artillery shifted from their places, combatants on the march, alone broke this solitude. Cries of ‘Open the shutters!’ ‘Draw up the blinds!’ alone interrupted this silence. Two journals, <em>Le Tribun du Peuple </em>and <em>Le Salut Public, </em>were published, notwithstanding the Versaillese shells that were falling into the printing-office of the Rue Aboukir.</p>
<p>A few men at the H�tel-de-Ville did their best to attend to details. One decree authorized the chiefs of barricades to requisition the necessary implements and victuals; another condemned every house from which Federals were shot at to be burned. In the afternoon the Committee of Public Safety issued an appeal to the soldiers:</p>
<p class="quoteb">The people of Paris will never believe that you could raise your arms against them. When they face you your hands will recoil from an act that would be a veritable fratricide. Like us, you too are proletarians. That which you did not the 18th March you will do again. Come to us, brothers, come to us; ours are open to receive you.</p>
<p>The Central Committee at the same time posted up a similar appeal — a puerile but generous illusion — and on this point the people of Paris entirely agreed with their representatives. In spite of the frenzy of the Assembly, the fusillade of the wounded, the treatment inflicted upon the prisoners for six weeks, the working men did not admit that children of the people could rend the entrails of that Paris who combated for them.</p>
<p>At three o'clock M. Bonvalet and other members of the <em>Ligue des Droits de Paris </em>presented themselves at the H�tel-de-Ville, where some members of the Council and of the Committee of Public Safety received them. They bewailed this struggle, proposed to interfere, as they had so successfully done during the siege, and to carry to M. Thiers the expression of their sorrow; further, they placed themselves at the disposition of the H�tel-de-Ville. ‘Well, then,’ they were answered, ‘shoulder a gun and go to the barricades!’ Before this direct appeal the League fell back upon the Central Committee, which had the weakness to listen to them.</p>
<p>There was no question of negotiating in the midst of the battle. The Versaillese, following up their success at Montmartre, were at this moment pushing towards the Boulevard Ornano and the Northern Railway station. At two o'clock the barricades of the Chauss�e Clignancourt were abandoned, and in the Rue Myrrha, by the side of Vermorel, Dombrowski fell mortally wounded. In the morning Delescluze had told him to try his best in the neighbourhood of Montmartre; and, without hope, without soldiers, suspected since the entry of the Versaillese, all Dombrowski could do was to die. He expired two hours afterwards at the Lariboisi�re Hospital. His body was taken to the H�tel-de-Ville, the men of the barricades presenting arms as he was carried by. His glorious death had disarmed suspicion.</p>
<p>Clinchant, thenceforth free on his left, proceeded to the ninth arrondissement. A column marched down the Rues Fontaine, St. Georges, and Notre Dame de Lorette, and made a halt at the crossroads; while another cannonaded the Rollin College before penetrating into the Rue Trudaine, where it was held in check until the evening.</p>
<p>More in the centre, at the Boulevard Haussmann, Douai pressed close upon the barricade of the Printemps shop, and with gunshots dislodged the Federals who occupied the Trinit� Church. Five pieces established under the porch of the church were then directed at the very important barricade that barred the Chauss�e d'Antin at the entrance of the boulevard. A detachment penetrated into the Rues Ch�teaudun and Lafayette, but at the cross-roads of the Faubourg Montmartre a barricade, a yard high at the utmost, defended by twenty-five men, held them up until night.</p>
<p>Douai’s right was still powerless against the Rue Royale. There for two days Brunel sustained a struggle only equalled by that of the Butte-aux-Cailles, of the Bastille, and the Ch�teau d'Eau. His main barricade, transversely crossing the street, was overlooked by the neighbouring houses, from which the Versaillese decimated the Federals; and Brunel, impressed with the importance of the post confided to him, ordered these murderous houses to be burned down. A Federal obeying him was struck by a ball in the eye, and came back dying to Brunel’s side, saying, ‘I am paying with my life for the order you have given me. <em>Vive la Commune!’ </em>All the houses between 13 and the Faubourg St. Honor� were caught in the flames, and the Versaillese, appalled, ran away, some passing over to the Federals. One of them put on the Parisian uniform and became Brunel’s orderly.</p>
<p>On the right the Boulevard Malesherbes, on the left the terrace of the Tuileries, which Bergeret occupied since the day before, seconded Brunel’s efforts. The Boulevard Malesherbes, furrowed by shells, was like a field ploughed up by gigantic shares. The fire of eighty pieces of artillery at the Quai d'Orsay, Passy, the Champ-de-Mars, the Barri�re de l'Etoile converged on the terrace of the Tuileries and the barricade St. Florentin. About a dozen Federal pieces bore up against this shower. The Place de la Concorde, taken between these crossfires, was strewn with fragments of fountains and lamp-posts. The statue of Lille was beheaded, that of Strasbourg pitted by the grapeshot.</p>
<p>On the left bank the Versaillese made their way from house to house. The inhabitants of the quarter lent their assistance, and from behind their closed blinds fired on the Federals, who, indignant, forced and set fire to the treacherous houses. The Versaillese shells had already begun the conflagration, and the rest of the quarter was soon in flames. The troops continued to gain ground, occupied the Ministry of War, the telegraph office, and reached the Bellechasse Barracks and the Rue de l'Universit�. The barricades of the quay and the Rue du Bac were battered down by the shells; the Federal battalions, which for two days had held out at the L�gion d'Honneur,. had no longer any retreat but the quays. At five o'clock they evacuated this unclean place after having set it on fire.</p>
<p>At six o'clock the barricade of the Chauss�e d'Antin was lost to us; the enemy advancing by the side streets had occupied the Nouvel Op�ra, entirely dismantled, and from the top of the roofs the marines commanded the barricade. Instead of imitating them, of also occupy ing the houses, the Federals, there as everywhere else, obstinately kept behind the barricade.</p>
<p>At eight o'clock the barricade of the Rue Neuve des Capucines, at the entrance of the Boulevard, gave way under the fire of the pieces of 4 cm. established in the Rue Caumartin. The Versaillese approached the Place Vend�me.</p>
<p>At all points the army had made decided progress. The Versaillese line, starting from the Northern Railway station, following the Rues Rochechouart, Cadet, Drouot, whose <em>mairie</em> was taken, the Boulevard des Italiens, stretched to the Place Vend�me and the Place de la Concorde, passed along the Rue du Bac, the Abbaye-au-Bois, and the Boulevard d'Enfer, ending at Bastion 8 1. The Place de la Concorde and the Rue Royale, surrounded on their flanks, stood out like a promontory in the midst of a tempest. Ladmirault faced La Villette; on his right Clinchant occupied the ninth arrondissement; Douai presented himself at the Place Vend�me; Vinoy supported Cissy operating on the left bank. At this hour hardly one-half of Paris was still held by the Federals.</p>
<p>The rest was given over to massacre. They were still fighting at one end of a street when the conquered part was already being sacked. Woe to him who possessed arms or a uniform! Woe to him who betrayed dismay! Woe to him who was denounced by a political or personal enemy! He was dragged away. Each corps had its regular executioner, the provost; but to speed the business there were supplemen tary provosts in the streets. The victims were led there — shot. The blind fury of the soldiers encouraged by the men of order served their hatred and liquidated their debts. Theft followed massacre. The shops of the tradesmen who had supplied the Commune, or whom their rival shopkeepers accused, were given over to pillage; the soldiers smashed their furniture and carried off the objects of value. jewels, wine, liqueurs, provisions, linen, perfumery, disappeared into their knapsacks.</p>
<p>When M. Thiers was apprised of the fall of Montmartre, he believed the battle over, and telegraphed to the prefects. For six weeks he had not ceased to announce that, the ramparts taken, the insurgents would flee; but Paris, contrary to the habits of the men of Sedan and Metz and of the National Defence, contested street by street, house by house, and rather than surrender, burned them.</p>
<p>A blinding glare arose at nightfall. The Tuileries were burning, so also the L�gion d'Honneur, the Conseil d'Etat, and the Cour des Comptes. Formidable detonations were heard from the palace of the kings, whose walls were failing, its vast cupolas giving way. Flames, now slow, now rapid as darts, flashed from a hundred windows; the red tide of the Seine reflected the monuments, thus redoubling the conflagration. Fanned by an eastern wind, the blazing flames rose up against Versailles, and cried to the conqueror of Paris that he will no longer find his place there, and that these monarchical monuments will not again shelter a monarchy. The Rue du Bac, the Rue du Lille, the Croix-Rouge, dashed luminous columns into the air; the Rue Royale to St. Sulpice seemed a wall of fire divided by the Seine. Eddies of smoke clouded all the west of Paris, and the spiral flames shooting forth from these furnaces emitted showers of sparks that fell upon the neighbouring quarters.</p>
<p><em>Eleven o'clock — </em>We go to the H�tel-de-Ville. Sentinels on far advanced posts made it secure against any surprise; at long intervals a gaslight flickered in the obscurity; at several barricades there were torches, and even bivouac fires. That of the St. Jacques Square, opposite the Boulevard Sebastopol, made of large trees, whose branches swung to and fro in the wind, muttered and fluttered in the redoubtable gloom.</p>
<p>The fa�ade of the H�tel-de-Ville was reddened by distant flames; the statues, which the reflection seemed to move, stirred in their niches. The interior courts were filled with crowds and tumult. Artillery ammunition wagons, carts, omnibuses crammed with munitions, rolled off with a great noise under the vaults. The fetes of Baron Haussmann awoke no such sonorous echoes. Life and death, agony and laughter, jostled each other on these staircases, on every storey. illumined by the same dazzling light of the gas.</p>
<p>The lower lobbies were encumbered by National Guards rolled up in their blankets. The wounded lay groaning on their reddened mattresses; blood was trickling from the litters placed along the walls. A commander was brought in who no longer presented a human aspect; a ball had passed through his cheek, carried away the lips, broken the teeth. Incapable of articulating a sound, this brave fellow still waved a red flag, and summoned those who were resting to replace him in the combat.</p>
<p>In the notorious chamber of Valentine Haussmann the corpse of Dombrowski was laid out upon a bed of blue satin. A single taper threw its lurid light on the heroic soldier. His face, white as snow, was calm, the nose fine, the mouth delicate, the small fair beard standing out pointed. Two aides-de-camp seated in the darkened corners watched silently, another hurriedly sketched the last traits of his general.</p>
<p>The double marble staircase was filled with people coming and going, whom the sentinels could hardly keep away from the delegate’s office. Delescluze signed orders, mute and wan as a spectre. The anguish of those later days had absorbed his last vital powers; his voice was only a death-rattle; the eye and the heart alone lived still in this moribund athlete.</p>
<p>Two or three officers calmly prepared the orders, stamped and sent the despatches; many officers and guards surrounded the table. No speeches, a little conversation, among the various groups. If hope had waned, resolution had not grown less.</p>
<p>Who are these officers who have laid aside their uniforms, these members of the Council, these functionaries who have shaved their beards? What are they doing here amongst these brave men? Ranvier, meeting two of his colleagues thus disguised, who during the siege had been among the most beplumed, harangued them, threatening to shoot them if they did not at once return to their arrondissements.</p>
<p>A great example would not have been useless. From hour to hour all discipline foundered. At that same moment the Central Committee, which believed itself invested with power by the abdication of the Council, launched a manifesto, in which it made conditions: ‘Dissolution of the Assembly and of the Commune; the army to leave Paris; the Government to be provisionally confided to the delegates of the large towns, who will have a Constituent Assembly elected; mutual amnesty.’ The ultimatum of a conqueror. This dream was posted up on a few walls, and threw new disorder into the resistance.</p>
<p>From time to time some greater clamour arose from the square. A spy was shot against the barricade of the Victoria Avenue. Some were audacious enough to penetrate into the most intimate councils.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n186">[186]</a></sup> That evening, at the H�tel-de-Ville, Bergeret had received the verbal authorization to fire the Tuileries, when an individual pretending to be sent by him asked for this order in writing. He was still speaking when Bergeret returned. ‘Who sent you?’ said he to the personage. ‘Bergeret.’ ‘When did you see him?’ ‘Just here, a moment ago.’</p>
<p>During this evening, Raoul Rigault, taking orders from himself only, and without consulting any of his colleagues, repaired to the prison of Sainte P�Iagie, and signified to Chaudey that he was to die. Chaudey protested, said he was a Republican, and swore that he had not given the order to fire on the 22nd January. However, he had been at that time the only authority in the H�tel-de-Ville. His protestations were of no avail against Rigault’s resolution. Led into the exerciseground of Sainte P�Iagie, Chaudey was shot, as were also three gendarmes taken prisoner on the 18th March. During the first seige he had said to some partisans of the Commune, ‘The strongest will shoot the others.’ He died perhaps for those words.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XXVIII
The street battles continue
The defenders of the barricades slept on their paving-stones. The hostile outposts were on the watch. At the Batignolles the Versaillese reconnaissance carried off a sentinel. The Federal cried out with all his might, ‘Vive la Commune!’ and his comrades, thus warned, were able to put themselves on their guard. He was shot there and then. In like manner fell D'Assas and Barra.
At two o'clock La C�cilia, accompanied by the members of the Council, Lefran�ais, Vermorel and Johannard, and the journalists Alphonse Humbert and G. Maroteau, brought up a reinforcement of 100 men to the Batignolles. To Malon’s reproaches for having left the quarter without succour the whole day, the General answered, ‘I am not obeyed.’
Three o'clock — To the barricades! The Commune is not dead! The fresh morning air bathes the fatigued faces and revives hope. The enemy’s cannonade along the whole line salutes the break of day. The artillery men of the Commune, from Mont-Parnasse to the Buttes Montmartre, which seem awaking, answered as well as they could.
Ladmirault, almost motionless the day before, now launched his men along the fortifications, taking all the gates from Neuilly to St. Ouen in the rear. On his right, Clinchant attacked by the same movement all the barricades of the Batignolles. The Rue Cardinet yielded first, then the Rues Noblet, Truffaut, La Condamine, and the lower Avenue of Clichy. Suddenly the gate of St. Ouen opened, and the Versaillese poured into Paris; it was the Montaudon division, which since evening had been operating in the exterior. The Prussians had surrendered the neutral zone, and so, with the help of Bismarck, Clinchant and Ladmirault were able to take the Buttes by the two flanks.
Nearly surrounded in the mairie of the seventeenth arrondissement, Malon ordered the retreat on Montmartre, whither a detachment of twenty-five women, come to offer their services under the conduct of the citoyennes Dimitriev and Louise Michel, were also sent.
Clinchant, pursuing his route, was arrested by the barricade of the Place Clichy. To reduce these badly disposed paving-stones, behind which hardly fifty men were fighting, required the combined effort of the Versaillese of the Rue de St. P�tersbourg and the tirailleurs of the College Chaptal. The Federals, having no more shells, charged with stones and bitumen; their powder exhausted, they fell back upon the Rue des Carri�res, and Ladmirault, master of the St. Ouen Avenue, turned on their barricade by the Montmartre Cemetery. About twenty guards refused to surrender, and were at once shot by the Versaillese.
In the rear, the Des Epinettes district still held out for a time; at last all resistance ceased, and about nine o'clock the entire Batignolles belonged to the army.
The H�tel-de-Ville knew nothing yet of the progress of the troops when Vermorel rushed thither in search of munitions for Montmartre. As he was setting out at the head of the wagons he met Ferr�, and, with the smile familiar to him, said, ‘Well, Ferr�, the members of the minority fight.’ ‘The members of the majority will do their duty,’ answered Ferr�. Generous emulation of these men, who were both devoted to the people, and who were to die so nobly.
Vermorel could not take his wagons as far as Montmartre, the Versaillese already surrounding the heights. Masters of the Batignolles, they had but to stretch out their hand to seize upon Montmartre. The Buttes seemed dead; during the night panic had hurried on its underhand work; the battalions, one after the other, had grown smaller, vanished. Individuals seen later on in the ranks of the army had stirred defections, spread false news, and every moment arrested civil and military chiefs, under the pretext that they were betraying. Only about a hundred men lined the north side of the hill; a few barricades had been commenced in the night, but without spirit; the women alone had shown any ardour.
Cluseret had, according to his usual habit, gone off in a huff. Despite his despatches and the promises of the H�tel-de-Ville, La C�cilia had received neither reinforcements nor munitions. At nine o'clock, no longer hearing the cannon of the Buttes, he hurried up, and found the gunners gone. The runaways from the Batignolles arriving at ten o'clock only brought in panic. The Versaillese might have presented themselves; there were not 200 combatants there to receive them.
MacMahon, however, only dared attempt the assault with his best troops, so redoubtable was this position, so great the renown of Montmartre. Two entire army corps assailed it by the Rues Lepic, Mercadet, and the Chauss�e Clignancourt. From time to time some shots were fired from a few houses; forthwith frightened columns came to a standstill and began regular sieges. These 20,000 men, who completely surrounded Montmartre, helped by the artillery established on the platform of the enceinte, took three hours to climb these positions, defended without method by a few dozen tirailleurs.
At eleven o'clock the cemetery was taken, and shortly afterwards the troops reached the Ch�teau-Rouge. In the environs there were some shootings, but the few obstinate men who still fought were soon killed, or withdrew discouraged at their isolation. The Versailles, scrambling up to the Buttes by all the slopes that lead to them, at midday installed themselves at the Moulin de la Galette, descended by the Place St. Pierre to the mairie, and occupied the whole of the eighteenth arrondissement without any resistance.
Thus without a battle, without an assault, without even a protestation of despair, was this impregnable fortress abandoned, from which a few hundred resolute men might have kept the whole Versaillese army in check, and constrained the Assembly to come to terms.
Hardly arrived at Montmartre, the Versaillese staff offered a holocaust to the fighters of Lecomte and Cl�ment-Thomas. Forty-two men, three women, and four children were conducted to No. 6 in the Rue des Rosiers and forced to kneel bare-headed before the wall, at the foot of which the generals had been executed on the 18th March; then they were killed. A woman, who held her child in her arms, refused to kneel down, and cried to her companions, ‘Show these wretches that you know how to die ‘upright.’
On the following day these massacres continued. Each batch of prisoners halted some time before this wall, marked with bullets, and were then despatched on the slope of the Buttes that overlooks the St. Denis route.[185]
The Batignolles and Montmartre witnessed the first wholesale massacres. Every individual wearing a uniform or regulation boots was shot., as a matter of course, without questions put, without explanations given. Thus the Versaillese had been assassinating since the morning in the Place des Batignolles, Place de L'H�tel-de-Ville, and at the gate of Clichy. The Parc Monceaux was their principal slaughter-house in the seventeenth arrondissement. At Montmartre the centres of massacre were the Buttes, the Elys�e, of which every step was strewn with corpses, and the exterior boulevards.
A few steps from Montmartre the catastrophe was not known. At the Place Blanche the women’s barricade held out for several hours against Clinchant’s soldiers; they then retreated towards the Pigalle barricade, which fell at about two o'clock. Its leader was led before a Versaillese chief of battalion. ‘Who are you?’ asked the officer. ‘L�veque, mason, member of the Central Committee.’ The Versaillese discharged his revolver in his face; the soldiers finished him.
On the other bank of the Seine our resistance was more successful. The Versaillese had been able since morning to occupy the Babylone Barracks and L'Abbaye-au-Bois, but Varlin stopped them at the cross-roads of the Croix-Rouge. This cross-road will remain celebrated in the defence of Paris. All the streets that open into it had been powerfully barricaded, and this stronghold was only abandoned when fire and shells had reduced it to a heap of ruins. On the banks of the river, the Rues de l'Universit�, St. Dominique, St. Germain, and de Grenelle, the 67th, 135th, 138th, and 147th battalions, supported by the enfants perdus and les tirailleurs, resisted obstinately. In the Rue de Rennes and on the adjoining boulevards the Versaillese exhausted their strength. In the Rue Vavin, where Lisbonne conducted the defence, the resistance was prodigious; for two days this advanced sentinel kept back the invasion from the Luxembourg.
We were less secure on our extreme left. The Versaillese had early in the day surrounded the Mont-Parnasse Cemetery, which we held with a handful of men. Near the restaurant Richefeu, the Federals, allowing the enemy to approach, unmasked their machine-guns; but in vain, for the Versaillese were numerous enough to surround the few defenders of the cemetery on all sides, and soon stormed it. From there, passing by the ramparts of the fourteenth arrondissement, they arrived at the Place St. Pierre. The fortifications of the Avenue d'Italie and of the Route de Ch�tillon, long since carefully prepared, but still against the ramparts, were taken in the rear by the Chaus�e du Maine, and the whole defence of the cross-roads of the Quatre-Chemins was concentrated round the church. From the top of the steeple about a dozen Federals of Montrouge supported the barricade that barred two-thirds of the Chauss�e du Maine, held by thirty men for several hours. At last, their cartridges exhausted, the tricolor flag was hoisted at the mairie, at the same hour that it floated above the Buttes Montmartre. Henceforth the route to the Place d'Enfer was open, and the Versaillese arrived there after having undergone the fire from the Observatoire, where some Federals had made a stand.
Behind these lines thus forced other defences were thrown up, thanks to the care of Wroblewski. The day before, the general, receiving the order to evacuate the forts, had answered, ‘Is it treachery or a misunderstanding? I will not evacuate.’ Montmartre taken, the general went to Delescluze, urging him to transfer the defence to the left bank. The Seine, the forts, the Panth�on, the Bievre, formed, in his opinion, a safe citadel, with the open fields for a retreat; a very just conception this with regular troops, but one cannot at will displace the heart of an insurrection, and the Federals were more and more bent on remaining in their own quarters.
Wroblewski returned to his headquarters, assembled the commanders of the forts, prescribed all the dispositions to be taken for their defence, and came back to resume the command of the left bank, given him by earlier decrees. But on sending orders to the Panth�on, he was answered that Lisbonne commanded there. Wroblewski, undeterred, placed the section left to him in a state of defence. He installed a battery of eight pieces and two batteries of four on the Butte-aux-Cailles, a dominant position between the Panth�on and the forts; he fortified the Boulevards d'Italie, de l'H�pital, and de la Gare. His headquarters were established at the Mairie des Gobelins, and his reserve at the Place d'Italie, Place Jeanne d'Arc, and at Bercy.
At the other extremities of Paris the fourteenth and twentieth arrondissements also prepared their defence. The brave Passedouet had replaced Du Bisson, who still dared to present himself as chefde-legion of La Villette. They barricaded the Grande Rue de la Chapelle behind the Strasbourg Railway, the Rues d'Aubervilliers, de Flandre, and the canal, so as to form five lines of defence, protected on the flank by the boulevards and the fortifications. Cannon were placed in the Rue Riquet at the gasworks, while rampart pieces were carried by the men on to the Buttes Chaumont and others to the Rue de Puebla. A battery of six was mounted on the height of the P�re la Chaise, covering Paris with its rumbling reports.
A mute and desolate Paris. As on the day before, the shops remained closed, and the streets, bleached by the sun, looked empty and menacing. Despatch riders riding at full speed, pieces of artillery shifted from their places, combatants on the march, alone broke this solitude. Cries of ‘Open the shutters!’ ‘Draw up the blinds!’ alone interrupted this silence. Two journals, Le Tribun du Peuple and Le Salut Public, were published, notwithstanding the Versaillese shells that were falling into the printing-office of the Rue Aboukir.
A few men at the H�tel-de-Ville did their best to attend to details. One decree authorized the chiefs of barricades to requisition the necessary implements and victuals; another condemned every house from which Federals were shot at to be burned. In the afternoon the Committee of Public Safety issued an appeal to the soldiers:
The people of Paris will never believe that you could raise your arms against them. When they face you your hands will recoil from an act that would be a veritable fratricide. Like us, you too are proletarians. That which you did not the 18th March you will do again. Come to us, brothers, come to us; ours are open to receive you.
The Central Committee at the same time posted up a similar appeal — a puerile but generous illusion — and on this point the people of Paris entirely agreed with their representatives. In spite of the frenzy of the Assembly, the fusillade of the wounded, the treatment inflicted upon the prisoners for six weeks, the working men did not admit that children of the people could rend the entrails of that Paris who combated for them.
At three o'clock M. Bonvalet and other members of the Ligue des Droits de Paris presented themselves at the H�tel-de-Ville, where some members of the Council and of the Committee of Public Safety received them. They bewailed this struggle, proposed to interfere, as they had so successfully done during the siege, and to carry to M. Thiers the expression of their sorrow; further, they placed themselves at the disposition of the H�tel-de-Ville. ‘Well, then,’ they were answered, ‘shoulder a gun and go to the barricades!’ Before this direct appeal the League fell back upon the Central Committee, which had the weakness to listen to them.
There was no question of negotiating in the midst of the battle. The Versaillese, following up their success at Montmartre, were at this moment pushing towards the Boulevard Ornano and the Northern Railway station. At two o'clock the barricades of the Chauss�e Clignancourt were abandoned, and in the Rue Myrrha, by the side of Vermorel, Dombrowski fell mortally wounded. In the morning Delescluze had told him to try his best in the neighbourhood of Montmartre; and, without hope, without soldiers, suspected since the entry of the Versaillese, all Dombrowski could do was to die. He expired two hours afterwards at the Lariboisi�re Hospital. His body was taken to the H�tel-de-Ville, the men of the barricades presenting arms as he was carried by. His glorious death had disarmed suspicion.
Clinchant, thenceforth free on his left, proceeded to the ninth arrondissement. A column marched down the Rues Fontaine, St. Georges, and Notre Dame de Lorette, and made a halt at the crossroads; while another cannonaded the Rollin College before penetrating into the Rue Trudaine, where it was held in check until the evening.
More in the centre, at the Boulevard Haussmann, Douai pressed close upon the barricade of the Printemps shop, and with gunshots dislodged the Federals who occupied the Trinit� Church. Five pieces established under the porch of the church were then directed at the very important barricade that barred the Chauss�e d'Antin at the entrance of the boulevard. A detachment penetrated into the Rues Ch�teaudun and Lafayette, but at the cross-roads of the Faubourg Montmartre a barricade, a yard high at the utmost, defended by twenty-five men, held them up until night.
Douai’s right was still powerless against the Rue Royale. There for two days Brunel sustained a struggle only equalled by that of the Butte-aux-Cailles, of the Bastille, and the Ch�teau d'Eau. His main barricade, transversely crossing the street, was overlooked by the neighbouring houses, from which the Versaillese decimated the Federals; and Brunel, impressed with the importance of the post confided to him, ordered these murderous houses to be burned down. A Federal obeying him was struck by a ball in the eye, and came back dying to Brunel’s side, saying, ‘I am paying with my life for the order you have given me. Vive la Commune!’ All the houses between 13 and the Faubourg St. Honor� were caught in the flames, and the Versaillese, appalled, ran away, some passing over to the Federals. One of them put on the Parisian uniform and became Brunel’s orderly.
On the right the Boulevard Malesherbes, on the left the terrace of the Tuileries, which Bergeret occupied since the day before, seconded Brunel’s efforts. The Boulevard Malesherbes, furrowed by shells, was like a field ploughed up by gigantic shares. The fire of eighty pieces of artillery at the Quai d'Orsay, Passy, the Champ-de-Mars, the Barri�re de l'Etoile converged on the terrace of the Tuileries and the barricade St. Florentin. About a dozen Federal pieces bore up against this shower. The Place de la Concorde, taken between these crossfires, was strewn with fragments of fountains and lamp-posts. The statue of Lille was beheaded, that of Strasbourg pitted by the grapeshot.
On the left bank the Versaillese made their way from house to house. The inhabitants of the quarter lent their assistance, and from behind their closed blinds fired on the Federals, who, indignant, forced and set fire to the treacherous houses. The Versaillese shells had already begun the conflagration, and the rest of the quarter was soon in flames. The troops continued to gain ground, occupied the Ministry of War, the telegraph office, and reached the Bellechasse Barracks and the Rue de l'Universit�. The barricades of the quay and the Rue du Bac were battered down by the shells; the Federal battalions, which for two days had held out at the L�gion d'Honneur,. had no longer any retreat but the quays. At five o'clock they evacuated this unclean place after having set it on fire.
At six o'clock the barricade of the Chauss�e d'Antin was lost to us; the enemy advancing by the side streets had occupied the Nouvel Op�ra, entirely dismantled, and from the top of the roofs the marines commanded the barricade. Instead of imitating them, of also occupy ing the houses, the Federals, there as everywhere else, obstinately kept behind the barricade.
At eight o'clock the barricade of the Rue Neuve des Capucines, at the entrance of the Boulevard, gave way under the fire of the pieces of 4 cm. established in the Rue Caumartin. The Versaillese approached the Place Vend�me.
At all points the army had made decided progress. The Versaillese line, starting from the Northern Railway station, following the Rues Rochechouart, Cadet, Drouot, whose mairie was taken, the Boulevard des Italiens, stretched to the Place Vend�me and the Place de la Concorde, passed along the Rue du Bac, the Abbaye-au-Bois, and the Boulevard d'Enfer, ending at Bastion 8 1. The Place de la Concorde and the Rue Royale, surrounded on their flanks, stood out like a promontory in the midst of a tempest. Ladmirault faced La Villette; on his right Clinchant occupied the ninth arrondissement; Douai presented himself at the Place Vend�me; Vinoy supported Cissy operating on the left bank. At this hour hardly one-half of Paris was still held by the Federals.
The rest was given over to massacre. They were still fighting at one end of a street when the conquered part was already being sacked. Woe to him who possessed arms or a uniform! Woe to him who betrayed dismay! Woe to him who was denounced by a political or personal enemy! He was dragged away. Each corps had its regular executioner, the provost; but to speed the business there were supplemen tary provosts in the streets. The victims were led there — shot. The blind fury of the soldiers encouraged by the men of order served their hatred and liquidated their debts. Theft followed massacre. The shops of the tradesmen who had supplied the Commune, or whom their rival shopkeepers accused, were given over to pillage; the soldiers smashed their furniture and carried off the objects of value. jewels, wine, liqueurs, provisions, linen, perfumery, disappeared into their knapsacks.
When M. Thiers was apprised of the fall of Montmartre, he believed the battle over, and telegraphed to the prefects. For six weeks he had not ceased to announce that, the ramparts taken, the insurgents would flee; but Paris, contrary to the habits of the men of Sedan and Metz and of the National Defence, contested street by street, house by house, and rather than surrender, burned them.
A blinding glare arose at nightfall. The Tuileries were burning, so also the L�gion d'Honneur, the Conseil d'Etat, and the Cour des Comptes. Formidable detonations were heard from the palace of the kings, whose walls were failing, its vast cupolas giving way. Flames, now slow, now rapid as darts, flashed from a hundred windows; the red tide of the Seine reflected the monuments, thus redoubling the conflagration. Fanned by an eastern wind, the blazing flames rose up against Versailles, and cried to the conqueror of Paris that he will no longer find his place there, and that these monarchical monuments will not again shelter a monarchy. The Rue du Bac, the Rue du Lille, the Croix-Rouge, dashed luminous columns into the air; the Rue Royale to St. Sulpice seemed a wall of fire divided by the Seine. Eddies of smoke clouded all the west of Paris, and the spiral flames shooting forth from these furnaces emitted showers of sparks that fell upon the neighbouring quarters.
Eleven o'clock — We go to the H�tel-de-Ville. Sentinels on far advanced posts made it secure against any surprise; at long intervals a gaslight flickered in the obscurity; at several barricades there were torches, and even bivouac fires. That of the St. Jacques Square, opposite the Boulevard Sebastopol, made of large trees, whose branches swung to and fro in the wind, muttered and fluttered in the redoubtable gloom.
The fa�ade of the H�tel-de-Ville was reddened by distant flames; the statues, which the reflection seemed to move, stirred in their niches. The interior courts were filled with crowds and tumult. Artillery ammunition wagons, carts, omnibuses crammed with munitions, rolled off with a great noise under the vaults. The fetes of Baron Haussmann awoke no such sonorous echoes. Life and death, agony and laughter, jostled each other on these staircases, on every storey. illumined by the same dazzling light of the gas.
The lower lobbies were encumbered by National Guards rolled up in their blankets. The wounded lay groaning on their reddened mattresses; blood was trickling from the litters placed along the walls. A commander was brought in who no longer presented a human aspect; a ball had passed through his cheek, carried away the lips, broken the teeth. Incapable of articulating a sound, this brave fellow still waved a red flag, and summoned those who were resting to replace him in the combat.
In the notorious chamber of Valentine Haussmann the corpse of Dombrowski was laid out upon a bed of blue satin. A single taper threw its lurid light on the heroic soldier. His face, white as snow, was calm, the nose fine, the mouth delicate, the small fair beard standing out pointed. Two aides-de-camp seated in the darkened corners watched silently, another hurriedly sketched the last traits of his general.
The double marble staircase was filled with people coming and going, whom the sentinels could hardly keep away from the delegate’s office. Delescluze signed orders, mute and wan as a spectre. The anguish of those later days had absorbed his last vital powers; his voice was only a death-rattle; the eye and the heart alone lived still in this moribund athlete.
Two or three officers calmly prepared the orders, stamped and sent the despatches; many officers and guards surrounded the table. No speeches, a little conversation, among the various groups. If hope had waned, resolution had not grown less.
Who are these officers who have laid aside their uniforms, these members of the Council, these functionaries who have shaved their beards? What are they doing here amongst these brave men? Ranvier, meeting two of his colleagues thus disguised, who during the siege had been among the most beplumed, harangued them, threatening to shoot them if they did not at once return to their arrondissements.
A great example would not have been useless. From hour to hour all discipline foundered. At that same moment the Central Committee, which believed itself invested with power by the abdication of the Council, launched a manifesto, in which it made conditions: ‘Dissolution of the Assembly and of the Commune; the army to leave Paris; the Government to be provisionally confided to the delegates of the large towns, who will have a Constituent Assembly elected; mutual amnesty.’ The ultimatum of a conqueror. This dream was posted up on a few walls, and threw new disorder into the resistance.
From time to time some greater clamour arose from the square. A spy was shot against the barricade of the Victoria Avenue. Some were audacious enough to penetrate into the most intimate councils.[186] That evening, at the H�tel-de-Ville, Bergeret had received the verbal authorization to fire the Tuileries, when an individual pretending to be sent by him asked for this order in writing. He was still speaking when Bergeret returned. ‘Who sent you?’ said he to the personage. ‘Bergeret.’ ‘When did you see him?’ ‘Just here, a moment ago.’
During this evening, Raoul Rigault, taking orders from himself only, and without consulting any of his colleagues, repaired to the prison of Sainte P�Iagie, and signified to Chaudey that he was to die. Chaudey protested, said he was a Republican, and swore that he had not given the order to fire on the 22nd January. However, he had been at that time the only authority in the H�tel-de-Ville. His protestations were of no avail against Rigault’s resolution. Led into the exerciseground of Sainte P�Iagie, Chaudey was shot, as were also three gendarmes taken prisoner on the 18th March. During the first seige he had said to some partisans of the Commune, ‘The strongest will shoot the others.’ He died perhaps for those words.
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<h3>Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</h3>
<h1>Author’s Notes</h1>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n1"></a>1</span> The prefect of police, Pietri, attests it: ‘It is certain that on that day the revolution might have succeeded, for the crowd which surrounded the Corps L�gislatif on the 9th August was composed of elements similar <em>to </em>those which triumphed on the 4th September.’ <em>Enqu�te sur Le 4 Septembre</em>, Vol. I, p. 253.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n2"></a>2</span> Let it be understood that I proceed, the words of our adversaries in hand parliamentary inquiries, memoirs, reports, histories: that I do not attribute to them an act or a word which has not been avowed by them, their documents, or their friends. When I say M. Thiers saw, M. Theirs knew, it is that M. Thiers has said, <em>I saw</em>, page 6, I knew, page 11, Vol. I of the <em>Enqu�te sur let Actes du Gouvernement de la Defense Nationale</em>. It will be the same with all the acts and words of all the official or adverse personages that I quote.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n3"></a>3</span> See the evidence of the Marquis de Talhouet, reporter of the Commission charged with verifying the famous despatch which precipitated the vote for war. <em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre</em> Vol. I, p. 121-124.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n4"></a>4</span> <em>Compte-rendu du 31 Octobre</em> by Milli�re.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n5"></a>5</span> Which did not, however, prevent his accepting a secret mission during the Crimean war. He was commissioned by Napoleon III to propose to the English to betray Turkey by limiting the war <em>to </em>the defence of Constantinople.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n6"></a>6</span> <em>Enqu�te sur Le 4 Septembre</em>, Jules Brame, Vol.. I, p. 201.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n7"></a>7</span> <em>Ibid</em>., Vol. II, p. 194.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n8"></a>8</span> <em>Ibid</em>., p. 313.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n9"></a>9</span> <em>Ibid</em>., Vol. I, p. 330.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n10"></a>10</span> In his official report, Jules Favre, to clear the Government, did not neglect to assume the responsibility of this mission, which he said he had undertaken without the knowledge of his colleagues.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n11"></a>11</span> <em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre</em>, Garnier-Pages, vol. i. p. 445.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n12"></a>12</span> ‘Constantly in relations with the anxious population, which urgently asked what was going on, what the Government thought, what it was doing, we were obliged to screen it; to say that it was acting for the best; that it had given itself up entirely to the defence; that the chiefs of the army were most devoted and working with ardour... We said this without knowing, without believing it. We knew nothing.’ <em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, </em>Corbon, Vol. I, p. 375.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n13"></a>13</span> <em>Enqu�tes sur le 4 Septembre, Jules </em>Ferry. He even calls the armistice a ‘compensation’.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n14"></a>14</span> <em>Ibid</em>., Vol. I, p. 432.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n15"></a>15</span> <em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, </em>Vol. I, p. 395. The deposition of this imbecile, still as naive as ever, is all the more conclusive.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n16"></a>16</span> ‘We were able to unite 40,000 men by telling the National Guards that Blanqui and Flourens occupied the H�tel-de-Ville. These two names did not fail to produce their usual effect.’ Enqu�te <em>sur </em>le 18 <em>Mars, </em>ed. Adam, Vol. II, p. 157. ‘If the name of Blanqui had not been pronounced, the new elections announced by the poster of Dorian and Schoelcher would have taken place the next day.’ <em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Jules </em>Ferry, Vol. I, p. 396-431.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n17"></a>17</span> See the affirmation of Dorian. Enqu�te <em>sur le 4 Septembre</em>, Vol. I, p. 527-528.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n18"></a>18</span> He offered a musket of honour to anyone who would kill the King of Prussia, and patronized a Greek-fire that was to roast the German army.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n19"></a>19</span> <em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, </em>Jules Favre, Vol. II, p. 42.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n20"></a>20</span> Even Felix Pyat was arrested. He managed to get out of prison through a jest, writing to Emmanuel Arago: ‘What a pity that I should be your prisoner; you might have been my advocate.’ He was set free.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n21"></a>21</span> The Minister of War, Lefl�, who naturally undervalues everything, says, ‘This left us, while assuring the operations of the siege against the Prussians, a disposable force of 230,000 to 240,000 men.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n22"></a>22</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a01">Appendix I</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n23"></a>23</span> <em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, </em>Cresson, Vol. II, p. 135.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n24"></a>24</span> Jules Simon, <em>Souvenirs du 4 Septembre. </em>Literally his expressions.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n25"></a>25</span> <em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, </em>Jules Favre, Vol. II, p. 43.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n26"></a>26</span> After the disaster of Orleans, which cut our army in two, he wrote: ‘The army of the Loire is far from being annihilated; it is separated into two armies of equal strength.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n27"></a>27</span> They avoided drawing up minutes to prevent even the appearance of being a municipality (<em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, </em>Jules Ferry, Vol. I, p. 406). A dozen of these brave ones met with a few adjuncts at the <em>mairie </em>of the third arrondissement. They confined their whole efforts to seeking someone to replace Trochu. One of them, M. Corbon, has said (<em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars</em>, Vol. II, p. 613): ‘However displeased they might have been at the manner affairs were conducted by the Defence, they would not for the world overthrow or weaken the Government.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n28"></a>28</span> This poster was drawn up by Tridon and Vall�s.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n29"></a>29</span> ‘See,’ said they, ‘what a terrible responsibility we should incur if we consented any longer to remain the passive instruments of a policy condemned by the interests of France and of the Republic.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n30"></a>30</span> See the Minutes of the Government of the Defence, evidently arranged for the best by M. Dr�o, the son-in-law of Garnier-Pages.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n31"></a>31</span> <em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, </em>Ducrot, Vol. III, p. xx.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n32"></a>32</span> See the Minutes of the Government of Defence.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n33"></a>33</span> Who bears witness to the bravery of the National Guard? Superior officers themselves. See in the Enqu�te <em>sur le 18 Mars, </em>the depositions of General Lefl�, Vice-Admiral Pothuan, Colonel Lambert, and Trochu, speaking from the tribune: ‘If 1 did not fear to appear intrusive, I could show that up to the close of the day the inexperienced National Guards took and retook with the energy of old troops, under terrific fire, the heights that had been abandoned. It was necessary to hold them at any price in order to effect the retreat of the troops engaged in the centre. I had told them so, and they sacrificed themselves without hesitation.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n34"></a>34</span> Vinoy’s corps, which took Montretout, had five regiments and one battalion of infantry, nineteen battalions of mobiles, five regiments of National Guards. That of General Bellemare, which took Buzenval, had five regiments of line, seventeen battalions of mobiles, eight regiments of National Guards.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n35"></a>35</span> ‘We shall give the National Guard a little peppering (�crabouiller un peu la garde nationale) since they wish it,’ said a colonel of infantry, much annoyed at this affair. <em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre</em>. Colonel Chaper, Vol. II, p. 281.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n36"></a>36</span> He told them by way of consolation that ‘from the evening of the 4th September he had declared that it would be madness to attempt sustaining a siege by the Prussian army.’ <em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Corbon, </em>Vol. IV, p. 389.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n37"></a>37</span> He has pronounced these words of perfect Jesuitism: To yield to hunger is to die, not to capitulate.’ Jules Simon, <em>Souvenirs do 4 Septembre, p. </em>299.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n38"></a>38</span> Deposition of General Soumairs, <em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre</em>, Vol. II, p. 215.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n39"></a>39</span> What disgrace! 175,000 men pretending that they had been add by a single one! In the Seven years War, in Westphalia, at Minden, when General Morangies prepared to capitulate, 1500 men, roused by a corporal, refused to surrender, forced their way and rejoined the army of the Count of Clermont.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n40"></a>40</span> <em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre</em>, Arnaud de l'Ari�ge, Vol. II, p. 320-321.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n41"></a>41</span> ‘I return from Versailles. I have come to terms with M. de Bismarck, and it has been agreed upon between us as a matter of honour the firing should cease.’ Order sent by Jules Favre on the 27th, seven o'clock evening. Vinoy, L'Armistice et la Commune, p. 67.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n42"></a>42</span> The decree sacrificed fifteen and spared twenty-four.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n43"></a>43</span> A. Arnaud, Avrail, Beslay, Blanqui, Demay, Dereure, Dupas, E. Dupont, J. <em>Durand, E. Duval, Eudes, </em>Flotte, <em>Frankel, Gambon, Goupil, </em>Granger, Humbert, Jaclard, Jarnigon, Lacambre, Lacord, <em>Langevin, Lefran�ais, </em>Leverdays, <em>Longuet, </em>Macdonnel, <em>Maim, Meillet, </em>Minet, <em>Oudet, Pindy, F. Pyat, Ranvier, </em>Rey, Rouillier, <em>Serraillier, Theisz, </em>Tolain, <em>Tridon, Vaillant, Valles, Varlin. </em>The names of those who were elected members of the Commune are in italics.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n44"></a>44</span> In the <em>Vengeur, </em>which had taken the place of the <em>Combat, </em>he proved, documents in hand, that for years Jules Favre had been guilty of forgery, bigamy, and falsification of papers of legitimation.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n45"></a>45</span> After the five returned, sixteen candidates of <em>La Corderie</em> obtained from 65,000 votes to 22,000 votes; Tridon 65,707; Duval 22,499.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n46"></a>46</span> Which, besides, has been recounted by Marc Dufraisse in the <em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Vol. IV, p. </em>428.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n47"></a>47</span> Cluseret, an ex-officer, decorated in 1848 for his spirited conduct. ‘I unfortunately displayed too much energy in that disastrous battle,’ he wrote in <em>Fraser’s Magazine </em>of March 1873. Attached to the Arabian Bureaux, he threw up his commission after the Crimean War, and not being able to play a part in Europe, engaged in the American Civil War for a short time, then withdrew to New York, where he campaigned with his pen. Misunderstood by the bourgeoisie of the two worlds, he again took to politics, but from the opposite side; offered himself to the Irish insurgents; landed in Ireland urging them to rise, and one fine night abandoned them. The nascent International also saw this powerful general come and offer his services. He did a good deal in the way of pamphleteering; tried to impress upon the workmen that he was the sword and buckler of Socialism. ‘We or nothing,’ said he to the sons of the massacred of June. The Government of the 4th September having also failed to appreciate his genius, he called Gambetta <em>Prussian, </em>and got himself sent as delegate to Lyons by the Corderie, where Varlin, whom he deceived for a long time, had introduced him. He offered the Lyons council to organize an army of volunteers which was to operate on the flank of the enemy.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n48"></a>48</span> The working men’s quarters of Lyons.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n49"></a>49</span> <em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, </em>Gambetta, Vol. I, p. 560.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n50"></a>50</span> The Jew Cremieux lived with the Ultramontane Archbishop Guibert (since made Archbishop of Paris) in his episcopal palace at Tours, dining every day at his table, and in return rendering him all the little services asked for by the clergy.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n51"></a>51</span> See above.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n52"></a>52</span> <em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, </em>Gambetta, Vol. I, p. 561.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n53"></a>53</span> D'Aurelles de Paladines, <em>La Premi�re Arm�e de la Loire, p. </em>93.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n54"></a>54</span> De Freycinet, <em>La Guerre en Province, p. </em>86, 87.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n55"></a>55</span> <em>Ibid., p. </em>91.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n56"></a>56</span> On the 11th the delegate telegraphed to D'Aurelles: ‘We fully approve of the dispositions you had taken for your troops round Orleans . . . You will receive instructions. In the meantime redouble your vigilance in prevision of a return to the offensive on the part of the enemy.’ D'Aurelles de Paladines, <em>La Premiere Arm�e de la Loire, p. </em>120. Thus, far from speaking of attacking, the Delegation only thought of the defensive.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n57"></a>57</span> ‘It was only when they could not help it that they made up their minds to act,’ Gambetta has said in the <em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre. </em>The avowal is precious, coming from him.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n58"></a>58</span> It is most amusing to hear D'Aurelles chaffing Trochu without perceiving that he is just as ridiculous. In his evidence (<em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Vol. III, p. </em>201) he says: ‘I did not deposit either a plan or a testament at a lawyer’s: I confined myself to writing to the Bishop of Orl�ans: Monsignor, the army of the Loire today sets out on its march to meet the army of General Ducrot. Pray, Monsignor, for the salvation of France.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n59"></a>59</span> And what other name is merited by the general who abandoned his post in the field to go and negotiate with the sovereign whom France had expelled?</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n60"></a>60</span> <em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, </em>Rolland, Voo. III, p. 456.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n61"></a>61</span><em> Ibid., </em>Dalloz, Vol. IV, p. 398.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n62"></a>62</span> If General Boyer, who saw the letter, is to be believed, the Delegation of Tours on the 24th October made officious advances to the Empress, and then gave the order to the charg�-d'affaires at London to go and thank her for the patriotism that she had shown in refusing to treat with Bismarck, who trifled with her as well as with Bazaine. See <em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Vol. IV, p. </em>253.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n63"></a>63</span> <em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, </em>Admiral Jaureguiberry, Vol. III, p. 297.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n64"></a>64</span> 3rd arrondissement. A. Genotal; 4th, Alavoine; 5th, Manet; 6th, V. Frontier; 7th, Badois; 8th, Morterol; 9th, Mayer; 10th, Arnold; 11th Piconel; 12th, Audoynaud; 13th, Soncial; 14th, Dacosta; 15th, Masson; 16th, P�; 17th, Weber; 18th, Trouillet; 19th, Lagarde; 20th, A. Bonit. Courty remained president, Ramel secretary.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n65"></a>65</span> Vinoy, <em>L'Armistice et la Commune, p. </em>128.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n66"></a>66</span> The reactionaries have said that this fear was feigned; that the cannon were safe from the Prussians. This is so false that the general staff itself feared a surprise. See Mortemart, chef d'�tat-major, <em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Vol. II, p. 344.</em></p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n67"></a>67</span> <em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, </em>Colonel Lavigne, Vol. II, <em>p. 467.</em></p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n68"></a>68</span> ‘The first cannon were taken, carried away, on the news of the entry of the Prussians. And these, gentlemen, believe me, were carried off by citizens devoted to order, the National Guards of Passy and Auteuil, and taken where? From the Ranelagh.’ Jules Ferry, <em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. II, p. 63.</em></p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n69"></a>69</span> A. Alavoine, A. Bouit, Frontier, Boursier, David, Buisson, Harond, Gritz, Tessier, Ramel, Badois, Arnold, Piconel, Audoynaud, Masson, Weber, Lagarde, J. Laroque, J. Bergeret, Pouchain, Lavalette, Fleury, MaIjournal, Couteau, Cadaze, Gastaud, Dutil, Matt�, Mutin. Ten only of those elected on the 15th figure in this document. Various delegations, abstentions, and irregular adhesions had given nearly twenty new names.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n70"></a>70</span> Roger du Nord, the chief of D'Aurelles’ staff, heard it said in all the fractions of the National Guard, ‘Why place a man of such energy at the head of the National Guard if not to make a <em>coup d'�tat?’ Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. II.</em></p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n71"></a>71</span> The National Guards of each of the twenty arrondissements were formed into a separate legion.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n72"></a>72</span> Arnold, J. Bergeret, Bouit, Castioni, Chauvi�re, Chouteau, Courty, Dutil, Fleury, Frontier, H. Fortun�, Lacord, Lagarde, Lavalette, MaIjournal, Matt�, Ostyn, Piconel, Pindy, Prudhomme, Varlin, H. Verlet, Viard. Many of these names, those of the representatives elected on the 3rd, were new ones. On the other hand, many of those that had figured in the placard of the 28th were missing, because only those signed who were present at the sitting.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n73"></a>73</span> He dared to say from the tribune that he only returned on the 3rd ‘to save Paris from any demagogic attempts.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n74"></a>74</span> The prefecture of Rennes posted up this despatch of the Government: ‘A criminal insurrection is being organized in Paris. I send forces which, joined to the honest National Guards of Paris and to the other regular troops which are still stationed there, will suppress, I hope, this odious attempt.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n75"></a>75</span> Jules Ferry, who had remained at Paris, telegraphed on the 5th to the Government: ‘Never has a Sunday been calmer, notwithstanding sinister reports. The population is enjoying the sun and their promenades as if nothing had happened. I no longer believe in the danger.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n76"></a>76</span> ‘The vote of the Assembly’, wrote Jules Favre, ‘was received at Paris with extreme disfavour; not only amongst the fanatics and the agitators; all classes of the population showed themselves almost unanimous. Everyone saw in it an affront and a menace. It was repeated everywhere that this was the first act of a monarchical <em>coup d'�tat; </em>that the Assembly was ready to name a king, and that, knowing the unpopularity of its work, it sought to accomplish it far from the eyes of those who might oppose it.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n77"></a>77</span> This is the Committee which many took for the Central Committee.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n78"></a>78</span> Some Bourse speculators, in the belief that a campaign of six weeks would give a fresh impulse to the speculations they were living upon, said, ‘It is a disagreeable moment to pass through, some 50,000 men to be sacrificed, after which the horizon will dear and commerce revive.’ M. Thiers, <em>Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Vol. 1, p. 9.</em></p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n79"></a>79</span> <em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, </em>M. Thiers, Vol. II, p. 11.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n80"></a>80</span> In the evening D'Aurelles assembled forty of the most reliable, and asked them if their battalions would march. They all said their men were not to be counted upon. <em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. II, </em>p. 435, 456.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n81"></a>81</span> This is the number of pieces given by M. Thiers in the <em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars.</em></p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n82"></a>82</span> This order enjoining the troop to march off in the midst of the National Guards was drawn up in pencil by a captain. Lecomte copied it in ink without changing a word. The court-martial has denied this, in order to glorify this general, who died so pusillanimously.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n83"></a>83</span> Five to six hundred, says M. Thiers: fourteen men per battalion, says Jules Ferry. <em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars.</em></p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n84"></a>84</span> M. Thiers in the <em>Enquire sur le 18 Mars </em>says, firstly, ‘We let them march off,’ then, twenty lines further, ‘We repulsed them.’ Lefl� has not concealed the fright the Council was in: ‘The moment seemed critical to me. And I said, ‘I think we are done for; we shall be carried off,’ and indeed the battalions had only to penetrate into the palace and we were all taken to the last man. But the three battalions marched off without saying anything.’ Vol. II, p. 80.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n85"></a>85</span> The report of the <em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars </em>said that ‘the Committee did not hesitate on the afternoon of the 18th March to take possession of all the administrations.’ This is if not a lie, intended to palliate the stampede of M. Thiers — one of the grossest proofs of the ignorance of this report, which attributes the demonstration of the 24th of February to an order of the Central Committee,</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n86"></a>86</span> See <a href="appendix.htm#a02">Appendix II</a>, the details of the proceedings of the Central Committee during this day, told by one of its members.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n87"></a>87</span> Vinoy has the impudence to say in his book <em>L'Armistice er la Commune: ‘</em>The general assembled his men, and <em>sword in hand </em>he bravely placed himself at the head of his troops.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n88"></a>88</span> Ten days after he recounted in a crazy letter written in the Conciergerie that he had done everything; taken the H�tel-de-Ville, the Prefecture of Police, the Place Vend�me, the Tuileries, etc.; and this letter is referred to as an authority by the report of the <em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars! </em>For the future, I shall abstain from pointing out the errors that abound in this report, which is an ignorant and malignant r�sum� of the lies, inaccuracies, and animosity accumulated in this <em>Inquiry, </em>from which all the vanquished, and even the smallest adversaries, were excluded. Entirely insufficient as a historical source, it may well serve to set forth the intelligence and morality of the French bourgeoisie of the epoch.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n89"></a>89</span> Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Marreille, Vol. II, p. 200.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n90"></a>90</span> Assi, Billioray, Ferrat, Babick, Ed. Moreau, C. Dupont, Yarlin, Boursier, Mortier, Gouhier, Lavalette, F. jourde, Rousseau, C. Lullier, Blanchet, J. Grollard, Barrond, H. Geresme, Fabre, Fougeret, the members present at the morning sitting. The Committee decided later that its publications should bear the names of all its <em>members.</em></p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n91"></a>91</span> The minutes of the first Central Committee have disappeared, but one of its most assiduous members has restored the principal sittings from memory. It is from his notes, checked by several of his colleagues, that we have taken these details. It is superfluous to say that the minutes published by the Paris journal, which have been used by reactionary historians, are incomplete, inexact, drawn up from hearsay, unintelligent indiscretions, and often from pure imagination. Thus, for instance, they make all the sittings presided over by Assi, attributing to him the principal part, because under the Empire he was very incorrectly supposed to have directed the strike of Creuzot. Assi never had any influence in the Committee.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n92"></a>92</span> Verbatim. It is from the little man of Paris that the little man of Versailles borrowed the phrase, completing it himself.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n93"></a>93</span> I need not justify the long quotations I shall make. The French proletarian has never been allowed to speak in books of history; at least he should do so in the recital of his own revolution.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n94"></a>94</span> The two generals have testified to the extreme consideration shown them in their prison. See the <em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars. Two </em>days later, on Chanzy’s simple promise not to serve against Paris, the Central Committee set them free.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n95"></a>95</span> <em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, </em>Dr. Danet, Vo.. II, p. 531.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n96"></a>96</span> Of course the Radicals have seen in this a Bonapartist manoeuvre, have written and said from the tribune of the Assembly, ‘The Bonapartist director of the Bank of France saved the Revolution; without the million of the Monday the Central Committee would have capitulated.’ Two facts answer this: From the 19th the Committee had in the Ministry of Finance 4,600,000 francs; the municipal coffers contained 1,200,000 francs, and on the 21st the Octroi had brought in 500,000 more.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n97"></a>97</span> The aggression was so evident, that not one of the twenty court-martials that searched into every detail of the revolution of the 18th March dared allude to the affair of the Place Vend�me.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n98"></a>98</span> Their names were published in the <em>Journal Officiel</em>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n99"></a>99</span> Here are the names of those who signed the proclamations and nod= of the Committee. We shall restore, as far as possible, their correct orthography, often altered, even in the Officiel, to the extent of giving fictitious names: Andignoux, A. Arnaud, G. Arnold, A. Assi, Babick, Barrond, Bergeret, Billioray, Bouit, Boursier, Blanchet, Castioni, Chouteau, C. Dupont, Eudes, Fabre, Ferrat, Fleury, H. Fortun�, Fougeret, Gaudier, Geresme, Gouhier, Grelier, J. Grollard, Josselin, jourde, Lavalette, Lisbonne, Lullier, Maljournal, Ed. Moreau, Mortier, Prudhomme, Ranvier, Routscan, Varlin, Viard. Notwithstanding the decision of the Committee, all its members did not always sign the proclamations. Finally, some who took part in certain deliberations never signed at all.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n100"></a>100</span> This order had been given the evening before. The treachery of Du Bisson, nominated chief of the staff by Lullier, had prevented its execution.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n101"></a>101</span> Tirard: ‘My whole preoccupation and that of my <em>colleagues had </em>been to postpone the elections so as to reach the date of the 3rd <em>April.</em>’ — <em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars</em>, Vol. II, p.340. Vautrain: ‘My colleagues and I thus gained eight days more.’ <em>Ibid</em>., p. 379. J. Favre: ‘For eight days we were the only barricade raised up between the insurrection and the Government.’ <em>Ibid</em>., p. 385. Desmarets: ‘I believed it necessary to remain exposed to danger in order to give the Government of Versailles time for arming.’ <em>Ibid</em>., p. 412.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n102"></a>102</span> <em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars</em>, Tirard, Vol. II, p.342.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n103"></a>103</span> He then and them inaugurated this incomparable lying campaign, the progress of which we shall closely watch. On the 19th he said, ‘The army, to the number of 40,000 men, is concentrated in good order at Versailles.’ There were 23,000 men (the number given by himself in the <em>Enqu�te</em>) totally disbanded. On the 20th:’ The Government did not want to cater into a bloody struggle, though provoked.’ By the 21st the army had grown to 45,000 men: — the insurrection is disavowed by everybody.’ On the 22nd: ‘From all sides the Government is offered battalions of mobiles to support it against anarchy.’ On the 27th, while the votes were being counted: ‘A considerable proportion of the population and of the National Guard of Paris solicits the help of the provinces to re-establish order.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n104"></a>104</span> ‘Considering,’ said they in their declaration, ‘that the Provisional Commune of Lyons, acclaimed by the National Guard, is no longer feeling itself supported by them, the members of the Commune declare themselves released from their engagements towards their electors, and resign all powers they have received.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n105"></a>105</span> Certain infamous evidence must be quoted in full in order to give a notion of the delirium tremens of the great bourgeoisie when speaking of the Commune. Four months after these events the Prefect Ducros, the inventor of the famous bridges of the Marne, deposed before the <em>Commission d'Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars</em>: ‘They did not respect his corpse; they cut off his head. In the night, horrible to say, one of the men who had participated in the assassination, and who has been put on trial, came to a caf� offering those present pieces of M. De l'Esp�e’s skull, and cracking under his teeth pieces of the same skull.’ And Ducros dared to add: The man had been arrested, put on his trial, and acquitted.’ Horrible imaginings, which even the Radicals of St. Etienne have stigmatized.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n106"></a>106</span> The popular quarters of Marseilles.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n107"></a>107</span> This abdication was revealed before the court-martial by the advocate of one of the accused. Cosnier, fearing that it might be interpreted as an act of cowardice, blew out his brains.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n108"></a>108</span> Ad. Adam, Mane, Rochard, Barr� (1st arrondissement, Louvre); Brelay, Loiseau-Pinson, Tirard, Ch�on (2nd, Bourse); Ch. Murat (3rd, Temple); A. Le Roy, Robinet (6th, Luxembourg); Desmarets, E. Ferry, Nast (9th, Op�ra); Marmottan, De Bouteillier (16th, Pasty).</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n109"></a>109</span> Goupil (6th, Luxembourg); E. Lef�vre (7th, Palais-Bourbon); A. Ranc, U. Parent (9th, Op�ra).</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n110"></a>110</span> Demay, A. Arnaud, Pindy, D. Dupont (3rd, Temple); A. Arnould, Lefran�ais, Cl�mence, E. G�rardin (4th, H�tel-de-Ville); R�g�re, Jourde, Tridon, Blanchet, Ledroit (5th, Panth�on); Beslay, Varlin (6th, Luxembourg); Parizel, Urbain, Brunel (7th, Palais-Bourbon Raoul Rigault, Vaillant, A. Arnould, Alix (8th, Champs-Elys�es); Gambon, F�lix, Pyat, H. Fortun�, Champy, Babick, Rastoul (110th, Enclos St. Laurent); Mortier, Delescluze, Assi, Protot, Eudes, Avrial, Verdure (11th, Popincourt); Varlin, Gresme, Theiez, Fruneau (12th, Reuilly); L�o Meillet, Duval, Chardon, Frankel (13th, Gobelins); Billioray, Martelet, Decamp (14th, Observatoire); V. Cl�ment, J. Valles, Langevin (15th, Vaugirard); Varlin, E. Cl�ment, Ch. Girardin, Chalain, Malon (17th, Batignolles); Blanqui, Theisz, Dereure, J. B. Cl�ment, Ferr�, VennoreI, P. Grousset (18th, Montmartre); Oudet, Puget, Delescluze, J. Miot, Ostyn, Flourens (19th, Buttes-Chaumont); Bergeret, Ranvier, Flourens, Blanqui (20th, Menilmontant). Blanqui had been arrested in the South of France, where he had gone for the sake of his health.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n111"></a>111</span> See <a href="appendix.htm#a03">Appendix III</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n112"></a>112</span> MacMahon, with his coup-d'oeil of Reischoffen and Sedan, saw there 17,000 men. <em>Enqu�te </em>sur <em>le 18 </em>Mars, Vol. II, p. 22.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n113"></a>113</span> ‘To Versailles, if we don’t want again to resort to balloons! To Versailles, if we don’t want to fall back upon pigeons! To Versailles, if we don’t want to be reduced to bran bread,’ etc., etc. — <em>Le Vengeur</em>, 3rd April.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n114"></a>114</span> These details, related in part by the journals of the time, have been completed by numerous comrades of Duval whom we have questioned. In his mutilated, lying, naively cynical book, Vinoy dared to say: ‘The insurgents threw down their arms and arrendered at <em>discretion; the </em>man called Duval was <em>killed in the </em>affray.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n115"></a>115</span> ‘The general commanding the department and the procureur-general, aware that I had for thirty years been the friend of the man who commanded the Commune at Narbonne, came to solicit my intervention to induce him to submit. It was arranged that if I did not succeed I should immediately send a telegram to General Robinet, in order that the military authorities might act in consequence. At midnight 1 sent the telegram ... You do not know me; it is thanks to my personal influence that order was maintained at Carcassone.’ <em>Speech of M. </em>Marcou to <em>the Assembly in </em>answer <em>to </em>M. de Gavardie. Sitting <em>of the 27th </em>January, <em>1874.</em></p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n116"></a>116</span> M. Barth�emy-St.-Hilaire, Thiers’ secretary, answered Barral de Montaud, who spoke of the possibility of a massacre in the prisons: ‘The hostages! the hostages! But we can do nothing. What should we do? So much the worse for them.’ <em>Enqu�te sur </em>le 18 Mars, Vol. II, p. 271.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n117"></a>117</span> M. Beslay, in his book Mes Souvenirs, Paris, 1873, says: ‘The cash in hand was forty and some odd millions.’ These ‘some odd’ were no less than 203 millions. They presented the good man fictitious statements, with which they gulled him. In his evidence and the annexes (<em>Enqu�te sur </em>le 18 Mars, Vol. III, errata, p. 438), M. de Ploeuc has given the true statements.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n118"></a>118</span> These were all the reasons he could ever allege, even in his book written in Switzerland, whither M. de Ploeuc himself went to deposit him after the fall of the Commune. Besides his life being saved, he, later on, received a judicial ordinance to the effect that no further judicial proceedings were to be taken against him.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n119"></a>119</span> Out of 400 pieces cast by Paris during the siege, the Government of the National Defence only accepted forty, on the pretence that the others were imperfect. Vinoy, Si�ge de Paris, P. 287.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n120"></a>120</span> Sometimes even to falsification. In his account of the 9th Thermidor, he makes Barrere say to Billaud-Varennes, ‘Do not attack Robespierre;’ and on the strength of this expatiates on the greatness of his hero. Now, the report of Courtois that he quotes, hoping, no doubt, that no one would examine the accuracy of the statement, says, ‘Attack only,’ and not ‘Do not attack.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n121"></a>121</span> It seems there was a split in the League. The Radicals, Floquet, Corbon, etc., disapproved of this semi-commanding attitude, and boasted of it later on before the Committee of Inquiry into the 18th March; but during the Commune they made no public protest against this address.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n122"></a>122</span> Seventy-three communes have more than 20,000 inhabitants; 108 have from 10,000</p>
<p class="information">to 20,000; 309 from 5,000 to 10,000, 249 from 4,000 to 5,000; and 581 from 3,000 to 4,000. There are then only 1,320 communes having more than 3,000 inhabitants, 800 at most that possess any political life.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n123"></a>123</span> Vesinier, Cluseret, Pillot, Andrieu (I st arrondissement, Louvre); Pothier, Serraillier, 1. Durand, Johannard (2nd, Bourse); Courbet, Rogeard (6th, Luxembourg); Sicard (7th. Palais-Bourbon); Briosne (9th, Op�ra); Philippe, Lonclas (12th, Reuilly); Longuet (16th, Passy); Dupont (17th, Batignolles); Cluseret, Arnold (18th, Montmartre); Menotti Garibaldi (19th, Buttes-Chaumont); Viard, Trinquet (20th, M�nilmontant).</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n124"></a>124</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a04">Appendix IV</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n125"></a>125</span> And what sublime faith in their naivet�! We heard in an omnibus two women on their return from the trenches. The one wept; the other said to her, ‘Do not distress yourself; our husbands will come back. And then the Commune has promised to take care of us and of our children. But no! it is impossible they should be killed in defending so good a cause. Besides I would rather have my husband dead than in the hands of the Versaillese.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n126"></a>126</span> ‘My heart bleeds to see that only those ready to volunteer engage in the combat. This is not, citizen delegate, a denunciation; far from me such a thought; but I fear lest the weakness of the members of the Commune should cause our great projects for the future to miscarry.’ This heroic letter is taken from a book, Le <em>Fond de la </em>Soci�t� sous la Commune, which contains documents found by the army in different mairies and administrations. The work in general is an odious caricature, of which the author himself, a Joseph Prudhomme, in the shape of a bloodhound, is certainly the most ridiculous trait.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n127"></a>127</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a05">Appendix V</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n128"></a>128</span> Very approximate numbers. The return of the <em>Officiel </em>of the 6th May is very incomplete. In general, these statements were erroneous, fictitious, especially after the administration of Meyer.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n129"></a>129</span> The figures which I give have been carefully verified <em>de visu, </em>first during the struggle, afterwards with generals, superior officers, and functionaries of the War Office. General Appert has drawn up merely fantastic returns. He has created imaginary brigades, manufactured effective returns by counting as regular combatants all men who, at any time, might have been told off for active service, and constantly duplicated the items of his accounts. He has thus contrived to give more than 20,000 men to Dombrowski, and as much as 50,000 to the three commanders — quite ridiculous figures. His report swarms with mistakes as to names and functions; he does not even know the names of certain general commanders. It possesses no kind of historical value.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n130"></a>130</span> A member of the Council discovered him, and presented him at the War Office, where he explained his ideas: ‘But,’ it was remarked to him, ‘this is word for word that F�lix Pyat does not cease saying to us.’ ‘A few days ago,’ answered Wroblewski, ‘I sent Felix Pyat a memorandum.’ Rossel went to Pyat’s bureau, and there found the memorandum, For several days this trickster had been making capital of the ideas of Wroblewski without the least allusion to their author, and astounding the Commission by his common sense and technical knowledge.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n131"></a>131</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a06">Appendix VI</a>. /p>
</p><p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n132"></a>132</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a07">Appendix VII</a>, report by Thiesz.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n133"></a>133</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a08">Appendix VIII</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n134"></a>134</span> There were five parks: the H�tel-de-Ville, the Tuileries, the Ecole Militaire, Monmartre, Vincennes. In all, including the artillery of the forts and that of the open country, the Commune had more than 1100 cannon, howitzers, mortars, and machine-guns.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n135"></a>135</span> The second Central Committee was composed of forty members, of whom twelve only had formed part of the first Committee.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n136"></a>136</span> ‘Do you know,’ said he to Delescluze, ‘that Versailles has offered me a million?’ ‘Be silent!’ answered Delescluze, turning his back upon him.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n137"></a>137</span> He was arrested on the 20th March in his private room in the Palace of Justice, where he had given the procureur-general a rendezvous.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n138"></a>138</span> He was recognized as he asked for his passport at the prefecture of police.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n139"></a>139</span> The correspondent of the Times wrote in the number of 9th May: ‘The superior and her nuns explained that these were orthopaedic instruments — a superficial falsehood . The mattress and straps struck me as being easily accounted for; I have seen such things used in French midwifery and in cases of violent delirium; but the rack and its adjuncts are justly objects of grave suspicion, for they imply a use of brutal force which no disease at present known would justify.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n140"></a>140</span> The nun who filled the post of superior, a big and bold virago, answered Rigault in an easy-going manner. ‘Why have you shut up these women?’ ‘To do their families a service; they were mad. See, gentlemen, you are young men of good families; you'll understand that sometimes one is glad to conceal the madness of one’s relations.’ ‘But do you not know the law?’ ‘No we obey our superiors.’ ‘Whose books are these?’ ‘We know nothing about them.’ Thus affecting simpleness, they sold the simpletons.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n141"></a>141</span> This negotiation has in part been recounted in the <em>Officiel</em> of the Commune. We add further details. Soon after his arrest the Archbishop wrote to M. Thiers begging him to stop the execution of the prisoners, on which the lives of the hostages depended. M. Thiers did not answer. An old friend of Blanqui’s, Flotte, went to the President to propose an exchange, and said that the Archbishop might incur peril. M. Thiers made a decided gesture: ‘What does it matter to me?’ Flotte again took up the negotiation through Darboy, who named Deguerry as envoy to Versailles. The prefecture, unwilling to give up such a hostage, the Vicar-General Lagarde took Deguerry’s place. The Archbishop furnished him with instructions, and on the 12th April Flotte conducted Lagarde to the station and made him swear to return if he failed in his mission. Lagarde swore, ‘Even if to be shot, I shall return. Can you believe that I could for a single moment harbour the thought of leaving Monseigneur alone here?’ At the moment when the train was about to start, Flotte insisted again, ‘Do not go if you have not the intention of returning.’ The priest again renewed his oath. He went off, and handed over a letter in which the Archbishop solicited the exchange. M. Thiers, pretending to know nothing of this one, answered the first, which one of the Commune papers had just published. His answer is one of his masterpieces of hypocrisy and falsehood: ‘The facts to which you call my attention are absolutely false, and I am really surprised that so enlightened a prelate as you, Monseigneur ... Our soldiers have never shot prisoners nor sought to kill the wounded. That, in the heat of combat, they may have turned their arms against men who assassinate their generals, is possible; but, the combat terminated, they resume the natural generosity of the national character. I therefore spurn, Monseigneur, the calumny that has been told you. I affirm that our soldiers have never shot prisoners.’ On the 17th Flotte received a letter in which Lagarde informed him that his presence was still indispensable at Versailles. Flotte complained to the Archbishop, who could not believe in this desertion. ‘It is impossible,’ said he, ‘that M. Lagarde should remain at Versailles; he will come back; he has sworn it to me myself,’ and he gave Flotte a note for Lagarde. The latter answered that M. Thiers retained him. On the 23rd Darboy wrote to him again: ‘On the reception of this letter, M. Lagarde is immediately to retrace his steps to Paris and to re-enter Mazas. This delay compromises us gravely, and may have the saddest results.’ Lagarde did not answer any more.</p>
<p class="information">His friends thought of rescuing him, and a sum of 50,000 francs was prepared for his release. But much more would have been necessary, and, above all, adroit agents, for the least imprudence would have cost the life of the prisoner. The affair was procrastinated, and part of the funds were still in the coffers of the Committee of Public Safety at the entry of the Versaillese.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n142"></a>142</span> Georges Duchene began examining the commercial transactions of the Government of National Defence, but he published nothing.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n143"></a>143</span> Before the Commission of Inquiry at the Assembly he has assumed the attitude of a Daniel in the lions’ den. The meeting, however, contented with hissing him, for Paris let these impotent drones buzz as much as they liked without taking any notice of them.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n144"></a>144</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a09">Appendix IX</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n145"></a>145</span> The minority formed a nucleus of twenty-two members: Andrieu, Anrold, A. Arnould, Avrial, Beslay, Cl�mence, V. Cl�menrt, Courbet, Frankel, E. G�rardin, Jourde, Lefran�ais, Longuet, Malon, Ostyn, Pindy, Serraillier, Theisz, Tridon, Vall�s, Varlin, Vermorel.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n146"></a>146</span> Blanchet, an ex-Capucin and bankrupt, and E. Cl�ment, who under the Empire had offered his services to the police.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n147"></a>147</span> <em>La Guerre des Communaux, </em>by a superior officer of the Versaillese army.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n148"></a>148</span> On the 12th May, at the barricade of Petit-Vanves, an officer of engineers of the Lacretelle division, second corps, Captain Rozhem, was taken prisoner. When brought before the commander of the trenches, ‘I know what is in store for me,’ said he; ‘shoot me.’ The commander shrugged his shoulders and took him to Delescluze. ‘Captain,’ said the delegate, ‘promise that you will not fight against the Commune and you are free.’ The officer promised, and, deeply moved, asked Delescluze for permission to shake hands with him. This is one fact among a hundred such. Is it necessary to add that from the 3rd April to the 23rd May the Federals did not shoot one single prisoner, officer or soldier?</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n149"></a>149</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a10">Appendix X</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n150"></a>150</span> This fact was established through the minute inquiry which the Council charged</p>
<p class="information">three of its members to make. Two of these, Gambon and Langevin, are by their characters above all suspicion. They received the declaration of the wounded man, and saw one of the bodies, the two others not having been found.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n151"></a>151</span> It never appeared in the Officiel, but was announced in the Vengeur; for F�lix Pyat abused his functions in order to give his journal the first news of the official decisions. Ilia 6= he was a little too quick.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n152"></a>152</span> On the 3rd May they had voted that the public should be admitted, and even charged two members to find a suitable hall; but the decree was not executed, although in the H�tel-de-Ville itself there was the splendid St. Jean Hall, which might have been prepared in a few hours.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n153"></a>153</span> The reports in the Officiel, confided to inexperienced writers, who abridged or amplified at pleasure, again altered at the printing-office, frequently interrupted by the formation of secret committees, give but a very vogue idea of these sittings.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n154"></a>154</span> ‘Committee of Public Safety, No. 98 — Paris, 3rd May 1871. — General Wroblewald, — Please repair immediately to the fort of Issy. It is urgent to make provision for several services, engineering, artillery, etc. The members of the Committee of Public Safety. Felix Pyat, Arnaud. Enclosed is a despatch from the commander of the fort.’ Before the public. ignorant of this despatch, Pyat kept up his lie. He said in the <em>Vengeur: ‘</em>The only order given directly to the generals by the Committee of Public Safety to defend Issy, which Road did not defend, was addressed to General Wroblewski, intrusted with the forts of the south. The Committee of Public Safety, in ordering him to watch over Issy, did not displace him.’ ln point of fact, not Wroblewski was charged with the defence of the fort of Issy, but La C�cilia, who since the reoccupation held the chief post on this side, and commanded Wetzel intrusted with the defence of the approaches. of the fort.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n155"></a>155</span> The chefs-de-l�gion have said 10,000. T he truth lies between the two.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n156"></a>156</span>. P. Vichard, ex-chief of the staff of the Garibaldian General Bossack.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n157"></a>157</span> Heard and reported by Lefran�ais, whose veracity is above suspicion. <em>Etude sur le Mouvement Communaliste </em>G. Lefran�ais, p. 294. Neuchatel, 1870.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n158"></a>158</span> All the unpublished reports that 1 quote and on which I rely have been copied from the originals.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n159"></a>159</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a11">Appendix XI</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n160"></a>160</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a12">Appendix XII</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n161"></a>161</span> ‘It was better to take possession of the town by main force,’ said the apostolic Comte de Mun (<em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars</em>, Vol. II, p. 277). ‘Thus right manifests itself m peremptory manner’ — the right of carriage, no doubt. ‘It was better that it should not be said that we had got in by the back-door.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n162"></a>162</span> It has been stated that a Polish officer of Dombrowski’s staff, killed afterwards during the street fight, was the agent in this attempted treason. I have been unable, in spite of a minute search to discover the least proof of this imputation.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n163"></a>163</span> See a letter from Colonel Corbin, quoted in the <em>Histoire des conspirations sous la commune, </em>a work by A. J. Dalseme, arranged in the form of a novel, but containing some documents.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n164"></a>164</span> On the 23rd, Picard telegraphed to the procureur-general of Aix: ‘The Republic was, the day before yesterday, again affirmed in a proclamation of the Assembly. The very proclamation which the Assembly had refused to conclude by the cry ‘<em>Vive la R�publique!’</em></p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n165"></a>165</span> The same day — it was that of the Marseilles insurrection — Dufaure telegraphed to the same procureur-general: ‘Read the name <em>R�publique Fran�aise </em>at the head of all the despatches I send you.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n166"></a>166</span> 1 have in my possession about twenty proclamations of prefects or magistrates. They am all on this point identically the same.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n167"></a>167</span> A great speech of the President of the Council has been applauded by the Extreme left.’ The speech of the 21st Much against Paris. Dufaure to the procureur-general at Aix, 23rd March.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n168"></a>168</span> He confessed his trickery in a speech pronounced at Bordeaux in 1875: ‘I was enabled with the remains of the defeated army to unit a military force of 150,000 men, but if this force was sufficient to tear Paris from the Commune, it could not have kept down the large towns of France, keenly bent on the maintenance of the Republic, and coming to ark me with distrust and irritation if it were the monarchy that we combated for.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n169"></a>169</span> 1 should say ‘resuscitated’, if it were not doing these eunuchs too much honour to compare them to Robespierre, who by their side appears a hero. But how prevent one’s thoughts from wandering to the pontiff declaring inopportune the Republican outburst of June-July 1791; inopportune the cries of Paris famished by engrossers; inopportune the people asking for a single article in their favour in the Constitution of 1793; inopportune the commissars, without whom France would have been dismembered; inopportune the great movement against the Church; inopportune the Socialists and Jacques Roux, whom he did to death; inopportune the popular societies closed by him, and after the disappearance of which Paris expired; inopportune Clootz, yearning to rally round France an the revolutionary forces of the world; inopportune H�bert, who, nevertheless, had helped him to stifle the socialists; inopportune, in fine, all that was not cut out after his own amiable day when he was himself declared inopportune by the great bourgeoisie, who found it as easy as opportune to swallow him at a mouthful as soon as he had purged, bled, muzzled for them the revolutionary lion.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n170"></a>170</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a13">Appendix XIII</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n171"></a>171</span> The workmen’s quarter in Lyons. </p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n172"></a>172</span> These were what General Appert calls the Brunel brigade, 7882 strong.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n173"></a>173</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a14">Appendix XIV</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n174"></a>174</span> During the first siege, the <em>Journal Officiel</em> of the mairie of Paris had inserted a letter from Courbet demanding the overthrow of the column.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n175"></a>175</span> Thus Courbet was not as yet a member of the Council. Nevertheless he was considered as the principal author of the M of the column.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n176"></a>176</span> Funeral of Lieutenant Chatelet, of the 61st.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n177"></a>177</span> See the evidence of the chief of police, M. Claude, Enqu�te sur le 18th Mars, Vol. II, p. 106.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n178"></a>178</span> The original of this document has been lost, but we have been able to re-establish the text with the evidence of Dombrowski’s brother and of a great number of members of the Council present at this sitting.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n179"></a>179</span> ‘Seventeen hours were required to get in 130,000 men and our numerous artillery.’ — M. Thiers, <em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars</em>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n180"></a>180</span> ‘From this unexpected obstruction there resulted a confusion that lasted till after the passage of the troops, and might have had serious consequences. If the insurgents had then opened fire upon the Trocadero, from the batteries of Montmartre, their shells would have harassed us a great deal. But the cannon of Montmartre still kept silent. It was only a little after nine o'clock that they commenced firing; the passage was then already cleared.’ — Vinoy, <em>La Commune</em>, p. 130.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n181"></a>181</span> The first conflagration of the days of May, and the Versaillese have admitted that they themselves kindled it. — Vinoy, <em>L'Armistice et la Commune</em>, p. 309.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n182"></a>182</span> No deputy protested either on this day or after, or declared he had abstained from voting, neither those of the extreme Left nor those of the extreme Right. They are then, all of them equally answerable for this vote.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n183"></a>183</span> ‘At the Place Blanche,’ wrote G. Maroteau in the Salut Public of the next day, ‘there was a barricade perfectly constructed and defended by a battalion of women, about 120. At the moment when 1 arrived, a dark form detached itself from the recess of a courtyard. It was a young M with a Phrygian cap on her head, a chassepot in her hand, a cartridge-box by her side. ‘Stand, citizen! no one panes here!’ I stopped astonished, showed my safe-conduct, and the citoyenne allowed me to go to the foot of the barricade.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n184"></a>184</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a15">Appendix XV</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n185"></a>185</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a16">Appendix XVI</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n186"></a>186</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a17">Appendix XVII</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n187"></a>187</span> One of the commanders of the German troops.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n188"></a>188</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a18">Appendix XVIII</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n189"></a>189</span> At half-past eight o'clock in the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement the delegate Genton made this recital, which we heard, and reproduce verbatim.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n190"></a>190</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a19">Appendix XIX</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n191"></a>191</span> ‘Bum everything! I have heard these words from the most wise, the most virtuous men.’ — Jules Favre, Enqu�te sur le Mars Vol. II, p. 42. ‘Rather Moscow than S�dan,’ wrote one of these wise and virtuous men during the first siege — M. Jules Simon.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n192"></a>192</span> Armlet conspirators.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n193"></a>193</span> Summoned several times to surrender, the Federals answered, ‘Vive la Commune!’ They were thrown against the wall of the prison and fell with the same cry, one of them still clasping the red flag of the barricade. Before such faith the Versaillese officer felt a little ashamed. He turned to the people who had hurried up from the neighbouring houses, and several times repeated by way of excuse, ‘It is their fault! Why did they not surrender!’ As though all Federals were not regularly and mercilessly massacred by them.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n194"></a>194</span> Minister of War from 187 1, he was in 1876, notwithstanding the desperate efforts of MacMahon, expelled from the Ministry, partly because of irregularities discovered in his budget, partly for having let his mistress, a German, take the plan of one of the new forts round Paris, which was transmitted to Berlin.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n195"></a>195</span> Since promoted to a higher grade.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n196"></a>196</span> <em>Enqu�te sur </em>le 18 Mars, Vol. II, p. 239.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n197"></a>197</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a20">Appendix XX</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n198"></a>198</span> Heard and reported by the author of the book Le <em>Fond </em>de la Soci�t� sous la Commune. The author wittily adds, ‘What the devil was this imbecile solicitous about?’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n199"></a>199</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a21">Appendix XXI</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n200"></a>200</span> The Versaillese calumniators, pursuing him even to his last hour, spread abroad that he had confessed to a Jesuit, and had disavowed his writings ‘in presence of the gendarmes and nuns.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n201"></a>201</span> ‘Marshal MacMahon to General Vinoy, 29th May, 10.5 morning. — Our propositions to enter the fort, Prince of Saxony has given the order to enlarge the blockade, in order to leave the French authorities free to act as they think fit. He has promised to preserve the blockade.’ — Vinoy, <em>L'Armistice et la Commune</em>, p. 430.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n202"></a>202</span> In the Boulevard des Italiens women kissed the boots of the mounted officers who escorted the convoys. A journalist, Francisque Sarcey, wrote: ‘With what serene joy the eye rested on the loyal faces of those brave gendarmes, who marched with a sprightly step by the sides of the hideous column, forming a martial and severe framework!’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n203"></a>203</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a22">Appendix XXII</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n204"></a>204</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a23">Appendix XXIII</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n205"></a>205</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a24">Appendix XXIV</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n206"></a>206</span> Later on all the names will be known. Let us cite from amongst a hundred. At the mairie of the fifth arrondissement the colonel of the National Guard, Galle; at the seventh, M. Gabriel Ossude and M. Blamont; at the College Bonaparte, M. de Soulanges, chief of the 69th battalion; at the mairie of the ninth arrondissement, M. Charpentier; at the Elys�e, M. de St. Geniez, chief of the 3rd battalion; at the Luxembourg, MM. Gosselin, Parfait, Daniel; at the <em>mairie </em>of the thirteenth arrondissement, MM. D'Avril, chief of the 4th battalion, Lascol, chief of the 17th Thierce; at the Chatelet, Vabre in a few hours achieved an atrocious celebrity.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n207"></a>207</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a25">Appendix XXV</a></p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n208"></a>208</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a26">Appendix XXVI</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n209"></a>209</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a27">Appendix XXVII</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n210"></a>210</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a28">Appendix XXVIII</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n211"></a>211</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a29">Appendix XXIX</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n212"></a>212</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a30">Appendix XXX</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n213"></a>213</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a31">Appendix XXXI</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n214"></a>214</span> The journal L'Ari�geois has published the text of the report addressed to the colonel of the 67th of the line by Lieutenant Sicre, a native of the department of Ari�ge who had taken part in the arrest of Varlin, and commanded the firing-party. We extract the following passage: ‘Amongst the objects found on him were a pocket-book bearing his name, a purse containing 284 francs 15 centimes, a penknife, a silver watch, and a card of the man Tridon.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n215"></a>215</span> Some foreign journals uttered the same cry. The <em>Naval </em>and Military Gazette of the 27th May said, ‘We are deliberately of opinion that hanging is too good a death for such villains to die, and if medical science could be advanced by operating upon the living body of the malefactors who have crucified their country, we at least should find no fault with the experiment.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n216"></a>216</span> At a wineshop of the Place Voltaire we met some quite young soldiers on the Sunday morning. They were marine-fusiliers of the 1871 class. ‘And are there many dead?’ said we. ‘Ah! answered one of them in a stupefied tone, ‘we have the order to make no prisoners; it is the general who told us’ (they could not tell us the name of their general). ‘If they had not lighted thee fires they would not have been served thus; but as they set on fire, we must kin’. (verbatim) Then he went on talking to his comrade. ‘This morning there’ (and he pointed to the barricade of the mairie), ‘one came up in a blouse. We led him off. “You are not going to shoot me?” said he. “Oh, I should think not!” We made him pass in front of us, and then, pan, pan; and didn’t he kick about funnily!’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n217"></a>217</span> Sixty-three officers killed and 430 wounded, 794 soldiers dead and 6024 wounded — in all, 877 dead and 6454 wounded. <em>Rapport du Mar�chal MacMahon</em>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n218"></a>218</span> This is the exact number of the hostages executed: four at Sainte P�lagie,, six at the Roquette, forty-eight at the Rue Haxo, four at the Petite Roquette, and the banker Jecker.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n219"></a>219</span> The Count de Mun said (<em>Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, </em>Vol. II, p. 276), ‘When they were shot, they all died with a kind of insolence which cannot be attributed to a moral sentiment’ (the sentiment of the executioner, Monsieur de Mun, no doubt), ‘and can only be attributed to the resolution to come to an end by death rather than live by working.’ It is true that MacMahon had said (p. 28), ‘They seemed to think they were defending a sacred cause, the independence of Paris. In their intentions some of them may have been of good faith.’ Who is more odious, he who believes he is killing an ‘insolent’, or he who knows that he is killing a martyr?</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n220"></a>220</span> ‘On the Seine may be seen a long trail of blood following the course of the water and passing under the second arch from the side <em>of </em>the Tuileries. This trail never stopped.’ <em>La Libert� </em>of the 31st May.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n221"></a>221</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a32">Appendix XXXII</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n222"></a>222</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a33">Appendix XXXIII</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n223"></a>223</span> This is the figure given by General Appert in the <em>Enquire </em>sur <em>le 18 Mars. </em>MacMahon has said, ‘When men surrender their arms they must not be shot; that was admitted. Unhappily, on certain points, the instructions 1 had given were forgotten. I can, however, affirm that the number <em>of </em>executions has been very restricted.’ Admire the logic <em>of </em>this reasoning. No doubt a list has been kept of all, oblivious as to the victims of the prevotal courts; the ‘loyal soldier’ ignores them completely.</p>
<p class="information">Several days after the battle the <em>Nationale, </em>a Liberal-conservative paper, said, ‘In official circles it is estimated that 20,000 is the number of Federals killed, shot, or dead in consequence <em>of </em>wounds received during the days of May. We should not have dared to give this figure, which seems to us considerable, if we had not got this information from officers who have declared that this estimate is very probably correct.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n224"></a>224</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a34">Appendix XXXIV</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n225"></a>225</span> This fact and the following one are not only attested by the prisoners, but by the journals of order and the correspondents of the conservative foreign newspapers speaking as eye-witnesses. <a href="appendix.htm#a35">Appendix XXXV</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n226"></a>226</span> ‘I observed a slender figure walking alone, in the costume of the National Guard, with long fair hair floating over the shoulders, a bright blue eye, and a handsome, bold young face, that seemed to know neither shame nor fear. When the spectators detected at a glance that this seeming young National Guardsman was a woman, their indignation found vent in strong language; but the only response of the victim was to glare right and left with heightened colour and flashing eyes. If the French nation were composed only of Frenchwomen, what a terrible nation it would be!’ The Times, 29th May, 1871.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n227"></a>227</span> They treated in this manner M. Ratisbonne, he who in the D�bats had just written, ‘What an inestimable victory!’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n228"></a>228</span> These facts are borne witness to be several conservative journals, among others the <em>Siecle. </em>We cite this paper in preference to the Figarist journals, which might be suspected of having amplified the glory of the army. ‘The day before yesterday there has been (at Satory) an attempt at revolt. The soldiers began by aiming at the most mutinous; but as this procedure did not seem sufficiently expeditious, machine-guns were advanced, which fired into the crowd. Order was re-established, but at what a price!’ (Versailles, 27th May). ‘Towards four o'clock in the morning a new rising took place amongst the prisoners of Satory. There were several machine-gun volleys, and, as you may suppose, the number of dead and wounded must have been rather considerable.’ (Versailles, May 28).</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n229"></a>229</span> Among others, one Thierce, Leiutenant-colonel, who had presided at the executions in the thirteenth arrondissement.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n230"></a>230</span> At the Beaujon Hospital there was a wounded Federal whom all the staff wanted to save. Only one person refused, the doctor Delbeau, head-surgeon and professor in the faculty of medicine. He sent up the soldiers of the neighbouring post and had the poor fellow taken away. Be it said to the honour of the students that they forced him some months after to suspend his lectures.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n231"></a>231</span> The numbers of the registers where the denunciations were inscribed enabled the proof of this statistic of infamy, published by the spy journals of the time, to he ascertained.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n232"></a>232</span> One of these orders, which commanded Milliere to set fire to the left bank, was signed Billioray, who had fled on the 21st, and Dombrowski, already dead at this time.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n233"></a>233</span> ‘General <em>Enterprise of </em>Parisian Sweeping. — The repression must equal the crime. These are the means by which this result <em>win </em>be arrived at. The members of the Commune, the chiefs of the insurrection, the members of the committees, courtsmartial and revolutionary tribunals, the foreign generals and officers, the deserters, the assassins of Montmartre, La Roquette, and Mazas, <em>the p�troleurs and </em>the p�troleuses, the ticket-of-leave men, are to be shot. Martial law must be applied in all its rigour to the journalists who have placed the torch and the chassepot in the hands of fanatic imbeciles. A part of these measures have already been put into practice. Our soldiers have simplified the work of the courts-martial of Versailles by shooting on the spot; but it must not be overlooked that a great many culprits have escaped chastisement.’ <em>Le </em>Figaro of the 8th June.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n234"></a>234</span> Report of General Appert, Table I, pp. 215,262.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n235"></a>235</span> Report of Captain Guichard, <em>Enqu�te sur </em>le 18 Mars, Vol. III, p. 313.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n236"></a>236</span> The Journal <em>des D�bats estimated </em>that ‘the losses by the party of the insurrection in dead and prisoners reached the figure of 100,000 individuals.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n237"></a>237</span> In the Figaro of the 8th June — the same number which contained the plan of massacre — might be read, ‘We have received the following letter from M. Louis Blanc:</p>
<p class="information">“To Monsieur Philippe Gille.</p>
<p class="information">“Sir, — I read in an article signed by you that the honest Republican party has the right to expect a protestation from me against the abominations of which Paris has been the theatre and the victim. This observation surprises me.</p>
<p class="information">“What honest man could, without lacking self-respect, believe himself obliged to warn the public that incendiarism, pillage, and assassination horrify him? I esteem myself enough to judge that, on my part, a declaration is perfectly useless.<br>
"When, too, public indignation is so legitimate and so great, are you aware, sir, that in the tribunals the silence of the assistants is obligatory; so true is it that the duty of everybody is to remain silent when the judge is about to speak. Receive, sir, the assurance of my regard.<br>
Louis Blanc.” ‘</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n238"></a>238</span> <em>The Civil War in France</em>. Address of the Council of the International WorkingMen’s Association.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n239"></a>239</span> These details are extracted from very numerous notes furnished not only by the prisoners, among others by Elis�e Reclus, but by persons entire strangers to the Commune, municipal councillors of seaport towns, foreign journalists, etc.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n240"></a>240</span> General Appert’s report is not only silent with regard to these ignominious proceedings, but lies with a placidity that is frightful. He says, for instance, ‘The prisoners of the pontoons were treated like the sailors, with this difference, that they did no work and got frequent distributions of wine.’ Of the cages, the vermin, the blows, not a word. In the same manner he recounts, in the style of a pretentious quartermaster, the history of the Commune and of the last struggles. It would be doing him too much honour to point out how his absurd statements contradict each other. And yet it is from these official lies that all bourgeois historians have till today compiled their histories.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n241"></a>241</span> Letter addressed to the <em>Libert� </em>of Brussels.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n242"></a>242</span> Besides the 27,837 prisoners officially recognized at the pontoons, 8472 others wore admitted as being dispersed at Satory, L'Orangerie, Les Chautiers, the houses of justice and correction of Rouen-Clermont and St. Cyr. On the 15th of October there were still 3500 in the prisons of Versailles.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n243"></a>243</span> The former resort of all sorts of criminals.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n244"></a>244</span> The great political hecatombs have taken place in France since the decree of the Provisional Government of 1848.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n245"></a>245</span> Here is a sample, and not one of the most emphatic: ‘We must make no mistake,’ said <em>La Libert�</em>; ‘we must, above all, not stand on niceties; this is certainly a band of scoundrels, assassins, thieves, and incendiaries whom we have before our eyes. To argue from their situation of accused in order to exact for them the respect and benefit of the law which supposes them innocent would be a want of faith. No, no! a thousand times no! These are not ordinary accused; they were taken, some in the very act, and the others have so surely signed their culpability by authentic and solemn acts that it suffices to establish their identity in order to cry with the full and sonorous. voice of conviction, “Yes, yes! they are guilty!”</p>
<p class="information">‘The detained witnesses are, for the most part, sinister bandits, with atrocious faces, repulsive types, especially the youngest, and whom one would not like to meet even in broad daylight at the corner of a wood.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n246"></a>246</span> Family and morality were triumphing along the whole line. Some days after the fall of the Commune, the first president of the Court of Cassation, the official go-between of the amours of Napoleon III, solemnly reoccupied, before all the courts united, his scat, whence the hypocritical prudery of the men of the 4th September had expelled him.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n247"></a>247</span> Let us cite Dupont de Bussac, and above au L�on Bigot, who defended Maroteau, Lisbonne, and a great number of obscure prisoners. For a year he gave them his time, his labour, his money, publishing memoirs, exhausting himself in applications. He died in harness, falling, struck by apoplexy, even at the bar. The friends of the Commune will not forge this noble devotion.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n248"></a>248</span> He was condemned in 1876 to five years’ imprisonment for embezzlement.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n249"></a>249</span> In the law-schools is there no one to undertake it? What finer cause to begin with for a young man? What noble occasion to efface the great wrongs of the schools during the Commune, to bring nearer the proletariat this part of our youth, which is drifting further from them every day?</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n250"></a>250</span> ‘To this demand of the communication of judicial evidence,’ said the tribunal of Budapest in its judgment, ‘the French Government has answered by purely and simply transmitting the sentence of the court-martial. In this sentence there exists no trace of proof, nor any precise evidence establishing culpability. Considering that this verdict is totally destitute of evidence and legal proofs, and that it indicates no means of procuring them, this tribunal exonerates Frankel from the charges brought against him.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n251"></a>251</span> Here are their names, which truly belong to the history of the people:-Martel, president; Piou, vice-president; the Count Octave de Bastard, Felix Voisin, secretaries; Batbie, the Count de Maill�, the Count Duchatel, Peltereau-Villeneuve, Francois Sacaze, Tailhaud, the Marquis de Quinsonnas, Bigot, Merveilleux-Duvignan, Paris, (;Orne.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n252"></a>252</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a37">Appendix XXXVII</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n253"></a>253</span> According to reactionary journals this agent had been first bound to a board, an odious invention, which nothing that came out during the trial could justify. Vizentini, seized in a spontaneous outburst of fury and thrown immediately into the Seine, might even have been saved, if a board to which he clung had not in tipping over struck him on the head.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n254"></a>254</span> Report of General Apport.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n255"></a>255</span> Thus the seizures nude during the house-searches, in virtue of regular mandates, were classed among the acts of theft with violence, pillage, etc., as though these acts had had any personal motive. Now it is necessary to point out that no one gave evidence of theft against the prisoners before the courts-martial; no one could say that the conflagrations had been taken advantage of for pillage.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n256"></a>256</span> ‘We all recollect one of our comrades, Corcelles, who had contracted pulmonary phthisis of the gravest form. He could scarcely keep himself on his legs when crawling before the Commission. To the President’s usual question he answered by a pitiful smile only, and while one of the younger members of the Commission, moved probably to pity at the sight of the walking corpse, bent himself towards the ear of the old surgeon, doubtless with the view of begging a respite, the latter retorted. loud enough to be heard by the patient and several other prisoners, ‘Bah! the sharks will want something to eat.’ And the sharks did have something to eat; less than three weeks after we were out at sea our friend Corcelles was dead, and we committed his remains to the last common reservoir.’ We must give the name of this friend of sharks; his name is Dr. Chanal. ‘Out of the four thousand condemned who passed in file before him, ten cases of exemption are not known. And perhaps the motives which dictated this may be better judged when the following facts are known. M. Edmond Adam, deputy of the Seine, having come to the Ile de R� in order to visit M. H. Rochefort, who was shut up there, had a young woman present herself at his hotel, who proposed to him, for the modest sum of 1000 francs, to procure from the chief-surgeon a respite for his friend on his departure. She had but one word to say, remarked she, and the old man was under her orders.’ (Account by two escaped prisoners from New Caledonia, Paschal Grousset and Jourde, published by <em>The Times, </em>27th June 1874.)</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n257"></a>257</span> The Australian and English journal: ‘The news of the convict ship the <em>Orne,</em> transmitted through the English press, is inexact in all points. Far from counting 420 cases of scurvy, this vessel had hardly 360 cases.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n258"></a>258</span> Report of the Commission of Pardons, presented in January 1876, by MM. Martel and F. Voisin.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n259"></a>259</span> In the Ile des Pins, 900 condemned received between them all 500 hectaries (about 100 acres). ‘We have been mistaken as to the resources offered by the Ile des Pins.’ philosophically remarked the Minister of Marine in 1876. ‘1 said so three years ago,’ answered M. Georges P�rin.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n260"></a>260</span> ‘Admiral Ribourt, in his Inquiry, declares that during the year 1873 the engineering department had paid the condemned in the peninsula 110,525 francs. We must then leave off saying that the convicts won’t work.’ (Speech of M. Georges P�rin in favour of an amnesty, Sitting of the 17th May 1876.)</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n261"></a>261</span> An overlooker of the first class had been condemned for an attempt to murder; another, decorated with the cross of the L�gion d'Honneur, sentenced to seven years’ hard labour for attempting to murder his wife. Many of them were every day condemned for drunkenness.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n262"></a>262</span> Details taken from the very correct and by no means exaggerated relation which Paschal Grousset and Jourde published in <em>The Times </em>after their escape. It has since been republished as a pamphlet.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n263"></a>263</span> Two notorious murderers.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n264"></a>264</span> The Pole condemned for having shot at the Tsar in Paris.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n265"></a>265</span> One of them has given a complete account of their escape, together with some interesting details on New Caledonia: <em>Un Voyage de Circumnavigation</em>, by A. Baillere.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n266"></a>266</span> On the 22nd December 1876, Baron, ex-delegate of the accountants of Paris to the Workmen’s Congress, was summoned before the third court-martial, which accused him of having been one of the secretaries of the delegation of war during the Commune. Baron was condemned to transportation in a fortress. During the examination the president said, ‘The Court will take notice that the accused still has the same sentiments as those which animated him in 187 1, for in 1876 we have seen that he took part in the Workmen’s Congress.’</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n267"></a>267</span> <a href="appendix.htm#a38">Appendix XXXVIII</a>.</p>
<p class="information"><span class="info"><a name="n268"></a>268</span> Even in the month of April 1877 another ship, having 506 condemned to transportation, has been despatched from France to New Caledonia.</p>
<p class="skip"> </p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="footer">
<a href="glossary.htm">Glossary</a> |
<a href="index.htm">Contents</a> |
<a href="appendix.htm">Appendix</a><br>
</p>
</body> |
Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Author’s Notes
1 The prefect of police, Pietri, attests it: ‘It is certain that on that day the revolution might have succeeded, for the crowd which surrounded the Corps L�gislatif on the 9th August was composed of elements similar to those which triumphed on the 4th September.’ Enqu�te sur Le 4 Septembre, Vol. I, p. 253.
2 Let it be understood that I proceed, the words of our adversaries in hand parliamentary inquiries, memoirs, reports, histories: that I do not attribute to them an act or a word which has not been avowed by them, their documents, or their friends. When I say M. Thiers saw, M. Theirs knew, it is that M. Thiers has said, I saw, page 6, I knew, page 11, Vol. I of the Enqu�te sur let Actes du Gouvernement de la Defense Nationale. It will be the same with all the acts and words of all the official or adverse personages that I quote.
3 See the evidence of the Marquis de Talhouet, reporter of the Commission charged with verifying the famous despatch which precipitated the vote for war. Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre Vol. I, p. 121-124.
4 Compte-rendu du 31 Octobre by Milli�re.
5 Which did not, however, prevent his accepting a secret mission during the Crimean war. He was commissioned by Napoleon III to propose to the English to betray Turkey by limiting the war to the defence of Constantinople.
6 Enqu�te sur Le 4 Septembre, Jules Brame, Vol.. I, p. 201.
7 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 194.
8 Ibid., p. 313.
9 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 330.
10 In his official report, Jules Favre, to clear the Government, did not neglect to assume the responsibility of this mission, which he said he had undertaken without the knowledge of his colleagues.
11 Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Garnier-Pages, vol. i. p. 445.
12 ‘Constantly in relations with the anxious population, which urgently asked what was going on, what the Government thought, what it was doing, we were obliged to screen it; to say that it was acting for the best; that it had given itself up entirely to the defence; that the chiefs of the army were most devoted and working with ardour... We said this without knowing, without believing it. We knew nothing.’ Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Corbon, Vol. I, p. 375.
13 Enqu�tes sur le 4 Septembre, Jules Ferry. He even calls the armistice a ‘compensation’.
14 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 432.
15 Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Vol. I, p. 395. The deposition of this imbecile, still as naive as ever, is all the more conclusive.
16 ‘We were able to unite 40,000 men by telling the National Guards that Blanqui and Flourens occupied the H�tel-de-Ville. These two names did not fail to produce their usual effect.’ Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, ed. Adam, Vol. II, p. 157. ‘If the name of Blanqui had not been pronounced, the new elections announced by the poster of Dorian and Schoelcher would have taken place the next day.’ Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Jules Ferry, Vol. I, p. 396-431.
17 See the affirmation of Dorian. Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Vol. I, p. 527-528.
18 He offered a musket of honour to anyone who would kill the King of Prussia, and patronized a Greek-fire that was to roast the German army.
19 Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Jules Favre, Vol. II, p. 42.
20 Even Felix Pyat was arrested. He managed to get out of prison through a jest, writing to Emmanuel Arago: ‘What a pity that I should be your prisoner; you might have been my advocate.’ He was set free.
21 The Minister of War, Lefl�, who naturally undervalues everything, says, ‘This left us, while assuring the operations of the siege against the Prussians, a disposable force of 230,000 to 240,000 men.’
22 Appendix I.
23 Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Cresson, Vol. II, p. 135.
24 Jules Simon, Souvenirs du 4 Septembre. Literally his expressions.
25 Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Jules Favre, Vol. II, p. 43.
26 After the disaster of Orleans, which cut our army in two, he wrote: ‘The army of the Loire is far from being annihilated; it is separated into two armies of equal strength.’
27 They avoided drawing up minutes to prevent even the appearance of being a municipality (Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Jules Ferry, Vol. I, p. 406). A dozen of these brave ones met with a few adjuncts at the mairie of the third arrondissement. They confined their whole efforts to seeking someone to replace Trochu. One of them, M. Corbon, has said (Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. II, p. 613): ‘However displeased they might have been at the manner affairs were conducted by the Defence, they would not for the world overthrow or weaken the Government.’
28 This poster was drawn up by Tridon and Vall�s.
29 ‘See,’ said they, ‘what a terrible responsibility we should incur if we consented any longer to remain the passive instruments of a policy condemned by the interests of France and of the Republic.’
30 See the Minutes of the Government of the Defence, evidently arranged for the best by M. Dr�o, the son-in-law of Garnier-Pages.
31 Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Ducrot, Vol. III, p. xx.
32 See the Minutes of the Government of Defence.
33 Who bears witness to the bravery of the National Guard? Superior officers themselves. See in the Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, the depositions of General Lefl�, Vice-Admiral Pothuan, Colonel Lambert, and Trochu, speaking from the tribune: ‘If 1 did not fear to appear intrusive, I could show that up to the close of the day the inexperienced National Guards took and retook with the energy of old troops, under terrific fire, the heights that had been abandoned. It was necessary to hold them at any price in order to effect the retreat of the troops engaged in the centre. I had told them so, and they sacrificed themselves without hesitation.’
34 Vinoy’s corps, which took Montretout, had five regiments and one battalion of infantry, nineteen battalions of mobiles, five regiments of National Guards. That of General Bellemare, which took Buzenval, had five regiments of line, seventeen battalions of mobiles, eight regiments of National Guards.
35 ‘We shall give the National Guard a little peppering (�crabouiller un peu la garde nationale) since they wish it,’ said a colonel of infantry, much annoyed at this affair. Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre. Colonel Chaper, Vol. II, p. 281.
36 He told them by way of consolation that ‘from the evening of the 4th September he had declared that it would be madness to attempt sustaining a siege by the Prussian army.’ Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Corbon, Vol. IV, p. 389.
37 He has pronounced these words of perfect Jesuitism: To yield to hunger is to die, not to capitulate.’ Jules Simon, Souvenirs do 4 Septembre, p. 299.
38 Deposition of General Soumairs, Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Vol. II, p. 215.
39 What disgrace! 175,000 men pretending that they had been add by a single one! In the Seven years War, in Westphalia, at Minden, when General Morangies prepared to capitulate, 1500 men, roused by a corporal, refused to surrender, forced their way and rejoined the army of the Count of Clermont.
40 Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Arnaud de l'Ari�ge, Vol. II, p. 320-321.
41 ‘I return from Versailles. I have come to terms with M. de Bismarck, and it has been agreed upon between us as a matter of honour the firing should cease.’ Order sent by Jules Favre on the 27th, seven o'clock evening. Vinoy, L'Armistice et la Commune, p. 67.
42 The decree sacrificed fifteen and spared twenty-four.
43 A. Arnaud, Avrail, Beslay, Blanqui, Demay, Dereure, Dupas, E. Dupont, J. Durand, E. Duval, Eudes, Flotte, Frankel, Gambon, Goupil, Granger, Humbert, Jaclard, Jarnigon, Lacambre, Lacord, Langevin, Lefran�ais, Leverdays, Longuet, Macdonnel, Maim, Meillet, Minet, Oudet, Pindy, F. Pyat, Ranvier, Rey, Rouillier, Serraillier, Theisz, Tolain, Tridon, Vaillant, Valles, Varlin. The names of those who were elected members of the Commune are in italics.
44 In the Vengeur, which had taken the place of the Combat, he proved, documents in hand, that for years Jules Favre had been guilty of forgery, bigamy, and falsification of papers of legitimation.
45 After the five returned, sixteen candidates of La Corderie obtained from 65,000 votes to 22,000 votes; Tridon 65,707; Duval 22,499.
46 Which, besides, has been recounted by Marc Dufraisse in the Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Vol. IV, p. 428.
47 Cluseret, an ex-officer, decorated in 1848 for his spirited conduct. ‘I unfortunately displayed too much energy in that disastrous battle,’ he wrote in Fraser’s Magazine of March 1873. Attached to the Arabian Bureaux, he threw up his commission after the Crimean War, and not being able to play a part in Europe, engaged in the American Civil War for a short time, then withdrew to New York, where he campaigned with his pen. Misunderstood by the bourgeoisie of the two worlds, he again took to politics, but from the opposite side; offered himself to the Irish insurgents; landed in Ireland urging them to rise, and one fine night abandoned them. The nascent International also saw this powerful general come and offer his services. He did a good deal in the way of pamphleteering; tried to impress upon the workmen that he was the sword and buckler of Socialism. ‘We or nothing,’ said he to the sons of the massacred of June. The Government of the 4th September having also failed to appreciate his genius, he called Gambetta Prussian, and got himself sent as delegate to Lyons by the Corderie, where Varlin, whom he deceived for a long time, had introduced him. He offered the Lyons council to organize an army of volunteers which was to operate on the flank of the enemy.
48 The working men’s quarters of Lyons.
49 Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Gambetta, Vol. I, p. 560.
50 The Jew Cremieux lived with the Ultramontane Archbishop Guibert (since made Archbishop of Paris) in his episcopal palace at Tours, dining every day at his table, and in return rendering him all the little services asked for by the clergy.
51 See above.
52 Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Gambetta, Vol. I, p. 561.
53 D'Aurelles de Paladines, La Premi�re Arm�e de la Loire, p. 93.
54 De Freycinet, La Guerre en Province, p. 86, 87.
55 Ibid., p. 91.
56 On the 11th the delegate telegraphed to D'Aurelles: ‘We fully approve of the dispositions you had taken for your troops round Orleans . . . You will receive instructions. In the meantime redouble your vigilance in prevision of a return to the offensive on the part of the enemy.’ D'Aurelles de Paladines, La Premiere Arm�e de la Loire, p. 120. Thus, far from speaking of attacking, the Delegation only thought of the defensive.
57 ‘It was only when they could not help it that they made up their minds to act,’ Gambetta has said in the Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre. The avowal is precious, coming from him.
58 It is most amusing to hear D'Aurelles chaffing Trochu without perceiving that he is just as ridiculous. In his evidence (Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Vol. III, p. 201) he says: ‘I did not deposit either a plan or a testament at a lawyer’s: I confined myself to writing to the Bishop of Orl�ans: Monsignor, the army of the Loire today sets out on its march to meet the army of General Ducrot. Pray, Monsignor, for the salvation of France.’
59 And what other name is merited by the general who abandoned his post in the field to go and negotiate with the sovereign whom France had expelled?
60 Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Rolland, Voo. III, p. 456.
61 Ibid., Dalloz, Vol. IV, p. 398.
62 If General Boyer, who saw the letter, is to be believed, the Delegation of Tours on the 24th October made officious advances to the Empress, and then gave the order to the charg�-d'affaires at London to go and thank her for the patriotism that she had shown in refusing to treat with Bismarck, who trifled with her as well as with Bazaine. See Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Vol. IV, p. 253.
63 Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Admiral Jaureguiberry, Vol. III, p. 297.
64 3rd arrondissement. A. Genotal; 4th, Alavoine; 5th, Manet; 6th, V. Frontier; 7th, Badois; 8th, Morterol; 9th, Mayer; 10th, Arnold; 11th Piconel; 12th, Audoynaud; 13th, Soncial; 14th, Dacosta; 15th, Masson; 16th, P�; 17th, Weber; 18th, Trouillet; 19th, Lagarde; 20th, A. Bonit. Courty remained president, Ramel secretary.
65 Vinoy, L'Armistice et la Commune, p. 128.
66 The reactionaries have said that this fear was feigned; that the cannon were safe from the Prussians. This is so false that the general staff itself feared a surprise. See Mortemart, chef d'�tat-major, Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Vol. II, p. 344.
67 Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Colonel Lavigne, Vol. II, p. 467.
68 ‘The first cannon were taken, carried away, on the news of the entry of the Prussians. And these, gentlemen, believe me, were carried off by citizens devoted to order, the National Guards of Passy and Auteuil, and taken where? From the Ranelagh.’ Jules Ferry, Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. II, p. 63.
69 A. Alavoine, A. Bouit, Frontier, Boursier, David, Buisson, Harond, Gritz, Tessier, Ramel, Badois, Arnold, Piconel, Audoynaud, Masson, Weber, Lagarde, J. Laroque, J. Bergeret, Pouchain, Lavalette, Fleury, MaIjournal, Couteau, Cadaze, Gastaud, Dutil, Matt�, Mutin. Ten only of those elected on the 15th figure in this document. Various delegations, abstentions, and irregular adhesions had given nearly twenty new names.
70 Roger du Nord, the chief of D'Aurelles’ staff, heard it said in all the fractions of the National Guard, ‘Why place a man of such energy at the head of the National Guard if not to make a coup d'�tat?’ Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. II.
71 The National Guards of each of the twenty arrondissements were formed into a separate legion.
72 Arnold, J. Bergeret, Bouit, Castioni, Chauvi�re, Chouteau, Courty, Dutil, Fleury, Frontier, H. Fortun�, Lacord, Lagarde, Lavalette, MaIjournal, Matt�, Ostyn, Piconel, Pindy, Prudhomme, Varlin, H. Verlet, Viard. Many of these names, those of the representatives elected on the 3rd, were new ones. On the other hand, many of those that had figured in the placard of the 28th were missing, because only those signed who were present at the sitting.
73 He dared to say from the tribune that he only returned on the 3rd ‘to save Paris from any demagogic attempts.’
74 The prefecture of Rennes posted up this despatch of the Government: ‘A criminal insurrection is being organized in Paris. I send forces which, joined to the honest National Guards of Paris and to the other regular troops which are still stationed there, will suppress, I hope, this odious attempt.’
75 Jules Ferry, who had remained at Paris, telegraphed on the 5th to the Government: ‘Never has a Sunday been calmer, notwithstanding sinister reports. The population is enjoying the sun and their promenades as if nothing had happened. I no longer believe in the danger.’
76 ‘The vote of the Assembly’, wrote Jules Favre, ‘was received at Paris with extreme disfavour; not only amongst the fanatics and the agitators; all classes of the population showed themselves almost unanimous. Everyone saw in it an affront and a menace. It was repeated everywhere that this was the first act of a monarchical coup d'�tat; that the Assembly was ready to name a king, and that, knowing the unpopularity of its work, it sought to accomplish it far from the eyes of those who might oppose it.’
77 This is the Committee which many took for the Central Committee.
78 Some Bourse speculators, in the belief that a campaign of six weeks would give a fresh impulse to the speculations they were living upon, said, ‘It is a disagreeable moment to pass through, some 50,000 men to be sacrificed, after which the horizon will dear and commerce revive.’ M. Thiers, Enqu�te sur le 4 Septembre, Vol. 1, p. 9.
79 Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, M. Thiers, Vol. II, p. 11.
80 In the evening D'Aurelles assembled forty of the most reliable, and asked them if their battalions would march. They all said their men were not to be counted upon. Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. II, p. 435, 456.
81 This is the number of pieces given by M. Thiers in the Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars.
82 This order enjoining the troop to march off in the midst of the National Guards was drawn up in pencil by a captain. Lecomte copied it in ink without changing a word. The court-martial has denied this, in order to glorify this general, who died so pusillanimously.
83 Five to six hundred, says M. Thiers: fourteen men per battalion, says Jules Ferry. Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars.
84 M. Thiers in the Enquire sur le 18 Mars says, firstly, ‘We let them march off,’ then, twenty lines further, ‘We repulsed them.’ Lefl� has not concealed the fright the Council was in: ‘The moment seemed critical to me. And I said, ‘I think we are done for; we shall be carried off,’ and indeed the battalions had only to penetrate into the palace and we were all taken to the last man. But the three battalions marched off without saying anything.’ Vol. II, p. 80.
85 The report of the Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars said that ‘the Committee did not hesitate on the afternoon of the 18th March to take possession of all the administrations.’ This is if not a lie, intended to palliate the stampede of M. Thiers — one of the grossest proofs of the ignorance of this report, which attributes the demonstration of the 24th of February to an order of the Central Committee,
86 See Appendix II, the details of the proceedings of the Central Committee during this day, told by one of its members.
87 Vinoy has the impudence to say in his book L'Armistice er la Commune: ‘The general assembled his men, and sword in hand he bravely placed himself at the head of his troops.
88 Ten days after he recounted in a crazy letter written in the Conciergerie that he had done everything; taken the H�tel-de-Ville, the Prefecture of Police, the Place Vend�me, the Tuileries, etc.; and this letter is referred to as an authority by the report of the Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars! For the future, I shall abstain from pointing out the errors that abound in this report, which is an ignorant and malignant r�sum� of the lies, inaccuracies, and animosity accumulated in this Inquiry, from which all the vanquished, and even the smallest adversaries, were excluded. Entirely insufficient as a historical source, it may well serve to set forth the intelligence and morality of the French bourgeoisie of the epoch.
89 Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Marreille, Vol. II, p. 200.
90 Assi, Billioray, Ferrat, Babick, Ed. Moreau, C. Dupont, Yarlin, Boursier, Mortier, Gouhier, Lavalette, F. jourde, Rousseau, C. Lullier, Blanchet, J. Grollard, Barrond, H. Geresme, Fabre, Fougeret, the members present at the morning sitting. The Committee decided later that its publications should bear the names of all its members.
91 The minutes of the first Central Committee have disappeared, but one of its most assiduous members has restored the principal sittings from memory. It is from his notes, checked by several of his colleagues, that we have taken these details. It is superfluous to say that the minutes published by the Paris journal, which have been used by reactionary historians, are incomplete, inexact, drawn up from hearsay, unintelligent indiscretions, and often from pure imagination. Thus, for instance, they make all the sittings presided over by Assi, attributing to him the principal part, because under the Empire he was very incorrectly supposed to have directed the strike of Creuzot. Assi never had any influence in the Committee.
92 Verbatim. It is from the little man of Paris that the little man of Versailles borrowed the phrase, completing it himself.
93 I need not justify the long quotations I shall make. The French proletarian has never been allowed to speak in books of history; at least he should do so in the recital of his own revolution.
94 The two generals have testified to the extreme consideration shown them in their prison. See the Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars. Two days later, on Chanzy’s simple promise not to serve against Paris, the Central Committee set them free.
95 Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Dr. Danet, Vo.. II, p. 531.
96 Of course the Radicals have seen in this a Bonapartist manoeuvre, have written and said from the tribune of the Assembly, ‘The Bonapartist director of the Bank of France saved the Revolution; without the million of the Monday the Central Committee would have capitulated.’ Two facts answer this: From the 19th the Committee had in the Ministry of Finance 4,600,000 francs; the municipal coffers contained 1,200,000 francs, and on the 21st the Octroi had brought in 500,000 more.
97 The aggression was so evident, that not one of the twenty court-martials that searched into every detail of the revolution of the 18th March dared allude to the affair of the Place Vend�me.
98 Their names were published in the Journal Officiel.
99 Here are the names of those who signed the proclamations and nod= of the Committee. We shall restore, as far as possible, their correct orthography, often altered, even in the Officiel, to the extent of giving fictitious names: Andignoux, A. Arnaud, G. Arnold, A. Assi, Babick, Barrond, Bergeret, Billioray, Bouit, Boursier, Blanchet, Castioni, Chouteau, C. Dupont, Eudes, Fabre, Ferrat, Fleury, H. Fortun�, Fougeret, Gaudier, Geresme, Gouhier, Grelier, J. Grollard, Josselin, jourde, Lavalette, Lisbonne, Lullier, Maljournal, Ed. Moreau, Mortier, Prudhomme, Ranvier, Routscan, Varlin, Viard. Notwithstanding the decision of the Committee, all its members did not always sign the proclamations. Finally, some who took part in certain deliberations never signed at all.
100 This order had been given the evening before. The treachery of Du Bisson, nominated chief of the staff by Lullier, had prevented its execution.
101 Tirard: ‘My whole preoccupation and that of my colleagues had been to postpone the elections so as to reach the date of the 3rd April.’ — Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. II, p.340. Vautrain: ‘My colleagues and I thus gained eight days more.’ Ibid., p. 379. J. Favre: ‘For eight days we were the only barricade raised up between the insurrection and the Government.’ Ibid., p. 385. Desmarets: ‘I believed it necessary to remain exposed to danger in order to give the Government of Versailles time for arming.’ Ibid., p. 412.
102 Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Tirard, Vol. II, p.342.
103 He then and them inaugurated this incomparable lying campaign, the progress of which we shall closely watch. On the 19th he said, ‘The army, to the number of 40,000 men, is concentrated in good order at Versailles.’ There were 23,000 men (the number given by himself in the Enqu�te) totally disbanded. On the 20th:’ The Government did not want to cater into a bloody struggle, though provoked.’ By the 21st the army had grown to 45,000 men: — the insurrection is disavowed by everybody.’ On the 22nd: ‘From all sides the Government is offered battalions of mobiles to support it against anarchy.’ On the 27th, while the votes were being counted: ‘A considerable proportion of the population and of the National Guard of Paris solicits the help of the provinces to re-establish order.’
104 ‘Considering,’ said they in their declaration, ‘that the Provisional Commune of Lyons, acclaimed by the National Guard, is no longer feeling itself supported by them, the members of the Commune declare themselves released from their engagements towards their electors, and resign all powers they have received.’
105 Certain infamous evidence must be quoted in full in order to give a notion of the delirium tremens of the great bourgeoisie when speaking of the Commune. Four months after these events the Prefect Ducros, the inventor of the famous bridges of the Marne, deposed before the Commission d'Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars: ‘They did not respect his corpse; they cut off his head. In the night, horrible to say, one of the men who had participated in the assassination, and who has been put on trial, came to a caf� offering those present pieces of M. De l'Esp�e’s skull, and cracking under his teeth pieces of the same skull.’ And Ducros dared to add: The man had been arrested, put on his trial, and acquitted.’ Horrible imaginings, which even the Radicals of St. Etienne have stigmatized.
106 The popular quarters of Marseilles.
107 This abdication was revealed before the court-martial by the advocate of one of the accused. Cosnier, fearing that it might be interpreted as an act of cowardice, blew out his brains.
108 Ad. Adam, Mane, Rochard, Barr� (1st arrondissement, Louvre); Brelay, Loiseau-Pinson, Tirard, Ch�on (2nd, Bourse); Ch. Murat (3rd, Temple); A. Le Roy, Robinet (6th, Luxembourg); Desmarets, E. Ferry, Nast (9th, Op�ra); Marmottan, De Bouteillier (16th, Pasty).
109 Goupil (6th, Luxembourg); E. Lef�vre (7th, Palais-Bourbon); A. Ranc, U. Parent (9th, Op�ra).
110 Demay, A. Arnaud, Pindy, D. Dupont (3rd, Temple); A. Arnould, Lefran�ais, Cl�mence, E. G�rardin (4th, H�tel-de-Ville); R�g�re, Jourde, Tridon, Blanchet, Ledroit (5th, Panth�on); Beslay, Varlin (6th, Luxembourg); Parizel, Urbain, Brunel (7th, Palais-Bourbon Raoul Rigault, Vaillant, A. Arnould, Alix (8th, Champs-Elys�es); Gambon, F�lix, Pyat, H. Fortun�, Champy, Babick, Rastoul (110th, Enclos St. Laurent); Mortier, Delescluze, Assi, Protot, Eudes, Avrial, Verdure (11th, Popincourt); Varlin, Gresme, Theiez, Fruneau (12th, Reuilly); L�o Meillet, Duval, Chardon, Frankel (13th, Gobelins); Billioray, Martelet, Decamp (14th, Observatoire); V. Cl�ment, J. Valles, Langevin (15th, Vaugirard); Varlin, E. Cl�ment, Ch. Girardin, Chalain, Malon (17th, Batignolles); Blanqui, Theisz, Dereure, J. B. Cl�ment, Ferr�, VennoreI, P. Grousset (18th, Montmartre); Oudet, Puget, Delescluze, J. Miot, Ostyn, Flourens (19th, Buttes-Chaumont); Bergeret, Ranvier, Flourens, Blanqui (20th, Menilmontant). Blanqui had been arrested in the South of France, where he had gone for the sake of his health.
111 See Appendix III.
112 MacMahon, with his coup-d'oeil of Reischoffen and Sedan, saw there 17,000 men. Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. II, p. 22.
113 ‘To Versailles, if we don’t want again to resort to balloons! To Versailles, if we don’t want to fall back upon pigeons! To Versailles, if we don’t want to be reduced to bran bread,’ etc., etc. — Le Vengeur, 3rd April.
114 These details, related in part by the journals of the time, have been completed by numerous comrades of Duval whom we have questioned. In his mutilated, lying, naively cynical book, Vinoy dared to say: ‘The insurgents threw down their arms and arrendered at discretion; the man called Duval was killed in the affray.’
115 ‘The general commanding the department and the procureur-general, aware that I had for thirty years been the friend of the man who commanded the Commune at Narbonne, came to solicit my intervention to induce him to submit. It was arranged that if I did not succeed I should immediately send a telegram to General Robinet, in order that the military authorities might act in consequence. At midnight 1 sent the telegram ... You do not know me; it is thanks to my personal influence that order was maintained at Carcassone.’ Speech of M. Marcou to the Assembly in answer to M. de Gavardie. Sitting of the 27th January, 1874.
116 M. Barth�emy-St.-Hilaire, Thiers’ secretary, answered Barral de Montaud, who spoke of the possibility of a massacre in the prisons: ‘The hostages! the hostages! But we can do nothing. What should we do? So much the worse for them.’ Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. II, p. 271.
117 M. Beslay, in his book Mes Souvenirs, Paris, 1873, says: ‘The cash in hand was forty and some odd millions.’ These ‘some odd’ were no less than 203 millions. They presented the good man fictitious statements, with which they gulled him. In his evidence and the annexes (Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. III, errata, p. 438), M. de Ploeuc has given the true statements.
118 These were all the reasons he could ever allege, even in his book written in Switzerland, whither M. de Ploeuc himself went to deposit him after the fall of the Commune. Besides his life being saved, he, later on, received a judicial ordinance to the effect that no further judicial proceedings were to be taken against him.
119 Out of 400 pieces cast by Paris during the siege, the Government of the National Defence only accepted forty, on the pretence that the others were imperfect. Vinoy, Si�ge de Paris, P. 287.
120 Sometimes even to falsification. In his account of the 9th Thermidor, he makes Barrere say to Billaud-Varennes, ‘Do not attack Robespierre;’ and on the strength of this expatiates on the greatness of his hero. Now, the report of Courtois that he quotes, hoping, no doubt, that no one would examine the accuracy of the statement, says, ‘Attack only,’ and not ‘Do not attack.’
121 It seems there was a split in the League. The Radicals, Floquet, Corbon, etc., disapproved of this semi-commanding attitude, and boasted of it later on before the Committee of Inquiry into the 18th March; but during the Commune they made no public protest against this address.
122 Seventy-three communes have more than 20,000 inhabitants; 108 have from 10,000
to 20,000; 309 from 5,000 to 10,000, 249 from 4,000 to 5,000; and 581 from 3,000 to 4,000. There are then only 1,320 communes having more than 3,000 inhabitants, 800 at most that possess any political life.
123 Vesinier, Cluseret, Pillot, Andrieu (I st arrondissement, Louvre); Pothier, Serraillier, 1. Durand, Johannard (2nd, Bourse); Courbet, Rogeard (6th, Luxembourg); Sicard (7th. Palais-Bourbon); Briosne (9th, Op�ra); Philippe, Lonclas (12th, Reuilly); Longuet (16th, Passy); Dupont (17th, Batignolles); Cluseret, Arnold (18th, Montmartre); Menotti Garibaldi (19th, Buttes-Chaumont); Viard, Trinquet (20th, M�nilmontant).
124 Appendix IV.
125 And what sublime faith in their naivet�! We heard in an omnibus two women on their return from the trenches. The one wept; the other said to her, ‘Do not distress yourself; our husbands will come back. And then the Commune has promised to take care of us and of our children. But no! it is impossible they should be killed in defending so good a cause. Besides I would rather have my husband dead than in the hands of the Versaillese.’
126 ‘My heart bleeds to see that only those ready to volunteer engage in the combat. This is not, citizen delegate, a denunciation; far from me such a thought; but I fear lest the weakness of the members of the Commune should cause our great projects for the future to miscarry.’ This heroic letter is taken from a book, Le Fond de la Soci�t� sous la Commune, which contains documents found by the army in different mairies and administrations. The work in general is an odious caricature, of which the author himself, a Joseph Prudhomme, in the shape of a bloodhound, is certainly the most ridiculous trait.
127 Appendix V.
128 Very approximate numbers. The return of the Officiel of the 6th May is very incomplete. In general, these statements were erroneous, fictitious, especially after the administration of Meyer.
129 The figures which I give have been carefully verified de visu, first during the struggle, afterwards with generals, superior officers, and functionaries of the War Office. General Appert has drawn up merely fantastic returns. He has created imaginary brigades, manufactured effective returns by counting as regular combatants all men who, at any time, might have been told off for active service, and constantly duplicated the items of his accounts. He has thus contrived to give more than 20,000 men to Dombrowski, and as much as 50,000 to the three commanders — quite ridiculous figures. His report swarms with mistakes as to names and functions; he does not even know the names of certain general commanders. It possesses no kind of historical value.
130 A member of the Council discovered him, and presented him at the War Office, where he explained his ideas: ‘But,’ it was remarked to him, ‘this is word for word that F�lix Pyat does not cease saying to us.’ ‘A few days ago,’ answered Wroblewski, ‘I sent Felix Pyat a memorandum.’ Rossel went to Pyat’s bureau, and there found the memorandum, For several days this trickster had been making capital of the ideas of Wroblewski without the least allusion to their author, and astounding the Commission by his common sense and technical knowledge.
131 Appendix VI. /p>
132 Appendix VII, report by Thiesz.
133 Appendix VIII.
134 There were five parks: the H�tel-de-Ville, the Tuileries, the Ecole Militaire, Monmartre, Vincennes. In all, including the artillery of the forts and that of the open country, the Commune had more than 1100 cannon, howitzers, mortars, and machine-guns.
135 The second Central Committee was composed of forty members, of whom twelve only had formed part of the first Committee.
136 ‘Do you know,’ said he to Delescluze, ‘that Versailles has offered me a million?’ ‘Be silent!’ answered Delescluze, turning his back upon him.
137 He was arrested on the 20th March in his private room in the Palace of Justice, where he had given the procureur-general a rendezvous.
138 He was recognized as he asked for his passport at the prefecture of police.
139 The correspondent of the Times wrote in the number of 9th May: ‘The superior and her nuns explained that these were orthopaedic instruments — a superficial falsehood . The mattress and straps struck me as being easily accounted for; I have seen such things used in French midwifery and in cases of violent delirium; but the rack and its adjuncts are justly objects of grave suspicion, for they imply a use of brutal force which no disease at present known would justify.’
140 The nun who filled the post of superior, a big and bold virago, answered Rigault in an easy-going manner. ‘Why have you shut up these women?’ ‘To do their families a service; they were mad. See, gentlemen, you are young men of good families; you'll understand that sometimes one is glad to conceal the madness of one’s relations.’ ‘But do you not know the law?’ ‘No we obey our superiors.’ ‘Whose books are these?’ ‘We know nothing about them.’ Thus affecting simpleness, they sold the simpletons.
141 This negotiation has in part been recounted in the Officiel of the Commune. We add further details. Soon after his arrest the Archbishop wrote to M. Thiers begging him to stop the execution of the prisoners, on which the lives of the hostages depended. M. Thiers did not answer. An old friend of Blanqui’s, Flotte, went to the President to propose an exchange, and said that the Archbishop might incur peril. M. Thiers made a decided gesture: ‘What does it matter to me?’ Flotte again took up the negotiation through Darboy, who named Deguerry as envoy to Versailles. The prefecture, unwilling to give up such a hostage, the Vicar-General Lagarde took Deguerry’s place. The Archbishop furnished him with instructions, and on the 12th April Flotte conducted Lagarde to the station and made him swear to return if he failed in his mission. Lagarde swore, ‘Even if to be shot, I shall return. Can you believe that I could for a single moment harbour the thought of leaving Monseigneur alone here?’ At the moment when the train was about to start, Flotte insisted again, ‘Do not go if you have not the intention of returning.’ The priest again renewed his oath. He went off, and handed over a letter in which the Archbishop solicited the exchange. M. Thiers, pretending to know nothing of this one, answered the first, which one of the Commune papers had just published. His answer is one of his masterpieces of hypocrisy and falsehood: ‘The facts to which you call my attention are absolutely false, and I am really surprised that so enlightened a prelate as you, Monseigneur ... Our soldiers have never shot prisoners nor sought to kill the wounded. That, in the heat of combat, they may have turned their arms against men who assassinate their generals, is possible; but, the combat terminated, they resume the natural generosity of the national character. I therefore spurn, Monseigneur, the calumny that has been told you. I affirm that our soldiers have never shot prisoners.’ On the 17th Flotte received a letter in which Lagarde informed him that his presence was still indispensable at Versailles. Flotte complained to the Archbishop, who could not believe in this desertion. ‘It is impossible,’ said he, ‘that M. Lagarde should remain at Versailles; he will come back; he has sworn it to me myself,’ and he gave Flotte a note for Lagarde. The latter answered that M. Thiers retained him. On the 23rd Darboy wrote to him again: ‘On the reception of this letter, M. Lagarde is immediately to retrace his steps to Paris and to re-enter Mazas. This delay compromises us gravely, and may have the saddest results.’ Lagarde did not answer any more.
His friends thought of rescuing him, and a sum of 50,000 francs was prepared for his release. But much more would have been necessary, and, above all, adroit agents, for the least imprudence would have cost the life of the prisoner. The affair was procrastinated, and part of the funds were still in the coffers of the Committee of Public Safety at the entry of the Versaillese.
142 Georges Duchene began examining the commercial transactions of the Government of National Defence, but he published nothing.
143 Before the Commission of Inquiry at the Assembly he has assumed the attitude of a Daniel in the lions’ den. The meeting, however, contented with hissing him, for Paris let these impotent drones buzz as much as they liked without taking any notice of them.
144 Appendix IX.
145 The minority formed a nucleus of twenty-two members: Andrieu, Anrold, A. Arnould, Avrial, Beslay, Cl�mence, V. Cl�menrt, Courbet, Frankel, E. G�rardin, Jourde, Lefran�ais, Longuet, Malon, Ostyn, Pindy, Serraillier, Theisz, Tridon, Vall�s, Varlin, Vermorel.
146 Blanchet, an ex-Capucin and bankrupt, and E. Cl�ment, who under the Empire had offered his services to the police.
147 La Guerre des Communaux, by a superior officer of the Versaillese army.
148 On the 12th May, at the barricade of Petit-Vanves, an officer of engineers of the Lacretelle division, second corps, Captain Rozhem, was taken prisoner. When brought before the commander of the trenches, ‘I know what is in store for me,’ said he; ‘shoot me.’ The commander shrugged his shoulders and took him to Delescluze. ‘Captain,’ said the delegate, ‘promise that you will not fight against the Commune and you are free.’ The officer promised, and, deeply moved, asked Delescluze for permission to shake hands with him. This is one fact among a hundred such. Is it necessary to add that from the 3rd April to the 23rd May the Federals did not shoot one single prisoner, officer or soldier?
149 Appendix X.
150 This fact was established through the minute inquiry which the Council charged
three of its members to make. Two of these, Gambon and Langevin, are by their characters above all suspicion. They received the declaration of the wounded man, and saw one of the bodies, the two others not having been found.
151 It never appeared in the Officiel, but was announced in the Vengeur; for F�lix Pyat abused his functions in order to give his journal the first news of the official decisions. Ilia 6= he was a little too quick.
152 On the 3rd May they had voted that the public should be admitted, and even charged two members to find a suitable hall; but the decree was not executed, although in the H�tel-de-Ville itself there was the splendid St. Jean Hall, which might have been prepared in a few hours.
153 The reports in the Officiel, confided to inexperienced writers, who abridged or amplified at pleasure, again altered at the printing-office, frequently interrupted by the formation of secret committees, give but a very vogue idea of these sittings.
154 ‘Committee of Public Safety, No. 98 — Paris, 3rd May 1871. — General Wroblewald, — Please repair immediately to the fort of Issy. It is urgent to make provision for several services, engineering, artillery, etc. The members of the Committee of Public Safety. Felix Pyat, Arnaud. Enclosed is a despatch from the commander of the fort.’ Before the public. ignorant of this despatch, Pyat kept up his lie. He said in the Vengeur: ‘The only order given directly to the generals by the Committee of Public Safety to defend Issy, which Road did not defend, was addressed to General Wroblewski, intrusted with the forts of the south. The Committee of Public Safety, in ordering him to watch over Issy, did not displace him.’ ln point of fact, not Wroblewski was charged with the defence of the fort of Issy, but La C�cilia, who since the reoccupation held the chief post on this side, and commanded Wetzel intrusted with the defence of the approaches. of the fort.
155 The chefs-de-l�gion have said 10,000. T he truth lies between the two.
156. P. Vichard, ex-chief of the staff of the Garibaldian General Bossack.
157 Heard and reported by Lefran�ais, whose veracity is above suspicion. Etude sur le Mouvement Communaliste G. Lefran�ais, p. 294. Neuchatel, 1870.
158 All the unpublished reports that 1 quote and on which I rely have been copied from the originals.
159 Appendix XI.
160 Appendix XII.
161 ‘It was better to take possession of the town by main force,’ said the apostolic Comte de Mun (Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. II, p. 277). ‘Thus right manifests itself m peremptory manner’ — the right of carriage, no doubt. ‘It was better that it should not be said that we had got in by the back-door.’
162 It has been stated that a Polish officer of Dombrowski’s staff, killed afterwards during the street fight, was the agent in this attempted treason. I have been unable, in spite of a minute search to discover the least proof of this imputation.
163 See a letter from Colonel Corbin, quoted in the Histoire des conspirations sous la commune, a work by A. J. Dalseme, arranged in the form of a novel, but containing some documents.
164 On the 23rd, Picard telegraphed to the procureur-general of Aix: ‘The Republic was, the day before yesterday, again affirmed in a proclamation of the Assembly. The very proclamation which the Assembly had refused to conclude by the cry ‘Vive la R�publique!’
165 The same day — it was that of the Marseilles insurrection — Dufaure telegraphed to the same procureur-general: ‘Read the name R�publique Fran�aise at the head of all the despatches I send you.’
166 1 have in my possession about twenty proclamations of prefects or magistrates. They am all on this point identically the same.
167 A great speech of the President of the Council has been applauded by the Extreme left.’ The speech of the 21st Much against Paris. Dufaure to the procureur-general at Aix, 23rd March.
168 He confessed his trickery in a speech pronounced at Bordeaux in 1875: ‘I was enabled with the remains of the defeated army to unit a military force of 150,000 men, but if this force was sufficient to tear Paris from the Commune, it could not have kept down the large towns of France, keenly bent on the maintenance of the Republic, and coming to ark me with distrust and irritation if it were the monarchy that we combated for.’
169 1 should say ‘resuscitated’, if it were not doing these eunuchs too much honour to compare them to Robespierre, who by their side appears a hero. But how prevent one’s thoughts from wandering to the pontiff declaring inopportune the Republican outburst of June-July 1791; inopportune the cries of Paris famished by engrossers; inopportune the people asking for a single article in their favour in the Constitution of 1793; inopportune the commissars, without whom France would have been dismembered; inopportune the great movement against the Church; inopportune the Socialists and Jacques Roux, whom he did to death; inopportune the popular societies closed by him, and after the disappearance of which Paris expired; inopportune Clootz, yearning to rally round France an the revolutionary forces of the world; inopportune H�bert, who, nevertheless, had helped him to stifle the socialists; inopportune, in fine, all that was not cut out after his own amiable day when he was himself declared inopportune by the great bourgeoisie, who found it as easy as opportune to swallow him at a mouthful as soon as he had purged, bled, muzzled for them the revolutionary lion.
170 Appendix XIII.
171 The workmen’s quarter in Lyons.
172 These were what General Appert calls the Brunel brigade, 7882 strong.
173 Appendix XIV.
174 During the first siege, the Journal Officiel of the mairie of Paris had inserted a letter from Courbet demanding the overthrow of the column.
175 Thus Courbet was not as yet a member of the Council. Nevertheless he was considered as the principal author of the M of the column.
176 Funeral of Lieutenant Chatelet, of the 61st.
177 See the evidence of the chief of police, M. Claude, Enqu�te sur le 18th Mars, Vol. II, p. 106.
178 The original of this document has been lost, but we have been able to re-establish the text with the evidence of Dombrowski’s brother and of a great number of members of the Council present at this sitting.
179 ‘Seventeen hours were required to get in 130,000 men and our numerous artillery.’ — M. Thiers, Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars.
180 ‘From this unexpected obstruction there resulted a confusion that lasted till after the passage of the troops, and might have had serious consequences. If the insurgents had then opened fire upon the Trocadero, from the batteries of Montmartre, their shells would have harassed us a great deal. But the cannon of Montmartre still kept silent. It was only a little after nine o'clock that they commenced firing; the passage was then already cleared.’ — Vinoy, La Commune, p. 130.
181 The first conflagration of the days of May, and the Versaillese have admitted that they themselves kindled it. — Vinoy, L'Armistice et la Commune, p. 309.
182 No deputy protested either on this day or after, or declared he had abstained from voting, neither those of the extreme Left nor those of the extreme Right. They are then, all of them equally answerable for this vote.
183 ‘At the Place Blanche,’ wrote G. Maroteau in the Salut Public of the next day, ‘there was a barricade perfectly constructed and defended by a battalion of women, about 120. At the moment when 1 arrived, a dark form detached itself from the recess of a courtyard. It was a young M with a Phrygian cap on her head, a chassepot in her hand, a cartridge-box by her side. ‘Stand, citizen! no one panes here!’ I stopped astonished, showed my safe-conduct, and the citoyenne allowed me to go to the foot of the barricade.’
184 Appendix XV.
185 Appendix XVI.
186 Appendix XVII.
187 One of the commanders of the German troops.
188 Appendix XVIII.
189 At half-past eight o'clock in the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement the delegate Genton made this recital, which we heard, and reproduce verbatim.
190 Appendix XIX.
191 ‘Bum everything! I have heard these words from the most wise, the most virtuous men.’ — Jules Favre, Enqu�te sur le Mars Vol. II, p. 42. ‘Rather Moscow than S�dan,’ wrote one of these wise and virtuous men during the first siege — M. Jules Simon.
192 Armlet conspirators.
193 Summoned several times to surrender, the Federals answered, ‘Vive la Commune!’ They were thrown against the wall of the prison and fell with the same cry, one of them still clasping the red flag of the barricade. Before such faith the Versaillese officer felt a little ashamed. He turned to the people who had hurried up from the neighbouring houses, and several times repeated by way of excuse, ‘It is their fault! Why did they not surrender!’ As though all Federals were not regularly and mercilessly massacred by them.
194 Minister of War from 187 1, he was in 1876, notwithstanding the desperate efforts of MacMahon, expelled from the Ministry, partly because of irregularities discovered in his budget, partly for having let his mistress, a German, take the plan of one of the new forts round Paris, which was transmitted to Berlin.
195 Since promoted to a higher grade.
196 Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. II, p. 239.
197 Appendix XX.
198 Heard and reported by the author of the book Le Fond de la Soci�t� sous la Commune. The author wittily adds, ‘What the devil was this imbecile solicitous about?’
199 Appendix XXI.
200 The Versaillese calumniators, pursuing him even to his last hour, spread abroad that he had confessed to a Jesuit, and had disavowed his writings ‘in presence of the gendarmes and nuns.’
201 ‘Marshal MacMahon to General Vinoy, 29th May, 10.5 morning. — Our propositions to enter the fort, Prince of Saxony has given the order to enlarge the blockade, in order to leave the French authorities free to act as they think fit. He has promised to preserve the blockade.’ — Vinoy, L'Armistice et la Commune, p. 430.
202 In the Boulevard des Italiens women kissed the boots of the mounted officers who escorted the convoys. A journalist, Francisque Sarcey, wrote: ‘With what serene joy the eye rested on the loyal faces of those brave gendarmes, who marched with a sprightly step by the sides of the hideous column, forming a martial and severe framework!’
203 Appendix XXII.
204 Appendix XXIII.
205 Appendix XXIV.
206 Later on all the names will be known. Let us cite from amongst a hundred. At the mairie of the fifth arrondissement the colonel of the National Guard, Galle; at the seventh, M. Gabriel Ossude and M. Blamont; at the College Bonaparte, M. de Soulanges, chief of the 69th battalion; at the mairie of the ninth arrondissement, M. Charpentier; at the Elys�e, M. de St. Geniez, chief of the 3rd battalion; at the Luxembourg, MM. Gosselin, Parfait, Daniel; at the mairie of the thirteenth arrondissement, MM. D'Avril, chief of the 4th battalion, Lascol, chief of the 17th Thierce; at the Chatelet, Vabre in a few hours achieved an atrocious celebrity.
207 Appendix XXV
208 Appendix XXVI.
209 Appendix XXVII.
210 Appendix XXVIII.
211 Appendix XXIX.
212 Appendix XXX.
213 Appendix XXXI.
214 The journal L'Ari�geois has published the text of the report addressed to the colonel of the 67th of the line by Lieutenant Sicre, a native of the department of Ari�ge who had taken part in the arrest of Varlin, and commanded the firing-party. We extract the following passage: ‘Amongst the objects found on him were a pocket-book bearing his name, a purse containing 284 francs 15 centimes, a penknife, a silver watch, and a card of the man Tridon.’
215 Some foreign journals uttered the same cry. The Naval and Military Gazette of the 27th May said, ‘We are deliberately of opinion that hanging is too good a death for such villains to die, and if medical science could be advanced by operating upon the living body of the malefactors who have crucified their country, we at least should find no fault with the experiment.’
216 At a wineshop of the Place Voltaire we met some quite young soldiers on the Sunday morning. They were marine-fusiliers of the 1871 class. ‘And are there many dead?’ said we. ‘Ah! answered one of them in a stupefied tone, ‘we have the order to make no prisoners; it is the general who told us’ (they could not tell us the name of their general). ‘If they had not lighted thee fires they would not have been served thus; but as they set on fire, we must kin’. (verbatim) Then he went on talking to his comrade. ‘This morning there’ (and he pointed to the barricade of the mairie), ‘one came up in a blouse. We led him off. “You are not going to shoot me?” said he. “Oh, I should think not!” We made him pass in front of us, and then, pan, pan; and didn’t he kick about funnily!’
217 Sixty-three officers killed and 430 wounded, 794 soldiers dead and 6024 wounded — in all, 877 dead and 6454 wounded. Rapport du Mar�chal MacMahon.
218 This is the exact number of the hostages executed: four at Sainte P�lagie,, six at the Roquette, forty-eight at the Rue Haxo, four at the Petite Roquette, and the banker Jecker.
219 The Count de Mun said (Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. II, p. 276), ‘When they were shot, they all died with a kind of insolence which cannot be attributed to a moral sentiment’ (the sentiment of the executioner, Monsieur de Mun, no doubt), ‘and can only be attributed to the resolution to come to an end by death rather than live by working.’ It is true that MacMahon had said (p. 28), ‘They seemed to think they were defending a sacred cause, the independence of Paris. In their intentions some of them may have been of good faith.’ Who is more odious, he who believes he is killing an ‘insolent’, or he who knows that he is killing a martyr?
220 ‘On the Seine may be seen a long trail of blood following the course of the water and passing under the second arch from the side of the Tuileries. This trail never stopped.’ La Libert� of the 31st May.
221 Appendix XXXII.
222 Appendix XXXIII.
223 This is the figure given by General Appert in the Enquire sur le 18 Mars. MacMahon has said, ‘When men surrender their arms they must not be shot; that was admitted. Unhappily, on certain points, the instructions 1 had given were forgotten. I can, however, affirm that the number of executions has been very restricted.’ Admire the logic of this reasoning. No doubt a list has been kept of all, oblivious as to the victims of the prevotal courts; the ‘loyal soldier’ ignores them completely.
Several days after the battle the Nationale, a Liberal-conservative paper, said, ‘In official circles it is estimated that 20,000 is the number of Federals killed, shot, or dead in consequence of wounds received during the days of May. We should not have dared to give this figure, which seems to us considerable, if we had not got this information from officers who have declared that this estimate is very probably correct.’
224 Appendix XXXIV.
225 This fact and the following one are not only attested by the prisoners, but by the journals of order and the correspondents of the conservative foreign newspapers speaking as eye-witnesses. Appendix XXXV.
226 ‘I observed a slender figure walking alone, in the costume of the National Guard, with long fair hair floating over the shoulders, a bright blue eye, and a handsome, bold young face, that seemed to know neither shame nor fear. When the spectators detected at a glance that this seeming young National Guardsman was a woman, their indignation found vent in strong language; but the only response of the victim was to glare right and left with heightened colour and flashing eyes. If the French nation were composed only of Frenchwomen, what a terrible nation it would be!’ The Times, 29th May, 1871.
227 They treated in this manner M. Ratisbonne, he who in the D�bats had just written, ‘What an inestimable victory!’
228 These facts are borne witness to be several conservative journals, among others the Siecle. We cite this paper in preference to the Figarist journals, which might be suspected of having amplified the glory of the army. ‘The day before yesterday there has been (at Satory) an attempt at revolt. The soldiers began by aiming at the most mutinous; but as this procedure did not seem sufficiently expeditious, machine-guns were advanced, which fired into the crowd. Order was re-established, but at what a price!’ (Versailles, 27th May). ‘Towards four o'clock in the morning a new rising took place amongst the prisoners of Satory. There were several machine-gun volleys, and, as you may suppose, the number of dead and wounded must have been rather considerable.’ (Versailles, May 28).
229 Among others, one Thierce, Leiutenant-colonel, who had presided at the executions in the thirteenth arrondissement.
230 At the Beaujon Hospital there was a wounded Federal whom all the staff wanted to save. Only one person refused, the doctor Delbeau, head-surgeon and professor in the faculty of medicine. He sent up the soldiers of the neighbouring post and had the poor fellow taken away. Be it said to the honour of the students that they forced him some months after to suspend his lectures.
231 The numbers of the registers where the denunciations were inscribed enabled the proof of this statistic of infamy, published by the spy journals of the time, to he ascertained.
232 One of these orders, which commanded Milliere to set fire to the left bank, was signed Billioray, who had fled on the 21st, and Dombrowski, already dead at this time.
233 ‘General Enterprise of Parisian Sweeping. — The repression must equal the crime. These are the means by which this result win be arrived at. The members of the Commune, the chiefs of the insurrection, the members of the committees, courtsmartial and revolutionary tribunals, the foreign generals and officers, the deserters, the assassins of Montmartre, La Roquette, and Mazas, the p�troleurs and the p�troleuses, the ticket-of-leave men, are to be shot. Martial law must be applied in all its rigour to the journalists who have placed the torch and the chassepot in the hands of fanatic imbeciles. A part of these measures have already been put into practice. Our soldiers have simplified the work of the courts-martial of Versailles by shooting on the spot; but it must not be overlooked that a great many culprits have escaped chastisement.’ Le Figaro of the 8th June.
234 Report of General Appert, Table I, pp. 215,262.
235 Report of Captain Guichard, Enqu�te sur le 18 Mars, Vol. III, p. 313.
236 The Journal des D�bats estimated that ‘the losses by the party of the insurrection in dead and prisoners reached the figure of 100,000 individuals.’
237 In the Figaro of the 8th June — the same number which contained the plan of massacre — might be read, ‘We have received the following letter from M. Louis Blanc:
“To Monsieur Philippe Gille.
“Sir, — I read in an article signed by you that the honest Republican party has the right to expect a protestation from me against the abominations of which Paris has been the theatre and the victim. This observation surprises me.
“What honest man could, without lacking self-respect, believe himself obliged to warn the public that incendiarism, pillage, and assassination horrify him? I esteem myself enough to judge that, on my part, a declaration is perfectly useless.
"When, too, public indignation is so legitimate and so great, are you aware, sir, that in the tribunals the silence of the assistants is obligatory; so true is it that the duty of everybody is to remain silent when the judge is about to speak. Receive, sir, the assurance of my regard.
Louis Blanc.” ‘
238 The Civil War in France. Address of the Council of the International WorkingMen’s Association.
239 These details are extracted from very numerous notes furnished not only by the prisoners, among others by Elis�e Reclus, but by persons entire strangers to the Commune, municipal councillors of seaport towns, foreign journalists, etc.
240 General Appert’s report is not only silent with regard to these ignominious proceedings, but lies with a placidity that is frightful. He says, for instance, ‘The prisoners of the pontoons were treated like the sailors, with this difference, that they did no work and got frequent distributions of wine.’ Of the cages, the vermin, the blows, not a word. In the same manner he recounts, in the style of a pretentious quartermaster, the history of the Commune and of the last struggles. It would be doing him too much honour to point out how his absurd statements contradict each other. And yet it is from these official lies that all bourgeois historians have till today compiled their histories.
241 Letter addressed to the Libert� of Brussels.
242 Besides the 27,837 prisoners officially recognized at the pontoons, 8472 others wore admitted as being dispersed at Satory, L'Orangerie, Les Chautiers, the houses of justice and correction of Rouen-Clermont and St. Cyr. On the 15th of October there were still 3500 in the prisons of Versailles.
243 The former resort of all sorts of criminals.
244 The great political hecatombs have taken place in France since the decree of the Provisional Government of 1848.
245 Here is a sample, and not one of the most emphatic: ‘We must make no mistake,’ said La Libert�; ‘we must, above all, not stand on niceties; this is certainly a band of scoundrels, assassins, thieves, and incendiaries whom we have before our eyes. To argue from their situation of accused in order to exact for them the respect and benefit of the law which supposes them innocent would be a want of faith. No, no! a thousand times no! These are not ordinary accused; they were taken, some in the very act, and the others have so surely signed their culpability by authentic and solemn acts that it suffices to establish their identity in order to cry with the full and sonorous. voice of conviction, “Yes, yes! they are guilty!”
‘The detained witnesses are, for the most part, sinister bandits, with atrocious faces, repulsive types, especially the youngest, and whom one would not like to meet even in broad daylight at the corner of a wood.’
246 Family and morality were triumphing along the whole line. Some days after the fall of the Commune, the first president of the Court of Cassation, the official go-between of the amours of Napoleon III, solemnly reoccupied, before all the courts united, his scat, whence the hypocritical prudery of the men of the 4th September had expelled him.
247 Let us cite Dupont de Bussac, and above au L�on Bigot, who defended Maroteau, Lisbonne, and a great number of obscure prisoners. For a year he gave them his time, his labour, his money, publishing memoirs, exhausting himself in applications. He died in harness, falling, struck by apoplexy, even at the bar. The friends of the Commune will not forge this noble devotion.
248 He was condemned in 1876 to five years’ imprisonment for embezzlement.
249 In the law-schools is there no one to undertake it? What finer cause to begin with for a young man? What noble occasion to efface the great wrongs of the schools during the Commune, to bring nearer the proletariat this part of our youth, which is drifting further from them every day?
250 ‘To this demand of the communication of judicial evidence,’ said the tribunal of Budapest in its judgment, ‘the French Government has answered by purely and simply transmitting the sentence of the court-martial. In this sentence there exists no trace of proof, nor any precise evidence establishing culpability. Considering that this verdict is totally destitute of evidence and legal proofs, and that it indicates no means of procuring them, this tribunal exonerates Frankel from the charges brought against him.’
251 Here are their names, which truly belong to the history of the people:-Martel, president; Piou, vice-president; the Count Octave de Bastard, Felix Voisin, secretaries; Batbie, the Count de Maill�, the Count Duchatel, Peltereau-Villeneuve, Francois Sacaze, Tailhaud, the Marquis de Quinsonnas, Bigot, Merveilleux-Duvignan, Paris, (;Orne.
252 Appendix XXXVII.
253 According to reactionary journals this agent had been first bound to a board, an odious invention, which nothing that came out during the trial could justify. Vizentini, seized in a spontaneous outburst of fury and thrown immediately into the Seine, might even have been saved, if a board to which he clung had not in tipping over struck him on the head.
254 Report of General Apport.
255 Thus the seizures nude during the house-searches, in virtue of regular mandates, were classed among the acts of theft with violence, pillage, etc., as though these acts had had any personal motive. Now it is necessary to point out that no one gave evidence of theft against the prisoners before the courts-martial; no one could say that the conflagrations had been taken advantage of for pillage.
256 ‘We all recollect one of our comrades, Corcelles, who had contracted pulmonary phthisis of the gravest form. He could scarcely keep himself on his legs when crawling before the Commission. To the President’s usual question he answered by a pitiful smile only, and while one of the younger members of the Commission, moved probably to pity at the sight of the walking corpse, bent himself towards the ear of the old surgeon, doubtless with the view of begging a respite, the latter retorted. loud enough to be heard by the patient and several other prisoners, ‘Bah! the sharks will want something to eat.’ And the sharks did have something to eat; less than three weeks after we were out at sea our friend Corcelles was dead, and we committed his remains to the last common reservoir.’ We must give the name of this friend of sharks; his name is Dr. Chanal. ‘Out of the four thousand condemned who passed in file before him, ten cases of exemption are not known. And perhaps the motives which dictated this may be better judged when the following facts are known. M. Edmond Adam, deputy of the Seine, having come to the Ile de R� in order to visit M. H. Rochefort, who was shut up there, had a young woman present herself at his hotel, who proposed to him, for the modest sum of 1000 francs, to procure from the chief-surgeon a respite for his friend on his departure. She had but one word to say, remarked she, and the old man was under her orders.’ (Account by two escaped prisoners from New Caledonia, Paschal Grousset and Jourde, published by The Times, 27th June 1874.)
257 The Australian and English journal: ‘The news of the convict ship the Orne, transmitted through the English press, is inexact in all points. Far from counting 420 cases of scurvy, this vessel had hardly 360 cases.’
258 Report of the Commission of Pardons, presented in January 1876, by MM. Martel and F. Voisin.
259 In the Ile des Pins, 900 condemned received between them all 500 hectaries (about 100 acres). ‘We have been mistaken as to the resources offered by the Ile des Pins.’ philosophically remarked the Minister of Marine in 1876. ‘1 said so three years ago,’ answered M. Georges P�rin.
260 ‘Admiral Ribourt, in his Inquiry, declares that during the year 1873 the engineering department had paid the condemned in the peninsula 110,525 francs. We must then leave off saying that the convicts won’t work.’ (Speech of M. Georges P�rin in favour of an amnesty, Sitting of the 17th May 1876.)
261 An overlooker of the first class had been condemned for an attempt to murder; another, decorated with the cross of the L�gion d'Honneur, sentenced to seven years’ hard labour for attempting to murder his wife. Many of them were every day condemned for drunkenness.
262 Details taken from the very correct and by no means exaggerated relation which Paschal Grousset and Jourde published in The Times after their escape. It has since been republished as a pamphlet.
263 Two notorious murderers.
264 The Pole condemned for having shot at the Tsar in Paris.
265 One of them has given a complete account of their escape, together with some interesting details on New Caledonia: Un Voyage de Circumnavigation, by A. Baillere.
266 On the 22nd December 1876, Baron, ex-delegate of the accountants of Paris to the Workmen’s Congress, was summoned before the third court-martial, which accused him of having been one of the secretaries of the delegation of war during the Commune. Baron was condemned to transportation in a fortress. During the examination the president said, ‘The Court will take notice that the accused still has the same sentiments as those which animated him in 187 1, for in 1876 we have seen that he took part in the Workmen’s Congress.’
267 Appendix XXXVIII.
268 Even in the month of April 1877 another ship, having 506 condemned to transportation, has been despatched from France to New Caledonia.
Glossary |
Contents |
Appendix
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./articles/Lissagaray-Prosper/https:..www.marxists.org.history.france.archive.lissagaray.ch13 | <body>
<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XIII<br>
The commune is defeated at Marseilles and Narbonne</h1>
<p>The same sun that saw the scale turn against Paris looked also on the defeat of the people of Marseilles.</p>
<p><img src="pics/cremieux-adolphe.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Cremieux" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p>The paralytic Commission still continued to doze, when, on the 26th, Espivent beat the r�veille, placed the department in a state of siege, and issued a proclamation <em>� la</em> Thiers. The municipal council began to tremble, and on the 27th withdrew their delegates from the prefecture. Gaston Cr�mieux and Bouchet were at once sent to the <em>mairie</em> to announce that the Commission was ready to withdraw before the council. The council asked for time to consider.</p>
<p>The evening was passing away, and the Commission searching for a loophole by which to escape from a position become untenable, when Bouchet proposed to telegraph to Versailles that they would resign their powers into the hands of a Republican prefect. Poor issue of a great movement! They knew what the Republican prefects of M. Thiers were. The Commission, jaded, discouraged, let Bouchet draw up the telegram, when Landeck, Amouroux, and May arrived, sent, they said, by Paris. They spoke in the name of the great town. Bouchet wanted to verify their powers and contested their validity, which were indeed more than contestable, whereat the members of the Commission grew indignant. The magic name of victorious Paris resuscitated the enthusiasm of the first hours, and Bouchet left the place. At midnight the municipal council decided to maintain its resolution, and communicated this to the club of the National Guard, who immediately followed their example. At half-past one in the morning the delegates of the club informed the Commission that their powers were at an end. The Liberal bourgeoisie, coward-like, stole away, the Radicals backed out, and the people remained alone to face the reaction.</p>
<p>This was the second phase of the movement. The most exalted of the three delegates, Landeck, became an authority paramount to the Commission. The cold-blooded Republicans who heard him and knew of his past dealings with the Imperialist police, suspected a Bonapartist under the grossly ignorant bully. He was indeed but a juggler, meant for the itinerant stage, of grotesque vanity, and shrinking from nothing, because ignorant of everything. The situation waxed tragic with this mountebank for a leader. Cr�mieux, unable to find another issue, was still for the solution of the evening before. On the 28th he wrote to the municipal council that the Commission was ready to retire, leaving them the responsibility of events, and urged his colleagues to release the hostages; this only rendered him the more suspect of moderatism. Closely watched, threatened, he lost heart at these disputes, and that same evening left the prefecture. His secession divested the Commission of all authority. It succeeded in discovering his retreat, made an appeal to his devotion to the cause, and led him back to the prefecture, there to resume his strange part of a chief at once captive and responsible.</p>
<p>The municipal council did not answer Cr�mieux’s letter and on the 29th the Commission renewed its proposal. The council still remained silent. In the evening 400 delegates of the National Guard met at the museum, decided to federate the battalions, and appointed a commission charged to negotiate between the H�tel-de-Ville and the prefecture. But these delegates represented only the revolutionary element of the battalions, and the H�tel-de-Ville plunged more and more into a slough of despond.</p>
<p>A war of proclamations now ensued between the two powers. On the 30th the council answered the deliberations of the museum meeting with a proclamation from the leaders of the reactionary battalions. The Commission launched a manifesto demanding the autonomy of the Commune and the abolition of prefectures; immediately after, the council declared the general secretary of the prefect the legal representative of the Government, and invited him to retake his post. The secretary turned a deaf ear and took refuge aboard <em>La Couronne, </em>many councillors also betaking themselves to the frigate — gratuitous cowardice, since the most notorious reactionaries went to and fro without being in the least interfered with. The energy of the Commission was mere show; it arrested only two or three functionaries, the procureur Guibert, the deputy, and for a short time the director of the customhouse, and the son of the mayor. General Ollivier was set free as soon as it became known that he had refused to form part of the Mixed Commissions of 1851. They were even so loose as to leave a post close to the prefecture in the hands of chasseurs forgotten by Espivent. The flight of the council, therefore, appeared only the more shameful. The town continued to be calm, gay, facetious. One day the patrol boat <em>Le Renard </em>coming to show its cannon at the Canebi�re, the crowd thronging on the quay hooted so much that it was obliged to slip its cable and rejoin the frigate in the new harbour.</p>
<p>The Commission inferred that no one would dare to attack them, and thus took no measures of defence. They might easily have armed the heights of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, which commanded the town, and enlisted a great number of Garibaldians, some officers of the last campaign having offered to organize everything. The Commission thanked them, said that the troops would not come, and that even if they did, they would fraternize with the people. They contented themselves with hoisting the black flag, addressing a proclamation to the soldiers, and accumulating at the prefecture arms and cannon without projectiles of corresponding calibre. Landeck, for his part, wanting to distinguish himself, declared Espivent’s grade forfeited, and in his place nominated a former cavalry sergeant named Pelissier. ‘Until the assumption of his functions,’ said the decree, ‘the troops will remain under the orders of General Espivent.’ This gross farce dated from the 1st April. Before the court-martial which tried him, Pelissier hit the mark . When asked, ‘Of what armies were you general?’ ‘I was general of the situation,’ was his reply; and indeed he never did lead any troops. On the morning of the 24th the workmen had returned to their work, for the National Guards, save the guardians of the prefecture, were not paid. Men to garrison the posts were found with difficulty, and at midnight the prefecture had but a hundred defenders.</p>
<p>A <em>coup-de-main </em>would have been easy, and some rich bourgeois wanted to try it. The men were there and the manoeuvres agreed upon. At midnight the Commission was to be carried off and the prefecture taken possession of, while Espivent was to march on the town so as to get there by daybreak. An officer was despatched to Aubagne. The general refused under the pretext of prudence, but his retinue revealed the true motive of the refusal. ‘We have stolen away from Marseilles like thieves,’ they told the messenger; ‘we want to re-enter it as conquerors.’</p>
<p>Such a performance seemed rather difficult with the army of Aubagne, 600 or 700 men, without cadres and without discipline. One single regiment, the 6th Chasseurs, showed a more martial carriage. But Espivent relied upon the sailors of <em>La Couronne, </em>the National Guards of order, in continual relations with him, and above all, on the well-known supineness of the Commission.</p>
<p>The latter tried to strengthen itself by the adjunction of delegates from the National Guard. They voted the dissolution of the municipal council, and the Commission convoked the electors for the 3rd April. This measure, if taken on the 24th March, might perhaps have settled everything, but on the 2nd April it was only a stroke in the air.</p>
<p>On the 3rd, at the news from Versailles, Espivent sent an order to the leaders of the reactionary battalions to hold themselves in readiness. In the evening, at eleven o'clock, Garibaldian officers came to inform the prefecture that the troops at Aubagne were moving. The Commission recommenced its old refrain: ‘Let them come; we are ready to receive them.’ At half-past one they decided to beat the retreat, and towards four o'clock some men mustered at the prefecture. About a hundred franc-tireurs established themselves at the station, where the Commission had not even thought of placing a battery.</p>
<p>At five o'clock Marseilles was on the alert. Some reactionary companies appeared at the Place du Palais de justice and in the Cours Bonaparte; the sailors of <em>La Couronne </em>were drawn up before the Bourse; the first shots were fired at the station.</p>
<p>Espivent’s troops presented themselves at three points — the station, the Place Castellane, and La Plaine. The franc-tireurs, notwithstanding a fine defence, were soon surrounded and obliged to retreat. The Versaillese shot the Federalist stationmaster under the eyes of his son, a child of sixteen, who threw himself at the feet of the officer, offering his life for his father’s. The second stationmaster, Funel, was able to escape with only a broken arm. The columns of La Plaine and L'Esplanade pushed their advanced posts as far as 300 yards from the prefecture.</p>
<p>The Commission, still in the clouds, sent an embassy to Espivent. Cr�mieux and P�lissier set out, followed by an immense mass of men and children, crying ‘<em>Vive Paris!’ </em>At the outposts of the Place Castellane, the seat of the staff, the commander of the 6th Chasseurs, Villeneuve, came forward towards the delegates. ‘What are your intentions?’ asked Cr�mieux. ‘We want to re-establish order. “What! you would dare fire on the people?’ cried Cr�mieux, and commenced haranguing, when the Versaillese threatened to order their infantry to march on. The delegates then had themselves conducted to Espivent. He first spoke of putting them under arrest, but then would allow them five minutes for the evacuation of the prefecture. Cr�mieux on his return found the infantry men struggling with the crowd, who sought to disarm them. A new current of people, preceded by a black flag, arrived, making a vigorous push against the soldiers. A German officer of Espivent’s staff arrested Pelissier, but the Versaillese leaders, seeing their men waver, ordered a retreat.</p>
<p>The mass applauded, believing they would disband. Two infantry corps had already refused to march, and the Place de la Prefecture was filled with groups certain of success. Suddenly, towards ten o'clock, the infantry men emerged from the Rues de Rome and De l'Arm�ny. The people shouted and surrounded them, when many raised the butt-end of their muskets. One officer who, urging on his company, made them cross bayonets, fell, his head pierced by a bullet. His men charged the Federals, who took refuge and were taken prisoners in the prefecture, whither the infantry men followed. The volleys of the National Guards of order and the infantry men from the Cours Bonaparte and from the house of the Freres Ignorantins, keeping up a running fire were replied to by the Federals from the windows of the prefecture.</p>
<p>The shooting had lasted two hours, and no reinforcement arrived in support of the Federals. Untouchable in the prefecture, a solid square building, they were none the less vanquished, having neither provisions nor sufficient ammunation, and it would have sufficed to wait with arms shouldered till they had exhausted their cartridges. But the general of the Sacr� Coeur would not put up with such a half-triumph. This was his first campaign; he wanted blood, and, above all, noise. Since eleven o'clock he had had the prefecture bombarded from the top of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, a distance of about 500 yards. The Fort St. Nicolas also opened its fire, but its shells, less far-seeing than those of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, dashed down upon the aristocratic houses of the Cours Bonaparte, killing one of those heroic guards of order who fired from behind the soldiers. At three o'clock the prefecture hoisted a flag of truce. Espivent continued to fire. An envoy was sent to him, but he insisted upon their unconditional surrender. At five o'clock more than 300 shells had traversed the edifice, wounding many Federals. Little by little, the defenders, seeing that they were not supported, left the place. The prefecture had long ceased firing when Espivent was still bombarding it. The fright of this brute was so great that he continued firing shells till night-fall. At half past seven the sailors of <em>La Couronne </em>and <em>Le Magnanime </em>courageously stormed the prefecture, void of all its defenders.</p>
<p>They found the hostages safe and sound, as were the chasseurs taken prisoner in the morning. Yet the Jesuitic repression was atrocious. The men of order arrested at random, and dragged their victims into the lamp-stores of the station. There an officer scrutinized the prisoners, made a sign to one or the other of them to step out, and blew out his brains. The following days there were rumours of summary executions in the barracks, the forts and the prisons. The number of dead the people lost is unknown, but it exceeded 150, besides many wounded who concealed themselves. The Versaillese had thirty killed and fifty wounded. More than 900 persons were thrown into the casemates of the Ch�teau d'If and of the Fort St. Nicolas. Cr�mieux was arrested at the porter’s of the Israelite Cemetery. He voluntarily gave himself up to those who sought him, strong in his good faith, and still believing in the judges. The brave Etienne was also taken. Landeck, of course, had made his exit in good time.</p>
<p>On the 5th Espivent entered triumphantly, acclaimed with savage frenzy by the reactionaries. But from the further ranks of the crowd cries and hisses rose against the murderers. At the Place St. Ferr�ol a captain was fired at, and the people stoned the windows of a house from which the sailors had been cheered.</p>
<p>Two days after the struggle, on its return from <em>La Couronne, </em>the municipal council recovered its voice to strike the vanquished.</p>
<p>The National Guard was disarmed, a fierce reaction raged, the Jesuits again lorded it, and Espivent paraded about, receiving ovations to the cries of ‘<em>Vive J�sus! Vive le Sacr� Coeur!’ </em>The club of the National Guard was closed, Bouchet arrested, and the Radicals, insulted, persecuted, once more saw what it costs to desert the people.</p>
<p>Narbonne, too, was subdued. On the 30th March the prefect and the procureur-general issued a proclamation in which they spoke of ‘the handful of factious men’, presented themselves as upholders of the true Republic, and telegraphed everywhere the failure of the provincial movements. ‘Is this a reason,’ Digeon answered in a poster, ‘to lower before force this red flag dyed in the blood of our martyrs?</p>
<p>Let others consent to live eternally oppressed.’ Whereupon he prepared for battle, and barricaded the streets leading to the Hotel-de-Ville. The women, always to the fore, pulled up pavements and piled up furniture. The authorities, afraid of serious resistance, sent M. Marcou to his friend Digeon. The Brutus of Carcassonne strode through the H�tel-de-Ville, accompanied by two Republicans of Limoux, to offer in the name of the procureur-general a full and complete amnesty to those who would evacuate the edifice. They offered Digeon twenty-four hours to gain the frontier. Digeon assembled his council, and all refused to fly. M. Marcou hastened to inform the military authorities that they might now act.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n115">[115]</a></sup> General Zentz was at once sent to Narbonne.</p>
<p>At three o'clock in the morning a detachment of Turcos reconnoitred the barricades of the Rue du Pont. The Federals, anxious to fraternize, cleared it, and were received with a volley, killing two men and wounding three. On the 31st, at seven o'clock, Zentz in a proclamation announced that the bombardment was about to recommence. Digeon at once wrote to him, ‘I have the right to reply to such a savage menace in the same style. I warn you that if you bombard the town, 1 shall have the three prisoners who are in my power shot.’ Zentz answered by arresting the envoy, and had brandy distributed to the Turcos, the only troops who would march. These brutes arrived at Narbonne eager to loot, and had already pillaged three caf�s. The fight was about to begin, when the procureur-general again sent two envoys, offering amnesty to all those who would evacuate the Hotel-de-Ville before the opening of the fire, but the execution of the hostages would be punished by the massacre of all its occupants. Digeon wrote out these conditions under the dictation of one of the envoys, read them to the Federals, and left every one free to withdraw. At this moment the procureur-general presented himself with the Turcos before the terrace of the garden. Digeon rushed thither. The procureur harangued the multitude, and as he spoke of indulgence, Digeon protested that amnesty had just been promised. The procureur drowned the discussion in a roll of drums, read the legal <em>sommation</em> in front of the H�tel-de-Ville, and asked for the hostages, whom the soldiers who had deserted delivered over to him.</p>
<p>All these parleys had profoundly enervated the defence. Besides, the H�tel-de-Ville could do nothing against a bombardment that would have battered the town. Digeon had the edifice evacuated, and shut himself up alone in the cabinet of the mayor, resolved to sell his life dearly; but the people, in spite of his resistance, carried him off. The H�tel-de-Ville was empty when the Turcos arrived. They plundered in all its corners, and officers were seen to deck themselves with stolen valuables.</p>
<p><img src="pics/actualite.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="caricature" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p>Notwithstanding the formal promises of amnesty, numerous warrants of arrest were issued. Digeon refused to fly, and wrote to the procureur-general that he might arrest him. Such a man at Toulouse would have saved the movement and raised the whole South.</p>
<p>Limoges had one glimpse of hope on the fatal day of the 4th April. That revolutionary capital of the Centre could not look on the efforts of Paris unmoved. On the 23rd March the Soci�t� Populaire centralized all the democratic forces and passed a vote of thanks to the army of Paris for its conduct on the 18th. When Versailles called for volunteers, the Society enjoined the municipal council to prevent such an incitement to civil war. The working men’s societies despatched a delegate to Paris soon after the proclamation of the Commune, there to inquire into its principles, and to request the sending of a commissar to Limoges. The members of the Commune replied that this was impossible for the present, that they would consider it by and by; and never sent anybody. The Soci�t� Populaire was thus obliged to act alone. It urged the municipal council to hold a review of the National Guards , certain that it would result in a demonstration against Versailles. The council, composed, with few exceptions, of timid men, tried to gain time, when the news of the 3rd April became known. On the morning of the 4th, on reading on the walls the triumphant telegram from Versailles, the workmen revolted. A detachment of five hundred soldiers was about to leave for Versailles; the crowd followed them to the station, and the workmen urged them to join the people. The soldiers, surrounded, much excited, fraternized and surrendered their arms, many of which were taken to the Soci�t� Populaire, and hidden there.</p>
<p>The call-up was at once beaten. The colonel of cuirassiers, Billet, who, accompanied by orderlies, rode. through the town, was hemmed in by the people, and constrained to cry, ‘<em>Vive la R�publique!’ </em>At five o'clock the whole National Guard was in arms on the Place de la <em>Mairie</em>. The officers met in the H�tel-de-Ville, where a councillor proposed to proclaim the Commune. The mayor objected, but the cry resounded on all sides. Captain Coissac took upon himself to go to the station in order to stop the train ready for the departure of the troops. The other officers consulted their companies, which answered with one unanimous cry, ‘<em>Vive Paris! � bas Versailles!’ </em>Soon after, the battalions, filing off before the H�tel-de-Ville, preceded by two municipal councillors in their official costume, went to ask the general for the release of the soldiers arrested during the course of the day. The general gave the order to set them free, and at the same time sent word to Colonel Billet to prepare against the insurrection. From the Place Tourny the Federals repaired to the prefecture, occupying it in spite of the resistance of the Conservative National Guards, and commenced throwing up some barricades. A few soldiers arrived from the Rue des Prisons, and several citizens urged the officers not to commence a civil war. These hesitated, retired, when Colonel Billet, at the head of about fifty cuirassiers, came out on to the Place de l'Eglise St. Michel, and ordered his men to advance and draw swords. They fired their pistols, the Federals answered, and the colonel was mortally wounded. His horse turning about, carried its rider as far as the Place St. Pierre, the other horses following, the Federals thus remained masters of the field. But lacking organization, they disbanded in the night and left the prefecture. The next day the company that occupied the station seeing themselves abandoned withdrew. The arrests began, and many were obliged to hide.</p>
<p>Thus the revolts of the great towns died out one by one like the lateral craters of an exhausted volcano. The revolutionaries of the provinces showed themselves everywhere completely disorganized, without any faculty to wield power. Everywhere victorious at the outset, the workmen had only known how to pronounce for Paris. But at least they showed some vitality, generosity, and pride. Eighty years of bourgeois domination had not been able to transform them into a nation of mercenaries; while the Radicals, who either combated or held aloof from them, once more attested the decrepitude, the egotism of the middle-class , always ready to betray the working men to the ‘upper’ classes.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XIII
The commune is defeated at Marseilles and Narbonne
The same sun that saw the scale turn against Paris looked also on the defeat of the people of Marseilles.
The paralytic Commission still continued to doze, when, on the 26th, Espivent beat the r�veille, placed the department in a state of siege, and issued a proclamation � la Thiers. The municipal council began to tremble, and on the 27th withdrew their delegates from the prefecture. Gaston Cr�mieux and Bouchet were at once sent to the mairie to announce that the Commission was ready to withdraw before the council. The council asked for time to consider.
The evening was passing away, and the Commission searching for a loophole by which to escape from a position become untenable, when Bouchet proposed to telegraph to Versailles that they would resign their powers into the hands of a Republican prefect. Poor issue of a great movement! They knew what the Republican prefects of M. Thiers were. The Commission, jaded, discouraged, let Bouchet draw up the telegram, when Landeck, Amouroux, and May arrived, sent, they said, by Paris. They spoke in the name of the great town. Bouchet wanted to verify their powers and contested their validity, which were indeed more than contestable, whereat the members of the Commission grew indignant. The magic name of victorious Paris resuscitated the enthusiasm of the first hours, and Bouchet left the place. At midnight the municipal council decided to maintain its resolution, and communicated this to the club of the National Guard, who immediately followed their example. At half-past one in the morning the delegates of the club informed the Commission that their powers were at an end. The Liberal bourgeoisie, coward-like, stole away, the Radicals backed out, and the people remained alone to face the reaction.
This was the second phase of the movement. The most exalted of the three delegates, Landeck, became an authority paramount to the Commission. The cold-blooded Republicans who heard him and knew of his past dealings with the Imperialist police, suspected a Bonapartist under the grossly ignorant bully. He was indeed but a juggler, meant for the itinerant stage, of grotesque vanity, and shrinking from nothing, because ignorant of everything. The situation waxed tragic with this mountebank for a leader. Cr�mieux, unable to find another issue, was still for the solution of the evening before. On the 28th he wrote to the municipal council that the Commission was ready to retire, leaving them the responsibility of events, and urged his colleagues to release the hostages; this only rendered him the more suspect of moderatism. Closely watched, threatened, he lost heart at these disputes, and that same evening left the prefecture. His secession divested the Commission of all authority. It succeeded in discovering his retreat, made an appeal to his devotion to the cause, and led him back to the prefecture, there to resume his strange part of a chief at once captive and responsible.
The municipal council did not answer Cr�mieux’s letter and on the 29th the Commission renewed its proposal. The council still remained silent. In the evening 400 delegates of the National Guard met at the museum, decided to federate the battalions, and appointed a commission charged to negotiate between the H�tel-de-Ville and the prefecture. But these delegates represented only the revolutionary element of the battalions, and the H�tel-de-Ville plunged more and more into a slough of despond.
A war of proclamations now ensued between the two powers. On the 30th the council answered the deliberations of the museum meeting with a proclamation from the leaders of the reactionary battalions. The Commission launched a manifesto demanding the autonomy of the Commune and the abolition of prefectures; immediately after, the council declared the general secretary of the prefect the legal representative of the Government, and invited him to retake his post. The secretary turned a deaf ear and took refuge aboard La Couronne, many councillors also betaking themselves to the frigate — gratuitous cowardice, since the most notorious reactionaries went to and fro without being in the least interfered with. The energy of the Commission was mere show; it arrested only two or three functionaries, the procureur Guibert, the deputy, and for a short time the director of the customhouse, and the son of the mayor. General Ollivier was set free as soon as it became known that he had refused to form part of the Mixed Commissions of 1851. They were even so loose as to leave a post close to the prefecture in the hands of chasseurs forgotten by Espivent. The flight of the council, therefore, appeared only the more shameful. The town continued to be calm, gay, facetious. One day the patrol boat Le Renard coming to show its cannon at the Canebi�re, the crowd thronging on the quay hooted so much that it was obliged to slip its cable and rejoin the frigate in the new harbour.
The Commission inferred that no one would dare to attack them, and thus took no measures of defence. They might easily have armed the heights of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, which commanded the town, and enlisted a great number of Garibaldians, some officers of the last campaign having offered to organize everything. The Commission thanked them, said that the troops would not come, and that even if they did, they would fraternize with the people. They contented themselves with hoisting the black flag, addressing a proclamation to the soldiers, and accumulating at the prefecture arms and cannon without projectiles of corresponding calibre. Landeck, for his part, wanting to distinguish himself, declared Espivent’s grade forfeited, and in his place nominated a former cavalry sergeant named Pelissier. ‘Until the assumption of his functions,’ said the decree, ‘the troops will remain under the orders of General Espivent.’ This gross farce dated from the 1st April. Before the court-martial which tried him, Pelissier hit the mark . When asked, ‘Of what armies were you general?’ ‘I was general of the situation,’ was his reply; and indeed he never did lead any troops. On the morning of the 24th the workmen had returned to their work, for the National Guards, save the guardians of the prefecture, were not paid. Men to garrison the posts were found with difficulty, and at midnight the prefecture had but a hundred defenders.
A coup-de-main would have been easy, and some rich bourgeois wanted to try it. The men were there and the manoeuvres agreed upon. At midnight the Commission was to be carried off and the prefecture taken possession of, while Espivent was to march on the town so as to get there by daybreak. An officer was despatched to Aubagne. The general refused under the pretext of prudence, but his retinue revealed the true motive of the refusal. ‘We have stolen away from Marseilles like thieves,’ they told the messenger; ‘we want to re-enter it as conquerors.’
Such a performance seemed rather difficult with the army of Aubagne, 600 or 700 men, without cadres and without discipline. One single regiment, the 6th Chasseurs, showed a more martial carriage. But Espivent relied upon the sailors of La Couronne, the National Guards of order, in continual relations with him, and above all, on the well-known supineness of the Commission.
The latter tried to strengthen itself by the adjunction of delegates from the National Guard. They voted the dissolution of the municipal council, and the Commission convoked the electors for the 3rd April. This measure, if taken on the 24th March, might perhaps have settled everything, but on the 2nd April it was only a stroke in the air.
On the 3rd, at the news from Versailles, Espivent sent an order to the leaders of the reactionary battalions to hold themselves in readiness. In the evening, at eleven o'clock, Garibaldian officers came to inform the prefecture that the troops at Aubagne were moving. The Commission recommenced its old refrain: ‘Let them come; we are ready to receive them.’ At half-past one they decided to beat the retreat, and towards four o'clock some men mustered at the prefecture. About a hundred franc-tireurs established themselves at the station, where the Commission had not even thought of placing a battery.
At five o'clock Marseilles was on the alert. Some reactionary companies appeared at the Place du Palais de justice and in the Cours Bonaparte; the sailors of La Couronne were drawn up before the Bourse; the first shots were fired at the station.
Espivent’s troops presented themselves at three points — the station, the Place Castellane, and La Plaine. The franc-tireurs, notwithstanding a fine defence, were soon surrounded and obliged to retreat. The Versaillese shot the Federalist stationmaster under the eyes of his son, a child of sixteen, who threw himself at the feet of the officer, offering his life for his father’s. The second stationmaster, Funel, was able to escape with only a broken arm. The columns of La Plaine and L'Esplanade pushed their advanced posts as far as 300 yards from the prefecture.
The Commission, still in the clouds, sent an embassy to Espivent. Cr�mieux and P�lissier set out, followed by an immense mass of men and children, crying ‘Vive Paris!’ At the outposts of the Place Castellane, the seat of the staff, the commander of the 6th Chasseurs, Villeneuve, came forward towards the delegates. ‘What are your intentions?’ asked Cr�mieux. ‘We want to re-establish order. “What! you would dare fire on the people?’ cried Cr�mieux, and commenced haranguing, when the Versaillese threatened to order their infantry to march on. The delegates then had themselves conducted to Espivent. He first spoke of putting them under arrest, but then would allow them five minutes for the evacuation of the prefecture. Cr�mieux on his return found the infantry men struggling with the crowd, who sought to disarm them. A new current of people, preceded by a black flag, arrived, making a vigorous push against the soldiers. A German officer of Espivent’s staff arrested Pelissier, but the Versaillese leaders, seeing their men waver, ordered a retreat.
The mass applauded, believing they would disband. Two infantry corps had already refused to march, and the Place de la Prefecture was filled with groups certain of success. Suddenly, towards ten o'clock, the infantry men emerged from the Rues de Rome and De l'Arm�ny. The people shouted and surrounded them, when many raised the butt-end of their muskets. One officer who, urging on his company, made them cross bayonets, fell, his head pierced by a bullet. His men charged the Federals, who took refuge and were taken prisoners in the prefecture, whither the infantry men followed. The volleys of the National Guards of order and the infantry men from the Cours Bonaparte and from the house of the Freres Ignorantins, keeping up a running fire were replied to by the Federals from the windows of the prefecture.
The shooting had lasted two hours, and no reinforcement arrived in support of the Federals. Untouchable in the prefecture, a solid square building, they were none the less vanquished, having neither provisions nor sufficient ammunation, and it would have sufficed to wait with arms shouldered till they had exhausted their cartridges. But the general of the Sacr� Coeur would not put up with such a half-triumph. This was his first campaign; he wanted blood, and, above all, noise. Since eleven o'clock he had had the prefecture bombarded from the top of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, a distance of about 500 yards. The Fort St. Nicolas also opened its fire, but its shells, less far-seeing than those of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, dashed down upon the aristocratic houses of the Cours Bonaparte, killing one of those heroic guards of order who fired from behind the soldiers. At three o'clock the prefecture hoisted a flag of truce. Espivent continued to fire. An envoy was sent to him, but he insisted upon their unconditional surrender. At five o'clock more than 300 shells had traversed the edifice, wounding many Federals. Little by little, the defenders, seeing that they were not supported, left the place. The prefecture had long ceased firing when Espivent was still bombarding it. The fright of this brute was so great that he continued firing shells till night-fall. At half past seven the sailors of La Couronne and Le Magnanime courageously stormed the prefecture, void of all its defenders.
They found the hostages safe and sound, as were the chasseurs taken prisoner in the morning. Yet the Jesuitic repression was atrocious. The men of order arrested at random, and dragged their victims into the lamp-stores of the station. There an officer scrutinized the prisoners, made a sign to one or the other of them to step out, and blew out his brains. The following days there were rumours of summary executions in the barracks, the forts and the prisons. The number of dead the people lost is unknown, but it exceeded 150, besides many wounded who concealed themselves. The Versaillese had thirty killed and fifty wounded. More than 900 persons were thrown into the casemates of the Ch�teau d'If and of the Fort St. Nicolas. Cr�mieux was arrested at the porter’s of the Israelite Cemetery. He voluntarily gave himself up to those who sought him, strong in his good faith, and still believing in the judges. The brave Etienne was also taken. Landeck, of course, had made his exit in good time.
On the 5th Espivent entered triumphantly, acclaimed with savage frenzy by the reactionaries. But from the further ranks of the crowd cries and hisses rose against the murderers. At the Place St. Ferr�ol a captain was fired at, and the people stoned the windows of a house from which the sailors had been cheered.
Two days after the struggle, on its return from La Couronne, the municipal council recovered its voice to strike the vanquished.
The National Guard was disarmed, a fierce reaction raged, the Jesuits again lorded it, and Espivent paraded about, receiving ovations to the cries of ‘Vive J�sus! Vive le Sacr� Coeur!’ The club of the National Guard was closed, Bouchet arrested, and the Radicals, insulted, persecuted, once more saw what it costs to desert the people.
Narbonne, too, was subdued. On the 30th March the prefect and the procureur-general issued a proclamation in which they spoke of ‘the handful of factious men’, presented themselves as upholders of the true Republic, and telegraphed everywhere the failure of the provincial movements. ‘Is this a reason,’ Digeon answered in a poster, ‘to lower before force this red flag dyed in the blood of our martyrs?
Let others consent to live eternally oppressed.’ Whereupon he prepared for battle, and barricaded the streets leading to the Hotel-de-Ville. The women, always to the fore, pulled up pavements and piled up furniture. The authorities, afraid of serious resistance, sent M. Marcou to his friend Digeon. The Brutus of Carcassonne strode through the H�tel-de-Ville, accompanied by two Republicans of Limoux, to offer in the name of the procureur-general a full and complete amnesty to those who would evacuate the edifice. They offered Digeon twenty-four hours to gain the frontier. Digeon assembled his council, and all refused to fly. M. Marcou hastened to inform the military authorities that they might now act.[115] General Zentz was at once sent to Narbonne.
At three o'clock in the morning a detachment of Turcos reconnoitred the barricades of the Rue du Pont. The Federals, anxious to fraternize, cleared it, and were received with a volley, killing two men and wounding three. On the 31st, at seven o'clock, Zentz in a proclamation announced that the bombardment was about to recommence. Digeon at once wrote to him, ‘I have the right to reply to such a savage menace in the same style. I warn you that if you bombard the town, 1 shall have the three prisoners who are in my power shot.’ Zentz answered by arresting the envoy, and had brandy distributed to the Turcos, the only troops who would march. These brutes arrived at Narbonne eager to loot, and had already pillaged three caf�s. The fight was about to begin, when the procureur-general again sent two envoys, offering amnesty to all those who would evacuate the Hotel-de-Ville before the opening of the fire, but the execution of the hostages would be punished by the massacre of all its occupants. Digeon wrote out these conditions under the dictation of one of the envoys, read them to the Federals, and left every one free to withdraw. At this moment the procureur-general presented himself with the Turcos before the terrace of the garden. Digeon rushed thither. The procureur harangued the multitude, and as he spoke of indulgence, Digeon protested that amnesty had just been promised. The procureur drowned the discussion in a roll of drums, read the legal sommation in front of the H�tel-de-Ville, and asked for the hostages, whom the soldiers who had deserted delivered over to him.
All these parleys had profoundly enervated the defence. Besides, the H�tel-de-Ville could do nothing against a bombardment that would have battered the town. Digeon had the edifice evacuated, and shut himself up alone in the cabinet of the mayor, resolved to sell his life dearly; but the people, in spite of his resistance, carried him off. The H�tel-de-Ville was empty when the Turcos arrived. They plundered in all its corners, and officers were seen to deck themselves with stolen valuables.
Notwithstanding the formal promises of amnesty, numerous warrants of arrest were issued. Digeon refused to fly, and wrote to the procureur-general that he might arrest him. Such a man at Toulouse would have saved the movement and raised the whole South.
Limoges had one glimpse of hope on the fatal day of the 4th April. That revolutionary capital of the Centre could not look on the efforts of Paris unmoved. On the 23rd March the Soci�t� Populaire centralized all the democratic forces and passed a vote of thanks to the army of Paris for its conduct on the 18th. When Versailles called for volunteers, the Society enjoined the municipal council to prevent such an incitement to civil war. The working men’s societies despatched a delegate to Paris soon after the proclamation of the Commune, there to inquire into its principles, and to request the sending of a commissar to Limoges. The members of the Commune replied that this was impossible for the present, that they would consider it by and by; and never sent anybody. The Soci�t� Populaire was thus obliged to act alone. It urged the municipal council to hold a review of the National Guards , certain that it would result in a demonstration against Versailles. The council, composed, with few exceptions, of timid men, tried to gain time, when the news of the 3rd April became known. On the morning of the 4th, on reading on the walls the triumphant telegram from Versailles, the workmen revolted. A detachment of five hundred soldiers was about to leave for Versailles; the crowd followed them to the station, and the workmen urged them to join the people. The soldiers, surrounded, much excited, fraternized and surrendered their arms, many of which were taken to the Soci�t� Populaire, and hidden there.
The call-up was at once beaten. The colonel of cuirassiers, Billet, who, accompanied by orderlies, rode. through the town, was hemmed in by the people, and constrained to cry, ‘Vive la R�publique!’ At five o'clock the whole National Guard was in arms on the Place de la Mairie. The officers met in the H�tel-de-Ville, where a councillor proposed to proclaim the Commune. The mayor objected, but the cry resounded on all sides. Captain Coissac took upon himself to go to the station in order to stop the train ready for the departure of the troops. The other officers consulted their companies, which answered with one unanimous cry, ‘Vive Paris! � bas Versailles!’ Soon after, the battalions, filing off before the H�tel-de-Ville, preceded by two municipal councillors in their official costume, went to ask the general for the release of the soldiers arrested during the course of the day. The general gave the order to set them free, and at the same time sent word to Colonel Billet to prepare against the insurrection. From the Place Tourny the Federals repaired to the prefecture, occupying it in spite of the resistance of the Conservative National Guards, and commenced throwing up some barricades. A few soldiers arrived from the Rue des Prisons, and several citizens urged the officers not to commence a civil war. These hesitated, retired, when Colonel Billet, at the head of about fifty cuirassiers, came out on to the Place de l'Eglise St. Michel, and ordered his men to advance and draw swords. They fired their pistols, the Federals answered, and the colonel was mortally wounded. His horse turning about, carried its rider as far as the Place St. Pierre, the other horses following, the Federals thus remained masters of the field. But lacking organization, they disbanded in the night and left the prefecture. The next day the company that occupied the station seeing themselves abandoned withdrew. The arrests began, and many were obliged to hide.
Thus the revolts of the great towns died out one by one like the lateral craters of an exhausted volcano. The revolutionaries of the provinces showed themselves everywhere completely disorganized, without any faculty to wield power. Everywhere victorious at the outset, the workmen had only known how to pronounce for Paris. But at least they showed some vitality, generosity, and pride. Eighty years of bourgeois domination had not been able to transform them into a nation of mercenaries; while the Radicals, who either combated or held aloof from them, once more attested the decrepitude, the egotism of the middle-class , always ready to betray the working men to the ‘upper’ classes.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XIV<br>
The weaknesses of the Council</h1>
<p>After an armistice of seventy days, Paris again took up the struggle for France single-handed. It was no longer the territory only which she strove for, but the very ground-work of the nation. Victorious, her victory would not be sterile like those of the battlefield; regenerated, the people would set to the great work of remaking the social edifice; vanquished, all liberty would be quenched, the bourgeoisie turn its whips into scorpions, and a generation glide into the grave.</p>
<p>And Paris, so generous, so fraternal, did not shudder at the impending civil war. She stood up for an idea that exalted her battalions. While the bourgeois refuses to fight, saying, ‘I have a family,’ the workman says, ‘I fight for my children.’</p>
<p>For the third time since the 18th March Paris had but one soul. The official despatches, the hireling journalists established at Versailles, pictured her as the pandemonium of all the black-legs of Europe, recounted the thefts, the arrests <em>en masse</em>, the endless orgies, detailed sums and names. According to them, honest women no longer dared venture into the streets; 1,500,000 persons oppressed by 20,000 ruffians were offering up ardent prayers for Versailles. But the traveller running the risk of a visit to Paris, found the streets and boulevards tranquil, presenting their usual aspect. The pillagers had only pillaged the guillotine, solemnly burnt before the <em>mairie</em> of the eleventh arrondissement. From all quarters the same murmur of execration rose against the assassination of the prisoners and the ignoble scenes at Versailles. The incoherence of the first acts of the Council was hardly noticed while the ferocity of the Versaillese was the topic of the day.</p>
<p>Persons coming full of indignation against Paris, seeing this calm, this union of hearts, these wounded men crying ‘<em>Vive la Commune!’ </em>these enthusiastic battalions — there Mont Val�rien vomiting death, here men living as brothers — in a few hours caught the Parisian malady.</p>
<p>It was a fever of faith, of blind devotion, and of hope — of hope above all. What rebellion had been thus armed? It was no longer a handful of desperate men fighting behind a few pavements, reduced to charging their muskets with slugs or stones. The Commune of 1871, much better armed than that of 1793, possessed at least 60,000 men, 200,000 muskets, 1,200 cannon, five forts; a precinct covering Montmartre, Belleville, the Panth�on overtowering the whole city, munitions enough to last for years, and milliards at her bidding. What else is wanted to conquer? Some revolutionary instinct. There was not a man at the H�tel-de-Ville who did not boast of possessing it.</p>
<p>The sitting of the 3rd April during the battle was stormy. Many loudly opposed this mad sortie. Lefran�ais, indignant at having been deceived, withdrew from the Commission, which, called upon to explain, threw all the blame upon the generals. The friends of the latter took up their defence, demanded that news should be waited for. Soon the disastrous tidings were brought, and they could not hesitate any longer. For such a usurpation of authority there was but one atonement possible. Flourens and Duval had made it voluntarily. The others ought to have followed. Thus the dead would have been appeased, similar follies once for all cut short, and the authority of the Commune brought home to the most refractory.</p>
<p>But the men at the H�tel-de-Ville were not of such inflexibility. Many had fought, plotted together under the Empire, lived in the same prisons, identified the Revolution with their friends. And besides, the generals, were they alone guilty? So many battalions could not have bestirred themselves all the night without the Council being informed thereof. Though blind or deaf, they were none the less responsible. In order to be just they ought to have decimated themselves. They felt this, no doubt, and did not dare strike the generals.</p>
<p>They might at least have dismissed them. They contented themselves with replacing them on the Executive Commission, and notified this measure most respectfully. ‘The Commune was desirous to leave them all liberty in the conduct of the military operations; it was as far from wishing to disoblige them as from wishing to weaken their authority.’ And yet their heedlessness, their incapacity, had been mortal. Their ignorance only saved them from the suspicion of having betrayed. This indulgence was big with promises for the future.</p>
<p>This future meant Cluseret. From the first days he had beset the Central Committee, the Ministries, in quest of a generalship, his hands full of war plans against the mayors. The Committee would have nothing to do with him. He then clung to the Executive Commission, which on the 2nd April, at seven o'clock in the evening, appointed him delegate at war, with the order to enter upon his duties immediately. The rappel was being beaten at that moment for the fatal sortie. Cluseret took good care not to take possession of his post, allowed the generals to ruin themselves, and on the 3rd appeared before the Council to denounce their childishness. It was this military pamphlet-monger, with no pledge but the decoration he had won against the Socialists of 1848, who had played the marionette in three insurrections, whom the Socialists of 1871 charged with the defence of their Revolution.</p>
<p>The choice was execrable, the very idea of naming a delegate faulty. The Council had just decided to keep on the defensive. To guard the lines, regularize the services, provision and administer the battalions, the best delegate would have been common sense. A commission, composed of a few active and laborious men, would have offered all guarantees of security.</p>
<p>Moreover, the Council failed to point out what sort of defence they had in view. The defence of the forts, of the redoubts, of the accessory positions, required thousands of men, experienced officers, a war with the mattock as well as the musket. The National Guard was not qualified for such soldiership. Behind the ramparts, on the contrary, it became invincible. It would have sufficed to blow up the forts of the south, to fortify Monmartre, the Panth�on, and the Buttes-Chaumont, to strongly arm the ramparts, to create a second, a third enceinte, to render Paris inaccessible or untenable to the enemy. The Council did not indicate either of these systems, but allowed its delegates to dabble with the two, and finally annulled the one by the other.</p>
<p>If they wished by the appointment of a delegate to concentrate the military power, why not dissolve the Central Committee? The latter acted , spoke more boldly and much better than the Council which had excluded it from the H�tel-de-Ville. The Committee had installed itself in the Rue de l'Entrep�t, behind the Customs House, near its cradle. Thence on the 5th April it launched a fine proclamation: ‘Workmen, do not deceive yourselves about the import of the combat. It is the engagement between parasitism and labour, exploitation and production. If you are tired of vegetating in ignorance and wallowing in misery, if you want your children to be men enjoying the benefit of their labour, and not mere animals trained for the workshop and the battlefield, if you do not want your daughters, whom you are unable to educate and care for as you yearn to do, to become instruments of pleasure in the arms of the aristocracy of money, if you at last want the reign of justice, workmen, be intelligent, rise!’</p>
<p>The Committee certainly declared in another proclamation that it did not pretend to any political power, but power in times of revolution of itself belongs to those who define it. For eight days the Council had not known how to interpret the Commune, and its whole baggage consisted in two insignificant decrees. The Central Committee, on the contrary, very distinctly set forth the character of this contest, that had become a social one and, breaking through the political facade, pointed out behind the struggle for municipal liberties the question of the proletariat.</p>
<p>The Council might have profited by the lesson, endorsed if necessary that manifesto, and then, referring to the protestations of the Committee, obliged it to dissolve itself. This was all the more easy in that the Committee, much weakened by the elections, only existed thanks to four or five members and its eloquent mouthpiece, Moreau. But the Council contented itself with mildly protesting at the sitting of the 5th, and as usual letting things get along as best they could.</p>
<p>It was already drifting from weakness to weakness; and yet, if ever it believed in its own energy it was that day. The savagery of the Versaillese, the assassination of the prisoners, of Flourens and Duval, had excited the most calm. They had been there full of life three days ago, these brave colleagues and friends. Their empty places seemed to cry out for vengeance. Well, then, since Versailles waged a war of cannibals, they would answer an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Besides, if the Council did not act, the people, it was said, would perhaps revenge themselves, and more terribly. They decreed that any one accused of complicity with Versailles would be judged within forty-eight hours, and if guilty, retained as a hostage. The execution by Versailles of a defender of the Commune would be followed by that of a hostage — by three said the decree, in equal or double number said the proclamation.</p>
<p><img src="pics/declaration.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Declaration" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p>These different readings betrayed the troubled state of their minds. The Council alone believed it had frightened Versailles. The bourgeois journals certainly shouted ‘Abomination!’ and M. Thiers, who shot without any decrees, denounced the ferocity of the Commune. At bottom they all laughed in their sleeves. The reactionaries of any mark had long since fled; there only remained in Paris the small fry and a few isolated men, whom, if needs be, Versailles was ready to sacrifice.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n116">[116]</a></sup> The members of the Council, in their childish impetuosity, had not seen the real hostages staring them in the face — the bank, the civil register, the domains and the suitors’ fund. These were the tender points by which to hold the bourgeoisie. Without risking a single man, the Commune had only to stretch out its hand and bid Versailles negotiate or commit suicide.</p>
<p>The timid delegates of the 26th March were not the men to dare this. In allowing the Versaillese army to march off, the Central Committee had committed a heavy fault; that of the Council was incomparably more damaging. All serious rebels have commenced by seizing upon the sinews of the enemy — the treasury. The Council of the Commune was the only revolutionary Government that refused to so so. While abolishing the budget of public worship, which was at Versailles, they bent their knees to the budget of the bourgeoisie, which was at their mercy.</p>
<p>Then followed a scene of high comedy, if one could laugh at negligence that has caused so much bloodshed. Since the 19th March the governors of the bank lived like men condemned to death, every day expecting the execution of the treasure. Of removing it to Versailles they could not dream. It would have required sixty or eighty vans and an army corps. On the 23rd, its governor, Rouland, could no longer stand it, and fled. The deputy governor, De Ploeue, replaced him. From his first interview with the delegates of the H�tel-de-Ville he had seen through their timidity, given battle, then seemed to soften, yielded little by little, and doled out his money franc by franc. The bank, which Versailles believed almost empty, contained: coin, 77 millions; <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n117">[117]</a></sup> bank-notes, 166 millions; bills discounted, 899 millions; securities for advances made, 120 millions; bullion, 11 millions; jewels in deposit, 7 millions; public effects and other titles in deposit, 900 millions; that is, 2 milliards 180 million francs: 800 millions in bank-notes only required the signature of the cashier, a signature easily made. The Commune had then three milliards in its hands, of which over a milliard was realized, enough to buy all the generals and functionaries of Versailles; as hostages, 90,000 depositors of titles, and the two milliards in circulation whose guarantee lay in the coffers in the Rue de la Vrilli�re.</p>
<p>On the 29th March old Beslay presented himself before the tabernacle. De Ploeuc had mustered his 430 clerks, armed with muskets without cartridges. Beslay, led through the lines of these warriors, humbly prayed the governor to be so kind as to supply the pay of the National Guard. De Ploeuc answered superciliously, spoke of defending himself. ‘But,’ said Beslay, ‘if, to prevent the effusion of blood, the Commune appointed a governor. . . “A governor! Never!’ said De Ploeuc, who understood his man; ‘but a delegate! If you were that delegate we might come to an understanding.’ And, acting pathetic, ‘Come, M. Beslay, help me to save this. This is the fortune of your country; this is the fortune of France.’</p>
<p>Beslay, deeply moved, hurried off to the Executive Commission, repeated his lesson all the better that he believed it and prided himself on his financial lore. ‘The bank,’ he said, ‘is the fortune of the country: without it, no more industry, no more commerce. If you violate it, all its notes will be so much waste-paper. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n118">[118]</a></sup> This trash circulated in the H�tel-de-Ville, and the Proudhonists of the Council, forgetting that their master put the suppression of the bank at the head of his revolutionary programme, backed old Beslay. At Versailles itself, the capitalist stronghold had no more inveterate defenders than those of the H�tel-de-Ville. If someone had at least proposed, ‘Let us at least occupy the bank’ — but the Executive Commission had not the nerve to do this, and contented itself with commissioning Beslay. De Ploeuc received the good man with open arms, installed him in the nearest office, even persuading him to sleep at the bank, made him his hostage, and once more breathed freely.</p>
<p>Thus from the first week the Assembly of the H�tel-de-Ville showed itself weak towards the authors of the sortie, weak towards the Central Committee, weak towards the bank, trifling in its decrees, in the choice of its delegate to the War Office, without a military plan, without a programme, without general views, and indulging in desultory discussions. The Radicals who had remained in the Council saw whither it was drifting, and, not inclined to play the martyrs, they sent in their resignations.</p>
<p>0 Revolution! thou dost not await the well-timed day and hour. Thou comest suddenly, blind and fatal as the avalanche. The true soldier of the people accepts the combat wherever hazard may place him. Blunders, defections, compromising companions do not dishearten him. Though certain of defeat, he struggles still; his victory looms in the future.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XIV
The weaknesses of the Council
After an armistice of seventy days, Paris again took up the struggle for France single-handed. It was no longer the territory only which she strove for, but the very ground-work of the nation. Victorious, her victory would not be sterile like those of the battlefield; regenerated, the people would set to the great work of remaking the social edifice; vanquished, all liberty would be quenched, the bourgeoisie turn its whips into scorpions, and a generation glide into the grave.
And Paris, so generous, so fraternal, did not shudder at the impending civil war. She stood up for an idea that exalted her battalions. While the bourgeois refuses to fight, saying, ‘I have a family,’ the workman says, ‘I fight for my children.’
For the third time since the 18th March Paris had but one soul. The official despatches, the hireling journalists established at Versailles, pictured her as the pandemonium of all the black-legs of Europe, recounted the thefts, the arrests en masse, the endless orgies, detailed sums and names. According to them, honest women no longer dared venture into the streets; 1,500,000 persons oppressed by 20,000 ruffians were offering up ardent prayers for Versailles. But the traveller running the risk of a visit to Paris, found the streets and boulevards tranquil, presenting their usual aspect. The pillagers had only pillaged the guillotine, solemnly burnt before the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement. From all quarters the same murmur of execration rose against the assassination of the prisoners and the ignoble scenes at Versailles. The incoherence of the first acts of the Council was hardly noticed while the ferocity of the Versaillese was the topic of the day.
Persons coming full of indignation against Paris, seeing this calm, this union of hearts, these wounded men crying ‘Vive la Commune!’ these enthusiastic battalions — there Mont Val�rien vomiting death, here men living as brothers — in a few hours caught the Parisian malady.
It was a fever of faith, of blind devotion, and of hope — of hope above all. What rebellion had been thus armed? It was no longer a handful of desperate men fighting behind a few pavements, reduced to charging their muskets with slugs or stones. The Commune of 1871, much better armed than that of 1793, possessed at least 60,000 men, 200,000 muskets, 1,200 cannon, five forts; a precinct covering Montmartre, Belleville, the Panth�on overtowering the whole city, munitions enough to last for years, and milliards at her bidding. What else is wanted to conquer? Some revolutionary instinct. There was not a man at the H�tel-de-Ville who did not boast of possessing it.
The sitting of the 3rd April during the battle was stormy. Many loudly opposed this mad sortie. Lefran�ais, indignant at having been deceived, withdrew from the Commission, which, called upon to explain, threw all the blame upon the generals. The friends of the latter took up their defence, demanded that news should be waited for. Soon the disastrous tidings were brought, and they could not hesitate any longer. For such a usurpation of authority there was but one atonement possible. Flourens and Duval had made it voluntarily. The others ought to have followed. Thus the dead would have been appeased, similar follies once for all cut short, and the authority of the Commune brought home to the most refractory.
But the men at the H�tel-de-Ville were not of such inflexibility. Many had fought, plotted together under the Empire, lived in the same prisons, identified the Revolution with their friends. And besides, the generals, were they alone guilty? So many battalions could not have bestirred themselves all the night without the Council being informed thereof. Though blind or deaf, they were none the less responsible. In order to be just they ought to have decimated themselves. They felt this, no doubt, and did not dare strike the generals.
They might at least have dismissed them. They contented themselves with replacing them on the Executive Commission, and notified this measure most respectfully. ‘The Commune was desirous to leave them all liberty in the conduct of the military operations; it was as far from wishing to disoblige them as from wishing to weaken their authority.’ And yet their heedlessness, their incapacity, had been mortal. Their ignorance only saved them from the suspicion of having betrayed. This indulgence was big with promises for the future.
This future meant Cluseret. From the first days he had beset the Central Committee, the Ministries, in quest of a generalship, his hands full of war plans against the mayors. The Committee would have nothing to do with him. He then clung to the Executive Commission, which on the 2nd April, at seven o'clock in the evening, appointed him delegate at war, with the order to enter upon his duties immediately. The rappel was being beaten at that moment for the fatal sortie. Cluseret took good care not to take possession of his post, allowed the generals to ruin themselves, and on the 3rd appeared before the Council to denounce their childishness. It was this military pamphlet-monger, with no pledge but the decoration he had won against the Socialists of 1848, who had played the marionette in three insurrections, whom the Socialists of 1871 charged with the defence of their Revolution.
The choice was execrable, the very idea of naming a delegate faulty. The Council had just decided to keep on the defensive. To guard the lines, regularize the services, provision and administer the battalions, the best delegate would have been common sense. A commission, composed of a few active and laborious men, would have offered all guarantees of security.
Moreover, the Council failed to point out what sort of defence they had in view. The defence of the forts, of the redoubts, of the accessory positions, required thousands of men, experienced officers, a war with the mattock as well as the musket. The National Guard was not qualified for such soldiership. Behind the ramparts, on the contrary, it became invincible. It would have sufficed to blow up the forts of the south, to fortify Monmartre, the Panth�on, and the Buttes-Chaumont, to strongly arm the ramparts, to create a second, a third enceinte, to render Paris inaccessible or untenable to the enemy. The Council did not indicate either of these systems, but allowed its delegates to dabble with the two, and finally annulled the one by the other.
If they wished by the appointment of a delegate to concentrate the military power, why not dissolve the Central Committee? The latter acted , spoke more boldly and much better than the Council which had excluded it from the H�tel-de-Ville. The Committee had installed itself in the Rue de l'Entrep�t, behind the Customs House, near its cradle. Thence on the 5th April it launched a fine proclamation: ‘Workmen, do not deceive yourselves about the import of the combat. It is the engagement between parasitism and labour, exploitation and production. If you are tired of vegetating in ignorance and wallowing in misery, if you want your children to be men enjoying the benefit of their labour, and not mere animals trained for the workshop and the battlefield, if you do not want your daughters, whom you are unable to educate and care for as you yearn to do, to become instruments of pleasure in the arms of the aristocracy of money, if you at last want the reign of justice, workmen, be intelligent, rise!’
The Committee certainly declared in another proclamation that it did not pretend to any political power, but power in times of revolution of itself belongs to those who define it. For eight days the Council had not known how to interpret the Commune, and its whole baggage consisted in two insignificant decrees. The Central Committee, on the contrary, very distinctly set forth the character of this contest, that had become a social one and, breaking through the political facade, pointed out behind the struggle for municipal liberties the question of the proletariat.
The Council might have profited by the lesson, endorsed if necessary that manifesto, and then, referring to the protestations of the Committee, obliged it to dissolve itself. This was all the more easy in that the Committee, much weakened by the elections, only existed thanks to four or five members and its eloquent mouthpiece, Moreau. But the Council contented itself with mildly protesting at the sitting of the 5th, and as usual letting things get along as best they could.
It was already drifting from weakness to weakness; and yet, if ever it believed in its own energy it was that day. The savagery of the Versaillese, the assassination of the prisoners, of Flourens and Duval, had excited the most calm. They had been there full of life three days ago, these brave colleagues and friends. Their empty places seemed to cry out for vengeance. Well, then, since Versailles waged a war of cannibals, they would answer an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Besides, if the Council did not act, the people, it was said, would perhaps revenge themselves, and more terribly. They decreed that any one accused of complicity with Versailles would be judged within forty-eight hours, and if guilty, retained as a hostage. The execution by Versailles of a defender of the Commune would be followed by that of a hostage — by three said the decree, in equal or double number said the proclamation.
These different readings betrayed the troubled state of their minds. The Council alone believed it had frightened Versailles. The bourgeois journals certainly shouted ‘Abomination!’ and M. Thiers, who shot without any decrees, denounced the ferocity of the Commune. At bottom they all laughed in their sleeves. The reactionaries of any mark had long since fled; there only remained in Paris the small fry and a few isolated men, whom, if needs be, Versailles was ready to sacrifice.[116] The members of the Council, in their childish impetuosity, had not seen the real hostages staring them in the face — the bank, the civil register, the domains and the suitors’ fund. These were the tender points by which to hold the bourgeoisie. Without risking a single man, the Commune had only to stretch out its hand and bid Versailles negotiate or commit suicide.
The timid delegates of the 26th March were not the men to dare this. In allowing the Versaillese army to march off, the Central Committee had committed a heavy fault; that of the Council was incomparably more damaging. All serious rebels have commenced by seizing upon the sinews of the enemy — the treasury. The Council of the Commune was the only revolutionary Government that refused to so so. While abolishing the budget of public worship, which was at Versailles, they bent their knees to the budget of the bourgeoisie, which was at their mercy.
Then followed a scene of high comedy, if one could laugh at negligence that has caused so much bloodshed. Since the 19th March the governors of the bank lived like men condemned to death, every day expecting the execution of the treasure. Of removing it to Versailles they could not dream. It would have required sixty or eighty vans and an army corps. On the 23rd, its governor, Rouland, could no longer stand it, and fled. The deputy governor, De Ploeue, replaced him. From his first interview with the delegates of the H�tel-de-Ville he had seen through their timidity, given battle, then seemed to soften, yielded little by little, and doled out his money franc by franc. The bank, which Versailles believed almost empty, contained: coin, 77 millions; [117] bank-notes, 166 millions; bills discounted, 899 millions; securities for advances made, 120 millions; bullion, 11 millions; jewels in deposit, 7 millions; public effects and other titles in deposit, 900 millions; that is, 2 milliards 180 million francs: 800 millions in bank-notes only required the signature of the cashier, a signature easily made. The Commune had then three milliards in its hands, of which over a milliard was realized, enough to buy all the generals and functionaries of Versailles; as hostages, 90,000 depositors of titles, and the two milliards in circulation whose guarantee lay in the coffers in the Rue de la Vrilli�re.
On the 29th March old Beslay presented himself before the tabernacle. De Ploeuc had mustered his 430 clerks, armed with muskets without cartridges. Beslay, led through the lines of these warriors, humbly prayed the governor to be so kind as to supply the pay of the National Guard. De Ploeuc answered superciliously, spoke of defending himself. ‘But,’ said Beslay, ‘if, to prevent the effusion of blood, the Commune appointed a governor. . . “A governor! Never!’ said De Ploeuc, who understood his man; ‘but a delegate! If you were that delegate we might come to an understanding.’ And, acting pathetic, ‘Come, M. Beslay, help me to save this. This is the fortune of your country; this is the fortune of France.’
Beslay, deeply moved, hurried off to the Executive Commission, repeated his lesson all the better that he believed it and prided himself on his financial lore. ‘The bank,’ he said, ‘is the fortune of the country: without it, no more industry, no more commerce. If you violate it, all its notes will be so much waste-paper. [118] This trash circulated in the H�tel-de-Ville, and the Proudhonists of the Council, forgetting that their master put the suppression of the bank at the head of his revolutionary programme, backed old Beslay. At Versailles itself, the capitalist stronghold had no more inveterate defenders than those of the H�tel-de-Ville. If someone had at least proposed, ‘Let us at least occupy the bank’ — but the Executive Commission had not the nerve to do this, and contented itself with commissioning Beslay. De Ploeuc received the good man with open arms, installed him in the nearest office, even persuading him to sleep at the bank, made him his hostage, and once more breathed freely.
Thus from the first week the Assembly of the H�tel-de-Ville showed itself weak towards the authors of the sortie, weak towards the Central Committee, weak towards the bank, trifling in its decrees, in the choice of its delegate to the War Office, without a military plan, without a programme, without general views, and indulging in desultory discussions. The Radicals who had remained in the Council saw whither it was drifting, and, not inclined to play the martyrs, they sent in their resignations.
0 Revolution! thou dost not await the well-timed day and hour. Thou comest suddenly, blind and fatal as the avalanche. The true soldier of the people accepts the combat wherever hazard may place him. Blunders, defections, compromising companions do not dishearten him. Though certain of defeat, he struggles still; his victory looms in the future.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XII<br>
The Versaillese beat back the Commune patrols and massacre prisoners</h1>
<p><img src="pics/guns.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="guns" border="1" align="left"></p>
<p>That very day, the 2nd April, at one o'clock, without warning, without summons, the Versaillese opened fire and launched their shells into Paris.</p>
<p>For several days their cavalry had exchanged shots with our advance posts at Chatillon and Putteaux. We occupied Courbevoie, that commands the route to Versailles, which made the rurals very anxious. On the 2nd, at ten o'clock in the morning, three brigades of the best Versailles troops, 10,000 strong, arrived at the cross-roads of Bergeres. Six or seven hundred cavalry of the brigade Gallifet supported this movement, while we had only three federal battalions at Courbevoie, in all five or six hundred men, defended by a halffinished barricade on the St. Germain road. Their watch, however, was well kept; their vedettes had killed the head-surgeon of the Versaillese army, whom they had mistaken for a colonel of gendarmerie.</p>
<p>At mid-day the Versaillese, having cannonaded the barracks of Courbevoie and the barricade, launched themselves to the assault. At the first shots from our men they scampered off, abandoning on the road cannon and officers. Vinoy was obliged to come himself and rally the renegades. Meanwhile the 113th of the line outflanked Courbevoie on the right, and the infantry of the marines turned left, marching through Putteaux. Too inferior in number and fearing to be cut off from Paris, the Federals evacuated Courbevoie, and, pursued by shells, fell back on the Avenue de Neuilly, leaving twelve dead and some prisoners. The gendarmes had taken five, one of whom was a child of fifteen, beating them unmercifully, and shot them at the foot of Mont-Val�rien. This expedition concluded, the army regained its cantonment.</p>
<p>At the report of the cannon all Paris started. No one believed in an attack, so completely did all, since the 28th, live in an atmosphere of confidence. It was no doubt an anniversary, a misunderstanding at the utmost. When the news, the ambulance-carriages, arrived; when the word was spoken, ‘The siege is recommencing!’ an explosion of horror shook all the quarters. An affrighted hive, such was Paris. The barricades were again thrown up, the call to arms beaten everywhere, and the cannon drawn to the ramparts of the Porte-Maillot and of the Ternes. At three o'clock 80,000 men were on foot crying, ‘To Versailles!’ The women excited the battalions, and spoke of marching in the vanguard.</p>
<p>The Executive Commission met and posted up a proclamation: ‘The royalist conspirators have attacked; despite the moderation of our attitude, they have attacked. Our duty is to defend the great city against these culpable aggressions.’ In the Commission, the generals Duval, Bergeret, and Eudes declared for an attack. ‘The enthusiasm,’ they said, ‘is irresistible, unique. What can Versailles do against 100,000 men? We must sally out.’ Their colleagues resisted, especially F�lix Pyat, confronted with his rant and vapourings of the morning. His buffoonery stood him in the stead of a life-preserver. ‘One does not start,’ said he, ‘at random, without cannon, with cadres, and without leaders;’ and he demanded the return of the strength of the troops. Duval, who since the 19th March had been strongly bent upon a sortie, violently rebuked him: ‘Why, then, for three days have you shouted, “To Versailles"?’ The most energetic opponent of the sortie was Lefran�ais. Finally, the four civil members — that is, the majority — decided that the generals should present a detailed statement as to their forces in men, artillery, munitions, and transports. The same evening the Commission named Cluseret delegate at War jointly with Eudes, who, being a member of the so-called party of action, owed this post only to the patronage of his old cronies.</p>
<p>In spite of the majority of the Commission, the generals set out. They had, anyway received no formal order to the contrary. F�lix Pyat had even concluded by saying, ‘After all, if you think you are ready . . .’they saw Flourens always ready for a <em>coup-de-main, </em>other colleagues equally adventurous, and, on their own authority, certain of being followed by the National Guard. They sent the <em>chefs-de-l�gion </em>the order to form columns. The battalions of the right bank were to concentrate at the Place Vend�me and Place Wagram; those of the left bank, at the Place d'Italie and Champ-de-Mars.</p>
<p>These movements, without staff officers to guide them, were very badly executed. Many men marched hither and thither, grew tired. Yet at midnight there were still about 20,000 men on the right bank of the Seine and about 17,000 on the left.</p>
<p>From eight o'clock to midnight the Council was sitting. The inexorable F�lix Pyat, always pertinent, demanded the abolition of the budget of public worship. The majority immediately satisfied him. He might just as well have decreed the abolition of the Versaillese army. Of the sortie, of the military preparations deafening Paris, no one breathed a word in the Council — no one disputed the field with the generals.</p>
<p>The plan of the latter, which they communicated to Cluseret, was to make a strong demonstration in the direction of Rueil, while two columns were to march on Versailles by Meudon and the plateau of Chatillon. Bergeret, assisted by Flourens, was to operate on the right; Eudes and Duval were to command the columns of the centre and the left. A simple idea, and easy of execution with experienced officers and solid heads of columns. But most of the battalions had been without leaders since the 18th March, the National Guards without cadres, and the generals who assumed the responsibility of leading 40,000 men had never conducted a single battalion into the field. They neglected even the most elementary precautions, knew not how to collect artillery, ammunition-wagons or ambulances, forgot to make an order of the day, and left the men for several hours without food in a penetrating fog. Every Federal chose the leader he liked best. Many had no cartridges, and believed the sortie to be a simple demonstration. The Executive Commission had just posted up a despatch from the Place Vend�me, headquarters of the National Guard: ‘Soldiers of the line are all coming to us, and declare that, save the superior officers, no one wants to fight.’</p>
<p>At three o'clock in the morning Bergeret’s column, about 10,000 men strong and with only eight ordnance pieces, arrived at the bridge of Neuilly. It was necessary to give the men, who had taken nothing since the evening before, time to recover themselves. At dawn they moved in the direction of Rued. The battalions marched by sections in line in the middle of the road, without scouts, and cheerfully climbed the Plateau des Bergeres, when suddenly a shell burst into their ranks, followed by a second. Mont-Val�rien had opened fire.</p>
<p>A terrible panic broke up the battalions, amidst thousandfold cries of ‘Treason!’ the whole National Guard believing that we occupied Mont-Val�rien. Many members of the Commune, of the Central Committee, at the Place Vend�me, knew the contrary, and very foolishly concealed it, living in the hope that the fortress would not fire. It possessed, it is true, only two or three badly appointed guns, the range of which the Guards might have escaped by one quick movement; but, surprised when in a state of blind confidence, they fancied themselves betrayed, and fled on all sides. Bergeret exhausted every means to stay them. A shell cut in two the brother of his chief-of-staff, an officer of the regular army gone over to the Commune. The greater part of the Federals dispersed in the fields and regained Paris. The 91st only and a few others, 1,200 men in all, remained with Bergeret, and, dividing into small groups, reached Rueil. Shortly after, Flourens arrived by the road of Asni�res, bringing hardly a thousand men.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n112">[112]</a></sup> The rest had lagged behind in Paris or on the way. Flourens, pressing forward all the same, arrived at the Malmaison, put Gallifet’s chasseurs to flight, and the Parisian vanguard pushed on as far as Bougival.</p>
<p>The Versaillese, surprised by this sortie, only drew up very late, towards ten o'clock. Ten thousand men were launched against Bougival, and the batteries placed on the hill of La Jonchere cannonaded Rueil. Two brigades of cavalry on the right and that of Gallifet on the left defended the wings. The Parisian vanguard — a mere handful of men — offered a determined resistance, in order to give Bergeret time to operate his retreat, which commenced towards one o'clock, on Neuilly, where they fortified the bridge-head. Some valiant men, who had obstinately held out in Rueil, with great difficulty gained the bridge of Asni�res, whither they were pursued by the cavalry, who took some prisoners.</p>
<p>Flourens was surprised at Rueil, and the house which he occupied with some officers surrounded by gendarmes. As he prepared to defend himself, the officer of the detachment, Captain Desmarets, cleft his head with so furious a blow of the sabre that the brains gushed out. The body was thrown into a dust-cart and taken to Versailles, where the fine ladies gathered to enjoy the spectacle. Thus ended the large-hearted man, beloved of the Revolution.</p>
<p>At the extreme left Duval had passed the night with six or seven thousand men on the plateau of Chatillon. Towards seven o'clock he formed a column of picked men, advanced to Petit-Bicetre, dispersed the outpost of General du Barail, and sent an officer to reconnoitre Villecoublay, that commanded the route. The officer announced that the roads were free, and the Federals advanced without fear. When near the hamlet firing commenc d. The m en deployed as skirmishers, and Duval, uncovered in the middle of the road, set them the example. They held out for several hours. A few shells would have sufficed to dislodge the enemy; but Duval had no artillery. Even cartridges were already wanting, and he had to send to Chatillon for more.</p>
<p>The bulk of the Federals who occupied the redoubt, confounded in an inextricable disorder, already believed themselves surrounded on all sides. The messengers of Duval on their arrival begged, menaced, but could not obtain either reinforcements or munitions. An officer even ordered a retreat. The unfortunate Duval , totally abandoned, was assailed by the Derroja brigade and the whole Pell� division, 8,000 men. He retired with his troops to the plateau of Chatillon.</p>
<p>Our efforts in the centre were not more fortunate. Ten thousand men had left the Champ-de-Mars at three o'clock in the morning with Ranvier and Avrial. General Eudes as his whole battle array had ordered the troops to move on. At six o'clock the 61st reached the Moulineaux, defended by gendarmes; these were soon forced to retreat to Meudon, strongly occupied by a Versaillese brigade entrenched in the villas and armed with machine-guns. The Federals had only eight pieces, while Paris possessed hundreds, and each of these had only eight rounds. At six o'clock, weary of shooting at walls, they retreated to Molineaux. Ranvier went in search of cannon, and mounted them in the fort of Issy, thus preventing the Versaillese from taking the offensive.</p>
<p>We were beaten at all points, and the Communalist papers shouted ‘Victory!’ Led astray by staffs which did not even know the names of the generals, the Executive Commission announced the junction of Flourens and Duval at Courbevoie. F�lix Pyat, again become bellicose, six times cried in his <em>Vengeur</em>, ‘To Versailles!’ <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n113">[113]</a></sup> Despite the runaways of the morning, the popular enthusiasm did not flag. A battalion of 300 women marched up the Champs-Elys�es, the red flag at their head, demanding to sally forth against the enemy. The evening papers announced the arrival of Flourens at Versailles.</p>
<p>At the ramparts the sad truth was discovered. Long files of guards re-entered by all the gates, and at six o'clock the only army outside Paris was the guards on the Chatillon plateau. A few shells falling in their midst completed the disorder. Some of the men threatened</p>
<p>Duval, who was making desperate efforts to keep them together. He remained, surrounded only by a handful of men, but always equally resolute. The whole night he, usually so taciturn, did not cease repeating, ‘I will not retreat.’</p>
<p>The next day at eight o'clock the plateau and the neighbouring villages were surrounded by the Derroja brigade and Pell�’s division. ‘Surrender and your lives will be spared,’ General Pell� had told them. The Parisians surrendered. The Versaillese at once seized the soldiers fighting in the ranks of the Federals and shot them. The prisoners, between two lines of chasseurs, were sent on to Versailles, while their officers, bare-headed, their braid torn off, were put at the head of the convoy.</p>
<p>At Petit-Bicetre they met the general-in-Chief, Vinoy. He commanded that the officers be shot, but the leader of the escort reminding him of General Pell�’s promise, Vinoy said, ‘Is there a commander?’ ‘Myself,’ said Duval, darting from the ranks. Another advanced: ‘I am the chief of Duval’s staff.’ Then the commander of the volunteers of Montrouge placed himself by their side. ‘You are awful scoundrels,’ said Vinoy; and, turning to his officers, ‘Shoot them.’ Duval and his comrades disdained to reply, cleared a ditch, leant against a wall on which were inscribed the words, ‘Duval, gardener.’ They disrobed, and, crying ‘<em>Vive la Commune!’ </em>died for it. A horseman tore off Duval’s boots and carried them about as a trophy, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n114">[114]</a></sup> and an editor of the <em>Figaro</em> took possession of his bloodstained collar.</p>
<p>Thus the army of order inaugurated the civil war by the massacre of the prisoners. It had begun on the 2nd; on the 3rd, at Chatou, General Gallifet had three Federals shot who were surprised in an inn taking their meal, and then he published a ferocious proclamation: ‘War has been declared by the bandits of Paris. They have assassinated my soldiers. It is a merciless war which I declare against these assassins. I had to make an example.’</p>
<p>The general who called the combatants of Paris ‘bandits’ and these assassinations ‘an example’ was a scamp of high life, first ruined, then kept by actresses. Famous for his brigandage in Mexico, he had in a few years obtained a generalship of brigade by the charms of his wife, prominent in the orgies of the Imperial court. Nothing is more edifying in this civil war than the standard-bearers of the ‘honest people.’</p>
<p>Their band in full strength hastened to the Paris Avenue at Versailles to receive the prisoners of Chatillon. The whole Parisian emigration, functionaries, dandies, women of the world and of the streets, all came with the rage of hyenas to strike the Federals with their fists, with canes and parasols, pushing off their k�pis and cloaks, crying, ‘Down with the assassins! To the guillotine!’ Amongst these ‘assassins’ was the geographer Elis�e Reclus, taken with Duval. In order to give them time to glut their fury, the escort made several halts before conducting their prisoners to the barracks of the gendarmes. They were thrown into the docks of Satory, and thence carried to Brest in cattle-trucks.</p>
<p>Picard wanted to associate all the honest people of the provinces in this baiting. ‘Never,’ telegraphed this pimply-looking Falstaff, ‘have baser countenances of a base demagogy met the afflicted gaze of honest men.’</p>
<p>Already, the evening before, after the assassinations of Mont-Val�rien and of Chatou, M. Thiers had written to his prefects, ‘The moral effect is excellent.’ Odious repetition of those words, ‘Order reigns in Warsaw,’ and ‘The chassepot has done wonders.’ Ali! it is well known that it was not the French bourgeoisie, but a daughter of the people who spoke those great words, ‘I have never seen French blood shed without my hair standing on end.’</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XII
The Versaillese beat back the Commune patrols and massacre prisoners
That very day, the 2nd April, at one o'clock, without warning, without summons, the Versaillese opened fire and launched their shells into Paris.
For several days their cavalry had exchanged shots with our advance posts at Chatillon and Putteaux. We occupied Courbevoie, that commands the route to Versailles, which made the rurals very anxious. On the 2nd, at ten o'clock in the morning, three brigades of the best Versailles troops, 10,000 strong, arrived at the cross-roads of Bergeres. Six or seven hundred cavalry of the brigade Gallifet supported this movement, while we had only three federal battalions at Courbevoie, in all five or six hundred men, defended by a halffinished barricade on the St. Germain road. Their watch, however, was well kept; their vedettes had killed the head-surgeon of the Versaillese army, whom they had mistaken for a colonel of gendarmerie.
At mid-day the Versaillese, having cannonaded the barracks of Courbevoie and the barricade, launched themselves to the assault. At the first shots from our men they scampered off, abandoning on the road cannon and officers. Vinoy was obliged to come himself and rally the renegades. Meanwhile the 113th of the line outflanked Courbevoie on the right, and the infantry of the marines turned left, marching through Putteaux. Too inferior in number and fearing to be cut off from Paris, the Federals evacuated Courbevoie, and, pursued by shells, fell back on the Avenue de Neuilly, leaving twelve dead and some prisoners. The gendarmes had taken five, one of whom was a child of fifteen, beating them unmercifully, and shot them at the foot of Mont-Val�rien. This expedition concluded, the army regained its cantonment.
At the report of the cannon all Paris started. No one believed in an attack, so completely did all, since the 28th, live in an atmosphere of confidence. It was no doubt an anniversary, a misunderstanding at the utmost. When the news, the ambulance-carriages, arrived; when the word was spoken, ‘The siege is recommencing!’ an explosion of horror shook all the quarters. An affrighted hive, such was Paris. The barricades were again thrown up, the call to arms beaten everywhere, and the cannon drawn to the ramparts of the Porte-Maillot and of the Ternes. At three o'clock 80,000 men were on foot crying, ‘To Versailles!’ The women excited the battalions, and spoke of marching in the vanguard.
The Executive Commission met and posted up a proclamation: ‘The royalist conspirators have attacked; despite the moderation of our attitude, they have attacked. Our duty is to defend the great city against these culpable aggressions.’ In the Commission, the generals Duval, Bergeret, and Eudes declared for an attack. ‘The enthusiasm,’ they said, ‘is irresistible, unique. What can Versailles do against 100,000 men? We must sally out.’ Their colleagues resisted, especially F�lix Pyat, confronted with his rant and vapourings of the morning. His buffoonery stood him in the stead of a life-preserver. ‘One does not start,’ said he, ‘at random, without cannon, with cadres, and without leaders;’ and he demanded the return of the strength of the troops. Duval, who since the 19th March had been strongly bent upon a sortie, violently rebuked him: ‘Why, then, for three days have you shouted, “To Versailles"?’ The most energetic opponent of the sortie was Lefran�ais. Finally, the four civil members — that is, the majority — decided that the generals should present a detailed statement as to their forces in men, artillery, munitions, and transports. The same evening the Commission named Cluseret delegate at War jointly with Eudes, who, being a member of the so-called party of action, owed this post only to the patronage of his old cronies.
In spite of the majority of the Commission, the generals set out. They had, anyway received no formal order to the contrary. F�lix Pyat had even concluded by saying, ‘After all, if you think you are ready . . .’they saw Flourens always ready for a coup-de-main, other colleagues equally adventurous, and, on their own authority, certain of being followed by the National Guard. They sent the chefs-de-l�gion the order to form columns. The battalions of the right bank were to concentrate at the Place Vend�me and Place Wagram; those of the left bank, at the Place d'Italie and Champ-de-Mars.
These movements, without staff officers to guide them, were very badly executed. Many men marched hither and thither, grew tired. Yet at midnight there were still about 20,000 men on the right bank of the Seine and about 17,000 on the left.
From eight o'clock to midnight the Council was sitting. The inexorable F�lix Pyat, always pertinent, demanded the abolition of the budget of public worship. The majority immediately satisfied him. He might just as well have decreed the abolition of the Versaillese army. Of the sortie, of the military preparations deafening Paris, no one breathed a word in the Council — no one disputed the field with the generals.
The plan of the latter, which they communicated to Cluseret, was to make a strong demonstration in the direction of Rueil, while two columns were to march on Versailles by Meudon and the plateau of Chatillon. Bergeret, assisted by Flourens, was to operate on the right; Eudes and Duval were to command the columns of the centre and the left. A simple idea, and easy of execution with experienced officers and solid heads of columns. But most of the battalions had been without leaders since the 18th March, the National Guards without cadres, and the generals who assumed the responsibility of leading 40,000 men had never conducted a single battalion into the field. They neglected even the most elementary precautions, knew not how to collect artillery, ammunition-wagons or ambulances, forgot to make an order of the day, and left the men for several hours without food in a penetrating fog. Every Federal chose the leader he liked best. Many had no cartridges, and believed the sortie to be a simple demonstration. The Executive Commission had just posted up a despatch from the Place Vend�me, headquarters of the National Guard: ‘Soldiers of the line are all coming to us, and declare that, save the superior officers, no one wants to fight.’
At three o'clock in the morning Bergeret’s column, about 10,000 men strong and with only eight ordnance pieces, arrived at the bridge of Neuilly. It was necessary to give the men, who had taken nothing since the evening before, time to recover themselves. At dawn they moved in the direction of Rued. The battalions marched by sections in line in the middle of the road, without scouts, and cheerfully climbed the Plateau des Bergeres, when suddenly a shell burst into their ranks, followed by a second. Mont-Val�rien had opened fire.
A terrible panic broke up the battalions, amidst thousandfold cries of ‘Treason!’ the whole National Guard believing that we occupied Mont-Val�rien. Many members of the Commune, of the Central Committee, at the Place Vend�me, knew the contrary, and very foolishly concealed it, living in the hope that the fortress would not fire. It possessed, it is true, only two or three badly appointed guns, the range of which the Guards might have escaped by one quick movement; but, surprised when in a state of blind confidence, they fancied themselves betrayed, and fled on all sides. Bergeret exhausted every means to stay them. A shell cut in two the brother of his chief-of-staff, an officer of the regular army gone over to the Commune. The greater part of the Federals dispersed in the fields and regained Paris. The 91st only and a few others, 1,200 men in all, remained with Bergeret, and, dividing into small groups, reached Rueil. Shortly after, Flourens arrived by the road of Asni�res, bringing hardly a thousand men.[112] The rest had lagged behind in Paris or on the way. Flourens, pressing forward all the same, arrived at the Malmaison, put Gallifet’s chasseurs to flight, and the Parisian vanguard pushed on as far as Bougival.
The Versaillese, surprised by this sortie, only drew up very late, towards ten o'clock. Ten thousand men were launched against Bougival, and the batteries placed on the hill of La Jonchere cannonaded Rueil. Two brigades of cavalry on the right and that of Gallifet on the left defended the wings. The Parisian vanguard — a mere handful of men — offered a determined resistance, in order to give Bergeret time to operate his retreat, which commenced towards one o'clock, on Neuilly, where they fortified the bridge-head. Some valiant men, who had obstinately held out in Rueil, with great difficulty gained the bridge of Asni�res, whither they were pursued by the cavalry, who took some prisoners.
Flourens was surprised at Rueil, and the house which he occupied with some officers surrounded by gendarmes. As he prepared to defend himself, the officer of the detachment, Captain Desmarets, cleft his head with so furious a blow of the sabre that the brains gushed out. The body was thrown into a dust-cart and taken to Versailles, where the fine ladies gathered to enjoy the spectacle. Thus ended the large-hearted man, beloved of the Revolution.
At the extreme left Duval had passed the night with six or seven thousand men on the plateau of Chatillon. Towards seven o'clock he formed a column of picked men, advanced to Petit-Bicetre, dispersed the outpost of General du Barail, and sent an officer to reconnoitre Villecoublay, that commanded the route. The officer announced that the roads were free, and the Federals advanced without fear. When near the hamlet firing commenc d. The m en deployed as skirmishers, and Duval, uncovered in the middle of the road, set them the example. They held out for several hours. A few shells would have sufficed to dislodge the enemy; but Duval had no artillery. Even cartridges were already wanting, and he had to send to Chatillon for more.
The bulk of the Federals who occupied the redoubt, confounded in an inextricable disorder, already believed themselves surrounded on all sides. The messengers of Duval on their arrival begged, menaced, but could not obtain either reinforcements or munitions. An officer even ordered a retreat. The unfortunate Duval , totally abandoned, was assailed by the Derroja brigade and the whole Pell� division, 8,000 men. He retired with his troops to the plateau of Chatillon.
Our efforts in the centre were not more fortunate. Ten thousand men had left the Champ-de-Mars at three o'clock in the morning with Ranvier and Avrial. General Eudes as his whole battle array had ordered the troops to move on. At six o'clock the 61st reached the Moulineaux, defended by gendarmes; these were soon forced to retreat to Meudon, strongly occupied by a Versaillese brigade entrenched in the villas and armed with machine-guns. The Federals had only eight pieces, while Paris possessed hundreds, and each of these had only eight rounds. At six o'clock, weary of shooting at walls, they retreated to Molineaux. Ranvier went in search of cannon, and mounted them in the fort of Issy, thus preventing the Versaillese from taking the offensive.
We were beaten at all points, and the Communalist papers shouted ‘Victory!’ Led astray by staffs which did not even know the names of the generals, the Executive Commission announced the junction of Flourens and Duval at Courbevoie. F�lix Pyat, again become bellicose, six times cried in his Vengeur, ‘To Versailles!’ [113] Despite the runaways of the morning, the popular enthusiasm did not flag. A battalion of 300 women marched up the Champs-Elys�es, the red flag at their head, demanding to sally forth against the enemy. The evening papers announced the arrival of Flourens at Versailles.
At the ramparts the sad truth was discovered. Long files of guards re-entered by all the gates, and at six o'clock the only army outside Paris was the guards on the Chatillon plateau. A few shells falling in their midst completed the disorder. Some of the men threatened
Duval, who was making desperate efforts to keep them together. He remained, surrounded only by a handful of men, but always equally resolute. The whole night he, usually so taciturn, did not cease repeating, ‘I will not retreat.’
The next day at eight o'clock the plateau and the neighbouring villages were surrounded by the Derroja brigade and Pell�’s division. ‘Surrender and your lives will be spared,’ General Pell� had told them. The Parisians surrendered. The Versaillese at once seized the soldiers fighting in the ranks of the Federals and shot them. The prisoners, between two lines of chasseurs, were sent on to Versailles, while their officers, bare-headed, their braid torn off, were put at the head of the convoy.
At Petit-Bicetre they met the general-in-Chief, Vinoy. He commanded that the officers be shot, but the leader of the escort reminding him of General Pell�’s promise, Vinoy said, ‘Is there a commander?’ ‘Myself,’ said Duval, darting from the ranks. Another advanced: ‘I am the chief of Duval’s staff.’ Then the commander of the volunteers of Montrouge placed himself by their side. ‘You are awful scoundrels,’ said Vinoy; and, turning to his officers, ‘Shoot them.’ Duval and his comrades disdained to reply, cleared a ditch, leant against a wall on which were inscribed the words, ‘Duval, gardener.’ They disrobed, and, crying ‘Vive la Commune!’ died for it. A horseman tore off Duval’s boots and carried them about as a trophy, [114] and an editor of the Figaro took possession of his bloodstained collar.
Thus the army of order inaugurated the civil war by the massacre of the prisoners. It had begun on the 2nd; on the 3rd, at Chatou, General Gallifet had three Federals shot who were surprised in an inn taking their meal, and then he published a ferocious proclamation: ‘War has been declared by the bandits of Paris. They have assassinated my soldiers. It is a merciless war which I declare against these assassins. I had to make an example.’
The general who called the combatants of Paris ‘bandits’ and these assassinations ‘an example’ was a scamp of high life, first ruined, then kept by actresses. Famous for his brigandage in Mexico, he had in a few years obtained a generalship of brigade by the charms of his wife, prominent in the orgies of the Imperial court. Nothing is more edifying in this civil war than the standard-bearers of the ‘honest people.’
Their band in full strength hastened to the Paris Avenue at Versailles to receive the prisoners of Chatillon. The whole Parisian emigration, functionaries, dandies, women of the world and of the streets, all came with the rage of hyenas to strike the Federals with their fists, with canes and parasols, pushing off their k�pis and cloaks, crying, ‘Down with the assassins! To the guillotine!’ Amongst these ‘assassins’ was the geographer Elis�e Reclus, taken with Duval. In order to give them time to glut their fury, the escort made several halts before conducting their prisoners to the barracks of the gendarmes. They were thrown into the docks of Satory, and thence carried to Brest in cattle-trucks.
Picard wanted to associate all the honest people of the provinces in this baiting. ‘Never,’ telegraphed this pimply-looking Falstaff, ‘have baser countenances of a base demagogy met the afflicted gaze of honest men.’
Already, the evening before, after the assassinations of Mont-Val�rien and of Chatou, M. Thiers had written to his prefects, ‘The moral effect is excellent.’ Odious repetition of those words, ‘Order reigns in Warsaw,’ and ‘The chassepot has done wonders.’ Ali! it is well known that it was not the French bourgeoisie, but a daughter of the people who spoke those great words, ‘I have never seen French blood shed without my hair standing on end.’
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<p><img src="pics/valles1.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Valles" border="1" align="right"></p>
<h1>Chapter XXV<br>
Paris on the eve of death</h1>
<p>The Paris of the Commune has but three days more to live; let us engrave upon our memory her luminous physiognomy.</p>
<p>He who has breathed in thy life that fiery fever of modern history, who has panted on thy boulevards and wept in thy faubourgs, who has sung to the morning of thy revolutions and a few weeks after bathed his hands in powder behind thy barricades, he who can hear from beneath thy stones the voices of the martyrs of sublime ideas and read in every one of thy streets a date of human progress, even he does less justice to thy original grandeur than the stranger, though a Philistine, who came to glance at thee during the days of the Commune. The attraction of rebellious Paris was so strong that men hurried thither from America to behold this spectacle unprecedented in the world’s history — the greatest town of the European continent in the hands of the proletarians. Even the pusillanimous were drawn towards her.</p>
<p>In the first days of May one of our friends arrived — one of the most timid men of the timid provinces. His kith and kin had escorted him on his departure, tears in their eyes, as though he were descending into the infernal regions. He said to us, ‘What truth is there in all the rumours spread about?’ ‘Well, come and search all the recesses of the den.’</p>
<p>We set out from the Bastille. Street-arabs cry Rochefort’s <em>Mot d'Ordre, </em>the <em>P�re Duch�ne, </em>Jules Vall�s’ <em>Cri du Peuple</em>, F�lix Pyat’s <em>Vengeur, La Commune, L'Affranchi, Le Pilori des Mouchards. </em>The <em>Officiel </em>is little asked for; the journalists of the Council stifle it by their competition. The <em>Cri du Peuple </em>has a circulation of 100,000. It is the earliest out; it rises with chanticleer. If we have an article by Vall�s this morning, we are in luck; but in his stead, Pierre Denis, with his autonomy a <em>outrance, </em>makes himself too often heard. Only buy the <em>P�re Duch�ne </em>once, though its circulation is more than 60,000. Take F�lix Pyat’s article in the <em>Vengeur </em>as a fine example of literary intoxication. The bourgeoisie has no better helpmates than these vain and ignorant claptrap-mongers. Here is the doctrinaire journal <em>La Commune, </em>in which Milliere sometimes writes, and in which Georges Duch�ne takes the young men and the old of the H�tel-de-Ville to task with a severity which would better fit another character than his. Do not forget the <em>Mot d'Ordre</em>, whatever the romanticists may say. It was one of the first to support the Revolution of the 18th March, and darted terrible arrows at the Versaillese.</p>
<p>In the kiosques are the caricatures. Thiers, Picard, and Jules Favre figure as the Three Graces, clasping each other’s paunches. This fine fish, the mackerel, with the blue-green scales, who is making up a bed with an imperial crown, is the Marquis de Gallifet. <em>L'Avenir, </em>the mouthpiece of the <em>Ligue, Le Si�cle, </em>become very hostile since the arrest of Gustave Chaudey; and <em>La V�rit�, </em>the Yankee Portalis’s paper, are piled up, melancholy and intact. Many reactionary papers have been suppressed by the prefecture, but for all that are not dead; for a lad, without any mystery about him, offers them to us.</p>
<p>Read, search, find one appeal to murder, to pillage, a single cruel line in all these Communard journals excited by the battle, and then compare them with the Versaillese papers, demanding fusillades <em>en Masse </em>as soon as the troops shall have vanquished Paris.</p>
<p>Let us follow those catafalques that are being taken up the Rue de la Roquette, and enter with them into the P�re la Chaise cemetery. All those who die for Paris are entombed with funerals in the great resting-place. The Commune has claimed the honour of paying for their funerals; its red flag blazes from the four corners of the hearse, followed by some comrades of the battalion, while a few passers-by always join the procession. Here is a wife accompanying her dead husband. A member of the Council follows the coffin; at the grave he speaks not of regrets, but of hope, of vengeance. The widow presses her children in her arms, and says to them, ‘Remember and cry with me, “<em>Vive la R�publique! Vive la Commune!” ‘</em><sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n176">[176]</a></sup> </p>
<p>On retracing our steps, we pass by the <em>mairie </em>of the eleventh arrondissement. It is hung with black, the mourning of the last Imperialist plebiscite, of which the people of Paris was innocent and became the victim. We cross the Place de la Bastille, gay, animated by the ginger-bread fair. Paris will yield nothing to the cannon; she has</p>
<p>Carriages are rare, for the second siege has cut short the provisions for horses. By the Rue du 4 Septembre we reach the Stock Exchange, surmounted by the red flag, and the Bibliotheque Nationale, where readers are sitting round the long tables. Crossing the Palais-Royal, whose arcades are always noisy, we come to the Museum of the Louvre; the rooms, hung with their pictures, are open to the public. The Versaillese journals none the less say the Commune is selling the national collections to foreigners.</p>
<p>We descend the Rue de Rivoli. On the right, in the Rue Castiglione, a huge barricade obstructs the entrance of the Place Vend�me. The issue of the Place de la Concorde is barred by the St. Florentin redoubt, stretching to the Ministry of Marine on its right, and the garden of the Tuileries on its left, with three rather badly directed embrasures eight yards wide. An enormous ditch, laying bare all the arteries of subterranean life, separates the Place from the redoubt. The workmen are giving it the finishing stroke, and cover the banks with turf. Many people walking by look on inquisitively, and more than one brow lowers. A corridor skilfully constructed conducts us to the Place de la Concorde. The proud profile of the Strasbourg statue stands out against the red flags. The Communards, who are accused of ignoring France, have piously replaced the faded crowns of the first siege by fresh spring flowers.</p>
<p>We now enter the zone of battle. The avenue of the Champs-Elys�es unrolls its long-deserted line, cut by the dismal bursting of the shells from Mont-Val�rien and Courbevoie. These reach as far as the Palais de I'Industrie, whose treasures the employees of the Commune courageously protect. In the distance rises the mighty bulk of the Arc de Triomphe. The sightseers of the first days have disappeared, for the Place de I'Etoile has become almost as deadly as the rampart. The shells break off the bas-reliefs that M. Jules Simon had caused to be iron-clad against the Prussians. The main arch is walled up to stop the projectiles launched against it. Behind this barricade they are getting ready to mount some pieces on the platform, which is almost as high as Mont-Val�rien.</p>
<p>By the Faubourg St. Honor� we pass along the Champs-Elys�es. In the right angle comprised between the Avenue de la Grande Arm�e, that of the Ternes, the ramparts, and the Avenue Wagram there is not a house intact. You see M. Thiers ‘does not bombard Paris, as the people of the Commune will not fail to say.’ Some shreds of a poster hang from a half-battered wall; it is M. Thiers’ speech against King Bomba, which a group of conciliators have been witty enough to reproduce. ‘You know, gentlemen,’ said he to the bourgeois of 1848, what is happening at Palermo. You all have shaken with horror on hearing that during forty-eight hours a large town has been bombarded. By whom? Was it by a foreign enemy exercising the rights of war? No, gentlemen, it was by its own Government. And why? Because that unfortunate town demanded its rights. Well, then, for the demand of its rights it has got forty-eight hours of bombardment!’ Happy Palermo! Paris already has had forty days of bombardment.</p>
<p>We have some chance of getting to the Boulevard P�reire by the left side of the Avenue des Ternes. From there to the Porte-Maillot every spot is beset with danger. Watching for a momentary lull, we reach the gate, or rather the heap of ruins that mark its place. The station no longer exists, the tunnel is filled up, the ramparts are slipping into the moats. And yet there are human salamanders who dare to move about amidst these ruins. Facing the gate there are three pieces commanded by Captain La Marseillaise; on the right, Captain Rouchat with five pieces; on the left, Captain Martin with four. Monteret, who commands this post for the last five weeks, lives with them in this atmosphere of shells. The Mont-Val�rien, Courbevoie, and B�con have thrown more than eight hundred of them. Twelve pieces are served by ten men, naked to the waist, their body and arms blackened with powder, in a stream of perspiration, often a match in each hand. The only survivor of the first set, the sailor Bonaventure, has twenty times seen his comrades dashed to pieces. And yet they hold out, and these pieces, continually dismounted, are continually renewed; their artillery men only complain of the want of ammunition, for the wagons no longer dare approach. The Versaillese have very often attempted, and may attempt, surprise attacks. Monteret watches day and night, and he can without boasting write to the Committee of Public Safety that so long as he is there the Versaillese will not enter by the Porte-Maillot.</p>
<p>Every step towards La Muette is a challenge to death. But our friend must witness all the greatness of Paris. On the ramparts, near the gate of La Muette, an officer is waving his k�pi toward the Bois de Boulogne; the balls are whistling around him. It is Dombrowski, who amusing himself with inveighing against the Versaillese of the trenches. A member of the Council who is with him succeeds in king him forego this musketeer foolhardiness, and the general takes us to the castle, where he has established one of his headquarters. All the rooms are perforated by shells. Still he remains there, and makes his men remain. It has been calculated that his aides-de-camp on an average lived eight days. At this moment the watch of the Belvedere rushes in with appalled countenance; a shell has traversed his post. ‘Stay there,’ says Dombrowski to him; ‘if you are not destined to die there you have nothing to fear.’ Such was his courage — all fatalism. He received no reinforcements despite his despatches to the War Office; believed the game lost, and said so but too often.</p>
<p>This is my only reproach, for you do not expect me to apologise for the Commune’s having allowed foreigners to die for it. Is not this the revolution of all proletarians? Is it not for the people to at last do justice to that great Polish race which all French governments have betrayed?</p>
<p>Dombrowski accompanies us across Passy as far as the Seine, and shows us the almost abandoned ramparts. The shells crush or mow down all the approaches to the railway; the large viaduct is giving way at a hundred places; the iron-clad locomotives have been overthrown. The Versaillese battery of the Billancourt Isle fires point-blank at our gunboats, and sinks one, <em>L'Estoc, </em>under our very eyes. A tug arrives in time, picks up the crew, and ascends the Seine under the fire that follows it up to the Jena Bridge.</p>
<p>A clear sky, a bright sun, peaceful silence envelop this stream, this wreck, these scattered shells. Death appears more cruel amidst the serenity of nature. Let us go and salute our wounded at Passy. A member of the Council, Lefran�ais, is visiting the ambulance of Dr. Demarquay, whom he questions as to the state of the wounded. ‘I do not share your opinions,’ answers the doctor, ‘and I cannot desire the triumph of your cause; but I have never seen wounded men preserve more calm and sang-froid during operations. I attribute this courage to the energy of their convictions.’ We then visit the beds; most of the sick anxiously inquire when they will be able to resume their service. A young fellow of eighteen, whose right hand had just been amputated, holds out the other, exclaiming, ‘I have still this one for the service of the Commune!’ An officer, mortally wounded, is told that the Commune has just handed over his pay to his wife and children. ‘I had no right to it,’ answers he. ‘These, my friend, these are the brutish drunkards who, according to Versailles, form the army of the Commune.’</p>
<p>We return by the Champ-de-Mars; its huts are badly manned. Other cadres, a different discipline would be needed to retain the battalions there. Before the Ecole, 1,500 yards from the ramparts, and a few steps from the War Office, a hundred ordnance pieces remain inert, loaded with mud. Leaving on our right the War Office, that centre of discord, let us enter the Corps L�gislatif, transformed into a work-shop. Fifteen hundred women are there, sewing the sand sacks that are to stop up the breaches. A tall and handsome girl, Marthe, round her waist the red scarf with silver fringe given her by her comrades, distributes the work. The hours of labour are shortened by joyous songs. Every evening the wages are paid, and the women receive the whole sum, eight centimes a sack, while the former contractors hardly gave them two.</p>
<p>We now proceed along the quays, lulled in imperturbable calm. The Academy of Sciences holds its Monday sittings. It is not the workmen who have said, ‘The Republic wants no savants.’ M. Delaunay is in the chair. M. Elie de Beaumont looks through the correspondence, and reads a note from his colleague, M. J. Bertrand, who has fled to St. Germain. We shall find the report in the <em>Officiel </em>of the Commune.</p>
<p>We must not leave the left bank without visiting the military prison. Ask the soldiers if they have met with a single menace, a single insult in Paris; if they are not treated as comrades, subjected to no exceptional rules, set free when willing to help their Parisian brothers.</p>
<p>Meanwhile evening has set in. The theatres are opening. The Lyrique gives a grand performance for the benefit of the wounded, and the Op�ra-Comique is preparing another. The Op�ra promises us a special performance for the following Monday, when we shall hear Gossec’s revolutionary hymn. The artists of the Gaiet�, abandoned by their manager, themselves direct their theatre. The Gymnase, Ch�telet, Th�atre-Fran�ais, Ambigu-Comique, D�Iassements, have large audiences every night. Let us pass to more virile spectacles, such as Paris has not witnessed since 1793.</p>
<p>Ten churches open, and the Revolution mounts the pulpits. In the old quarter of the Gravilliers, St. Nicholas des Champs is filling with the powerful murmur of many voices. A few gas-burners hardly light up the swarming crowd; and at the farther end, almost hidden by the shadow of the vaults, hangs the figure of Christ draped in the popular oriflamme. The only luminous centre is the reading-desk, facing the ,Pulpit, hung with red. The organ and the people chant the <em>Marseillaise.</em> The orator, over-excited by these fantastic surroundings, launches forth into ecstatic declamations, which the echo repeats like a menace. The people discuss the events of the day, the means of defence; the members of the Council are severely censured, and vigorous resolutions are voted to be presented to the Hotel-de-Ville the next day. Women sometimes ask to speak; at the Batignolles they have a club of their own. No doubt, few precise ideas come forth from these feverish meetings, but many find there a provision of energy and of courage.</p>
<p>It is only nine o'clock, and we may still be in time for the concert of the Tuileries. At the entrance, citoyennes, accompanied by commissioners, are making a collection for the widows and orphans of the Commune. The immense rooms are animated by a decent and gay throng. For the first time respectably-dressed women are seated on the forms in the court. Three orchestras are playing in the galleries, but the soul of the fete is in the Salle des Mar�chaux, where Mademoiselle Agar recites from ‘Les Ch�timents’ in that same place, where, ten months before, Bonaparte and his band were enthroned. Mozart, Meyerbeer, Rossini, the great works of art have driven away the musical obscenities of the Empire. From the large central window the harmonious strains vibrate to the garden; joyous lights shine like stars on the green-sward, dance among the trees, and colour the playing fountains. Within the arbours the people are laughing; but the noble Champs-Elys�es, dark and desolate, seem to protest against these popular masters, whom they have never acknowledged. Versailles, too, protests by that conflagration of which a wan reflex lights up the Arc de Triomphe, whose sombre mass overtowers the civil war.</p>
<p>At eleven o'clock, as the crowd is retiring, we hear a noise from the side of the chapel. M. Schoelcher has just been arrested. He has been taken to the prefecture, where, a few hours after, the procureur Rigault sets him at liberty.</p>
<p>The boulevards are thronged with the people coming from the theatres. At the Caf�-Peters there is a scandalous gathering of staffofficers and prostitutes. Suddenly a detachment of National Guards appears and leads them off. We follow them to the H�tel-de-Ville, where Ranvier, who is on duty there, receives them. Short shrift is made: the women to St. Lazare, the officers, with spades and mattocks, to the trenches.</p>
<p>One o'clock in the morning. Paris sleeps tranquilly. Such, my friend, is the Paris of the brigand. You have seen this Paris thinking, weeping, combating, working, enthusiastic, fraternal, severe to vice. Her streets free during the day, are they less safe in the silence of the night? Since Paris has her own police crime has disappeared.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n177">[177]</a></sup> Each one is left to his instincts, and where do you see debauchery victorious? These Federals, who might draw milliards, live on ridiculous pay compared with their usual salaries. Do you at last recognize this Paris, seven times shot down since 1789, and always ready to rise for the salvation of France? Where is her programme, say you? Why, seek it before you, and not at the faltering H�tel-de-Ville. These smoking ramparts, these explosions of heroism, these women, these men of all professions united, all the workmen of the earth applauding our combat, all monarchs, all the bourgeois coalesced against us, do they not speak loudly enough our common thought, and that all of us are fighting for equality, the enfranchisement of labour, the advent of a social society? Woe to France if she does not comprehend! Leave at once; recount what Paris is. If she dies, what life remains to you? Who, save Paris, will have strength enough to continue the Revolution? Who save Paris will stifle the clerical monster? Go, tell the Republican provinces, ‘These proletarians fight for you too, who perhaps may be the exiles of to-morrow.’ As to that class, the purveyor of empires, that fancies it can govern by periodical butcheries, go and tell them, in accents loud enough to drown their clamours, ‘The blood of the people will enrich the revolutionary field. The idea of Paris will arise from her burning entrails and become an inexorable firebrand with the sons of the slaughtered.’</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XXV
Paris on the eve of death
The Paris of the Commune has but three days more to live; let us engrave upon our memory her luminous physiognomy.
He who has breathed in thy life that fiery fever of modern history, who has panted on thy boulevards and wept in thy faubourgs, who has sung to the morning of thy revolutions and a few weeks after bathed his hands in powder behind thy barricades, he who can hear from beneath thy stones the voices of the martyrs of sublime ideas and read in every one of thy streets a date of human progress, even he does less justice to thy original grandeur than the stranger, though a Philistine, who came to glance at thee during the days of the Commune. The attraction of rebellious Paris was so strong that men hurried thither from America to behold this spectacle unprecedented in the world’s history — the greatest town of the European continent in the hands of the proletarians. Even the pusillanimous were drawn towards her.
In the first days of May one of our friends arrived — one of the most timid men of the timid provinces. His kith and kin had escorted him on his departure, tears in their eyes, as though he were descending into the infernal regions. He said to us, ‘What truth is there in all the rumours spread about?’ ‘Well, come and search all the recesses of the den.’
We set out from the Bastille. Street-arabs cry Rochefort’s Mot d'Ordre, the P�re Duch�ne, Jules Vall�s’ Cri du Peuple, F�lix Pyat’s Vengeur, La Commune, L'Affranchi, Le Pilori des Mouchards. The Officiel is little asked for; the journalists of the Council stifle it by their competition. The Cri du Peuple has a circulation of 100,000. It is the earliest out; it rises with chanticleer. If we have an article by Vall�s this morning, we are in luck; but in his stead, Pierre Denis, with his autonomy a outrance, makes himself too often heard. Only buy the P�re Duch�ne once, though its circulation is more than 60,000. Take F�lix Pyat’s article in the Vengeur as a fine example of literary intoxication. The bourgeoisie has no better helpmates than these vain and ignorant claptrap-mongers. Here is the doctrinaire journal La Commune, in which Milliere sometimes writes, and in which Georges Duch�ne takes the young men and the old of the H�tel-de-Ville to task with a severity which would better fit another character than his. Do not forget the Mot d'Ordre, whatever the romanticists may say. It was one of the first to support the Revolution of the 18th March, and darted terrible arrows at the Versaillese.
In the kiosques are the caricatures. Thiers, Picard, and Jules Favre figure as the Three Graces, clasping each other’s paunches. This fine fish, the mackerel, with the blue-green scales, who is making up a bed with an imperial crown, is the Marquis de Gallifet. L'Avenir, the mouthpiece of the Ligue, Le Si�cle, become very hostile since the arrest of Gustave Chaudey; and La V�rit�, the Yankee Portalis’s paper, are piled up, melancholy and intact. Many reactionary papers have been suppressed by the prefecture, but for all that are not dead; for a lad, without any mystery about him, offers them to us.
Read, search, find one appeal to murder, to pillage, a single cruel line in all these Communard journals excited by the battle, and then compare them with the Versaillese papers, demanding fusillades en Masse as soon as the troops shall have vanquished Paris.
Let us follow those catafalques that are being taken up the Rue de la Roquette, and enter with them into the P�re la Chaise cemetery. All those who die for Paris are entombed with funerals in the great resting-place. The Commune has claimed the honour of paying for their funerals; its red flag blazes from the four corners of the hearse, followed by some comrades of the battalion, while a few passers-by always join the procession. Here is a wife accompanying her dead husband. A member of the Council follows the coffin; at the grave he speaks not of regrets, but of hope, of vengeance. The widow presses her children in her arms, and says to them, ‘Remember and cry with me, “Vive la R�publique! Vive la Commune!” ‘[176]
On retracing our steps, we pass by the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement. It is hung with black, the mourning of the last Imperialist plebiscite, of which the people of Paris was innocent and became the victim. We cross the Place de la Bastille, gay, animated by the ginger-bread fair. Paris will yield nothing to the cannon; she has
Carriages are rare, for the second siege has cut short the provisions for horses. By the Rue du 4 Septembre we reach the Stock Exchange, surmounted by the red flag, and the Bibliotheque Nationale, where readers are sitting round the long tables. Crossing the Palais-Royal, whose arcades are always noisy, we come to the Museum of the Louvre; the rooms, hung with their pictures, are open to the public. The Versaillese journals none the less say the Commune is selling the national collections to foreigners.
We descend the Rue de Rivoli. On the right, in the Rue Castiglione, a huge barricade obstructs the entrance of the Place Vend�me. The issue of the Place de la Concorde is barred by the St. Florentin redoubt, stretching to the Ministry of Marine on its right, and the garden of the Tuileries on its left, with three rather badly directed embrasures eight yards wide. An enormous ditch, laying bare all the arteries of subterranean life, separates the Place from the redoubt. The workmen are giving it the finishing stroke, and cover the banks with turf. Many people walking by look on inquisitively, and more than one brow lowers. A corridor skilfully constructed conducts us to the Place de la Concorde. The proud profile of the Strasbourg statue stands out against the red flags. The Communards, who are accused of ignoring France, have piously replaced the faded crowns of the first siege by fresh spring flowers.
We now enter the zone of battle. The avenue of the Champs-Elys�es unrolls its long-deserted line, cut by the dismal bursting of the shells from Mont-Val�rien and Courbevoie. These reach as far as the Palais de I'Industrie, whose treasures the employees of the Commune courageously protect. In the distance rises the mighty bulk of the Arc de Triomphe. The sightseers of the first days have disappeared, for the Place de I'Etoile has become almost as deadly as the rampart. The shells break off the bas-reliefs that M. Jules Simon had caused to be iron-clad against the Prussians. The main arch is walled up to stop the projectiles launched against it. Behind this barricade they are getting ready to mount some pieces on the platform, which is almost as high as Mont-Val�rien.
By the Faubourg St. Honor� we pass along the Champs-Elys�es. In the right angle comprised between the Avenue de la Grande Arm�e, that of the Ternes, the ramparts, and the Avenue Wagram there is not a house intact. You see M. Thiers ‘does not bombard Paris, as the people of the Commune will not fail to say.’ Some shreds of a poster hang from a half-battered wall; it is M. Thiers’ speech against King Bomba, which a group of conciliators have been witty enough to reproduce. ‘You know, gentlemen,’ said he to the bourgeois of 1848, what is happening at Palermo. You all have shaken with horror on hearing that during forty-eight hours a large town has been bombarded. By whom? Was it by a foreign enemy exercising the rights of war? No, gentlemen, it was by its own Government. And why? Because that unfortunate town demanded its rights. Well, then, for the demand of its rights it has got forty-eight hours of bombardment!’ Happy Palermo! Paris already has had forty days of bombardment.
We have some chance of getting to the Boulevard P�reire by the left side of the Avenue des Ternes. From there to the Porte-Maillot every spot is beset with danger. Watching for a momentary lull, we reach the gate, or rather the heap of ruins that mark its place. The station no longer exists, the tunnel is filled up, the ramparts are slipping into the moats. And yet there are human salamanders who dare to move about amidst these ruins. Facing the gate there are three pieces commanded by Captain La Marseillaise; on the right, Captain Rouchat with five pieces; on the left, Captain Martin with four. Monteret, who commands this post for the last five weeks, lives with them in this atmosphere of shells. The Mont-Val�rien, Courbevoie, and B�con have thrown more than eight hundred of them. Twelve pieces are served by ten men, naked to the waist, their body and arms blackened with powder, in a stream of perspiration, often a match in each hand. The only survivor of the first set, the sailor Bonaventure, has twenty times seen his comrades dashed to pieces. And yet they hold out, and these pieces, continually dismounted, are continually renewed; their artillery men only complain of the want of ammunition, for the wagons no longer dare approach. The Versaillese have very often attempted, and may attempt, surprise attacks. Monteret watches day and night, and he can without boasting write to the Committee of Public Safety that so long as he is there the Versaillese will not enter by the Porte-Maillot.
Every step towards La Muette is a challenge to death. But our friend must witness all the greatness of Paris. On the ramparts, near the gate of La Muette, an officer is waving his k�pi toward the Bois de Boulogne; the balls are whistling around him. It is Dombrowski, who amusing himself with inveighing against the Versaillese of the trenches. A member of the Council who is with him succeeds in king him forego this musketeer foolhardiness, and the general takes us to the castle, where he has established one of his headquarters. All the rooms are perforated by shells. Still he remains there, and makes his men remain. It has been calculated that his aides-de-camp on an average lived eight days. At this moment the watch of the Belvedere rushes in with appalled countenance; a shell has traversed his post. ‘Stay there,’ says Dombrowski to him; ‘if you are not destined to die there you have nothing to fear.’ Such was his courage — all fatalism. He received no reinforcements despite his despatches to the War Office; believed the game lost, and said so but too often.
This is my only reproach, for you do not expect me to apologise for the Commune’s having allowed foreigners to die for it. Is not this the revolution of all proletarians? Is it not for the people to at last do justice to that great Polish race which all French governments have betrayed?
Dombrowski accompanies us across Passy as far as the Seine, and shows us the almost abandoned ramparts. The shells crush or mow down all the approaches to the railway; the large viaduct is giving way at a hundred places; the iron-clad locomotives have been overthrown. The Versaillese battery of the Billancourt Isle fires point-blank at our gunboats, and sinks one, L'Estoc, under our very eyes. A tug arrives in time, picks up the crew, and ascends the Seine under the fire that follows it up to the Jena Bridge.
A clear sky, a bright sun, peaceful silence envelop this stream, this wreck, these scattered shells. Death appears more cruel amidst the serenity of nature. Let us go and salute our wounded at Passy. A member of the Council, Lefran�ais, is visiting the ambulance of Dr. Demarquay, whom he questions as to the state of the wounded. ‘I do not share your opinions,’ answers the doctor, ‘and I cannot desire the triumph of your cause; but I have never seen wounded men preserve more calm and sang-froid during operations. I attribute this courage to the energy of their convictions.’ We then visit the beds; most of the sick anxiously inquire when they will be able to resume their service. A young fellow of eighteen, whose right hand had just been amputated, holds out the other, exclaiming, ‘I have still this one for the service of the Commune!’ An officer, mortally wounded, is told that the Commune has just handed over his pay to his wife and children. ‘I had no right to it,’ answers he. ‘These, my friend, these are the brutish drunkards who, according to Versailles, form the army of the Commune.’
We return by the Champ-de-Mars; its huts are badly manned. Other cadres, a different discipline would be needed to retain the battalions there. Before the Ecole, 1,500 yards from the ramparts, and a few steps from the War Office, a hundred ordnance pieces remain inert, loaded with mud. Leaving on our right the War Office, that centre of discord, let us enter the Corps L�gislatif, transformed into a work-shop. Fifteen hundred women are there, sewing the sand sacks that are to stop up the breaches. A tall and handsome girl, Marthe, round her waist the red scarf with silver fringe given her by her comrades, distributes the work. The hours of labour are shortened by joyous songs. Every evening the wages are paid, and the women receive the whole sum, eight centimes a sack, while the former contractors hardly gave them two.
We now proceed along the quays, lulled in imperturbable calm. The Academy of Sciences holds its Monday sittings. It is not the workmen who have said, ‘The Republic wants no savants.’ M. Delaunay is in the chair. M. Elie de Beaumont looks through the correspondence, and reads a note from his colleague, M. J. Bertrand, who has fled to St. Germain. We shall find the report in the Officiel of the Commune.
We must not leave the left bank without visiting the military prison. Ask the soldiers if they have met with a single menace, a single insult in Paris; if they are not treated as comrades, subjected to no exceptional rules, set free when willing to help their Parisian brothers.
Meanwhile evening has set in. The theatres are opening. The Lyrique gives a grand performance for the benefit of the wounded, and the Op�ra-Comique is preparing another. The Op�ra promises us a special performance for the following Monday, when we shall hear Gossec’s revolutionary hymn. The artists of the Gaiet�, abandoned by their manager, themselves direct their theatre. The Gymnase, Ch�telet, Th�atre-Fran�ais, Ambigu-Comique, D�Iassements, have large audiences every night. Let us pass to more virile spectacles, such as Paris has not witnessed since 1793.
Ten churches open, and the Revolution mounts the pulpits. In the old quarter of the Gravilliers, St. Nicholas des Champs is filling with the powerful murmur of many voices. A few gas-burners hardly light up the swarming crowd; and at the farther end, almost hidden by the shadow of the vaults, hangs the figure of Christ draped in the popular oriflamme. The only luminous centre is the reading-desk, facing the ,Pulpit, hung with red. The organ and the people chant the Marseillaise. The orator, over-excited by these fantastic surroundings, launches forth into ecstatic declamations, which the echo repeats like a menace. The people discuss the events of the day, the means of defence; the members of the Council are severely censured, and vigorous resolutions are voted to be presented to the Hotel-de-Ville the next day. Women sometimes ask to speak; at the Batignolles they have a club of their own. No doubt, few precise ideas come forth from these feverish meetings, but many find there a provision of energy and of courage.
It is only nine o'clock, and we may still be in time for the concert of the Tuileries. At the entrance, citoyennes, accompanied by commissioners, are making a collection for the widows and orphans of the Commune. The immense rooms are animated by a decent and gay throng. For the first time respectably-dressed women are seated on the forms in the court. Three orchestras are playing in the galleries, but the soul of the fete is in the Salle des Mar�chaux, where Mademoiselle Agar recites from ‘Les Ch�timents’ in that same place, where, ten months before, Bonaparte and his band were enthroned. Mozart, Meyerbeer, Rossini, the great works of art have driven away the musical obscenities of the Empire. From the large central window the harmonious strains vibrate to the garden; joyous lights shine like stars on the green-sward, dance among the trees, and colour the playing fountains. Within the arbours the people are laughing; but the noble Champs-Elys�es, dark and desolate, seem to protest against these popular masters, whom they have never acknowledged. Versailles, too, protests by that conflagration of which a wan reflex lights up the Arc de Triomphe, whose sombre mass overtowers the civil war.
At eleven o'clock, as the crowd is retiring, we hear a noise from the side of the chapel. M. Schoelcher has just been arrested. He has been taken to the prefecture, where, a few hours after, the procureur Rigault sets him at liberty.
The boulevards are thronged with the people coming from the theatres. At the Caf�-Peters there is a scandalous gathering of staffofficers and prostitutes. Suddenly a detachment of National Guards appears and leads them off. We follow them to the H�tel-de-Ville, where Ranvier, who is on duty there, receives them. Short shrift is made: the women to St. Lazare, the officers, with spades and mattocks, to the trenches.
One o'clock in the morning. Paris sleeps tranquilly. Such, my friend, is the Paris of the brigand. You have seen this Paris thinking, weeping, combating, working, enthusiastic, fraternal, severe to vice. Her streets free during the day, are they less safe in the silence of the night? Since Paris has her own police crime has disappeared.[177] Each one is left to his instincts, and where do you see debauchery victorious? These Federals, who might draw milliards, live on ridiculous pay compared with their usual salaries. Do you at last recognize this Paris, seven times shot down since 1789, and always ready to rise for the salvation of France? Where is her programme, say you? Why, seek it before you, and not at the faltering H�tel-de-Ville. These smoking ramparts, these explosions of heroism, these women, these men of all professions united, all the workmen of the earth applauding our combat, all monarchs, all the bourgeois coalesced against us, do they not speak loudly enough our common thought, and that all of us are fighting for equality, the enfranchisement of labour, the advent of a social society? Woe to France if she does not comprehend! Leave at once; recount what Paris is. If she dies, what life remains to you? Who, save Paris, will have strength enough to continue the Revolution? Who save Paris will stifle the clerical monster? Go, tell the Republican provinces, ‘These proletarians fight for you too, who perhaps may be the exiles of to-morrow.’ As to that class, the purveyor of empires, that fancies it can govern by periodical butcheries, go and tell them, in accents loud enough to drown their clamours, ‘The blood of the people will enrich the revolutionary field. The idea of Paris will arise from her burning entrails and become an inexorable firebrand with the sons of the slaughtered.’
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XIX<br>
Formation of the Committee of Public Safety</h1>
<p><img src="pics/milliere.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Milliere" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p>M. Thiers was fully acquainted with the failings of the Commune, but he also knew the weakness of his army. Besides, he prided himself upon playing the soldier before the Prussians. In order to appease his colleagues, eager for the assault on Paris, he was haughty in receiving the conciliators, who multiplied their advances and their lame combinations.</p>
<p>Everybody intermeddled, from the good and visionary Consid�rant down to the cynic Girardin, down to Saisset’s ex-aide-de-camp Schoelcher, who had replaced his plan of battle of the 24th March by a plan of conciliation. These encounters became the common topics of raillery. Since its pompous declaration, ‘All Paris will rise,’ the <em>Ligue des Droits de Paris </em>had been altogether sunk out of sight. It was perfectly understood that these Radicals were in search of some decent contrivance to back out of the peril. At the end of April their sham movements served only as a foil to set off the courageous conduct of the Freemasons.</p>
<p>On the 21st April the Freemasons, having gone to Versailles to ask for the armistice, complained of the municipal law recently voted by the Assembly. ‘What!’ M. Thiers replied, ‘but this is the most liberal one we have had in France for eighty years. “We beg your pardon, and how about the communal institutions of 1791?’ ‘Ah! you want to return to the follies of our fathers?’ ‘But, after all, are you then resolved to sacrifice Paris?’ ‘There will be some houses riddled, some ‘persons killed, but the law will be enforced.’ The Freemasons had this hideous answer posted up in Paris.</p>
<p>On the 26th they met at the Ch�telet, and several proposed that they should go and plant their banners on the ramparts. A thousand cheers answered. M. Floquet, who, with an eye to the future, had sent in his resignation as deputy, together with MM. Lockroy and Cl�menceau, protested against this co-operation of the middle class with the people. His shrill voice was drowned in the enthusiastic cries in the hall. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n143">[143]</a></sup> On the motion of Ranvier, the Freemasons went up to the H�tel-de-Ville, preceded by their banner, where they were met by the Council in the Court of Honour. ‘If at the outset,’ said their spokesman, Thirifocq, ‘the Freemasons did not wish to act, it was because they wanted to have certain proof that Versailles would not hear of conciliation. They are ready to-day to plant their banner on the rampart. If one single ball touches it, the Freemasons will march with the same ardour as yourselves against the common enemy.’ This declaration was loudly applauded. Jules Vall�s, in the name of the Commune, tendered his red scarf, which was twisted round the banner, and a delegation of the Council accompanied the brethren to the Masonic temple in the Rue Cadet.</p>
<p>They came three days after to redeem their word. The announcement of this intervention had given great hope to Paris. From early in the morning an immense crowd encumbered the approaches to the Carrousel, the rendezvous of all the lodges; and, despite a few reactionary Freemasons, who had put up posters protesting, at ten o'clock 10,000 brethren, representing fifty-five lodges, had gathered in the Carrousel. Six members of the Council led them to the H�tel-de-Ville through the midst of the crowd and an avenue of battalions. A band, playing music of solemn and ritual character, preceded the procession; then came superior officers, the grand-masters, the members of the Council, and the brethren, with their wide blue, green, white, red or black ribbon, according to their grade, grouped around sixty-five banners that had never before been displayed in public. The one carried at the head of the procession was the white banner of Vincennes, bearing in red letters the fraternal and revolutionary inscription, ‘<em>Love one another.</em>’ A lodge of women was especially cheered.</p>
<p>The banners and a numerous delegation were introduced into the H�tel-de-Ville, the members of the Council waiting to receive them on the balcony of the staircase of honour. The banners were fixed along the steps. These standards of peace by the side of the red flag, this middle class joining hands with the proletariat under the proud image of the Republic, these cries of fraternity dazzled and brightened up even the most downcast. F�lix Pyat indulged in a rhapsody of words and rhetorical antitheses. Old Beslay was much more eloquent in a few words broken by true tears. A brother solicited the honour of being the first to plant on the rampart the banner of his lodge, <em>La Pers�v�rance, </em>founded in 1790, in the era of the great federations. A member of the Council presented the red flag: ‘Let it accompany your banners; let no hand henceforth turn us against each other.’ And the orator of the delegation, Thirifocq, pointing to the banner of Vincennes: ‘This will be the first to be presented before the ranks of the enemy. We will say to them, “Soldiers of the mother country, fraternize with us, come and embrace us.” If we fail, we shall go and join the companies of war.’</p>
<p>When the delegates left the H�tel-de-Ville, a free balloon, marked with the three symbolical points, made an ascent here and there dropping the manifesto of the Freemasons. The immense procession having shown the Bastille and the boulevards its mysterious banners, frantically applauded, arrived about two o'clock at the cross-roads of the Champs-Elys�es. The shells of Mont-Val�rien obliged them to take the side-streets on their way to the Arc-de-Triomphe. There a delegation of all the venerables went to plant the banners at the most dangerous posts, from the Porte-Maillot to the Porte-Bineau. When the white flag was hoisted on the outpost of the Porte-Maillot the Versaillese ceased firing.</p>
<p>The delegates of the Freemasons and some members of the Council, appointed by their colleagues to accompany them, advanced, headed by their banner, into the Avenue of Neuilly. At the bridge of Courbevoie, before the Versaillese barricade, they found an officer who conducted them to General Montaudon, himself a Freemason. The Parisians explained the object of their demonstration, and asked for a truce. The general proposed that they should send a deputation to Versailles. Three delegates were chosen, and their companions returned to the town. In the evening silence reigned from St. Ouen to Neuilly, Dombrowski having taken upon himself to continue the truce. For the first time for twenty-five days the sleep of Paris was not disturbed by the report of cannon.</p>
<p>The next day the delegates returned. M. Thiers had hardly deigned receive them, had shown himself impatient, irritated, decided to grant nothing and to admit no more deputations. The Freemasons then resolved to march to battle with their insignia.</p>
<p>In the afternoon the <em>Alliance R�publicaine des D�partements </em>made an act of adhesion to the Commune. Milli�re, who had quite joined the movement without being able to gain the confidence of the H�tel-de-Ville, exerted himself to group the provincials residing at Paris. Who does not know what the provinces contributed in blood and sinew to the great town? Out of 35,000 prisoners of French origin figuring in the official reports of Versailles, there were, according to their own statement, only 9,000 born Parisians. Each departmental group was to strain itself to enlighten its native place, to send circulars, proclamations, delegates. On the 30th all the groups met in the Court of the Louvre to vote an address to the departments, and all, about 15,000 men, headed by Milli�re, went to the H�tel-de-Ville ‘to renew their adhesion to the patriotic work of the Commune of Paris.’</p>
<p>The procession was still passing when a sinister rumour spread: the fort of Issy had been evacuated.</p>
<p>Under cover of their batteries, the Versaillese, pushing forward, had on the night of the 26th to the 27th surprised the Moulineaux, by which the park of Issy may be reached. On the following day sixty pieces of powerful calibre concentrated their shells on the fort, while others occupied Vanves, Montrouge, the gunboats and the enceinte. Issy answered valiantly, but our trenches, to which Wetzel ought to have attended, were in bad condition. On the 29th the bombardment redoubled and the projectiles ploughed the park. At eleven o'clock in the evening the Versaillese ceased firing, and in the nocturnal stillness surprised the Federals and occupied the trenches. On the 30th, at five o'clock in the morning, the fort, which had received no warning of this incident, found itself surrounded by a semi-circle of Versaillese. The commander, Megy, was disconcerted, sent for reinforcements, but received none. The garrison grew alarmed, and these Federals, who had cheerfully withstood a hailstorm of shells, took fright at a few skirmishers. M�gy held a council, and the evacuation was decided upon. The cannon were precipitately spiked — so badly that they were unnailed the same evening — and the bulk of the garrison left. Some men with different notions of duty made it a point of honour to stay at their post. In the course of the day a Versaillese officer summoned them to surrender within a quarter of an hour on pain of being shot. They did not even answer.</p>
<p>At three o'clock Cluseret and La C�cilia arrived at Issy with a few companies picked up in haste. They deployed as skirmishers, drove the Versaillese from the park, and at six o'clock the Federals reoccupied the fort. At the entrance they found a child, Dufour, near a wheelbarrow filled with cartridges and cartouches, ready to blow himself up, and, as he believed, the vault with him. In the evening Vermorel and Trinquet brought other reinforcements, and we reoccupied all our positions.</p>
<p>At the first rumour of the evacuation, National Guards had hurried to the H�tel-de-Ville to question the Executive Commission. It denied having given any order to evacuate the fort, and promised to punish the traitors if there were any. In the evening it arrested Cluseret on his arrival from the fort of Issy. Strange rumours circulated about him, and he quitted the Ministry without leaving the slightest trace of any useful work whatever. As to the defence of the interior, all he had done was to bury cannon at the Trocadero, which, he said, were to breach Mont-Val�rien. At a later period, after the fall of the Commune, he endeavoured to throw his whole incapacity upon his colleagues, treating them in English reviews as vain and ignorant fools, imputing villanies to a man like Delescluze, stating that his arrest had ruined everything, and modestly calling himself the ‘incarnation of the people.’ <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n144">[144]</a></sup></p>
<p>This panic of Issy was the origin of the Committee of Public Safety. Already on the 28th April, at the end of the sitting, Miot, one of the best-bearded men of 1848, had risen to demand ‘without phrases’ the creation of a Committee of Public Safety, having authority over all the Commissions. Being pressed to give his reasons, he majestically replied that he believed the Committee necessary. There was only one opinion as to the necessity of strengthening the central control and action, for the second Executive Commission had shown itself as impotent as the first, each delegate going his own way and decreeing on his own account. But what signified this word Committee of Public Safety, this parody of the past and scarecrow of boobies? It jarred with this proletarian revolution, this H�tel-de-Ville, whence the original Committee of Public Safety had torn away Chaumette, Jacques Roux and the best friends of the people. But the Romanticists of the Council had only a smattering of the history of the Revolution, and this high-sounding title delighted them. They would have there and then voted it but for the energy of some colleagues, who insisted on a discussion. ‘Yes,’ said these latter, ‘we want a vigorous Commission, but give us no revolutionary pasticcio. Let the Commune be reformed; let it cease to be a small talkative parliament, quashing one day, just as it suits its caprices, what it created the day before.’ And they proposed an Executive Committee. The votes were equally divided.</p>
<p>The affair of Issy turned the scale. On the 1st May 34 <em>Ayes</em> against 28 <em>Noes</em> carried the title of Committee of Public Safety. on the whole of the project 48 voted for and 23 against. Several had voted for the Committee notwithstanding its title, with the only object of creating a strong power. Many explained their votes. Some alleged they were obeying the <em>mandat imperatif </em>of their electors. Some wanted to make the cowards and traitors tremble'; others simply declared, like Miot, that ‘it was an indispensable measure’. F�lix Pyat, who had egged on Miot, and violently supported the proposition in order to win back the esteem of the ultras, gave this cogent reason.. ‘Yes: considering that the words Public Safety are absolutely of the same epoch as the words French Republic and Commune of Paris.’ But Tridon: ‘No: because I dislike useless and ridiculous cast-off old clothes.’ Vermorel: ‘No: they are only words, and the people have too long taken up with words.’ Longuet: ‘Not believing any more in words of salvation than in talismans and amulets, I vote No.’ Seventeen collectively declared against the institution of a Committee, which, they said, would create a dictatorship, and others pleaded the same motive, which was puerile enough. The Council remained so sovereign that eight days after it overturned the Committee.</p>
<p>Having protested by this vote, the opponents ought afterwards to have made the best of the situation. Tridon had certainly said, ‘I see no men to put in such a Committee;’ all the more reason not to leave the place to the Romanticists. Instead of coming to an understanding with those of their colleagues who were desirous to concentrate the power and not galvanize a corpse, the opponents folded their arms. ‘We can they said, ‘appoint no one to an institution considered by us as useless and fatal.... We consider abstention as the only dignified, logical, and politic attitude.’</p>
<p>The ballot, thus stigmatized beforehand, gave a power without authority; there were only 37 votes. Ranvier, A. Arnaud, Leo Meillet, Charles Gerardin, F�lix Pyat were named. The alarmists might comfort themselves. The only one of real energy, the upright and warm-hearted Ranvier, was at the mercy of his blind kindliness.</p>
<p>The friends of the Commune, the brave soldiers of the trenches and of the forts, then learnt that there was a minority at the H�tel-de-Ville. It put in its appearance at the very moment when Versailles unmasked its batteries. This minority, which, with the exception of some ten members, comprised the most enlightened and the most laborious members of the Council, was never able to accommodate itself to the situation. These men could never understand that the Commune was a barricade, not a government. This was the general error, the superstitious belief in their governmental longevity; hence, for instance, they delayed for seven months the date for the total return of the pledges at the pawnshops. There were perhaps as many dreamers in the minority as in the majority. Some put forward their principles like the head of a Medusa, and would have made no concessions even for the sake of victory. They strained the reaction against the principle of authority to the verge of suicide. ‘We,’ they said, ‘were for liberty under the Empire; in power we will not deny it.’ Even in exile they have fancied that the Commune perished through its authoritative tendencies. With a little diplomacy, by yielding to circumstances and the weaknesses of their colleagues, they might have detached from the majority all men of real value.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n145">[145]</a></sup> Tridon had come to them uninvited, but his was a superior mind; they ought to have made advances to the others, opposing to the mere braggarts precise ideas, and by true energy reduced the turbulent. They remained unrelenting, dogged, and contented themselves with forcible protests.</p>
<p>Thenceforth divergences degenerated into hostilities. The council-room was small, badly ventilated; the soon over-heated atmosphere ruffled the temper. The discussions grew bitter, and F�lix Pyat turned them into attacks. Delescluze never spoke but for union, concord. The other would have preferred the Commune dead rather than saved by one of those he bore a grudge against, and he hated whoever smiled at his craziness. He did not mind discrediting the Council, casting aspersions on its most devoted members, so much did he resent a trespass on his vanity. He could lie with perfect effrontery, carve out some infamous calumny, slaver a colleague, then suddenly, in emotional attitude, open his arms, exclaiming, ‘Let us embrace.’ He now accused Vermorel of having sold his journal to the Empire after having offered it to the Orleanists. He glided about in the lobbies, the Commissions, a Barr�re of the boards, now insinuating, now foaming, now patriarchal. ‘The Commune! why it is my child! I have watched over it for twenty years.. I have nursed, I have rocked it.’ To hear him, the 18th March was owing to him. He thus enlisted the naive, the light-headed sent to the Council by the public meetings, and, despite his blank incapacity, shown by the man while a member of the first executive, despite his attempts at flight, he picked up twenty-four votes at the election of the Committee of Public Safety. The aspic profited by it to hiss forth discord.</p>
<p>Disunion within the Council was fatal, the mother of defeat. It ceased — let the people know this as well as their faults — when they thought of the people, when they rose above these miserable personal quarrels. They followed the funeral of Pierre Leroux, who had defended the insurgents of June, 1848; ordered the demolition of the Brea church, built in memory of a justly punished traitor; of the expiatory monument, an affront to the Revolution; were not forgetful of the political prisoners still at the Bagnio, and ennobled the Place d'Italie with the name of Duval. All Socialist decrees passed unanimously; for though they differed they were all Socialists. There was but one vote in the Council to expel two of its members guilty of some former offence, <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n146">[146]</a></sup> and no one even in the thick of the peril dared to utter the word capitulation.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XIX
Formation of the Committee of Public Safety
M. Thiers was fully acquainted with the failings of the Commune, but he also knew the weakness of his army. Besides, he prided himself upon playing the soldier before the Prussians. In order to appease his colleagues, eager for the assault on Paris, he was haughty in receiving the conciliators, who multiplied their advances and their lame combinations.
Everybody intermeddled, from the good and visionary Consid�rant down to the cynic Girardin, down to Saisset’s ex-aide-de-camp Schoelcher, who had replaced his plan of battle of the 24th March by a plan of conciliation. These encounters became the common topics of raillery. Since its pompous declaration, ‘All Paris will rise,’ the Ligue des Droits de Paris had been altogether sunk out of sight. It was perfectly understood that these Radicals were in search of some decent contrivance to back out of the peril. At the end of April their sham movements served only as a foil to set off the courageous conduct of the Freemasons.
On the 21st April the Freemasons, having gone to Versailles to ask for the armistice, complained of the municipal law recently voted by the Assembly. ‘What!’ M. Thiers replied, ‘but this is the most liberal one we have had in France for eighty years. “We beg your pardon, and how about the communal institutions of 1791?’ ‘Ah! you want to return to the follies of our fathers?’ ‘But, after all, are you then resolved to sacrifice Paris?’ ‘There will be some houses riddled, some ‘persons killed, but the law will be enforced.’ The Freemasons had this hideous answer posted up in Paris.
On the 26th they met at the Ch�telet, and several proposed that they should go and plant their banners on the ramparts. A thousand cheers answered. M. Floquet, who, with an eye to the future, had sent in his resignation as deputy, together with MM. Lockroy and Cl�menceau, protested against this co-operation of the middle class with the people. His shrill voice was drowned in the enthusiastic cries in the hall. [143] On the motion of Ranvier, the Freemasons went up to the H�tel-de-Ville, preceded by their banner, where they were met by the Council in the Court of Honour. ‘If at the outset,’ said their spokesman, Thirifocq, ‘the Freemasons did not wish to act, it was because they wanted to have certain proof that Versailles would not hear of conciliation. They are ready to-day to plant their banner on the rampart. If one single ball touches it, the Freemasons will march with the same ardour as yourselves against the common enemy.’ This declaration was loudly applauded. Jules Vall�s, in the name of the Commune, tendered his red scarf, which was twisted round the banner, and a delegation of the Council accompanied the brethren to the Masonic temple in the Rue Cadet.
They came three days after to redeem their word. The announcement of this intervention had given great hope to Paris. From early in the morning an immense crowd encumbered the approaches to the Carrousel, the rendezvous of all the lodges; and, despite a few reactionary Freemasons, who had put up posters protesting, at ten o'clock 10,000 brethren, representing fifty-five lodges, had gathered in the Carrousel. Six members of the Council led them to the H�tel-de-Ville through the midst of the crowd and an avenue of battalions. A band, playing music of solemn and ritual character, preceded the procession; then came superior officers, the grand-masters, the members of the Council, and the brethren, with their wide blue, green, white, red or black ribbon, according to their grade, grouped around sixty-five banners that had never before been displayed in public. The one carried at the head of the procession was the white banner of Vincennes, bearing in red letters the fraternal and revolutionary inscription, ‘Love one another.’ A lodge of women was especially cheered.
The banners and a numerous delegation were introduced into the H�tel-de-Ville, the members of the Council waiting to receive them on the balcony of the staircase of honour. The banners were fixed along the steps. These standards of peace by the side of the red flag, this middle class joining hands with the proletariat under the proud image of the Republic, these cries of fraternity dazzled and brightened up even the most downcast. F�lix Pyat indulged in a rhapsody of words and rhetorical antitheses. Old Beslay was much more eloquent in a few words broken by true tears. A brother solicited the honour of being the first to plant on the rampart the banner of his lodge, La Pers�v�rance, founded in 1790, in the era of the great federations. A member of the Council presented the red flag: ‘Let it accompany your banners; let no hand henceforth turn us against each other.’ And the orator of the delegation, Thirifocq, pointing to the banner of Vincennes: ‘This will be the first to be presented before the ranks of the enemy. We will say to them, “Soldiers of the mother country, fraternize with us, come and embrace us.” If we fail, we shall go and join the companies of war.’
When the delegates left the H�tel-de-Ville, a free balloon, marked with the three symbolical points, made an ascent here and there dropping the manifesto of the Freemasons. The immense procession having shown the Bastille and the boulevards its mysterious banners, frantically applauded, arrived about two o'clock at the cross-roads of the Champs-Elys�es. The shells of Mont-Val�rien obliged them to take the side-streets on their way to the Arc-de-Triomphe. There a delegation of all the venerables went to plant the banners at the most dangerous posts, from the Porte-Maillot to the Porte-Bineau. When the white flag was hoisted on the outpost of the Porte-Maillot the Versaillese ceased firing.
The delegates of the Freemasons and some members of the Council, appointed by their colleagues to accompany them, advanced, headed by their banner, into the Avenue of Neuilly. At the bridge of Courbevoie, before the Versaillese barricade, they found an officer who conducted them to General Montaudon, himself a Freemason. The Parisians explained the object of their demonstration, and asked for a truce. The general proposed that they should send a deputation to Versailles. Three delegates were chosen, and their companions returned to the town. In the evening silence reigned from St. Ouen to Neuilly, Dombrowski having taken upon himself to continue the truce. For the first time for twenty-five days the sleep of Paris was not disturbed by the report of cannon.
The next day the delegates returned. M. Thiers had hardly deigned receive them, had shown himself impatient, irritated, decided to grant nothing and to admit no more deputations. The Freemasons then resolved to march to battle with their insignia.
In the afternoon the Alliance R�publicaine des D�partements made an act of adhesion to the Commune. Milli�re, who had quite joined the movement without being able to gain the confidence of the H�tel-de-Ville, exerted himself to group the provincials residing at Paris. Who does not know what the provinces contributed in blood and sinew to the great town? Out of 35,000 prisoners of French origin figuring in the official reports of Versailles, there were, according to their own statement, only 9,000 born Parisians. Each departmental group was to strain itself to enlighten its native place, to send circulars, proclamations, delegates. On the 30th all the groups met in the Court of the Louvre to vote an address to the departments, and all, about 15,000 men, headed by Milli�re, went to the H�tel-de-Ville ‘to renew their adhesion to the patriotic work of the Commune of Paris.’
The procession was still passing when a sinister rumour spread: the fort of Issy had been evacuated.
Under cover of their batteries, the Versaillese, pushing forward, had on the night of the 26th to the 27th surprised the Moulineaux, by which the park of Issy may be reached. On the following day sixty pieces of powerful calibre concentrated their shells on the fort, while others occupied Vanves, Montrouge, the gunboats and the enceinte. Issy answered valiantly, but our trenches, to which Wetzel ought to have attended, were in bad condition. On the 29th the bombardment redoubled and the projectiles ploughed the park. At eleven o'clock in the evening the Versaillese ceased firing, and in the nocturnal stillness surprised the Federals and occupied the trenches. On the 30th, at five o'clock in the morning, the fort, which had received no warning of this incident, found itself surrounded by a semi-circle of Versaillese. The commander, Megy, was disconcerted, sent for reinforcements, but received none. The garrison grew alarmed, and these Federals, who had cheerfully withstood a hailstorm of shells, took fright at a few skirmishers. M�gy held a council, and the evacuation was decided upon. The cannon were precipitately spiked — so badly that they were unnailed the same evening — and the bulk of the garrison left. Some men with different notions of duty made it a point of honour to stay at their post. In the course of the day a Versaillese officer summoned them to surrender within a quarter of an hour on pain of being shot. They did not even answer.
At three o'clock Cluseret and La C�cilia arrived at Issy with a few companies picked up in haste. They deployed as skirmishers, drove the Versaillese from the park, and at six o'clock the Federals reoccupied the fort. At the entrance they found a child, Dufour, near a wheelbarrow filled with cartridges and cartouches, ready to blow himself up, and, as he believed, the vault with him. In the evening Vermorel and Trinquet brought other reinforcements, and we reoccupied all our positions.
At the first rumour of the evacuation, National Guards had hurried to the H�tel-de-Ville to question the Executive Commission. It denied having given any order to evacuate the fort, and promised to punish the traitors if there were any. In the evening it arrested Cluseret on his arrival from the fort of Issy. Strange rumours circulated about him, and he quitted the Ministry without leaving the slightest trace of any useful work whatever. As to the defence of the interior, all he had done was to bury cannon at the Trocadero, which, he said, were to breach Mont-Val�rien. At a later period, after the fall of the Commune, he endeavoured to throw his whole incapacity upon his colleagues, treating them in English reviews as vain and ignorant fools, imputing villanies to a man like Delescluze, stating that his arrest had ruined everything, and modestly calling himself the ‘incarnation of the people.’ [144]
This panic of Issy was the origin of the Committee of Public Safety. Already on the 28th April, at the end of the sitting, Miot, one of the best-bearded men of 1848, had risen to demand ‘without phrases’ the creation of a Committee of Public Safety, having authority over all the Commissions. Being pressed to give his reasons, he majestically replied that he believed the Committee necessary. There was only one opinion as to the necessity of strengthening the central control and action, for the second Executive Commission had shown itself as impotent as the first, each delegate going his own way and decreeing on his own account. But what signified this word Committee of Public Safety, this parody of the past and scarecrow of boobies? It jarred with this proletarian revolution, this H�tel-de-Ville, whence the original Committee of Public Safety had torn away Chaumette, Jacques Roux and the best friends of the people. But the Romanticists of the Council had only a smattering of the history of the Revolution, and this high-sounding title delighted them. They would have there and then voted it but for the energy of some colleagues, who insisted on a discussion. ‘Yes,’ said these latter, ‘we want a vigorous Commission, but give us no revolutionary pasticcio. Let the Commune be reformed; let it cease to be a small talkative parliament, quashing one day, just as it suits its caprices, what it created the day before.’ And they proposed an Executive Committee. The votes were equally divided.
The affair of Issy turned the scale. On the 1st May 34 Ayes against 28 Noes carried the title of Committee of Public Safety. on the whole of the project 48 voted for and 23 against. Several had voted for the Committee notwithstanding its title, with the only object of creating a strong power. Many explained their votes. Some alleged they were obeying the mandat imperatif of their electors. Some wanted to make the cowards and traitors tremble'; others simply declared, like Miot, that ‘it was an indispensable measure’. F�lix Pyat, who had egged on Miot, and violently supported the proposition in order to win back the esteem of the ultras, gave this cogent reason.. ‘Yes: considering that the words Public Safety are absolutely of the same epoch as the words French Republic and Commune of Paris.’ But Tridon: ‘No: because I dislike useless and ridiculous cast-off old clothes.’ Vermorel: ‘No: they are only words, and the people have too long taken up with words.’ Longuet: ‘Not believing any more in words of salvation than in talismans and amulets, I vote No.’ Seventeen collectively declared against the institution of a Committee, which, they said, would create a dictatorship, and others pleaded the same motive, which was puerile enough. The Council remained so sovereign that eight days after it overturned the Committee.
Having protested by this vote, the opponents ought afterwards to have made the best of the situation. Tridon had certainly said, ‘I see no men to put in such a Committee;’ all the more reason not to leave the place to the Romanticists. Instead of coming to an understanding with those of their colleagues who were desirous to concentrate the power and not galvanize a corpse, the opponents folded their arms. ‘We can they said, ‘appoint no one to an institution considered by us as useless and fatal.... We consider abstention as the only dignified, logical, and politic attitude.’
The ballot, thus stigmatized beforehand, gave a power without authority; there were only 37 votes. Ranvier, A. Arnaud, Leo Meillet, Charles Gerardin, F�lix Pyat were named. The alarmists might comfort themselves. The only one of real energy, the upright and warm-hearted Ranvier, was at the mercy of his blind kindliness.
The friends of the Commune, the brave soldiers of the trenches and of the forts, then learnt that there was a minority at the H�tel-de-Ville. It put in its appearance at the very moment when Versailles unmasked its batteries. This minority, which, with the exception of some ten members, comprised the most enlightened and the most laborious members of the Council, was never able to accommodate itself to the situation. These men could never understand that the Commune was a barricade, not a government. This was the general error, the superstitious belief in their governmental longevity; hence, for instance, they delayed for seven months the date for the total return of the pledges at the pawnshops. There were perhaps as many dreamers in the minority as in the majority. Some put forward their principles like the head of a Medusa, and would have made no concessions even for the sake of victory. They strained the reaction against the principle of authority to the verge of suicide. ‘We,’ they said, ‘were for liberty under the Empire; in power we will not deny it.’ Even in exile they have fancied that the Commune perished through its authoritative tendencies. With a little diplomacy, by yielding to circumstances and the weaknesses of their colleagues, they might have detached from the majority all men of real value.[145] Tridon had come to them uninvited, but his was a superior mind; they ought to have made advances to the others, opposing to the mere braggarts precise ideas, and by true energy reduced the turbulent. They remained unrelenting, dogged, and contented themselves with forcible protests.
Thenceforth divergences degenerated into hostilities. The council-room was small, badly ventilated; the soon over-heated atmosphere ruffled the temper. The discussions grew bitter, and F�lix Pyat turned them into attacks. Delescluze never spoke but for union, concord. The other would have preferred the Commune dead rather than saved by one of those he bore a grudge against, and he hated whoever smiled at his craziness. He did not mind discrediting the Council, casting aspersions on its most devoted members, so much did he resent a trespass on his vanity. He could lie with perfect effrontery, carve out some infamous calumny, slaver a colleague, then suddenly, in emotional attitude, open his arms, exclaiming, ‘Let us embrace.’ He now accused Vermorel of having sold his journal to the Empire after having offered it to the Orleanists. He glided about in the lobbies, the Commissions, a Barr�re of the boards, now insinuating, now foaming, now patriarchal. ‘The Commune! why it is my child! I have watched over it for twenty years.. I have nursed, I have rocked it.’ To hear him, the 18th March was owing to him. He thus enlisted the naive, the light-headed sent to the Council by the public meetings, and, despite his blank incapacity, shown by the man while a member of the first executive, despite his attempts at flight, he picked up twenty-four votes at the election of the Committee of Public Safety. The aspic profited by it to hiss forth discord.
Disunion within the Council was fatal, the mother of defeat. It ceased — let the people know this as well as their faults — when they thought of the people, when they rose above these miserable personal quarrels. They followed the funeral of Pierre Leroux, who had defended the insurgents of June, 1848; ordered the demolition of the Brea church, built in memory of a justly punished traitor; of the expiatory monument, an affront to the Revolution; were not forgetful of the political prisoners still at the Bagnio, and ennobled the Place d'Italie with the name of Duval. All Socialist decrees passed unanimously; for though they differed they were all Socialists. There was but one vote in the Council to expel two of its members guilty of some former offence, [146] and no one even in the thick of the peril dared to utter the word capitulation.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XVII<br>
Women of the Commune and the opposing armies</h1>
<p><img src="pics/leo.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Leo" border="1" align="left"></p>
<p>The glorious flame of Paris still hid these failings. One must have been enkindled by it to describe it. Beside it the Communard journals, in spite of their romanticism, show pale and dull. It is true the <em>mise en sc�ne </em>was unpretending. In the streets, in the silent boulevards, a battalion of a hundred men setting out for the battle or returning from it; a woman who follows, a passer — by who applauds — that is all. But it is the drama of the Revolution, simple and gigantic as a drama of Aeschylus.</p>
<p>The commander in his <em>vareuse, </em>dusty, his silver lace singed, his men greyheads or youths, the veterans of June 1848 and the pupils of March, the son often marching by the side of the father.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n124">[124]</a></sup> </p>
<p>This woman, who salutes or accompanies them, she is the true Parisienne. The unclean androgyne, born in the mire of the Empire, the madonna of the pornographers, the Dumas fils and the Feydeaux, has followed her patrons to Versailles or works the Prussian mine at St. Denis. She, who is now uppermost, is the Parisienne, strong, devoted, tragic, knowing how to die as she loves. A helpmeet in labour, she will also be an associate in the death-struggle. A formidable equality this to oppose to the bourgeoisie. The proletarian is doubly strong — one heart and four hands. On the 24th of March a Federal addressed these noble words to the bourgeois battalions of the first arrondissement, making them drop their arms: ‘Believe me, you cannot hold out; your wives are all in tears, and ours do not weep.’</p>
<p>She does not keep back her husband.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n125">[125]</a></sup> On the contrary, she urges him to battle, carries him his linen and his soup, as she had before done to his workshop. Many would not return, but took up arms. At the plateau de Chatillon they were the last to stand the fire. The <em>cantini�res, </em>simply dressed as workwomen, not fancy costumes, fell by dozens. On the 3rd April, at Meudon, the Citoyenne Lachaise, <em>cantinere </em>of the 66th battalion, remained the whole day in the field of battle, tending the wounded, alone, without a doctor.</p>
<p><img src="pics/michel-louise.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Louise Michel" border="1" align="left"></p>
<p>If they return, it is to call to arms. Having formed a central committee at the <em>mairie </em>of the tenth arrondissement, they issued fiery proclamations: ‘We must conquer or die. You who say, “What matters the triumph of our cause if 1 must lose those I love?” know that the only means of saving those who are dear to you is to throw yourselves into the struggle.’ Their committees multiplied. They offered themselves to the Commune, demanding arms, posts of danger, and complaining of the cowards who swerved from their duty.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n126">[126]</a></sup> Madame Andr� L�o, with her eloquent pen, explained the meaning of the Commune, summoned the delegate at the War Office to avail himself of the ‘holy fever that burns in the hearts of the women.’ A young Russian lady, of noble birth, educated, beautiful, rich, called Demitriev, was the Th�roigne de M�ricourt of this Revolution. The proletarian character of the Commune was embodied in Louise Michel, a teacher in the seventeenth arrondissement. Gentle and patient with the little children, who adored her, in the cause of the people the mother became a lioness. She had organized a corps of ambulance nurses, who tended the wounded even under fire. There they suffered no rivals. They also went to the hospitals to save their beloved comrades from the harsh nuns; and the eyes of the dying brightened at the murmur of those gentle voices that spoke to them of the Republic and of hope.</p>
<p>In this contest of devotion the children fought with men and women. The Versaillese, victorious, took 660 of them, and many perished in the battle of the streets. Thousands served during the siege. They followed the battalions to the trenches, in the forts, especially clinging to the cannon. Some gunners of the Porte-Maillot were boys of from thirteen to fourteen years old. Unsheltered, in the open country, they performed exploits of mad heroism.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n127">[127]</a></sup> </p>
<p>This Parisian flame radiated beyond the enceinte. The municipalities of Sceaux and St. Denis united at Vincennes to protest against the bombardment, demand the municipal franchises and the establishment of the Republic. Its heat was even felt in the provinces.</p>
<p>They began to believe Paris was impregnable, and laughed much at the despatches of M. Thiers, saying on the 3rd April, ‘This day is decisive of the fate of the insurrection; on the 4th, ‘The insurgents have to-day suffered a decisive defeat;’ on the 7th, ‘This day is decisive;’ on the 11th, ‘Irresistible means are being prepared at Versailles,’ on the 12th, ‘We expect the decisive moment.’ And despite so many decisive successes and irresistible means, the Versaillese army was all the while baffled at our advanced posts. Its only decisive victories were against the houses of the enceinte and the suburbs.</p>
<p>The neighbourhood of the Porte-Maillot, the Avenue de la Grande Arm�e and the Ternes were continually lighting up with conflagrations. Asni�res and Levallois were filling with ruins, the inhabitants of Neuilly starving in their cellars. The Versaillese threw against these points alone 1,500 shells a day; and yet M. Thiers wrote to his prefects, ‘If a few cannon-shots are heard, it is not the act of the Government, but of a few insurgents trying to make us believe they are fighting. while they hardly dare show themselves.’</p>
<p>The Commune assisted the bombarded people of Paris, but could do nothing for those of Neuilly, caught between two fires. A cry of pity went up from the whole press. All the journals demanded an armistice for the evacuation of Neuilly; the Freemasons and the <em>Ligue des Droits de Paris </em>interposed. With much trouble, for the generals did not want an armistice, the delegates got a suspension of arms for eight hours. The Council appointed five of its members to receive the bombarded people; the municipalities prepared them an asylum, and some of the women’s committees left Paris to assist them.</p>
<p>On the 25th, at nine o'clock in the morning, the cannon from the Porte-Maillot to Asni�res were silent. Thousands of Parisians went to visit the ruins of the Avenue and the Porte-Maillot, a mortar of earth, granite, and fragments of shells; stood still, deeply moved, before the artillerists leaning on their famous pieces, and then dispersed all over Neuilly. The little town, once so coquettish, displayed in the bright rays of the sun its shattered houses. At the limits agreed upon were two barriers, one of soldiers of the line, the other of Federals, separated from each other by an interval of about twenty yards. The Versaillese, chosen from amongst their most reliable troops, were watched by officers with hangdog looks. The Parisians, good fellows, approached the soldiers, speaking to them. The officers immediately ran up shouting furiously. When a soldier gave a polite answer to two ladies, an officer threw himself upon him, tore away his musket, and pointing the bayonet at the Parisiennes, cried, ‘This is how one speaks to them.’ Some persons having crossed the boundary marked out were taken prisoners. Still five o'clock struck without any massacre having occurred. The Avenue grew empty. Each Parisian on returning home carried his sack of earth to the fortifications of the Porte-Maillot, which found themselves re-established as if by magic.</p>
<p>In the evening the Versaillese again opened fire. It had not ceased against the forts of the south. That same day the enemy unmasked on this side the batteries he had been constructing for a fortnight — the first part of the plan of General Thiers.</p>
<p>He had on the 6th placed all the troops under the command of that MacMahon, his stains of Sedan still upon him. The army at this time was 46,000 strong, for the most part the residuum of depots, incapable of any serious action. To reinforce it and obtain soldiers, M. Thiers had sent Jules Favre whining to Bismarck. The Prussians had set free 60,000 prisoners on harsher conditions of peace, and authorized their ally Thiers to augment to 130,000 men the number of soldiers round Paris, which, according to the preliminaries of peace, were not to have exceeded 40,000 men. On the 25th April the Versaillese army comprised five corps, two of them, those of Douai and Clinchant, composed of the released prisoners from Germany and a reserve commanded by Vinoy, all in all 110,000 men. It increased to 170,000 receiving rations, of whom 130,000 were combatants. M. Thiers displayed real ability in setting it against Paris. The soldiers were well fed, well dressed, severely overlooked; discipline was reestablished. There occurred mysterious disappearances of officers guilty of having given utterance to their horror at this fratricidal war. Still this was not yet the army for an attack, the men always scampering away before a steady resistance. Despite official brag, the generals only counted upon the artillery, to which they owed the successes of Courbevoie and of Asni�res. Paris was only to be overcome by fire.</p>
<p>As during the first siege, Paris was literally hemmed in by bayonets, but this time half-foreign, half-French. The German army, forming a semicircle from the Marne to St. Denis, occupying the forts of the east and of the north; the Versaillese army, closing the circle from St. Denis to Villeneuve St. Georges, mistress only of Mont-Val�rien. The latter could then only attack the Commune by the west and south. The Federals had then the five forts of Ivry, Bicetre, Montrouge, Vanves, and Issy to defend themselves, with the trenches and the advanced posts that united them to each other, and the principal villages, Neuilly, Asni�res, and St. Ouen.</p>
<p>The vulnerable point of the enceinte facing the Versaillese was on the south-west, the salient of the Point du Jour, defended by the fort of Issy. Sufficiently covered on the right by the park, the castle of Issy and a trench uniting it to the Seine, commanded by our gunboats, this fort was overtopped in front and on the left by the heights of Bellevue, Meudon, and Chatillon. M. Thiers armed them with siege pieces which he had sent from Toulon, Cherbourg, Douai, Lyons, and Besancon — 293 ordnance pieces — and their effect was such that from the first days the fort of Issy was shaken. General Cissey, charged with the command of these operations, immediately commenced manoeuvring.</p>
<p>To crush the fort of Issy and that of Vanves, which supported it, then to force the Point du Jour, whence the troops could deploy into Paris, such was M. Thiers’ plan. The only object of the operations from St. Ouen to Neuilly was to prevent our attack by Courbevoie.</p>
<p>What forces and what plan did the Commune oppose?</p>
<p>The returns stated about 96,000 men and 4,000 officers for the active National Guard; for the reserve, 100,000 men and 3,500 officers. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n128">[128]</a></sup> Thirty-six free corps claimed to number 3,450 men. All deductions made, 60,000 combatants might have been obtained had they known how to set about it. But the weakness of the Council, the difficulty of supervision and repression, allowed the less brave and those who did not stand in need of pay, to shirk all control. Many contrived to limit their services to the interior of Paris. Thus for want of order the effective forces remained very weak, and the line from St. Ouen to Ivry was never held by more than 15,000 or 16,000 Federals.</p>
<p>The cavalry existed only on paper. There were only 500 horses to drag the guns or the wagons and to mount the officers and despatch-riders. The engineer department remained in a rudimentary state, the finest decrees notwithstanding. Of the 1,200 cannon possessed by Paris, only 200 were utilized. There were never more than 500 artillerymen, while the returns stated 2,500.</p>
<p><img src="pics/dombrowski.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Dombrowski" border="1" align="left"></p>
<p>Dombrowski occupied the bridge of Asni�res, Levallois, and Neuilly with 4,000 or 5,000 men at the utmost.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n129">[129]</a></sup> To protect his positions he had at Clichy and Asni�res about thirty ordnance pieces and two ironclad railway carriages, which from the 15th April to the 22nd May, even after the entry of the Versaillese, did not cease running along the lines; at Levallois, a dozen pieces. The ramparts of the north assisted him, and the valiant Porte-Maillot covered him at Neuilly.</p>
<p>On the left bank, from Issy to Ivry, in the forts, the villages, and the trenches, there were 10,000 to 11,000 Federals. The fort of Issy contained on an average 600 men and 50 pieces of 7 and 12 centimetres, of which two-thirds were inactive. The bastions 72 and 73 relieved him a little, aided by four ironclad locomotives established on the viaduct of the Point du Jour. Underneath, the gunboats, rearmed, fired on Breteuil, Sevres, Brimborion, even daring to push as far as Chatillon, and, unsheltered, cannonaded Meudon. A few hundred riflemen occupied the park and the castle of Issy, the Moulineaux, Le Val, and the trenches which united the fort of Issy to that of Vanves. This latter, exposed like Issy, valiantly supported its efforts with a garrison of 500 men and about 20 cannon. The bastions of the enceinte supported it very little.</p>
<p>The fort of Montrouge, with 350 men and 10 to 15 ordnance pieces, had only to support the fort of Vanves. That of Bicetre, provided with 500 men and 20 pieces, had to fire at objects hidden from its view. Three considerable redoubts protected it — the Hautes Bruyeres, with 500 men and 20 pieces; the Moulin Saquet, with 700 men and about 14 pieces; and Villejuif, with 300 men and a few howitzers. At the extreme left, the fort of Ivry and its dependencies had 500 men and about 40 pieces. The intermediate villages, Gentilly, Cachan, and Arcueil, were occupied by 2,000 to 2,500 Federals.</p>
<p>The nominal command of the forts of the south, first confided to Eudes, assisted by an ex-officer of Garibaldi, La Cecilia, on the 20th passed into the hands of the Alsatian Wetzel, an officer of the army of the Loire. From his headquarters of Issy he was to superintend the trenches of Issy and of Vanves and the defence of the forts. In reality, their commanders, who often changed, did just as they pleased.</p>
<p>The command, from Issy to Arcueil was, towards the middle of April, entrusted to General Wroblewski, one of the best officers of the Polish insurrection, young, an adept in military science, brave, methodical, and shrewd, turning everybody and everything to account; an excellent chief for young troops.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n130">[130]</a></sup> </p>
<p>All these general officers never received but one order: ‘Defend yourselves.’ As to a general plan, there never was one. Neither Cluseret nor Rossel held councils of war.</p>
<p>The men were also abandoned to themselves, being neither cared for nor controlled. Scarcely any, if any, relieving of the troops under fire ever took place. The whole strain fell upon the same men. Certain battalions remained twenty, thirty days in the trenches, while others were continually kept in reserve. If some men grew so inured to fire that they refused to return home, others were discouraged, came to show their clothes covered with vermin and asked for rest. The generals were obliged to retain them, having no one to put in their places.</p>
<p>This carelessness soon destroyed all discipline. The brave wanted to rely only upon themselves, and the others slunk from the service. The officers did the same, some leaving their posts to assist the fight at a contiguous place, others returning to the town. The court-martial sentenced a few of them very severely. The Council quashed the sentences, and commuted one condemnation to death to three years’ imprisonment.</p>
<p>As they recoiled from rigour, from regular war discipline, they ought to have changed their method and their tactics. But the Council was now even less capable of showing will of its own than on the first day. It always lamented that things were at a stand-still, but did not know how to set them going. On the 26th, the military commission, declaring that decrees and orders remained a dead letter, charged the municipalities, the Central Committee, and the <em>chefs-de-l�gions </em>with the reorganization of the National Guard. Not one of these mechanisms functioned methodically; the Council had not even thought of organizing Paris by sections; the Central Committee intrigued; the <em>chefs-de-l�gions </em>were agitated; certain members of the Council and generals dreamt of a military dictatorship. In the midst of this fatal wrestling, the Council discussed during several sittings whether the pawn tickets to be given back gratuitously to their owners should amount to twenty or thirty francs, and whether the <em>Officiel</em> should be sold for five centimes.</p>
<p>Towards the end of April, no observer of any perspicacity could fail to see that the defence had become hopeless. In Paris, active and devoted men exhausted their strength in enervating struggles with the bureaux, the committees, the sub-committees, and the thousand pretentious rival administrations, often losing a whole day in order to obtain possession of a single cannon. At the ramparts, some artillerymen riddled the line of Versailles, and, asking for nothing but bread and iron, stood to their pieces until torn away by shells. The forts, their casemates staved in, their embrasures destroyed, lustily answered the fire from the heights. Brave skirmishers, unprotected, surprised the line-soldiers in their lurking-places. All this devotion and dazzling heroism were spent in vain, like the steam of an engine escaping through hundreds of outlets.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XVII
Women of the Commune and the opposing armies
The glorious flame of Paris still hid these failings. One must have been enkindled by it to describe it. Beside it the Communard journals, in spite of their romanticism, show pale and dull. It is true the mise en sc�ne was unpretending. In the streets, in the silent boulevards, a battalion of a hundred men setting out for the battle or returning from it; a woman who follows, a passer — by who applauds — that is all. But it is the drama of the Revolution, simple and gigantic as a drama of Aeschylus.
The commander in his vareuse, dusty, his silver lace singed, his men greyheads or youths, the veterans of June 1848 and the pupils of March, the son often marching by the side of the father.[124]
This woman, who salutes or accompanies them, she is the true Parisienne. The unclean androgyne, born in the mire of the Empire, the madonna of the pornographers, the Dumas fils and the Feydeaux, has followed her patrons to Versailles or works the Prussian mine at St. Denis. She, who is now uppermost, is the Parisienne, strong, devoted, tragic, knowing how to die as she loves. A helpmeet in labour, she will also be an associate in the death-struggle. A formidable equality this to oppose to the bourgeoisie. The proletarian is doubly strong — one heart and four hands. On the 24th of March a Federal addressed these noble words to the bourgeois battalions of the first arrondissement, making them drop their arms: ‘Believe me, you cannot hold out; your wives are all in tears, and ours do not weep.’
She does not keep back her husband.[125] On the contrary, she urges him to battle, carries him his linen and his soup, as she had before done to his workshop. Many would not return, but took up arms. At the plateau de Chatillon they were the last to stand the fire. The cantini�res, simply dressed as workwomen, not fancy costumes, fell by dozens. On the 3rd April, at Meudon, the Citoyenne Lachaise, cantinere of the 66th battalion, remained the whole day in the field of battle, tending the wounded, alone, without a doctor.
If they return, it is to call to arms. Having formed a central committee at the mairie of the tenth arrondissement, they issued fiery proclamations: ‘We must conquer or die. You who say, “What matters the triumph of our cause if 1 must lose those I love?” know that the only means of saving those who are dear to you is to throw yourselves into the struggle.’ Their committees multiplied. They offered themselves to the Commune, demanding arms, posts of danger, and complaining of the cowards who swerved from their duty.[126] Madame Andr� L�o, with her eloquent pen, explained the meaning of the Commune, summoned the delegate at the War Office to avail himself of the ‘holy fever that burns in the hearts of the women.’ A young Russian lady, of noble birth, educated, beautiful, rich, called Demitriev, was the Th�roigne de M�ricourt of this Revolution. The proletarian character of the Commune was embodied in Louise Michel, a teacher in the seventeenth arrondissement. Gentle and patient with the little children, who adored her, in the cause of the people the mother became a lioness. She had organized a corps of ambulance nurses, who tended the wounded even under fire. There they suffered no rivals. They also went to the hospitals to save their beloved comrades from the harsh nuns; and the eyes of the dying brightened at the murmur of those gentle voices that spoke to them of the Republic and of hope.
In this contest of devotion the children fought with men and women. The Versaillese, victorious, took 660 of them, and many perished in the battle of the streets. Thousands served during the siege. They followed the battalions to the trenches, in the forts, especially clinging to the cannon. Some gunners of the Porte-Maillot were boys of from thirteen to fourteen years old. Unsheltered, in the open country, they performed exploits of mad heroism.[127]
This Parisian flame radiated beyond the enceinte. The municipalities of Sceaux and St. Denis united at Vincennes to protest against the bombardment, demand the municipal franchises and the establishment of the Republic. Its heat was even felt in the provinces.
They began to believe Paris was impregnable, and laughed much at the despatches of M. Thiers, saying on the 3rd April, ‘This day is decisive of the fate of the insurrection; on the 4th, ‘The insurgents have to-day suffered a decisive defeat;’ on the 7th, ‘This day is decisive;’ on the 11th, ‘Irresistible means are being prepared at Versailles,’ on the 12th, ‘We expect the decisive moment.’ And despite so many decisive successes and irresistible means, the Versaillese army was all the while baffled at our advanced posts. Its only decisive victories were against the houses of the enceinte and the suburbs.
The neighbourhood of the Porte-Maillot, the Avenue de la Grande Arm�e and the Ternes were continually lighting up with conflagrations. Asni�res and Levallois were filling with ruins, the inhabitants of Neuilly starving in their cellars. The Versaillese threw against these points alone 1,500 shells a day; and yet M. Thiers wrote to his prefects, ‘If a few cannon-shots are heard, it is not the act of the Government, but of a few insurgents trying to make us believe they are fighting. while they hardly dare show themselves.’
The Commune assisted the bombarded people of Paris, but could do nothing for those of Neuilly, caught between two fires. A cry of pity went up from the whole press. All the journals demanded an armistice for the evacuation of Neuilly; the Freemasons and the Ligue des Droits de Paris interposed. With much trouble, for the generals did not want an armistice, the delegates got a suspension of arms for eight hours. The Council appointed five of its members to receive the bombarded people; the municipalities prepared them an asylum, and some of the women’s committees left Paris to assist them.
On the 25th, at nine o'clock in the morning, the cannon from the Porte-Maillot to Asni�res were silent. Thousands of Parisians went to visit the ruins of the Avenue and the Porte-Maillot, a mortar of earth, granite, and fragments of shells; stood still, deeply moved, before the artillerists leaning on their famous pieces, and then dispersed all over Neuilly. The little town, once so coquettish, displayed in the bright rays of the sun its shattered houses. At the limits agreed upon were two barriers, one of soldiers of the line, the other of Federals, separated from each other by an interval of about twenty yards. The Versaillese, chosen from amongst their most reliable troops, were watched by officers with hangdog looks. The Parisians, good fellows, approached the soldiers, speaking to them. The officers immediately ran up shouting furiously. When a soldier gave a polite answer to two ladies, an officer threw himself upon him, tore away his musket, and pointing the bayonet at the Parisiennes, cried, ‘This is how one speaks to them.’ Some persons having crossed the boundary marked out were taken prisoners. Still five o'clock struck without any massacre having occurred. The Avenue grew empty. Each Parisian on returning home carried his sack of earth to the fortifications of the Porte-Maillot, which found themselves re-established as if by magic.
In the evening the Versaillese again opened fire. It had not ceased against the forts of the south. That same day the enemy unmasked on this side the batteries he had been constructing for a fortnight — the first part of the plan of General Thiers.
He had on the 6th placed all the troops under the command of that MacMahon, his stains of Sedan still upon him. The army at this time was 46,000 strong, for the most part the residuum of depots, incapable of any serious action. To reinforce it and obtain soldiers, M. Thiers had sent Jules Favre whining to Bismarck. The Prussians had set free 60,000 prisoners on harsher conditions of peace, and authorized their ally Thiers to augment to 130,000 men the number of soldiers round Paris, which, according to the preliminaries of peace, were not to have exceeded 40,000 men. On the 25th April the Versaillese army comprised five corps, two of them, those of Douai and Clinchant, composed of the released prisoners from Germany and a reserve commanded by Vinoy, all in all 110,000 men. It increased to 170,000 receiving rations, of whom 130,000 were combatants. M. Thiers displayed real ability in setting it against Paris. The soldiers were well fed, well dressed, severely overlooked; discipline was reestablished. There occurred mysterious disappearances of officers guilty of having given utterance to their horror at this fratricidal war. Still this was not yet the army for an attack, the men always scampering away before a steady resistance. Despite official brag, the generals only counted upon the artillery, to which they owed the successes of Courbevoie and of Asni�res. Paris was only to be overcome by fire.
As during the first siege, Paris was literally hemmed in by bayonets, but this time half-foreign, half-French. The German army, forming a semicircle from the Marne to St. Denis, occupying the forts of the east and of the north; the Versaillese army, closing the circle from St. Denis to Villeneuve St. Georges, mistress only of Mont-Val�rien. The latter could then only attack the Commune by the west and south. The Federals had then the five forts of Ivry, Bicetre, Montrouge, Vanves, and Issy to defend themselves, with the trenches and the advanced posts that united them to each other, and the principal villages, Neuilly, Asni�res, and St. Ouen.
The vulnerable point of the enceinte facing the Versaillese was on the south-west, the salient of the Point du Jour, defended by the fort of Issy. Sufficiently covered on the right by the park, the castle of Issy and a trench uniting it to the Seine, commanded by our gunboats, this fort was overtopped in front and on the left by the heights of Bellevue, Meudon, and Chatillon. M. Thiers armed them with siege pieces which he had sent from Toulon, Cherbourg, Douai, Lyons, and Besancon — 293 ordnance pieces — and their effect was such that from the first days the fort of Issy was shaken. General Cissey, charged with the command of these operations, immediately commenced manoeuvring.
To crush the fort of Issy and that of Vanves, which supported it, then to force the Point du Jour, whence the troops could deploy into Paris, such was M. Thiers’ plan. The only object of the operations from St. Ouen to Neuilly was to prevent our attack by Courbevoie.
What forces and what plan did the Commune oppose?
The returns stated about 96,000 men and 4,000 officers for the active National Guard; for the reserve, 100,000 men and 3,500 officers. [128] Thirty-six free corps claimed to number 3,450 men. All deductions made, 60,000 combatants might have been obtained had they known how to set about it. But the weakness of the Council, the difficulty of supervision and repression, allowed the less brave and those who did not stand in need of pay, to shirk all control. Many contrived to limit their services to the interior of Paris. Thus for want of order the effective forces remained very weak, and the line from St. Ouen to Ivry was never held by more than 15,000 or 16,000 Federals.
The cavalry existed only on paper. There were only 500 horses to drag the guns or the wagons and to mount the officers and despatch-riders. The engineer department remained in a rudimentary state, the finest decrees notwithstanding. Of the 1,200 cannon possessed by Paris, only 200 were utilized. There were never more than 500 artillerymen, while the returns stated 2,500.
Dombrowski occupied the bridge of Asni�res, Levallois, and Neuilly with 4,000 or 5,000 men at the utmost.[129] To protect his positions he had at Clichy and Asni�res about thirty ordnance pieces and two ironclad railway carriages, which from the 15th April to the 22nd May, even after the entry of the Versaillese, did not cease running along the lines; at Levallois, a dozen pieces. The ramparts of the north assisted him, and the valiant Porte-Maillot covered him at Neuilly.
On the left bank, from Issy to Ivry, in the forts, the villages, and the trenches, there were 10,000 to 11,000 Federals. The fort of Issy contained on an average 600 men and 50 pieces of 7 and 12 centimetres, of which two-thirds were inactive. The bastions 72 and 73 relieved him a little, aided by four ironclad locomotives established on the viaduct of the Point du Jour. Underneath, the gunboats, rearmed, fired on Breteuil, Sevres, Brimborion, even daring to push as far as Chatillon, and, unsheltered, cannonaded Meudon. A few hundred riflemen occupied the park and the castle of Issy, the Moulineaux, Le Val, and the trenches which united the fort of Issy to that of Vanves. This latter, exposed like Issy, valiantly supported its efforts with a garrison of 500 men and about 20 cannon. The bastions of the enceinte supported it very little.
The fort of Montrouge, with 350 men and 10 to 15 ordnance pieces, had only to support the fort of Vanves. That of Bicetre, provided with 500 men and 20 pieces, had to fire at objects hidden from its view. Three considerable redoubts protected it — the Hautes Bruyeres, with 500 men and 20 pieces; the Moulin Saquet, with 700 men and about 14 pieces; and Villejuif, with 300 men and a few howitzers. At the extreme left, the fort of Ivry and its dependencies had 500 men and about 40 pieces. The intermediate villages, Gentilly, Cachan, and Arcueil, were occupied by 2,000 to 2,500 Federals.
The nominal command of the forts of the south, first confided to Eudes, assisted by an ex-officer of Garibaldi, La Cecilia, on the 20th passed into the hands of the Alsatian Wetzel, an officer of the army of the Loire. From his headquarters of Issy he was to superintend the trenches of Issy and of Vanves and the defence of the forts. In reality, their commanders, who often changed, did just as they pleased.
The command, from Issy to Arcueil was, towards the middle of April, entrusted to General Wroblewski, one of the best officers of the Polish insurrection, young, an adept in military science, brave, methodical, and shrewd, turning everybody and everything to account; an excellent chief for young troops.[130]
All these general officers never received but one order: ‘Defend yourselves.’ As to a general plan, there never was one. Neither Cluseret nor Rossel held councils of war.
The men were also abandoned to themselves, being neither cared for nor controlled. Scarcely any, if any, relieving of the troops under fire ever took place. The whole strain fell upon the same men. Certain battalions remained twenty, thirty days in the trenches, while others were continually kept in reserve. If some men grew so inured to fire that they refused to return home, others were discouraged, came to show their clothes covered with vermin and asked for rest. The generals were obliged to retain them, having no one to put in their places.
This carelessness soon destroyed all discipline. The brave wanted to rely only upon themselves, and the others slunk from the service. The officers did the same, some leaving their posts to assist the fight at a contiguous place, others returning to the town. The court-martial sentenced a few of them very severely. The Council quashed the sentences, and commuted one condemnation to death to three years’ imprisonment.
As they recoiled from rigour, from regular war discipline, they ought to have changed their method and their tactics. But the Council was now even less capable of showing will of its own than on the first day. It always lamented that things were at a stand-still, but did not know how to set them going. On the 26th, the military commission, declaring that decrees and orders remained a dead letter, charged the municipalities, the Central Committee, and the chefs-de-l�gions with the reorganization of the National Guard. Not one of these mechanisms functioned methodically; the Council had not even thought of organizing Paris by sections; the Central Committee intrigued; the chefs-de-l�gions were agitated; certain members of the Council and generals dreamt of a military dictatorship. In the midst of this fatal wrestling, the Council discussed during several sittings whether the pawn tickets to be given back gratuitously to their owners should amount to twenty or thirty francs, and whether the Officiel should be sold for five centimes.
Towards the end of April, no observer of any perspicacity could fail to see that the defence had become hopeless. In Paris, active and devoted men exhausted their strength in enervating struggles with the bureaux, the committees, the sub-committees, and the thousand pretentious rival administrations, often losing a whole day in order to obtain possession of a single cannon. At the ramparts, some artillerymen riddled the line of Versailles, and, asking for nothing but bread and iron, stood to their pieces until torn away by shells. The forts, their casemates staved in, their embrasures destroyed, lustily answered the fire from the heights. Brave skirmishers, unprotected, surprised the line-soldiers in their lurking-places. All this devotion and dazzling heroism were spent in vain, like the steam of an engine escaping through hundreds of outlets.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XXVI<br>
The enemy enters Paris</h1>
<p><img src="pics/tuilleries.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="The Tuilleries" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p class="quoteb">The St. Cloud gate has just been breached. General Douai has thrown himself at it. (Thiers to the Prefects, 21st May.)</p>
<p>The great attack approached; the Assembly drew up in battlearray. On the 16th May it refused to recognize the Republic as the Government of France, and voted public prayers by 417 out of 420. On the 17th the army established its breach batteries against the gates of La Muette, Auteuil, St. Cloud, Point du Jour, Issy. The batteries in the rear continued to pound the enceinte of the Point du Jour and to confound Passy. The pieces of the Ch�teau de Br�con ruined the Montmartre cemetry, and reached as far as the Place St. Pierre. We had five arrondissements under shell.</p>
<p>On the 18th, in the evening, the Versaillese surprised the Federals of Cachan by approaching them with the cry of ‘<em>Vive la Commune!’ </em>However, we succeeded in preventing their movement towards the Hautes-Bruyeres. The Dominican monks who from their convent gave signals to the enemy were arrested and taken to the Fort de Bicetre.</p>
<p><em>May </em>19th: — Despite the Versaillese approaches, our defence did not become more vigorous. Bastions 72 and 73 threw a few occasional shells upon the village and the fort of Issy. From the Point du Jour to the Porte-Maillot we had only the cannon of the Dauphin� gate to answer the hundred Versaillese pieces and check their works in the Bois de Boulogne. A few barricades at the Bineau and Asnieres gates and the Boulevard d'Italie, two redoubts at the Place de la Concorde and Rue Castiglione, a moat in the Rue Royale and another at the Trocadero; this was all that the Council had done in seven weeks for the defence of the interior. There were no works at the Mont-Parnasse Station, the Panth�on, the Buttes Montmartre, where two or three pieces had been fired off on the 14th, only to kill our own men at Lavallois. At the terrace of the Tuileries about twelve navvies sadly dug away at a useless trench. The Committee of Public Safety could not, they said, find workmen, when they had 1,500 idlers at the Prince-Eugene Barracks, 100,000 sedentary guards, and millions of francs to hand. An iron will and firm direction might still have saved everything; and we were now in the period of coma, of immense lassitude. The competitions, quarrels, and intrigues had absorbed all energy. The Council occupied itself with details, with trifles. The Committee of Public Safety multiplied its romantic proclamations, which moved nobody. The Central Committee thought only of seizing upon a power it was unable to wield, and on the 19th announced itself administrator of the War Office. Its members had made so sure of their sway, that one of them by a decree inserted in the <em>Officiel </em>ordered all the inhabitants of Paris to ‘present themselves at their homes within forty-eight hours,’ on pain of ‘having their rent-titles on the grand livre burnt.’ This was the pendant of the identity card.</p>
<p>Our best battalions, decimated, abandoned to themselves, were but wrecks. Since the beginning of April we had lost 4,000 men, killed or wounded, and 3,500 prisoners. There now remained to us 2,000 men from Ansieres to Neuilly, 4,000 perhaps from La Muette to PetitVanves. The battalions designated for the posts of Passy were not there, or stayed in the houses far from the ramparts; many of their officers had disappeared. At bastions 36 to 70, precisely at the point of attack, there were not twenty artillerymen; the sentinels were absent.</p>
<p>Was it treason? The conspirators boasted a few days after of having dismantled these ramparts; but the terrible bombardment would suffice to explain this dereliction. Still there was a culpable heedlessness. Dombrowski, weary of struggling against the inertness of the War Office, was discouraged, went too often to his quarters at the Place Vend�me, while the Committee of Public Safety, informed of the abandonment of the ramparts, contented itself with warning the War Office instead of hurrying to the rescue and taking the situation in hand.</p>
<p>On Saturday, the 20th May, the breach batteries were unmasked; 300 naval guns and siege-pieces blending together their detonations announced the beginning of the end.</p>
<p>The same day De Beaufond, whom Lasnier’s arrest had not discouraged, sent his habitual emissary to warn the chief of the Versaillese general staff that the gates of Montrouge, Vanves, Vaugirard, Point du Jour and Dauphine were entirely deserted. Orders for concentrating the troops were immediately issued. On the 21st the Versaillese found themselves in readiness, as on the 3rd and 12th, but this time success seemed certain; the gate of St. Cloud was dashed to pieces.</p>
<p>For several days some members of the Council had pointed out this breach to the chief of the general staff, Henri Prodhomme. He answered <em>à la</em> Cluseret that his measures were taken; that he was even going to throw up a terrible iron-clad barricade before this gate; but he did not stir. On the Sunday morning, Lefran�ais, traversing the moat on the ruins of the drawbridge, at about fifteen yards distance, ran up against the Versaillese trenches. Struck by the imminence of the peril, he sent Delescluze a note, which was lost.</p>
<p>At half-past two, under the shade of the Tuileries, a monster concert was being given for the benefit of the widows and orphans of the Commune. Thousands of people had come; the bright spring dresses of the women lit up the green alleys; people eagerly inhaled the fresh air sent forth from the great trees. Two hundred yards off, on the Place de la Concorde, the Versaillese shells burst, uttering their discordant note amidst the joyous sounds of the bands and the invigorating breath of spring.</p>
<p>At the end of the concert a staff officer ascended the platform of the conductor of the orchestra. ‘Citizens,’ said he, ‘M. Thiers promised to enter Paris yesterday. M. Thiers has not entered; he will not enter. I invite you to come here next Sunday, to the same place, to our second concert for the benefit of the widows and orphans.’</p>
<p>At that very hour, at that very minute, almost within gunshot, the vanguard of the Versaillese was making its entry into Paris.</p>
<p>The expected signal had at last been given from the St. Cloud gate, but did not come from the licensed conspirators. An amateur spy, Ducatel, was crossing these quarters, when he saw everything, gates and ramparts, quite deserted. He thereupon climbed Bastion 64, waving a white handkerchief, and cried to the soldiers in the trenches, ‘You can enter; there is no one here.’ A naval officer came forward, interrogated Ducatel, crossed over the ruins of the drawbridge, and was able to assure himself that the bastions and neighbouring houses were entirely abandoned. Returning immediately to the trenches, the officer telegraphed the news to the nearest generals. The breach batteries ceased firing, and the soldiers of the trenches nearby penetrated by small platoons into the enceinte. M. Thiers, MacMahon, and Admiral Pothuan , who were just then at Mont-Val�rien, telegraphed to Versailles to have all the divisions put in motion.</p>
<p>Dombrowski, absent from his headquarters of La Muette for several hours, arrived at four o'clock. A commander met him, and informed him of the entry of the Versaillese. Dombrowski let the officer terminate his report, then, turning to one of his aides-de-camp, with a coolness that he exaggerated in critical circumstances, said, ‘Send to the Ministry of Marine for a battery of seven cannon; warn such and such battalions. I shall take the command myself.’ He also addressed a despatch to the Committee of Public Safety and the War Office, and sent the batallion of volunteers to occupy the gate of Auteuil.</p>
<p>At five o'clock, National Guards, without k�pis, without arms, uttered a cry of alarm in the streets of Passy; some officers unsheathing their swords tried to stop them; the Federals left their houses, some loading their guns, others maintaining that it was a false alarm. The commander of the volunteers picked up and led off as many men as he could get to follow him.</p>
<p>These volunteers were troops inured to fire. Near the railway station they saw the red-coats, and received them with a volley. A Versaillese officer on horseback, who hurried up trying to urge on his men with drawn sabre, fell beneath our balls, and his soldiers retreated. The Federals established themselves solidly on the viaduct and at the opening of the Murat Boulevard, while, at the same time, the quay abreast of the Jena. Bridge was being barricaded.</p>
<p>Dombrowski’s despatch had reached the Committee of Public Safety. Billioray, on duty at this moment, at once proceeded to the Council. The Assembly was just putting Cluseret on trial, and Vermorel was speaking. The ex-delegate, seated on a chair, listened to the orator with that vain nonchalance which the naive took for talent. Billioray, very pale, entered, and for a moment sat down; then, as Vermorel went on, cried to him, ‘Conclude! conclude! I have to make a communication of the greatest importance to the Assembly; I demand a secret sitting.’</p>
<p>Vermorel: ‘Let citizen Bil lioray speak.’</p>
<p>Billioray rose and read a paper that trembled slightly in his hand.</p>
<p>‘Dombrowski to War and Committee of Public Safety. The Versaillese have entered by the Porte de St. Cloud. I am taking measures to drive them back. If you can send me reinforcements, I answer for everything.’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n178">[178]</a></sup></p>
<p>There was first a silence of anguish, soon broken by interpellations. ‘Some battalions have marched off,’ answered Billioray; ‘the Committee of Public Safety watches.’</p>
<p>The discussion was again taken up, and naturally cut short. The Council acquitted Cluseret; the ridiculous impeachment brought forward by Miot, made up only of gossip, neglected the only incriminating fact — the inactivity of Cluseret during his delegation. They then formed into groups and commented on the despatch. The confidence of Dombrowski, the assurance of Billioray, proved quite sufficient to the romanticists. What with faith in the general, the solidity of the ramparts, the immortality of the cause; what with the responsibility of the Committee of Public Safety, the question at issue was slurred over; let every one go about in search of information, and in case of need betake himself to his own arrondissement.</p>
<p>The time was wasted in small-talk; there were neither motion nor debate; eight o'clock struck , and the president raised the sitting. The last sitting of the Council! And there was no one to demand a permanent committee; no one to call on his colleague to wait here for news, to summon the Committee of Public Safety to the bar of the Council. There was no one to insist that at this critical moment of uncertainty, when perhaps it might be necessary to improvise a plan of defence at a moment’s notice or take a great resolution in case of disaster, the post of the guardians of Paris was in the centre, at the H�tel-de-Ville, and not in their respective arrondissements.</p>
<p>Thus the Council of the Commune disappeared from history and the H�tel-de-Ville at the moment of supreme danger, when the Versaillese penetrated into Paris.</p>
<p>The same prostration reigned at the War Office, where they had received the news at five o'clock. The Central Committee went to Delescluze, who seemed very calm, and said, what many indeed believed, that the fight in the streets would be favourable to the Commune. The commander of the section of the Point du Jour having just come to report that nothing serious had happened, the delegate accepted his statements without corroboration. The chief of the general staff did not even think it worth while to go and make a personal recognisance, and towards eight o'clock he had this incredible despatch posted up: ‘The observatory of the Arc de Triomphe denies the entry of the Versaillese; at least, it sees nothing that looks like it.</p>
<p>The commander (Renaud) of the section has just left my office, and declares that there has only been a panic, and that the gate of Auteuil has not been forced; that if a few Versaillese have entered, they have been repulsed. I have sent for eleven battalions of reinforcements, by as many officers of the general staff, who are not to leave them till they have led them to the posts which they are to occupy.’</p>
<p>At the same hour M. Thiers telegraphed to his prefects, ‘The gate of St. Cloud has fallen under the fire of our cannon. General Douai has dashed into the town.’ A twofold lie. The gate of St. Cloud had been wide open for three days without the Versaillese daring to pass it, and General Douai had crept in very modestly, man by man, introduced by treason.</p>
<p>At night the Ministry seemed to wake up a little. Officers flocked thither asking for orders. The general staff would not allow the tocsin to be sounded, on the pretext that the population must not be alarmed. Some members of the Council pored over the plan of Paris at last, studying those strategical points that had been forgotten for six weeks. When it was necessary at once to find an idea, a method, and give precise instructions, the delegate shut himself in his office in order to frame a proclamation.</p>
<p>While in the midst of Paris, confident in her trustees, a few men, without soldiers, without information, prepared the first resistance, the Versaillese continued to slip in through the breaches of the ramparts. Wave on wave their flood grew, silent, veiled by the dusk. By degrees they massed themselves between the railway line and the fortifications. At eight o'clock they were numerous enough to divide into two columns, one of which, turning to the left, crowned Bastions 66 and 67, while the other filed off to the right on the route to Versailles. The first lodged itself in the centre of Passy, occupying the St. P�rine asylum, the church and the place of Auteuil; the other, having swept away the rudimentary barricade constructed on the quay at the top of the Rue Guillon, towards one o'clock in the morning, by the Rue Raynouard, scaled the Trocadero, neither fortified nor manned on this side, and it once took possession of it.</p>
<p>At the Hotel-de-Ville the members of the Committee of Public Safety had at last assembled. Billioray alone had vanished not to appear again. They knew nothing of the number and position of the troops, but knew that under the cover of night the enemy had entered Passy. Staff officers sent to La Muette to reconnoitre came back with the most reassuring news. Thereupon, at eleven o'clock, a member of the Council, Assi, entered the Rue Beethoven, where the lights had been put out. Soon his horse refused to advance; it had slipped down in large pools of blood, and National Guards seemed to lie asleep along the walls. Suddenly men sprang forward. They were the Versaillese waiting in ambush; these sleepers were murdered Federals.</p>
<p>The Versaillese were slaughtering within the walls of Paris and Paris knew it not. The night was clear, starlit, mild, fragrant; the theatres were crowded, the boulevards sparkling with life and gaiety, the bright caf�s swarming with visitors, and the cannon were everywhere hushed — a silence unknown for three weeks. If ‘the finest army that France ever had’ were to push straight on by the quays and boulevards, entirely free of barricades, with one bound, without firing a shot, if would crush the Commune of Paris.</p>
<p>The volunteers held out on the railway line till midnight; then, exhausted, left without any reinforcements, they fell back upon La Muette. General Clinchant followed them, occupied the Auteuil gate, passed by that of Passy, and marched on the headquarters of Dombrowski. Fifty volunteers for some time still kept up a skirmish in the Ch�teau, but outflanked on the east, about to be closed in from the Trocadero, at half-past one in the morning they beat a retreat on the Champs-Elys�es.</p>
<p>On the left bank General Cissey had the whole evening massed his forces at about 200 yards from the enceinte. At midnight his sappers crossed the moat, scaled the ramparts, without even encountering a sentinel, and opened the Sevres and Versailles gates.</p>
<p>At three o'clock in the morning the Versaillese inundated Paris through the five gaping wounds of the gates of Passy, Auteuil, St. Cloud, Sevres, and Versailles. The greater part of the fifteenth arrondissement was occupied, the Muette taken; all Passy and the heights of the Trocadero were taken, and the powder-magazine of the Rue Beethoven, immense catacombs running underneath the sixteenth arrondissement, crammed with 3,000 barrels of powder, millions of cartridges, thousands of shells. At five o'clock the first Versaillese shell fell upon the L�gion d'Honneur. As on the morning of the 2nd December, Paris was asleep.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XXVI
The enemy enters Paris
The St. Cloud gate has just been breached. General Douai has thrown himself at it. (Thiers to the Prefects, 21st May.)
The great attack approached; the Assembly drew up in battlearray. On the 16th May it refused to recognize the Republic as the Government of France, and voted public prayers by 417 out of 420. On the 17th the army established its breach batteries against the gates of La Muette, Auteuil, St. Cloud, Point du Jour, Issy. The batteries in the rear continued to pound the enceinte of the Point du Jour and to confound Passy. The pieces of the Ch�teau de Br�con ruined the Montmartre cemetry, and reached as far as the Place St. Pierre. We had five arrondissements under shell.
On the 18th, in the evening, the Versaillese surprised the Federals of Cachan by approaching them with the cry of ‘Vive la Commune!’ However, we succeeded in preventing their movement towards the Hautes-Bruyeres. The Dominican monks who from their convent gave signals to the enemy were arrested and taken to the Fort de Bicetre.
May 19th: — Despite the Versaillese approaches, our defence did not become more vigorous. Bastions 72 and 73 threw a few occasional shells upon the village and the fort of Issy. From the Point du Jour to the Porte-Maillot we had only the cannon of the Dauphin� gate to answer the hundred Versaillese pieces and check their works in the Bois de Boulogne. A few barricades at the Bineau and Asnieres gates and the Boulevard d'Italie, two redoubts at the Place de la Concorde and Rue Castiglione, a moat in the Rue Royale and another at the Trocadero; this was all that the Council had done in seven weeks for the defence of the interior. There were no works at the Mont-Parnasse Station, the Panth�on, the Buttes Montmartre, where two or three pieces had been fired off on the 14th, only to kill our own men at Lavallois. At the terrace of the Tuileries about twelve navvies sadly dug away at a useless trench. The Committee of Public Safety could not, they said, find workmen, when they had 1,500 idlers at the Prince-Eugene Barracks, 100,000 sedentary guards, and millions of francs to hand. An iron will and firm direction might still have saved everything; and we were now in the period of coma, of immense lassitude. The competitions, quarrels, and intrigues had absorbed all energy. The Council occupied itself with details, with trifles. The Committee of Public Safety multiplied its romantic proclamations, which moved nobody. The Central Committee thought only of seizing upon a power it was unable to wield, and on the 19th announced itself administrator of the War Office. Its members had made so sure of their sway, that one of them by a decree inserted in the Officiel ordered all the inhabitants of Paris to ‘present themselves at their homes within forty-eight hours,’ on pain of ‘having their rent-titles on the grand livre burnt.’ This was the pendant of the identity card.
Our best battalions, decimated, abandoned to themselves, were but wrecks. Since the beginning of April we had lost 4,000 men, killed or wounded, and 3,500 prisoners. There now remained to us 2,000 men from Ansieres to Neuilly, 4,000 perhaps from La Muette to PetitVanves. The battalions designated for the posts of Passy were not there, or stayed in the houses far from the ramparts; many of their officers had disappeared. At bastions 36 to 70, precisely at the point of attack, there were not twenty artillerymen; the sentinels were absent.
Was it treason? The conspirators boasted a few days after of having dismantled these ramparts; but the terrible bombardment would suffice to explain this dereliction. Still there was a culpable heedlessness. Dombrowski, weary of struggling against the inertness of the War Office, was discouraged, went too often to his quarters at the Place Vend�me, while the Committee of Public Safety, informed of the abandonment of the ramparts, contented itself with warning the War Office instead of hurrying to the rescue and taking the situation in hand.
On Saturday, the 20th May, the breach batteries were unmasked; 300 naval guns and siege-pieces blending together their detonations announced the beginning of the end.
The same day De Beaufond, whom Lasnier’s arrest had not discouraged, sent his habitual emissary to warn the chief of the Versaillese general staff that the gates of Montrouge, Vanves, Vaugirard, Point du Jour and Dauphine were entirely deserted. Orders for concentrating the troops were immediately issued. On the 21st the Versaillese found themselves in readiness, as on the 3rd and 12th, but this time success seemed certain; the gate of St. Cloud was dashed to pieces.
For several days some members of the Council had pointed out this breach to the chief of the general staff, Henri Prodhomme. He answered à la Cluseret that his measures were taken; that he was even going to throw up a terrible iron-clad barricade before this gate; but he did not stir. On the Sunday morning, Lefran�ais, traversing the moat on the ruins of the drawbridge, at about fifteen yards distance, ran up against the Versaillese trenches. Struck by the imminence of the peril, he sent Delescluze a note, which was lost.
At half-past two, under the shade of the Tuileries, a monster concert was being given for the benefit of the widows and orphans of the Commune. Thousands of people had come; the bright spring dresses of the women lit up the green alleys; people eagerly inhaled the fresh air sent forth from the great trees. Two hundred yards off, on the Place de la Concorde, the Versaillese shells burst, uttering their discordant note amidst the joyous sounds of the bands and the invigorating breath of spring.
At the end of the concert a staff officer ascended the platform of the conductor of the orchestra. ‘Citizens,’ said he, ‘M. Thiers promised to enter Paris yesterday. M. Thiers has not entered; he will not enter. I invite you to come here next Sunday, to the same place, to our second concert for the benefit of the widows and orphans.’
At that very hour, at that very minute, almost within gunshot, the vanguard of the Versaillese was making its entry into Paris.
The expected signal had at last been given from the St. Cloud gate, but did not come from the licensed conspirators. An amateur spy, Ducatel, was crossing these quarters, when he saw everything, gates and ramparts, quite deserted. He thereupon climbed Bastion 64, waving a white handkerchief, and cried to the soldiers in the trenches, ‘You can enter; there is no one here.’ A naval officer came forward, interrogated Ducatel, crossed over the ruins of the drawbridge, and was able to assure himself that the bastions and neighbouring houses were entirely abandoned. Returning immediately to the trenches, the officer telegraphed the news to the nearest generals. The breach batteries ceased firing, and the soldiers of the trenches nearby penetrated by small platoons into the enceinte. M. Thiers, MacMahon, and Admiral Pothuan , who were just then at Mont-Val�rien, telegraphed to Versailles to have all the divisions put in motion.
Dombrowski, absent from his headquarters of La Muette for several hours, arrived at four o'clock. A commander met him, and informed him of the entry of the Versaillese. Dombrowski let the officer terminate his report, then, turning to one of his aides-de-camp, with a coolness that he exaggerated in critical circumstances, said, ‘Send to the Ministry of Marine for a battery of seven cannon; warn such and such battalions. I shall take the command myself.’ He also addressed a despatch to the Committee of Public Safety and the War Office, and sent the batallion of volunteers to occupy the gate of Auteuil.
At five o'clock, National Guards, without k�pis, without arms, uttered a cry of alarm in the streets of Passy; some officers unsheathing their swords tried to stop them; the Federals left their houses, some loading their guns, others maintaining that it was a false alarm. The commander of the volunteers picked up and led off as many men as he could get to follow him.
These volunteers were troops inured to fire. Near the railway station they saw the red-coats, and received them with a volley. A Versaillese officer on horseback, who hurried up trying to urge on his men with drawn sabre, fell beneath our balls, and his soldiers retreated. The Federals established themselves solidly on the viaduct and at the opening of the Murat Boulevard, while, at the same time, the quay abreast of the Jena. Bridge was being barricaded.
Dombrowski’s despatch had reached the Committee of Public Safety. Billioray, on duty at this moment, at once proceeded to the Council. The Assembly was just putting Cluseret on trial, and Vermorel was speaking. The ex-delegate, seated on a chair, listened to the orator with that vain nonchalance which the naive took for talent. Billioray, very pale, entered, and for a moment sat down; then, as Vermorel went on, cried to him, ‘Conclude! conclude! I have to make a communication of the greatest importance to the Assembly; I demand a secret sitting.’
Vermorel: ‘Let citizen Bil lioray speak.’
Billioray rose and read a paper that trembled slightly in his hand.
‘Dombrowski to War and Committee of Public Safety. The Versaillese have entered by the Porte de St. Cloud. I am taking measures to drive them back. If you can send me reinforcements, I answer for everything.’[178]
There was first a silence of anguish, soon broken by interpellations. ‘Some battalions have marched off,’ answered Billioray; ‘the Committee of Public Safety watches.’
The discussion was again taken up, and naturally cut short. The Council acquitted Cluseret; the ridiculous impeachment brought forward by Miot, made up only of gossip, neglected the only incriminating fact — the inactivity of Cluseret during his delegation. They then formed into groups and commented on the despatch. The confidence of Dombrowski, the assurance of Billioray, proved quite sufficient to the romanticists. What with faith in the general, the solidity of the ramparts, the immortality of the cause; what with the responsibility of the Committee of Public Safety, the question at issue was slurred over; let every one go about in search of information, and in case of need betake himself to his own arrondissement.
The time was wasted in small-talk; there were neither motion nor debate; eight o'clock struck , and the president raised the sitting. The last sitting of the Council! And there was no one to demand a permanent committee; no one to call on his colleague to wait here for news, to summon the Committee of Public Safety to the bar of the Council. There was no one to insist that at this critical moment of uncertainty, when perhaps it might be necessary to improvise a plan of defence at a moment’s notice or take a great resolution in case of disaster, the post of the guardians of Paris was in the centre, at the H�tel-de-Ville, and not in their respective arrondissements.
Thus the Council of the Commune disappeared from history and the H�tel-de-Ville at the moment of supreme danger, when the Versaillese penetrated into Paris.
The same prostration reigned at the War Office, where they had received the news at five o'clock. The Central Committee went to Delescluze, who seemed very calm, and said, what many indeed believed, that the fight in the streets would be favourable to the Commune. The commander of the section of the Point du Jour having just come to report that nothing serious had happened, the delegate accepted his statements without corroboration. The chief of the general staff did not even think it worth while to go and make a personal recognisance, and towards eight o'clock he had this incredible despatch posted up: ‘The observatory of the Arc de Triomphe denies the entry of the Versaillese; at least, it sees nothing that looks like it.
The commander (Renaud) of the section has just left my office, and declares that there has only been a panic, and that the gate of Auteuil has not been forced; that if a few Versaillese have entered, they have been repulsed. I have sent for eleven battalions of reinforcements, by as many officers of the general staff, who are not to leave them till they have led them to the posts which they are to occupy.’
At the same hour M. Thiers telegraphed to his prefects, ‘The gate of St. Cloud has fallen under the fire of our cannon. General Douai has dashed into the town.’ A twofold lie. The gate of St. Cloud had been wide open for three days without the Versaillese daring to pass it, and General Douai had crept in very modestly, man by man, introduced by treason.
At night the Ministry seemed to wake up a little. Officers flocked thither asking for orders. The general staff would not allow the tocsin to be sounded, on the pretext that the population must not be alarmed. Some members of the Council pored over the plan of Paris at last, studying those strategical points that had been forgotten for six weeks. When it was necessary at once to find an idea, a method, and give precise instructions, the delegate shut himself in his office in order to frame a proclamation.
While in the midst of Paris, confident in her trustees, a few men, without soldiers, without information, prepared the first resistance, the Versaillese continued to slip in through the breaches of the ramparts. Wave on wave their flood grew, silent, veiled by the dusk. By degrees they massed themselves between the railway line and the fortifications. At eight o'clock they were numerous enough to divide into two columns, one of which, turning to the left, crowned Bastions 66 and 67, while the other filed off to the right on the route to Versailles. The first lodged itself in the centre of Passy, occupying the St. P�rine asylum, the church and the place of Auteuil; the other, having swept away the rudimentary barricade constructed on the quay at the top of the Rue Guillon, towards one o'clock in the morning, by the Rue Raynouard, scaled the Trocadero, neither fortified nor manned on this side, and it once took possession of it.
At the Hotel-de-Ville the members of the Committee of Public Safety had at last assembled. Billioray alone had vanished not to appear again. They knew nothing of the number and position of the troops, but knew that under the cover of night the enemy had entered Passy. Staff officers sent to La Muette to reconnoitre came back with the most reassuring news. Thereupon, at eleven o'clock, a member of the Council, Assi, entered the Rue Beethoven, where the lights had been put out. Soon his horse refused to advance; it had slipped down in large pools of blood, and National Guards seemed to lie asleep along the walls. Suddenly men sprang forward. They were the Versaillese waiting in ambush; these sleepers were murdered Federals.
The Versaillese were slaughtering within the walls of Paris and Paris knew it not. The night was clear, starlit, mild, fragrant; the theatres were crowded, the boulevards sparkling with life and gaiety, the bright caf�s swarming with visitors, and the cannon were everywhere hushed — a silence unknown for three weeks. If ‘the finest army that France ever had’ were to push straight on by the quays and boulevards, entirely free of barricades, with one bound, without firing a shot, if would crush the Commune of Paris.
The volunteers held out on the railway line till midnight; then, exhausted, left without any reinforcements, they fell back upon La Muette. General Clinchant followed them, occupied the Auteuil gate, passed by that of Passy, and marched on the headquarters of Dombrowski. Fifty volunteers for some time still kept up a skirmish in the Ch�teau, but outflanked on the east, about to be closed in from the Trocadero, at half-past one in the morning they beat a retreat on the Champs-Elys�es.
On the left bank General Cissey had the whole evening massed his forces at about 200 yards from the enceinte. At midnight his sappers crossed the moat, scaled the ramparts, without even encountering a sentinel, and opened the Sevres and Versailles gates.
At three o'clock in the morning the Versaillese inundated Paris through the five gaping wounds of the gates of Passy, Auteuil, St. Cloud, Sevres, and Versailles. The greater part of the fifteenth arrondissement was occupied, the Muette taken; all Passy and the heights of the Trocadero were taken, and the powder-magazine of the Rue Beethoven, immense catacombs running underneath the sixteenth arrondissement, crammed with 3,000 barrels of powder, millions of cartridges, thousands of shells. At five o'clock the first Versaillese shell fell upon the L�gion d'Honneur. As on the morning of the 2nd December, Paris was asleep.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter VI<br>
The mayors and the Assembly combine against Paris</h1>
<p class="quoteb">The thought of witnessing a massacre filled me with anguish. <br>
(Jules Favre, Inquiry into <em>the 4th of September</em>.)</p>
<p>On the 21st the situation stood out in bold relief.</p>
<p>At Paris — the Central Committee, with it all the workmen and all the generous and enlightened men of the lower middle-class. The Committee said, ‘We have but one object — the elections. Everybody is welcome to co-operate with us, but we shall not leave the H�tel-de-Ville before they have been made.’</p>
<p>At Versailles — the Assembly: all the monarchists, all the great bourgeoisie, all the slaveholders. They yelled, ‘Paris is only a rebel, the Central Committee a band of brigands.’</p>
<p>Between Versailles and Paris — a few Radical deputies, all the mayors, many adjuncts. They comprised the Liberal bourgeois, that sacred herd that makes all revolutions and allows all the empires to be made. Despised by the Assembly, disdained by the people, they cried to the Central Committee, ‘Usurpers!’ and to the Assembly, ‘You will spoil all.’</p>
<p>The day of the 21st is memorable, for on it all these voices made themselves heard.</p>
<p>The Central Committee: ‘Paris has in nowise the intention of separating from France; far from it. For France she has borne with the Empire and the Government of the National Defence, with all their treachery and defections, certainly not to abandon her now, but only to say to her as an elder sister: Sustain thyself as I have sustained myself; oppose thyself to oppression as I have done.’</p>
<p>And the <em>Journal Officiel</em>, in the first of those articles where Moreau, Longuet, and Rogeard commented upon the new revolution, said:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The proletarians of the capital, amidst the failures and treasons of the ruling classes, have understood that the hour has struck for them to save the situation by taking into their own hands the direction of public affairs. Hardly possessed of the government, they have hastened to convoke the people of Paris to the ballot-boxes. There is no example in history of a provisional government so anxious to divest itself of its mandate. In the presence of conduct so disinterested, one may well ask how a press can be found unjust enough to pour out upon these citizens slander, contumely, and insult? The working men, those who produce everything and enjoy nothing, are they then for ever to be exposed to outrage? The bourgeoisie, which has accomplished its emancipation, does it not understand that now the time for the emancipation of the proletariat is come? Why, then, does it persist in refusing the proletariat its legitimate share?’</p>
<p>It was the first socialist note struck in the movement. Parisian revolutions never remain purely political. The approach of the foreigner, the abnegation of the workmen, had, on the 4th September, silenced all social demands. Peace once concluded, the workmen in power, their voice would naturally make itself heard. How just was this complaint of the Central Committee! What an act of accusation the French proletariat could draw up against its masters! And on the 18th March, 1871, could not the people, making greater their great words of 1848, say, ‘We had placed eighty years of patience at the service of our country’?</p>
<p>The same day the Central Committee suspended the sale of objects pledged in the pawnshops, prolonged the overdue bills for a month, and forbade landlords to dismiss their tenants till further notice. In three lines it did justice, beat Versailles, and gained Paris.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the representatives and mayors told the people, ‘No election; everything is for the best. We wanted the maintenance of the National Guard; we shall have it. We wanted Paris to recover her municipal liberty; we shall have it. Your requests have been brought before the Assembly. The Assembly <em>has satisfied them </em>by a unanimous vote, which guarantees the municipal elections. Awaiting these, the only legal elections, we declare that we shall abstain from the elections announced for to-morrow, and we protest against their illegality.’</p>
<p>Thrice-lying address! The Assembly had not said a word of the National Guard; it had promised no municipal liberty, and several of the signatures were suppositious.</p>
<p><img src="pics/trochu.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Trochu" border="1" align="left"></p>
<p>The bourgeois press followed suit. Since the 19th the Figarist papers, supported by the police, the altar, and the alcove, the Liberal gazettes, by which Trochu had prepared the capitulation of Paris, had not ceased to fall foul of the federal battalions. They spoke of the public coffers and private property being pillaged, of Prussian gold streaming into the faubourgs, of documentary evidence hurtful to the members of the Central Committee destroyed by them. The Republican journals also discovered gold in the movement, but Bonapartist gold; and the best of them, na�vely convinced that the Republic belonged to their patrons, inveigled against the accession of the proletariat, saying, ‘These people dishonour us.’ Emboldened by the mayors and deputies, they all agreed to revolt; and on the 21st, in a collective declaration, asked the electors to consider as null and void the illegal convocation of the H�tel-de-Ville.</p>
<p>Illegality! Thus the question was put by the Legitimists, twice imposed on us by foreign bayonets; by the Orl�anists, raised to power through barricades; by the brigands of December; even by the exiles returned home, thanks to an insurrection. What! When the bourgeois, who make all laws, always act illegally, how are the workmen to proceed, against whom all the laws are made?</p>
<p>These attacks of the mayors and deputies and of the press screwed up the courage of the Hectors of the reaction. For two days this rabble of runaways, who during the siege had infested the caf�s of Brussels and the Haymarket of London, gesticulated on the fashionable boulevards, asking for order and work. On the 21st, at about ten o’clock, at the Place de la Bourse, about a hundred of these strange working men marched round the Stock Exchange, banners flying, and advancing along the boulevards to the cries of<em> ‘Vive l’Assembl�e!’ </em>came to the Place Vend�me, shouting before the general staff, ‘Down with the Committee!’ The commander of the Place, Bergeret, told them to send delegates. ‘No, no!’ cried they; ‘no delegates! You would assassinate them!’ The federals, losing patience, had the Place cleared. The riotous fops gave themselves a rendezvous for the next day before the new Opera-House.</p>
<p>At the same hour the Assembly made its demonstration. The draft of an address to the people and the army, a tissue of lies and insults to Paris, having just been read, and Milli�re having pointed out that it contained some unfortunate expressions, was hooted. The demand of the Left to at least conclude the address with the words ‘<em>Vive la R�publique!’ </em>was frantically refused by an immense majority. Louis Blanc and his group, entreating the Assembly to immediately examine their project of municipal law and oppose a vote to the elections that the Committee announced for the next day, M. Thiers answered, ‘Give us time to study the question. “Time!’ exclaimed M. Cl�menceau, ‘we have none to lose.’ Then M. Thiers gave those drones a lesson they richly deserved: ‘What would be the use of concessions?’ said he. ‘What authority have you at Paris? Who would listen to you at the H�tel-de-Ville? Do you think that the adoption of a bill would disarm the party of brigands, the party of assassins?’ Then he charged Jules Favre to expatiate on this theme for the special benefit of the provinces. For an hour and a half that bitter follower of Guadet, spinning round Paris his elaborate periods, limed her with his venom. No doubt he again saw himself on the 3 1st October, when the people held him in their power and pardoned him, a cruel remembrance for his rankling spirit. He commenced by reading the declaration of the press, ‘courageously written,’ said he, ‘under the knife of the assassins.’ He spoke of Paris as in the power of ‘a handful of scoundrels, putting above the right of the Assembly I know now what bloody and rapacious ideal.’ Then, humbly supplicating monarchists and Catholics: ‘What they want,’ cried he, ‘what they have realized, is an attempt at that baleful doctrine which in philosophy may be called individualism and materialism, and which in politics means the Republic placed above universal suffrage.’ At this idiotic quibbling the Assembly burst into roars of applause. ‘These new doctors,’ continued he, ‘have the pretension of separating Paris from France. But let the insurgents know this: if we left Paris, it was with the intention of returning in order to combat them resolutely. (Bravo! bravo!) Then stirring the panic of those rurals who every moment expected to see the federal battalions coming down upon them: ‘If some of you fall into the hands of these men, who have only usurped power for the sake of violence, assassination and theft, the fate of the unfortunate victims of their ferocity would be yours.’ And finally, garbling, improving with ferocious skill the maladroitness of an article in the <em>Journal Officiel</em> on the execution of the generals: ‘No more temporizing. For three days I combated the exigencies of the victor Who wanted to disarm the National Guard. I ask pardon for it of God and of man.’ Each new insult, each banderillo thrust into the flesh of Paris, drew from the Assembly mad hurrahs. Admiral Saisset stamped, emphasising certain phrases of the speaker with his hoarse interjections. Goaded by these wild cheers, Jules Favre doubled his invective. Since the Gironde, since Isnard’s curse, Paris had not undergone such an imprecation. Even Langlois, unable to stand it any longer, exclaimed, ‘0h, it is outrageous, atrocious to speak thus!’ And when Jules Favre concluded, implacable, impassible, only foaming a little at the mouth: ‘France will not be lowered to the bloody level of the wretches who oppress the capital,’ the whole Assembly rose raving. ‘Let us appeal to the provinces,’ shrieked the rurals. And Saisset: ‘Yes, let us appeal to the provinces and march on Paris.’ In vain one of the deputies of the Seine adjured the Assembly not to let them return to Paris empty-handed. This great bourgeoisie, which had just surrendered the honour, the fortune, and the territory of France to the Prussians, trembled with rage at the mere thought of conceding anything to Paris.</p>
<p>After this horrible scene, the Radical deputies found nothing better to do than to issue a lachrymose address inviting Paris to be patient. The Central Committee was obliged to adjourn the elections till the 23rd, for several <em>mairies </em>belonged to the enemy; but on the 22nd it warned the papers that provocation to revolt would be severely repressed.</p>
<p>The matadors of reaction, reanimated by Jules Favre’s speech, took this warning for an idle boast. On the 22nd at mid-day they assembled at the Place du Nouvel Opera. At one o’clock they numbered a thousand dandies, petty squires, journalists, notorious familiars of the Empire, who marched down the Rue de la Paix to the cry of ‘<em>Vive l’ordre!’ </em>Their plan was, under the cloak of a pacific demonstration, to force the Place Vend�me and to expel the Federals from it; then, masters of the <em>mairie </em>of the first arrondissement, of half of the second and of Passy, they would have cut Paris in two and menaced the H�tel-de-Ville. Admiral Saisset followed them.</p>
<p>Before the Rue Neuve St. Augustin these pacific demonstrationmen disarmed and ill-treated two detached sentries of the National Guard. Seeing this, the Federals of the Place Vend�me seized their muskets and hurried in marching order to the top of the Rue Neuve des Petits-Champs. They were but 200, the whole garrison of the place; the two cannon levelled at the Rue de la Paix had no cartridges. The reactionists soon encountered the first line with the cry, ‘Down with the Committee! Down with the assassins!’ waving a banner and their handkerchiefs, while some of them stretched out their hands to seize the muskets. Bergeret and Maljournal, members of the Committee, in the first ranks, summoned the rioters to retire. Furious cries of ‘Cowards! brigands!’ drowned their voices, and sword-canes were pointed at them. Bergeret made a sign to the drummers. A dozen times the <em>sommations</em> were made and repeated. For several minutes only the roll of the drums was heard, and between these savage cries. The ranks in the rear of the demonstration pushed on those in front and tried to break through the lines of the Federals. At last, despairing no doubt of succeeding by mere bravado, the insurgents fired their revolvers; <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n97">[97]</a></sup> two guards were killed and seven wounded;<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n98">[98]</a></sup> Maljournal was struck in the thigh.</p>
<p>The muskets of the guards went off, so to say, spontaneously. A volley and a terrible cry, followed by silence more dismal. In a few seconds the crowded Rue de la Paix was emptied. In the deserted road, strewn with revolvers, sword-canes, and hats, lay about a dozen corpses. If the Federals had only aimed at foes’ hearts, there would have been 200 killed, for in this compact mass no shot would have missed. The insurgents had killed one of their own, the Vicomte de Molinat, fallen in the front ranks, his face towards the square, a ball in the back of his head. On his body was found a dagger fixed by a small chain. An adroit ball struck in the rear the chief editor of the <em>Paris Journal</em>, the Bonapartist De P�ne, one of the basest revilers of the movement.</p>
<p>The runaways traversed Paris shouting, ‘Murder!’ The shops of the boulevards were closed and the Place de la Bourse filled with rabid groups. At four o’clock some of the reactionary companies appeared, resolute, in good order, their muskets on their shoulders, and took possession of the quarters of the Bourse.</p>
<p>At three o’clock the event became known at Versailles. The Assembly had just rejected Louis Blanc’s bill on the municipal council, and Picard was reading another one refusing all justice to Paris, when the news arrived. The Assembly precipitately raised the sitting; the Ministers looked dumb-founded.</p>
<p>All their swaggering of the evening before had only been meant to frighten Paris, to encourage the men of order, and provoke a <em>coup-de-main. </em>The incident had occurred, but the Central Committee triumphed. For the first time M. Thiers began to believe that this Committee, able to repress a riot, might after all be a Government.</p>
<p>The news in the evening was more reassuring. The fusillade seemed to have roused the <em>men of order. </em>They were flocking to the Place de la Bourse. A great many officers just returned from Germany came to offer their help. The reactionary companies were establishing them selves solidly in the <em>mairie </em>of the ninth arrondissement and reoccupying that of the sixth, dislodging the Federals of the St. Lazare station, guarding all the approaches of the occupied quarters, and forcibly arresting the passers-by. They formed a town within the town. The mayors were constituting a permanent committee in the <em>mairie </em>of the second arrondissement. Their resistance was now provided with an army.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter VI
The mayors and the Assembly combine against Paris
The thought of witnessing a massacre filled me with anguish.
(Jules Favre, Inquiry into the 4th of September.)
On the 21st the situation stood out in bold relief.
At Paris — the Central Committee, with it all the workmen and all the generous and enlightened men of the lower middle-class. The Committee said, ‘We have but one object — the elections. Everybody is welcome to co-operate with us, but we shall not leave the H�tel-de-Ville before they have been made.’
At Versailles — the Assembly: all the monarchists, all the great bourgeoisie, all the slaveholders. They yelled, ‘Paris is only a rebel, the Central Committee a band of brigands.’
Between Versailles and Paris — a few Radical deputies, all the mayors, many adjuncts. They comprised the Liberal bourgeois, that sacred herd that makes all revolutions and allows all the empires to be made. Despised by the Assembly, disdained by the people, they cried to the Central Committee, ‘Usurpers!’ and to the Assembly, ‘You will spoil all.’
The day of the 21st is memorable, for on it all these voices made themselves heard.
The Central Committee: ‘Paris has in nowise the intention of separating from France; far from it. For France she has borne with the Empire and the Government of the National Defence, with all their treachery and defections, certainly not to abandon her now, but only to say to her as an elder sister: Sustain thyself as I have sustained myself; oppose thyself to oppression as I have done.’
And the Journal Officiel, in the first of those articles where Moreau, Longuet, and Rogeard commented upon the new revolution, said:
‘The proletarians of the capital, amidst the failures and treasons of the ruling classes, have understood that the hour has struck for them to save the situation by taking into their own hands the direction of public affairs. Hardly possessed of the government, they have hastened to convoke the people of Paris to the ballot-boxes. There is no example in history of a provisional government so anxious to divest itself of its mandate. In the presence of conduct so disinterested, one may well ask how a press can be found unjust enough to pour out upon these citizens slander, contumely, and insult? The working men, those who produce everything and enjoy nothing, are they then for ever to be exposed to outrage? The bourgeoisie, which has accomplished its emancipation, does it not understand that now the time for the emancipation of the proletariat is come? Why, then, does it persist in refusing the proletariat its legitimate share?’
It was the first socialist note struck in the movement. Parisian revolutions never remain purely political. The approach of the foreigner, the abnegation of the workmen, had, on the 4th September, silenced all social demands. Peace once concluded, the workmen in power, their voice would naturally make itself heard. How just was this complaint of the Central Committee! What an act of accusation the French proletariat could draw up against its masters! And on the 18th March, 1871, could not the people, making greater their great words of 1848, say, ‘We had placed eighty years of patience at the service of our country’?
The same day the Central Committee suspended the sale of objects pledged in the pawnshops, prolonged the overdue bills for a month, and forbade landlords to dismiss their tenants till further notice. In three lines it did justice, beat Versailles, and gained Paris.
On the other hand, the representatives and mayors told the people, ‘No election; everything is for the best. We wanted the maintenance of the National Guard; we shall have it. We wanted Paris to recover her municipal liberty; we shall have it. Your requests have been brought before the Assembly. The Assembly has satisfied them by a unanimous vote, which guarantees the municipal elections. Awaiting these, the only legal elections, we declare that we shall abstain from the elections announced for to-morrow, and we protest against their illegality.’
Thrice-lying address! The Assembly had not said a word of the National Guard; it had promised no municipal liberty, and several of the signatures were suppositious.
The bourgeois press followed suit. Since the 19th the Figarist papers, supported by the police, the altar, and the alcove, the Liberal gazettes, by which Trochu had prepared the capitulation of Paris, had not ceased to fall foul of the federal battalions. They spoke of the public coffers and private property being pillaged, of Prussian gold streaming into the faubourgs, of documentary evidence hurtful to the members of the Central Committee destroyed by them. The Republican journals also discovered gold in the movement, but Bonapartist gold; and the best of them, na�vely convinced that the Republic belonged to their patrons, inveigled against the accession of the proletariat, saying, ‘These people dishonour us.’ Emboldened by the mayors and deputies, they all agreed to revolt; and on the 21st, in a collective declaration, asked the electors to consider as null and void the illegal convocation of the H�tel-de-Ville.
Illegality! Thus the question was put by the Legitimists, twice imposed on us by foreign bayonets; by the Orl�anists, raised to power through barricades; by the brigands of December; even by the exiles returned home, thanks to an insurrection. What! When the bourgeois, who make all laws, always act illegally, how are the workmen to proceed, against whom all the laws are made?
These attacks of the mayors and deputies and of the press screwed up the courage of the Hectors of the reaction. For two days this rabble of runaways, who during the siege had infested the caf�s of Brussels and the Haymarket of London, gesticulated on the fashionable boulevards, asking for order and work. On the 21st, at about ten o’clock, at the Place de la Bourse, about a hundred of these strange working men marched round the Stock Exchange, banners flying, and advancing along the boulevards to the cries of ‘Vive l’Assembl�e!’ came to the Place Vend�me, shouting before the general staff, ‘Down with the Committee!’ The commander of the Place, Bergeret, told them to send delegates. ‘No, no!’ cried they; ‘no delegates! You would assassinate them!’ The federals, losing patience, had the Place cleared. The riotous fops gave themselves a rendezvous for the next day before the new Opera-House.
At the same hour the Assembly made its demonstration. The draft of an address to the people and the army, a tissue of lies and insults to Paris, having just been read, and Milli�re having pointed out that it contained some unfortunate expressions, was hooted. The demand of the Left to at least conclude the address with the words ‘Vive la R�publique!’ was frantically refused by an immense majority. Louis Blanc and his group, entreating the Assembly to immediately examine their project of municipal law and oppose a vote to the elections that the Committee announced for the next day, M. Thiers answered, ‘Give us time to study the question. “Time!’ exclaimed M. Cl�menceau, ‘we have none to lose.’ Then M. Thiers gave those drones a lesson they richly deserved: ‘What would be the use of concessions?’ said he. ‘What authority have you at Paris? Who would listen to you at the H�tel-de-Ville? Do you think that the adoption of a bill would disarm the party of brigands, the party of assassins?’ Then he charged Jules Favre to expatiate on this theme for the special benefit of the provinces. For an hour and a half that bitter follower of Guadet, spinning round Paris his elaborate periods, limed her with his venom. No doubt he again saw himself on the 3 1st October, when the people held him in their power and pardoned him, a cruel remembrance for his rankling spirit. He commenced by reading the declaration of the press, ‘courageously written,’ said he, ‘under the knife of the assassins.’ He spoke of Paris as in the power of ‘a handful of scoundrels, putting above the right of the Assembly I know now what bloody and rapacious ideal.’ Then, humbly supplicating monarchists and Catholics: ‘What they want,’ cried he, ‘what they have realized, is an attempt at that baleful doctrine which in philosophy may be called individualism and materialism, and which in politics means the Republic placed above universal suffrage.’ At this idiotic quibbling the Assembly burst into roars of applause. ‘These new doctors,’ continued he, ‘have the pretension of separating Paris from France. But let the insurgents know this: if we left Paris, it was with the intention of returning in order to combat them resolutely. (Bravo! bravo!) Then stirring the panic of those rurals who every moment expected to see the federal battalions coming down upon them: ‘If some of you fall into the hands of these men, who have only usurped power for the sake of violence, assassination and theft, the fate of the unfortunate victims of their ferocity would be yours.’ And finally, garbling, improving with ferocious skill the maladroitness of an article in the Journal Officiel on the execution of the generals: ‘No more temporizing. For three days I combated the exigencies of the victor Who wanted to disarm the National Guard. I ask pardon for it of God and of man.’ Each new insult, each banderillo thrust into the flesh of Paris, drew from the Assembly mad hurrahs. Admiral Saisset stamped, emphasising certain phrases of the speaker with his hoarse interjections. Goaded by these wild cheers, Jules Favre doubled his invective. Since the Gironde, since Isnard’s curse, Paris had not undergone such an imprecation. Even Langlois, unable to stand it any longer, exclaimed, ‘0h, it is outrageous, atrocious to speak thus!’ And when Jules Favre concluded, implacable, impassible, only foaming a little at the mouth: ‘France will not be lowered to the bloody level of the wretches who oppress the capital,’ the whole Assembly rose raving. ‘Let us appeal to the provinces,’ shrieked the rurals. And Saisset: ‘Yes, let us appeal to the provinces and march on Paris.’ In vain one of the deputies of the Seine adjured the Assembly not to let them return to Paris empty-handed. This great bourgeoisie, which had just surrendered the honour, the fortune, and the territory of France to the Prussians, trembled with rage at the mere thought of conceding anything to Paris.
After this horrible scene, the Radical deputies found nothing better to do than to issue a lachrymose address inviting Paris to be patient. The Central Committee was obliged to adjourn the elections till the 23rd, for several mairies belonged to the enemy; but on the 22nd it warned the papers that provocation to revolt would be severely repressed.
The matadors of reaction, reanimated by Jules Favre’s speech, took this warning for an idle boast. On the 22nd at mid-day they assembled at the Place du Nouvel Opera. At one o’clock they numbered a thousand dandies, petty squires, journalists, notorious familiars of the Empire, who marched down the Rue de la Paix to the cry of ‘Vive l’ordre!’ Their plan was, under the cloak of a pacific demonstration, to force the Place Vend�me and to expel the Federals from it; then, masters of the mairie of the first arrondissement, of half of the second and of Passy, they would have cut Paris in two and menaced the H�tel-de-Ville. Admiral Saisset followed them.
Before the Rue Neuve St. Augustin these pacific demonstrationmen disarmed and ill-treated two detached sentries of the National Guard. Seeing this, the Federals of the Place Vend�me seized their muskets and hurried in marching order to the top of the Rue Neuve des Petits-Champs. They were but 200, the whole garrison of the place; the two cannon levelled at the Rue de la Paix had no cartridges. The reactionists soon encountered the first line with the cry, ‘Down with the Committee! Down with the assassins!’ waving a banner and their handkerchiefs, while some of them stretched out their hands to seize the muskets. Bergeret and Maljournal, members of the Committee, in the first ranks, summoned the rioters to retire. Furious cries of ‘Cowards! brigands!’ drowned their voices, and sword-canes were pointed at them. Bergeret made a sign to the drummers. A dozen times the sommations were made and repeated. For several minutes only the roll of the drums was heard, and between these savage cries. The ranks in the rear of the demonstration pushed on those in front and tried to break through the lines of the Federals. At last, despairing no doubt of succeeding by mere bravado, the insurgents fired their revolvers; [97] two guards were killed and seven wounded;[98] Maljournal was struck in the thigh.
The muskets of the guards went off, so to say, spontaneously. A volley and a terrible cry, followed by silence more dismal. In a few seconds the crowded Rue de la Paix was emptied. In the deserted road, strewn with revolvers, sword-canes, and hats, lay about a dozen corpses. If the Federals had only aimed at foes’ hearts, there would have been 200 killed, for in this compact mass no shot would have missed. The insurgents had killed one of their own, the Vicomte de Molinat, fallen in the front ranks, his face towards the square, a ball in the back of his head. On his body was found a dagger fixed by a small chain. An adroit ball struck in the rear the chief editor of the Paris Journal, the Bonapartist De P�ne, one of the basest revilers of the movement.
The runaways traversed Paris shouting, ‘Murder!’ The shops of the boulevards were closed and the Place de la Bourse filled with rabid groups. At four o’clock some of the reactionary companies appeared, resolute, in good order, their muskets on their shoulders, and took possession of the quarters of the Bourse.
At three o’clock the event became known at Versailles. The Assembly had just rejected Louis Blanc’s bill on the municipal council, and Picard was reading another one refusing all justice to Paris, when the news arrived. The Assembly precipitately raised the sitting; the Ministers looked dumb-founded.
All their swaggering of the evening before had only been meant to frighten Paris, to encourage the men of order, and provoke a coup-de-main. The incident had occurred, but the Central Committee triumphed. For the first time M. Thiers began to believe that this Committee, able to repress a riot, might after all be a Government.
The news in the evening was more reassuring. The fusillade seemed to have roused the men of order. They were flocking to the Place de la Bourse. A great many officers just returned from Germany came to offer their help. The reactionary companies were establishing them selves solidly in the mairie of the ninth arrondissement and reoccupying that of the sixth, dislodging the Federals of the St. Lazare station, guarding all the approaches of the occupied quarters, and forcibly arresting the passers-by. They formed a town within the town. The mayors were constituting a permanent committee in the mairie of the second arrondissement. Their resistance was now provided with an army.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chaper VII<br>
The Central Committee forces the mayors to capitulate</h1>
<p>The Central Committee was equal to the occasion. Its proclamations, its Socialist articles in the <em>Officiel</em>, the truculence of the mayors and deputies, had at last rallied round it all the revolutionary groups. It had also added to its members some men better known to the masses.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n99">[99]</a></sup> By its order the Place Vend�me was provided with barricades; the battalions of the H�tel-de-Ville were reinforced; strong patrols remounted the boulevards before the reactionary posts of the Rues Vivienne and Drouot. Thanks to it, the night passed tranquilly.</p>
<p>As the elections on the next day had become impossible, the Committee declared they could only take place on the 26th, and said to Paris: ‘The reaction, excited by your mayors and your deputies, has declared war on us. We must accept the struggle and break this resistance.’ It announced that it would summon before it all the journalists libelling the people. It sent a battalion of Belleville to reoccupy the <em>mairie</em> of the sixth, and replaced by its delegates the mayors and adjuncts of the third, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and eighteenth arrondissements, in spite of their protestations. M. Cl�menceau wrote that he yielded to force, but would not himself resort to force. This was all the more magnanimous that his whole force consisted of himself and his adjunct. The Federals installed themselves at the Battignolles on the railway lines, and stopped the trains, thus preventing the occupation of the St. Lazare station. Lastly. the Committee proceeded energetically against the Bourse.</p>
<p><img src="pics/jourde.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Jourde" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p>The reaction counted upon famine to make the Committee capitulate. The million of the Monday was gone; a second one had been promised. On the Thursday morning, Varlin and Jourde, going to fetch an instalment, received only threats. They wrote to the governor: ‘To starve out the people, such is the aim of a party that styles itself honest. Famine disarms no one; it will only encourage devastation. We take up the gauntlet that has been flung down to us.’ And, without deigning to take any notice of the swash-bucklers of the Bourse, the Committee sent two battalions to the bank, which had to give in.</p>
<p>At the same time the Committee neglected nothing in order to reassure Paris. Numerous ticket-of-leave men had been let loose upon the town. The Committee denounced them to the vigilance of the National Guard, and posted upon the doors of the H�tel-de-Ville, ‘Every individual taken in the act of stealing will be shot.’ Picard’s police had failed to put an end to the gamblers who every night since the siege had encumbered the streets; a single order of the Committee sufficed. The great scarecrow of the reactionaries was the Prussians, and Jules Favre had announced their early intervention. The Committee published the despatches that had passed between it and the commander of Compiegne, to this effect: ‘The German troops will remain passive so long as Paris does not take a hostile attitude.’ The Committee had answered with great dignity: ‘The Revolution accomplished at Paris is of an essentially municipal character. We are not qualified to discuss the preliminaries of peace voted by the Assembly.’ Paris was therefore without anxiety on that head.</p>
<p>The only disturbance proceeded from the mayors. Authorized by M. Thiers, they appointed as chief of the National Guards Saisset, the madman of the sitting of the 21st, giving him Langlois and Schoelcher as coadjutors, and made every effort to attract National Guards to the Place de la Bourse, where they distributed the pay due to the guards of the invaded <em>mairies</em>. Many came only to get the pay, not to fight. Even the chiefs began to be divided amongst themselves. The most rabid certainly spoke of sweeping away everything before them. Those were Vautrain, Dubail, Denormandie, Degouve-Denuncques, and Heligon, an ex-working man, an idle fellow, admitted into the bourgeois servants’ hall, and bumptious like other lackeys. But many others flagged and thought of conciliation, especially since some of the deputies and adjuncts — Milli�re, Malon, Dereure, and Jaclard had withdrawn from the union of the mayors, thus still further setting forth its frankly reactionary character. Finally, some soft-headed mayors, still believing that the Assembly needed only enlightenment, extemporized a melodramatic scene.</p>
<p>They arrived at Versailles on the 23rd, at the moment when the rurals, again plucking up their courage, made an appeal to the provinces to march on Paris. In most solemn attitude these mayors put in their appearance before the tribune of the president, girdled with their official scarfs. The Left applauded, crying ‘<em>Vive la R�publique!’ </em>The Larnourettes returned the compliment. But the Right and the Centre cried ‘<em>Vive la France! </em>Order! Order!’ and with clenched hands they challenged the deputies of the Left, who naively answered, ‘You insult Paris!’ to which the others replied, ‘You insult France!’ and they left the House. In the evening a deputy, who was also a mayor, Arnaud De l'Ariege, read from the tribune the declaration that they had brought, and wound up by saying, ‘We are on the eve of an awful civil war. There is but one way to prevent it — that the election of the commander-in-chief of the National Guard be fixed for the 28th, and that of the municipal council for the 3rd of April.’ These propositions were referred to the Committee.</p>
<p>The mayors returned home indignant. A despatch of the evening before had already disquieted Paris. M. Thiers announced to the provinces that the Bonapartist Ministers, Rouher, Chevreau, and Boitelle, arrested by the people of Boulogne, had been protected, and that Marshal Canrobert, one of the accomplices of Bazaine, had offered his services to the Government. The insult inflicted upon the mayors irritated the whole middle-class, and called forth a sudden change in their Republican journals. The attacks against the Central Committee relaxed. Even the Moderates began to expect the worst from Versailles.</p>
<p>The Central Committee took advantage of this change of opinion. Having just been informed of the proclamation of the Commune at Lyons, it spoke out all the more clearly in its manifesto of the 24th. ‘Some battalions, misled by their reactionary chiefs, have thought it their duty to block our movements. Some mayors and deputies, forgetting their mandates, have encouraged this resistance. We rely upon your courage for the accomplishment of our mission. It is objected that the Assembly promises us at some indefinite period the election of the municipal council and that of our chiefs, and that consequently our resistance ought not to be prolonged. We have been deceived too often to be entrapped again; the left hand would take back what the right hand gives. See what the Government has already done. In the Chamber, through the voice of Jules Favre, it has challenged us to a terrible civil war, called on the provinces to destroy Paris, and covered us with the most odious calumnies.’</p>
<p>Having spoken, the Committee now acted, and named three generals — Brunei, Duval, and Eudes. It had to confine the drunkard Lullier, who, assisted by a staff of traitors, had the evening before allowed a whole regiment of the army encamped at the Luxembourg to leave Paris with arms and baggage. Now, too, it was known that Mont-Valerien was lost by his fault.</p>
<p>The generals made a profession not to be misunderstood: ‘This is no longer a time for parliamentarism. We must act. Paris wishes to be free. The great city will not permit public order to be disturbed with impunity.’</p>
<p>A direct caution this, addressed to the camp of the Bourse, which, moreover, was visibly growing less. The desertions from it multiplied at every sitting of the rurals. Women came to fetch their husbands. The Bonapartist officers, overshooting the mark, irritated moderate Republicans. The programme of the mayors — submission to Versailles — discouraged the middle class. The general staff of this helter-skelter army had been foolishly established at the Grand H�tel. There sat the crazy trio — Saisset, Langlois, and Schoelcher — who, from extreme confidence, had fallen into a state of utter dejection. The most crack-brained of them, Saisset, took upon himself to announce by placards that the Assembly had granted the complete recognition of the municipal franchise, the election of all the officers of the National Guard, including the general-in-chief, modifications of the law on the overdue commercial bills, and a bill on rents favourable to the tenants. This gigantic hoax only mystified Versailles.</p>
<p>The Committee, pushing forward,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n100"> [100]</a></sup> ordered Brunei to seize the <em>mairies </em>of the first and second arrondissements. Brunei, with 600 men of Belleville, two pieces of artillery, and accompanied by two delegates of the Committee, Lisbonne and Protot, presented himself at three o'clock at the <em>mairie of </em>the Louvre. The bourgeois companies assumed an air of resistance. Brunei had his cannon advanced, when the passage was at once opened to him. He declared to the adjuncts, Meline and Adam, that the Committee would proceed with the elections as soon as possible. The adjuncts, intimidated, sent to the <em>mairie of </em>the second arrondissement to ask for the authorization to treat. Dubail answered that they might promise the elections for the 3rd April. Brunei insisted on appointing the 30th March. The adjuncts acquiesced. The National Guards of the two camps saluted this agreement with enthusiastic acclamations, and mingling their ranks, marched to the <em>mairie of </em>the second arrondissement. In the Rue Montmartre a few companies of the Bourse army,. trying to stop the way, were told, ‘Peace is made,’ and they let them pass. At the <em>mairie </em>of the second arrondissement, Schoelcher, who presided at the meeting of the mayors, Dubail, and Vautrain resisted, refusing to ratify the convention, insisting on the date of the 3rd April. But the great majority of their colleagues accepted that of the 30th, and the election of the commander-in-chief of the National Guard for the 3rd April. Immense cheers hailed the good news, and the popular battalions, saluted by the bourgeois battalions, marched through the Rue Vivienne and the boulevards, dragging along their cannon, mounted by lads with green branches in their hands.</p>
<p>The Central Committee could not accept this transaction. Twice it had postponed the elections. A new adjournment would have given certain mayors five days for plotting and playing into the hands of Versailles. Besides, the Federal battalions, on foot since the 18th, were really tired out. Ranvier and Arnold the same evening went to the <em>mairie</em> of the second arrondissement to say that the H�tel-de-Ville adhered to the date of the 26th for the elections. The mayors and adjuncts, many of whom had only the one purpose, as they have avowed since,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n101">[101]</a></sup> of gaining time, inveighed against a breach of faith. The delegates protested, for Brunel. had had no mandate but that of occupying the <em>mairies</em>. For several hours everything was tried to talk over the delegates, but they held their ground, and went away at two o'clock in the morning without any conclusion being arrived at. After their departure the more intractable discussed the chance of resistance. The irrepressible Dubail wrote a call to arms, sent it to the printing-office, and spent the whole night with his faithful Heligon in transmitting orders to the chiefs of battalions and providing the <em>mairie </em>with machine-guns.</p>
<p>While they were thus bent upon resistance the rurals thought themselves betrayed. Every day they became more nervous, being deprived of their creature-comforts, obliged to camp in the lobbies of the castle of Versailles, exposed to all winds and to all panics. They felt weary of the incessant interference of the mayors, and were thunderstruck by the proclamation of Saisset. They fancied that M. Thiers was coquetting with the mob, that the <em>petit bourgeois</em>, as he hypocritically called himself, wanted to cozen the monarchists, and, using Paris as his lever, overthrow them. They spoke of removing him, and appointing as commander-in-chief one of the D'Orleans, Joinville or D'Aumale. Their plot might have come to a head at the evening</p>
<p>sitting, when the proposition of the mayors was to be read. M. Thiers was beforehand with them, implored the Assembly to adjourn the discussion, adding that an ill-considered word might cost torrents of blood. Grevy shuffled through the sitting in ten minutes. But the rumour of a plot got abroad.</p>
<p>Saturday was the last day of the crisis. Either the Central Committee or. the mayors had to disappear. The Committee on that very morning placarded: ‘The transport of machine-guns to the <em>mairie </em>of the second arrondissement compels us to maintain our resolution. The election will take place on the 26th March’. Paris, which had believed peace concluded, and for the first time in five days had passed a quiet night, was very angry at seeing the mayors recommence the wrangle. The idea of the election had made its way in all ranks, and many papers declared for it, even among those that had signed the protestation of the 21st. No one could understand this quarrel about a date. One irresistible current of fraternization swayed the whole town. The ranks of the two or three hundred soldiers of order who had remained faithful to Dubail dwindled away from hour to hour, leaving Admiral Saisset alone to make his proclamation in the desert of the Grand H�tel. The mayors had no longer an army when, at ten o'clock, Ranvier came to ask for their final decision. Their dispute grew hot when some deputies of Paris on their return from Versailles announced the news that the Duc d'Aumale was proclaimed lieutenant-general. Several mayors and adjuncts then at last understood that the Republic was at stake, and, convinced of their impotence, capitulated. The draft of a poster was drawn up to be signed by the mayors, deputies, and for the Central Committee by the two delegates Ranvier and Arnold. The Committee wanted to sign <em>en masse, </em>and slightly modified the text, saying, ‘The Central Committee, round which the deputies of Paris, the mayors, and adjuncts have rallied, convokes. . .’thereupon some of the mayors, on the look-out for a pretext, rose, crying, ‘This is not our convention; we said the deputies, the mayors, the adjuncts, and the members of the Committee ... ;’ and, at the risk of rekindling the embers, posted up the protest. Yet the Committee might well say, ‘Which have rallied?’ since it had yielded no point. However, Paris overruled the mischief-mongers. Admiral Saisset had to disband the four men who remained to him. Tirard in a poster advised the electors to vote; for M. Thiers that same morning had given him the hint, ‘Do not continue a useless resistance. I am reorganizing the army. I hope that in a fortnight or three weeks we shall have a sufficient force to relieve Paris.’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n102">[102]</a></sup> </p>
<p>Five deputies only signed the address for the election, MM. Lockroy, Floquet, Cl�menceau, Tolain, and Greppo; the rest of Louis Blanc’s group had kept aloof from Paris for several days. These weaklings, having all their life sung the glories of the Revolution, when it rose up before them ran away appalled, like the Arab fisherman at the apparition of the genie.</p>
<p>With these mandarins of the tribune of history and of journalism, mute and lifeless, contrast strangely the sons of the multitude, obscure, but rich in will, faith, and eloquence. Their farewell address was worthy of their advent: ‘Do not forget that the men who will serve you best are those whom you will choose from amongst yourselves, living your life, suffering the same ills. Beware of the ambitious as much as the upstarts. Beware also of mere talkers. Shun those whom fortune has favoured, for only too rarely is he who possesses fortune prone to look upon the working man as a brother. Give your preference to those who do not solicit your suffrages. True merit is modest, and it is for the workingmen to know those who are worthy, not for these to present themselves.’</p>
<p>They could indeed ‘come down the steps of the H�tel-de-Ville head erect,’ these obscure men who had safely anchored the revolution of the 18th March. Named only to organize the National Guard, thrown up at the head of a revolution without precedent and without guides, they had been able to resist the impatient, quell the riot, re-establish the public services, victual Paris, baffle intrigues, take advantage of all the blunders of Versailles and of the mayors, and, harassed on all sides, every moment in danger of civil war, known how to negotiate, to act at the right time and in the right place. They had embodied the tendency of the movement, limited their programme to communal revindications, and conducted the entire population to the ballot-box. They had inaugurated a precise, vigorous, and fraternal language unknown to all bourgeois powers.</p>
<p>And yet they were obscure men, all with an incomplete education, some of them fanatics. But the people thought with them. Paris was the brazier, the H�tel-de-Ville the flame. In the H�tel-de-Ville, where illustrious bourgeois have only accumulated folly upon defeat, these new-comers found victory because they listened to Paris.</p>
<p>May their services absolve them from two grave faults — allowing the escape of the army and of the functionaries, and the retaking of the Mont-Val�rien by Versailles. It has been said that on the 19th or 20th they ought to have marched on Versailles. But on the first alarm these would have fled to Fontainebleau, with the Administration and the Left, everything that was wanted to govern and deceive the provinces. The occupation of Versailles would only have displaced the enemy, and it would not have been for long, as the popular battalions were too badly provided, too badly commanded, to hold at the same time this open town and Paris.</p>
<p>At all events, the Central Committee left its successor all the means necessary to disarm the enemy.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chaper VII
The Central Committee forces the mayors to capitulate
The Central Committee was equal to the occasion. Its proclamations, its Socialist articles in the Officiel, the truculence of the mayors and deputies, had at last rallied round it all the revolutionary groups. It had also added to its members some men better known to the masses.[99] By its order the Place Vend�me was provided with barricades; the battalions of the H�tel-de-Ville were reinforced; strong patrols remounted the boulevards before the reactionary posts of the Rues Vivienne and Drouot. Thanks to it, the night passed tranquilly.
As the elections on the next day had become impossible, the Committee declared they could only take place on the 26th, and said to Paris: ‘The reaction, excited by your mayors and your deputies, has declared war on us. We must accept the struggle and break this resistance.’ It announced that it would summon before it all the journalists libelling the people. It sent a battalion of Belleville to reoccupy the mairie of the sixth, and replaced by its delegates the mayors and adjuncts of the third, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and eighteenth arrondissements, in spite of their protestations. M. Cl�menceau wrote that he yielded to force, but would not himself resort to force. This was all the more magnanimous that his whole force consisted of himself and his adjunct. The Federals installed themselves at the Battignolles on the railway lines, and stopped the trains, thus preventing the occupation of the St. Lazare station. Lastly. the Committee proceeded energetically against the Bourse.
The reaction counted upon famine to make the Committee capitulate. The million of the Monday was gone; a second one had been promised. On the Thursday morning, Varlin and Jourde, going to fetch an instalment, received only threats. They wrote to the governor: ‘To starve out the people, such is the aim of a party that styles itself honest. Famine disarms no one; it will only encourage devastation. We take up the gauntlet that has been flung down to us.’ And, without deigning to take any notice of the swash-bucklers of the Bourse, the Committee sent two battalions to the bank, which had to give in.
At the same time the Committee neglected nothing in order to reassure Paris. Numerous ticket-of-leave men had been let loose upon the town. The Committee denounced them to the vigilance of the National Guard, and posted upon the doors of the H�tel-de-Ville, ‘Every individual taken in the act of stealing will be shot.’ Picard’s police had failed to put an end to the gamblers who every night since the siege had encumbered the streets; a single order of the Committee sufficed. The great scarecrow of the reactionaries was the Prussians, and Jules Favre had announced their early intervention. The Committee published the despatches that had passed between it and the commander of Compiegne, to this effect: ‘The German troops will remain passive so long as Paris does not take a hostile attitude.’ The Committee had answered with great dignity: ‘The Revolution accomplished at Paris is of an essentially municipal character. We are not qualified to discuss the preliminaries of peace voted by the Assembly.’ Paris was therefore without anxiety on that head.
The only disturbance proceeded from the mayors. Authorized by M. Thiers, they appointed as chief of the National Guards Saisset, the madman of the sitting of the 21st, giving him Langlois and Schoelcher as coadjutors, and made every effort to attract National Guards to the Place de la Bourse, where they distributed the pay due to the guards of the invaded mairies. Many came only to get the pay, not to fight. Even the chiefs began to be divided amongst themselves. The most rabid certainly spoke of sweeping away everything before them. Those were Vautrain, Dubail, Denormandie, Degouve-Denuncques, and Heligon, an ex-working man, an idle fellow, admitted into the bourgeois servants’ hall, and bumptious like other lackeys. But many others flagged and thought of conciliation, especially since some of the deputies and adjuncts — Milli�re, Malon, Dereure, and Jaclard had withdrawn from the union of the mayors, thus still further setting forth its frankly reactionary character. Finally, some soft-headed mayors, still believing that the Assembly needed only enlightenment, extemporized a melodramatic scene.
They arrived at Versailles on the 23rd, at the moment when the rurals, again plucking up their courage, made an appeal to the provinces to march on Paris. In most solemn attitude these mayors put in their appearance before the tribune of the president, girdled with their official scarfs. The Left applauded, crying ‘Vive la R�publique!’ The Larnourettes returned the compliment. But the Right and the Centre cried ‘Vive la France! Order! Order!’ and with clenched hands they challenged the deputies of the Left, who naively answered, ‘You insult Paris!’ to which the others replied, ‘You insult France!’ and they left the House. In the evening a deputy, who was also a mayor, Arnaud De l'Ariege, read from the tribune the declaration that they had brought, and wound up by saying, ‘We are on the eve of an awful civil war. There is but one way to prevent it — that the election of the commander-in-chief of the National Guard be fixed for the 28th, and that of the municipal council for the 3rd of April.’ These propositions were referred to the Committee.
The mayors returned home indignant. A despatch of the evening before had already disquieted Paris. M. Thiers announced to the provinces that the Bonapartist Ministers, Rouher, Chevreau, and Boitelle, arrested by the people of Boulogne, had been protected, and that Marshal Canrobert, one of the accomplices of Bazaine, had offered his services to the Government. The insult inflicted upon the mayors irritated the whole middle-class, and called forth a sudden change in their Republican journals. The attacks against the Central Committee relaxed. Even the Moderates began to expect the worst from Versailles.
The Central Committee took advantage of this change of opinion. Having just been informed of the proclamation of the Commune at Lyons, it spoke out all the more clearly in its manifesto of the 24th. ‘Some battalions, misled by their reactionary chiefs, have thought it their duty to block our movements. Some mayors and deputies, forgetting their mandates, have encouraged this resistance. We rely upon your courage for the accomplishment of our mission. It is objected that the Assembly promises us at some indefinite period the election of the municipal council and that of our chiefs, and that consequently our resistance ought not to be prolonged. We have been deceived too often to be entrapped again; the left hand would take back what the right hand gives. See what the Government has already done. In the Chamber, through the voice of Jules Favre, it has challenged us to a terrible civil war, called on the provinces to destroy Paris, and covered us with the most odious calumnies.’
Having spoken, the Committee now acted, and named three generals — Brunei, Duval, and Eudes. It had to confine the drunkard Lullier, who, assisted by a staff of traitors, had the evening before allowed a whole regiment of the army encamped at the Luxembourg to leave Paris with arms and baggage. Now, too, it was known that Mont-Valerien was lost by his fault.
The generals made a profession not to be misunderstood: ‘This is no longer a time for parliamentarism. We must act. Paris wishes to be free. The great city will not permit public order to be disturbed with impunity.’
A direct caution this, addressed to the camp of the Bourse, which, moreover, was visibly growing less. The desertions from it multiplied at every sitting of the rurals. Women came to fetch their husbands. The Bonapartist officers, overshooting the mark, irritated moderate Republicans. The programme of the mayors — submission to Versailles — discouraged the middle class. The general staff of this helter-skelter army had been foolishly established at the Grand H�tel. There sat the crazy trio — Saisset, Langlois, and Schoelcher — who, from extreme confidence, had fallen into a state of utter dejection. The most crack-brained of them, Saisset, took upon himself to announce by placards that the Assembly had granted the complete recognition of the municipal franchise, the election of all the officers of the National Guard, including the general-in-chief, modifications of the law on the overdue commercial bills, and a bill on rents favourable to the tenants. This gigantic hoax only mystified Versailles.
The Committee, pushing forward, [100] ordered Brunei to seize the mairies of the first and second arrondissements. Brunei, with 600 men of Belleville, two pieces of artillery, and accompanied by two delegates of the Committee, Lisbonne and Protot, presented himself at three o'clock at the mairie of the Louvre. The bourgeois companies assumed an air of resistance. Brunei had his cannon advanced, when the passage was at once opened to him. He declared to the adjuncts, Meline and Adam, that the Committee would proceed with the elections as soon as possible. The adjuncts, intimidated, sent to the mairie of the second arrondissement to ask for the authorization to treat. Dubail answered that they might promise the elections for the 3rd April. Brunei insisted on appointing the 30th March. The adjuncts acquiesced. The National Guards of the two camps saluted this agreement with enthusiastic acclamations, and mingling their ranks, marched to the mairie of the second arrondissement. In the Rue Montmartre a few companies of the Bourse army,. trying to stop the way, were told, ‘Peace is made,’ and they let them pass. At the mairie of the second arrondissement, Schoelcher, who presided at the meeting of the mayors, Dubail, and Vautrain resisted, refusing to ratify the convention, insisting on the date of the 3rd April. But the great majority of their colleagues accepted that of the 30th, and the election of the commander-in-chief of the National Guard for the 3rd April. Immense cheers hailed the good news, and the popular battalions, saluted by the bourgeois battalions, marched through the Rue Vivienne and the boulevards, dragging along their cannon, mounted by lads with green branches in their hands.
The Central Committee could not accept this transaction. Twice it had postponed the elections. A new adjournment would have given certain mayors five days for plotting and playing into the hands of Versailles. Besides, the Federal battalions, on foot since the 18th, were really tired out. Ranvier and Arnold the same evening went to the mairie of the second arrondissement to say that the H�tel-de-Ville adhered to the date of the 26th for the elections. The mayors and adjuncts, many of whom had only the one purpose, as they have avowed since,[101] of gaining time, inveighed against a breach of faith. The delegates protested, for Brunel. had had no mandate but that of occupying the mairies. For several hours everything was tried to talk over the delegates, but they held their ground, and went away at two o'clock in the morning without any conclusion being arrived at. After their departure the more intractable discussed the chance of resistance. The irrepressible Dubail wrote a call to arms, sent it to the printing-office, and spent the whole night with his faithful Heligon in transmitting orders to the chiefs of battalions and providing the mairie with machine-guns.
While they were thus bent upon resistance the rurals thought themselves betrayed. Every day they became more nervous, being deprived of their creature-comforts, obliged to camp in the lobbies of the castle of Versailles, exposed to all winds and to all panics. They felt weary of the incessant interference of the mayors, and were thunderstruck by the proclamation of Saisset. They fancied that M. Thiers was coquetting with the mob, that the petit bourgeois, as he hypocritically called himself, wanted to cozen the monarchists, and, using Paris as his lever, overthrow them. They spoke of removing him, and appointing as commander-in-chief one of the D'Orleans, Joinville or D'Aumale. Their plot might have come to a head at the evening
sitting, when the proposition of the mayors was to be read. M. Thiers was beforehand with them, implored the Assembly to adjourn the discussion, adding that an ill-considered word might cost torrents of blood. Grevy shuffled through the sitting in ten minutes. But the rumour of a plot got abroad.
Saturday was the last day of the crisis. Either the Central Committee or. the mayors had to disappear. The Committee on that very morning placarded: ‘The transport of machine-guns to the mairie of the second arrondissement compels us to maintain our resolution. The election will take place on the 26th March’. Paris, which had believed peace concluded, and for the first time in five days had passed a quiet night, was very angry at seeing the mayors recommence the wrangle. The idea of the election had made its way in all ranks, and many papers declared for it, even among those that had signed the protestation of the 21st. No one could understand this quarrel about a date. One irresistible current of fraternization swayed the whole town. The ranks of the two or three hundred soldiers of order who had remained faithful to Dubail dwindled away from hour to hour, leaving Admiral Saisset alone to make his proclamation in the desert of the Grand H�tel. The mayors had no longer an army when, at ten o'clock, Ranvier came to ask for their final decision. Their dispute grew hot when some deputies of Paris on their return from Versailles announced the news that the Duc d'Aumale was proclaimed lieutenant-general. Several mayors and adjuncts then at last understood that the Republic was at stake, and, convinced of their impotence, capitulated. The draft of a poster was drawn up to be signed by the mayors, deputies, and for the Central Committee by the two delegates Ranvier and Arnold. The Committee wanted to sign en masse, and slightly modified the text, saying, ‘The Central Committee, round which the deputies of Paris, the mayors, and adjuncts have rallied, convokes. . .’thereupon some of the mayors, on the look-out for a pretext, rose, crying, ‘This is not our convention; we said the deputies, the mayors, the adjuncts, and the members of the Committee ... ;’ and, at the risk of rekindling the embers, posted up the protest. Yet the Committee might well say, ‘Which have rallied?’ since it had yielded no point. However, Paris overruled the mischief-mongers. Admiral Saisset had to disband the four men who remained to him. Tirard in a poster advised the electors to vote; for M. Thiers that same morning had given him the hint, ‘Do not continue a useless resistance. I am reorganizing the army. I hope that in a fortnight or three weeks we shall have a sufficient force to relieve Paris.’[102]
Five deputies only signed the address for the election, MM. Lockroy, Floquet, Cl�menceau, Tolain, and Greppo; the rest of Louis Blanc’s group had kept aloof from Paris for several days. These weaklings, having all their life sung the glories of the Revolution, when it rose up before them ran away appalled, like the Arab fisherman at the apparition of the genie.
With these mandarins of the tribune of history and of journalism, mute and lifeless, contrast strangely the sons of the multitude, obscure, but rich in will, faith, and eloquence. Their farewell address was worthy of their advent: ‘Do not forget that the men who will serve you best are those whom you will choose from amongst yourselves, living your life, suffering the same ills. Beware of the ambitious as much as the upstarts. Beware also of mere talkers. Shun those whom fortune has favoured, for only too rarely is he who possesses fortune prone to look upon the working man as a brother. Give your preference to those who do not solicit your suffrages. True merit is modest, and it is for the workingmen to know those who are worthy, not for these to present themselves.’
They could indeed ‘come down the steps of the H�tel-de-Ville head erect,’ these obscure men who had safely anchored the revolution of the 18th March. Named only to organize the National Guard, thrown up at the head of a revolution without precedent and without guides, they had been able to resist the impatient, quell the riot, re-establish the public services, victual Paris, baffle intrigues, take advantage of all the blunders of Versailles and of the mayors, and, harassed on all sides, every moment in danger of civil war, known how to negotiate, to act at the right time and in the right place. They had embodied the tendency of the movement, limited their programme to communal revindications, and conducted the entire population to the ballot-box. They had inaugurated a precise, vigorous, and fraternal language unknown to all bourgeois powers.
And yet they were obscure men, all with an incomplete education, some of them fanatics. But the people thought with them. Paris was the brazier, the H�tel-de-Ville the flame. In the H�tel-de-Ville, where illustrious bourgeois have only accumulated folly upon defeat, these new-comers found victory because they listened to Paris.
May their services absolve them from two grave faults — allowing the escape of the army and of the functionaries, and the retaking of the Mont-Val�rien by Versailles. It has been said that on the 19th or 20th they ought to have marched on Versailles. But on the first alarm these would have fled to Fontainebleau, with the Administration and the Left, everything that was wanted to govern and deceive the provinces. The occupation of Versailles would only have displaced the enemy, and it would not have been for long, as the popular battalions were too badly provided, too badly commanded, to hold at the same time this open town and Paris.
At all events, the Central Committee left its successor all the means necessary to disarm the enemy.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<h1>Chapter XXXV<br>
The executions</h1>
<p><img src="pics/trochu.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Trochu" border="1" align="left"></p>
<p class="quoteb">At Versailles, every means was used to ensure that the cases were heard with the utmost attention and seriousness ... I think therefore that the verdicts given are not only unquestionably right, according to all our laws, but that for the most scrupulous consciences, they are verdicts which speak the truth. ('Hear, hear!') (Dufaure’s speech against the amnesty, session of 18th May, 1876.)</p>
<p class="quoteb">The verdict of the military tribunals was, I must admit, for the best. (Allain-Targ�, pro-Gambetta deputy, session of 19th May, 1876.)</p>
<p>Twenty-six courts-martial, twenty-six judicial machine-guns, were at work at Versailles, Mont-Val�rien, Paris, Vincennes, St. Cloud, Sevres, St. Germain, Rambouillet, as far as Chartres. In the composition of these tribunals not only all semblance of justice, but even all military rules had been despised. The Assembly had not even troubled itself to define their prerogatives. And these officers, hot from the struggle, and for whom every resistance, even the most legitimate, is a crime, had been let loose upon their overwhelmed enemies without any other jurisprudence than their fancy, without any other rein than their humanity, without any other instruction than their cornmission. With such janissaries and a penal code comprising everything in its elastic obscurity, there was no need for emergency laws in order to attaint all Paris. Soon one saw the most extravagant theories invented and propagated in these judicial dens. Thus, being at the place of the crime constituted legal complicity; with these magistrates this was a dogma.</p>
<p>Instead of removing the courts-martial into the ports, the prisoners were forced to again undergo the painful journey from the sea to Versailles. Some, like Elis�e Reclus, had thus to pass through fourteen prisons. From the pontoons they were conducted to the railway station on foot, their hands manacled; but at Brest, when they passed through the streets showing their chains, the passers-by uncovered their heads before them.</p>
<p>With the exception of a few prisoners of note, whose trials I shall briefly recount, the bulk of the prisoners were thrust before the tribunals after an examination which did not even always make sure of their identity. Too poor to get a defender, these unfortunate people, without guides, without witnesses for the defence — those whom they called did not dare to come for fear of being arrested — only appeared and disappeared before the tribunal. The accusation, the examination, the sentence were shuffled through in a few minutes. ‘You fought at Issy, at Neuilly? Sentenced to transportation.’ ‘What! for life? And my wife, my children?’ To another: ‘You served in the battalions of the Commune?’ ‘And who would have fed my family when the workshop and factory were closed?’ Again sentenced to transportation. ‘And you? Guilty of an illegal arrest. To the penal colony.’ On the 14th October, in less than two months, the first and second courts had pronounced more than six hundred sentences.</p>
<p>Would that I could recount the martyrdom of the thousands who marched past thus in sombre lines, National Guards, women, children, old men, ambulance attendants, doctors, functionaries, of this decimated town! It is you whom I should honour, you above all, you, the nameless, to whom I should give the first place, as you took it in the work at the barricades, where you did your duty in obscurity. The true drama of the courts-martial was not in those solemn sittings in which the accused, the tribunal, the barristers prepared for public performance, but in those halls which only saw the unhappy ones, ignored by the whole world, face to face with a tribunal as inexorable as the chassep�t. How many of these humble defenders of the Commune held up their heads more proudly than the chiefs, and whose heroism no one will tell! When the insolence, the insults, the grotesque arguments of the conspicuous judges are known, it may be guessed with what ignominy the unknown accused were overwhelmed in the shade of these new prevotal courts. Who will avenge these hecatombs of the P�re la Chaise in the darkness of the night?</p>
<p>The newspapers have left no trace of their trials; but, in default of the names of the victims, I can scatter those of some judges to the four winds of history.</p>
<p>Formerly, in the days of honour of the French army, in 1795, after Quiberon, it was necessary to threaten the officers of the Republic with death in order to form the courts-martial that were to judge the Vend�ens. And yet those vanquished had, under the cannon, with English arms, attacked their country in the rear, while the coalesced Powers struck her in front. In 1871 the accomplices of Bazaine solicited the honour of judging the vanquished of that Paris which had been the bulwark of national honour. Through long months 1,509 officers of this degraded army, that has not an hour too much for its rehabilitation and for study, 14 generals, 266 colonels and lieutenant-colonels, and 284 commanders, were dubbed judges and commisars. How select amongst this pick of bestiality? When I mention a few presidents at random — Merlin, Boisdenernetz, Jobey, Delaporte, Dulac, Barthel, Donnat, Aubert — I shall be wronging a hundred others.</p>
<p>Merlin and Boisdenemetz are known. Colonel Delaporte was of the Gallifet species. Old, used up, valetudinarian, he only revived after a sentence of death. It is he who pronounced the greatest number, aided by the clerk of the court, Duplan, who prepared the sentences beforehand, and afterwards committed the most impudent forgeries in the minutes. Jobey had, it was said, lost a son in the struggle with the Commune, and now he avenged himself. His small wrinkled eye watched for the anguish in the face of the unfortunate he condemned. Every appeal to good sense was to him an insult. ‘He would have been happy,’ said he, ‘to stew the lawyers together with the culprits.’</p>
<p>And yet how few lawyers did their duty! Many had declared that one could not decently assist such prisoners. Others wanted to be requisitioned. With four or five exceptions<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n247">[247]</a></sup> these unworthy defenders banqueted with the officers. Barristers and commissars communicated to each other their means of attack or defence; the officers announced the verdicts beforehand. The advocate Rich� boasted of having drawn up the accusation act against Rossel. The advocates officially designated did not answer the call.</p>
<p>These ignorant judges, making a parade of violence, insulting the prisoners, witnesses, and lawyers, *ere worthily seconded by the commissar. One of them, Grimal, sold to the demi-monde journals the papers of the celebrated prisoners.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n248">[248]</a></sup> Gaveau, a savage simpleton, without a shadow of talent, died some months after in a madhouse. Bourboulon, eager for display, aimed at oratorical effects. Barthelemy, a beer-drinker, fair and fat, made puns while asking for the heads of the accused. Charri�re, at fifty years of age still captain, a kind of wild-cat, an imbecile, and a pretentious liar, said that he had made a vow of cruelty to Caesar. Jouesne, notorious in the army for his stupidity, made up for it by his stubborn animosity. Not much was needed in such courts. The most implacable, on the whole, were the third, fourth, and sixth courts, and the thirteenth at St. Cloud, which publicly boasted of acquitting nobody.</p>
<p>So much for the judges and the justice which the bourgeoisie gave those proletarians they had not shot down. I should like to be able to follow up step by step their swash-buckling jurisprudence, take the trials one by one, show the laws violated, the most elementary rules of procedure despised, the documents falsified, the evidence distorted, the prisoners condemned to hard labour and to death without what would have been the ghost of a proof with a serious jury; the cynicism of the prevotal courts of the Restoration and of the Mixed Commissions of December ingrafted on the brutality of the soldier who revenges his caste. Such a work would require long technical labour.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n249">[249]</a></sup> I shall only indicate the principal lines. Besides, are not these judgments already judged?</p>
<p>In 1871 the Versailles Government demanded of Switzerland the extradition of the governor of the Ecole Militaire, in 1876 that of the delegate Frankel from Hungary, both condemned to death for assassination and incendiarism. They were at once arrested. Liberal Switzerland and rural Hungary, considering the acts of the Commune as common crimes, were ready to deliver up the prisoners if Versailles furnished the legal proof required by treaties of extradition that they had committed the acts for which they had been condemned. The Versaillese Government only produced the sentences of the courtsmartial, and could not add the least ‘trace of proof or any precise evidence establishing culpability.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n250">[250]</a></sup> The prisoners had to be released.</p>
<p>On the 8th September Rossel appeared before the third court. His defence consisted in saying that he had served the Commune in the hope that the insurrection would recommence the war against the Prussians. Merlin treated the prisoner with the greatest consideration, who in turn testified the most profound respect for the army. But an example was needed for romantic soldiers, and Rossel was condemned to death.</p>
<p>On the 21st Rochefort was sentenced to transportation in a fortress. The Bonapartists of the court especially had their eye on the author of the <em>Lanterne. </em>Merlin had defended Pierre Bonaparte. Gaveau, accused the prisoner of having outraged the person of the Emperor. Trochu, whom Rochefort had called as a witness for the defence, answered the man who during the siege had for him sacrificed his popularity, by an insulting letter!</p>
<p>Revolutionary journalism had the honour of counting some victims in its ranks. Young Maroteau, for two articles — two only — in the <em>Salut Public </em>was condemned to death; Alphonse Humbert, for three or four articles in the <em>P�re Duchesne, </em>to hard labour for life.</p>
<p>Other journalists were condemned to transportation. What was their crime? Having defended the Commune. Yet the Commune had contented itself with suppressing the papers that defended Versailles. In point of fact, the courts-martial were charged to exterminate the revolutionary party.</p>
<p>Fear of the future rendered them implacable. After the numberless assassinations in the Rue des Rosiers, they too wanted to offer a holocaust to the manes of Lecomte and Cl�ment-Thomas. The real executioners were not to be found. The explosion of fury which cost the two generals their lives had been spontaneous, sudden as that which in 1789 killed Flesselles, Foulon and Berthier. The actors of the drama were legion, and with it all traces of them were lost. The military judges selected the accused at random, as their colleagues had on the Buttes Montmartre shot the first-comers.</p>
<p>‘Simon Mayer,’ said the report, ‘tried to the last moment to defend the prisoners, and Kazdansky did his best to oppose the carrying out of the threats of death. The crowd insulted him and tore off his gold lace.’ HerpinLacroix had made desperate efforts; Lagrange, who had refused to form the firing-party, felt so secure in his innocence that he had come to give himself up to the judges of his own free will. The report made the principal accused of him, along with Simon Mayer, Kazdansky, Herpin-Lacroix, and a sergeant of the line, Verdagnier, who on the 18th March had raised the butt-end of his gun.</p>
<p><img src="pics/herpin-lacroix.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Herpin-Lacroix" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p>The trial was conducted by Colonel Aubert, a sneering melodramatic bigot. Despite his efforts and those of the commissar, not the slightest proof could be brought forward against the prisoners. Even the officers of the army, companions of General Lecomte, gave evidence in their favour. ‘Simon Mayer did all that was possible to save us,’ said the Commander Poussargue. This officer had heard a voice cry, ‘Do not kill even traitors without judgment; form a courtmartial’ , literally the words of Herpin-Lacroix. Of all the accused. he only recognized Mayer. Another officer gave similar evidence. Verdagnier proved that at the time of the executions he had been at the huts of Courcelles. The prosecution denied all, but without being able to produce a single witness. Ribemont proved that he had withstood the assailants in the room of the Rue des Rosiers. Masselot had against him nothing but the evidence of some hostile women, pretending that he had boasted of having shot at the generals. Captain Beugnot, aide-de-camp of the Minister, and present at the execution, affirmed, on the contrary, that the generals had been surrounded by the soldiers; M. de Maillefu, that the front of the platoon was composed of nine soldiers, whose regiments he named.</p>
<p>There were not even false official witnesses, as in the trial of the members of the Commune; and yet the prosecution, far from letting them escape its clutches, was most implacable with regard to these very men who had risked their lives to save the generals. The commissar threatened to arrest a witness who warmly gave evidence in favour of a prisoner. After several sittings they discovered that they were judging one individual for another. The president ordered the press to hush up the incident. Each sitting, each new evidence, cleared the prisoners and made a condemnation more impossible. Yet on the 18th November Verdagnier, Mayer, Herpin-Lacroix, Masselot, Leblond, and Aldenhoff were condemned to death; the others to penalties varying from hard labour to imprisonment. One of those condemned to death, Leblond, was only fifteen and a half years old.</p>
<p>This satisfaction given the army, the courts, as good courtiers, avenged the offences against M. Thiers. The functionary Fontaine, charged by the Commune with the demolition of the house of him who had demolished hundreds of houses, appeared before the fifth court-martial, which did its utmost to make him appear a thief. Every one knew that M. Thiers’ furniture and silver plate had been sent to the Garde-Meuble, the objects of art to the museums, the books to the public libraries, the linen to the ambulances, and that after the entry of the troops the little <em>man </em>had regained possession of most of these objects. Some having perished in the conflagration of the Tuileries, the report accused Fontaine of having abstracted them, although only two valueless medals had been found in his house. To this accusation, from which he believed himself secured by a long life of probity and honour, Fontaine could only reply with tears. The Figarists laughed at it a good deal, and he was condemned to twenty years’ hard labour.</p>
<p>On the 28th November the Assembly recommenced its shootings. M. Thiers, cleverly throwing upon the representatives the right of commuting the penalties, had a Commission of Pardons named by the Chamber. It was composed of fifteen members, purveyors of the Mixed Commission of 1852, great proprietors, inveterate Royalists .<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n251">[251]</a></sup> One of them, the Marquis de Quinsonnas, had during the battle in the streets superintended the executions at the Luxembourg. The president, Martel, was an old satyr, who sold his pardons to pretty solicitresses.</p>
<p>The first cases which they took up were those of Rossel and Ferr�. The Liberal press pleaded warmly for the young officer. In his restless mind, without unsound political opinions, who had so cavalierly turned his back upon the Commune, the bourgeoisie soon recognized one of her prodigal children. He had besides made an <em>amende honorable. </em>The press published his memoirs, in which he reviled the Commune and the Federals. Day by day they recounted the life of the prisoner, his sublime colloquies with a Protestant clergyman, his heart-rending interviews with his family. Of Ferr� not a word, except to say he was ‘hideous’. His mother had died mad; his brother was shut up as mad in the dungeons of Versailles; his father was a prisoner in the citadel of Fouras; his sister, a young girl of nineteen, silent, resigned, stoical, spent her days and nights earning the twenty francs that she every week sent her brother. She had refused the aid of her friends, unwilling to share with any one the honour of accomplishing her pious duty. Indeed, one can imagine nothing more ‘hideous!’</p>
<p>For twelve weeks death remained suspended above the heads of the condemned. At last, on the 28th November, at six o'clock in the morning, they were told that they must die. Ferr� jumped out of bed without showing the slightest emotion, declined the visit of the chaplain, wrote to ask the military tribunals for the release of his father, and to his sister that she should have him buried so that his friends would be able to find him again. Rossel, rather surprised at first, afterwards conversed with his clergyman. He wrote a letter demanding that his death should not be avenged — a very useless precaution — and addressed a few thanks to Jesus Christ. For comrade in death they had a sergeant of the 45th line, Bourgeois, who had gone over to the Commune, and who showed the same calm as Ferr�. Rossel was indignant when they put on the handcuffs; Ferr� and Bourgeois disdained to protest.</p>
<p>The day was hardly dawning; it was bitterly cold. Before the Butte of Satory 5,000 men under arms surrounded three white stakes, each one guarded by twelve executioners. Colonel Merlin commanded, thus uniting the three functions of conqueror, judge, and hangman.</p>
<p>Some curious lookers-on, officers and journalists, composed the whole public.</p>
<p>At seven o'clock the carts of the condemned appeared; the drums beat a salute, the trumpets sounded. The prisoners descended, escorted by gendarmes. Rossel, on passing before a group of officers, saluted them. The brave Bourgeois, looking on at the whole drama with an indifferent air, leant against the middle stake. Ferr� came last, dressed in black and smoking a cigar, not a muscle of his face moving. With a firm and even step he walked up and leant against the third stake.</p>
<p>Rossel, attended by his lawyer and his clergyman, asked to be allowed to command the fire. Merlin refused. Rossel wished to shake hands with him, in order to do homage to his sentence. This was refused. During these negotiations Ferr� and Bourgeois remained motionless, silent. In order to put a stop to Rossel’s effusions an officer was obliged to tell him that he was prolonging the torture of the two others. At last they blindfolded him. Ferr� pushed back the bandage, and, fixing his eyeglass, looked the soldiers straight in the face.</p>
<p>The sentence read, the adjutants lowered their sabres, the guns were discharged. Rossel and Bourgeois fell back. Ferr� remained standing; he was only hit in the side. He was again fired at and fell. A soldier placing his chassep�t at his ear blew out his brains.</p>
<p>On a gesture of Merlin a flourish of trumpets burst forth, and, emulating the customs of the cannibals, the troops marched past in triumph before the corpses. What cries of horror the bourgeoisie would have uttered if before the executed hostages the Federals had paraded to the sound of music!</p>
<p><img src="pics/rossel.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Rossel" border="1" align="right"></p>
<p>The bodies of Rossel and Ferr� were claimed by their families; that of Bourgeois disappeared in the common grave of the St. Louis Cemetery. The people will not disassociate his memory from that of Ferr�, for they both died with the same courage for the cause they had served with the same devotion.</p>
<p>The Liberal press reserved its tears for Rossel. Some courageous provincial papers did honour to all the victims, and devoted to the hatred of France the Commission of Pardons — ‘the Commission of Assassins,’ as a deputy, Ordinaire junior, said in the Assembly. Prosecuted before juries, all these journals were acquitted.</p>
<p><img src="pics/cremieux.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Gaston Cremiuex" border="1" align="left"></p>
<p>Two days after the execution of Satory, the Commission of Pardons ordered Gaston Cr�mieux to be killed. Six months had elapsed since his condemnation, and this long delay seemed to make the murder impossible. But the rural Commission wanted to avenge his famous speech of Bordeaux. On the 30th November, at seven o'clock in the morning, Gaston Cr�mieux was led to the Prado, a large plain bordering the sea. He said to his guardians, ‘I will show how a Republican should die.’ He was placed against the same stake where a month before the soldier Paquis had been shot for going over to the insurrection.</p>
<p>Gaston Cr�mieux wished to have his eyes unbandaged and to command the fire. They consented. Then addressing himself to the soldiers, ‘Aim at the chest; do not touch my head. Fire! <em>Vive la R�publique!</em>’ The last word was cut short by death. As at Satory, the dance of the soldiers round the corpse followed.</p>
<p>The death of this young enthusiast made a deep impression in the town. Registers placed at the door of his house filled in a few hours with thousands of signatures. The revolutionaries of Marseilles will not forget his children.</p>
<p>The same day the sixth court avenged the death of Chaudey. This had been ordered and superintended by Raoul Rigault alone. The men who formed the platoon were abroad. Pr�au de V�del, the principal accused, then imprisoned in Sainte P�lagie for a common offence, had only held the lantern. But the jurisprudence of the officers attributed to simple agents the same responsibility as to the chiefs. Pr�au de V�del was condemned to death.</p>
<p>On the 4th December, in the hall of the third court, a kind of phantom, pale-faced and sympathetic, appeared. It was Lisbonne, who for six months had dragged about his wounds of the Chiteau d'Eau. The same before the court-martial as during the Commune and at Buzenval, this bravest of the brave gloried in having fought, and only denied the accusations of pillage. Other judges would have been proud to spare such an enemy; the Versaillese condemned him to death.</p>
<p>Some days after, this same court-martial heard a woman’s voice. ‘I will not defend myself; I will not be defended,’ cried Louise Michel. ‘I belong entirely to the social revolution, and I declare that I accept the responsibility of all my acts. I accept it entirely and without reserve. You accuse me of having participated in the execution of the generals. To this I answer, yes. If I had been at Montmartre, when they wished to fire on the people, I should not have hesitated to order fire myself on those who gave such commands. As to the conflagrations of Paris, yes, I did participate in them. I wanted to oppose a barrier of flames to the invaders of Versailles. I have no accomplices; I acted on my own account.’</p>
<p>Commissar Dailly demanded the penalty of death.</p>
<p class="fst"><em>Louise Michel</em>: What I ask of you, you who style yourselves a court-martial, who proclaim yourselves my judges, who do not hide yourselves like the Commission of Pardons, is the field of Satory, where our brothers have already fallen. I must be cut off from society; you have been told to do so. Well, the Commissar of the Republic is right. Since it seems that every heart which beats for liberty has only right to a little lead, I too demand my part. If you let me live, I shall not cease to cry vengeance, and I shall denounce to the vengeance of my brothers the assassins of the Commission of Pardons.</p>
<p class="fst"><em>The President</em>: I cannot allow you to go on.</p>
<p class="fst"><em>Louise Michel</em>: I have done. If you are not cowards, kill me.</p>
<p>They had not courage to kill her at one blow. She was condemned to transportation to a fortress.</p>
<p><img src="pics/lemel.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Lemel" border="1" align="left"></p>
<p>Louise Michel did not stand alone in her courageous attitude. Many others, amongst whom must be mentioned Lemel and Augustine Chiffon, showed the Versaillese what terrible women these Parisians are, even vanquished, even in chains.</p>
<p>The affair of the executions of La Roquette came on at the beginning of 1872. There, as in the Cl�ment-Thomas and Chaudey trials, they had none of the real actors except Genton, who had carried the order. Almost all the witnesses, former hostages, gave evidence with the rage natural to people who have trembled. The prosecution, refusing to believe in an outburst of fury, had built up a ridiculous scaffolding of a court-martial discussing and ordering the death of the prisoners. It asserted that one of the accused had commanded the fire, and he was about to be condemned, in spite of the solemn protests of Genton, when the real chief of the firing-party, who had just been discovered dying in a prison, was brought in. Genton was condemned to death. His advocate had odiously slandered him, then fled, and the court refused to allow him a second defender.</p>
<p>The most important affair which followed was that of the Dominicans of Arcueil. No execution had been less premeditated. These monks had fallen in crossing the Avenue d'Italie, shot down by the men of the 101st. The report accused S�rizier, who at that moment was not even in the Avenue. The only witness called against him said, ‘I do not affirm anything myself; I have heard it said.’ But we know what close bonds unite army and clergy. S�rizier was condemned to death, as was also one of his lieutenants, Bouin, against whom not a single witness could be brought forward. The court took advantage of the occasion to pronounce sentences of death against Wroblewski, who at that time had been at the Butte-aux-Cailles, and against Frankel, who had been fighting at the Bastille.</p>
<p>On the 12th March the affair of the Rue Haxo came on before the sixth court, still presided over by Delaporte. The executioners of the hostages had been no more discoverable than those of the Rue des Rosiers. The indictment fell back upon the director of the prison, Francois, who for a long time had disputed the surrender of his prisoners, and upon twenty-two persons denounced by gossip contradicted at the trial. Not one of the witnesses recognized the accused. Delaporte multiplied his menaces with such a cynicism that the Commissar Rustaud, who had, however, given proofs of his animosity in the preceding trials, could not refrain from exclaiming, ‘But do you want to condemn them all?’ He was the next day replaced by the idiot Charri�re. In spite of all this, the indictment frittered away from hour to hour before the disavowals of the witnesses. Still not one of the prisoners escaped. Seven were condemned to death, nine to hard labour, and the others to transportation.</p>
<p><img src="pics/lagrange.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="Lagrange" border="1" align="left"></p>
<p>The Commission of Pardons awaited, chassep�t in hand, the prey given up to them by the courts-martial. On the 22nd of February, 1872, it shot three of the so-called murderers of Cl�ment-Thomas and Lecomte, even those whose innocence had most clearly come out in the trial — Herpin-Lacroix, Lagrange, and Verdagner. Upright at the stake of the 28th November, they cried ‘<em>Vive la Commune!’ </em>and died, their faces radiant. On the 19th March Pr�au de V�del was executed. On the 30th April it was Genton’s turn. The wounds which he had received in May had reopened, and he dragged himself to the Butte on his crutches. Arrived at the stake, he threw them from him, cried ‘<em>Vive la Commune!’ </em>and fell under the fire. On the 25th May the three stakes were again occupied by S�rizier, Bouin, and Boudin, the latter condemned as chief of the platoon which in front of the Tuileries had executed a Versaillese who attempted to prevent the erection of the barricades of the Rue Richeli eu. They said to the soldiers of the platoon, ‘We are children of the people, and you are too. We shall show you that the children of Paris know how to die!’ And they, also, fell, crying ‘<em>Vive la Commune!’</em></p>
<p>These men who went to the grave so courageously, who with a gesture defied the musket, who, dying, cried that their cause died not, these ringing voices, these steadfast looks, disconcerted the soldiers profoundly. The muskets trembled, and almost within point-blank range they rarely killed at the first discharge. So at the next execution, the 6th July, the Commander Colin, who presided at these shootings, ordered the eyes of the victims bandaged. There were two of them Baudoin, accused of setting fire to the St. Eloi Church, and of killing an individual who had fired at the Federals; and Rouilhac, an insurgent who had shot at a bourgeois who was potting Federals. Both pushed back the sergeants who came to blindfold them. Colin gave the order to tie them to the stake. Three times Baudoin tore assunder the cords; Rouilhac struggled desperately. The priest who came to assist the soldiers received some blows in the chest. At last, overwhelmed, they cried, ‘We die for the good cause.’ They were mangled by the balls. After the march past, an officer of a psychological turn of mind, moving with the tip of his boot the brains that trickled down, remarked to a colleague, ‘It is with this that they thought.’</p>
<p>In June, 1872, all the celebrated cases being disposed of, military justice avenged the death of a Federal, Captain Beaufort. There is but one explanation for this strange fact, which is that Beaufort belonged to the Versailles. We have received important evidence on this head .<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n252">[252]</a></sup> At all events, if Delescluze or Varlin had been shot by the Federals, Versailles would not have avenged their death.</p>
<p>Three of those accused out of four were present, Deschamps, Denivelle, and Madame Lachaise, the celebrated cantini�re of the 66th. She had followed Beaufort before the council held at the Boulevard Voltaire, and, having heard explanations, had done her best to protect him. The indictment none the less made of her the principal instigator of his death. On the written evidence of a witness who was not to be found, and who had never been confronted with her, the commissar accused Madame Lachaise of having profaned Beaufort’s corpse. At this abominable accusation this noble woman burst into tears. She, as well as Denivelle and Deschamps, were condemned to death.</p>
<p>The obscene imagination of soldiers with Algerian habits taxed itself to pollute the accused. Colonel Dulac, judging an intimate friend of Rigault’s, pretended that their friendship had been of an infamous character. Despite the indignant protests of the prisoner, the wretched officer persisted.</p>
<p>The bourgeois press, far from stigmatizing, applauded. Without truce, without lassitude, since the opening of the courts-martial it accompanied all the trials with the same chorus of imprecations and the same slanders. Some persons having protested against these executions so long after the battle, Francisque Sarcey wrote, ‘The axe ought to be riveted to the hand of the executioner.’</p>
<p>Till then the Commission of Pardons had only killed three at a time. On the 24th of July it slaughtered four — Francois, the director of La Roquette, Aubry, Dalivoust, and De St. Omer, condemned for the affair of the Rue Haxo. De St. Omer was more than suspected, and in the prison his comrades kept aloof from him. Before the muskets they cried ‘<em>Vive la Commune!’ </em>He answered, ‘Down with it!’</p>
<p>On the 18th September, Lolive (accused of having participated in the execution of the Archbishop), Denivelle, and Deschamps were executed. These last cried, ‘Long live the Universal and Social Republic! Down with the cowards!’ On the 22nd January, 1873, nineteen months after the battle in the streets, the Commission of Pardons tied three more victims to its stakes — Philippe, member of the Council of the Commune, guilty of having energetically defended Bercy; Benot, who set fire to the Tuileries; and Decamps, condemned for the conflagration of the Rue de Lille, although they had not been able to bring forward any evidence whatever against him. ‘I die innocent,’ cried he. ‘Down with Thiers!’ Philippe and Benot: ‘Long five the Social Republic! <em>Vive la Commune!’ </em>They fell, not having belied the courage of the soldiers of the Revolution of the 18th March.</p>
<p>This was the last execution at Satory. The blood of twenty-five victims had reddened the stakes of the Commission of Pardons. In 1875 it had a young soldier shot at Vincennes, accused of the death of the detective Vizentini, thrown into the Seine by hundreds of hands at the demonstration of the Bastille.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n253">[253]</a></sup></p>
<p>The movements of the provinces were judged by courts-martial or assize courts , according to the department being or not being in a state of siege. Everywhere the issue of the Parisian struggle had been waited for. Immediately after the defeat of Paris the reaction ran riot. Espivent’s court-martial initiated these trials. He had his Gaveau in Commander Villeneuve, one of the bombarders of the 4th April, his Merlin, and his Boisdenemetz in the colonels Thomassin and Douat. On the 12th June Gaston Cr�mieux, Etienne, P�Iissier, Roux, Bouchet, and all those who could be connected with the movement of the 23rd March appeared before the soldiers. The pretentious block-headedness of Villeneuve served as type of the military prosecutor’s addresses with which France was inundated. Cr�mieux, Etienne, P�lissier, and Roux were condemned to death. This was not enough for the jesuitical bourgeois reaction. Espivent had declared through the Court of Cassation that the department of the Bouches-du-Rh�ne was in a state of siege since the 9th August, 1870, in virtue of a decree by the Empress, which had neither been published in the bulletin of laws, nor been sanctioned by the Senate, nor even promulgated. Provided with this arm, he persecuted all marked out by the hand of the Congregation. The municipal councillor, David Bosc, exdelegate to the Commission, a millionaire shipowner, accused of having stolen a silver watch from a police agent, was only acquitted by a small majority of votes. The next day the colonel-president was replaced by the lieutenant-colonel of the 4th Chasseurs, Donnat, half-mad with absinthe-drinking. A working man, aged seventy-five, was condemned to ten years’ hard labour and twenty years’ deprivation of civil and political rights for having on the 4th September arrested for half an hour a police agent who had sent him to Cayenne in 1852. A crazy old woman, purveyor of the Jesuits, arrested for a few moments on the 4th September, accused the former commander of the Civil Guard of her arrest. Her accusation was contradicted by herself and quite overthrown by alibis and numberless proofs. The ex-commander was condemned to five years’ of prison and ten years’ privation of civil rights. One of the soldier-judges, coming out after committing this crime, said, ‘One must have very profound political convictions to condemn in similar affairs.’ With these cynical collaborators Espivent could satisfy all his hated. He asked the courts of Versailles to deliver up to him the member of the Council of the Commune, Amouroux, delegate for a time at Marseilles. ‘I am prosecuting him for tampering with soldiers,’ wrote Espivent, ‘a crime punished by death; and I am persuaded that this punishment will be applied to him.’</p>
<p>The court-martial of Lyons was not very inferior. Forty-four persons were prosecuted for the movement of the 22nd March, and thirty-two condemned to penalties varying from transportation to imprisonment. The insurrection of the 30th April furnished seventy prisoners, taken at random at Lyons, as was the custom at Versailles. The mayor of the Guilloti�re, Crestin, called as witness, did not recognize amongst them any of those he had seen on that day in his <em>mairie</em>. Presidents of the courts, the Colonels Marion and R�billot.</p>
<p>At Limoges, Dubois and Roubeyrol, democrats esteemed by the whole town, were condemned in default to death, as the principal actors in the movement of the 4th April; two were condemned to twenty years’ imprisonment for having boasted of knowing who had shot at Colonel Billet. Another got ten years for having distributed ammunition.</p>
<p>The verdicts of the jury varied. That of the Basses-Pyr�n�es on the 8th August acquitted Duportal, and the four or five persons accused of the movement of Toulouse. The same aquittal took place at Rhodez, where Digeon and the accused of Narbonne appeared after a preliminary imprisonment of eight months. A sympathetic public filled the hall and the approaches of the tribunal and cheered the accused at their departure. The energetic attitude of Digeon once more showed the strong cast of his character.</p>
<p>The jury of Riom condemned for the affairs of St. Etienne twentyone prisoners, among whom was Amouroux, who had only sent two delegates. A young working man, Caton, distinguished himself by his intelligence and firmness.</p>
<p>The jury of Orl�ans was severe upon the accused of Montargis, all of whom they condemned to prison, and atrocious to those of Cosnes and Neury-sur-Loire, where there had been no resistance. There were twenty-three altogether, of whom three were women. Their whole crime had been carrying about a red flag and crying ‘Vivre Paris! Down with Versailles!’ Malardier, a former representative of the people, who only arrived on the eve of the demonstration, and who had taken no part in it, was condemned to fifteen years’ imprisonment. None of the accused was spared. The proprietors of the Loiret avenged the fright of their fellow-proprietors of the Nievre.</p>
<p>The movements of Coulommiers, Nimes, Dordives, and Voiron gave rise to some convictions.</p>
<p>In the month of June, 1872, the greater part of the work of repression was done. Of the 36,309 <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n254">[254]</a></sup> prisoners, men, women, and children, without counting the 5,000 military prisoners, to whom the Versailles have confessed, 1,179, said they, had died in their prisons; 22,326 had been liberated after long winter months in the pontoons, the forts, and the prisons; 10,488 brought before the courts-martial, who had condemned 8,525 of them. The persecutions did not cease. On the advent of MacMahon, the 24th May, 1873, there set in a recrudescence. On the 1st January, 1875, the general r�sum� of Versaillese justice gave 10,137 condemnations pronounced in presence of the accused, and 3,313 in default. The sentences passed were distributed thus:</p>
<table align="center" width="70%">
<tbody><tr><td class="text"> </td><td class="data">Total</td><td class="data">Women</td><td class="data">Children</td></tr>
<tr><td class="text">Condemnations to death</td><td class="data">270</td><td class="data">8</td><td class="data"> </td></tr>
<tr><td class="text">Hard labour</td><td class="data">10</td><td class="data">29</td><td class="data"></td><td class="data"> </td></tr>
<tr><td class="text">Transportation in a fortress</td><td class="data"> </td><td class="data">3989</td><td class="data"> </td></tr>
<tr><td class="text">Simple transportation</td><td class="data">3507</td><td class="data">16</td><td class="data">1</td></tr>
<tr><td class="text">Detention</td><td class="data">1269</td><td class="data">8</td><td class="data"> </td></tr>
<tr><td class="text">Confinement</td><td class="data">64</td><td class="data">10</td><td class="data"> </td></tr>
<tr><td class="text">Hard labour at public works</td><td class="data">29</td><td class="data"> </td><td class="data"> </td></tr>
<tr><td class="text">Imprisonment from three months or less</td><td class="data">432</td><td class="data"> </td><td class="data"> </td></tr>
<tr><td class="text">Imprisonment from three months to one year</td><td class="data">1622</td><td class="data">50</td><td class="data">1</td></tr>
<tr><td class="text">Imprisonment for more than one year</td><td class="data">1344</td><td class="data">15</td><td class="data">4</td></tr>
<tr><td class="text">Banishment</td><td class="data">322</td><td class="data"> </td><td class="data"> </td></tr>
<tr><td class="text">Surveillance of the police</td><td class="data">117</td><td class="data">1</td><td class="data"> </td></tr>
<tr><td class="text">Fines</td><td class="data">9</td><td class="data"> </td><td class="data"> </td></tr>
<tr><td class="text">Children under 16 sent to houses of correction</td><td class="data"> </td><td class="data"> </td><td class="data">56</td></tr>
<tr><td class="text">Total</td><td class="data">13,440</td><td class="data">157</td><td class="data">62</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<p>This r�sum� contained neither the sentences pronounced by the courts-martial beyond the jurisdiction of Versailles nor those of the courts of assizes. We must therefore add 15 condemnations to death, 22 to hard labour, 28 to transportation in a fortress, 29 to simple transportation, 74 to detention, 13 to confinement, and a certain number to imprisonment. The total figure of the condemned of Paris and the provinces exceeds 13,700, among whom were 170 women and 62 children.</p>
<p>Three-fourths of the 10,000 condemned while present — 7,418 out of 10,137 — were simple guards or non-commissioned officers, 1,942 subaltern officers. There were only 225 superior officers, 29 members of the Council of the Commune, 49 of the Central Committee. Despite their savage jurisprudence, the inquiries, and the false witnesses, the courts-martial had been unable to bring forward against nine-tenths of the condemned — 9,285 — any other crime than the bearing of arms or the exercise of public functions. Of the 766 condemned for so-called common crimes, 276 were for simple arrests, 171 for the battle in the streets, 132 for crimes classed as ‘others’ by the report, all evidently for acts of war.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n255">[255]</a></sup> Notwithstanding the great number of ticket-of-leave men designedly included in these prosecutions, nearly three-fourths of the condemned — 7,119 — had no judiciary antecedents; 524 had incurred condemnation for misdemeanour against public order (political or simple police cases); 2,381 for crimes or misdemeanours, which the report took care not to specify. Finally, this insurrection, provoked and conducted by the foreigner according to the bourgeois press, furnished in all but 396 prisoners of foreign origin.</p>
<p>This is the balance-sheet of 1874. The following years added new condemnations. The number of the courts was reduced, but their institution was maintained and the prosecutions are going on. Even now, six years after the defeat, the arrests and convictions have not ceased.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter XXXV
The executions
At Versailles, every means was used to ensure that the cases were heard with the utmost attention and seriousness ... I think therefore that the verdicts given are not only unquestionably right, according to all our laws, but that for the most scrupulous consciences, they are verdicts which speak the truth. ('Hear, hear!') (Dufaure’s speech against the amnesty, session of 18th May, 1876.)
The verdict of the military tribunals was, I must admit, for the best. (Allain-Targ�, pro-Gambetta deputy, session of 19th May, 1876.)
Twenty-six courts-martial, twenty-six judicial machine-guns, were at work at Versailles, Mont-Val�rien, Paris, Vincennes, St. Cloud, Sevres, St. Germain, Rambouillet, as far as Chartres. In the composition of these tribunals not only all semblance of justice, but even all military rules had been despised. The Assembly had not even troubled itself to define their prerogatives. And these officers, hot from the struggle, and for whom every resistance, even the most legitimate, is a crime, had been let loose upon their overwhelmed enemies without any other jurisprudence than their fancy, without any other rein than their humanity, without any other instruction than their cornmission. With such janissaries and a penal code comprising everything in its elastic obscurity, there was no need for emergency laws in order to attaint all Paris. Soon one saw the most extravagant theories invented and propagated in these judicial dens. Thus, being at the place of the crime constituted legal complicity; with these magistrates this was a dogma.
Instead of removing the courts-martial into the ports, the prisoners were forced to again undergo the painful journey from the sea to Versailles. Some, like Elis�e Reclus, had thus to pass through fourteen prisons. From the pontoons they were conducted to the railway station on foot, their hands manacled; but at Brest, when they passed through the streets showing their chains, the passers-by uncovered their heads before them.
With the exception of a few prisoners of note, whose trials I shall briefly recount, the bulk of the prisoners were thrust before the tribunals after an examination which did not even always make sure of their identity. Too poor to get a defender, these unfortunate people, without guides, without witnesses for the defence — those whom they called did not dare to come for fear of being arrested — only appeared and disappeared before the tribunal. The accusation, the examination, the sentence were shuffled through in a few minutes. ‘You fought at Issy, at Neuilly? Sentenced to transportation.’ ‘What! for life? And my wife, my children?’ To another: ‘You served in the battalions of the Commune?’ ‘And who would have fed my family when the workshop and factory were closed?’ Again sentenced to transportation. ‘And you? Guilty of an illegal arrest. To the penal colony.’ On the 14th October, in less than two months, the first and second courts had pronounced more than six hundred sentences.
Would that I could recount the martyrdom of the thousands who marched past thus in sombre lines, National Guards, women, children, old men, ambulance attendants, doctors, functionaries, of this decimated town! It is you whom I should honour, you above all, you, the nameless, to whom I should give the first place, as you took it in the work at the barricades, where you did your duty in obscurity. The true drama of the courts-martial was not in those solemn sittings in which the accused, the tribunal, the barristers prepared for public performance, but in those halls which only saw the unhappy ones, ignored by the whole world, face to face with a tribunal as inexorable as the chassep�t. How many of these humble defenders of the Commune held up their heads more proudly than the chiefs, and whose heroism no one will tell! When the insolence, the insults, the grotesque arguments of the conspicuous judges are known, it may be guessed with what ignominy the unknown accused were overwhelmed in the shade of these new prevotal courts. Who will avenge these hecatombs of the P�re la Chaise in the darkness of the night?
The newspapers have left no trace of their trials; but, in default of the names of the victims, I can scatter those of some judges to the four winds of history.
Formerly, in the days of honour of the French army, in 1795, after Quiberon, it was necessary to threaten the officers of the Republic with death in order to form the courts-martial that were to judge the Vend�ens. And yet those vanquished had, under the cannon, with English arms, attacked their country in the rear, while the coalesced Powers struck her in front. In 1871 the accomplices of Bazaine solicited the honour of judging the vanquished of that Paris which had been the bulwark of national honour. Through long months 1,509 officers of this degraded army, that has not an hour too much for its rehabilitation and for study, 14 generals, 266 colonels and lieutenant-colonels, and 284 commanders, were dubbed judges and commisars. How select amongst this pick of bestiality? When I mention a few presidents at random — Merlin, Boisdenernetz, Jobey, Delaporte, Dulac, Barthel, Donnat, Aubert — I shall be wronging a hundred others.
Merlin and Boisdenemetz are known. Colonel Delaporte was of the Gallifet species. Old, used up, valetudinarian, he only revived after a sentence of death. It is he who pronounced the greatest number, aided by the clerk of the court, Duplan, who prepared the sentences beforehand, and afterwards committed the most impudent forgeries in the minutes. Jobey had, it was said, lost a son in the struggle with the Commune, and now he avenged himself. His small wrinkled eye watched for the anguish in the face of the unfortunate he condemned. Every appeal to good sense was to him an insult. ‘He would have been happy,’ said he, ‘to stew the lawyers together with the culprits.’
And yet how few lawyers did their duty! Many had declared that one could not decently assist such prisoners. Others wanted to be requisitioned. With four or five exceptions[247] these unworthy defenders banqueted with the officers. Barristers and commissars communicated to each other their means of attack or defence; the officers announced the verdicts beforehand. The advocate Rich� boasted of having drawn up the accusation act against Rossel. The advocates officially designated did not answer the call.
These ignorant judges, making a parade of violence, insulting the prisoners, witnesses, and lawyers, *ere worthily seconded by the commissar. One of them, Grimal, sold to the demi-monde journals the papers of the celebrated prisoners.[248] Gaveau, a savage simpleton, without a shadow of talent, died some months after in a madhouse. Bourboulon, eager for display, aimed at oratorical effects. Barthelemy, a beer-drinker, fair and fat, made puns while asking for the heads of the accused. Charri�re, at fifty years of age still captain, a kind of wild-cat, an imbecile, and a pretentious liar, said that he had made a vow of cruelty to Caesar. Jouesne, notorious in the army for his stupidity, made up for it by his stubborn animosity. Not much was needed in such courts. The most implacable, on the whole, were the third, fourth, and sixth courts, and the thirteenth at St. Cloud, which publicly boasted of acquitting nobody.
So much for the judges and the justice which the bourgeoisie gave those proletarians they had not shot down. I should like to be able to follow up step by step their swash-buckling jurisprudence, take the trials one by one, show the laws violated, the most elementary rules of procedure despised, the documents falsified, the evidence distorted, the prisoners condemned to hard labour and to death without what would have been the ghost of a proof with a serious jury; the cynicism of the prevotal courts of the Restoration and of the Mixed Commissions of December ingrafted on the brutality of the soldier who revenges his caste. Such a work would require long technical labour.[249] I shall only indicate the principal lines. Besides, are not these judgments already judged?
In 1871 the Versailles Government demanded of Switzerland the extradition of the governor of the Ecole Militaire, in 1876 that of the delegate Frankel from Hungary, both condemned to death for assassination and incendiarism. They were at once arrested. Liberal Switzerland and rural Hungary, considering the acts of the Commune as common crimes, were ready to deliver up the prisoners if Versailles furnished the legal proof required by treaties of extradition that they had committed the acts for which they had been condemned. The Versaillese Government only produced the sentences of the courtsmartial, and could not add the least ‘trace of proof or any precise evidence establishing culpability.[250] The prisoners had to be released.
On the 8th September Rossel appeared before the third court. His defence consisted in saying that he had served the Commune in the hope that the insurrection would recommence the war against the Prussians. Merlin treated the prisoner with the greatest consideration, who in turn testified the most profound respect for the army. But an example was needed for romantic soldiers, and Rossel was condemned to death.
On the 21st Rochefort was sentenced to transportation in a fortress. The Bonapartists of the court especially had their eye on the author of the Lanterne. Merlin had defended Pierre Bonaparte. Gaveau, accused the prisoner of having outraged the person of the Emperor. Trochu, whom Rochefort had called as a witness for the defence, answered the man who during the siege had for him sacrificed his popularity, by an insulting letter!
Revolutionary journalism had the honour of counting some victims in its ranks. Young Maroteau, for two articles — two only — in the Salut Public was condemned to death; Alphonse Humbert, for three or four articles in the P�re Duchesne, to hard labour for life.
Other journalists were condemned to transportation. What was their crime? Having defended the Commune. Yet the Commune had contented itself with suppressing the papers that defended Versailles. In point of fact, the courts-martial were charged to exterminate the revolutionary party.
Fear of the future rendered them implacable. After the numberless assassinations in the Rue des Rosiers, they too wanted to offer a holocaust to the manes of Lecomte and Cl�ment-Thomas. The real executioners were not to be found. The explosion of fury which cost the two generals their lives had been spontaneous, sudden as that which in 1789 killed Flesselles, Foulon and Berthier. The actors of the drama were legion, and with it all traces of them were lost. The military judges selected the accused at random, as their colleagues had on the Buttes Montmartre shot the first-comers.
‘Simon Mayer,’ said the report, ‘tried to the last moment to defend the prisoners, and Kazdansky did his best to oppose the carrying out of the threats of death. The crowd insulted him and tore off his gold lace.’ HerpinLacroix had made desperate efforts; Lagrange, who had refused to form the firing-party, felt so secure in his innocence that he had come to give himself up to the judges of his own free will. The report made the principal accused of him, along with Simon Mayer, Kazdansky, Herpin-Lacroix, and a sergeant of the line, Verdagnier, who on the 18th March had raised the butt-end of his gun.
The trial was conducted by Colonel Aubert, a sneering melodramatic bigot. Despite his efforts and those of the commissar, not the slightest proof could be brought forward against the prisoners. Even the officers of the army, companions of General Lecomte, gave evidence in their favour. ‘Simon Mayer did all that was possible to save us,’ said the Commander Poussargue. This officer had heard a voice cry, ‘Do not kill even traitors without judgment; form a courtmartial’ , literally the words of Herpin-Lacroix. Of all the accused. he only recognized Mayer. Another officer gave similar evidence. Verdagnier proved that at the time of the executions he had been at the huts of Courcelles. The prosecution denied all, but without being able to produce a single witness. Ribemont proved that he had withstood the assailants in the room of the Rue des Rosiers. Masselot had against him nothing but the evidence of some hostile women, pretending that he had boasted of having shot at the generals. Captain Beugnot, aide-de-camp of the Minister, and present at the execution, affirmed, on the contrary, that the generals had been surrounded by the soldiers; M. de Maillefu, that the front of the platoon was composed of nine soldiers, whose regiments he named.
There were not even false official witnesses, as in the trial of the members of the Commune; and yet the prosecution, far from letting them escape its clutches, was most implacable with regard to these very men who had risked their lives to save the generals. The commissar threatened to arrest a witness who warmly gave evidence in favour of a prisoner. After several sittings they discovered that they were judging one individual for another. The president ordered the press to hush up the incident. Each sitting, each new evidence, cleared the prisoners and made a condemnation more impossible. Yet on the 18th November Verdagnier, Mayer, Herpin-Lacroix, Masselot, Leblond, and Aldenhoff were condemned to death; the others to penalties varying from hard labour to imprisonment. One of those condemned to death, Leblond, was only fifteen and a half years old.
This satisfaction given the army, the courts, as good courtiers, avenged the offences against M. Thiers. The functionary Fontaine, charged by the Commune with the demolition of the house of him who had demolished hundreds of houses, appeared before the fifth court-martial, which did its utmost to make him appear a thief. Every one knew that M. Thiers’ furniture and silver plate had been sent to the Garde-Meuble, the objects of art to the museums, the books to the public libraries, the linen to the ambulances, and that after the entry of the troops the little man had regained possession of most of these objects. Some having perished in the conflagration of the Tuileries, the report accused Fontaine of having abstracted them, although only two valueless medals had been found in his house. To this accusation, from which he believed himself secured by a long life of probity and honour, Fontaine could only reply with tears. The Figarists laughed at it a good deal, and he was condemned to twenty years’ hard labour.
On the 28th November the Assembly recommenced its shootings. M. Thiers, cleverly throwing upon the representatives the right of commuting the penalties, had a Commission of Pardons named by the Chamber. It was composed of fifteen members, purveyors of the Mixed Commission of 1852, great proprietors, inveterate Royalists .[251] One of them, the Marquis de Quinsonnas, had during the battle in the streets superintended the executions at the Luxembourg. The president, Martel, was an old satyr, who sold his pardons to pretty solicitresses.
The first cases which they took up were those of Rossel and Ferr�. The Liberal press pleaded warmly for the young officer. In his restless mind, without unsound political opinions, who had so cavalierly turned his back upon the Commune, the bourgeoisie soon recognized one of her prodigal children. He had besides made an amende honorable. The press published his memoirs, in which he reviled the Commune and the Federals. Day by day they recounted the life of the prisoner, his sublime colloquies with a Protestant clergyman, his heart-rending interviews with his family. Of Ferr� not a word, except to say he was ‘hideous’. His mother had died mad; his brother was shut up as mad in the dungeons of Versailles; his father was a prisoner in the citadel of Fouras; his sister, a young girl of nineteen, silent, resigned, stoical, spent her days and nights earning the twenty francs that she every week sent her brother. She had refused the aid of her friends, unwilling to share with any one the honour of accomplishing her pious duty. Indeed, one can imagine nothing more ‘hideous!’
For twelve weeks death remained suspended above the heads of the condemned. At last, on the 28th November, at six o'clock in the morning, they were told that they must die. Ferr� jumped out of bed without showing the slightest emotion, declined the visit of the chaplain, wrote to ask the military tribunals for the release of his father, and to his sister that she should have him buried so that his friends would be able to find him again. Rossel, rather surprised at first, afterwards conversed with his clergyman. He wrote a letter demanding that his death should not be avenged — a very useless precaution — and addressed a few thanks to Jesus Christ. For comrade in death they had a sergeant of the 45th line, Bourgeois, who had gone over to the Commune, and who showed the same calm as Ferr�. Rossel was indignant when they put on the handcuffs; Ferr� and Bourgeois disdained to protest.
The day was hardly dawning; it was bitterly cold. Before the Butte of Satory 5,000 men under arms surrounded three white stakes, each one guarded by twelve executioners. Colonel Merlin commanded, thus uniting the three functions of conqueror, judge, and hangman.
Some curious lookers-on, officers and journalists, composed the whole public.
At seven o'clock the carts of the condemned appeared; the drums beat a salute, the trumpets sounded. The prisoners descended, escorted by gendarmes. Rossel, on passing before a group of officers, saluted them. The brave Bourgeois, looking on at the whole drama with an indifferent air, leant against the middle stake. Ferr� came last, dressed in black and smoking a cigar, not a muscle of his face moving. With a firm and even step he walked up and leant against the third stake.
Rossel, attended by his lawyer and his clergyman, asked to be allowed to command the fire. Merlin refused. Rossel wished to shake hands with him, in order to do homage to his sentence. This was refused. During these negotiations Ferr� and Bourgeois remained motionless, silent. In order to put a stop to Rossel’s effusions an officer was obliged to tell him that he was prolonging the torture of the two others. At last they blindfolded him. Ferr� pushed back the bandage, and, fixing his eyeglass, looked the soldiers straight in the face.
The sentence read, the adjutants lowered their sabres, the guns were discharged. Rossel and Bourgeois fell back. Ferr� remained standing; he was only hit in the side. He was again fired at and fell. A soldier placing his chassep�t at his ear blew out his brains.
On a gesture of Merlin a flourish of trumpets burst forth, and, emulating the customs of the cannibals, the troops marched past in triumph before the corpses. What cries of horror the bourgeoisie would have uttered if before the executed hostages the Federals had paraded to the sound of music!
The bodies of Rossel and Ferr� were claimed by their families; that of Bourgeois disappeared in the common grave of the St. Louis Cemetery. The people will not disassociate his memory from that of Ferr�, for they both died with the same courage for the cause they had served with the same devotion.
The Liberal press reserved its tears for Rossel. Some courageous provincial papers did honour to all the victims, and devoted to the hatred of France the Commission of Pardons — ‘the Commission of Assassins,’ as a deputy, Ordinaire junior, said in the Assembly. Prosecuted before juries, all these journals were acquitted.
Two days after the execution of Satory, the Commission of Pardons ordered Gaston Cr�mieux to be killed. Six months had elapsed since his condemnation, and this long delay seemed to make the murder impossible. But the rural Commission wanted to avenge his famous speech of Bordeaux. On the 30th November, at seven o'clock in the morning, Gaston Cr�mieux was led to the Prado, a large plain bordering the sea. He said to his guardians, ‘I will show how a Republican should die.’ He was placed against the same stake where a month before the soldier Paquis had been shot for going over to the insurrection.
Gaston Cr�mieux wished to have his eyes unbandaged and to command the fire. They consented. Then addressing himself to the soldiers, ‘Aim at the chest; do not touch my head. Fire! Vive la R�publique!’ The last word was cut short by death. As at Satory, the dance of the soldiers round the corpse followed.
The death of this young enthusiast made a deep impression in the town. Registers placed at the door of his house filled in a few hours with thousands of signatures. The revolutionaries of Marseilles will not forget his children.
The same day the sixth court avenged the death of Chaudey. This had been ordered and superintended by Raoul Rigault alone. The men who formed the platoon were abroad. Pr�au de V�del, the principal accused, then imprisoned in Sainte P�lagie for a common offence, had only held the lantern. But the jurisprudence of the officers attributed to simple agents the same responsibility as to the chiefs. Pr�au de V�del was condemned to death.
On the 4th December, in the hall of the third court, a kind of phantom, pale-faced and sympathetic, appeared. It was Lisbonne, who for six months had dragged about his wounds of the Chiteau d'Eau. The same before the court-martial as during the Commune and at Buzenval, this bravest of the brave gloried in having fought, and only denied the accusations of pillage. Other judges would have been proud to spare such an enemy; the Versaillese condemned him to death.
Some days after, this same court-martial heard a woman’s voice. ‘I will not defend myself; I will not be defended,’ cried Louise Michel. ‘I belong entirely to the social revolution, and I declare that I accept the responsibility of all my acts. I accept it entirely and without reserve. You accuse me of having participated in the execution of the generals. To this I answer, yes. If I had been at Montmartre, when they wished to fire on the people, I should not have hesitated to order fire myself on those who gave such commands. As to the conflagrations of Paris, yes, I did participate in them. I wanted to oppose a barrier of flames to the invaders of Versailles. I have no accomplices; I acted on my own account.’
Commissar Dailly demanded the penalty of death.
Louise Michel: What I ask of you, you who style yourselves a court-martial, who proclaim yourselves my judges, who do not hide yourselves like the Commission of Pardons, is the field of Satory, where our brothers have already fallen. I must be cut off from society; you have been told to do so. Well, the Commissar of the Republic is right. Since it seems that every heart which beats for liberty has only right to a little lead, I too demand my part. If you let me live, I shall not cease to cry vengeance, and I shall denounce to the vengeance of my brothers the assassins of the Commission of Pardons.
The President: I cannot allow you to go on.
Louise Michel: I have done. If you are not cowards, kill me.
They had not courage to kill her at one blow. She was condemned to transportation to a fortress.
Louise Michel did not stand alone in her courageous attitude. Many others, amongst whom must be mentioned Lemel and Augustine Chiffon, showed the Versaillese what terrible women these Parisians are, even vanquished, even in chains.
The affair of the executions of La Roquette came on at the beginning of 1872. There, as in the Cl�ment-Thomas and Chaudey trials, they had none of the real actors except Genton, who had carried the order. Almost all the witnesses, former hostages, gave evidence with the rage natural to people who have trembled. The prosecution, refusing to believe in an outburst of fury, had built up a ridiculous scaffolding of a court-martial discussing and ordering the death of the prisoners. It asserted that one of the accused had commanded the fire, and he was about to be condemned, in spite of the solemn protests of Genton, when the real chief of the firing-party, who had just been discovered dying in a prison, was brought in. Genton was condemned to death. His advocate had odiously slandered him, then fled, and the court refused to allow him a second defender.
The most important affair which followed was that of the Dominicans of Arcueil. No execution had been less premeditated. These monks had fallen in crossing the Avenue d'Italie, shot down by the men of the 101st. The report accused S�rizier, who at that moment was not even in the Avenue. The only witness called against him said, ‘I do not affirm anything myself; I have heard it said.’ But we know what close bonds unite army and clergy. S�rizier was condemned to death, as was also one of his lieutenants, Bouin, against whom not a single witness could be brought forward. The court took advantage of the occasion to pronounce sentences of death against Wroblewski, who at that time had been at the Butte-aux-Cailles, and against Frankel, who had been fighting at the Bastille.
On the 12th March the affair of the Rue Haxo came on before the sixth court, still presided over by Delaporte. The executioners of the hostages had been no more discoverable than those of the Rue des Rosiers. The indictment fell back upon the director of the prison, Francois, who for a long time had disputed the surrender of his prisoners, and upon twenty-two persons denounced by gossip contradicted at the trial. Not one of the witnesses recognized the accused. Delaporte multiplied his menaces with such a cynicism that the Commissar Rustaud, who had, however, given proofs of his animosity in the preceding trials, could not refrain from exclaiming, ‘But do you want to condemn them all?’ He was the next day replaced by the idiot Charri�re. In spite of all this, the indictment frittered away from hour to hour before the disavowals of the witnesses. Still not one of the prisoners escaped. Seven were condemned to death, nine to hard labour, and the others to transportation.
The Commission of Pardons awaited, chassep�t in hand, the prey given up to them by the courts-martial. On the 22nd of February, 1872, it shot three of the so-called murderers of Cl�ment-Thomas and Lecomte, even those whose innocence had most clearly come out in the trial — Herpin-Lacroix, Lagrange, and Verdagner. Upright at the stake of the 28th November, they cried ‘Vive la Commune!’ and died, their faces radiant. On the 19th March Pr�au de V�del was executed. On the 30th April it was Genton’s turn. The wounds which he had received in May had reopened, and he dragged himself to the Butte on his crutches. Arrived at the stake, he threw them from him, cried ‘Vive la Commune!’ and fell under the fire. On the 25th May the three stakes were again occupied by S�rizier, Bouin, and Boudin, the latter condemned as chief of the platoon which in front of the Tuileries had executed a Versaillese who attempted to prevent the erection of the barricades of the Rue Richeli eu. They said to the soldiers of the platoon, ‘We are children of the people, and you are too. We shall show you that the children of Paris know how to die!’ And they, also, fell, crying ‘Vive la Commune!’
These men who went to the grave so courageously, who with a gesture defied the musket, who, dying, cried that their cause died not, these ringing voices, these steadfast looks, disconcerted the soldiers profoundly. The muskets trembled, and almost within point-blank range they rarely killed at the first discharge. So at the next execution, the 6th July, the Commander Colin, who presided at these shootings, ordered the eyes of the victims bandaged. There were two of them Baudoin, accused of setting fire to the St. Eloi Church, and of killing an individual who had fired at the Federals; and Rouilhac, an insurgent who had shot at a bourgeois who was potting Federals. Both pushed back the sergeants who came to blindfold them. Colin gave the order to tie them to the stake. Three times Baudoin tore assunder the cords; Rouilhac struggled desperately. The priest who came to assist the soldiers received some blows in the chest. At last, overwhelmed, they cried, ‘We die for the good cause.’ They were mangled by the balls. After the march past, an officer of a psychological turn of mind, moving with the tip of his boot the brains that trickled down, remarked to a colleague, ‘It is with this that they thought.’
In June, 1872, all the celebrated cases being disposed of, military justice avenged the death of a Federal, Captain Beaufort. There is but one explanation for this strange fact, which is that Beaufort belonged to the Versailles. We have received important evidence on this head .[252] At all events, if Delescluze or Varlin had been shot by the Federals, Versailles would not have avenged their death.
Three of those accused out of four were present, Deschamps, Denivelle, and Madame Lachaise, the celebrated cantini�re of the 66th. She had followed Beaufort before the council held at the Boulevard Voltaire, and, having heard explanations, had done her best to protect him. The indictment none the less made of her the principal instigator of his death. On the written evidence of a witness who was not to be found, and who had never been confronted with her, the commissar accused Madame Lachaise of having profaned Beaufort’s corpse. At this abominable accusation this noble woman burst into tears. She, as well as Denivelle and Deschamps, were condemned to death.
The obscene imagination of soldiers with Algerian habits taxed itself to pollute the accused. Colonel Dulac, judging an intimate friend of Rigault’s, pretended that their friendship had been of an infamous character. Despite the indignant protests of the prisoner, the wretched officer persisted.
The bourgeois press, far from stigmatizing, applauded. Without truce, without lassitude, since the opening of the courts-martial it accompanied all the trials with the same chorus of imprecations and the same slanders. Some persons having protested against these executions so long after the battle, Francisque Sarcey wrote, ‘The axe ought to be riveted to the hand of the executioner.’
Till then the Commission of Pardons had only killed three at a time. On the 24th of July it slaughtered four — Francois, the director of La Roquette, Aubry, Dalivoust, and De St. Omer, condemned for the affair of the Rue Haxo. De St. Omer was more than suspected, and in the prison his comrades kept aloof from him. Before the muskets they cried ‘Vive la Commune!’ He answered, ‘Down with it!’
On the 18th September, Lolive (accused of having participated in the execution of the Archbishop), Denivelle, and Deschamps were executed. These last cried, ‘Long live the Universal and Social Republic! Down with the cowards!’ On the 22nd January, 1873, nineteen months after the battle in the streets, the Commission of Pardons tied three more victims to its stakes — Philippe, member of the Council of the Commune, guilty of having energetically defended Bercy; Benot, who set fire to the Tuileries; and Decamps, condemned for the conflagration of the Rue de Lille, although they had not been able to bring forward any evidence whatever against him. ‘I die innocent,’ cried he. ‘Down with Thiers!’ Philippe and Benot: ‘Long five the Social Republic! Vive la Commune!’ They fell, not having belied the courage of the soldiers of the Revolution of the 18th March.
This was the last execution at Satory. The blood of twenty-five victims had reddened the stakes of the Commission of Pardons. In 1875 it had a young soldier shot at Vincennes, accused of the death of the detective Vizentini, thrown into the Seine by hundreds of hands at the demonstration of the Bastille.[253]
The movements of the provinces were judged by courts-martial or assize courts , according to the department being or not being in a state of siege. Everywhere the issue of the Parisian struggle had been waited for. Immediately after the defeat of Paris the reaction ran riot. Espivent’s court-martial initiated these trials. He had his Gaveau in Commander Villeneuve, one of the bombarders of the 4th April, his Merlin, and his Boisdenemetz in the colonels Thomassin and Douat. On the 12th June Gaston Cr�mieux, Etienne, P�Iissier, Roux, Bouchet, and all those who could be connected with the movement of the 23rd March appeared before the soldiers. The pretentious block-headedness of Villeneuve served as type of the military prosecutor’s addresses with which France was inundated. Cr�mieux, Etienne, P�lissier, and Roux were condemned to death. This was not enough for the jesuitical bourgeois reaction. Espivent had declared through the Court of Cassation that the department of the Bouches-du-Rh�ne was in a state of siege since the 9th August, 1870, in virtue of a decree by the Empress, which had neither been published in the bulletin of laws, nor been sanctioned by the Senate, nor even promulgated. Provided with this arm, he persecuted all marked out by the hand of the Congregation. The municipal councillor, David Bosc, exdelegate to the Commission, a millionaire shipowner, accused of having stolen a silver watch from a police agent, was only acquitted by a small majority of votes. The next day the colonel-president was replaced by the lieutenant-colonel of the 4th Chasseurs, Donnat, half-mad with absinthe-drinking. A working man, aged seventy-five, was condemned to ten years’ hard labour and twenty years’ deprivation of civil and political rights for having on the 4th September arrested for half an hour a police agent who had sent him to Cayenne in 1852. A crazy old woman, purveyor of the Jesuits, arrested for a few moments on the 4th September, accused the former commander of the Civil Guard of her arrest. Her accusation was contradicted by herself and quite overthrown by alibis and numberless proofs. The ex-commander was condemned to five years’ of prison and ten years’ privation of civil rights. One of the soldier-judges, coming out after committing this crime, said, ‘One must have very profound political convictions to condemn in similar affairs.’ With these cynical collaborators Espivent could satisfy all his hated. He asked the courts of Versailles to deliver up to him the member of the Council of the Commune, Amouroux, delegate for a time at Marseilles. ‘I am prosecuting him for tampering with soldiers,’ wrote Espivent, ‘a crime punished by death; and I am persuaded that this punishment will be applied to him.’
The court-martial of Lyons was not very inferior. Forty-four persons were prosecuted for the movement of the 22nd March, and thirty-two condemned to penalties varying from transportation to imprisonment. The insurrection of the 30th April furnished seventy prisoners, taken at random at Lyons, as was the custom at Versailles. The mayor of the Guilloti�re, Crestin, called as witness, did not recognize amongst them any of those he had seen on that day in his mairie. Presidents of the courts, the Colonels Marion and R�billot.
At Limoges, Dubois and Roubeyrol, democrats esteemed by the whole town, were condemned in default to death, as the principal actors in the movement of the 4th April; two were condemned to twenty years’ imprisonment for having boasted of knowing who had shot at Colonel Billet. Another got ten years for having distributed ammunition.
The verdicts of the jury varied. That of the Basses-Pyr�n�es on the 8th August acquitted Duportal, and the four or five persons accused of the movement of Toulouse. The same aquittal took place at Rhodez, where Digeon and the accused of Narbonne appeared after a preliminary imprisonment of eight months. A sympathetic public filled the hall and the approaches of the tribunal and cheered the accused at their departure. The energetic attitude of Digeon once more showed the strong cast of his character.
The jury of Riom condemned for the affairs of St. Etienne twentyone prisoners, among whom was Amouroux, who had only sent two delegates. A young working man, Caton, distinguished himself by his intelligence and firmness.
The jury of Orl�ans was severe upon the accused of Montargis, all of whom they condemned to prison, and atrocious to those of Cosnes and Neury-sur-Loire, where there had been no resistance. There were twenty-three altogether, of whom three were women. Their whole crime had been carrying about a red flag and crying ‘Vivre Paris! Down with Versailles!’ Malardier, a former representative of the people, who only arrived on the eve of the demonstration, and who had taken no part in it, was condemned to fifteen years’ imprisonment. None of the accused was spared. The proprietors of the Loiret avenged the fright of their fellow-proprietors of the Nievre.
The movements of Coulommiers, Nimes, Dordives, and Voiron gave rise to some convictions.
In the month of June, 1872, the greater part of the work of repression was done. Of the 36,309 [254] prisoners, men, women, and children, without counting the 5,000 military prisoners, to whom the Versailles have confessed, 1,179, said they, had died in their prisons; 22,326 had been liberated after long winter months in the pontoons, the forts, and the prisons; 10,488 brought before the courts-martial, who had condemned 8,525 of them. The persecutions did not cease. On the advent of MacMahon, the 24th May, 1873, there set in a recrudescence. On the 1st January, 1875, the general r�sum� of Versaillese justice gave 10,137 condemnations pronounced in presence of the accused, and 3,313 in default. The sentences passed were distributed thus:
TotalWomenChildren
Condemnations to death2708
Hard labour1029
Transportation in a fortress 3989
Simple transportation3507161
Detention12698
Confinement6410
Hard labour at public works29
Imprisonment from three months or less432
Imprisonment from three months to one year1622501
Imprisonment for more than one year1344154
Banishment322
Surveillance of the police1171
Fines9
Children under 16 sent to houses of correction 56
Total13,44015762
This r�sum� contained neither the sentences pronounced by the courts-martial beyond the jurisdiction of Versailles nor those of the courts of assizes. We must therefore add 15 condemnations to death, 22 to hard labour, 28 to transportation in a fortress, 29 to simple transportation, 74 to detention, 13 to confinement, and a certain number to imprisonment. The total figure of the condemned of Paris and the provinces exceeds 13,700, among whom were 170 women and 62 children.
Three-fourths of the 10,000 condemned while present — 7,418 out of 10,137 — were simple guards or non-commissioned officers, 1,942 subaltern officers. There were only 225 superior officers, 29 members of the Council of the Commune, 49 of the Central Committee. Despite their savage jurisprudence, the inquiries, and the false witnesses, the courts-martial had been unable to bring forward against nine-tenths of the condemned — 9,285 — any other crime than the bearing of arms or the exercise of public functions. Of the 766 condemned for so-called common crimes, 276 were for simple arrests, 171 for the battle in the streets, 132 for crimes classed as ‘others’ by the report, all evidently for acts of war.[255] Notwithstanding the great number of ticket-of-leave men designedly included in these prosecutions, nearly three-fourths of the condemned — 7,119 — had no judiciary antecedents; 524 had incurred condemnation for misdemeanour against public order (political or simple police cases); 2,381 for crimes or misdemeanours, which the report took care not to specify. Finally, this insurrection, provoked and conducted by the foreigner according to the bourgeois press, furnished in all but 396 prisoners of foreign origin.
This is the balance-sheet of 1874. The following years added new condemnations. The number of the courts was reduced, but their institution was maintained and the prosecutions are going on. Even now, six years after the defeat, the arrests and convictions have not ceased.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<p><img src="pics/eleanor.jpg" align="right" hspace="12" alt="eleanor marx in 1886" border="1"></p>
<h1>Introduction</h1>
<p>The following translation of Lissagaray’s <em>Histoire de la Commune</em> was made many years ago, at the express wish of the author, who, besides making many emendations in his work, wrote nearly a hundred pages especially for this English version. The translation, in fact, was made from the <em>Histoire de la Commune </em>as prepared for a second edition — an edition which the French Government would not allow to be published. This explanation is necessary in view of the differences between the translation and the first edition of Lissagaray’s book.</p>
<p>Written in 1876, there are necessarily passages in this history out of date today; as, for example, the references to the prisoners in New Caledonia, the exiles, and the amnesty. But for two reasons I prefer leaving this translation as it was originally. To have it ‘written up to date’ would only be making patchwork of it. Secondly, I am loath to alter the work in any way. It had been entirely revised and corrected by my father. I want it to remain as he knew it.</p>
<p>Lissagaray’s <em>Histoire de la Commune </em>is the only authentic and reliable history as yet written of the most memorable movement of modern times. It is true Lissagaray was a soldier of the Commune, but he has had the courage and honesty to speak the truth. He has not attempted to hide the errors of his party, or to gloss over the fatal weaknesses of the Revolution; and if he has erred, it has been on the side of moderation, in his anxiety not to make a single statement that could not be corroborated by overwhelming proofs of its truth. Wherever it was possible, the statements of the Versaillese in their Parliamentary Inquiries, in their press, and in their books are used in preference to the statements of friends and partisans; and whenever the evidence of Communards is given, it is invariably sifted with scrupulous care. And it is this impartiality, this careful avoidance of any assertion that could be considered doubtful, which should recommend this work to English readers.</p>
<p>In England especially most persons are still quite ignorant of the events which led up to and forced the people of Paris into making that revolution which was to save France from the shame and disgrace of a fourth Empire. To most English people the Commune still spells ‘rapine, fear and lust’, and when they speak of its ‘atrocities’ they have some vague idea of hostages ruthlessly massacred by brutal revolutionises, of houses burnt down by furious petroleuses. Is it not time that English people at last learnt the truth? Is it not time they were reminded that for the sixty-five hostages shot, not by the Commune, but by a few people made mad by the massacre of prisoners by the Versaillese, the troops of law and order shot down thirty thousand men’ women, and children, for the most part long after all fighting had ceased? If any Englishman, after reading Lissagaray’s <em>History of the Commune, </em>still has any doubt as to what the ‘atrocities’ of the Commune really were, he should turn to the Parisian correspondence for May and June, 1871, of the <em>Times, Daily News, and Standard.</em><sup class="enote"><a href="#NB">[NB]</a></sup> There he can learn what kind of ‘order reigned in Paris’ after the glorious victory of Versailles.</p>
<p>Nor is it enough that we should be clear as to the ‘atrocities’ of the Commune. It is time people understood the true meaning of this Revolution; and this can be summed up in a few words. It meant the government of the people by the people. It was the first attempt of the proletariat to govern itself. The workers of Paris expressed this when in their first manifesto they declared they ‘understood it was their imperious duty and their absolute right to render themselves masters of their own destinies by seizing upon governmental power’. The establishment of the Commune meant not the replacing of one form of class rule by another, but the abolishing of all class rule. It meant the substitution of true co-operative, i.e., communist, for capitalistic production, and the participation in this Revolution of workers of all countries meant the internationalizing, not only the nationalising, of the, land and of private property.</p>
<p>And the same men who now cry out against the use of force used force — and what force! — to vanquish the people of Paris. Those who denounce Socialists as mere firebrands and dynamitards used fire and sword to crush the people into submission.</p>
<p>And what has been the result of these massacres, of this slaying of thousands of men, women, and children? Is Socialism dead? Was it drowned in the blood of the people of Paris? Socialism today is a greater power than it has ever been. The bourgeois Republic of France may join hands with the Autocrat of Russia to blot it out; Bismarck may pass repressive laws, and democratic America may follow in his wake — and still it moves! And because Socialism is today a power, because in England even it is ‘in the air’, the time has come for doing justice to the Commune of Paris. The time has come when even the opponents of Socialism will read, at least with patience if not with sympathy, an honest and truthful account of the greatest Socialist movement — thus far — of the century.</p>
<p><em>Eleanor Marx Aveling</em> <br>
June (Whit Week) 1886</p>
<hr class="end">
<a name="NB"></a>
<p><strong>NB</strong> I need but refer readers to <em>The Times’ </em>account of the murders at Moulin Saquet and Clamart, long before the entry of the Versaillese into Paris, and to the accounts in the English press of the wholesale massacres after their entry. Here are a few extracts taken at random:</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The shambles have been established at the end of the Boulevard Malesherbes, and it is a lugubrious spectacle to see each man and women, of all ages and conditions of life, defile past at intervals in that fatal direction. A party of <em>three hundred </em>moved across the boulevard only a few moments ago ... At Satory, on Wednesday, a thousand of the captured insurgents revolted and got rid of their handcuffs ... The soldiers fired into the crowd, and <em>three hundred </em>insurgents were shot... In one of the convoys of prisoners ... a woman was being driven on by a gendarme, who goaded her with the point of his sabre till the blood ran ... M. Galliret halted the column, selected eighty-two [prisoners], and had them shot there and then ... As many as <em>one thousand </em>Communists were shot after their capture (June 1) . . . Huma n life has become so cheap, that a man is shot more readily than a dog. Summary executions are still [long after the fighting had ceased] going on wholesale.’ <em>The Times, </em>May-June 1871.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘Several hundred insurgents who took refuge in the Madeleine were, it is said, bayoneted in the church ... Eleven wagon-loads of dead bodies of insurgents have been buried in the common ditch of Issy ... No quarter was given to any man, woman, or child . . . Batches of as many as <em>fifty</em> and <em>one hundred </em>at a time are shot.’ <em>Daily News,</em> May-June 1871.</p>
<p class="quoteb">‘The wholesale executions continue indiscriminately. Prisoners are taken down in batches to certain ... places where firing-parties are stationed, and deep trenches dug beforehand ... At one of these, the Caserne Napol�on, since last night <em>five hundred</em> persons have been shot... There are invariably women and boys among them ... Prisoners are soon disposed of by a volley and tumbled into a trench, when, if not killed by the shots, death from suffocation must soon put an end to their pain. Two court-martials alone are shooting at the rate of <em>five hundred a day. Two thousand </em>dead bodies are collected round the Panth�on.’ <em>Standard</em>, June, 1871.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Introduction
The following translation of Lissagaray’s Histoire de la Commune was made many years ago, at the express wish of the author, who, besides making many emendations in his work, wrote nearly a hundred pages especially for this English version. The translation, in fact, was made from the Histoire de la Commune as prepared for a second edition — an edition which the French Government would not allow to be published. This explanation is necessary in view of the differences between the translation and the first edition of Lissagaray’s book.
Written in 1876, there are necessarily passages in this history out of date today; as, for example, the references to the prisoners in New Caledonia, the exiles, and the amnesty. But for two reasons I prefer leaving this translation as it was originally. To have it ‘written up to date’ would only be making patchwork of it. Secondly, I am loath to alter the work in any way. It had been entirely revised and corrected by my father. I want it to remain as he knew it.
Lissagaray’s Histoire de la Commune is the only authentic and reliable history as yet written of the most memorable movement of modern times. It is true Lissagaray was a soldier of the Commune, but he has had the courage and honesty to speak the truth. He has not attempted to hide the errors of his party, or to gloss over the fatal weaknesses of the Revolution; and if he has erred, it has been on the side of moderation, in his anxiety not to make a single statement that could not be corroborated by overwhelming proofs of its truth. Wherever it was possible, the statements of the Versaillese in their Parliamentary Inquiries, in their press, and in their books are used in preference to the statements of friends and partisans; and whenever the evidence of Communards is given, it is invariably sifted with scrupulous care. And it is this impartiality, this careful avoidance of any assertion that could be considered doubtful, which should recommend this work to English readers.
In England especially most persons are still quite ignorant of the events which led up to and forced the people of Paris into making that revolution which was to save France from the shame and disgrace of a fourth Empire. To most English people the Commune still spells ‘rapine, fear and lust’, and when they speak of its ‘atrocities’ they have some vague idea of hostages ruthlessly massacred by brutal revolutionises, of houses burnt down by furious petroleuses. Is it not time that English people at last learnt the truth? Is it not time they were reminded that for the sixty-five hostages shot, not by the Commune, but by a few people made mad by the massacre of prisoners by the Versaillese, the troops of law and order shot down thirty thousand men’ women, and children, for the most part long after all fighting had ceased? If any Englishman, after reading Lissagaray’s History of the Commune, still has any doubt as to what the ‘atrocities’ of the Commune really were, he should turn to the Parisian correspondence for May and June, 1871, of the Times, Daily News, and Standard.[NB] There he can learn what kind of ‘order reigned in Paris’ after the glorious victory of Versailles.
Nor is it enough that we should be clear as to the ‘atrocities’ of the Commune. It is time people understood the true meaning of this Revolution; and this can be summed up in a few words. It meant the government of the people by the people. It was the first attempt of the proletariat to govern itself. The workers of Paris expressed this when in their first manifesto they declared they ‘understood it was their imperious duty and their absolute right to render themselves masters of their own destinies by seizing upon governmental power’. The establishment of the Commune meant not the replacing of one form of class rule by another, but the abolishing of all class rule. It meant the substitution of true co-operative, i.e., communist, for capitalistic production, and the participation in this Revolution of workers of all countries meant the internationalizing, not only the nationalising, of the, land and of private property.
And the same men who now cry out against the use of force used force — and what force! — to vanquish the people of Paris. Those who denounce Socialists as mere firebrands and dynamitards used fire and sword to crush the people into submission.
And what has been the result of these massacres, of this slaying of thousands of men, women, and children? Is Socialism dead? Was it drowned in the blood of the people of Paris? Socialism today is a greater power than it has ever been. The bourgeois Republic of France may join hands with the Autocrat of Russia to blot it out; Bismarck may pass repressive laws, and democratic America may follow in his wake — and still it moves! And because Socialism is today a power, because in England even it is ‘in the air’, the time has come for doing justice to the Commune of Paris. The time has come when even the opponents of Socialism will read, at least with patience if not with sympathy, an honest and truthful account of the greatest Socialist movement — thus far — of the century.
Eleanor Marx Aveling
June (Whit Week) 1886
NB I need but refer readers to The Times’ account of the murders at Moulin Saquet and Clamart, long before the entry of the Versaillese into Paris, and to the accounts in the English press of the wholesale massacres after their entry. Here are a few extracts taken at random:
‘The shambles have been established at the end of the Boulevard Malesherbes, and it is a lugubrious spectacle to see each man and women, of all ages and conditions of life, defile past at intervals in that fatal direction. A party of three hundred moved across the boulevard only a few moments ago ... At Satory, on Wednesday, a thousand of the captured insurgents revolted and got rid of their handcuffs ... The soldiers fired into the crowd, and three hundred insurgents were shot... In one of the convoys of prisoners ... a woman was being driven on by a gendarme, who goaded her with the point of his sabre till the blood ran ... M. Galliret halted the column, selected eighty-two [prisoners], and had them shot there and then ... As many as one thousand Communists were shot after their capture (June 1) . . . Huma n life has become so cheap, that a man is shot more readily than a dog. Summary executions are still [long after the fighting had ceased] going on wholesale.’ The Times, May-June 1871.
‘Several hundred insurgents who took refuge in the Madeleine were, it is said, bayoneted in the church ... Eleven wagon-loads of dead bodies of insurgents have been buried in the common ditch of Issy ... No quarter was given to any man, woman, or child . . . Batches of as many as fifty and one hundred at a time are shot.’ Daily News, May-June 1871.
‘The wholesale executions continue indiscriminately. Prisoners are taken down in batches to certain ... places where firing-parties are stationed, and deep trenches dug beforehand ... At one of these, the Caserne Napol�on, since last night five hundred persons have been shot... There are invariably women and boys among them ... Prisoners are soon disposed of by a volley and tumbled into a trench, when, if not killed by the shots, death from suffocation must soon put an end to their pain. Two court-martials alone are shooting at the rate of five hundred a day. Two thousand dead bodies are collected round the Panth�on.’ Standard, June, 1871.
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<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<p><img src="pics/favre.jpg" hspace="12" align="right" alt="jules favre" border="1"></p>
<h1>Prologue</h1>
<h5>How the Prussians got Paris and the Rurals France</h5>
<p class="quoteb">Daring — this word sums up all the politics of the day.<br>
(St. Just’s Report to the Convention)</p>
<p><em>August 9, 1870</em> — In six days the Empire has lost three battles. Douai, Frossart, MacMahon have allowed themselves to be isolated, surprised, crushed. Alsace is lost, the Moselle laid bare. The dumb-founded Ministry has convoked the Chamber. Ollivier, in dread of a demonstration, denounces it beforehand as ‘Prussian’. But since eleven in the morning an immense agitated crowd occupies the Place de la Concorde, the quays, and surrounds the Corps L�gislatif.</p>
<p>Paris is waiting for the word from the deputies of the Left. Since the announcement of the defeat they have become the only moral authority. Bourgeoisie, workingmen, all rally round them. The workshops have turned their army into the streets, and at the head of the different groups one sees men of tried energy. </p>
<p>The Empire totters — it has now only to fall. The troops drawn up before the Corps L�gislatif are greatly excited, ready to turn tail in spite of the decorated and grumbling Marshal y d'Hilliers. The people cry, ‘To the frontier’. Officers answer aloud, ‘Our is not here’.</p>
<p>In the Salle des Pas Perdus well-known Republicans, the men of the clubs, who have forced their way in, roughly challenge the Imperial deputies, speak loudly of proclaiming the Republic. The pale-faced Mamelukes <span class="context">[originally a militia of Egyptian slave-soldiers, here used to mean the Right.]</span> steal behind the groups. M. Thiers arrives and exclaims: ‘Well, then, make your republic!’ When the President, Schneider, passes to the chair, he is received with cries of ‘Resign!’</p>
<p><img src="pics/gambetta.jpg" hspace="12" align="right" alt="gambetta" border="1"></p>
<p>The deputies of the Left are surrounded by delegates from without. ‘What are you waiting for? We are ready. Only show yourselves under the colonnades at the gates.’ The honourable gentlemen seem confounded, stupefied. ‘Are there enough of you? Is it not better to put it off till tomorrow?’ There are indeed only 1 00,000 men ready. Someone arrives and tells Gambetta, ‘There are several thousand of us at the Place Bourbon.’ Another, the writer of this history, says, ‘Make sure of the situation today, when it may ‘Still. be saved. Tomorrow, having become desperate it will be forced upon you.’ But these brains seem paralysed; no word escapes these gaping mouths.</p>
<p>The sitting opens. Jules Favre proposes to this base Chamber, the abettor of our disasters, the humus of the Empire, to seize upon the government. The Mamelukes rise up in dudgeon, and Jules Simon, hair on end, returns to us in the Salle des Pas Perdus. ‘They threaten to shoot us,’ he shrieks: ‘I descended into the midst of the hall and said, “Well, shoot us”.’ We exclaim, ‘Put an end to this.’ ‘Yes,’ says he, ‘we must make an end of it,’ — and he returns to the Chamber.</p>
<p>And thus ended their threatening looks. The Mamelukes, who know their Left, recover their self-assurance. throw Ollivier overboard and form a <em>coup d'�tat </em>Ministry. Schneider precipitately breaks up the sitting in order to get rid of the crowd. The people, feebly repulsed by the soldiers, repair in masses to the bridges, follow- those who leave the Chamber, expecting every moment to hear the Republic proclaimed. M. Jules Simon, out of reach of the bayonets, makes. a heroic discourse, and convokes the people to meet the next day at the Place de la Concorde. The next day the police occupy all the approaches.</p>
<p>Thus the Left abandoned to Napoleon III our two last armies. One effort would have sufficed to overthrow this pasteboard Empire. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n1">[1]</a></sup> The people instinctively offered their help to render the nation unto herself. The Left repulsed them, refused to save the country by a riot, and, confining their efforts to a ridiculous motion, left to the Mamelukes the care of saving France. The Turks in 1876 showed more intelligence and elasticity.</p>
<p>During three weeks it was the story of Byzantium all over again — the fettered nation sinking into the abyss in the face of its motionless governing classes. All Europe cried, ‘Beware!’ They alone heard not. The masses, deceived by a braggart and corrupt press, might ignore the danger, lull themselves with vain hopes; but the deputies have, must have, their hands full of crushing truths. They conceal them. The Left exhausts itself in exclamations. On the 12th M. Gambetta cries, ‘We must wage Republican war’ — and sits down again. On the 13th Jules Favre demands the creation of a Committee of Defence. It is refused. He utters no syllable. On the 20th the Ministry announces that Bazaine has forced three army corps into the quarries of Jaumont; the next day the whole European press related, on the contrary, that Bazaine, three times beaten, had been thrown back upon Metz by 200,000 Germans. And no deputy rises to challenge the liars! Since the 26th they have known MacMahon’s insane march upon Metz, exposing the last army of France, a mob of 80,000 conscripts, and vanquished, to 200,000 victorious Germans. M. Thiers, again restored to favour since the disasters, demonstrates in the committees and in the lobbies that this march is the way to utter ruin. The extreme Left says and puts it about that all is lost and of all these responsible persons seeing the state ship tempest-tossed, not one raises his hand to seize the helm.</p>
<p>Since 1813 France had seen no such collapse of the governing classes. The ineffable dastardliness of the Cent jours <span class="context">[the Hundred Days of 1815 between Napoleon I’s return from exile on the island of Elba until his defeat at Waterloo]</span> pales before this superior cowardice; for here Tartuffe <span class="context">[symbol of hypocrisy, from a play by Moli�re]</span> is grafted upon Trimalcion. <span class="context">[Nero-like character in a play by Petronius]</span> Thirteen months later, at Versailles, I hear, amidst enthusiastic applause, the Empire apostrophized, ‘Varus <span class="context">[Roman general, he committed suicide after his legions had been destroyed]</span>, give us back our legions.’ Who speaks, who applauds thus? The same great bourgeoisie, which, for eighteen years mute and bowed to the dust, offered their legions to Varus. The bourgeoisie accepted the Second Empire from fear of Socialism, even as their fathers had submitted to the first to make an end of the Revolution. Napoleon I rendered the bourgeoisie two services not overpaid by his apotheosis. He gave them an iron centralization and sent to their graves 15,000 wretches still kindled by the flame of the Revolution, who at any moment might have claimed the public lands granted to them. But he left the same bourgeoisie saddled for all masters. When they possessed themselves of the parliamentary government, to which Mirabeau wished to raise them at one bound, they were incapable of governing. Their mutiny of 1830, turned into a revolution by the people, made the belly master. The great bourgeois of 1830, like him of 1790, had but one thought — to gorge himself with privileges, to arm the bulwarks in defence of his domains, to perpetuate the proletariat. The fortune of his country is nothing to him, so that he fatten. To lead, to compromise France, the parliamentary king has as free license as Bonaparte. When by a new outburst of the people the bourgeoisie are compelled to seize the helm, after three years, in spite of massacre and proscription, it slips out of their palsied hands into those of the first comer.</p>
<p>From 1851 to 1869 they relapse into the same state as after the 18th Brumaire. Their privileges safe, they allow Napoleon III to plunder France, make her the vassal of Rome, dishonour her in Mexico, ruin her finances, vulgarize debauchery. All-powerful by their retainers and their wealth, they do not risk a ‘man, a dollar, for the sake of protesting. In 1869 the pressure from without raises them to the verge of power; a little strength of will and the government is theirs. They have but the desires of the eunuch. At the first sign of the impotent master they kiss the rod that smote them on 2nd December, making room for the plebiscite which rebaptizes the Empire.</p>
<p>Bismarck prepared the war, Napoleon Ill wanted it, the great bourgeoisie looked on. They might have stopped it by an earnest gesture. M. Thiers contented himself with a grimace. He saw in this war our certain ruin; he knew our terrible inferiority in everything; he could have united the Left, the <em>tiers-parti, </em>the journalists, have made palpable to them the folly of the attack, and, supported by this strength of opinion, have said to the Tuileries, to Paris if needs be, ‘War is impossible; we shall combat it as treason.’ He, anxious only to clear himself, simply demanded the despatches instead of speaking the true word, ‘You have no chance of success.’ <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n2">[2]</a></sup> And these great bourgeois, who would not have risked the least part of their fortunes without the most serious guarantees, staked 100,000 lives and the milliards of France on the word of a Leboeuf and the equivocations of a Grammont. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n3">[3]</a></sup></p>
<p>And what then is the lower middle class doing meanwhile? This lean class, which penetrates everything — industry, commerce, the administration — mighty by encompassing the people, so vigorous, so ready in the first days of our Hegira, <span class="context">[or hijrrah, a Muslim term meaning ‘emigration’, but used for the start of a new era]</span> will it not, as in 1792, rise for the common weal? Alas! it has been spoilt under the hot corruption of the Empire. For many years it has lived at random, isolating itself from the proletariat, whence it issued but yesterday, and whither the great barons of Capital will hurl it back again tomorrow. No more of that fraternity with the people, of that zeal for reform, which manifested themselves from 1830 to 1848. With its bold initiative, its revolutionary instinct, it loses also the consciousness of its force. Instead of representing itself, as it might so well do, it goes about in quest of representatives among the Liberals.</p>
<p>The friend of the people who will write the history of Liberalism in France wig save us many a convulsion. Sincere Liberalism would be folly in, a country where the governing classes, refusing to concede anything, constrain every honest man to become a revolutionise. But it was never anything else than the Jesuitism of liberty, a trick of the bourgeoisie to isolate the workmen. From Bailly to Jules Favre, the moderates have masked the manoeuvres of despotism, buried our revolutions, conducted the great massacres of proletarians. The old clear-sighted Parisian sections hated them more than the down-right reactionists. Twice Imperial despotism rehabilitated them, and the lower middle class, soon forgetting their true part, accepted as defenders those who pretended to be vanquished like themselves. The men who had made abortive the movement of 1848 and paved the way for the 2nd December thus became during the darkness which followed it the acclaimed vindicators of ravished liberty. At the first dawn they appeared what they had ever been — the enemies of the working class. Under the Empire the Left never condescended to concern itself with the interests of the workmen. These Liberals never found for them a word, a protestation, even such as the Chambers of 1830-1848 sometimes witnessed. The young lawyers whom they had affiliated to themselves soon revealed their designs, rallying to the Liberal Empire, some openly, like Ollivier and Darimon, others with prudence, like Picard. For the timid or ambitious they founded the ‘open Left’, a bench of candidates for public office; and in 1870 a number of Liberals indeed solicited official functions. For the ‘intransigeants’ there was the ‘closed Left’, where the irreconcilable dragons Gambetta, Cr�mieux, Arago, Pelletan guarded the pure principles. lie chiefs towered in the centre. These two groups of augurs thus held every fraction of bourgeois opposition — the timorous and the intrepid. After the plebiscite they became the holy synod, the uncontested chiefs of the lower middle class, more and more incapable of governing itself, and alarmed at the Socialist movement, behind which they showed it the hand of the Emperor. It gave them full powers, shut its eyes, and allowed itself to drift gradually towards the parliamentary Empire, big with portfolios for its patrons. The thunderbolt of the galvanized it into life, but only for a moment. At the bidding of the deputies to keep quiet, the lower middle class, the mother of the 10th August, docilely bent its head and let the foreigner plunge his into the very bosom of France.</p>
<p>Poor France! Who will save thee? the humble, the poor, those who for six years contended for thee with the Empire.</p>
<p>While the upper classes sell the nation for a few hours of rest, and the Liberals seek to feather their nests under the Empire, a handful of men, without arms, unprotected, rise up against the still all-powerful despot. On the one hand, young men who are part of the bourgeoisie have gone over to the people, faithful children of 1789, resolved to continue the work of the Revolution; on the other hand, working men unite for the study and the conquest of the rights of labour. In vain the Empire attempts to split their forces, to seduce the working men. These see the snare, hiss the professors of Caesarian socialism, and from 1863, without journals, without a tribune, affirm themselves as a class, to the great scandal of the Liberal sycophants, maintaining that 1789 has equalized all classes. In 1867 they descend into the streets, make a demonstration at the tomb of Manin <span class="context">[Daniel Manin (1804-1857), an Italian nationalist leader who died an exile in France]</span>, and, despite the bludgeons of the sbirri, protest against Mentana. <span class="context">[village where Garibaldi’s troops were defeated by the French in 1867]</span> At this, appearance of a revolutionary. socialist party the Left gnashes its teeth. When some working men, ignorant of their own history, ask Jules Favre if the Liberal bourgeoisie will support them on the day of their rising for the Republic, the leader of the Left impudently answers, ‘Gentlemen, workmen, you have made the Empire; it is your business to unmake it.’ And. Picard says, ‘Socialism does not exist, or at any rate ‘we will not treat with it.’</p>
<p>Thus set right for the future, the working men continue the struggle single-handed. Since the re-opening of the public meetings they fill the halls, and, in spite of persecution and imprisonment, harass, undermine the Empire, taking advantage of every accident to inflict a blow. On the 26th October 1869 they threaten to march on the Corps L�gislatif; in November they insult the Tuileries by the election of Rochefort; in December they goad the Government by the <em>Marseillaise; </em>in January, 1870, they go 200,000 strong to the funeral of Victor Noir, and, well directed, would have swept away the throne.</p>
<p>The Left, terrified at this multitude, which threatens to overwhelm them, brands their leaders as desperados or as police agents. They, however, keep to the fore, unmasking the Left, defying them to discussion, keeping up at the same time a running fire on the Empire, They form the vanguard against the plebiscite. At the war rumours they are the first to make a stand. The old dregs of chauvinism, stirred by the Bonapartists, discharge their muddy waters. The Liberals remain impassible or applaud; the working men stop the way. On the 15th July, at the very same hour when Ollivier from the tribune invokes war with a light heart, the revolutionary socialists crowd the boulevards crying, <em>Vive la paix! </em>and singing the pacific refrain -</p>
<p class="quoteb">The people are our brothers<br>
And the tyrants our enemies.</p>
<p>From the Ch�teau d'Eau to the Boulevard St. Denis they are applauded, but are hissed in the Boulevards Bonne Nouvelle and Montmartre, and come to blows with certain bands shouting for war.</p>
<p>The next day they meet again at the Bastille, and parade the streets, Ranvier, a painter on porcelain, well known in Belleville, marching at their head with a banner. In the Faubourg Montmartre the <em>sergents-de-ville </em>charge them with drawn swords.</p>
<p>Unable to influence the bourgeoisie, they turn to the working men of Germany, as they had done in 1869: ‘Brothers, we protest against the war, we who wish for peace, labour, and liberty. Brothers, do not listen to the hirelings who seek to deceive you as to the real wishes of France.’ Their noble appeal received its reward. In 1869 the students of Berlin had answered the pacific address of the French students with insults. The working men of Berlin in 1870 spoke thus to the working men of France: ‘We too wish for peace, labour, and liberty. We know that on both sides of the Rhine there are brothers with whom we are ready to die for the Universal Republic.’ Great prophetic words! Let them be inscribed on the first page of the Golden Book just opened by the workmen.</p>
<p>Thus towards the end of the Empire there was no life, no activity, save in the ranks of the proletariat and the young men of the middle class who had joined them. They alone showed some political courage, and in the midst of the general paralysis of the month of July 1870, they alone found the energy to attempt at least the salvation of France.</p>
<p>They lacked authority; they failed to carry with them the lower middle class, for which they also combat, because of their utter want of political experience. How could they have acquired it during eighty years, when the ruling class not only withheld fight from them, but even the right to enlighten themselves? By an internal Machiavellianism they forced them to grope their way in the dark, so that they might hand them over the more easily to dreamers and sectarians. Under the Empire, when the public meetings and journals reappeared, the political education of the workmen had still to be effected. Many, abused by morbid minds, in the belief that their affranchisement depended on a <em>coup-de-main </em>gave themselves up to whoever spoke of overthrowing the Empire. Others, convinced that even the most thorough-going bourgeois were hostile to Socialism, and only courted the people in furtherance of their ambitious plans, wanted the workmen to constitute themselves into groups independent of all tutelage. These different currents crossed each other. The chaotic state of the party of action was laid bare in its journal, the<em> Marseillaise,</em> a hot mish-mash of doctrinaires and desperate writers united by hatred of the Empire, but without definite views and above all, without discipline. Much time was wanted to cool down the first effervescence and get rid of the romantic rubbish which twenty years of oppression and want of study had made fashionable. However, the influence of the Socialists began to prevail, and no doubt with time they would have classified their ideas, drawn up their programme, eliminated the mere spouters, entered upon serious action. Already, in 1869, workingmen’s societies, founded for mutual credit, resistance and study, had united in a Federation, whose headquarters were the Place de la Corderie du Temple. The International setting forth the most adequate idea of the revolutionary movement of our century, under the guidance of Varlin, a bookbinder of rare intelligence, of Duval, Theisz, Frankel, and a few devoted men, was beginning to gain Power in France. It also met at the Corderie, and urged on the more slow and reserved workmen’s societies. The public meetings of 1870 no longer resembled the earlier ones; the people wanted useful discussions. Men like Milli�re, Lefran�ais, Vermorel, Longuet, etc. seriously competed with the mere declaimers. But many years would have been required for the development of the party of labour, hampered by young bourgeois adventurers in search of a reputation, Encumbered with conspiracy-mongers and romantic visionaries, still Ignorant of the administrative and political mechanism of the bourgeois regime which they attacked. </p>
<p>Just before the war some discipline was attempted. Some tried to move the deputies of the left and met them at Cr�mieux’s. They found them stupefied, more afraid of a <em>coup-d'�tat </em>than of the Prussian victories. Cr�mieux, pressed to act, answered naively, ‘Let us wait for a new disaster, as, for instance, the fall of Strasburg.’</p>
<p>It was indeed necessary to wait, for without these shadows nothing could be done. The Parisian lower middle class believed in the extreme Left, as it had believed in our armies. Those who wished to do without them failed. On the 14th the friends of Blanqui attempted to raise the outlying districts, attacked the quarters of the firemen of La Villette, and put the sergents-de-ville to flight. Masters of the field, they traversed the boulevard up to Belleville, crying, <em>Vtve la</em> <em>R�publique! Death to the Prussians!</em> No one joined them. The crowd looked on from afar, astonished, motionless, rendered suspicious by the police agents, who thus drew them off from the real enemy — the Empire. The Left pretended to believe in the Prussian agent, to reassure the bourgeoisie, and Gambetta demanded the immediate trial of the prisoners of La Villette. The Minister Palikao had to remind him that certain forms must be observed, even by military justice. The court-martial condemned ten to death, although almost all the accused had had nothing to do with the affray. Some true-hearted men, wishing to prevent these executions, went to Michelet, who wrote a touching letter on their behalf. The Empire had no time to carry out the sentences.</p>
<p>Since the 25th MacMahon was leading his army into the snares laid by Moltke. On the 29th, surprised, and beaten at Beaumont l'Argonne, he knew himself over-reached, and yet pushed forward. Palikao had written to him on the 27th: ‘If you abandon Bazaine we shall have the Revolution in Paris.’ And to ward off the Revolution he exposed France. On the 30th he threw his troops into the pit of Sedan; on the 1st September the army was surrounded by 200,000 enemies, and 700 cannons crowned the heights. The next day Napoleon III delivered up his sword to the King of Prussia. The telegraph announced it; all Europe knew it that same night. The deputies, however, were silent; they remained so on the 3rd. On the 4th only, at midnight, after Paris had passed through a day of feverish excitement, they made up their minds to speak. Jules Favre demanded the abolition of the Empire and a Commission charged with the defence, but took care not to touch the Chamber. During the day some men of tried energy had attempted to raise the boulevards, and in the evening an anxious crowd pressed against the railings of the Corps L�gislatif, crying: <em>Vive la R�publique. </em>Gambetta met them and said, ‘You are wrong; we must remain united; make no revolution.’ Jules Favre surrounded on his leaving the Chamber, strove to calm the people.</p>
<p>If Paris had been guided by the Left, France would have capitulated that very hour more shamefully than Napoleon III. But on the morning of the 4th of September the people assemble, and amongst them National Guards armed with their muskets. The astonished gendarmes give way to them. Little by little the Corps L�gislatif is invaded. At ten o'clock notwithstanding the desperate efforts of the Left, the crowd fills the galleries. It is time. The Chamber, on the point of forming a Ministry, try to seize the government. The Left support this combination with all its might, waxing indignant at the mere mention of a Republic. When that cry bursts forth from the galleries, Gambetta makes unheard-of efforts and conjures the people to await the result of the deliberations of the Chamber — a result known before hand. It is the project of M. Thiers: a Government Commission named by the Assembly; peace demanded and accepted at any price; after that disgrace, the parliamentary monarchy. Happily a new crowd of invaders bursts its way through the doors, while the occupants of the galleries glide into the hall. The people expel the deputies. Gambetta, forced to the tribune, is obliged to announce the abolition of the Empire. The crowd, wanting more than this, asks for the Republic, and carries off the deputies to proclaim it at the H�tel-de-Ville.</p>
<p>This was already in the hands of the people. In the Salle du Tr�ne were some of those who for a month had attempted to rouse public opinion. First on the ground, they might, with a little discipline, have influenced the constitution of the government. The Left surprised them haranguing, and, incited by an acclaiming multitude, Jules Favre took the chair, which Milli�re gave up to him, saying, ‘At the present moment there is but one matter at stake — the expulsion of the Prussians.’ <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n4">[4]</a></sup> Jules Favre, Jules Simon, Jules Ferry, Gambetta, Cr�mieux, Emmanuel Arago, Glais-Bizoin, Pelletan, Gamier-Pages, Picard, uniting, proclaimed themselves the Government, and read their own names to the crowd, which answered by adding those of men like Delescluze, Ledru-Rollin, Blanqui. They, however, declared they would accept no colleagues but the deputies of Paris. The crowd applauded. This frenzy of just-emancipated serfs made the Left masters. They were clever enough to admit Rochefort.</p>
<p>They next applied to General Trochu, named governor of Paris by Napoleon. This general had become the idol of the Liberals because he had sulked a little with the Empire.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n5">[5]</a></sup> His whole military glory consisted in a few pamphlets. The Left had seen much of him during the last crisis. Having attained to power, it begged him to direct the defence. He asked, firstly, a place for God in the ne ‘ w regime; secondly, for himself the presidency of the council. He obtained everything. The future will show what secret bond so quickly united the men of the Left to the loyal Breton who had promised ‘to die on the steps of the Tuileries in defence of the dynasty’.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n6">[6]</a></sup></p>
<p>Twelve individuals thus took possession of France. They invoked no other title than their mandate as representatives of Paris, and declared themselves legitimate by popular acclamation. ‘</p>
<p>In the evening the International and syndicates of the workmen sent delegates to the H�tel-de-Ville. They had on the same day sent a new address to the German working men. Their fraternal duty fulfilled, the French workmen gave themselves up the defence. Let the Government organize it and they would stay by it. The most suspicious were taken in. On the 7th, in the first number of his paper La <em>Patrie en Danger, </em>Blanqui and his friends offered the Government their most energetic, their absolute co-operation.</p>
<p>All Paris abandoned itself to the men of the H�tel-de-Ville, forgetting their late defections, investing them with the grandeur of the danger. To seize, to monopolize the government at such a moment, seemed a stroke of audacity of which genius alone is capable. Paris, deprived for eighty years of her municipal liberties, accepted as mayor the lachrymose Etienne Arago. In the twenty arrondissements he named the mayors he liked, and they again named the adjuncts agreeable to themselves. But Arago announced early elections and spoke of reviving the great days of 1792. At this moment Jules Favre, proud as Danton, cried to Prussia, to Europe: ‘We will cede neither an inch of our territories nor a stone of our fortresses,’ and Paris rapturously applauded this dictatorship announcing itself with words so heroic. On the 14th when Trochu held the review of the National Guard, 250,000 men stationed in the boulevards, the Place de la Concorde, and the Champs-Elys�es cheered enthusiastically, and renewed a vow like that of their fathers on the morning of Valmy.</p>
<p>Yes, Paris gave herself up without reserve — incurable confidence — to that same Left to which she had been forced to do violence in order to make her revolution. Her outburst of will lasted but for an hour. The Empire once overthrown, she re-abdicated. In vain did far-seeing patriots try to keep her on the alert; in vain did Blanqui write, ‘Paris is no more impregnable than we were invincible. Paris, mystified by a braggart press, ignores the greatness of the peril; Paris abuses confidence.’ Paris abandoned herself to her new masters, obstinately shutting her eyes. And yet each day brought with it new ill omens. The shadow of the siege approached, and the Government of Defence, far from evacuating the superfluous mouths, crowded the 200,000 inhabitants of the suburbs into the town. The exterior works did not advance. Instead of throwing all Paris into the work, and taking these descendants of the levellers of the Camp-de-Mars out of the enceinte in troops of 100,000 drums beating, banners flying, Trochu abandoned the earthworks to the ordinary contractors. The heights of Chatillon, the key to our forts of the south, had hardly been surveyed, when on the 19th the enemy presented himself, sweeping from the plateau an affrighted troop of zouaves and soldiers who did not wish to fight. The following day, that Paris which the press had declared could not be invested, was surrounded and cut off from France.</p>
<p>This gross ignorance very soon alarmed the Revolutionists. They had promised their support, but not blind faith. Since the 4th of September, wishing to centralize the forces of the party of action for the defence and the maintenance of the Republic, they had invited the public meetings in each arrondissement to name a Committee of Vigilance charged to control the mayors and to delegate four members to a Central Committee of the twenty arrondissements. This tumultuous mode of election had resulted in a committee composed of working men, employees and authors, known in the revolutionary movements of the last years. This committee had established itself in the hall of the Rue de la Corderie, lent by the International and the Federation of trade unions.</p>
<p>These had almost suspended their work, the service of the National Guard absorbing all their activity. Some of their members again met m the Committee of Vigilance and in the Central Committee, which caused the latter to be erroneously attributed to the International. On the 4th it demanded by a manifesto the election of the municipalities, the police to be placed in their hands, the election and control of all the magistrates, absolute freedom of the press, public meeting and association, the expropriation of all articles of primary necessity, their distribution by allowance, the arming of all citizens, the sending of commissioners to rouse the provinces. But Paris was then infected with a fit of confidence. The bourgeois journals denounced the committee as Prussian. The names of some of the signers were, however, well known in the meetings and to the press: Ranvier, Milli�re, Longuet, Vall�s, Lafran�ais, Mallon, etc. Their posters were torn down.</p>
<p>On the 20th, after Jules Favre’s application to Bismarck, the Committee held a large meeting in the Alcazar and sent a deputation to the H�tel-de-Ville to demand war ‘to the end’ and the early election of the Commune of Paris. Jules Ferry gave his word of honour that the government would not treat at any price, and announced the municipal elections for the end of the month. Two days later a decree postponed them indefinitely.</p>
<p>Thus this Government, which in seventeen days had prepared nothing, which had allowed itself to be blocked up without even a struggle refused the advice of Paris, and more than ever arrogated to itself the right of directing the defence. Did it then possess the secret of victory? Trochu had just said, ‘Ale resistance is a heroic madness;’ Picard, ‘We shall defend ourselves for honour’s sake, but all hope is chimerical;’ the elegant Cr�mieux, ‘The Prussians will enter Paris like a knife goes into butter;’ <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n7">[7]</a></sup> the chief of Trochu’s staff, ‘We cannot defend ourselves; we have decided not to defend ourselves; <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n8">[8]</a></sup> and, instead of honestly warning Paris, saying, ‘Capitulate at once or, conduct the combat yourselves,’ these men, who declared defence impossible, claimed its undivided direction.</p>
<p>What then is their aim? To negotiate. Since the first defeats they have no other. The reverses which exalted our fathers only made the Left store cowardly than the Imperialist deputies. On the 7th of August Jules Favre, Jules Simon, and Pelletan had said to Schneider, ‘We cannot hold out; we must come to terms as soon as possible.’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n9">[9]</a></sup> All the following days the Left had only one policy — to urge the Chamber to possess itself of the government in order to negotiate, hoping to get into office afterwards. Hardly established, these defenders sent M. Thiers all over Europe to beg for peace, and Jules Favre to run after Bismarck to ask his conditions <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n10">[10]</a></sup> — a step that revealed to the Prussian with what tremblers he had to deal.</p>
<p>When all Paris cried to them, ‘Defend us; drive back the enemy,’ they applauded, accepted, but said to themselves, ‘You shall capitulate.’ There is no more crying treason in history. The asinine confidence of the immense majority no more diminishes the crime than the foolishness of the dupe excuses the cheater. Did the men of the 4th September, yes or no, betray the mandate they received? ‘Yes,’ will be the verdict of the future.</p>
<p>A tacit mandate, it is true, but so clear, so formal, that all Paris started at the news of the proceedings at Ferri�res. If the Defenders had gone a step farther, they would have been swept away. They were obliged to adjourn, to give way to what they termed the ‘madness of the siege,’ to simulate a defence. In point of fact, they did not abandon their idea for an hour, esteeming themselves the only men in Paris who had not lost their heads.</p>
<p>‘There shall be fighting since those Parisians will have it so, but only with the view to soften Bismarck.’ On his return from the review. this scene of hopeful enthusiasm manifested by 250,000 armed men is amid to have affected Trochu, who announced that it would perhaps be possible to hold the ramparts. Such was the maximum of his enthusiasm: to hold out — not to open the gates. As to or g these 250,000 men, uniting them with the 2403000 mobiles, soldiers and marines gathered together in Paris, and with all these forces forming a powerful scourge to drive the enemy back to the Rhine, of this he never dreamt. His colleagues thought of it as little, and only discussed with him the more or less cavilling they might venture upon with the Prussian invader.</p>
<p>He was all for mild proceedings. His devoutness forbade him to useless blood. Since, according to all military manuals, the great town was to fall, he would make that fall as little sanguinary as possible. Besides, the return of M. Thiers, who might at any moment bring back the treaty, was waited for. Leaving the enemy to establish himself tranquilly round Paris, Trochu organized a few skirmishes for the lookers-on. One single serious engagement took place on the 30th at Chevilly, when, after a success, we retreated, abandoning a battery for want of reinforcements and teams. Public opinion, still hoaxed by the same men that had cried, ‘To Berlin!’ believed in a success. The revolutionists only were not taken in. The capitulation of Toul and of Strasbourg was to theft a solemn warning. Flourens, chief of the 63rd battalion, but who was the real commander of Bellevine, could no longer restrain himself. With the head and heart of a child, an ardent imagination, guided only by his own impulse, Flourens conducted his battalions to the H�tel-de-Ville, demanded the mass mobilization, sorties, municipal elections, and putting the town on short rations. Trochu, who, to amuse him, had given him the title of major of the rampart, made an elaborate discourse; the twelve apostles argued with him, and wound up by showing him out. As delegates came from all sides to demand that Paris should have a voice in her own defence, should name a council, her Commune, the Government declared on the 7th that their dignity forbade them to concede these behests. This insolence caused the movement of the 8th October. The committee of the twenty arrondissements protested in an energetic placard. Seven or eight hundred persons cried ‘<em>Vive la Commune!’ </em>under the windows of the H�tel-de-Ville. But the multitude had not yet lost faith. A great number of battalions hastened to the rescue; the Government passed them in review. Jules Favre opened the flood-gates of his rhetoric and declared the election impossible because — unanswerable reason! — everybody ought to be at the ramparts.</p>
<p>The majority greedily swallowed the bait. On the 16th, Trochu having written to his crony Etienne Arago, ‘I shall pursue the plan I have traced for myself to the end,’ the loungers announced a victory, and took up the burden of their August song on Bazaine, ‘Let him alone; he has his plan.’ The agitators looked like Prussians, for Trochu, as a good Jesuit, had not failed to speak of ‘a small number of men whose culpable views serve the projects of the enemy.’ Then Paris allowed herself during the whole month of October to be-rocked asleep to the sound of expeditions commencing with success and always terminated by retreats. On the 13th we took Bagneux, and a spirited attack would have repossessed us of Chatillon: Trochu had no reserves. On the 21st a march on the Malmaison revealed the weakness of the investment and spread panic even to Versailles. Instead of pressing forward, General Ducrot engaged only six thousand men, and the enemy repulsed him, taking two cannons. The Government transformed these repulses into successful reconnoitres, and coined money out of the despatches of Gambetta, who, sent to the provinces on the 8th, announced imaginary armies, and intoxicated Paris with the account of the brilliant defence’ of Ch�teaudun.</p>
<p>The mayors encouraged this pleasant confidence. They sat at the H�tel-de-Ville with their adjuncts, and this Assembly of sixty-four members could have seen clearly what the Defence was if they had. had the least courage. But it was composed of those Liberals and Republicans of whom the Left is the last expression. They knocked at the door of the Government now and then, timidly interrogated it, and received only vague assurances, in which they did not believe,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n12">[12]</a></sup> but made every effort to make Paris believe.</p>
<p>But at the Corderie, in the clubs, in the paper of Blanqui, in the <em>Reveil </em>of Delescluze, in the <em>Combat </em>of F�lix Pyat, the plan of the men of the H�tel-de-Ville is exposed. What is the meaning of these partial sorties which are never sustained? Why is the National Guard hardly armed, unorganized, withheld from every military action? Why is the casting of cannon not proceeded with? Six weeks of idle talk and inactivity cannot leave the least doubt as to the incapacity or ill-will of the Government. This same thought occupies all minds. Let the make room for those that believe in the Defence; let Paris ion of herself; let the Commune of 1792 be revived to save the city and France. Every day this resolution sinks more deeply into virile minds. On the 27th the <em>Combat, </em>which preached the e in high-flown phraseology whose musical rhythm struck the muses more than the nervous dialectics of Blanqui, hurls a terrific thunderbolt. ‘Bazaine is about to surrender Metz, to treat for peace m the name of Napoleon III; his aide-de-camp is at Versailles.’ The H�tel-de-Ville immediately contradicted this news, ‘as infamous as it is false. lie glorious soldier Bazaine has not ceased harassing the besieging army with brilliant sorties.’ The Government called down the upon journalist ‘the chastisement of public opinion.’ At this appeal the drones of Paris buzzed, burnt the journal, and would have torn the journalist to pieces if he had not decamped. The next day the <em>Combat </em>declared that they had the statement from Rochefort, to whom Flourens had communicated it. Other complications followed. On, the 20th a surprise made us masters of Bourget, a village in the north-east of Paris, and on the 29th the general staff announced this success as a triumph. The whole day it left our soldiers without food, without reinforcements, under the fire of the Prussians, who, returning on the 30th 15,000 strong, recovered the village from its 1,600 defenders. On the 31st of October, Paris on awaking received the news of three disasters: the loss of Bourget, the capitulation of Metz, together with the whole army of the ‘glorious Bazaine’, and the arrival of M. Thiers for the purpose of negotiating an armistice.</p>
<p>The men of the 4th September believed they were saved, that their goal was reached. They had posted up the armistice side by side with capitulation, ‘good and bad news,’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n13">[13]</a></sup> convinced that Paris, despairing of victory, would accept peace with open arms. Paris started up as with an electric shock, at the same time rousing Marseilles, Toulouse, and Saint-Etienne. There was such spontaneity of indignation, that from eleven o'clock, in pouring rain, the masses came to the H�tel-de-Ville crying ‘No armistice’. Notwithstanding the resistance of the mobiles who defended the entrance, they invaded the vestibule. Arago and his adjuncts hastened thither, swore that the Government was exhausting itself in efforts to save us. The first crowd retired; a second followed hard upon. At twelve o'clock Trochu ,appeared at the foot of the staircase, thinking to extricate himself by a harangue; cries of ‘Down with Trochu’ answered him. Jules Simon relieved him, and, confident in his rhetoric, even went to the square in front of the H�tel-de-Ville and expatiated upon the comforts of the armistice. The people cried ‘No armistice.’ He only succeeded in backing out by asking the crowd to name six delegates to accompany him to the H�tel-de-Ville . Trochu, Jules Favre, Jules Ferry, and Picard received them. Trochu in Ciceronic periods demonstrated the uselessness of Bourget, and pretended that he had only just learnt the capitulation of Metz. A voice cried, ‘You are a liar.’ A deputation from the Committee of the twenty arrondissements and of the Committees of Vigilance had entered the hall a little while before. Others, wishing to pump Trochu, invited him to continue his speech. He recommenced, when a shot was fired in the square, putting an end to the monologue and scaring away the orator. Cal being re-established, Jules Favre supplied the place of the general, and took up the thread of his discourse.</p>
<p>While these scenes were going on in the Salle du Tr�ne, the mayors, so long the accomplices of Trochu, were deliberating in the hall of the municipal council. To quell the riot, they proposed the election of municipalities, the formation of battalions of the National Guard, and their joining them to the army. The scapegoat Etienne Aragot was sent to offer this salve to the Government. At two o'clock an immense crowd inundated the Place de l'H�tel-de-Ville, crying, ‘Down with Trochu! <em>Vive la Commune!’ </em>and carrying banners with the inscription ‘No armistice.’ They had several times come into collision with the militia. The delegates who entered the H�tel-de-Ville brought no answer. About three o'clock, the crowd, growing impatient, rushed forward, breaking through the militia, and forcing F�lix Pyat, come to the H�tel-de-Ville as a sight-seer, into the Salle des Maires. He exclaimed, struggled, protested that this was against all rules. The mayors supported him as well as they could, and announced that they had demanded the election of the municipalities, and that the decree in that sense was about to be signed. The multitude, still pushing forward, goes up to the Salle du Tr�ne, cutting short the oration of Jules Favre, who had rejoined his colleagues in the Government-room.</p>
<p>While the people were thundering at the door, the defenders voted the proposition of the mayors — but in principle, not fixing the date for the elections:<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n14">[14]</a></sup> another jesuitical trick. Towards four o'clock the mass penetrated into the room. Rochefort in vain promised the municipal elections. They asked for the Commune! One of the delegates of the Committee of the twenty arrondissements, getting upon the tables proclaimed the abolition of the Government. A Commission was charged to proceed with the elections within forty-eight hours. The names of Dorian, the only Minister who had taken the defence to heart, of Louis Blanc, Ledru-Rollin, Victor Hugo, Raspail, Delescluse, F�lix Pyat. Blanqui and Milli�re were received with acclamation.</p>
<p>Had this Commission seized on authority, cleared the H�tel-de-Ville, posted up a proclamation convoking the electors with the briefest delays the day’s work would have been beneficially concluded. But Dorian refused. Louis Blanc, Victor Hugo, Ledru-Rollin. Raspail, F�lix Pyat, and Mottu. Interminable discussions followed, the disorder became terrible. The men of the 4th September felt they were saved, and smiled as they looked at the conquerors who allowed victory to slip through their fingers.</p>
<p>Thenceforth all became involved in an inextricable imbroglio. Every room had its government, its orators. The confusion was such that about eight o'clock reactionary National Guards could, under Flourens’ nose, pick up Trochu and Jules Ferry, while others carried off Blanqui when some franc-tireurs tried to rescue him. In the office of the mayor, Etienne Arago and his adjuncts convoked the electors for the next day under the presidency of Dorian and Schoelcher. Towards ten o'clock their announcement was posted up in Paris.</p>
<p>The whole day Paris had looked on. ‘On the morning of the 31st October,’ says Jules Ferry, ‘the Parisian population, from highest to lowest, was absolutely hostile to us.” Everybody thought we deserved to be dismissed.’ Not only did Trochu’s battalions not stir, but one of the best, led to the succour of the Government by General Tamisier, commander-in-chief of the National Guard, raised the butt end of their guns on arriving at the Place de l'H�tel-de-Ville. In the evening everything changed when it became known that the members of the Government were prisoners, and above all who were their substitutes. The measure seemed too strong. Such a one, who might have accepted Ledru-Rollin or Victor Hugo, could not make up his mind to Flourens and Blanqui.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n16">[16]</a></sup> In vain the whole day drums had been beating to arms; in the evening they proved effective. Battalions refractory in the morning arrived at the Place Vend�me, most of them believing, it is true, that the elections had been granted; an assemblage of officers at the Bourse only consented to wait for the regular vote on the strength of Dorian and Schoelcher’s placard. Trochu and the deserters from the H�tel-de-Ville again found their faithful flock. The H�tel-de-Ville, on the other hand, was getting empty.</p>
<p>Most of the battalions of the Commune, believing their cause victorious, had returned to their quarters. In the edifice there remained hardly a thousand unarmed men, the only troops being Flourens’ unmanageable tirailleurs, while he wandered up and down amidst this mob. Blanqui signed and again signed. Delescluze tried to save some remnants from this great movement. He saw Dorian, received the formal assurance that the elections of the Commune would take place the next day, those of the Provisional Government the day after; put these assurances upon record in a note where the insurrectional committee declared itself willing to wait for the elections, and had it signed by Milli�re, Flourens and Blanqui. Milli�re and Dorian went to communicate this document to the members of the Defence. Milli�re proposed to them to leave the H�tel-de-Ville together, while charging Dorian and Schoelcher to proceed with the elections, but on the express condition that no prosecutions were to take place. The members of the Defence accepted,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n17">[17]</a></sup> and Milli�re was just saying to them, ‘Gentlemen, you ‘ are free,’ when the National Guards asked for written engagements. The prisoners became indignant that their word should be doubted, while Milli�re and Flourens could not make the Guards understand that signatures are illusory. During this mortal anarchy the battalions of order grew larger, and Jules Ferry attacked the door opening on the Place Lobau. Delescluze and Dorian informed him of the arrangement which they believed concluded, and induced him to wait. At three o'clock in the morning chaos still reigned supreme. Trochu’s drums were beating on the Place de l'H�tel-de-Ville. A battalion of Breton mobiles debauched in the midst of the H�tel-de-Ville through subterranean passage of the Napoleon Barracks, surprised and disarmed many of the tirailleurs. Jules Ferry invaded the Government room. The indisciplinable mass offered no resistance. Jules Favre and his colleagues were set free. As the Bretons became menacing, General Tamisier reminded them of the convention entered upon during the evening, and, as a pledge of mutual oblivion, left the H�tel-de-Ville between Blanqui and Flourens. Trochu paraded the streets amidst the pompous pageantry of his battalions.</p>
<p>Thus this day, which might have buoyed up the Defence, ended in smoke. The desultoriness, the indiscipline of the patriots restored to the Government its immaculate character of September. It took advantage of it that very night to tear down the placards of Dorian and Schoelcher; it accorded the municipal elections for the 5th, but in exchange demanded a plebiscite, putting the question in the t style, ‘Those who wish to maintain the Government will vote <em>aye</em>.’ In vain the Committee of the twenty arrondissements issued a manifesto; in vain the <em>R�veil, </em>the<em> Patrie en Danger, </em>the<em> Combat,</em> enumerated the hundred reasons which made it necessary to answer <em>No. </em>Six months after the plebiscite which had made the war, the immense majority of Paris voted the plebiscite that made the capitulation. Let Paris remember and accuse herself. For fear of two or three men she opened fresh credit to this Government which added incapacity to insolence, and said to it, ‘I want you’ 322,000 times. The army, the mobiles, gave 237,000 ayes. There were but 54,000 civilians and 9,000 soldiers to say boldly, no.</p>
<p>How did it happen that those 60,000 men, so clear-sighted, prompt and energetic, could not manage to direct public opinion? Simply because they were wanting in <em>cadres, </em>in method, in organizers. The feel of the siege had been unable to discipline the revolutionary Sporty, in such dire confusion a few weeks before, nor had the patriarchs of 1848 tried to do so. The Jacobins like Delescluze and Blanqui, instead of leading the people, lived in an exclusive circle of friends. F�lix Pyat, vibrating between just ideas and literary epilepsy, only became practical<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n18">[18]</a></sup> when he had to save his own skin. The others, Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, the hope of the Republicans under the Empire, returned from exile shallow, pursy, rotten to the core with vanity and selfishness, without courage or patriotism, disdaining the Socialists. The dandies of Jacobinism, who called themselves Radicals, Floquet, Cl�menceau, Brinon, and other democratic politicians, carefully kept aloof from the working men. The old Montagnards themselves formed a group of their own, and never came to the Committee of the twenty arrondissements, which only wanted method and political experience to become a power. So it was only a centre of emotions, not of direction — the Gravilliers section of 1870-71, daring, eloquent, but, like its predecessor, treating of everything by manifestos.</p>
<p>There at least was life, a lamp, not always bright, but always burning. What is the lower middle class contributing now? Where are their Jacobins, even their Cordeliers? At the Corderie I see the workers of the lower middle class, men of the pen and orators, but where is the bulk of the army?</p>
<p>All is silent. Save the faubourgs, Paris was a vast sick chamber, where no one dared to speak above his breath. This moral abdication is the true psychological phenomenon of the siege, all the more extraordinary in that it coexisted with an. admirable ardour for resistance. Men who speak of going to seek death with their wives and children, who say, ‘We will burn our houses rather than surrender them to the enemy,’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n19">[19]</a></sup> get angry at any controversy as to the power entrusted to the men of the H�tel-de-Ville. If they dread the giddy-headed, the fanatics, or compromising collaborators, why do they not take the direction of the movement into their own hands? But they confine themselves to crying, ‘No insurrection before the enemy! No fanatics!’ as though capitulation were better than an insurrection; as though the 10th of -August 1792 and 31st May 1793 had not been insurrections before the enemy; as though there were no medium between abdication and delirium. And you, citizens of the old sections of 1792-93, who furnished ideas to the Convention and the Commune, who dictated to them the means of safety, who directed the clubs and fraternal societies, entertained in Paris a hundred luminous centres, do you recognise your offspring in these gulls, weaklings, jealous of the people, prostrate before the Left like devotees before the host?</p>
<p>On the 5th and 7th they renewed their plebiscitory vote, naming twelve of the twenty mayors named by Arago. Four amongst them, Dubail, Vautrain, Tirard, and Desmarets, belong to the pure reaction. The greater part of the adjuncts were of the Liberal type. The faubourgs, always at their post, elected Delescluze in the nineteenth arrondissement and Ranvier, Milli�re, Lefran�ais, and Flourens in the twentieth. These latter could not take their seats. The Government, violating the convention of Dorian and Tamisier, had issued warrants for their arrest, and for that of about twenty other revolutionaries.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n20">[20]</a></sup> Thus, out of seventy-five effective members, mayors and adjuncts, there were not ten revolutionaries.</p>
<p>These shadows of municipal councillors looked upon themselves as the stewards of the Defence, forbade themselves any indiscreet question, were on their best behaviour, feeding and administering Trochu’s patient. They allowed the insolent and incapable Ferry to be appointed to the central <em>mairie</em>, and C1�ment-Thomas, the executioner of June 1848, to be made commander-in-chief of the National Guard. For seventy days, feeling the pulse of Paris growing from hour to hour more weak, they never had the honesty, the courage to say to the Government, ‘Where are-you leading us?’</p>
<p>Nothing was lost in the beginning of November. The army, the mobiles, the marines numbered, according to the plebiscite, 246,000 men and 7,000 officers: 125,000 National Guards capable of serving a campaign might easily have been picked out in Paris, and 129,000 left for the defence of the interior.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n21">[21]</a></sup> The necessary armaments might have been furnished in a few weeks, the cannon especially, every one depriving himself of bread in order to endow his battalion with five pieces, the traditional pride of the Parisians. ‘Where find 9,000 artillerymen?’ said Trochu. Why, in every Parisian mechanic there is the stuff of a gunner, as the Commune has sufficiently proved. In everything else there was the same superabundance. Paris swarmed with engineers, overseers, foremen, who might have been drilled into officers. There lying wasted were all the materials for a victorious army.</p>
<p>The gouty martinets of the regular army saw here nothing but barbarism. This Paris, for which Hoche, Marcea, Kleber <span class="context">[generals of the French Revolution]</span> would have been neither too young, nor too faithful, nor too pure, had for generals the residue of the Empire and Orleanism, Vinoy of December, Ducrot, Luzanne, Lefl�, and a fossil like Chaboud-Latour. In their pleasant intimacy they made much fun of the defence.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n22">[22]</a></sup> Finding, however, that the joke was lasting a little too long, the 31st October enraged them. They conceived an implacable, rabid hatred to the National Guard, and up to the last hour refused to utilize it.</p>
<p>Instead of amalgamating the forces of Paris, of giving to all the same <em>cadres</em>, the same uniforms, the same flag, the proud name of National Guard, Trochu had maintained the three divisions: the army, mobiles, and civilians. This was the natural consequence of his opinion of the Defence. The army, incited by the staff, shared its hatred of Paris, who imposed on it, it was said, useless fatigues. The mobiles of the provinces, prompted by their officers, the cream of the country squires, became also embittered. All, seeing the National Guard despised, despised it, calling them, ‘<em>Les � outrance! Les trente sous!’ </em>(Since the siege the Parisians received thirty sous — 1s. 2 1/2d. — as indemnity.) Collisions were to be feared every day.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n23">[23]</a></sup></p>
<p>The 31st October changed nothing in the real state of affairs. The Government broke off the negotiations, which, notwithstanding their victory, they could not have pursued without foundering, decreed the creation of marching companies m the National Guard, and accelerated the cannon-founding, but did not believe a whit the more in defence, still steered towards peace. Riots formed the chief subject of their preoccupation.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n24">[24]</a></sup> It was not only from the ‘folly of the siege’ that they wished to save Paris, but above all from the revolutionaries. In this direction they were pushed on by the big bourgeoisie. Before the 4th September the latter had declared they ‘would not fight if the working class were armed, and if it had any chance of prevailing;<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n25">[25]</a></sup> and on the evening of ‘ the 4th September Jules Favre and Jules Simon had gone to the Corps L�gislatif to reassure them, to explain to them that the new tenants would not damage the house. But the irresistible force of events had provided the proletariat with arms, and to make them inefficient in their hands became now the supreme aim of the bourgeoisie. For two months they had been biding their time, and the plebiscite told them it had come. Trochu held Paris, and by the clergy they held Trochu, all the closer in that he believed himself to be amenable only to his conscience. Strange conscience, full of trapdoors, with more complications than those of a theatre. Since the 4th of September the General had made it his duty to deceive Paris, saying, ‘I shall surrender thee, but it is for thy good.’ After the 31st October he believed his mission twofold — saw in himself the archangel, the St. Michael of threatened society. This marks the second period of the defence. It may perhaps be traced to a cabinet in the Rue des Postes, for the chiefs of the clergy saw more clearly than any one else the danger of inuring the working men to war. Their intrigues were full of cunning. Violent reactionists would have spoilt all, precipitated Paris into a revolution. They applied subtle tricks in their subterranean work, watching Trochu’s every movement, whetting his antipathy to the National Guard, penetrating everywhere into the general staff, the ambulances, even the <em>mairies. </em>Like the fisherman Struggling with too big a prey, they bewildered Pads, now apparently allowing her to swim in her own element, then suddenly weakening her by the harpoon. On the 28th November Trochu gave a first performance to a full-band accompaniment. General Ducrot, who commanded, presented himself like a leonidas: ‘I take the oath before you, before the whole nation. I shall return to Paris dead or victorious. You may see me fall; you will never see me retreat.’ This ation exalted Paris. She fancied herself on the eve of Jemmapes, when the Parisian volunteers scaled the artillery-defended heights; for this time the National Guard was to take part in the proceedings.</p>
<p>We were to force an opening by the Marne in order to join the mythical armies of the provinces, and cross the river at Nogent. Ducrot’s engineer had taken his measures badly; the bridges were not in a fit state. It was necessary to wait till the next day. The enemy, instead of being surprised, was able to put himself on the defensive. On the 30th a spirited assault made us masters of Champigny. The next day Ducrot remained inactive, while the enemy, emptying out of Versailles, accumulated its forces upon Champigny. On the 2nd they recovered part of the village. The whole day we fought severely. The former deputies of the Left were represented on the field of battle by a letter to their ‘very dear president.’ That evening we camped in our positions, but half frozen, the ‘dear president’ having ordered the blankets to be left in Paris, and we had set out — a proof that the whole dons had been done in mockery — without tents or ambulances. The following day Ducrot declared we must retreat, and, ‘before Paris, before the whole nation,’ this dishonoured braggart sounded the retreat. We had 8,000 dead or wounded out of the 100,000 men who had been sent out, and of the 50,000 engaged.</p>
<p>For twenty days Trochu rested on his laurels. Cl�ment-Thomas took advantage of this leisure time to disband and stigmatize the tirailluers of Belleville, who had, however, had many dead and wounded in their ranks. On the mere report of the commanding general at Vincennes, he also stigmatized the 200th battalion. Flourens was arrested. On the 20th of December these rabid purgers of our own ranks consented to take a little notice of the Prussians. The mobiles of the Seine were launched without cannons against the walls of Stains and to the attack of Bourget. The enemy received them with a crushing artillery. An advantage obtained on the right of the Ville-Evrard was not followed up. The soldiers returned in the greatest consternation, some of them crying, <em>Vive la paix! </em>Each new enterprise betrayed Trochu’s plan, enervated the troops. but had no effect on the courage of the National Guards engaged. During two days on the plateau D'Ouron they sustained the fire of sixty pieces. When there was a goodly number of dead, Trochu discovered that the position was of no importance, and evacuated.</p>
<p>These repeated foils began to wear out the credulity of Paris. From hour to hour the sting of hunger was increasing, and horse-flesh had become a delicacy. Dogs, cats, and rats were eagerly devoured. The women waited for hours in the cold and mud for a starvation allowance. For bread they got black grout, that tortured the stomach. Children died on their mothers’ empty breasts. Wood was worth its weight in gold, and the poor had only to warm them the despatches of Gambetta, always announcing fantastic successes.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n26">[26]</a></sup> At the end of December their privations began to open the eyes of the people. Were they to give in, their arms intact?</p>
<p>The mayors did not stir. Jules Favre gave them little weekly receptions, where they gossiped about the cuisine of the siege.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n27">[27]</a></sup> Only one did his duty — Delescluze. He had acquired great authority by his articles in the <em>R�veil, </em>as free of partiality as they were severe. On the 30th December he challenged Jules Favre, said to his colleagues, ‘You are responsible,’ demanded that the municipal council should be joined to the Defence. His colleagues protested, more especially Dubail and Vacherot. He returned to the charge on the 4th. of January, laid down a radical motion — the dismissal of Trochu and of Cl�ment-Thomas, the mobilization of the National Guard, the institution of a council of defence, the renewal of the Committee of War. No more attention was paid him than before.</p>
<p>The Committee of the twenty arrondissements supported Delescluze in issuing a red poster on the 6th: ‘Has the Government which charged itself with the national defence fulfilled its mission? No. By their procrastination, their indecision, their inertia, those who govern us have led us to the brink of the abyss. They have known neither how to administer nor how to fight. We die of cold, almost of hunger. Sorties without object, deadly struggles without results, repeated failures. The Government has given the measure of its capacity; it is killing us. The perpetuation of this regime means capitulation. The politics, the strategies, the administration of the Empire continued by the men of the 4th of September have been judged. Make way for the people! Make way for the Commune!<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n28">[28]</a></sup> This was outspoken and true. However incapable of action the Committee may have been, its idea were just and precise, and to the end of the siege it remained thee indefatigable, sagacious monitor of Paris.</p>
<p>The multitude who wanted illustrious names, paid no attention to these posters. Some of those who had signed it were arrested., Trochu, however, felt under attack, and the very same evening had posted on the walls, ‘The governor of Paris will never capitulate.’ And Paris again applauded, four months after the 4th September. It was even wondered at that, in spite of Trochu’s declaration, Delescluze and his adjuncts should tender their resignations.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n29">[29]</a></sup></p>
<p>Nevertheless, without obstinately shutting one’s eyes it was impossible not to see the precipice to which the Government was hurrying us on. The Prussians bombarded our houses from the forts of Issy and of Vanves, and on the 30th December, Trochu, having declared all further action impossible, invoked the opinion of all his generals, and wound up by proposing that he should be replaced. On the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th January the Defenders discussed the election of an Assembly which was to follow the catastrophe.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n30">[30]</a></sup> But for the irritation of the patriots, Paris would have capitulated before the 15th.</p>
<p>The faubourgs no longer called the men of the Government other than ‘the band of Judas.’ The great democratic lamas, who had withdrawn after the 31st October, returned to the Commune, thus their own helplessness and the common sense of the people. Republican Alliance, where Ledru-Rollin officiated before half-a-dozen incense bearers, the Republican Union, and other bourgeois chapels, went so far as to very energetically demand a Parisian Assembly to organize the defence. The Government felt it had no time to lose. If the bourgeoisie joined the people, it would become impossible to capitulate without a formidable uprising. The population which cheered under the shells would not allow itself to be given up like a flock of sheep. It was necessary to mortify it first, to cure it of its ‘infatuation’, as Jules Ferry said, to purge it of its fever. ‘The National Guard will only be satisfied when 10,000 National Guards have fallen,’ they said at the Government table. Urged on by Jules Favre and Picard on the one hand, and on the other by the simple-minded Emmanuel Arago, Garnier-Pages, and Pelletan, the quack Trochu consented to give a last performance. </p>
<p>It was got up as a farce<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n31">[31]</a></sup> at the same time as the capitulation.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n32">[32]</a></sup> On the 19th the Council of Defence stated that a new defeat would be the signal of the catastrophe. Trochu was willing to accept the mayors m coadjutors on the question of capitulation and revictualling. Jules Simon and Garnier-Pages were willing to surrender Paris, and only make some reserve with regard to France. Garnier-Pages proposed to name by special elections mandatories charged to capitulate. Such was their vigil before the battle.</p>
<p>On the 18th the din of trumpets and drums called Paris to arms and put the Prussians on the alert. For this supreme effort Trochu had been able to muster only 84,000 men, of whom nineteen regiments belonged to the National Guard. He made them pass the night, which was cold and rainy, in the mud of the fields of Mont-Valdrien.</p>
<p>The attack was directed against the defences that covered Versailles from the side of La Bergerie. At ten o'clock, with the impulse of old troops,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n33">[33]</a></sup> the National Guards and the mobiles, who formed the majority of the left wing and centre,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n34">[34]</a></sup> had stormed the redoubt of Montretout, the part of Buzenval, a part of St. Cloud, pushing forward as far as Garches, occupying, in one word, all the posts designated. General Ducrot, commanding the left wing, had arrived two hours behind time, and though his army consisted chiefly of troops of the line, he did not advance.</p>
<p>We had conquered several commanding heights which the generals did not arm. The Prussians were allowed to sweep these crests at their ease, and at four o'clock sent forth assault columns. Ours gave way at first, then, steadying themselves, checked the onward movement of the enemy. Towards six o'clock, when the hostile f ire diminished, Trochu ordered a retreat. Yet there 40,000 reserves between Mont-Vald�rien and Buzenval. Out of 150 artillery pieces, thirty only had been employed. But the generals, who during the whole day had hardly deigned to communicate with the National Guard, declared they could not hold out a second nigh!, and Trochu had Montretout and all the conquered positions evacuated. Battalions returned weeping with rage. All understood that the whole affair was a cruel mockery.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n35">[35]</a></sup></p>
<p>Paris, which had gone to sleep victorious, awoke to the sound of Trochu’s alarm-bell. The General asked for an armistice of two days to carry off the wounded and bury the dead. He said, ‘We want time, carts, and many litters.’ The dead and wounded did not exceed 3,000 men.</p>
<p>This time Paris at last saw the abyss. Besides, the Defenders, disdaining all further disguise, suddenly dropped the mask. Jules Favre and Trochu summoned the mayors. Trochu declared that all was lost and any further struggle impossible.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n36">[36]</a></sup> The sinister news immediately spread over the town.</p>
<p>During four months’ siege, patriotic Paris had foreseen, accepted all; pestilence, assault, pillage, everything save capitulation. On this the 20th of January found Paris, notwithstanding her credulity, her weakness, the same Paris as on the 20th September. Thus, when the fatal word was uttered, the city seemed at first wonder-struck, as at the sight of some monstrous, unnatural crime. The wounds of four months opened again, crying for vengeance. Cold, starvation, bombardment, the long nights in the trenches, the little children dying by thousands, death scattered abroad in the sorties, and all to end in shame, to form an escort for Bazaine, to become a second Metz. One fancied one could hear the Prussian sneering. With some, stupor turned into rage. Those who were longing for the surrender threw themselves into attitudes. The white-livered mayors even affected to fly into a passion. On the evening of the 2 Ist they were again received by Trochu. That same morning all the generals had unanimously decided that another sortie was impossible. Trochu very philosophically demonstrated to the mayors the absolute necessity of making advances to the enemy, but declared he would have nothing to do with it, insinuating that they should capitulate in his stead. They cut wry faces, protested, still imagining they were not responsible for this issue.</p>
<p>After their departure the Defenders deliberated. Jules Favre asked to tender his resignation. But he, the apostle, insisted upon being by them, fancying thus to cheat history into the belief that he had to the last resisted capitulation.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n37">[37]</a></sup> The discussion was growing heated when, at three o'clock in the morning, they were informed of the rescue of Flourens and other political prisoners confined at Mazas. A body. of National Guards headed by an adjunct from the eighteenth arrondissement had presented themselves an hour before in front of the prison. The bewildered governor had let them have their way. The Defenders, fearing a repetition of the 31st October, hurried on their resolution replacing Trochu by Vinoy.</p>
<p>He wanted to be implored. Jules Favre and Lefl� had to show him the people in arms, an insurrection imminent. At that very moment, the morning of the 22nd, the prefect of police, declaring himself powerless, had sent in his resignation. The men of the 4th September had fallen so low as to bend their knees before those of the 2nd December. Vinoy condescended to yield.</p>
<p>His first act was to arm against Paris, to dismantle her lines before the Prussians, to recall the troops of Suresne, Gentilly, Les Lilas, to call out the cavalry and gendarmerie. A battalion of mobiles commanded by Vabre, a colonel of the National Guard, fortified itself in the H�tel-de-Ville. Cl�ment-Thomas issued a furious proclamation: ‘The factions are joining the enemy.’ He adjured the ‘entire National Guard to rise in order to smite them.’ He had not called upon it to rise against the Prussians.</p>
<p>There were signs of anger afloat, but no symptoms of a serious collision. Many revolutionaries, well aware that all was at an end, would not support a movement which, if successful, would have saved the men of the Defence and forced the victors to capitulate in their stead. Others, whose patriotism was not enlightened by reason, still warm from the ardour of Buzenval, believed in a <em>sortie en masse. We</em> must at least, said they, save our honour. The evening before, some meetings had voted that an armed opposition should be offered to any attempt at capitulation, and had given themselves a rendezvous before the H�tel-de-Ville.</p>
<p>At twelve o'clock the drums beat to arms at the Batignolles. At one o'clock several armed groups appeared in the square of the H�tel-de-Ville; the crowd was gathering. A deputation, led by a member of the Alliance, was received by G. Chaudey, adjunct to the mayor, for the Government was seated at the Louvre since the 31st October. The orator said the wrongs of Paris necessitated the nomination of the Commune. Chaudey answered that the Commune was nonsense; that he always had, and always would oppose it. Another, more eager deputation arrived. Chaudey received it with insults. Meanwhile the excitement was spreading to the crowd that filled the square. The 101st battalion arrived from the left bank crying ‘Death to the traitors!’ when the 207th of the Batignolles, who had marched down the boulevards, debauched on the square through the Rue du Temple and drew up before the H�tel-de-Ville, whose doors and windows were closed. Others joined them. Some shots were fired, the windows of the H�tel-de-Ville were clouded with smoke, and the crowd dispersed with a cry of terror. Sheltered by lamp-posts and some heaps of sand, some National Guards sustained the fire of the mobiles. Others fired from the houses in the Avenue Victoria. The fusillade had been going on for half an hour when the gendarmes appeared at the corner of the Avenue. The insurgents, almost surrounded, made a retreat. About a dozen were arrested and taken to the H�tel-de-Ville, where Vinoy wanted to despatch them at once. Jules Ferry recoiled, and had them sent before the regular court-martials. Those who had got up the demonstration and the inoffensive crowd of spectators had thirty killed or wounded, among others a man of great energy, Commandant Sapia. The H�tel-de-Ville had only one killed and two wounded.</p>
<p>The same evening the government closed all the clubs and issued numerous warrants. Eighty-three persons, most of them innocent,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n38">[38]</a></sup> were melted. This occasion was also taken advantage of to send Delescluze, notwithstanding his sixty-five years, and an acute bronchitis which was undermining his health, to rejoin the prisoners of the 31st October, thrown pell-mell into a damp dungeon at Vincennes. The <em>R�veil</em> and the <em>Combat </em>were suppressed.</p>
<p>An indignant proclamation denounced the insurgents as ‘the partisans of the foreigners,’ the only resource left the men of the 4th September in this shameful crisis. In this only they were Jacobins. Who served the enemy? The Government ever ready to negotiate, or the men ever offering a desperate resistance? History will tell how at Metz an immense army, with cadres, well-trained soldiers, allowed itself to be given over without a single marshal, <em>chef-de-corps, </em>or a regiment rising to save it from Bazaine;<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n39">[39]</a></sup> whereas the revolutionaries of Paris, without leaders, without organization, before 240,000 soldiers and mobiles gained over to peace, delayed the capitulation for months and revenged it with their blood.</p>
<p>The simulated indignation of traitors raised only a feeling of disgust. Their very name, ‘Government of Defence,’ cried out against them. On the very day of the affray they played their last farce. Jules Simon having assembled the mayors and a dozen superior officers,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n40">[40]</a></sup> offered the supreme command to the military men who could propose a plan. This Paris, which they had received exuberant with life, the men of the 4th September, now that they had exhausted and bled her, proposed to abandon to others. Not one of those present resented the infamous irony. They confined themselves to refusing this hopeless legacy. This was exactly the thing Jules Simon waited for. Someone muttered, ‘We must capitulate.’ It was General Lecomte. The mayors understood why they had been convoked, and a few of them squeezed out a tear.</p>
<p>From this time forth Paris existed like the patient who is expecting amputation. The forts still thundered, the dead and the wounded were still brought in, but Jules Favre was known to be at Versailles. On the 27th at midnight the cannon were silenced. Bismarck and Jules Favre had come to an <em>honourable</em> understanding.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n41">[41]</a></sup> Paris had surrendered. </p>
<p>The next day the Government of the Defence published the basis of the negotiations — a fortnight’s armistice, the immediate convocation of an Assembly, the occupation of the forts, the disarmaments of all the soldiers and mobiles with the exception of one division. The town remained gloomy. These days of anguish had stunned Paris. Only a few demonstrations were made. A battalion of the National Guard came before the H�tel-de-Ville crying ‘Down with the traitors!’ In the evening, 400 officers signed a pact of resistance, naming as their chief Brunel, an ex-officer expelled from the army under the Empire for his republican opinions, and resolved to march on the forts of the east, commanded by Admiral Saisset, whom the press credited with the reputation of a Beaurepaire. At midnight the call to arms and the alarm bell summoned the tenth, thirteenth, and twentieth arrondissements. But the night was icy cold, the National Guard too enervated for an act of despair. Two or three battalions only came to the rendezvous. Brunel was arrested two days after.</p>
<p>On the 29th January the German flag was hoisted on our forts. All had been signed the evening before. 400,000 men armed with muskets and cannons capitulated before 200,000. The forts, the enceinte were disarmed. Paris was to pay 200,000,000 francs in a fortnight. The Government boasted of having preserved the arms of the National Guard, but every one knew that to take these it would have been necessary to storm Paris. In the end, not content with surrendering Paris, the Government of the National Defence surrendered all France. The armistice applied to all the armies of the provinces save Bourbaki’s, the only one that would have profited by it.</p>
<p>On the following days there arrived some news from the provinces. It was known that Bourbaki, pressed by the Prussians, had, after a comedy of suicide, thrown his whole army into Switzerland. The aspect and the weakness of the Delegation of the Defence in the provinces had just began to reveal themselves, when the <em>Mot d'Ordre</em> founded by Rochefort, who had abandoned the Government after the 31st October, published a proclamation by Gambetta, stigmatizing a shameful peace, and a whole litany of Radical decrees: ineligibility of all the great functionaries and official deputies of the Empire; dissolution of the <em>conseils-g�n�raux, </em>revocation of some of the judges<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n42">[42]</a></sup> who had formed part of the mixed commission of the 2nd December. It was ignored that during the whole war the Delegation had acted in contradiction to its last decrees, which, coming from a fallen power, were a mere electoral trick, and Gambetta’s name was placed on most of the electoral lists.</p>
<p>Some bourgeois papers supported Jules-Favre and Picard, who had been clever enough to make themselves looked upon as the out-and-outers of the Government; none dared to go so far as to support Trochu, Simon and Ferry. lie variety of electoral lists set forth by the republican party explained its impotence during the siege. The men of 1848 refused to accept Blanqui, but admitted several members of the International in order to usurp its name, and their list, a medley of Neo-Jacobins and Socialists, entitled itself ‘the fist of the Four Committees.’ The clubs and working men’s groups drew up lists of a more outspoken character; one bore the name of the German Socialist deputy, Liebknecht. The most decided one was that of the Corderie.</p>
<p>The International and the Federal Chamber of the working-men’s societies, mute and disorganized during the siege, again taking up their programme, said, ‘We must also have working men amongst those in power.’ They came to an arrangement with the Committee of the twenty arrondissements, and the three groups issued the same manifesto. ‘This,’ said they, ‘is the list of the candidates presented ‘m the name of a new world by the party of the disinherited. France is about to reconstitute herself; working men have the right to find and take their place in the new order of things. The socialist revolutionary candidatures signify the denial of the right to discuss the existence of the Republic; affirmation of the necessity for the accession of working men to political power; overthrow of the oligarchical Government and of industrial feudalism.’ Besides a few names familiar to the public, Blanqui, Gambon, Garibaldi, Felix Pyat, Ranvier, Tridon, Longuet, Lefran�ais, Vall�s, these Socialist candidates were known only in the working men’s centres — mechanics, shoemakers, ironfounders, tailors, carpenters, cooks, cabinetmakers, carvers.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n43">[43]</a></sup> Their proclamations were but few in number. These disinherited could not compete with bourgeois enterprise. Their day was to come a few weeks later, when two-thirds of them were to be elected to the Commune. Now those only received a mandate who were accepted by the middle-class papers, five in all: Garibaldi, Gambon, F�lix Pyat, Tolain, and Malon.</p>
<p>The list of representatives of the 8th February was a harlequinade, including every republican shade and every political crotchet. Louis Blanc, who had played the part of a goody during the siege, and who was supported by all the committees except that of the Corderie, headed the procession with 216,000 votes, followed by Victor Hugo, Gambetta, and Garibaldi; Delmcluze obtained 154,000 votes. Then came a motley crowd of Jacobin fossils, radicals, officers, mayors, journalists, and inventors. One single member of the Government slipped in, Jules Favre, although his private life had been exposed by Milli�re, who was also elected.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n44">[44]</a></sup> By a cruel injustice, the vigilant sentinel, the only journalist who during the siege had always shown sagacity, Blanqui, found only 52,000 votes, about the number of those who opposed the plebiscite, while F�lix Pyat received 145,000 for his piping in the <em>Combat.</em><sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n45">[45]</a></sup></p>
<p>This confused incongruous ballot affirmed at least the republican idea. Paris, trampled upon by the Empire and the Liberals, clung to the Republic, who gave her promise for the future. But even before her vote had been proclaimed she heard coming forth from the provincial ballot boxes a savage cry of reaction. Before a single one of her representatives had left the town, she saw on the way to Bordeaux a troop of rustics, of <em>Pourceaugnacs, </em>of sombre clericals, spectres of 1815, 1830, 1848, high and low reactionaries, who, mumbling and furious, came by the grace of universal suffrage to take possession of France. What signified this sinister masquerade? How had this subterranean vegetation contrived to pierce and overgrow the summit of the country?</p>
<p>It was that Paris and the provinces should be crushed, that the Prussian Shylock should drain our milliards and cut his pound of flesh, that the state of slew should for four years weigh down upon forty-two departments, that 100,000 Frenchmen should be cut off from life or banished from their native soil, that the black brotherhood should conduct their processions over France, to bring about this great conservative machination, which from the first hour to the last explosion, the revolutionaries of Paris and of the provinces had not ceased to denounce to our treacherous or sluggish governors.</p>
<p>In the provinces the field and the tactics were not the same. The conspiracy, instead of being carried on within the Government, circumvented it. During the whole month of September the reactionaries hid in their lairs. The Government of National Defence had only forgotten one element of defence — the provinces, seventy-six departments. Yet they were agitating, showed life; they alone held in check the reaction. Lyons had even understood her duty earlier than Paris; in the morning of the 4th September she proclaimed the Republic, hoisted the red flag and named a Committee of Public Safety. Marseilles and Toulouse organized regional commissions. The Defenders understood nothing of this patriotic zeal, thought France disjointed, and delegated to put it right again two very tainted relics, Cr�mieux and Glais-Bizoin, together with a former governor of Cayenne, the Bonapartist Admiral Fourichon.</p>
<p>They reached Tours on the 18th. The patriots hastened thither to meet them. In the west and south, they had already organized Leagues to marshal the departments against the enemy and supply the want of a central impulse. They surrounded the delegates of Paris, asking them for orders, vigorous measures, the sending of commissioners, and promised their absolute co-operation. The scoundrels answered, ‘We are face to face, let us speak frankly. Well. then, we have no longer any army; all resistance is impossible. ‘We only hold out for the sake of making better conditions.’ We ourselves witnessed the scene.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n46">[46]</a></sup> There was but one cry of indignation: ‘What! is this your answer when thousands of Frenchmen come to offer you their lives and fortunes?’</p>
<p>On the 28th, the Lyonese broke out. Hardly four departments separated them from the enemy, who might at any moment come to levy a contribution on their city, and since the 4th September they had in vain demanded arms. The municipality, elected on the 16th in place of the Committee of Public Safety, passed its time in squabbling with the Prefect, Challemel-Lacour, an arrogant Neo-Jacobin. On the 27th, instead of any serious measures of defence, the council had reduced by five-pence the pay of the working men employed in the fortifications, and appointed Cluseret general without troops of an army to be created.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n47">[47]</a></sup>.</p>
<p>The Republican committees of Les Brotteaux, of La Guilloti�re, of La Croix-Rousse,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n48">[48]</a></sup> and the Central Committee of the National Guard decided to urge on the H�tel-de-Ville, and laid before it on the 28th an energetic programme of defence. The working men of the fortifications, led by Saigne, supported this step by a demonstration. They filled the Place des Terreaux, and what with the speeches, what with the excitement, invaded the H�tel-de-Ville. Saigne proposed the nomination of a revolutionary commission, and perceiving Cluseret, named him commander of the National Guard. Cluseret, much concerned for his future, only appeared on the balcony to propound his Plan and recommend calm. However, the commission being constituted, he no longer dared to resist, but set out in search of his troops. At the door, the mayor, H�non, and the prefect arrested him. They had penetrated into the H�tel-de-Ville by the Place de la Com�die. Saigne, springing upon the balcony, announced the news to the crowd, which, throwing itself upon the H�tel-de-Ville, delivered the prospective general and in turn arrested the mayor and the prefect.</p>
<p>The bourgeois battalions soon arrived at the Place des Terreaux; shortly after those of La Croix-Rousse and of La Guilloti�re emerged. Great misfortune might have resulted from the first shot. They parleyed. -Me commission disappeared and the general swooned.</p>
<p>This was ‘a warning. Other symptoms manifested themselves in several towns. The prefects even presided over Leagues and met each other. At the commencement of October, the Admiral of Cayenne had only been able to set on foot 30,000 men, and nothing came from Tours but a decree convoking the election for the 16th.</p>
<p>On the 9th, when Gambetta alighted from his balloon, all the patriots started. The Conservatives, who had begun to creep out of their recesses, quickly drew back again. The ardour and the energy of his. first proclamation carried people away. Gambetta held France absolutely; he was all-powerful.</p>
<p>He disposed of the immense resources of France, of innumerable men; of Bourges, Brest, L'Orient, Rochefort, Toulon for arsenals; workshops like Lille, Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Marseilles, Lyons; the seas free; incomparably greater strength than that of 1793, which had to fight at the same time the foreigner and internal rebellions. The centres were kindling. The municipal councils made themselves felt, the rural districts as yet showing no signs Of resistance; the national reserve intact. The burning metal needed only moulding.</p>
<p>The debut of the delegate was a serious blunder. He executed the decree of Paris for the adjournment of the elections, which promised to be republican and bellicose. Bismarck himself had told Jules Favre that he did not want an Assembly, because this Assembly would be for war. Energetic circulars, some measures against the intriguers, formal instructions to the prefects, would have brightened and victoriously brought out this patriotic fervour. An Assembly fortified by all the republican aspirations, vigorously led, sitting in a populous town, would have increased the national energy a hundred-fold, brought to light unhoped-for talents, and might have exacted everything from the country, blood and gold. It would have proclaimed the Republic, and in case of being obliged by reverses to negotiate, would have saved her from foundering, prevented reaction. But Gambetta’s instructions were formal. ‘Elections at Paris would bring back days like. June,’ said he. ‘We must do without Paris,’ was our answer. All was useless. Besides, several prefects, incapable of influencing their surroundings, predicted pacific election. Lacking the energy to grapple with the real difficulties of the situation, Gambetta fancied he might shift them by the expedient clap-trap of his dictatorship.</p>
<p>Did he bring a great political revolution? No. His whole programme was. ‘To maintain order and liberty and push on the war.’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n49">[49]</a></sup> Cr�mieux had called the Bonapartists ‘republicans going astray.’ Gambetta believed, or pretended to believe, in the patriotism of the reactionaries. A few pontifical zouaves who offered themselves, the abject submission of the Bonapartist generals, the wheedling of a few bishops,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n50">[50]</a></sup> sufficed to delude him. He continued the tactics of his predecessors, to conciliate everybody; he spared even the functionaries. In the department of Finance and Public Instruction, he and his colleagues forbade the dismissal of any official. The War Office for a long time remained under the supreme direction of a Bonapartist, and always carried on an underhand war against the defence. Gambetta -maintained in some prefectures the same employees who had drawn up the proscription lists of the 2nd December, 1851. With the exception of a few justices of the peace and a small number of magistrates, nothing was changed in the political personnel, the whole subordinate administration remaining intact.</p>
<p>Was he wanting in authority? His colleagues of the council did not even dare to raise their voices; the prefects knew only him; the generals put on the manner of school boys in his presence. Was a personnel wanting? The Leagues contained solid elements; the petty bourgeoisie and proletariat might have given the cadres.</p>
<p>Gambetta saw here only obstacles, chaos, federalism, and roughly dismissed their delegates. Each department possessed groups of known, tried republicans, to whom the administration and the part of spurring the Defence under the direction of commissioners might have been entrusted. Gambetta refused almost everywhere to refer to them; the few whom he appointed he knew how to fetter closely. He vested all power in the prefects, most of them ruins of 1848, or his colleagues of the Conf�rence Mol�,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n51">[51]</a></sup> nerveless, loquacious, timorous, anxious to have themselves well spoken of, and many anxious to feather themselves a nest in their department.</p>
<p>The Defence in the provinces set out on these two crutches — the War Office and the prefects. On this absurd plan of conciliation the Government was conducted.</p>
<p>Did the new delegate at least bring a powerful military conception? ‘No one in the Government, neither General Trochu nor General Lefl�, no one had suggested a military operation of any kind.’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n52">[52]</a></sup> Did he at least possess that quick penetration which makes up for want of experience? After twenty days in the provinces he comprehended the military situation no better than he had done at Paris. The capitulation of Metz drew from him indignant proclamations, but he understood no more than his colleagues of the H�tel-de-Ville that this was the very moment to make a supreme effort.</p>
<p>With the exception of three divisions (30,000) men and the greater part of their cavalry, the Germans had been obliged to employ for the investment of Paris all their troops, and they had no reserve left them. The three divisions at Orl�ans and Ch�teaudun were kept in check by our forces of the Loire. The cavalry, while infesting a large extent of territory in the west, north and east, could not hold out against infantry. At the end of October, the army before Paris, strongly fortified against the town, was not at all covered from the side of the provinces. The appearance of 50,000 men, even of young troops,, would have forced the Prussians to raise the blockade.</p>
<p>Moltke was far from disregarding the danger. He had decided in case of need to raise the blockade, to sacrifice the park of artillery then being formed at Villecoublay, to concentrate his army for action in the open country, and only to re-establish the blockade after the victory, that is to say, after the arrival of the army of Metz. ‘Everything was ready for our decampment; we only had to team the horses,’ reported an eye-witness, the Swiss Colonel D'Erlach. The official papers of Berlin had already prepared public opinion for this event.</p>
<p>The blockade of Paris raised, even momentarily, might have led, under the pressure of Europe, to an honourable peace; this was almost certain. Paris and France recovering their salutary buoyancy, the revictualling of the great town, and the consequent prolongation of her resistance, would have given the time necessary for the organization of the provincial armies.</p>
<p>At the end of October our army of the Loire was in progress of formation, the 15th corps at Salbris, the 16th at Blois, already numbering 80,000 men. If it had driven through between the Bavarians at Orl�ans and the Prussians at Ch�teaudun; if — and this was an easy matter with its numerical superiority — it would have beaten the enemy one after another, the route to Paris would have been thrown open, and the deliverance of Paris almost sure.</p>
<p>The Delegation of Tours did not see so far. It confined its efforts to recovering Orl�ans, in order to establish there an entrenched camp; so on the 26th General D'Aurelles de Paladines, named by Gambetta commander-in-chief of the two corps, received the order to rescue the town from the Bavarians. He was a senator, a bigoted, rabid reactionary, at best fit only to be an officer of zouaves, fuming in his heart at the defence. It was resolved to make the attack from Blois. instead of conducting the 15th corps on foot, which by Romorantin would have taken forty-eight hours, the Delegation sent it by the Vierzon railway to Tours, a journey which took five days and could not be hidden from the enemy. Still, on the 28th, D'Aurelles encamped before Blois, with at least 40,000 men, and the next day he was to have left for Orl�ans.</p>
<p>On the 28th, at nine o'clock in the evening, the commander of the German troops had him informed ‘of the capitulation of Metz. D'Aurelles, jumping at this pretext, telegraphed to Tours that he should call off his movement.</p>
<p>A general of some ability, of some good faith, would, on the contrary, have precipitated everything. Since the army before Metz, now disengage, would swoop down upon the centre of France, there was not a day to lose to get ahead of it. Every hour told. This was the critical juncture of the war.</p>
<p>The delegation of Tours was as foolish as D'Aurelles. Instead of dismissing him, it contented itself with moans, ordering him to concentrate his forces. This concentration was terminated on the 3rd November.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n53">[53]</a></sup> D'Aurelles then had 70,000 men established from Mer to Marchenoir. He might have aired before events overtook him. That very day a whole brigade of Prussian cavalry had been obliged to abandon Mantes and to retreat before bands of franc-tieurs; French forces were observed to be marching from Courville in the direction of Chartres. D'Aurelles did not stir, and the Delegation remained as paralysed as he. ‘M. le Ministre’, wrote on the 4th November the Delegate at War, M. de Freycinet,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n54">[54]</a></sup> ‘for some days the army and myself do not know if the Government wants peace or war. At this Moment, when we are just disposing ourselves to accomplish projects laboriously Prepared, rumours of an armistice disturb the minds of our generals, and I myself, I seek to revive their spirits and push them on, I know not whether the next day I shall not be disavowed by the Government.’ Gambetta the same day answered: ‘I agree with you as to the detestable influence of the political hesitations of the Government. From today we must decide on our march forward;’ and on the 7th D'Aurelles still remained motionless. At last, on the 8th, he set out, and went about fifteen kilometres, and in the evening again spoke of making a halt.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n55">[55]</a></sup> All his forces together ed 100,000 men. On the 9th he made up his mind to attack at Coulmiers. The Bavarians immediately evacuated Orl�ans. Far from pursuing them, D'Aurelles announced that he was going to fortify himself before the town. The Delegation let him do as he liked, and gave him no orders to pursue the enemy.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n56">[56]</a></sup> Three days after the battle Gambetta came to the headquarters and approved of D'Aurelle’s plan. The Bavarians during this respite had fallen back upon Toury, and two divisions hurried from Metz by the railway arrived before Paris. Moltke could at his ease direct the 17th Prussian division towards Toury, where it arrived on the 12th. Three other corps of the army of Metz approached the Seine by forced marches. The ignorance of the Delegation, the obstruction of Trochu, the ill-will and blunders of D'Aurelles, frustrated the only chances of raising the blockade of Paris.</p>
<p>On the 19th, the army of Metz protected the blockade in the north and in the south. Henceforth the Delegation had but one part to play — to prepare sound, manoeuvrable armies for France, and find the necessary time for this, as in ancient times the Romans did, and in our days the Americans. It preferred bolstering up vain appearances, amusing public opinion with the din of arms, imagining that they could thus puzzle the Prussians also. It threw upon them men raised but a few days before, without instruction, without discipline, without instruments of war, fatally destined to defeat. The prefects charged with the organization of the mobiles, and those on the point of being mobilized, were in continual strife with the generals, and lost themselves in the details of the equipments. The generals, unable to make anything of those W-supplied contingents, only advanced on compulsions Gambetta on his arrival had said in his proclamation ‘We will make young leaders,’ and the important commands were given to the men of the Empire, worn out, ignorant, knowing nothing of patriotic wars. To these young recruits, who should have been electrified by stirring appeals, D'Aurelles preached the word of the Lord and the interest of the service.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n58">[58]</a></sup> The accomplice of Bazaine, Bourbaki,<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n59">[59]</a></sup> on his return from England, received the command of the army of the East. The weakness of the new Delegate encouraged the resistance of all malcontents. Gambetta asked the officers whether they would accept service under Garibaldi;<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n60">[60]</a></sup> he not only allowed them to refuse, but even released a cur� who in the pulpit had set a price on the General’s head. He humbly explained to the royalist officers that the question at issue was not to defend the Republic but the territory. He gave leave to the pontifical zouaves to hoist the banner of the Sacred Heart. He suffered Admiral Fourichon to contend for the disposal of the navy with the Delegation.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n61">[61]</a></sup> He indignantly rejected every project for an enforced loan, and refused to sanction those voted in some departments. He left the railway companies masters of the transport, in the hands of reactionaries, always ready to raise difficulties. From the end of November, these boisterous and contradictory orders, these accumulations of impracticable decrees, these powers given and taken back, clearly proved that only a sham resistance was meant.</p>
<p>The country obeyed, giving everything with passive blindness. The contingents were raised without difficulty; there were no refractory recruits in rural districts, although the gendarmerie were absent with the army; the Leagues had given way on the first remonstrance. There .was only a movement on the 3 Ist October. The Marseilles revolutionaries, indignant at the weakness of their Municipal Council, proclaimed the Commune. Cluseret, who from Geneva had asked the ‘Prussian’ Gambetta for the command of an army corps, appeared at Marseilles, got himself named general, again backed out and retired to Switzerland, his dignity forbidding him to serve as a simple soldier. At Toulouse, the population expelled the general. At Saint-Etienne the Commune existed for an hour. But everywhere a word sufficed to replace the authority in the hands of the Delegation; such was the apprehension of everybody of creating the slightest embarrassment. . This abnegation only served the reactionaries. The Jesuits, who resumed their intrigues, had been reinstated by Gambetta at Marseilles, whence the indignation of the people had expelled them. The delegate cancelled the suspension of papers that published letters from Chambord and D'Aumale. He protected the judges who had formed part of the mixed commission’ released the one who had decimated the department of the Var, and dismissed the prefect of Toulouse for having suspended the functions of another in the Haute-Garonne. The Bonapartists mustered again.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n62">[62]</a></sup> When the prefect of Bordeaux, an ultra-moderate Liberal, asked for the authorization to arrest some of their ringleaders, Gambetta severely answered him, ‘These are practices of the Empire, not of the Republic.’ Cr�mieux, too, said, ‘The Republic is the reign of law.’</p>
<p>Then the Conservative Vend�e arose. Monarchists, clericals, capitalists, waited for their time; cowering in their castles, all their strongholds remained intact; seminaries, tribunals, general councils, which for a long time the Delegation refused to dissolve <em>en masse. </em>They were clever enough to figure here and there in the field of battle, in order to preserve the appearance of patriotism. In a few weeks they had seen through Gambetta and found out the Liberal behind the Tribune.</p>
<p>Their campaign was laid and conducted from the be by the only serious political tacticians ~ France possesses — by the Jesuits, masters of the clergy. The arrival of M. Thiers provided the apparent leader.</p>
<p>The men of the 4th September had made him their ambassador. France, almost without diplomatists since Talleyrand, has never possessed one more easily gulled than this little man. He had gone naively to London, to Petersburg, to Italy, whose inveterate enemy he had always been, begging for vanquished France alliances which had been refused her when yet intact. He was trifled with everywhere. He obtained but one interview with Bismarck, and negotiated the armistice rejected by the 3 Ist October. When he arrived at Tours in the firs days of November, he knew that peace was impossible, and that henceforth it must be war to the knife. Instead of courageously making the best of it, of placing his existence at the service of the Delegation, he had but one object, to baffle the defence.</p>
<p>It could not have had a more redoubtable enemy. lie success of this man, without ideas, without principles of government, without comprehension of progress, without courage, would have been impossible everywhere, save with the French bourgeoisie. But he has always been at hand when a Liberal was wanted to shoot down the people, and he is a wonderful artist in Parliamentary intrigue. No one has known like him how to attack, to isolate a Government, to group prejudices hatred, and interests, to hide his intrigues behind a mask of patriotism and common sense. The campaign of 1870-71 will certainly be his masterpiece. He had made up his mind as to the lion’s share due to the Prussians, and took no more notice of them than they had crossed the Moselle. For him the enemy was the defender. When our poor mobiles, without cadres, without military training, succumbed to a temperature as fatal as that of 1812, M. Thiers exulted at our disasters. His house had become the headquarters for the Conservative notabilities. At Bordeaux especially it seemed to be the true seat of the Government.</p>
<p>Before the investment the reactionary press of Paris had o provincial service, and from the outset cooled down the Delegation.</p>
<p>After the arrival of M. Thiers it carried on a regular war. It never ceased harassing, accusing, pointing out the slightest shortcomings, with a view not to instruct, but to slander, and to wind up by the .foregone conclusion: Fighting is madness, disobedience legitimate. From the middle of December this watchword, faithfully followed by all the papers of the party, spread over the rural districts.</p>
<p>For the first time country squires found their way to the ear of the peasant. This war was about to draw off all the men who were not in the army or in the Garde Mobile, and camps were being prepared to receive them. The prisons of Germany held 260,000 men; Paris, the Loire, the army of the East, more than 350,000. Thirty thousand were dead, and thousands filled the hospitals. Since the month of August France had given at least 700,000 men. Where are they to stop? This cry was echoed in every cottage: ‘It is the Republic that wants war! Paris is in the hands of the <em>levellers</em>.’ What does the French peasant know of his fatherland, and how many could say where Alsace lies? It is he above all whom the bourgeoisie have in view when they resist compulsory education. For eighty years all their efforts tended to transforming into coolies the descendants of the volunteers of 1792.</p>
<p>Before long a spirit of revolt infected the mobiles, almost everywhere commanded by noted reactionaries. Here an equerry of the Emperor, there rabid royalists led battalions. In the army of the Loire they muttered, ‘We will not fight for M. Gambetta.’<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n63">[63]</a></sup> Officers of the mobilized troops boasted of never having exposed the lives of their men.</p>
<p>In the beginning of 1871 the provinces were undermined from end to end. Some general councils that had been dissolved met publicly, declaring that they considered themselves elected. The Delegation followed the progress of this enemy, cursed M. Thiers in private, but took good care not to arrest him. The revolutionaries who came to tell it the lengths things were going to were curtly shown out. Gambetta, worn out, not believing in the defence, thought only of conciliating the men of influence and rendering himself acceptable for the future.</p>
<p>At the signal of the elections, the scenery, laboriously prepared, appeared all of a piece, showing the Conservatives grouped, supercilious, their lists ready. We were far now from the month of October, when, in many departments, they had not dared to put forward their candidates. The decrees on the ineligibility of the high Bonapartist functionaries only affected shadows. The coalition, disdaining the broken-down men of the Empire, had carefully formed a personnel of pig-tailed nobles, well-to-do farmers, captains of industry, men likely to do the work bluntly. The clergy had skilfully united on their lists the Legitimists and Orleanists, perhaps laid down the basis for a fusion. The vote was carried like a plebiscite. lie republicans tried to speak of an honourable peace; the peasants would only hear of peace at any price. The towns knew hardly how to make a stand; at the utmost elected Liberals. Out of 750 members, the Assembly counted 450 born monarchists. ‘Me apparent chief of the campaign, the king of Liberals, M. Thiers, was returned in twenty-three departments.</p>
<p>The conciliator <em>� outrance </em>could rival Trochu. The one had worried out Paris, the other the Republic.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Prologue
How the Prussians got Paris and the Rurals France
Daring — this word sums up all the politics of the day.
(St. Just’s Report to the Convention)
August 9, 1870 — In six days the Empire has lost three battles. Douai, Frossart, MacMahon have allowed themselves to be isolated, surprised, crushed. Alsace is lost, the Moselle laid bare. The dumb-founded Ministry has convoked the Chamber. Ollivier, in dread of a demonstration, denounces it beforehand as ‘Prussian’. But since eleven in the morning an immense agitated crowd occupies the Place de la Concorde, the quays, and surrounds the Corps L�gislatif.
Paris is waiting for the word from the deputies of the Left. Since the announcement of the defeat they have become the only moral authority. Bourgeoisie, workingmen, all rally round them. The workshops have turned their army into the streets, and at the head of the different groups one sees men of tried energy.
The Empire totters — it has now only to fall. The troops drawn up before the Corps L�gislatif are greatly excited, ready to turn tail in spite of the decorated and grumbling Marshal y d'Hilliers. The people cry, ‘To the frontier’. Officers answer aloud, ‘Our is not here’.
In the Salle des Pas Perdus well-known Republicans, the men of the clubs, who have forced their way in, roughly challenge the Imperial deputies, speak loudly of proclaiming the Republic. The pale-faced Mamelukes [originally a militia of Egyptian slave-soldiers, here used to mean the Right.] steal behind the groups. M. Thiers arrives and exclaims: ‘Well, then, make your republic!’ When the President, Schneider, passes to the chair, he is received with cries of ‘Resign!’
The deputies of the Left are surrounded by delegates from without. ‘What are you waiting for? We are ready. Only show yourselves under the colonnades at the gates.’ The honourable gentlemen seem confounded, stupefied. ‘Are there enough of you? Is it not better to put it off till tomorrow?’ There are indeed only 1 00,000 men ready. Someone arrives and tells Gambetta, ‘There are several thousand of us at the Place Bourbon.’ Another, the writer of this history, says, ‘Make sure of the situation today, when it may ‘Still. be saved. Tomorrow, having become desperate it will be forced upon you.’ But these brains seem paralysed; no word escapes these gaping mouths.
The sitting opens. Jules Favre proposes to this base Chamber, the abettor of our disasters, the humus of the Empire, to seize upon the government. The Mamelukes rise up in dudgeon, and Jules Simon, hair on end, returns to us in the Salle des Pas Perdus. ‘They threaten to shoot us,’ he shrieks: ‘I descended into the midst of the hall and said, “Well, shoot us”.’ We exclaim, ‘Put an end to this.’ ‘Yes,’ says he, ‘we must make an end of it,’ — and he returns to the Chamber.
And thus ended their threatening looks. The Mamelukes, who know their Left, recover their self-assurance. throw Ollivier overboard and form a coup d'�tat Ministry. Schneider precipitately breaks up the sitting in order to get rid of the crowd. The people, feebly repulsed by the soldiers, repair in masses to the bridges, follow- those who leave the Chamber, expecting every moment to hear the Republic proclaimed. M. Jules Simon, out of reach of the bayonets, makes. a heroic discourse, and convokes the people to meet the next day at the Place de la Concorde. The next day the police occupy all the approaches.
Thus the Left abandoned to Napoleon III our two last armies. One effort would have sufficed to overthrow this pasteboard Empire. [1] The people instinctively offered their help to render the nation unto herself. The Left repulsed them, refused to save the country by a riot, and, confining their efforts to a ridiculous motion, left to the Mamelukes the care of saving France. The Turks in 1876 showed more intelligence and elasticity.
During three weeks it was the story of Byzantium all over again — the fettered nation sinking into the abyss in the face of its motionless governing classes. All Europe cried, ‘Beware!’ They alone heard not. The masses, deceived by a braggart and corrupt press, might ignore the danger, lull themselves with vain hopes; but the deputies have, must have, their hands full of crushing truths. They conceal them. The Left exhausts itself in exclamations. On the 12th M. Gambetta cries, ‘We must wage Republican war’ — and sits down again. On the 13th Jules Favre demands the creation of a Committee of Defence. It is refused. He utters no syllable. On the 20th the Ministry announces that Bazaine has forced three army corps into the quarries of Jaumont; the next day the whole European press related, on the contrary, that Bazaine, three times beaten, had been thrown back upon Metz by 200,000 Germans. And no deputy rises to challenge the liars! Since the 26th they have known MacMahon’s insane march upon Metz, exposing the last army of France, a mob of 80,000 conscripts, and vanquished, to 200,000 victorious Germans. M. Thiers, again restored to favour since the disasters, demonstrates in the committees and in the lobbies that this march is the way to utter ruin. The extreme Left says and puts it about that all is lost and of all these responsible persons seeing the state ship tempest-tossed, not one raises his hand to seize the helm.
Since 1813 France had seen no such collapse of the governing classes. The ineffable dastardliness of the Cent jours [the Hundred Days of 1815 between Napoleon I’s return from exile on the island of Elba until his defeat at Waterloo] pales before this superior cowardice; for here Tartuffe [symbol of hypocrisy, from a play by Moli�re] is grafted upon Trimalcion. [Nero-like character in a play by Petronius] Thirteen months later, at Versailles, I hear, amidst enthusiastic applause, the Empire apostrophized, ‘Varus [Roman general, he committed suicide after his legions had been destroyed], give us back our legions.’ Who speaks, who applauds thus? The same great bourgeoisie, which, for eighteen years mute and bowed to the dust, offered their legions to Varus. The bourgeoisie accepted the Second Empire from fear of Socialism, even as their fathers had submitted to the first to make an end of the Revolution. Napoleon I rendered the bourgeoisie two services not overpaid by his apotheosis. He gave them an iron centralization and sent to their graves 15,000 wretches still kindled by the flame of the Revolution, who at any moment might have claimed the public lands granted to them. But he left the same bourgeoisie saddled for all masters. When they possessed themselves of the parliamentary government, to which Mirabeau wished to raise them at one bound, they were incapable of governing. Their mutiny of 1830, turned into a revolution by the people, made the belly master. The great bourgeois of 1830, like him of 1790, had but one thought — to gorge himself with privileges, to arm the bulwarks in defence of his domains, to perpetuate the proletariat. The fortune of his country is nothing to him, so that he fatten. To lead, to compromise France, the parliamentary king has as free license as Bonaparte. When by a new outburst of the people the bourgeoisie are compelled to seize the helm, after three years, in spite of massacre and proscription, it slips out of their palsied hands into those of the first comer.
From 1851 to 1869 they relapse into the same state as after the 18th Brumaire. Their privileges safe, they allow Napoleon III to plunder France, make her the vassal of Rome, dishonour her in Mexico, ruin her finances, vulgarize debauchery. All-powerful by their retainers and their wealth, they do not risk a ‘man, a dollar, for the sake of protesting. In 1869 the pressure from without raises them to the verge of power; a little strength of will and the government is theirs. They have but the desires of the eunuch. At the first sign of the impotent master they kiss the rod that smote them on 2nd December, making room for the plebiscite which rebaptizes the Empire.
Bismarck prepared the war, Napoleon Ill wanted it, the great bourgeoisie looked on. They might have stopped it by an earnest gesture. M. Thiers contented himself with a grimace. He saw in this war our certain ruin; he knew our terrible inferiority in everything; he could have united the Left, the tiers-parti, the journalists, have made palpable to them the folly of the attack, and, supported by this strength of opinion, have said to the Tuileries, to Paris if needs be, ‘War is impossible; we shall combat it as treason.’ He, anxious only to clear himself, simply demanded the despatches instead of speaking the true word, ‘You have no chance of success.’ [2] And these great bourgeois, who would not have risked the least part of their fortunes without the most serious guarantees, staked 100,000 lives and the milliards of France on the word of a Leboeuf and the equivocations of a Grammont. [3]
And what then is the lower middle class doing meanwhile? This lean class, which penetrates everything — industry, commerce, the administration — mighty by encompassing the people, so vigorous, so ready in the first days of our Hegira, [or hijrrah, a Muslim term meaning ‘emigration’, but used for the start of a new era] will it not, as in 1792, rise for the common weal? Alas! it has been spoilt under the hot corruption of the Empire. For many years it has lived at random, isolating itself from the proletariat, whence it issued but yesterday, and whither the great barons of Capital will hurl it back again tomorrow. No more of that fraternity with the people, of that zeal for reform, which manifested themselves from 1830 to 1848. With its bold initiative, its revolutionary instinct, it loses also the consciousness of its force. Instead of representing itself, as it might so well do, it goes about in quest of representatives among the Liberals.
The friend of the people who will write the history of Liberalism in France wig save us many a convulsion. Sincere Liberalism would be folly in, a country where the governing classes, refusing to concede anything, constrain every honest man to become a revolutionise. But it was never anything else than the Jesuitism of liberty, a trick of the bourgeoisie to isolate the workmen. From Bailly to Jules Favre, the moderates have masked the manoeuvres of despotism, buried our revolutions, conducted the great massacres of proletarians. The old clear-sighted Parisian sections hated them more than the down-right reactionists. Twice Imperial despotism rehabilitated them, and the lower middle class, soon forgetting their true part, accepted as defenders those who pretended to be vanquished like themselves. The men who had made abortive the movement of 1848 and paved the way for the 2nd December thus became during the darkness which followed it the acclaimed vindicators of ravished liberty. At the first dawn they appeared what they had ever been — the enemies of the working class. Under the Empire the Left never condescended to concern itself with the interests of the workmen. These Liberals never found for them a word, a protestation, even such as the Chambers of 1830-1848 sometimes witnessed. The young lawyers whom they had affiliated to themselves soon revealed their designs, rallying to the Liberal Empire, some openly, like Ollivier and Darimon, others with prudence, like Picard. For the timid or ambitious they founded the ‘open Left’, a bench of candidates for public office; and in 1870 a number of Liberals indeed solicited official functions. For the ‘intransigeants’ there was the ‘closed Left’, where the irreconcilable dragons Gambetta, Cr�mieux, Arago, Pelletan guarded the pure principles. lie chiefs towered in the centre. These two groups of augurs thus held every fraction of bourgeois opposition — the timorous and the intrepid. After the plebiscite they became the holy synod, the uncontested chiefs of the lower middle class, more and more incapable of governing itself, and alarmed at the Socialist movement, behind which they showed it the hand of the Emperor. It gave them full powers, shut its eyes, and allowed itself to drift gradually towards the parliamentary Empire, big with portfolios for its patrons. The thunderbolt of the galvanized it into life, but only for a moment. At the bidding of the deputies to keep quiet, the lower middle class, the mother of the 10th August, docilely bent its head and let the foreigner plunge his into the very bosom of France.
Poor France! Who will save thee? the humble, the poor, those who for six years contended for thee with the Empire.
While the upper classes sell the nation for a few hours of rest, and the Liberals seek to feather their nests under the Empire, a handful of men, without arms, unprotected, rise up against the still all-powerful despot. On the one hand, young men who are part of the bourgeoisie have gone over to the people, faithful children of 1789, resolved to continue the work of the Revolution; on the other hand, working men unite for the study and the conquest of the rights of labour. In vain the Empire attempts to split their forces, to seduce the working men. These see the snare, hiss the professors of Caesarian socialism, and from 1863, without journals, without a tribune, affirm themselves as a class, to the great scandal of the Liberal sycophants, maintaining that 1789 has equalized all classes. In 1867 they descend into the streets, make a demonstration at the tomb of Manin [Daniel Manin (1804-1857), an Italian nationalist leader who died an exile in France], and, despite the bludgeons of the sbirri, protest against Mentana. [village where Garibaldi’s troops were defeated by the French in 1867] At this, appearance of a revolutionary. socialist party the Left gnashes its teeth. When some working men, ignorant of their own history, ask Jules Favre if the Liberal bourgeoisie will support them on the day of their rising for the Republic, the leader of the Left impudently answers, ‘Gentlemen, workmen, you have made the Empire; it is your business to unmake it.’ And. Picard says, ‘Socialism does not exist, or at any rate ‘we will not treat with it.’
Thus set right for the future, the working men continue the struggle single-handed. Since the re-opening of the public meetings they fill the halls, and, in spite of persecution and imprisonment, harass, undermine the Empire, taking advantage of every accident to inflict a blow. On the 26th October 1869 they threaten to march on the Corps L�gislatif; in November they insult the Tuileries by the election of Rochefort; in December they goad the Government by the Marseillaise; in January, 1870, they go 200,000 strong to the funeral of Victor Noir, and, well directed, would have swept away the throne.
The Left, terrified at this multitude, which threatens to overwhelm them, brands their leaders as desperados or as police agents. They, however, keep to the fore, unmasking the Left, defying them to discussion, keeping up at the same time a running fire on the Empire, They form the vanguard against the plebiscite. At the war rumours they are the first to make a stand. The old dregs of chauvinism, stirred by the Bonapartists, discharge their muddy waters. The Liberals remain impassible or applaud; the working men stop the way. On the 15th July, at the very same hour when Ollivier from the tribune invokes war with a light heart, the revolutionary socialists crowd the boulevards crying, Vive la paix! and singing the pacific refrain -
The people are our brothers
And the tyrants our enemies.
From the Ch�teau d'Eau to the Boulevard St. Denis they are applauded, but are hissed in the Boulevards Bonne Nouvelle and Montmartre, and come to blows with certain bands shouting for war.
The next day they meet again at the Bastille, and parade the streets, Ranvier, a painter on porcelain, well known in Belleville, marching at their head with a banner. In the Faubourg Montmartre the sergents-de-ville charge them with drawn swords.
Unable to influence the bourgeoisie, they turn to the working men of Germany, as they had done in 1869: ‘Brothers, we protest against the war, we who wish for peace, labour, and liberty. Brothers, do not listen to the hirelings who seek to deceive you as to the real wishes of France.’ Their noble appeal received its reward. In 1869 the students of Berlin had answered the pacific address of the French students with insults. The working men of Berlin in 1870 spoke thus to the working men of France: ‘We too wish for peace, labour, and liberty. We know that on both sides of the Rhine there are brothers with whom we are ready to die for the Universal Republic.’ Great prophetic words! Let them be inscribed on the first page of the Golden Book just opened by the workmen.
Thus towards the end of the Empire there was no life, no activity, save in the ranks of the proletariat and the young men of the middle class who had joined them. They alone showed some political courage, and in the midst of the general paralysis of the month of July 1870, they alone found the energy to attempt at least the salvation of France.
They lacked authority; they failed to carry with them the lower middle class, for which they also combat, because of their utter want of political experience. How could they have acquired it during eighty years, when the ruling class not only withheld fight from them, but even the right to enlighten themselves? By an internal Machiavellianism they forced them to grope their way in the dark, so that they might hand them over the more easily to dreamers and sectarians. Under the Empire, when the public meetings and journals reappeared, the political education of the workmen had still to be effected. Many, abused by morbid minds, in the belief that their affranchisement depended on a coup-de-main gave themselves up to whoever spoke of overthrowing the Empire. Others, convinced that even the most thorough-going bourgeois were hostile to Socialism, and only courted the people in furtherance of their ambitious plans, wanted the workmen to constitute themselves into groups independent of all tutelage. These different currents crossed each other. The chaotic state of the party of action was laid bare in its journal, the Marseillaise, a hot mish-mash of doctrinaires and desperate writers united by hatred of the Empire, but without definite views and above all, without discipline. Much time was wanted to cool down the first effervescence and get rid of the romantic rubbish which twenty years of oppression and want of study had made fashionable. However, the influence of the Socialists began to prevail, and no doubt with time they would have classified their ideas, drawn up their programme, eliminated the mere spouters, entered upon serious action. Already, in 1869, workingmen’s societies, founded for mutual credit, resistance and study, had united in a Federation, whose headquarters were the Place de la Corderie du Temple. The International setting forth the most adequate idea of the revolutionary movement of our century, under the guidance of Varlin, a bookbinder of rare intelligence, of Duval, Theisz, Frankel, and a few devoted men, was beginning to gain Power in France. It also met at the Corderie, and urged on the more slow and reserved workmen’s societies. The public meetings of 1870 no longer resembled the earlier ones; the people wanted useful discussions. Men like Milli�re, Lefran�ais, Vermorel, Longuet, etc. seriously competed with the mere declaimers. But many years would have been required for the development of the party of labour, hampered by young bourgeois adventurers in search of a reputation, Encumbered with conspiracy-mongers and romantic visionaries, still Ignorant of the administrative and political mechanism of the bourgeois regime which they attacked.
Just before the war some discipline was attempted. Some tried to move the deputies of the left and met them at Cr�mieux’s. They found them stupefied, more afraid of a coup-d'�tat than of the Prussian victories. Cr�mieux, pressed to act, answered naively, ‘Let us wait for a new disaster, as, for instance, the fall of Strasburg.’
It was indeed necessary to wait, for without these shadows nothing could be done. The Parisian lower middle class believed in the extreme Left, as it had believed in our armies. Those who wished to do without them failed. On the 14th the friends of Blanqui attempted to raise the outlying districts, attacked the quarters of the firemen of La Villette, and put the sergents-de-ville to flight. Masters of the field, they traversed the boulevard up to Belleville, crying, Vtve la R�publique! Death to the Prussians! No one joined them. The crowd looked on from afar, astonished, motionless, rendered suspicious by the police agents, who thus drew them off from the real enemy — the Empire. The Left pretended to believe in the Prussian agent, to reassure the bourgeoisie, and Gambetta demanded the immediate trial of the prisoners of La Villette. The Minister Palikao had to remind him that certain forms must be observed, even by military justice. The court-martial condemned ten to death, although almost all the accused had had nothing to do with the affray. Some true-hearted men, wishing to prevent these executions, went to Michelet, who wrote a touching letter on their behalf. The Empire had no time to carry out the sentences.
Since the 25th MacMahon was leading his army into the snares laid by Moltke. On the 29th, surprised, and beaten at Beaumont l'Argonne, he knew himself over-reached, and yet pushed forward. Palikao had written to him on the 27th: ‘If you abandon Bazaine we shall have the Revolution in Paris.’ And to ward off the Revolution he exposed France. On the 30th he threw his troops into the pit of Sedan; on the 1st September the army was surrounded by 200,000 enemies, and 700 cannons crowned the heights. The next day Napoleon III delivered up his sword to the King of Prussia. The telegraph announced it; all Europe knew it that same night. The deputies, however, were silent; they remained so on the 3rd. On the 4th only, at midnight, after Paris had passed through a day of feverish excitement, they made up their minds to speak. Jules Favre demanded the abolition of the Empire and a Commission charged with the defence, but took care not to touch the Chamber. During the day some men of tried energy had attempted to raise the boulevards, and in the evening an anxious crowd pressed against the railings of the Corps L�gislatif, crying: Vive la R�publique. Gambetta met them and said, ‘You are wrong; we must remain united; make no revolution.’ Jules Favre surrounded on his leaving the Chamber, strove to calm the people.
If Paris had been guided by the Left, France would have capitulated that very hour more shamefully than Napoleon III. But on the morning of the 4th of September the people assemble, and amongst them National Guards armed with their muskets. The astonished gendarmes give way to them. Little by little the Corps L�gislatif is invaded. At ten o'clock notwithstanding the desperate efforts of the Left, the crowd fills the galleries. It is time. The Chamber, on the point of forming a Ministry, try to seize the government. The Left support this combination with all its might, waxing indignant at the mere mention of a Republic. When that cry bursts forth from the galleries, Gambetta makes unheard-of efforts and conjures the people to await the result of the deliberations of the Chamber — a result known before hand. It is the project of M. Thiers: a Government Commission named by the Assembly; peace demanded and accepted at any price; after that disgrace, the parliamentary monarchy. Happily a new crowd of invaders bursts its way through the doors, while the occupants of the galleries glide into the hall. The people expel the deputies. Gambetta, forced to the tribune, is obliged to announce the abolition of the Empire. The crowd, wanting more than this, asks for the Republic, and carries off the deputies to proclaim it at the H�tel-de-Ville.
This was already in the hands of the people. In the Salle du Tr�ne were some of those who for a month had attempted to rouse public opinion. First on the ground, they might, with a little discipline, have influenced the constitution of the government. The Left surprised them haranguing, and, incited by an acclaiming multitude, Jules Favre took the chair, which Milli�re gave up to him, saying, ‘At the present moment there is but one matter at stake — the expulsion of the Prussians.’ [4] Jules Favre, Jules Simon, Jules Ferry, Gambetta, Cr�mieux, Emmanuel Arago, Glais-Bizoin, Pelletan, Gamier-Pages, Picard, uniting, proclaimed themselves the Government, and read their own names to the crowd, which answered by adding those of men like Delescluze, Ledru-Rollin, Blanqui. They, however, declared they would accept no colleagues but the deputies of Paris. The crowd applauded. This frenzy of just-emancipated serfs made the Left masters. They were clever enough to admit Rochefort.
They next applied to General Trochu, named governor of Paris by Napoleon. This general had become the idol of the Liberals because he had sulked a little with the Empire.[5] His whole military glory consisted in a few pamphlets. The Left had seen much of him during the last crisis. Having attained to power, it begged him to direct the defence. He asked, firstly, a place for God in the ne ‘ w regime; secondly, for himself the presidency of the council. He obtained everything. The future will show what secret bond so quickly united the men of the Left to the loyal Breton who had promised ‘to die on the steps of the Tuileries in defence of the dynasty’.[6]
Twelve individuals thus took possession of France. They invoked no other title than their mandate as representatives of Paris, and declared themselves legitimate by popular acclamation. ‘
In the evening the International and syndicates of the workmen sent delegates to the H�tel-de-Ville. They had on the same day sent a new address to the German working men. Their fraternal duty fulfilled, the French workmen gave themselves up the defence. Let the Government organize it and they would stay by it. The most suspicious were taken in. On the 7th, in the first number of his paper La Patrie en Danger, Blanqui and his friends offered the Government their most energetic, their absolute co-operation.
All Paris abandoned itself to the men of the H�tel-de-Ville, forgetting their late defections, investing them with the grandeur of the danger. To seize, to monopolize the government at such a moment, seemed a stroke of audacity of which genius alone is capable. Paris, deprived for eighty years of her municipal liberties, accepted as mayor the lachrymose Etienne Arago. In the twenty arrondissements he named the mayors he liked, and they again named the adjuncts agreeable to themselves. But Arago announced early elections and spoke of reviving the great days of 1792. At this moment Jules Favre, proud as Danton, cried to Prussia, to Europe: ‘We will cede neither an inch of our territories nor a stone of our fortresses,’ and Paris rapturously applauded this dictatorship announcing itself with words so heroic. On the 14th when Trochu held the review of the National Guard, 250,000 men stationed in the boulevards, the Place de la Concorde, and the Champs-Elys�es cheered enthusiastically, and renewed a vow like that of their fathers on the morning of Valmy.
Yes, Paris gave herself up without reserve — incurable confidence — to that same Left to which she had been forced to do violence in order to make her revolution. Her outburst of will lasted but for an hour. The Empire once overthrown, she re-abdicated. In vain did far-seeing patriots try to keep her on the alert; in vain did Blanqui write, ‘Paris is no more impregnable than we were invincible. Paris, mystified by a braggart press, ignores the greatness of the peril; Paris abuses confidence.’ Paris abandoned herself to her new masters, obstinately shutting her eyes. And yet each day brought with it new ill omens. The shadow of the siege approached, and the Government of Defence, far from evacuating the superfluous mouths, crowded the 200,000 inhabitants of the suburbs into the town. The exterior works did not advance. Instead of throwing all Paris into the work, and taking these descendants of the levellers of the Camp-de-Mars out of the enceinte in troops of 100,000 drums beating, banners flying, Trochu abandoned the earthworks to the ordinary contractors. The heights of Chatillon, the key to our forts of the south, had hardly been surveyed, when on the 19th the enemy presented himself, sweeping from the plateau an affrighted troop of zouaves and soldiers who did not wish to fight. The following day, that Paris which the press had declared could not be invested, was surrounded and cut off from France.
This gross ignorance very soon alarmed the Revolutionists. They had promised their support, but not blind faith. Since the 4th of September, wishing to centralize the forces of the party of action for the defence and the maintenance of the Republic, they had invited the public meetings in each arrondissement to name a Committee of Vigilance charged to control the mayors and to delegate four members to a Central Committee of the twenty arrondissements. This tumultuous mode of election had resulted in a committee composed of working men, employees and authors, known in the revolutionary movements of the last years. This committee had established itself in the hall of the Rue de la Corderie, lent by the International and the Federation of trade unions.
These had almost suspended their work, the service of the National Guard absorbing all their activity. Some of their members again met m the Committee of Vigilance and in the Central Committee, which caused the latter to be erroneously attributed to the International. On the 4th it demanded by a manifesto the election of the municipalities, the police to be placed in their hands, the election and control of all the magistrates, absolute freedom of the press, public meeting and association, the expropriation of all articles of primary necessity, their distribution by allowance, the arming of all citizens, the sending of commissioners to rouse the provinces. But Paris was then infected with a fit of confidence. The bourgeois journals denounced the committee as Prussian. The names of some of the signers were, however, well known in the meetings and to the press: Ranvier, Milli�re, Longuet, Vall�s, Lafran�ais, Mallon, etc. Their posters were torn down.
On the 20th, after Jules Favre’s application to Bismarck, the Committee held a large meeting in the Alcazar and sent a deputation to the H�tel-de-Ville to demand war ‘to the end’ and the early election of the Commune of Paris. Jules Ferry gave his word of honour that the government would not treat at any price, and announced the municipal elections for the end of the month. Two days later a decree postponed them indefinitely.
Thus this Government, which in seventeen days had prepared nothing, which had allowed itself to be blocked up without even a struggle refused the advice of Paris, and more than ever arrogated to itself the right of directing the defence. Did it then possess the secret of victory? Trochu had just said, ‘Ale resistance is a heroic madness;’ Picard, ‘We shall defend ourselves for honour’s sake, but all hope is chimerical;’ the elegant Cr�mieux, ‘The Prussians will enter Paris like a knife goes into butter;’ [7] the chief of Trochu’s staff, ‘We cannot defend ourselves; we have decided not to defend ourselves; [8] and, instead of honestly warning Paris, saying, ‘Capitulate at once or, conduct the combat yourselves,’ these men, who declared defence impossible, claimed its undivided direction.
What then is their aim? To negotiate. Since the first defeats they have no other. The reverses which exalted our fathers only made the Left store cowardly than the Imperialist deputies. On the 7th of August Jules Favre, Jules Simon, and Pelletan had said to Schneider, ‘We cannot hold out; we must come to terms as soon as possible.’[9] All the following days the Left had only one policy — to urge the Chamber to possess itself of the government in order to negotiate, hoping to get into office afterwards. Hardly established, these defenders sent M. Thiers all over Europe to beg for peace, and Jules Favre to run after Bismarck to ask his conditions [10] — a step that revealed to the Prussian with what tremblers he had to deal.
When all Paris cried to them, ‘Defend us; drive back the enemy,’ they applauded, accepted, but said to themselves, ‘You shall capitulate.’ There is no more crying treason in history. The asinine confidence of the immense majority no more diminishes the crime than the foolishness of the dupe excuses the cheater. Did the men of the 4th September, yes or no, betray the mandate they received? ‘Yes,’ will be the verdict of the future.
A tacit mandate, it is true, but so clear, so formal, that all Paris started at the news of the proceedings at Ferri�res. If the Defenders had gone a step farther, they would have been swept away. They were obliged to adjourn, to give way to what they termed the ‘madness of the siege,’ to simulate a defence. In point of fact, they did not abandon their idea for an hour, esteeming themselves the only men in Paris who had not lost their heads.
‘There shall be fighting since those Parisians will have it so, but only with the view to soften Bismarck.’ On his return from the review. this scene of hopeful enthusiasm manifested by 250,000 armed men is amid to have affected Trochu, who announced that it would perhaps be possible to hold the ramparts. Such was the maximum of his enthusiasm: to hold out — not to open the gates. As to or g these 250,000 men, uniting them with the 2403000 mobiles, soldiers and marines gathered together in Paris, and with all these forces forming a powerful scourge to drive the enemy back to the Rhine, of this he never dreamt. His colleagues thought of it as little, and only discussed with him the more or less cavilling they might venture upon with the Prussian invader.
He was all for mild proceedings. His devoutness forbade him to useless blood. Since, according to all military manuals, the great town was to fall, he would make that fall as little sanguinary as possible. Besides, the return of M. Thiers, who might at any moment bring back the treaty, was waited for. Leaving the enemy to establish himself tranquilly round Paris, Trochu organized a few skirmishes for the lookers-on. One single serious engagement took place on the 30th at Chevilly, when, after a success, we retreated, abandoning a battery for want of reinforcements and teams. Public opinion, still hoaxed by the same men that had cried, ‘To Berlin!’ believed in a success. The revolutionists only were not taken in. The capitulation of Toul and of Strasbourg was to theft a solemn warning. Flourens, chief of the 63rd battalion, but who was the real commander of Bellevine, could no longer restrain himself. With the head and heart of a child, an ardent imagination, guided only by his own impulse, Flourens conducted his battalions to the H�tel-de-Ville, demanded the mass mobilization, sorties, municipal elections, and putting the town on short rations. Trochu, who, to amuse him, had given him the title of major of the rampart, made an elaborate discourse; the twelve apostles argued with him, and wound up by showing him out. As delegates came from all sides to demand that Paris should have a voice in her own defence, should name a council, her Commune, the Government declared on the 7th that their dignity forbade them to concede these behests. This insolence caused the movement of the 8th October. The committee of the twenty arrondissements protested in an energetic placard. Seven or eight hundred persons cried ‘Vive la Commune!’ under the windows of the H�tel-de-Ville. But the multitude had not yet lost faith. A great number of battalions hastened to the rescue; the Government passed them in review. Jules Favre opened the flood-gates of his rhetoric and declared the election impossible because — unanswerable reason! — everybody ought to be at the ramparts.
The majority greedily swallowed the bait. On the 16th, Trochu having written to his crony Etienne Arago, ‘I shall pursue the plan I have traced for myself to the end,’ the loungers announced a victory, and took up the burden of their August song on Bazaine, ‘Let him alone; he has his plan.’ The agitators looked like Prussians, for Trochu, as a good Jesuit, had not failed to speak of ‘a small number of men whose culpable views serve the projects of the enemy.’ Then Paris allowed herself during the whole month of October to be-rocked asleep to the sound of expeditions commencing with success and always terminated by retreats. On the 13th we took Bagneux, and a spirited attack would have repossessed us of Chatillon: Trochu had no reserves. On the 21st a march on the Malmaison revealed the weakness of the investment and spread panic even to Versailles. Instead of pressing forward, General Ducrot engaged only six thousand men, and the enemy repulsed him, taking two cannons. The Government transformed these repulses into successful reconnoitres, and coined money out of the despatches of Gambetta, who, sent to the provinces on the 8th, announced imaginary armies, and intoxicated Paris with the account of the brilliant defence’ of Ch�teaudun.
The mayors encouraged this pleasant confidence. They sat at the H�tel-de-Ville with their adjuncts, and this Assembly of sixty-four members could have seen clearly what the Defence was if they had. had the least courage. But it was composed of those Liberals and Republicans of whom the Left is the last expression. They knocked at the door of the Government now and then, timidly interrogated it, and received only vague assurances, in which they did not believe,[12] but made every effort to make Paris believe.
But at the Corderie, in the clubs, in the paper of Blanqui, in the Reveil of Delescluze, in the Combat of F�lix Pyat, the plan of the men of the H�tel-de-Ville is exposed. What is the meaning of these partial sorties which are never sustained? Why is the National Guard hardly armed, unorganized, withheld from every military action? Why is the casting of cannon not proceeded with? Six weeks of idle talk and inactivity cannot leave the least doubt as to the incapacity or ill-will of the Government. This same thought occupies all minds. Let the make room for those that believe in the Defence; let Paris ion of herself; let the Commune of 1792 be revived to save the city and France. Every day this resolution sinks more deeply into virile minds. On the 27th the Combat, which preached the e in high-flown phraseology whose musical rhythm struck the muses more than the nervous dialectics of Blanqui, hurls a terrific thunderbolt. ‘Bazaine is about to surrender Metz, to treat for peace m the name of Napoleon III; his aide-de-camp is at Versailles.’ The H�tel-de-Ville immediately contradicted this news, ‘as infamous as it is false. lie glorious soldier Bazaine has not ceased harassing the besieging army with brilliant sorties.’ The Government called down the upon journalist ‘the chastisement of public opinion.’ At this appeal the drones of Paris buzzed, burnt the journal, and would have torn the journalist to pieces if he had not decamped. The next day the Combat declared that they had the statement from Rochefort, to whom Flourens had communicated it. Other complications followed. On, the 20th a surprise made us masters of Bourget, a village in the north-east of Paris, and on the 29th the general staff announced this success as a triumph. The whole day it left our soldiers without food, without reinforcements, under the fire of the Prussians, who, returning on the 30th 15,000 strong, recovered the village from its 1,600 defenders. On the 31st of October, Paris on awaking received the news of three disasters: the loss of Bourget, the capitulation of Metz, together with the whole army of the ‘glorious Bazaine’, and the arrival of M. Thiers for the purpose of negotiating an armistice.
The men of the 4th September believed they were saved, that their goal was reached. They had posted up the armistice side by side with capitulation, ‘good and bad news,’[13] convinced that Paris, despairing of victory, would accept peace with open arms. Paris started up as with an electric shock, at the same time rousing Marseilles, Toulouse, and Saint-Etienne. There was such spontaneity of indignation, that from eleven o'clock, in pouring rain, the masses came to the H�tel-de-Ville crying ‘No armistice’. Notwithstanding the resistance of the mobiles who defended the entrance, they invaded the vestibule. Arago and his adjuncts hastened thither, swore that the Government was exhausting itself in efforts to save us. The first crowd retired; a second followed hard upon. At twelve o'clock Trochu ,appeared at the foot of the staircase, thinking to extricate himself by a harangue; cries of ‘Down with Trochu’ answered him. Jules Simon relieved him, and, confident in his rhetoric, even went to the square in front of the H�tel-de-Ville and expatiated upon the comforts of the armistice. The people cried ‘No armistice.’ He only succeeded in backing out by asking the crowd to name six delegates to accompany him to the H�tel-de-Ville . Trochu, Jules Favre, Jules Ferry, and Picard received them. Trochu in Ciceronic periods demonstrated the uselessness of Bourget, and pretended that he had only just learnt the capitulation of Metz. A voice cried, ‘You are a liar.’ A deputation from the Committee of the twenty arrondissements and of the Committees of Vigilance had entered the hall a little while before. Others, wishing to pump Trochu, invited him to continue his speech. He recommenced, when a shot was fired in the square, putting an end to the monologue and scaring away the orator. Cal being re-established, Jules Favre supplied the place of the general, and took up the thread of his discourse.
While these scenes were going on in the Salle du Tr�ne, the mayors, so long the accomplices of Trochu, were deliberating in the hall of the municipal council. To quell the riot, they proposed the election of municipalities, the formation of battalions of the National Guard, and their joining them to the army. The scapegoat Etienne Aragot was sent to offer this salve to the Government. At two o'clock an immense crowd inundated the Place de l'H�tel-de-Ville, crying, ‘Down with Trochu! Vive la Commune!’ and carrying banners with the inscription ‘No armistice.’ They had several times come into collision with the militia. The delegates who entered the H�tel-de-Ville brought no answer. About three o'clock, the crowd, growing impatient, rushed forward, breaking through the militia, and forcing F�lix Pyat, come to the H�tel-de-Ville as a sight-seer, into the Salle des Maires. He exclaimed, struggled, protested that this was against all rules. The mayors supported him as well as they could, and announced that they had demanded the election of the municipalities, and that the decree in that sense was about to be signed. The multitude, still pushing forward, goes up to the Salle du Tr�ne, cutting short the oration of Jules Favre, who had rejoined his colleagues in the Government-room.
While the people were thundering at the door, the defenders voted the proposition of the mayors — but in principle, not fixing the date for the elections:[14] another jesuitical trick. Towards four o'clock the mass penetrated into the room. Rochefort in vain promised the municipal elections. They asked for the Commune! One of the delegates of the Committee of the twenty arrondissements, getting upon the tables proclaimed the abolition of the Government. A Commission was charged to proceed with the elections within forty-eight hours. The names of Dorian, the only Minister who had taken the defence to heart, of Louis Blanc, Ledru-Rollin, Victor Hugo, Raspail, Delescluse, F�lix Pyat. Blanqui and Milli�re were received with acclamation.
Had this Commission seized on authority, cleared the H�tel-de-Ville, posted up a proclamation convoking the electors with the briefest delays the day’s work would have been beneficially concluded. But Dorian refused. Louis Blanc, Victor Hugo, Ledru-Rollin. Raspail, F�lix Pyat, and Mottu. Interminable discussions followed, the disorder became terrible. The men of the 4th September felt they were saved, and smiled as they looked at the conquerors who allowed victory to slip through their fingers.
Thenceforth all became involved in an inextricable imbroglio. Every room had its government, its orators. The confusion was such that about eight o'clock reactionary National Guards could, under Flourens’ nose, pick up Trochu and Jules Ferry, while others carried off Blanqui when some franc-tireurs tried to rescue him. In the office of the mayor, Etienne Arago and his adjuncts convoked the electors for the next day under the presidency of Dorian and Schoelcher. Towards ten o'clock their announcement was posted up in Paris.
The whole day Paris had looked on. ‘On the morning of the 31st October,’ says Jules Ferry, ‘the Parisian population, from highest to lowest, was absolutely hostile to us.” Everybody thought we deserved to be dismissed.’ Not only did Trochu’s battalions not stir, but one of the best, led to the succour of the Government by General Tamisier, commander-in-chief of the National Guard, raised the butt end of their guns on arriving at the Place de l'H�tel-de-Ville. In the evening everything changed when it became known that the members of the Government were prisoners, and above all who were their substitutes. The measure seemed too strong. Such a one, who might have accepted Ledru-Rollin or Victor Hugo, could not make up his mind to Flourens and Blanqui.[16] In vain the whole day drums had been beating to arms; in the evening they proved effective. Battalions refractory in the morning arrived at the Place Vend�me, most of them believing, it is true, that the elections had been granted; an assemblage of officers at the Bourse only consented to wait for the regular vote on the strength of Dorian and Schoelcher’s placard. Trochu and the deserters from the H�tel-de-Ville again found their faithful flock. The H�tel-de-Ville, on the other hand, was getting empty.
Most of the battalions of the Commune, believing their cause victorious, had returned to their quarters. In the edifice there remained hardly a thousand unarmed men, the only troops being Flourens’ unmanageable tirailleurs, while he wandered up and down amidst this mob. Blanqui signed and again signed. Delescluze tried to save some remnants from this great movement. He saw Dorian, received the formal assurance that the elections of the Commune would take place the next day, those of the Provisional Government the day after; put these assurances upon record in a note where the insurrectional committee declared itself willing to wait for the elections, and had it signed by Milli�re, Flourens and Blanqui. Milli�re and Dorian went to communicate this document to the members of the Defence. Milli�re proposed to them to leave the H�tel-de-Ville together, while charging Dorian and Schoelcher to proceed with the elections, but on the express condition that no prosecutions were to take place. The members of the Defence accepted,[17] and Milli�re was just saying to them, ‘Gentlemen, you ‘ are free,’ when the National Guards asked for written engagements. The prisoners became indignant that their word should be doubted, while Milli�re and Flourens could not make the Guards understand that signatures are illusory. During this mortal anarchy the battalions of order grew larger, and Jules Ferry attacked the door opening on the Place Lobau. Delescluze and Dorian informed him of the arrangement which they believed concluded, and induced him to wait. At three o'clock in the morning chaos still reigned supreme. Trochu’s drums were beating on the Place de l'H�tel-de-Ville. A battalion of Breton mobiles debauched in the midst of the H�tel-de-Ville through subterranean passage of the Napoleon Barracks, surprised and disarmed many of the tirailleurs. Jules Ferry invaded the Government room. The indisciplinable mass offered no resistance. Jules Favre and his colleagues were set free. As the Bretons became menacing, General Tamisier reminded them of the convention entered upon during the evening, and, as a pledge of mutual oblivion, left the H�tel-de-Ville between Blanqui and Flourens. Trochu paraded the streets amidst the pompous pageantry of his battalions.
Thus this day, which might have buoyed up the Defence, ended in smoke. The desultoriness, the indiscipline of the patriots restored to the Government its immaculate character of September. It took advantage of it that very night to tear down the placards of Dorian and Schoelcher; it accorded the municipal elections for the 5th, but in exchange demanded a plebiscite, putting the question in the t style, ‘Those who wish to maintain the Government will vote aye.’ In vain the Committee of the twenty arrondissements issued a manifesto; in vain the R�veil, the Patrie en Danger, the Combat, enumerated the hundred reasons which made it necessary to answer No. Six months after the plebiscite which had made the war, the immense majority of Paris voted the plebiscite that made the capitulation. Let Paris remember and accuse herself. For fear of two or three men she opened fresh credit to this Government which added incapacity to insolence, and said to it, ‘I want you’ 322,000 times. The army, the mobiles, gave 237,000 ayes. There were but 54,000 civilians and 9,000 soldiers to say boldly, no.
How did it happen that those 60,000 men, so clear-sighted, prompt and energetic, could not manage to direct public opinion? Simply because they were wanting in cadres, in method, in organizers. The feel of the siege had been unable to discipline the revolutionary Sporty, in such dire confusion a few weeks before, nor had the patriarchs of 1848 tried to do so. The Jacobins like Delescluze and Blanqui, instead of leading the people, lived in an exclusive circle of friends. F�lix Pyat, vibrating between just ideas and literary epilepsy, only became practical[18] when he had to save his own skin. The others, Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, the hope of the Republicans under the Empire, returned from exile shallow, pursy, rotten to the core with vanity and selfishness, without courage or patriotism, disdaining the Socialists. The dandies of Jacobinism, who called themselves Radicals, Floquet, Cl�menceau, Brinon, and other democratic politicians, carefully kept aloof from the working men. The old Montagnards themselves formed a group of their own, and never came to the Committee of the twenty arrondissements, which only wanted method and political experience to become a power. So it was only a centre of emotions, not of direction — the Gravilliers section of 1870-71, daring, eloquent, but, like its predecessor, treating of everything by manifestos.
There at least was life, a lamp, not always bright, but always burning. What is the lower middle class contributing now? Where are their Jacobins, even their Cordeliers? At the Corderie I see the workers of the lower middle class, men of the pen and orators, but where is the bulk of the army?
All is silent. Save the faubourgs, Paris was a vast sick chamber, where no one dared to speak above his breath. This moral abdication is the true psychological phenomenon of the siege, all the more extraordinary in that it coexisted with an. admirable ardour for resistance. Men who speak of going to seek death with their wives and children, who say, ‘We will burn our houses rather than surrender them to the enemy,’[19] get angry at any controversy as to the power entrusted to the men of the H�tel-de-Ville. If they dread the giddy-headed, the fanatics, or compromising collaborators, why do they not take the direction of the movement into their own hands? But they confine themselves to crying, ‘No insurrection before the enemy! No fanatics!’ as though capitulation were better than an insurrection; as though the 10th of -August 1792 and 31st May 1793 had not been insurrections before the enemy; as though there were no medium between abdication and delirium. And you, citizens of the old sections of 1792-93, who furnished ideas to the Convention and the Commune, who dictated to them the means of safety, who directed the clubs and fraternal societies, entertained in Paris a hundred luminous centres, do you recognise your offspring in these gulls, weaklings, jealous of the people, prostrate before the Left like devotees before the host?
On the 5th and 7th they renewed their plebiscitory vote, naming twelve of the twenty mayors named by Arago. Four amongst them, Dubail, Vautrain, Tirard, and Desmarets, belong to the pure reaction. The greater part of the adjuncts were of the Liberal type. The faubourgs, always at their post, elected Delescluze in the nineteenth arrondissement and Ranvier, Milli�re, Lefran�ais, and Flourens in the twentieth. These latter could not take their seats. The Government, violating the convention of Dorian and Tamisier, had issued warrants for their arrest, and for that of about twenty other revolutionaries.[20] Thus, out of seventy-five effective members, mayors and adjuncts, there were not ten revolutionaries.
These shadows of municipal councillors looked upon themselves as the stewards of the Defence, forbade themselves any indiscreet question, were on their best behaviour, feeding and administering Trochu’s patient. They allowed the insolent and incapable Ferry to be appointed to the central mairie, and C1�ment-Thomas, the executioner of June 1848, to be made commander-in-chief of the National Guard. For seventy days, feeling the pulse of Paris growing from hour to hour more weak, they never had the honesty, the courage to say to the Government, ‘Where are-you leading us?’
Nothing was lost in the beginning of November. The army, the mobiles, the marines numbered, according to the plebiscite, 246,000 men and 7,000 officers: 125,000 National Guards capable of serving a campaign might easily have been picked out in Paris, and 129,000 left for the defence of the interior.[21] The necessary armaments might have been furnished in a few weeks, the cannon especially, every one depriving himself of bread in order to endow his battalion with five pieces, the traditional pride of the Parisians. ‘Where find 9,000 artillerymen?’ said Trochu. Why, in every Parisian mechanic there is the stuff of a gunner, as the Commune has sufficiently proved. In everything else there was the same superabundance. Paris swarmed with engineers, overseers, foremen, who might have been drilled into officers. There lying wasted were all the materials for a victorious army.
The gouty martinets of the regular army saw here nothing but barbarism. This Paris, for which Hoche, Marcea, Kleber [generals of the French Revolution] would have been neither too young, nor too faithful, nor too pure, had for generals the residue of the Empire and Orleanism, Vinoy of December, Ducrot, Luzanne, Lefl�, and a fossil like Chaboud-Latour. In their pleasant intimacy they made much fun of the defence.[22] Finding, however, that the joke was lasting a little too long, the 31st October enraged them. They conceived an implacable, rabid hatred to the National Guard, and up to the last hour refused to utilize it.
Instead of amalgamating the forces of Paris, of giving to all the same cadres, the same uniforms, the same flag, the proud name of National Guard, Trochu had maintained the three divisions: the army, mobiles, and civilians. This was the natural consequence of his opinion of the Defence. The army, incited by the staff, shared its hatred of Paris, who imposed on it, it was said, useless fatigues. The mobiles of the provinces, prompted by their officers, the cream of the country squires, became also embittered. All, seeing the National Guard despised, despised it, calling them, ‘Les � outrance! Les trente sous!’ (Since the siege the Parisians received thirty sous — 1s. 2 1/2d. — as indemnity.) Collisions were to be feared every day.[23]
The 31st October changed nothing in the real state of affairs. The Government broke off the negotiations, which, notwithstanding their victory, they could not have pursued without foundering, decreed the creation of marching companies m the National Guard, and accelerated the cannon-founding, but did not believe a whit the more in defence, still steered towards peace. Riots formed the chief subject of their preoccupation.[24] It was not only from the ‘folly of the siege’ that they wished to save Paris, but above all from the revolutionaries. In this direction they were pushed on by the big bourgeoisie. Before the 4th September the latter had declared they ‘would not fight if the working class were armed, and if it had any chance of prevailing;[25] and on the evening of ‘ the 4th September Jules Favre and Jules Simon had gone to the Corps L�gislatif to reassure them, to explain to them that the new tenants would not damage the house. But the irresistible force of events had provided the proletariat with arms, and to make them inefficient in their hands became now the supreme aim of the bourgeoisie. For two months they had been biding their time, and the plebiscite told them it had come. Trochu held Paris, and by the clergy they held Trochu, all the closer in that he believed himself to be amenable only to his conscience. Strange conscience, full of trapdoors, with more complications than those of a theatre. Since the 4th of September the General had made it his duty to deceive Paris, saying, ‘I shall surrender thee, but it is for thy good.’ After the 31st October he believed his mission twofold — saw in himself the archangel, the St. Michael of threatened society. This marks the second period of the defence. It may perhaps be traced to a cabinet in the Rue des Postes, for the chiefs of the clergy saw more clearly than any one else the danger of inuring the working men to war. Their intrigues were full of cunning. Violent reactionists would have spoilt all, precipitated Paris into a revolution. They applied subtle tricks in their subterranean work, watching Trochu’s every movement, whetting his antipathy to the National Guard, penetrating everywhere into the general staff, the ambulances, even the mairies. Like the fisherman Struggling with too big a prey, they bewildered Pads, now apparently allowing her to swim in her own element, then suddenly weakening her by the harpoon. On the 28th November Trochu gave a first performance to a full-band accompaniment. General Ducrot, who commanded, presented himself like a leonidas: ‘I take the oath before you, before the whole nation. I shall return to Paris dead or victorious. You may see me fall; you will never see me retreat.’ This ation exalted Paris. She fancied herself on the eve of Jemmapes, when the Parisian volunteers scaled the artillery-defended heights; for this time the National Guard was to take part in the proceedings.
We were to force an opening by the Marne in order to join the mythical armies of the provinces, and cross the river at Nogent. Ducrot’s engineer had taken his measures badly; the bridges were not in a fit state. It was necessary to wait till the next day. The enemy, instead of being surprised, was able to put himself on the defensive. On the 30th a spirited assault made us masters of Champigny. The next day Ducrot remained inactive, while the enemy, emptying out of Versailles, accumulated its forces upon Champigny. On the 2nd they recovered part of the village. The whole day we fought severely. The former deputies of the Left were represented on the field of battle by a letter to their ‘very dear president.’ That evening we camped in our positions, but half frozen, the ‘dear president’ having ordered the blankets to be left in Paris, and we had set out — a proof that the whole dons had been done in mockery — without tents or ambulances. The following day Ducrot declared we must retreat, and, ‘before Paris, before the whole nation,’ this dishonoured braggart sounded the retreat. We had 8,000 dead or wounded out of the 100,000 men who had been sent out, and of the 50,000 engaged.
For twenty days Trochu rested on his laurels. Cl�ment-Thomas took advantage of this leisure time to disband and stigmatize the tirailluers of Belleville, who had, however, had many dead and wounded in their ranks. On the mere report of the commanding general at Vincennes, he also stigmatized the 200th battalion. Flourens was arrested. On the 20th of December these rabid purgers of our own ranks consented to take a little notice of the Prussians. The mobiles of the Seine were launched without cannons against the walls of Stains and to the attack of Bourget. The enemy received them with a crushing artillery. An advantage obtained on the right of the Ville-Evrard was not followed up. The soldiers returned in the greatest consternation, some of them crying, Vive la paix! Each new enterprise betrayed Trochu’s plan, enervated the troops. but had no effect on the courage of the National Guards engaged. During two days on the plateau D'Ouron they sustained the fire of sixty pieces. When there was a goodly number of dead, Trochu discovered that the position was of no importance, and evacuated.
These repeated foils began to wear out the credulity of Paris. From hour to hour the sting of hunger was increasing, and horse-flesh had become a delicacy. Dogs, cats, and rats were eagerly devoured. The women waited for hours in the cold and mud for a starvation allowance. For bread they got black grout, that tortured the stomach. Children died on their mothers’ empty breasts. Wood was worth its weight in gold, and the poor had only to warm them the despatches of Gambetta, always announcing fantastic successes.[26] At the end of December their privations began to open the eyes of the people. Were they to give in, their arms intact?
The mayors did not stir. Jules Favre gave them little weekly receptions, where they gossiped about the cuisine of the siege.[27] Only one did his duty — Delescluze. He had acquired great authority by his articles in the R�veil, as free of partiality as they were severe. On the 30th December he challenged Jules Favre, said to his colleagues, ‘You are responsible,’ demanded that the municipal council should be joined to the Defence. His colleagues protested, more especially Dubail and Vacherot. He returned to the charge on the 4th. of January, laid down a radical motion — the dismissal of Trochu and of Cl�ment-Thomas, the mobilization of the National Guard, the institution of a council of defence, the renewal of the Committee of War. No more attention was paid him than before.
The Committee of the twenty arrondissements supported Delescluze in issuing a red poster on the 6th: ‘Has the Government which charged itself with the national defence fulfilled its mission? No. By their procrastination, their indecision, their inertia, those who govern us have led us to the brink of the abyss. They have known neither how to administer nor how to fight. We die of cold, almost of hunger. Sorties without object, deadly struggles without results, repeated failures. The Government has given the measure of its capacity; it is killing us. The perpetuation of this regime means capitulation. The politics, the strategies, the administration of the Empire continued by the men of the 4th of September have been judged. Make way for the people! Make way for the Commune![28] This was outspoken and true. However incapable of action the Committee may have been, its idea were just and precise, and to the end of the siege it remained thee indefatigable, sagacious monitor of Paris.
The multitude who wanted illustrious names, paid no attention to these posters. Some of those who had signed it were arrested., Trochu, however, felt under attack, and the very same evening had posted on the walls, ‘The governor of Paris will never capitulate.’ And Paris again applauded, four months after the 4th September. It was even wondered at that, in spite of Trochu’s declaration, Delescluze and his adjuncts should tender their resignations.[29]
Nevertheless, without obstinately shutting one’s eyes it was impossible not to see the precipice to which the Government was hurrying us on. The Prussians bombarded our houses from the forts of Issy and of Vanves, and on the 30th December, Trochu, having declared all further action impossible, invoked the opinion of all his generals, and wound up by proposing that he should be replaced. On the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th January the Defenders discussed the election of an Assembly which was to follow the catastrophe.[30] But for the irritation of the patriots, Paris would have capitulated before the 15th.
The faubourgs no longer called the men of the Government other than ‘the band of Judas.’ The great democratic lamas, who had withdrawn after the 31st October, returned to the Commune, thus their own helplessness and the common sense of the people. Republican Alliance, where Ledru-Rollin officiated before half-a-dozen incense bearers, the Republican Union, and other bourgeois chapels, went so far as to very energetically demand a Parisian Assembly to organize the defence. The Government felt it had no time to lose. If the bourgeoisie joined the people, it would become impossible to capitulate without a formidable uprising. The population which cheered under the shells would not allow itself to be given up like a flock of sheep. It was necessary to mortify it first, to cure it of its ‘infatuation’, as Jules Ferry said, to purge it of its fever. ‘The National Guard will only be satisfied when 10,000 National Guards have fallen,’ they said at the Government table. Urged on by Jules Favre and Picard on the one hand, and on the other by the simple-minded Emmanuel Arago, Garnier-Pages, and Pelletan, the quack Trochu consented to give a last performance.
It was got up as a farce[31] at the same time as the capitulation.[32] On the 19th the Council of Defence stated that a new defeat would be the signal of the catastrophe. Trochu was willing to accept the mayors m coadjutors on the question of capitulation and revictualling. Jules Simon and Garnier-Pages were willing to surrender Paris, and only make some reserve with regard to France. Garnier-Pages proposed to name by special elections mandatories charged to capitulate. Such was their vigil before the battle.
On the 18th the din of trumpets and drums called Paris to arms and put the Prussians on the alert. For this supreme effort Trochu had been able to muster only 84,000 men, of whom nineteen regiments belonged to the National Guard. He made them pass the night, which was cold and rainy, in the mud of the fields of Mont-Valdrien.
The attack was directed against the defences that covered Versailles from the side of La Bergerie. At ten o'clock, with the impulse of old troops,[33] the National Guards and the mobiles, who formed the majority of the left wing and centre,[34] had stormed the redoubt of Montretout, the part of Buzenval, a part of St. Cloud, pushing forward as far as Garches, occupying, in one word, all the posts designated. General Ducrot, commanding the left wing, had arrived two hours behind time, and though his army consisted chiefly of troops of the line, he did not advance.
We had conquered several commanding heights which the generals did not arm. The Prussians were allowed to sweep these crests at their ease, and at four o'clock sent forth assault columns. Ours gave way at first, then, steadying themselves, checked the onward movement of the enemy. Towards six o'clock, when the hostile f ire diminished, Trochu ordered a retreat. Yet there 40,000 reserves between Mont-Vald�rien and Buzenval. Out of 150 artillery pieces, thirty only had been employed. But the generals, who during the whole day had hardly deigned to communicate with the National Guard, declared they could not hold out a second nigh!, and Trochu had Montretout and all the conquered positions evacuated. Battalions returned weeping with rage. All understood that the whole affair was a cruel mockery.[35]
Paris, which had gone to sleep victorious, awoke to the sound of Trochu’s alarm-bell. The General asked for an armistice of two days to carry off the wounded and bury the dead. He said, ‘We want time, carts, and many litters.’ The dead and wounded did not exceed 3,000 men.
This time Paris at last saw the abyss. Besides, the Defenders, disdaining all further disguise, suddenly dropped the mask. Jules Favre and Trochu summoned the mayors. Trochu declared that all was lost and any further struggle impossible.[36] The sinister news immediately spread over the town.
During four months’ siege, patriotic Paris had foreseen, accepted all; pestilence, assault, pillage, everything save capitulation. On this the 20th of January found Paris, notwithstanding her credulity, her weakness, the same Paris as on the 20th September. Thus, when the fatal word was uttered, the city seemed at first wonder-struck, as at the sight of some monstrous, unnatural crime. The wounds of four months opened again, crying for vengeance. Cold, starvation, bombardment, the long nights in the trenches, the little children dying by thousands, death scattered abroad in the sorties, and all to end in shame, to form an escort for Bazaine, to become a second Metz. One fancied one could hear the Prussian sneering. With some, stupor turned into rage. Those who were longing for the surrender threw themselves into attitudes. The white-livered mayors even affected to fly into a passion. On the evening of the 2 Ist they were again received by Trochu. That same morning all the generals had unanimously decided that another sortie was impossible. Trochu very philosophically demonstrated to the mayors the absolute necessity of making advances to the enemy, but declared he would have nothing to do with it, insinuating that they should capitulate in his stead. They cut wry faces, protested, still imagining they were not responsible for this issue.
After their departure the Defenders deliberated. Jules Favre asked to tender his resignation. But he, the apostle, insisted upon being by them, fancying thus to cheat history into the belief that he had to the last resisted capitulation.[37] The discussion was growing heated when, at three o'clock in the morning, they were informed of the rescue of Flourens and other political prisoners confined at Mazas. A body. of National Guards headed by an adjunct from the eighteenth arrondissement had presented themselves an hour before in front of the prison. The bewildered governor had let them have their way. The Defenders, fearing a repetition of the 31st October, hurried on their resolution replacing Trochu by Vinoy.
He wanted to be implored. Jules Favre and Lefl� had to show him the people in arms, an insurrection imminent. At that very moment, the morning of the 22nd, the prefect of police, declaring himself powerless, had sent in his resignation. The men of the 4th September had fallen so low as to bend their knees before those of the 2nd December. Vinoy condescended to yield.
His first act was to arm against Paris, to dismantle her lines before the Prussians, to recall the troops of Suresne, Gentilly, Les Lilas, to call out the cavalry and gendarmerie. A battalion of mobiles commanded by Vabre, a colonel of the National Guard, fortified itself in the H�tel-de-Ville. Cl�ment-Thomas issued a furious proclamation: ‘The factions are joining the enemy.’ He adjured the ‘entire National Guard to rise in order to smite them.’ He had not called upon it to rise against the Prussians.
There were signs of anger afloat, but no symptoms of a serious collision. Many revolutionaries, well aware that all was at an end, would not support a movement which, if successful, would have saved the men of the Defence and forced the victors to capitulate in their stead. Others, whose patriotism was not enlightened by reason, still warm from the ardour of Buzenval, believed in a sortie en masse. We must at least, said they, save our honour. The evening before, some meetings had voted that an armed opposition should be offered to any attempt at capitulation, and had given themselves a rendezvous before the H�tel-de-Ville.
At twelve o'clock the drums beat to arms at the Batignolles. At one o'clock several armed groups appeared in the square of the H�tel-de-Ville; the crowd was gathering. A deputation, led by a member of the Alliance, was received by G. Chaudey, adjunct to the mayor, for the Government was seated at the Louvre since the 31st October. The orator said the wrongs of Paris necessitated the nomination of the Commune. Chaudey answered that the Commune was nonsense; that he always had, and always would oppose it. Another, more eager deputation arrived. Chaudey received it with insults. Meanwhile the excitement was spreading to the crowd that filled the square. The 101st battalion arrived from the left bank crying ‘Death to the traitors!’ when the 207th of the Batignolles, who had marched down the boulevards, debauched on the square through the Rue du Temple and drew up before the H�tel-de-Ville, whose doors and windows were closed. Others joined them. Some shots were fired, the windows of the H�tel-de-Ville were clouded with smoke, and the crowd dispersed with a cry of terror. Sheltered by lamp-posts and some heaps of sand, some National Guards sustained the fire of the mobiles. Others fired from the houses in the Avenue Victoria. The fusillade had been going on for half an hour when the gendarmes appeared at the corner of the Avenue. The insurgents, almost surrounded, made a retreat. About a dozen were arrested and taken to the H�tel-de-Ville, where Vinoy wanted to despatch them at once. Jules Ferry recoiled, and had them sent before the regular court-martials. Those who had got up the demonstration and the inoffensive crowd of spectators had thirty killed or wounded, among others a man of great energy, Commandant Sapia. The H�tel-de-Ville had only one killed and two wounded.
The same evening the government closed all the clubs and issued numerous warrants. Eighty-three persons, most of them innocent,[38] were melted. This occasion was also taken advantage of to send Delescluze, notwithstanding his sixty-five years, and an acute bronchitis which was undermining his health, to rejoin the prisoners of the 31st October, thrown pell-mell into a damp dungeon at Vincennes. The R�veil and the Combat were suppressed.
An indignant proclamation denounced the insurgents as ‘the partisans of the foreigners,’ the only resource left the men of the 4th September in this shameful crisis. In this only they were Jacobins. Who served the enemy? The Government ever ready to negotiate, or the men ever offering a desperate resistance? History will tell how at Metz an immense army, with cadres, well-trained soldiers, allowed itself to be given over without a single marshal, chef-de-corps, or a regiment rising to save it from Bazaine;[39] whereas the revolutionaries of Paris, without leaders, without organization, before 240,000 soldiers and mobiles gained over to peace, delayed the capitulation for months and revenged it with their blood.
The simulated indignation of traitors raised only a feeling of disgust. Their very name, ‘Government of Defence,’ cried out against them. On the very day of the affray they played their last farce. Jules Simon having assembled the mayors and a dozen superior officers,[40] offered the supreme command to the military men who could propose a plan. This Paris, which they had received exuberant with life, the men of the 4th September, now that they had exhausted and bled her, proposed to abandon to others. Not one of those present resented the infamous irony. They confined themselves to refusing this hopeless legacy. This was exactly the thing Jules Simon waited for. Someone muttered, ‘We must capitulate.’ It was General Lecomte. The mayors understood why they had been convoked, and a few of them squeezed out a tear.
From this time forth Paris existed like the patient who is expecting amputation. The forts still thundered, the dead and the wounded were still brought in, but Jules Favre was known to be at Versailles. On the 27th at midnight the cannon were silenced. Bismarck and Jules Favre had come to an honourable understanding.[41] Paris had surrendered.
The next day the Government of the Defence published the basis of the negotiations — a fortnight’s armistice, the immediate convocation of an Assembly, the occupation of the forts, the disarmaments of all the soldiers and mobiles with the exception of one division. The town remained gloomy. These days of anguish had stunned Paris. Only a few demonstrations were made. A battalion of the National Guard came before the H�tel-de-Ville crying ‘Down with the traitors!’ In the evening, 400 officers signed a pact of resistance, naming as their chief Brunel, an ex-officer expelled from the army under the Empire for his republican opinions, and resolved to march on the forts of the east, commanded by Admiral Saisset, whom the press credited with the reputation of a Beaurepaire. At midnight the call to arms and the alarm bell summoned the tenth, thirteenth, and twentieth arrondissements. But the night was icy cold, the National Guard too enervated for an act of despair. Two or three battalions only came to the rendezvous. Brunel was arrested two days after.
On the 29th January the German flag was hoisted on our forts. All had been signed the evening before. 400,000 men armed with muskets and cannons capitulated before 200,000. The forts, the enceinte were disarmed. Paris was to pay 200,000,000 francs in a fortnight. The Government boasted of having preserved the arms of the National Guard, but every one knew that to take these it would have been necessary to storm Paris. In the end, not content with surrendering Paris, the Government of the National Defence surrendered all France. The armistice applied to all the armies of the provinces save Bourbaki’s, the only one that would have profited by it.
On the following days there arrived some news from the provinces. It was known that Bourbaki, pressed by the Prussians, had, after a comedy of suicide, thrown his whole army into Switzerland. The aspect and the weakness of the Delegation of the Defence in the provinces had just began to reveal themselves, when the Mot d'Ordre founded by Rochefort, who had abandoned the Government after the 31st October, published a proclamation by Gambetta, stigmatizing a shameful peace, and a whole litany of Radical decrees: ineligibility of all the great functionaries and official deputies of the Empire; dissolution of the conseils-g�n�raux, revocation of some of the judges[42] who had formed part of the mixed commission of the 2nd December. It was ignored that during the whole war the Delegation had acted in contradiction to its last decrees, which, coming from a fallen power, were a mere electoral trick, and Gambetta’s name was placed on most of the electoral lists.
Some bourgeois papers supported Jules-Favre and Picard, who had been clever enough to make themselves looked upon as the out-and-outers of the Government; none dared to go so far as to support Trochu, Simon and Ferry. lie variety of electoral lists set forth by the republican party explained its impotence during the siege. The men of 1848 refused to accept Blanqui, but admitted several members of the International in order to usurp its name, and their list, a medley of Neo-Jacobins and Socialists, entitled itself ‘the fist of the Four Committees.’ The clubs and working men’s groups drew up lists of a more outspoken character; one bore the name of the German Socialist deputy, Liebknecht. The most decided one was that of the Corderie.
The International and the Federal Chamber of the working-men’s societies, mute and disorganized during the siege, again taking up their programme, said, ‘We must also have working men amongst those in power.’ They came to an arrangement with the Committee of the twenty arrondissements, and the three groups issued the same manifesto. ‘This,’ said they, ‘is the list of the candidates presented ‘m the name of a new world by the party of the disinherited. France is about to reconstitute herself; working men have the right to find and take their place in the new order of things. The socialist revolutionary candidatures signify the denial of the right to discuss the existence of the Republic; affirmation of the necessity for the accession of working men to political power; overthrow of the oligarchical Government and of industrial feudalism.’ Besides a few names familiar to the public, Blanqui, Gambon, Garibaldi, Felix Pyat, Ranvier, Tridon, Longuet, Lefran�ais, Vall�s, these Socialist candidates were known only in the working men’s centres — mechanics, shoemakers, ironfounders, tailors, carpenters, cooks, cabinetmakers, carvers.[43] Their proclamations were but few in number. These disinherited could not compete with bourgeois enterprise. Their day was to come a few weeks later, when two-thirds of them were to be elected to the Commune. Now those only received a mandate who were accepted by the middle-class papers, five in all: Garibaldi, Gambon, F�lix Pyat, Tolain, and Malon.
The list of representatives of the 8th February was a harlequinade, including every republican shade and every political crotchet. Louis Blanc, who had played the part of a goody during the siege, and who was supported by all the committees except that of the Corderie, headed the procession with 216,000 votes, followed by Victor Hugo, Gambetta, and Garibaldi; Delmcluze obtained 154,000 votes. Then came a motley crowd of Jacobin fossils, radicals, officers, mayors, journalists, and inventors. One single member of the Government slipped in, Jules Favre, although his private life had been exposed by Milli�re, who was also elected.[44] By a cruel injustice, the vigilant sentinel, the only journalist who during the siege had always shown sagacity, Blanqui, found only 52,000 votes, about the number of those who opposed the plebiscite, while F�lix Pyat received 145,000 for his piping in the Combat.[45]
This confused incongruous ballot affirmed at least the republican idea. Paris, trampled upon by the Empire and the Liberals, clung to the Republic, who gave her promise for the future. But even before her vote had been proclaimed she heard coming forth from the provincial ballot boxes a savage cry of reaction. Before a single one of her representatives had left the town, she saw on the way to Bordeaux a troop of rustics, of Pourceaugnacs, of sombre clericals, spectres of 1815, 1830, 1848, high and low reactionaries, who, mumbling and furious, came by the grace of universal suffrage to take possession of France. What signified this sinister masquerade? How had this subterranean vegetation contrived to pierce and overgrow the summit of the country?
It was that Paris and the provinces should be crushed, that the Prussian Shylock should drain our milliards and cut his pound of flesh, that the state of slew should for four years weigh down upon forty-two departments, that 100,000 Frenchmen should be cut off from life or banished from their native soil, that the black brotherhood should conduct their processions over France, to bring about this great conservative machination, which from the first hour to the last explosion, the revolutionaries of Paris and of the provinces had not ceased to denounce to our treacherous or sluggish governors.
In the provinces the field and the tactics were not the same. The conspiracy, instead of being carried on within the Government, circumvented it. During the whole month of September the reactionaries hid in their lairs. The Government of National Defence had only forgotten one element of defence — the provinces, seventy-six departments. Yet they were agitating, showed life; they alone held in check the reaction. Lyons had even understood her duty earlier than Paris; in the morning of the 4th September she proclaimed the Republic, hoisted the red flag and named a Committee of Public Safety. Marseilles and Toulouse organized regional commissions. The Defenders understood nothing of this patriotic zeal, thought France disjointed, and delegated to put it right again two very tainted relics, Cr�mieux and Glais-Bizoin, together with a former governor of Cayenne, the Bonapartist Admiral Fourichon.
They reached Tours on the 18th. The patriots hastened thither to meet them. In the west and south, they had already organized Leagues to marshal the departments against the enemy and supply the want of a central impulse. They surrounded the delegates of Paris, asking them for orders, vigorous measures, the sending of commissioners, and promised their absolute co-operation. The scoundrels answered, ‘We are face to face, let us speak frankly. Well. then, we have no longer any army; all resistance is impossible. ‘We only hold out for the sake of making better conditions.’ We ourselves witnessed the scene.[46] There was but one cry of indignation: ‘What! is this your answer when thousands of Frenchmen come to offer you their lives and fortunes?’
On the 28th, the Lyonese broke out. Hardly four departments separated them from the enemy, who might at any moment come to levy a contribution on their city, and since the 4th September they had in vain demanded arms. The municipality, elected on the 16th in place of the Committee of Public Safety, passed its time in squabbling with the Prefect, Challemel-Lacour, an arrogant Neo-Jacobin. On the 27th, instead of any serious measures of defence, the council had reduced by five-pence the pay of the working men employed in the fortifications, and appointed Cluseret general without troops of an army to be created.[47].
The Republican committees of Les Brotteaux, of La Guilloti�re, of La Croix-Rousse,[48] and the Central Committee of the National Guard decided to urge on the H�tel-de-Ville, and laid before it on the 28th an energetic programme of defence. The working men of the fortifications, led by Saigne, supported this step by a demonstration. They filled the Place des Terreaux, and what with the speeches, what with the excitement, invaded the H�tel-de-Ville. Saigne proposed the nomination of a revolutionary commission, and perceiving Cluseret, named him commander of the National Guard. Cluseret, much concerned for his future, only appeared on the balcony to propound his Plan and recommend calm. However, the commission being constituted, he no longer dared to resist, but set out in search of his troops. At the door, the mayor, H�non, and the prefect arrested him. They had penetrated into the H�tel-de-Ville by the Place de la Com�die. Saigne, springing upon the balcony, announced the news to the crowd, which, throwing itself upon the H�tel-de-Ville, delivered the prospective general and in turn arrested the mayor and the prefect.
The bourgeois battalions soon arrived at the Place des Terreaux; shortly after those of La Croix-Rousse and of La Guilloti�re emerged. Great misfortune might have resulted from the first shot. They parleyed. -Me commission disappeared and the general swooned.
This was ‘a warning. Other symptoms manifested themselves in several towns. The prefects even presided over Leagues and met each other. At the commencement of October, the Admiral of Cayenne had only been able to set on foot 30,000 men, and nothing came from Tours but a decree convoking the election for the 16th.
On the 9th, when Gambetta alighted from his balloon, all the patriots started. The Conservatives, who had begun to creep out of their recesses, quickly drew back again. The ardour and the energy of his. first proclamation carried people away. Gambetta held France absolutely; he was all-powerful.
He disposed of the immense resources of France, of innumerable men; of Bourges, Brest, L'Orient, Rochefort, Toulon for arsenals; workshops like Lille, Nantes, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Marseilles, Lyons; the seas free; incomparably greater strength than that of 1793, which had to fight at the same time the foreigner and internal rebellions. The centres were kindling. The municipal councils made themselves felt, the rural districts as yet showing no signs Of resistance; the national reserve intact. The burning metal needed only moulding.
The debut of the delegate was a serious blunder. He executed the decree of Paris for the adjournment of the elections, which promised to be republican and bellicose. Bismarck himself had told Jules Favre that he did not want an Assembly, because this Assembly would be for war. Energetic circulars, some measures against the intriguers, formal instructions to the prefects, would have brightened and victoriously brought out this patriotic fervour. An Assembly fortified by all the republican aspirations, vigorously led, sitting in a populous town, would have increased the national energy a hundred-fold, brought to light unhoped-for talents, and might have exacted everything from the country, blood and gold. It would have proclaimed the Republic, and in case of being obliged by reverses to negotiate, would have saved her from foundering, prevented reaction. But Gambetta’s instructions were formal. ‘Elections at Paris would bring back days like. June,’ said he. ‘We must do without Paris,’ was our answer. All was useless. Besides, several prefects, incapable of influencing their surroundings, predicted pacific election. Lacking the energy to grapple with the real difficulties of the situation, Gambetta fancied he might shift them by the expedient clap-trap of his dictatorship.
Did he bring a great political revolution? No. His whole programme was. ‘To maintain order and liberty and push on the war.’[49] Cr�mieux had called the Bonapartists ‘republicans going astray.’ Gambetta believed, or pretended to believe, in the patriotism of the reactionaries. A few pontifical zouaves who offered themselves, the abject submission of the Bonapartist generals, the wheedling of a few bishops,[50] sufficed to delude him. He continued the tactics of his predecessors, to conciliate everybody; he spared even the functionaries. In the department of Finance and Public Instruction, he and his colleagues forbade the dismissal of any official. The War Office for a long time remained under the supreme direction of a Bonapartist, and always carried on an underhand war against the defence. Gambetta -maintained in some prefectures the same employees who had drawn up the proscription lists of the 2nd December, 1851. With the exception of a few justices of the peace and a small number of magistrates, nothing was changed in the political personnel, the whole subordinate administration remaining intact.
Was he wanting in authority? His colleagues of the council did not even dare to raise their voices; the prefects knew only him; the generals put on the manner of school boys in his presence. Was a personnel wanting? The Leagues contained solid elements; the petty bourgeoisie and proletariat might have given the cadres.
Gambetta saw here only obstacles, chaos, federalism, and roughly dismissed their delegates. Each department possessed groups of known, tried republicans, to whom the administration and the part of spurring the Defence under the direction of commissioners might have been entrusted. Gambetta refused almost everywhere to refer to them; the few whom he appointed he knew how to fetter closely. He vested all power in the prefects, most of them ruins of 1848, or his colleagues of the Conf�rence Mol�,[51] nerveless, loquacious, timorous, anxious to have themselves well spoken of, and many anxious to feather themselves a nest in their department.
The Defence in the provinces set out on these two crutches — the War Office and the prefects. On this absurd plan of conciliation the Government was conducted.
Did the new delegate at least bring a powerful military conception? ‘No one in the Government, neither General Trochu nor General Lefl�, no one had suggested a military operation of any kind.’[52] Did he at least possess that quick penetration which makes up for want of experience? After twenty days in the provinces he comprehended the military situation no better than he had done at Paris. The capitulation of Metz drew from him indignant proclamations, but he understood no more than his colleagues of the H�tel-de-Ville that this was the very moment to make a supreme effort.
With the exception of three divisions (30,000) men and the greater part of their cavalry, the Germans had been obliged to employ for the investment of Paris all their troops, and they had no reserve left them. The three divisions at Orl�ans and Ch�teaudun were kept in check by our forces of the Loire. The cavalry, while infesting a large extent of territory in the west, north and east, could not hold out against infantry. At the end of October, the army before Paris, strongly fortified against the town, was not at all covered from the side of the provinces. The appearance of 50,000 men, even of young troops,, would have forced the Prussians to raise the blockade.
Moltke was far from disregarding the danger. He had decided in case of need to raise the blockade, to sacrifice the park of artillery then being formed at Villecoublay, to concentrate his army for action in the open country, and only to re-establish the blockade after the victory, that is to say, after the arrival of the army of Metz. ‘Everything was ready for our decampment; we only had to team the horses,’ reported an eye-witness, the Swiss Colonel D'Erlach. The official papers of Berlin had already prepared public opinion for this event.
The blockade of Paris raised, even momentarily, might have led, under the pressure of Europe, to an honourable peace; this was almost certain. Paris and France recovering their salutary buoyancy, the revictualling of the great town, and the consequent prolongation of her resistance, would have given the time necessary for the organization of the provincial armies.
At the end of October our army of the Loire was in progress of formation, the 15th corps at Salbris, the 16th at Blois, already numbering 80,000 men. If it had driven through between the Bavarians at Orl�ans and the Prussians at Ch�teaudun; if — and this was an easy matter with its numerical superiority — it would have beaten the enemy one after another, the route to Paris would have been thrown open, and the deliverance of Paris almost sure.
The Delegation of Tours did not see so far. It confined its efforts to recovering Orl�ans, in order to establish there an entrenched camp; so on the 26th General D'Aurelles de Paladines, named by Gambetta commander-in-chief of the two corps, received the order to rescue the town from the Bavarians. He was a senator, a bigoted, rabid reactionary, at best fit only to be an officer of zouaves, fuming in his heart at the defence. It was resolved to make the attack from Blois. instead of conducting the 15th corps on foot, which by Romorantin would have taken forty-eight hours, the Delegation sent it by the Vierzon railway to Tours, a journey which took five days and could not be hidden from the enemy. Still, on the 28th, D'Aurelles encamped before Blois, with at least 40,000 men, and the next day he was to have left for Orl�ans.
On the 28th, at nine o'clock in the evening, the commander of the German troops had him informed ‘of the capitulation of Metz. D'Aurelles, jumping at this pretext, telegraphed to Tours that he should call off his movement.
A general of some ability, of some good faith, would, on the contrary, have precipitated everything. Since the army before Metz, now disengage, would swoop down upon the centre of France, there was not a day to lose to get ahead of it. Every hour told. This was the critical juncture of the war.
The delegation of Tours was as foolish as D'Aurelles. Instead of dismissing him, it contented itself with moans, ordering him to concentrate his forces. This concentration was terminated on the 3rd November.[53] D'Aurelles then had 70,000 men established from Mer to Marchenoir. He might have aired before events overtook him. That very day a whole brigade of Prussian cavalry had been obliged to abandon Mantes and to retreat before bands of franc-tieurs; French forces were observed to be marching from Courville in the direction of Chartres. D'Aurelles did not stir, and the Delegation remained as paralysed as he. ‘M. le Ministre’, wrote on the 4th November the Delegate at War, M. de Freycinet,[54] ‘for some days the army and myself do not know if the Government wants peace or war. At this Moment, when we are just disposing ourselves to accomplish projects laboriously Prepared, rumours of an armistice disturb the minds of our generals, and I myself, I seek to revive their spirits and push them on, I know not whether the next day I shall not be disavowed by the Government.’ Gambetta the same day answered: ‘I agree with you as to the detestable influence of the political hesitations of the Government. From today we must decide on our march forward;’ and on the 7th D'Aurelles still remained motionless. At last, on the 8th, he set out, and went about fifteen kilometres, and in the evening again spoke of making a halt.[55] All his forces together ed 100,000 men. On the 9th he made up his mind to attack at Coulmiers. The Bavarians immediately evacuated Orl�ans. Far from pursuing them, D'Aurelles announced that he was going to fortify himself before the town. The Delegation let him do as he liked, and gave him no orders to pursue the enemy.[56] Three days after the battle Gambetta came to the headquarters and approved of D'Aurelle’s plan. The Bavarians during this respite had fallen back upon Toury, and two divisions hurried from Metz by the railway arrived before Paris. Moltke could at his ease direct the 17th Prussian division towards Toury, where it arrived on the 12th. Three other corps of the army of Metz approached the Seine by forced marches. The ignorance of the Delegation, the obstruction of Trochu, the ill-will and blunders of D'Aurelles, frustrated the only chances of raising the blockade of Paris.
On the 19th, the army of Metz protected the blockade in the north and in the south. Henceforth the Delegation had but one part to play — to prepare sound, manoeuvrable armies for France, and find the necessary time for this, as in ancient times the Romans did, and in our days the Americans. It preferred bolstering up vain appearances, amusing public opinion with the din of arms, imagining that they could thus puzzle the Prussians also. It threw upon them men raised but a few days before, without instruction, without discipline, without instruments of war, fatally destined to defeat. The prefects charged with the organization of the mobiles, and those on the point of being mobilized, were in continual strife with the generals, and lost themselves in the details of the equipments. The generals, unable to make anything of those W-supplied contingents, only advanced on compulsions Gambetta on his arrival had said in his proclamation ‘We will make young leaders,’ and the important commands were given to the men of the Empire, worn out, ignorant, knowing nothing of patriotic wars. To these young recruits, who should have been electrified by stirring appeals, D'Aurelles preached the word of the Lord and the interest of the service.[58] The accomplice of Bazaine, Bourbaki,[59] on his return from England, received the command of the army of the East. The weakness of the new Delegate encouraged the resistance of all malcontents. Gambetta asked the officers whether they would accept service under Garibaldi;[60] he not only allowed them to refuse, but even released a cur� who in the pulpit had set a price on the General’s head. He humbly explained to the royalist officers that the question at issue was not to defend the Republic but the territory. He gave leave to the pontifical zouaves to hoist the banner of the Sacred Heart. He suffered Admiral Fourichon to contend for the disposal of the navy with the Delegation.[61] He indignantly rejected every project for an enforced loan, and refused to sanction those voted in some departments. He left the railway companies masters of the transport, in the hands of reactionaries, always ready to raise difficulties. From the end of November, these boisterous and contradictory orders, these accumulations of impracticable decrees, these powers given and taken back, clearly proved that only a sham resistance was meant.
The country obeyed, giving everything with passive blindness. The contingents were raised without difficulty; there were no refractory recruits in rural districts, although the gendarmerie were absent with the army; the Leagues had given way on the first remonstrance. There .was only a movement on the 3 Ist October. The Marseilles revolutionaries, indignant at the weakness of their Municipal Council, proclaimed the Commune. Cluseret, who from Geneva had asked the ‘Prussian’ Gambetta for the command of an army corps, appeared at Marseilles, got himself named general, again backed out and retired to Switzerland, his dignity forbidding him to serve as a simple soldier. At Toulouse, the population expelled the general. At Saint-Etienne the Commune existed for an hour. But everywhere a word sufficed to replace the authority in the hands of the Delegation; such was the apprehension of everybody of creating the slightest embarrassment. . This abnegation only served the reactionaries. The Jesuits, who resumed their intrigues, had been reinstated by Gambetta at Marseilles, whence the indignation of the people had expelled them. The delegate cancelled the suspension of papers that published letters from Chambord and D'Aumale. He protected the judges who had formed part of the mixed commission’ released the one who had decimated the department of the Var, and dismissed the prefect of Toulouse for having suspended the functions of another in the Haute-Garonne. The Bonapartists mustered again.[62] When the prefect of Bordeaux, an ultra-moderate Liberal, asked for the authorization to arrest some of their ringleaders, Gambetta severely answered him, ‘These are practices of the Empire, not of the Republic.’ Cr�mieux, too, said, ‘The Republic is the reign of law.’
Then the Conservative Vend�e arose. Monarchists, clericals, capitalists, waited for their time; cowering in their castles, all their strongholds remained intact; seminaries, tribunals, general councils, which for a long time the Delegation refused to dissolve en masse. They were clever enough to figure here and there in the field of battle, in order to preserve the appearance of patriotism. In a few weeks they had seen through Gambetta and found out the Liberal behind the Tribune.
Their campaign was laid and conducted from the be by the only serious political tacticians ~ France possesses — by the Jesuits, masters of the clergy. The arrival of M. Thiers provided the apparent leader.
The men of the 4th September had made him their ambassador. France, almost without diplomatists since Talleyrand, has never possessed one more easily gulled than this little man. He had gone naively to London, to Petersburg, to Italy, whose inveterate enemy he had always been, begging for vanquished France alliances which had been refused her when yet intact. He was trifled with everywhere. He obtained but one interview with Bismarck, and negotiated the armistice rejected by the 3 Ist October. When he arrived at Tours in the firs days of November, he knew that peace was impossible, and that henceforth it must be war to the knife. Instead of courageously making the best of it, of placing his existence at the service of the Delegation, he had but one object, to baffle the defence.
It could not have had a more redoubtable enemy. lie success of this man, without ideas, without principles of government, without comprehension of progress, without courage, would have been impossible everywhere, save with the French bourgeoisie. But he has always been at hand when a Liberal was wanted to shoot down the people, and he is a wonderful artist in Parliamentary intrigue. No one has known like him how to attack, to isolate a Government, to group prejudices hatred, and interests, to hide his intrigues behind a mask of patriotism and common sense. The campaign of 1870-71 will certainly be his masterpiece. He had made up his mind as to the lion’s share due to the Prussians, and took no more notice of them than they had crossed the Moselle. For him the enemy was the defender. When our poor mobiles, without cadres, without military training, succumbed to a temperature as fatal as that of 1812, M. Thiers exulted at our disasters. His house had become the headquarters for the Conservative notabilities. At Bordeaux especially it seemed to be the true seat of the Government.
Before the investment the reactionary press of Paris had o provincial service, and from the outset cooled down the Delegation.
After the arrival of M. Thiers it carried on a regular war. It never ceased harassing, accusing, pointing out the slightest shortcomings, with a view not to instruct, but to slander, and to wind up by the .foregone conclusion: Fighting is madness, disobedience legitimate. From the middle of December this watchword, faithfully followed by all the papers of the party, spread over the rural districts.
For the first time country squires found their way to the ear of the peasant. This war was about to draw off all the men who were not in the army or in the Garde Mobile, and camps were being prepared to receive them. The prisons of Germany held 260,000 men; Paris, the Loire, the army of the East, more than 350,000. Thirty thousand were dead, and thousands filled the hospitals. Since the month of August France had given at least 700,000 men. Where are they to stop? This cry was echoed in every cottage: ‘It is the Republic that wants war! Paris is in the hands of the levellers.’ What does the French peasant know of his fatherland, and how many could say where Alsace lies? It is he above all whom the bourgeoisie have in view when they resist compulsory education. For eighty years all their efforts tended to transforming into coolies the descendants of the volunteers of 1792.
Before long a spirit of revolt infected the mobiles, almost everywhere commanded by noted reactionaries. Here an equerry of the Emperor, there rabid royalists led battalions. In the army of the Loire they muttered, ‘We will not fight for M. Gambetta.’[63] Officers of the mobilized troops boasted of never having exposed the lives of their men.
In the beginning of 1871 the provinces were undermined from end to end. Some general councils that had been dissolved met publicly, declaring that they considered themselves elected. The Delegation followed the progress of this enemy, cursed M. Thiers in private, but took good care not to arrest him. The revolutionaries who came to tell it the lengths things were going to were curtly shown out. Gambetta, worn out, not believing in the defence, thought only of conciliating the men of influence and rendering himself acceptable for the future.
At the signal of the elections, the scenery, laboriously prepared, appeared all of a piece, showing the Conservatives grouped, supercilious, their lists ready. We were far now from the month of October, when, in many departments, they had not dared to put forward their candidates. The decrees on the ineligibility of the high Bonapartist functionaries only affected shadows. The coalition, disdaining the broken-down men of the Empire, had carefully formed a personnel of pig-tailed nobles, well-to-do farmers, captains of industry, men likely to do the work bluntly. The clergy had skilfully united on their lists the Legitimists and Orleanists, perhaps laid down the basis for a fusion. The vote was carried like a plebiscite. lie republicans tried to speak of an honourable peace; the peasants would only hear of peace at any price. The towns knew hardly how to make a stand; at the utmost elected Liberals. Out of 750 members, the Assembly counted 450 born monarchists. ‘Me apparent chief of the campaign, the king of Liberals, M. Thiers, was returned in twenty-three departments.
The conciliator � outrance could rival Trochu. The one had worried out Paris, the other the Republic.
Glossary |
Contents |
Chapter I |
The Civil War in France |
Paris Commune Archive
|
./articles/Lissagaray-Prosper/https:..www.marxists.org.history.france.archive.lissagaray.ch03 | <body>
<p class="title">Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871</p>
<p><img src="pics/ferre.jpg" vspace="2" hspace="12" alt="ferre, member of the committee of vigilance" border="1" align="right"></p>
<h1>Chapter III<br>
The eighteenth of March</h1>
<p class="quoteb">We then did what we had to do: nothing provoked the Paris insurrection. (Dufaure’s speech against amnesty, session of 18th May, 1876.)</p>
<p>The execution was as foolish as the conception. On the 18th of March, at three o'clock in the morning, several columns dispersed in various directions to the Buttes Chaumont, Belleville, the Faubourg du Temple, the Bastille, the H�tel-de-Ville, Place St. Michel, the Luxembourg, the thirteenth arrondissement and the Invalides. General Susbielle marched on Montmartre with two brigades about 6,000 men strong. All was silent and deserted. The Paturel brigade took possession of the Moulin de la Galette without striking a blow. The Lecomte brigade gained the Tower of Solferino only meeting with one sentinel, Turpin, who crossed bayonets with them and was hewn down by the gendarmes. They then rushed to the post of the Rue des Rosiers, stormed it, and threw the National Guards into the caves of the Tower of Solferino. At six o'clock the surprise was complete. M. Cl�menceau hurried to the Buttes to congratulate General Lecomte. Everywhere else the cannon were surprised in the same way. The Government triumphed all along the line, and D'Aurelles sent the papers a proclamation written in the conqueror’s vein.</p>
<p>There was only one thing wanting — teams to convey the spoil. Vinoy had almost forgotten them. At eight o'clock they began to put some horses to the pieces. Meanwhile the faubourgs were awaking and the early shops opening. Around the milkmaids and before the wineshops the people began talking in a low voice; they pointed to the soldiers, the machine-gun <span class="context">[a multiple-barrelled gun, forerunner of the modern machine-gun]</span> levelled at the streets, the walls covered with the still wet poster signed by M. Thiers and his Ministers. The spoke of paralysed commerce, suspended orders, frightened capital:</p>
<p>‘Inhabitants of Paris, in your interest the Government has resolved to act. Let the good citizens separate from the bad ones; let them aid public force; they will render a service to the Republic herself,’ said MM. Pouyer-Quertier, De Larcy, Dufaure and other Republicans. The conclusion is borrowed from the phraseology of December: ‘The culpable shall be surrendered to justice. Order, complete, immediate and unalterable, must be re-established.’ They spoke of order — blood was to be shed.</p>
<p>As in our great days, the women were the first to act. Those of the 18th March, hardened by the siege — they had had a double ration of misery — did not wait for the men. They surrounded the machineguns, apostrophized the sergeant in command of the gun, saying, ‘This is shameful; what are you doing there?’ The soldiers did not answer. Occasionally a non-commissioned officer spoke to them: ‘Come, my good women, get out of the way.’ At the same time a handful of National Guards, proceeding to the post of the Rue Doudeauville, there found two drums that had not been smashed, and beat the rappel. At eight o'clock they numbered 300 officers and guards, who ascended the Boulevard Ornano. They met a platoon of soldiers of the 88th, and, crying, <em>Vive la R�publique! </em>enlisted them. The post of the Rue Dejean also joined them, and the butt-end of their muskets raised, soldiers and guards together marched up to the Rue Muller that leads to the Buttes Montmartre, defended on this side by the men of the 88th. These, seeing their comrades intermingling with the guards, signed to them to advance, that they would let them pass. General Lecomte, catching sight of the signs, had the men replaced by <em>sergents-de-ville, </em>and confined them in the Tower of Solferino, adding, ‘You will get your deserts.’ The <em>sergents-de-ville </em>discharged a few shots, to which the guards replied. Suddenly a large number of National Guards, the butt-end of their muskets up, women and children, appeared on the other flank from the Rue des Rosiers. Lecomte, surrounded, three times gave the order to fire. His men stood still, their arms ordered. The crowd, advancing, fraternized with them, and Lecomte and his officers were arrested.</p>
<p>The soldiers whom he had just shut up in the tower wanted to shoot him, but some National Guards having succeeded in disengaging him with great difficulty — for the crowd took him for Vinoy — conducted him with his officers to the Ch�teau-Rouge, where the staff of the battalions of the National Guard was seated. There they asked him for an order to evacuate the Buttes. He signed it without hesitation. <sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n82">[82]</a></sup> The order was immediately communicated to the officers and soldiers of the Rue des Rosiers. The gendarmes surrendered their chassepots, and even cried, <em>Vive la R�publique! </em>Three discharges from the cannon announced the recapture of the Buttes.</p>
<p>General Paturel, who wanted to carry away the cannon, surprised at the Moulin de la Galette, came into collision with a living barricade in the Rue Lepic. The people stopped the horses, cut the traces, dispersed the artillerymen, and took back the cannon to their post. In the Place Pigalle, General Susbielle gave the order to charge the crowd collected in the Rue Houdon, but the chasseurs, intimidated, spurred back their horses and were laughed at. A captain, dashing forward, sabre in hand, wounded a guard, and fell, pierced with balls. The General fled. The gendarmes, who commenced firing from behind the huts, were soon dislodged, and the bulk of the soldiers went over to the people.</p>
<p>At Belleville, the Buttes Chaumont, the Luxembourg, the troops fraternized everywhere with the crowds that had collected at the first alarm.</p>
<p>By eleven o'clock the people had vanquished the aggressors at all points, preserved almost all their cannon, of which only ten had been carried off, and seized thousands of chassepots. All their battalions were now on foot, and the men of the faubourgs commenced unpaving the streets.</p>
<p>Since six o'clock in the morning D'Aurelles had had the rappel beaten in the central quarters, but in vain. Battalions formerly noted for their devotion to Trochu sent only twenty men to the rendezvous. All Paris, on reading the posters, said ‘This is the <em>coup-d'�tat</em>. At twelve o'clock D'Aurelles and Picard sounded the alarm: ‘The Government calls on you to defend your homes, your families, your property. Some misguided men, under the lead of some secret leaders, turn against Paris the cannon kept back from the Prussians.’ These reminiscences of June, 1848, this accusation of indelicacy toward the Prussians, failing to rouse any one, the whole Ministry came to the rescue: ‘An absurd rumour is being spread that the Government is preparing a <em>coup-d'�tat. </em>It has wished and wishes to make an end of an insurrectional Committee, whose members only represent Communist doctrines.’ These alarms, repeatedly sounded, raised in all 500 men.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n83">[83]</a></sup></p>
<p>The Government were at the Foreign Office, and, after the first reverses, M. Thiers had given the order to fall back with all the troops on the Champs-de-Mars. When he saw the desertion of the National Guards of the Centre, he declared that it was necessary to evacuate Paris. Several Ministers objected, wanted a few points to be guarded — the H�tel-de-Ville, its barracks occupied by the brigade Derroja, the Ecole Militaire — and that they should take a position on the Trocadero. The little man, quite distracted, would only hear of extreme measures. Lef�, who had almost been made a prisoner at the Bastille, vigorously supported him. It was decided that the whole town should be evacuated, even the forts on the south, restored by the Prussians a fortnight before. Towards three o'clock the popular battalions of the Gros Caillou marched past the H�tel-de-Ville, headed by drums and trumpets. The Council believed itself surrounded.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n84">[84]</a></sup> M. Thiers escaped by a back stair, and left for Versailles so out of his senses that at the bridge of S�vres he gave the written order to evacuate Mont-Val�rien.</p>
<p>At the self-same hour when M. Thiers ran away, the revolutionary battalions had not yet attempted any attack or occupied any official posts.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n85">[85]</a></sup> The aggression of the morning had surprised the Central Committee, as it had all Paris. The evening before they had separated as usual, giving themselves a rendezvous for the 18th, at eleven o'clock at night, behind the Bastille, at the school in the Rue Basfroi; the Place de la Corderie, actively watched by the police, no longer being safe. Since the 15th new elections had added to their numbers, and they had appointed a Committee of Defence. On the news of the attack, some ran to the Rue Basfroi, others applied themselves to raising the battalions of their quarters: Varlin at the Batignolles, Bergeret, recently named <em>chef-de-l�gion, </em>at Montmartre, Duval at the Panth�on, Pindy in the third arrondissement, Faltot in the Rue de S�vres. Ranvier and Brunel, without belonging to the Committee, were agitating Belleville and the tenth arrondissement. At ten o'clock a dozen members met together, overwhelmed with messages from all sides, and receiving from time to time some prisoners. Positive intelligence only came in towards two o'clock. They then drew up a kind of plan by which all the federalist battalions were to converge upon the H�tel-de-Ville, and then dispersed in all directions to transmit orders.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n86">[86]</a></sup></p>
<p>The battalions were indeed on the alert, but did not march. The revolutionary quarters, fearing a resumption of the attack, and ignoring the plenitude of their victory, were strongly barricading themselves, and remained where they were. Even Montmartre was only swarming with guards in search of news, and disbanded soldiers for whom collections were being made, as they had had nothing to eat since the morning. Towards half-past three o'clock the Committee of Vigilance of the eighteenth arrondissement, established in the Rue de Clignancourt, was informed that General Lecomte was in great danger. A crowd, consisting chiefly of soldiers, surrounded the Ch�teau-Rouge and demanded the General.
<img src="pics/bergeret.jpg" alt="Jules Bergeret" hspace="12" border="1" align="right">
The members of the Committee of Vigilance, Ferr�, Jaclard, and Bergeret, immediately sent an order to the commander of the Ch�teau-Rouge to guard the prisoner, who was to be put on trial. When the order arrived Lecomte had just left.</p>
<p>
He had long been asking to be taken before the Central Committee. The chiefs of the post, much perturbed by the cries of the crowd, anxious to get rid of their responsibility, and believing this Committee was sitting in the Rue des Rosiers, decided to conduct the General and his officers there. They arrived at about four o'clock, passing through a terribly irritated crowd, yet no one raised a hand against them. The General was closely guarded in a small front room on the ground floor. There the scenes of the Ch�teau-Rouge recommenced. The exasperated soldiers asked for his death. The officers of the National Guard made desperate efforts to quiet them, crying, ‘Wait for the Committee.’ They succeeded in posting sentinels and appeasing the commotion for a time.</p>
<p>No member of the Committee had arrived when, at half-past four, formidable cries filled the street, and hunted by a fierce multitude, a man with a white beard was thrust against the wall of the house. It was Cl�ment-Thomas, the man of June, 1848, the insulter of the revolutionary battalions. He had been recognized and arrested at the Chauss�e des Martyrs, where he was examining the barricades.
<img src="pics/herpin-lacroix.jpg" alt="Herpin-Lacroix" hspace="12" border="1" align="right">
Some officers of the National Guard, a Garibaldian captain, Herpin-Lacroix, and some franc-tireurs had tried to stop the deadly mass, repeating a thousand times, ‘Wait for the Committee! Constitute a court-martial!’ They were jostled, and Cl�ment-Thomas was again seized and hurled into the little garden of the house. Twenty muskets levelled at him battered him down. During this execution the soldiers broke the windows of the room where General Lecomte was confined, threw themselves upon him, dragging him towards the garden. This man, who in the morning had three times given the order to fire upon the people, wept, begged for pity, and spoke of his family. He was forced against the wall and fell under the bullets.</p>
<p>These reprisals over, the wrath of the mass subsided. They allowed the officers of Lecomte’s suite to be taken back to the Ch�teau-Rouge, and at nightfall they were set at liberty.</p>
<p>While these executions took place, the people, so long standing on the defensive, had begun to move. Brunel surrounded the Prince Eug�ne Barracks, held by the 120th of the line. The colonel, accompanied by about a hundred officers, assuming lofty airs, Brunel had them all locked up. Two thousand chassepots fell into the hands of the people.
<img src="pics/brunel.jpg" alt="Brunel" hspace="12" border="1" align="left">
Brunel continued his march by the Rue du Temple towards the H�tel-de-Ville. The Imprimerie Nationale was occupied at five o'clock. At six the crowd attacked the doors of the Napol�on Barracks with hatchets. A discharge was made, fired from the opening, and three persons fell; but the soldiers made signs from the windows of the Rue de Rivoli, crying, ‘It is the gendarmes who have fired. <em>Vive la</em> <em>R�publique!’ </em>Soon after they opened the doors and allowed their arms to be carried off.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n87">[87]</a></sup></p>
<p>At half-past seven the H�tel-de-Ville was almost surrounded. The gendarmes who occupied it fled by the subterranean passage of the Lobau Barracks. About half-past eight Jules Ferry and Vabre, entirely abandoned by their men, left without any order by the Government, also stole away. Shortly after Brunel’s column arrived at the place and took possession of the H�tel-de-Ville, where Ranvier arrived at the same time by the quays.</p>
<p>The number of the battalions augmented incessantly. Brunel had given order to raise barricades in the Rue de Rivoli, on the quays, manned all the approaches, distributed the posts, and sent out strong patrols. One of these, surrounding the <em>mairie</em> of the Louvre, where the mayors were deliberating, almost succeeded in catching Ferry, who saved himself by jumping out of a window. The mayors returned to the <em>mairie</em> of the Place de la Bourse.</p>
<p>They had already met there during the day together with many adjuncts, much offended at the senseless governmental attack, waiting for information and for ideas. Towards four o'clock they sent delegates to the Government. M. Thiers had already made off. Picard politely showed them out. D'Aurelles washed his hands of the whole affair, saying the lawyers had done it. At night, however, it became necessary to take a resolution. The federal battalions already surrounded the H�tel-de-Ville and occupied the Place Vend�me, whither Varlin, Bergeret, and Arnold had conducted the battalions of Montmartre and the Batignolles. Vacherot, Vautrain, and a few reactionaries spoke of resisting at any price, as though they had had an army to back them. Others, more sensible, sought for some expedient. They thought they could calm down everything by naming as prefect of police Eduard Adam, who had distinguished himself against the insurgents of June, 1848, and as General of the National Guards the giddy Proudhonist Langlois, a former Internationalist, who had been for the movement of the 31st of October in the morning, against it in the evening, and was named deputy, thanks to a scratch received while gesticulating at Buzenval. The delegates went to propose this brilliant solution to Jules Favre. He refused outright, saying, ‘We cannot treat with assassins.’ This comedy was only played to justify the evacuation of Paris, which he concealed from the mayors. During the conference it was announced that Jules Ferry had abandoned the H�tel-de-Ville. The other Jules feigned surprise, and engaged the mayors to call out the battalions of order for the purpose of replacing the vanished army.</p>
<p>They returned overwhelmed by this raillery, humbled at having been altogether left in the dark about the intention of the Government. If possessed of some political courage, they would have gone straight to the H�tel-de-Ville, instead of commencing to deliberate again in their <em>mairie</em>. At last, at ten o'clock in the morning, Picard informed them that they might bring out their Lafayette. They immediately sent Langlois to the H�tel-de-Ville.</p>
<p>Some members of the Central Committee had been there since ten o'clock, generally very anxious and very hesitant. Not one of them had dreamt that power would fall so heavily upon their shoulders. Many did not want to sit at the H�tel-de-Ville. They deliberated. At last it was decided that they would only stay during the two or three days wanted for the elections. Meanwhile it was necessary to ward off any attempt at resistance. Luilier was present, buzzing around the Committee, in one of his intervals of grave lucidity, promising to ward off all danger and appealing to the vote of Vauxhall. He had played no part during the whole day.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n88">[88]</a></sup> The Committee committed the blunder of appointing him commander-in-chief of the National Guard, while Brunel, who had rendered such service since the morning, was already installed in the H�tel-de-Ville.</p>
<p>At three o'clock, Langlois, the competitor of Luilier, announced himself. He was full of confidence in himself, and had already sent his proclamation to the <em>Journal Officiel. ‘</em>Who are you?’ the sentinels asked him. ‘General of the National Guard,’ answered Langlois. Some deputies of Paris, Lockroy, Cournet, etc. accompanied him. The Committee consented to receive them. ‘Who has named you?’ said they to Langlois. ‘M. Thiers.’ They smiled at this madman’s aplomb. As he pleaded the rights of the Assembly they put him to the test; ‘Do you recognize the Central Committee?’ ‘No.’ He decamped and ran away after his proclamation.</p>
<p>The night was calm, fatally calm for liberty. By the gates of the south Vinoy marched off his regiments, his artillery, and his baggage to Versailles. The disbanded troops jogged along peevishly, insulting the gendarmes.<sup class="enote"><a href="notes.htm#n89">[89]</a></sup> The staff, true to its traditions, had lost its head, and left in Paris three regiments, six batteries, and all the gunboats, which it would have sufficed to leave to the current of the river. The slightest demonstration by the federals would have stopped this exodus. Far from thinking of closing the gates, the new commander of the National Guard — he boasted of it before the council of war — left open all issues to the army.</p>
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Lissagaray: History of the Paris Commune of 1871
Chapter III
The eighteenth of March
We then did what we had to do: nothing provoked the Paris insurrection. (Dufaure’s speech against amnesty, session of 18th May, 1876.)
The execution was as foolish as the conception. On the 18th of March, at three o'clock in the morning, several columns dispersed in various directions to the Buttes Chaumont, Belleville, the Faubourg du Temple, the Bastille, the H�tel-de-Ville, Place St. Michel, the Luxembourg, the thirteenth arrondissement and the Invalides. General Susbielle marched on Montmartre with two brigades about 6,000 men strong. All was silent and deserted. The Paturel brigade took possession of the Moulin de la Galette without striking a blow. The Lecomte brigade gained the Tower of Solferino only meeting with one sentinel, Turpin, who crossed bayonets with them and was hewn down by the gendarmes. They then rushed to the post of the Rue des Rosiers, stormed it, and threw the National Guards into the caves of the Tower of Solferino. At six o'clock the surprise was complete. M. Cl�menceau hurried to the Buttes to congratulate General Lecomte. Everywhere else the cannon were surprised in the same way. The Government triumphed all along the line, and D'Aurelles sent the papers a proclamation written in the conqueror’s vein.
There was only one thing wanting — teams to convey the spoil. Vinoy had almost forgotten them. At eight o'clock they began to put some horses to the pieces. Meanwhile the faubourgs were awaking and the early shops opening. Around the milkmaids and before the wineshops the people began talking in a low voice; they pointed to the soldiers, the machine-gun [a multiple-barrelled gun, forerunner of the modern machine-gun] levelled at the streets, the walls covered with the still wet poster signed by M. Thiers and his Ministers. The spoke of paralysed commerce, suspended orders, frightened capital:
‘Inhabitants of Paris, in your interest the Government has resolved to act. Let the good citizens separate from the bad ones; let them aid public force; they will render a service to the Republic herself,’ said MM. Pouyer-Quertier, De Larcy, Dufaure and other Republicans. The conclusion is borrowed from the phraseology of December: ‘The culpable shall be surrendered to justice. Order, complete, immediate and unalterable, must be re-established.’ They spoke of order — blood was to be shed.
As in our great days, the women were the first to act. Those of the 18th March, hardened by the siege — they had had a double ration of misery — did not wait for the men. They surrounded the machineguns, apostrophized the sergeant in command of the gun, saying, ‘This is shameful; what are you doing there?’ The soldiers did not answer. Occasionally a non-commissioned officer spoke to them: ‘Come, my good women, get out of the way.’ At the same time a handful of National Guards, proceeding to the post of the Rue Doudeauville, there found two drums that had not been smashed, and beat the rappel. At eight o'clock they numbered 300 officers and guards, who ascended the Boulevard Ornano. They met a platoon of soldiers of the 88th, and, crying, Vive la R�publique! enlisted them. The post of the Rue Dejean also joined them, and the butt-end of their muskets raised, soldiers and guards together marched up to the Rue Muller that leads to the Buttes Montmartre, defended on this side by the men of the 88th. These, seeing their comrades intermingling with the guards, signed to them to advance, that they would let them pass. General Lecomte, catching sight of the signs, had the men replaced by sergents-de-ville, and confined them in the Tower of Solferino, adding, ‘You will get your deserts.’ The sergents-de-ville discharged a few shots, to which the guards replied. Suddenly a large number of National Guards, the butt-end of their muskets up, women and children, appeared on the other flank from the Rue des Rosiers. Lecomte, surrounded, three times gave the order to fire. His men stood still, their arms ordered. The crowd, advancing, fraternized with them, and Lecomte and his officers were arrested.
The soldiers whom he had just shut up in the tower wanted to shoot him, but some National Guards having succeeded in disengaging him with great difficulty — for the crowd took him for Vinoy — conducted him with his officers to the Ch�teau-Rouge, where the staff of the battalions of the National Guard was seated. There they asked him for an order to evacuate the Buttes. He signed it without hesitation. [82] The order was immediately communicated to the officers and soldiers of the Rue des Rosiers. The gendarmes surrendered their chassepots, and even cried, Vive la R�publique! Three discharges from the cannon announced the recapture of the Buttes.
General Paturel, who wanted to carry away the cannon, surprised at the Moulin de la Galette, came into collision with a living barricade in the Rue Lepic. The people stopped the horses, cut the traces, dispersed the artillerymen, and took back the cannon to their post. In the Place Pigalle, General Susbielle gave the order to charge the crowd collected in the Rue Houdon, but the chasseurs, intimidated, spurred back their horses and were laughed at. A captain, dashing forward, sabre in hand, wounded a guard, and fell, pierced with balls. The General fled. The gendarmes, who commenced firing from behind the huts, were soon dislodged, and the bulk of the soldiers went over to the people.
At Belleville, the Buttes Chaumont, the Luxembourg, the troops fraternized everywhere with the crowds that had collected at the first alarm.
By eleven o'clock the people had vanquished the aggressors at all points, preserved almost all their cannon, of which only ten had been carried off, and seized thousands of chassepots. All their battalions were now on foot, and the men of the faubourgs commenced unpaving the streets.
Since six o'clock in the morning D'Aurelles had had the rappel beaten in the central quarters, but in vain. Battalions formerly noted for their devotion to Trochu sent only twenty men to the rendezvous. All Paris, on reading the posters, said ‘This is the coup-d'�tat. At twelve o'clock D'Aurelles and Picard sounded the alarm: ‘The Government calls on you to defend your homes, your families, your property. Some misguided men, under the lead of some secret leaders, turn against Paris the cannon kept back from the Prussians.’ These reminiscences of June, 1848, this accusation of indelicacy toward the Prussians, failing to rouse any one, the whole Ministry came to the rescue: ‘An absurd rumour is being spread that the Government is preparing a coup-d'�tat. It has wished and wishes to make an end of an insurrectional Committee, whose members only represent Communist doctrines.’ These alarms, repeatedly sounded, raised in all 500 men.[83]
The Government were at the Foreign Office, and, after the first reverses, M. Thiers had given the order to fall back with all the troops on the Champs-de-Mars. When he saw the desertion of the National Guards of the Centre, he declared that it was necessary to evacuate Paris. Several Ministers objected, wanted a few points to be guarded — the H�tel-de-Ville, its barracks occupied by the brigade Derroja, the Ecole Militaire — and that they should take a position on the Trocadero. The little man, quite distracted, would only hear of extreme measures. Lef�, who had almost been made a prisoner at the Bastille, vigorously supported him. It was decided that the whole town should be evacuated, even the forts on the south, restored by the Prussians a fortnight before. Towards three o'clock the popular battalions of the Gros Caillou marched past the H�tel-de-Ville, headed by drums and trumpets. The Council believed itself surrounded.[84] M. Thiers escaped by a back stair, and left for Versailles so out of his senses that at the bridge of S�vres he gave the written order to evacuate Mont-Val�rien.
At the self-same hour when M. Thiers ran away, the revolutionary battalions had not yet attempted any attack or occupied any official posts.[85] The aggression of the morning had surprised the Central Committee, as it had all Paris. The evening before they had separated as usual, giving themselves a rendezvous for the 18th, at eleven o'clock at night, behind the Bastille, at the school in the Rue Basfroi; the Place de la Corderie, actively watched by the police, no longer being safe. Since the 15th new elections had added to their numbers, and they had appointed a Committee of Defence. On the news of the attack, some ran to the Rue Basfroi, others applied themselves to raising the battalions of their quarters: Varlin at the Batignolles, Bergeret, recently named chef-de-l�gion, at Montmartre, Duval at the Panth�on, Pindy in the third arrondissement, Faltot in the Rue de S�vres. Ranvier and Brunel, without belonging to the Committee, were agitating Belleville and the tenth arrondissement. At ten o'clock a dozen members met together, overwhelmed with messages from all sides, and receiving from time to time some prisoners. Positive intelligence only came in towards two o'clock. They then drew up a kind of plan by which all the federalist battalions were to converge upon the H�tel-de-Ville, and then dispersed in all directions to transmit orders.[86]
The battalions were indeed on the alert, but did not march. The revolutionary quarters, fearing a resumption of the attack, and ignoring the plenitude of their victory, were strongly barricading themselves, and remained where they were. Even Montmartre was only swarming with guards in search of news, and disbanded soldiers for whom collections were being made, as they had had nothing to eat since the morning. Towards half-past three o'clock the Committee of Vigilance of the eighteenth arrondissement, established in the Rue de Clignancourt, was informed that General Lecomte was in great danger. A crowd, consisting chiefly of soldiers, surrounded the Ch�teau-Rouge and demanded the General.
The members of the Committee of Vigilance, Ferr�, Jaclard, and Bergeret, immediately sent an order to the commander of the Ch�teau-Rouge to guard the prisoner, who was to be put on trial. When the order arrived Lecomte had just left.
He had long been asking to be taken before the Central Committee. The chiefs of the post, much perturbed by the cries of the crowd, anxious to get rid of their responsibility, and believing this Committee was sitting in the Rue des Rosiers, decided to conduct the General and his officers there. They arrived at about four o'clock, passing through a terribly irritated crowd, yet no one raised a hand against them. The General was closely guarded in a small front room on the ground floor. There the scenes of the Ch�teau-Rouge recommenced. The exasperated soldiers asked for his death. The officers of the National Guard made desperate efforts to quiet them, crying, ‘Wait for the Committee.’ They succeeded in posting sentinels and appeasing the commotion for a time.
No member of the Committee had arrived when, at half-past four, formidable cries filled the street, and hunted by a fierce multitude, a man with a white beard was thrust against the wall of the house. It was Cl�ment-Thomas, the man of June, 1848, the insulter of the revolutionary battalions. He had been recognized and arrested at the Chauss�e des Martyrs, where he was examining the barricades.
Some officers of the National Guard, a Garibaldian captain, Herpin-Lacroix, and some franc-tireurs had tried to stop the deadly mass, repeating a thousand times, ‘Wait for the Committee! Constitute a court-martial!’ They were jostled, and Cl�ment-Thomas was again seized and hurled into the little garden of the house. Twenty muskets levelled at him battered him down. During this execution the soldiers broke the windows of the room where General Lecomte was confined, threw themselves upon him, dragging him towards the garden. This man, who in the morning had three times given the order to fire upon the people, wept, begged for pity, and spoke of his family. He was forced against the wall and fell under the bullets.
These reprisals over, the wrath of the mass subsided. They allowed the officers of Lecomte’s suite to be taken back to the Ch�teau-Rouge, and at nightfall they were set at liberty.
While these executions took place, the people, so long standing on the defensive, had begun to move. Brunel surrounded the Prince Eug�ne Barracks, held by the 120th of the line. The colonel, accompanied by about a hundred officers, assuming lofty airs, Brunel had them all locked up. Two thousand chassepots fell into the hands of the people.
Brunel continued his march by the Rue du Temple towards the H�tel-de-Ville. The Imprimerie Nationale was occupied at five o'clock. At six the crowd attacked the doors of the Napol�on Barracks with hatchets. A discharge was made, fired from the opening, and three persons fell; but the soldiers made signs from the windows of the Rue de Rivoli, crying, ‘It is the gendarmes who have fired. Vive la R�publique!’ Soon after they opened the doors and allowed their arms to be carried off.[87]
At half-past seven the H�tel-de-Ville was almost surrounded. The gendarmes who occupied it fled by the subterranean passage of the Lobau Barracks. About half-past eight Jules Ferry and Vabre, entirely abandoned by their men, left without any order by the Government, also stole away. Shortly after Brunel’s column arrived at the place and took possession of the H�tel-de-Ville, where Ranvier arrived at the same time by the quays.
The number of the battalions augmented incessantly. Brunel had given order to raise barricades in the Rue de Rivoli, on the quays, manned all the approaches, distributed the posts, and sent out strong patrols. One of these, surrounding the mairie of the Louvre, where the mayors were deliberating, almost succeeded in catching Ferry, who saved himself by jumping out of a window. The mayors returned to the mairie of the Place de la Bourse.
They had already met there during the day together with many adjuncts, much offended at the senseless governmental attack, waiting for information and for ideas. Towards four o'clock they sent delegates to the Government. M. Thiers had already made off. Picard politely showed them out. D'Aurelles washed his hands of the whole affair, saying the lawyers had done it. At night, however, it became necessary to take a resolution. The federal battalions already surrounded the H�tel-de-Ville and occupied the Place Vend�me, whither Varlin, Bergeret, and Arnold had conducted the battalions of Montmartre and the Batignolles. Vacherot, Vautrain, and a few reactionaries spoke of resisting at any price, as though they had had an army to back them. Others, more sensible, sought for some expedient. They thought they could calm down everything by naming as prefect of police Eduard Adam, who had distinguished himself against the insurgents of June, 1848, and as General of the National Guards the giddy Proudhonist Langlois, a former Internationalist, who had been for the movement of the 31st of October in the morning, against it in the evening, and was named deputy, thanks to a scratch received while gesticulating at Buzenval. The delegates went to propose this brilliant solution to Jules Favre. He refused outright, saying, ‘We cannot treat with assassins.’ This comedy was only played to justify the evacuation of Paris, which he concealed from the mayors. During the conference it was announced that Jules Ferry had abandoned the H�tel-de-Ville. The other Jules feigned surprise, and engaged the mayors to call out the battalions of order for the purpose of replacing the vanished army.
They returned overwhelmed by this raillery, humbled at having been altogether left in the dark about the intention of the Government. If possessed of some political courage, they would have gone straight to the H�tel-de-Ville, instead of commencing to deliberate again in their mairie. At last, at ten o'clock in the morning, Picard informed them that they might bring out their Lafayette. They immediately sent Langlois to the H�tel-de-Ville.
Some members of the Central Committee had been there since ten o'clock, generally very anxious and very hesitant. Not one of them had dreamt that power would fall so heavily upon their shoulders. Many did not want to sit at the H�tel-de-Ville. They deliberated. At last it was decided that they would only stay during the two or three days wanted for the elections. Meanwhile it was necessary to ward off any attempt at resistance. Luilier was present, buzzing around the Committee, in one of his intervals of grave lucidity, promising to ward off all danger and appealing to the vote of Vauxhall. He had played no part during the whole day.[88] The Committee committed the blunder of appointing him commander-in-chief of the National Guard, while Brunel, who had rendered such service since the morning, was already installed in the H�tel-de-Ville.
At three o'clock, Langlois, the competitor of Luilier, announced himself. He was full of confidence in himself, and had already sent his proclamation to the Journal Officiel. ‘Who are you?’ the sentinels asked him. ‘General of the National Guard,’ answered Langlois. Some deputies of Paris, Lockroy, Cournet, etc. accompanied him. The Committee consented to receive them. ‘Who has named you?’ said they to Langlois. ‘M. Thiers.’ They smiled at this madman’s aplomb. As he pleaded the rights of the Assembly they put him to the test; ‘Do you recognize the Central Committee?’ ‘No.’ He decamped and ran away after his proclamation.
The night was calm, fatally calm for liberty. By the gates of the south Vinoy marched off his regiments, his artillery, and his baggage to Versailles. The disbanded troops jogged along peevishly, insulting the gendarmes.[89] The staff, true to its traditions, had lost its head, and left in Paris three regiments, six batteries, and all the gunboats, which it would have sufficed to leave to the current of the river. The slightest demonstration by the federals would have stopped this exodus. Far from thinking of closing the gates, the new commander of the National Guard — he boasted of it before the council of war — left open all issues to the army.
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./articles/Machel-Samora/https:..www.marxists.org.archive.sankara.1986.october.31 | <body>
<h2>Thomas Sankara</h2>
<h1>A Death that Must Enlighten and Strengthen Us</h1>
<h4>Speech on death of Samora Machel</h4>
<hr class="end">
<p class="information"><span class="info">Delivered:</span> October 1986.<br>
<span class="info">This edition:</span> Marxists Internet Archive, December 2022, thanks to Liz Blaczak.</p>
<hr class="end">
<p><em>Samora Machel, president of Mozambique and leader of Frelimo (Mozambique Liberation Front), was killed on October 19, 1986, when his plane crashed in South Africa. Many supporters of the African freedom struggle expressed suspicion that the Apartheid regime was responsible for the crash. The following speech given in Ougadougou was published in the October 31, 1986, issue of Carrefour Africain.</em></p>
<p>Comrade militants:</p>
<p>Our task today is not to weep, but to adopt a revolutionary attitude as we face the tragic situation caused by Samora Machel's disappearance. To avoid falling into sentimentalism, we must not weep. With sentimentalism one cannot understand death. Sentimentalism belongs to the messianic vision of the world, which, since it expects a single man to transform the universe, inspires lamentation, discouragement, and despondency as soon as this man disappears.</p>
<p>Another reason we should not weep is to avoid being confused with all the hypocrites here and elsewhere, those crocodiles, those dogs, who make believe that Samora Machel's death saddens them. We know very well who is saddened and who is delighted by the disappearance of this fighter. We do not want to join in the competition among cynics who decree here and there this-and-that many days of mourning, each one trying to establish and advertise his distress with tears that we revolutionaries should recognize for what they are.</p>
<p>Samora Machel is dead. This death must serve to enlighten and strengthen us as revolutionaries, because the enemies of our revolution, the enemies of the people's of the world, have once again revealed one of their tactics, one of their traps. We have discovered that the enemy knows how to strike down combatants even when they're in the air. We know that the enemy can take advantage of a moment's inattention on our part to commit its odious crimes.</p>
<p>Let us draw the lessons from this direct and barbaric aggression, together with the brothers of Mozambique. It's only purpose is to disorganize the political leadership of Frelimo and definitively jeopardize the Mozambican people's struggle, thus putting an end to the hopes of an entire people, of more than one people, of all people's.</p>
<p>We say to imperialism and to all our enemies that every time they carry out such actions, it will be yet another lesson we have learned. Certainly these are not free lessons, but they're ones we deserve all the more. Yesterday, when Eduardo Mondlane was killed in cowardly, barbaric, and treacherous fashion by the enemies of the people's of the world, the enemies of freedom for the people, they thought they had done well, that they had been successful.<a href="#01">[1]</a> They hoped that in this way the flag of Liberation would fall in the mud and that the people would take fright and give up the fight forever.</p>
<p>But they did not reckon with the people's determination, with their desire for freedom. They did not reckon with the special force men have within them that makes them say no despite the bullets and the traps. They did not reckon with the fearless combatants of Frelimo.</p>
<p>These were the conditions in which Samora Machel dared to pick up the flag carried by Eduardo Mondlane, whose memory is still with us. Machel immediately established himself as a leader, a force, a star that guides and lights the way. He knew how to put his internationalism at the service of others. He fought not only in Mozambique, but elsewhere too, and for others.</p>
<p>Let's ask ourselves a question today: who killed Samora Machel? We're told that investigations are being conducted, and experts are meeting to determine the cause of Machel's death. With the help of imperialist radio stations, South Africa is already trying to peddle the theory of an accident. They would have us believe that lightning struck the plane. They would have us believe that pilot error led the plane where it should not have gone.</p>
<p>Without being pilots or aeronautical experts, there is one question we can logically ask ourselves: how could a plane flying at such a high altitude suddenly graze the trees and flip over, that is, come within 200 meters of the ground?</p>
<p>We're told that the number of survivors is proof this was an accident and not an assassination. But comrades, how can a plane's passengers, awakened brutally by the impact, say how and why their plane flipped over and crashed?</p>
<p>In our opinion, this event is purely and simply the continuation of the racist policies of South African whites. It is another manifestation of imperialism. To discover who killed Samora Machel, let us ask ourselves who is rejoicing, and who has an interest in having Machel killed. We find, side by side and hand in hand, first the racist whites of South Africa, whom we have never stopped denouncing. At their side we find those puppets, the armed bandits of the MNR, the so-called National Resistance Movement.<a href="#02">[2]</a> Resistance to what? To the Liberation of the Mozambican people, to the March to freedom of the Mozambican people and others, and to the internationalist aid that Mozambique provided, via Frelimo, to other people's.</p>
<p>We also find the Jonas Savimbis. He is planning to go to Europe. We protested against this. We told the Europeans, in particular France, that if they were to issue an entry visa in order to fight terrorism, if they're looking for terrorists, they've found one: Jonas Savimbi. By their side we find the African traitors who allow arms for use against the people's of Africa to pass through their countries. We also find those people who cry "peace" here and there, yet who deploy their knowledge and energies every day to help and support traitors to the African cause.</p>
<p>These are the ones who assassinated Samora Machel. Alas, we Africans also delivered Samora Machel to his enemies by not providing him with the necessary support. When Mozambique answered the call by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and completely severed relations with South Africa, who in the OAU supported it? Yet Mozambique, economically tied to South Africa, was experiencing enormous difficulties. The Mozambicans fought against and resisted South Africa alone. This is why we Africans within the OAU bear a heavy responsibility for Samora Machel's disappearance.</p>
<p>Today's speeches will never count for anything if we don't try to be more consistent with our resolutions in the future. Burkina Faso put forward the same position in Harare [at the Eighth Summit of the Movement of Nonaligned Countries]. It's not enough to applaud Robert Mugabe, and put him forward as the Nonaligned Movement's worthy son if, a few hours after our departure, South Africa starts bombing Zimbabwe, and each of us stays snugly at home in his capital, doing nothing more than sending messages of support. Some states applauded us. Others thought we were going too far. But history has proven us right. Shortly after the Nonaligned Summit, South Africa did its dirty deed. And here we are, simply issuing verbal condemnations.</p>
<p>It is imperialism that organizes and orchestrates all these misfortunes. That's who armed and trained the racists. That's who sold them the radar equipment and the fighter planes to track and bring down Samora Machel's plane. That's also who placed their puppets in Africa to communicate the information as to the plane's takeoff time, and when it would pass over their territory. That's who is now trying to take advantage of the situation, and that's who is already trying to figure out who will succeed Samora Machel. That's also who is trying to divide the Mozambican combatants by categorizing them as moderates or extremists.</p>
<p>Samora Machel was a great friend of our revolution, a great backer of our revolution. He said so everywhere and demonstrated it in his attitude toward Burkinab� delegations. We made contact with him for the first time through his writings on revolution. We read and studied Machel's works and we were intellectually close to him. The second time we met him was in New Delhi at the [1983] Nonaligned summit. He told us he was following the situation in our country, but was worried by imperialism's desire to dominate.</p>
<p>After that, we met him twice in Addis Ababa. We had discussions together. We admired this man who never vowed his head, not even after the Nkomati Accords, the tactical character of which he understood, and that certain opportunist elements tried to use against him, making him out to be a coward. The Burkinab� delegations took the floor to say that those who were attacking Mozambique had no right to speak as long as they had not taken up arms to go fight in South Africa.</p>
<p>We supported him a great deal, but he too supported us. At the last OAU summit, when Burkina's position was under attack by certain states, Machel took the floor and said, "If they didn't have the gratitude and courage to applaud Burkina Faso, they should at least have some shame and keep quiet."</p>
<p>We met up with him again in his homeland in Maputo. He helped us a lot to understand the extremely difficult internal and external situation in which he found himself. Everyone knows the role SamoraMachel played among the Frontline States.</p>
<p>Finally, we met him again at the last Nonaligned summit in Harare where we had numerous exchanges. Samora Machel knew he was being targeted by imperialism. He also made a commitment to visit Burkina Faso in 1987. We agreed to exchange delegations from our CDRS, from the army, from our ministries, and so on.</p>
<p>We must learn from all of this. We must stand firm, hand in hand with other revolutionaries, because there are other plots lying in wait for us, other crimes in preparation.</p>
<p>Comrades, we are taking this medal, this distinction of honor, to Mozambique to confer on Samora Machel, and I would ask you all to send your thoughts with it. We will send him the highest distinction of Burkina Faso, of our revolution, because we think that his work contributed and contributes to the progress of our revolution. He therefore deserves the award of the Gold Star of Nahouri.</p>
<p>At the same time, I ask you to name streets, buildings, and so on, after Samora Machel over the whole expanse of our territories, because he deserves it. Posterity must remember this man and all that he did for his people and for other people's. We will thus shape his memory in our country, so that other men remember him forever.</p>
<p>Comrades we are gathered here today to think about the loss of Samora Machel. Tomorrow we must go forward, we must win.</p>
<p>Homeland or death, we will win!</p>
<p class="skip"> </p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="toc">Notes</p>
<p><a name="01">[1]</a> Eduardo Mondlane, founder of Frelimo, was assassinated by agents of Portuguese colonialism in 1969. He was succeeded by Samora Machel.</p>
<p><a name="02">[2]</a> A reference to the Mozambican National Resistance, or Renamo. This was an organization closely tied to the South African Apartheid regime, which was waging a terrorist war against Mozambique's government and people that killed thousands.</p>
<p class="skip"> </p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="footer"><a href="../../index.htm">Thomas Sankara Archive</a> |
<a href="../../../../subject/africa/machel/index.htm">Samora Machel Archive</a>
</p>
</body> |
Thomas Sankara
A Death that Must Enlighten and Strengthen Us
Speech on death of Samora Machel
Delivered: October 1986.
This edition: Marxists Internet Archive, December 2022, thanks to Liz Blaczak.
Samora Machel, president of Mozambique and leader of Frelimo (Mozambique Liberation Front), was killed on October 19, 1986, when his plane crashed in South Africa. Many supporters of the African freedom struggle expressed suspicion that the Apartheid regime was responsible for the crash. The following speech given in Ougadougou was published in the October 31, 1986, issue of Carrefour Africain.
Comrade militants:
Our task today is not to weep, but to adopt a revolutionary attitude as we face the tragic situation caused by Samora Machel's disappearance. To avoid falling into sentimentalism, we must not weep. With sentimentalism one cannot understand death. Sentimentalism belongs to the messianic vision of the world, which, since it expects a single man to transform the universe, inspires lamentation, discouragement, and despondency as soon as this man disappears.
Another reason we should not weep is to avoid being confused with all the hypocrites here and elsewhere, those crocodiles, those dogs, who make believe that Samora Machel's death saddens them. We know very well who is saddened and who is delighted by the disappearance of this fighter. We do not want to join in the competition among cynics who decree here and there this-and-that many days of mourning, each one trying to establish and advertise his distress with tears that we revolutionaries should recognize for what they are.
Samora Machel is dead. This death must serve to enlighten and strengthen us as revolutionaries, because the enemies of our revolution, the enemies of the people's of the world, have once again revealed one of their tactics, one of their traps. We have discovered that the enemy knows how to strike down combatants even when they're in the air. We know that the enemy can take advantage of a moment's inattention on our part to commit its odious crimes.
Let us draw the lessons from this direct and barbaric aggression, together with the brothers of Mozambique. It's only purpose is to disorganize the political leadership of Frelimo and definitively jeopardize the Mozambican people's struggle, thus putting an end to the hopes of an entire people, of more than one people, of all people's.
We say to imperialism and to all our enemies that every time they carry out such actions, it will be yet another lesson we have learned. Certainly these are not free lessons, but they're ones we deserve all the more. Yesterday, when Eduardo Mondlane was killed in cowardly, barbaric, and treacherous fashion by the enemies of the people's of the world, the enemies of freedom for the people, they thought they had done well, that they had been successful.[1] They hoped that in this way the flag of Liberation would fall in the mud and that the people would take fright and give up the fight forever.
But they did not reckon with the people's determination, with their desire for freedom. They did not reckon with the special force men have within them that makes them say no despite the bullets and the traps. They did not reckon with the fearless combatants of Frelimo.
These were the conditions in which Samora Machel dared to pick up the flag carried by Eduardo Mondlane, whose memory is still with us. Machel immediately established himself as a leader, a force, a star that guides and lights the way. He knew how to put his internationalism at the service of others. He fought not only in Mozambique, but elsewhere too, and for others.
Let's ask ourselves a question today: who killed Samora Machel? We're told that investigations are being conducted, and experts are meeting to determine the cause of Machel's death. With the help of imperialist radio stations, South Africa is already trying to peddle the theory of an accident. They would have us believe that lightning struck the plane. They would have us believe that pilot error led the plane where it should not have gone.
Without being pilots or aeronautical experts, there is one question we can logically ask ourselves: how could a plane flying at such a high altitude suddenly graze the trees and flip over, that is, come within 200 meters of the ground?
We're told that the number of survivors is proof this was an accident and not an assassination. But comrades, how can a plane's passengers, awakened brutally by the impact, say how and why their plane flipped over and crashed?
In our opinion, this event is purely and simply the continuation of the racist policies of South African whites. It is another manifestation of imperialism. To discover who killed Samora Machel, let us ask ourselves who is rejoicing, and who has an interest in having Machel killed. We find, side by side and hand in hand, first the racist whites of South Africa, whom we have never stopped denouncing. At their side we find those puppets, the armed bandits of the MNR, the so-called National Resistance Movement.[2] Resistance to what? To the Liberation of the Mozambican people, to the March to freedom of the Mozambican people and others, and to the internationalist aid that Mozambique provided, via Frelimo, to other people's.
We also find the Jonas Savimbis. He is planning to go to Europe. We protested against this. We told the Europeans, in particular France, that if they were to issue an entry visa in order to fight terrorism, if they're looking for terrorists, they've found one: Jonas Savimbi. By their side we find the African traitors who allow arms for use against the people's of Africa to pass through their countries. We also find those people who cry "peace" here and there, yet who deploy their knowledge and energies every day to help and support traitors to the African cause.
These are the ones who assassinated Samora Machel. Alas, we Africans also delivered Samora Machel to his enemies by not providing him with the necessary support. When Mozambique answered the call by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and completely severed relations with South Africa, who in the OAU supported it? Yet Mozambique, economically tied to South Africa, was experiencing enormous difficulties. The Mozambicans fought against and resisted South Africa alone. This is why we Africans within the OAU bear a heavy responsibility for Samora Machel's disappearance.
Today's speeches will never count for anything if we don't try to be more consistent with our resolutions in the future. Burkina Faso put forward the same position in Harare [at the Eighth Summit of the Movement of Nonaligned Countries]. It's not enough to applaud Robert Mugabe, and put him forward as the Nonaligned Movement's worthy son if, a few hours after our departure, South Africa starts bombing Zimbabwe, and each of us stays snugly at home in his capital, doing nothing more than sending messages of support. Some states applauded us. Others thought we were going too far. But history has proven us right. Shortly after the Nonaligned Summit, South Africa did its dirty deed. And here we are, simply issuing verbal condemnations.
It is imperialism that organizes and orchestrates all these misfortunes. That's who armed and trained the racists. That's who sold them the radar equipment and the fighter planes to track and bring down Samora Machel's plane. That's also who placed their puppets in Africa to communicate the information as to the plane's takeoff time, and when it would pass over their territory. That's who is now trying to take advantage of the situation, and that's who is already trying to figure out who will succeed Samora Machel. That's also who is trying to divide the Mozambican combatants by categorizing them as moderates or extremists.
Samora Machel was a great friend of our revolution, a great backer of our revolution. He said so everywhere and demonstrated it in his attitude toward Burkinab� delegations. We made contact with him for the first time through his writings on revolution. We read and studied Machel's works and we were intellectually close to him. The second time we met him was in New Delhi at the [1983] Nonaligned summit. He told us he was following the situation in our country, but was worried by imperialism's desire to dominate.
After that, we met him twice in Addis Ababa. We had discussions together. We admired this man who never vowed his head, not even after the Nkomati Accords, the tactical character of which he understood, and that certain opportunist elements tried to use against him, making him out to be a coward. The Burkinab� delegations took the floor to say that those who were attacking Mozambique had no right to speak as long as they had not taken up arms to go fight in South Africa.
We supported him a great deal, but he too supported us. At the last OAU summit, when Burkina's position was under attack by certain states, Machel took the floor and said, "If they didn't have the gratitude and courage to applaud Burkina Faso, they should at least have some shame and keep quiet."
We met up with him again in his homeland in Maputo. He helped us a lot to understand the extremely difficult internal and external situation in which he found himself. Everyone knows the role SamoraMachel played among the Frontline States.
Finally, we met him again at the last Nonaligned summit in Harare where we had numerous exchanges. Samora Machel knew he was being targeted by imperialism. He also made a commitment to visit Burkina Faso in 1987. We agreed to exchange delegations from our CDRS, from the army, from our ministries, and so on.
We must learn from all of this. We must stand firm, hand in hand with other revolutionaries, because there are other plots lying in wait for us, other crimes in preparation.
Comrades, we are taking this medal, this distinction of honor, to Mozambique to confer on Samora Machel, and I would ask you all to send your thoughts with it. We will send him the highest distinction of Burkina Faso, of our revolution, because we think that his work contributed and contributes to the progress of our revolution. He therefore deserves the award of the Gold Star of Nahouri.
At the same time, I ask you to name streets, buildings, and so on, after Samora Machel over the whole expanse of our territories, because he deserves it. Posterity must remember this man and all that he did for his people and for other people's. We will thus shape his memory in our country, so that other men remember him forever.
Comrades we are gathered here today to think about the loss of Samora Machel. Tomorrow we must go forward, we must win.
Homeland or death, we will win!
Notes
[1] Eduardo Mondlane, founder of Frelimo, was assassinated by agents of Portuguese colonialism in 1969. He was succeeded by Samora Machel.
[2] A reference to the Mozambican National Resistance, or Renamo. This was an organization closely tied to the South African Apartheid regime, which was waging a terrorist war against Mozambique's government and people that killed thousands.
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<p class="title">
<a href="../../../index.htm" class="title">MIA</a>: <a href="../../index.htm" class="title">Subjects</a>: <a href="../index.htm" class="title">Africa</a>: FRELIMO</p>
<blockquote>
<div class="border">
<p class="skip"> </p>
<p><img src="../africa.gif" border="0" hspace="12" vspace="12" alt="africa" align="left"></p>
<h1>The Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO)</h1>
<hr class="end">
<h4>Documents</h4>
<p class="fst">
<a href="../frelimo/founding-frelimo.pdf"><b>A Look Back at the Past, to Understand the Present: The Founding of FRELIMO</b></a>, <em>Mozambican Notes</em>, Numbers 1 and 2, September 1983 and January 1984<br>
</p><hr class="section">
<p class="fst">
<a href="../paigc/concp-founding.pdf"><b>Statement on the Founding of the "Conference of Nationalist Organizations in Portuguese Colonies" (C.O.N.C.P.)</b></a>, (1961)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-founding.pdf"><b>Joint Press Communique from MANU and UDENAMO</b></a> [on uniting to form FRELIMO] (June 1962)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/parties-fuse.pdf"><b>Mozambique Political Parties Fuse</b></a> [to form FRELIMO] (June 1962)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/programme-standing-orders.pdf"><b>Initial Programme and Standing Orders in Preparation for First Congress</b></a> (June 1962)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-1st-congress.pdf"><b>Declarations and Resolutions of the First FRELIMO Congress</b></a> (September 1962)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-61-con-program.pdf"><b>FRELIMO Constitution and Programme</b></a> (1962)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/to-portugal.pdf"><b>FRELIMO: To the Portuguese People</b></a>, [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 2] (1962)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/simango-62.pdf"><b>Speech of Uria T. Simango, FRELIMO Vice-President, to a Pan-African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa Conference </b></a> (1962)<br>
<a href="../udenamo/declaration-dissolve-frelimo.pdf"><b>UDENAMO and MANU Declare FRELIMO "Dissolved"</b></a> (May 21, 1963)<br>
<a href="../udenamo/frelimo-split-63.pdf"><b>Telegram to the Conference of African Independent States and Prime Ministers</b></a> [on UDENAMO and MANU withdrawing from FRELIMO] (May 22, 1963)<br>
<a href="../udenamo/frelimo-split-memo.pdf"><b>Memorandum on Withdrawl from FRELIMO</b></a> [by UDENAMO and MANU] (May 27, 1963)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-63-memo.pdf"><b>FRELIMO: Memorandum to the Addis Ababa Conference</b></a> [on FRELIMO's origins and programme] (1963)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-why-we-fight.pdf"><b>FRELIMO: Why We Fight</b></a>, [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 1] (1963)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/to-mozambican.pdf"><b>FRELIMO: To the Mozambican People</b></a>, [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 2] (1964)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-64-brochure.pdf"><b>FRELIMO: 1964 Brochure</b></a> (1964)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/joint-64-memo.pdf"><b>Joint Memorandum Submitted by the African National Liberation Movements to the Conference of the Heads of African States Held in Cairo 17th to 21st July, 1964</b></a> (1964)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/mondlane-church.pdf"><b>The Role of the Church in Mozambique</b></a>, by Eduardo Mondlane [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 1] (1964)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/64-proclamation.pdf"><b>Proclamation to the Mozambican People,</b></a> <em>Mozambique Revolution</em>, Special Issue, 25 September 1967<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-colonialism.pdf"><b>FRELIMO: Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism</b></a>, [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 1] (1965)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/all-political-situation.pdf"><b>The Political Situation in Portugal and the Liberation Struggle in the Portuguese Colonies</b></a>, [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 1] (1965)<br>
<a href="../paigc/concp-2nd.pdf"><b>Statements and Resolutions of the Second "Conference of Nationalist Organizations in Portuguese Colonies" (C.O.N.C.P.)</b></a> (1965)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/mondlane-nationalism.pdf"><b>Development of Nationalism in Mozambique</b></a>, by Eduardo Mondlane [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 2] (1965)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-66-brochure.pdf"><b>Mozambique: 25th of September </b></a> (1966)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-conscience.pdf"><b>FRELIMO Speaks on the Conscience of the Mozambique Revolution</b></a> (1967)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/message-to-people.pdf"><b>Message from the Central Committee to the Mozambican People,</b></a> <em>Mozambique Revolution</em>, Special Issue, 25 September 1967<br>
<a href="../frelimo/mondlane-students.pdf"><b>Participation of Students in the Struggle for National Liberation</b></a>, by Eduardo Mondlane [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 1] (1967)<br>
<img class="right" src="frelimo-logo.png" width="350"" alt="Cover" align="right" border="1" hspace="12">
<a href="../frelimo/mondlane-frelimo-fights.pdf"><b>FRELIMO Fights for Human Rights</b></a>, by Eduardo Mondlane, <em>Sechaba</em>, Volume 2, Number 3, March 1968<br>
<a href="../frelimo/smith-salazar.pdf"><b>FRELIMO: Smith, Sanctions, and Salazar</b></a>, [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 1] (1968)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/mozambique-album.pdf"><b>Mozambique: An Album of the Struggle</b></a> [for the FRELIMO Second Congress] (1968)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/aapso-frelimo-2nd-congress.pdf"><b>AAPSO Permanent Secretariat Delegation Attends the Second National Conference of FRELIMO</b></a>, <em>Afro-Asian Bulletin,</em> Volume X, Numbers 7-8, July-August 1968<br>
<a href="../frelimo/highlights-2nd-congress.pdf"><b>Highlights of the Second National Conference of FRELIMO</b></a>, <em>Afro-Asian Bulletin,</em> Volume X, Numbers 7-8, July-August 1968<br>
<a href="../frelimo/cc-report-2nd-congress.pdf"><b>Report of the Central Committee the Second National Conference of FRELIMO</b></a>, <em>Afro-Asian Bulletin,</em> Volume X, Numbers 7-8, July-August 1968<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-2nd-congress.pdf"><b>Resolutions of FRELIMO's Second Congress</b></a> (1968)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/sa-framework.pdf"><b>Mozambique in the Framework of Southern Africa</b></a>, by Jose Oscar Monteiro [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 3] (1968)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/prolonged-war.pdf"><b>On the Necessity of Prolonged War</b></a>, [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 3] (1968)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-women-68.pdf"><b>FRELIMO Women's Detachment: The Mozambican Woman in the Revolution</b></a> (1968)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-revolution.pdf"><b>Comrade Jose Monteiro, FRELIMO representative in Algeria, answers questions on the Mozambique Revolution</b></a>, <em>Sechaba</em>, September 1968 <br>
<a href="../cuba/road-to-liberation.pdf"><b>Mozambique: A Country on the Road to Liberation</b></a>, <em>Tricontinental Bulletin</em>, Year III, Number 30, September 1968 <br>
<a href="../cpgb/frelimo-docs.pdf"><b>Documents of Frelimo – The Mozambique Liberation Front</b></a> (1968) <br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-our-struggle.pdf"><b>"Our Struggle at Home and Abroad". Interview with Miguel Murupo</b></a>, <em>Sechaba</em>, Volume 3, Number 2, February 1969 <br>
<a href="../frelimo/mondlane-last.pdf"><b>Mozambique Now One-Fifth Under African Rule</b></a>, by Eduardo Mondlane <em>Sechaba</em>, Volume 3, Number 4, April 1969 <br>
<a href="../cpgb/mondlane.pdf"><b>Eduardo Mondlane</b></a>, by M.P. Naicker, <em>Labour Monthly</em>, March 1969 <br>
<a href="../frelimo/cc-statement.pdf"><b>Statement of the Central Committee,</b></a> [on the Mondlane assassination] <em>Mozambique Revolution</em>, Number 38, March-April 1969<br>
<a href="../frelimo/cc-communique.pdf"><b>Central Committee Communique,</b></a> <em>Mozambique Revolution</em>, Number 38, March-April 1969<br>
<a href="../frelimo/kavandame.pdf"><b>The Kavandame Affair</b></a>, <em>Southern Africa</em>, May 1969 <br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-no-change.pdf"><b>FRELIMO: Caetano: No Essential Change</b></a>, [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 1] (1969)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-self-crit.pdf"><b>FRELIMO: Self-Criticism</b></a>, [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 2] (1969)<br>
<a href="../cuba/davidson-portugal.pdf"><b>The Mercenaries of the Empire [Portuguese colonies in Africa]</b></a>, by Basil Davidson, <em>Tricontinental</em>, Number 11 (1969) <br>
<a href="../frelimo/gloomy-situation.pdf"><b>Gloomy Situation in FRELIMO</b></a>, by Uria T. Simango, [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 2] (1969)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/on-simango.pdf"><b>FRELIMO: On Uria T. Simango</b></a>, [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 2] (1969)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-womens-section-69.pdf"><b>FRELIMO Women's Section Brochure</b></a> (1969)<br>
<a href="../paigc/nat-lib-wars.pdf"><b>National Liberation Wars in the Portuguese Colonies</b></a> by the Permanent Secretariat of the Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Organization (1970) <br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-cc-communique.pdf"><b>Communique of the Central Committee,</b></a> <em>Mozambique Revolution</em>, Number 43, April-June 1969<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-opportunism.pdf"><b>FRELIMO... Opportunist Policies Defeated</b></a>, <em>Sechaba</em>, March 1970 <br>
<a href="../cuba/front-of-solidarity.pdf"><b>Portuguese Colonies: Front of Solidarity Against Reaction</b></a>, <em>Tricontinental Bulletin</em>, Year V, Number 48, March 1970 <br>
<a href="../cuba/why-we-fight.pdf"><b>Why We Fight</b></a>, by Moises Machel Samora, <em>Tricontinental</em>, Number 18, May-June 1970<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-vatican.pdf"><b>FRELIMO: Change of Policy in the Vatican?</b></a>, [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 1] (1970)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/moz-nation-building.pdf"><b>Nation Building in Mozambique</b></a>, <em>Sechaba</em>, Volume 4, Number 8, August 1970 <br>
<a href="../frelimo/dos-santos-1.pdf"><b>Marcelino Dos Santos talks to <em>Sechaba</em></b></a>, Part 1, <em>Sechaba</em>, Volume 4, Number 10, October 1970 <br>
<a href="../frelimo/dos-santos-2.pdf"><b>Marcelino Dos Santos talks to <em>Sechaba</em></b></a>, Part 2, <em>Sechaba</em>, Volume 4, Numbers 11-12, November-December 1970 <br>
<a href="../lsm/frelimo-aspects.pdf"><b>Aspects of the Mozambican Struggle by FRELIMO </b></a> <br>
<a href="../cuba/international-war.pdf"><b>An International War</b></a>, by Marcelino dos Santos, <em>Tricontinental</em>, Numbers 23, April-May 1971<br>
<a href="../cuba/cabora-bassa.pdf"><b>immediate Objective: Cabora Bassa</b></a>, by Peter Kellner, <em>Tricontinental</em>, Numbers 23, April-May 1971<br>
<a href="../lsm/dos-santos-interview.pdf"><b>FRELIMO: Interview with Marcelino dos Santos,</b></a> Part 1, by Boubaker Adjali (1971) <br>
<a href="../lsm/dos-santos-interview-2.pdf"><b>Interviews in Depth: Mozambique, FRELIMO: Marcelino dos Santos, Vice-President of FRELIMO, </b></a> Part 2 (1971) <br>
<a href="../arg/building-freedom.pdf"><b>Building Freedom: Mozambique's FRELIMO</b></a> (1971) <br>
<a href="../machel/1971/machel-producers.pdf"><b>Producers and Students</b></a>, by Samora Machel, [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 1] (1971)<br>
<a href="../cuba/education-mozambique.pdf"><b>Education in Free Mozambique</b></a>, <em>Tricontinental Bulletin</em>, Year VII, Number 73, April 1972 <br>
<a href="../frelimo/revolutionary-education.pdf"><b>Revolutionary Education</b></a>, [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 3] (1972)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/first-steps.pdf"><b>The First Steps</b></a>, [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 3] (1972)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-10th.pdf"><b>FRELIMO: 10th Anniversary</b></a> 1972 <br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-caetano.pdf"><b>Caetano's Reforms Sink in a Sea of Contradictions</b></a>, [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 3] (1972)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-coup.pdf"><b>FRELIMO: The Coup d'Etat of April 25</b></a>, [from the book <em>The African Liberation Reader,</em> Volume 1] (1974)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/pan-african-6th.pdf"><b>Address by the Frelimo Delegation to the Sixth Pan-African Congress</b></a> (1974) <br>
<a href="../lsm/women-in-revolution.pdf"><b>The Mozambican Woman in the Revolution</b></a> (1974) <br>
<a href="../frelimo/moz-independence.pdf"><b>Mozambique Independence Celebrations</b></a> (1975) <br>
<a href="../cpgb/machel.pdf"><b>Frelimo President's Independence Message</b></a> by Samora Machel (1975) <br>
<a href="../lsm/revolution-or-reaction.pdf"><b>Mozambique: Revolution or Reaction? Two Speeches</b></a> by Samora Machel, FRELIMO President (1975) <br>
<a href="../frelimo/maputo-revolt.pdf"><b>Mozambicans Put Down Right Wing Violence in Maputo</b></a>, <em>CFM News & Notes</em>, Number 34, April 1976<br>
<a href="../cuba/cc-report.pdf"><b>Report from the CC of Frelimo to the Third Congress</b></a>, by Samora Machel, <em>Tricontinental</em>, Number 52, 1977<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-3rd.pdf"><b>Charting a Socialist Course – FRELIMO Third Party Congress</b></a>, by William Minter, <em>Southern Africa</em>, April 1977<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-reorganizes.pdf"><b>FRELIMO Reorganizes</b></a>, <em>Sechaba</em>, Third Quarter 1977<br>
<a href="../mpla/mpla-frelimo.pdf"><b>MPLA and FRELIMO: Perspectives on the Struggle Southern Africa</b></a>, <em>Sechaba</em> Volume 11, Fourth Quarter 1977 <br>
<a href="../frelimo/burchett-mozambique.pdf"><b>Mozambique</b></a>, by Wilfred Burchett [from the book <em>Southern Africa Stands Up</em> 1978] <br>
<a href="../frelimo/dawn-frelimo-1.pdf"><b>The People's Forces for the Liberation of Mozambique</b></a>, Part 1, <em>Dawn</em>, February 1980<br>
<a href="../frelimo/political-offensive.pdf"><b>Mozambique Reorganizes: The Political and Ideological Offensive</b>,</a> by Paul and Andy Epstein (1980)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/lions-tail.pdf"><b>Getting Hold of the Lions Tail: The Campaign Against Bureaucracy</b>,</a> by Roberta Washington (1980)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/tambo-frelimo-4th.pdf"><b>The Unity of Our Peoples. Address of ANC President Oliver Tambo to the Fourth Congress of FRELIMO</b></a>, <em>Sechaba</em>, July 1983 <br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-4th.pdf"><b>FRELIMO Fights for the Future of Mozambique</b></a> [on FRELIMO's Fourth Party Congress] <em>The African Communist</em>, Fourth Quarter 1983<br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-4th-congress.pdf"><b>The Fourth FRELIMO Party Congress</b></a>, <em>Mozambican Notes</em>, September 1983<br>
<a href="../frelimo/anc-frelimo.pdf"><b> ANC and FRELIMO</b></a>, <em>Mozambican Notes</em>, November 1984<br>
<a href="../cpgb/ideals-reality.pdf"><b>Mozambique – Ideals and Reality</b></a>, by Paul Fauvet (1984) <br>
<a href="../frelimo/background-conflict.pdf"><b>Background to the Mozambique Conflict</b></a>, by Moeletsi Mbeki (1985) <br>
<a href="../frelimo/moz-econ-reforms.pdf"><b>Economic Reform in Mozambique: Two Views</b></a> by John Loxley and Otto Roesch, <em>Southern Africa Report</em>, October 1988<br>
<a href="../frelimo/moz-ropes.pdf"><b>On the Ropes: Socialism and FRELIMO's Fifth Congress</b></a> by Judith Marshall, <em>Southern Africa Report</em>, November 1989<br>
<a href="../frelimo/moz-nampula.pdf"><b>Nampula: What's Left?</b></a> [on FRELIMO's Fifth Party Congress] by Otto Roesch, <em>Southern Africa Report</em>, November 1989<br>
<a href="../frelimo/moz-solidarity.pdf"><b>Mozambique: Debating the Terms of Solidarity</b></a> <em>Southern Africa Report</em>, February 1990<br>
<a href="../frelimo/moz-debate-cont.pdf"><b>Mozambique: The Debate Continues</b></a>, by Michael Cahen and Otto Roesch, <em>Southern Africa Report</em>, May 1990<br>
<a href="../frelimo/saul-moz-socialism.pdf"><b>Mozambique: The Failure of Socialism?</b></a>, by John S. Saul, <em>Southern Africa Report</em>, November 1990<br>
<a href="../frelimo/evaluating-moz.pdf"><b>Interpretations Matter: Evaluating the War in Mozambique</b></a>, by Bridget O'Laughlin and Christian Geffrey, <em>Southern Africa Report</em>, March 1992<br>
<a href="../frelimo/moz-what-do.pdf"><b>Mozambique: What is to Be Done?</b></a>, by Bridget O'Laughlin, <em>Southern Africa Report</em>, March 1992<br>
<a href="../frelimo/fight-peacefully.pdf"><b>"Let Us Fight Peacefully": Interview with Marcellino dos Santos</b></a> (1993)<br>
<a href="../frelimo/recolonization-moz.pdf"><b>Twenty Years After Recolonization in Mozambique</b></a>, by John S. Saul, <em>Southern Africa Report</em>, January 1996<br>
</p><hr class="section">
<h4>Periodicals</h4>
<p class="fst">
<a href="../frelimo/patriota-1.pdf"><b><em>Patriota,</em></b></a> Number 1, n.d., [1962] <br>
<a href="../frelimo/patriota-2.pdf"><b><em>Patriota,</em></b></a> Number 2, n.d., [1962] <br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-info-1.pdf"><b><em>FRELIMO Information Bulletin,</em></b></a> Number 1, October 14, 1963 <br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-info-6-7-66.pdf"><b><em>FRELIMO Information Bulletin,</em></b></a> Volume II, June-July 1966 <br>
<a href="../frelimo/frelimo-info-8-9-66.pdf"><b><em>FRELIMO Information Bulletin,</em></b></a> Volume II, August-September 1966 <br>
<a href="../periodicals/mozambique-revolution/index.htm"><b><em>Mozambique Revolution</em></b></a> (1969-1973)<br>
<a href="../periodicals/mozambican-notes/index.htm"><b><em>Mozambican Notes</em></b></a> (1983-1986)<br>
</p><hr class="section">
<h4>See also:</h4>
<p class="fst">
<a href="../mondlane/index.htm"><strong>Eduardo Mondlane: Archive of Works</strong></a><br>
<a href="../machel/index.htm"><strong>Samora Machel: Archive of Works</strong></a></p>
<p class="skip"> </p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="footer">
<a href="../index.htm">Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in Africa</a></p>
<p class="skip"> </p>
</div>
</blockquote>
</body> |
MIA: Subjects: Africa: FRELIMO
The Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO)
Documents
A Look Back at the Past, to Understand the Present: The Founding of FRELIMO, Mozambican Notes, Numbers 1 and 2, September 1983 and January 1984
Statement on the Founding of the "Conference of Nationalist Organizations in Portuguese Colonies" (C.O.N.C.P.), (1961)
Joint Press Communique from MANU and UDENAMO [on uniting to form FRELIMO] (June 1962)
Mozambique Political Parties Fuse [to form FRELIMO] (June 1962)
Initial Programme and Standing Orders in Preparation for First Congress (June 1962)
Declarations and Resolutions of the First FRELIMO Congress (September 1962)
FRELIMO Constitution and Programme (1962)
FRELIMO: To the Portuguese People, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 2] (1962)
Speech of Uria T. Simango, FRELIMO Vice-President, to a Pan-African Freedom Movement of East and Central Africa Conference (1962)
UDENAMO and MANU Declare FRELIMO "Dissolved" (May 21, 1963)
Telegram to the Conference of African Independent States and Prime Ministers [on UDENAMO and MANU withdrawing from FRELIMO] (May 22, 1963)
Memorandum on Withdrawl from FRELIMO [by UDENAMO and MANU] (May 27, 1963)
FRELIMO: Memorandum to the Addis Ababa Conference [on FRELIMO's origins and programme] (1963)
FRELIMO: Why We Fight, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1963)
FRELIMO: To the Mozambican People, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 2] (1964)
FRELIMO: 1964 Brochure (1964)
Joint Memorandum Submitted by the African National Liberation Movements to the Conference of the Heads of African States Held in Cairo 17th to 21st July, 1964 (1964)
The Role of the Church in Mozambique, by Eduardo Mondlane [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1964)
Proclamation to the Mozambican People, Mozambique Revolution, Special Issue, 25 September 1967
FRELIMO: Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1965)
The Political Situation in Portugal and the Liberation Struggle in the Portuguese Colonies, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1965)
Statements and Resolutions of the Second "Conference of Nationalist Organizations in Portuguese Colonies" (C.O.N.C.P.) (1965)
Development of Nationalism in Mozambique, by Eduardo Mondlane [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 2] (1965)
Mozambique: 25th of September (1966)
FRELIMO Speaks on the Conscience of the Mozambique Revolution (1967)
Message from the Central Committee to the Mozambican People, Mozambique Revolution, Special Issue, 25 September 1967
Participation of Students in the Struggle for National Liberation, by Eduardo Mondlane [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1967)
FRELIMO Fights for Human Rights, by Eduardo Mondlane, Sechaba, Volume 2, Number 3, March 1968
FRELIMO: Smith, Sanctions, and Salazar, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1968)
Mozambique: An Album of the Struggle [for the FRELIMO Second Congress] (1968)
AAPSO Permanent Secretariat Delegation Attends the Second National Conference of FRELIMO, Afro-Asian Bulletin, Volume X, Numbers 7-8, July-August 1968
Highlights of the Second National Conference of FRELIMO, Afro-Asian Bulletin, Volume X, Numbers 7-8, July-August 1968
Report of the Central Committee the Second National Conference of FRELIMO, Afro-Asian Bulletin, Volume X, Numbers 7-8, July-August 1968
Resolutions of FRELIMO's Second Congress (1968)
Mozambique in the Framework of Southern Africa, by Jose Oscar Monteiro [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 3] (1968)
On the Necessity of Prolonged War, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 3] (1968)
FRELIMO Women's Detachment: The Mozambican Woman in the Revolution (1968)
Comrade Jose Monteiro, FRELIMO representative in Algeria, answers questions on the Mozambique Revolution, Sechaba, September 1968
Mozambique: A Country on the Road to Liberation, Tricontinental Bulletin, Year III, Number 30, September 1968
Documents of Frelimo – The Mozambique Liberation Front (1968)
"Our Struggle at Home and Abroad". Interview with Miguel Murupo, Sechaba, Volume 3, Number 2, February 1969
Mozambique Now One-Fifth Under African Rule, by Eduardo Mondlane Sechaba, Volume 3, Number 4, April 1969
Eduardo Mondlane, by M.P. Naicker, Labour Monthly, March 1969
Statement of the Central Committee, [on the Mondlane assassination] Mozambique Revolution, Number 38, March-April 1969
Central Committee Communique, Mozambique Revolution, Number 38, March-April 1969
The Kavandame Affair, Southern Africa, May 1969
FRELIMO: Caetano: No Essential Change, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1969)
FRELIMO: Self-Criticism, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 2] (1969)
The Mercenaries of the Empire [Portuguese colonies in Africa], by Basil Davidson, Tricontinental, Number 11 (1969)
Gloomy Situation in FRELIMO, by Uria T. Simango, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 2] (1969)
FRELIMO: On Uria T. Simango, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 2] (1969)
FRELIMO Women's Section Brochure (1969)
National Liberation Wars in the Portuguese Colonies by the Permanent Secretariat of the Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Organization (1970)
Communique of the Central Committee, Mozambique Revolution, Number 43, April-June 1969
FRELIMO... Opportunist Policies Defeated, Sechaba, March 1970
Portuguese Colonies: Front of Solidarity Against Reaction, Tricontinental Bulletin, Year V, Number 48, March 1970
Why We Fight, by Moises Machel Samora, Tricontinental, Number 18, May-June 1970
FRELIMO: Change of Policy in the Vatican?, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1970)
Nation Building in Mozambique, Sechaba, Volume 4, Number 8, August 1970
Marcelino Dos Santos talks to Sechaba, Part 1, Sechaba, Volume 4, Number 10, October 1970
Marcelino Dos Santos talks to Sechaba, Part 2, Sechaba, Volume 4, Numbers 11-12, November-December 1970
Aspects of the Mozambican Struggle by FRELIMO
An International War, by Marcelino dos Santos, Tricontinental, Numbers 23, April-May 1971
immediate Objective: Cabora Bassa, by Peter Kellner, Tricontinental, Numbers 23, April-May 1971
FRELIMO: Interview with Marcelino dos Santos, Part 1, by Boubaker Adjali (1971)
Interviews in Depth: Mozambique, FRELIMO: Marcelino dos Santos, Vice-President of FRELIMO, Part 2 (1971)
Building Freedom: Mozambique's FRELIMO (1971)
Producers and Students, by Samora Machel, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1971)
Education in Free Mozambique, Tricontinental Bulletin, Year VII, Number 73, April 1972
Revolutionary Education, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 3] (1972)
The First Steps, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 3] (1972)
FRELIMO: 10th Anniversary 1972
Caetano's Reforms Sink in a Sea of Contradictions, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 3] (1972)
FRELIMO: The Coup d'Etat of April 25, [from the book The African Liberation Reader, Volume 1] (1974)
Address by the Frelimo Delegation to the Sixth Pan-African Congress (1974)
The Mozambican Woman in the Revolution (1974)
Mozambique Independence Celebrations (1975)
Frelimo President's Independence Message by Samora Machel (1975)
Mozambique: Revolution or Reaction? Two Speeches by Samora Machel, FRELIMO President (1975)
Mozambicans Put Down Right Wing Violence in Maputo, CFM News & Notes, Number 34, April 1976
Report from the CC of Frelimo to the Third Congress, by Samora Machel, Tricontinental, Number 52, 1977
Charting a Socialist Course – FRELIMO Third Party Congress, by William Minter, Southern Africa, April 1977
FRELIMO Reorganizes, Sechaba, Third Quarter 1977
MPLA and FRELIMO: Perspectives on the Struggle Southern Africa, Sechaba Volume 11, Fourth Quarter 1977
Mozambique, by Wilfred Burchett [from the book Southern Africa Stands Up 1978]
The People's Forces for the Liberation of Mozambique, Part 1, Dawn, February 1980
Mozambique Reorganizes: The Political and Ideological Offensive, by Paul and Andy Epstein (1980)
Getting Hold of the Lions Tail: The Campaign Against Bureaucracy, by Roberta Washington (1980)
The Unity of Our Peoples. Address of ANC President Oliver Tambo to the Fourth Congress of FRELIMO, Sechaba, July 1983
FRELIMO Fights for the Future of Mozambique [on FRELIMO's Fourth Party Congress] The African Communist, Fourth Quarter 1983
The Fourth FRELIMO Party Congress, Mozambican Notes, September 1983
ANC and FRELIMO, Mozambican Notes, November 1984
Mozambique – Ideals and Reality, by Paul Fauvet (1984)
Background to the Mozambique Conflict, by Moeletsi Mbeki (1985)
Economic Reform in Mozambique: Two Views by John Loxley and Otto Roesch, Southern Africa Report, October 1988
On the Ropes: Socialism and FRELIMO's Fifth Congress by Judith Marshall, Southern Africa Report, November 1989
Nampula: What's Left? [on FRELIMO's Fifth Party Congress] by Otto Roesch, Southern Africa Report, November 1989
Mozambique: Debating the Terms of Solidarity Southern Africa Report, February 1990
Mozambique: The Debate Continues, by Michael Cahen and Otto Roesch, Southern Africa Report, May 1990
Mozambique: The Failure of Socialism?, by John S. Saul, Southern Africa Report, November 1990
Interpretations Matter: Evaluating the War in Mozambique, by Bridget O'Laughlin and Christian Geffrey, Southern Africa Report, March 1992
Mozambique: What is to Be Done?, by Bridget O'Laughlin, Southern Africa Report, March 1992
"Let Us Fight Peacefully": Interview with Marcellino dos Santos (1993)
Twenty Years After Recolonization in Mozambique, by John S. Saul, Southern Africa Report, January 1996
Periodicals
Patriota, Number 1, n.d., [1962]
Patriota, Number 2, n.d., [1962]
FRELIMO Information Bulletin, Number 1, October 14, 1963
FRELIMO Information Bulletin, Volume II, June-July 1966
FRELIMO Information Bulletin, Volume II, August-September 1966
Mozambique Revolution (1969-1973)
Mozambican Notes (1983-1986)
See also:
Eduardo Mondlane: Archive of Works
Samora Machel: Archive of Works
Marxism and Anti-Imperialism in Africa
|
./articles/Machel-Samora/https:..www.marxists.org.subject.africa.machel.1970.educate-win-war | <body>
<p class="title">Samora Machel 1970</p>
<h1>Educate Man to Win the War, Create a New Society and Develop our Country</h1>
<hr class="end"><p class="information"><span class="info">Written</span>: 1970;<br>
<span class="info">First Published</span>: 1970;<br>
<span class="info">Source</span>: <em>Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution</em>, Mozambique, pp. 37-45;<br>
<span class="info">Transcription</span>: Liz Blasczak;</p>
<p class="information">Speech at the Second Conference of the Department of Education and Culture, September 1970.</p><hr class="end">
<p class="fst">Comrade delegates to the Second Conference of the Department of Education and Culture,<br>
Comrades,</p>
<p class="fst">We are happy to take part in this 2nd Conference of the Department of Education and Culture because Culture and Education are fundamental problems of our people on which the creation of a new mentality ultimately depends. We also believe that meeting and discussing our work and methods is the reliable way of guiding our action.</p>
<p>This Conference is starting at a time when we are celebrating the most important date in our history. The fact that this Conference is taking place is a result of our struggle, of the fierce struggle against colonialism, and the tough and tricky struggle against reactionary forces amongst us. It is a victory of the many who have sacrificed their lives to drive out the Portuguese colonialists and to expose the new exploiters. </p>
<p>
The Conference therefore takes on special significance, for bloodshed and sacrifice lie behind it. It was made possible by the clarification and consolidation embarked on amid our ranks. </p>
<p>
We must therefore carry on the work that has just been started and avoid patting ourselves on the back for victories achieved, forgetting the very great deal that remains to be done. </p>
<p>
Because our Education has been born of bloodshed, it is only right that we should pay tribute to those who have fallen for our country. More than anyone else, Eduardo Mondlane symbolized our struggle to free Man from the colonial yoke and from obscurantism. </p>
<p>
I therefore request that we observe a minute of silence in his memory and in memory of all the comrades who have laid down their lives. </p>
<p>
This Conference has set itself the task of analyzing the work achieved, discovering the errors and shortcomings in our activity and, based on our principles, promoting the implementation of the task entrusted to the Department by FRELIMO’s leading organs. </p>
<p>
Other documents to be submitted to the Conference contain detailed analysis of the work done, of the great deal that has been done and the vast amount we still have to do. Here we wish simply to put forward a few themes for reflection which, as they express the preoccupations of FRELIMO’s leadership, will help to guide us in our work. </p>
<p>
After demonstrating the harmfulness of both traditional and colonial education, we should like to explain the educational goals we have set ourselves in relation to the new society we are struggling for. </p>
<p>
At the same time, it is essential that we establish guiding lines which take into account the immediate imperatives of the situation, the need to unite the people, to deepen our knowledge of our country’s society and environment, to advance the war and to reconstruct the nation. </p>
<p>
Finally, we wish to formulate what seem to us the most correct methods of facing problems successfully within a revolutionary perspective. </p>
<h3>I. Education and Society</h3>
<p>Each society always seeks to ensure its survival through new generations, passing on its accumulated knowledge and experience. However, since society exists within the framework of its structures, its survival obviously involves the perpetuation of these structures, however oppressive they may be. In this context, the education that is passed on, because it is a reflection of an actual society, serves to justify that society: its economic structures, its social customs, its ethical and artistic concepts, in short, the culture of that society. </p>
<p>
In the present phase in Mozambique, there are three antagonistic types of education, two of them reflecting societies which are on their way out and the third directed towards the future. </p>
<h5>(a) Traditional education and the paralysis of society</h5>
<p>Although the colonialists dealt a powerful blow to traditional society, traditional education is still the dominant form of education in Mozambique. </p>
<p>
Owing to their superficial knowledge of nature, members of traditional society conceive of it as a series of forces of supernatural origin which are to varying degrees hostile to man. Hence the fact that superstition takes the place of science in education. Furthermore, the poor development of the traditional economy based on subsistence agriculture results in the isolation of the community. </p>
<p>
Taking advantage of the superstition among the masses and the community’s isolation, certain social groups are able to maintain their retrograde rule over society. </p>
<p>
In this context education aims at passing on tradition, which is raised to the level of a dogma. The system of age groups and initiation rites is intended to keep the youth under the sway of old ideas, to destroy their initiative. All that is new, different and foreign is opposed in the name of tradition. Thus all progress is prevented and the society survives in a completely static way. </p>
<p>
Women are regarded as second class human beings, subjected to the humiliating practice of polygamy, acquired through a gift made to their families, inherited by the husband’s family on his death, and educated to serve man passively. </p>
<h5>(b) The colonial education system based on social discrimination</h5>
<p>Whereas innovation and science are seen to disrupt the fossilized structures of the past, conversely capitalism uses them to exploit men more. </p>
<p>
The more traditional society fights individualism, the more capitalism promotes it, in that it creates in the exploiter the required mentality for exploiting his victim and prevents the exploited from uniting with their comrades to overcome oppression. </p>
<p>
In Mozambique, a colonial country, social discrimination in education is accentuated by racial discrimination. Education is reserved almost exclusively for the children of settlers, and particularly higher education, which is for the children of rich settlers. </p>
<p>
In addition to its overall purpose of reinforcing bourgeois oppression, colonial education seeks particularly to de-personalize the Mozambican. Removed from his people whom he is taught to look down upon, isolated by the individualism instilled in him, with no dimension in time provided by his own history, ignorant by the space determined by his own geography, living on imported ideas, deformed by the decadent attitudes of colonial society, the Mozambican is supposed to become a black-skinned Portuguese, a docile tool of colonialism whose highest ambition is to live like the settler in whose image he is created. </p>
<h5>(c) Revolutionary education and the creation of the New Man</h5>
<p>When we took up arms to defeat the old order, we felt the obscure need to create a new society, strong, healthy and prosperous, in which men free from all exploitation would cooperate for the progress of all. </p>
<p>
In the course of our struggle, in the tough fight we have had to wage against reactionary elements, we came to understand our objectives more clearly. We felt especially that the struggle to create new structures would fail without the creation of a new mentality. </p>
<p>
Creating an attitude of solidarity between people to enable them to carry out collective work presupposes the elimination of individualism. Developing a healthy and revolutionary morality which promotes the liberation of women and the creation of a new generation with a collective feeling of responsibility requires the destruction of inherited corrupt ideas and tastes. In order to lay the foundations of a prosperous and advanced economy, science has to overcome superstition. To unite all Mozambicans, transcending traditions and different languages, requires that the tribe must die in our consciousness so that the nation may be born. </p>
<p>
What I mean by this is that to us education does not mean teaching how to read and write, creating an elite group of graduates, with no direct relationship to our objectives. In other words, just as one can wage an armed struggle without carrying out a revolution, one can also learn without educating oneself in a revolutionary way. We do not want to form an educated elite at the service of an exploitative group. We do not want science to be used to enrich a minority, oppress man and stifle the creative initiative of the masses, the inexhaustible source of collective progress. Each of us must assume his revolutionary responsibilities in education, regarding books, study, as tools at the exclusive service of the masses. Studying must be seen as a revolutionary task to be combined with the revolutionary tasks of production and fighting. He who studies should be like a spark lighting the flame which is the people. </p>
<p>
The principal task of education, in our teaching, textbooks, and programs, is to instill in each of us the advanced, scientific, objective and collective ideology which enables us to progress in the revolutionary process. </p>
<p>
Education must prepare us to internalize the new society and its requirements. </p>
<p>
Education must give us a Mozambican personality which, without subservience of any kind and steeped in our own realities, will be able, in contact with the outside world, to assimilate critically the ideas and experiences of other peoples, also passing on to them the fruits of our thought and practice. </p>
<p>
We need a consciousness of responsibility and collective solidarity, free from all individualism and corruption. We have to acquire a scientific attitude, open and free from the dead weight of superstition and dogmatic traditions. </p>
<p>
We need particularly to create a new attitude in women, emancipating their consciousness and behavior, and at the same time instill in men new behavior and attitudes towards women.
We must make everyone aware of the need to serve the people, to participate in production, to respect manual labor, to release creative initiative and to develop a sense of responsibility. In short, what we want is a revolutionary mentality which uses science to serve the people. </p>
<p>
Our continued progress depends on the new generation. For the first time in our history, there are children, young people, growing up away from colonialism, away from dogmatic traditions. There is a generation, the first, which is being formed in the heat of the revolution. This is the generation which will be called upon in the 20 years to come to carry on the task we are starting. They are the plant nursery from which will come the selected plants ensuring the ultimate triumph of the revolution. </p>
<p>
In this respect the task of the teachers and cadres in education is an extraordinarily delicate one, because like us they grew up and were formed in the old world, and carry within them many bad habits and defects, a lot of individualism and ambition, many corrupt and superstitious attitudes which are harmful and might contaminate the new generation. </p>
<p>
Teachers and education cadres must behave like the doctor who, before approaching the patient in the operating theatre, disinfects and sterilizes himself so as not to infect the patient. </p>
<p>
Through constant meetings, through continual criticism and self-criticism, teachers and education cadres must eliminate old ideas and tastes, so as to be able to acquire the new mentality and pass it on to the next generation. </p>
<p>
How would we classify a doctor or nurse who contaminates patients? Who instead of caring for them and saving them, passes on diseases to them. </p>
<p>
We must show maximum severity towards anyone among the teachers and education cadres who displays subjectivism, individualism, tribalism, arrogance, superstition or ignorance. </p>
<p>
In short, the teacher, the education cadre, united with the masses, must wage an internal struggle, must disinfect himself, getting rid of the old and wholly internalizing the new. </p>
<h3>II. The present Situation and Its Requirements</h3>
<p>Apart from the long-term task of creating a new mentality, there are requirements of the present situation which education is called upon to meet. We can’t create a new society without destroying the old, without overthrowing colonialism and its vestiges, without creating the economic foundations for advancing the war and our society. </p>
<h5>(a) The unity of the people and education</h5>
<p>One of the prime concerns of education should be the unity of the people. Colonialism sought to accentuate all ethnic, linguistic, religious and cultural divisions there might be among the Mozambican people. At the same time, traditional education by extolling the cult of the linguistic community to which a person belongs, instills in him an attitude of contempt, and at times even of hatred, towards other communities. </p>
<p>
In our teaching we should bring out the similarities in the conditions of the Mozambican people as a whole. We should explain how colonialism exploits every region. The pupil needs to realize that the Mueda peasant’s struggle against cotton growing is no different to the struggle of the sugar cane growers on the banks of the Zambezi, that the struggle of the stevedores in Louren�o Marques is the same as that of the miners in Tete. Workers shipped from Nampula to S�o Tom� or to the Louren�o Marques railways suffer the same exploitation as the men from Gaza who are sold to South Africa. The fishermen and rice cultivators in Manica e Sofala are exploited by the same foreigner as occupies the oilfields of Inhambane. Taxes were just as crushing a burden on the people of Niassa who, like all Mozambicans, never saw a school or hospital which catered for them. </p>
<p>
At the same time, the pupil must identify with the heroic traditions of our whole country: the fight of Maguiane, the resistance of Baru�, the splendor of Sofala and the magnificence of Monomotapa. </p>
<p>
Mozambique’s cultural wealth does not belong to any one region. The contribution of the Zavala marimba players is as much a source of pride to us as Makonde sculpture and the gold filigree work of the Tete goldsmiths. In this connection, we should like to hail the decision to invite Mozambican sculptors to teach the boys and girls at the Tunduru Pilot School the wonders of their art. We hope that there will be more and more similar initiatives in the fields of painting, goldsmithing, iron and copper working, artistic handicrafts, mat-making, basketry, etc. </p>
<p>
Regionalism, tribalism and the attitude of looking down on other communities are the result of ignorance, of lack of knowledge of other values. No one loves what he does not know. </p>
<p>
This is why we regard the First Cultural Festival the DEC proposes to hold as a valuable contribution to our national unity, for the development of our culture. It is to be hoped that regional and provincial festivals will be held prior and subsequent to the First Cultural Festival. Let art seek to combine old form with new content, then giving rise to new form. Let painting, written literature, theatre and artistic handicrafts be added to the traditionally cultivated dance, sculpture and singing. Let the creativity of some become that of all, men and women young and old, from the North to the South, so that the new revolutionary and Mozambican culture may be born of all. </p>
<p>
In the schools, on the classroom benches, in the house and canteens and in production, we should always endeavor to join pupils and teachers from different regions, so that through day-to-day familiarity we rid ourselves of regional reflexes and acquire Mozambican feelings and consciousness. </p>
<p>
It is by uniting in work that we really unite. Teachers and pupils should work side by side at all tasks, because there are no greater or lesser tasks in the revolution, only revolutionary tasks. Because words have no life without practice, a body without flesh is a skeleton and a body without bones can’t stay upright on its own, it is necessary constantly to transform the assertion of unity into the practice of unity. Uniting with one another means knowing and understanding one another. It is in joint effort, in sweat expended at the same time, in the tree trunk torn out by combining our strength, in the dance composed through the creativity of minds </p>
<p>working together that knowing and understanding come into being and unity is consolidated. </p>
<h5>(b) Knowledge of the society and environment</h5>
<p>In our struggle against the colonialists, one of the decisive factors for our victory is that we are struggling in our own country, that is, in a society and on a terrain which are ours and which we know better than anyone. </p>
<p>
The development of our struggle requires that we constantly deepen our knowledge of our country, that this knowledge becomes increasingly scientific. </p>
<p>
Studying the history, geography, zoology, botany and mineralogy of our land will enable us to know how to use our resources better. </p>
<p>
It should be considered especially that our people have a great deal of knowledge about the resources of nature, even though this knowledge is empirical and often distorted by superstition. In our education we should encourage teachers and pupils to compile the empirical knowledge of the masses and analyze it critically and objectively so as to develop our knowledge and science for the benefit of society. </p>
<p>
It is also necessary to promote constant discussion and study on the usages and customs of each region, so as to know them better, assimilate them and purify them through criticism. </p>
<p>
Each of us must understand that the task he is called upon to perform is in Mozambique. In other words, Mozambique is not a given region, village or province, but a vast country with a great diversity of conditions which we need to understand if we are to be effective. </p>
<h5>(c) Technology and the advance of the struggle</h5>
<p>We are confronting an enemy army which is backed by all the resources of modern technology, and in order to face up to the growing needs of the masses and the war we are obliged to continually increase and diversify production. At the same time, our social and administrative needs require the use of more personnel and more complex technology. </p>
<p>
While it is true that it is in military camps and especially in the field that we discover the ways of destroying the enemy’s military machine, it is still necessary to impart a minimum of scientific knowledge to militants, to cadres, to enable them to increase their mastery of military technology. </p>
<p>
Production requires ever more attention. In facing up to the needs of the masses under war conditions we should rely above all on our own efforts. However, diversifying production, improving techniques, using nature to fight against natural calamities, digging wells and irrigation channels, building dams and so forth, requires of us knowledge we do not always have. </p>
<p>
We want pupils to acquire such practical knowledge at school. Cotton spinning and weaving should be taught with the natural sciences; the theory and practice of building dams and irrigation channels should be combined with arithmetic and physics; there should be practice in building water wheels, mills turned by animals and windmills. In short, there is a great deal of scientific and practical knowledge which could help us to develop our agriculture and promote the establishment of such craft-based industries as cabinet making, carpentry, masonry, pottery, soap making, spinning and weaving, making furnaces for iron production, kilns for bricks, etc. </p>
<p>
Combining education with production means above all the theoretical and practical acquisition of knowledge to be made available for production, administration, social services and combat. </p>
<h3>III. Revolution and Education methods</h3>
<p>It is obvious that if we are to solve all the problems that face us successfully we must use methods suited to our situation. </p>
<p>
To be effective, our methods must derive from our principles and practice, they must be based on that which constitutes our strength. </p>
<h5>(a) Education and the mass line</h5>
<p>Our chief strength, the primary cause of all we do, is the people. In solving our problems we should rely on the people in defining our objective interests and struggling to achieve them. </p>
<p>
Only by following this line can we distinguish the essential from the secondary, the immediate from the long term, defining what are our interests and distinguishing that which belongs to the enemy from that which is ours. These principles also apply to our work in education. </p>
<p>
The chief characteristic of the situation in education in our country is the illiteracy prevailing among the overwhelming majority of our people, as well as the obscurantist practices caused by colonialism and superstition. </p>
<p>
The main battle in the field of education is therefore against illiteracy and obscurantism. If we are to succeed, we must mobilize the masses in this battle, making them aware of the need to learn and showing them the catastrophic consequences of ignorance. Without the active participation of the masses in the battle against illiteracy it will not be possible to wipe it out, and without an understanding of the evils introduced by obscurantism nothing will make them struggle against it. </p>
<p>
It is also by following the mass line that we define the priorities and establish the education program. How are we to know, for example, where we should devote the greatest efforts, whether in literacy teaching, higher education, training primary school teachers or establishing secondary education? Should a pupil who has completed primary education carry on with his studies or should he devote himself to teaching literacy? Should we be content to state that 20,000 children in the liberated areas are receiving schooling when in those same areas there are still hundreds of thousands of children who have no contact with any school? Should we give priority to children or to the army, which is the backbone of our movement? </p>
<p>
These are extremely serious problems requiring deep thought. The priorities in our education work have not as yet been properly established, and this 2nd Conference must make a careful study of the problem. </p>
<h5>(b) Learning war in the war</h5>
<p>This problem stems mainly from the concept that a pupil needs continuous education, that is, that the pupil must remain in school from the primary level until he obtains his higher education diploma. </p>
<p>
However, the circumstances under which we are living, of war and massive illiteracy, demand concepts and methods which meet both our future objectives and our most immediate objectives, for unless these are solved there will be no future. This means that instead of continuous education we should give priority to permanent and progressive education. We mean that all militants should at all times be able to raise their technical, cultural and political level. At the same time it means that after priorities have been established, some people will be selected for special crash courses, so that they can then impart their newly-acquired knowledge to broader sectors of the people. </p>
<p>
In the final analysis, this is the method we have already been using successfully for some years in our war. As soon as a fighter receives a minimum of training, he goes into battle where he further develops his practical knowledge and passes it on to others. Some are selected from the battlefield for more advanced training, and they then return to raise the general level. We do not wait to train generals in order to fight battles. </p>
<h5>(c) Relying on our own forces</h5>
<p>Stemming from what we have just said is the principle of relying on our own forces. We do not wait for others to come and solve our problems for us. We do not wait for help from outside in order to face situations we come up against. </p>
<p>
We are all aware that to solve the problems of education and to prepare textbooks and programs, highly specialized personnel are required. </p>
<p>
It seems to us that more productive use should be made of the higher cadres in education – both national and foreign. We feel that these people should devote themselves primarily to training and refresher courses for education cadres, the drawing up and supervision of programs and correspondence courses. In short, the programs should be directed towards raising the general level, which is a fundamental need in our war. In line with this, we think it would be wasteful to use foreign teachers solely for teaching secondary school pupils, who will only be productive in the long term, when the very requirements of education calls for cadres with a minimal scientific base to teach literacy to children, the army, workers in cooperatives and the militia. This approach might land us in the situation of some independent countries which have a few hundred graduates on the one hand, and a vast mass of illiterates on the other, without the middle cadres needed to ensure a proper output from the higher cadres. It is like a house with a roof but no foundations. </p>
<p>
Let us pool our little knowledge and it will add up to a great deal. Let us discuss frequently, subjecting our ideals and knowledge to criticism and practice, studying a lot, holding regional and provincial seminars to increase our knowledge and exchange experiences. Let us try to organise correspondence courses to raise the knowledge of teachers and cadres. </p>
<h3>Conclusions</h3>
<p>If we rely on the masses, learning war in the war and relying on our own forces, we shall be able to win the battle of education. We have already achieved a great deal and this 2nd Conference shows us the distance we have covered since 1962, when education meant only the Mozambique Institute and good will in helping a few militants in Dar es Salaam. </p>
<p>
Today our education means thousands and thousands of children in schools in liberated Mozambique, hundreds of teachers, adults studying, secondary education being re-organized, and about two hundred Mozambicans following technical and higher education courses abroad. </p>
<p>
It is appropriate here to congratulate all the comrades who have made this reality possible, and in particular to pay tribute to the memory of our beloved President Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane. We must also congratulate his wife, Comrade Janet Mondlane. These two comrades were among the first to understand that the destruction of obscurantism, of ignorance, was a fundamental task in our struggle. </p>
<p>
May this Conference, may the Department of Education and Culture put into practice the watchword we are here issuing: Educate man to win the war, create a new society and develop our country. </p>
<p>
THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES. INDEPENDENCE OR DEATH. WE WILL WIN.
</p>
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Samora Machel 1970
Educate Man to Win the War, Create a New Society and Develop our Country
Written: 1970;
First Published: 1970;
Source: Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution, Mozambique, pp. 37-45;
Transcription: Liz Blasczak;
Speech at the Second Conference of the Department of Education and Culture, September 1970.
Comrade delegates to the Second Conference of the Department of Education and Culture,
Comrades,
We are happy to take part in this 2nd Conference of the Department of Education and Culture because Culture and Education are fundamental problems of our people on which the creation of a new mentality ultimately depends. We also believe that meeting and discussing our work and methods is the reliable way of guiding our action.
This Conference is starting at a time when we are celebrating the most important date in our history. The fact that this Conference is taking place is a result of our struggle, of the fierce struggle against colonialism, and the tough and tricky struggle against reactionary forces amongst us. It is a victory of the many who have sacrificed their lives to drive out the Portuguese colonialists and to expose the new exploiters.
The Conference therefore takes on special significance, for bloodshed and sacrifice lie behind it. It was made possible by the clarification and consolidation embarked on amid our ranks.
We must therefore carry on the work that has just been started and avoid patting ourselves on the back for victories achieved, forgetting the very great deal that remains to be done.
Because our Education has been born of bloodshed, it is only right that we should pay tribute to those who have fallen for our country. More than anyone else, Eduardo Mondlane symbolized our struggle to free Man from the colonial yoke and from obscurantism.
I therefore request that we observe a minute of silence in his memory and in memory of all the comrades who have laid down their lives.
This Conference has set itself the task of analyzing the work achieved, discovering the errors and shortcomings in our activity and, based on our principles, promoting the implementation of the task entrusted to the Department by FRELIMO’s leading organs.
Other documents to be submitted to the Conference contain detailed analysis of the work done, of the great deal that has been done and the vast amount we still have to do. Here we wish simply to put forward a few themes for reflection which, as they express the preoccupations of FRELIMO’s leadership, will help to guide us in our work.
After demonstrating the harmfulness of both traditional and colonial education, we should like to explain the educational goals we have set ourselves in relation to the new society we are struggling for.
At the same time, it is essential that we establish guiding lines which take into account the immediate imperatives of the situation, the need to unite the people, to deepen our knowledge of our country’s society and environment, to advance the war and to reconstruct the nation.
Finally, we wish to formulate what seem to us the most correct methods of facing problems successfully within a revolutionary perspective.
I. Education and Society
Each society always seeks to ensure its survival through new generations, passing on its accumulated knowledge and experience. However, since society exists within the framework of its structures, its survival obviously involves the perpetuation of these structures, however oppressive they may be. In this context, the education that is passed on, because it is a reflection of an actual society, serves to justify that society: its economic structures, its social customs, its ethical and artistic concepts, in short, the culture of that society.
In the present phase in Mozambique, there are three antagonistic types of education, two of them reflecting societies which are on their way out and the third directed towards the future.
(a) Traditional education and the paralysis of society
Although the colonialists dealt a powerful blow to traditional society, traditional education is still the dominant form of education in Mozambique.
Owing to their superficial knowledge of nature, members of traditional society conceive of it as a series of forces of supernatural origin which are to varying degrees hostile to man. Hence the fact that superstition takes the place of science in education. Furthermore, the poor development of the traditional economy based on subsistence agriculture results in the isolation of the community.
Taking advantage of the superstition among the masses and the community’s isolation, certain social groups are able to maintain their retrograde rule over society.
In this context education aims at passing on tradition, which is raised to the level of a dogma. The system of age groups and initiation rites is intended to keep the youth under the sway of old ideas, to destroy their initiative. All that is new, different and foreign is opposed in the name of tradition. Thus all progress is prevented and the society survives in a completely static way.
Women are regarded as second class human beings, subjected to the humiliating practice of polygamy, acquired through a gift made to their families, inherited by the husband’s family on his death, and educated to serve man passively.
(b) The colonial education system based on social discrimination
Whereas innovation and science are seen to disrupt the fossilized structures of the past, conversely capitalism uses them to exploit men more.
The more traditional society fights individualism, the more capitalism promotes it, in that it creates in the exploiter the required mentality for exploiting his victim and prevents the exploited from uniting with their comrades to overcome oppression.
In Mozambique, a colonial country, social discrimination in education is accentuated by racial discrimination. Education is reserved almost exclusively for the children of settlers, and particularly higher education, which is for the children of rich settlers.
In addition to its overall purpose of reinforcing bourgeois oppression, colonial education seeks particularly to de-personalize the Mozambican. Removed from his people whom he is taught to look down upon, isolated by the individualism instilled in him, with no dimension in time provided by his own history, ignorant by the space determined by his own geography, living on imported ideas, deformed by the decadent attitudes of colonial society, the Mozambican is supposed to become a black-skinned Portuguese, a docile tool of colonialism whose highest ambition is to live like the settler in whose image he is created.
(c) Revolutionary education and the creation of the New Man
When we took up arms to defeat the old order, we felt the obscure need to create a new society, strong, healthy and prosperous, in which men free from all exploitation would cooperate for the progress of all.
In the course of our struggle, in the tough fight we have had to wage against reactionary elements, we came to understand our objectives more clearly. We felt especially that the struggle to create new structures would fail without the creation of a new mentality.
Creating an attitude of solidarity between people to enable them to carry out collective work presupposes the elimination of individualism. Developing a healthy and revolutionary morality which promotes the liberation of women and the creation of a new generation with a collective feeling of responsibility requires the destruction of inherited corrupt ideas and tastes. In order to lay the foundations of a prosperous and advanced economy, science has to overcome superstition. To unite all Mozambicans, transcending traditions and different languages, requires that the tribe must die in our consciousness so that the nation may be born.
What I mean by this is that to us education does not mean teaching how to read and write, creating an elite group of graduates, with no direct relationship to our objectives. In other words, just as one can wage an armed struggle without carrying out a revolution, one can also learn without educating oneself in a revolutionary way. We do not want to form an educated elite at the service of an exploitative group. We do not want science to be used to enrich a minority, oppress man and stifle the creative initiative of the masses, the inexhaustible source of collective progress. Each of us must assume his revolutionary responsibilities in education, regarding books, study, as tools at the exclusive service of the masses. Studying must be seen as a revolutionary task to be combined with the revolutionary tasks of production and fighting. He who studies should be like a spark lighting the flame which is the people.
The principal task of education, in our teaching, textbooks, and programs, is to instill in each of us the advanced, scientific, objective and collective ideology which enables us to progress in the revolutionary process.
Education must prepare us to internalize the new society and its requirements.
Education must give us a Mozambican personality which, without subservience of any kind and steeped in our own realities, will be able, in contact with the outside world, to assimilate critically the ideas and experiences of other peoples, also passing on to them the fruits of our thought and practice.
We need a consciousness of responsibility and collective solidarity, free from all individualism and corruption. We have to acquire a scientific attitude, open and free from the dead weight of superstition and dogmatic traditions.
We need particularly to create a new attitude in women, emancipating their consciousness and behavior, and at the same time instill in men new behavior and attitudes towards women.
We must make everyone aware of the need to serve the people, to participate in production, to respect manual labor, to release creative initiative and to develop a sense of responsibility. In short, what we want is a revolutionary mentality which uses science to serve the people.
Our continued progress depends on the new generation. For the first time in our history, there are children, young people, growing up away from colonialism, away from dogmatic traditions. There is a generation, the first, which is being formed in the heat of the revolution. This is the generation which will be called upon in the 20 years to come to carry on the task we are starting. They are the plant nursery from which will come the selected plants ensuring the ultimate triumph of the revolution.
In this respect the task of the teachers and cadres in education is an extraordinarily delicate one, because like us they grew up and were formed in the old world, and carry within them many bad habits and defects, a lot of individualism and ambition, many corrupt and superstitious attitudes which are harmful and might contaminate the new generation.
Teachers and education cadres must behave like the doctor who, before approaching the patient in the operating theatre, disinfects and sterilizes himself so as not to infect the patient.
Through constant meetings, through continual criticism and self-criticism, teachers and education cadres must eliminate old ideas and tastes, so as to be able to acquire the new mentality and pass it on to the next generation.
How would we classify a doctor or nurse who contaminates patients? Who instead of caring for them and saving them, passes on diseases to them.
We must show maximum severity towards anyone among the teachers and education cadres who displays subjectivism, individualism, tribalism, arrogance, superstition or ignorance.
In short, the teacher, the education cadre, united with the masses, must wage an internal struggle, must disinfect himself, getting rid of the old and wholly internalizing the new.
II. The present Situation and Its Requirements
Apart from the long-term task of creating a new mentality, there are requirements of the present situation which education is called upon to meet. We can’t create a new society without destroying the old, without overthrowing colonialism and its vestiges, without creating the economic foundations for advancing the war and our society.
(a) The unity of the people and education
One of the prime concerns of education should be the unity of the people. Colonialism sought to accentuate all ethnic, linguistic, religious and cultural divisions there might be among the Mozambican people. At the same time, traditional education by extolling the cult of the linguistic community to which a person belongs, instills in him an attitude of contempt, and at times even of hatred, towards other communities.
In our teaching we should bring out the similarities in the conditions of the Mozambican people as a whole. We should explain how colonialism exploits every region. The pupil needs to realize that the Mueda peasant’s struggle against cotton growing is no different to the struggle of the sugar cane growers on the banks of the Zambezi, that the struggle of the stevedores in Louren�o Marques is the same as that of the miners in Tete. Workers shipped from Nampula to S�o Tom� or to the Louren�o Marques railways suffer the same exploitation as the men from Gaza who are sold to South Africa. The fishermen and rice cultivators in Manica e Sofala are exploited by the same foreigner as occupies the oilfields of Inhambane. Taxes were just as crushing a burden on the people of Niassa who, like all Mozambicans, never saw a school or hospital which catered for them.
At the same time, the pupil must identify with the heroic traditions of our whole country: the fight of Maguiane, the resistance of Baru�, the splendor of Sofala and the magnificence of Monomotapa.
Mozambique’s cultural wealth does not belong to any one region. The contribution of the Zavala marimba players is as much a source of pride to us as Makonde sculpture and the gold filigree work of the Tete goldsmiths. In this connection, we should like to hail the decision to invite Mozambican sculptors to teach the boys and girls at the Tunduru Pilot School the wonders of their art. We hope that there will be more and more similar initiatives in the fields of painting, goldsmithing, iron and copper working, artistic handicrafts, mat-making, basketry, etc.
Regionalism, tribalism and the attitude of looking down on other communities are the result of ignorance, of lack of knowledge of other values. No one loves what he does not know.
This is why we regard the First Cultural Festival the DEC proposes to hold as a valuable contribution to our national unity, for the development of our culture. It is to be hoped that regional and provincial festivals will be held prior and subsequent to the First Cultural Festival. Let art seek to combine old form with new content, then giving rise to new form. Let painting, written literature, theatre and artistic handicrafts be added to the traditionally cultivated dance, sculpture and singing. Let the creativity of some become that of all, men and women young and old, from the North to the South, so that the new revolutionary and Mozambican culture may be born of all.
In the schools, on the classroom benches, in the house and canteens and in production, we should always endeavor to join pupils and teachers from different regions, so that through day-to-day familiarity we rid ourselves of regional reflexes and acquire Mozambican feelings and consciousness.
It is by uniting in work that we really unite. Teachers and pupils should work side by side at all tasks, because there are no greater or lesser tasks in the revolution, only revolutionary tasks. Because words have no life without practice, a body without flesh is a skeleton and a body without bones can’t stay upright on its own, it is necessary constantly to transform the assertion of unity into the practice of unity. Uniting with one another means knowing and understanding one another. It is in joint effort, in sweat expended at the same time, in the tree trunk torn out by combining our strength, in the dance composed through the creativity of minds
working together that knowing and understanding come into being and unity is consolidated.
(b) Knowledge of the society and environment
In our struggle against the colonialists, one of the decisive factors for our victory is that we are struggling in our own country, that is, in a society and on a terrain which are ours and which we know better than anyone.
The development of our struggle requires that we constantly deepen our knowledge of our country, that this knowledge becomes increasingly scientific.
Studying the history, geography, zoology, botany and mineralogy of our land will enable us to know how to use our resources better.
It should be considered especially that our people have a great deal of knowledge about the resources of nature, even though this knowledge is empirical and often distorted by superstition. In our education we should encourage teachers and pupils to compile the empirical knowledge of the masses and analyze it critically and objectively so as to develop our knowledge and science for the benefit of society.
It is also necessary to promote constant discussion and study on the usages and customs of each region, so as to know them better, assimilate them and purify them through criticism.
Each of us must understand that the task he is called upon to perform is in Mozambique. In other words, Mozambique is not a given region, village or province, but a vast country with a great diversity of conditions which we need to understand if we are to be effective.
(c) Technology and the advance of the struggle
We are confronting an enemy army which is backed by all the resources of modern technology, and in order to face up to the growing needs of the masses and the war we are obliged to continually increase and diversify production. At the same time, our social and administrative needs require the use of more personnel and more complex technology.
While it is true that it is in military camps and especially in the field that we discover the ways of destroying the enemy’s military machine, it is still necessary to impart a minimum of scientific knowledge to militants, to cadres, to enable them to increase their mastery of military technology.
Production requires ever more attention. In facing up to the needs of the masses under war conditions we should rely above all on our own efforts. However, diversifying production, improving techniques, using nature to fight against natural calamities, digging wells and irrigation channels, building dams and so forth, requires of us knowledge we do not always have.
We want pupils to acquire such practical knowledge at school. Cotton spinning and weaving should be taught with the natural sciences; the theory and practice of building dams and irrigation channels should be combined with arithmetic and physics; there should be practice in building water wheels, mills turned by animals and windmills. In short, there is a great deal of scientific and practical knowledge which could help us to develop our agriculture and promote the establishment of such craft-based industries as cabinet making, carpentry, masonry, pottery, soap making, spinning and weaving, making furnaces for iron production, kilns for bricks, etc.
Combining education with production means above all the theoretical and practical acquisition of knowledge to be made available for production, administration, social services and combat.
III. Revolution and Education methods
It is obvious that if we are to solve all the problems that face us successfully we must use methods suited to our situation.
To be effective, our methods must derive from our principles and practice, they must be based on that which constitutes our strength.
(a) Education and the mass line
Our chief strength, the primary cause of all we do, is the people. In solving our problems we should rely on the people in defining our objective interests and struggling to achieve them.
Only by following this line can we distinguish the essential from the secondary, the immediate from the long term, defining what are our interests and distinguishing that which belongs to the enemy from that which is ours. These principles also apply to our work in education.
The chief characteristic of the situation in education in our country is the illiteracy prevailing among the overwhelming majority of our people, as well as the obscurantist practices caused by colonialism and superstition.
The main battle in the field of education is therefore against illiteracy and obscurantism. If we are to succeed, we must mobilize the masses in this battle, making them aware of the need to learn and showing them the catastrophic consequences of ignorance. Without the active participation of the masses in the battle against illiteracy it will not be possible to wipe it out, and without an understanding of the evils introduced by obscurantism nothing will make them struggle against it.
It is also by following the mass line that we define the priorities and establish the education program. How are we to know, for example, where we should devote the greatest efforts, whether in literacy teaching, higher education, training primary school teachers or establishing secondary education? Should a pupil who has completed primary education carry on with his studies or should he devote himself to teaching literacy? Should we be content to state that 20,000 children in the liberated areas are receiving schooling when in those same areas there are still hundreds of thousands of children who have no contact with any school? Should we give priority to children or to the army, which is the backbone of our movement?
These are extremely serious problems requiring deep thought. The priorities in our education work have not as yet been properly established, and this 2nd Conference must make a careful study of the problem.
(b) Learning war in the war
This problem stems mainly from the concept that a pupil needs continuous education, that is, that the pupil must remain in school from the primary level until he obtains his higher education diploma.
However, the circumstances under which we are living, of war and massive illiteracy, demand concepts and methods which meet both our future objectives and our most immediate objectives, for unless these are solved there will be no future. This means that instead of continuous education we should give priority to permanent and progressive education. We mean that all militants should at all times be able to raise their technical, cultural and political level. At the same time it means that after priorities have been established, some people will be selected for special crash courses, so that they can then impart their newly-acquired knowledge to broader sectors of the people.
In the final analysis, this is the method we have already been using successfully for some years in our war. As soon as a fighter receives a minimum of training, he goes into battle where he further develops his practical knowledge and passes it on to others. Some are selected from the battlefield for more advanced training, and they then return to raise the general level. We do not wait to train generals in order to fight battles.
(c) Relying on our own forces
Stemming from what we have just said is the principle of relying on our own forces. We do not wait for others to come and solve our problems for us. We do not wait for help from outside in order to face situations we come up against.
We are all aware that to solve the problems of education and to prepare textbooks and programs, highly specialized personnel are required.
It seems to us that more productive use should be made of the higher cadres in education – both national and foreign. We feel that these people should devote themselves primarily to training and refresher courses for education cadres, the drawing up and supervision of programs and correspondence courses. In short, the programs should be directed towards raising the general level, which is a fundamental need in our war. In line with this, we think it would be wasteful to use foreign teachers solely for teaching secondary school pupils, who will only be productive in the long term, when the very requirements of education calls for cadres with a minimal scientific base to teach literacy to children, the army, workers in cooperatives and the militia. This approach might land us in the situation of some independent countries which have a few hundred graduates on the one hand, and a vast mass of illiterates on the other, without the middle cadres needed to ensure a proper output from the higher cadres. It is like a house with a roof but no foundations.
Let us pool our little knowledge and it will add up to a great deal. Let us discuss frequently, subjecting our ideals and knowledge to criticism and practice, studying a lot, holding regional and provincial seminars to increase our knowledge and exchange experiences. Let us try to organise correspondence courses to raise the knowledge of teachers and cadres.
Conclusions
If we rely on the masses, learning war in the war and relying on our own forces, we shall be able to win the battle of education. We have already achieved a great deal and this 2nd Conference shows us the distance we have covered since 1962, when education meant only the Mozambique Institute and good will in helping a few militants in Dar es Salaam.
Today our education means thousands and thousands of children in schools in liberated Mozambique, hundreds of teachers, adults studying, secondary education being re-organized, and about two hundred Mozambicans following technical and higher education courses abroad.
It is appropriate here to congratulate all the comrades who have made this reality possible, and in particular to pay tribute to the memory of our beloved President Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane. We must also congratulate his wife, Comrade Janet Mondlane. These two comrades were among the first to understand that the destruction of obscurantism, of ignorance, was a fundamental task in our struggle.
May this Conference, may the Department of Education and Culture put into practice the watchword we are here issuing: Educate man to win the war, create a new society and develop our country.
THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES. INDEPENDENCE OR DEATH. WE WILL WIN.
Samora Machel Archive
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<p class="title">Samora Machel 1973</p>
<h1>The Liberation of Women is a Fundamental Necessity for the Revolution</h1>
<hr class="end"><p class="information"><span class="info">Written</span>: 1973;<br>
<span class="info">First Published</span>: 1973;<br>
<span class="info">Source</span>: <em>Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution</em>, Mozambique, pp. 21-36;<br>
<span class="info">Transcription</span>: Liz Blasczak.</p>
<p class="information">Opening Speech at the First Conference of Mozambican Women, 4 March, 1973.</p><hr class="end">
<p>This is a historic and glorious moment in the life of our organization. For the first time we are holding a conference of Mozambican women engaged in all sectors of activity within our revolution. For the first time FRELIMO militants are meeting together to pool their efforts and jointly work out a strategy for the emancipation of women.</p>
<p>We should like first, on behalf of FRELIMO’s Central Committee to express warm greetings to all of the delegations present here.</p>
<p>Allow us to extend a special welcome to the delegates from the war provinces, who have left very important sectors of work so that through their presence and experience they may contribute to the success of this conference. Their presence here is both proof of their understanding of the value of this conference, and a guarantee of its success.</p>
<p>We hail the women comrades from Cabo Delagado who are fighting heroically on every front, many since the start of the war, advancing and consolidating the revolution and dealing tremendous blows against the colonialist and reactionary forces.</p>
<p>We hail the comrades who have come from Niassa, such a large province with a small population. These comrades are facing great difficulties, but they have proved that they are able to overcome them, showing unbreakable determination and revolutionary spirit, daily defending our organization’s central ideas, transporting equipment, mobilizing the population, producing, feeding the guerillas, creating conditions whereby in Niassa FRELIMO’s presence remains undisputed.</p>
<p>The comrades from Tete have a special responsibility. This province is of great strategic importance; it represents the door to the liberation of the whole of Southern Africa and is a center of direct conflict between the forces of revolution and reaction. We warmly welcome the comrades from Tete and congratulate them for having so completely assumed the watchwords of our movement, so that only in about four years, alongside the men, their comrades in arms, they have been able to carry the torch of freedom throughout the whole of Tete province, now also taking it into Manica e Sofala to light the way there.</p>
<p>We should like to hail the comrades doing clandestine work in the zones still occupied by the Portuguese colonialists. Working in the midst of the enemy, subject to incalculable risks and to the temptations of corruption in which the enemy specializes, these comrades put the interests of the people above all else, facing the risks and rejecting corruption as they create the conditions for the outbreak of armed struggle. They give us extremely valuable information and make a very important contribution to the progress of our liberation struggle.</p>
<p>We would also like to extend special greetings to the comrades who work in the FRELIMO camps outside the country, in various sectors of activities. As FRELIMO representatives, where they play an outstanding role in supplying the new fronts; in the secondary school where they are training the cadres who will assume our policies, discovering the secrets of science and destroying myths, so as to mobilize both society and nature in the interests of the revolution.</p>
<p>We also hail the comrades from Americo Boavida hospital at Mtwara, who are carrying out our principle of putting the health services at the service of the masses, treating the sick and the war wounded, so as to make them fit to return to the struggle, and training cadres who will defend the health of our people on the front line.</p>
<p>The comrades of the Centre for Political and Military Training deserve special mention. They are carrying out a delicate and difficult mission, that of turning men and women hitherto guided by outmoded ideas and prejudices into politically conscious fighters, prepared to destroy the enemy’s physical and ideological forces of exploitation and oppression.</p>
<p>The comrades in our children’s home have three decisive tasks. Educating the new generation, instilling in children the new way of thinking which will make them true perpetuators of the revolution. Teaching students so that, understanding our line, they master science and become agents for the transformation of society. And making the wives of militants into active militants themselves, into true mothers of the revolution.</p>
<p>To these comrades, who are the hosts at this conference today, we address warm greetings, conscious as we are of their important role as educators.</p>
<p>We can state with pride that this conference is a great victory, a victory against the traditions and obscurantism which doom women to passivity, a victory against the exploitative society which enslaves women and a victory for the revolution, which is liberating the exploited and the oppressed and which is releasing the creative initiative of the masses.</p>
<p>But victories are built and sustained through blood and sacrifice. There are many women and many men who should have been here with us today, those who in the fight against the enemy and in the internal struggle that took place, have created the political, moral and even physical conditions for our meeting here. They are not physically with us. Their sacrifice is a bridge to our future success. Some gave up their lives in a final heroic act; for others each day of their lives was a heroic act, an example of service to the masses, of defense of our line.</p>
<p>We are what we are because of the sacrifices which have gone into the revolution. It is therefore fitting that as we being our conference we observe a minute of silence in memory of the women and men who have fallen serving the people, serving the revolution.</p>
<p>Gathered here are women from all the provinces, from all the regions and ethnic groups of our country, with varying levels of education and culture. There are mothers and even grandmothers, side by side with young single women. We have here teachers, instructresses, soldiers, nurses, students and also peasant women. Men will also be attending the conference, your comrades in arms not only in the liberation of the nation, but also in the very struggle for the emancipation of women.</p>
<h5>THE REVOLUTION AND THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN</h5>
<p class="fst">a. The historical context of this conference.</p>
<p>This conference is taking place at a specific historical moment in the life of our organization. It is this historical context that gives the conference its importance, its profound significance.</p>
<p>We have just celebrated the tenth anniversary of the founding of FRELIMO. Achieving the unity of the Mozambican people from the Rovuma to the Maputo provided us with an indispensible instrument for launching the process of liberation. Unity constitutes the driving forces of our action. The transformation of our unity into an operative force in other words, the launching of our armed struggle on the 25th of September 1964 created the conditions for the beginning of a radical process of transformation in our country.</p>
<p>The recent celebrations of the eighth anniversary of the beginning of the armed struggle for national liberation take on a special importance now that the struggle has already become a revolution and as such is gradually spreading to all regions of our country, as shown by the recent opening of the Manica e Sofala front.</p>
<p>The eighth anniversary we celebrated also corresponds to an advanced phase in the process of collapse in the enemy’s military and political effort. As pointed out by the recent Central Committee meeting, we are now entering upon the stage of generalized offensives by our forces in the politico-military field, a stage which will change the balance of forces between us and the enemy in our favor.</p>
<p>The constant clarification and strengthening of our line over the four and a half years since the Second Congress have made our achievements possible and provided the guidance needed to enable us all to reach this point. This is the context in which the conditions that led us to call this conference became ripe.</p>
<p>The opening of the conference almost coincides with the 8th of march, International Women’s day, the day when all of progressive mankind solemnly reaffirms its support for the struggle for women’s liberation. This fortunate coincidence should be an incentive to us, since it reminds us of the fact that our struggle is not isolated, showing us that the struggle of women is the struggle of humanity and making us aware of the progress already achieved.</p>
<p>The main purpose of this conference is to study questions concerning the emancipation of women, to find lines of action which will lead to their emancipation. But a preliminary question arises: why bother with the emancipation of women? And another: why call this conference now?</p>
<p>There are people among us, as our movement is well aware, who feel that we should devote all our efforts to the struggle against colonialism and that the task of women’s emancipation is therefore secondary because it will dissipate our forces. They further add that our present situation, with a shortage of schools, very few educated women and with women still bound by tradition, does not provide any basis for embarking upon consistent action, and that it is therefore necessary to wait for independence for the establishment of sound economic, social, and educational foundations for launching the fight.</p>
<p>Yet others, giving a twisted interpretation of Statutes, claim that certain local traditions must be respected and that we can’t oppose them at this stage for fear of losing the support of the masses. They then ask why there is a need to emancipate women at this point, when the vast majority of women are indifferent to the matter. After all they conclude, emancipation would be artificial, imposed on women by FRELIMO.</p>
<p>This is a very serious question. It demands careful study and clear thought.</p>
<p class="fst">b. The need for emancipation</p>
<p>The emancipation of women is not an act of charity, the result of a humanitarian or compassionate attitude. The liberation of women is a fundamental necessity for the revolution, the guarantee of its continuity and the precondition for its victory. The main objective of the revolution is to destroy the system of exploitation and build a new society which releases the potentialities of human beings, reconciling them with labor and with nature. This is the context within which the question of women’s emancipation arises.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, women are the most oppressed, humiliated and exploited beings in society. A woman is even exploited by a man who is himself exploited, beaten by the man who is lacerated by the palmatoria, humiliated by the man who is crushed under the boot of the boss and the settler.</p>
<p>How can the revolution triumph without the liberation of women? Will it be possible to get rid of the system of exploitation while keeping one part of society exploited? One can’t only partially wipe out exploitation and oppression, one can’t tear up only half the weeds without even stronger ones spreading from out from the half that has survived.</p>
<p>How then can one make a revolution without mobilizing women? If more than half the exploited and oppressed people consist of women, how can they be left on the fringe of the struggle? To make a revolution it is necessary to mobilize all the exploited and oppressed, and consequently women as well. If it is to be victorious, the revolution must eliminate the whole system of exploitation and oppression, liberating all the exploited and oppressed. Therefore it must eliminate the exploitation and oppression of women, it is forced to liberate women.</p>
<p>Moreover, if we also consider the basic need for the revolution to be continued by the new generation, how can we ensure the revolutionary education of the generation which will carry on our work if mothers, the first educators, are marginal to the revolutionary process? How can one turn the homes of the exploited and the oppressed into cells of revolutionary struggle, centers for the diffusion of our line, encouraging the involvement of the family, if women remain apathetic to this process, indifferent to the society which is being built and deaf to the call of the people,</p>
<p>To say that women do not feel the need to liberate themselves, or that it is often FRELIMO, and not the women, which upholds women’s emancipation is a paltry argument which can’t stand up to analysis. Women feel their subjection, they feel the need to change their situation. What happens is that the domination imposed by society, by stifling their initiative, often prevents them from expressing their aspirations, often prevents them from thinking of how to wage their struggle. It is here that FRELIMO intervenes. As the conscious vanguard of the women and men of Mozambique, of the oppressed people, FRELIMO formulates the line and indicates the methods of the struggle.</p>
<p>It is essential that we understand this phenomenon so as to avoid false and futile debates.</p>
<p class="fst">c. The right time to launch the fight</p>
<p>The other question that arises is when is the right time to launch the struggle?</p>
<p>We can’t limit the revolutionary process to certain people while neglecting others, because this would halt the revolution, destroy it. The roots of an evil which we underestimate and decide to pull out at a later date become the roots of a cancer which can destroy us, invading the whole body, before we get to that ‘later date’.</p>
<p>Under the present conditions, FRELIMO is no longer able to wage an armed struggle without carrying a revolution. The preconditions for advancing the armed struggle is to attack the very roots of exploitation. The idea of waiting until later to emancipate women is erroneous; it means allowing reactionary ideas to gain ground only to fight them when they are strong. It is like not fighting the alligator on the bank only to fight him in the middle of the river.</p>
<p>The armed struggle, acting like an incubator, has already created the conditions for the masses to be receptive to the ideas of progress and revolution. To avoid joining battle when conditions are ripe is lack of political foresight, an error of strategy.</p>
<p>This close and indissoluble link between revolution and the liberation of women also enables us to understand why this conference is taking place now and not five years ago, for example. Let us recall an experience we had, that of the Mozambican Women’s League (LIFEMO). LIFEMO was created in Mbeya in June 1966. At that meeting, attended virtually only by women who were on the fringe of the struggle, they elected a leadership which was ignorant of the struggle and of the country, and which set itself some tasks outside the real perspectives of the struggle. A few months after the LIFEMO conference, all that remained of the leadership were the names. Like a rotten fruit, LIFEMO decayed of its own accord. Why?</p>
<p>When LIFEMO was established, what stage had been reached by FRELIMO, the Mozambican revolution and women? FRELIMO did not yet have sound structures and its line had not been sufficiently well understood and internalized because it had not yet been put to test in the struggle. Its cadres and leadership had not been sufficiently seasoned by struggle and they lacked experience.</p>
<p>This situation, where although the line was clear it had not been internalized, where the structures were not sound, the leadership was not experienced and the cadres were not seasoned, blocked the development of our line through practice. We were unable to distinguish the essential from the secondary, unable to define our tasks correctly, establishing proper priorities. Therefore we had only reached a very embryonic stage of the popularization of the war, the point of departure under our conditions for transforming the struggle into a revolution.</p>
<p>We can therefore say that at the time of LIFEMO’s creation the revolutionary process was still at the initial stage. This shows why it was difficult to wage the battle for the emancipation of women: it is inseparable from the development of the revolution.</p>
<p>Consequently, for LIFEMO to talk of the emancipation of women was merely an empty verbal exercise, an imitation of what was going on elsewhere in the world, a superficial fashion.</p>
<p>It was so because at that time women as a whole were not involved in the struggle. And what is more important, those who were involved were discriminated against. They were not invited to attend the conference. Having no involvement or tasks, LIFEMO was doomed to wither away and die. And this is precisely what happened.</p>
<p>Today the conditions for launching a victorious battle really exist. FRELIMO’s line has been internalized and developed in practice, our cadres are gaining experience, being tempered in the struggle, and the process of purifying our ranks has thus begun. The revolutionary process has been assured, the struggle has already been transformed into a revolution and national unity is becoming ideological unity.</p>
<p>The participation of women in the armed struggle, the principal task at our present historical stage, enables them to put our unity into practice and creates the conditions for transforming their consciousness, so that they feel their responsibilities, become consciously involved, undertake critical analysis and understand that society is created by ourselves.</p>
<p>So the wind of revolution blows, and with it, necessarily, the wind of women’s emancipation. FRELIMO’s Central Committee is making us hoist our sails, and this is a favorable moment for us to set sail.</p>
<h5>2. THE BASIS OF WOMEN’ ALIENATION</h5>
<p class="fst">a. The system of exploitation. The starting point</p>
<p>To speak of the emancipation of women clearly implies that they are oppressed and exploited. It is important to understand the basis of that oppression and exploitation.</p>
<p>Let us begin by saying that the oppression of women is the result of their exploitation; oppression in society is always the result of imposed exploitation. Colonialism did not come to occupy our country for the purpose of arresting us, flogging us and beating us with the palmatoria. It invaded and occupied our country for the purpose of exploiting our wealth and labor. In order to exploit us, in order to quell our resistance to exploitation and prevent us from rebelling against it, it then introduced the system of oppression; physical oppression, through the courts, the police, the armed forces, imprisonment, torture and massacre; and spiritual oppression, through obscurantism, superstition and ignorance, designed to destroy the spirit of creative initiative, to kill the sense of justice and criticism, to reduce the individual to passivity and make him accept his exploited and oppressed state as a normal thing. Humiliation and contempt came into being in the process, since he who exploits and oppresses tends to humiliate and despise his victims, regarding them as inherently inferior beings. And then racism appears, the supreme form of humiliation and contempt.</p>
<p>The mechanism of women’s alienation is identical to the mechanism of the alienation of the colonized man in colonial society, or of the worker in capitalist society.</p>
<p>From the moment when early man started to produce more than he consumed, the material foundations were laid for the emergence of a stratum in society which would appropriate the fruits of the majority’s labor. This appropriation of the product of the masses labour by a handful of people in society is the essence of the system of the exploitation of man by man and the crux of the antagonistic contradiction which has divided society for centuries.</p>
<p>As soon as the process of exploitation was unleashed, women as a whole – like men – were subjected to the domination of the privileged strata. Women are also producers, and workers, but with specific characteristics. To possess women is to possess workers, unpaid workers, workers whose entire labor power can be appropriated without resistance by the husband, who is the lord and master. In an agrarian economy, marrying many women is a sure way of accumulating a great deal of wealth. The husband is assured of free labor which neither complains nor rebels against exploitation.</p>
<p>Hence the important role played by polygamy in the rural areas of a primitive economy. Society, realizing that women are a source of wealth, demands that a price be paid for them. The girl’s parents demand from their future son in law the payment of a bride-price – lobolo – before giving up their daughter. The woman is bought and inherited just like material goods, or any source of wealth.</p>
<p>But what is more important is that compared with, say, the slave, who is also a source of wealth and an unpaid worker, the woman offers her owner two added advantages. She is a source of pleasure and above all, she produces other workers, she produces new sources of wealth.</p>
<p>This last aspect is particularly significant. Society grants the husband the right to repudiate his wife and demand re-payment of the lobolo should she prove barren, or if the husband thinks that she is. It can also be noted that in many societies, mindful of the value of the labor power of the woman’s children, the principal is established that the children belong to the mother’s clan or family. In our society, it is also current practice for the children to continue to belong to the mother’s family, especially if the husband has not paid the entire lobolo, that is, the purchase price for the wealth. This situation has led to the excessive emphasis on women’s fertility and the transformation of the man-woman relationship into the mere act of procreation.</p>
<p>But a particular situation emerged. Owing to his control over the masses, the exploiter acquired vast riches, vast estates, large herds of cattle, gold and jewels and so on. Yet despite his wealth he was still mortal, like other men. The problem then of the fate of his wealth – in other words, the question of inheritance – became crucial. Women are the producers of heirs.</p>
<p>It is therefore clear that the exploitation of women and their consequent oppression starts in the system of private ownership of the means of production, in the system of exploitation of man by man.</p>
<p class="fst">b. The ideological and cultural mechanisms of domination</p>
<p>A society based on private ownership of the means of production, on the exploitation of men, creates and imposes the ideology and culture which uphold its values and ensure its survival. The economic exploitation of women, their transformation into mere producers with no rights, at the service of their owners – whether their husbands or fathers – requires the establishment of a corresponding ideology and culture, together with an educational system to pass them on. Obviously, this is not something which happens all at once, but a process developed and refined over thousands of years of the society’s existence.</p>
<p>Obscurantism is the beginning of the process. The general principle is to keep women in ignorance or give them only an essential minimum of education. Everywhere we find that illiteracy is higher among women, they are always a minority in schools, colleges and universities, even though they are the majority of the population.</p>
<p>Science has always been kept as man’s monopoly, his exclusive domain, in the developed civilizations of the past as in capitalist society today. To keep women away from science is to prevent them from discovering that society is created as a function of certain specific interests and that it is therefore possible to change society.</p>
<p>Obscurantism and ignorance go hand in hand with superstition and give rise to passivity.</p>
<p>All superstitions and religions find their most fertile soil amongst women, because they are submerged in the greatest ignorance and obscurantism. In our society, rites and ceremonies are the main vehicle for the transmission of society’s concept of women’s inferiority, and their subservience to men. It is here too that countless myths and superstitions are propagated with the express intention of destroying women’s sense of initiative and reducing them to passivity.</p>
<p>Family education itself emphasizes and reinforces this. From infancy the girl is brought up differently from the boy and a feeling of inferiority instilled in her.</p>
<p>None of this is surprising. As we have said, exploitative society promotes the ideology, culture and education that serves its interests. It does so with women, just as it does colonized people and with workers in capitalist society. All are deliberately kept in ignorance, obscurantism and superstition with a view to making them resigned to their position, of instilling in them an attitude of passivity and servility.</p>
<p>This is where racism comes in. The colonized man is called a second class human being by virtue of his skin. The woman is called an inferior human being by virtue of her sex. In capitalist countries in Europe, they claim that women are creatures with long hair and short ideas.</p>
<p>The process of alienation reaches its peak when the exploited person, reduced to total passivity, is no longer capable of imagining that the possibility of liberation exists and in turn becomes a tool for the propagation of the ideology of resignation and passivity. It must be recognized that the centuries old subjugation of women has to a great extent reduced them to a passive state, which prevents them from even understanding their condition.</p>
<p class="fst">c. The nature of the antagonism</p>
<p>It is important to understand correctly the nature of the contradiction or contradictions involved, for only after understanding them will we be in a position to define the target of our attack and plan the appropriate strategy and tactics for our struggle.</p>
<p>We have seen that the basis of the domination of women lies in the system of economic organization of society, private ownership of the means of production, which necessarily leads to the exploitation of man by man.</p>
<p>This means that apart from the specific features of their situation, the contradiction between women and the social order is in essence a contradiction between women and the exploitation of man by man, between women and the private ownership of the means of production. In other words, it is the same as the contradiction between the working masses and the exploitative social order.</p>
<p>Let us be clear on this point. The antagonistic contradiction is not between women and men, but between women and the social order, between all exploited people, both women and men, and the social order. The fact that they are exploited explains why they are not involved in all planning and decision making tasks in society, why they are excluded from working out the concepts which govern economic, social, cultural and political life, even when their interests are directly affected.</p>
<p>This is the main feature of the contradiction: their exclusion from the sphere of decision making in society. This contradiction can only be solved by revolution, because only revolution destroys the foundations of exploitative society and rebuilds society on new foundations, freeing the initiative of women, integrating them in society as responsible members and involving them in decision making.</p>
<p>Therefore, just as there can be no revolution without the liberation of women, the struggle for women’s emancipation can’t succeed without the victory of the revolution.</p>
<p>It should be pointed out that the ideological and cultural precepts of the exploitative society which maintain the subjugation of women are destroyed by the advance of the ideological and cultural revolution which introduces into society new values, a new content to education and culture.</p>
<p>But apart from the antagonistic contradiction between women and the social order, other contradictions of a secondary nature also arise between women and men as a kind of reflex.</p>
<p>The marriage system, marital authority based solely on sex, the frequent brutality of the husband and his consistent refusal to treat his wife as an equal, are sources of friction and contradiction. If they are not correctly solved, these secondary contradictions may become more acute and produce such serious consequences as divorce.</p>
<p>But however serious they may be, these factors do not alter the nature of the contradiction.</p>
<p>It is important to stress this aspect, because we now see an ideological offensive taking place particularly in the capitalist world, in the guise of a women’s liberation struggle. The aim is to transform the contradiction with men into an antagonistic one, thereby dividing exploited men and women to prevent them from fighting the exploitative society. In fact, leaving aside the demagoguery which hides its true nature, this ideological offensive is an offensive by capitalism to confuse women, to divert their attention from the real target.</p>
<p>We see small manifestations of this offensive appearing among us. Here and there we hear women grumbling about men, as if the cause of their exploitation lay in the difference between the sexes, as if the men were sadistic monsters who derive pleasure from the oppression of women.</p>
<p>Men and women are products and victims of the exploitative society which has created and formed them. It is essentially against this society that men and women should fight united. Our practical experience has proved that the progress achieved in the liberation of women is the result of the successes gained in our common struggle against colonialism and imperialism, against the exploitation of man by man, and to build a new society.</p>
<h5>3. STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL QUESTIONS</h5>
<p class="fst">a. Our main lines of action</p>
<p>The fight for women’s emancipation demands, as a first step, the clarification of our ideas. Such clarification is all the more imperative in that there is a profusion of erroneous ideas about the emancipation of women.</p>
<p>There are those who see emancipation as mechanical equality between men and women. This vulgar concept is often seen among us. Here emancipation means that women and men do exactly the same tasks, mechanically dividing their household duties. ‘If I wash the dishes today you must wash them tomorrow, whether or not you are busy or have the time.’ If there are still no women truck drivers or tractor drivers in FRELIMO, we must have some right away regardless of the objective and subjective conditions. As we can see from the example of capitalist countries, this mechanically conceived emancipation leads to complaints and attitudes which utterly distort the meaning of women’s emancipation. An emancipated woman is one who drinks, smokes, wears trousers and mini skirts, who indulges in sexual promiscuity, who refuses to have children, etc.</p>
<p>Others associate emancipation with the accumulation of diplomas, and particular university degrees, which are regarded as certificates of emancipation.</p>
<p>Yet others think that emancipation consists of achieving a certain economic, social and cultural level.</p>
<p>All these are erroneous and superficial concepts. Not one of them either gets to the heart of the contradiction or suggests a line that will really emancipate women.</p>
<p>Emancipation requires action on several essential levels.</p>
<p>First of all, a political line of action must be lined down. For women to emancipate themselves there must be conscious political commitment. What does this mean in practical terms?</p>
<p>It means, firstly, that the line must be laid down by a revolutionary political organization which, defending the interests of the exploited masses as a whole, leads them in the fight against the old society. Only such an organization is in a position to formulate a global strategy for the fight for liberation. In our case, what this means in concrete terms is that in order to liberate themselves, women must internalize FRELIMO’s political line and live by it in a creative way. Otherwise they will throw themselves into sterile and secondary battles which will exhaust them uselessly and to no effect.</p>
<p>To internalize and live by our line requires involvement in the tasks laid down by the organization. Just as plants need to strike roots in the ground in order to grow, so does the political line take root in revolutionary practice. Revolutionary practice destroys the exploitative society, unleashes the internal struggle, demolishes our erroneous ideas and releases our critical sense and creative initiatives.</p>
<p>In this context women must be mobilized for internal struggle and for mass struggle, and they must be organized. They will then be able to internalize the political line to start the offensive. They must be involved in the battle for the political education of the next generation and in the battle for the large scale mobilization and organization of the masses. Their commitment to the liberation struggle will then become concrete action, leading them to take part in making decisions affecting the country’s future.</p>
<p>There also arises the need to engage in production.</p>
<p>Releasing the productive forces and launching the process of economic development will lead to deeper ideological understanding and a sounder knowledge of reality, of society and nature.</p>
<p>A third aspect is scientific and cultural education. A scientific and cultural grounding enables women to achieve a correct understanding of their relationship with nature and society, thus destroying the myths fostered by obscurantism which oppress them psychologically and deprive them of initiative.</p>
<p>In this way, women will gradually attain all levels of planning, decision making, and implementation in organizing the affairs of children, hospitals, schools, factories, the armed forces, diplomacy, art, science, culture and so on.</p>
<p>It should also be emphasized here that all these needs do not apply solely to women, because men are also alienated, though in different ways.</p>
<p>The last aspect is that of the relationship between men and women, that is, the new revolutionary concept of the couple and the home. We can already see clearly what this relationship should not be. Until now it has been based on the alleged superiority of man over woman, aimed at satisfying the male ego.</p>
<p>We must state here – and this is something new in society – that the family relationship, the man-woman relationship should be founded exclusively on love. We do not mean the the banal, romantic concept of love which amounts to little more than emotional excitement and an idealized view of life.</p>
<p>For us, love can only exist between free and equal people who have the same ideals and commitment in serving the masses and the revolution. This is the basis upon which the moral and emotional affinity which constitutes love is built. We need to discover this new dimension, hitherto unknown in our country.</p>
<p class="fst">b. The organization of women</p>
<p>Following the principle of mobilizing, organizing and uniting all our forces in the struggle, the Central Committee, satisfying the aspirations of the increasingly conscious Mozambican women, has decided to establish the Organization of Mozambican Women (OMM). The Organization of Mozambican Women is a body which will provide leadership and guidance for all Mozambican women in the struggle for the emancipation of women and for the revolution.</p>
<p>Apart from this, its central task is to mobilize international public opinion in favor of our struggle and to express the solidarity of the Mozambican women and people with the liberating and revolutionary struggle of the women and the peoples of the whole world.</p>
<p>One battle the organization has to wage is that of keeping the true sense of emancipation permanently alive, reinforcing the ideological struggle against attempts to disparage the women’s struggle and isolate it from the revolution. Firm adherence to the line, which must be understood, internalized and lived by in the details of everyday life, will give the organization and women themselves the sense of vigilance required to nip in the bud even the slightest reactionary ideological offensive.</p>
<p>We can be sure that the colonialist army, like other reactionary and conservative forces, will react against this conference and its results and do their utmost to make our decisions remain a dead letter. Comrades of ours who still cling to erroneous concepts will find it difficult to understand the profound meaning of the women’s struggle and they will put obstacles in its way.</p>
<p>But the greatest obstacle will be created by women themselves, by their habit of dependence, their passivity and the dead weight of tradition they carry over from the old society.</p>
<p>Women must unite. Unity is the main weapon of the struggle, its driving force. FRELIMO’s political line is your platform for unity, while tribalism, regionalism and racism stand against it.</p>
<p>Tribalism and regionalism prevent one from realizing the greatness of our country and of our struggle. They make it impossible to understand the complexity of our country, and above all, they disperse one’s forces.</p>
<p>Racism is a reactionary attitude. The enemy has no color. The function of racism in our case and in any struggle is to make it difficult to define the real target, creating confusion so as to divide the national revolutionary and progressive forces, weakening them and leading to their annihilation by the common enemy and exploiter. Our struggle would remain isolated from the world-wide struggle of the progressive forces against the exploitation of man by man.</p>
<p>Seeds planted among us by the enemy can’t be destroyed by words or magic formulas. The ideological struggle must be started among all women to make them clearly understand the harm of these reactionary ideas. At the same time efforts must be made to explain to women that their experiencing of suffering, exploitation and oppression in Cabo Delegado, Gaza, Niassa, Inhambane, Tete and Maputo, in Zambezia, Manica e Sofala and Nampula, is the same. All bear the same scars, all have known the same hunger, the same poverty, the same suffering, the same shackles, the same widowhood, the same orphanhood, the same tears caused by colonialism and exploitation.</p>
<p>We are united through the discovery of common wounds and scars, but above all unity is realized through common effort, links are forged through collective work and study, through collective internal struggle, through criticism and self-criticism, and through action against colonialism.</p>
<p>We must also learn from the experience of our sisters throughout the world. That will help us to understand that there are no races or peoples who are exploiters or oppressors. There are no racist peoples, no colonialist peoples. By opening our minds to the experience of others we will not only learn useful lessons, but we will also understand that all countries, all peoples, all races, are waging the same struggle as we are: a struggle against the colonialists and imperialists who have no country, a struggle against the exploiters who have no race. In this way we will be able to see how the struggle of Mozambican women and of our people is the struggle of all of humanity, and we will understand the warmth of the solidarity between us.</p>
<p>We must give up the pernicious habit of identifying only with those who come from the same village as ourselves, who speak the same language and have the same culture, traditions and educational background. Those with whom we must identify and see as our sisters, giving them our friendship and affection, our help and fraternal warmth, are all those who, like us, are exploited and oppressed, and who are with us in the great struggle for the liberation of women, the country and the working people.</p>
<p>These are all sacred tasks for the Organization of Mozambican Women, because it is the women’s responsibility to bring up the next generation free from tribalism, regionalism, and racism, free from the archaic attitude of oppressing women or passively accepting oppresion, free from superstition and imbued with our class feeling and internationalism.</p>
<p>It is also necessary to fight against certain very negative subjective attitudes. Many women comrades think of their commitment as temporary, while they are single, and have a tendency to give up their revolutionary duties as soon as they are married. It is considered normal for wives to return to the village, and for being a wife to become a woman’s sole duty. In many cases this is encouraged by the husband himself who still sees the woman as his private property, dependent on him, existing by virtue of him, and tied to him, almost like a piece of luggage, whom he can use as he pleases, who is obliged to go where he goes. This conflicts both with the requirements of the national liberation struggle and with the women’s struggle for emancipation.</p>
<p>We must mobilize all women, so that they feel the need to participate in concrete tasks, to feel responsible, and to be actively engaged in the transformation of society. In this respect, married women especially must concern themselves with setting a positive example to the younger single women and show them in practice that marriage is an incentive for the pursuit of revolutionary tasks.</p>
<p class="fst">c. The structures of the Organization of Mozambican Women</p>
<p>In order to function, to carry out its tasks of leading and guiding women in the struggle for their emancipation, and to involve them ever more deeply in the tasks of the revolution, the Organization of Mozambican Women needs to be properly structured. We are sure that the participation of many comrades engaged in the different sectors of the struggle, the experience they have accumulated and will synthesize here, and their knowledge of the existing difficulties and needs, will enable them to define the basis for the structures to be created and their functions.</p>
<p>However, some questions arise. Who should join the Organization of Mozambican Women? How should it function and what should its relationship with the Women’s Detachment be? What should its place be within FRELIMO as a whole?</p>
<p>We have said that the duty of the OMM is to involve all Mozambican women in the struggle for emancipation and revolution. It must therefore form the broadest possible front, mobilizing, organizing, and uniting all the women who until now have remained outside the process of transformation of our new society, young and old, single and married, educated and non-educated, militants and non-militants. The OMM must organize Mozambican women, wherever they are to be found, at places of work, in schools, hospitals, detachments, co-operatives and nurseries, organizing women in every base, circle and village.</p>
<p>The OMM is a new wing of FRELIMO to reach and involve the women whom we have not yet properly reached or involved.</p>
<p>But to carry out this process requires experienced leadership, people who have understood and internalized the line, and lived by it in the process of engaging in the everyday tasks of the revolution. The members of the leadership must therefore have had politico-military training and experience, the indispensable prerequisite for grasping the complexity of the situation and for always being able to see clearly the path to be followed.</p>
<p>The Women’s Detachment, because it involves women in the central task of the present phase – direct combat against the colonialist and imperialist enemy – is the vanguard body for the women’s participation in the struggle, and it is now playing an extremely active role in the transformation of society. It therefore constitutes the driving nucleus of the OMM, its main source of cadres.</p>
<p>But the Women’s Detachment is not the OMM and the OMM is not the Women’s Detachment. The Detachment is an integral part of our army, of the People’s Forces for the Liberation of Mozambique, an armed political body. The OMM on the other hand, involves all women, from those who have remained marginal to the struggle until now, to those who are combatants on the health, education, production, army and other fronts.</p>
<p>The relationship between the two must be complementary and based on mutual help, the Women’s Detachment being a driving force, a source of cadres, and the OMM a mobilizing force which expands our base and provides new forces for the Women’s Detachment.</p>
<p>In order that the OMM may be in a position to take up and carry out the important tasks with which FRELIMO entrusts it, FRELIMO’s central Committee has decided to organize a training course for women cadres, to be held under the leadership of the Executive Committee.</p>
<p>Integrated in FRELIMO, inspired by FRELIMO’s revolutionary line, acting as a part of our revolutionary family’s harmonious body, in the context of the structures of FRELIMO, the OMM will accomplish the difficult task which the people, the women and the revolution has entrusted to it.</p>
<p>Comrades, the proceedings of the First Conference of Mozambican Women are about to start.</p>
<p>Millions of Mozambican Women, who for centuries have been oppressed, are anxiously and hopefully waiting for the dawn of freedom which will be born here. The Mozambican people, the Mozambican revolution, need your commitment, your struggle. You have a decisive weapon in your hand which is FRELIMO’s political line on the emancipation of women. We must once more underline the most important aspects of our thought.</p>
<p>The exploitation of women is an aspect of the general system of exploitation of man by man. This exploitation creates the conditions for the alienation of women; it reduces them to passivity and excludes them from the sphere of decision-making in society. The antagonistic contradictions which thus exist, are between women and the social order. These contradictions are between all the exploited masses in our country and in the world, and the exploiting classes. Only revolution can definitely resolve this contradiction, because it alone is the incarnation of the interests of the exploited masses; it mobilizes, organizes and unites them for the struggle; it alone can destroy the social order. Revolution puts the exploited masses in power, the masses who lived under oppression and were forced into passivity.</p>
<p>Our people’s armed struggle against colonialism and imperialism is the fundamental starting point for the Mozambican revolution; the moment of the unleashing of the process of liberation of our land, women and men. The armed struggle which is gaining in popularity in our country acts like an incubator in which the revolutionary process starts to take root.</p>
<p>The centuries old experience of exploitation and suffering of the women and the men of Mozambique and the discovery of the freedom born of the people’s power in the areas under our control, have made our people receptive to the ideas of progress and revolution. The conditions are ripe for an offensive on the women’s liberation front, an important moment in our revolutionary struggle.</p>
<p>We already know what our strategy and tactics should be in the struggle, in which we will not only have to fight against the colonialist enemy, but will also have to face the opposition aroused by erroneous concepts rooted in the minds of both women and men.</p>
<p>It is essential that women be involved in FRELIMO, for only FRELIMO is in a position to take up all the interests of the exploited masses of our country and thus formulate the concrete line of battle.</p>
<p>The OMM which is being formed is emerging in the FRELIMO structure as a new arm of our revolution which must reach the broad masses of women who until now have remained marginal to the process of transformation which is taking place in our country. The OMM must draw into the struggle for the emancipation of women and into the national revolutionary struggle the millions of our countrymen.</p>
<p>Our struggle is not an isolated struggle. The Mozambican Women’s fight, the Mozambican people’s fight, is an integral part of the world-wide front of struggle against colonialism and imperialism, against the exploitation of man by man, and for the construction of a new popular social order.</p>
<p>For this very reason we feel that the struggle of our sisters and brothers in Angola, who, under the leadership of the MPLA, have been fighting Portuguese colonialism and imperialism for twelve years is our own. We feel that the struggle of our sisters and brothers in Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde, who, led by the PAIGC have been fighting Portuguese colonialism since 1963, is our own struggle.</p>
<p>Hence we feel bereaved by the recent assassination of our comrade Amilcar Cabral, secretary-general of the PAIGC. This barbarous crime, like the assassination of our first president, Comrade Eduardo Mondlane is an attempt to stop the revolutionary advance of our peoples. It failed in Mozambique and it will fail in Guinea-Bissau.</p>
<p>The fight for the consolidation of independence and for revolutionary development in Tanzania and Zambia, Somalia, Congo, Guinea and the whole of Africa is our fight, the fight to consolidate our strategic rear.</p>
<p>The recent victory of the heroic peoples of Vietnam and Indochina, is a great incentive in our struggle. The women and men of Vietnam, of a small country, of an economically backward country, succeeded in defeating the largest and most cruel imperialist power in the world, the United States of America.</p>
<p>We feel encouraged by the successes achieved by our sisters and brothers in the socialist countries, who are building a new society of freedom and progress for women and men.</p>
<p>The women and men of Mozambique congratulate the Portuguese people for the intensification of the struggle against the colonial war and fascism in Portugal. The opening of the fourth battle front against Portuguese colonialism in Portugal itself, consolidates the solidarity and friendship of our peoples.</p>
<p>We salute all peoples, we salute the women and men of all continents, who anonymously are like us, fighting to build a new society. To all of them we say that our people’s struggle will be intensified, our revolution will be consolidated and triumphant, thus contributing towards the common victory.</p>
<p class="indentb">Long Live the First Conference of Mozambican Women!</p>
<p class="indentb">Long Live the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women!</p>
<p class="indentb">Long Live the Mozambican revolution!</p>
<p class="indentb">Long live the Struggle of the Mozambican people, united from the Rovuma to the Maputo!</p>
<p class="indentb">Long Live Africa!</p>
<p class="indentb">Long Live the Organization of Mozambican Women!</p>
<p class="indentb">Long Live FRELIMO!</p>
<p class="indentb">THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES. INDEPENDENCE OR DEATH. WE WILL WIN.</p>
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<a href="../../../index.htm"> Samora Machel Archive</a>
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Samora Machel 1973
The Liberation of Women is a Fundamental Necessity for the Revolution
Written: 1973;
First Published: 1973;
Source: Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution, Mozambique, pp. 21-36;
Transcription: Liz Blasczak.
Opening Speech at the First Conference of Mozambican Women, 4 March, 1973.
This is a historic and glorious moment in the life of our organization. For the first time we are holding a conference of Mozambican women engaged in all sectors of activity within our revolution. For the first time FRELIMO militants are meeting together to pool their efforts and jointly work out a strategy for the emancipation of women.
We should like first, on behalf of FRELIMO’s Central Committee to express warm greetings to all of the delegations present here.
Allow us to extend a special welcome to the delegates from the war provinces, who have left very important sectors of work so that through their presence and experience they may contribute to the success of this conference. Their presence here is both proof of their understanding of the value of this conference, and a guarantee of its success.
We hail the women comrades from Cabo Delagado who are fighting heroically on every front, many since the start of the war, advancing and consolidating the revolution and dealing tremendous blows against the colonialist and reactionary forces.
We hail the comrades who have come from Niassa, such a large province with a small population. These comrades are facing great difficulties, but they have proved that they are able to overcome them, showing unbreakable determination and revolutionary spirit, daily defending our organization’s central ideas, transporting equipment, mobilizing the population, producing, feeding the guerillas, creating conditions whereby in Niassa FRELIMO’s presence remains undisputed.
The comrades from Tete have a special responsibility. This province is of great strategic importance; it represents the door to the liberation of the whole of Southern Africa and is a center of direct conflict between the forces of revolution and reaction. We warmly welcome the comrades from Tete and congratulate them for having so completely assumed the watchwords of our movement, so that only in about four years, alongside the men, their comrades in arms, they have been able to carry the torch of freedom throughout the whole of Tete province, now also taking it into Manica e Sofala to light the way there.
We should like to hail the comrades doing clandestine work in the zones still occupied by the Portuguese colonialists. Working in the midst of the enemy, subject to incalculable risks and to the temptations of corruption in which the enemy specializes, these comrades put the interests of the people above all else, facing the risks and rejecting corruption as they create the conditions for the outbreak of armed struggle. They give us extremely valuable information and make a very important contribution to the progress of our liberation struggle.
We would also like to extend special greetings to the comrades who work in the FRELIMO camps outside the country, in various sectors of activities. As FRELIMO representatives, where they play an outstanding role in supplying the new fronts; in the secondary school where they are training the cadres who will assume our policies, discovering the secrets of science and destroying myths, so as to mobilize both society and nature in the interests of the revolution.
We also hail the comrades from Americo Boavida hospital at Mtwara, who are carrying out our principle of putting the health services at the service of the masses, treating the sick and the war wounded, so as to make them fit to return to the struggle, and training cadres who will defend the health of our people on the front line.
The comrades of the Centre for Political and Military Training deserve special mention. They are carrying out a delicate and difficult mission, that of turning men and women hitherto guided by outmoded ideas and prejudices into politically conscious fighters, prepared to destroy the enemy’s physical and ideological forces of exploitation and oppression.
The comrades in our children’s home have three decisive tasks. Educating the new generation, instilling in children the new way of thinking which will make them true perpetuators of the revolution. Teaching students so that, understanding our line, they master science and become agents for the transformation of society. And making the wives of militants into active militants themselves, into true mothers of the revolution.
To these comrades, who are the hosts at this conference today, we address warm greetings, conscious as we are of their important role as educators.
We can state with pride that this conference is a great victory, a victory against the traditions and obscurantism which doom women to passivity, a victory against the exploitative society which enslaves women and a victory for the revolution, which is liberating the exploited and the oppressed and which is releasing the creative initiative of the masses.
But victories are built and sustained through blood and sacrifice. There are many women and many men who should have been here with us today, those who in the fight against the enemy and in the internal struggle that took place, have created the political, moral and even physical conditions for our meeting here. They are not physically with us. Their sacrifice is a bridge to our future success. Some gave up their lives in a final heroic act; for others each day of their lives was a heroic act, an example of service to the masses, of defense of our line.
We are what we are because of the sacrifices which have gone into the revolution. It is therefore fitting that as we being our conference we observe a minute of silence in memory of the women and men who have fallen serving the people, serving the revolution.
Gathered here are women from all the provinces, from all the regions and ethnic groups of our country, with varying levels of education and culture. There are mothers and even grandmothers, side by side with young single women. We have here teachers, instructresses, soldiers, nurses, students and also peasant women. Men will also be attending the conference, your comrades in arms not only in the liberation of the nation, but also in the very struggle for the emancipation of women.
THE REVOLUTION AND THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN
a. The historical context of this conference.
This conference is taking place at a specific historical moment in the life of our organization. It is this historical context that gives the conference its importance, its profound significance.
We have just celebrated the tenth anniversary of the founding of FRELIMO. Achieving the unity of the Mozambican people from the Rovuma to the Maputo provided us with an indispensible instrument for launching the process of liberation. Unity constitutes the driving forces of our action. The transformation of our unity into an operative force in other words, the launching of our armed struggle on the 25th of September 1964 created the conditions for the beginning of a radical process of transformation in our country.
The recent celebrations of the eighth anniversary of the beginning of the armed struggle for national liberation take on a special importance now that the struggle has already become a revolution and as such is gradually spreading to all regions of our country, as shown by the recent opening of the Manica e Sofala front.
The eighth anniversary we celebrated also corresponds to an advanced phase in the process of collapse in the enemy’s military and political effort. As pointed out by the recent Central Committee meeting, we are now entering upon the stage of generalized offensives by our forces in the politico-military field, a stage which will change the balance of forces between us and the enemy in our favor.
The constant clarification and strengthening of our line over the four and a half years since the Second Congress have made our achievements possible and provided the guidance needed to enable us all to reach this point. This is the context in which the conditions that led us to call this conference became ripe.
The opening of the conference almost coincides with the 8th of march, International Women’s day, the day when all of progressive mankind solemnly reaffirms its support for the struggle for women’s liberation. This fortunate coincidence should be an incentive to us, since it reminds us of the fact that our struggle is not isolated, showing us that the struggle of women is the struggle of humanity and making us aware of the progress already achieved.
The main purpose of this conference is to study questions concerning the emancipation of women, to find lines of action which will lead to their emancipation. But a preliminary question arises: why bother with the emancipation of women? And another: why call this conference now?
There are people among us, as our movement is well aware, who feel that we should devote all our efforts to the struggle against colonialism and that the task of women’s emancipation is therefore secondary because it will dissipate our forces. They further add that our present situation, with a shortage of schools, very few educated women and with women still bound by tradition, does not provide any basis for embarking upon consistent action, and that it is therefore necessary to wait for independence for the establishment of sound economic, social, and educational foundations for launching the fight.
Yet others, giving a twisted interpretation of Statutes, claim that certain local traditions must be respected and that we can’t oppose them at this stage for fear of losing the support of the masses. They then ask why there is a need to emancipate women at this point, when the vast majority of women are indifferent to the matter. After all they conclude, emancipation would be artificial, imposed on women by FRELIMO.
This is a very serious question. It demands careful study and clear thought.
b. The need for emancipation
The emancipation of women is not an act of charity, the result of a humanitarian or compassionate attitude. The liberation of women is a fundamental necessity for the revolution, the guarantee of its continuity and the precondition for its victory. The main objective of the revolution is to destroy the system of exploitation and build a new society which releases the potentialities of human beings, reconciling them with labor and with nature. This is the context within which the question of women’s emancipation arises.
Generally speaking, women are the most oppressed, humiliated and exploited beings in society. A woman is even exploited by a man who is himself exploited, beaten by the man who is lacerated by the palmatoria, humiliated by the man who is crushed under the boot of the boss and the settler.
How can the revolution triumph without the liberation of women? Will it be possible to get rid of the system of exploitation while keeping one part of society exploited? One can’t only partially wipe out exploitation and oppression, one can’t tear up only half the weeds without even stronger ones spreading from out from the half that has survived.
How then can one make a revolution without mobilizing women? If more than half the exploited and oppressed people consist of women, how can they be left on the fringe of the struggle? To make a revolution it is necessary to mobilize all the exploited and oppressed, and consequently women as well. If it is to be victorious, the revolution must eliminate the whole system of exploitation and oppression, liberating all the exploited and oppressed. Therefore it must eliminate the exploitation and oppression of women, it is forced to liberate women.
Moreover, if we also consider the basic need for the revolution to be continued by the new generation, how can we ensure the revolutionary education of the generation which will carry on our work if mothers, the first educators, are marginal to the revolutionary process? How can one turn the homes of the exploited and the oppressed into cells of revolutionary struggle, centers for the diffusion of our line, encouraging the involvement of the family, if women remain apathetic to this process, indifferent to the society which is being built and deaf to the call of the people,
To say that women do not feel the need to liberate themselves, or that it is often FRELIMO, and not the women, which upholds women’s emancipation is a paltry argument which can’t stand up to analysis. Women feel their subjection, they feel the need to change their situation. What happens is that the domination imposed by society, by stifling their initiative, often prevents them from expressing their aspirations, often prevents them from thinking of how to wage their struggle. It is here that FRELIMO intervenes. As the conscious vanguard of the women and men of Mozambique, of the oppressed people, FRELIMO formulates the line and indicates the methods of the struggle.
It is essential that we understand this phenomenon so as to avoid false and futile debates.
c. The right time to launch the fight
The other question that arises is when is the right time to launch the struggle?
We can’t limit the revolutionary process to certain people while neglecting others, because this would halt the revolution, destroy it. The roots of an evil which we underestimate and decide to pull out at a later date become the roots of a cancer which can destroy us, invading the whole body, before we get to that ‘later date’.
Under the present conditions, FRELIMO is no longer able to wage an armed struggle without carrying a revolution. The preconditions for advancing the armed struggle is to attack the very roots of exploitation. The idea of waiting until later to emancipate women is erroneous; it means allowing reactionary ideas to gain ground only to fight them when they are strong. It is like not fighting the alligator on the bank only to fight him in the middle of the river.
The armed struggle, acting like an incubator, has already created the conditions for the masses to be receptive to the ideas of progress and revolution. To avoid joining battle when conditions are ripe is lack of political foresight, an error of strategy.
This close and indissoluble link between revolution and the liberation of women also enables us to understand why this conference is taking place now and not five years ago, for example. Let us recall an experience we had, that of the Mozambican Women’s League (LIFEMO). LIFEMO was created in Mbeya in June 1966. At that meeting, attended virtually only by women who were on the fringe of the struggle, they elected a leadership which was ignorant of the struggle and of the country, and which set itself some tasks outside the real perspectives of the struggle. A few months after the LIFEMO conference, all that remained of the leadership were the names. Like a rotten fruit, LIFEMO decayed of its own accord. Why?
When LIFEMO was established, what stage had been reached by FRELIMO, the Mozambican revolution and women? FRELIMO did not yet have sound structures and its line had not been sufficiently well understood and internalized because it had not yet been put to test in the struggle. Its cadres and leadership had not been sufficiently seasoned by struggle and they lacked experience.
This situation, where although the line was clear it had not been internalized, where the structures were not sound, the leadership was not experienced and the cadres were not seasoned, blocked the development of our line through practice. We were unable to distinguish the essential from the secondary, unable to define our tasks correctly, establishing proper priorities. Therefore we had only reached a very embryonic stage of the popularization of the war, the point of departure under our conditions for transforming the struggle into a revolution.
We can therefore say that at the time of LIFEMO’s creation the revolutionary process was still at the initial stage. This shows why it was difficult to wage the battle for the emancipation of women: it is inseparable from the development of the revolution.
Consequently, for LIFEMO to talk of the emancipation of women was merely an empty verbal exercise, an imitation of what was going on elsewhere in the world, a superficial fashion.
It was so because at that time women as a whole were not involved in the struggle. And what is more important, those who were involved were discriminated against. They were not invited to attend the conference. Having no involvement or tasks, LIFEMO was doomed to wither away and die. And this is precisely what happened.
Today the conditions for launching a victorious battle really exist. FRELIMO’s line has been internalized and developed in practice, our cadres are gaining experience, being tempered in the struggle, and the process of purifying our ranks has thus begun. The revolutionary process has been assured, the struggle has already been transformed into a revolution and national unity is becoming ideological unity.
The participation of women in the armed struggle, the principal task at our present historical stage, enables them to put our unity into practice and creates the conditions for transforming their consciousness, so that they feel their responsibilities, become consciously involved, undertake critical analysis and understand that society is created by ourselves.
So the wind of revolution blows, and with it, necessarily, the wind of women’s emancipation. FRELIMO’s Central Committee is making us hoist our sails, and this is a favorable moment for us to set sail.
2. THE BASIS OF WOMEN’ ALIENATION
a. The system of exploitation. The starting point
To speak of the emancipation of women clearly implies that they are oppressed and exploited. It is important to understand the basis of that oppression and exploitation.
Let us begin by saying that the oppression of women is the result of their exploitation; oppression in society is always the result of imposed exploitation. Colonialism did not come to occupy our country for the purpose of arresting us, flogging us and beating us with the palmatoria. It invaded and occupied our country for the purpose of exploiting our wealth and labor. In order to exploit us, in order to quell our resistance to exploitation and prevent us from rebelling against it, it then introduced the system of oppression; physical oppression, through the courts, the police, the armed forces, imprisonment, torture and massacre; and spiritual oppression, through obscurantism, superstition and ignorance, designed to destroy the spirit of creative initiative, to kill the sense of justice and criticism, to reduce the individual to passivity and make him accept his exploited and oppressed state as a normal thing. Humiliation and contempt came into being in the process, since he who exploits and oppresses tends to humiliate and despise his victims, regarding them as inherently inferior beings. And then racism appears, the supreme form of humiliation and contempt.
The mechanism of women’s alienation is identical to the mechanism of the alienation of the colonized man in colonial society, or of the worker in capitalist society.
From the moment when early man started to produce more than he consumed, the material foundations were laid for the emergence of a stratum in society which would appropriate the fruits of the majority’s labor. This appropriation of the product of the masses labour by a handful of people in society is the essence of the system of the exploitation of man by man and the crux of the antagonistic contradiction which has divided society for centuries.
As soon as the process of exploitation was unleashed, women as a whole – like men – were subjected to the domination of the privileged strata. Women are also producers, and workers, but with specific characteristics. To possess women is to possess workers, unpaid workers, workers whose entire labor power can be appropriated without resistance by the husband, who is the lord and master. In an agrarian economy, marrying many women is a sure way of accumulating a great deal of wealth. The husband is assured of free labor which neither complains nor rebels against exploitation.
Hence the important role played by polygamy in the rural areas of a primitive economy. Society, realizing that women are a source of wealth, demands that a price be paid for them. The girl’s parents demand from their future son in law the payment of a bride-price – lobolo – before giving up their daughter. The woman is bought and inherited just like material goods, or any source of wealth.
But what is more important is that compared with, say, the slave, who is also a source of wealth and an unpaid worker, the woman offers her owner two added advantages. She is a source of pleasure and above all, she produces other workers, she produces new sources of wealth.
This last aspect is particularly significant. Society grants the husband the right to repudiate his wife and demand re-payment of the lobolo should she prove barren, or if the husband thinks that she is. It can also be noted that in many societies, mindful of the value of the labor power of the woman’s children, the principal is established that the children belong to the mother’s clan or family. In our society, it is also current practice for the children to continue to belong to the mother’s family, especially if the husband has not paid the entire lobolo, that is, the purchase price for the wealth. This situation has led to the excessive emphasis on women’s fertility and the transformation of the man-woman relationship into the mere act of procreation.
But a particular situation emerged. Owing to his control over the masses, the exploiter acquired vast riches, vast estates, large herds of cattle, gold and jewels and so on. Yet despite his wealth he was still mortal, like other men. The problem then of the fate of his wealth – in other words, the question of inheritance – became crucial. Women are the producers of heirs.
It is therefore clear that the exploitation of women and their consequent oppression starts in the system of private ownership of the means of production, in the system of exploitation of man by man.
b. The ideological and cultural mechanisms of domination
A society based on private ownership of the means of production, on the exploitation of men, creates and imposes the ideology and culture which uphold its values and ensure its survival. The economic exploitation of women, their transformation into mere producers with no rights, at the service of their owners – whether their husbands or fathers – requires the establishment of a corresponding ideology and culture, together with an educational system to pass them on. Obviously, this is not something which happens all at once, but a process developed and refined over thousands of years of the society’s existence.
Obscurantism is the beginning of the process. The general principle is to keep women in ignorance or give them only an essential minimum of education. Everywhere we find that illiteracy is higher among women, they are always a minority in schools, colleges and universities, even though they are the majority of the population.
Science has always been kept as man’s monopoly, his exclusive domain, in the developed civilizations of the past as in capitalist society today. To keep women away from science is to prevent them from discovering that society is created as a function of certain specific interests and that it is therefore possible to change society.
Obscurantism and ignorance go hand in hand with superstition and give rise to passivity.
All superstitions and religions find their most fertile soil amongst women, because they are submerged in the greatest ignorance and obscurantism. In our society, rites and ceremonies are the main vehicle for the transmission of society’s concept of women’s inferiority, and their subservience to men. It is here too that countless myths and superstitions are propagated with the express intention of destroying women’s sense of initiative and reducing them to passivity.
Family education itself emphasizes and reinforces this. From infancy the girl is brought up differently from the boy and a feeling of inferiority instilled in her.
None of this is surprising. As we have said, exploitative society promotes the ideology, culture and education that serves its interests. It does so with women, just as it does colonized people and with workers in capitalist society. All are deliberately kept in ignorance, obscurantism and superstition with a view to making them resigned to their position, of instilling in them an attitude of passivity and servility.
This is where racism comes in. The colonized man is called a second class human being by virtue of his skin. The woman is called an inferior human being by virtue of her sex. In capitalist countries in Europe, they claim that women are creatures with long hair and short ideas.
The process of alienation reaches its peak when the exploited person, reduced to total passivity, is no longer capable of imagining that the possibility of liberation exists and in turn becomes a tool for the propagation of the ideology of resignation and passivity. It must be recognized that the centuries old subjugation of women has to a great extent reduced them to a passive state, which prevents them from even understanding their condition.
c. The nature of the antagonism
It is important to understand correctly the nature of the contradiction or contradictions involved, for only after understanding them will we be in a position to define the target of our attack and plan the appropriate strategy and tactics for our struggle.
We have seen that the basis of the domination of women lies in the system of economic organization of society, private ownership of the means of production, which necessarily leads to the exploitation of man by man.
This means that apart from the specific features of their situation, the contradiction between women and the social order is in essence a contradiction between women and the exploitation of man by man, between women and the private ownership of the means of production. In other words, it is the same as the contradiction between the working masses and the exploitative social order.
Let us be clear on this point. The antagonistic contradiction is not between women and men, but between women and the social order, between all exploited people, both women and men, and the social order. The fact that they are exploited explains why they are not involved in all planning and decision making tasks in society, why they are excluded from working out the concepts which govern economic, social, cultural and political life, even when their interests are directly affected.
This is the main feature of the contradiction: their exclusion from the sphere of decision making in society. This contradiction can only be solved by revolution, because only revolution destroys the foundations of exploitative society and rebuilds society on new foundations, freeing the initiative of women, integrating them in society as responsible members and involving them in decision making.
Therefore, just as there can be no revolution without the liberation of women, the struggle for women’s emancipation can’t succeed without the victory of the revolution.
It should be pointed out that the ideological and cultural precepts of the exploitative society which maintain the subjugation of women are destroyed by the advance of the ideological and cultural revolution which introduces into society new values, a new content to education and culture.
But apart from the antagonistic contradiction between women and the social order, other contradictions of a secondary nature also arise between women and men as a kind of reflex.
The marriage system, marital authority based solely on sex, the frequent brutality of the husband and his consistent refusal to treat his wife as an equal, are sources of friction and contradiction. If they are not correctly solved, these secondary contradictions may become more acute and produce such serious consequences as divorce.
But however serious they may be, these factors do not alter the nature of the contradiction.
It is important to stress this aspect, because we now see an ideological offensive taking place particularly in the capitalist world, in the guise of a women’s liberation struggle. The aim is to transform the contradiction with men into an antagonistic one, thereby dividing exploited men and women to prevent them from fighting the exploitative society. In fact, leaving aside the demagoguery which hides its true nature, this ideological offensive is an offensive by capitalism to confuse women, to divert their attention from the real target.
We see small manifestations of this offensive appearing among us. Here and there we hear women grumbling about men, as if the cause of their exploitation lay in the difference between the sexes, as if the men were sadistic monsters who derive pleasure from the oppression of women.
Men and women are products and victims of the exploitative society which has created and formed them. It is essentially against this society that men and women should fight united. Our practical experience has proved that the progress achieved in the liberation of women is the result of the successes gained in our common struggle against colonialism and imperialism, against the exploitation of man by man, and to build a new society.
3. STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL QUESTIONS
a. Our main lines of action
The fight for women’s emancipation demands, as a first step, the clarification of our ideas. Such clarification is all the more imperative in that there is a profusion of erroneous ideas about the emancipation of women.
There are those who see emancipation as mechanical equality between men and women. This vulgar concept is often seen among us. Here emancipation means that women and men do exactly the same tasks, mechanically dividing their household duties. ‘If I wash the dishes today you must wash them tomorrow, whether or not you are busy or have the time.’ If there are still no women truck drivers or tractor drivers in FRELIMO, we must have some right away regardless of the objective and subjective conditions. As we can see from the example of capitalist countries, this mechanically conceived emancipation leads to complaints and attitudes which utterly distort the meaning of women’s emancipation. An emancipated woman is one who drinks, smokes, wears trousers and mini skirts, who indulges in sexual promiscuity, who refuses to have children, etc.
Others associate emancipation with the accumulation of diplomas, and particular university degrees, which are regarded as certificates of emancipation.
Yet others think that emancipation consists of achieving a certain economic, social and cultural level.
All these are erroneous and superficial concepts. Not one of them either gets to the heart of the contradiction or suggests a line that will really emancipate women.
Emancipation requires action on several essential levels.
First of all, a political line of action must be lined down. For women to emancipate themselves there must be conscious political commitment. What does this mean in practical terms?
It means, firstly, that the line must be laid down by a revolutionary political organization which, defending the interests of the exploited masses as a whole, leads them in the fight against the old society. Only such an organization is in a position to formulate a global strategy for the fight for liberation. In our case, what this means in concrete terms is that in order to liberate themselves, women must internalize FRELIMO’s political line and live by it in a creative way. Otherwise they will throw themselves into sterile and secondary battles which will exhaust them uselessly and to no effect.
To internalize and live by our line requires involvement in the tasks laid down by the organization. Just as plants need to strike roots in the ground in order to grow, so does the political line take root in revolutionary practice. Revolutionary practice destroys the exploitative society, unleashes the internal struggle, demolishes our erroneous ideas and releases our critical sense and creative initiatives.
In this context women must be mobilized for internal struggle and for mass struggle, and they must be organized. They will then be able to internalize the political line to start the offensive. They must be involved in the battle for the political education of the next generation and in the battle for the large scale mobilization and organization of the masses. Their commitment to the liberation struggle will then become concrete action, leading them to take part in making decisions affecting the country’s future.
There also arises the need to engage in production.
Releasing the productive forces and launching the process of economic development will lead to deeper ideological understanding and a sounder knowledge of reality, of society and nature.
A third aspect is scientific and cultural education. A scientific and cultural grounding enables women to achieve a correct understanding of their relationship with nature and society, thus destroying the myths fostered by obscurantism which oppress them psychologically and deprive them of initiative.
In this way, women will gradually attain all levels of planning, decision making, and implementation in organizing the affairs of children, hospitals, schools, factories, the armed forces, diplomacy, art, science, culture and so on.
It should also be emphasized here that all these needs do not apply solely to women, because men are also alienated, though in different ways.
The last aspect is that of the relationship between men and women, that is, the new revolutionary concept of the couple and the home. We can already see clearly what this relationship should not be. Until now it has been based on the alleged superiority of man over woman, aimed at satisfying the male ego.
We must state here – and this is something new in society – that the family relationship, the man-woman relationship should be founded exclusively on love. We do not mean the the banal, romantic concept of love which amounts to little more than emotional excitement and an idealized view of life.
For us, love can only exist between free and equal people who have the same ideals and commitment in serving the masses and the revolution. This is the basis upon which the moral and emotional affinity which constitutes love is built. We need to discover this new dimension, hitherto unknown in our country.
b. The organization of women
Following the principle of mobilizing, organizing and uniting all our forces in the struggle, the Central Committee, satisfying the aspirations of the increasingly conscious Mozambican women, has decided to establish the Organization of Mozambican Women (OMM). The Organization of Mozambican Women is a body which will provide leadership and guidance for all Mozambican women in the struggle for the emancipation of women and for the revolution.
Apart from this, its central task is to mobilize international public opinion in favor of our struggle and to express the solidarity of the Mozambican women and people with the liberating and revolutionary struggle of the women and the peoples of the whole world.
One battle the organization has to wage is that of keeping the true sense of emancipation permanently alive, reinforcing the ideological struggle against attempts to disparage the women’s struggle and isolate it from the revolution. Firm adherence to the line, which must be understood, internalized and lived by in the details of everyday life, will give the organization and women themselves the sense of vigilance required to nip in the bud even the slightest reactionary ideological offensive.
We can be sure that the colonialist army, like other reactionary and conservative forces, will react against this conference and its results and do their utmost to make our decisions remain a dead letter. Comrades of ours who still cling to erroneous concepts will find it difficult to understand the profound meaning of the women’s struggle and they will put obstacles in its way.
But the greatest obstacle will be created by women themselves, by their habit of dependence, their passivity and the dead weight of tradition they carry over from the old society.
Women must unite. Unity is the main weapon of the struggle, its driving force. FRELIMO’s political line is your platform for unity, while tribalism, regionalism and racism stand against it.
Tribalism and regionalism prevent one from realizing the greatness of our country and of our struggle. They make it impossible to understand the complexity of our country, and above all, they disperse one’s forces.
Racism is a reactionary attitude. The enemy has no color. The function of racism in our case and in any struggle is to make it difficult to define the real target, creating confusion so as to divide the national revolutionary and progressive forces, weakening them and leading to their annihilation by the common enemy and exploiter. Our struggle would remain isolated from the world-wide struggle of the progressive forces against the exploitation of man by man.
Seeds planted among us by the enemy can’t be destroyed by words or magic formulas. The ideological struggle must be started among all women to make them clearly understand the harm of these reactionary ideas. At the same time efforts must be made to explain to women that their experiencing of suffering, exploitation and oppression in Cabo Delegado, Gaza, Niassa, Inhambane, Tete and Maputo, in Zambezia, Manica e Sofala and Nampula, is the same. All bear the same scars, all have known the same hunger, the same poverty, the same suffering, the same shackles, the same widowhood, the same orphanhood, the same tears caused by colonialism and exploitation.
We are united through the discovery of common wounds and scars, but above all unity is realized through common effort, links are forged through collective work and study, through collective internal struggle, through criticism and self-criticism, and through action against colonialism.
We must also learn from the experience of our sisters throughout the world. That will help us to understand that there are no races or peoples who are exploiters or oppressors. There are no racist peoples, no colonialist peoples. By opening our minds to the experience of others we will not only learn useful lessons, but we will also understand that all countries, all peoples, all races, are waging the same struggle as we are: a struggle against the colonialists and imperialists who have no country, a struggle against the exploiters who have no race. In this way we will be able to see how the struggle of Mozambican women and of our people is the struggle of all of humanity, and we will understand the warmth of the solidarity between us.
We must give up the pernicious habit of identifying only with those who come from the same village as ourselves, who speak the same language and have the same culture, traditions and educational background. Those with whom we must identify and see as our sisters, giving them our friendship and affection, our help and fraternal warmth, are all those who, like us, are exploited and oppressed, and who are with us in the great struggle for the liberation of women, the country and the working people.
These are all sacred tasks for the Organization of Mozambican Women, because it is the women’s responsibility to bring up the next generation free from tribalism, regionalism, and racism, free from the archaic attitude of oppressing women or passively accepting oppresion, free from superstition and imbued with our class feeling and internationalism.
It is also necessary to fight against certain very negative subjective attitudes. Many women comrades think of their commitment as temporary, while they are single, and have a tendency to give up their revolutionary duties as soon as they are married. It is considered normal for wives to return to the village, and for being a wife to become a woman’s sole duty. In many cases this is encouraged by the husband himself who still sees the woman as his private property, dependent on him, existing by virtue of him, and tied to him, almost like a piece of luggage, whom he can use as he pleases, who is obliged to go where he goes. This conflicts both with the requirements of the national liberation struggle and with the women’s struggle for emancipation.
We must mobilize all women, so that they feel the need to participate in concrete tasks, to feel responsible, and to be actively engaged in the transformation of society. In this respect, married women especially must concern themselves with setting a positive example to the younger single women and show them in practice that marriage is an incentive for the pursuit of revolutionary tasks.
c. The structures of the Organization of Mozambican Women
In order to function, to carry out its tasks of leading and guiding women in the struggle for their emancipation, and to involve them ever more deeply in the tasks of the revolution, the Organization of Mozambican Women needs to be properly structured. We are sure that the participation of many comrades engaged in the different sectors of the struggle, the experience they have accumulated and will synthesize here, and their knowledge of the existing difficulties and needs, will enable them to define the basis for the structures to be created and their functions.
However, some questions arise. Who should join the Organization of Mozambican Women? How should it function and what should its relationship with the Women’s Detachment be? What should its place be within FRELIMO as a whole?
We have said that the duty of the OMM is to involve all Mozambican women in the struggle for emancipation and revolution. It must therefore form the broadest possible front, mobilizing, organizing, and uniting all the women who until now have remained outside the process of transformation of our new society, young and old, single and married, educated and non-educated, militants and non-militants. The OMM must organize Mozambican women, wherever they are to be found, at places of work, in schools, hospitals, detachments, co-operatives and nurseries, organizing women in every base, circle and village.
The OMM is a new wing of FRELIMO to reach and involve the women whom we have not yet properly reached or involved.
But to carry out this process requires experienced leadership, people who have understood and internalized the line, and lived by it in the process of engaging in the everyday tasks of the revolution. The members of the leadership must therefore have had politico-military training and experience, the indispensable prerequisite for grasping the complexity of the situation and for always being able to see clearly the path to be followed.
The Women’s Detachment, because it involves women in the central task of the present phase – direct combat against the colonialist and imperialist enemy – is the vanguard body for the women’s participation in the struggle, and it is now playing an extremely active role in the transformation of society. It therefore constitutes the driving nucleus of the OMM, its main source of cadres.
But the Women’s Detachment is not the OMM and the OMM is not the Women’s Detachment. The Detachment is an integral part of our army, of the People’s Forces for the Liberation of Mozambique, an armed political body. The OMM on the other hand, involves all women, from those who have remained marginal to the struggle until now, to those who are combatants on the health, education, production, army and other fronts.
The relationship between the two must be complementary and based on mutual help, the Women’s Detachment being a driving force, a source of cadres, and the OMM a mobilizing force which expands our base and provides new forces for the Women’s Detachment.
In order that the OMM may be in a position to take up and carry out the important tasks with which FRELIMO entrusts it, FRELIMO’s central Committee has decided to organize a training course for women cadres, to be held under the leadership of the Executive Committee.
Integrated in FRELIMO, inspired by FRELIMO’s revolutionary line, acting as a part of our revolutionary family’s harmonious body, in the context of the structures of FRELIMO, the OMM will accomplish the difficult task which the people, the women and the revolution has entrusted to it.
Comrades, the proceedings of the First Conference of Mozambican Women are about to start.
Millions of Mozambican Women, who for centuries have been oppressed, are anxiously and hopefully waiting for the dawn of freedom which will be born here. The Mozambican people, the Mozambican revolution, need your commitment, your struggle. You have a decisive weapon in your hand which is FRELIMO’s political line on the emancipation of women. We must once more underline the most important aspects of our thought.
The exploitation of women is an aspect of the general system of exploitation of man by man. This exploitation creates the conditions for the alienation of women; it reduces them to passivity and excludes them from the sphere of decision-making in society. The antagonistic contradictions which thus exist, are between women and the social order. These contradictions are between all the exploited masses in our country and in the world, and the exploiting classes. Only revolution can definitely resolve this contradiction, because it alone is the incarnation of the interests of the exploited masses; it mobilizes, organizes and unites them for the struggle; it alone can destroy the social order. Revolution puts the exploited masses in power, the masses who lived under oppression and were forced into passivity.
Our people’s armed struggle against colonialism and imperialism is the fundamental starting point for the Mozambican revolution; the moment of the unleashing of the process of liberation of our land, women and men. The armed struggle which is gaining in popularity in our country acts like an incubator in which the revolutionary process starts to take root.
The centuries old experience of exploitation and suffering of the women and the men of Mozambique and the discovery of the freedom born of the people’s power in the areas under our control, have made our people receptive to the ideas of progress and revolution. The conditions are ripe for an offensive on the women’s liberation front, an important moment in our revolutionary struggle.
We already know what our strategy and tactics should be in the struggle, in which we will not only have to fight against the colonialist enemy, but will also have to face the opposition aroused by erroneous concepts rooted in the minds of both women and men.
It is essential that women be involved in FRELIMO, for only FRELIMO is in a position to take up all the interests of the exploited masses of our country and thus formulate the concrete line of battle.
The OMM which is being formed is emerging in the FRELIMO structure as a new arm of our revolution which must reach the broad masses of women who until now have remained marginal to the process of transformation which is taking place in our country. The OMM must draw into the struggle for the emancipation of women and into the national revolutionary struggle the millions of our countrymen.
Our struggle is not an isolated struggle. The Mozambican Women’s fight, the Mozambican people’s fight, is an integral part of the world-wide front of struggle against colonialism and imperialism, against the exploitation of man by man, and for the construction of a new popular social order.
For this very reason we feel that the struggle of our sisters and brothers in Angola, who, under the leadership of the MPLA, have been fighting Portuguese colonialism and imperialism for twelve years is our own. We feel that the struggle of our sisters and brothers in Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde, who, led by the PAIGC have been fighting Portuguese colonialism since 1963, is our own struggle.
Hence we feel bereaved by the recent assassination of our comrade Amilcar Cabral, secretary-general of the PAIGC. This barbarous crime, like the assassination of our first president, Comrade Eduardo Mondlane is an attempt to stop the revolutionary advance of our peoples. It failed in Mozambique and it will fail in Guinea-Bissau.
The fight for the consolidation of independence and for revolutionary development in Tanzania and Zambia, Somalia, Congo, Guinea and the whole of Africa is our fight, the fight to consolidate our strategic rear.
The recent victory of the heroic peoples of Vietnam and Indochina, is a great incentive in our struggle. The women and men of Vietnam, of a small country, of an economically backward country, succeeded in defeating the largest and most cruel imperialist power in the world, the United States of America.
We feel encouraged by the successes achieved by our sisters and brothers in the socialist countries, who are building a new society of freedom and progress for women and men.
The women and men of Mozambique congratulate the Portuguese people for the intensification of the struggle against the colonial war and fascism in Portugal. The opening of the fourth battle front against Portuguese colonialism in Portugal itself, consolidates the solidarity and friendship of our peoples.
We salute all peoples, we salute the women and men of all continents, who anonymously are like us, fighting to build a new society. To all of them we say that our people’s struggle will be intensified, our revolution will be consolidated and triumphant, thus contributing towards the common victory.
Long Live the First Conference of Mozambican Women!
Long Live the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women!
Long Live the Mozambican revolution!
Long live the Struggle of the Mozambican people, united from the Rovuma to the Maputo!
Long Live Africa!
Long Live the Organization of Mozambican Women!
Long Live FRELIMO!
THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES. INDEPENDENCE OR DEATH. WE WILL WIN.
Samora Machel Archive
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./articles/Machel-Samora/https:..www.marxists.org.subject.africa.machel.1972.sowing-seeds | <body>
<p class="title">Samora Machel 1972</p>
<h1>Sowing the Seeds of Revolution</h1>
<hr class="end"><p class="information"><span class="info">Written</span>: 1971-1972;<br>
<span class="info">First Published</span>: 1971-1972;<br>
<span class="info">Source</span>: Samora Machel, <em>Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution, Mozambique</em>, pp. 56-62;<br>
Transcription: Liz Blasczak.</p>
<p class="information">Directives issued at the beginning of the productive cycle 1971-1972.</p><hr class="end">
<p>We shall soon be starting to prepare the land for new crops.</p>
<p>To many people production may seem a rite, a necessity, just something we are obliged to do in order to eat and clothe ourselves. It is true that production is aimed at satisfying our basic biological needs, but we also need it to free ourselves from poverty, to better know, control and use nature, and to educate ourselves politically. We are revolutionaries, our activities always have political meaning and content. Therefore our production, besides having an economic meaning and content, must also have political content.</p>
<p>In the enemy zone, under capitalism, under colonialism, there is also production. There too man wields the hoe to break the soil. There too, on the factory machine – which we do not as yet have in our zone – man makes things. Yet we say that production in the enemy zone is exploitation, whereas in our zone production liberates man. But it is the same hoe, the same man, the same act of breaking the soil. Why then is there this dividing line? Almost everyone knows the G3 gun. In the hands of the enemy the G3 is used to oppress and slaughter the people, but when we capture a G3, it becomes an instrument for liberating the people, for punishing those who slaughter the people. It is the same gun, but its content has changed because those who use it have different aims, different interests.</p>
<p>What use is made of the produce of a Mozambican peasant who grows rice in Gaza? Is it used to feed him, to satisfy his family’s needs? To a certain extent perhaps. But what is certain is that out of what he gets for his produce he has to pay the colonial taxes, taxes to pay the police who arrest him, taxes to pay the salary of the administrator who oppresses him, taxes to buy arms for the soldiers who will tomorrow drive the peasant off his land, taxes to pay for transporting and installing settlers who will occupy the peasant’s land. The peasant produces to pay taxes. Through his labor, the peasant finances the oppression of which he is the victim.</p>
<p>Let us continue with the example of the peasant who grows rice. In order to live he needs other things apart from rice. He needs clothing. He needs oil. He needs many things which he has to buy in the shop. To buy he needs money, and money does not fall from heaven. This means that our peasant has to go and sell rice to the store or company. He sells his things at low prices and buys at prices four or five times higher than what he sells for. Many meters of cotton cloth, many shirts, can be made out of one sack of cotton. When we sell a sack of cotton however, the money we get for the one sack is barely enough to buy one shirt. This means that what we produce, our sweated labor acting on the soil, benefits the companies, the traders who do nothing.</p>
<p>In the enemy zone these are the mildest, the least cruel forms of exploitation. There are others which are much worse. There is the sale of workers to the mines, the many strong young men who go off to the mines. Many die in mine disasters. More than 2,500 die in the mines each year. Others, we do not know how many, return without arms, without a foot, with their lungs eaten away by tuberculosis. The mine owners are the richest men in the world. The wealth extracted from the mines is sold at very high prices, but how much do the men who die in the mines earn?</p>
<p>Along the Zambezi, are the rich lands of Sena Sugar. Sena Sugar makes many thousands of contos a year. But how much do those work on the rich land of Sena Sugar earn? In the Moatize coal mines, in the Zambezia company’s power groves, in the Gurue tea highlands, everywhere Mozambicans are cultivating rich lands, building big buildings, making complex machinery produce goods, but nowhere is it those who work, who sweat over the soil, who risk their lives in the mine shafts, who benefit from their own labor.</p>
<p>In the enemy zone, manual labor, the labor that creates everything, is for the poor, for the “stupid,” the “illiterate.” The less a person works, the more educated he is, the less he works, the more civilized he is, the more he exploits the labor of others and the more he is respected, the higher his status in society. Who can imagine a governor, a doctor, a general or a banker with calloused hands, his feet in the soil, sweating under the sun with the effort of hoeing? It would be though dishonorable, shameful, low. In the enemy zone where the exploiters live like leeches off the labor of the exploited, in the schools, on the radio, at the cinema, everywhere contempt is taught for manual labor and veneration of the exploiters.</p>
<p>In our zone it is different. Here labor does not serve to enrich companies and traders, speculators and parasites. Labor is to satisfy the needs of the people and the war. This is why our production is the target of constant enemy attack.</p>
<p>In our zone labor is a liberating activity because the product of labor benefits the workers, serves the interests of the workers, i.e. it serves to liberate man from hunger and poverty and to advance the struggle. This is because in our zone we have abolished the exploitation of man by man, because what is produced is the property of the people, serving the people. We are producing in our own interest. It is in our interest to bring up healthy children, children free from disease, strong children free from hunger and rickets.</p>
<p>Through production we are contributing towards feeding our children and our people properly. By cultivating the land we are producing vitamin-rich foods. We are growing carrots, which have vitamins that are good for our eyesight. We are growing cassava, which has leaves rich in iron. We are growing an infinite number of crops, from maize to tomatoes, from beans to lettuces, which strengthen the body and which, owing to the very diversity and wealth of them, provide us with a diet which, because it is varied is not only more agreeable but is also a more balanced diet, in itself a defense against many diseases, making us more resistant. Moreover, the physical effort of agricultural production especially, not only strengthens the muscles, hardening our bodies, but, because it keeps us in contact with nature, keeps us in the sun, which provides us with vitamins which are necessary for the body’s resistance creating the condition for us to enjoy good health.</p>
<p>At the same time, it is through production, by advancing it, and only through production that we will succeed in meeting our growing needs. In certain regions, because we are able to export our surpluses to friendly countries, the clothing problem has been attenuated. What we export provides us with the means to buy things we do not yet produce.</p>
<p>Our needs in clothing, footwear and soap can be solved in only two ways. One is to step up our exports, thereby enabling ourselves to buy more. The second way, which is more effective but a long-term prospect, is to produce these goods ourselves. We are purposely talking about cloth, footwear and soap. The reason for this is quite simple. Our country, our cultivators, grow the cotton from which the cloth is made. Craft production of cotton cloth is within the realm of our possibilities. We have the skins of cows, goats, and many other animals, and such skins are used to make footwear. Craft production of leather and shoes is within the realm of our possibilities. We have the agricultural raw materials from which soap is made and experiments in Cabo Delegado have proved that we are in a position to make soap.</p>
<p>At the same time, increasing production through better use of our resources – >using manure and irrigation, improving agriculture and livestock raising, etc. – is possible, as proved by experiments made at certain military bases and in pilot centers. Production therefore serves to solve the essential problems of a rich diet for health and to meet all our needs. This is why work is respected in our zone and why he who works is praised, while he who lives by exploiting the work of others is criticized, denounced, fought against and despised.</p>
<p>Through work we are also becoming more united, cementing our unity. If I am a Nyanja, and cultivate the land alongside an Ngoni, I sweat with him, wrest life from the soil with him, learn with him, appreciating his efforts, and I feel united with him. If I am from the center and am with a comrade from the north, discussing with him how to use a plot of land, how and what to plant, we plan together, fight the difficulties together and share the joy of picking the ear of maize which has grown through our joint effort. I and that comrade are united, our liking for each other increases. If I am from the north and learn how to make a kitchen garden with a comrade from the south, how to water the fleshy red tomatoes, or if I am from the centre and learn for the first time how to grow cassava with a comrade from the north, I am becoming more united with those comrades, tangibly living the unity of our country, the unity of our working class. With him I am destroying tribal, religious and linguistic prejudices, all that is secondary and divides us. Unity grows with the growing plant, with the sweat and intelligence we both mingle with the soil.</p>
<p>In FRELIMO we always emphasize the importance of production. To our army we give the tasks of fighting, producing and mobilizing the masses. To our youth we give the tasks of studying, producing and fighting. In our discussions, in our documents, we constantly stress the importance of production, pointing out that this is an important front in our fight and a school for us. We can see that production is satisfying our everyday needs at the same time as liberating and uniting us. But we do not yet see that production is a school, that we learn through production. Some people might be surprised that in our schools there are those who devote long hours to production, and that our army also has this task. These people might feel that this is absurd, that it would be more worthwhile for the pupils to spend this time reading books, attending classes, that the army’s job is is to fight and not to produce. But we also learn through production. Our ideas do not fall from the skies like rain. Our knowledge and experience do not come from dreaming in our sleep. Without ever having been to school, our illiterate peasants know more about cassava, cotton, groundnuts and many other things than the honorable capitalist gentleman who has never touched a hoe. Without knowing how to read, it is clear that our mechanics know more about car engines, how to assemble them and repair them and how to mend broken parts, than the honorable capitalist gentleman who has never wished to soil his hands with motor oil. We see our “ignorant” masons, our “stupid” carpenters and laborers, so despised by the capitalist gentleman, making beautiful houses, beautiful furniture which the honorable gentleman appreciates immensely and which he has no idea how to make. This clearly shows that we learn through production.</p>
<p>What we learn we do, and when we do, we see what is wrong. So we learn also from our mistakes and achievements. The mistakes show where there are no shortcomings in our knowledge, weak points which have to be examined. This means that it is in the process of producing that we correct our mistakes. Production shows us that if good tomatoes are going to grow in it, this soil needs more manure, that there more water is needed. It was by making experiments that failed our pupils learned how to make soap. It was by making soap that they improved the quality of the soap.</p>
<p>Production is a school because it is one of the sources of our knowledge, and it is through production that we correct our mistakes. It is by going to the people, that we both learn and teach the people. If our army did not produce, how would we have grown cassava in Tete when the people had no knowledge of cassava? If we had contented ourselves with making speeches about cassava, would the cassava have grown? What better way of defending our production in Tete against bombing raids, chemical weapons and enemy incursions than diversification of production, introduction of new crops and crops which are resistant to enemy action?</p>
<p>How can the people improve their production methods, how can they know what is wrong and what is right, unless they produce? We are in the habit of saying that it is in the war that we learn war, which means, in fact, that it is by carrying out a revolution that one learns how to carry out a revolution better, that it is by fighting that we learn how to fight better and that it is by producing that we learn to produce better. We can study a lot, but what use is tons of knowledge if it is not taken to the masses, if we do not produce? If someone keeps maize seeds in a drawer, will he harvest ears of maize?</p>
<p>If someone learns a lot and never goes to the masses, is never involved in practice, he will remain a dead compendium, a mere recorder who is able to quote by heart many passages from scientific works, from revolutionary works, but who will live his whole life without writing a single new page, a single new line. His intelligence would remain sterile, like those seeds locked in the drawer. We need constant practice, we need to be immersed in the revolution and in production, to increase our knowledge and, in this way, to advance our revolutionary work, our productive work.</p>
<p>The seed of knowledge only grows when it is buried in the soil of production of struggle. If we already have so greatly transformed our country, if we have won so many successes in production, education, health and combat, it is because we are always with the masses. We consistently apply what we know to production, correct our mistakes and enrich our knowledge.</p>
<p>But we should not be satisfied. Practice is not enough. One must also know, study. Without practice, without being combined with force, intelligence remains sterile. Without intelligence, without knowledge, force remains blind, a brute force.</p>
<p>There are still many shortcomings in our work which me must and can correct. These shortcomings are a result of the insufficient use of intelligence in our work. All our shortcomings boil down to two aspects: political shortcomings and shortcomings in our scientific knowledge.</p>
<p>In many places we could produce more and better with less effort and with greater protection from enemy action. If we do not do so it is because we have not adopted our political line, because we are still strongly influenced by the individualism and corruption inherited from the old society. However energetic they may be and however hard they work, one man and his family can’t cultivate many small plots all at the same time, i.e they can’t disperse the enemy’s targets, in other words protect production. This man and his family can’t at the same time cultivate various plots providing different crops and, therefore, a richer diet. It is impossible for him to organize a system of guarding and protecting all the plots, all the granaries, his house and the village from enemy incursions and looting. One man can’t do productive work and at the same time patrol various areas to watch out for the enemy and prevent surprise attacks. This means that individualism and the private property mentality, (I have my plot and my cattle, you have your plot and cattle, I have my granary and my house, and you have your granary and your house), lead to defeats, making us lose the cattle, plot, house and granary.</p>
<p>Another serious consequence of a lack of collective spirit in production, of shortcomings in collective methods, is that this prevents us from learning from each other, from benefiting from mutual experience and knowledge. There was no progress in the past, because we did not discuss our knowledge and experience. The knowledge and experience passed on to us by our grandparents had become a dogma which no one discussed, and we remained sterile, without initiative.</p>
<p>Therefore, we leaders, cadres, fighter and militants must work hard to make the masses adopt and live by the collective spirit, using collective methods of production, which will make it possible to enhance the spirit of collective living, thereby increasing the sense of unity, discipline and organization. Adopting a collective consciousness in work means renouncing individualism and considering that all the cultivated plots belong to us, to the people, that all the granaries and houses are ours, the people’s. It means that I must unite with others in a co-operative, in a production brigade. We will cultivate, harvest and stand guard together, and together we will protect that which belongs not to me or you, but to us. That field is not mine or yours, but ours. The pupil in the school, the soldier in the base, and the patient and the nurse in the hospital all have a collective consciousness. No one looks upon the school, the base or the hospital as their private property, and everyone therefore takes an enthusiastic interest in advancing the work of the school, base or hospital. As a result progress is made, the work advances, and the enemy can’t so easily attack. Where there is a collective spirit, we are more organized, there is better discipline and a proper division of labor. There is also more initiative, a greater spirit of sacrifice and we learn more, produce more and fight better, with more determination.</p>
<p>Other shortcomings are a result of superficial or even mistaken ideas on the laws which govern natural phenomena. These are shortcomings in our scientific knowledge. We often live near a source of water – a river or a well – waiting for rain for the crops, although there is water there which would solve our problems. Other times we go about complaining that the soil is poor, completely ignoring natural fertilizers, the animal and human manures which enrich the soil. We have the raw materials for making soap, yet we go on doing without soap. We can grow, spin and weave cotton and yet we go on doing without clothing. There are many examples, all of which show that our lack of scientific knowledge blinds us. The solution to a problem facing us is right under our noses and we do not see it, we do not have the courage to show initiative. We are fighting our insufficient knowledge through study, learning, discussion and practice.</p>
<p>There are comrades who look down on study because they do not know its value. Study is like a lamp in the night which shows us the way. To work without studying is to advance in the dark. One can go forward, of course, but at great risk of stumbling or taking the wrong path. At some bases, among some comrades, the regular habit has been established of devoting some time to study. This is good, but it is not enough. All leaders and cadres, together with the units must organize consistent and regular study programs. Depending on the situation at least one hour a day should be devoted to study activities. Study should be organized in the spirit of collective work, collective consciousness, with small groups in which some teach others and everyone fights ignorance together. Because our starting point is a fairly weak one, we advise that in this first phase every effort should be made to raise the level of basic knowledge, especially by wiping out illiteracy in the units and among the cadres.</p>
<p>The Political Commissar, in co-operation with the Department of Education and Culture and working closely with the Provincial organizations, must organize the program of fighting illiteracy and ignorance in such a way that each FRELIMO bases becomes a base for fighting against obscurantism. Closely related to this program should be a program of seminars for comrades with higher scientific knowledge – agronomists, engineers, mechanics, sociologists, nurses etc. – to help raise the general level of knowledge of leaders and cadres in the districts and provinces. These should be specialized seminars on precise subjects such as irrigation, hygiene, mill construction, the introduction of new crops and the introduction of new production methods.</p>
<p>In this way our comrades will be able to relate their scientific studies to practice, and raise the level both of their own work and of the work of the masses. Soil without manure produces weak plants, but manure without soil burns the seeds and also produces nothing. Our intelligence, our knowledge, are like that manure. Manure must be mixed with soil, intelligence with practice. Because their very existence depends on exploiting us, capitalism and colonialism keep knowledge away from the masses, creating an educated elite which does not work and is used only to better exploit the masses.</p>
<p>We say that it is the workers who must have knowledge, who must rule and who must benefit from labor. This is what we say and practice. And this is why our Armed Struggle has been transformed into a Revolution, why everything is in constant transformation and we are liberating the creative energy of the masses. This, finally, is why the enemy hates us. Nothing exists without production, and nothing exists without workers. The planes and bombing raids, the colonialist crimes, are aiming at keeping the workers producing for the capitalists, at keeping them exploited. The target of our bullets, the purpose of our struggle is, definitely, to end the exploitation of man by man, colonialism being its principal form in our country today. Our objective is to hand production over to the creative ability of the masses.</p>
<p>We are about to enter our eighth year of war. Next year we will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the founding of our Front. We are growing a great deal, but to grow more, to meet the growing needs of the war and the people, it is essential that our production increase in both quantity and quality, that more things be produced in our country.</p>
<p>Revolution liberates man. It liberates his intelligence and his work. This liberation manifests itself in the development of our production, which serves the people, which serves the struggle. Therefore, at this time when preparations are being made in agriculture for sowing the crops of the new season, we say to all the comrades: TO PRODUCE IS TO LEARN, LEARN IN ORDER TO PRODUCE AND STRUGGLE BETTER.</p>
<p>THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES. INDEPENDENCE OR DEATH. WE WILL WIN.</p>
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Samora Machel 1972
Sowing the Seeds of Revolution
Written: 1971-1972;
First Published: 1971-1972;
Source: Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution, Mozambique, pp. 56-62;
Transcription: Liz Blasczak.
Directives issued at the beginning of the productive cycle 1971-1972.
We shall soon be starting to prepare the land for new crops.
To many people production may seem a rite, a necessity, just something we are obliged to do in order to eat and clothe ourselves. It is true that production is aimed at satisfying our basic biological needs, but we also need it to free ourselves from poverty, to better know, control and use nature, and to educate ourselves politically. We are revolutionaries, our activities always have political meaning and content. Therefore our production, besides having an economic meaning and content, must also have political content.
In the enemy zone, under capitalism, under colonialism, there is also production. There too man wields the hoe to break the soil. There too, on the factory machine – which we do not as yet have in our zone – man makes things. Yet we say that production in the enemy zone is exploitation, whereas in our zone production liberates man. But it is the same hoe, the same man, the same act of breaking the soil. Why then is there this dividing line? Almost everyone knows the G3 gun. In the hands of the enemy the G3 is used to oppress and slaughter the people, but when we capture a G3, it becomes an instrument for liberating the people, for punishing those who slaughter the people. It is the same gun, but its content has changed because those who use it have different aims, different interests.
What use is made of the produce of a Mozambican peasant who grows rice in Gaza? Is it used to feed him, to satisfy his family’s needs? To a certain extent perhaps. But what is certain is that out of what he gets for his produce he has to pay the colonial taxes, taxes to pay the police who arrest him, taxes to pay the salary of the administrator who oppresses him, taxes to buy arms for the soldiers who will tomorrow drive the peasant off his land, taxes to pay for transporting and installing settlers who will occupy the peasant’s land. The peasant produces to pay taxes. Through his labor, the peasant finances the oppression of which he is the victim.
Let us continue with the example of the peasant who grows rice. In order to live he needs other things apart from rice. He needs clothing. He needs oil. He needs many things which he has to buy in the shop. To buy he needs money, and money does not fall from heaven. This means that our peasant has to go and sell rice to the store or company. He sells his things at low prices and buys at prices four or five times higher than what he sells for. Many meters of cotton cloth, many shirts, can be made out of one sack of cotton. When we sell a sack of cotton however, the money we get for the one sack is barely enough to buy one shirt. This means that what we produce, our sweated labor acting on the soil, benefits the companies, the traders who do nothing.
In the enemy zone these are the mildest, the least cruel forms of exploitation. There are others which are much worse. There is the sale of workers to the mines, the many strong young men who go off to the mines. Many die in mine disasters. More than 2,500 die in the mines each year. Others, we do not know how many, return without arms, without a foot, with their lungs eaten away by tuberculosis. The mine owners are the richest men in the world. The wealth extracted from the mines is sold at very high prices, but how much do the men who die in the mines earn?
Along the Zambezi, are the rich lands of Sena Sugar. Sena Sugar makes many thousands of contos a year. But how much do those work on the rich land of Sena Sugar earn? In the Moatize coal mines, in the Zambezia company’s power groves, in the Gurue tea highlands, everywhere Mozambicans are cultivating rich lands, building big buildings, making complex machinery produce goods, but nowhere is it those who work, who sweat over the soil, who risk their lives in the mine shafts, who benefit from their own labor.
In the enemy zone, manual labor, the labor that creates everything, is for the poor, for the “stupid,” the “illiterate.” The less a person works, the more educated he is, the less he works, the more civilized he is, the more he exploits the labor of others and the more he is respected, the higher his status in society. Who can imagine a governor, a doctor, a general or a banker with calloused hands, his feet in the soil, sweating under the sun with the effort of hoeing? It would be though dishonorable, shameful, low. In the enemy zone where the exploiters live like leeches off the labor of the exploited, in the schools, on the radio, at the cinema, everywhere contempt is taught for manual labor and veneration of the exploiters.
In our zone it is different. Here labor does not serve to enrich companies and traders, speculators and parasites. Labor is to satisfy the needs of the people and the war. This is why our production is the target of constant enemy attack.
In our zone labor is a liberating activity because the product of labor benefits the workers, serves the interests of the workers, i.e. it serves to liberate man from hunger and poverty and to advance the struggle. This is because in our zone we have abolished the exploitation of man by man, because what is produced is the property of the people, serving the people. We are producing in our own interest. It is in our interest to bring up healthy children, children free from disease, strong children free from hunger and rickets.
Through production we are contributing towards feeding our children and our people properly. By cultivating the land we are producing vitamin-rich foods. We are growing carrots, which have vitamins that are good for our eyesight. We are growing cassava, which has leaves rich in iron. We are growing an infinite number of crops, from maize to tomatoes, from beans to lettuces, which strengthen the body and which, owing to the very diversity and wealth of them, provide us with a diet which, because it is varied is not only more agreeable but is also a more balanced diet, in itself a defense against many diseases, making us more resistant. Moreover, the physical effort of agricultural production especially, not only strengthens the muscles, hardening our bodies, but, because it keeps us in contact with nature, keeps us in the sun, which provides us with vitamins which are necessary for the body’s resistance creating the condition for us to enjoy good health.
At the same time, it is through production, by advancing it, and only through production that we will succeed in meeting our growing needs. In certain regions, because we are able to export our surpluses to friendly countries, the clothing problem has been attenuated. What we export provides us with the means to buy things we do not yet produce.
Our needs in clothing, footwear and soap can be solved in only two ways. One is to step up our exports, thereby enabling ourselves to buy more. The second way, which is more effective but a long-term prospect, is to produce these goods ourselves. We are purposely talking about cloth, footwear and soap. The reason for this is quite simple. Our country, our cultivators, grow the cotton from which the cloth is made. Craft production of cotton cloth is within the realm of our possibilities. We have the skins of cows, goats, and many other animals, and such skins are used to make footwear. Craft production of leather and shoes is within the realm of our possibilities. We have the agricultural raw materials from which soap is made and experiments in Cabo Delegado have proved that we are in a position to make soap.
At the same time, increasing production through better use of our resources – >using manure and irrigation, improving agriculture and livestock raising, etc. – is possible, as proved by experiments made at certain military bases and in pilot centers. Production therefore serves to solve the essential problems of a rich diet for health and to meet all our needs. This is why work is respected in our zone and why he who works is praised, while he who lives by exploiting the work of others is criticized, denounced, fought against and despised.
Through work we are also becoming more united, cementing our unity. If I am a Nyanja, and cultivate the land alongside an Ngoni, I sweat with him, wrest life from the soil with him, learn with him, appreciating his efforts, and I feel united with him. If I am from the center and am with a comrade from the north, discussing with him how to use a plot of land, how and what to plant, we plan together, fight the difficulties together and share the joy of picking the ear of maize which has grown through our joint effort. I and that comrade are united, our liking for each other increases. If I am from the north and learn how to make a kitchen garden with a comrade from the south, how to water the fleshy red tomatoes, or if I am from the centre and learn for the first time how to grow cassava with a comrade from the north, I am becoming more united with those comrades, tangibly living the unity of our country, the unity of our working class. With him I am destroying tribal, religious and linguistic prejudices, all that is secondary and divides us. Unity grows with the growing plant, with the sweat and intelligence we both mingle with the soil.
In FRELIMO we always emphasize the importance of production. To our army we give the tasks of fighting, producing and mobilizing the masses. To our youth we give the tasks of studying, producing and fighting. In our discussions, in our documents, we constantly stress the importance of production, pointing out that this is an important front in our fight and a school for us. We can see that production is satisfying our everyday needs at the same time as liberating and uniting us. But we do not yet see that production is a school, that we learn through production. Some people might be surprised that in our schools there are those who devote long hours to production, and that our army also has this task. These people might feel that this is absurd, that it would be more worthwhile for the pupils to spend this time reading books, attending classes, that the army’s job is is to fight and not to produce. But we also learn through production. Our ideas do not fall from the skies like rain. Our knowledge and experience do not come from dreaming in our sleep. Without ever having been to school, our illiterate peasants know more about cassava, cotton, groundnuts and many other things than the honorable capitalist gentleman who has never touched a hoe. Without knowing how to read, it is clear that our mechanics know more about car engines, how to assemble them and repair them and how to mend broken parts, than the honorable capitalist gentleman who has never wished to soil his hands with motor oil. We see our “ignorant” masons, our “stupid” carpenters and laborers, so despised by the capitalist gentleman, making beautiful houses, beautiful furniture which the honorable gentleman appreciates immensely and which he has no idea how to make. This clearly shows that we learn through production.
What we learn we do, and when we do, we see what is wrong. So we learn also from our mistakes and achievements. The mistakes show where there are no shortcomings in our knowledge, weak points which have to be examined. This means that it is in the process of producing that we correct our mistakes. Production shows us that if good tomatoes are going to grow in it, this soil needs more manure, that there more water is needed. It was by making experiments that failed our pupils learned how to make soap. It was by making soap that they improved the quality of the soap.
Production is a school because it is one of the sources of our knowledge, and it is through production that we correct our mistakes. It is by going to the people, that we both learn and teach the people. If our army did not produce, how would we have grown cassava in Tete when the people had no knowledge of cassava? If we had contented ourselves with making speeches about cassava, would the cassava have grown? What better way of defending our production in Tete against bombing raids, chemical weapons and enemy incursions than diversification of production, introduction of new crops and crops which are resistant to enemy action?
How can the people improve their production methods, how can they know what is wrong and what is right, unless they produce? We are in the habit of saying that it is in the war that we learn war, which means, in fact, that it is by carrying out a revolution that one learns how to carry out a revolution better, that it is by fighting that we learn how to fight better and that it is by producing that we learn to produce better. We can study a lot, but what use is tons of knowledge if it is not taken to the masses, if we do not produce? If someone keeps maize seeds in a drawer, will he harvest ears of maize?
If someone learns a lot and never goes to the masses, is never involved in practice, he will remain a dead compendium, a mere recorder who is able to quote by heart many passages from scientific works, from revolutionary works, but who will live his whole life without writing a single new page, a single new line. His intelligence would remain sterile, like those seeds locked in the drawer. We need constant practice, we need to be immersed in the revolution and in production, to increase our knowledge and, in this way, to advance our revolutionary work, our productive work.
The seed of knowledge only grows when it is buried in the soil of production of struggle. If we already have so greatly transformed our country, if we have won so many successes in production, education, health and combat, it is because we are always with the masses. We consistently apply what we know to production, correct our mistakes and enrich our knowledge.
But we should not be satisfied. Practice is not enough. One must also know, study. Without practice, without being combined with force, intelligence remains sterile. Without intelligence, without knowledge, force remains blind, a brute force.
There are still many shortcomings in our work which me must and can correct. These shortcomings are a result of the insufficient use of intelligence in our work. All our shortcomings boil down to two aspects: political shortcomings and shortcomings in our scientific knowledge.
In many places we could produce more and better with less effort and with greater protection from enemy action. If we do not do so it is because we have not adopted our political line, because we are still strongly influenced by the individualism and corruption inherited from the old society. However energetic they may be and however hard they work, one man and his family can’t cultivate many small plots all at the same time, i.e they can’t disperse the enemy’s targets, in other words protect production. This man and his family can’t at the same time cultivate various plots providing different crops and, therefore, a richer diet. It is impossible for him to organize a system of guarding and protecting all the plots, all the granaries, his house and the village from enemy incursions and looting. One man can’t do productive work and at the same time patrol various areas to watch out for the enemy and prevent surprise attacks. This means that individualism and the private property mentality, (I have my plot and my cattle, you have your plot and cattle, I have my granary and my house, and you have your granary and your house), lead to defeats, making us lose the cattle, plot, house and granary.
Another serious consequence of a lack of collective spirit in production, of shortcomings in collective methods, is that this prevents us from learning from each other, from benefiting from mutual experience and knowledge. There was no progress in the past, because we did not discuss our knowledge and experience. The knowledge and experience passed on to us by our grandparents had become a dogma which no one discussed, and we remained sterile, without initiative.
Therefore, we leaders, cadres, fighter and militants must work hard to make the masses adopt and live by the collective spirit, using collective methods of production, which will make it possible to enhance the spirit of collective living, thereby increasing the sense of unity, discipline and organization. Adopting a collective consciousness in work means renouncing individualism and considering that all the cultivated plots belong to us, to the people, that all the granaries and houses are ours, the people’s. It means that I must unite with others in a co-operative, in a production brigade. We will cultivate, harvest and stand guard together, and together we will protect that which belongs not to me or you, but to us. That field is not mine or yours, but ours. The pupil in the school, the soldier in the base, and the patient and the nurse in the hospital all have a collective consciousness. No one looks upon the school, the base or the hospital as their private property, and everyone therefore takes an enthusiastic interest in advancing the work of the school, base or hospital. As a result progress is made, the work advances, and the enemy can’t so easily attack. Where there is a collective spirit, we are more organized, there is better discipline and a proper division of labor. There is also more initiative, a greater spirit of sacrifice and we learn more, produce more and fight better, with more determination.
Other shortcomings are a result of superficial or even mistaken ideas on the laws which govern natural phenomena. These are shortcomings in our scientific knowledge. We often live near a source of water – a river or a well – waiting for rain for the crops, although there is water there which would solve our problems. Other times we go about complaining that the soil is poor, completely ignoring natural fertilizers, the animal and human manures which enrich the soil. We have the raw materials for making soap, yet we go on doing without soap. We can grow, spin and weave cotton and yet we go on doing without clothing. There are many examples, all of which show that our lack of scientific knowledge blinds us. The solution to a problem facing us is right under our noses and we do not see it, we do not have the courage to show initiative. We are fighting our insufficient knowledge through study, learning, discussion and practice.
There are comrades who look down on study because they do not know its value. Study is like a lamp in the night which shows us the way. To work without studying is to advance in the dark. One can go forward, of course, but at great risk of stumbling or taking the wrong path. At some bases, among some comrades, the regular habit has been established of devoting some time to study. This is good, but it is not enough. All leaders and cadres, together with the units must organize consistent and regular study programs. Depending on the situation at least one hour a day should be devoted to study activities. Study should be organized in the spirit of collective work, collective consciousness, with small groups in which some teach others and everyone fights ignorance together. Because our starting point is a fairly weak one, we advise that in this first phase every effort should be made to raise the level of basic knowledge, especially by wiping out illiteracy in the units and among the cadres.
The Political Commissar, in co-operation with the Department of Education and Culture and working closely with the Provincial organizations, must organize the program of fighting illiteracy and ignorance in such a way that each FRELIMO bases becomes a base for fighting against obscurantism. Closely related to this program should be a program of seminars for comrades with higher scientific knowledge – agronomists, engineers, mechanics, sociologists, nurses etc. – to help raise the general level of knowledge of leaders and cadres in the districts and provinces. These should be specialized seminars on precise subjects such as irrigation, hygiene, mill construction, the introduction of new crops and the introduction of new production methods.
In this way our comrades will be able to relate their scientific studies to practice, and raise the level both of their own work and of the work of the masses. Soil without manure produces weak plants, but manure without soil burns the seeds and also produces nothing. Our intelligence, our knowledge, are like that manure. Manure must be mixed with soil, intelligence with practice. Because their very existence depends on exploiting us, capitalism and colonialism keep knowledge away from the masses, creating an educated elite which does not work and is used only to better exploit the masses.
We say that it is the workers who must have knowledge, who must rule and who must benefit from labor. This is what we say and practice. And this is why our Armed Struggle has been transformed into a Revolution, why everything is in constant transformation and we are liberating the creative energy of the masses. This, finally, is why the enemy hates us. Nothing exists without production, and nothing exists without workers. The planes and bombing raids, the colonialist crimes, are aiming at keeping the workers producing for the capitalists, at keeping them exploited. The target of our bullets, the purpose of our struggle is, definitely, to end the exploitation of man by man, colonialism being its principal form in our country today. Our objective is to hand production over to the creative ability of the masses.
We are about to enter our eighth year of war. Next year we will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the founding of our Front. We are growing a great deal, but to grow more, to meet the growing needs of the war and the people, it is essential that our production increase in both quantity and quality, that more things be produced in our country.
Revolution liberates man. It liberates his intelligence and his work. This liberation manifests itself in the development of our production, which serves the people, which serves the struggle. Therefore, at this time when preparations are being made in agriculture for sowing the crops of the new season, we say to all the comrades: TO PRODUCE IS TO LEARN, LEARN IN ORDER TO PRODUCE AND STRUGGLE BETTER.
THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES. INDEPENDENCE OR DEATH. WE WILL WIN.
Samora Machel Archive
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./articles/Machel-Samora/https:..www.marxists.org.subject.africa.machel.1972.build-nation | <body>
<p class="title">Samora Machel 1972</p>
<h1>Building a Nation</h1>
<hr class="end"><p class="information"><span class="info">Written</span>:1972;<br>
<span class="info">First Published</span>:1972;<br>
<span class="info">Source</span>: <em>Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution</em>, Tanzania, pp63-68;<br>
<span class="info">Transcription</span>: Liz Blasczak.</p>
<p class="information">Interview in the <em>Sunday News</em> (Tanzania) 2 April, 1972.</p><hr class="end">
<p class="fst">Samora Moises Machel has been president of the Mozambique Liberation Front since shortly after the death of Dr. Eduardo Mondlane in 1969. He is rarely seen in Dar es Salaam and seldom gives interviews but on a recent visit he spoke to Sunday News staff writer Iain Christie about FRELIMO; what it stands for; what it is doing; and where it is going. In this interview the word “Cahora” is used instead of “Cabora” in the name of the giant dam project in Mozambique. FRELIMO uses Cahora because it more closely approximates the local people’s pronunciation of the site.</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Interviewer</b>: Since you began military operations near Cahora Bassa, developments in South Tete have received a great deal of publicity, and successful FRELIMO operations are reported so frequently, even by the Portuguese, that it appears as though the struggle is more developed here than anywhere else in Mozambique. Is this so? And how do South Tete and Cahora Bassa fit into FRELIMO’s overall strategy?</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Samora Machel</b>: The struggle in Tete province is not separated from the development of the struggle in the other provinces. Therefore in order to understand the situation in Tete you have to know the political and military situation in the whole of Mozambique.</p>
<p>Tete is an integral part of our country. The arm can’t live outside the body and Tete is something like an arm in the context of our country. Only when the other parts of the body work properly can the arm also function. It is because the political and military struggle is developing properly in the other provinces that we are having successes in Tete.</p>
<p>It was necessary to develop the war in the other provinces to create conditions for it to start in Tete in 1968. By that time, in Niassa and Cabo Delegado, we were already launching large scale, important combats, already capturing prisoners and war equipment.</p>
<p>We were developing the process of national reconstruction in these two provinces we had hospitals and schools. So the struggle had already determined important changes in society there.</p>
<p>These conditions enabled us to begin the fighting in Tete again in 1968 and the struggle is now well developed. It is developing because the people are becoming more and more involved. But although it may appear that the war in Tete is more developed than in the other two provinces, this is not the case. What is happening is that Tete is being given more publicity because of economic interests there. They are the interests of capitalists and international imperialism; for them Tete is like the camel’s hump where their strengths and reserves are concentrated. And our struggle is affecting these interests.</p>
<p>You know about Cahora Bassa. The great powers are involved there. Them there are the trucks which transport goods on the road through Tete from Malawi to Rhodesia. We attack the roads, trains and trucks, mainly because it is through them that the enemy circulates and distributes its forces.</p>
<p>Cahora Bassa is not our main target. Our plan as it was defined when we started the war is to spread the struggle throughout the entire country, and since Cahora Bassa is inside our country and in a province where there is fighting, it necessarily falls within this plan. We do not concentrate our action in Tete or Cahora Bassa, but of course there are circumstances that make it a very important target for us, namely the extent of imperialist involvement and the implications for our struggle if the scheme were to be carried out.</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Interviewer</b>: I know you have schools, hospitals and so on in the northern part of Tete, but do you have these things south of the Zambezi yet?</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Samora Machel</b>: Yes. The struggle has developed quickly here because this is an area where Portuguese oppression made itself felt more strongly than in other places. And there are the people who live the border with Rhodesia. They suffered double the oppression. They were recruited to work in the banana and sugar plantations in Mozambique and when they finished they were sold to Rhodesia to work in the tobacco plantations. When they finished they came back and were recruited by the Portuguese again.</p>
<p>So the people there felt oppression more than anywhere else. Men could never live with their families. It was something like slavery.</p>
<p>The result is that the people are aware that the armed struggle is the only solution to their problems. That’s why there are so many cases of boys and girls of 15 and 16 joining us. One of the reasons is that they themselves saw their parents being oppressed, exploited and even killed by the Portuguese colonialists.</p>
<p>But in spite of these atrocities we do not retaliate in their brutal manner.</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Interviewer</b>: What about captured Portuguese soldiers? What is your attitude towards them and towards white civilians in Mozambique?</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Samora Machel</b>: When we capture Portuguese soldiers we do not kill or mistreat them. Our people know that these men are participating in the war because they were forced to. They are not defending their own interests or the interests of the Portuguese people, but the interests of Portuguese capitalists and international imperialism.</p>
<p>Then there are the Portuguese soldiers who desert to us. These we consider our allies. Their desertion is an act of support to our struggle.</p>
<p>And there are whites born in Mozambique who want to join our ranks. We do not consider these as foreigners who support us. Such a man is one of us and it is his duty, just as it is my duty, to liberate Mozambique.</p>
<p>Our policy regarding civilians is clear. We do not fight the Portuguese who are in our country because they are Portuguese. We fight the forces of colonial occupation.</p>
<p>This policy is not new. Since the beginning we have said our struggle is not against the Portuguese people but against Portuguese colonialism. And now in Tete one begins to feel this more strongly. There are more concrete cases there because the Portuguese population is much larger in Tete than in the other two provinces where we are fighting. They have shops there and plantations. There are traders. We don’t harm them. We attack the colonial war machine of repression.</p>
<p>Of course if those people cooperate with the colonial authorities against us we have to take action against them. We do the same with Mozambicans.</p>
<p>Sometimes civilians get killed when we attack a convoy. But we attack these convoys because in them are troops and arms, and these aren’t carried only in military vehicles. Civilian cars are used for this purpose too, so it is impossible to differentiate, to know which is military car and which is not. That is why civilians sometimes get killed. But it is not our policy to kill civilians. Our targets are military or with a military relevance.</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Interviewer</b>: The Portuguese have been putting hard surfaces on roads in Tete to prevent you from laying mines. They even brought in a new governor general who is an expert on road building to help. Have they succeeded in surfacing the roads and, if so, have you devised a way around this problem?</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Samora Machel</b>: The former governor was also an engineer. He was brought especially for Cahora Bassa, because he was one of its planners. And one of his first statements when he arrived was that the north was calling them, because the north was not developed, had no communications, roads.</p>
<p>The plan of opening roads stems from as far back as 1969. They had already been allocated thousands of pounds just for building roads from Lourenco Marques up to the Rovuma river, and from Beira to the Zambian border, to enable them to distribute their forces to attack our zones.</p>
<p>We don’t control the air and that is not our concern. We do control the ground and we are concentrating on continuing to control it.</p>
<p>The Portuguese have created a myth that road building is the key to their security. The last governor failed in this task and resigned. The new governor won’t succeed either because we are now in a better position than ever to wreck the plan. Today it is not only our soldiers who destroy the roads, the villagers themselves go out and rip up the surfaces almost as soon as they are laid.</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Interviewer</b>: You have often said that the Mozambican struggle is essentially political and that this must be realized in order to understand the development of FRELIMO’s military operations. Does this mean that you attribute military success to having the correct political line?</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Samora Machel</b>: Yes. For FRELIMO it is fundamental to have a national consciousness and to develop it into a revolutionary consciousness that allows for an understanding of the objectives of our struggle, the reasons for our revolution, and an awareness of who we are fighting, who are the enemies. This is the primary concern of every leader, of every militant and of the people in general.</p>
<p>Our military situation is now better than ever. And we know that the reason the struggle is successful is that our political line is correct, the people are becoming more and more aware, mobilized and organized. That is what makes the struggle political.</p>
<p>Big changes are taking place in our society now. Political power is being handed to the people themselves, the leadership in the liberated areas is being undertaken by the people of those areas.</p>
<p>The Portuguese will never be able to destroy this new awareness. In some of those areas the people have not known oppression for seven years, they pay no taxes, they don’t have to carry the Portuguese boss on their shoulders ... when the colonialists went to the villages to collect taxes or to arrest people they were carried by the Mozambicans themselves.</p>
<p>The people have developed their initiative. They discuss their problems and find solutions together. They discuss ways to combat the enemy. They participate in the struggle both in its planning and its implementation. They discuss the kind of life they want to live.</p>
<p>So we no longer discuss if our struggle will continue, if the Portuguese will have successes or not. The struggle is an internal part of the people’s lives and what we discuss with the people now is how to make our struggle a real revolution.</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Interviewer</b>: Can you define what you mean by a liberated area? The Portuguese sometimes takes journalists into areas which you describe as liberated, then say to them: “Look, there are no terrorists here.”</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Samora Machel</b>: You could have visited pre independence Tanganyika and travelled for miles in the countryside, where the people lived, without seeing any sign of the administrative authorities, the British. This does not mean that Tanganyika was not dominated by the colonialists: the structure which determined the lives of the people and to which they were subjected was a colonialist structure.</p>
<p>The form of administration and the form of production were colonialist. Arresting people for work, for example. The form of teaching in the schools, when and where there was a school somewhere in the countryside, was a colonialist form. The curriculum was British, about the history of Britain, the heroism of the British people.</p>
<p>So although the British were not physically present everywhere, the structure of oppresion made itself felt throughout the country.</p>
<p>Now, in Mozambique, these attestations of colonialism, the methods of work under the colonialists, have been removed from large areas of the country. These we call liberated zones. The way of production is a popular way, not the colonialist way, which is characterized by exploitation. The attitude which guides everybody’s life is now collective, not indivdualist. Problems are solved collectively and this is something new.</p>
<p>These liberated zones, because of the new type of power, new kind of administration, new way of life, are the targets of the enemy. We do not deny that these zones are subject to attacks, but this happens even in Vietnam and nobody can deny that there are large liberated areas in Vietnam.</p>
<p>And to further clarify the point, “liberated zones” does not mean the complete expulsion of the physical presence of the colonialists. There are still Portuguese there but they are isolated in a few small garrisons. The basic question is: who do the people follow? They follow whose watchword? Is the work they undertake clandestine or open? In our zones the work is open. The watchword comes from the organization. That means freedom from exploitation, from forced labor. That is a liberated zone.</p>
<p>The Portuguese have taken journalists to Mozambique. We also take our friends. Each one sees for himself. We take people from many countries and last year journalists and students visited us from as far apart as Sweden and Kenya. Our visitors have been to Cabo Delegado, Niassa and Tete and have written about what they saw. They have balanced the picture. It was clear to them that FRELIMO controls these areas.</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Interviewer</b>: Since the beginning of the revolution in Angola, the Portuguese have introduced “reforms” in all the colonies in an effort to persuade the people not to join the armed struggle. Has this caused any serious problems for you?</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Samora Machel</b>: They do this and will continue to do it because it is the only weapon they have. Dividing the people in order to dominate them. What they have introduced is new methods of corruption, not methods of changing the structure of society. It’s not to better the lives of the people, it’s the introduction of corruption.</p>
<p>They can’t change their political line because they can’t stop being colonialists. They can’t stop making the people do forced labor because they depend on forced labor.</p>
<p>What they do is divide the people. They give some economic privileges to a few Mozambicans, those who have had some education and who are considered potentially active political leaders, to induce them to defend the colonial system in order to retain those privileges.</p>
<p>They announce “important changes” like the new “State” of Mozambique to try to create the illusion (mainly among people in other countries) that the Portuguese are taking steps towards the independence of our country.</p>
<p>They also try to discredit the liberation movement by attempting to make the people believe that we are terrorists. For example, they massacre people in a certain place, then bring people from another zone and say: “look, this is what FRELIMO does.”</p>
<p>But to answer your question, these tactics do not cause any problem for us. The people are politically aware and conscious; they have lived under Portuguese colonialism since they were born; they have experienced the oppression, exploitation and humiliation in their own flesh; they can’t be cheated.</p>
<p>A typical example is that of Domingos Arouca, the only black Mozambican lawyer. The Portuguese tried to win him over by offering him a high post in the colonial administration. He understood and refused to be part of the colonial machine. Today he is in jail.</p>
<p>Maneuvers will never succeed.</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Interviewer</b>: Recently the West German Government has been making moves which suggest that Chancellor Willy Brandt is trying to stop German weapons going to Portugal for the African wars. Do you think that Mr. Brandt is making an honest effort?</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Samora Machel</b>: We can’t see how this can be considered other than as a manoeuvre. The West German Government is linked with the Portuguese so much that it can’t stop its support. The West Germans have advisers, they have officers, they manufacture weapons in Portugal. It is easier to make weapons there than to transport them from West Germany.</p>
<p>A few weeks ago the West German Ambassador in Malawi flew to Mozambique to “visit” Cahora Bassa.</p>
<p>Do you think this adds up to an honest effort?</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Interviewer</b>: What kind of political structure is being built in liberated Mozambique? What kind of society can we expect to see when the entire country is free, and would you like to compare it to any other country’s system?</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Samora Machel</b>: We are fighting against a specific structure which exists in Mozambique. It is an unpopular structure, where there is a privileged class, there is an embryonic intermediate class and there are those who are really miserable; a structure which ensures that the riches of our country do not serve the people.</p>
<p>The people who are fighting, making sacrifices, dying in the war, destroying the enemy, are doing so to win real freedom. The people will create a structure that benefits them, not one that satisfies the selfish aims of an exploiting minority.</p>
<p>There is no need to draw comparisons with other countries.</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Interviewer</b>: How much time do you spend in Mozambique, how much outside in your various diplomatic activities?</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Samora Machel</b>: The rule is to spend most of the time inside because our external policy is determined by the situation inside. The leadership must stay inside, following the development of the situation so as to be able to formulate the watchword corresponding to the situation at any given moment. The exterior plays an important part in our struggle and this is why we have to go outside from time to time, to inform our friends in Africa, in the socialist countries, the progressive forces in the West, about the development of the struggle. But it is not a decisive part and we go abroad only when necessary.</p>
<p>It is fundamental to our struggle that the leadership and the people participate together in the work inside and through this we know where to put more emphasis, where to concentrate more efforts at any specific time. This is a rule of organization but it is not because it is a rule that our leadership undertakes it duties inside. They understand that it is necessary to know the temperature inside and that the people are the thermometer.</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Interviewer</b>: Are you able to operate politically in the south of your country, where the armed struggle has not begun?</p>
<p class="fst"><b>Samora Machel</b>: Yes. We have political cadres over the whole country. That is why there is a growing awareness among the people that enables them to understand the maneuvers of the enemy. For example, during Banda’s trip, there was a movement of discontent that expressed itself in our protests. The colonialists made mass arrests in the whole southern region. The same happened in June, 1970. This is because of our presence everywhere.</p>
<p>In the central committee there are members from all provinces. In all the different sectors of activity there are people from all provinces. This is the political structure.</p>
<p>Fighters come from all provinces, too, and if we do not yet operate militarily in some provinces it is mainly due to geographical problems. But we will cover the whole country. Of this we are certain.</p>
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Samora Machel 1972
Building a Nation
Written:1972;
First Published:1972;
Source: Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution, Tanzania, pp63-68;
Transcription: Liz Blasczak.
Interview in the Sunday News (Tanzania) 2 April, 1972.
Samora Moises Machel has been president of the Mozambique Liberation Front since shortly after the death of Dr. Eduardo Mondlane in 1969. He is rarely seen in Dar es Salaam and seldom gives interviews but on a recent visit he spoke to Sunday News staff writer Iain Christie about FRELIMO; what it stands for; what it is doing; and where it is going. In this interview the word “Cahora” is used instead of “Cabora” in the name of the giant dam project in Mozambique. FRELIMO uses Cahora because it more closely approximates the local people’s pronunciation of the site.
Interviewer: Since you began military operations near Cahora Bassa, developments in South Tete have received a great deal of publicity, and successful FRELIMO operations are reported so frequently, even by the Portuguese, that it appears as though the struggle is more developed here than anywhere else in Mozambique. Is this so? And how do South Tete and Cahora Bassa fit into FRELIMO’s overall strategy?
Samora Machel: The struggle in Tete province is not separated from the development of the struggle in the other provinces. Therefore in order to understand the situation in Tete you have to know the political and military situation in the whole of Mozambique.
Tete is an integral part of our country. The arm can’t live outside the body and Tete is something like an arm in the context of our country. Only when the other parts of the body work properly can the arm also function. It is because the political and military struggle is developing properly in the other provinces that we are having successes in Tete.
It was necessary to develop the war in the other provinces to create conditions for it to start in Tete in 1968. By that time, in Niassa and Cabo Delegado, we were already launching large scale, important combats, already capturing prisoners and war equipment.
We were developing the process of national reconstruction in these two provinces we had hospitals and schools. So the struggle had already determined important changes in society there.
These conditions enabled us to begin the fighting in Tete again in 1968 and the struggle is now well developed. It is developing because the people are becoming more and more involved. But although it may appear that the war in Tete is more developed than in the other two provinces, this is not the case. What is happening is that Tete is being given more publicity because of economic interests there. They are the interests of capitalists and international imperialism; for them Tete is like the camel’s hump where their strengths and reserves are concentrated. And our struggle is affecting these interests.
You know about Cahora Bassa. The great powers are involved there. Them there are the trucks which transport goods on the road through Tete from Malawi to Rhodesia. We attack the roads, trains and trucks, mainly because it is through them that the enemy circulates and distributes its forces.
Cahora Bassa is not our main target. Our plan as it was defined when we started the war is to spread the struggle throughout the entire country, and since Cahora Bassa is inside our country and in a province where there is fighting, it necessarily falls within this plan. We do not concentrate our action in Tete or Cahora Bassa, but of course there are circumstances that make it a very important target for us, namely the extent of imperialist involvement and the implications for our struggle if the scheme were to be carried out.
Interviewer: I know you have schools, hospitals and so on in the northern part of Tete, but do you have these things south of the Zambezi yet?
Samora Machel: Yes. The struggle has developed quickly here because this is an area where Portuguese oppression made itself felt more strongly than in other places. And there are the people who live the border with Rhodesia. They suffered double the oppression. They were recruited to work in the banana and sugar plantations in Mozambique and when they finished they were sold to Rhodesia to work in the tobacco plantations. When they finished they came back and were recruited by the Portuguese again.
So the people there felt oppression more than anywhere else. Men could never live with their families. It was something like slavery.
The result is that the people are aware that the armed struggle is the only solution to their problems. That’s why there are so many cases of boys and girls of 15 and 16 joining us. One of the reasons is that they themselves saw their parents being oppressed, exploited and even killed by the Portuguese colonialists.
But in spite of these atrocities we do not retaliate in their brutal manner.
Interviewer: What about captured Portuguese soldiers? What is your attitude towards them and towards white civilians in Mozambique?
Samora Machel: When we capture Portuguese soldiers we do not kill or mistreat them. Our people know that these men are participating in the war because they were forced to. They are not defending their own interests or the interests of the Portuguese people, but the interests of Portuguese capitalists and international imperialism.
Then there are the Portuguese soldiers who desert to us. These we consider our allies. Their desertion is an act of support to our struggle.
And there are whites born in Mozambique who want to join our ranks. We do not consider these as foreigners who support us. Such a man is one of us and it is his duty, just as it is my duty, to liberate Mozambique.
Our policy regarding civilians is clear. We do not fight the Portuguese who are in our country because they are Portuguese. We fight the forces of colonial occupation.
This policy is not new. Since the beginning we have said our struggle is not against the Portuguese people but against Portuguese colonialism. And now in Tete one begins to feel this more strongly. There are more concrete cases there because the Portuguese population is much larger in Tete than in the other two provinces where we are fighting. They have shops there and plantations. There are traders. We don’t harm them. We attack the colonial war machine of repression.
Of course if those people cooperate with the colonial authorities against us we have to take action against them. We do the same with Mozambicans.
Sometimes civilians get killed when we attack a convoy. But we attack these convoys because in them are troops and arms, and these aren’t carried only in military vehicles. Civilian cars are used for this purpose too, so it is impossible to differentiate, to know which is military car and which is not. That is why civilians sometimes get killed. But it is not our policy to kill civilians. Our targets are military or with a military relevance.
Interviewer: The Portuguese have been putting hard surfaces on roads in Tete to prevent you from laying mines. They even brought in a new governor general who is an expert on road building to help. Have they succeeded in surfacing the roads and, if so, have you devised a way around this problem?
Samora Machel: The former governor was also an engineer. He was brought especially for Cahora Bassa, because he was one of its planners. And one of his first statements when he arrived was that the north was calling them, because the north was not developed, had no communications, roads.
The plan of opening roads stems from as far back as 1969. They had already been allocated thousands of pounds just for building roads from Lourenco Marques up to the Rovuma river, and from Beira to the Zambian border, to enable them to distribute their forces to attack our zones.
We don’t control the air and that is not our concern. We do control the ground and we are concentrating on continuing to control it.
The Portuguese have created a myth that road building is the key to their security. The last governor failed in this task and resigned. The new governor won’t succeed either because we are now in a better position than ever to wreck the plan. Today it is not only our soldiers who destroy the roads, the villagers themselves go out and rip up the surfaces almost as soon as they are laid.
Interviewer: You have often said that the Mozambican struggle is essentially political and that this must be realized in order to understand the development of FRELIMO’s military operations. Does this mean that you attribute military success to having the correct political line?
Samora Machel: Yes. For FRELIMO it is fundamental to have a national consciousness and to develop it into a revolutionary consciousness that allows for an understanding of the objectives of our struggle, the reasons for our revolution, and an awareness of who we are fighting, who are the enemies. This is the primary concern of every leader, of every militant and of the people in general.
Our military situation is now better than ever. And we know that the reason the struggle is successful is that our political line is correct, the people are becoming more and more aware, mobilized and organized. That is what makes the struggle political.
Big changes are taking place in our society now. Political power is being handed to the people themselves, the leadership in the liberated areas is being undertaken by the people of those areas.
The Portuguese will never be able to destroy this new awareness. In some of those areas the people have not known oppression for seven years, they pay no taxes, they don’t have to carry the Portuguese boss on their shoulders ... when the colonialists went to the villages to collect taxes or to arrest people they were carried by the Mozambicans themselves.
The people have developed their initiative. They discuss their problems and find solutions together. They discuss ways to combat the enemy. They participate in the struggle both in its planning and its implementation. They discuss the kind of life they want to live.
So we no longer discuss if our struggle will continue, if the Portuguese will have successes or not. The struggle is an internal part of the people’s lives and what we discuss with the people now is how to make our struggle a real revolution.
Interviewer: Can you define what you mean by a liberated area? The Portuguese sometimes takes journalists into areas which you describe as liberated, then say to them: “Look, there are no terrorists here.”
Samora Machel: You could have visited pre independence Tanganyika and travelled for miles in the countryside, where the people lived, without seeing any sign of the administrative authorities, the British. This does not mean that Tanganyika was not dominated by the colonialists: the structure which determined the lives of the people and to which they were subjected was a colonialist structure.
The form of administration and the form of production were colonialist. Arresting people for work, for example. The form of teaching in the schools, when and where there was a school somewhere in the countryside, was a colonialist form. The curriculum was British, about the history of Britain, the heroism of the British people.
So although the British were not physically present everywhere, the structure of oppresion made itself felt throughout the country.
Now, in Mozambique, these attestations of colonialism, the methods of work under the colonialists, have been removed from large areas of the country. These we call liberated zones. The way of production is a popular way, not the colonialist way, which is characterized by exploitation. The attitude which guides everybody’s life is now collective, not indivdualist. Problems are solved collectively and this is something new.
These liberated zones, because of the new type of power, new kind of administration, new way of life, are the targets of the enemy. We do not deny that these zones are subject to attacks, but this happens even in Vietnam and nobody can deny that there are large liberated areas in Vietnam.
And to further clarify the point, “liberated zones” does not mean the complete expulsion of the physical presence of the colonialists. There are still Portuguese there but they are isolated in a few small garrisons. The basic question is: who do the people follow? They follow whose watchword? Is the work they undertake clandestine or open? In our zones the work is open. The watchword comes from the organization. That means freedom from exploitation, from forced labor. That is a liberated zone.
The Portuguese have taken journalists to Mozambique. We also take our friends. Each one sees for himself. We take people from many countries and last year journalists and students visited us from as far apart as Sweden and Kenya. Our visitors have been to Cabo Delegado, Niassa and Tete and have written about what they saw. They have balanced the picture. It was clear to them that FRELIMO controls these areas.
Interviewer: Since the beginning of the revolution in Angola, the Portuguese have introduced “reforms” in all the colonies in an effort to persuade the people not to join the armed struggle. Has this caused any serious problems for you?
Samora Machel: They do this and will continue to do it because it is the only weapon they have. Dividing the people in order to dominate them. What they have introduced is new methods of corruption, not methods of changing the structure of society. It’s not to better the lives of the people, it’s the introduction of corruption.
They can’t change their political line because they can’t stop being colonialists. They can’t stop making the people do forced labor because they depend on forced labor.
What they do is divide the people. They give some economic privileges to a few Mozambicans, those who have had some education and who are considered potentially active political leaders, to induce them to defend the colonial system in order to retain those privileges.
They announce “important changes” like the new “State” of Mozambique to try to create the illusion (mainly among people in other countries) that the Portuguese are taking steps towards the independence of our country.
They also try to discredit the liberation movement by attempting to make the people believe that we are terrorists. For example, they massacre people in a certain place, then bring people from another zone and say: “look, this is what FRELIMO does.”
But to answer your question, these tactics do not cause any problem for us. The people are politically aware and conscious; they have lived under Portuguese colonialism since they were born; they have experienced the oppression, exploitation and humiliation in their own flesh; they can’t be cheated.
A typical example is that of Domingos Arouca, the only black Mozambican lawyer. The Portuguese tried to win him over by offering him a high post in the colonial administration. He understood and refused to be part of the colonial machine. Today he is in jail.
Maneuvers will never succeed.
Interviewer: Recently the West German Government has been making moves which suggest that Chancellor Willy Brandt is trying to stop German weapons going to Portugal for the African wars. Do you think that Mr. Brandt is making an honest effort?
Samora Machel: We can’t see how this can be considered other than as a manoeuvre. The West German Government is linked with the Portuguese so much that it can’t stop its support. The West Germans have advisers, they have officers, they manufacture weapons in Portugal. It is easier to make weapons there than to transport them from West Germany.
A few weeks ago the West German Ambassador in Malawi flew to Mozambique to “visit” Cahora Bassa.
Do you think this adds up to an honest effort?
Interviewer: What kind of political structure is being built in liberated Mozambique? What kind of society can we expect to see when the entire country is free, and would you like to compare it to any other country’s system?
Samora Machel: We are fighting against a specific structure which exists in Mozambique. It is an unpopular structure, where there is a privileged class, there is an embryonic intermediate class and there are those who are really miserable; a structure which ensures that the riches of our country do not serve the people.
The people who are fighting, making sacrifices, dying in the war, destroying the enemy, are doing so to win real freedom. The people will create a structure that benefits them, not one that satisfies the selfish aims of an exploiting minority.
There is no need to draw comparisons with other countries.
Interviewer: How much time do you spend in Mozambique, how much outside in your various diplomatic activities?
Samora Machel: The rule is to spend most of the time inside because our external policy is determined by the situation inside. The leadership must stay inside, following the development of the situation so as to be able to formulate the watchword corresponding to the situation at any given moment. The exterior plays an important part in our struggle and this is why we have to go outside from time to time, to inform our friends in Africa, in the socialist countries, the progressive forces in the West, about the development of the struggle. But it is not a decisive part and we go abroad only when necessary.
It is fundamental to our struggle that the leadership and the people participate together in the work inside and through this we know where to put more emphasis, where to concentrate more efforts at any specific time. This is a rule of organization but it is not because it is a rule that our leadership undertakes it duties inside. They understand that it is necessary to know the temperature inside and that the people are the thermometer.
Interviewer: Are you able to operate politically in the south of your country, where the armed struggle has not begun?
Samora Machel: Yes. We have political cadres over the whole country. That is why there is a growing awareness among the people that enables them to understand the maneuvers of the enemy. For example, during Banda’s trip, there was a movement of discontent that expressed itself in our protests. The colonialists made mass arrests in the whole southern region. The same happened in June, 1970. This is because of our presence everywhere.
In the central committee there are members from all provinces. In all the different sectors of activity there are people from all provinces. This is the political structure.
Fighters come from all provinces, too, and if we do not yet operate militarily in some provinces it is mainly due to geographical problems. But we will cover the whole country. Of this we are certain.
Samora Machel Archive
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./articles/Machel-Samora/https:..www.marxists.org.subject.africa.machel.1973.solidarity | <body>
<p class="title">Speech by Samora Machel 1973</p>
<h1>Solidarity is Mutual Aid between Forces Fighting for the Same Objectives</h1>
<hr class="end"><p class="information"><span class="info">Written</span>: 1973;<br>
<span class="info">First Published</span>: 1974;<br>
<span class="info">Source</span>: <em>Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution</em>, Italy, pp. 7-15;<br>
<span class="info">Transcription</span>: Liz Blasczak.</p>
<p class="information">Speech at the First National Solidarity Conference for the Freedom and Independence of Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau, at Reggio Emilia, Italy, on 25 March 1973.</p><hr class="end">
<p>Comrade Chairman of the Conference, Comrade Leaders and Militants of the Italian Democratic forces, Comrades of the MPLA and the PAIGC, Comrade Delegates and Observers, this demonstration of solidarity is a festival of friendship between people’s, a reaffirmation of the principal that all people who love freedom, justice, progress and peace, and that these are indivisible.</p>
<p>This magnificent celebration is taking place in the region of Emilia Romagna, where at every turn we come across concrete expressions of hatred for fascism and exploitation, examples of the people’s determination to defend their rights. Here the fight for Italian independence and unity reached great heights. One of the main centres of the fight against fascism and Hitlerism was established on this martyred and heroic land. Today Emilia Romagna is one of the Italian regions where people’s democratic power has been established, thereby defending the gains of the Italian resistance.</p>
<p>Correctly interpreting the interests of the people and keeping alive the deep feelings of the Italian resistance, the people of Emilia Romagna have turned their region into a front of Italian solidarity with the struggles of other peoples. Here in Reggio Emilia there is the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital, which is linked to the Zambezia Hospital by a friendship pact. In the Emilia Romagna too, there is the municipality of Bologna, also linked by a pact of friendship to our Education Centre in Tunduru.</p>
<p>It is this and the countless other demonstrations of solidarity, affection and friendship of the Italian people which we should like solemnly to hail today and to thank you for, on behalf of the Mozambican people and FRELIMO.</p>
<p>Apart from the tangible support that it represents, your solidarity is also a political act which helps us to educate our people.</p>
<p>Colonialism and imperialism made our people know the brutal face of aggression, exploitation, and oppression.</p>
<p>The land of the renaissance of European culture, of the freedom epic of Garibaldi, of the tenacious struggle against fascism, the land of the great Italian people, was unknown to us. The image we had of you was only of the FIAT G-91’s which sow death; of the Bologna food industries which exploit our peasants and workers in their cashew-nut shelling plants in Mozambique. Only the liberation war, which broke the isolation to which we were subjected, enabled us to come into contact with the Italian people and to discover their true character.</p>
<p>Your solidarity, in this context, makes our people understand concretely that there are no enemy races or people’s; that the enemy of our people is that of all people’s; colonialism which has no race, imperialism which has no country.</p>
<p>The visits made by your delegations to the Tunduru Educational Centre, to the Dr. Americo Boavida Hospital and to the liberated regions of Mozambique, were political lessons for our people.</p>
<p>Comrade Chairman of the Conference, dear Comrades, our conference is taking place at a time of great progress in our struggle.</p>
<p>In Mozambique we are in our ninth year of armed struggle. Profound qualitative and quantitative changes are taking place in our country.</p>
<p>The armed struggle has spread to the nerve centres of the economic system of colonial domination. It has reached the major centres of vital strategic and economic interests both of the Portuguese colonialism and of imperialism. Furthermore, this advance of our struggle is affecting both enemy interests in Mozambique and their system of domination of the whole of Southern Africa.</p>
<p>Mozambique’s 3,000km of coastline on the Indian ocean, with its excellent harbours such as Louren�o Marques, Beira and Nacala makes our country a natural outlet to the sea for a vast hinterland rich in mining and industry, with prosperous agriculture and flourishing international trade. Mozambique’s geographical position makes our country a centre for the control of shipping around Africa, both between Asia and the Middle East, and between Europe and America.</p>
<p>The cold war mentality which persists in militarist and reactionary circles makes Western powers see our country as an essential factor in the control of the so called Cape route.</p>
<p>As the frontier of the white empire in Southern Africa, Mozambique is regarded as a buffer state by the racist regimes in Pretoria and Salisbury.</p>
<p>A country with the population of over 9 million, which makes it the second most populous country in Southern Africa, Mozambique is the main supplier of labour to the whole of Southern Africa. In the mines of South Africa and Rhodesia, on the plantations and in the industries of the racist empire, nearly one million Mozambicans sold by the Portuguese government are subjected to the new slavery for the benefit of the lords of the mines and the land.</p>
<p>The vast reserves of hydro-electric power and coal, the deposits of oil, gas, uranium, iron, copper, bauxite, gold and diamonds, and the fertility of our soil, have all attracted the interest of the big multinational companies.</p>
<p>It is this combination of economic and strategic interests which, by identifying with Portuguese colonialism, has enabled colonialism to survive to this day. It is against them that our struggle is directed, it is they who are being destroyed by our struggle.</p>
<p>Between late October 1971 and the beginning of November 1972, the FRELIMO armed forces undertook more than 800 operations against the colonial army, in the course of which 107 enemy military bases and camps were totally or partially destroyed, more than 3,000 Portuguese soldiers killed, and 344 military vehicles of all types destroyed. During this same period we shot down or destroyed on the ground 55 aeroplanes and helicopters (including a Rhodesian bomber and helicopter), and we sank 15 boats on the Zambezi River. Dozens of kilometres of railway line were destroyed, as well as 20 trains and 20 bridges.</p>
<p>But more important than combat statistics are the changes brought about in the political field and in national reconstruction.</p>
<p>Cabo Delagado was a province subjected to the exploitation of the cotton companies.</p>
<p>Tens of thousands of African families were forced by the colonial administration to devote their efforts to cotton production only to be paid starvation prices for their crops. The oppression of the companies was so brutal under colonial rule that hundreds of thousands of people preferred to cross the Rovuma river and work on the sisal plantations in what was Tanganyika.</p>
<p>Today the cotton companies have almost disappeared from Cabo Delagado.</p>
<p>The aim of the present activity of our fighters is to wipe out the few surviving enemy bases isolated in our areas, and to assure that the population is better protected against bombing raids. Thus, on 18 September, 1972 we launched a simultaneous offensive against seven enemy military bases, including the strategic land and air base at Mueda, the centre for Portuguese military operations in the middle of the province.</p>
<p>At Mueda 18 planes and helicopters, including two FIAT G-91’s were blown up on the tarmac. In addition, a number of military installations were destroyed or damaged, namely arsenals, living quarters, fuel deposits and runways. The offensive is still going on now and we have already destroyed several bases, the most recent were Quinhantati, Nacatar, Nangade, Ula, and Pundanhar.</p>
<p>The brutal oppression of the colonialists in Niassa the occupation of the most fertile land by settlers, the selling of labor to the mines and plantations in Rhodesia and South Africa, the cotton system and the lack of medical care for the people all served to decimate the population.</p>
<p>Covering an area of more than 120,000 square kilometers with fertile soil and a moderate climate, Niassa had a population of 250,000 people when the war started. Colonialism incited tribal and religious divisions among that scant population. The despotic and feudal rule of the chiefs (<em>regulos</em>) stifled the people’s initiative. Such was Niassa.</p>
<p>Today not only have the cotton companies and the sale of the workers ceased to exist, but the process of establishing new settlers has also been curtailed. The linguistic and religious groups are discovering the Mozambican identity, finding the fraternity which unites the oppressed.</p>
<p>The democratically appointed people’s committees of power have replaced the feudal and despotic rule of the former chiefs.</p>
<p>As in Cabo Delagado, the enemy is isolated, for the roads and railways are blocked. Here too our activity mainly involves the destruction of enemy bases. In the last few months we attacked and totally or partially destroyed Macaloge, Lunho, Massangulo and Valadim, and concentration camps such as Maua, were destroyed and hundreds of people freed.</p>
<p>Tete province supplied workers who were sold to the mines, tobacco plantations and farms of Rhodesia and to the Moatize coal mines. The colonialists used our men as beasts of burden to transport the settler and his goods. Men were taken to the Beira docks and to the settler plantations. The province, which borders on Rhodesia and Malawi, was center for international communication lines.</p>
<p>The deposits of coal, iron, uranium, copper, bauxite and gold attracted the interests and ambitions of the big companies. But it was above all the gigantic Cahora Bassa scheme with profound implications for Southern Africa, which made the big monopolies focus their attention to our country. Cahora Bassa, intended to supply cheap electric energy to South Africa and to Southern Africa, would be the starting point for the setting up of a common market which would subject our entire zone to the tutelage of Pretoria.</p>
<p>In the Zambezi valley, which is to be irrigated by the dam waters, colonialism has plans to establish one million European settlers, who would constitute a kind of human buffer against the advance of the liberation struggle.</p>
<p>But profound changes have taken place in Tete in the past five years. Although the enemy have considerably increased their strength in men and material, and are being further reinforced by the military intervention of Salisbury and Pretoria, the rapid expansion of the armed struggle to the whole province and its advance into Manica e Sofala have destroyed the enemy’s strategic and tactical plans, preventing them from exploiting their material superiority.</p>
<p>The practical effects of colonialist military defeat are the very great extent to which ground communication lines, including international ones, have been paralyzed, gradually bringing to a halt foreign economic activity in the fields of agriculture, trade, transport, and mineral prospecting, increasing the isolation of Cahora Bassa and the coal mining centre at Moatize, and breaking through the blockade of the Zambezi.</p>
<p>Our people are no longer beasts of burden and are no longer sold to foreign countries.</p>
<p>Forced labor has ceased, the brutality and humiliations meted out by the settlers and administrators are gradually being relegated to the past. Here too, Portuguese colonialism no longer exists as a system of administration and economic domination, and so assumes only its other features, those of an aggressor and criminal.</p>
<p>To mark the new stage of this process, while the struggle was raging in Manica e Sofala and 120 kilometers of railway line were destroyed, our forces launched a strategic offensive against the strongest enemy bases.</p>
<p>On 9 November the offensive began against the provincial capital and the Chingozi air base in the vicinity of Tete. Military, administrative and commercial buildings in the city center were badly hit, and at the same time, in Chingozi 17 planes and helicopters (including several Fiats) were blown up on the tarmac, as well as barracks, hangars, etc.</p>
<p>The offensive launched on 9 November is continuing to this day. The Fingoe and Furancungo bases, each with forces greater than battalion strength, have been destroyed. On 1 march, the strategic base at Malewara was completely destroyed, despite frantic help from the Portuguese and Rhodesian air forces.</p>
<p>The expansion of the struggle into Manica e Sofala on 25 July denotes a new phase in our struggle.</p>
<p>There are entrenched imperialist interests in Manica e Sofala regarded as vital in the context of both our country and all of Southern Africa. Big sugar companies like British Sena Sugar are established there. There are textile, cement, and engineering industries linked to foreign monopolies in this province. American, French, West German, and South African companies have been granted vast concessions for oil and gas prospecting, both on-shore and on the continental shelf.</p>
<p>The province dominates the routes linking the north and the south of the country. Several neighboring countries, especially Rhodesia, are supplied from the provincial capital, the port of Beira. The headquarters of the Portuguese military command is in Manica e Sofala. It is from there that enemy troops are deployed elsewhere. This explains the alarm caused in Portuguese, South African, and Rhodesian economic and military circles when the struggle was launched in that province.</p>
<p>The rapid spread of the people’s war of liberation has forced the Portuguese colonialists and their allies to continually review the distribution of their forces. The insoluble contradictions in which the enemy’s strategic and tactical thinking is floundering leading them to defeat after defeat.</p>
<p>The military victories achieved by our forces are creating the conditions for further developing and consolidating the process of establishing the structure of people’s power and making the situation more favourable for national reconstruction. Thus the dividing line between the liberated areas and the enemy zone is becoming irreversible. The masses who are directly experiencing freedom are prepared to defend that freedom against any attempt at enemy reoccupation.</p>
<p>The fact of liberated areas does not mean the total disappearance of the physical presence of the enemy. Enemy bases, though isolated, still remain there. The air force maintains constant activity. Enemy troops launch incursions.</p>
<p>The basic feature of the liberated areas is that the masses follow watchwords, are mobilized and publicly organized by us, and openly follow our line in their daily activities. This is how liberation from exploitation, the elimination of tribalism, and the birth of a nation are brought about, together with the practical establishment of people’s power in political, economic, and social structures.</p>
<p>This is what the liberated areas are, and hence their fundamental importance as centers of far-reaching change, as bases where, in the details of everyday life, the new balances of force in favor of the oppressed masses takes on material form. In short, the liberated zones are centers for the diffusion of our ideology, of the new life we are creating.</p>
<p>In the zones still occupied by the colonialists, increasingly large sectors of the population are joining our ranks. Although, according to their own statements, the colonialists have already interned over a million people in about a thousand concentration camps, called <em>aldeias de proteccao</em> (protective hamlets), they are unable to quell the masses desire for liberation. The concentration camps become new combat centers and the puppet militiamen, politicized through our mobilization, become anti colonialist combat detachments. The waves of arrests and murders unleashed in the rural and urban areas affect all strata in the population: priests, office workers, students, workers, and peasants.</p>
<p>Colonialist terror sharpens the colonialist contradictions with the masses, making the people more committed to the cause of liberation.</p>
<p>The just policies of FRELIMO, its respect for human dignity and freedom, its policy of clemency towards the Portuguese prisoners of war, the clear and correct definition of the enemy and of the objectives of the struggle, are leading towards growing sections of the European population to dissociate with Portuguese colonialism, to denounce and condemn its crimes, and in more and more cases already, to support our struggle. Because of this, the colonialist repressive machinery is now reaching large sectors of the European population. The students union at the university of Louren�o Marques has been dissolved and its leaders arrested and deported. Several bishops have complained about harassment by the political police. Portuguese and foreign priests have been arrested, sentenced and expelled from the country.</p>
<p>The military defeats and the growing political isolation of the colonialists in Mozambique are being accompanied by similar developments in Angola and Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, thus reducing the enemy’s room for maneuver. The recent assassination of our comrade Amilcar Cabral, secretary general of the PAIGC, like the previous assassination in 1969 of president Eduardo Mondlane, had the same purpose of trying to paralyze the struggle by assassinating our leaders. It has been proved that these actions are criminal and futile.</p>
<p>In Portugal a fourth fighting front has been opened against fascism and the colonial war.</p>
<p>For the first time in the history of colonial wars, citizens of the colonial power have launched armed action in their country against the colonial war machine, as part of the strategy in the fight against the regime.</p>
<p>Besides encouraging our people, these actions weaken the enemy, forcing them to fight on more fronts.</p>
<p>The countries bordering on the Portuguese colonies, such as Tanzania, Zambia, Congo, the Republic of Guinea, and others, are standing firm and true to the duty of solidarity, often shedding their blood too, in the fight for the same cause. The historic assembly of African heads of state in Rabat, which renewed and deepened Africa’s commitment to its liberation, together with our liberating action, created a new situation internationally.</p>
<p>Internationally, Portugal’s isolation has become so great that its closest allies feel obliged to condemn it, as shown by the recent security council meeting on the Portuguese colonial question.</p>
<p>The UN has recognized the representativity of FRELIMO, and our representatives have observer status in the fourth commission.</p>
<p>In the Socialist world, our just struggle meets with the greatest moral, political, diplomatic, and material support. In Western countries there is the development of the popular movement of solidarity and support for our cause, and condemnation of the alliance of governments and monopolies with the Portuguese colonialists. Several governments of NATO countries, like Norway, Denmark, and Holland, have publicly shown the desire to dissociate the Atlantic alliance from Portuguese colonial adventures.</p>
<p>In Italy we are happy to see, as proved by this magnificent conference, that the solidarity movement is reaching all social strata and all political forces which prize the freedom and dignity of man.</p>
<p>Prominent religious and political figures from the world of science and the arts are joining the solidarity movement alongside workers and students, white-collar workers and peasants.</p>
<p>The vast popular front of solidarity with our struggle established in Italy, besides being an example, proves above all that the cause of anti colonialist struggle can win over all honest people.</p>
<p>Comrade Chairman of the Conference, dear Comrades, it seems to us that solidarity activities should be seen with this overall perspective. Solidarity activities must be imbued with political context, so as to be able to plan a concrete line of action and methods.</p>
<p>The Mozambican people’s liberation struggle is a struggle against Portuguese colonial fascist domination, against imperialism, a struggle to establish a new social order in our country with a popular and democratic content.</p>
<p>Portuguese colonialism and fascism are aberrations in our era. Colonial war encourages the lowest and most horrible crimes which appall the human conscience. Ever more courageous voices are being raised the world over to denounce and expose the horrors of Portuguese colonialism and its colonial war. The honest voices of priests and bishops in the last two years, are forcing growing sectors of world opinion to become aware of existing realities.</p>
<p>The fight against Portuguese colonialism and fascism is not different in essence from the fight against fascism and Nazism which took place in Europe. The European peoples who lost millions of dead in the holocaust to dreams of the domination of “superior” races, completely understand our struggle against this cancer in our country.</p>
<p>The destruction of the domination of the big imperialist companies in Mozambique and the shrinking of the buffer zones of the racist empires of Rhodesia and South Africa, concern all forces in the world which see the need to fight against imperialist plunder and the policy of aggression.</p>
<p>This is the fight of the Mozambican people and of all peoples. Also to be seen as a common fight is our struggle to establish a new popular social order in our country, which liberates man from the misery of exploitation, introduces justice in society and releases the creative initiative of the masses.</p>
<p>In this context, solidarity is not an act of charity, but mutual aid between forces fighting for the same objective. Liquidating the Portuguese colonial fascist system means destroying one of the main bastions of contemporary fascism, which is stimulating the growth of the fascist forces in Europe, including Italy.</p>
<p>In the present phase it is important that the solidarity movement set itself a certain number of objectives and methods of work.</p>
<p>In the first place the cause of struggle against Portuguese colonialism and fascism, as your experience shows, is a cause which concerns and mobilizes all honest people, regardless of their social origins and party-political or religious affiliations. In this context, we believe that a united solidarity movement must be developed, so as to reach the numerous sectors which are not yet involved.</p>
<p>Popularizing the solidarity movement means organizing and mobilizing the various sectors in factories, schools, universities, offices, hospitals, and churches. It means publicizing the horrors of colonialism and the nature and successes of our struggle. In this respect, it seems to us that it would also be useful for the conference to study ways of making the circulation of information between our liberation movements and the Italian people more rapid and efficient.</p>
<p>Mobilizing and organizing also means defining the tasks of the solidarity movement, mapping out lines of action. There are two main types of tasks today: political tasks and material support.</p>
<p>Politically our main concern is to isolate Portuguese colonialism from its sources of moral, political, diplomatic, economic and military support; and at the same time to make the international community recognize the political realities of our country, that the Mozambican people are regaining their sovereignty and exercising it through FRELIMO, which leads and represents them.</p>
<p>This twofold concern gives rise to different lines of action. Political parties, trade unions and other mass organizations are called upon for action involving vigilance, denunciation and pressure. Vigilance in detecting the activities of government and financial consortiums on behalf of Portuguese colonialism; denunciation of such activities; and pressure to put an end to them and make governmental institutions recognize Mozambican political realities.</p>
<p>Obviously this type of action must be developed at all levels: in the press, in parliament, in petitions and popular demonstrations.</p>
<p>At the last session of the United Nations, FRELIMO’s representativity was recognized in the Fourth Commission and we were granted observer status. Nevertheless, the opposition from western countries, including Italy, prevented the UN general assembly from drawing all the conclusions contained in the Fourth Commission’s decision.</p>
<p>The UN general assembly must recognize that in Mozambique FRELIMO is the only power which legitimately represents Mozambique. Portugal’s status is that of an aggressor which must unconditionally put an end to its aggression, and evacuate its forces of repression.</p>
<p>Recognition of the situation in Mozambique also implies material support to consolidate and promote national reconstruction.</p>
<p>This action can take place at various levels. In African countries, Socialist countries, and various Asian and Scandinavian countries, governments (either directly or through governmental agencies) make an important material contribution to national reconstruction. Italy should also be involved in such action, as happens in Emilia Romagna, where regional and local institutions of people’s power give material support to our medical care and agricultural development programs. This type of action, if it is widespread, can contribute immensely to the success of our work.</p>
<p>Mass organizations and political, trade union, cultural, and religious bodies can also contribute material support.</p>
<p>Fields in which material solidarity can be shown are as wide ranging as are our needs: health, education, child care centers, production. All sectors of work are in need of assistance.</p>
<p>Comrade Chairman of the Conference, Comrade Delegates, the tenacious struggle of brother people for freedom, independence, justice and peace is also solidarity with us. We warmly and affectionately hail the victories of our comrades in arms in the MPLA and PAIGC who are fighting Portuguese colonialism with us. Their victories are our victories and, like ours, they are made of sacrifices and bloodshed. All of us here today feel the absence of our brother and comrade Amilcar Cabral, Secretary General of the PAIGC, assassinated by agents of Portuguese colonialism and imperialism. His friendly presence, his talent, his cultured mind, his dedication as a militant and fighter and his vision as a leader are no longer with us. But the struggle continues, just as FRELIMO continued after the assassination of Eduardo Mondlane, its first president.</p>
<p>Amilcar’s great merit was that he was able to embody national unity and make it operative, using it as a weapon to destroy colonialism; he was able to establish a policy and structures making it possible for the struggle to survive the individual and draw new strength from his sacrifice.</p>
<p>We reaffirm our solidarity with the struggle of the peoples of South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia who, with us, are confronting imperialism in the trenches of Southern Africa.</p>
<p>We hail the victories of the African people in the struggle to consolidate the independence and unity of our continent. Their victories are ours, and they are creating the conditions for the development of our struggle. We also hail with respect, friendship and solidarity the peoples, parties and leaders of Tanzania, Zambia, the Congo, Guinea, and other sister countries which, under the difficult conditions of bordering on the war zones of Portuguese colonialism, are continuing to support our cause.</p>
<p>We welcome the successes of the Portuguese people in their struggle against the colonial war and fascism. The armed action of Portuguese patriots against the colonial fascist war machine encourage us and strengthen the friendship and solidarity between our peoples.</p>
<p>We support the just cause of the Arab and Palestinian peoples against Zionist aggression, for the recovery of occupied territories and for the national rights of the Palestinian people. We all join the progressive forces in the world in welcoming and rejoicing at the victory achieved by the comrades in Vietnam and Laos.</p>
<p>Our comrades, like the people of Cambodia, are proving that imperialism can’t survive in the face of people’s struggle, even when it is defended by the mightiest and most criminal power of all, the United States. We congratulate the Socialist countries for the victories they have achieved in building a new society, and for their high sense of international duty.</p>
<p>We hail the struggles of the peoples and workers of the world, and especially of Italy, for their defense of national independence against imperialism, for their fight for democratic freedom and the workers interests. That fight strengthens ours. Your solidarity represents a high peak of human fraternity, the affirmation that no people stand alone, that their suffering and struggle are shared by all peoples.</p>
<p>We shall take back with us and convey to our people the warmth, affection, friendship, fraternity and solidarity we are experiencing here, amid the Italian people. We shall tell them that far away in Europe, a people who have also shed their blood for freedom are today making sacrifices in our support. We shall explain your struggle, your difficulties, your spirit of solidarity, so that our people learn from your example and increase their steadfastness and solidarity in their revolutionary struggle. We should also like to assure you that the Mozambican people will always respect the sacrifices made for them and solidarity shown for them. We will carry on our struggle until final victory, thereby performing our national and international duty.</p>
<p>Long live the National Solidarity Conference for the Freedom and Independence of Mozambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau.</p>
<p>Long live friendship and solidarity between the peoples of Mozambique and Italy.</p>
<p>Down with Portuguese colonialism and imperialism.</p>
<p>Long live the united struggle of the peoples of the entire world for freedom, justice, progress and peace.</p>
<p>United we shall win.</p>
<p>The struggle continues. Independence or death. We shall win.</p>
<p class="skip"> </p>
<hr class="end">
<p class="footer">
<a href="../index.htm"> Samora Machel Archive</a>
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Speech by Samora Machel 1973
Solidarity is Mutual Aid between Forces Fighting for the Same Objectives
Written: 1973;
First Published: 1974;
Source: Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution, Italy, pp. 7-15;
Transcription: Liz Blasczak.
Speech at the First National Solidarity Conference for the Freedom and Independence of Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau, at Reggio Emilia, Italy, on 25 March 1973.
Comrade Chairman of the Conference, Comrade Leaders and Militants of the Italian Democratic forces, Comrades of the MPLA and the PAIGC, Comrade Delegates and Observers, this demonstration of solidarity is a festival of friendship between people’s, a reaffirmation of the principal that all people who love freedom, justice, progress and peace, and that these are indivisible.
This magnificent celebration is taking place in the region of Emilia Romagna, where at every turn we come across concrete expressions of hatred for fascism and exploitation, examples of the people’s determination to defend their rights. Here the fight for Italian independence and unity reached great heights. One of the main centres of the fight against fascism and Hitlerism was established on this martyred and heroic land. Today Emilia Romagna is one of the Italian regions where people’s democratic power has been established, thereby defending the gains of the Italian resistance.
Correctly interpreting the interests of the people and keeping alive the deep feelings of the Italian resistance, the people of Emilia Romagna have turned their region into a front of Italian solidarity with the struggles of other peoples. Here in Reggio Emilia there is the Santa Maria Nuova Hospital, which is linked to the Zambezia Hospital by a friendship pact. In the Emilia Romagna too, there is the municipality of Bologna, also linked by a pact of friendship to our Education Centre in Tunduru.
It is this and the countless other demonstrations of solidarity, affection and friendship of the Italian people which we should like solemnly to hail today and to thank you for, on behalf of the Mozambican people and FRELIMO.
Apart from the tangible support that it represents, your solidarity is also a political act which helps us to educate our people.
Colonialism and imperialism made our people know the brutal face of aggression, exploitation, and oppression.
The land of the renaissance of European culture, of the freedom epic of Garibaldi, of the tenacious struggle against fascism, the land of the great Italian people, was unknown to us. The image we had of you was only of the FIAT G-91’s which sow death; of the Bologna food industries which exploit our peasants and workers in their cashew-nut shelling plants in Mozambique. Only the liberation war, which broke the isolation to which we were subjected, enabled us to come into contact with the Italian people and to discover their true character.
Your solidarity, in this context, makes our people understand concretely that there are no enemy races or people’s; that the enemy of our people is that of all people’s; colonialism which has no race, imperialism which has no country.
The visits made by your delegations to the Tunduru Educational Centre, to the Dr. Americo Boavida Hospital and to the liberated regions of Mozambique, were political lessons for our people.
Comrade Chairman of the Conference, dear Comrades, our conference is taking place at a time of great progress in our struggle.
In Mozambique we are in our ninth year of armed struggle. Profound qualitative and quantitative changes are taking place in our country.
The armed struggle has spread to the nerve centres of the economic system of colonial domination. It has reached the major centres of vital strategic and economic interests both of the Portuguese colonialism and of imperialism. Furthermore, this advance of our struggle is affecting both enemy interests in Mozambique and their system of domination of the whole of Southern Africa.
Mozambique’s 3,000km of coastline on the Indian ocean, with its excellent harbours such as Louren�o Marques, Beira and Nacala makes our country a natural outlet to the sea for a vast hinterland rich in mining and industry, with prosperous agriculture and flourishing international trade. Mozambique’s geographical position makes our country a centre for the control of shipping around Africa, both between Asia and the Middle East, and between Europe and America.
The cold war mentality which persists in militarist and reactionary circles makes Western powers see our country as an essential factor in the control of the so called Cape route.
As the frontier of the white empire in Southern Africa, Mozambique is regarded as a buffer state by the racist regimes in Pretoria and Salisbury.
A country with the population of over 9 million, which makes it the second most populous country in Southern Africa, Mozambique is the main supplier of labour to the whole of Southern Africa. In the mines of South Africa and Rhodesia, on the plantations and in the industries of the racist empire, nearly one million Mozambicans sold by the Portuguese government are subjected to the new slavery for the benefit of the lords of the mines and the land.
The vast reserves of hydro-electric power and coal, the deposits of oil, gas, uranium, iron, copper, bauxite, gold and diamonds, and the fertility of our soil, have all attracted the interest of the big multinational companies.
It is this combination of economic and strategic interests which, by identifying with Portuguese colonialism, has enabled colonialism to survive to this day. It is against them that our struggle is directed, it is they who are being destroyed by our struggle.
Between late October 1971 and the beginning of November 1972, the FRELIMO armed forces undertook more than 800 operations against the colonial army, in the course of which 107 enemy military bases and camps were totally or partially destroyed, more than 3,000 Portuguese soldiers killed, and 344 military vehicles of all types destroyed. During this same period we shot down or destroyed on the ground 55 aeroplanes and helicopters (including a Rhodesian bomber and helicopter), and we sank 15 boats on the Zambezi River. Dozens of kilometres of railway line were destroyed, as well as 20 trains and 20 bridges.
But more important than combat statistics are the changes brought about in the political field and in national reconstruction.
Cabo Delagado was a province subjected to the exploitation of the cotton companies.
Tens of thousands of African families were forced by the colonial administration to devote their efforts to cotton production only to be paid starvation prices for their crops. The oppression of the companies was so brutal under colonial rule that hundreds of thousands of people preferred to cross the Rovuma river and work on the sisal plantations in what was Tanganyika.
Today the cotton companies have almost disappeared from Cabo Delagado.
The aim of the present activity of our fighters is to wipe out the few surviving enemy bases isolated in our areas, and to assure that the population is better protected against bombing raids. Thus, on 18 September, 1972 we launched a simultaneous offensive against seven enemy military bases, including the strategic land and air base at Mueda, the centre for Portuguese military operations in the middle of the province.
At Mueda 18 planes and helicopters, including two FIAT G-91’s were blown up on the tarmac. In addition, a number of military installations were destroyed or damaged, namely arsenals, living quarters, fuel deposits and runways. The offensive is still going on now and we have already destroyed several bases, the most recent were Quinhantati, Nacatar, Nangade, Ula, and Pundanhar.
The brutal oppression of the colonialists in Niassa the occupation of the most fertile land by settlers, the selling of labor to the mines and plantations in Rhodesia and South Africa, the cotton system and the lack of medical care for the people all served to decimate the population.
Covering an area of more than 120,000 square kilometers with fertile soil and a moderate climate, Niassa had a population of 250,000 people when the war started. Colonialism incited tribal and religious divisions among that scant population. The despotic and feudal rule of the chiefs (regulos) stifled the people’s initiative. Such was Niassa.
Today not only have the cotton companies and the sale of the workers ceased to exist, but the process of establishing new settlers has also been curtailed. The linguistic and religious groups are discovering the Mozambican identity, finding the fraternity which unites the oppressed.
The democratically appointed people’s committees of power have replaced the feudal and despotic rule of the former chiefs.
As in Cabo Delagado, the enemy is isolated, for the roads and railways are blocked. Here too our activity mainly involves the destruction of enemy bases. In the last few months we attacked and totally or partially destroyed Macaloge, Lunho, Massangulo and Valadim, and concentration camps such as Maua, were destroyed and hundreds of people freed.
Tete province supplied workers who were sold to the mines, tobacco plantations and farms of Rhodesia and to the Moatize coal mines. The colonialists used our men as beasts of burden to transport the settler and his goods. Men were taken to the Beira docks and to the settler plantations. The province, which borders on Rhodesia and Malawi, was center for international communication lines.
The deposits of coal, iron, uranium, copper, bauxite and gold attracted the interests and ambitions of the big companies. But it was above all the gigantic Cahora Bassa scheme with profound implications for Southern Africa, which made the big monopolies focus their attention to our country. Cahora Bassa, intended to supply cheap electric energy to South Africa and to Southern Africa, would be the starting point for the setting up of a common market which would subject our entire zone to the tutelage of Pretoria.
In the Zambezi valley, which is to be irrigated by the dam waters, colonialism has plans to establish one million European settlers, who would constitute a kind of human buffer against the advance of the liberation struggle.
But profound changes have taken place in Tete in the past five years. Although the enemy have considerably increased their strength in men and material, and are being further reinforced by the military intervention of Salisbury and Pretoria, the rapid expansion of the armed struggle to the whole province and its advance into Manica e Sofala have destroyed the enemy’s strategic and tactical plans, preventing them from exploiting their material superiority.
The practical effects of colonialist military defeat are the very great extent to which ground communication lines, including international ones, have been paralyzed, gradually bringing to a halt foreign economic activity in the fields of agriculture, trade, transport, and mineral prospecting, increasing the isolation of Cahora Bassa and the coal mining centre at Moatize, and breaking through the blockade of the Zambezi.
Our people are no longer beasts of burden and are no longer sold to foreign countries.
Forced labor has ceased, the brutality and humiliations meted out by the settlers and administrators are gradually being relegated to the past. Here too, Portuguese colonialism no longer exists as a system of administration and economic domination, and so assumes only its other features, those of an aggressor and criminal.
To mark the new stage of this process, while the struggle was raging in Manica e Sofala and 120 kilometers of railway line were destroyed, our forces launched a strategic offensive against the strongest enemy bases.
On 9 November the offensive began against the provincial capital and the Chingozi air base in the vicinity of Tete. Military, administrative and commercial buildings in the city center were badly hit, and at the same time, in Chingozi 17 planes and helicopters (including several Fiats) were blown up on the tarmac, as well as barracks, hangars, etc.
The offensive launched on 9 November is continuing to this day. The Fingoe and Furancungo bases, each with forces greater than battalion strength, have been destroyed. On 1 march, the strategic base at Malewara was completely destroyed, despite frantic help from the Portuguese and Rhodesian air forces.
The expansion of the struggle into Manica e Sofala on 25 July denotes a new phase in our struggle.
There are entrenched imperialist interests in Manica e Sofala regarded as vital in the context of both our country and all of Southern Africa. Big sugar companies like British Sena Sugar are established there. There are textile, cement, and engineering industries linked to foreign monopolies in this province. American, French, West German, and South African companies have been granted vast concessions for oil and gas prospecting, both on-shore and on the continental shelf.
The province dominates the routes linking the north and the south of the country. Several neighboring countries, especially Rhodesia, are supplied from the provincial capital, the port of Beira. The headquarters of the Portuguese military command is in Manica e Sofala. It is from there that enemy troops are deployed elsewhere. This explains the alarm caused in Portuguese, South African, and Rhodesian economic and military circles when the struggle was launched in that province.
The rapid spread of the people’s war of liberation has forced the Portuguese colonialists and their allies to continually review the distribution of their forces. The insoluble contradictions in which the enemy’s strategic and tactical thinking is floundering leading them to defeat after defeat.
The military victories achieved by our forces are creating the conditions for further developing and consolidating the process of establishing the structure of people’s power and making the situation more favourable for national reconstruction. Thus the dividing line between the liberated areas and the enemy zone is becoming irreversible. The masses who are directly experiencing freedom are prepared to defend that freedom against any attempt at enemy reoccupation.
The fact of liberated areas does not mean the total disappearance of the physical presence of the enemy. Enemy bases, though isolated, still remain there. The air force maintains constant activity. Enemy troops launch incursions.
The basic feature of the liberated areas is that the masses follow watchwords, are mobilized and publicly organized by us, and openly follow our line in their daily activities. This is how liberation from exploitation, the elimination of tribalism, and the birth of a nation are brought about, together with the practical establishment of people’s power in political, economic, and social structures.
This is what the liberated areas are, and hence their fundamental importance as centers of far-reaching change, as bases where, in the details of everyday life, the new balances of force in favor of the oppressed masses takes on material form. In short, the liberated zones are centers for the diffusion of our ideology, of the new life we are creating.
In the zones still occupied by the colonialists, increasingly large sectors of the population are joining our ranks. Although, according to their own statements, the colonialists have already interned over a million people in about a thousand concentration camps, called aldeias de proteccao (protective hamlets), they are unable to quell the masses desire for liberation. The concentration camps become new combat centers and the puppet militiamen, politicized through our mobilization, become anti colonialist combat detachments. The waves of arrests and murders unleashed in the rural and urban areas affect all strata in the population: priests, office workers, students, workers, and peasants.
Colonialist terror sharpens the colonialist contradictions with the masses, making the people more committed to the cause of liberation.
The just policies of FRELIMO, its respect for human dignity and freedom, its policy of clemency towards the Portuguese prisoners of war, the clear and correct definition of the enemy and of the objectives of the struggle, are leading towards growing sections of the European population to dissociate with Portuguese colonialism, to denounce and condemn its crimes, and in more and more cases already, to support our struggle. Because of this, the colonialist repressive machinery is now reaching large sectors of the European population. The students union at the university of Louren�o Marques has been dissolved and its leaders arrested and deported. Several bishops have complained about harassment by the political police. Portuguese and foreign priests have been arrested, sentenced and expelled from the country.
The military defeats and the growing political isolation of the colonialists in Mozambique are being accompanied by similar developments in Angola and Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, thus reducing the enemy’s room for maneuver. The recent assassination of our comrade Amilcar Cabral, secretary general of the PAIGC, like the previous assassination in 1969 of president Eduardo Mondlane, had the same purpose of trying to paralyze the struggle by assassinating our leaders. It has been proved that these actions are criminal and futile.
In Portugal a fourth fighting front has been opened against fascism and the colonial war.
For the first time in the history of colonial wars, citizens of the colonial power have launched armed action in their country against the colonial war machine, as part of the strategy in the fight against the regime.
Besides encouraging our people, these actions weaken the enemy, forcing them to fight on more fronts.
The countries bordering on the Portuguese colonies, such as Tanzania, Zambia, Congo, the Republic of Guinea, and others, are standing firm and true to the duty of solidarity, often shedding their blood too, in the fight for the same cause. The historic assembly of African heads of state in Rabat, which renewed and deepened Africa’s commitment to its liberation, together with our liberating action, created a new situation internationally.
Internationally, Portugal’s isolation has become so great that its closest allies feel obliged to condemn it, as shown by the recent security council meeting on the Portuguese colonial question.
The UN has recognized the representativity of FRELIMO, and our representatives have observer status in the fourth commission.
In the Socialist world, our just struggle meets with the greatest moral, political, diplomatic, and material support. In Western countries there is the development of the popular movement of solidarity and support for our cause, and condemnation of the alliance of governments and monopolies with the Portuguese colonialists. Several governments of NATO countries, like Norway, Denmark, and Holland, have publicly shown the desire to dissociate the Atlantic alliance from Portuguese colonial adventures.
In Italy we are happy to see, as proved by this magnificent conference, that the solidarity movement is reaching all social strata and all political forces which prize the freedom and dignity of man.
Prominent religious and political figures from the world of science and the arts are joining the solidarity movement alongside workers and students, white-collar workers and peasants.
The vast popular front of solidarity with our struggle established in Italy, besides being an example, proves above all that the cause of anti colonialist struggle can win over all honest people.
Comrade Chairman of the Conference, dear Comrades, it seems to us that solidarity activities should be seen with this overall perspective. Solidarity activities must be imbued with political context, so as to be able to plan a concrete line of action and methods.
The Mozambican people’s liberation struggle is a struggle against Portuguese colonial fascist domination, against imperialism, a struggle to establish a new social order in our country with a popular and democratic content.
Portuguese colonialism and fascism are aberrations in our era. Colonial war encourages the lowest and most horrible crimes which appall the human conscience. Ever more courageous voices are being raised the world over to denounce and expose the horrors of Portuguese colonialism and its colonial war. The honest voices of priests and bishops in the last two years, are forcing growing sectors of world opinion to become aware of existing realities.
The fight against Portuguese colonialism and fascism is not different in essence from the fight against fascism and Nazism which took place in Europe. The European peoples who lost millions of dead in the holocaust to dreams of the domination of “superior” races, completely understand our struggle against this cancer in our country.
The destruction of the domination of the big imperialist companies in Mozambique and the shrinking of the buffer zones of the racist empires of Rhodesia and South Africa, concern all forces in the world which see the need to fight against imperialist plunder and the policy of aggression.
This is the fight of the Mozambican people and of all peoples. Also to be seen as a common fight is our struggle to establish a new popular social order in our country, which liberates man from the misery of exploitation, introduces justice in society and releases the creative initiative of the masses.
In this context, solidarity is not an act of charity, but mutual aid between forces fighting for the same objective. Liquidating the Portuguese colonial fascist system means destroying one of the main bastions of contemporary fascism, which is stimulating the growth of the fascist forces in Europe, including Italy.
In the present phase it is important that the solidarity movement set itself a certain number of objectives and methods of work.
In the first place the cause of struggle against Portuguese colonialism and fascism, as your experience shows, is a cause which concerns and mobilizes all honest people, regardless of their social origins and party-political or religious affiliations. In this context, we believe that a united solidarity movement must be developed, so as to reach the numerous sectors which are not yet involved.
Popularizing the solidarity movement means organizing and mobilizing the various sectors in factories, schools, universities, offices, hospitals, and churches. It means publicizing the horrors of colonialism and the nature and successes of our struggle. In this respect, it seems to us that it would also be useful for the conference to study ways of making the circulation of information between our liberation movements and the Italian people more rapid and efficient.
Mobilizing and organizing also means defining the tasks of the solidarity movement, mapping out lines of action. There are two main types of tasks today: political tasks and material support.
Politically our main concern is to isolate Portuguese colonialism from its sources of moral, political, diplomatic, economic and military support; and at the same time to make the international community recognize the political realities of our country, that the Mozambican people are regaining their sovereignty and exercising it through FRELIMO, which leads and represents them.
This twofold concern gives rise to different lines of action. Political parties, trade unions and other mass organizations are called upon for action involving vigilance, denunciation and pressure. Vigilance in detecting the activities of government and financial consortiums on behalf of Portuguese colonialism; denunciation of such activities; and pressure to put an end to them and make governmental institutions recognize Mozambican political realities.
Obviously this type of action must be developed at all levels: in the press, in parliament, in petitions and popular demonstrations.
At the last session of the United Nations, FRELIMO’s representativity was recognized in the Fourth Commission and we were granted observer status. Nevertheless, the opposition from western countries, including Italy, prevented the UN general assembly from drawing all the conclusions contained in the Fourth Commission’s decision.
The UN general assembly must recognize that in Mozambique FRELIMO is the only power which legitimately represents Mozambique. Portugal’s status is that of an aggressor which must unconditionally put an end to its aggression, and evacuate its forces of repression.
Recognition of the situation in Mozambique also implies material support to consolidate and promote national reconstruction.
This action can take place at various levels. In African countries, Socialist countries, and various Asian and Scandinavian countries, governments (either directly or through governmental agencies) make an important material contribution to national reconstruction. Italy should also be involved in such action, as happens in Emilia Romagna, where regional and local institutions of people’s power give material support to our medical care and agricultural development programs. This type of action, if it is widespread, can contribute immensely to the success of our work.
Mass organizations and political, trade union, cultural, and religious bodies can also contribute material support.
Fields in which material solidarity can be shown are as wide ranging as are our needs: health, education, child care centers, production. All sectors of work are in need of assistance.
Comrade Chairman of the Conference, Comrade Delegates, the tenacious struggle of brother people for freedom, independence, justice and peace is also solidarity with us. We warmly and affectionately hail the victories of our comrades in arms in the MPLA and PAIGC who are fighting Portuguese colonialism with us. Their victories are our victories and, like ours, they are made of sacrifices and bloodshed. All of us here today feel the absence of our brother and comrade Amilcar Cabral, Secretary General of the PAIGC, assassinated by agents of Portuguese colonialism and imperialism. His friendly presence, his talent, his cultured mind, his dedication as a militant and fighter and his vision as a leader are no longer with us. But the struggle continues, just as FRELIMO continued after the assassination of Eduardo Mondlane, its first president.
Amilcar’s great merit was that he was able to embody national unity and make it operative, using it as a weapon to destroy colonialism; he was able to establish a policy and structures making it possible for the struggle to survive the individual and draw new strength from his sacrifice.
We reaffirm our solidarity with the struggle of the peoples of South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia who, with us, are confronting imperialism in the trenches of Southern Africa.
We hail the victories of the African people in the struggle to consolidate the independence and unity of our continent. Their victories are ours, and they are creating the conditions for the development of our struggle. We also hail with respect, friendship and solidarity the peoples, parties and leaders of Tanzania, Zambia, the Congo, Guinea, and other sister countries which, under the difficult conditions of bordering on the war zones of Portuguese colonialism, are continuing to support our cause.
We welcome the successes of the Portuguese people in their struggle against the colonial war and fascism. The armed action of Portuguese patriots against the colonial fascist war machine encourage us and strengthen the friendship and solidarity between our peoples.
We support the just cause of the Arab and Palestinian peoples against Zionist aggression, for the recovery of occupied territories and for the national rights of the Palestinian people. We all join the progressive forces in the world in welcoming and rejoicing at the victory achieved by the comrades in Vietnam and Laos.
Our comrades, like the people of Cambodia, are proving that imperialism can’t survive in the face of people’s struggle, even when it is defended by the mightiest and most criminal power of all, the United States. We congratulate the Socialist countries for the victories they have achieved in building a new society, and for their high sense of international duty.
We hail the struggles of the peoples and workers of the world, and especially of Italy, for their defense of national independence against imperialism, for their fight for democratic freedom and the workers interests. That fight strengthens ours. Your solidarity represents a high peak of human fraternity, the affirmation that no people stand alone, that their suffering and struggle are shared by all peoples.
We shall take back with us and convey to our people the warmth, affection, friendship, fraternity and solidarity we are experiencing here, amid the Italian people. We shall tell them that far away in Europe, a people who have also shed their blood for freedom are today making sacrifices in our support. We shall explain your struggle, your difficulties, your spirit of solidarity, so that our people learn from your example and increase their steadfastness and solidarity in their revolutionary struggle. We should also like to assure you that the Mozambican people will always respect the sacrifices made for them and solidarity shown for them. We will carry on our struggle until final victory, thereby performing our national and international duty.
Long live the National Solidarity Conference for the Freedom and Independence of Mozambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau.
Long live friendship and solidarity between the peoples of Mozambique and Italy.
Down with Portuguese colonialism and imperialism.
Long live the united struggle of the peoples of the entire world for freedom, justice, progress and peace.
United we shall win.
The struggle continues. Independence or death. We shall win.
Samora Machel Archive
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<h1>FRELIMO and Samora Machel</h1>
<hr class="end"><p class="information"><span class="info">Written</span>: 1974;<br>
<span class="info">First Published</span>: 1974;<br>
<span class="info">Source</span>: Introduction to <em>Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution</em>, by John Saul, Toronto, pp. 3-5;<br>
<span class="info">Transcription</span>: Liz Blasczak.<br>
The biographical material in this introduction is drawn from an interview with Samora Machel carried out within FRELIMO in 1974.</p><hr class="end">
<p class="information">In Mozambique, the drive to attain national independence has given birth to a revolution. Elsewhere, in much of now-independent Africa, the colonialisms of Britain and France began quite early to hedge their bets, moving to co-opt and tame nationalist leaderships and lay the groundwork for neo-colonialism. But Portuguese colonialism could permit no such smooth transition to political independence. As a result, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) was forced to launch an armed struggle in 1964. And once such a struggle had begun, it set in train a whole series of developments which slowly but surely transformed the very nature of Mozambican nationalism.</p>
<p class="information">Most important, the need arose to involve the people <i>the essential base for successful guerrilla warfare</i> in the struggle in a new and more vital manner than had been the case with earlier expressions of nationalism on the continent. This, in turn, demanded that the movement exemplify, in the nationalist phase itself, the promise of a new kind of life – one in which the leadership was seen to avoid the easy paths of elitism and pursuit of entrepreneurial advantage, and one in which the people saw themselves to be gaining fresh and meaningful control over their own lives, through popularly-based institutions in the liberated areas. Such a struggle also dictated a deepening of ideological awareness at all levels: an understanding of imperialism, an eschewing of exploitation, a critique of racism and a redefinition of nationalism. Eduardo Mondlane, first President of FRELIMO, was only half joking when he said, shortly before his assassination by the Portuguese in 1969, that it would almost be a pity if Mozambicans were to win their war too soon, because “we are learning so much"!</p>
<p class="information">Within FRELIMO the triumph of this revolutionary emphasis was not achieved easily or automatically. Basil Davidson has remarked that “there is a general rule by which all movements of resistance produce and deepen conflicts within themselves as the reformists draw back from the revolutionaries, and, in drawing back, fall victim to the game of the enemy regime.” The conflicts over the direction of FRELIMO’s development which racked the movement in 1968-9 can be understood precisely in these terms. The crucial role of Samora Machel, who then emerged as President of FRELIMO, also can be understood only within the context of these events. For Samora Machel represented, in his person, all those within the organization who were prepared to learn the broader lessons of the liberation struggle, and to move to a new level of consciousness and of commitment to the cause of the Mozambican people. Even more important, he has been able to codify these lessons and present them to his colleagues as components of their political education and as guidelines for their future work. Herein lies one of his greatest contributions to FRELIMO, and also the strength of his contribution to revolutionary theory. The speeches collected here provide some of the best evidence of this kind of contribution.</p>
<p class="information">Samora Machel, born in Gaza province in southern Mozambique in 1933, learnt the lessons of colonial oppression early. His own grandfather had been wounded in earlier resistance to the Portuguese occupation. The day-to-day realities of economic exploitation were felt in the fertile Gaza region, where the Portuguese administration made the time-consuming cultivation of cotton compulsory for African families, and bought the crop at fixed, minimal prices. Moreover, for generations men have been forced to go to work in the South African gold mines. While some come home <i>often maimed or blind or tubercular</i> others, like Machel’s eldest brother, do not return at all. In Gaza, too, a dramatic example of colonial oppression occurred in 1950 when land in the Limpopo valley was seized to make way for a fresh wave of settlers and the Africans removed to infertile areas, their villages destroyed, without compensation.</p>
<p class="information">Samora Machel began his education at a mission school but, like so many others, found the path to further studies effectively blocked. Only when he started work was he able to proceed with his secondary education, paying the fees out of his wages. But in employment, too, Africans suffer differential treatment <i>racial discrimination</i> in pay, in promotion, as also in social life.</p>
<p class="information">In the late 1950s, as other African countries moved towards independence, the possibility of renewed resistance became apparent. In 1962 Machel left Mozambique, with others, to join FRELIMO in Tanzania. Convinced, correctly, that the Portuguese would not yield, would not open a real dialogue with the Mozambican people, without a fight, he immediately opted for military training, and was in the army when fighting began in 1964. He had risen to become the commander of this people’s army when he became President of FRELIMO five years later.</p>
<p class="information">By this time, the struggle for independence had developed into a revolutionary one; it has become, as Machel says in the interview reprinted here, “an integral part of the people’s lives ... What we discuss with the people now is how to make our struggle a real revolution.” The speeches collected here therefore present the theory and practice of consolidating a people’s struggle under Mozambican conditions. They deal with such themes as the methods of political work most likely to advance the revolutionary process, the dynamics of co-operative agricultural production, the emancipation of women, the nature of genuinely innovative educational and health facilities, and the imperatives of international solidarity.</p>
<p class="information">Readers will discover such themes for themselves in the following pages; there is no need to rehearse them further here. However, two points are worth emphasis. One is that no distinction is made between the task of destroying colonialism and the task of building a new Mozambique: they are two sides of the same coin. Thus, in Machel’s formulations and in FRELIMO’s practice, the collective spirit which sustains successful military activity becomes the essence of the new social and economic institutions. And the active involvement of the people which has premised military success becomes the guarantee of future progress without false decolonization or any subsequent trend towards authoritarianism.</p>
<p class="information">Second, there is the balance struck between theory and practice in Machel’s speeches – between the specificity of day-to-day revolutionary activity on the one hand and the broader principles and strategies which give shape to such activity on the other. Some successful revolutionaries have come to revolution with theoretical preoccupations and have gradually tempered and refined these in the heat of action. In Machel’s case the development has been somewhat different: practice is now being theorized and thus forged into an ever more effective instrument of progress.</p>
<p class="information">Yet one should not make too much of this distinction; in both cases a learning process is involved. The result, when a revolution is being successfully sustained, is an exciting blend of theory and practice. This is precisely what one finds in today’s Mozambique and this excitement is fully captured in these pages.</p>
<p class="indentb">Toronto, April, 1974<br>
John Saul</p>
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FRELIMO and Samora Machel
Written: 1974;
First Published: 1974;
Source: Introduction to Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution, by John Saul, Toronto, pp. 3-5;
Transcription: Liz Blasczak.
The biographical material in this introduction is drawn from an interview with Samora Machel carried out within FRELIMO in 1974.
In Mozambique, the drive to attain national independence has given birth to a revolution. Elsewhere, in much of now-independent Africa, the colonialisms of Britain and France began quite early to hedge their bets, moving to co-opt and tame nationalist leaderships and lay the groundwork for neo-colonialism. But Portuguese colonialism could permit no such smooth transition to political independence. As a result, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) was forced to launch an armed struggle in 1964. And once such a struggle had begun, it set in train a whole series of developments which slowly but surely transformed the very nature of Mozambican nationalism.
Most important, the need arose to involve the people the essential base for successful guerrilla warfare in the struggle in a new and more vital manner than had been the case with earlier expressions of nationalism on the continent. This, in turn, demanded that the movement exemplify, in the nationalist phase itself, the promise of a new kind of life – one in which the leadership was seen to avoid the easy paths of elitism and pursuit of entrepreneurial advantage, and one in which the people saw themselves to be gaining fresh and meaningful control over their own lives, through popularly-based institutions in the liberated areas. Such a struggle also dictated a deepening of ideological awareness at all levels: an understanding of imperialism, an eschewing of exploitation, a critique of racism and a redefinition of nationalism. Eduardo Mondlane, first President of FRELIMO, was only half joking when he said, shortly before his assassination by the Portuguese in 1969, that it would almost be a pity if Mozambicans were to win their war too soon, because “we are learning so much"!
Within FRELIMO the triumph of this revolutionary emphasis was not achieved easily or automatically. Basil Davidson has remarked that “there is a general rule by which all movements of resistance produce and deepen conflicts within themselves as the reformists draw back from the revolutionaries, and, in drawing back, fall victim to the game of the enemy regime.” The conflicts over the direction of FRELIMO’s development which racked the movement in 1968-9 can be understood precisely in these terms. The crucial role of Samora Machel, who then emerged as President of FRELIMO, also can be understood only within the context of these events. For Samora Machel represented, in his person, all those within the organization who were prepared to learn the broader lessons of the liberation struggle, and to move to a new level of consciousness and of commitment to the cause of the Mozambican people. Even more important, he has been able to codify these lessons and present them to his colleagues as components of their political education and as guidelines for their future work. Herein lies one of his greatest contributions to FRELIMO, and also the strength of his contribution to revolutionary theory. The speeches collected here provide some of the best evidence of this kind of contribution.
Samora Machel, born in Gaza province in southern Mozambique in 1933, learnt the lessons of colonial oppression early. His own grandfather had been wounded in earlier resistance to the Portuguese occupation. The day-to-day realities of economic exploitation were felt in the fertile Gaza region, where the Portuguese administration made the time-consuming cultivation of cotton compulsory for African families, and bought the crop at fixed, minimal prices. Moreover, for generations men have been forced to go to work in the South African gold mines. While some come home often maimed or blind or tubercular others, like Machel’s eldest brother, do not return at all. In Gaza, too, a dramatic example of colonial oppression occurred in 1950 when land in the Limpopo valley was seized to make way for a fresh wave of settlers and the Africans removed to infertile areas, their villages destroyed, without compensation.
Samora Machel began his education at a mission school but, like so many others, found the path to further studies effectively blocked. Only when he started work was he able to proceed with his secondary education, paying the fees out of his wages. But in employment, too, Africans suffer differential treatment racial discrimination in pay, in promotion, as also in social life.
In the late 1950s, as other African countries moved towards independence, the possibility of renewed resistance became apparent. In 1962 Machel left Mozambique, with others, to join FRELIMO in Tanzania. Convinced, correctly, that the Portuguese would not yield, would not open a real dialogue with the Mozambican people, without a fight, he immediately opted for military training, and was in the army when fighting began in 1964. He had risen to become the commander of this people’s army when he became President of FRELIMO five years later.
By this time, the struggle for independence had developed into a revolutionary one; it has become, as Machel says in the interview reprinted here, “an integral part of the people’s lives ... What we discuss with the people now is how to make our struggle a real revolution.” The speeches collected here therefore present the theory and practice of consolidating a people’s struggle under Mozambican conditions. They deal with such themes as the methods of political work most likely to advance the revolutionary process, the dynamics of co-operative agricultural production, the emancipation of women, the nature of genuinely innovative educational and health facilities, and the imperatives of international solidarity.
Readers will discover such themes for themselves in the following pages; there is no need to rehearse them further here. However, two points are worth emphasis. One is that no distinction is made between the task of destroying colonialism and the task of building a new Mozambique: they are two sides of the same coin. Thus, in Machel’s formulations and in FRELIMO’s practice, the collective spirit which sustains successful military activity becomes the essence of the new social and economic institutions. And the active involvement of the people which has premised military success becomes the guarantee of future progress without false decolonization or any subsequent trend towards authoritarianism.
Second, there is the balance struck between theory and practice in Machel’s speeches – between the specificity of day-to-day revolutionary activity on the one hand and the broader principles and strategies which give shape to such activity on the other. Some successful revolutionaries have come to revolution with theoretical preoccupations and have gradually tempered and refined these in the heat of action. In Machel’s case the development has been somewhat different: practice is now being theorized and thus forged into an ever more effective instrument of progress.
Yet one should not make too much of this distinction; in both cases a learning process is involved. The result, when a revolution is being successfully sustained, is an exciting blend of theory and practice. This is precisely what one finds in today’s Mozambique and this excitement is fully captured in these pages.
Toronto, April, 1974
John Saul
Samora Machel Archive
|
./articles/Machel-Samora/https:..www.marxists.org.subject.africa.machel.1972.recommendations | <body>
<p class="title">Samora Machel 1972</p>
<h1>Leadership is Collective, Responsibility is Collective</h1>
<hr class="end"><p class="information"><span class="info">Written</span>: 1972;<br>
<span class="info">First Published</span>: 1972;<br>
<span class="info">Source</span>: <i>Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution</i>, Mozambique, pp. 16-20;<br>
<span class="info">Transcription</span>: Liz Blasczak.</p><hr class="end">
<p>Summary of the President’s Recommendations made at a Joint Meeting with instructors and other cadres at a FRELIMO Centre for Political and Military Training, on 2 February, 1972.</p>
<p class="fst">1. The work of the CPPM (Center for Political and Military Training) is not to produce “killers,” but to train true revolutionary fighters, authentic FRELIMO soldiers.</p>
<p>What characterizes the FRELIMO soldier is his political consciousness. We train fighters whose essential task is to build a new society, and because it can only be built in a territory free from enemy occupation, the fighter has to be trained to eliminate the enemy physically.</p>
<p>A fighter is therefore a conscious and active agent in the transformation of society. The CPPM is the laboratory where we create this agent of change, the new man.</p>
<p class="fst">2. Our watchword is: production, study and combat. This watchword synthesizes our political line. Our fighter combines these three factors. Production supplies the material needs of war, political study gives us our identity, while scientific study enables us to develop production and improve our combat techniques.</p>
<p>The fight against the physical enemy provides us with the land where production and the renewal of society takes place and frees the population from which new fighters come from. The fight against the enemy in our own minds the capitalist ideology imposed by colonialism and the feudal ideology inherited from tradition consolidates our physical victory, lays the foundations for the new society, and makes our progress irreversible.</p>
<p>Our watchword must be applied in our methods of training fighters.</p>
<p class="fst">3. The fight against the enemy that lives in the mind is the toughest. Our whole upbringing, our tradition, our whole life until the time we joined FRELIMO makes us see and cultivate as virtues what our new society rejects as defects. The CPPM, in its way of life, demands a radical change in values, attitudes and behavior. Newly arrived comrades are introduced to a life which they have never conceived of, which they never thought possible. So it is quite a shock.</p>
<p class="fst">4. We must never think of men as automatons who must receive and carry out orders irrespective of whether they understand them or have assimilated them. Leaders must fight against the harmful tendency of solving political problems through administrative decisions. This tendency leads to a bureaucratic dictatorship and creates sharp contradictions with the rank and file.</p>
<p>Our life and our discipline can be based only on conscious and voluntary involvement. Therefore when new trainees arrive at the CPPM, the camp leadership must discuss with them and explain the life in the camp, and its basic values.</p>
<p class="fst">5. The trainees must be led to progressively adopt our values.</p>
<p>The first battle is to instill national consciousness and the importance of unity and of wiping out tribalism. Class consciousness must be made more acute and deeply felt, together with the need for close unity between peasants and workers to win power. Closely related to the battle for unity is the struggle to wipe out the spirit of individualism and to foster a collective spirit.</p>
<p>To steal is a selfish act, an act of disregard for the interests of one’s comrades. The thief deliberately harms his comrades in order to satisfy his personal petty interests. Stealing his comrades shirt will not solve the problem of nakedness. Fighters should be taught to return even a needle they find. Unthriftiness and waste reflects indifference towards the party’s property and very incorrect understanding of what it means. At home nobody abandons a hoe or throws away food, because when a person has to work to acquire such things, he knows their value. Everyone needs to be fully aware that everything FRELIMO possesses has been paid for with the blood of our comrades and the sweat of our friends, and that the blood and sweat are part of the object or food we acquire. At this point we must draw comrades attention to the fact that they must not go about in tatters. Indeed, this not only prevents military smartness, but the main thing is that a small hole or tear which is not repaired in time soon becomes a gaping hole, a large tear, so that the clothes may be written off. In order to help our comrades understand the necessity of this, we should, as far as possible, distribute needles and thread.</p>
<p class="fst">6. Releasing the masses sense of creative initiative is an essential precondition for our victory and one of the chief purposes of our struggle.</p>
<p>If the masses are to exercise the power the power so dearly won, they must display initiative. Colonial oppression, tradition, ignorance and superstition create a sense of passivity in man which stifles initiative.</p>
<p>To create a sense of initiative is also to create a sense of responsibility and to make the militant feel directly concerned by everything related to the revolution, to our life. He must feel that he is FRELIMO, that FRELIMO’s fate depends on his behavior.</p>
<p class="fst">7. If fighters are to be able to accomplish their task, it is essential that they understand the correct definition of who is the enemy, and can clearly distinguish friend from foe, even if the latter is concealed under the same color, language, family ties or tribal markings as their own, even if he raises the flag with us.</p>
<p>The struggle against tribalism, racism, false religious and family loyalty, and so on, is essential if the barrel of our gun is always to be trained on the correct target.</p>
<p class="fst">8. The emancipation of women is one of FRELIMO’s central tasks, which is undertaken mainly by the Women’s Detachment.</p>
<p>We must ensure that all militants and cadres are committed to respecting the Women’s Detachment and seeing its members as their mothers, sisters and wives. Our women comrades must assume their duties and correctly understand their mission as mothers of the revolution, as educators of the future generation which will continue the revolution. They must also learn to respect their own bodies. There is also a need to fight reactionary prejudices among both men and women about women’s abilities and their role in the revolution, in society and in the home.</p>
<p class="fst">9. International solidarity plays an important role in our revolution. We could not have reached the present stage of development in our struggle without the aid we receive from the progressive forces of the world.</p>
<p>The struggle of the peoples and workers of the whole world against the exploitation of man and to build a new society is a decisive factor in creating favorable conditions for the victory of our struggle in the present era.</p>
<p>The internationalist spirit is an essential characteristic of revolutionary forces; hard work is therefore required to make our militants realize who are our friends and allies at the international level, and to acquire an internationalist spirit.</p>
<p class="fst">10. Study combined with practice is a fundamental weapon with which to heighten our political consciousness and gain the knowledge required to mobilize nature and its laws on our behalf. It also gives us ammunition for wiping out superstition.</p>
<p>A program of constant political education must therefore operate at every level: cadres, instructors, leading cadres, rank and file and the Women’s Detachment.</p>
<p>There must be regular and frequent meetings with the units, whether by company or whole battalion. It is negative to only hold meetings when they are called by the president, the National Political Commissar or other top leaders.</p>
<p>Scientific and literary education is a requirement of our armed struggle, of our fight against ignorance and superstition, and of our endeavors in economic and social development.</p>
<p>It is inadmissible that we should have cadres, especially instructors, who are illiterate and can’t speak Portuguese.</p>
<p>Therefore, priority must be given to the struggle against illiteracy and lack of knowledge of Portuguese among instructors and cadres, and in the second phase the struggle must be broadened to include the Women’s Detachment and the whole camp.</p>
<p>Instructors and cadres who can read and write and speak Portuguese must draw up continuous and constant programs for improving scientific and literacy knowledge. Programs should include the history and geography of Mozambique, the Portuguese language, arithmetic and geometry, rudiments of physics, chemistry, and the natural sciences. Such a program should include regular lectures and discussions on new techniques and methods of production, particularly in the fields of agriculture and animal husbandry.</p>
<p>Acquiring good habits of hygiene, both personal and collective, is decisive to the prevention of many diseases. A soldiers basic training, therefore, should include a weekly program of hygiene classes and a basic knowledge of first aid. In the same way, but at a higher level, there should be weekly courses on hygiene and first aid for instructors and cadres.</p>
<p>The importance of culture must also be given due emphasis, since it expresses the characteristic features of our national identity.</p>
<p>There should be regular programs of songs, plays, poetry reading, and so on, with the companies, instructors and cadres.</p>
<p class="fst">11. Production is essential for us. Without it not only could the war not advance, but it would be impossible to ensure the people’s survival, let alone meet the growing needs of the masses.</p>
<p>In the final analysis, the principle contradiction lies in whether it is to be a handful of exploiters, old or new, or the masses who are to control the means of production, for greater well being in society and increased economic and social progress. Thus production in our army is a school of independence.</p>
<p>In our centers the practical side of production is satisfactory; what is now needed is to relate it more closely to theory, so that experiences can be exchanged, understood and internalized. Fortunately we are beginning to have an increasing number of young people recently trained in fields directly related to production. We must try to spread their scientific and theoretical knowledge among our instructors and cadres through talks and short courses. This will enable us to improve our production techniques and achieve greater diversification.</p>
<p class="fst">12. The chief feature of our CPPMs is the teaching of military techniques, training men to wipe out the enemy physically and this is what distinguishes them from such other FRELIMO centers as schools, hospitals, cooperatives etc.</p>
<p>Each group, depending on its basic knowledge and experience, should receive specific training. When training a group of fighters we must consider the tasks they will be called upon to carry out, so that their training corresponds to genuine requirements. We must get the fighters used to the real conditions of struggle. During training fighters should never abandon their weapons, packs or blankets. We need to increase the number of long marches with small rations and short rest periods. We should insist on night marches. The fighters must get used to making individual and group shelters, trenches, tunnels and underground caches.</p>
<p class="fst">13. Good or bad habits are acquired by units during training. If our teaching is to be worthwhile, our behavior must conform to what we say, to our political line. Leading cadres, instructors and cadres must be guiding lights of the new way of behaving. For the units, it is we who personify FRELIMO’s political line. Whatever our behavior, our unity or disunity, our discipline or indiscipline, our hardworkingness or laziness, our collective spirit or selfishness, our revolutionary dedication or corruption, this is what will be followed by the units, because it will be interpreted as the reality of FRELIMO’s line.</p>
<p>With the exception of the strictly military programs, political, educational and cultural programs in the CPPMs have not been as successful as was hoped due principally to lack of continuity. We begin things, then interrupt them, and they die. The usual excuse is that the person in charge of the program was busy, absent, sent on s new mission, etc.</p>
<p>This makes no sense and it must stop. One of the reasons why many national level cadres are appointed to the leadership of CPPM is to ensure regular and unbroken continuity of all programs. The great responsibility of the appointed cadres requires that they have sufficient flexibility and ability to pursue the program of a colleague who may for some reason be unable to continue it himself.</p>
<p class="fst">14. Leadership is collective and although each member of the leadership has a specific task, there are no hard and fast compartments.</p>
<p>The duty of every member is to be concerned with all the work, see that it is carried out and to put forward ideas and criticism. Leadership is collective and responsibility is collective.</p>
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Samora Machel 1972
Leadership is Collective, Responsibility is Collective
Written: 1972;
First Published: 1972;
Source: Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution, Mozambique, pp. 16-20;
Transcription: Liz Blasczak.
Summary of the President’s Recommendations made at a Joint Meeting with instructors and other cadres at a FRELIMO Centre for Political and Military Training, on 2 February, 1972.
1. The work of the CPPM (Center for Political and Military Training) is not to produce “killers,” but to train true revolutionary fighters, authentic FRELIMO soldiers.
What characterizes the FRELIMO soldier is his political consciousness. We train fighters whose essential task is to build a new society, and because it can only be built in a territory free from enemy occupation, the fighter has to be trained to eliminate the enemy physically.
A fighter is therefore a conscious and active agent in the transformation of society. The CPPM is the laboratory where we create this agent of change, the new man.
2. Our watchword is: production, study and combat. This watchword synthesizes our political line. Our fighter combines these three factors. Production supplies the material needs of war, political study gives us our identity, while scientific study enables us to develop production and improve our combat techniques.
The fight against the physical enemy provides us with the land where production and the renewal of society takes place and frees the population from which new fighters come from. The fight against the enemy in our own minds the capitalist ideology imposed by colonialism and the feudal ideology inherited from tradition consolidates our physical victory, lays the foundations for the new society, and makes our progress irreversible.
Our watchword must be applied in our methods of training fighters.
3. The fight against the enemy that lives in the mind is the toughest. Our whole upbringing, our tradition, our whole life until the time we joined FRELIMO makes us see and cultivate as virtues what our new society rejects as defects. The CPPM, in its way of life, demands a radical change in values, attitudes and behavior. Newly arrived comrades are introduced to a life which they have never conceived of, which they never thought possible. So it is quite a shock.
4. We must never think of men as automatons who must receive and carry out orders irrespective of whether they understand them or have assimilated them. Leaders must fight against the harmful tendency of solving political problems through administrative decisions. This tendency leads to a bureaucratic dictatorship and creates sharp contradictions with the rank and file.
Our life and our discipline can be based only on conscious and voluntary involvement. Therefore when new trainees arrive at the CPPM, the camp leadership must discuss with them and explain the life in the camp, and its basic values.
5. The trainees must be led to progressively adopt our values.
The first battle is to instill national consciousness and the importance of unity and of wiping out tribalism. Class consciousness must be made more acute and deeply felt, together with the need for close unity between peasants and workers to win power. Closely related to the battle for unity is the struggle to wipe out the spirit of individualism and to foster a collective spirit.
To steal is a selfish act, an act of disregard for the interests of one’s comrades. The thief deliberately harms his comrades in order to satisfy his personal petty interests. Stealing his comrades shirt will not solve the problem of nakedness. Fighters should be taught to return even a needle they find. Unthriftiness and waste reflects indifference towards the party’s property and very incorrect understanding of what it means. At home nobody abandons a hoe or throws away food, because when a person has to work to acquire such things, he knows their value. Everyone needs to be fully aware that everything FRELIMO possesses has been paid for with the blood of our comrades and the sweat of our friends, and that the blood and sweat are part of the object or food we acquire. At this point we must draw comrades attention to the fact that they must not go about in tatters. Indeed, this not only prevents military smartness, but the main thing is that a small hole or tear which is not repaired in time soon becomes a gaping hole, a large tear, so that the clothes may be written off. In order to help our comrades understand the necessity of this, we should, as far as possible, distribute needles and thread.
6. Releasing the masses sense of creative initiative is an essential precondition for our victory and one of the chief purposes of our struggle.
If the masses are to exercise the power the power so dearly won, they must display initiative. Colonial oppression, tradition, ignorance and superstition create a sense of passivity in man which stifles initiative.
To create a sense of initiative is also to create a sense of responsibility and to make the militant feel directly concerned by everything related to the revolution, to our life. He must feel that he is FRELIMO, that FRELIMO’s fate depends on his behavior.
7. If fighters are to be able to accomplish their task, it is essential that they understand the correct definition of who is the enemy, and can clearly distinguish friend from foe, even if the latter is concealed under the same color, language, family ties or tribal markings as their own, even if he raises the flag with us.
The struggle against tribalism, racism, false religious and family loyalty, and so on, is essential if the barrel of our gun is always to be trained on the correct target.
8. The emancipation of women is one of FRELIMO’s central tasks, which is undertaken mainly by the Women’s Detachment.
We must ensure that all militants and cadres are committed to respecting the Women’s Detachment and seeing its members as their mothers, sisters and wives. Our women comrades must assume their duties and correctly understand their mission as mothers of the revolution, as educators of the future generation which will continue the revolution. They must also learn to respect their own bodies. There is also a need to fight reactionary prejudices among both men and women about women’s abilities and their role in the revolution, in society and in the home.
9. International solidarity plays an important role in our revolution. We could not have reached the present stage of development in our struggle without the aid we receive from the progressive forces of the world.
The struggle of the peoples and workers of the whole world against the exploitation of man and to build a new society is a decisive factor in creating favorable conditions for the victory of our struggle in the present era.
The internationalist spirit is an essential characteristic of revolutionary forces; hard work is therefore required to make our militants realize who are our friends and allies at the international level, and to acquire an internationalist spirit.
10. Study combined with practice is a fundamental weapon with which to heighten our political consciousness and gain the knowledge required to mobilize nature and its laws on our behalf. It also gives us ammunition for wiping out superstition.
A program of constant political education must therefore operate at every level: cadres, instructors, leading cadres, rank and file and the Women’s Detachment.
There must be regular and frequent meetings with the units, whether by company or whole battalion. It is negative to only hold meetings when they are called by the president, the National Political Commissar or other top leaders.
Scientific and literary education is a requirement of our armed struggle, of our fight against ignorance and superstition, and of our endeavors in economic and social development.
It is inadmissible that we should have cadres, especially instructors, who are illiterate and can’t speak Portuguese.
Therefore, priority must be given to the struggle against illiteracy and lack of knowledge of Portuguese among instructors and cadres, and in the second phase the struggle must be broadened to include the Women’s Detachment and the whole camp.
Instructors and cadres who can read and write and speak Portuguese must draw up continuous and constant programs for improving scientific and literacy knowledge. Programs should include the history and geography of Mozambique, the Portuguese language, arithmetic and geometry, rudiments of physics, chemistry, and the natural sciences. Such a program should include regular lectures and discussions on new techniques and methods of production, particularly in the fields of agriculture and animal husbandry.
Acquiring good habits of hygiene, both personal and collective, is decisive to the prevention of many diseases. A soldiers basic training, therefore, should include a weekly program of hygiene classes and a basic knowledge of first aid. In the same way, but at a higher level, there should be weekly courses on hygiene and first aid for instructors and cadres.
The importance of culture must also be given due emphasis, since it expresses the characteristic features of our national identity.
There should be regular programs of songs, plays, poetry reading, and so on, with the companies, instructors and cadres.
11. Production is essential for us. Without it not only could the war not advance, but it would be impossible to ensure the people’s survival, let alone meet the growing needs of the masses.
In the final analysis, the principle contradiction lies in whether it is to be a handful of exploiters, old or new, or the masses who are to control the means of production, for greater well being in society and increased economic and social progress. Thus production in our army is a school of independence.
In our centers the practical side of production is satisfactory; what is now needed is to relate it more closely to theory, so that experiences can be exchanged, understood and internalized. Fortunately we are beginning to have an increasing number of young people recently trained in fields directly related to production. We must try to spread their scientific and theoretical knowledge among our instructors and cadres through talks and short courses. This will enable us to improve our production techniques and achieve greater diversification.
12. The chief feature of our CPPMs is the teaching of military techniques, training men to wipe out the enemy physically and this is what distinguishes them from such other FRELIMO centers as schools, hospitals, cooperatives etc.
Each group, depending on its basic knowledge and experience, should receive specific training. When training a group of fighters we must consider the tasks they will be called upon to carry out, so that their training corresponds to genuine requirements. We must get the fighters used to the real conditions of struggle. During training fighters should never abandon their weapons, packs or blankets. We need to increase the number of long marches with small rations and short rest periods. We should insist on night marches. The fighters must get used to making individual and group shelters, trenches, tunnels and underground caches.
13. Good or bad habits are acquired by units during training. If our teaching is to be worthwhile, our behavior must conform to what we say, to our political line. Leading cadres, instructors and cadres must be guiding lights of the new way of behaving. For the units, it is we who personify FRELIMO’s political line. Whatever our behavior, our unity or disunity, our discipline or indiscipline, our hardworkingness or laziness, our collective spirit or selfishness, our revolutionary dedication or corruption, this is what will be followed by the units, because it will be interpreted as the reality of FRELIMO’s line.
With the exception of the strictly military programs, political, educational and cultural programs in the CPPMs have not been as successful as was hoped due principally to lack of continuity. We begin things, then interrupt them, and they die. The usual excuse is that the person in charge of the program was busy, absent, sent on s new mission, etc.
This makes no sense and it must stop. One of the reasons why many national level cadres are appointed to the leadership of CPPM is to ensure regular and unbroken continuity of all programs. The great responsibility of the appointed cadres requires that they have sufficient flexibility and ability to pursue the program of a colleague who may for some reason be unable to continue it himself.
14. Leadership is collective and although each member of the leadership has a specific task, there are no hard and fast compartments.
The duty of every member is to be concerned with all the work, see that it is carried out and to put forward ideas and criticism. Leadership is collective and responsibility is collective.
Samora Machel Archive
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./articles/Machel-Samora/https:..www.marxists.org.subject.africa.machel.1971.health-service | <body>
<p class="title">Samora Machel 1971</p>
<h1>Our Health Service’s Role in the Revolution </h1>
<hr class="end"><p class="information"><span class="info">Written</span>:1 971;<br>
<span class="info">First Published</span>: 1971;<br>
<span class="info">Source</span>: <em>Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution</em>, Mozambique, pp. 46-55;<br>
<span class="info">Transcription</span>: Liz Blasczak;</p>
<p class="information">Speech at the beginning of a course for health cadres, in November 1971.</p><hr class="end">
<p class="fst">Comrades,</p>
<p>Today we are starting a new course for training nurses. In 1968 we were forced to suspend such courses and they were stopped for three years. For three years our struggle and our people were deprived of new health cadres. In the past three years fighters have died for lack of medical care, members of the population have died, children have died, because we were not in a position to provide even a minimum of medical aid. In many of the liberated areas, and for many of the people, these past three years were not years of struggle against disease. Our people were forgotten, as in the colonial period, during those three years.</p>
<p>Three years ago we engaged in the battle to train health cadres. We lost the battle at that time. There is no war in which there are only victories for us and defeat for the enemy.</p>
<p>We lost the battle because the political awareness of our nursing students was not such as to permit a true grasp of the meaning and importance of the battle that was being fought, and they thus allowed the enemy to come in their midst.</p>
<p>In 1968, our armed struggle made big advances. We were shelling enemy bases and taking them by assault. We were taking Portuguese prisoners of war and capturing tons of arms. We reopened the fighting front in Tete.</p>
<p>The essential struggle for the clarity of our political line and for the development of our ideology made the popular objectives of the revolutionary forces quite clear to all of us.</p>
<p>This struggle involved the health workers. It was also a struggle between two lines in the field of health. It was a struggle in the defense of the people’s interests in that field.</p>
<p>What is a FRELIMO hospital and what are its tasks?</p>
<p>It might at first seem absurd to talk about a political line, a struggle between two lines in the field of health. It might at first be thought that FRELIMO wishes to politicize something as apparently neutral as health. In the final analysis, those who believe in apolitical health would say, penicillin and chloroquine have the same effect whether administered by a revolutionary or not, whether given in a FRELIMO hospital or in a colonial hospital.</p>
<p>Yet all our actions, our whole life, are utterly and radically different from the actions and life in the enemy areas.</p>
<p>In the enemy zone, in the colonialist zone, in the capitalist zone, everything is intended to maintain domination over the people, to maintain the exploitation of the people and to provide profits for the capitalists.</p>
<p>In the capitalist zone, in the colonialist zone, the roads serve the rapid transportation of the army and police who seize you and take you off to forced labor. Roads are fast routes for coming to collect your taxes. Roads are used to transport the cotton which you produced but which belongs to the company. They are used by the trader who comes to sell back to you at fantastic prices, goods which you and your class brothers produced, and for which the colonialists pay starvation prices.</p>
<p>In the enemy zone, schools are for the children of the rich, even though it is your taxes that finance them. If, by some miracle, a poor man’s son sometimes goes to school, it is not in order to learn how to serve his people. He will be brainwashed by the school until he is ashamed of his origins, and turned into an instrument of the rich for the further exploitation of the workers.</p>
<p>Everything has a content determined by the zone in which it is, by the kind of power that prevails in that zone. In the capitalist and colonialist zone, schools, fields, roads, courts, shops, technology, laws and education – everything serves to oppress and exploit us.</p>
<p>In our zone, because we have power, because it is the peasants, the workers, the working masses who plan and lead, everything is directed towards liberating man, serving the people. This is what happens with the hospitals, the health services.</p>
<p>In the capitalist and colonialist zone, hospitals are among the centers of exploitation. Because what is at stake is a person’s life, the lives of one’s nearest and dearest, this is where the greed of the capitalist world shows itself most clearly and shamelessly.</p>
<p>One can’t enter and be treated in a capitalist hospital in accordance with one’s needs. If one is poor and without power of influence, it is difficult to get a hospital bed, even if cancer is devouring your flesh, tuberculosis eating away your lungs, or fever burning your body. The rich man, the gentleman, the boss, has not the slightest difficulty in getting a room, in finding place for himself and those who accompany him.</p>
<p>Eminent doctors and university professors are brought in to treat the capitalist’s cold, to cure the judge’s constipation, while nearby children are dying, people are dying, because they did not have the money to call a doctor.</p>
<p>In a capitalist hospital they do not examine patients, they examine wealth. Medicine is sold for its weight in gold. Only those who can pay are treated. Food, special diet, fruit, milk, salad, meat and fine fish restore the convalescent’s strength. But they are given only to those who can pay, not to those who need them. Even the ambulance sent off in an emergency to fetch someone who is dying often comes back empty because the dying man’s family can’t guarantee to pay the bill.</p>
<p>In the enemy zone, the rich man’s dog gets more in the way of vaccinations, medicine and medical care than do the workers upon whom the rich man’s wealth is built.</p>
<p>It is not surprising, therefore, that in the enemy zone to be a doctor means to be rich, and to be a nurse means very high salary. To be a doctor is to enjoy a position of social prominence as an exploiter, to be a nurse means to enjoy many privileges.</p>
<p>In the Mozambique of the colonialists and capitalists there are hospitals only where there are settlers. There are only doctors and nurses where people who can pay live. In Louren�o Marques there are more hospital beds, more doctors, more nurses and more laboratories than in all the rest of Mozambique. Does this mean that Louren�o Marques is the only place where people get sick?</p>
<p>In the mines where we work, on the company plantations that we cultivate, on the roads that we build, in the factories, in the fields, in the villages, there are millions of Mozambicans who have never seen a doctor, who have never seen a nurse, who have never had any medical care when they are ill.</p>
<p>Our hospital is different. It is not surgical instruments, or medicines that make a hospital. These are of course important, but the main thing, the decisive fact, is the human factor. That is why today, for the first time, the people in Cabo Delegado, Niassa and Tete are receiving medical care and vaccinations, and hygiene is being taught in the villages. Yet we have still very little medicine, very few surgical instruments, and our buildings are so modest that from outside one can barely distinguish them from ordinary grass huts.</p>
<p>Our hospitals belong to the people. They are a fruit of the revolution. Our hospitals are far more than centers for dispensing medicines and cures. A FRELIMO hospital is a center where our political line – that of serving the masses – is put into practice. It is a center where our principle that the revolution frees the people becomes a reality.</p>
<p>Our hospitals are intended to free the people from disease, to make our fighters, militants and workers physically fit so that they can fulfill the revolutionary tasks in which they are engaged. We cure people through the confidence we inspire, through the high morale we instill in them. Health workers, patients and medicines all combine to free the people from disease.</p>
<p>Our hospitals are centers of the revolution, they exist because of the revolution, and are closely associated with the revolution.</p>
<p>Whereas the capitalist hospitals have links with the exploiters, the settlers, because that is whom they serve, our hospitals have links with the people, because they are there to serve them. Thus our hospital is a center of national unity, a center of class unity, a center of clarification of ideas, a center of revolutionary and organizational propaganda, a combat unit, Medical staff, students, orderlies, patients and society as a whole are all closely united.</p>
<p>In a FRELIMO hospital there are no tribes, no regions, no races, no religious beliefs – there is nothing to divide us. The hospital is accomplishing a revolutionary task. Medical staff, students and hospital orderlies are carrying out the essential tasks entrusted to them by the people. The whole people, from the Rovuma to the Maputo, through their sacrifices and bloodshed, built this hospital to serve them, to free them from disease. No one is sent to work in a hospital by any tribe or region.</p>
<p>As the patients feel the unity of those working in the hospital, from doctors to orderlies, they will unite with the medical and non-medical staff, and they will all combine their efforts to wipe out disease. If there is disunity, there will be distrust; the patient will refuse medicines for fear that the treatment he is being given will make his condition worse.</p>
<p>We are all united in the fulfillment of our tasks. There are no menial or unimportant tasks for us, just because I might be an orderly and someone else a nurse or a doctor. All of our tasks are essential, even though our responsibilities may be different. Feeling any inferiority complex in the carrying out of our tasks and worrying about whether we are being given big or small jobs means a lack of class consciousness. We all come from the working people and we are serving the working people. Our task is therefore a great one. Any other attitude merely reflects elitism, privilege-seeking, the loss of class consciousness and the adoption of bourgeois ideas.</p>
<p>Just as we disinfect ourselves on entering an operating theatre, so must we cleanse ourselves of incorrect ideas and complexes which could contaminate our hospital. Just as we put on masks and smocks, so we must always be armed with our unity and class consciousness, so as to serve the people in a revolutionary way. In this way, our hospital will really be a center of revolutionary and organizational propaganda, a concrete example of the correctness of our political line – a true FRELIMO area. Thus, a hospital performs our tasks fighting disease, molding people and producing.</p>
<p>Production can’t be separated from our health work. A hospital needs food. Often the local population and FRELIMO are unable to supply the hospital because we are at war, because the enemy is attacking us, because our production is one of the enemy’s targets. A hospital must therefore try to rely on its own resources, to be as self-sufficient in food as possible.</p>
<p>On the other hand, we must not forget the importance of an adequate diet in the proper treatment of disease. Patients need to eat properly in order to get well again. Fruit, salads, green vegetables, meat, eggs, fish and milk are the foods containing the vitamins, salts, minerals and proteins that strengthen the body in the fight against disease.</p>
<p>Since a hospital is a center of production, it is also a center for the education of patients. We must not neglect any opportunity of heightening our people’s political consciousness and knowledge. In our hospitals there should be no inactivity, no laziness. Moreover, experience has shown that involving patients and especially convalescents in activities, boosts their morale and is an important contribution to their recovery.</p>
<p>This said, we should like to suggest that our hospitals should constantly endeavor to widen their range of activities in cooperation with the Political Commissariat and the Department of Education and Culture. We must teach patients and convalescents to read and write, teach them Portuguese, and make sure that they know, understand and regard as their own the cultural wealth of our entire country.</p>
<p>We must organize short courses on hygiene for patients, so that they acquire good hygienic habits, which prevent many diseases.</p>
<p>We want all those who come to our hospitals for treatment to become active disseminators of methods of hygiene when they leave. We must also remember that in many regions of our country people have very bad eating habits. It is important that the people acquire new eating habits; therefore we should hold short courses for patients in the hospitals, especially for mothers, explaining to them the nutritional value of various foods and even how to prepare them.</p>
<p>We can never neglect political work, since this task always has first priority. A patient’s stay in hospital should serve to heighten his awareness of national unity, his determination to fight and his hatred of the exploiting enemy.</p>
<p>It will now be seen why we define a FRELIMO hospital as one of our fighting detachments, a front line.</p>
<p>Our nurses, our medical staff, besides having their specific tasks, are also instructors, teachers, political commissars. The activity of our revolutionary medical staff not only cures the body but also frees and forms the mind. The enemy understands this very well – so much so that they have made our hospitals one of the main targets of their bombing raids and of their criminal troops.</p>
<p>The Hospital – A Front Line</p>
<p>In starting this course we are opening up a new fighting front. In starting this course we are creating conditions to open new hospitals, more centers in which FRELIMO’s political line is put into practice. New hospitals are new front lines.</p>
<p>When we open a new front, we can say that the struggle has grown; but we have also enlarged the target, we have given the enemy another target. In 1968, as we said, we were forced to retreat, we were forced to suspend the course. We lost a battle. Today we are re-launching the battle, backed by the experience gained through our successes and failures.</p>
<p>When we launch a battle, if we are to succeed it is essential we know the enemy, define our methods and know where our strength lies. In our struggle, we face three enemies:</p>
<ul class="disc"><li>the direct enemy</li>
<li>the indirect enemy</li>
<li>the enemy hidden in our midst.</li>
</ul>
<p>The Portuguese colonialists are our direct enemy. They attack us openly, physically. They come in their planes and bomb our hospitals, they attack us from their helicopters, they send in their troops to murder our patients, to destroy our equipment and to prevent medicines from reaching their destination. Colonialism is the most easily identifiable enemy, because it is open and attacks with weapons of war.</p>
<p>More dangerous, because they are more easily believed than the colonialists, are our indirect enemies, Portugal’s allies, those who fight us under cover, behind the Portuguese troops. They fight us with newspaper articles, rumors, slander. Today they will say that we are selling medicine, and tomorrow they will say one or another region is looked down upon in our hospitals. One day they will write that we are incompetent, and the next that the people don’t trust our hospitals. And the campaign will continue, to divide us, undermine our confidence and subtly force us to surrender. Every error, every mistake we make will be used by them as irrefutable proof that everything they say is true.</p>
<p>But above all, in order to defeat us, in order to deprive our people of medical care again, the enemy, whether direct or indirect, relies on the work of its forces in our midst. The decisive force that can defeat us is the hidden enemy in our midst, he who holds high the banner of FRELIMO with us in order to destroy FRELIMO more easily.</p>
<p>This has been our experience, this was our main reason for defeat in 1968, the reason for the suspension of the courses. Having infiltrated its spies among us, the enemy fostered tribalism, racism, selfishness, ambition, elitism, ignorance, superstition, religious fanaticism and corruption. Each of these is an enemy detachment in our midst.</p>
<p>Tribalism divided the students, made them counter-revolutionary and caused them to fight against the FRELIMO leadership, against FRELIMO and against the people. Each saw himself as representing the interests of this or that region, meticulously seeking to assess whether another linguistic group had more students on the course than his, spreading mistrust and disunity amongst us.</p>
<p>Racism led to the disunity between students and teachers. Claiming to be very revolutionary, students who had yet to show proof of true revolutionary commitment fought against teachers who had already given ample proof of their dedication to the people’s cause, solely because the teachers were white.</p>
<p>Combing selfishness and ambition, the students rejected a program of studies planned to meet the immediate and urgent needs of the struggle and demanded programs that would give them diplomas and privileges so that they could exploit the people in the future. They wanted to become an elite of parasites, acquiring wealth and social prominence at the expense of the people’s suffering.</p>
<p>Ignorance, superstition and religious fanaticism also caused the students to believe in non-existen supernatural forces, in amulets and stones, scorning science and rejecting the lessons of the teachers, which were founded on the laws of nature, on objective reality. It was in this climate that indiscipline, anarchy, corruption and chaos were fostered.</p>
<p>The battle had been lost. The indirect enemy published articles in their newspapers on the “revolt of the revolutionary students against the leadership of FRELIMO.” The colonialists were delighted and intensified the campaign to reinforce the enemy in our midst: old ideas and the habits of the old society.</p>
<p>Our people were for a long time crushed under the dead weight of obsolete and reactionary traditions and colonialist and capitalist ideas. Many students, cadres, medical workers and leading cadres have still not shaken off the burden of a corrupt past.</p>
<p>There are those who envisage a Mozambique reduced to the tiny scale of one linguistic group or region. No matter how important it may be, no organ can live outside the body. An arm or a leg rots if it is no longer supplied with the body’s blood, if it is separated from its unity with the body.</p>
<p>Through the unity we create among ourselves, by the revolutionary way in which hospitals serve the people, we give the masses a concrete demonstration of the need to make the nation live and to ensure the death of tribalism. Just as we kill germs and harmful bacteria to protect the patient, a hospital must be a living example of the extermination of the contagious microbe which is tribalism, so that the nation may live.</p>
<p>Others seek the answers to concrete problems in the supernatural, which is born of ignorance. They can’t yet see that the answer to all problems depends absolutely on the combination of intelligence and energy with the objective laws that govern natural and social phenomena.</p>
<p>They seek answers in the heavens when answers can be found on earth. Because the people see science at work, because the people see the results of science, because we continually explain to the patients and people the origins of disease and ways of fighting it, our hospitals can become bases of struggle against obscurantism.</p>
<p>The more we believe in mankind, the more superstition among the people will be destroyed. The more our work demonstrates the value of science, the more supernatural obscurantism will be made to retreat.</p>
<p>Some regard themselves as irreplaceable, as being all things in themselves. Full or arrogance, they refuse to learn from others or to share their knowledge, rejoicing at the failures of their comrades. By acting in this manner, they are trying to create conditions which will allow them to establish themselves as a privileged class, to exploit the masses and have their own wretched whims prevail. To consolidate their position, they both accept and spread rumors and intrigues, selfishly confining themselves to their own petty interests.</p>
<p>Individualism, selfishness, ambition and arrogance are germs carrying division, incubators of the old ideas of the exploiting society.</p>
<p>Because we have come a long way, because everyone is joining the struggle, we sometimes find in our midst people who used to be accustomed to banditry. These people often introduce their vices into the new society.</p>
<p>Some of them may steal medicines, sheets or food. Others betraying the confidence of patients, may use delicate secrets they know to satisfy their taste for intrigue and their ambition.</p>
<p>There may also be those who use their position to try to corrupt the youth, contaminating the new generation with their low instincts. This kind of behavior has to be fought. A nurse who destroyed bottles of plasma in a hospital would be regarded as a criminal. A nurse who poisoned patients would be regarded as a criminal. Our revolutionary mortality, our principles, are our plasma, and the new society we are building is our life. Our fight is against our enemy, against those who want to destroy our plasma, our blood, those who want to take our life.</p>
<h5>Our methods of struggle</h5>
<p>On the health front it is our medical personnel who are our operational forces. They are vanguard forces in our movement, in our revolution.</p>
<p>The medical staff represent our political line of serving the masses in the hospital.</p>
<p>A strong bond of trust and hope is established between the patient and the nurse or doctor who is treating him. The patient associates the alleviation of pain and the curing of disease with the work of the nurse or doctor.</p>
<p>This confidence of the patient and of his family and friends is an extraordinary political asset which we must use to advance the revolution. On the basis of the confidence that is established, we must help the patient to take the road of national unity, to increase his class consciousness and to learn more about hygiene, science and culture. In short, treatment of the body should be accompanied by corresponding treatment of the mind, in order that the new mentality may triumph.</p>
<p>One needs a vocation, a natural enthusiasm for this type of work. This vocation is closely related to and guided by consciousness and the requirements of the struggle.</p>
<p>Whereas in the capitalist zone, a vocation combined with the desire for profits and privilege is corrupted and stranded, in our zone, since one’s vocation is combined with sound political consciousness, it becomes a powerful incentive in our work.</p>
<p>Precisely because we regard man as the decisive factor, in training our medical personnel, priority must be given to political education, to political consciousness. The experience of seven years of struggle has amply proved that despite their low technical level and lack of medicines our medical personnel have been able to do very much more for the people than the colonialist health services with all their technology and means. With two doctors we did more work than the colonialist health services which have dozens and even hundreds of doctors. These results are evidence of the vital importance of the political line pursued by us.</p>
<p>Political education means above all cultivating political consciousness in the students and medical and hospital staff, developing the anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist spirit, increasing understanding of oppression and making class consciousness and feeling more deep-rooted.</p>
<p>Members of the hospital staff are in constant contact with the human suffering caused by exploitation and ignorance. This involvement with suffering should serve to sharpen political consciousness, increase the knowledge of the medical staff, and strengthen their determination to fight the enemy, to fight disease and to fight ignorance.</p>
<p>The medical staff’s professional consciousness must be based on heightened political consciousness. A nurse does not have working hours and rest hours. His work usually starts at a certain time – and he must be punctual – but he has no set time at which to finish.</p>
<p>Disease, suffering and war can’t be subject to bureaucratic decisions. A hospital functions 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Wherever there are patients, wherever there is suffering, there the doctor must be, regardless of the time. This is the only way to serve the people. A war is not fought with rest hours, and neither can disease be fought with rest hours for the medical staff. If nursing students are to get used to this exacting pace, their program of studies must include at least ten hours of activity a day.</p>
<p>In the course of duty, medical workers are forced to come into close contact with all kinds of human weakness and misery.</p>
<p>Even if they want to, patients can’t conceal their ailments and their causes. Scientific analysis is revealing. It is therefore essential that the medical staff understand the concept of professional secrecy. Their knowledge of weaknesses and miseries must not be the subject of general conversation or worse still, an instrument of ambition or revenge.</p>
<p>The patient is sacred to the hospital. A nurse, hospital worker or doctor is not involved with revenge in the course of duty. For the medical staff there are no races, colors, creeds or even nationalities. To them there are only patients. A wounded or sick Portuguese soldier is treated like one of us in our hospital. We do this because we have a revolutionary morality, a higher morality, radically opposed to the baseness of fascism and colonialism.</p>
<p>We have already said that the hospital embodies our political line, that the medical workers must actively embody our ideology. For this, our words and deeds must correspond rigorously to our line. This is the main thing. If despite our technical and material shortcomings we have already achieved better results in the field of health than the colonialists, this is due solely to the correctness and superiority of our line.</p>
<p>Waging an internal struggle to make our words and actions comply with our line is to create the conditions for the success of our work. Our hospitals must be the daily source of a thousand good examples to the masses of our principles.</p>
<p>Technical knowledge takes second place. It is important nevertheless. Only the knowledge of the laws of nature and their use for our purposes will enable us to eradicate disease. There can be no limits to study. No on knows everything, or even enough. So long as there are diseases, so long as people are dying, we must study, we must learn.</p>
<p>If we are to be of greater service, we must study a great deal. We must study everything. Naturally we must first study medical science, acquiring the theoretical knowledge that synthesizes and rationalizes practical teaching. But we must also study and learn from practice – we must study and learn from the people.</p>
<p>We must study society. We must know the traditions, history, culture and specific features of each region, and constantly relate them to the national context.</p>
<p>We must study people, get to know them. Illness does not exist in the abstract, but in actual people, each with his own psychological make-up and specific abilities. Knowing a man is the best way of helping him to summon his energy against the illness attacking him, and also the best way of guiding our actions to bring about the revolutionary transformation of his mind. Through knowledge we achieve understanding, and only after understanding can we act.</p>
<p>But the most important thing is to constantly study the policy of our movement, because only this can give us an overall view and provide the clear perspective ensuring the proper orientation of our work. For us the aim of study is not to gain the means of exploiting people better or to acquire privileged positions as in the capitalist zone.</p>
<p>We are not interested in one person getting good grades, in imparting a lot of knowledge to one individual. However knowledgeable he might be, one person would not be able to run all the hospitals we need or attend to all the patients.</p>
<p>We study collectively and our progress goes in waves, everyone advancing together. This requires a spirit of mutual aid among the students and medical staff, the falling behind of one being regarded as a step backward for the movement, a step backward in serving the people.</p>
<p>This collective spirit should govern our entire lives. Without national unity, we will be defeated by the colonialists. Without unity, our worker and peasant class will be dominated by the exploiters. Without unity, our health work will fail.</p>
<p>The collective spirit makes us face each problem, each situation, each shortcoming as if it were our own. There is no problem to which we are indifferent. Power belongs to us and therefore we can’t sit with folded arms when faced with a situation, however small, which hampers our progress. A minor cut may open the way for tetanus, which destroys the whole organism. In the case of the body, a cut on our little toe can kill if it is not treated. We must not disregard a problem just because it does not affect us personally: this problem is part of the body to which we too belong.</p>
<p>Our hospitals exist because sacrifices have been made. Our hospitals represent all the blood that has been shed.</p>
<p>The surgical instruments, drugs and equipment are a result of the sacrifices made by the people, the sacrifices made by our friends.</p>
<p>Because blood is flowing in Mozambique, a powerful tide of solidarity has built up in many countries to help us. People voluntarily deprive themselves to help us.</p>
<p>Having a well developed sense of how to fight waste, indicates that we respect the sacrifices made by our friends – it shows the collective spirit.</p>
<p>Comrades often die in our hospitals for lack of medicines. Very often there is not even peroxide to treat a patient. Saving medicines and equipment is to save the lives of the people that these medicines and equipment can cure.</p>
<p>This course is being started at the Americo Boavida hospital. This is a symbolic coincidence.</p>
<p>Comrade Boavida, an Angolan doctor, sacrificed his life for the people. He could have been doing medical research, but he died serving the people, fighting against sickness and exploitation.</p>
<p>A further example and encouragement to us should be the internationalist spirit of the foreign comrades who, out of revolutionary solidarity, have left their own countries and the comfort created through their labor to come and work with us.</p>
<p>Our responsibility is great. Our struggle is not only to liberate our people but also to support brother peoples, the working class of the whole world.</p>
<p>In our work united under the leadership of FRELIMO and guided by our ideology, let us apply the watchword: serve the people. We will thus perform our national and international duty.</p>
<p>THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES. INDEPENDENCE OR DEATH. WE WILL WIN.</p>
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Samora Machel 1971
Our Health Service’s Role in the Revolution
Written:1 971;
First Published: 1971;
Source: Samora Machel, Mozambique Sowing the Seeds of Revolution, Mozambique, pp. 46-55;
Transcription: Liz Blasczak;
Speech at the beginning of a course for health cadres, in November 1971.
Comrades,
Today we are starting a new course for training nurses. In 1968 we were forced to suspend such courses and they were stopped for three years. For three years our struggle and our people were deprived of new health cadres. In the past three years fighters have died for lack of medical care, members of the population have died, children have died, because we were not in a position to provide even a minimum of medical aid. In many of the liberated areas, and for many of the people, these past three years were not years of struggle against disease. Our people were forgotten, as in the colonial period, during those three years.
Three years ago we engaged in the battle to train health cadres. We lost the battle at that time. There is no war in which there are only victories for us and defeat for the enemy.
We lost the battle because the political awareness of our nursing students was not such as to permit a true grasp of the meaning and importance of the battle that was being fought, and they thus allowed the enemy to come in their midst.
In 1968, our armed struggle made big advances. We were shelling enemy bases and taking them by assault. We were taking Portuguese prisoners of war and capturing tons of arms. We reopened the fighting front in Tete.
The essential struggle for the clarity of our political line and for the development of our ideology made the popular objectives of the revolutionary forces quite clear to all of us.
This struggle involved the health workers. It was also a struggle between two lines in the field of health. It was a struggle in the defense of the people’s interests in that field.
What is a FRELIMO hospital and what are its tasks?
It might at first seem absurd to talk about a political line, a struggle between two lines in the field of health. It might at first be thought that FRELIMO wishes to politicize something as apparently neutral as health. In the final analysis, those who believe in apolitical health would say, penicillin and chloroquine have the same effect whether administered by a revolutionary or not, whether given in a FRELIMO hospital or in a colonial hospital.
Yet all our actions, our whole life, are utterly and radically different from the actions and life in the enemy areas.
In the enemy zone, in the colonialist zone, in the capitalist zone, everything is intended to maintain domination over the people, to maintain the exploitation of the people and to provide profits for the capitalists.
In the capitalist zone, in the colonialist zone, the roads serve the rapid transportation of the army and police who seize you and take you off to forced labor. Roads are fast routes for coming to collect your taxes. Roads are used to transport the cotton which you produced but which belongs to the company. They are used by the trader who comes to sell back to you at fantastic prices, goods which you and your class brothers produced, and for which the colonialists pay starvation prices.
In the enemy zone, schools are for the children of the rich, even though it is your taxes that finance them. If, by some miracle, a poor man’s son sometimes goes to school, it is not in order to learn how to serve his people. He will be brainwashed by the school until he is ashamed of his origins, and turned into an instrument of the rich for the further exploitation of the workers.
Everything has a content determined by the zone in which it is, by the kind of power that prevails in that zone. In the capitalist and colonialist zone, schools, fields, roads, courts, shops, technology, laws and education – everything serves to oppress and exploit us.
In our zone, because we have power, because it is the peasants, the workers, the working masses who plan and lead, everything is directed towards liberating man, serving the people. This is what happens with the hospitals, the health services.
In the capitalist and colonialist zone, hospitals are among the centers of exploitation. Because what is at stake is a person’s life, the lives of one’s nearest and dearest, this is where the greed of the capitalist world shows itself most clearly and shamelessly.
One can’t enter and be treated in a capitalist hospital in accordance with one’s needs. If one is poor and without power of influence, it is difficult to get a hospital bed, even if cancer is devouring your flesh, tuberculosis eating away your lungs, or fever burning your body. The rich man, the gentleman, the boss, has not the slightest difficulty in getting a room, in finding place for himself and those who accompany him.
Eminent doctors and university professors are brought in to treat the capitalist’s cold, to cure the judge’s constipation, while nearby children are dying, people are dying, because they did not have the money to call a doctor.
In a capitalist hospital they do not examine patients, they examine wealth. Medicine is sold for its weight in gold. Only those who can pay are treated. Food, special diet, fruit, milk, salad, meat and fine fish restore the convalescent’s strength. But they are given only to those who can pay, not to those who need them. Even the ambulance sent off in an emergency to fetch someone who is dying often comes back empty because the dying man’s family can’t guarantee to pay the bill.
In the enemy zone, the rich man’s dog gets more in the way of vaccinations, medicine and medical care than do the workers upon whom the rich man’s wealth is built.
It is not surprising, therefore, that in the enemy zone to be a doctor means to be rich, and to be a nurse means very high salary. To be a doctor is to enjoy a position of social prominence as an exploiter, to be a nurse means to enjoy many privileges.
In the Mozambique of the colonialists and capitalists there are hospitals only where there are settlers. There are only doctors and nurses where people who can pay live. In Louren�o Marques there are more hospital beds, more doctors, more nurses and more laboratories than in all the rest of Mozambique. Does this mean that Louren�o Marques is the only place where people get sick?
In the mines where we work, on the company plantations that we cultivate, on the roads that we build, in the factories, in the fields, in the villages, there are millions of Mozambicans who have never seen a doctor, who have never seen a nurse, who have never had any medical care when they are ill.
Our hospital is different. It is not surgical instruments, or medicines that make a hospital. These are of course important, but the main thing, the decisive fact, is the human factor. That is why today, for the first time, the people in Cabo Delegado, Niassa and Tete are receiving medical care and vaccinations, and hygiene is being taught in the villages. Yet we have still very little medicine, very few surgical instruments, and our buildings are so modest that from outside one can barely distinguish them from ordinary grass huts.
Our hospitals belong to the people. They are a fruit of the revolution. Our hospitals are far more than centers for dispensing medicines and cures. A FRELIMO hospital is a center where our political line – that of serving the masses – is put into practice. It is a center where our principle that the revolution frees the people becomes a reality.
Our hospitals are intended to free the people from disease, to make our fighters, militants and workers physically fit so that they can fulfill the revolutionary tasks in which they are engaged. We cure people through the confidence we inspire, through the high morale we instill in them. Health workers, patients and medicines all combine to free the people from disease.
Our hospitals are centers of the revolution, they exist because of the revolution, and are closely associated with the revolution.
Whereas the capitalist hospitals have links with the exploiters, the settlers, because that is whom they serve, our hospitals have links with the people, because they are there to serve them. Thus our hospital is a center of national unity, a center of class unity, a center of clarification of ideas, a center of revolutionary and organizational propaganda, a combat unit, Medical staff, students, orderlies, patients and society as a whole are all closely united.
In a FRELIMO hospital there are no tribes, no regions, no races, no religious beliefs – there is nothing to divide us. The hospital is accomplishing a revolutionary task. Medical staff, students and hospital orderlies are carrying out the essential tasks entrusted to them by the people. The whole people, from the Rovuma to the Maputo, through their sacrifices and bloodshed, built this hospital to serve them, to free them from disease. No one is sent to work in a hospital by any tribe or region.
As the patients feel the unity of those working in the hospital, from doctors to orderlies, they will unite with the medical and non-medical staff, and they will all combine their efforts to wipe out disease. If there is disunity, there will be distrust; the patient will refuse medicines for fear that the treatment he is being given will make his condition worse.
We are all united in the fulfillment of our tasks. There are no menial or unimportant tasks for us, just because I might be an orderly and someone else a nurse or a doctor. All of our tasks are essential, even though our responsibilities may be different. Feeling any inferiority complex in the carrying out of our tasks and worrying about whether we are being given big or small jobs means a lack of class consciousness. We all come from the working people and we are serving the working people. Our task is therefore a great one. Any other attitude merely reflects elitism, privilege-seeking, the loss of class consciousness and the adoption of bourgeois ideas.
Just as we disinfect ourselves on entering an operating theatre, so must we cleanse ourselves of incorrect ideas and complexes which could contaminate our hospital. Just as we put on masks and smocks, so we must always be armed with our unity and class consciousness, so as to serve the people in a revolutionary way. In this way, our hospital will really be a center of revolutionary and organizational propaganda, a concrete example of the correctness of our political line – a true FRELIMO area. Thus, a hospital performs our tasks fighting disease, molding people and producing.
Production can’t be separated from our health work. A hospital needs food. Often the local population and FRELIMO are unable to supply the hospital because we are at war, because the enemy is attacking us, because our production is one of the enemy’s targets. A hospital must therefore try to rely on its own resources, to be as self-sufficient in food as possible.
On the other hand, we must not forget the importance of an adequate diet in the proper treatment of disease. Patients need to eat properly in order to get well again. Fruit, salads, green vegetables, meat, eggs, fish and milk are the foods containing the vitamins, salts, minerals and proteins that strengthen the body in the fight against disease.
Since a hospital is a center of production, it is also a center for the education of patients. We must not neglect any opportunity of heightening our people’s political consciousness and knowledge. In our hospitals there should be no inactivity, no laziness. Moreover, experience has shown that involving patients and especially convalescents in activities, boosts their morale and is an important contribution to their recovery.
This said, we should like to suggest that our hospitals should constantly endeavor to widen their range of activities in cooperation with the Political Commissariat and the Department of Education and Culture. We must teach patients and convalescents to read and write, teach them Portuguese, and make sure that they know, understand and regard as their own the cultural wealth of our entire country.
We must organize short courses on hygiene for patients, so that they acquire good hygienic habits, which prevent many diseases.
We want all those who come to our hospitals for treatment to become active disseminators of methods of hygiene when they leave. We must also remember that in many regions of our country people have very bad eating habits. It is important that the people acquire new eating habits; therefore we should hold short courses for patients in the hospitals, especially for mothers, explaining to them the nutritional value of various foods and even how to prepare them.
We can never neglect political work, since this task always has first priority. A patient’s stay in hospital should serve to heighten his awareness of national unity, his determination to fight and his hatred of the exploiting enemy.
It will now be seen why we define a FRELIMO hospital as one of our fighting detachments, a front line.
Our nurses, our medical staff, besides having their specific tasks, are also instructors, teachers, political commissars. The activity of our revolutionary medical staff not only cures the body but also frees and forms the mind. The enemy understands this very well – so much so that they have made our hospitals one of the main targets of their bombing raids and of their criminal troops.
The Hospital – A Front Line
In starting this course we are opening up a new fighting front. In starting this course we are creating conditions to open new hospitals, more centers in which FRELIMO’s political line is put into practice. New hospitals are new front lines.
When we open a new front, we can say that the struggle has grown; but we have also enlarged the target, we have given the enemy another target. In 1968, as we said, we were forced to retreat, we were forced to suspend the course. We lost a battle. Today we are re-launching the battle, backed by the experience gained through our successes and failures.
When we launch a battle, if we are to succeed it is essential we know the enemy, define our methods and know where our strength lies. In our struggle, we face three enemies:
the direct enemy
the indirect enemy
the enemy hidden in our midst.
The Portuguese colonialists are our direct enemy. They attack us openly, physically. They come in their planes and bomb our hospitals, they attack us from their helicopters, they send in their troops to murder our patients, to destroy our equipment and to prevent medicines from reaching their destination. Colonialism is the most easily identifiable enemy, because it is open and attacks with weapons of war.
More dangerous, because they are more easily believed than the colonialists, are our indirect enemies, Portugal’s allies, those who fight us under cover, behind the Portuguese troops. They fight us with newspaper articles, rumors, slander. Today they will say that we are selling medicine, and tomorrow they will say one or another region is looked down upon in our hospitals. One day they will write that we are incompetent, and the next that the people don’t trust our hospitals. And the campaign will continue, to divide us, undermine our confidence and subtly force us to surrender. Every error, every mistake we make will be used by them as irrefutable proof that everything they say is true.
But above all, in order to defeat us, in order to deprive our people of medical care again, the enemy, whether direct or indirect, relies on the work of its forces in our midst. The decisive force that can defeat us is the hidden enemy in our midst, he who holds high the banner of FRELIMO with us in order to destroy FRELIMO more easily.
This has been our experience, this was our main reason for defeat in 1968, the reason for the suspension of the courses. Having infiltrated its spies among us, the enemy fostered tribalism, racism, selfishness, ambition, elitism, ignorance, superstition, religious fanaticism and corruption. Each of these is an enemy detachment in our midst.
Tribalism divided the students, made them counter-revolutionary and caused them to fight against the FRELIMO leadership, against FRELIMO and against the people. Each saw himself as representing the interests of this or that region, meticulously seeking to assess whether another linguistic group had more students on the course than his, spreading mistrust and disunity amongst us.
Racism led to the disunity between students and teachers. Claiming to be very revolutionary, students who had yet to show proof of true revolutionary commitment fought against teachers who had already given ample proof of their dedication to the people’s cause, solely because the teachers were white.
Combing selfishness and ambition, the students rejected a program of studies planned to meet the immediate and urgent needs of the struggle and demanded programs that would give them diplomas and privileges so that they could exploit the people in the future. They wanted to become an elite of parasites, acquiring wealth and social prominence at the expense of the people’s suffering.
Ignorance, superstition and religious fanaticism also caused the students to believe in non-existen supernatural forces, in amulets and stones, scorning science and rejecting the lessons of the teachers, which were founded on the laws of nature, on objective reality. It was in this climate that indiscipline, anarchy, corruption and chaos were fostered.
The battle had been lost. The indirect enemy published articles in their newspapers on the “revolt of the revolutionary students against the leadership of FRELIMO.” The colonialists were delighted and intensified the campaign to reinforce the enemy in our midst: old ideas and the habits of the old society.
Our people were for a long time crushed under the dead weight of obsolete and reactionary traditions and colonialist and capitalist ideas. Many students, cadres, medical workers and leading cadres have still not shaken off the burden of a corrupt past.
There are those who envisage a Mozambique reduced to the tiny scale of one linguistic group or region. No matter how important it may be, no organ can live outside the body. An arm or a leg rots if it is no longer supplied with the body’s blood, if it is separated from its unity with the body.
Through the unity we create among ourselves, by the revolutionary way in which hospitals serve the people, we give the masses a concrete demonstration of the need to make the nation live and to ensure the death of tribalism. Just as we kill germs and harmful bacteria to protect the patient, a hospital must be a living example of the extermination of the contagious microbe which is tribalism, so that the nation may live.
Others seek the answers to concrete problems in the supernatural, which is born of ignorance. They can’t yet see that the answer to all problems depends absolutely on the combination of intelligence and energy with the objective laws that govern natural and social phenomena.
They seek answers in the heavens when answers can be found on earth. Because the people see science at work, because the people see the results of science, because we continually explain to the patients and people the origins of disease and ways of fighting it, our hospitals can become bases of struggle against obscurantism.
The more we believe in mankind, the more superstition among the people will be destroyed. The more our work demonstrates the value of science, the more supernatural obscurantism will be made to retreat.
Some regard themselves as irreplaceable, as being all things in themselves. Full or arrogance, they refuse to learn from others or to share their knowledge, rejoicing at the failures of their comrades. By acting in this manner, they are trying to create conditions which will allow them to establish themselves as a privileged class, to exploit the masses and have their own wretched whims prevail. To consolidate their position, they both accept and spread rumors and intrigues, selfishly confining themselves to their own petty interests.
Individualism, selfishness, ambition and arrogance are germs carrying division, incubators of the old ideas of the exploiting society.
Because we have come a long way, because everyone is joining the struggle, we sometimes find in our midst people who used to be accustomed to banditry. These people often introduce their vices into the new society.
Some of them may steal medicines, sheets or food. Others betraying the confidence of patients, may use delicate secrets they know to satisfy their taste for intrigue and their ambition.
There may also be those who use their position to try to corrupt the youth, contaminating the new generation with their low instincts. This kind of behavior has to be fought. A nurse who destroyed bottles of plasma in a hospital would be regarded as a criminal. A nurse who poisoned patients would be regarded as a criminal. Our revolutionary mortality, our principles, are our plasma, and the new society we are building is our life. Our fight is against our enemy, against those who want to destroy our plasma, our blood, those who want to take our life.
Our methods of struggle
On the health front it is our medical personnel who are our operational forces. They are vanguard forces in our movement, in our revolution.
The medical staff represent our political line of serving the masses in the hospital.
A strong bond of trust and hope is established between the patient and the nurse or doctor who is treating him. The patient associates the alleviation of pain and the curing of disease with the work of the nurse or doctor.
This confidence of the patient and of his family and friends is an extraordinary political asset which we must use to advance the revolution. On the basis of the confidence that is established, we must help the patient to take the road of national unity, to increase his class consciousness and to learn more about hygiene, science and culture. In short, treatment of the body should be accompanied by corresponding treatment of the mind, in order that the new mentality may triumph.
One needs a vocation, a natural enthusiasm for this type of work. This vocation is closely related to and guided by consciousness and the requirements of the struggle.
Whereas in the capitalist zone, a vocation combined with the desire for profits and privilege is corrupted and stranded, in our zone, since one’s vocation is combined with sound political consciousness, it becomes a powerful incentive in our work.
Precisely because we regard man as the decisive factor, in training our medical personnel, priority must be given to political education, to political consciousness. The experience of seven years of struggle has amply proved that despite their low technical level and lack of medicines our medical personnel have been able to do very much more for the people than the colonialist health services with all their technology and means. With two doctors we did more work than the colonialist health services which have dozens and even hundreds of doctors. These results are evidence of the vital importance of the political line pursued by us.
Political education means above all cultivating political consciousness in the students and medical and hospital staff, developing the anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist spirit, increasing understanding of oppression and making class consciousness and feeling more deep-rooted.
Members of the hospital staff are in constant contact with the human suffering caused by exploitation and ignorance. This involvement with suffering should serve to sharpen political consciousness, increase the knowledge of the medical staff, and strengthen their determination to fight the enemy, to fight disease and to fight ignorance.
The medical staff’s professional consciousness must be based on heightened political consciousness. A nurse does not have working hours and rest hours. His work usually starts at a certain time – and he must be punctual – but he has no set time at which to finish.
Disease, suffering and war can’t be subject to bureaucratic decisions. A hospital functions 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Wherever there are patients, wherever there is suffering, there the doctor must be, regardless of the time. This is the only way to serve the people. A war is not fought with rest hours, and neither can disease be fought with rest hours for the medical staff. If nursing students are to get used to this exacting pace, their program of studies must include at least ten hours of activity a day.
In the course of duty, medical workers are forced to come into close contact with all kinds of human weakness and misery.
Even if they want to, patients can’t conceal their ailments and their causes. Scientific analysis is revealing. It is therefore essential that the medical staff understand the concept of professional secrecy. Their knowledge of weaknesses and miseries must not be the subject of general conversation or worse still, an instrument of ambition or revenge.
The patient is sacred to the hospital. A nurse, hospital worker or doctor is not involved with revenge in the course of duty. For the medical staff there are no races, colors, creeds or even nationalities. To them there are only patients. A wounded or sick Portuguese soldier is treated like one of us in our hospital. We do this because we have a revolutionary morality, a higher morality, radically opposed to the baseness of fascism and colonialism.
We have already said that the hospital embodies our political line, that the medical workers must actively embody our ideology. For this, our words and deeds must correspond rigorously to our line. This is the main thing. If despite our technical and material shortcomings we have already achieved better results in the field of health than the colonialists, this is due solely to the correctness and superiority of our line.
Waging an internal struggle to make our words and actions comply with our line is to create the conditions for the success of our work. Our hospitals must be the daily source of a thousand good examples to the masses of our principles.
Technical knowledge takes second place. It is important nevertheless. Only the knowledge of the laws of nature and their use for our purposes will enable us to eradicate disease. There can be no limits to study. No on knows everything, or even enough. So long as there are diseases, so long as people are dying, we must study, we must learn.
If we are to be of greater service, we must study a great deal. We must study everything. Naturally we must first study medical science, acquiring the theoretical knowledge that synthesizes and rationalizes practical teaching. But we must also study and learn from practice – we must study and learn from the people.
We must study society. We must know the traditions, history, culture and specific features of each region, and constantly relate them to the national context.
We must study people, get to know them. Illness does not exist in the abstract, but in actual people, each with his own psychological make-up and specific abilities. Knowing a man is the best way of helping him to summon his energy against the illness attacking him, and also the best way of guiding our actions to bring about the revolutionary transformation of his mind. Through knowledge we achieve understanding, and only after understanding can we act.
But the most important thing is to constantly study the policy of our movement, because only this can give us an overall view and provide the clear perspective ensuring the proper orientation of our work. For us the aim of study is not to gain the means of exploiting people better or to acquire privileged positions as in the capitalist zone.
We are not interested in one person getting good grades, in imparting a lot of knowledge to one individual. However knowledgeable he might be, one person would not be able to run all the hospitals we need or attend to all the patients.
We study collectively and our progress goes in waves, everyone advancing together. This requires a spirit of mutual aid among the students and medical staff, the falling behind of one being regarded as a step backward for the movement, a step backward in serving the people.
This collective spirit should govern our entire lives. Without national unity, we will be defeated by the colonialists. Without unity, our worker and peasant class will be dominated by the exploiters. Without unity, our health work will fail.
The collective spirit makes us face each problem, each situation, each shortcoming as if it were our own. There is no problem to which we are indifferent. Power belongs to us and therefore we can’t sit with folded arms when faced with a situation, however small, which hampers our progress. A minor cut may open the way for tetanus, which destroys the whole organism. In the case of the body, a cut on our little toe can kill if it is not treated. We must not disregard a problem just because it does not affect us personally: this problem is part of the body to which we too belong.
Our hospitals exist because sacrifices have been made. Our hospitals represent all the blood that has been shed.
The surgical instruments, drugs and equipment are a result of the sacrifices made by the people, the sacrifices made by our friends.
Because blood is flowing in Mozambique, a powerful tide of solidarity has built up in many countries to help us. People voluntarily deprive themselves to help us.
Having a well developed sense of how to fight waste, indicates that we respect the sacrifices made by our friends – it shows the collective spirit.
Comrades often die in our hospitals for lack of medicines. Very often there is not even peroxide to treat a patient. Saving medicines and equipment is to save the lives of the people that these medicines and equipment can cure.
This course is being started at the Americo Boavida hospital. This is a symbolic coincidence.
Comrade Boavida, an Angolan doctor, sacrificed his life for the people. He could have been doing medical research, but he died serving the people, fighting against sickness and exploitation.
A further example and encouragement to us should be the internationalist spirit of the foreign comrades who, out of revolutionary solidarity, have left their own countries and the comfort created through their labor to come and work with us.
Our responsibility is great. Our struggle is not only to liberate our people but also to support brother peoples, the working class of the whole world.
In our work united under the leadership of FRELIMO and guided by our ideology, let us apply the watchword: serve the people. We will thus perform our national and international duty.
THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES. INDEPENDENCE OR DEATH. WE WILL WIN.
Samora Machel Archive
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>John L. Lewis: His Stand on War,<br>
His Role in the Unions</h1>
<h3>(6 September 1941)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_36" target="new">Vol. V No. 36</a>, 6 September 1941, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">The new united front of the Stalinists and Hillmanites against John L. Lewis confronts, every militant worker in the labor movement with the necessity of having a clear and precise attitude toward the Lewis group in the CIO. This involves an understanding not only of the position taken by Lewis on the war, but also of the role Lewis is playing in the union movement today.</p>
<p>The Hillman-Stalinist forces are concentrating their fire on Lewis’ action last month in signing his name to a statement on the war together with 14 leading Republican isolationists. Let us begin, therefore, by examining that “anti-war” statement.</p>
<p>It is an out-and-out isolationist document. It opposes “naval action” and the seizing of bases outside the Western Hemisphere, although not opposing seizures inside. It declares against military action outside the Western Hemisphere but maintains “that American lives should be sacrificed” for “independence” or to keep control of the Western Hemisphere.</p>
<p>This “isolationist” statement is, in short, one calculated to serve the interests of those imperialists who are satisfied for the time being to dominate the Americas. It is no accident that reactionaries like Hoover and Landon could sign their name to it.</p>
<p>In addition, the statement comes out against governmental aid to the Soviet Union as “unauthorized” and because the Soviet Union is not a democracy. This statement, it should be recalled, is signed by people who are not opposed to and as a matter of fact support the sending of aid to British imperialism.<br>
</p>
<h4>Lewis Policy on the War</h4>
<p class="fst">No class-conscious worker can support this so-called “anti-war” statement that Lewis signed, for it is neither anti-war nor pro-labor in character. The fundamental fallacies in it are:</p>
<p class="fst"><em>1. It is no more progressive to support “Western Hemisphere” imperialism than it is to support the imperialists who seek world domination.</em></p>
<p class="fst"><em>2. It is incorrect to support government aid to British imperialism in the war as a means of fighting against war.</em></p>
<p>Such support will lead inevitably to involving the United States in the war. If the aid is to get there, it means seeing that the aid is not sunk, it means sending convoys to prevent the Nazis from sinking the aid. Sending convoys means entering on the road of direct and open “shooting” conflict with Hitler, it means “incidents” which can easily be used by the warmongers for the purpose of beginning the war. One step leads to the next, and those who advocate aid to Britain today must logically call for war tomorrow. Those who really want to fight against United States entry into the war will also refuse to support aid to British imperialism today.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Question of Aid to the USSR</h4>
<p class="fst"><em>3. No militant worker can consistently oppose aid to the Soviet Union.</em></p>
<p>Of course, we cannot adopt for our own, the slogan of government aid to the Soviet Union, Those who would accept responsibility for such a slogan must accept the responsibility for convoys, etc. There is no doubt that Roosevelt is glad to use aid to the Soviet Union as a means of gathering support for his war program from those sections of the working class which opposed the lend-lease bill for Britain, but want to give aid to the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>But the workers cannot follow Lewis in his opposition to aid to the Soviet Union. Instead they must concentrate on the only real program of aid to the USSR, workers’ independent action against he bosses and their war and for the establishment of a Workers and Farmers Government that will be a true ally of the Soviet masses.</p>
<p>It is clear that the policies on the war which Lewis follows in no way resemble a militant, working class opposition to imperialist war. Between his policies and the policies of the Stalinist-Hilllnanite nited front on the war there is no real choice for the workers.<br>
</p>
<h4>Differences on Building the Unions</h4>
<p class="fst">The Stalinists and the Hillmanites do more, however, than attack the very vulnerable position of Lewis on the war. They follow this by attacking his entire role in the union movement.</p>
<p>We refuse to support either the Lewis position on war or the war-mongering policies of the CP-Hillman coalition; but we must recognize that there is an important difference between them on the question of building the CIO. While the Stalinists-Hillmanites are willing to subordinate everything in the labor movement to support of Roosevelt’s: war program, Lewis stands for the building of the CIO in spite of the war and in spite of the government. When it comes to this dispute between the two groups, which is one of the key questions for labor in time of war, militant workers cannot stand with folded arms, indifferent to the, outcome.</p>
<p><em>Militants must intervene when two groups are fighting over questions that will determine the future of the CIO, the independence of the labor movement, the preservation of the gains of industrial unionism.</em></p>
<p>When Lewis condemns the use of troops to break strikes, as at the North American plant, while Hillman condones it; when Lewis attacks the anti-labor functions of the National Defense Mediation Board, while Hillman collaborates with it; when Lewis leads the attack on Congressional and administration anti-labor legislation, while Hillman behind the scenes tries to make that legislation a little more palatable; when Lewis encourages the affiliation of the militant drivers movement to the CIO, while Hillman’s associates pass resolutions against it in the local bodies they control; when in short Lewis seeks to build and spread the CIO, while Hillman tries to shackle it to the Roosevelt war machine and weaken it in the struggle against the reactionary craft-unionists headed by the AFL Executive Council, then progressive trade unionists must support Lewis against the Hillman-Stalinist bloc.</p>
<p>By their policy for both the unions and on the war, the Hillman-Stalinist forces occupy a wholly reactionary position. Lewis’s position on the war is wrong and misleading from beginning to end, and will have to be fought by those who understand that the isolationists are incapable of leading successful opposition to the war in the workers’ interests. But this must not blind militants to the equally undeniable fact that the Lewis forces tend to resist the government moves to hogtie the CIO and destroy its character as the progressive organizational movement of the workers in the mass industries.</p>
<p>Those who want: to fight against the war as well as those who want to protect and extend labor’s gains – for both of which tasks a strong independent industrial union movement is required – will unhesitatingly take their side on questions of building the unions, against the Hillman-Stalinist united front.</p>
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George Breitman
John L. Lewis: His Stand on War,
His Role in the Unions
(6 September 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 36, 6 September 1941, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The new united front of the Stalinists and Hillmanites against John L. Lewis confronts, every militant worker in the labor movement with the necessity of having a clear and precise attitude toward the Lewis group in the CIO. This involves an understanding not only of the position taken by Lewis on the war, but also of the role Lewis is playing in the union movement today.
The Hillman-Stalinist forces are concentrating their fire on Lewis’ action last month in signing his name to a statement on the war together with 14 leading Republican isolationists. Let us begin, therefore, by examining that “anti-war” statement.
It is an out-and-out isolationist document. It opposes “naval action” and the seizing of bases outside the Western Hemisphere, although not opposing seizures inside. It declares against military action outside the Western Hemisphere but maintains “that American lives should be sacrificed” for “independence” or to keep control of the Western Hemisphere.
This “isolationist” statement is, in short, one calculated to serve the interests of those imperialists who are satisfied for the time being to dominate the Americas. It is no accident that reactionaries like Hoover and Landon could sign their name to it.
In addition, the statement comes out against governmental aid to the Soviet Union as “unauthorized” and because the Soviet Union is not a democracy. This statement, it should be recalled, is signed by people who are not opposed to and as a matter of fact support the sending of aid to British imperialism.
Lewis Policy on the War
No class-conscious worker can support this so-called “anti-war” statement that Lewis signed, for it is neither anti-war nor pro-labor in character. The fundamental fallacies in it are:
1. It is no more progressive to support “Western Hemisphere” imperialism than it is to support the imperialists who seek world domination.
2. It is incorrect to support government aid to British imperialism in the war as a means of fighting against war.
Such support will lead inevitably to involving the United States in the war. If the aid is to get there, it means seeing that the aid is not sunk, it means sending convoys to prevent the Nazis from sinking the aid. Sending convoys means entering on the road of direct and open “shooting” conflict with Hitler, it means “incidents” which can easily be used by the warmongers for the purpose of beginning the war. One step leads to the next, and those who advocate aid to Britain today must logically call for war tomorrow. Those who really want to fight against United States entry into the war will also refuse to support aid to British imperialism today.
The Question of Aid to the USSR
3. No militant worker can consistently oppose aid to the Soviet Union.
Of course, we cannot adopt for our own, the slogan of government aid to the Soviet Union, Those who would accept responsibility for such a slogan must accept the responsibility for convoys, etc. There is no doubt that Roosevelt is glad to use aid to the Soviet Union as a means of gathering support for his war program from those sections of the working class which opposed the lend-lease bill for Britain, but want to give aid to the Soviet Union.
But the workers cannot follow Lewis in his opposition to aid to the Soviet Union. Instead they must concentrate on the only real program of aid to the USSR, workers’ independent action against he bosses and their war and for the establishment of a Workers and Farmers Government that will be a true ally of the Soviet masses.
It is clear that the policies on the war which Lewis follows in no way resemble a militant, working class opposition to imperialist war. Between his policies and the policies of the Stalinist-Hilllnanite nited front on the war there is no real choice for the workers.
Differences on Building the Unions
The Stalinists and the Hillmanites do more, however, than attack the very vulnerable position of Lewis on the war. They follow this by attacking his entire role in the union movement.
We refuse to support either the Lewis position on war or the war-mongering policies of the CP-Hillman coalition; but we must recognize that there is an important difference between them on the question of building the CIO. While the Stalinists-Hillmanites are willing to subordinate everything in the labor movement to support of Roosevelt’s: war program, Lewis stands for the building of the CIO in spite of the war and in spite of the government. When it comes to this dispute between the two groups, which is one of the key questions for labor in time of war, militant workers cannot stand with folded arms, indifferent to the, outcome.
Militants must intervene when two groups are fighting over questions that will determine the future of the CIO, the independence of the labor movement, the preservation of the gains of industrial unionism.
When Lewis condemns the use of troops to break strikes, as at the North American plant, while Hillman condones it; when Lewis attacks the anti-labor functions of the National Defense Mediation Board, while Hillman collaborates with it; when Lewis leads the attack on Congressional and administration anti-labor legislation, while Hillman behind the scenes tries to make that legislation a little more palatable; when Lewis encourages the affiliation of the militant drivers movement to the CIO, while Hillman’s associates pass resolutions against it in the local bodies they control; when in short Lewis seeks to build and spread the CIO, while Hillman tries to shackle it to the Roosevelt war machine and weaken it in the struggle against the reactionary craft-unionists headed by the AFL Executive Council, then progressive trade unionists must support Lewis against the Hillman-Stalinist bloc.
By their policy for both the unions and on the war, the Hillman-Stalinist forces occupy a wholly reactionary position. Lewis’s position on the war is wrong and misleading from beginning to end, and will have to be fought by those who understand that the isolationists are incapable of leading successful opposition to the war in the workers’ interests. But this must not blind militants to the equally undeniable fact that the Lewis forces tend to resist the government moves to hogtie the CIO and destroy its character as the progressive organizational movement of the workers in the mass industries.
Those who want: to fight against the war as well as those who want to protect and extend labor’s gains – for both of which tasks a strong independent industrial union movement is required – will unhesitatingly take their side on questions of building the unions, against the Hillman-Stalinist united front.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>Repeating Our Warning</h1>
<h3>(14 February 1977)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1949/index.htm#m49_07" target="new">Vol. 13 No. 7</a>, 14 February 1949, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">The filibuster system is a serious obstacle to the passage of civil rights legislation, and so it is natural that most attention is devoted at present to the maneuvers of both parties to dodge responsibility for maintaining the filibuster. Nevertheless, there is another move on foot by the enemies of civil rights which is just as important even though it hasn’t received much notice.</p>
<p>In a careful speech made in the House of Representatives on Feb. 2, Rep. Brooks Hays, Arkansas poll-tax Democrat, asked for a “compromise” on civil rights. He admitted that the Southern democrats had been “inaccurate” in their tirades against Truman; that “on the question of segregation views sometimes attributed to the President are not contained in his message at all” (unlike the report of his famous committee which came out against segregation).</p>
<p>Southerners may be willing to go along with Truman’s civil rights program, he stated, if a “compromise” is made. And these were the conditions he laid down:</p>
<ol>
<li>“If we could agree ... that no legislation should be adopted on the subject of segregation, it would be the first step in a proper compromise.”<br>
</li>
<li>In return, the Southern Democrats could accept an anti-poll tax bill if it was adopted as a constitutional amendment, requiring approval by ¾ of the states.<br>
</li>
<li>They could accept a federal anti-lynching bill if the federal government would have jurisdiction only in states where state officials “willfully” failed or refused to prosecute lynchers.<br>
</li>
<li>They could even accept an FEPC bill if it did not provide “legal sanctions” for enforcement.</li>
</ol>
<p class="fst">In short, they would accept civil rights bills if all the teeth were extracted from them – if Negroes, could still be barred from the ballot by other means than the poll tax, if the federal government could not intervene in lynchings so long as state officals put on an act of trying to punish lynchers, if no employer was forced to stop racial discrimination in employment.</p>
<p>After Hays finished speaking, he was congratulated by several other Representatives. Not a single one got up to denounce his arrogance in offering a “compromise” that would give the Jim Crow artists everything they want. But most important is the fact that, according to the <strong>N.Y. Times</strong>, the speech “had been weeks in preparation with the knowledge, at least, of Speaker Sam Rayburn.” Translated, that means it had the approval of Rayburn, which in turn means that it was a feeler put out by the White House itself.</p>
<p>Ever since Nov. 2 <strong>The Militant</strong> has been warning against just such a trick. It would enable Truman to say, “See, I kept all my promises to the Negro people.” It would enable the liberals like Humphrey to go around saying: “See, the Democratic Party is the only party for the Negroes.” It would enable the white supremacists to be happy too. The Negroes – well, the Negroes would still be second-class citizens.</p>
<p>Every fighter for civil rights should be aware of the dirty deal being worked out behind the scenes, and should spread the word far and wide. It is better to have no civil rights bills at all than to have ones that don’t mean anything. The capitalist parties are not going to grant equality to the Negro people. Equality will be won only by fighting for it – and that means a fight against the Trumanite fakers as well as the Dixiecrats.</p>
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Albert Parker
Repeating Our Warning
(14 February 1977)
From The Militant, Vol. 13 No. 7, 14 February 1949, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The filibuster system is a serious obstacle to the passage of civil rights legislation, and so it is natural that most attention is devoted at present to the maneuvers of both parties to dodge responsibility for maintaining the filibuster. Nevertheless, there is another move on foot by the enemies of civil rights which is just as important even though it hasn’t received much notice.
In a careful speech made in the House of Representatives on Feb. 2, Rep. Brooks Hays, Arkansas poll-tax Democrat, asked for a “compromise” on civil rights. He admitted that the Southern democrats had been “inaccurate” in their tirades against Truman; that “on the question of segregation views sometimes attributed to the President are not contained in his message at all” (unlike the report of his famous committee which came out against segregation).
Southerners may be willing to go along with Truman’s civil rights program, he stated, if a “compromise” is made. And these were the conditions he laid down:
“If we could agree ... that no legislation should be adopted on the subject of segregation, it would be the first step in a proper compromise.”
In return, the Southern Democrats could accept an anti-poll tax bill if it was adopted as a constitutional amendment, requiring approval by ¾ of the states.
They could accept a federal anti-lynching bill if the federal government would have jurisdiction only in states where state officials “willfully” failed or refused to prosecute lynchers.
They could even accept an FEPC bill if it did not provide “legal sanctions” for enforcement.
In short, they would accept civil rights bills if all the teeth were extracted from them – if Negroes, could still be barred from the ballot by other means than the poll tax, if the federal government could not intervene in lynchings so long as state officals put on an act of trying to punish lynchers, if no employer was forced to stop racial discrimination in employment.
After Hays finished speaking, he was congratulated by several other Representatives. Not a single one got up to denounce his arrogance in offering a “compromise” that would give the Jim Crow artists everything they want. But most important is the fact that, according to the N.Y. Times, the speech “had been weeks in preparation with the knowledge, at least, of Speaker Sam Rayburn.” Translated, that means it had the approval of Rayburn, which in turn means that it was a feeler put out by the White House itself.
Ever since Nov. 2 The Militant has been warning against just such a trick. It would enable Truman to say, “See, I kept all my promises to the Negro people.” It would enable the liberals like Humphrey to go around saying: “See, the Democratic Party is the only party for the Negroes.” It would enable the white supremacists to be happy too. The Negroes – well, the Negroes would still be second-class citizens.
Every fighter for civil rights should be aware of the dirty deal being worked out behind the scenes, and should spread the word far and wide. It is better to have no civil rights bills at all than to have ones that don’t mean anything. The capitalist parties are not going to grant equality to the Negro people. Equality will be won only by fighting for it – and that means a fight against the Trumanite fakers as well as the Dixiecrats.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<h3>(14 March 1942)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1942/index.htm#m42_11" target="new">Vol. VI No. 11</a>, 14 March 1942, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">An Associated Negro Press dispatch from Washington, D.C., reports that the people of the Virgin Islands, United States possessions west of Puerto Rico, have been “excused” from the draft. The islands are in the vicinity of recent enemy submarine action in the West Indies area, they have a total area of 133 square miles, and a population of 25,000, of whom 95% are Negroes. The A.N.P. report declares that the official policy is: “We don’t want colored natives armed and able to shoot.” <strong>The Black Dispatch</strong>, Negro paper published in Oklahoma City by Roscoe Dunjee, leading Negro Democrat, has a headline over the story which says <em>Army Doesn’t Want Colored Natives Armed Because They May Turn Guns Around</em>. This should settle once and for all the idea that there is some fundamental difference between the attitude of the British Empire toward its colonial subjects, and the attitude of the American government toward its colonial subjects.</p>
<h4>*</h4>
<p class="fst"><em>From the Workers Defense League Press Service: “Governor Colgate Darden of Virginia reports that he is receiving 50 to 75 letters a day requesting a stay of execution for Odell Waller, condemned Negro sharecropper, whose case is being appealed to the Ú. S. Supreme Court by the Workers Defense League.” Among the unions which have asked the Governor to grant a stay of execution for Waller so that his case may be heard by the Supreme Court, and which have contributed to the Waller defense fund are locals and joint boards of the International Ladies Garment Workers, Amalgamated Clothing Workers, Marine and Shipbuilding Workers, Hosiery Workers, American Federation of Teachers, Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen, etc.</em></p>
<p>Waller is scheduled to die March 20 because he defended himself against his white landlord in a dispute over his landlord’s refusal to give Waller’s family their share of the crop. This does not give the defense movement enough time to properly prepare its case for presentation to the Supreme Court. If you belong to a union or any other kind of organization, bring the Waller case up this week and have them pass a resolution asking Governor Darden, Roanoke, Va., to postpone the date of execution. If you want to read more about the Waller case, ask the W.D.L., 112 E. 19th St., New York, to send you a copy of its pamphlet, <strong>All for Mr. Davis</strong>.</p>
<h4>*</h4>
<p class="fst"><em>One of the things pretty much overlooked about the Detroit housing “riot” is the responsibility of the federal government itself. True, the city administration was partly to blame; the police force was partly to blame; the federal housing authorities, by their vacillation and their willingness to co-operate with the Jim Crow landlords and the Ku Klux Klan, were partly to blame. But don’t forget that what was behind this “riot” was the idea dear to the hearts of Jim Crow and Judge Lynch that Negroes must be segregated from whites. The official policy of the federal government as expressed in most of its departments is to uphold this system of segregation. For example, the government won’t let Negro soldiers serve in the same regiment as white soldiers, it won’t let Negro sailors, segregated to the kitchen, sleep in the same room with white sailors, etc. And so far as housing goes, in most cases even in the north, it won’t let Negroes live in the same federal housing project as whites; it follows the policy of setting up lily-white and all-Negro projects. Is there anyone who doubts that the Ku Kluxers and their followers are encouraged by such policies?</em></p>
<h4>*</h4>
<p class="fst">for a bill, he fights for it, he tells his congressional spokesmen he wants that bill passed, he puts pressure on congressional committees, he issues statements to the press, he delivers fireside chats. That’s how he used to act before the war when he wanted a war measure or appropriation passed. Then on the other hand when he is not interested, Roosevelt can be as silent as the Sphinx — as for example,. when it comes to an antilynching bill.</p>
<h4>*</h4>
<p class="fst"><em>The Pepper bill is supposed to come before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, scheduled to begin March 12. Hundreds of trade unions and Negro organizations are letting the Committee know by telegram and resolution that they want the bill brought to the floor of Congress and passed. Roosevelt will show by his action — or his silence — this week how truthful was his statement last month.</em></p>
<h4>*</h4>
<p class="fst">The U. S. Navy is still as strong as ever ... in its determination not to use Negroes in any department but the kitchen. Only last week the Navy Department let a reporter know that it has not retreated an inch ... on this question. Evidently the Navy brass hats will fight to the bitter end ... against equality and democratic treatment for Negroes on ships.</p>
<h4>*</h4>
<p class="fst">The new Negro paper, <strong>The People’s Voice</strong>, published in Harlem by City Councilman A. Clayton Powell, Jr. and Charles P. Buchanan, is a hard-hitting addition to the ranks of Negro journalism. It takes a forthright position on the trade union movement, and declares that “This is a working class paper.” If promises, “We cannot be bought, we will not be sold.” We reserve fuller discussion of <strong>The People’s Voice</strong> for a future issue of <strong>The Militant</strong>.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
(14 March 1942)
From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 11, 14 March 1942, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
An Associated Negro Press dispatch from Washington, D.C., reports that the people of the Virgin Islands, United States possessions west of Puerto Rico, have been “excused” from the draft. The islands are in the vicinity of recent enemy submarine action in the West Indies area, they have a total area of 133 square miles, and a population of 25,000, of whom 95% are Negroes. The A.N.P. report declares that the official policy is: “We don’t want colored natives armed and able to shoot.” The Black Dispatch, Negro paper published in Oklahoma City by Roscoe Dunjee, leading Negro Democrat, has a headline over the story which says Army Doesn’t Want Colored Natives Armed Because They May Turn Guns Around. This should settle once and for all the idea that there is some fundamental difference between the attitude of the British Empire toward its colonial subjects, and the attitude of the American government toward its colonial subjects.
*
From the Workers Defense League Press Service: “Governor Colgate Darden of Virginia reports that he is receiving 50 to 75 letters a day requesting a stay of execution for Odell Waller, condemned Negro sharecropper, whose case is being appealed to the Ú. S. Supreme Court by the Workers Defense League.” Among the unions which have asked the Governor to grant a stay of execution for Waller so that his case may be heard by the Supreme Court, and which have contributed to the Waller defense fund are locals and joint boards of the International Ladies Garment Workers, Amalgamated Clothing Workers, Marine and Shipbuilding Workers, Hosiery Workers, American Federation of Teachers, Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen, etc.
Waller is scheduled to die March 20 because he defended himself against his white landlord in a dispute over his landlord’s refusal to give Waller’s family their share of the crop. This does not give the defense movement enough time to properly prepare its case for presentation to the Supreme Court. If you belong to a union or any other kind of organization, bring the Waller case up this week and have them pass a resolution asking Governor Darden, Roanoke, Va., to postpone the date of execution. If you want to read more about the Waller case, ask the W.D.L., 112 E. 19th St., New York, to send you a copy of its pamphlet, All for Mr. Davis.
*
One of the things pretty much overlooked about the Detroit housing “riot” is the responsibility of the federal government itself. True, the city administration was partly to blame; the police force was partly to blame; the federal housing authorities, by their vacillation and their willingness to co-operate with the Jim Crow landlords and the Ku Klux Klan, were partly to blame. But don’t forget that what was behind this “riot” was the idea dear to the hearts of Jim Crow and Judge Lynch that Negroes must be segregated from whites. The official policy of the federal government as expressed in most of its departments is to uphold this system of segregation. For example, the government won’t let Negro soldiers serve in the same regiment as white soldiers, it won’t let Negro sailors, segregated to the kitchen, sleep in the same room with white sailors, etc. And so far as housing goes, in most cases even in the north, it won’t let Negroes live in the same federal housing project as whites; it follows the policy of setting up lily-white and all-Negro projects. Is there anyone who doubts that the Ku Kluxers and their followers are encouraged by such policies?
*
for a bill, he fights for it, he tells his congressional spokesmen he wants that bill passed, he puts pressure on congressional committees, he issues statements to the press, he delivers fireside chats. That’s how he used to act before the war when he wanted a war measure or appropriation passed. Then on the other hand when he is not interested, Roosevelt can be as silent as the Sphinx — as for example,. when it comes to an antilynching bill.
*
The Pepper bill is supposed to come before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, scheduled to begin March 12. Hundreds of trade unions and Negro organizations are letting the Committee know by telegram and resolution that they want the bill brought to the floor of Congress and passed. Roosevelt will show by his action — or his silence — this week how truthful was his statement last month.
*
The U. S. Navy is still as strong as ever ... in its determination not to use Negroes in any department but the kitchen. Only last week the Navy Department let a reporter know that it has not retreated an inch ... on this question. Evidently the Navy brass hats will fight to the bitter end ... against equality and democratic treatment for Negroes on ships.
*
The new Negro paper, The People’s Voice, published in Harlem by City Councilman A. Clayton Powell, Jr. and Charles P. Buchanan, is a hard-hitting addition to the ranks of Negro journalism. It takes a forthright position on the trade union movement, and declares that “This is a working class paper.” If promises, “We cannot be bought, we will not be sold.” We reserve fuller discussion of The People’s Voice for a future issue of The Militant.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(10 May 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_19" target="new">Vol. V No. 19</a>, 10 May 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>The Supreme Court Decision</h4>
<p class="fst">It was extremely dissappointing to read the comment of the Negro press on the recent decision of the Supreme Court on the Mitchell case. Most of the press went overboard for it hook, line and sinker, hailing it as one of the most important decisions since the Civil War.</p>
<p>The <strong>Pittsburgh Courier</strong> went even further than most, spilling the pictures of the eight judges clear across the top of the front page and labeling it “Eight Real Americans ... They Rendered Most Momentous Decision Affecting The Race since 1857.”</p>
<p>Are the <strong>Courier</strong> editors kidding themselves or do they believe it? The most that could be said for the decision, so far as the great mass of the Negro people goes, was that it was a thin moral victory insofar as the position of the 10 Southern Attorneys-General was rejected.</p>
<p>The decision did <em>not</em> wipe out segregation in transportation, just as the court’s decision on the Gaines case a few years ago did not wipe out segregation in education. That is what is fundamental, and that is just what the court refused to act on.</p>
<p>The Negro press does not do a service to the job of clarifying the struggle for full equality when it prints such twaddle as it did on this case. Indeed, it sounds almost as ridiculous as did Mitchell himself, when he crowed after the announcement of the decision that he wants the world to know that he fought, the case single-handed and deserves “the full credit.” The only difference is that the Negro press ballyhoos the Jim-Crow Court as the protector of Negro rights, while Mitchell ballyhoos only himself.<br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>Pickens Defends British Jim Crow</h4>
<p class="fst">William Pickens has written another article in an endeavor to swing more Negroes to support of the war to defend British imperialism. His latest article is directed against George Padmore who is now in England. Padmore’s article in the March issue of <strong>The Crisis</strong>, <em>Hitler Makes British Drop Color Bar</em>, has aroused Picken’s ire.</p>
<p>We do not comment on it in order to defend Padmore, because Padmore can ably defend himself, but in order to defend the American Negro, people against the sly distortions of Pickens.</p>
<p>Pickens’ theme, this time, is that in England you will find far less evidence of Jim Crowism than you will find anywhere else except, maybe Honolulu, Hawaii; and that therefore Negroes should throw all their support behind the government’s steps to aid England. Once Pickens had made more than 60 lectures all over England, and he claims that “for the Negro, the worst place in England is better than the best place in the United States ...”</p>
<p>The trick Pickens employs here is to separate the British Isles from the British Empire and to pick out one isolated, very minor aspect of the first to justify all-out, uncritical defense of the second. We are willing to grant, for the sake of argument, the truth of Pickens’ observations about racial discrimination in England (although current reports about separate Jim Crow bomb shelters do not jibe with his pretty picture). But is that the decisive question, as Pickens tries to make it appear?</p>
<p>Ask Churchill, and the other imperialists, and they’ll answer only too quickly that it is not. Churchill and his class are not fighting to preserve Negro rights in the British Isles, they are fighting to preserve the British EMPIRE, which means the continued exploitation and oppression of hundreds of millions of colored workers and peasants in Africa and India and the West Indies.</p>
<p>Pickens is happy that two years ago in London he “could roam through the whole town, and stop and step into any public place, and eat and drink, and without receiving any discourtesy, could crowd shoulder to shoulder with the thronging English people, without a ripple of displeasure.” But when he tries to imply that this is what the British ruling class is fighting for, he <em>knows</em> that he is deceiving his public.</p>
<p>Padmore described how the progress of the war has compelled the British ruling class to temporarily lower some of the color bars against Negroes. The reason was not that they believe in equal rights for Negroes, but that they want to strengthen the imperialist system that keeps the great bulk of Negroes in subjection.</p>
<p>Because for every Negro who might be able to go freely in England, there were and are a thousand Negroes in Africa who can’t go where they want, or work where they want, or vote, or belong to a union, or a party, or even an African form of the NAACP.<br>
</p>
<a name="p3"></a>
<h4>NAACP Picket Lines</h4>
<p class="fst">The NAACP picket lines scheduled to be held throughout the country on April 26 were far from the successful demonstrations against Jim Crowism that they easily could have been.</p>
<p>They were poorly organized, and consequently, not well attended.</p>
<p>This must be a lesson to, the leaders of the NAACP, or all their other efforts will also be unavailing. They must pay more attention to involving the Negro masses in the struggle against discrimination. It is necessary and correct to take care of court action, to prepare briefs for Congress, to file telegrams of protest. But unless these actions are backed up by the great hulk of the Negro people (and everyone knows they are more aroused by present day developments than ever before), nothing will come of them.</p>
<p>For more demonstrations involving the masses! For real preparation and organization of such demonstrations to show the real strength of the Negroes!</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(10 May 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 19, 10 May 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Supreme Court Decision
It was extremely dissappointing to read the comment of the Negro press on the recent decision of the Supreme Court on the Mitchell case. Most of the press went overboard for it hook, line and sinker, hailing it as one of the most important decisions since the Civil War.
The Pittsburgh Courier went even further than most, spilling the pictures of the eight judges clear across the top of the front page and labeling it “Eight Real Americans ... They Rendered Most Momentous Decision Affecting The Race since 1857.”
Are the Courier editors kidding themselves or do they believe it? The most that could be said for the decision, so far as the great mass of the Negro people goes, was that it was a thin moral victory insofar as the position of the 10 Southern Attorneys-General was rejected.
The decision did not wipe out segregation in transportation, just as the court’s decision on the Gaines case a few years ago did not wipe out segregation in education. That is what is fundamental, and that is just what the court refused to act on.
The Negro press does not do a service to the job of clarifying the struggle for full equality when it prints such twaddle as it did on this case. Indeed, it sounds almost as ridiculous as did Mitchell himself, when he crowed after the announcement of the decision that he wants the world to know that he fought, the case single-handed and deserves “the full credit.” The only difference is that the Negro press ballyhoos the Jim-Crow Court as the protector of Negro rights, while Mitchell ballyhoos only himself.
Pickens Defends British Jim Crow
William Pickens has written another article in an endeavor to swing more Negroes to support of the war to defend British imperialism. His latest article is directed against George Padmore who is now in England. Padmore’s article in the March issue of The Crisis, Hitler Makes British Drop Color Bar, has aroused Picken’s ire.
We do not comment on it in order to defend Padmore, because Padmore can ably defend himself, but in order to defend the American Negro, people against the sly distortions of Pickens.
Pickens’ theme, this time, is that in England you will find far less evidence of Jim Crowism than you will find anywhere else except, maybe Honolulu, Hawaii; and that therefore Negroes should throw all their support behind the government’s steps to aid England. Once Pickens had made more than 60 lectures all over England, and he claims that “for the Negro, the worst place in England is better than the best place in the United States ...”
The trick Pickens employs here is to separate the British Isles from the British Empire and to pick out one isolated, very minor aspect of the first to justify all-out, uncritical defense of the second. We are willing to grant, for the sake of argument, the truth of Pickens’ observations about racial discrimination in England (although current reports about separate Jim Crow bomb shelters do not jibe with his pretty picture). But is that the decisive question, as Pickens tries to make it appear?
Ask Churchill, and the other imperialists, and they’ll answer only too quickly that it is not. Churchill and his class are not fighting to preserve Negro rights in the British Isles, they are fighting to preserve the British EMPIRE, which means the continued exploitation and oppression of hundreds of millions of colored workers and peasants in Africa and India and the West Indies.
Pickens is happy that two years ago in London he “could roam through the whole town, and stop and step into any public place, and eat and drink, and without receiving any discourtesy, could crowd shoulder to shoulder with the thronging English people, without a ripple of displeasure.” But when he tries to imply that this is what the British ruling class is fighting for, he knows that he is deceiving his public.
Padmore described how the progress of the war has compelled the British ruling class to temporarily lower some of the color bars against Negroes. The reason was not that they believe in equal rights for Negroes, but that they want to strengthen the imperialist system that keeps the great bulk of Negroes in subjection.
Because for every Negro who might be able to go freely in England, there were and are a thousand Negroes in Africa who can’t go where they want, or work where they want, or vote, or belong to a union, or a party, or even an African form of the NAACP.
NAACP Picket Lines
The NAACP picket lines scheduled to be held throughout the country on April 26 were far from the successful demonstrations against Jim Crowism that they easily could have been.
They were poorly organized, and consequently, not well attended.
This must be a lesson to, the leaders of the NAACP, or all their other efforts will also be unavailing. They must pay more attention to involving the Negro masses in the struggle against discrimination. It is necessary and correct to take care of court action, to prepare briefs for Congress, to file telegrams of protest. But unless these actions are backed up by the great hulk of the Negro people (and everyone knows they are more aroused by present day developments than ever before), nothing will come of them.
For more demonstrations involving the masses! For real preparation and organization of such demonstrations to show the real strength of the Negroes!
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h4>The Negro Struggle</h4>
<h1>“Separate but Equal” Facilities</h1>
<h3>(19 January 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_03" target="new">Vol. XII No. 3</a>, 19 January 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Members of the U.S. Supreme Court come and go, but the Court itself never changes in its undying opposition to equality for the Negro people. This came out once again on Jan. 12 when the Court said segregation is OK.</p>
<p>Two years ago Miss Ada Lois Sipuel applied for admission to the University of Oklahoma Law School, the only school of its kind in that state. She was turned down solely because she is a Negro and Oklahoma segregates Negroes in education as well as other fields. The state courts ruled against her, and so she went to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking two things – that she be admitted to the school, and that the Court outlaw segregation of students as unconstitutional.</p>
<p>By unanimous vote, the Court did neither. It ordered Oklahoma to provide a legal education for Miss Sipuel – either at the existing school, from which Negroes have been banned, or by setting up a new school for Negroes only. And it refused to take any action at all on the constitutionality of segregation.</p>
<p>Of the two questions, the second is, of course, far more important because it affects all aspects of Negro life in the 20 states and the District of Columbia where local laws specifically require segregation.</p>
<p>By upholding these laws in the Sipuel case, the Court is acting consistently with its own long anti-Negro history and traditions. In fact, this body bears greater responsibility for the pattern of the present Jim Crow system than any other single institution in the country.</p>
<p>After the Civil War Congress passed several laws to protect the civil rights of the newly freed Negroes. But the Supreme Court threw most of them out, ruling that authority over the protection of civil rights belongs to the states, and not to the federal government. This was just what the Southern states wanted, and they quickly passed Jim Crow laws to deprive Negroes of their rights. The Supreme Court said discrimination was illegal, but it nullified the effect of that decision by declaring segregation is not discrimination if “separate but equal” facilities are provided for those segregated.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Examples of how the rule works are readily at hand,” says William R. Ming, Jr., in the chapter he wrote for the NAACP’c recent appeal to the United Nations. “Contrast the crowded, dirty, freezing in winter, and sweltering in summer, ‘Jim Crow’ cars of the southern railroads with the accommodations afforded white persons paying no more than equal fares. Or, consider the one-room schools, often unheated, poorly furnished and frequently equally poorly taught, to which most rural Negroes go for their education as another illustration ... Or, wait with a Negro soldier on a three day pass while successive busses admit only a few Negroes at a time as his leave runs out. The fact is that the law permits facilities to be separate but it does not succeed in making them equal.”</p>
<p class="fst">You can say that again. And while you’re saying it, remember what it means: To win equality for the Negro people it is necessary to change not only the laws, but the whole system which makes such laws possible and inevitable.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Separate but Equal” Facilities
(19 January 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. XII No. 3, 19 January 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Members of the U.S. Supreme Court come and go, but the Court itself never changes in its undying opposition to equality for the Negro people. This came out once again on Jan. 12 when the Court said segregation is OK.
Two years ago Miss Ada Lois Sipuel applied for admission to the University of Oklahoma Law School, the only school of its kind in that state. She was turned down solely because she is a Negro and Oklahoma segregates Negroes in education as well as other fields. The state courts ruled against her, and so she went to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking two things – that she be admitted to the school, and that the Court outlaw segregation of students as unconstitutional.
By unanimous vote, the Court did neither. It ordered Oklahoma to provide a legal education for Miss Sipuel – either at the existing school, from which Negroes have been banned, or by setting up a new school for Negroes only. And it refused to take any action at all on the constitutionality of segregation.
Of the two questions, the second is, of course, far more important because it affects all aspects of Negro life in the 20 states and the District of Columbia where local laws specifically require segregation.
By upholding these laws in the Sipuel case, the Court is acting consistently with its own long anti-Negro history and traditions. In fact, this body bears greater responsibility for the pattern of the present Jim Crow system than any other single institution in the country.
After the Civil War Congress passed several laws to protect the civil rights of the newly freed Negroes. But the Supreme Court threw most of them out, ruling that authority over the protection of civil rights belongs to the states, and not to the federal government. This was just what the Southern states wanted, and they quickly passed Jim Crow laws to deprive Negroes of their rights. The Supreme Court said discrimination was illegal, but it nullified the effect of that decision by declaring segregation is not discrimination if “separate but equal” facilities are provided for those segregated.
“Examples of how the rule works are readily at hand,” says William R. Ming, Jr., in the chapter he wrote for the NAACP’c recent appeal to the United Nations. “Contrast the crowded, dirty, freezing in winter, and sweltering in summer, ‘Jim Crow’ cars of the southern railroads with the accommodations afforded white persons paying no more than equal fares. Or, consider the one-room schools, often unheated, poorly furnished and frequently equally poorly taught, to which most rural Negroes go for their education as another illustration ... Or, wait with a Negro soldier on a three day pass while successive busses admit only a few Negroes at a time as his leave runs out. The fact is that the law permits facilities to be separate but it does not succeed in making them equal.”
You can say that again. And while you’re saying it, remember what it means: To win equality for the Negro people it is necessary to change not only the laws, but the whole system which makes such laws possible and inevitable.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Our Military Policy – And the FBI’s False Version</h1>
<h4>The Lessons of Two World Wars Dictate Our Party’s Program<br>
for Military Training, Government-Financed, Union-Controlled</h4>
<h3>(26 July 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_34" target="new">Vol. V No. 34</a>, 23 August 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">The key charges in the indictments handed down against the Socialist Workers Party last week revolve around our party’s anti-war stand and the concretization of our anti-war stand in our proletarian military policy.</p>
<p>It would not serve the purpose of Roosevelt’s Department of Justice to present our real military policy, as it was actually adopted at our national conference last September and as it has been presented, countless times in our press, in our public meetings and in the election platforms of our candidates for office.</p>
<p>For the truth would completely discredit and disprove the Roosevelt Administration’s charges.</p>
<p>An examination of these charges in the indictment, numbered 7, 8 and 9, – supposed to describe our military policy – clearly demonstrates the purpose of the prosecutions. Because what they accuse us of is not the policy we really advocate, but a falsified and distorted version, cooked up for the purposes of a frameup.</p>
<p>Number 7 of the indictment charges that:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“The defendants and their co-conspirators would endeavor by any means at their disposal to procure members of the military and naval forces of the United States to become undisciplined, to complain about food, living conditions, and missions to which they would be assigned, to create dissension, dissatisfaction and insubordination among the armed forces, to impair the loyalty and morale thereof, and FINALLY TO SEEK TO GAIN CONTROL OF SAID NAVAL AND MILITARY FORCES so that the enlisted personnel thereof would revolt against its officers, thereby enabling said defendants to overcome and put down by force and arms the constitutional government of the United States.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">Paragraph 9 makes substantially the same charge.</p>
<p>Our military policy has nothing in common with the police-mind version fabricated by the Department of Justice. Here is what we advocate:</p>
<p class="fst">We recognize in this period of universal militarism and the deadly advances of fascism, the need for military training of the workers. We never succumbed for a minute to the fatal ideas of pacifism. On the contrary we pointed out that workers could overcome fascism only by fighting it, and that pacifism would only disarm the workers.</p>
<p>But the experiences of both the first and second World Wars have taught us that the best interests of the workers cannot be entrusted to the bosses or their agents on the military field any more than in the factories. The downfall of France, we have pointed out, contained a great lesson for American workers. There the government had built a great army in the name of a war against fascism. But instead of carrying this war through, the army bureaucrats capitulated and delivered the French workers to Hitler.</p>
<p>The way the U.S. Army is constituted, we said, offers us no assurances that the same thing that happened in France will not happen here.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Anti-Labor Military Hierarchy</h4>
<p class="fst">The army is run by a hardened bureaucratic caste that is distinguished, as a result of its background, training and traditions, by the following characteristics:</p>
<ol>
<li>It is anti-labor and anti-democratic.<br>
</li>
<li>It is composed almost exclusively of men drawn from that part ot society that is most alien to and separated from the needs and interests of the working class.<br>
</li>
<li>It bases itself on a harsh barracks discipline that tends to destroy the independent thought and initiative of the worker-soldiers.<br>
</li>
<li>It is conservative in its military thinking and strategy.</li>
</ol>
<p class="fst">No informed person would dispute these characterizations. As a matter of fact, they are openly admitted by many “liberal” supporters of Roosevelt’s war, and program, and even by some of the more observant sections of the army bureaucracy itself, who are trying to effect some reforms in order to make the army regime more satisfactory for their own purposes and more acceptable in the eyes of the masses.</p>
<p>There is no question, either, but that the workers look with suspicion and distrust on this military caste. Nor is there any question about the existence of a wide spread dissatisfaction with it among American workers. The war mongers may attempt through this frameup of the Socialist Workers Party to attribute this dissatisfaction to our activities. But everyone knows that we are not responsible for these conditions. We did not “create” them we only discuss them. They were created by Roosevelt and his class.<br>
</p>
<h4>Our Program for Militant Training</h4>
<p class="fst">We told the workers: If we are forced to depend on such a set-up what may result, in spite of all the workers’ sacrifices, is the definitive victory of fascism and the establishment of an American Vichy regime by the very forces that today tell us there is no other way to fight fascism than by joining the army and supporting the Roosevelt war program and everything that goes with it But there is another way. It is briefly expressed in the slogan raised by our party:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Military training of workers, financed by the government, but under control of the trade unions. Special officers’ training camps, financed by the government but controlled by the trade unions, to train workers to become officers.”</p>
<p class="fst">Our program of military training under trade union control is to be achieved, not by gaining control of the existing governmental armed forces, but as a result of independent pressure on the government for appropriations to be used to train the workers and to train worker-officers in special camps, to be set up for this express purpose and to be operated by the trade unions.</p>
<p>We recognize very well that only a disciplined armed force can successfully fight off fascist attacks. But lack of discipline does not arise from “agitation” or “propaganda”. It arises, in the armed forces as in industry and everywhere else, only as a result of rotten conditions and the lack of machinery for correcting them. It is precisely the fact that the nature of the present military regime prohibits correction that ends weight to our argument for the establishment of a system of military training, which by its nature will be democratically operated, will permit the handling and satisfaction of legitimate grievances, and will thus automatically build and create the kind of discipline which no fascist army, itself chock full of barracks discipline and dissatisfaction, could possibly withstand.<br>
</p>
<h4>What We Do When We Are Conscripted</h4>
<p class="fst">Paragraph 8 of the indictments charges that:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“When the Selective Service Act was passed, the members of said Socialist Workers Party would be urged to willingly accept service, but after being inducted into the army of the United States, to do everything in their power to disrupt, hinder, and impair the efficient functioning thereof, and when the appropriate time came to turn their weapons against their officers.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">The indictment does not err in stating that we advised class-conscious workers not to seek an individual solution of their problem by refusing to go when drafted. But it falsifies from beginning to end what we advise workers to do after they were drafted.</p>
<p>One quotation from many in the record will prove this. In our official <em>Resolution on Proletarian Military Policy</em>, we said:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“Under conditions of mass militarization the revolutionary worker cannot evade military exploitation any more than he can evade exploitation in the factory. He does not seek a personal solution of the problem of war by evading military service. That is nothing but a desertion of class duty. The proletarian revolutionist goes with the masses. He becomes a soldier when they become soldiers, and goes to war when they go to war. The proletarian revolutionist strives to become the most skilled among the worker-soldiers, and demonstrates in action that he is most concerned for the general welfare and protection of his comrades. Only in this way, as in the factory, can the proletarian revolutionist gain the confidence of his comrades in arms and become an influential leader among them.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">Obviously, far from urging the class conscious worker to follow a policy of “disrupting, hindering and impairing” – a policy which could only place his fellow soldiers as well as himself in the greatest danger, especially in time of combat – we urged him to become “the most skilled” among the soldiers.</p>
<p>We tell the workers to learn the military arts because they have to learn them if they do not want to be crushed by fascism, of either the foreign or domestic variety.</p>
<p>We tell them to demand training under trusted leadership so that not only will they be able to defeat foreign fascism, but also to prevent an American capitulation and the establishment of fascism from within. In other words, we are serious about this business of fighting fascism.</p>
<p><em>Thus, we see, the government is preparing to suppress us on charges that we are trying to impede and interfere with a war against fascism, when actually it is preparing to suppress the only party with a program that will really guarantee the defeat of fascism of all kinds!</em></p>
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George Breitman
Our Military Policy – And the FBI’s False Version
The Lessons of Two World Wars Dictate Our Party’s Program
for Military Training, Government-Financed, Union-Controlled
(26 July 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 34, 23 August 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The key charges in the indictments handed down against the Socialist Workers Party last week revolve around our party’s anti-war stand and the concretization of our anti-war stand in our proletarian military policy.
It would not serve the purpose of Roosevelt’s Department of Justice to present our real military policy, as it was actually adopted at our national conference last September and as it has been presented, countless times in our press, in our public meetings and in the election platforms of our candidates for office.
For the truth would completely discredit and disprove the Roosevelt Administration’s charges.
An examination of these charges in the indictment, numbered 7, 8 and 9, – supposed to describe our military policy – clearly demonstrates the purpose of the prosecutions. Because what they accuse us of is not the policy we really advocate, but a falsified and distorted version, cooked up for the purposes of a frameup.
Number 7 of the indictment charges that:
“The defendants and their co-conspirators would endeavor by any means at their disposal to procure members of the military and naval forces of the United States to become undisciplined, to complain about food, living conditions, and missions to which they would be assigned, to create dissension, dissatisfaction and insubordination among the armed forces, to impair the loyalty and morale thereof, and FINALLY TO SEEK TO GAIN CONTROL OF SAID NAVAL AND MILITARY FORCES so that the enlisted personnel thereof would revolt against its officers, thereby enabling said defendants to overcome and put down by force and arms the constitutional government of the United States.”
Paragraph 9 makes substantially the same charge.
Our military policy has nothing in common with the police-mind version fabricated by the Department of Justice. Here is what we advocate:
We recognize in this period of universal militarism and the deadly advances of fascism, the need for military training of the workers. We never succumbed for a minute to the fatal ideas of pacifism. On the contrary we pointed out that workers could overcome fascism only by fighting it, and that pacifism would only disarm the workers.
But the experiences of both the first and second World Wars have taught us that the best interests of the workers cannot be entrusted to the bosses or their agents on the military field any more than in the factories. The downfall of France, we have pointed out, contained a great lesson for American workers. There the government had built a great army in the name of a war against fascism. But instead of carrying this war through, the army bureaucrats capitulated and delivered the French workers to Hitler.
The way the U.S. Army is constituted, we said, offers us no assurances that the same thing that happened in France will not happen here.
The Anti-Labor Military Hierarchy
The army is run by a hardened bureaucratic caste that is distinguished, as a result of its background, training and traditions, by the following characteristics:
It is anti-labor and anti-democratic.
It is composed almost exclusively of men drawn from that part ot society that is most alien to and separated from the needs and interests of the working class.
It bases itself on a harsh barracks discipline that tends to destroy the independent thought and initiative of the worker-soldiers.
It is conservative in its military thinking and strategy.
No informed person would dispute these characterizations. As a matter of fact, they are openly admitted by many “liberal” supporters of Roosevelt’s war, and program, and even by some of the more observant sections of the army bureaucracy itself, who are trying to effect some reforms in order to make the army regime more satisfactory for their own purposes and more acceptable in the eyes of the masses.
There is no question, either, but that the workers look with suspicion and distrust on this military caste. Nor is there any question about the existence of a wide spread dissatisfaction with it among American workers. The war mongers may attempt through this frameup of the Socialist Workers Party to attribute this dissatisfaction to our activities. But everyone knows that we are not responsible for these conditions. We did not “create” them we only discuss them. They were created by Roosevelt and his class.
Our Program for Militant Training
We told the workers: If we are forced to depend on such a set-up what may result, in spite of all the workers’ sacrifices, is the definitive victory of fascism and the establishment of an American Vichy regime by the very forces that today tell us there is no other way to fight fascism than by joining the army and supporting the Roosevelt war program and everything that goes with it But there is another way. It is briefly expressed in the slogan raised by our party:
“Military training of workers, financed by the government, but under control of the trade unions. Special officers’ training camps, financed by the government but controlled by the trade unions, to train workers to become officers.”
Our program of military training under trade union control is to be achieved, not by gaining control of the existing governmental armed forces, but as a result of independent pressure on the government for appropriations to be used to train the workers and to train worker-officers in special camps, to be set up for this express purpose and to be operated by the trade unions.
We recognize very well that only a disciplined armed force can successfully fight off fascist attacks. But lack of discipline does not arise from “agitation” or “propaganda”. It arises, in the armed forces as in industry and everywhere else, only as a result of rotten conditions and the lack of machinery for correcting them. It is precisely the fact that the nature of the present military regime prohibits correction that ends weight to our argument for the establishment of a system of military training, which by its nature will be democratically operated, will permit the handling and satisfaction of legitimate grievances, and will thus automatically build and create the kind of discipline which no fascist army, itself chock full of barracks discipline and dissatisfaction, could possibly withstand.
What We Do When We Are Conscripted
Paragraph 8 of the indictments charges that:
“When the Selective Service Act was passed, the members of said Socialist Workers Party would be urged to willingly accept service, but after being inducted into the army of the United States, to do everything in their power to disrupt, hinder, and impair the efficient functioning thereof, and when the appropriate time came to turn their weapons against their officers.”
The indictment does not err in stating that we advised class-conscious workers not to seek an individual solution of their problem by refusing to go when drafted. But it falsifies from beginning to end what we advise workers to do after they were drafted.
One quotation from many in the record will prove this. In our official Resolution on Proletarian Military Policy, we said:
“Under conditions of mass militarization the revolutionary worker cannot evade military exploitation any more than he can evade exploitation in the factory. He does not seek a personal solution of the problem of war by evading military service. That is nothing but a desertion of class duty. The proletarian revolutionist goes with the masses. He becomes a soldier when they become soldiers, and goes to war when they go to war. The proletarian revolutionist strives to become the most skilled among the worker-soldiers, and demonstrates in action that he is most concerned for the general welfare and protection of his comrades. Only in this way, as in the factory, can the proletarian revolutionist gain the confidence of his comrades in arms and become an influential leader among them.”
Obviously, far from urging the class conscious worker to follow a policy of “disrupting, hindering and impairing” – a policy which could only place his fellow soldiers as well as himself in the greatest danger, especially in time of combat – we urged him to become “the most skilled” among the soldiers.
We tell the workers to learn the military arts because they have to learn them if they do not want to be crushed by fascism, of either the foreign or domestic variety.
We tell them to demand training under trusted leadership so that not only will they be able to defeat foreign fascism, but also to prevent an American capitulation and the establishment of fascism from within. In other words, we are serious about this business of fighting fascism.
Thus, we see, the government is preparing to suppress us on charges that we are trying to impede and interfere with a war against fascism, when actually it is preparing to suppress the only party with a program that will really guarantee the defeat of fascism of all kinds!
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<h2 class="western">Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(8 February 1941)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_06" target="new">Vol. V No. 6</a>, 8 February 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4 class="western">Fight Against Byrne’s Appointment</h4>
<p class="fst">Shortly after the announcement that McReynolds was retiring from the United States Supreme Court, word came that Roosevelt had already chosen the man he was going to nominate to fill the vacancy, although he did not intend to make the name known for several weeks.</p>
<p>However, at the same time, “authoritative sources” disclosed that the man Roosevelt was referring to was Senator James Byrnes of South Carolina, one of his chief aides in pushing the “Lend-Lease” War Powers Bill.</p>
<p>Immediately, protest action was called for by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which said it would conduct a fight against the selection of Byrnes because he “has been absolutely consistent in opposing any and every effort to give to Negro citizens the protection of the United States Constitution.”</p>
<p>’The NAACP also pointed out that the three senators who most strongly favor Byrne’s appointment, Carter Glass of Virginia, Pat Harrison of Mississippi, and Alben Bartley of Kentucky, are all opponents of any kind of federal anti-lynching legislation.</p>
<p>The <strong>Pittsburgh Courier</strong> went back to the record and dug out the following information:</p>
<ul>
<li>While Byrnes was in the House of Representatives, he tried to obstruct and voted against appropriations for Howard University.<br>
</li>
<li>He spoke and voted against the Dyer anti-lynching bill.<br>
</li>
<li>He voted against the resolution providing a loan of five million dollars to Liberia.<br>
</li>
<li>He placed the blame for the 1919 “race riots” in Chicago and Washington on “would-be leaders of the (Negro) race.” instead of on the boss-inspired anti-union campaigns, and said:</li>
</ul>
<p class="quoteb">“If the two races are to live together in this country, it may as well be understood that the war has in no way changed the attitude of the white man toward the social and political equality of the Negro.</p>
<p class="quote">“<em>If, as a result of his experience in the war, he does not earn to live in this land without political and social equality, then he can depart for any country he wishes and his departure will be facilitated by the white people of this country who desire no disturbing factor in their midst.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">The <strong>Courier</strong>, asks:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Can the man who made the above statement and has the above record mete out equal justice to all citizens of the United States?</p>
<p class="quote">“If you think so, read until you’re sleepy and go on to bed.</p>
<p class="quote">“If you don’t think so, prepare to act.”<br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4 class="western">New Deal Testimony Against Byrnes!</h4>
<p class="fst">But not even the <strong>Courier</strong> has told the whole story about Byrnes, as can be seen by a reading of <strong>Dixie Demagogues</strong> by two New Dealers, A. Michie and P. Ryhlick, who will be embarrassed, after they exposed Byrne’s record and his opposition to the more liberal legislation of the earlier New Deal, to see how closely Roosevelt is working with him today.</p>
<p>For Byrnes is every bit as much anti-labor as he is anti-Negro. And his nomination must be opposed not only by fighters for equality for the Negro people, but by organized labor as well.</p>
<p>In 1937 Byrnes was among the first to rush forward with a denunciation of the sit-down strike, and he introduced an amendment to the Guffey Coat Bill to bar sit-downs, one of labor’s strongest weapons.</p>
<p>He opposed the Wage-Hour Bill in the Senate, and attempted to use his influence in the House to prevent its passage. He thinks that the thousands of textile workers and sharecroppers of South Carolina are getting along well enough in their present starving, highly exploited condition.</p>
<p>He was one of the leaders in Congress of the relief-slashing bloc that has cut WPA to ribbons, always favoring the lowest figure offered for WPA appropriations, always in favor of the move to turn relief over to the states’ control.</p>
<p>An example of his die-hard opposition to the anti-lynching bill, was his reply to the question asked him in 1938 as to what likelihood there was of ending the filibuster against the anti-lynch bill:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Not until the year 2038, unless the bill is withdrawn before then!”</p>
<p class="fst">The fact that Roosevelt even <em>considers</em> such a man for appointment to the Supreme Court should serve to disillusion many colored and white workers who have supported Roosevelt because “he’s a little better than the Republicans.”</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(8 February 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 6, 8 February 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Fight Against Byrne’s Appointment
Shortly after the announcement that McReynolds was retiring from the United States Supreme Court, word came that Roosevelt had already chosen the man he was going to nominate to fill the vacancy, although he did not intend to make the name known for several weeks.
However, at the same time, “authoritative sources” disclosed that the man Roosevelt was referring to was Senator James Byrnes of South Carolina, one of his chief aides in pushing the “Lend-Lease” War Powers Bill.
Immediately, protest action was called for by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which said it would conduct a fight against the selection of Byrnes because he “has been absolutely consistent in opposing any and every effort to give to Negro citizens the protection of the United States Constitution.”
’The NAACP also pointed out that the three senators who most strongly favor Byrne’s appointment, Carter Glass of Virginia, Pat Harrison of Mississippi, and Alben Bartley of Kentucky, are all opponents of any kind of federal anti-lynching legislation.
The Pittsburgh Courier went back to the record and dug out the following information:
While Byrnes was in the House of Representatives, he tried to obstruct and voted against appropriations for Howard University.
He spoke and voted against the Dyer anti-lynching bill.
He voted against the resolution providing a loan of five million dollars to Liberia.
He placed the blame for the 1919 “race riots” in Chicago and Washington on “would-be leaders of the (Negro) race.” instead of on the boss-inspired anti-union campaigns, and said:
“If the two races are to live together in this country, it may as well be understood that the war has in no way changed the attitude of the white man toward the social and political equality of the Negro.
“If, as a result of his experience in the war, he does not earn to live in this land without political and social equality, then he can depart for any country he wishes and his departure will be facilitated by the white people of this country who desire no disturbing factor in their midst.”
The Courier, asks:
“Can the man who made the above statement and has the above record mete out equal justice to all citizens of the United States?
“If you think so, read until you’re sleepy and go on to bed.
“If you don’t think so, prepare to act.”
New Deal Testimony Against Byrnes!
But not even the Courier has told the whole story about Byrnes, as can be seen by a reading of Dixie Demagogues by two New Dealers, A. Michie and P. Ryhlick, who will be embarrassed, after they exposed Byrne’s record and his opposition to the more liberal legislation of the earlier New Deal, to see how closely Roosevelt is working with him today.
For Byrnes is every bit as much anti-labor as he is anti-Negro. And his nomination must be opposed not only by fighters for equality for the Negro people, but by organized labor as well.
In 1937 Byrnes was among the first to rush forward with a denunciation of the sit-down strike, and he introduced an amendment to the Guffey Coat Bill to bar sit-downs, one of labor’s strongest weapons.
He opposed the Wage-Hour Bill in the Senate, and attempted to use his influence in the House to prevent its passage. He thinks that the thousands of textile workers and sharecroppers of South Carolina are getting along well enough in their present starving, highly exploited condition.
He was one of the leaders in Congress of the relief-slashing bloc that has cut WPA to ribbons, always favoring the lowest figure offered for WPA appropriations, always in favor of the move to turn relief over to the states’ control.
An example of his die-hard opposition to the anti-lynching bill, was his reply to the question asked him in 1938 as to what likelihood there was of ending the filibuster against the anti-lynch bill:
“Not until the year 2038, unless the bill is withdrawn before then!”
The fact that Roosevelt even considers such a man for appointment to the Supreme Court should serve to disillusion many colored and white workers who have supported Roosevelt because “he’s a little better than the Republicans.”
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>Another Negro Lynched;<br>
More Soldiers in ‘Riot’</h1>
<h3>(21 March 1942)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1942/index.htm#m42_12" target="new">Vol. VI No. 12</a>, 21 March 1942, pp. 1 & 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">In this war, as in 1917, the Negro people have been promised that their reward for fighting and dying will be equal treatment – after the war. The Negroes had to wait until the first war was over to find out what a lie this was, to find that their “reward” was more lynchings, “race riots”, segregation, discrimination and insult than they had received before the war.</p>
<p>The chief difference between World War II and World War I, so far as the Negro people in this country are concerned, is that they don’t have to wait until after the war is over to find out what lies they have been told by the capitalist press and their own misleaders – they can see what lies they are already!</p>
<p>You don’t have to go back even a year ago to prove that Negroes are still considered second-class citizens. You don’t have to remember that Negroes are discriminated against in the army, segregated in the navy and air corps, barred completely from the marines. You don’t have to remember that one Negro soldier in a southern camp was lynched on an army reservation, and that another was shot dead for protecting himself from a vicious M.P. attack. You don’t have to remember the “riot” of Alexandria, Louisiana. You don’t have to remember the lynching of Cleo Wright in Sikeston, Missouri. You don’t even have to remember the housing fight in Detroit, which took place less than a month ago.</p>
<p>Even if you forgot all those things, you would still know that Negroes are Jim Crowed, because these are not isolated, accidental cases – they are going on all the time.</p>
<p>The Negro press for just the last two weeks tells the same story all over again: another Negro lynched; some more whitewash by government officials; another army “riot”; another dramatic example of navy Jim Crow; some more attempts to keep Negroes from living in homes on the basis of equality with whites; some more police brutality against Negroes; some more evidence showing what the government is doing about these cases.<br>
</p>
<h4>Another Lynching</h4>
<p class="fst">The <b>Kansas City Call</b>, Mar. 13, reveals some of the facts in the “secret lynching” in Brookshire, Texas, of Howard Wilpitz, “which never reached publication in the daily newspapers.”</p>
<p>Wilpitz was ordered out of Brookshire, which is 35 miles from Houston, by a local constable. In the argument that followed, the constable hit Wilpitz over the head with his pistol and shot him in the leg when he tried to run away. Wilpitz shot back, and knocked the constable’s gun out of his hand. An armed lynch mob was quickly formed, surrounded Wilpitz in the toilet behind a Negro lodge building, and riddled it with bullets until the victim fell out. They then stood over him and shot him till he was dead.</p>
<p>The Negroes in the town were threatened into silence. The body was held for a week and then buried secretly. Wilpitz’s wife never even saw the body.</p>
<p>The lynching took place on Feb. 21. No word of it was printed until the <b>Call</b> learned the story last week. How many other such cases there are which are hushed up, we do not know. But we have no doubt that there are many of them;</p>
<p>In the same issue of the <b>Call</b> is the report of the action by the Scott County, Missouri, Grand Jury on the lynching of Cleo Wright in Sikeston. Although everyone in Sikeston knows the names of the people who led and participated in the Wright lynching, the Grand Jury, meeting for less than two days, found no one to blame, and announced it had insufficient evidence to return a true bill. The jury was composed almost exclusively of merchants, bankers and “retired” farmers. The judge, J.C. McDowell, accepted the report without comment. Apparently he was satisfied that they had obeyed his warning, given just before they opened their hearings, not to pay any attention to “outside agitation” and “radical talk.”</p>
<p>Everybody knows who lynched Cleo Wright; the guilty parties are walking the streets of that town free and easy. Everybody knows that if anybody talks, he’ll join Cleo Wright, and nothing will happen to the men who murder him either. The people who lynched Cleo Wright are all-out supporters of the “second war for democracy ...”<br>
</p>
<h4>New Army “Riot”</h4>
<p class="fst">The <b>California Eagle</b>, Mar. 5, reports another army “riot” in Merced, Calif., on Mar. 2. It all began when the Negro soldiers were refused service at a tavern on the fair ground’s on which they are Camped. The report says:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Negro soldiers attacked the discriminatory tavern twice. Both times they were ‘calmed’ by Military Police.</p>
<p class="quote">“Colored troops were armed only with sticks and clubs.</p>
<p class="quote">“Military police are still patrolling the business section, whether to prevent riots or prevent Negro patronage is not clear.”<br>
</p>
<h4>Navy Jim Crow</h4>
<p class="fst">The name of the Negro sailor who was hailed as hero on the <em>U.S.S. Arizona</em> has finally been revealed. He is Dorie Miller, 22 year old Texan. At Pearl Harbor he seized a machine gun – although he had never handled one before – and manned it under enemy fire until his ammunition ran out and the ship was sinking. The Negro press is singing his praises this week – but he is still in the mess kitchen somewhere, not permitted by Navy Jim Crow rules from doing anything but serve food and wash dishes.<br>
</p>
<h4>Housing</h4>
<p class="fst">In Rhode Island, “home of Roger Williams and tolerance”, there is a housing project at Newport at which it was decided that some Negro as well as white families could live. Among the whites assigned to the project it was felt equality for the Negro people was a threat to “the maintenance of the morale and prestige of the white race”, so they sent a petition to their Senator in Washington asking him to have the Negroes barred.</p>
<p>This is pretty much, the way the Detroit “riot” began; so far Washington has refused to do anything about the situation, but the Detroit experience showed that when Jim Crow forces put on a little pressure, they are only too willing to give in – against equality for the Negroes.</p>
<p>And that housing Jim Crowism is not an evil peculiar to Detroit or Rhode Island is shown in last week’s <b>People’s Voice</b>, the front page of which shows a large picture of a Washington Heights, New York, Negro man and woman, standing by a window, the pane of which was shattered by a milk bottle thrown by hoodlums who don’t want Negroes living on the same block as whites.<br>
</p>
<h4>Police Brutality</h4>
<p class="fst">New York is supposed to be the most “liberal” city in the country, but as City Councilman Adam Glayton Powell points out in a <b>People’s Voice</b> editorial: “... during the past few days, one man was horribly beaten, teeth knocked out, leg broken and then arrested, although he first came to the police station to make a complaint. Another severe beating was administered to a 15-year-old school boy by a special subway officer and three strong courageous police protectors of the peace,” etc.<br>
</p>
<h4>What Government Is Doing</h4>
<p class="fst">And what about the government while all this is going on? What are the government officials doing about lynchings and riots and brutality?</p>
<p><em>The answer is: They are out investigating the Negro newspaper editors and publishers who print the truth about conditions and have the courage to protest against them!</em></p>
<p>The <b>Pittsburgh Courier</b>, Mar. 14, in an editorial, <em>Cowing the Negro Press</em>, reports that “the Negro press is being closely watched and investigated by government agents.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Offices of at least two of the largest Negro newspapers have been visited by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation since Pearl Harbor.</p>
<p class="quote">“Mrs. Charlotte A. Bass, editor and publisher of the militant <b>California Eagle</b>, states that FBI agents have visited her office and interrogated her about possible receipt of Japanese or German funds because her paper courageously condemned color discrimination and segregation in National Defense.</p>
<p class="quote">“This sort of thing is an obvious effort to cow the Negro press into soft-pedaling its criticism and ending its forthright exposure of the outrageous discriminations to which Negroes have been subjected ...”</p>
<p class="fst">In other words, instead of going after the enemies of the Negro people, the government is going after the defenders of equality for the Negroes. This is the typical “police mind” reaction to complaints against injustice: if somebody complains, shut him up and expect him to keep quiet even though the cause of his complaint goes untouched.</p>
<p>It does not take a prophet to predict that the Negro people, dissatisfied today, are going to become increasingly dissatisfied as the war goes on and conditions become worse. The government may try to cow the press into silence, it may try to explain Negro dissatisfaction as the work of “agitators” – but it will never be able to convince the Negro masses that this is a “war for democracy” as long as it is fought by a Jim Crow Army and Navy, as long as Negroes are lynched and their lynchers white-washed, as long as cops beat up Negroes and protect the fascists, – as long, in short, as the Jim Crow ruling class continues to run things in this country.</p>
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Albert Parker
Another Negro Lynched;
More Soldiers in ‘Riot’
(21 March 1942)
From The Militant, Vol. VI No. 12, 21 March 1942, pp. 1 & 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
In this war, as in 1917, the Negro people have been promised that their reward for fighting and dying will be equal treatment – after the war. The Negroes had to wait until the first war was over to find out what a lie this was, to find that their “reward” was more lynchings, “race riots”, segregation, discrimination and insult than they had received before the war.
The chief difference between World War II and World War I, so far as the Negro people in this country are concerned, is that they don’t have to wait until after the war is over to find out what lies they have been told by the capitalist press and their own misleaders – they can see what lies they are already!
You don’t have to go back even a year ago to prove that Negroes are still considered second-class citizens. You don’t have to remember that Negroes are discriminated against in the army, segregated in the navy and air corps, barred completely from the marines. You don’t have to remember that one Negro soldier in a southern camp was lynched on an army reservation, and that another was shot dead for protecting himself from a vicious M.P. attack. You don’t have to remember the “riot” of Alexandria, Louisiana. You don’t have to remember the lynching of Cleo Wright in Sikeston, Missouri. You don’t even have to remember the housing fight in Detroit, which took place less than a month ago.
Even if you forgot all those things, you would still know that Negroes are Jim Crowed, because these are not isolated, accidental cases – they are going on all the time.
The Negro press for just the last two weeks tells the same story all over again: another Negro lynched; some more whitewash by government officials; another army “riot”; another dramatic example of navy Jim Crow; some more attempts to keep Negroes from living in homes on the basis of equality with whites; some more police brutality against Negroes; some more evidence showing what the government is doing about these cases.
Another Lynching
The Kansas City Call, Mar. 13, reveals some of the facts in the “secret lynching” in Brookshire, Texas, of Howard Wilpitz, “which never reached publication in the daily newspapers.”
Wilpitz was ordered out of Brookshire, which is 35 miles from Houston, by a local constable. In the argument that followed, the constable hit Wilpitz over the head with his pistol and shot him in the leg when he tried to run away. Wilpitz shot back, and knocked the constable’s gun out of his hand. An armed lynch mob was quickly formed, surrounded Wilpitz in the toilet behind a Negro lodge building, and riddled it with bullets until the victim fell out. They then stood over him and shot him till he was dead.
The Negroes in the town were threatened into silence. The body was held for a week and then buried secretly. Wilpitz’s wife never even saw the body.
The lynching took place on Feb. 21. No word of it was printed until the Call learned the story last week. How many other such cases there are which are hushed up, we do not know. But we have no doubt that there are many of them;
In the same issue of the Call is the report of the action by the Scott County, Missouri, Grand Jury on the lynching of Cleo Wright in Sikeston. Although everyone in Sikeston knows the names of the people who led and participated in the Wright lynching, the Grand Jury, meeting for less than two days, found no one to blame, and announced it had insufficient evidence to return a true bill. The jury was composed almost exclusively of merchants, bankers and “retired” farmers. The judge, J.C. McDowell, accepted the report without comment. Apparently he was satisfied that they had obeyed his warning, given just before they opened their hearings, not to pay any attention to “outside agitation” and “radical talk.”
Everybody knows who lynched Cleo Wright; the guilty parties are walking the streets of that town free and easy. Everybody knows that if anybody talks, he’ll join Cleo Wright, and nothing will happen to the men who murder him either. The people who lynched Cleo Wright are all-out supporters of the “second war for democracy ...”
New Army “Riot”
The California Eagle, Mar. 5, reports another army “riot” in Merced, Calif., on Mar. 2. It all began when the Negro soldiers were refused service at a tavern on the fair ground’s on which they are Camped. The report says:
“Negro soldiers attacked the discriminatory tavern twice. Both times they were ‘calmed’ by Military Police.
“Colored troops were armed only with sticks and clubs.
“Military police are still patrolling the business section, whether to prevent riots or prevent Negro patronage is not clear.”
Navy Jim Crow
The name of the Negro sailor who was hailed as hero on the U.S.S. Arizona has finally been revealed. He is Dorie Miller, 22 year old Texan. At Pearl Harbor he seized a machine gun – although he had never handled one before – and manned it under enemy fire until his ammunition ran out and the ship was sinking. The Negro press is singing his praises this week – but he is still in the mess kitchen somewhere, not permitted by Navy Jim Crow rules from doing anything but serve food and wash dishes.
Housing
In Rhode Island, “home of Roger Williams and tolerance”, there is a housing project at Newport at which it was decided that some Negro as well as white families could live. Among the whites assigned to the project it was felt equality for the Negro people was a threat to “the maintenance of the morale and prestige of the white race”, so they sent a petition to their Senator in Washington asking him to have the Negroes barred.
This is pretty much, the way the Detroit “riot” began; so far Washington has refused to do anything about the situation, but the Detroit experience showed that when Jim Crow forces put on a little pressure, they are only too willing to give in – against equality for the Negroes.
And that housing Jim Crowism is not an evil peculiar to Detroit or Rhode Island is shown in last week’s People’s Voice, the front page of which shows a large picture of a Washington Heights, New York, Negro man and woman, standing by a window, the pane of which was shattered by a milk bottle thrown by hoodlums who don’t want Negroes living on the same block as whites.
Police Brutality
New York is supposed to be the most “liberal” city in the country, but as City Councilman Adam Glayton Powell points out in a People’s Voice editorial: “... during the past few days, one man was horribly beaten, teeth knocked out, leg broken and then arrested, although he first came to the police station to make a complaint. Another severe beating was administered to a 15-year-old school boy by a special subway officer and three strong courageous police protectors of the peace,” etc.
What Government Is Doing
And what about the government while all this is going on? What are the government officials doing about lynchings and riots and brutality?
The answer is: They are out investigating the Negro newspaper editors and publishers who print the truth about conditions and have the courage to protest against them!
The Pittsburgh Courier, Mar. 14, in an editorial, Cowing the Negro Press, reports that “the Negro press is being closely watched and investigated by government agents.
“Offices of at least two of the largest Negro newspapers have been visited by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation since Pearl Harbor.
“Mrs. Charlotte A. Bass, editor and publisher of the militant California Eagle, states that FBI agents have visited her office and interrogated her about possible receipt of Japanese or German funds because her paper courageously condemned color discrimination and segregation in National Defense.
“This sort of thing is an obvious effort to cow the Negro press into soft-pedaling its criticism and ending its forthright exposure of the outrageous discriminations to which Negroes have been subjected ...”
In other words, instead of going after the enemies of the Negro people, the government is going after the defenders of equality for the Negroes. This is the typical “police mind” reaction to complaints against injustice: if somebody complains, shut him up and expect him to keep quiet even though the cause of his complaint goes untouched.
It does not take a prophet to predict that the Negro people, dissatisfied today, are going to become increasingly dissatisfied as the war goes on and conditions become worse. The government may try to cow the press into silence, it may try to explain Negro dissatisfaction as the work of “agitators” – but it will never be able to convince the Negro masses that this is a “war for democracy” as long as it is fought by a Jim Crow Army and Navy, as long as Negroes are lynched and their lynchers white-washed, as long as cops beat up Negroes and protect the fascists, – as long, in short, as the Jim Crow ruling class continues to run things in this country.
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<h4>“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(27 September 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_39" target="new">Vol. V No. 39</a>, 27 September 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>North or South?</h4>
<p class="fst">Even before the latest series of attacks on Negro soldiers stationed in southern camps, the demand was raised by various groups that all Negro soldiers be transferred to northern camps. But after the murder of Private Ned Turman at Fort Bragg, N.C., and the mass desertions from Arkansas by Negro troops who had been assaulted by white mobs for marching on the highways and denied ammunition by their officers for self-protection, it became a leading slogan of many papers and writers.</p>
<p>On September 6 the <strong>Chicago Defender</strong> printed a front page editorial which declared that “removing Negro troops from the South because of unprovoked attacks by prejudiced civilians as advocated by one of our contemporaries is far from being an adequate, honest solution of the problem. Besides being an unwarranted, indefensible concession, such a step would be equivalent to an official condoning of the inexcusable barbarities that have been committed against Negro soldiers.”</p>
<p>The <strong>Defender</strong> asserts that Negro troops “should be kept in the south or in any other section of the country where it is necessary and convenient to train them,” that the “government ought to be prepared to defend its defenders at all costs,” that the soldiers should be equipped to defend themselves.<br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>Schuyler’s Answer</h4>
<p class="fst">The following week George Schuyler, <strong>Pittsburgh Courier</strong> columnist, stated his disagreements with the <strong>Defender</strong>: “Any step that removes these soldiers from insult, persecution and brutality because of their color is an adequate step.” He points out that the administration is “not going to MAKE the South accept these Negro soldiers as anything but outcasts” and that it is not going to permit Negro soldiers to defend themselves from unjustifiable attacks. He reminds the <strong>Defender</strong> also that Negro roops are not being attacked by civilians alone for the “cold, hard fact is that most of their mistreatment has been at the hands of the Army’s military police.”</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“Since the question of honesty has been raised,” he continues, “why not be ENTIRELY honest, and urge that all separate Negro units be abolished and Negro recruits and selectees sent to the same units as white men? Why not be TRULY honest and admit that segregation and discrimination are inseparable, and that fair and equal treatment is impossible of attainment in a segregated setup?”</em></p>
<p class="fst">And Schuyler concludes his defense of the slogan demanding transfer of Negro soldiers to northern camps by declaring: “Keeping the present Negro soldier in the South will neither halt the outrageous treatment they are experiencing nor cause the Administration to end it. Hence the best solution is to not station these young men in the South.”</p>
<p>Schuyler finds it comparatively easy to discredit the proposal of the <strong>Defender</strong> editorial because it is based on a false premise: namely, that Negroes have reason to believe that the Jim Crow government might be interested in doing anything about persecution and brutality against Negroes.</p>
<p>The government has shown that the only concessions it “cannot afford to make” are concessions that might weaken the whole system of Jim Crowism in the south. Today especially it does not dare to do anything to offend the southern ruling class because most of the administration’s support for the imperialist war comes from the poll tax south. Dependence on the government or its War Department is nothing short of blindness. And that is the chief weakness of the Defender’s criticism of the proposal to move Negro troops north.<br>
</p>
<a name="p3"></a>
<h4>Both Viewpoints Are Wrong</h4>
<p class="fst">But the fact that the <strong>Defender</strong> editorial presented a poor case, does not make Schuyler’s case any stronger. For his own arguments are full of holes, and Schuyler himself sows illusions that are as dangerous and misleading as the <strong>Defender</strong>’s. While the <strong>Defender</strong> fools itself with the idea that “our” government will help fight Jim Crowism, Schuyler fools himself with the idea that Negro soldiers are removed from Jim Crowism in the government’s northern camps.</p>
<p><em>Of course, “any step that removes these soldiers from insult, persecution and brutality because of their color is an adequate step.” But who dares to say that Negro soldiers don’t face insult, persecution and brutality in northern camps?</em></p>
<p>Schuyler reminds the <strong>Defender</strong> that it’s not only civilians but Army MP’s as well that mistreat the Negroes. Does he realize that this is an argument as much against himself as against the <strong>Defender</strong>? Or does he contend that northern MP’s love Negroes, while southern MP’s don’t?</p>
<p>Schuyler asked the <strong>Defender</strong> an interesting question. “Why not be TRULY honest and admit that segregation and discrimination are inseparable, and that fair and equal treatment is impossible of attainment in a segregated setup” (which exists just as much in the north as in the south)? But we’d like to have him answer it himself, and then justify his proposal as “an adequate step.”</p>
<p>But Schuyler’s argument can be punctured without referring to the obvious contradictions in his article. All we need do is refer to an incident that took place, a few days after his article was written, in the north, at Fort Ontario, New York, to be exact. For at this camp there occurred the same kind of attack on Negro soldiers by white soldiers that occurs in the south, Negro soldiers were attacked, beaten and driven out of the hospital. What does Schuyler propose for them? To go further north, perhaps? To Canada or Alaska?</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx
(27 September 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 39, 27 September 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
North or South?
Even before the latest series of attacks on Negro soldiers stationed in southern camps, the demand was raised by various groups that all Negro soldiers be transferred to northern camps. But after the murder of Private Ned Turman at Fort Bragg, N.C., and the mass desertions from Arkansas by Negro troops who had been assaulted by white mobs for marching on the highways and denied ammunition by their officers for self-protection, it became a leading slogan of many papers and writers.
On September 6 the Chicago Defender printed a front page editorial which declared that “removing Negro troops from the South because of unprovoked attacks by prejudiced civilians as advocated by one of our contemporaries is far from being an adequate, honest solution of the problem. Besides being an unwarranted, indefensible concession, such a step would be equivalent to an official condoning of the inexcusable barbarities that have been committed against Negro soldiers.”
The Defender asserts that Negro troops “should be kept in the south or in any other section of the country where it is necessary and convenient to train them,” that the “government ought to be prepared to defend its defenders at all costs,” that the soldiers should be equipped to defend themselves.
Schuyler’s Answer
The following week George Schuyler, Pittsburgh Courier columnist, stated his disagreements with the Defender: “Any step that removes these soldiers from insult, persecution and brutality because of their color is an adequate step.” He points out that the administration is “not going to MAKE the South accept these Negro soldiers as anything but outcasts” and that it is not going to permit Negro soldiers to defend themselves from unjustifiable attacks. He reminds the Defender also that Negro roops are not being attacked by civilians alone for the “cold, hard fact is that most of their mistreatment has been at the hands of the Army’s military police.”
“Since the question of honesty has been raised,” he continues, “why not be ENTIRELY honest, and urge that all separate Negro units be abolished and Negro recruits and selectees sent to the same units as white men? Why not be TRULY honest and admit that segregation and discrimination are inseparable, and that fair and equal treatment is impossible of attainment in a segregated setup?”
And Schuyler concludes his defense of the slogan demanding transfer of Negro soldiers to northern camps by declaring: “Keeping the present Negro soldier in the South will neither halt the outrageous treatment they are experiencing nor cause the Administration to end it. Hence the best solution is to not station these young men in the South.”
Schuyler finds it comparatively easy to discredit the proposal of the Defender editorial because it is based on a false premise: namely, that Negroes have reason to believe that the Jim Crow government might be interested in doing anything about persecution and brutality against Negroes.
The government has shown that the only concessions it “cannot afford to make” are concessions that might weaken the whole system of Jim Crowism in the south. Today especially it does not dare to do anything to offend the southern ruling class because most of the administration’s support for the imperialist war comes from the poll tax south. Dependence on the government or its War Department is nothing short of blindness. And that is the chief weakness of the Defender’s criticism of the proposal to move Negro troops north.
Both Viewpoints Are Wrong
But the fact that the Defender editorial presented a poor case, does not make Schuyler’s case any stronger. For his own arguments are full of holes, and Schuyler himself sows illusions that are as dangerous and misleading as the Defender’s. While the Defender fools itself with the idea that “our” government will help fight Jim Crowism, Schuyler fools himself with the idea that Negro soldiers are removed from Jim Crowism in the government’s northern camps.
Of course, “any step that removes these soldiers from insult, persecution and brutality because of their color is an adequate step.” But who dares to say that Negro soldiers don’t face insult, persecution and brutality in northern camps?
Schuyler reminds the Defender that it’s not only civilians but Army MP’s as well that mistreat the Negroes. Does he realize that this is an argument as much against himself as against the Defender? Or does he contend that northern MP’s love Negroes, while southern MP’s don’t?
Schuyler asked the Defender an interesting question. “Why not be TRULY honest and admit that segregation and discrimination are inseparable, and that fair and equal treatment is impossible of attainment in a segregated setup” (which exists just as much in the north as in the south)? But we’d like to have him answer it himself, and then justify his proposal as “an adequate step.”
But Schuyler’s argument can be punctured without referring to the obvious contradictions in his article. All we need do is refer to an incident that took place, a few days after his article was written, in the north, at Fort Ontario, New York, to be exact. For at this camp there occurred the same kind of attack on Negro soldiers by white soldiers that occurs in the south, Negro soldiers were attacked, beaten and driven out of the hospital. What does Schuyler propose for them? To go further north, perhaps? To Canada or Alaska?
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>William Pickens, NAACP Leader,<br>
Gets Federal Job</h1>
<h3>(24 May 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_21" target="new">Vol. V No. 21</a>, 24 May 1941, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">William Pickens has a new job. It is with the federal government, in the Treasury Department. He has left his job as branch director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.</p>
<p>This is not surprising to those who have been watching his development in recent years. After all, he was spending more time and energy supporting the war than “advancing” the colored people. For every word he wrote about the conditions of the Negroes in the United States this last year, he wrote ten about how much tougher it would be for them under Hitler.</p>
<p>It is fitting for Pickens to do what he has done. Pickens should be paid by his real masters, the powers whom he really serves.</p>
<p>There has been a lot of sound and fury about the appointment. The Negro Democrats who supported Roosevelt last year feel bitter because none of them got the job, which pays a reported $6,000 salary. They feel that Roosevelt should never have appointed a man like Pickens, who was an ardent supporter of Willkie last November.</p>
<p><em>They don’t seem to understand what is involved. Pickens didn’t get the job because of his position in the presidential elections. He got the job because of his position on something far more important: the war. Roosevelt picked him because he supports his war plans, and certainly Pickens stands out head and shoulders above all the other Negro misleaders when it comes to war-mongering. He can show the others, both Democrats and Republicans, a lot of tricks at this game.</em></p>
<p>But while the job pays well, the work will be hard. For it is Pickens’ job to sell “defense bonds” to the Negroes. This won’t be much easier than selling refrigerators to the Eskimos.</p>
<p>For he has two large obstacles to overcome.</p>
<p>First, the Negro people (this does not apply to the so-called leaders) do not see any good reason for supporting a war conducted under Jim Crow conditions to preserve a “democracy” that does not include them. And before you can get anyone to shell out money for a cause, you’re got to “sell” the cause to him.</p>
<p><em>Second, of all the groups in this country, the Negroes have less money to buy bonds than anyone else. The reason for this is, of course, that the Negroes have been Jim Crowed out of all, the better-paying jobs in expanding industry, and relegated to the hard, low-paid menial jobs or to the relief and WPA rolls, by the same capitalists who will profit from the war Pickens is supporting. Thus, even if they were in some way to be suddenly aroused, they would find it virtually impossible to buy bonds an to be able to feed and house themselves at the same time.</em></p>
<p>Yes, Pickens will have to sweat to earn the salary, that his Jim Crow masters will pay him.</p>
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Albert Parker
William Pickens, NAACP Leader,
Gets Federal Job
(24 May 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 21, 24 May 1941, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
William Pickens has a new job. It is with the federal government, in the Treasury Department. He has left his job as branch director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
This is not surprising to those who have been watching his development in recent years. After all, he was spending more time and energy supporting the war than “advancing” the colored people. For every word he wrote about the conditions of the Negroes in the United States this last year, he wrote ten about how much tougher it would be for them under Hitler.
It is fitting for Pickens to do what he has done. Pickens should be paid by his real masters, the powers whom he really serves.
There has been a lot of sound and fury about the appointment. The Negro Democrats who supported Roosevelt last year feel bitter because none of them got the job, which pays a reported $6,000 salary. They feel that Roosevelt should never have appointed a man like Pickens, who was an ardent supporter of Willkie last November.
They don’t seem to understand what is involved. Pickens didn’t get the job because of his position in the presidential elections. He got the job because of his position on something far more important: the war. Roosevelt picked him because he supports his war plans, and certainly Pickens stands out head and shoulders above all the other Negro misleaders when it comes to war-mongering. He can show the others, both Democrats and Republicans, a lot of tricks at this game.
But while the job pays well, the work will be hard. For it is Pickens’ job to sell “defense bonds” to the Negroes. This won’t be much easier than selling refrigerators to the Eskimos.
For he has two large obstacles to overcome.
First, the Negro people (this does not apply to the so-called leaders) do not see any good reason for supporting a war conducted under Jim Crow conditions to preserve a “democracy” that does not include them. And before you can get anyone to shell out money for a cause, you’re got to “sell” the cause to him.
Second, of all the groups in this country, the Negroes have less money to buy bonds than anyone else. The reason for this is, of course, that the Negroes have been Jim Crowed out of all, the better-paying jobs in expanding industry, and relegated to the hard, low-paid menial jobs or to the relief and WPA rolls, by the same capitalists who will profit from the war Pickens is supporting. Thus, even if they were in some way to be suddenly aroused, they would find it virtually impossible to buy bonds an to be able to feed and house themselves at the same time.
Yes, Pickens will have to sweat to earn the salary, that his Jim Crow masters will pay him.
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<p> </p>
<h1>I</h1>
<h1>The Cannon Tradition:</h1>
<h1>“Don’t Strangle the Party!”</h1>
<p>The entirety of this portion of the book was published as a pamphlet
by the Fourth Internationalist Tendency in 1986, entitled <em>Don’t
Strangle the Party!</em> The introduction by George Breitman makes
unnecessary any further comment on the specific items.</p>
<table align="center" width="90%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p class="fst"><a href="#section1" target="_blank">1. DON’T TRY TO ENFORCE A
NONEXISTENT LAW</a><br>
<a href="#section2" target="_blank">2. REASONS FOR THE SURVIVAL OF THE SWP AND
FOR ITS NEW VITALITY IN THE 1960s</a><br>
<a href="#section3" target="_blank">3. A TREND IN THE WRONG DIRECTION</a><br>
<a href="#section4" target="_blank">4. THE SWP’S GREAT TRADITION</a></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<hr>
<table align="center" width="95%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<h3>Introduction</h3>
<h3>by George Breitman</h3>
<p>On April 8, 1983, a membership meeting of the Bay Area
District of the Socialist Workers Party (from branches in San
Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose) was held in San Jose to hear a report
on the latest three in a series of expulsions being engineered by the
SWP “central leadership team” headed by Jack Barnes. During the
discussion period, Asher Harer, a veteran party member from San
Francisco, made some comments about the newly announced “organizational
norm” prohibiting SWP members from communicating with members of other
branches under pain of expulsion. Harer said that if James P. Cannon,
the principal founder of the SWP, were alive today, he could not exist
in the SWP. Cannon often communicated directly with members in other
branches, on all sorts of questions, and Harer said he had a file of
Cannon letters to prove it.</p>
<p>Harer was answered by Clifton DeBerry, a member of the
national Control Commission, a former member of the National Committee,
and a former presidential candidate, who said: “If James P Cannon wrote
such letters today, he would be expelled.” DeBerry added that the SWP
is a “more disciplined” party today than in Cannon’s time. Some NC
members who supported the new norms were also present, but none
differentiated themselves from what DeBerry had said.</p>
<p>DeBerry’s remarks were not repeated in written form, then or
later, but they were very revealing. For more than a year the SWP
leadership had been accusing oppositionists in the NC of violating the
party’s organizational principles (“norms”), which the leadership
allegedly was trying to maintain and defend. And now DeBerry had
blurted out the truth: Even the founder of the party would have been
ousted as “undisciplined” if he had lived to 1983 and tried to function
in accord with the organizational norms that prevailed in the party
from its founding in 1938 to his death in 1974. Since these norms had
never been changed in Cannon’s time, or later, they were being violated
all right - not by the oppositionists but by the leadership itself,
which was reinterpreting them and giving them a new content without
ever formally discussing or formally changing them.</p>
<p>In the following year the SWP leadership expelled all known or
suspected oppositionists, dissidents, or critics. The real reason they
were expelled was that they had political differences with or doubts
about the leadership’s new orientation toward Castroism and away from
Trotskyism, and that the leadership was afraid to debate this
orientation with them in front of the SWP membership. The ostensible
reason given by the leadership was that the expelled members had in
various ways violated the party’s traditional organizational
principles, especially the 1965 resolution on “The Organizational
Character of the Socialist Workers Party.”</p>
<p>The present pamphlet consists of three letters and the text of
a talk by Cannon in 1966 and 1967, which prove conclusively that Cannon
did not share the current SWP leadership’s interpretation of the 1965
resolution. The real tradition of the SWP on democratic centralism is
different than the present leadership makes it out to be. Like Trotsky,
Cannon is a witness against the revisionist political and
organizational policies of the Barnes group.</p>
<p>Cannon was 75 years old and living in Los Angeles in 1965. He
was national chairman of the party but no longer responsible for its
day-to-day activity, which was handled by the Political Committee and
national secretary Farrell Dobbs from the party center in New York.
When the PC decided to submit a resolution on organizational principles
to the 1965 convention, it chose a committee of Dobbs, George Novack,
and Cannon to prepare a draft. Dobbs wrote it and Novack edited it. A
copy was sent to Cannon, who sent it back without comment. He thought
the draft was poorly written and too ambiguous on certain key points,
but did not undertake to amend or redraft it. He did not attend the
1965 convention, which adopted the resolution by a vote of 51 to 8.</p>
<p>In 1968 Cannon discontinued direct correspondence with the
party center in New York. But before that happened, he wrote and said
some things in 1966 and 1967 which showed that he disagreed with PC
members who were interpreting the 1965 resolution as a signal to
“tighten” or “centralize” the party, which he believed could only
damage it, perhaps fatally.</p>
<h4>1. Don’t Try to Enforce a Nonexistent Law</h4>
<p>Cannon’s letter of February 8, 1966, had the following
background: Arne Swabeck, a party founder and NC member, had been
trying for seven years to convert the SWP from Trotskyism to Maoism.
Despite repeated efforts before and during SWP national conventions in
1959, 1961, 1963, and 1965, his small group made little headway among
the members. Increasingly he and his group began to ignore the normal
channels for discussion in the party, and to communicate their ideas to
selected members by mail. This led to demands by Larry Trainor, an NC
member in Boston, for disciplinary action against Swabeck and his ally
in the NC, Richard Fraser. Through a circular letter for the PC Tom
Kerry announced that the matter would be taken up at a plenum of the NC
to be held at the end of February.</p>
<p>Cannon’s letter was addressed to the supporters of the NC
majority tendency (which excluded the supporters of the Swabeck and
Fraser-Clara Kaye tendencies, etc.). Cannon tried to convince the
majority that political discussion and education were the answer to the
minority tendencies, not disciplinary action. “There is absolutely <em>no
party law or precedent for such action</em>,” he said, “and we will run
into all kinds of trouble in the party ranks, and the International, if
we try this kind of <em>experiment for the first time...</em>. It
would be too bad if the SWP suddenly decided to get tougher than the
Communist Party [of the 1920s] and try to enforce <em>a nonexistent law</em>
— which can’t be enforced without creating all kinds of discontent and
disruption.” (Emphasis added)</p>
<p>This was written five months after the adoption of the 1965
resolution. It demonstrates that Cannon saw nothing in that resolution
that could be cited as “party law or precedent” for the kind of
disciplinary action taken by the Barnes leadership in the 1980s.</p>
<p>The February 1966 meeting of the NC found Cannon’s arguments
convincing. They did not want to conduct, for “the first time” in the
party’s history, the experiment of trying to enforce “a nonexistent
law.” So the whole question was dropped - until after Cannon’s death.</p>
<h4>2. Reasons for the Survival of the SWP and for Its New
Vitality in the 1960s</h4>
<p>Cannon’s September 6, 1966, talk was one of “my last speeches
before I fell into retirement, so to speak,” he said shortly before his
death. It was given to a Labor Day weekend educational conference at a
camp near San Francisco, and it was obviously intended primarily for
members of the SWP and YSA, rather than for the general public. The
form of this talk was that of a discussion about the history of the SWP
and the FI, which Cannon used to express his thinking about the
problems facing the SWP in 1966, its strengths and weaknesses, the
pressures it was feeling, and the lessons from the past that it could
learn for the present and the future. Although the talk was couched
mainly in historical terms, experienced listeners understood that
Cannon was saying, “I think we have some serious problems now and we’d
better think about how to handle them.” The SWP leadership never
printed this talk (which was transcribed from a taped recording and
edited by Evelyn Sell eighteen years later, after her expulsion from
the SWP as an oppositionist, and was printed in the <em>Bulletin in
Defense of Marxism</em>, No. 14, December 1984).</p>
<p>Cannon’s main concern here was that some SWP and YSA leaders
were not sufficiently resisting and opposing the harmful influences of
the “New Left” to which they were subjected in the antiwar and student
movements. Some “younger comrades,” he said quite openly, gave him the
impression that they had not fully assimilated the cardinal principle
of internationalism. His stress on the SWP as “revolutionary
continuators” was directed not only against the New Left but against
those in the SWP and YSA who disregarded this factor or thought it
insignificant. His demand for polemics with opponent tendencies (“the
mark of a revolutionary party”) stemmed from his conviction that there
was a reluctance among SWP and YSA leaders to openly explain their
differences with the New Left. Similarly with most of the talk - it was
not just a criticism of the New Left but of party and YSA members who
he thought were defaulting on the theoretical and educational struggle
against New Leftism.</p>
<p>But Cannon did not fail also to raise the questions about
party democracy that had been on his mind during the previous two or
more years. He began by touching on the “flexible democracy” that had
enabled the party to survive historically: “We never tried to settle
differences of opinion by suppression. Free discussion - not every day
in the week but at stated regular times, with full guarantees for the
minority - is a necessary condition for the health and strength of an
organization such as ours.” It never occurred to him to add that any of
this had been superseded by the 1965 resolution.</p>
<p>Continuing, he noted that factionalism can get out of hand or
become unprincipled. “But on the other hand,” he said, “if a party can
live year after year without any factional disturbances, it may not be
a sign of <em>health</em> — it may be a sign that the party’s <em>asleep</em>;
that it’s not a real live party. In a live party you have differences,
differences of appraisal, and so on. But that’s a sign of life.” The
present SWP leaders hardly ever say things like that any more; and even
when they do, they mean something different than Cannon meant.</p>
<h4>3. A Trend in the Wrong Direction</h4>
<p>In 1966 some SWP members raised the question of codifying
parts of the 1965 resolution through amendments to the party’s
constitution at the next national convention. A PC-appointed
constitution committee (Reba Hansen, Harry Ring, Jean Simon [Tussey])
began, in consultation with national organization secretary Ed Shaw, to
consider proposed changes for the constitution, including one to alter
the way the national Control Commission was elected and functioned.</p>
<p>In his response (reprinted from <em>Bulletin in Defense of
Marxism</em>, No. 8, June 1984), Cannon was quite disturbed by this
proposal, especially because he saw it as part of a dangerous trend:
“As far as I can see all the new moves and proposals to monkey with the
Constitution which has served the party so well in the past, with the
aim of ‘tightening’ centralization, represent a trend in the wrong
direction at the present time. The party (and the YSA) is too ‘tight’
already, and if we go much further along this line we can run the risk
of strangling the party to death.”</p>
<p>Most of Cannon’s letter was an explanation of why the party
would be better off if the Control Commission remained an “independent”
or “separate” body elected by the national convention as a whole than
it would be as a mere subcommittee of the NC. But he also seized the
opportunity to assert the necessity to “practice what we preach” about
existing constitutional provisions “to protect every party member
against possible abuse of authority by the National Committee.” There
was nothing ambiguous about his position:</p>
<p>“In the present political climate and with the present
changing composition of the party, democratic centralism must be
applied flexibly. At least ninety percent of the emphasis should be
placed on the democratic side and not on any crackpot schemes to
’streamline’ the party to the point where questions are unwelcomed and
criticism and discussion stifled. That is a prescription to kill the
party....”</p>
<p>Cannon clearly did not feel that the 1965 resolution justified
or authorized the kind of undemocratic changes that the “centralizing”
Barnes leadership made in the name of the 1965 document in the 1970s
and 1980s. Cannon’s letter was effective - none of the proposals he
warned against were recommended by the constitution committee or
adopted at the 1967 convention.</p>
<h4>4. The SWP’s Great Tradition</h4>
<p>The Arne Swabeck case came up again in 1967, when both an SWP
national convention and an FI world congress were scheduled. By then
Swabeck had lost all hope in the SWP and the FI. Instead of trying once
more to convince their members, he publicly attacked the SWP’s policies
in a letter to a hostile political group in England (the Healyites).
For this deliberate violation of discipline, the PC asked the NC to
suspend him from membership pending the coming convention.</p>
<p>Cannon had no sympathy whatever for Swabeck’s politics or
organizational practices, but he felt it would be “awkward” to begin
the preconvention and pre-world congress discussions by suspending the
one articulate critic of the party’s positions and actions. He
therefore urged that Swabeck’s provocation be handled by publishing
Swabeck’s letters together with a comprehensive political answer to
them. This “subordination of disciplinary measures to the bigger aims
of political education” - which he called a continuation of the party’s
great tradition - had always served the party well in the past, he
argued, and in the Swabeck case would “better serve the education of
the new generation of the party and the consolidation of party opinion”
than would the proposed suspension.</p>
<p>Most members of the NC disagreed with Cannon. They felt
Swabeck’s violation of discipline was too flagrant to be ignored, and
they felt that he already had been answered politically over and over
again, so that disciplinary action in this case would not represent any
rupture with the SWP’s great tradition. The NC suspended Swabeck, who
continued to attack the SWP publicly, and soon after he was expelled.
The differences in this case between the NC majority and Cannon were
tactical, and it is possible to see the logic and merits in both their
positions. But perhaps Cannon was looking a little farther ahead than
most of the NC members.</p>
<p>Swabeck had so discredited himself, Cannon told the PC, that
the immediate effect of the party’s reaction to the new provocation
would not be very great whether he was suspended or not. “But the
long-range effect on the political education of the party, and its
preparation to cope with old problems in new forms, can be very great
indeed.” It is clear from this that Cannon was concerned with something
bigger than the fate of Swabeck; that he was trying to alert the party
to dangers that transcended the issue of whether or not to suspend
Swabeck prior to the convention; that he feared mistakes on this issue
could have damaging long-range effects on the party, its political
education, and its ability to fulfill its revolutionary mission.</p>
<p>The Swabeck case was soon forgotten, but the dangers that
worried Cannon are worth recalling today, after the SWP leadership, in
a brutal break with the party’s tradition of subordinating disciplinary
measures to political discussion and clarification, expelled and in
other ways drove out any and all members who were suspected of having
oppositional views (whether they were articulate or not). The SWP
leadership “justified” this purge by accusing the expellees of being
disrupters and splitters who, “like Swabeck,” were outside the party
only because of their own indiscipline and disloyalty. But everybody in
the SWP knows that most of the expellees fought to remain in the party,
unlike Swabeck, and are still fighting to be reinstated, also unlike
Swabeck. Most members of the FI know this, too, because at their world
congress in February 1985, they voted overwhelmingly to demand the
reinstatement of the purged members. The fight for the SWP’s tradition
continues, but the SWP leadership is fighting on the other side.</p>
<p>In May <em>1983</em>, a month after the Harer-DeBerry
exchange in San Jose, the NC held a plenum in New York where
oppositionists contrasted Cannon’s positions on democratic centralism
with those of the Barnes group. Barnes finally took the floor and said,
“It looks as though we are going to have to rescue Cannon from these
people the same way we rescued Trotsky from the sectarians.” Barnes had
“rescued” Trotsky at a YSA convention on December 31, 1982, in a talk
entitled “Their Trotsky and Ours” (<em>New International</em> Fall
1983). It was rather a unique kind of rescue since in this talk Barnes
tried to demolish Trotsky and most of his work as sectarian and
harmful. A similar “rescue” of Cannon would mean a wholesale
reevaluation of his work and his place in the history of the SWP and
the FI. Even as Barnes uttered this promise or threat, a dossier was
being compiled that would “prove” Cannon had been a “Stalinophobe” in
the 1930s and 1940s, etc. Whether or not such material will be
published, it stands to reason that the Barnes group will have to
differentiate itself from Cannon and Cannonism more and more as it
proceeds further away from them politically and organizationally. The
antidote includes an objective reading of Cannon’s writings, of which
there are fortunately many in print.</p>
<p><em>May 1985</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p><a id="section1" name="section1" target="_blank"> </a></p>
<h3>Don’t Try to Enforce a Nonexistent Law</h3>
<p><em>February 8, 1966</em></p>
<p>For NC Majority Only</p>
<p>To the Secretariat</p>
<p>Dear Comrades:</p>
<p>I feel rather uneasy about the circular letter from Tom [Kerry]
dated Jan. 28, enclosing a copy of Larry T[rainor]’s letter of Jan. 15
and Arne [Swabeck]’s letter of January 7 addressed to Larry and his
letter of Dec. 14 addressed to Rosemary and Doug [Gordon], and also the
circular of Al A. announcing his decision to join the PLP [Progressive
Labor Party] (which I had already seen locally).</p>
<p>The Swabeck letter and the [Clara] Kaye document, which I had
previously received, make serious criticisms of the party and youth
actions at the Washington Thanksgiving Conference,<a id="f1" href="#n1" name="f1" target="_blank">[1]</a> and make a number of other serious, and even
fundamental, criticisms of party policy and action in general.</p>
<p>The problem, as I see it, is how to deal effectively with these
challenges and how to aid the education of the party and the youth in
the process - in the light of our tradition and experience over a
period of more than thirty-seven years since the Left Opposition in
this country began its work under the guidance of Trotsky. One might
well include the first ten years of American communism before that,
from which I, at least, learned and remember a lot from doing things
the wrong way.</p>
<p>Larry’s letter of Jan. 15 suggesting disciplinary action, and Tom’s
letter of Jan. 28 informing us that the Political Committee has put the
question of discipline on the plenum agenda, are, in my opinion, the
wrong way.</p>
<p>Probably the hardest lesson I had to learn from Trotsky, after ten
years of bad schooling through the Communist Party faction fights, was
to let organizational questions wait until the political questions at
issue were fully clarified, not only in the National Committee but also
in the ranks of the party. It is no exaggeration, but the full and
final truth, that our party owes its very existence today to the fact
that some of us learned this hard lesson and learned also how to apply
it in practice.</p>
<p>From that point of view, in my opinion, the impending plenum should
be conceived of as a school for the education and clarification of the
party on the political issues involved in the new disputes, most of
which grew out of earlier disputes with some new trimmings and
absurdities.</p>
<p>This aim will be best served if the attacks and criticisms are
answered point by point in an atmosphere free from poisonous personal
recriminations and venomous threats of organization discipline. Our
young comrades need above all to <em>learn;</em> and this is the best,
in fact the only way, for them to learn what they need to know about
the new disputes. They don’t know it all yet. The fact that some of
them probably think they already know everything, only makes it more
advisable to turn the plenum sessions into a school with questions and
answers freely and patiently passed back and forth.</p>
<p>The classic example for all time, in this matter of conducting
political disputes for the education of the cadres, is set forth in the
two books which grew out of the fundamental conflict with the
petty-bourgeois opposition in 1939-40.<a id="f2" href="#n2" name="f2" target="_blank">[2]</a>
I think these books, twenty-six years after, are still fresh and alive
because they attempt to answer and clarify all important questions
involved in the dispute, and leave discipline and organizational
measures aside for later consideration.</p>
<p>Compared to the systematic, organized violation of normal
disciplinary regulations and procedures committed by the
petty-bourgeois opposition in that fight, the irregularities of Kirk
[Richard Fraser] and Swabeck resemble juvenile pranks. Nevertheless,
Trotsky insisted from the beginning that all proposals, or even talk or
threats, of disciplinary action be left aside until the political
disputes were clarified and settled. The party was reborn and
reeducated in that historic struggle, and equipped to stand up in the
hard days that were to follow, precisely because that policy was
followed.</p>
<p>As for disciplinary action suggested in Larry’s letter, and at least
intimated in the action of the Political Committee in putting this
matter on the agenda of the plenum - I don’t even think we have much of
a case in the present instance. Are we going to discipline two members
of the National Committee for circulating their criticisms outside the
committee itself? There is absolutely no party law or precedent for
such action, and we will run into all kinds of trouble in the party
ranks, and the International, if we try this kind of experiment for the
first time.</p>
<p>We have always thought proper and responsible procedure required
that party leaders confine their differences and criticisms within the
National Committee until a full discussion could be had at a plenum,
and a discussion in the party formally authorized. But it never worked
with irresponsible people and it never will; and this kind of trouble
can’t be cured by discipline.</p>
<p>In the first five years of the Left Opposition, Shachtman and Abern
took every dispute in the committee, large or small, into the New York
Branch - with unlimited discussion and denunciation of the committee
majority by an assorted collection of articulate screwballs who would
make the present critics of the party policy, from one end of the
country to the other, appear in comparison as well mannered pupils in a
Sunday School. There was nothing to do about it but fight it out. Any
kind of disciplinary action would have provoked a split which couldn’t
be explained and justified before the radical public.</p>
<p>To my recollection, there has never been a time in our
thirty-seven-year history when a critical opposition waited very long
to circulate their ideas outside the committee ranks, despite our
explanation that such conduct was improper and irresponsible. We
educated and hardened our cadre over the years and decades by meeting
all critics and opponents <em>politically</em> and educating those who
were educable.</p>
<p>I will add to the previously cited examples of the fight with the
petty-bourgeois opposition two minor examples.</p>
<p>1. Right after our trial in Minneapolis in 1941 the well-known
[Grandizo] Munis blasted our conduct at the trial as lacking in “proud
valor,” capitulating to legalism, and all other crimes and dirty
tricks. I answered Munis by taking up his criticisms point by point and
answering them without equivocation or evasion. Munis’s letter and my
answer, some of you will remember, was published in a pamphlet on
“Defense Policy in the Minneapolis Trial,” so that all party members
and others who might be interested could hear both sides and judge for
themselves.</p>
<p>That pamphlet was published twenty-four years ago, and I personally
have never since heard a peep out of anybody in criticism of our
conduct at the trial. On the contrary, my testimony “Socialism On
Trial” has been printed and reprinted a number of times in a number of
editions and, as I understand it, has always been the most popular
pamphlet of the party.<a id="f3" href="#n3" name="f3" target="_blank">[3]</a></p>
<p>2. I notice that the YSA has just recently published, in an internal
discussion bulletin, my two speeches at the 1948 plenum on the Wallace
Progressive Party and our 1948 election campaign.<a id="f4" href="#n4" name="f4" target="_blank">[4]</a> The circumstances surrounding these speeches have
pertinence to the impending plenum.</p>
<p>No sooner had the Wallace candidacy been announced on a Progressive
Party ticket than Swabeck in Chicago, consulting with himself, decided
that this was the long-awaited labor party and that we had to jump into
it with both feet. Without waiting for the plenum, or even for the
Political Committee, to discuss the question and formulate a position,
he hastily lined up [Mike] Bartell and Manny Trbovitch and the local
executive committee and from that, quick as a wink, the entire Chicago
Branch to support the candidacy of Wallace and get into the Progressive
Party on the ground floor. There was also strong sympathy for this
policy in Los Angeles, Buffalo, Youngstown, and other branches of the
party. The discussion at the plenum should be studied in light of these
circumstances.</p>
<p>My two speeches were devoted, from beginning to end, to a political
analysis of the problem and a point by point answer to every objection
raised by Swabeck and other critics. It is worth noting, by those who
are willing to learn from past experiences, that Swabeck’s
irresponsible action and violation of what Larry refers to as
“committee discipline” were not mentioned once.</p>
<p>There was a reason for the omission, although such conduct was just
as much an irritation then as now. The reason for the omission was that
we wanted to devote all attention at the plenum to the fundamental
political problems involved and the political lessons to be learned
from the dispute. My speeches, as well as remarks of other comrades at
the plenum, had the result of convincing the great majority present and
even shaking the confidence of the opponents in their own position. By
the time we got to the national convention a few months later, the
party was solidly united and convinced that the nomination of our own
ticket in 1948 was the correct thing to do.</p>
<p>Committee “discipline” follows from conviction and a sense of
responsibility; it cannot be imposed by party law or threats. I have
said before that in more than thirty-seven years of our independent
history we have never tried to enforce such discipline. There was such
a law, however, or at least a mutual understanding to this effect, in
the Communist Party during the period of my incubation there. But what
was the result in practice?</p>
<p>Formally, all discussion and happenings in the Political Committee
and in the plenum were secrets sealed with seven seals. In practice
before any meeting was twenty-four hours old the partisans of the
different factions had full reports on secret “onion skin” paper
circulated throughout the party. Even the ultra-discipline of the
Communist Party never disciplined anybody for these surreptitious
operations.</p>
<p>It would be too bad if the SWP suddenly decided to get tougher than
the Communist Party and try to enforce a nonexistent law - which can’t
be enforced without creating all kinds of discontent and disruption, to
say nothing of blurring the serious political disputes which have to be
discussed and clarified for the education of the party ranks.</p>
<p>I would like copies of this letter to be made available to National
Committee members who received Tom’s letter of Jan. 28.</p>
<p>Fraternally,</p>
<p>James P Cannon</p>
<p><a id="section2" name="section2" target="_blank"> </a></p>
<h3>Reasons for the Survival of the SWP and for Its New Vitality in the
1960s</h3>
<p>The party that we represent here had its origin thirty-eight years
ago next month when I and Martin Abern and Max Shachtman, all members
of the National Committee of the Communist Party, were expelled because
we insisted upon supporting Trotsky and the Russian Opposition in the
international discussion. It seems remarkable, in view of the death
rate of organizations that we have noted over the years, that this
party still shows signs of youth. That is the hallmark of a living
movement: its capacity to attract the young. Many attempts at creating
different kinds of radical organizations have foundered, withered away,
over that problem. The old-timers stuck around but new blood didn’t
come in. The organizations, one by one, either died or just withered
away on the vine (which is probably a worse fate than death).</p>
<p>In my opinion, there are certain reasons for the survival of our
movement and for the indications of a new surge of vitality in it. I’ll
enumerate some of the more important reasons which account for this.</p>
<h4>Internationalism and the SWP</h4>
<p>First of all, and above all, we recognized thirty-eight years ago
that in the modern world it is impossible to organize a revolutionary
party in one country. All the problems of the different nations of the
world are so intertwined today that they cannot be solved with a
national policy alone. The latest to experience the truth of that
dictum is Lyndon B. Johnson. He’s trying to solve the problems of
American foreign policy with Texas-style arm-twisting politics. It does
not work. We decided we would be internationalists first, last, and all
the time, and that we would not try to build a purely American party
with American ideas - because American ideas are very scarce in the
realm of creative politics. By becoming part of an international
movement, and thereby participating in international <em>collaboration</em>,
and getting the benefit of the ideas and experiences of others in other
countries - as well as contributing our ideas to them - that we would
have a better chance to create a viable revolutionary movement in this
country.</p>
<p>I think that holds true today more than ever. A party that is not
internationalist is out of date very sadly and is doomed utterly. I
don’t know if our younger comrades have fully assimilated that basic,
fundamental first idea or not. I have the impression at times that they
understand it rather perfunctorily, take it for granted, rather than
understand it in its essence: that internationalism means, above all, <em>international
collaboration</em>. The affairs, the difficulties, the disputes of
every party in the Fourth International must be our concern - as our
problems must be their concern. It’s not only our right but our <em>duty</em>
to participate in all the discussions that arise throughout the
International, as well as it is their right and their duty to take part
in our discussions and disputes.</p>
<h4>Our Revolutionary Continuity</h4>
<p>The second reason that I would give for the durability of this party
of ours is the fact that we did not pretend to have a new revelation.
We were not these “men from nowhere” whom you see running around the
campuses and other places today saying, “We’ve got to start from
scratch. Everything that happened in the past is out the window.” On
the contrary, we solemnly based ourselves on the <em>continuity</em>
of the revolutionary movement. On being expelled from the Communist
Party, we did not become anticommunist. On the contrary, we said we are
the true representatives of the best traditions of the Communist Party.
If you read current literature, you’ll see that we are the only ones
who defend the first ten years of American communism. The official
leaders of the Communist Party don’t want to talk about it at all. Yet
those were ten rich and fruitful years which we had <em>behind us</em>
when we started the Trotskyist movement in this country. Before that,
some of us had about ten years of experience in the IWW and Socialist
Party, and in various class struggle activities around the country. We
said that we were the heirs of the IWW and the Socialist Party - all
that was good and valid and revolutionary in them. We honor the Knights
of Labor and the Haymarket martyrs. We’re not Johnny-come-latelys at
all. We’re <em>continuators</em>.</p>
<p>We even go back further than that. We go back to the “Communist
Manifesto” of 1848, and to Marx and Engels, the authors of that
document, and their other writings. We go back to the Paris Commune of
1871 and the Russian Revolution of 1917. We go back to Lenin and
Trotsky, and to the struggle of the Left Opposition in the Russian
Soviet party and in the Comintern.</p>
<p>We said, “We are the <em>continuators.”</em> And we really were. We
were in dead earnest about it and we were very active from the very
beginning. This is one of the marks of a group, however, small, that
has confidence in itself. We engaged in polemics against all other
pretenders to leadership of the American working class: first of all
the Stalinists, and the reformist Social Democrats, and the labor
skates, and anybody else who had some quack medicine to cure the
troubles of working people. Polemics are the mark of a revolutionary
party. A party that is “too nice” to engage in what some call
“bickering,” “criticizing,” is too damn nice to live very long in the
whirlpool of politics.</p>
<p>Politics is even worse than baseball, in that respect. Leo Durocher,
who had a bad reputation but who carried the New York Giants to a
championship of the National League and then to the world championship
over the Cleveland Indians, explained this fact in the title of an
article he wrote, “Nice Guys Finish Last.” That’s true in politics as
well as in baseball.</p>
<p>If we disagree with other people, we have to say so! We have to make
it clear <em>why</em> we disagree so that inquiring young people,
looking for an organization to represent their aspirations and ideals,
will know the difference between one party and another. Nothing is
worse than muddying up differences when they concern fundamental
questions.</p>
<h4>Working-Class Orientation</h4>
<p>Another reason for the survival of our movement through the early
hard period was our <em>orientation</em>. Being Marxists, our
orientation was always toward the working class and to the
working-class organizations. It never entered our minds in those days
to think you could overthrow capitalism over the head of the working
class. Marxism had taught us that the great service capitalism has
rendered to humanity has been to increase the productivity of society
and, at the same time, to create a working class which would have the
interest and the power to overthrow capitalism. In creating this
million-headed wage-working class, Marx said: capitalism has created
its own gravediggers. We saw it as the task of revolutionists to orient
our activity, our agitation, and our propaganda to the working class of
this country.</p>
<h4>Putting Theory into Action</h4>
<p>Another reason for our exceptional durability was that we did not
merely study the books and learn the formulas. Many people have done
that - and that’s all they’ve done, and they might as well have stayed
home. Trotsky remarked more than once, in the early days, about some
people who play with ideas in our international movement. He said: they
have understood all the formulas and they can repeat them by rote, but
they haven’t got them in their flesh and blood, so it doesn’t count.
When you get the formulas of Marxism in your flesh and blood that means
you have an <em>irresistible</em> impulse and drive <em>to put theory
into action</em>.</p>
<p>As Engels said to the sectarian socialists in the United States in
the nineteenth century: our theory is not a dogma but a guide to
action. One who studies the theory of Marxism and doesn’t do anything
to try to put it into action among the working class might as well have
stayed in bed. We were not that type. We came out of the experiences of
the past, but we were activists as well as students of Marxism.</p>
<h4>The Capacity to Learn</h4>
<p>One more reason for our survival: one factor working in our favor
was our <em>modesty</em>. Modesty is the precondition for learning. If
you know it all to start with, you can’t learn any more. We were
brought to the painful realization in 1928 that there were a lot of
things we didn’t know - after all of our experiences and study. New
problems and new complications which had arisen in the Soviet Union and
in the international movement required that we <em>go to school again</em>.
And to go to school with the best teachers: the leaders of the Russian
Revolution. After twenty years of experience in the American movement
and in the Comintern we put ourselves to school and tried to learn from
the great leaders who had made the only successful revolution in the
history of the working class.</p>
<p>We had to learn, also, how to <em>think -</em> and to take time to
think. We believed in a party of disciplined action but disciplined
activity alone does not characterize only the revolutionist. Other
groups, such as the fascists, have that quality. The Stalinists have
disciplined action. Disciplined action directed by clear thinking
distinguishes the revolutionary Marxist party. Thinking is a form of
action. In the early days of our movement we had a great deal of
discussion - not all of it pleasant to hear, but out of which came some
clarification. We had to learn to be patient and listen and, out of the
discussion, to formulate our policy and our program.</p>
<p>Those were the qualities of our movement in the first years of our
almost total isolation that enabled us to survive. We had confidence in
the American working class and we oriented toward it. When the American
working class began to move in the mid-thirties, we had formulated our
program of action, and we were in the midst of the class, and we began
to grow - in some years, we grew rather rapidly.</p>
<h4>Internal Democracy Within the SWP</h4>
<p>Not the least of our reasons for remaining alive for thirty-eight
years, and growing a little, and now being in a position to capitalize
on new opportunities, was the flexible democracy of our party. We never
tried to settle differences of opinion by suppression. Free discussion
- not every day in the week but at stated regular times, with full
guarantees for the minority - is a necessary condition for the health
and strength of an organization such as ours.</p>
<p>There’s no guarantee that factionalism won’t get out of hand. I
don’t want to be an advocate of factionalism - unless anybody picks on
me and runs the party the wrong way and doesn’t want to give me a
chance to protest about it! The general experience of the international
movement has shown that excesses of factionalism can be very dangerous
and destructive to a party. In my book, <em>The First Ten Years of
American Communism</em>,<a id="f5" href="#n5" name="f5" target="_blank">[5]</a> I put
all the necessary emphasis on the negative side of the factional
struggles which became unprincipled. But on the other hand, if a party
can live year after year without any factional disturbances, it may not
be a sign of <em>health -</em> it may be a sign that the party’s <em>asleep;</em>
that it’s not a real live party. In a live party, you have differences,
differences of appraisal, and so on. But that’s a sign of life.</p>
<h4>The New Left of the 1960s</h4>
<p>You have now a new phenomenon in the American radical movement which
I hear is called “The New Left.” This is a broad title given to an
assemblage of people who state they don’t like the situation the way it
is and something ought to be done about it -but we mustn’t take
anything from the experiences of the past; nothing from the “Old Left”
or any of its ideas or traditions are any good. What’s the future going
to be? “Well, that’s not so clear either. Let’s think about that.” What
do you do now? “I don’t know. Something ought to be done.” That’s a
fair description of this amorphous New Left which is written about so
much and with which we have to contend.</p>
<p>We know where we come from. We intend to maintain our continuity. We
know that we are part of the world, and that we have to belong to an
international movement and get the benefits of association and
discussion with cothinkers throughout the world. We have a definite
orientation whereas the New Left says the working class is dead. The
working class was crossed off by the wiseacres in the twenties. There
was a long boom in the 1920s. The workers not only didn’t gain any
victories, they lost ground. The trade unions actually declined in
number. In all the basic industries, where you now see great
flourishing industrial unions - the auto workers, aircraft, steel,
rubber, electrical, transportation, maritime - the unions did not
exist, just a scattering here and there. There were company unions in
all these big basic industries, run by the bosses’ stooges. The workers
were entitled to belong to these company unions as long as they did
what the stooges told them to do. It took a semi-revolutionary uprising
in the mid-thirties to break that up and install real unions.</p>
<p>There were a lot of wiseacres who crossed off the American working
class and said, “That’s Marx’s fundamental mistake. He thinks the
working class can make a revolution and emancipate itself. And he’s
dead wrong! Just look at them !” They didn’t say who would make the
revolution if the workers didn’t do it - just like the New Leftists
today don’t give us any precise description of what power will
transform society.</p>
<p>People who said such things in the 1920s were proved to be wrong,
and those who say the same things about the working class today will be
proved to be wrong. We will maintain our orientation toward the working
class and to its organized section in particular. I hope that our party
and our youth movement will not only continue but will intensify and
develop its capacity for polemics against all pretenders to leadership
of the coming radicalization of the American workers.</p>
<p>Above all, I hope our party and our youth movement will continue to
learn and to grow. That’s the condition for survival as a revolutionary
party. I don’t merely get impatient with Johnny-come-latelys who just
arrived from nowhere and announce that they know it all, I get
impatient even with old-timers who think they have nothing more to
learn. The world is changing. New problems arise, new complexities, new
complications confront the revolutionary movement at every step. The
condition for effective political leadership is that the leaders
themselves continue to learn and to grow. That means: not to lose their
modesty altogether.</p>
<h4>The Importance of the Individual</h4>
<p>I’d like to add one more point. The question is raised very often,
“What can one person do?” The urgency of the situation in the world is
pretty widely recognized outside of our ranks. The urgency of the whole
social problem has been magnified a million times by the development of
nuclear weapons, and by the capacity of these inventions and
discoveries to destroy all life on earth. Not merely a single city like
Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but capable of destroying all life on earth. And
it’s in the hands of reckless and irresponsible people. It’s got to be
taken away from them, and it cannot be done otherwise except by
revolution.</p>
<p>What can one single person do in this terribly urgent situation? I
heard a program on television a short while ago: an interview with
Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, former pacifist, fighter
against nuclear war. He’s not a revolutionary Marxist but is an
absolutely dedicated opponent of nuclear war and a prophet of the
calamity such a war will bring. He was asked, “What are the chances, in
your opinion, of preventing a nuclear war that might destroy all life
on earth?” He said, “The odds are four-to-six against us.” He was then
asked, “How would you raise the odds of being able to prevent a nuclear
war?” He answered, “I don’t know anything to do except keep on fighting
to try to change the odds.”</p>
<p>Now suppose as a result of all the protests and the activity of
ourselves and other people, we change the odds to fifty-fifty. Then you
have a scale, evenly balanced, where just a feather can tip it one way
or another. If a situation such as that exists - which, in my opinion,
is just about the state of affairs in the world today - one person’s
activity in the revolutionary movement might make the difference.</p>
<p><a id="section3" name="section3" target="_blank"> </a></p>
<h3>A Trend in the Wrong Direction</h3>
<p><em>November 12, 1966</em></p>
<p>Copies to:</p>
<p class="indent">Ed Shaw, New York<br>
</p>
<p class="indent">Jean Simon, Cleveland<br>
</p>
<p class="indent">Reba Hansen<br>
</p>
<p>New York, N.Y</p>
<p>Dear Reba:</p>
<p>This answers your letter of November 2 with which you enclosed a
copy of Jean Simon’s letter of October 12. I was surprised and
concerned by Jean’s proposals to change the constitutional provisions
providing for an independent Control Commission elected by the
convention, and making it a mere subcommittee of the NC, which would
mean in effect a subcommittee of the PC. This would be the <em>de facto</em>
liquidation of the Control Commission as it was originally conceived.</p>
<p>As far as I can see all the new moves and proposals to monkey with
the Constitution which has served the party so well in the past, with
the aim of “tightening” centralization, represent a trend in the wrong
direction at the present time. The party (and the YSA) is too “tight”
already, and if we go much further along this line we can run the risk
of strangling the party to death.</p>
<p>As I recall it, the proposal to establish a Control Commission,
separately elected by the convention, originated at the Plenum and
Active Workers’ Conference in the fall of 1940, following the
assassination of the Old Man. The assassin, as you will recall, gained
access to the household in Coyoacan through his relations with a party
member.<a id="f6" href="#n6" name="f6" target="_blank">[6]</a> The Political Committee
was then, as it always will be if it functions properly, too busy with
political and organizational problems to take time for investigations
and security checks on individuals.</p>
<p>It was agreed that we need a special body to take care of this work,
to investigate rumors and charges and present its findings and
recommendations to the National Committee.</p>
<p>If party security was one side of the functions of the Control
Commission, the other side - no less important - was to provide the
maximum assurance that any individual party member, accused or rumored
to be unworthy of party membership, could be assured of the fullest
investigation and a fair hearing or trial. It was thought that this
double purpose could best be served by a body separately elected by the
convention, and composed of members of long standing, especially
respected by the party for their fairness as well as their devotion.</p>
<p>I can recall instances where the Control Commission served the party
well in both aspects of this dual function. In one case a member of the
seamen’s fraction was expelled by the Los Angeles Branch after charges
were brought against him by two members of the National Committee of
that time. The expelled member appealed to the National Committee and
the case was turned over to the Control Commission for investigation.
The Control Commission, on which as I recall Dobbs was then the PC
representative, investigated the whole case, found that the charges
lacked substantial proof and recommended the reinstatement of the
expelled member. This was done.</p>
<p>In another case, a rumor circulated by the Shachtmanites and others
outside the party against the integrity of a National Office
secretarial worker was thoroughly investigated by the Control
Commission which, after taking stenographic testimony from all
available sources, declared the rumors unfounded and cleared the
accused party member to continue her work. There were other cases in
which charges were found after investigation to be substantiated and
appropriate action recommended.</p>
<p>All these experiences speak convincingly of the need for a separate
Control Commission of highly respected comrades to make thorough
investigations of every case, without being influenced by personal or
partisan prejudice, or pressure from any source, and whose sole
function is to examine each case from all sides fairly and justly and
report its findings and recommendations. This is the best way, not only
to protect the security of the party, but also to respect the rights of
the accused in every case.</p>
<p>As far as I know, the only criticism that can properly be made of
the Control Commission in recent times is that it has not always
functioned in this way with all its members participating, either by
presence or correspondence, in all proceedings - and convincing the
party that its investigation was thorough and that its findings and
recommendations were fair and just.</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p>It should be pointed out also that the idea of a Control Commission
separately constituted by the convention didn’t really originate with
us. Like almost everything else we know about the party organizational
principles and functions, it came from the Russian Bolsheviks. The
Russian party had a separate Control Commission. It might also be
pointed out that after the revolution the new government established
courts. It provided also for independent trade unions which, as Lenin
pointed out in one of the controversies, had the duty even to defend
the rights of its members against the government. Of course, all that
was changed later when all power was concentrated in the party
secretariat, and all the presumably independent institutions were
converted into rubber stamps. But we don’t want to move in that
direction. The forms and methods of the Lenin-Trotsky time are a better
guide for us.</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p>I am particularly concerned about any possible proposal to weaken
the constitutional provision about the absolute right of suspended or
expelled members to appeal to the convention. That is clearly and
plainly a provision to protect every party member against possible
abuse of authority by the National Committee. It should not be
abrogated or diluted just to show that we are so damn revolutionary
that we make no concessions to “bourgeois concepts of checks and
balances.” The well-known Bill of Rights is a check and balance which I
hope will be incorporated, in large part at least, in the Constitution
of the Workers Republic in this country. Our constitutional provision
for the right of appeal is also a “check and balance.” It can help to
recommend our party to revolutionary workers as a genuinely democratic
organization which guarantees rights as well as imposing
responsibilities, and thus make it more appealing to them.</p>
<p>I believe that these considerations have more weight now than ever
before in the thirty-eight-year history of our party. In the present
political climate and with the present changing composition of the
party, democratic centralism must be applied flexibly. At least ninety
percent of the emphasis should be placed on the democratic side and not
on any crackpot schemes to “streamline” the party to the point where
questions are unwelcomed and criticism and discussion stifled. That is
a prescription to kill the party before it gets a chance to show how it
can handle and assimilate an expanding membership of new young people,
who don’t know it all to start with, but have to learn and grow in the
course of explication and discussion in a free, democratic atmosphere.</p>
<p>Trotsky once remarked in a polemic against Stalinism that even in
the period of the Civil War discussion in the party was “boiling like a
spring.” Those words and others like it written by Trotsky, in his
first attack against Stalinism in <em>The New Course</em>, ought to be
explained now once again to the new young recruits in our party. And
the best way to explain such decisive things is to practice what we
preach.</p>
<p>Yours fraternally,</p>
<p>James P. Cannon</p>
<p><a id="section4" name="section4" target="_blank"> </a></p>
<h3>The SWP’s Great Tradition</h3>
<p><em>June 27, 1967</em></p>
<p>To the Political Committee, New York, New York</p>
<p>Dear Comrades:</p>
<p>I am opposed to the motion adopted by the Political Committee
recommending the immediate suspension of Comrade Swabeck.</p>
<p>As you have been previously informed, I favor a different approach
to the problem raised by Swabeck’s letter to [Gerry] Healy. I explained
my views to Art Sharon during his brief visit here, and I presume that
he communicated it to you. Also, Joel [Britton] showed me a copy of his
letter to the National Office in which he reported the discussion which
took place at a meeting of the NC members here.</p>
<p>I consider it rather unfortunate that these divergent views were not
incorporated in the PC minutes of the meeting which decided to
recommend the suspension of Swabeck - so that the other members of the
National Committee would have a chance to consider and discuss them
before casting their vote on the ballot sent to them together with the
PC minutes.</p>
<p>My approach to the problem can be briefly summarized as follows:</p>
<p>1. Since Swabeck’s letter to Healy deals with two questions of great
world importance - Chinese developments and our policy and tactics in
the struggle against the Vietnam war - which are now properly up for
discussion in the international movement as well as in our party, any
action of a disciplinary nature which we may propose should be closely
coordinated with international comrades, particularly the comrades in
England, and carried out in agreement with them.</p>
<p>2. Since we are just now opening up our preconvention discussion,
where the questions raised by Swabeck will properly have their place on
the agenda, it would be rather awkward to begin the discussion by
suspending the one articulate critic of the party’s positions and
actions. A more effective procedure, in my opinion, should be simply to
publish Swabeck’s letters (to Healy and Dobbs) with comprehensive and
detailed answers.</p>
<p>If past experience is any guide, the education of the new
generations of the party and the consolidation of party opinion would
be better served by this procedure. Examples in favor of this
subordination of disciplinary measures to the bigger aims of political
education have been richly documented in the published records of the
fight against the petty-bourgeois opposition in 1939-40, and in the
internal discussion bulletins dealing with the Goldman-Morrow affair in
1944-56.<a id="f7" href="#n7" name="f7" target="_blank">[7]</a></p>
<p>3. In the course of discussion, during a number of years of
opposition to party policy, Swabeck has managed to isolate himself to
the point where the immediate effect of the party’s reaction to this
new provocation will not be very great one way or the other. But the
long-range effect on the political education of the party, and its
preparation to cope with old problems in new forms, can be very great
indeed.</p>
<p>It is most important that our party members, and the international
movement, see the leadership once again in continuation of its great
tradition - acting with cool deliberation to serve our larger political
aims without personal favoritism or hostility.</p>
<p>Fraternally, James P. Cannon</p>
<p>Notes</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n1" href="#f1" name="n1" target="_blank">1.</a> An antiwar
convention and demonstration at the White House were held in
Washington, D.C., Nov. 25-28, 1965, under the sponsorship of the
National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam. The
convention was marked by heated controversy between radical and liberal
forces, which led to disputes over antiwar policy inside the SWP.
Cannon’s views about the conference, given in a December 1965 speech in
Los Angeles, were published in <em>International Socialist Review</em>,
October 1974, and reprinted in the Education for Socialists Bulletin,
“Revolutionary Strategy in the Antiwar Movement,” April 1975, pp. 12-17.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n2" href="#f2" name="n2" target="_blank">2.</a> <em>In Defense
of Marxism</em> by Leon Trotsky and <em>The Struggle for a Proletarian
Party</em> by Cannon (Pathfinder Press, 1973 and 1972) answer the
positions of the minority group in the SWP, led by Max Shachtman,
Martin Abern, and James Burnham, which split away in 1940 after a
bitter factional struggle.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n3" href="#f3" name="n3" target="_blank">3.</a> Pathfinder
Press’s 1973 edition of <em>Socialism on Trial</em>, Cannon’s
testimony at the 1941 Minneapolis trial, also contains “Defense Policy
in the Minneapolis Trial” as an appendix.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n4" href="#f4" name="n4" target="_blank">4.</a> Cannon’s two
speeches at the SWP NC plenum in February 1948, analyzing the new
Progressive Party led by Henry Wallace and proposing that the SWP run
its first presidential campaign that year, are reprinted in the
Education for Socialists Bulletin, “Aspects of Socialist Election
Policy,” March 1971, pp. 21-34.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n5" href="#f5" name="n5" target="_blank">5.</a> Reprinted by
Pathfinder Press, 1973.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n6" href="#f6" name="n6" target="_blank">6.</a> Leon Trotsky,
“the Old Man,” was assassinated in Mexico in August 1940 by an agent of
the Soviet secret police who pretended to be a sympathizer of the
Fourth International.</p>
<p class="note"><a id="n7" href="#f7" name="n7" target="_blank">7.</a> Cannon’s letters
and speeches about the oppositional group in the SWP led by Felix
Morrow and Albert Goldman are printed in his books <em>Letters from
Prison</em> and <em>The Struggle for Socialism in the “American
Century”</em> (Pathfinder Press, 1973 and 1977).</p>
<p> </p>
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I
The Cannon Tradition:
“Don’t Strangle the Party!”
The entirety of this portion of the book was published as a pamphlet
by the Fourth Internationalist Tendency in 1986, entitled Don’t
Strangle the Party! The introduction by George Breitman makes
unnecessary any further comment on the specific items.
1. DON’T TRY TO ENFORCE A
NONEXISTENT LAW
2. REASONS FOR THE SURVIVAL OF THE SWP AND
FOR ITS NEW VITALITY IN THE 1960s
3. A TREND IN THE WRONG DIRECTION
4. THE SWP’S GREAT TRADITION
Introduction
by George Breitman
On April 8, 1983, a membership meeting of the Bay Area
District of the Socialist Workers Party (from branches in San
Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose) was held in San Jose to hear a report
on the latest three in a series of expulsions being engineered by the
SWP “central leadership team” headed by Jack Barnes. During the
discussion period, Asher Harer, a veteran party member from San
Francisco, made some comments about the newly announced “organizational
norm” prohibiting SWP members from communicating with members of other
branches under pain of expulsion. Harer said that if James P. Cannon,
the principal founder of the SWP, were alive today, he could not exist
in the SWP. Cannon often communicated directly with members in other
branches, on all sorts of questions, and Harer said he had a file of
Cannon letters to prove it.
Harer was answered by Clifton DeBerry, a member of the
national Control Commission, a former member of the National Committee,
and a former presidential candidate, who said: “If James P Cannon wrote
such letters today, he would be expelled.” DeBerry added that the SWP
is a “more disciplined” party today than in Cannon’s time. Some NC
members who supported the new norms were also present, but none
differentiated themselves from what DeBerry had said.
DeBerry’s remarks were not repeated in written form, then or
later, but they were very revealing. For more than a year the SWP
leadership had been accusing oppositionists in the NC of violating the
party’s organizational principles (“norms”), which the leadership
allegedly was trying to maintain and defend. And now DeBerry had
blurted out the truth: Even the founder of the party would have been
ousted as “undisciplined” if he had lived to 1983 and tried to function
in accord with the organizational norms that prevailed in the party
from its founding in 1938 to his death in 1974. Since these norms had
never been changed in Cannon’s time, or later, they were being violated
all right - not by the oppositionists but by the leadership itself,
which was reinterpreting them and giving them a new content without
ever formally discussing or formally changing them.
In the following year the SWP leadership expelled all known or
suspected oppositionists, dissidents, or critics. The real reason they
were expelled was that they had political differences with or doubts
about the leadership’s new orientation toward Castroism and away from
Trotskyism, and that the leadership was afraid to debate this
orientation with them in front of the SWP membership. The ostensible
reason given by the leadership was that the expelled members had in
various ways violated the party’s traditional organizational
principles, especially the 1965 resolution on “The Organizational
Character of the Socialist Workers Party.”
The present pamphlet consists of three letters and the text of
a talk by Cannon in 1966 and 1967, which prove conclusively that Cannon
did not share the current SWP leadership’s interpretation of the 1965
resolution. The real tradition of the SWP on democratic centralism is
different than the present leadership makes it out to be. Like Trotsky,
Cannon is a witness against the revisionist political and
organizational policies of the Barnes group.
Cannon was 75 years old and living in Los Angeles in 1965. He
was national chairman of the party but no longer responsible for its
day-to-day activity, which was handled by the Political Committee and
national secretary Farrell Dobbs from the party center in New York.
When the PC decided to submit a resolution on organizational principles
to the 1965 convention, it chose a committee of Dobbs, George Novack,
and Cannon to prepare a draft. Dobbs wrote it and Novack edited it. A
copy was sent to Cannon, who sent it back without comment. He thought
the draft was poorly written and too ambiguous on certain key points,
but did not undertake to amend or redraft it. He did not attend the
1965 convention, which adopted the resolution by a vote of 51 to 8.
In 1968 Cannon discontinued direct correspondence with the
party center in New York. But before that happened, he wrote and said
some things in 1966 and 1967 which showed that he disagreed with PC
members who were interpreting the 1965 resolution as a signal to
“tighten” or “centralize” the party, which he believed could only
damage it, perhaps fatally.
1. Don’t Try to Enforce a Nonexistent Law
Cannon’s letter of February 8, 1966, had the following
background: Arne Swabeck, a party founder and NC member, had been
trying for seven years to convert the SWP from Trotskyism to Maoism.
Despite repeated efforts before and during SWP national conventions in
1959, 1961, 1963, and 1965, his small group made little headway among
the members. Increasingly he and his group began to ignore the normal
channels for discussion in the party, and to communicate their ideas to
selected members by mail. This led to demands by Larry Trainor, an NC
member in Boston, for disciplinary action against Swabeck and his ally
in the NC, Richard Fraser. Through a circular letter for the PC Tom
Kerry announced that the matter would be taken up at a plenum of the NC
to be held at the end of February.
Cannon’s letter was addressed to the supporters of the NC
majority tendency (which excluded the supporters of the Swabeck and
Fraser-Clara Kaye tendencies, etc.). Cannon tried to convince the
majority that political discussion and education were the answer to the
minority tendencies, not disciplinary action. “There is absolutely no
party law or precedent for such action,” he said, “and we will run
into all kinds of trouble in the party ranks, and the International, if
we try this kind of experiment for the first time.... It
would be too bad if the SWP suddenly decided to get tougher than the
Communist Party [of the 1920s] and try to enforce a nonexistent law
— which can’t be enforced without creating all kinds of discontent and
disruption.” (Emphasis added)
This was written five months after the adoption of the 1965
resolution. It demonstrates that Cannon saw nothing in that resolution
that could be cited as “party law or precedent” for the kind of
disciplinary action taken by the Barnes leadership in the 1980s.
The February 1966 meeting of the NC found Cannon’s arguments
convincing. They did not want to conduct, for “the first time” in the
party’s history, the experiment of trying to enforce “a nonexistent
law.” So the whole question was dropped - until after Cannon’s death.
2. Reasons for the Survival of the SWP and for Its New
Vitality in the 1960s
Cannon’s September 6, 1966, talk was one of “my last speeches
before I fell into retirement, so to speak,” he said shortly before his
death. It was given to a Labor Day weekend educational conference at a
camp near San Francisco, and it was obviously intended primarily for
members of the SWP and YSA, rather than for the general public. The
form of this talk was that of a discussion about the history of the SWP
and the FI, which Cannon used to express his thinking about the
problems facing the SWP in 1966, its strengths and weaknesses, the
pressures it was feeling, and the lessons from the past that it could
learn for the present and the future. Although the talk was couched
mainly in historical terms, experienced listeners understood that
Cannon was saying, “I think we have some serious problems now and we’d
better think about how to handle them.” The SWP leadership never
printed this talk (which was transcribed from a taped recording and
edited by Evelyn Sell eighteen years later, after her expulsion from
the SWP as an oppositionist, and was printed in the Bulletin in
Defense of Marxism, No. 14, December 1984).
Cannon’s main concern here was that some SWP and YSA leaders
were not sufficiently resisting and opposing the harmful influences of
the “New Left” to which they were subjected in the antiwar and student
movements. Some “younger comrades,” he said quite openly, gave him the
impression that they had not fully assimilated the cardinal principle
of internationalism. His stress on the SWP as “revolutionary
continuators” was directed not only against the New Left but against
those in the SWP and YSA who disregarded this factor or thought it
insignificant. His demand for polemics with opponent tendencies (“the
mark of a revolutionary party”) stemmed from his conviction that there
was a reluctance among SWP and YSA leaders to openly explain their
differences with the New Left. Similarly with most of the talk - it was
not just a criticism of the New Left but of party and YSA members who
he thought were defaulting on the theoretical and educational struggle
against New Leftism.
But Cannon did not fail also to raise the questions about
party democracy that had been on his mind during the previous two or
more years. He began by touching on the “flexible democracy” that had
enabled the party to survive historically: “We never tried to settle
differences of opinion by suppression. Free discussion - not every day
in the week but at stated regular times, with full guarantees for the
minority - is a necessary condition for the health and strength of an
organization such as ours.” It never occurred to him to add that any of
this had been superseded by the 1965 resolution.
Continuing, he noted that factionalism can get out of hand or
become unprincipled. “But on the other hand,” he said, “if a party can
live year after year without any factional disturbances, it may not be
a sign of health — it may be a sign that the party’s asleep;
that it’s not a real live party. In a live party you have differences,
differences of appraisal, and so on. But that’s a sign of life.” The
present SWP leaders hardly ever say things like that any more; and even
when they do, they mean something different than Cannon meant.
3. A Trend in the Wrong Direction
In 1966 some SWP members raised the question of codifying
parts of the 1965 resolution through amendments to the party’s
constitution at the next national convention. A PC-appointed
constitution committee (Reba Hansen, Harry Ring, Jean Simon [Tussey])
began, in consultation with national organization secretary Ed Shaw, to
consider proposed changes for the constitution, including one to alter
the way the national Control Commission was elected and functioned.
In his response (reprinted from Bulletin in Defense of
Marxism, No. 8, June 1984), Cannon was quite disturbed by this
proposal, especially because he saw it as part of a dangerous trend:
“As far as I can see all the new moves and proposals to monkey with the
Constitution which has served the party so well in the past, with the
aim of ‘tightening’ centralization, represent a trend in the wrong
direction at the present time. The party (and the YSA) is too ‘tight’
already, and if we go much further along this line we can run the risk
of strangling the party to death.”
Most of Cannon’s letter was an explanation of why the party
would be better off if the Control Commission remained an “independent”
or “separate” body elected by the national convention as a whole than
it would be as a mere subcommittee of the NC. But he also seized the
opportunity to assert the necessity to “practice what we preach” about
existing constitutional provisions “to protect every party member
against possible abuse of authority by the National Committee.” There
was nothing ambiguous about his position:
“In the present political climate and with the present
changing composition of the party, democratic centralism must be
applied flexibly. At least ninety percent of the emphasis should be
placed on the democratic side and not on any crackpot schemes to
’streamline’ the party to the point where questions are unwelcomed and
criticism and discussion stifled. That is a prescription to kill the
party....”
Cannon clearly did not feel that the 1965 resolution justified
or authorized the kind of undemocratic changes that the “centralizing”
Barnes leadership made in the name of the 1965 document in the 1970s
and 1980s. Cannon’s letter was effective - none of the proposals he
warned against were recommended by the constitution committee or
adopted at the 1967 convention.
4. The SWP’s Great Tradition
The Arne Swabeck case came up again in 1967, when both an SWP
national convention and an FI world congress were scheduled. By then
Swabeck had lost all hope in the SWP and the FI. Instead of trying once
more to convince their members, he publicly attacked the SWP’s policies
in a letter to a hostile political group in England (the Healyites).
For this deliberate violation of discipline, the PC asked the NC to
suspend him from membership pending the coming convention.
Cannon had no sympathy whatever for Swabeck’s politics or
organizational practices, but he felt it would be “awkward” to begin
the preconvention and pre-world congress discussions by suspending the
one articulate critic of the party’s positions and actions. He
therefore urged that Swabeck’s provocation be handled by publishing
Swabeck’s letters together with a comprehensive political answer to
them. This “subordination of disciplinary measures to the bigger aims
of political education” - which he called a continuation of the party’s
great tradition - had always served the party well in the past, he
argued, and in the Swabeck case would “better serve the education of
the new generation of the party and the consolidation of party opinion”
than would the proposed suspension.
Most members of the NC disagreed with Cannon. They felt
Swabeck’s violation of discipline was too flagrant to be ignored, and
they felt that he already had been answered politically over and over
again, so that disciplinary action in this case would not represent any
rupture with the SWP’s great tradition. The NC suspended Swabeck, who
continued to attack the SWP publicly, and soon after he was expelled.
The differences in this case between the NC majority and Cannon were
tactical, and it is possible to see the logic and merits in both their
positions. But perhaps Cannon was looking a little farther ahead than
most of the NC members.
Swabeck had so discredited himself, Cannon told the PC, that
the immediate effect of the party’s reaction to the new provocation
would not be very great whether he was suspended or not. “But the
long-range effect on the political education of the party, and its
preparation to cope with old problems in new forms, can be very great
indeed.” It is clear from this that Cannon was concerned with something
bigger than the fate of Swabeck; that he was trying to alert the party
to dangers that transcended the issue of whether or not to suspend
Swabeck prior to the convention; that he feared mistakes on this issue
could have damaging long-range effects on the party, its political
education, and its ability to fulfill its revolutionary mission.
The Swabeck case was soon forgotten, but the dangers that
worried Cannon are worth recalling today, after the SWP leadership, in
a brutal break with the party’s tradition of subordinating disciplinary
measures to political discussion and clarification, expelled and in
other ways drove out any and all members who were suspected of having
oppositional views (whether they were articulate or not). The SWP
leadership “justified” this purge by accusing the expellees of being
disrupters and splitters who, “like Swabeck,” were outside the party
only because of their own indiscipline and disloyalty. But everybody in
the SWP knows that most of the expellees fought to remain in the party,
unlike Swabeck, and are still fighting to be reinstated, also unlike
Swabeck. Most members of the FI know this, too, because at their world
congress in February 1985, they voted overwhelmingly to demand the
reinstatement of the purged members. The fight for the SWP’s tradition
continues, but the SWP leadership is fighting on the other side.
In May 1983, a month after the Harer-DeBerry
exchange in San Jose, the NC held a plenum in New York where
oppositionists contrasted Cannon’s positions on democratic centralism
with those of the Barnes group. Barnes finally took the floor and said,
“It looks as though we are going to have to rescue Cannon from these
people the same way we rescued Trotsky from the sectarians.” Barnes had
“rescued” Trotsky at a YSA convention on December 31, 1982, in a talk
entitled “Their Trotsky and Ours” (New International Fall
1983). It was rather a unique kind of rescue since in this talk Barnes
tried to demolish Trotsky and most of his work as sectarian and
harmful. A similar “rescue” of Cannon would mean a wholesale
reevaluation of his work and his place in the history of the SWP and
the FI. Even as Barnes uttered this promise or threat, a dossier was
being compiled that would “prove” Cannon had been a “Stalinophobe” in
the 1930s and 1940s, etc. Whether or not such material will be
published, it stands to reason that the Barnes group will have to
differentiate itself from Cannon and Cannonism more and more as it
proceeds further away from them politically and organizationally. The
antidote includes an objective reading of Cannon’s writings, of which
there are fortunately many in print.
May 1985
Don’t Try to Enforce a Nonexistent Law
February 8, 1966
For NC Majority Only
To the Secretariat
Dear Comrades:
I feel rather uneasy about the circular letter from Tom [Kerry]
dated Jan. 28, enclosing a copy of Larry T[rainor]’s letter of Jan. 15
and Arne [Swabeck]’s letter of January 7 addressed to Larry and his
letter of Dec. 14 addressed to Rosemary and Doug [Gordon], and also the
circular of Al A. announcing his decision to join the PLP [Progressive
Labor Party] (which I had already seen locally).
The Swabeck letter and the [Clara] Kaye document, which I had
previously received, make serious criticisms of the party and youth
actions at the Washington Thanksgiving Conference,[1] and make a number of other serious, and even
fundamental, criticisms of party policy and action in general.
The problem, as I see it, is how to deal effectively with these
challenges and how to aid the education of the party and the youth in
the process - in the light of our tradition and experience over a
period of more than thirty-seven years since the Left Opposition in
this country began its work under the guidance of Trotsky. One might
well include the first ten years of American communism before that,
from which I, at least, learned and remember a lot from doing things
the wrong way.
Larry’s letter of Jan. 15 suggesting disciplinary action, and Tom’s
letter of Jan. 28 informing us that the Political Committee has put the
question of discipline on the plenum agenda, are, in my opinion, the
wrong way.
Probably the hardest lesson I had to learn from Trotsky, after ten
years of bad schooling through the Communist Party faction fights, was
to let organizational questions wait until the political questions at
issue were fully clarified, not only in the National Committee but also
in the ranks of the party. It is no exaggeration, but the full and
final truth, that our party owes its very existence today to the fact
that some of us learned this hard lesson and learned also how to apply
it in practice.
From that point of view, in my opinion, the impending plenum should
be conceived of as a school for the education and clarification of the
party on the political issues involved in the new disputes, most of
which grew out of earlier disputes with some new trimmings and
absurdities.
This aim will be best served if the attacks and criticisms are
answered point by point in an atmosphere free from poisonous personal
recriminations and venomous threats of organization discipline. Our
young comrades need above all to learn; and this is the best,
in fact the only way, for them to learn what they need to know about
the new disputes. They don’t know it all yet. The fact that some of
them probably think they already know everything, only makes it more
advisable to turn the plenum sessions into a school with questions and
answers freely and patiently passed back and forth.
The classic example for all time, in this matter of conducting
political disputes for the education of the cadres, is set forth in the
two books which grew out of the fundamental conflict with the
petty-bourgeois opposition in 1939-40.[2]
I think these books, twenty-six years after, are still fresh and alive
because they attempt to answer and clarify all important questions
involved in the dispute, and leave discipline and organizational
measures aside for later consideration.
Compared to the systematic, organized violation of normal
disciplinary regulations and procedures committed by the
petty-bourgeois opposition in that fight, the irregularities of Kirk
[Richard Fraser] and Swabeck resemble juvenile pranks. Nevertheless,
Trotsky insisted from the beginning that all proposals, or even talk or
threats, of disciplinary action be left aside until the political
disputes were clarified and settled. The party was reborn and
reeducated in that historic struggle, and equipped to stand up in the
hard days that were to follow, precisely because that policy was
followed.
As for disciplinary action suggested in Larry’s letter, and at least
intimated in the action of the Political Committee in putting this
matter on the agenda of the plenum - I don’t even think we have much of
a case in the present instance. Are we going to discipline two members
of the National Committee for circulating their criticisms outside the
committee itself? There is absolutely no party law or precedent for
such action, and we will run into all kinds of trouble in the party
ranks, and the International, if we try this kind of experiment for the
first time.
We have always thought proper and responsible procedure required
that party leaders confine their differences and criticisms within the
National Committee until a full discussion could be had at a plenum,
and a discussion in the party formally authorized. But it never worked
with irresponsible people and it never will; and this kind of trouble
can’t be cured by discipline.
In the first five years of the Left Opposition, Shachtman and Abern
took every dispute in the committee, large or small, into the New York
Branch - with unlimited discussion and denunciation of the committee
majority by an assorted collection of articulate screwballs who would
make the present critics of the party policy, from one end of the
country to the other, appear in comparison as well mannered pupils in a
Sunday School. There was nothing to do about it but fight it out. Any
kind of disciplinary action would have provoked a split which couldn’t
be explained and justified before the radical public.
To my recollection, there has never been a time in our
thirty-seven-year history when a critical opposition waited very long
to circulate their ideas outside the committee ranks, despite our
explanation that such conduct was improper and irresponsible. We
educated and hardened our cadre over the years and decades by meeting
all critics and opponents politically and educating those who
were educable.
I will add to the previously cited examples of the fight with the
petty-bourgeois opposition two minor examples.
1. Right after our trial in Minneapolis in 1941 the well-known
[Grandizo] Munis blasted our conduct at the trial as lacking in “proud
valor,” capitulating to legalism, and all other crimes and dirty
tricks. I answered Munis by taking up his criticisms point by point and
answering them without equivocation or evasion. Munis’s letter and my
answer, some of you will remember, was published in a pamphlet on
“Defense Policy in the Minneapolis Trial,” so that all party members
and others who might be interested could hear both sides and judge for
themselves.
That pamphlet was published twenty-four years ago, and I personally
have never since heard a peep out of anybody in criticism of our
conduct at the trial. On the contrary, my testimony “Socialism On
Trial” has been printed and reprinted a number of times in a number of
editions and, as I understand it, has always been the most popular
pamphlet of the party.[3]
2. I notice that the YSA has just recently published, in an internal
discussion bulletin, my two speeches at the 1948 plenum on the Wallace
Progressive Party and our 1948 election campaign.[4] The circumstances surrounding these speeches have
pertinence to the impending plenum.
No sooner had the Wallace candidacy been announced on a Progressive
Party ticket than Swabeck in Chicago, consulting with himself, decided
that this was the long-awaited labor party and that we had to jump into
it with both feet. Without waiting for the plenum, or even for the
Political Committee, to discuss the question and formulate a position,
he hastily lined up [Mike] Bartell and Manny Trbovitch and the local
executive committee and from that, quick as a wink, the entire Chicago
Branch to support the candidacy of Wallace and get into the Progressive
Party on the ground floor. There was also strong sympathy for this
policy in Los Angeles, Buffalo, Youngstown, and other branches of the
party. The discussion at the plenum should be studied in light of these
circumstances.
My two speeches were devoted, from beginning to end, to a political
analysis of the problem and a point by point answer to every objection
raised by Swabeck and other critics. It is worth noting, by those who
are willing to learn from past experiences, that Swabeck’s
irresponsible action and violation of what Larry refers to as
“committee discipline” were not mentioned once.
There was a reason for the omission, although such conduct was just
as much an irritation then as now. The reason for the omission was that
we wanted to devote all attention at the plenum to the fundamental
political problems involved and the political lessons to be learned
from the dispute. My speeches, as well as remarks of other comrades at
the plenum, had the result of convincing the great majority present and
even shaking the confidence of the opponents in their own position. By
the time we got to the national convention a few months later, the
party was solidly united and convinced that the nomination of our own
ticket in 1948 was the correct thing to do.
Committee “discipline” follows from conviction and a sense of
responsibility; it cannot be imposed by party law or threats. I have
said before that in more than thirty-seven years of our independent
history we have never tried to enforce such discipline. There was such
a law, however, or at least a mutual understanding to this effect, in
the Communist Party during the period of my incubation there. But what
was the result in practice?
Formally, all discussion and happenings in the Political Committee
and in the plenum were secrets sealed with seven seals. In practice
before any meeting was twenty-four hours old the partisans of the
different factions had full reports on secret “onion skin” paper
circulated throughout the party. Even the ultra-discipline of the
Communist Party never disciplined anybody for these surreptitious
operations.
It would be too bad if the SWP suddenly decided to get tougher than
the Communist Party and try to enforce a nonexistent law - which can’t
be enforced without creating all kinds of discontent and disruption, to
say nothing of blurring the serious political disputes which have to be
discussed and clarified for the education of the party ranks.
I would like copies of this letter to be made available to National
Committee members who received Tom’s letter of Jan. 28.
Fraternally,
James P Cannon
Reasons for the Survival of the SWP and for Its New Vitality in the
1960s
The party that we represent here had its origin thirty-eight years
ago next month when I and Martin Abern and Max Shachtman, all members
of the National Committee of the Communist Party, were expelled because
we insisted upon supporting Trotsky and the Russian Opposition in the
international discussion. It seems remarkable, in view of the death
rate of organizations that we have noted over the years, that this
party still shows signs of youth. That is the hallmark of a living
movement: its capacity to attract the young. Many attempts at creating
different kinds of radical organizations have foundered, withered away,
over that problem. The old-timers stuck around but new blood didn’t
come in. The organizations, one by one, either died or just withered
away on the vine (which is probably a worse fate than death).
In my opinion, there are certain reasons for the survival of our
movement and for the indications of a new surge of vitality in it. I’ll
enumerate some of the more important reasons which account for this.
Internationalism and the SWP
First of all, and above all, we recognized thirty-eight years ago
that in the modern world it is impossible to organize a revolutionary
party in one country. All the problems of the different nations of the
world are so intertwined today that they cannot be solved with a
national policy alone. The latest to experience the truth of that
dictum is Lyndon B. Johnson. He’s trying to solve the problems of
American foreign policy with Texas-style arm-twisting politics. It does
not work. We decided we would be internationalists first, last, and all
the time, and that we would not try to build a purely American party
with American ideas - because American ideas are very scarce in the
realm of creative politics. By becoming part of an international
movement, and thereby participating in international collaboration,
and getting the benefit of the ideas and experiences of others in other
countries - as well as contributing our ideas to them - that we would
have a better chance to create a viable revolutionary movement in this
country.
I think that holds true today more than ever. A party that is not
internationalist is out of date very sadly and is doomed utterly. I
don’t know if our younger comrades have fully assimilated that basic,
fundamental first idea or not. I have the impression at times that they
understand it rather perfunctorily, take it for granted, rather than
understand it in its essence: that internationalism means, above all, international
collaboration. The affairs, the difficulties, the disputes of
every party in the Fourth International must be our concern - as our
problems must be their concern. It’s not only our right but our duty
to participate in all the discussions that arise throughout the
International, as well as it is their right and their duty to take part
in our discussions and disputes.
Our Revolutionary Continuity
The second reason that I would give for the durability of this party
of ours is the fact that we did not pretend to have a new revelation.
We were not these “men from nowhere” whom you see running around the
campuses and other places today saying, “We’ve got to start from
scratch. Everything that happened in the past is out the window.” On
the contrary, we solemnly based ourselves on the continuity
of the revolutionary movement. On being expelled from the Communist
Party, we did not become anticommunist. On the contrary, we said we are
the true representatives of the best traditions of the Communist Party.
If you read current literature, you’ll see that we are the only ones
who defend the first ten years of American communism. The official
leaders of the Communist Party don’t want to talk about it at all. Yet
those were ten rich and fruitful years which we had behind us
when we started the Trotskyist movement in this country. Before that,
some of us had about ten years of experience in the IWW and Socialist
Party, and in various class struggle activities around the country. We
said that we were the heirs of the IWW and the Socialist Party - all
that was good and valid and revolutionary in them. We honor the Knights
of Labor and the Haymarket martyrs. We’re not Johnny-come-latelys at
all. We’re continuators.
We even go back further than that. We go back to the “Communist
Manifesto” of 1848, and to Marx and Engels, the authors of that
document, and their other writings. We go back to the Paris Commune of
1871 and the Russian Revolution of 1917. We go back to Lenin and
Trotsky, and to the struggle of the Left Opposition in the Russian
Soviet party and in the Comintern.
We said, “We are the continuators.” And we really were. We
were in dead earnest about it and we were very active from the very
beginning. This is one of the marks of a group, however, small, that
has confidence in itself. We engaged in polemics against all other
pretenders to leadership of the American working class: first of all
the Stalinists, and the reformist Social Democrats, and the labor
skates, and anybody else who had some quack medicine to cure the
troubles of working people. Polemics are the mark of a revolutionary
party. A party that is “too nice” to engage in what some call
“bickering,” “criticizing,” is too damn nice to live very long in the
whirlpool of politics.
Politics is even worse than baseball, in that respect. Leo Durocher,
who had a bad reputation but who carried the New York Giants to a
championship of the National League and then to the world championship
over the Cleveland Indians, explained this fact in the title of an
article he wrote, “Nice Guys Finish Last.” That’s true in politics as
well as in baseball.
If we disagree with other people, we have to say so! We have to make
it clear why we disagree so that inquiring young people,
looking for an organization to represent their aspirations and ideals,
will know the difference between one party and another. Nothing is
worse than muddying up differences when they concern fundamental
questions.
Working-Class Orientation
Another reason for the survival of our movement through the early
hard period was our orientation. Being Marxists, our
orientation was always toward the working class and to the
working-class organizations. It never entered our minds in those days
to think you could overthrow capitalism over the head of the working
class. Marxism had taught us that the great service capitalism has
rendered to humanity has been to increase the productivity of society
and, at the same time, to create a working class which would have the
interest and the power to overthrow capitalism. In creating this
million-headed wage-working class, Marx said: capitalism has created
its own gravediggers. We saw it as the task of revolutionists to orient
our activity, our agitation, and our propaganda to the working class of
this country.
Putting Theory into Action
Another reason for our exceptional durability was that we did not
merely study the books and learn the formulas. Many people have done
that - and that’s all they’ve done, and they might as well have stayed
home. Trotsky remarked more than once, in the early days, about some
people who play with ideas in our international movement. He said: they
have understood all the formulas and they can repeat them by rote, but
they haven’t got them in their flesh and blood, so it doesn’t count.
When you get the formulas of Marxism in your flesh and blood that means
you have an irresistible impulse and drive to put theory
into action.
As Engels said to the sectarian socialists in the United States in
the nineteenth century: our theory is not a dogma but a guide to
action. One who studies the theory of Marxism and doesn’t do anything
to try to put it into action among the working class might as well have
stayed in bed. We were not that type. We came out of the experiences of
the past, but we were activists as well as students of Marxism.
The Capacity to Learn
One more reason for our survival: one factor working in our favor
was our modesty. Modesty is the precondition for learning. If
you know it all to start with, you can’t learn any more. We were
brought to the painful realization in 1928 that there were a lot of
things we didn’t know - after all of our experiences and study. New
problems and new complications which had arisen in the Soviet Union and
in the international movement required that we go to school again.
And to go to school with the best teachers: the leaders of the Russian
Revolution. After twenty years of experience in the American movement
and in the Comintern we put ourselves to school and tried to learn from
the great leaders who had made the only successful revolution in the
history of the working class.
We had to learn, also, how to think - and to take time to
think. We believed in a party of disciplined action but disciplined
activity alone does not characterize only the revolutionist. Other
groups, such as the fascists, have that quality. The Stalinists have
disciplined action. Disciplined action directed by clear thinking
distinguishes the revolutionary Marxist party. Thinking is a form of
action. In the early days of our movement we had a great deal of
discussion - not all of it pleasant to hear, but out of which came some
clarification. We had to learn to be patient and listen and, out of the
discussion, to formulate our policy and our program.
Those were the qualities of our movement in the first years of our
almost total isolation that enabled us to survive. We had confidence in
the American working class and we oriented toward it. When the American
working class began to move in the mid-thirties, we had formulated our
program of action, and we were in the midst of the class, and we began
to grow - in some years, we grew rather rapidly.
Internal Democracy Within the SWP
Not the least of our reasons for remaining alive for thirty-eight
years, and growing a little, and now being in a position to capitalize
on new opportunities, was the flexible democracy of our party. We never
tried to settle differences of opinion by suppression. Free discussion
- not every day in the week but at stated regular times, with full
guarantees for the minority - is a necessary condition for the health
and strength of an organization such as ours.
There’s no guarantee that factionalism won’t get out of hand. I
don’t want to be an advocate of factionalism - unless anybody picks on
me and runs the party the wrong way and doesn’t want to give me a
chance to protest about it! The general experience of the international
movement has shown that excesses of factionalism can be very dangerous
and destructive to a party. In my book, The First Ten Years of
American Communism,[5] I put
all the necessary emphasis on the negative side of the factional
struggles which became unprincipled. But on the other hand, if a party
can live year after year without any factional disturbances, it may not
be a sign of health - it may be a sign that the party’s asleep;
that it’s not a real live party. In a live party, you have differences,
differences of appraisal, and so on. But that’s a sign of life.
The New Left of the 1960s
You have now a new phenomenon in the American radical movement which
I hear is called “The New Left.” This is a broad title given to an
assemblage of people who state they don’t like the situation the way it
is and something ought to be done about it -but we mustn’t take
anything from the experiences of the past; nothing from the “Old Left”
or any of its ideas or traditions are any good. What’s the future going
to be? “Well, that’s not so clear either. Let’s think about that.” What
do you do now? “I don’t know. Something ought to be done.” That’s a
fair description of this amorphous New Left which is written about so
much and with which we have to contend.
We know where we come from. We intend to maintain our continuity. We
know that we are part of the world, and that we have to belong to an
international movement and get the benefits of association and
discussion with cothinkers throughout the world. We have a definite
orientation whereas the New Left says the working class is dead. The
working class was crossed off by the wiseacres in the twenties. There
was a long boom in the 1920s. The workers not only didn’t gain any
victories, they lost ground. The trade unions actually declined in
number. In all the basic industries, where you now see great
flourishing industrial unions - the auto workers, aircraft, steel,
rubber, electrical, transportation, maritime - the unions did not
exist, just a scattering here and there. There were company unions in
all these big basic industries, run by the bosses’ stooges. The workers
were entitled to belong to these company unions as long as they did
what the stooges told them to do. It took a semi-revolutionary uprising
in the mid-thirties to break that up and install real unions.
There were a lot of wiseacres who crossed off the American working
class and said, “That’s Marx’s fundamental mistake. He thinks the
working class can make a revolution and emancipate itself. And he’s
dead wrong! Just look at them !” They didn’t say who would make the
revolution if the workers didn’t do it - just like the New Leftists
today don’t give us any precise description of what power will
transform society.
People who said such things in the 1920s were proved to be wrong,
and those who say the same things about the working class today will be
proved to be wrong. We will maintain our orientation toward the working
class and to its organized section in particular. I hope that our party
and our youth movement will not only continue but will intensify and
develop its capacity for polemics against all pretenders to leadership
of the coming radicalization of the American workers.
Above all, I hope our party and our youth movement will continue to
learn and to grow. That’s the condition for survival as a revolutionary
party. I don’t merely get impatient with Johnny-come-latelys who just
arrived from nowhere and announce that they know it all, I get
impatient even with old-timers who think they have nothing more to
learn. The world is changing. New problems arise, new complexities, new
complications confront the revolutionary movement at every step. The
condition for effective political leadership is that the leaders
themselves continue to learn and to grow. That means: not to lose their
modesty altogether.
The Importance of the Individual
I’d like to add one more point. The question is raised very often,
“What can one person do?” The urgency of the situation in the world is
pretty widely recognized outside of our ranks. The urgency of the whole
social problem has been magnified a million times by the development of
nuclear weapons, and by the capacity of these inventions and
discoveries to destroy all life on earth. Not merely a single city like
Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but capable of destroying all life on earth. And
it’s in the hands of reckless and irresponsible people. It’s got to be
taken away from them, and it cannot be done otherwise except by
revolution.
What can one single person do in this terribly urgent situation? I
heard a program on television a short while ago: an interview with
Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, former pacifist, fighter
against nuclear war. He’s not a revolutionary Marxist but is an
absolutely dedicated opponent of nuclear war and a prophet of the
calamity such a war will bring. He was asked, “What are the chances, in
your opinion, of preventing a nuclear war that might destroy all life
on earth?” He said, “The odds are four-to-six against us.” He was then
asked, “How would you raise the odds of being able to prevent a nuclear
war?” He answered, “I don’t know anything to do except keep on fighting
to try to change the odds.”
Now suppose as a result of all the protests and the activity of
ourselves and other people, we change the odds to fifty-fifty. Then you
have a scale, evenly balanced, where just a feather can tip it one way
or another. If a situation such as that exists - which, in my opinion,
is just about the state of affairs in the world today - one person’s
activity in the revolutionary movement might make the difference.
A Trend in the Wrong Direction
November 12, 1966
Copies to:
Ed Shaw, New York
Jean Simon, Cleveland
Reba Hansen
New York, N.Y
Dear Reba:
This answers your letter of November 2 with which you enclosed a
copy of Jean Simon’s letter of October 12. I was surprised and
concerned by Jean’s proposals to change the constitutional provisions
providing for an independent Control Commission elected by the
convention, and making it a mere subcommittee of the NC, which would
mean in effect a subcommittee of the PC. This would be the de facto
liquidation of the Control Commission as it was originally conceived.
As far as I can see all the new moves and proposals to monkey with
the Constitution which has served the party so well in the past, with
the aim of “tightening” centralization, represent a trend in the wrong
direction at the present time. The party (and the YSA) is too “tight”
already, and if we go much further along this line we can run the risk
of strangling the party to death.
As I recall it, the proposal to establish a Control Commission,
separately elected by the convention, originated at the Plenum and
Active Workers’ Conference in the fall of 1940, following the
assassination of the Old Man. The assassin, as you will recall, gained
access to the household in Coyoacan through his relations with a party
member.[6] The Political Committee
was then, as it always will be if it functions properly, too busy with
political and organizational problems to take time for investigations
and security checks on individuals.
It was agreed that we need a special body to take care of this work,
to investigate rumors and charges and present its findings and
recommendations to the National Committee.
If party security was one side of the functions of the Control
Commission, the other side - no less important - was to provide the
maximum assurance that any individual party member, accused or rumored
to be unworthy of party membership, could be assured of the fullest
investigation and a fair hearing or trial. It was thought that this
double purpose could best be served by a body separately elected by the
convention, and composed of members of long standing, especially
respected by the party for their fairness as well as their devotion.
I can recall instances where the Control Commission served the party
well in both aspects of this dual function. In one case a member of the
seamen’s fraction was expelled by the Los Angeles Branch after charges
were brought against him by two members of the National Committee of
that time. The expelled member appealed to the National Committee and
the case was turned over to the Control Commission for investigation.
The Control Commission, on which as I recall Dobbs was then the PC
representative, investigated the whole case, found that the charges
lacked substantial proof and recommended the reinstatement of the
expelled member. This was done.
In another case, a rumor circulated by the Shachtmanites and others
outside the party against the integrity of a National Office
secretarial worker was thoroughly investigated by the Control
Commission which, after taking stenographic testimony from all
available sources, declared the rumors unfounded and cleared the
accused party member to continue her work. There were other cases in
which charges were found after investigation to be substantiated and
appropriate action recommended.
All these experiences speak convincingly of the need for a separate
Control Commission of highly respected comrades to make thorough
investigations of every case, without being influenced by personal or
partisan prejudice, or pressure from any source, and whose sole
function is to examine each case from all sides fairly and justly and
report its findings and recommendations. This is the best way, not only
to protect the security of the party, but also to respect the rights of
the accused in every case.
As far as I know, the only criticism that can properly be made of
the Control Commission in recent times is that it has not always
functioned in this way with all its members participating, either by
presence or correspondence, in all proceedings - and convincing the
party that its investigation was thorough and that its findings and
recommendations were fair and just.
* * *
It should be pointed out also that the idea of a Control Commission
separately constituted by the convention didn’t really originate with
us. Like almost everything else we know about the party organizational
principles and functions, it came from the Russian Bolsheviks. The
Russian party had a separate Control Commission. It might also be
pointed out that after the revolution the new government established
courts. It provided also for independent trade unions which, as Lenin
pointed out in one of the controversies, had the duty even to defend
the rights of its members against the government. Of course, all that
was changed later when all power was concentrated in the party
secretariat, and all the presumably independent institutions were
converted into rubber stamps. But we don’t want to move in that
direction. The forms and methods of the Lenin-Trotsky time are a better
guide for us.
* * *
I am particularly concerned about any possible proposal to weaken
the constitutional provision about the absolute right of suspended or
expelled members to appeal to the convention. That is clearly and
plainly a provision to protect every party member against possible
abuse of authority by the National Committee. It should not be
abrogated or diluted just to show that we are so damn revolutionary
that we make no concessions to “bourgeois concepts of checks and
balances.” The well-known Bill of Rights is a check and balance which I
hope will be incorporated, in large part at least, in the Constitution
of the Workers Republic in this country. Our constitutional provision
for the right of appeal is also a “check and balance.” It can help to
recommend our party to revolutionary workers as a genuinely democratic
organization which guarantees rights as well as imposing
responsibilities, and thus make it more appealing to them.
I believe that these considerations have more weight now than ever
before in the thirty-eight-year history of our party. In the present
political climate and with the present changing composition of the
party, democratic centralism must be applied flexibly. At least ninety
percent of the emphasis should be placed on the democratic side and not
on any crackpot schemes to “streamline” the party to the point where
questions are unwelcomed and criticism and discussion stifled. That is
a prescription to kill the party before it gets a chance to show how it
can handle and assimilate an expanding membership of new young people,
who don’t know it all to start with, but have to learn and grow in the
course of explication and discussion in a free, democratic atmosphere.
Trotsky once remarked in a polemic against Stalinism that even in
the period of the Civil War discussion in the party was “boiling like a
spring.” Those words and others like it written by Trotsky, in his
first attack against Stalinism in The New Course, ought to be
explained now once again to the new young recruits in our party. And
the best way to explain such decisive things is to practice what we
preach.
Yours fraternally,
James P. Cannon
The SWP’s Great Tradition
June 27, 1967
To the Political Committee, New York, New York
Dear Comrades:
I am opposed to the motion adopted by the Political Committee
recommending the immediate suspension of Comrade Swabeck.
As you have been previously informed, I favor a different approach
to the problem raised by Swabeck’s letter to [Gerry] Healy. I explained
my views to Art Sharon during his brief visit here, and I presume that
he communicated it to you. Also, Joel [Britton] showed me a copy of his
letter to the National Office in which he reported the discussion which
took place at a meeting of the NC members here.
I consider it rather unfortunate that these divergent views were not
incorporated in the PC minutes of the meeting which decided to
recommend the suspension of Swabeck - so that the other members of the
National Committee would have a chance to consider and discuss them
before casting their vote on the ballot sent to them together with the
PC minutes.
My approach to the problem can be briefly summarized as follows:
1. Since Swabeck’s letter to Healy deals with two questions of great
world importance - Chinese developments and our policy and tactics in
the struggle against the Vietnam war - which are now properly up for
discussion in the international movement as well as in our party, any
action of a disciplinary nature which we may propose should be closely
coordinated with international comrades, particularly the comrades in
England, and carried out in agreement with them.
2. Since we are just now opening up our preconvention discussion,
where the questions raised by Swabeck will properly have their place on
the agenda, it would be rather awkward to begin the discussion by
suspending the one articulate critic of the party’s positions and
actions. A more effective procedure, in my opinion, should be simply to
publish Swabeck’s letters (to Healy and Dobbs) with comprehensive and
detailed answers.
If past experience is any guide, the education of the new
generations of the party and the consolidation of party opinion would
be better served by this procedure. Examples in favor of this
subordination of disciplinary measures to the bigger aims of political
education have been richly documented in the published records of the
fight against the petty-bourgeois opposition in 1939-40, and in the
internal discussion bulletins dealing with the Goldman-Morrow affair in
1944-56.[7]
3. In the course of discussion, during a number of years of
opposition to party policy, Swabeck has managed to isolate himself to
the point where the immediate effect of the party’s reaction to this
new provocation will not be very great one way or the other. But the
long-range effect on the political education of the party, and its
preparation to cope with old problems in new forms, can be very great
indeed.
It is most important that our party members, and the international
movement, see the leadership once again in continuation of its great
tradition - acting with cool deliberation to serve our larger political
aims without personal favoritism or hostility.
Fraternally, James P. Cannon
Notes
1. An antiwar
convention and demonstration at the White House were held in
Washington, D.C., Nov. 25-28, 1965, under the sponsorship of the
National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam. The
convention was marked by heated controversy between radical and liberal
forces, which led to disputes over antiwar policy inside the SWP.
Cannon’s views about the conference, given in a December 1965 speech in
Los Angeles, were published in International Socialist Review,
October 1974, and reprinted in the Education for Socialists Bulletin,
“Revolutionary Strategy in the Antiwar Movement,” April 1975, pp. 12-17.
2. In Defense
of Marxism by Leon Trotsky and The Struggle for a Proletarian
Party by Cannon (Pathfinder Press, 1973 and 1972) answer the
positions of the minority group in the SWP, led by Max Shachtman,
Martin Abern, and James Burnham, which split away in 1940 after a
bitter factional struggle.
3. Pathfinder
Press’s 1973 edition of Socialism on Trial, Cannon’s
testimony at the 1941 Minneapolis trial, also contains “Defense Policy
in the Minneapolis Trial” as an appendix.
4. Cannon’s two
speeches at the SWP NC plenum in February 1948, analyzing the new
Progressive Party led by Henry Wallace and proposing that the SWP run
its first presidential campaign that year, are reprinted in the
Education for Socialists Bulletin, “Aspects of Socialist Election
Policy,” March 1971, pp. 21-34.
5. Reprinted by
Pathfinder Press, 1973.
6. Leon Trotsky,
“the Old Man,” was assassinated in Mexico in August 1940 by an agent of
the Soviet secret police who pretended to be a sympathizer of the
Fourth International.
7. Cannon’s letters
and speeches about the oppositional group in the SWP led by Felix
Morrow and Albert Goldman are printed in his books Letters from
Prison and The Struggle for Socialism in the “American
Century” (Pathfinder Press, 1973 and 1977).
Revolutionary Principles and Working-Class Democracy | Main Document Index | ETOL Home Page | Cannon Index
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>U.S. Army Courts-Martial System<br>
Flayed in Sweeping Denunciation</h1>
<h3>(4 May 1946)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1946/index.htm#m46_18" target="new">Vol. X No. 18</a>, 4 May 1946, pp. 1 & 7.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">A sweeping indictment of American “military justice” in World War II was made last week in a report by a sub-committee of the House Military Affairs Committee, the full contents of which have not yet been made public as a result of pressure from the War Department.</p>
<p>The report, drawn up after a six-month investigation, in effect charged the Army with conducting courts-martial in order to maintain the officers’ concept of “discipline” rather than to dispense justice:</p>
<p xlass="quoteb">“The court-martial system is regarded by most professional officers as a means of enforcing discipline ... (but) discipline must not be named as a cloak to cover arbitrariness and injustice.”</p>
<p class="fst">(Recently Major General Thomas H. Green, Judge Advocate General, in a defense of the court-martial system before the American Bar Association in Cincinnati, declared: “The court-martial system is, of course, primarily designed to help our armies win our wars. The sanctions of military justice constitute an instrument of command. They form the strong right arm of the military commander in the maintenance of order and discipline within his ranks.”)<br>
</p>
<h4>Compliant Courts</h4>
<p class="quoteb">“There is a widespread belief among intelligent soldiers that not so much a qualified as a weak and compliant court has been the objective,” the House committee report continued. A weak and compliant court is naturally more apt to obey the wishes of the senior officer who appointed its members and who can make life miserable for them after the trial.</p>
<p class="quote">“There have been many excessive sentences ... the most tragic, of course, are the death sentences not commuted (142 in number), about which it is so difficult to obtain information ... Army courts in Europe adjudged two sentences of life imprisonment for A.W.O.L. Hundreds, probably thousands of bewildered boys with no really disloyal intentions were sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for absence without leave ... It is the opinion of competent observers that Army sentences generally err on the side of severity.”</p>
<p class="fst">In addition, it declared, the War Department does not provide “adequate review of their findings” since the record shows that sentences imposed were approved by a 99-to-one ratio by the Judge Advocate General’s office.</p>
<p>As in all other spheres of Army life, officers get different and more favorable treatment than enlisted men facing the same charges. In Manila the Army issued orders to arrest all speed law violators. Enlisted men were fined on the first offense, it said, but officers were not punished until the third offense – and then got off with a reprimand in place of a fine.</p>
<p xlass="quoteb">”An enlisted man has the right, to bring charges against a commissioned officer,” the report observed. “This is largely a paper provision. An officer of long experience has said that when it did happen the enlisted man always found himself court-martialed or transferred.”</p>
<h4>Officers Select Court</h4>
<p class="fst">But, as every soldier knows, an officer not only can bring charges against an enlisted man, but he can often also select the members of the court-martial. Of course his testimony bears ten times more weight with the court than the enlisted man’s.</p>
<p>In addition to its general observations, the sub-committee presented 16 specific recommendations. But the adoption of these recommendations – which is not likely, since the War Department is preparing its own list of proposed “reforms” – will do little to change the situation fundamentally.</p>
<p>The sub-committee calls for amendments to some of the present Articles of War, when the need is for the complete abolition of this barbarous military code and the adoption of a code which will – recognize the democratic rights of members of the armed forces. It asks for an independent tribunal that will more thoroughly review the harshest courts-martial sentences, but is willing to leave the courts-martial themselves in the hands of the officer caste.</p>
<p>It seeks to give enlisted men on trial the right to have one-third of the court composed of enlisted men. This would be a change from the present system where only officers sit on juries, but would still be a far cry from the right of trial by a jury of one’s peers, which enlisted men asked for again and again in their letters to army newspapers during the recent war.<br>
</p>
<h4>Recommendations Useless</h4>
<p class="fst">The value of the sub-committee’s report lies in what it reports, and not in what it recommends. After all, Congress does not come into this matter with clean hands. After the first world war a similar report was made by a Congressional committee, and nothing came of it but a few face-saving amendments to the Articles of War. And Congress has the right to replace the Articles of War with a whole new code. Basically, as the record shows, all Congress wants to do is prevent scandals, not interfere with the power of the officer caste.</p>
<p>In spite of this. Undersecretary of War Royall challenged the report as “grossly unfair both to the Army and the system of military justice.” To defend the War Department he pointed out it had appointed an advisory board on military justice, with its members selected by the American Bar Association, to review the entire court-martial procedure. (This was done after the House sub-committee had begun its investigation. Furthermore, American Bar Association members helped the War Department whitewash the Articles of War after World War I.) Royall also called attention to the fact that a clemency board had been set up last summer “to review every individual general court-martial case.”</p>
<p>But as the House report said: “Neither clemency nor pardon are remedies for miscarriages of justice.”</p>
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George Breitman
U.S. Army Courts-Martial System
Flayed in Sweeping Denunciation
(4 May 1946)
From The Militant, Vol. X No. 18, 4 May 1946, pp. 1 & 7.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
A sweeping indictment of American “military justice” in World War II was made last week in a report by a sub-committee of the House Military Affairs Committee, the full contents of which have not yet been made public as a result of pressure from the War Department.
The report, drawn up after a six-month investigation, in effect charged the Army with conducting courts-martial in order to maintain the officers’ concept of “discipline” rather than to dispense justice:
“The court-martial system is regarded by most professional officers as a means of enforcing discipline ... (but) discipline must not be named as a cloak to cover arbitrariness and injustice.”
(Recently Major General Thomas H. Green, Judge Advocate General, in a defense of the court-martial system before the American Bar Association in Cincinnati, declared: “The court-martial system is, of course, primarily designed to help our armies win our wars. The sanctions of military justice constitute an instrument of command. They form the strong right arm of the military commander in the maintenance of order and discipline within his ranks.”)
Compliant Courts
“There is a widespread belief among intelligent soldiers that not so much a qualified as a weak and compliant court has been the objective,” the House committee report continued. A weak and compliant court is naturally more apt to obey the wishes of the senior officer who appointed its members and who can make life miserable for them after the trial.
“There have been many excessive sentences ... the most tragic, of course, are the death sentences not commuted (142 in number), about which it is so difficult to obtain information ... Army courts in Europe adjudged two sentences of life imprisonment for A.W.O.L. Hundreds, probably thousands of bewildered boys with no really disloyal intentions were sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for absence without leave ... It is the opinion of competent observers that Army sentences generally err on the side of severity.”
In addition, it declared, the War Department does not provide “adequate review of their findings” since the record shows that sentences imposed were approved by a 99-to-one ratio by the Judge Advocate General’s office.
As in all other spheres of Army life, officers get different and more favorable treatment than enlisted men facing the same charges. In Manila the Army issued orders to arrest all speed law violators. Enlisted men were fined on the first offense, it said, but officers were not punished until the third offense – and then got off with a reprimand in place of a fine.
”An enlisted man has the right, to bring charges against a commissioned officer,” the report observed. “This is largely a paper provision. An officer of long experience has said that when it did happen the enlisted man always found himself court-martialed or transferred.”
Officers Select Court
But, as every soldier knows, an officer not only can bring charges against an enlisted man, but he can often also select the members of the court-martial. Of course his testimony bears ten times more weight with the court than the enlisted man’s.
In addition to its general observations, the sub-committee presented 16 specific recommendations. But the adoption of these recommendations – which is not likely, since the War Department is preparing its own list of proposed “reforms” – will do little to change the situation fundamentally.
The sub-committee calls for amendments to some of the present Articles of War, when the need is for the complete abolition of this barbarous military code and the adoption of a code which will – recognize the democratic rights of members of the armed forces. It asks for an independent tribunal that will more thoroughly review the harshest courts-martial sentences, but is willing to leave the courts-martial themselves in the hands of the officer caste.
It seeks to give enlisted men on trial the right to have one-third of the court composed of enlisted men. This would be a change from the present system where only officers sit on juries, but would still be a far cry from the right of trial by a jury of one’s peers, which enlisted men asked for again and again in their letters to army newspapers during the recent war.
Recommendations Useless
The value of the sub-committee’s report lies in what it reports, and not in what it recommends. After all, Congress does not come into this matter with clean hands. After the first world war a similar report was made by a Congressional committee, and nothing came of it but a few face-saving amendments to the Articles of War. And Congress has the right to replace the Articles of War with a whole new code. Basically, as the record shows, all Congress wants to do is prevent scandals, not interfere with the power of the officer caste.
In spite of this. Undersecretary of War Royall challenged the report as “grossly unfair both to the Army and the system of military justice.” To defend the War Department he pointed out it had appointed an advisory board on military justice, with its members selected by the American Bar Association, to review the entire court-martial procedure. (This was done after the House sub-committee had begun its investigation. Furthermore, American Bar Association members helped the War Department whitewash the Articles of War after World War I.) Royall also called attention to the fact that a clemency board had been set up last summer “to review every individual general court-martial case.”
But as the House report said: “Neither clemency nor pardon are remedies for miscarriages of justice.”
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>Glenn Martin Still Says<br>
He Won’t Hire Negroes</h1>
<h3>(19 July 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_29" target="new">Vol. V No. 29</a>, 19 July 1941, p. 6.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Since the Negro March on Washington was called off, the government has done nothing to implement Roosevelt’s executive order which was supposed to do so much to end racial discrimination in the war industries. Yet most of the Negro “leaders” and papers have continued to shout themselves hoarse about the great significance of that executive order.</p>
<p>The reaction of neither the government nor the Negro leaders is half so significant, however, as the reaction of the big business men and industrialists who have up until now continued to refuse Negroes employment in their factories.</p>
<p>Sam Lacy in the <strong>Afro-American</strong> last week reported on a hearing on housing problems held in Baltimore <em>after</em> the issuance of Roosevelt’s order, in the course of which Glenn L. Martin, president of the big aircraft corporation bearing his name, was asked some very direct questions regarding the problem of employing Negroes, something his company has refused to do up to the present time.</p>
<p>For some reason Congressman Osmers of New Jersey, who was conducting the question, sought to get a statement from Martin with regard to the effects of the president’s order.</p>
<p>Osmers began by asking Martin, to his great embarrassment, what the employment policy of his company was, whether it used Negro labor. Martin replied that it did not, and when asked why, explained as follows:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“Because we have not been able to find a sufficient number of colored men skilled or being trained in the work in which they might be used. And because wherever vocational courses are being conducted in Baltimore there are not enough colored persons taking the courses to justify our consideration of them as likely prospects.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">(Lacy points out that the Martin plant has several thousand people taking training courses on the grounds and that the company refuses to admit Negroes to these courses as well as employment).</p>
<p>Osmers asked Martin if lack of trained colored men was the only reason, and Martin replied: “Well, there are some other factors perhaps. I, personally, have nothing against the colored race, but if I hired them I would be forced to segregate them.”</p>
<p>Pressed for an explanation of this, he said:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“Because I’d be compelled to do so by policy. It is the policy of the State of Maryland to segregate colored people. They go to different theaters, different churches and different schools. They’re segregated all over the State, therefore, I’d have no alternative.”</em></p>
<p class="fst">But is was obvious that there was a real contradiction at this point. Even if Maryland practiced Jim Crowism, President Roosevelt had just issued an order which said there was to be no further discrimination in employment. Martin was trying to justify his vicious policies by pretending that he was only abiding by the laws of the state. But how could he justify that if the federal government had ordered that discrimination must be stopped? Was he “law-abiding” only so far as the <em>state</em> went? Could he justify disregard of a federal order by reiterating his desire to abide by the state’s laws?</p>
<h4>Alibi No. 2.<br>
Blames the Workers</h4>
<p class="fst">Osmers then rushed to Martin’s aid with a “leading question”: “Is it a fact that should you place colored help in your plant you will face an immediate stoppage of work?”</p>
<p>Martin pounced on that excuse. “There would be an immediate stoppage of work. We know that. It couldn’t be avoided.”</p>
<p>Here we see the pretext that will be used by Martin and all the other bosses to justify disregard of the president’s order. It is not they who want to keep Negro workers out of work, oh, no, it is the workers who are responsible! And much as the bosses dislike it, they can’t do anything because after all they are concerned only with “producing” for “national defense,” aren’t they?</p>
<p><em>Negroes must not be deceived by maneuvers of this kind. They must continue their struggle against the bosses, the government and the Uncle Toms until they win full equality.</em></p>
<p>White workers must see through Martin’s schemes too. By organizing militant unions that accept Negro workers as brothers and fight for their rights too, the white workers can defeat these attempts to fasten the blame for Jim Crowism on themselves, unite the ranks of the working class and go forward to better conditions for all of labor.</p>
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Albert Parker
Glenn Martin Still Says
He Won’t Hire Negroes
(19 July 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 29, 19 July 1941, p. 6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Since the Negro March on Washington was called off, the government has done nothing to implement Roosevelt’s executive order which was supposed to do so much to end racial discrimination in the war industries. Yet most of the Negro “leaders” and papers have continued to shout themselves hoarse about the great significance of that executive order.
The reaction of neither the government nor the Negro leaders is half so significant, however, as the reaction of the big business men and industrialists who have up until now continued to refuse Negroes employment in their factories.
Sam Lacy in the Afro-American last week reported on a hearing on housing problems held in Baltimore after the issuance of Roosevelt’s order, in the course of which Glenn L. Martin, president of the big aircraft corporation bearing his name, was asked some very direct questions regarding the problem of employing Negroes, something his company has refused to do up to the present time.
For some reason Congressman Osmers of New Jersey, who was conducting the question, sought to get a statement from Martin with regard to the effects of the president’s order.
Osmers began by asking Martin, to his great embarrassment, what the employment policy of his company was, whether it used Negro labor. Martin replied that it did not, and when asked why, explained as follows:
“Because we have not been able to find a sufficient number of colored men skilled or being trained in the work in which they might be used. And because wherever vocational courses are being conducted in Baltimore there are not enough colored persons taking the courses to justify our consideration of them as likely prospects.”
(Lacy points out that the Martin plant has several thousand people taking training courses on the grounds and that the company refuses to admit Negroes to these courses as well as employment).
Osmers asked Martin if lack of trained colored men was the only reason, and Martin replied: “Well, there are some other factors perhaps. I, personally, have nothing against the colored race, but if I hired them I would be forced to segregate them.”
Pressed for an explanation of this, he said:
“Because I’d be compelled to do so by policy. It is the policy of the State of Maryland to segregate colored people. They go to different theaters, different churches and different schools. They’re segregated all over the State, therefore, I’d have no alternative.”
But is was obvious that there was a real contradiction at this point. Even if Maryland practiced Jim Crowism, President Roosevelt had just issued an order which said there was to be no further discrimination in employment. Martin was trying to justify his vicious policies by pretending that he was only abiding by the laws of the state. But how could he justify that if the federal government had ordered that discrimination must be stopped? Was he “law-abiding” only so far as the state went? Could he justify disregard of a federal order by reiterating his desire to abide by the state’s laws?
Alibi No. 2.
Blames the Workers
Osmers then rushed to Martin’s aid with a “leading question”: “Is it a fact that should you place colored help in your plant you will face an immediate stoppage of work?”
Martin pounced on that excuse. “There would be an immediate stoppage of work. We know that. It couldn’t be avoided.”
Here we see the pretext that will be used by Martin and all the other bosses to justify disregard of the president’s order. It is not they who want to keep Negro workers out of work, oh, no, it is the workers who are responsible! And much as the bosses dislike it, they can’t do anything because after all they are concerned only with “producing” for “national defense,” aren’t they?
Negroes must not be deceived by maneuvers of this kind. They must continue their struggle against the bosses, the government and the Uncle Toms until they win full equality.
White workers must see through Martin’s schemes too. By organizing militant unions that accept Negro workers as brothers and fight for their rights too, the white workers can defeat these attempts to fasten the blame for Jim Crowism on themselves, unite the ranks of the working class and go forward to better conditions for all of labor.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Wallace Fired in Drive to War</h1>
<h4>Ouster Symbolizes Wall Street lntention<br>
to Hasten Atomic Bomb Attack on USSR</h4>
<h3>(28 September 1946)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1946/index.htm#m46_39" target="new">Vol. X No. 39</a>, 28 September 1946, p. 1.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst"><strong>The dismissal of Henry A. Wallace from the Truman Cabinet is of great political significance for every worker in this country. This act means: 1. That Wall Street and the government openly proclaim their undivided support of a tough policy toward the USSR that is, a program of war in the not-distant future. 2. That the Truman administration is preparing for tougher measures against the labor movement at home.</strong></p>
<p>Wallace’s personal fate is of little importance. His confused and misleading program differs only tactically from that of Byrnes. But he has served as a symbol for the ruling class of this country, and his ouster as a symbol throws light on the real perspectives of Wall Street and Washington.</p>
<p>Wallace stood as a symbol for two things in the Cabinet: As the advocate of go-soft-with-Russia tactics, and as the last governmental spokesman of New Dealism, which was based on a policy of keeping the support of the labor bureaucrats through limited concessions.</p>
<p>Like a number of businessmen, chiefly small businessmen, Wallace believes that it is easier to make a deal with Stalin through “soft” methods. This deal, he proposes, should include political collaboration with the Stalinist bureaucracy, economic aid, a substantial loan, etc.</p>
<p>In return for these concessions Wallace thinks a truce could be reached with Stalin, recognizing his “sphere of influence” and leaving the rest of the world to the tender mercies of American imperialism and thus averting or postponing war. Such was the proposal put forward in Wallace’s Madison Square Garden speech and in his July 23 letter to Truman which was published after the first public flurry.<br>
</p>
<h4>Public Threat</h4>
<p class="fst">But the decisive section of the American ruling class and its servants in the White House and at the Peace Conference openly reject such a tactic. And they have kicked Wallace out to tell the whole world – and especially the European powers they are lining up against the Soviet Union – that now is not the time for half-measures or compromises. The removal of the advocate of “peace” with the Soviet Union is, under present conditions, equivalent to a public threat to resort to war.</p>
<p>This becomes even clearer from a consideration of the circumstances surrounding Wallace’s ouster. Important elections will take place in just a few weeks. Wallace, wearing the New Deal mantle, was counted on to swing labor votes to the Democratic Party.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, when Truman was placed in a position where he had to back up Wall Street’s get-tough tactic, he acted decisively, even if it meant yielding up an important section of the labor vote. The Truman administration places the interests of American capitalism as a whole above even the immediate needs of the Democratic Party. Better to take the risk of losing an election, Truman figured, than to jeopardize the war program.</p>
<p>The break with Wallace has its own logic on the home front. A government which is planningwar has to prepare to crack down on the masses if it is to regiment them for the war machine. The administration has been moving cautiously to the right – but in stages, because of election needs. Having been driven to a break with Wallace and his faction in the ruling class sooner than anticipated, the Truman Administration’s course from now on will tend steadily and faster to the right.</p>
<p>The Wallace dismissal is thus a warning to the labor movement that Wall Street’s war program is not a long-term program, but one that can plunge the country into war in short order. In the light of this grim reality, it is imperative for the organized labor movement to immediately launch the struggle against imperialist war and against the anti-labor measures that come with a war program.</p>
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George Breitman
Wallace Fired in Drive to War
Ouster Symbolizes Wall Street lntention
to Hasten Atomic Bomb Attack on USSR
(28 September 1946)
From The Militant, Vol. X No. 39, 28 September 1946, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The dismissal of Henry A. Wallace from the Truman Cabinet is of great political significance for every worker in this country. This act means: 1. That Wall Street and the government openly proclaim their undivided support of a tough policy toward the USSR that is, a program of war in the not-distant future. 2. That the Truman administration is preparing for tougher measures against the labor movement at home.
Wallace’s personal fate is of little importance. His confused and misleading program differs only tactically from that of Byrnes. But he has served as a symbol for the ruling class of this country, and his ouster as a symbol throws light on the real perspectives of Wall Street and Washington.
Wallace stood as a symbol for two things in the Cabinet: As the advocate of go-soft-with-Russia tactics, and as the last governmental spokesman of New Dealism, which was based on a policy of keeping the support of the labor bureaucrats through limited concessions.
Like a number of businessmen, chiefly small businessmen, Wallace believes that it is easier to make a deal with Stalin through “soft” methods. This deal, he proposes, should include political collaboration with the Stalinist bureaucracy, economic aid, a substantial loan, etc.
In return for these concessions Wallace thinks a truce could be reached with Stalin, recognizing his “sphere of influence” and leaving the rest of the world to the tender mercies of American imperialism and thus averting or postponing war. Such was the proposal put forward in Wallace’s Madison Square Garden speech and in his July 23 letter to Truman which was published after the first public flurry.
Public Threat
But the decisive section of the American ruling class and its servants in the White House and at the Peace Conference openly reject such a tactic. And they have kicked Wallace out to tell the whole world – and especially the European powers they are lining up against the Soviet Union – that now is not the time for half-measures or compromises. The removal of the advocate of “peace” with the Soviet Union is, under present conditions, equivalent to a public threat to resort to war.
This becomes even clearer from a consideration of the circumstances surrounding Wallace’s ouster. Important elections will take place in just a few weeks. Wallace, wearing the New Deal mantle, was counted on to swing labor votes to the Democratic Party.
Nevertheless, when Truman was placed in a position where he had to back up Wall Street’s get-tough tactic, he acted decisively, even if it meant yielding up an important section of the labor vote. The Truman administration places the interests of American capitalism as a whole above even the immediate needs of the Democratic Party. Better to take the risk of losing an election, Truman figured, than to jeopardize the war program.
The break with Wallace has its own logic on the home front. A government which is planningwar has to prepare to crack down on the masses if it is to regiment them for the war machine. The administration has been moving cautiously to the right – but in stages, because of election needs. Having been driven to a break with Wallace and his faction in the ruling class sooner than anticipated, the Truman Administration’s course from now on will tend steadily and faster to the right.
The Wallace dismissal is thus a warning to the labor movement that Wall Street’s war program is not a long-term program, but one that can plunge the country into war in short order. In the light of this grim reality, it is imperative for the organized labor movement to immediately launch the struggle against imperialist war and against the anti-labor measures that come with a war program.
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<h1>Letter on “Loyalty and Party Membership”</h1>
<h3>by George Breitman</h3>
<p>To the National Committee</p>
<p>Dear Comrades:</p>
<p>At the May plenum I criticized certain aspects of the Control Commission report on the Houston investigation, which the NC members received when the plenum began, and I asked permission to withhold my vote until I could see the final draft of this report, as revised after the plenum discussion. In July, shortly before the final draft was published in <em>Party Organizer</em> (Vol. 4, No. 2, July 1980), when the minutes of the plenum also were being completed, I received a copy of the minor changes made in the Control Commission report. Simultaneously, Comrade Betsey Stone informed me that my vote was to be not on the Control Commission's Houston report, on which the plenum had not voted, but on the oral report, “Loyalty and Party Membership,” which she had given on May 27 and which the plenum had adopted, and on the three PC motions denying the appeals of three Houston ex-members. While she provided me with a copy of the revised Control Commission report, on which I was not supposed to vote, she did not provide me with a written version of her oral report, on which I was supposed to vote. (The latter was printed later in the same <em>Party Organizer</em> cited above.) Since I could not remember clearly what had been in the Stone oral report six or seven weeks before, and had no idea of how much of it had been revised in the final draft, I abstained on this motion. Since I think the Control Commission report contained some serious errors, I voted against the three motions to deny the appeals of the former Houston members. My votes are explained below.</p>
<p>1. The party's policy against the use of illegal drugs, which some comrades call “universal” or “absolute,” does not allow for exceptions. If the three Houston appellants had used such drugs, they should have been expelled, and there would be no basis for appeal. But they were not expelled for using drugs. They were expelled for not giving the party information about violations by other members of the drug policy and other security measures. Is our position on that also “universal” or “absolute”? Do we require automatic expulsion in all cases where comrades knowingly withhold information about other members' violations of the drug or other security measures? I don't think that we did <em>before</em> the Houston case, the Control Commission report and the Stone report adopted by the plenum. I think that the plenum's adoption of the Stone report means that we now have such an automatic expulsion policy for the withholding of information, but I think that before the Houston case there probably were many members who did not clearly understand what their duty was in regard to other members' violations of the drug policy and did not know that they would be expelled for not performing this duty. The Stone report itself differentiates between the educational aspects emphasized before the Houston case and those emphasized since the Houston case: “Most of the discussions we've had in the party up to now have focused primarily on why the use of illegal drugs by party members should be incompatible with membership. The Control Commission report and this one [“Loyalty and Party Membership”] focused on something different—what it means for an individual member to decide that he or she will not implement this collective decision of the membership” (p. 21). But since the Houston case occurred before the differently focused Control Commission and Stone reports, the appeals should not have been rejected on the basis of a position not presented or voted on until after the appeals had been lodged. One can argue that the new and differently focused position is implicit in the party's traditional practice, which I think is true. But it can't be denied that it is a new position in a formal sense, and members should not be subjected to the severest disciplinary measure at our command merely because they did not comply with a position that had not yet been adopted.</p>
<p>2. The Houston branch executive committee, in its report recommending the expulsion of four comrades, said (to use the Control Commission's wording) that “the four comrades had failed to contact the branch about the dangers to the party because they had functioned in the party as a clique which had in many instances refused to work through the democratically constituted branch bodies.” That was a very bad thing for the executive committee to do. Cliquism is a serious charge to make against comrades. Its introduction at this point could only tend to prejudice the members against the defendants and to taint the trial. If the executive committee did not raise this question in the “many instances” when the alleged cliquism was manifested, it should have refrained from raising it at this trial. I hope that on further reflection the members of the executive committee will realize this, too. Unfortunately, the Control Commission, instead of explaining to them and to all the other comrades reading this report that they had made a mistake, waffles back and forth, ending up with a weak endorsement: “it was not necessarily incorrect” (p. 17).</p>
<p>3. The final draft of the Control Commission report says: “Two of the comrades who appealed argued that their violation of party discipline should be excused because of problems and demoralization they felt had existed in the Houston branch for a long time. During the trial and in our interviews, several comrades raised similar arguments. The Control Commission did not see it as our job to evaluate the general political situation in the Houston branch, past or present. We did conclude that nothing was raised about the history of the branch that would excuse the disloyal behavior of the comrades. In fact, we felt such behavior should not be excused on any account. It is incompatible with membership in the revolutionary party” (p. 16). It seems to me that when “several comrades” (not just the two appellants) raise the argument that long-existing problems and demoralization in the branch were responsible to some degree for the violations of discipline, then it certainly is the “job” of the Control Commission to evaluate the truth or falsity of this claim, which of course would not “excuse” the violations but might shed light on the cause of the violations beyond the asserted disloyalty of the defendants and might influence the severity of the disciplinary measures taken against them. I do not argue at all that the Houston branch leadership was responsible in any way for the violations of discipline by the defendants, since I know nothing about the conditions claimed by them, least of all from the Control Commission report. It seems to me that the Control Commission was derelict on this point, and that its misconception about its “job” was linked to its moral indignation against the asserted disloyalty of the defendants.</p>
<p>4. I must admit that I feel disturbed about some of the atmosphere being created around these drug and drug-related trials. Some of the things being said and done reek of fanatical moralism, zealotry, sophistry, and crusading, and the sooner they are curbed the better off the party will be. Some comrades seem to regard our drug policy as the veritable key to the party's entire future—everything will come to total ruin unless we agree with the Houston leadership that expulsion and nothing but expulsion was the only conceivable punishment for the comrades who violated party discipline there. Others view it as some kind of test. One refrain at the May plenum was “Comrades, you are being tested.” I couldn't figure that out, since in a certain sense we are always being tested from the day we join the movement, and since I can't see anything special about the present situation so far as testing goes. But some comrades seem to see the drug policy as a test of their Bolshevikness, of their hardness as revolutionaries, and they don't want to be found wanting. In Houston I think there was a certain tendency to regard Debbie Leonard's revelations as a “dare,” and to act as though the comrades would be guilty of something if they did not respond to her dare—cowardice, I suppose, or political inadequacy. All this is compounded by an increasingly elastic and schematic use of the concepts of loyalty and disloyalty in recent years. Loyalty is something that comes from inside, as a result of rising political consciousness. It is not something that can be imposed or produced through motion, resolution, or administrative measure. When the SWP was founded, loyalty was not listed as one of the requirements for membership, although of course we always strive to deepen and strengthen the loyalty of new members and old. What we demanded, and what we still demand in our constitution, Article III, Section 1, is that people accept the program of the party and <em>agree to submit to its discipline</em> and engage actively in its work. If someone violates the discipline, he or she can be punished in various ways, from reprimand or censure up to expulsion. This is sufficient for dealing with drug cases and all other cases of deliberate violation of party policy; you don't need to muddle things up with an ever-widening interpretation of loyalty and disloyalty. When I came into the movement, and until recently, disloyalty was used in a narrow sense: a disloyal person was one who owed his or her allegiance and real loyalty to some group or agency or force hostile to the party. For example, a person who pretended to submit to our party's discipline but actually was operating under the discipline of a group outside of the party was manifestly disloyal. (The Oehlerites and Fieldites used to send such agents into the SWP in the 1930s, and others have done it since, as we know.) Where there was no other allegiance or actual loyalty to some other force, we would penalize members violating party discipline more or less severely, depending on the seriousness of the violations, but instead of branding them as disloyal we condemned them as undisciplined or irresponsible elements, whose undisciplined or irresponsible acts harmed the party and its revolutionary development. I think the drug and drug-related violations of discipline can best be handled in this way, rather than through an expanding use or misuse of the loyalty/disloyalty concept.</p>
<p>5. I abstained on the “Loyalty and Party Membership” report because I could not remember it well many weeks after the plenum and because I did not have a chance to see it in written form at the deadline for my withheld vote. But if I had had a chance to read it first, I certainly would have voted against it. I am not opposed to it for making clear that the party is serious about the drug policy and expects all members to cooperate in enforcing it from here on; I would have voted for it if that was all it did. But I strongly oppose the report because it also further stretches the concept of disloyalty to include new misdemeanors, sins, or crimes disapproved by zealots and schematists. “In fact,” this report says, “if a comrade disagrees with a position or policy adopted by the party it is disloyal <em>not</em> to express your opinion at the appropriate time and place so that the party can be assured the benefit of the thinking and experience of all comrades” (p. 20). I can't remember a more fatuous statement adopted by the NC in its entire history, and I resent having such stuff included in documents the NC is called to vote on. Most NC members, I believe, would repudiate such a statement in an atmosphere free of Apocalypse Next Thursday Unless the Houston Expulsions Are Sustained. I myself have expressed disagreements with positions adopted by the party, from its labor party position in 1938 to aspects of its policy on Cuba in 1979. But on some occasions I have not expressed my disagreement with one or another party position or policy. In such cases, I have withheld my opinion for various reasons—because while I disagreed with a position adopted, I was not sure about it and therefore tended to defer to the opinions of other comrades who knew more about the subject; or because while I was sure the position adopted was wrong, I did not have or see any alternative to propose; or because I felt, rightly or wrongly, that at that point there was little or no chance of my point of view being understood or accepted; or for other reasons. As I said, I have done this in the past, without anyone ever posing questions about my loyalty, and I intend to go on doing it, despite the NC's adoption of this deplorable report on “Loyalty and Party Membership.” I hope that the comrades responsible for that report will bring me up on charges of disloyalty so that the question can get further clarification.</p>
<p>August 19, 1980</p>
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Letter on “Loyalty and Party Membership”
by George Breitman
To the National Committee
Dear Comrades:
At the May plenum I criticized certain aspects of the Control Commission report on the Houston investigation, which the NC members received when the plenum began, and I asked permission to withhold my vote until I could see the final draft of this report, as revised after the plenum discussion. In July, shortly before the final draft was published in Party Organizer (Vol. 4, No. 2, July 1980), when the minutes of the plenum also were being completed, I received a copy of the minor changes made in the Control Commission report. Simultaneously, Comrade Betsey Stone informed me that my vote was to be not on the Control Commission's Houston report, on which the plenum had not voted, but on the oral report, “Loyalty and Party Membership,” which she had given on May 27 and which the plenum had adopted, and on the three PC motions denying the appeals of three Houston ex-members. While she provided me with a copy of the revised Control Commission report, on which I was not supposed to vote, she did not provide me with a written version of her oral report, on which I was supposed to vote. (The latter was printed later in the same Party Organizer cited above.) Since I could not remember clearly what had been in the Stone oral report six or seven weeks before, and had no idea of how much of it had been revised in the final draft, I abstained on this motion. Since I think the Control Commission report contained some serious errors, I voted against the three motions to deny the appeals of the former Houston members. My votes are explained below.
1. The party's policy against the use of illegal drugs, which some comrades call “universal” or “absolute,” does not allow for exceptions. If the three Houston appellants had used such drugs, they should have been expelled, and there would be no basis for appeal. But they were not expelled for using drugs. They were expelled for not giving the party information about violations by other members of the drug policy and other security measures. Is our position on that also “universal” or “absolute”? Do we require automatic expulsion in all cases where comrades knowingly withhold information about other members' violations of the drug or other security measures? I don't think that we did before the Houston case, the Control Commission report and the Stone report adopted by the plenum. I think that the plenum's adoption of the Stone report means that we now have such an automatic expulsion policy for the withholding of information, but I think that before the Houston case there probably were many members who did not clearly understand what their duty was in regard to other members' violations of the drug policy and did not know that they would be expelled for not performing this duty. The Stone report itself differentiates between the educational aspects emphasized before the Houston case and those emphasized since the Houston case: “Most of the discussions we've had in the party up to now have focused primarily on why the use of illegal drugs by party members should be incompatible with membership. The Control Commission report and this one [“Loyalty and Party Membership”] focused on something different—what it means for an individual member to decide that he or she will not implement this collective decision of the membership” (p. 21). But since the Houston case occurred before the differently focused Control Commission and Stone reports, the appeals should not have been rejected on the basis of a position not presented or voted on until after the appeals had been lodged. One can argue that the new and differently focused position is implicit in the party's traditional practice, which I think is true. But it can't be denied that it is a new position in a formal sense, and members should not be subjected to the severest disciplinary measure at our command merely because they did not comply with a position that had not yet been adopted.
2. The Houston branch executive committee, in its report recommending the expulsion of four comrades, said (to use the Control Commission's wording) that “the four comrades had failed to contact the branch about the dangers to the party because they had functioned in the party as a clique which had in many instances refused to work through the democratically constituted branch bodies.” That was a very bad thing for the executive committee to do. Cliquism is a serious charge to make against comrades. Its introduction at this point could only tend to prejudice the members against the defendants and to taint the trial. If the executive committee did not raise this question in the “many instances” when the alleged cliquism was manifested, it should have refrained from raising it at this trial. I hope that on further reflection the members of the executive committee will realize this, too. Unfortunately, the Control Commission, instead of explaining to them and to all the other comrades reading this report that they had made a mistake, waffles back and forth, ending up with a weak endorsement: “it was not necessarily incorrect” (p. 17).
3. The final draft of the Control Commission report says: “Two of the comrades who appealed argued that their violation of party discipline should be excused because of problems and demoralization they felt had existed in the Houston branch for a long time. During the trial and in our interviews, several comrades raised similar arguments. The Control Commission did not see it as our job to evaluate the general political situation in the Houston branch, past or present. We did conclude that nothing was raised about the history of the branch that would excuse the disloyal behavior of the comrades. In fact, we felt such behavior should not be excused on any account. It is incompatible with membership in the revolutionary party” (p. 16). It seems to me that when “several comrades” (not just the two appellants) raise the argument that long-existing problems and demoralization in the branch were responsible to some degree for the violations of discipline, then it certainly is the “job” of the Control Commission to evaluate the truth or falsity of this claim, which of course would not “excuse” the violations but might shed light on the cause of the violations beyond the asserted disloyalty of the defendants and might influence the severity of the disciplinary measures taken against them. I do not argue at all that the Houston branch leadership was responsible in any way for the violations of discipline by the defendants, since I know nothing about the conditions claimed by them, least of all from the Control Commission report. It seems to me that the Control Commission was derelict on this point, and that its misconception about its “job” was linked to its moral indignation against the asserted disloyalty of the defendants.
4. I must admit that I feel disturbed about some of the atmosphere being created around these drug and drug-related trials. Some of the things being said and done reek of fanatical moralism, zealotry, sophistry, and crusading, and the sooner they are curbed the better off the party will be. Some comrades seem to regard our drug policy as the veritable key to the party's entire future—everything will come to total ruin unless we agree with the Houston leadership that expulsion and nothing but expulsion was the only conceivable punishment for the comrades who violated party discipline there. Others view it as some kind of test. One refrain at the May plenum was “Comrades, you are being tested.” I couldn't figure that out, since in a certain sense we are always being tested from the day we join the movement, and since I can't see anything special about the present situation so far as testing goes. But some comrades seem to see the drug policy as a test of their Bolshevikness, of their hardness as revolutionaries, and they don't want to be found wanting. In Houston I think there was a certain tendency to regard Debbie Leonard's revelations as a “dare,” and to act as though the comrades would be guilty of something if they did not respond to her dare—cowardice, I suppose, or political inadequacy. All this is compounded by an increasingly elastic and schematic use of the concepts of loyalty and disloyalty in recent years. Loyalty is something that comes from inside, as a result of rising political consciousness. It is not something that can be imposed or produced through motion, resolution, or administrative measure. When the SWP was founded, loyalty was not listed as one of the requirements for membership, although of course we always strive to deepen and strengthen the loyalty of new members and old. What we demanded, and what we still demand in our constitution, Article III, Section 1, is that people accept the program of the party and agree to submit to its discipline and engage actively in its work. If someone violates the discipline, he or she can be punished in various ways, from reprimand or censure up to expulsion. This is sufficient for dealing with drug cases and all other cases of deliberate violation of party policy; you don't need to muddle things up with an ever-widening interpretation of loyalty and disloyalty. When I came into the movement, and until recently, disloyalty was used in a narrow sense: a disloyal person was one who owed his or her allegiance and real loyalty to some group or agency or force hostile to the party. For example, a person who pretended to submit to our party's discipline but actually was operating under the discipline of a group outside of the party was manifestly disloyal. (The Oehlerites and Fieldites used to send such agents into the SWP in the 1930s, and others have done it since, as we know.) Where there was no other allegiance or actual loyalty to some other force, we would penalize members violating party discipline more or less severely, depending on the seriousness of the violations, but instead of branding them as disloyal we condemned them as undisciplined or irresponsible elements, whose undisciplined or irresponsible acts harmed the party and its revolutionary development. I think the drug and drug-related violations of discipline can best be handled in this way, rather than through an expanding use or misuse of the loyalty/disloyalty concept.
5. I abstained on the “Loyalty and Party Membership” report because I could not remember it well many weeks after the plenum and because I did not have a chance to see it in written form at the deadline for my withheld vote. But if I had had a chance to read it first, I certainly would have voted against it. I am not opposed to it for making clear that the party is serious about the drug policy and expects all members to cooperate in enforcing it from here on; I would have voted for it if that was all it did. But I strongly oppose the report because it also further stretches the concept of disloyalty to include new misdemeanors, sins, or crimes disapproved by zealots and schematists. “In fact,” this report says, “if a comrade disagrees with a position or policy adopted by the party it is disloyal not to express your opinion at the appropriate time and place so that the party can be assured the benefit of the thinking and experience of all comrades” (p. 20). I can't remember a more fatuous statement adopted by the NC in its entire history, and I resent having such stuff included in documents the NC is called to vote on. Most NC members, I believe, would repudiate such a statement in an atmosphere free of Apocalypse Next Thursday Unless the Houston Expulsions Are Sustained. I myself have expressed disagreements with positions adopted by the party, from its labor party position in 1938 to aspects of its policy on Cuba in 1979. But on some occasions I have not expressed my disagreement with one or another party position or policy. In such cases, I have withheld my opinion for various reasons—because while I disagreed with a position adopted, I was not sure about it and therefore tended to defer to the opinions of other comrades who knew more about the subject; or because while I was sure the position adopted was wrong, I did not have or see any alternative to propose; or because I felt, rightly or wrongly, that at that point there was little or no chance of my point of view being understood or accepted; or for other reasons. As I said, I have done this in the past, without anyone ever posing questions about my loyalty, and I intend to go on doing it, despite the NC's adoption of this deplorable report on “Loyalty and Party Membership.” I hope that the comrades responsible for that report will bring me up on charges of disloyalty so that the question can get further clarification.
August 19, 1980
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<h2>John F. Petrone</h2>
<h1>A Case of “Malicious Gossip”</h1>
<h3>(5 January 1948)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_01" target="new">Vol. XII No. 1</a>, 5 January 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">General Eisenhower is getting a bum deal, and all his friends are springing to his defense. Even those who don’t have much use for the general must concede, in the interests of fair play, that he is the victim of one of the worst frameups in political history.</p>
<p>It’s tough enough for a man to be Chief of Staff while he is running for president. Other candidates whose hats are flying through the air but have not yet landed in the ring, can at least engage openly in politics, and get off as many political speeches as they have wind for. But a five-star general in the post of Chief of Staff can’t speak publicly on anything but the need to spend additional billions of dollars on the armed forces, universal military training and other projects that don’t go over too well with a public already bled white by taxes.</p>
<p>As if that wasn’t bad enough, the general’s rivals for the Republican nomination are trying to discredit him beyond repair by spreading what <strong>Life</strong> magazine calls “malicious gossip.”</p>
<p>Rumor and slander have always played an important part in American presidential elections. Lincoln was said to be an atheist, Harding the father of a bastard, Al Smith an agent of the Pope, Roosevelt a Jew, etc. But that was in days gone by. The one about Eisenhower, a real product of the atomic age, dwarfs them all into insignificance.</p>
<p>It seems that Eisenhower was a guest at a private Republican dinner in Washington, and that he let go with a few “off the record” remarks during an after-dinner discussion on inflation. And this, according to Fulton Lewis, Jr., is what he said: The government should call in. all the industrialists and have them agree to reduce prices for two or three years and to “eliminate all profits whatsoever”; and if they refused, Congress should tax all profits 100%!</p>
<p>It is easy to understand the gasps of horror that arose in high circles when this story made the rounds. Why, Eisenhower was un-American; as bad as any Bolshevik; even Henry Wallace had never gone that far.</p>
<p>A dirty lie! “Imputed to the general ... are words he never uttered and a supposed ‘program’ to deal with domestic problems which he never proposed,” cried Arthur Krock of the <strong>N.Y. Times</strong>, who had been present at the dinner. The truth is, said <strong>Life</strong>, that Eisenhower spoke only “on the need for combating inflation by holding both profits and wages at reasonable levels” – a view repeatedly endorsed by Roosevelt, Hoover, Wallace, Truman, Taft and every last member of the NAM.</p>
<p>The Eisenhower boom is said to have sagged sadly since this incident. Wouldn’t it be ironic, and yet a fitting comment on the times, if he lost the nomination – not because he is a puppet of the sinister military bureaucrats who are out to regiment the youth and to prussianize the nation – but because he was falsely credited with advocating a damned good idea?</p>
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John F. Petrone
A Case of “Malicious Gossip”
(5 January 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. XII No. 1, 5 January 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
General Eisenhower is getting a bum deal, and all his friends are springing to his defense. Even those who don’t have much use for the general must concede, in the interests of fair play, that he is the victim of one of the worst frameups in political history.
It’s tough enough for a man to be Chief of Staff while he is running for president. Other candidates whose hats are flying through the air but have not yet landed in the ring, can at least engage openly in politics, and get off as many political speeches as they have wind for. But a five-star general in the post of Chief of Staff can’t speak publicly on anything but the need to spend additional billions of dollars on the armed forces, universal military training and other projects that don’t go over too well with a public already bled white by taxes.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the general’s rivals for the Republican nomination are trying to discredit him beyond repair by spreading what Life magazine calls “malicious gossip.”
Rumor and slander have always played an important part in American presidential elections. Lincoln was said to be an atheist, Harding the father of a bastard, Al Smith an agent of the Pope, Roosevelt a Jew, etc. But that was in days gone by. The one about Eisenhower, a real product of the atomic age, dwarfs them all into insignificance.
It seems that Eisenhower was a guest at a private Republican dinner in Washington, and that he let go with a few “off the record” remarks during an after-dinner discussion on inflation. And this, according to Fulton Lewis, Jr., is what he said: The government should call in. all the industrialists and have them agree to reduce prices for two or three years and to “eliminate all profits whatsoever”; and if they refused, Congress should tax all profits 100%!
It is easy to understand the gasps of horror that arose in high circles when this story made the rounds. Why, Eisenhower was un-American; as bad as any Bolshevik; even Henry Wallace had never gone that far.
A dirty lie! “Imputed to the general ... are words he never uttered and a supposed ‘program’ to deal with domestic problems which he never proposed,” cried Arthur Krock of the N.Y. Times, who had been present at the dinner. The truth is, said Life, that Eisenhower spoke only “on the need for combating inflation by holding both profits and wages at reasonable levels” – a view repeatedly endorsed by Roosevelt, Hoover, Wallace, Truman, Taft and every last member of the NAM.
The Eisenhower boom is said to have sagged sadly since this incident. Wouldn’t it be ironic, and yet a fitting comment on the times, if he lost the nomination – not because he is a puppet of the sinister military bureaucrats who are out to regiment the youth and to prussianize the nation – but because he was falsely credited with advocating a damned good idea?
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(29 March 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_13" target="new">Vol. V. No. 13</a>, 29 March 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>The Fight Against Ford</h4>
<p class="fst">In his latest broadside against the CIO, D.J. Marshall, Negro personnel head of the Ford Motor Company (who will be fired <em>by Ford</em>, not by the union, if Ford is organized), hurls the following challenge at the United Auto Workers Union:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The proposition seems to resolve itself to this: The union tells colored people that, if they will join the union, they will get industrial freedom; the Negroes at the Ford, Motor Company tell the union that if they will give the colored workers this independence in the shops where the union is already established, then they might consider unionism.”</p>
<p class="fst">To answer this challenge successfully would be to win the great majority of Negroes over to the union and to practically assure that the workers’ ranks would be united and indivisible against Ford, Bennett and Marshall. As <strong>The Militant</strong> has pointed out before, what is needed now is an aggressive policy, a program that takes the offensive against the bosses, on the question of Negro rights in industry. It is not enough to prove that the CIO has not been guilty of discrimination. It must be demonstrated that the CIO fights for Negro rights throughout the industry, which of course Ford will never do. And the CIO can demonstrate this.</p>
<p>Negroes should say to Marshall:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The proposition is also this: You and Ford tell the Negro that he is better off in Ford’s open shop than elsewhere; the Negroes tell you that if you will call off your anti-union squads of thugs, and if you’ll raise wages 10¢ an hour so they’ll equal, wages in other auto plants, and if you’ll reduce the speedup, and if you’ll stop threatening to fire us all if we join the union, then we might believe you. But you won’t do these things, because those are the only ways you have been able to keep Ford workers from joining the union in previous years.”</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>Who Taught Hitler</h4>
<p class="fst">Greatly played up nowadays is the story of how badly Hitlerism treats and intends to treat the Negroes. The purpose of most of this hullabaloo is to work the American Negro, up to support the “democracies” in the imperialist war.</p>
<p>The <strong>Crisis</strong> and the <strong>Pittsburgh Courier</strong> this month have both shown that, cold-blooded as is the policy on the Negro announced by the Nazis, it is really only a duplication of the policy on the Negro carried out in most parts of the United States since 1877.</p>
<p>And. if there is anyone who doubts that the. Nazi policy on this question is stolen right out of the handbook of British colonial policy, he ought to read the following Associated Negro Press dispatch from Cape Town, South Africa, dated March 6:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“Restrictions and segregation even more vicious than that of the Southland of the United States, are in vogue here and growing constantly worse. Recently, when a new railway station was planned for Huguenot, two separate entrances were provided, one for whites and one for non-whites. Waiting room accommodations for whites were arranged for in the main building but non-whites were given a waiting room in a separate building ...</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>“It appeared that an important step forward had, been made when two months ago the Witwatersrand University agreed to allow non-Europeans (the local designation for any other than whites) to attend medical school at the university and to work for both medical and dental degrees. The number of non-European students was restricted to ten. The chief problem which the school authorities had to overcome was the matter of providing bodies for dissection during the student’s fourth year. It was finally solved by deciding that non-European students should be permitted to dissect only black bodies.”</em></p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p class="fst">A Washington dispatch from the same agency had this to report a week later:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“No thought will be given to assigning colored doctors, dentists or nurses to centers where they might at any time be called upon to serve white soldiers, according to an official U.S. Army announcement.</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>“This determination to confine colored professional personnel to troops of their own race was emphatically declared by Surgeon General McGhee, Friday, during a conference with members of a committee from the National Medical Association ...</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>“The general professing to represent Northern sentiment, said that under no circumstances could he see colored and white doctors working together in the same hospital or as examiners of recruits.</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>“Advised that colored physicians had served. white soldiers in recruiting stations during the World War, he said it was inconceivable to him that colored doctors could work on an examining team with white doctors, and that no attempt would be made to integrate them into white medical teams.”</em></p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p class="fst">Strange bedfellows have turned up around a bill to deport all American Negroes to Africa. Senator Bilbo of Mississippi, who stands for “white supremacy” and hates the Negroes, is the author of the bill. J.R. Stewart, successor to the late Marcus Garvey as president general of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, in a speech in Chicago early this month, endorsed the bill of the enemy of the Negro people in the following words:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“As a long range measure, though not through any heartfelt benevolence, Bilbo of Mississippi has a bill which would deport us to Africa (Liberia) ... I am not for Bilbo but I am for this bill and will fight to support it ...”</p>
<p class="fst">In other words, the Garvey movement which once attracted the hopes of so many millions of Negroes is now acting as the tail to the kite of America’s outstanding exponent of “Negro inferiority.”</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(29 March 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V. No. 13, 29 March 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Fight Against Ford
In his latest broadside against the CIO, D.J. Marshall, Negro personnel head of the Ford Motor Company (who will be fired by Ford, not by the union, if Ford is organized), hurls the following challenge at the United Auto Workers Union:
“The proposition seems to resolve itself to this: The union tells colored people that, if they will join the union, they will get industrial freedom; the Negroes at the Ford, Motor Company tell the union that if they will give the colored workers this independence in the shops where the union is already established, then they might consider unionism.”
To answer this challenge successfully would be to win the great majority of Negroes over to the union and to practically assure that the workers’ ranks would be united and indivisible against Ford, Bennett and Marshall. As The Militant has pointed out before, what is needed now is an aggressive policy, a program that takes the offensive against the bosses, on the question of Negro rights in industry. It is not enough to prove that the CIO has not been guilty of discrimination. It must be demonstrated that the CIO fights for Negro rights throughout the industry, which of course Ford will never do. And the CIO can demonstrate this.
Negroes should say to Marshall:
“The proposition is also this: You and Ford tell the Negro that he is better off in Ford’s open shop than elsewhere; the Negroes tell you that if you will call off your anti-union squads of thugs, and if you’ll raise wages 10¢ an hour so they’ll equal, wages in other auto plants, and if you’ll reduce the speedup, and if you’ll stop threatening to fire us all if we join the union, then we might believe you. But you won’t do these things, because those are the only ways you have been able to keep Ford workers from joining the union in previous years.”
* * *
Who Taught Hitler
Greatly played up nowadays is the story of how badly Hitlerism treats and intends to treat the Negroes. The purpose of most of this hullabaloo is to work the American Negro, up to support the “democracies” in the imperialist war.
The Crisis and the Pittsburgh Courier this month have both shown that, cold-blooded as is the policy on the Negro announced by the Nazis, it is really only a duplication of the policy on the Negro carried out in most parts of the United States since 1877.
And. if there is anyone who doubts that the. Nazi policy on this question is stolen right out of the handbook of British colonial policy, he ought to read the following Associated Negro Press dispatch from Cape Town, South Africa, dated March 6:
“Restrictions and segregation even more vicious than that of the Southland of the United States, are in vogue here and growing constantly worse. Recently, when a new railway station was planned for Huguenot, two separate entrances were provided, one for whites and one for non-whites. Waiting room accommodations for whites were arranged for in the main building but non-whites were given a waiting room in a separate building ...
“It appeared that an important step forward had, been made when two months ago the Witwatersrand University agreed to allow non-Europeans (the local designation for any other than whites) to attend medical school at the university and to work for both medical and dental degrees. The number of non-European students was restricted to ten. The chief problem which the school authorities had to overcome was the matter of providing bodies for dissection during the student’s fourth year. It was finally solved by deciding that non-European students should be permitted to dissect only black bodies.”
* * *
A Washington dispatch from the same agency had this to report a week later:
“No thought will be given to assigning colored doctors, dentists or nurses to centers where they might at any time be called upon to serve white soldiers, according to an official U.S. Army announcement.
“This determination to confine colored professional personnel to troops of their own race was emphatically declared by Surgeon General McGhee, Friday, during a conference with members of a committee from the National Medical Association ...
“The general professing to represent Northern sentiment, said that under no circumstances could he see colored and white doctors working together in the same hospital or as examiners of recruits.
“Advised that colored physicians had served. white soldiers in recruiting stations during the World War, he said it was inconceivable to him that colored doctors could work on an examining team with white doctors, and that no attempt would be made to integrate them into white medical teams.”
* * *
Strange bedfellows have turned up around a bill to deport all American Negroes to Africa. Senator Bilbo of Mississippi, who stands for “white supremacy” and hates the Negroes, is the author of the bill. J.R. Stewart, successor to the late Marcus Garvey as president general of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, in a speech in Chicago early this month, endorsed the bill of the enemy of the Negro people in the following words:
“As a long range measure, though not through any heartfelt benevolence, Bilbo of Mississippi has a bill which would deport us to Africa (Liberia) ... I am not for Bilbo but I am for this bill and will fight to support it ...”
In other words, the Garvey movement which once attracted the hopes of so many millions of Negroes is now acting as the tail to the kite of America’s outstanding exponent of “Negro inferiority.”
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<h4>“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(20 September 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_38" target="new">Vol. V No. 38</a>, 20 September 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>Fascist Ideas and Jim Crow</h4>
<p class="fst">In the course of a discussion held in Mexico on April 4, 1939, Leon Trotsky said:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Fascism in the United States will be directed against the Jews and the Negroes, but against the Negroes particularly, and in a most terrible manner, A ‘privileged’ condition will be created for the American white workers on the back of the Negroes.”</p>
<p class="fst">In spite of the fact that this country is today preparing in every sphere for an all-out war, directed presumably “against fascism” abroad, the ideas of fascism right here at home in “the arsenal of the democracies” are gaining strength and new supporters with alarming speed.</p>
<p>The speech of that advocate of white supremacy, Lindbergh, attacking the Jewish people last week, is an example of this growing trend. This speech – not yet repudiated by any of his colleagues on the America First Committee – has received much publicity, especially through the efforts of the interventionist war-mongers Who are only too pleased with an easy opportunity to win supporters for the war by the cheap expedient of denouncing the racial prejudices of an outstanding isolationist.</p>
<p><em>But when it comes to Negro baiting and to Jim Crow practices developed in the school of propaganda-by-example, the interventionists have nothing or little to say. The reason is simple: in this field of racial division and the fostering of racial hatred, the warmongering administration takes first place and most of the responsibility.</em></p>
<p>Only here and there do you read about it – in the workers’ and Negro press, and occasionally in a liberal magazine – but at present the Roosevelt administration is doing more by its Jim Crow segregation policies in the armed forces to foster fascist racial ideas among whites than any other agency in the country, including the South.</p>
<p>The anti-labor bureaucratic caste in the army is not only teaching hundreds of thousands of white young men to hate organized labor and to receive an carry out orders given “from above” without thought and without question, but it is also teaching them – by separating Negro soldiers from them everywhere they eat, sleep, train, drill, get recreation, etc. – that they are better than Negroes. Thus the ideas of “white supremacy” and “Negro inferiority” are injected into the minds of young men, many of whom went to school beside Negroes when they were children and never had a trace of chauvinism.</p>
<p><em>Not every white soldier accepts these ideas, of course. Those especially who have been in unions, worked alongside of Negroes and walked beside them on picket-lines, refuse to accept these ideas. The Negro press carries numerous expressions of sympathy and protest from white workers in southern camps who have been revolted and disgusted by the vicious Jim Crow policies and the MP brutalities practiced against Negroes.</em></p>
<p>But let us [not] be lulled by these accounts. There has been no authoritative poll on this question, but there is no reason to believe that the racially tolerant white soldiers constitute a majority or much of a majority at best.</p>
<p>For the pressure on the average soldier, all the things said and half-said by his superior officers, is continuous and powerful. In the end many white soldiers who never even thought about Negroes at home, tend to accept that distorted way of thinking which is so frequently encountered in the South: “My own lot is a miserable one, but at least I am better off than the Negroes” and “The Negro is responsible for my conditions.”</p>
<p>To those who think this is an exaggeration or an isolated phenomenon, we recommend the reading of an article, <em>Why The Army Gripes</em> by Harold Lavine, in the August 30 issue of <strong>The Nation</strong>. The article is all the more significant because this magazine is an ardent supporter of Roosevelt and his war program. When they print this article, it is not because they are trying to spread anti-war propaganda, but because the situation is so acute that they would like to see it corrected or alleviated so that it will not interfere with the war plans.<br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>Lavine’s Report</h4>
<p class="fst">Mr. Lavine interviewed 352 soldiers on leave in New York City and tried to discover what their complaints were. Here is what he reported about the attitude of many of them toward the Negroes:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>“The inferiority complex which so many of the recruits have developed is reflected in their attitude toward Negroes. They haven’t just the normal anti-Negro prejudice which you find everywhere in the United States, in the North as well as the South. They HATE Negroes, and their hatred seems to be mounting to hysteria. They make sudden, irrelevant remarks: ‘Say, I read where Joe Louis is to join the Army. I hope they send him down my way. First dark night I’ll shoot the bastard.’ They occupy themselves with the problem of whether or not to salute Negro officers. ‘They say it’s the uniform you salute, not the man,’ I said. ‘The hell with that. I’d like to shoot them.’”</em></p>
<p class="fst">This is a terrible danger signal to the Negro people and the whole labor movement. Whatever happens in the war, a lot of people are going to get out of the army with strong fascist anti-Negro ideas. Whether the United States wins the war or not, these forces will further divide the Negro and white workers and increase the Jim Crow terror against the Negro people.</p>
<p>If there was no reason before for fighting the war program – and there were a hundred – here is a good one. If there was no reason before for fighting to take control of military training away from the bureaucratic officer caste and, struggling for military training under control of the trade unions and on the basis of equality for Negroes – and <strong>The Militant</strong> has been filled with such reasons – here is an undeniable one.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx
(20 September 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 38, 20 September 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Fascist Ideas and Jim Crow
In the course of a discussion held in Mexico on April 4, 1939, Leon Trotsky said:
“Fascism in the United States will be directed against the Jews and the Negroes, but against the Negroes particularly, and in a most terrible manner, A ‘privileged’ condition will be created for the American white workers on the back of the Negroes.”
In spite of the fact that this country is today preparing in every sphere for an all-out war, directed presumably “against fascism” abroad, the ideas of fascism right here at home in “the arsenal of the democracies” are gaining strength and new supporters with alarming speed.
The speech of that advocate of white supremacy, Lindbergh, attacking the Jewish people last week, is an example of this growing trend. This speech – not yet repudiated by any of his colleagues on the America First Committee – has received much publicity, especially through the efforts of the interventionist war-mongers Who are only too pleased with an easy opportunity to win supporters for the war by the cheap expedient of denouncing the racial prejudices of an outstanding isolationist.
But when it comes to Negro baiting and to Jim Crow practices developed in the school of propaganda-by-example, the interventionists have nothing or little to say. The reason is simple: in this field of racial division and the fostering of racial hatred, the warmongering administration takes first place and most of the responsibility.
Only here and there do you read about it – in the workers’ and Negro press, and occasionally in a liberal magazine – but at present the Roosevelt administration is doing more by its Jim Crow segregation policies in the armed forces to foster fascist racial ideas among whites than any other agency in the country, including the South.
The anti-labor bureaucratic caste in the army is not only teaching hundreds of thousands of white young men to hate organized labor and to receive an carry out orders given “from above” without thought and without question, but it is also teaching them – by separating Negro soldiers from them everywhere they eat, sleep, train, drill, get recreation, etc. – that they are better than Negroes. Thus the ideas of “white supremacy” and “Negro inferiority” are injected into the minds of young men, many of whom went to school beside Negroes when they were children and never had a trace of chauvinism.
Not every white soldier accepts these ideas, of course. Those especially who have been in unions, worked alongside of Negroes and walked beside them on picket-lines, refuse to accept these ideas. The Negro press carries numerous expressions of sympathy and protest from white workers in southern camps who have been revolted and disgusted by the vicious Jim Crow policies and the MP brutalities practiced against Negroes.
But let us [not] be lulled by these accounts. There has been no authoritative poll on this question, but there is no reason to believe that the racially tolerant white soldiers constitute a majority or much of a majority at best.
For the pressure on the average soldier, all the things said and half-said by his superior officers, is continuous and powerful. In the end many white soldiers who never even thought about Negroes at home, tend to accept that distorted way of thinking which is so frequently encountered in the South: “My own lot is a miserable one, but at least I am better off than the Negroes” and “The Negro is responsible for my conditions.”
To those who think this is an exaggeration or an isolated phenomenon, we recommend the reading of an article, Why The Army Gripes by Harold Lavine, in the August 30 issue of The Nation. The article is all the more significant because this magazine is an ardent supporter of Roosevelt and his war program. When they print this article, it is not because they are trying to spread anti-war propaganda, but because the situation is so acute that they would like to see it corrected or alleviated so that it will not interfere with the war plans.
Lavine’s Report
Mr. Lavine interviewed 352 soldiers on leave in New York City and tried to discover what their complaints were. Here is what he reported about the attitude of many of them toward the Negroes:
“The inferiority complex which so many of the recruits have developed is reflected in their attitude toward Negroes. They haven’t just the normal anti-Negro prejudice which you find everywhere in the United States, in the North as well as the South. They HATE Negroes, and their hatred seems to be mounting to hysteria. They make sudden, irrelevant remarks: ‘Say, I read where Joe Louis is to join the Army. I hope they send him down my way. First dark night I’ll shoot the bastard.’ They occupy themselves with the problem of whether or not to salute Negro officers. ‘They say it’s the uniform you salute, not the man,’ I said. ‘The hell with that. I’d like to shoot them.’”
This is a terrible danger signal to the Negro people and the whole labor movement. Whatever happens in the war, a lot of people are going to get out of the army with strong fascist anti-Negro ideas. Whether the United States wins the war or not, these forces will further divide the Negro and white workers and increase the Jim Crow terror against the Negro people.
If there was no reason before for fighting the war program – and there were a hundred – here is a good one. If there was no reason before for fighting to take control of military training away from the bureaucratic officer caste and, struggling for military training under control of the trade unions and on the basis of equality for Negroes – and The Militant has been filled with such reasons – here is an undeniable one.
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h4>The Negro Struggle</h4>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h1>A Little History</h1>
<h3>(11 October 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_41" target="new">Vol. V No. 41</a>, 11 October 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">Last week John McCormack of Newark, N.J., concluded a letter to the editor of <strong>The Militant</strong> with the question: “What good is the executive order that Roosevelt issued if it hasn’t got teeth to enforce it?”</p>
<p>We suspect that McCormack knew very well the answer to his own question. But if there is any one else who isn’t aware of the fraud and hypocrisy being practiced by the Roosevelt administration toward the problem of jobs without discrimination for Negroes, we reprint the following parts of an article by George McCray, Negro labor commentator, from the <strong>Chicago Bee</strong>, Sept. 21, 1941:</p>
<p class="quoteb"><em>Many people have an almost childlike faith in the power of powerless government committees and commissions. During N.R.A., when we not only had a National Labor Board, but labor adjustment boards for various industries, organized labor learned that these boards of Mr. Roosevelt often wasted a lot of precious time but never got much accomplished. It seems as though Negroes are going to make a similar discovery</em>.</p>
<h4>No Results</h4>
<p class="quoteb"><em>Here is an enlightening series of events: July, 1940; the National Defense Advisory Commission stipulated that workers should not be discriminated against because of age, race, or color. No discernible change.</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>April 12, 1941; Negro employment and training branch was established in the Office of Production Management to make pleas for the removal of “employment barriers erected against competent and available colored workers either by employers or labor organizations.” Some results achieved, but frankly hardly worth mentioning. The most strenuous efforts of such field workers for OPM as Poston and Weaver succeeded in placing a half dozen Negroes here and there.</em></p>
<p class="quote"><em>Most of the gains made in the building industry were due to a shortage of labor in many areas and to the bitter battles being fought between the AFL and the CIO to dominate the building industry. When the CIO went after Negro construction workers the AFL decided the time was ripe to change its policies and grant Negroes work permits, rarely union membership.</em></p>
<h4>No Change</h4>
<p class="quoteb"><em>April 11, 1941; both Hillman and Knudsen sent letters to defense contractors urging them to drop discrimination. No change.</em></p>
<h4>No Change</h4>
<p class="quoteb"><em>June 25, 1941; President Roosevelt, very much irritated by A.P. Randolph’s threatened march to Washington, took “strong” measures to prevent discrimination against Negroes. Government agencies were cautioned, a non-discrimination clause was to be placed in defense contracts; and another committee, this time one on Fair Employment Practices was to be created, to make investigations and to redress grievances. So far no change, but it should be remembered that the well-meaning, hard-working men on the committee really haven’t had time to tackle the problem.</em></p>
<h4>No Change</h4>
<p class="quoteb"><em>August, 1941; Fair Employment Practices committee called on President, had their pictures taken, and recommended that he call on all government agencies to drop segregation and discrimination against Negroes. Seems like this was done once before.</em></p>
<h4>Another Letter</h4>
<p class="quoteb"><em>August or September, 1941; President issues letter asking various department heads to review employment policies.</em></p>
<h4>Some Results</h4>
<p class="quoteb"><em>September, 1941; Associated Negro Press carried story of five Negro stenographers who had been hired, in the United States war department over which Mr. Roosevelt himself is boss. The girls were “hidden away on the second floor in the sixth wing of the huge munitions building of the war department” with practically nothing to do.</em></p>
<p class="fst">In short, to sum up the whole experience in October, 1941, all the letters, statements, orders, and “well-meaning” committeemen in the world are not going to be able to do anything basic about job Jim Crow. The Negro masses can depend only on their own organized strength to win concessions and to win full equality.</p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<a name="s1"></a>
<h3>Hastie Can’t Answer Baldwin</h3>
<p class="fst">In a letter to the <strong>New York Times</strong>, Oct. 4, William H. Hastie, Negro Civilian Aide to the Secretary of War, attempted to answer some remarks in an article in the Sept. 30 <strong>Times</strong> written by that paper’s military commentator, Hanson W. Baldwin.</p>
<p>In this article, devoted to a discussion of conclusions that could be drawn from the recently completed Army maneuvers, Baldwin stated that it was the “virtually unanimous belief of many officers that they (Negro soldiers) do not make good combat soldiers” and that “many officers say that the present tendency to increase the proportion of Negroes in the combat arms of the Army is dictated by political pressure and is dangerous to the efficiency of the Army.”</p>
<p>Hastie undertook to argue the question. But he was unable – and afraid – to deal with the point in Baldwin’s article that is visible to everyone that wants to see it: namely, that although Negro soldiers by and large are functioning as well as any others in the Army, their officers, in the face of all the favorable evidence given by Baldwin, still belittle and underrate them.</p>
<p>Hastie doesn’t mind showing Baldwin’s mistakes – but he has nothing to say about this attitude, fostered and tolerated by Hastie’s own superiors and covered up by him, that is the source of all the discrimination shown the Negro.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx
A Little History
(11 October 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 41, 11 October 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Last week John McCormack of Newark, N.J., concluded a letter to the editor of The Militant with the question: “What good is the executive order that Roosevelt issued if it hasn’t got teeth to enforce it?”
We suspect that McCormack knew very well the answer to his own question. But if there is any one else who isn’t aware of the fraud and hypocrisy being practiced by the Roosevelt administration toward the problem of jobs without discrimination for Negroes, we reprint the following parts of an article by George McCray, Negro labor commentator, from the Chicago Bee, Sept. 21, 1941:
Many people have an almost childlike faith in the power of powerless government committees and commissions. During N.R.A., when we not only had a National Labor Board, but labor adjustment boards for various industries, organized labor learned that these boards of Mr. Roosevelt often wasted a lot of precious time but never got much accomplished. It seems as though Negroes are going to make a similar discovery.
No Results
Here is an enlightening series of events: July, 1940; the National Defense Advisory Commission stipulated that workers should not be discriminated against because of age, race, or color. No discernible change.
April 12, 1941; Negro employment and training branch was established in the Office of Production Management to make pleas for the removal of “employment barriers erected against competent and available colored workers either by employers or labor organizations.” Some results achieved, but frankly hardly worth mentioning. The most strenuous efforts of such field workers for OPM as Poston and Weaver succeeded in placing a half dozen Negroes here and there.
Most of the gains made in the building industry were due to a shortage of labor in many areas and to the bitter battles being fought between the AFL and the CIO to dominate the building industry. When the CIO went after Negro construction workers the AFL decided the time was ripe to change its policies and grant Negroes work permits, rarely union membership.
No Change
April 11, 1941; both Hillman and Knudsen sent letters to defense contractors urging them to drop discrimination. No change.
No Change
June 25, 1941; President Roosevelt, very much irritated by A.P. Randolph’s threatened march to Washington, took “strong” measures to prevent discrimination against Negroes. Government agencies were cautioned, a non-discrimination clause was to be placed in defense contracts; and another committee, this time one on Fair Employment Practices was to be created, to make investigations and to redress grievances. So far no change, but it should be remembered that the well-meaning, hard-working men on the committee really haven’t had time to tackle the problem.
No Change
August, 1941; Fair Employment Practices committee called on President, had their pictures taken, and recommended that he call on all government agencies to drop segregation and discrimination against Negroes. Seems like this was done once before.
Another Letter
August or September, 1941; President issues letter asking various department heads to review employment policies.
Some Results
September, 1941; Associated Negro Press carried story of five Negro stenographers who had been hired, in the United States war department over which Mr. Roosevelt himself is boss. The girls were “hidden away on the second floor in the sixth wing of the huge munitions building of the war department” with practically nothing to do.
In short, to sum up the whole experience in October, 1941, all the letters, statements, orders, and “well-meaning” committeemen in the world are not going to be able to do anything basic about job Jim Crow. The Negro masses can depend only on their own organized strength to win concessions and to win full equality.
* * *
Hastie Can’t Answer Baldwin
In a letter to the New York Times, Oct. 4, William H. Hastie, Negro Civilian Aide to the Secretary of War, attempted to answer some remarks in an article in the Sept. 30 Times written by that paper’s military commentator, Hanson W. Baldwin.
In this article, devoted to a discussion of conclusions that could be drawn from the recently completed Army maneuvers, Baldwin stated that it was the “virtually unanimous belief of many officers that they (Negro soldiers) do not make good combat soldiers” and that “many officers say that the present tendency to increase the proportion of Negroes in the combat arms of the Army is dictated by political pressure and is dangerous to the efficiency of the Army.”
Hastie undertook to argue the question. But he was unable – and afraid – to deal with the point in Baldwin’s article that is visible to everyone that wants to see it: namely, that although Negro soldiers by and large are functioning as well as any others in the Army, their officers, in the face of all the favorable evidence given by Baldwin, still belittle and underrate them.
Hastie doesn’t mind showing Baldwin’s mistakes – but he has nothing to say about this attitude, fostered and tolerated by Hastie’s own superiors and covered up by him, that is the source of all the discrimination shown the Negro.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Newark’s Relief System Exposed</h1>
<h4>After Driving Workers’ Organizations<br>
Out of Stations, City Slashed Relief Budgets</h4>
<h3>(5 April 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_14" target="new">Vol. V No. 14</a>, 5 April 1941, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst"><strong>NEWARK, N.J.</strong> – Two years ago this month the Newark relief administration succeeded in putting, through the plan it had been working on so long – the barring of unemployed organizations from the relief stations of the city.</p>
<p>But with the passage of the ruling that “every relief client must speak for himself,” the Franklin-Malady relief administration began a series of cuts which have reduced the rolls to half the number, of two years ago, and wiped out every one of the gains won in the eight years previous to that.<br>
</p>
<h4>Relief Today</h4>
<p class="fst">The period of waiting after application for relief is now from three to four weeks, often more, where previously it was a week or so. The special “emergency check” is now a thing of the past.</p>
<p>Special diets, which were granted on any doctor’s recommendation, thus providing more food for sick people, are granted in only 1% of the cases which had them previously. No longer is the recommendation of any doctor sufficient: only a city doctor’s word is good enough now.</p>
<p>Where previously as much as a quart of milk was allowed for children below 12 years of age, today half-a-quart is considered quite sufficient by relief officials. Relief granted to strikers was always of great help to unions of newly organized workers with little finances to run their strikes. Today strikers are not allowed relief.<br>
</p>
<h4>Condemned to Freeze</h4>
<p class="fst">In 1939, the department began to issue coal for the winter season in October. In 1940, “money was saved” by not issuing the coal until the middle of December. During this period a wave of influenza and pneumonia cases reached almost the proportions of an epidemic in the workers’ neighborhoods.</p>
<p>Previously, by exerting a lot of pressure a relief client could get an order for clothing that could be cashed in a clothing stored Now this has been done away with. Relief clients get only clothing made on the WPA projects, and extremely little of that. In 1940 less than 1c per day per person was spent by the city on clothing. The 1941 budget calls for about the same figure.</p>
<p>But the best example of all of how Newark relief is conducted, now that the unemployed unions are locked out, is the recent ruling on rental allowances. In 1939 they were as follows: $15 a month for families of six or less, and up to $20 a month in certain cases of larger families. Gradually this was cut down so that single people received only $12 a month, and small families received even less than $15.</p>
<p>Suddenly last month the following policy was announced in a newspaper announcement headed: “Relief Clients’ Landlords May Get Increased Rents”:</p>
<p>Families of one or two were to receive a maximum of $9 a month, families of three and four to receive maximum of $10.50 and $13.50. But families of over five would receive more than $15. This was the “increase” talked about.<br>
</p>
<h4>The Way Out</h4>
<p class="fst">The key to the relief problem does not lie in the promises made by the politicians prior to elections. Franklin, self-proclaimed “champion of the underprivileged” will be able to do everything he wants, as long as the unemployed are not organized into unions that are recognized and have the right to bargain for their members.</p>
<p>That is why in this election we say to the unemployed that what they must fight for is recognition of their committees. The present administration, in spite of its claims that it is “fair to labor,” has shown that it is not fair to unions of the unemployed. That is why we say that the workers need a City Commission controlled by and responsible to the workers, which will recognize this right and open up the way to an improvement in relief standards.</p>
<p>LET LABOR CONTROL THE CITY COMMISSION! Build a labor party and elect a City Commission that is pledged, among other things, to recognition of the unemployed unions!</p>
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George Breitman
Newark’s Relief System Exposed
After Driving Workers’ Organizations
Out of Stations, City Slashed Relief Budgets
(5 April 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 14, 5 April 1941, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
NEWARK, N.J. – Two years ago this month the Newark relief administration succeeded in putting, through the plan it had been working on so long – the barring of unemployed organizations from the relief stations of the city.
But with the passage of the ruling that “every relief client must speak for himself,” the Franklin-Malady relief administration began a series of cuts which have reduced the rolls to half the number, of two years ago, and wiped out every one of the gains won in the eight years previous to that.
Relief Today
The period of waiting after application for relief is now from three to four weeks, often more, where previously it was a week or so. The special “emergency check” is now a thing of the past.
Special diets, which were granted on any doctor’s recommendation, thus providing more food for sick people, are granted in only 1% of the cases which had them previously. No longer is the recommendation of any doctor sufficient: only a city doctor’s word is good enough now.
Where previously as much as a quart of milk was allowed for children below 12 years of age, today half-a-quart is considered quite sufficient by relief officials. Relief granted to strikers was always of great help to unions of newly organized workers with little finances to run their strikes. Today strikers are not allowed relief.
Condemned to Freeze
In 1939, the department began to issue coal for the winter season in October. In 1940, “money was saved” by not issuing the coal until the middle of December. During this period a wave of influenza and pneumonia cases reached almost the proportions of an epidemic in the workers’ neighborhoods.
Previously, by exerting a lot of pressure a relief client could get an order for clothing that could be cashed in a clothing stored Now this has been done away with. Relief clients get only clothing made on the WPA projects, and extremely little of that. In 1940 less than 1c per day per person was spent by the city on clothing. The 1941 budget calls for about the same figure.
But the best example of all of how Newark relief is conducted, now that the unemployed unions are locked out, is the recent ruling on rental allowances. In 1939 they were as follows: $15 a month for families of six or less, and up to $20 a month in certain cases of larger families. Gradually this was cut down so that single people received only $12 a month, and small families received even less than $15.
Suddenly last month the following policy was announced in a newspaper announcement headed: “Relief Clients’ Landlords May Get Increased Rents”:
Families of one or two were to receive a maximum of $9 a month, families of three and four to receive maximum of $10.50 and $13.50. But families of over five would receive more than $15. This was the “increase” talked about.
The Way Out
The key to the relief problem does not lie in the promises made by the politicians prior to elections. Franklin, self-proclaimed “champion of the underprivileged” will be able to do everything he wants, as long as the unemployed are not organized into unions that are recognized and have the right to bargain for their members.
That is why in this election we say to the unemployed that what they must fight for is recognition of their committees. The present administration, in spite of its claims that it is “fair to labor,” has shown that it is not fair to unions of the unemployed. That is why we say that the workers need a City Commission controlled by and responsible to the workers, which will recognize this right and open up the way to an improvement in relief standards.
LET LABOR CONTROL THE CITY COMMISSION! Build a labor party and elect a City Commission that is pledged, among other things, to recognition of the unemployed unions!
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(19 October 1940)</h3>
<p> </p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/socialist-appeal-1940/index.htm#sa04_42" target="new">Vol. 4 No. 42</a>, 19 October 1940, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>A Victory on Paper</h4>
<p class="fst">A couple of weeks ago, before the conscription bill was passed, two amendments were made, which were hailed by Senator Wagner of New York (and several unsuspecting and gullible Negro leaders) as “a signal victory for the forces of democracy in America life.”</p>
<p>One amendment was supposed to prohibit discrimination in the armed forces because of color, so far as enlisted men were concerned, the other prohibited discrimination against drafted men.</p>
<p>But actually, in spite of the statements coming from secretaries in the White House, nothing has changed. Jim Crow still wears his stripes.</p>
<p>This was definitely shown in the attempts of a number of colored people to enlist in the service since the passage of the amended bill. They wanted to enlist so that they can choose the branch of the service they preferred, something that is not permitted for drafted men.</p>
<p>In five cities, reporters of the Baltimore <b>Afro-American</b> attempted to join the U.S. Aviation Corp. In each case, these colored men were met with flat rejections. “And in each instance the reason given was always the same – no openings for colored men.”</p>
<p>Another reporter of the same paper tried to enlist in the field artillery, a branch of the service that has been closed to the Negro people. “There are no vacancies for colored,” was the answer he got.</p>
<p>Another applied for admission into the U.S. Navy this week in Washington, the capital of this great democracy. He was told that the only place open for Negroes was as mess-hands, that is, as kitchen slavies. He protested, saying, “I was of the impression that the conscription bill, either in fact or in spirit, had changed all this segregation.”</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Well,” the officer declared, “I don’t know what can be done about it. We haven’t had any further orders. The conscription bill hasn’t changed the situation for us. As far as we’re concerned, it’s just as if nothing’s happened.”</p>
<p class="fst">And so it goes, up and down the line of the different branches. The marine corps is still lily white. So is the tank corps, the air corps, the artillery, the coast guard, the engineers, the signal corps, etc. Only the infantry, the cavalry, the quartermaster corps, mess hands in the Navy, and to a very limited extent, the medical corps are open to colored people.<br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>The White House Is Unmasked</h4>
<p class="fst">After a White. House conference with Walter White, A. Philip Randolph and T. Arnold Hill, it became clear this week that only white officers will be called in to command colored draftees. Roosevelt was quoted as saying That so far as training colored men as commissioned officers or for the air corps went, plans had not yet been developed.</p>
<p>Colored reserve officers will be called on active duty only to fill vacancies “in units now officered by colored personnel.” Since the only units now officered by colored men are the National Guard, this means that drafted men will be placed in separate units under white officers.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“As to the Navy,” says the <b>Afro-American</b>, “Colonel Knox allegedly stated that while he was sympathetic, he felt that the problem there was almost insoluble since men have to live together on ships, and that ‘Southern’ and ‘Northern’ ships are impossible.”</p>
<p class="fst">If Jim Crow still rules in the enlisted Army, in spite of the fine “anti-discrimination” amendment, how much more will it rule in the drafted army! It becomes clear now that the only reason these amendments were passed was to get the colored people to support the conscription bill, and make them feel things were going to change so far as they were concerned.</p>
<p>... It is now clearer than ever: <i>The fight to end Jim Crowism in the armed forces, the fight to see that colored soldiers have the right to pick their own officers, can be won only as part of the general struggle for trade union control of military training.</i></p>
<h4>* * *</h4>
<p class="fst">The Army doesn’t want colored men to become officers. And it has an unwritten rule that those who do become officers shall not rise higher than the rank of Colonel. And few of those!</p>
<p>The reason is that they don’t want colored men in the highest councils where they can see from the inside how the Negro ranks are discriminated against, how it is decided that they are to play mainly two roles: to do the dirty work in the labor battalions, and to be given the most dangerous assignments in active duty.</p>
<p>In 1917, when officers were being promoted, General Jim Crow and his staff decided that Colonel Charles E. Young, highest ranking Negro West Point graduate, was suddenly retired “because he had high blood pressure.” The real reason for this move was that an officer who is retired does not have to be promoted, even if he is returned to active duty.</p>
<p>Young rode on a horse all the way from Wilberforce, Ohio, to Washington, to show that he was physically fit – but he was not promoted as all the whites of his rank were. Later on, he was returned to active duty, but only as a colonel, because his “retirement” gave the general staff their necessary excuse not to advance him.</p>
<p>History repeated itself last week. President Roosevelt, who tells how he loves democracy ... in Europe, appointed 100 white colonels to the grade of brigadier-general over the head of Col. Benjamin O. Davis, commanding officer of the 369th Infantry Regiment, N.Y. These appointments were made by the Commander-in-Chief on the recommendation of the Army.</p>
<p>The only difference is that in 1917 they looked for an “excuse.” In 1940 they feel Jim Crow is permanent in the Army, as long as they’re in control, and they don’t even need excuses to cover it up.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(19 October 1940)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 4 No. 42, 19 October 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
A Victory on Paper
A couple of weeks ago, before the conscription bill was passed, two amendments were made, which were hailed by Senator Wagner of New York (and several unsuspecting and gullible Negro leaders) as “a signal victory for the forces of democracy in America life.”
One amendment was supposed to prohibit discrimination in the armed forces because of color, so far as enlisted men were concerned, the other prohibited discrimination against drafted men.
But actually, in spite of the statements coming from secretaries in the White House, nothing has changed. Jim Crow still wears his stripes.
This was definitely shown in the attempts of a number of colored people to enlist in the service since the passage of the amended bill. They wanted to enlist so that they can choose the branch of the service they preferred, something that is not permitted for drafted men.
In five cities, reporters of the Baltimore Afro-American attempted to join the U.S. Aviation Corp. In each case, these colored men were met with flat rejections. “And in each instance the reason given was always the same – no openings for colored men.”
Another reporter of the same paper tried to enlist in the field artillery, a branch of the service that has been closed to the Negro people. “There are no vacancies for colored,” was the answer he got.
Another applied for admission into the U.S. Navy this week in Washington, the capital of this great democracy. He was told that the only place open for Negroes was as mess-hands, that is, as kitchen slavies. He protested, saying, “I was of the impression that the conscription bill, either in fact or in spirit, had changed all this segregation.”
“Well,” the officer declared, “I don’t know what can be done about it. We haven’t had any further orders. The conscription bill hasn’t changed the situation for us. As far as we’re concerned, it’s just as if nothing’s happened.”
And so it goes, up and down the line of the different branches. The marine corps is still lily white. So is the tank corps, the air corps, the artillery, the coast guard, the engineers, the signal corps, etc. Only the infantry, the cavalry, the quartermaster corps, mess hands in the Navy, and to a very limited extent, the medical corps are open to colored people.
The White House Is Unmasked
After a White. House conference with Walter White, A. Philip Randolph and T. Arnold Hill, it became clear this week that only white officers will be called in to command colored draftees. Roosevelt was quoted as saying That so far as training colored men as commissioned officers or for the air corps went, plans had not yet been developed.
Colored reserve officers will be called on active duty only to fill vacancies “in units now officered by colored personnel.” Since the only units now officered by colored men are the National Guard, this means that drafted men will be placed in separate units under white officers.
“As to the Navy,” says the Afro-American, “Colonel Knox allegedly stated that while he was sympathetic, he felt that the problem there was almost insoluble since men have to live together on ships, and that ‘Southern’ and ‘Northern’ ships are impossible.”
If Jim Crow still rules in the enlisted Army, in spite of the fine “anti-discrimination” amendment, how much more will it rule in the drafted army! It becomes clear now that the only reason these amendments were passed was to get the colored people to support the conscription bill, and make them feel things were going to change so far as they were concerned.
... It is now clearer than ever: The fight to end Jim Crowism in the armed forces, the fight to see that colored soldiers have the right to pick their own officers, can be won only as part of the general struggle for trade union control of military training.
* * *
The Army doesn’t want colored men to become officers. And it has an unwritten rule that those who do become officers shall not rise higher than the rank of Colonel. And few of those!
The reason is that they don’t want colored men in the highest councils where they can see from the inside how the Negro ranks are discriminated against, how it is decided that they are to play mainly two roles: to do the dirty work in the labor battalions, and to be given the most dangerous assignments in active duty.
In 1917, when officers were being promoted, General Jim Crow and his staff decided that Colonel Charles E. Young, highest ranking Negro West Point graduate, was suddenly retired “because he had high blood pressure.” The real reason for this move was that an officer who is retired does not have to be promoted, even if he is returned to active duty.
Young rode on a horse all the way from Wilberforce, Ohio, to Washington, to show that he was physically fit – but he was not promoted as all the whites of his rank were. Later on, he was returned to active duty, but only as a colonel, because his “retirement” gave the general staff their necessary excuse not to advance him.
History repeated itself last week. President Roosevelt, who tells how he loves democracy ... in Europe, appointed 100 white colonels to the grade of brigadier-general over the head of Col. Benjamin O. Davis, commanding officer of the 369th Infantry Regiment, N.Y. These appointments were made by the Commander-in-Chief on the recommendation of the Army.
The only difference is that in 1917 they looked for an “excuse.” In 1940 they feel Jim Crow is permanent in the Army, as long as they’re in control, and they don’t even need excuses to cover it up.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Same Disastrous Policy to Be Followed – Stalin</h1>
<h4>Anniversary Speeches Indicate Kremlin<br>
Will Not Adopt Program That Can Save USSR</h4>
<h3>(15 November 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_46" target="new">Vol. V No. 46</a>, 15 November 1941, pp. 1 & 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">In the two speeches he delivered on the occasion of the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, Stalin tried to calm the fears of the Soviet masses about the defeats suffered by the USSR in the war against German fascism. He tried to explain away the defeats, and to justify the course the Stalinist regime has followed.</p>
<p>But what he succeeded in doing was to make it plain that the Stalinist bureaucracy has no plan or strategy for victory; that Stalinism is responsible for the terrible Soviet defeats; that in spite of the critical position the workers state occupies today, Stalin refuses to adopt the revolutionary policies which alone can save the Soviet Union in this war.</p>
<p>Stalin admits that by itself the Soviet Union is unable to defeat Hitler, for he explains what he calls the “temporary reverses” by the fact that the Soviet Union is fighting Germany alone, without the military help of allies, without</p>
<p>the aid of a “western front,” and by the fact that the Soviet Union does not have as many tanks and aircraft as Hitler who is able to draw on the resources and industries of most of Europe.</p>
<p>Stalin tries to console the masses with the hope that the “democratic” imperialists will come to the aid of the Soviet Union by opening a “western front.” Aside from thus leaving the fate of the USSR in the hands of the imperialists, Stalin presents no program to save the USSR.</p>
<p>He points to the undeniable instability and contradictions in Hitler’s position, and declares that eventually “in another few months, another half or one year perhaps, Hitlerite Germany must burst of its own weight of crimes.”</p>
<p>He asserts that Hitler’s conquest of Europe has by no means destroyed the resistance and opposition of the European masses to Hitlerism, and declares that the “new order” is “a volcano ready to erupt at any moment and bury the Germany imperialistic house of cards,” and that the rear of Hitler’s army in Germany itself is ready to turn against him.</p>
<p>Thus is indicated the policy which can make up for the shortcomings in Soviet production, and destroy the fascist regime in spite of its advantages in machinery and military experience:</p>
<p>What is required for this is a revolutionary appeal to the German and the European working class to rise up against fascism: the assurance that they will not be alone or isolated in this struggle, but that they will be joined and supported by all the resources of the Red Army and the Soviet Union. What is necessary is a revolutionary appeal that will disintegrate Hitler’s rear, that will move the German masses into action against the system that oppresses them.<br>
</p>
<h4>Stalin Takes No Step</h4>
<p class="fst"><em>But Stalin does not breathe even the suggestion of a revolutionary appeal to the German workers. If Hitler’s regime is to be toppled from behind, if Hitler’s doom is “inevitable”, in a few months or a half year or a year, Stalin proposes to wait for history to accomplish it Meanwhile, though the danger to the USSR increases, he himself refuses to take a single step to move the German workers into revolutionary action.</em></p>
<p>For Stalin has placed his hopes in the hands of the “democratic” imperialists. For fear of alienating them, he will not even suggest, let alone try to aid, a workers’ revolution in Germany.</p>
<p>Indeed, far from doing anything to arouse the German workers in this Way, Stalin’s policies only drive the German masses still closer to Hitler, and help to destroy every possibility of convincing them they must not aid Hitler in the destruction of the workers state.</p>
<p>For Stalin completely identifies the war of the USSR with the imperialist war of Great Britain, and claims that England, the United States and the USSR are in a “single camp,” that “the Soviet Union’ <em>and its allies</em> are waging a war of liberation – a just war calculated for the liberation of the enslaved peoples of Europe and the USSR” and that armies of the USSR, Great Britain and the other allies as armies of liberation.”</p>
<p>Hitler and Goebbels secure the support or at least the non-opposition of the German masses by warning them that although they have known suffering in the war, they will, if Germany loses the war, face even greater suffering in the form of a new Versailles Treaty to crush Germany and make its people pay for the costs of the war. The only way to deprive Hitler of this bludgeon held over the German masses is by showing them that they can escape this terrible prospect even if Hitler loses the war.</p>
<p>But Stalin, by declaring that imperialist Britain wages a just war, and by declaring that the Soviet Union is in one camp with Britain, and by refusing to promise to fight against a new Versailles succeeds only in driving the German masses still closer to Hitler – thus alienating them further from the workers State.</p>
<p>Stalin spoke on the anniversary of the Russian Revolution. But he was careful to avoid all references to the true meaning and tradition of that revolution, which he has trampled on and betrayed.</p>
<p>Trying to show that all was not lost in spite of the defeats suffered in this war under his leadership, Stalin turned back for a moment to the days of the Civil War and the intervention in 1918–20 when the young workers state was almost overthrown.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“At that time almost three-fourths of our country was in the hands of foreign interventionists ... We had no allies, no Red Army – we had only just begun to create it – we experienced a shortage of bread, a shortage of arms, a shortage of clothing. At that time 14 states were pressing against our country, but we did not despair ...”</p>
<p class="fst">In spite of its material disadvantages, the Soviet Union was saved. And today, according to Stalin, the Soviet Union is in a much stronger position, so:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Is it possible then to doubt that we can and must gain victory over the invaders?”</p>
<p class="fst"><em>But Stalin dared not tell the truth about the Civil War days. He dared not tell that the Bolsheviks, under Lenin and Trotsky, never for a moment placed reliance on the imperialists, even when momentarily they were allied to them, that at all times they turned to the working class of the world, and particularly the workers in the armies and the countries of the enemy, and called on them to save the workers state.</em></p>
<p>He does not dare admit that what saved the Soviet Union was this policy of revolutionary war, which neutralised the mechanical and numerical superiority of its enemies’ forces by setting the worker – and peasant-soldiers into action against their own imperialist rulers.</p>
<p>It is not too late to save the Soviet Union, as the experiences of the Civil War days showed. But it can be saved only by the policy of revolutionary war which Stalinism fears and refuses to adopt.</p>
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George Breitman
Same Disastrous Policy to Be Followed – Stalin
Anniversary Speeches Indicate Kremlin
Will Not Adopt Program That Can Save USSR
(15 November 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 46, 15 November 1941, pp. 1 & 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
In the two speeches he delivered on the occasion of the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, Stalin tried to calm the fears of the Soviet masses about the defeats suffered by the USSR in the war against German fascism. He tried to explain away the defeats, and to justify the course the Stalinist regime has followed.
But what he succeeded in doing was to make it plain that the Stalinist bureaucracy has no plan or strategy for victory; that Stalinism is responsible for the terrible Soviet defeats; that in spite of the critical position the workers state occupies today, Stalin refuses to adopt the revolutionary policies which alone can save the Soviet Union in this war.
Stalin admits that by itself the Soviet Union is unable to defeat Hitler, for he explains what he calls the “temporary reverses” by the fact that the Soviet Union is fighting Germany alone, without the military help of allies, without
the aid of a “western front,” and by the fact that the Soviet Union does not have as many tanks and aircraft as Hitler who is able to draw on the resources and industries of most of Europe.
Stalin tries to console the masses with the hope that the “democratic” imperialists will come to the aid of the Soviet Union by opening a “western front.” Aside from thus leaving the fate of the USSR in the hands of the imperialists, Stalin presents no program to save the USSR.
He points to the undeniable instability and contradictions in Hitler’s position, and declares that eventually “in another few months, another half or one year perhaps, Hitlerite Germany must burst of its own weight of crimes.”
He asserts that Hitler’s conquest of Europe has by no means destroyed the resistance and opposition of the European masses to Hitlerism, and declares that the “new order” is “a volcano ready to erupt at any moment and bury the Germany imperialistic house of cards,” and that the rear of Hitler’s army in Germany itself is ready to turn against him.
Thus is indicated the policy which can make up for the shortcomings in Soviet production, and destroy the fascist regime in spite of its advantages in machinery and military experience:
What is required for this is a revolutionary appeal to the German and the European working class to rise up against fascism: the assurance that they will not be alone or isolated in this struggle, but that they will be joined and supported by all the resources of the Red Army and the Soviet Union. What is necessary is a revolutionary appeal that will disintegrate Hitler’s rear, that will move the German masses into action against the system that oppresses them.
Stalin Takes No Step
But Stalin does not breathe even the suggestion of a revolutionary appeal to the German workers. If Hitler’s regime is to be toppled from behind, if Hitler’s doom is “inevitable”, in a few months or a half year or a year, Stalin proposes to wait for history to accomplish it Meanwhile, though the danger to the USSR increases, he himself refuses to take a single step to move the German workers into revolutionary action.
For Stalin has placed his hopes in the hands of the “democratic” imperialists. For fear of alienating them, he will not even suggest, let alone try to aid, a workers’ revolution in Germany.
Indeed, far from doing anything to arouse the German workers in this Way, Stalin’s policies only drive the German masses still closer to Hitler, and help to destroy every possibility of convincing them they must not aid Hitler in the destruction of the workers state.
For Stalin completely identifies the war of the USSR with the imperialist war of Great Britain, and claims that England, the United States and the USSR are in a “single camp,” that “the Soviet Union’ and its allies are waging a war of liberation – a just war calculated for the liberation of the enslaved peoples of Europe and the USSR” and that armies of the USSR, Great Britain and the other allies as armies of liberation.”
Hitler and Goebbels secure the support or at least the non-opposition of the German masses by warning them that although they have known suffering in the war, they will, if Germany loses the war, face even greater suffering in the form of a new Versailles Treaty to crush Germany and make its people pay for the costs of the war. The only way to deprive Hitler of this bludgeon held over the German masses is by showing them that they can escape this terrible prospect even if Hitler loses the war.
But Stalin, by declaring that imperialist Britain wages a just war, and by declaring that the Soviet Union is in one camp with Britain, and by refusing to promise to fight against a new Versailles succeeds only in driving the German masses still closer to Hitler – thus alienating them further from the workers State.
Stalin spoke on the anniversary of the Russian Revolution. But he was careful to avoid all references to the true meaning and tradition of that revolution, which he has trampled on and betrayed.
Trying to show that all was not lost in spite of the defeats suffered in this war under his leadership, Stalin turned back for a moment to the days of the Civil War and the intervention in 1918–20 when the young workers state was almost overthrown.
“At that time almost three-fourths of our country was in the hands of foreign interventionists ... We had no allies, no Red Army – we had only just begun to create it – we experienced a shortage of bread, a shortage of arms, a shortage of clothing. At that time 14 states were pressing against our country, but we did not despair ...”
In spite of its material disadvantages, the Soviet Union was saved. And today, according to Stalin, the Soviet Union is in a much stronger position, so:
“Is it possible then to doubt that we can and must gain victory over the invaders?”
But Stalin dared not tell the truth about the Civil War days. He dared not tell that the Bolsheviks, under Lenin and Trotsky, never for a moment placed reliance on the imperialists, even when momentarily they were allied to them, that at all times they turned to the working class of the world, and particularly the workers in the armies and the countries of the enemy, and called on them to save the workers state.
He does not dare admit that what saved the Soviet Union was this policy of revolutionary war, which neutralised the mechanical and numerical superiority of its enemies’ forces by setting the worker – and peasant-soldiers into action against their own imperialist rulers.
It is not too late to save the Soviet Union, as the experiences of the Civil War days showed. But it can be saved only by the policy of revolutionary war which Stalinism fears and refuses to adopt.
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<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
<table width="50%" border="6" align="center" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="6">
<tbody><tr>
<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(12 July 1941)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_28" target="new">Vol. V No. 28</a>, 12 July 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4>How To Defend the Soviet Union</h4>
<p class="fst">Last week we explained that workers, Negro and white, have the job of defending the Soviet Union against its imperialist enemies, in spite of Stalin’s crimes against the world working class because the Soviet Union is a workers’ state and because its defeat by the imperialists would greatly strengthen the bosses in their exploitation and oppression of the workers everywhere. This week we want to discuss how workers, and especially Negro workers, can best defend the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>By defense of the Soviet Union, it must be understood, first of all we Trotskyists do not mean the same thing at all that the Stalinists do. They don’t defend the same things we do, and they don’t defend them in the same way.</p>
<p>What they defend in the Soviet Union first of all is Stalinism, the power and privileges and theories of the corrupt bureaucracy that has seized control of the state. What WE defend is the remains of the greatest revolution of all time, the nationalized property relations, the economic foundation which if extended will lead to socialism and a new kind of society.</p>
<p>For example, a month ago, the Stalinists, feeling that the United States when it entered the war would probably be in an alliance directed against the Soviet Union, spent all their time denouncing the war preparations of the U.S. government and trying to keep it from entering the war with full military steps. As part of its propaganda, the Communist Party dealt with the Negro question and Jim Crowism, showed how false are Roosevelt’s slogans about “a war for democracy”.</p>
<p>Then came the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. And now the policy of the Stalinists in this country is not to “get out and stay out of the war,” but to get into it as quickly as possible. As a result, almost every single correct argument the Stalinists used a month ago has today been thrown overboard. The <strong>Daily Worker</strong> no longer stresses the contradictions between a war for democracy abroad and Jim Crowism at home. It no longer criticizes Roosevelt except because he is so slow at getting into the war. It calls on the Negro people not to oppose the war, but to put pressure on Roosevelt to hasten American entry.</p>
<p>In short, in order to get an alliance between Stalin and Roosevelt, the Stalinists are ready to drop everything else, including the struggle against Jim Crowism.<br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4>The Stalinists and the Negro March</h4>
<p class="fst">A concrete example of the change in their approach to the Negro problem is the recently called-off Negro March On Washington. Before the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Stalinists bitterly criticized the leaders of the March because they were tied to Roosevelt’s war machine, because their demands were inadequate, because they did not demand that the government support the anti-lynch and anti-poll tax bills, because they did not demand that the government stay out of war, etc. When the Roosevelt, administration began to put pressure on Randolph and White and the other leaders of the March, in an attempt to get it called off, the <strong>Daily Worker</strong> warned the Negroes to be careful that they did not submit to the pressure and call off the march.</p>
<p>Then came the invasion and a few days later Randolph gave in to Roosevelt, and in return for a face saving executive order which granted very little, called off the March. If this had happened a week earlier, the Stalinists would have raised holy hell, attacking and condemning Randolph. But since the Stalinists now had a new line, they uttered not a single word of criticism that the March had been called off. True, they saw what they called a few “loopholes” in Roosevelt’s executive order, but their National Negro Congress called it “a great step forward.”</p>
<p>We want to warn Negroes who watch the developments of the Stalinist line hot to expect a complete and open reversal overnight. If they did this, they would quickly lose all the influence among the militant Negroes which they now have. They will not drop their demand for the passage of an anti-lynch bill, for instance. After all, many “liberals” who also support the imperialist war, still think it would be good to pass such a bill. But the Stalinists will no longer make much of a point of it, and certainly will support Roosevelt’s war plans despite his refusal to back the anti-lynch bill.<br>
</p>
<a name="p3"></a>
<h4>We Fight On Against Jim Crow</h4>
<p class="fst">As opposed to the Stalinist line, the Socialist Workers Party finds no contradiction between revolutionary defense of the Soviet Union and continuation of militant struggle for labor and Negro rights.</p>
<p>As the Manifesto of the Socialist Workers Party says:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The method to defend the Soviet Union is to continue the class struggle against the imperialists. Defend workers’ rights against government strikebreaking! Build the power of the working class until it becomes the governmental power. That is the best service which the American workers can render to their brothers in the Soviet Union.”</p>
<p class="fst">In other words, class conscious Negroes must continue their struggle against Jim Crowism. Together with their white brothers, they must help to substitute for the present system of exploitation and discrimination, a system of socialist brotherhood which will help to solve our problems here and to defend the Soviet Union at the same time.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(12 July 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V No. 28, 12 July 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
How To Defend the Soviet Union
Last week we explained that workers, Negro and white, have the job of defending the Soviet Union against its imperialist enemies, in spite of Stalin’s crimes against the world working class because the Soviet Union is a workers’ state and because its defeat by the imperialists would greatly strengthen the bosses in their exploitation and oppression of the workers everywhere. This week we want to discuss how workers, and especially Negro workers, can best defend the Soviet Union.
By defense of the Soviet Union, it must be understood, first of all we Trotskyists do not mean the same thing at all that the Stalinists do. They don’t defend the same things we do, and they don’t defend them in the same way.
What they defend in the Soviet Union first of all is Stalinism, the power and privileges and theories of the corrupt bureaucracy that has seized control of the state. What WE defend is the remains of the greatest revolution of all time, the nationalized property relations, the economic foundation which if extended will lead to socialism and a new kind of society.
For example, a month ago, the Stalinists, feeling that the United States when it entered the war would probably be in an alliance directed against the Soviet Union, spent all their time denouncing the war preparations of the U.S. government and trying to keep it from entering the war with full military steps. As part of its propaganda, the Communist Party dealt with the Negro question and Jim Crowism, showed how false are Roosevelt’s slogans about “a war for democracy”.
Then came the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. And now the policy of the Stalinists in this country is not to “get out and stay out of the war,” but to get into it as quickly as possible. As a result, almost every single correct argument the Stalinists used a month ago has today been thrown overboard. The Daily Worker no longer stresses the contradictions between a war for democracy abroad and Jim Crowism at home. It no longer criticizes Roosevelt except because he is so slow at getting into the war. It calls on the Negro people not to oppose the war, but to put pressure on Roosevelt to hasten American entry.
In short, in order to get an alliance between Stalin and Roosevelt, the Stalinists are ready to drop everything else, including the struggle against Jim Crowism.
The Stalinists and the Negro March
A concrete example of the change in their approach to the Negro problem is the recently called-off Negro March On Washington. Before the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Stalinists bitterly criticized the leaders of the March because they were tied to Roosevelt’s war machine, because their demands were inadequate, because they did not demand that the government support the anti-lynch and anti-poll tax bills, because they did not demand that the government stay out of war, etc. When the Roosevelt, administration began to put pressure on Randolph and White and the other leaders of the March, in an attempt to get it called off, the Daily Worker warned the Negroes to be careful that they did not submit to the pressure and call off the march.
Then came the invasion and a few days later Randolph gave in to Roosevelt, and in return for a face saving executive order which granted very little, called off the March. If this had happened a week earlier, the Stalinists would have raised holy hell, attacking and condemning Randolph. But since the Stalinists now had a new line, they uttered not a single word of criticism that the March had been called off. True, they saw what they called a few “loopholes” in Roosevelt’s executive order, but their National Negro Congress called it “a great step forward.”
We want to warn Negroes who watch the developments of the Stalinist line hot to expect a complete and open reversal overnight. If they did this, they would quickly lose all the influence among the militant Negroes which they now have. They will not drop their demand for the passage of an anti-lynch bill, for instance. After all, many “liberals” who also support the imperialist war, still think it would be good to pass such a bill. But the Stalinists will no longer make much of a point of it, and certainly will support Roosevelt’s war plans despite his refusal to back the anti-lynch bill.
We Fight On Against Jim Crow
As opposed to the Stalinist line, the Socialist Workers Party finds no contradiction between revolutionary defense of the Soviet Union and continuation of militant struggle for labor and Negro rights.
As the Manifesto of the Socialist Workers Party says:
“The method to defend the Soviet Union is to continue the class struggle against the imperialists. Defend workers’ rights against government strikebreaking! Build the power of the working class until it becomes the governmental power. That is the best service which the American workers can render to their brothers in the Soviet Union.”
In other words, class conscious Negroes must continue their struggle against Jim Crowism. Together with their white brothers, they must help to substitute for the present system of exploitation and discrimination, a system of socialist brotherhood which will help to solve our problems here and to defend the Soviet Union at the same time.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>CP Launches Public Attack<br>
on James Kutcher</h1>
<h3>(7 March 1947)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1949/index.htm#m49_48" target="new">Vol. 13 No. 10</a>, 7 March 1949, pp. 1 & 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst">After six months of criminal silence on the case of James Kutcher, the Stalinist press has launched a poisonous attack on the legless veteran and the supporters of his fight against the government’s “subversive” blacklist and witch-hunt purge of federal employees.</p>
<p>Unwilling to support this struggle for civil liberties because it involves their firmest political opponents in the labor movement, and yet unable to maintain their silence because the case is winning ever-broader support, the Stalinists have been forced out into the open. The assignment to do a hatchet job on Kutcher was given to Adam Lapin, associate editor of the West Coast Stalinist paper, <strong>Daily People’s World</strong>, and he carried it out to the best of his ability in the Feb. 18 issue of that paper.</p>
<p>Lapin begins by pretending to examine the question of why Kutcher has the active backing of many “right-wing CIO leaders who have long since abandoned any real fight to preserve civil liberties.” As proof of such abandonment he refers to the failure of non-Stalinist union leaders to support the case of Irving Potash, a CIO offficial among the 12 Stalinists on trial in New York, and of the 15 people jailed and persecuted in Los Angeles.<br>
</p>
<h4>Lapin Warms Up</h4>
<p class="quoteb">“But,” he says, “the case of James Kutcher is apparently in a separate and favored category. Indeed, it has received the same kind of favored treatment from liberal publications like <strong>The Nation</strong> and <strong>The New Republic</strong> which have treated gingerly, if at all, the intensive national witch-hunt against the Communists.”</p>
<p class="fst"><em>Here Lapin is just warming up for the bigger lies to come. He knows as well as we do that the <strong>Nation</strong> has run only one short editorial on Kutcher, that the <strong>New Republic</strong> has had a total of six lines on the case, and that both, in the usual liberal fashion, have protested the CP trials on many occasions.</em></p>
<p class="quoteb">“Needless to say, Kutcher is not a Communist,” he continues. “He is rather a member of a group called the Socialist Workers Party which was aptly described by Carey McWilliams as ‘a sort of international conspiracy for the assassination of Joseph Stalin.’”</p>
<p class="fst">This “quotation” is no more honest than the customary Stalinist brand. McWilliams is a member of the Kutcher Civil Rights Committee; everywhere, on his recent lecture tour, he protested against Kutcher’s dismissal. It is ridiculous to think he would lend his support to a member of what he considered an international assassination conspiracy. Nevertheless, it is true that in his speech in Seattle last month he employed an expression similar to the one quoted by Lapin.</p>
<p>But it is also true – as Lapin knows and “aptly” conceals – that in the question and answer period McWilliams explicitly stated the remark had been facetious and did not represent his views. What he was trying to say, as many other civil libertarians have done, was that Kutcher could not be regarded as an “agent of a foreign power” because the Trotskyists are such bitter foes of Stalinism, and that this fact showed how’ far-reaching the current witch-hunt was.<br>
</p>
<h4>“An Oddity”</h4>
<p class="fst">The Trotskyist party, Lapin declares, “has not cavilled to cooperate with the most reactionary and anti-labor forces ... It has been praised by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and has been useful to the FBI. As McWilliams indicated, it is an oddity that he should lose his job.”</p>
<p>An oddity? It would be the eighth wonder of the world if the present administration, with the aid of the FBI, would fire a member of a party that cooperates with anti-labor forces, is praised by the Chamber of Commerce and is useful to the FBI! Wouldn’t such a man get promoted and rewarded instead of fired and stigmatized?</p>
<p>In an effort to explain this contradiction, Lapin proves himself a real master of the poisonpen:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Perhaps Kutcher’s dismissal was a product of overenthusiasm or of sheer ignorance on the part of hard-working FBI officials. If those who espouse his case seek merely to get him his job back, a friendly hint to the Department of Justice that it committed a boner would no doubt be sufficient.”</p>
<p class="fst">Lapin and his Stalinist masters know how foul this slander is, and so will everyone else who takes the care to examine the following facts:</p>
<ol>
<li>Kutcher was fired because the Attorney General placed the Socialist Workers Party on his “subversive” blacklist along with the Communist Party and other organizations. The over-enthusiastic, ignorant, hard-working FBI officials did not initiate the case; they executed the policy set down by Truman and Clark.<br>
</li>
<li>The Department of Justice is not in need of a hint, gentle or otherwise, to learn the facts about the case. Clark has heard about them in far-from-gentle terms from scores of organizations. Kutcher himself met with Clark to protest both his dismissal and the entire blacklist system. Clark doesn’t think the case was a “boner.” Despite mounting criticism from unionists and liberals, he persists in upholding Kutcher’s dismissal; in keeping the SWP on his blacklist; and in refusing it a public hearing.<br>
</li>
<li>In fact, long after all the facts in the case were printed in the press of all groups except the Stalinists, the Truman administration last December issued through its Loyalty Review Board the infamous <em>Memorandum No. 32</em>, which makes it mandatory to dismiss from government service all members of the SWP, CP and Workers Party, regardless of the circumstances surrounding individual cases. This was the administration’s direct answer to the Kutcher protest.<br>
</li>
</ol>
<h4>What They Conceal</h4>
<p class="fst">As always, the facts not only refute the Stalinist slanders but bring to the surface the truths about their own record which they are trying to hide. For example:</p>
<ol>
<li>It was the Stalinists who cooperated with reactionary and anti-labor forces in policing the no-strike pledge and the speed-up during the war. The Trotskyists never have collaborated with these forces in war or peace.<br>
</li>
<li>It was the Stalinists who held out the hand of comradeship to the Chamber of Commerce and the NAM during the war. The Trotskyists never did, and the Chamber of Commerce never in its entire history “praised” the Trotskyists.<br>
</li>
<li>It was the Stalinists who collaborated with the Department of Justice in upholding the conviction of the 18 Trotskyists in the Minneapolis trial under the same Smith Act now used to persecute the Stalinists. The Trotskyists were inot only persecuted by the Department of Justice and the FBI during the war, but ever since, as the “subversive” list proves.</li>
</ol>
<p class="quoteb">“But in any event,” Lapin continues, “it [the Kutcher dismissal] was outside the mainstream of the current attack on civil liberties. And by the same token the defense of Kutcher is outside the mainstream of the defense of civil liberties.”</p>
<p class="fst">Lapin would like people to believe that this is so, but Truman and his witch-hunters think differently. As <em>Memorandum No. 32</em> shows, they recognize the Kutcher case to be the most direct as well as most dramatic assault on their blacklist system that has yet been made. They know a victory for Kutcher will discredit the whole purge set-up. That’s why they stubbornly refuse to listen to “hints” and insist on standing by their admittedly unpopular victimization of the legless veteran.</p>
<p>The ones who are really “outside the mainstream of the defense of civil liberties” are those who openly approve the Kutcher dismissal – Truman and Co. – and those who seek to deny its significance or prevent the mobilization of mass support for Kutcher – notably, the Stalinists above all others. This isn’t the first time that the Stalinists have seen eye to eye with a reactionary capitalist government, nor will it be the last time that they give objective aid to the policies of such a government.</p>
<p>Lapin then finishes his article by returning to his first point: “The best that can be said for some of his advocates is that they seek here a convenient escape from the battle, a safe eivil liberties case on which they can speak up without fear of being tagjged as Communists themselves.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“But others of his backers have less innocent motives, and see in the case a possibility for diverting attention from the Los Angeles and New York cases, for disrupting the fight for civil liberties.</p>
<p class="quote">“There can be no other explanation for the deliberate attempt of right-wing labor leaders and some liberal publications to play up the Kutcher case while ignoring or apologizing for the persecution of Communists whose defense is now the first line of defense of all civil liberties.”</p>
<p class="fst">But how does support of Kutcher “disrupt” support of Stalinist victims of persecution? Everywhere that Kutcher himself speaks on the case, he urges support for the civil rights of the Stalinists as well, despite the unbridgeable political differences that separate them and despite their sabotage of his case. <strong>The Militant</strong> has also consistently tied the two together, and has printed as much on the CP trial since it began as it has on Kutcher.<br>
</p>
<h4>Why They’re Isolated</h4>
<p class="fst">Now there is one grain of truth to be found in Lapin’s final distortions – namely, that certain labor and liberal leaders, including some of Kutcher’s supporters, refuse to extend any aid to the Stalinists, despite our repeated warnings and appeals to them. One reason is that they are buckling under the pressure of the government’s “cold war.” But there is another reason:</p>
<p><em>And that is the CP’s own attacks on the principles of labor solidarity and united labor defense against attacks on civil liberties!</em></p>
<p>During the war the Stalinists worked themselves to the bone opposing support for the Minneapolis defendants on the ground that the Trotskyists were against supporting the war, the re-election of Roosevelt, etc. In short, the Stalinists preached that civil liberties should be denied to minority parties holding unpopular views. Many unionists and liberals today accept that argument – and use it against the Stalinists. This approach is as false and short-sighted today as when it was employed by the Stalinists during the war, and will have the same disastrous effects later on. But it is one of the explanations for the Stalinist isolation today.</p>
<p>Another is the stand of the CP on the Kutcher case itself. If the Stalinists won’t support his case because they disagree with his politics, then why – many people ask – should we support the Stalinists when- we disagree with their politics?</p>
<p><em>Lapin’s own article – allegedly designed to prevent diversion of support from the Stalinist defense – is actually the most powerful kind of blow that could be dealt to the CP’s defense. For every ounce of support it may detract from Kutcher’s support, it adds a ton of damage to the CP’s fight for its own civil rights.</em></p>
<p>The rank-and-file members of the CP should now be approached with these questions: Wouldn’t they be far better off in mobilizing Support against the witchhunt if the CP would grant support. to Kutcher, even while differentiating itself from his political views, just as the labor leaders and liberals have done? Why doesn’t the CP leadership accept the SWP’s offer of united front action ont behalf of all victims of the witch-hunt? Why does it persist in its suicidal policy? Isn’t it the duty of rank-and-file CP members to reverse this dangerous course which is further isolating them from working class support?</p>
<p>And non-Stalinists who hesitate to come to the CP’s defense should be acquainted with the CP’s line on Kutcher, as an object lesson of what the violation op disregard of labor solidarity leads to. There is a certain logic in these developments, and it should be driven home to everyone: <em>If today you fail to defend the civil rights of a working class group because you don’t agree with its policies, the result tomorrow can be fatal to yourself as well as the general cause of civil liberties.</em></p>
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George Breitman
CP Launches Public Attack
on James Kutcher
(7 March 1947)
From The Militant, Vol. 13 No. 10, 7 March 1949, pp. 1 & 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
After six months of criminal silence on the case of James Kutcher, the Stalinist press has launched a poisonous attack on the legless veteran and the supporters of his fight against the government’s “subversive” blacklist and witch-hunt purge of federal employees.
Unwilling to support this struggle for civil liberties because it involves their firmest political opponents in the labor movement, and yet unable to maintain their silence because the case is winning ever-broader support, the Stalinists have been forced out into the open. The assignment to do a hatchet job on Kutcher was given to Adam Lapin, associate editor of the West Coast Stalinist paper, Daily People’s World, and he carried it out to the best of his ability in the Feb. 18 issue of that paper.
Lapin begins by pretending to examine the question of why Kutcher has the active backing of many “right-wing CIO leaders who have long since abandoned any real fight to preserve civil liberties.” As proof of such abandonment he refers to the failure of non-Stalinist union leaders to support the case of Irving Potash, a CIO offficial among the 12 Stalinists on trial in New York, and of the 15 people jailed and persecuted in Los Angeles.
Lapin Warms Up
“But,” he says, “the case of James Kutcher is apparently in a separate and favored category. Indeed, it has received the same kind of favored treatment from liberal publications like The Nation and The New Republic which have treated gingerly, if at all, the intensive national witch-hunt against the Communists.”
Here Lapin is just warming up for the bigger lies to come. He knows as well as we do that the Nation has run only one short editorial on Kutcher, that the New Republic has had a total of six lines on the case, and that both, in the usual liberal fashion, have protested the CP trials on many occasions.
“Needless to say, Kutcher is not a Communist,” he continues. “He is rather a member of a group called the Socialist Workers Party which was aptly described by Carey McWilliams as ‘a sort of international conspiracy for the assassination of Joseph Stalin.’”
This “quotation” is no more honest than the customary Stalinist brand. McWilliams is a member of the Kutcher Civil Rights Committee; everywhere, on his recent lecture tour, he protested against Kutcher’s dismissal. It is ridiculous to think he would lend his support to a member of what he considered an international assassination conspiracy. Nevertheless, it is true that in his speech in Seattle last month he employed an expression similar to the one quoted by Lapin.
But it is also true – as Lapin knows and “aptly” conceals – that in the question and answer period McWilliams explicitly stated the remark had been facetious and did not represent his views. What he was trying to say, as many other civil libertarians have done, was that Kutcher could not be regarded as an “agent of a foreign power” because the Trotskyists are such bitter foes of Stalinism, and that this fact showed how’ far-reaching the current witch-hunt was.
“An Oddity”
The Trotskyist party, Lapin declares, “has not cavilled to cooperate with the most reactionary and anti-labor forces ... It has been praised by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and has been useful to the FBI. As McWilliams indicated, it is an oddity that he should lose his job.”
An oddity? It would be the eighth wonder of the world if the present administration, with the aid of the FBI, would fire a member of a party that cooperates with anti-labor forces, is praised by the Chamber of Commerce and is useful to the FBI! Wouldn’t such a man get promoted and rewarded instead of fired and stigmatized?
In an effort to explain this contradiction, Lapin proves himself a real master of the poisonpen:
“Perhaps Kutcher’s dismissal was a product of overenthusiasm or of sheer ignorance on the part of hard-working FBI officials. If those who espouse his case seek merely to get him his job back, a friendly hint to the Department of Justice that it committed a boner would no doubt be sufficient.”
Lapin and his Stalinist masters know how foul this slander is, and so will everyone else who takes the care to examine the following facts:
Kutcher was fired because the Attorney General placed the Socialist Workers Party on his “subversive” blacklist along with the Communist Party and other organizations. The over-enthusiastic, ignorant, hard-working FBI officials did not initiate the case; they executed the policy set down by Truman and Clark.
The Department of Justice is not in need of a hint, gentle or otherwise, to learn the facts about the case. Clark has heard about them in far-from-gentle terms from scores of organizations. Kutcher himself met with Clark to protest both his dismissal and the entire blacklist system. Clark doesn’t think the case was a “boner.” Despite mounting criticism from unionists and liberals, he persists in upholding Kutcher’s dismissal; in keeping the SWP on his blacklist; and in refusing it a public hearing.
In fact, long after all the facts in the case were printed in the press of all groups except the Stalinists, the Truman administration last December issued through its Loyalty Review Board the infamous Memorandum No. 32, which makes it mandatory to dismiss from government service all members of the SWP, CP and Workers Party, regardless of the circumstances surrounding individual cases. This was the administration’s direct answer to the Kutcher protest.
What They Conceal
As always, the facts not only refute the Stalinist slanders but bring to the surface the truths about their own record which they are trying to hide. For example:
It was the Stalinists who cooperated with reactionary and anti-labor forces in policing the no-strike pledge and the speed-up during the war. The Trotskyists never have collaborated with these forces in war or peace.
It was the Stalinists who held out the hand of comradeship to the Chamber of Commerce and the NAM during the war. The Trotskyists never did, and the Chamber of Commerce never in its entire history “praised” the Trotskyists.
It was the Stalinists who collaborated with the Department of Justice in upholding the conviction of the 18 Trotskyists in the Minneapolis trial under the same Smith Act now used to persecute the Stalinists. The Trotskyists were inot only persecuted by the Department of Justice and the FBI during the war, but ever since, as the “subversive” list proves.
“But in any event,” Lapin continues, “it [the Kutcher dismissal] was outside the mainstream of the current attack on civil liberties. And by the same token the defense of Kutcher is outside the mainstream of the defense of civil liberties.”
Lapin would like people to believe that this is so, but Truman and his witch-hunters think differently. As Memorandum No. 32 shows, they recognize the Kutcher case to be the most direct as well as most dramatic assault on their blacklist system that has yet been made. They know a victory for Kutcher will discredit the whole purge set-up. That’s why they stubbornly refuse to listen to “hints” and insist on standing by their admittedly unpopular victimization of the legless veteran.
The ones who are really “outside the mainstream of the defense of civil liberties” are those who openly approve the Kutcher dismissal – Truman and Co. – and those who seek to deny its significance or prevent the mobilization of mass support for Kutcher – notably, the Stalinists above all others. This isn’t the first time that the Stalinists have seen eye to eye with a reactionary capitalist government, nor will it be the last time that they give objective aid to the policies of such a government.
Lapin then finishes his article by returning to his first point: “The best that can be said for some of his advocates is that they seek here a convenient escape from the battle, a safe eivil liberties case on which they can speak up without fear of being tagjged as Communists themselves.
“But others of his backers have less innocent motives, and see in the case a possibility for diverting attention from the Los Angeles and New York cases, for disrupting the fight for civil liberties.
“There can be no other explanation for the deliberate attempt of right-wing labor leaders and some liberal publications to play up the Kutcher case while ignoring or apologizing for the persecution of Communists whose defense is now the first line of defense of all civil liberties.”
But how does support of Kutcher “disrupt” support of Stalinist victims of persecution? Everywhere that Kutcher himself speaks on the case, he urges support for the civil rights of the Stalinists as well, despite the unbridgeable political differences that separate them and despite their sabotage of his case. The Militant has also consistently tied the two together, and has printed as much on the CP trial since it began as it has on Kutcher.
Why They’re Isolated
Now there is one grain of truth to be found in Lapin’s final distortions – namely, that certain labor and liberal leaders, including some of Kutcher’s supporters, refuse to extend any aid to the Stalinists, despite our repeated warnings and appeals to them. One reason is that they are buckling under the pressure of the government’s “cold war.” But there is another reason:
And that is the CP’s own attacks on the principles of labor solidarity and united labor defense against attacks on civil liberties!
During the war the Stalinists worked themselves to the bone opposing support for the Minneapolis defendants on the ground that the Trotskyists were against supporting the war, the re-election of Roosevelt, etc. In short, the Stalinists preached that civil liberties should be denied to minority parties holding unpopular views. Many unionists and liberals today accept that argument – and use it against the Stalinists. This approach is as false and short-sighted today as when it was employed by the Stalinists during the war, and will have the same disastrous effects later on. But it is one of the explanations for the Stalinist isolation today.
Another is the stand of the CP on the Kutcher case itself. If the Stalinists won’t support his case because they disagree with his politics, then why – many people ask – should we support the Stalinists when- we disagree with their politics?
Lapin’s own article – allegedly designed to prevent diversion of support from the Stalinist defense – is actually the most powerful kind of blow that could be dealt to the CP’s defense. For every ounce of support it may detract from Kutcher’s support, it adds a ton of damage to the CP’s fight for its own civil rights.
The rank-and-file members of the CP should now be approached with these questions: Wouldn’t they be far better off in mobilizing Support against the witchhunt if the CP would grant support. to Kutcher, even while differentiating itself from his political views, just as the labor leaders and liberals have done? Why doesn’t the CP leadership accept the SWP’s offer of united front action ont behalf of all victims of the witch-hunt? Why does it persist in its suicidal policy? Isn’t it the duty of rank-and-file CP members to reverse this dangerous course which is further isolating them from working class support?
And non-Stalinists who hesitate to come to the CP’s defense should be acquainted with the CP’s line on Kutcher, as an object lesson of what the violation op disregard of labor solidarity leads to. There is a certain logic in these developments, and it should be driven home to everyone: If today you fail to defend the civil rights of a working class group because you don’t agree with its policies, the result tomorrow can be fatal to yourself as well as the general cause of civil liberties.
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Newark Housing Crisis Deepened by the War</h1>
<h4>Even the Few Housing Projects Will Now Be Turned Over to “Defense” Needs;<br>
Both City Hall Machines Are In on It ...</h4>
<h3>(22 March 1941)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_12" target="new">Vol. V. No. 12</a>, 22 March 1941, p. 2.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">During the last war workers moved to the Newark industrial area in such great nurnbers that a housing shortage arose “so acute that the City was forced to erect tent colonies to shelter hundreds of evicted families; that thousands of families were doubled up in living quarters, and rooming houses were forced to rent the same bed to as many as three lodgers in one day.” (From report of Newark’s World War I Mayor.)</p>
<p>Conditions in the city today are rapidly approaching the same situation. There is a real shortage in homes, flats and apartments. As a result, rents are going up, families are moving in together, cellars and store fronts are being occupied, and when one family moves out of a house in a workers’ neighborhood, there are five to ten applicants for the place during the next two hours. And the trend, because of factory expansion, is toward greater migration into the area.</p>
<p>The picture of Newark’s 44,451 housing structures was shown in the State Housing Authority’s 1934 report:</p>
<ul>
<li><em>Of every 100 structures, 80 were found to be of wood, the worst material, the quickest to deteriorate. Of every 100, 61 were bui1t before 1908, that is, they are more than a third of a century old, and were built on what are now old-fashioned standards.</em><br>
</li>
<li><em>Out of every hundred, four were declared to be in “good condition,” 45 were in need of “minor repairs,” 46 were in need of “major repairs,” and 10 were found “unfit for use.” That is, half of Newark’s homes were either not fit to live in or badly in need of repairs, and only 4% were in “good” condition.</em><br>
</li>
</ul>
<h4>Situation Not Changed</h4>
<p class="fst">The Newark Housing Authority reported a few months ago that, in the six years since 1934, the Building Department has granted less than 5,000 permits for alterations, additions and repairs. This would mean repair work on less than ¼ of the buildings needing major repairs or unfit for use, “It is to be noted that many of these permits were for commercial properties and structures in good conditions, thus further reducing the apparent number of sub-standard dwellings affected (by the repairs).”</p>
<p>In this same period, about 1,900 housing units (not structures) were demolished, and 2,600 constructed. Private capital built less than 400 of these, the others being built by FHA and NHA. Since almost as many were demolished as built, the situation remains almost the same.</p>
<p class="quoteb">“In Newark proper,” said the NHA last September, “there has been no house building to speak of, in the past 12 years. New construction has been negligible. Demolition has far outdistanced private new construction in Newark in recent years. Today the most reliable information, obtained shows that there is about a 3% housing vacancy in Newark. A great deal of the 3% vacancies is regarded substandard, much of it unlivable ...”<br>
</p>
<h4>What NHA Proposes</h4>
<p class="fst">What conclusions does the NHA, appointed by the present city Commission, draw from this terrible situation?</p>
<p class="quoteb">“It is agreed by most of the interested government agencies, the Newark Housing Authority and the Real Estate Board and property owfrers generally, that whatever additional housing is needed in Newark should be created by private capital.”</p>
<p><em>Private capital hasn’t built any homes in 12 years. The housing situation is getting more critical every day. Therefore? Therefore, says the NHA with the approval of City Hall and both machines (the Ellenstein-Franklin-Brady group and the Byrne-Clee group), let’s not construct any more federal housing projects. Let’s leave it to private capital!</em> But this is only part of the picture.</p>
<p><em>Not only does the NHA oppose building more low-cost homes, but it is preparing behind the scenes to “divert” a large or major part of the 2,435 units of federal housing already built or being built, “sell” them to the federal government for the use of “defense workers” on the grounds that poor housing for those workers will interfere with “national defense.”</em></p>
<p>Very little has been said of this in public. Certainly few of the thousands of low paid workers and relief clients who have applied for admission to these projects know what is coming. But already a bill is being prepared in the State Legislature (this is happening in other states too) which will permit the Authority to solve its problem about the skilled workers flocking into this area at the expense of the thousands who have been waiting for over two years to get into the projects.</p>
<p>That the NHA is already actively at work on this piece of skullduggery was shown in a statement of a member of the Newark Citizens’ Housing Council last week when he demanded reorganization of that body and complained, “I do not construe intelligent co-operation (with the NHA) as being yes-men to the diversion of low rent housing to the use of skilled defense workers ...”</p>
<p>The NHA doesn’t want to build any new homes, but it does want to take away some of those already built and change their character as “low rent housing” for “the duration of the present crisis,”</p>
<p>That is why the Socialist Workers Party in the present election campaign states that the housing crisis will be with us as long as the friends of the landlords and the representatives of big business sit in City Hall. That is why We say: LET LABOR CONTROL THE CITY COMMISSION! Build a labor party to take over City Hall, to prevent the “diversion” of low cost housing already constructed and to extend the housing program by building the homes necessary for the great majority of Newark’s workers!</p>
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George Breitman
Newark Housing Crisis Deepened by the War
Even the Few Housing Projects Will Now Be Turned Over to “Defense” Needs;
Both City Hall Machines Are In on It ...
(22 March 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V. No. 12, 22 March 1941, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
During the last war workers moved to the Newark industrial area in such great nurnbers that a housing shortage arose “so acute that the City was forced to erect tent colonies to shelter hundreds of evicted families; that thousands of families were doubled up in living quarters, and rooming houses were forced to rent the same bed to as many as three lodgers in one day.” (From report of Newark’s World War I Mayor.)
Conditions in the city today are rapidly approaching the same situation. There is a real shortage in homes, flats and apartments. As a result, rents are going up, families are moving in together, cellars and store fronts are being occupied, and when one family moves out of a house in a workers’ neighborhood, there are five to ten applicants for the place during the next two hours. And the trend, because of factory expansion, is toward greater migration into the area.
The picture of Newark’s 44,451 housing structures was shown in the State Housing Authority’s 1934 report:
Of every 100 structures, 80 were found to be of wood, the worst material, the quickest to deteriorate. Of every 100, 61 were bui1t before 1908, that is, they are more than a third of a century old, and were built on what are now old-fashioned standards.
Out of every hundred, four were declared to be in “good condition,” 45 were in need of “minor repairs,” 46 were in need of “major repairs,” and 10 were found “unfit for use.” That is, half of Newark’s homes were either not fit to live in or badly in need of repairs, and only 4% were in “good” condition.
Situation Not Changed
The Newark Housing Authority reported a few months ago that, in the six years since 1934, the Building Department has granted less than 5,000 permits for alterations, additions and repairs. This would mean repair work on less than ¼ of the buildings needing major repairs or unfit for use, “It is to be noted that many of these permits were for commercial properties and structures in good conditions, thus further reducing the apparent number of sub-standard dwellings affected (by the repairs).”
In this same period, about 1,900 housing units (not structures) were demolished, and 2,600 constructed. Private capital built less than 400 of these, the others being built by FHA and NHA. Since almost as many were demolished as built, the situation remains almost the same.
“In Newark proper,” said the NHA last September, “there has been no house building to speak of, in the past 12 years. New construction has been negligible. Demolition has far outdistanced private new construction in Newark in recent years. Today the most reliable information, obtained shows that there is about a 3% housing vacancy in Newark. A great deal of the 3% vacancies is regarded substandard, much of it unlivable ...”
What NHA Proposes
What conclusions does the NHA, appointed by the present city Commission, draw from this terrible situation?
“It is agreed by most of the interested government agencies, the Newark Housing Authority and the Real Estate Board and property owfrers generally, that whatever additional housing is needed in Newark should be created by private capital.”
Private capital hasn’t built any homes in 12 years. The housing situation is getting more critical every day. Therefore? Therefore, says the NHA with the approval of City Hall and both machines (the Ellenstein-Franklin-Brady group and the Byrne-Clee group), let’s not construct any more federal housing projects. Let’s leave it to private capital! But this is only part of the picture.
Not only does the NHA oppose building more low-cost homes, but it is preparing behind the scenes to “divert” a large or major part of the 2,435 units of federal housing already built or being built, “sell” them to the federal government for the use of “defense workers” on the grounds that poor housing for those workers will interfere with “national defense.”
Very little has been said of this in public. Certainly few of the thousands of low paid workers and relief clients who have applied for admission to these projects know what is coming. But already a bill is being prepared in the State Legislature (this is happening in other states too) which will permit the Authority to solve its problem about the skilled workers flocking into this area at the expense of the thousands who have been waiting for over two years to get into the projects.
That the NHA is already actively at work on this piece of skullduggery was shown in a statement of a member of the Newark Citizens’ Housing Council last week when he demanded reorganization of that body and complained, “I do not construe intelligent co-operation (with the NHA) as being yes-men to the diversion of low rent housing to the use of skilled defense workers ...”
The NHA doesn’t want to build any new homes, but it does want to take away some of those already built and change their character as “low rent housing” for “the duration of the present crisis,”
That is why the Socialist Workers Party in the present election campaign states that the housing crisis will be with us as long as the friends of the landlords and the representatives of big business sit in City Hall. That is why We say: LET LABOR CONTROL THE CITY COMMISSION! Build a labor party to take over City Hall, to prevent the “diversion” of low cost housing already constructed and to extend the housing program by building the homes necessary for the great majority of Newark’s workers!
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<h2>George Breitman</h2>
<h1>Martin Widelin – Our Martyr</h1>
<h4>Why the Gestapo Tracked Him Down</h4>
<h3>(20 July 1946)</h3>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1946/index.htm#m46_29" target="new">Vol. X No. 29</a>, 20 July 1946, p. 3.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">Martin Widelin – member of the European Executive Committee of the Fourth International, assassinated by the French-German Gestapo in Paris two years ago on July 22 – was one of the great figures of the revolutionary movement of our time.</p>
<p>A German himself, he was a lifelong foe of German capitalist reaction and fascism. He fought against the Nazis before they came to power and then afterward, both inside Germany and in the countries occupied by them. He was a living refutation of the foul slander that the German working class was responsible for Hitlerism. As such, he inspired both Belgian and French workers and German soldiers to struggle against Hitlerite oppression.</p>
<p>Opposition to Nazism was not unusual in Europe. But the antifascism of Widelin and his comrades was something unique. For their opposition was conducted throughout in the spirit of internationalism.</p>
<p>They did not unite with the agents of Allied capitalism around the nationalist slogan of “Death to the Boche!” – as the Stalinists and “Socialists” did. On the contrary, Widelin and his co-workers in all countries sought to unite the masses of the occupied countries with the German soldiers in the occupying armies in a joint struggle against their common oppressors. Fraternization was their method, for they knew that only through fraternization could the struggle against Hitlerism have a successful revolutionary outcome. As a consequence, the Gestapo placed a higher price on the head of Widelin than it did on many an Allied general.</p>
<p>Widelin’s work was exceedingly dangerous. It was far easier to stick a knife between the ribs of a German soldier on a dark night than to meet that same German in the daytime, win his confidence and enlist him in the ranks of the revolutionary fighters against fascism. But difficult though this work was, Widelin carried it out with growing success until the day of his death.</p>
<p>In close cooperation with French and Belgian Trotskyists, he helped to establish a network of Fourth Internationalist cells within the Wehrmacht. This work was so effective that the Gestapo dispatched a special commission to Paris to destroy the Trotskyists. In one German unit alone, more than 30 soldiers were executed as Trotskyists after a stoolpigeon had been introduced into their midst.</p>
<p>Widelin’s greatest achievement was <strong>Arbeiter und Soldat</strong> (<strong>Worker and Soldier</strong>), illegal German paper which he founded and edited under the direction of the European Secretariat of the Fourth International.</p>
<p>To be caught with a copy of this paper meant horrible torture and certain death. Yet it circulated from France where it was printed in the underground all the way back through Belgium into Germany itself. And – as the. British Trotskyist paper, <strong>Socialist Appeal</strong>, reported recently – copies made their way to the distant German garrisons in Italy. (Despite many raids, the Gestapo never discovered the press on which <strong>Arbeiter und Soldat</strong> was printed.)</p>
<p>Among Widelin’s other contributions was the role he played in helping to prepare the historic European Conference of the Fourth International in February, 1944, to which he was a delegate and by which he was elected as a member of the European Executive Committee.</p>
<p>Widelin’s murder was a great blow to the Fourth International and above all to its German section. If he were ALIVE today, we know that he would again be inside Germany, fighting to end the Allied oppression of that country. But not in any nationalist spirit! He would be passionately organizing the German workers for independent struggle, he would be actively working among the Allied soldiers trying to win their sympathy and support. His method would still be fraternization. His slogan and goal would still be the one for which he gave his life – the Socialist United States of Europe and the whole world.</p>
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George Breitman
Martin Widelin – Our Martyr
Why the Gestapo Tracked Him Down
(20 July 1946)
From The Militant, Vol. X No. 29, 20 July 1946, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Martin Widelin – member of the European Executive Committee of the Fourth International, assassinated by the French-German Gestapo in Paris two years ago on July 22 – was one of the great figures of the revolutionary movement of our time.
A German himself, he was a lifelong foe of German capitalist reaction and fascism. He fought against the Nazis before they came to power and then afterward, both inside Germany and in the countries occupied by them. He was a living refutation of the foul slander that the German working class was responsible for Hitlerism. As such, he inspired both Belgian and French workers and German soldiers to struggle against Hitlerite oppression.
Opposition to Nazism was not unusual in Europe. But the antifascism of Widelin and his comrades was something unique. For their opposition was conducted throughout in the spirit of internationalism.
They did not unite with the agents of Allied capitalism around the nationalist slogan of “Death to the Boche!” – as the Stalinists and “Socialists” did. On the contrary, Widelin and his co-workers in all countries sought to unite the masses of the occupied countries with the German soldiers in the occupying armies in a joint struggle against their common oppressors. Fraternization was their method, for they knew that only through fraternization could the struggle against Hitlerism have a successful revolutionary outcome. As a consequence, the Gestapo placed a higher price on the head of Widelin than it did on many an Allied general.
Widelin’s work was exceedingly dangerous. It was far easier to stick a knife between the ribs of a German soldier on a dark night than to meet that same German in the daytime, win his confidence and enlist him in the ranks of the revolutionary fighters against fascism. But difficult though this work was, Widelin carried it out with growing success until the day of his death.
In close cooperation with French and Belgian Trotskyists, he helped to establish a network of Fourth Internationalist cells within the Wehrmacht. This work was so effective that the Gestapo dispatched a special commission to Paris to destroy the Trotskyists. In one German unit alone, more than 30 soldiers were executed as Trotskyists after a stoolpigeon had been introduced into their midst.
Widelin’s greatest achievement was Arbeiter und Soldat (Worker and Soldier), illegal German paper which he founded and edited under the direction of the European Secretariat of the Fourth International.
To be caught with a copy of this paper meant horrible torture and certain death. Yet it circulated from France where it was printed in the underground all the way back through Belgium into Germany itself. And – as the. British Trotskyist paper, Socialist Appeal, reported recently – copies made their way to the distant German garrisons in Italy. (Despite many raids, the Gestapo never discovered the press on which Arbeiter und Soldat was printed.)
Among Widelin’s other contributions was the role he played in helping to prepare the historic European Conference of the Fourth International in February, 1944, to which he was a delegate and by which he was elected as a member of the European Executive Committee.
Widelin’s murder was a great blow to the Fourth International and above all to its German section. If he were ALIVE today, we know that he would again be inside Germany, fighting to end the Allied oppression of that country. But not in any nationalist spirit! He would be passionately organizing the German workers for independent struggle, he would be actively working among the Allied soldiers trying to win their sympathy and support. His method would still be fraternization. His slogan and goal would still be the one for which he gave his life – the Socialist United States of Europe and the whole world.
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<h2>Albert Parker</h2>
<h4>The Negro Struggle</h4>
<h1>Wallace and the Negroes</h1>
<h3>(5 January 1948)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_01" target="new">Vol. XII No. 1</a>, 5 January 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
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<p class="fst">The prestige of Henry Wallace among the Negro people is greater today than of any prominent politician in the country. If present indications mean anything, he will draw a very large Negro vote in 1948; perhaps even a majority of the Negro vote.</p>
<p>The reason, of course, is that Wallace is the only capitalist politician who has taken a forthright position against Jim Crow and who has even staged some demonstrations against segregation at public meetings in the South. If Negroes vote for Wallace it will be because they conceive such a vote to be a protest against the system of race prejudice and all its evils.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, we want to sound a warning to all militant Negroes: Be careful! Don’t accept any counterfeit! Look this piece of merchandise over very closely before you buy it!</p>
<p>Remember this: Words are cheap, especially for capitalist politicians. Don’t judge a man or a party only by what they say, but also by what they do; and not merely by what they say and do today, but by what they said and did in the past.</p>
<p>The first point to remember is that Wallace’s friendship for the Negro struggle is of very recent origin. In fact, most of it, suspiciously enough, dates from the time he decided to break with Truman in 1946 and began to eye the presidential nomination.</p>
<p>But Wallace was in politics a long time before that. For something like 14 years before that he was one of the leaders of the Democratic Party, and he never had much to say against the Jim Crow system in those days; as a matter of fact, he and Roosevelt supported and got support from the rabidly Jim Crow Southern Democrats.</p>
<p>As a Cabinet officer he never lifted a finger to end discrimination against Negro federal employees. As Secretary of Agriculture his politics favored the big landholders in the South and did nothing to help the poverty-stricken Negro and white sharecroppers. As Secretary of Commerce he never put up any kind of real fight for the FEPC or against job discrimination in industry.</p>
<p>But the best example of the suspicious contrast between his past record and his present pronouncements is the stand he took during the war. Today, of course, he poses as an intrepid anti-war fighter, while a few years ago he was one of the biggest apologists and advocates of war. Now the questions we want to raise for consideration are these: Does any one remember Henry Wallace ever saying anything against Army Jim Crow and segregation during that whole war? Or doing anything against them?</p>
<p>How much reliance can you place in a man who kept his mouth shut in time of war, when it counted the most and when the Negro people were engaged in bitter struggles to win equality in the armed forces?</p>
<p>Just this brief look at the Wallace record is enough to show that you can’t properly judge a man by what he says when he is running for office. But there is another and equally important aspect to the Wallace problem – the question of his program on Jim Crow – and that we will discuss next week.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
Wallace and the Negroes
(5 January 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. XII No. 1, 5 January 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The prestige of Henry Wallace among the Negro people is greater today than of any prominent politician in the country. If present indications mean anything, he will draw a very large Negro vote in 1948; perhaps even a majority of the Negro vote.
The reason, of course, is that Wallace is the only capitalist politician who has taken a forthright position against Jim Crow and who has even staged some demonstrations against segregation at public meetings in the South. If Negroes vote for Wallace it will be because they conceive such a vote to be a protest against the system of race prejudice and all its evils.
Nevertheless, we want to sound a warning to all militant Negroes: Be careful! Don’t accept any counterfeit! Look this piece of merchandise over very closely before you buy it!
Remember this: Words are cheap, especially for capitalist politicians. Don’t judge a man or a party only by what they say, but also by what they do; and not merely by what they say and do today, but by what they said and did in the past.
The first point to remember is that Wallace’s friendship for the Negro struggle is of very recent origin. In fact, most of it, suspiciously enough, dates from the time he decided to break with Truman in 1946 and began to eye the presidential nomination.
But Wallace was in politics a long time before that. For something like 14 years before that he was one of the leaders of the Democratic Party, and he never had much to say against the Jim Crow system in those days; as a matter of fact, he and Roosevelt supported and got support from the rabidly Jim Crow Southern Democrats.
As a Cabinet officer he never lifted a finger to end discrimination against Negro federal employees. As Secretary of Agriculture his politics favored the big landholders in the South and did nothing to help the poverty-stricken Negro and white sharecroppers. As Secretary of Commerce he never put up any kind of real fight for the FEPC or against job discrimination in industry.
But the best example of the suspicious contrast between his past record and his present pronouncements is the stand he took during the war. Today, of course, he poses as an intrepid anti-war fighter, while a few years ago he was one of the biggest apologists and advocates of war. Now the questions we want to raise for consideration are these: Does any one remember Henry Wallace ever saying anything against Army Jim Crow and segregation during that whole war? Or doing anything against them?
How much reliance can you place in a man who kept his mouth shut in time of war, when it counted the most and when the Negro people were engaged in bitter struggles to win equality in the armed forces?
Just this brief look at the Wallace record is enough to show that you can’t properly judge a man by what he says when he is running for office. But there is another and equally important aspect to the Wallace problem – the question of his program on Jim Crow – and that we will discuss next week.
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<h2>John F. Petrone</h2><h2>
</h2><h1>To My Uncle in Italy</h1>
<h3>(9 February 1948)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1948/index.htm#m48_06" target="new">Vol. 12 No. 6</a>, 9 February 1948, p. 4.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<p class="fst"><strong>Dear Uncle:</strong></p>
<p>Thanks for your letter about the Italian strikes.</p>
<p>I hope that by this time you have received the CARE package we sent. As soon as our budget allows, we will send another. But that is not the purpose of this letter, I am writing this at the suggestion of a man with considerable power in our government, the Honorable Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin, a Republican member of the U.S. Senate who is noted for speeches extolling the quality of cheese produced in his state. Sometimes he discusses broader subjects in the Senate, as he. did when he said recently:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“American citizens writing abroad should write about true conditions in America, stressing the many blessings that we enjoy in this land of freedom, the comforts, the conveniences, as well as stressing the aid that we have already extended abroad for the noblest of humanitarian purposes – both as individuals and as a nation.”</p>
<p class="fst">This strikes me as a good idea.</p>
<p>First, a word or two about that chief blessing, the high American standard of living. Of course, it is higher than the Italian standard, but it is nothing like what you sec in the Hollywood films. Money wages are much higher than ever before, but that is true in Italy too. isn’t it?</p>
<p>Last week a New Jersey mechanic, told a Senate committee he earns $2,500 a year, but because of high prices he and his family do not have enough food or milk, or money for medical care. “We are just existing, not living,” he said.</p>
<p>And in Cleveland, a post office worker earning $2,700 a year, declared he and his family had been better off during the depression when he worked in a steel mill for 60c an hour, or less than $1,300 a year. To be worse off than during the terrible depression my father used to write you about such blessings we can well do without.</p>
<p>I think you have already had the chance to become familiar with some of the other blessings we enjoy in this land of freedom.</p>
<p>For example, President Truman has for the last ear been carrying on a “loyalty” campaign to terrorize and drive out of the government all employees holding ideas which he labels as “subversive.” Mussolini, if I recall rightly, did the same.</p>
<p>Congress has passed a savage anti-labor law to discourage strikes and. regiment the unions. You yourself have written us how the fascist government issued similar decrees. Truman broke a national strike to make the railroads run on time. Mussolini achieved some of his fame in a like manner.</p>
<p>In Oklahoma a girt has been denied admission to the state law school solely because of the color of her skin. Mussolini’s fascist press also spouted “white supremacy” doctrines when, his planes dropped bombs and gas on the helpless Ethiopians.</p>
<p>Generals and bankers are the undisputed lords and masters in Washington, even as they were in Italy after the First World War. One of their chief demands is peace-time conscription; evidently they were impressed by the successes it won for Mussolini and Hitler.</p>
<p>The people groan under the burden of heavy taxes, extorted in the name of preserving peace through a vast war preparation program.</p>
<p>I could continue indefinitely in this vein about the “true conditions” in this country. But I don’t want you to get a wrong impression. I am not saying that America today is like fascist Italy in every respect, but that the capitalist class in America is like the capitalist class in fascist Italy – only more powerful and therefore more dangerous. If they have their way, an American Duce will put us all on a castor oil diet.</p>
<p>But we intend to see to it that they don’t have their way. When the American workers get done correcting things, we’ll take that atom bomb out of their hands and put them to work at useful labor. If they still want to make the railroads run on time, we’ll give them honest jobs as firemen or ticket-punchers.</p>
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<p class="fst">Your devoted nephew,<br>
<em>John</em></p>
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<p><br>
<br>
</p>
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John F. Petrone
To My Uncle in Italy
(9 February 1948)
From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 6, 9 February 1948, p. 4.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Dear Uncle:
Thanks for your letter about the Italian strikes.
I hope that by this time you have received the CARE package we sent. As soon as our budget allows, we will send another. But that is not the purpose of this letter, I am writing this at the suggestion of a man with considerable power in our government, the Honorable Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin, a Republican member of the U.S. Senate who is noted for speeches extolling the quality of cheese produced in his state. Sometimes he discusses broader subjects in the Senate, as he. did when he said recently:
“American citizens writing abroad should write about true conditions in America, stressing the many blessings that we enjoy in this land of freedom, the comforts, the conveniences, as well as stressing the aid that we have already extended abroad for the noblest of humanitarian purposes – both as individuals and as a nation.”
This strikes me as a good idea.
First, a word or two about that chief blessing, the high American standard of living. Of course, it is higher than the Italian standard, but it is nothing like what you sec in the Hollywood films. Money wages are much higher than ever before, but that is true in Italy too. isn’t it?
Last week a New Jersey mechanic, told a Senate committee he earns $2,500 a year, but because of high prices he and his family do not have enough food or milk, or money for medical care. “We are just existing, not living,” he said.
And in Cleveland, a post office worker earning $2,700 a year, declared he and his family had been better off during the depression when he worked in a steel mill for 60c an hour, or less than $1,300 a year. To be worse off than during the terrible depression my father used to write you about such blessings we can well do without.
I think you have already had the chance to become familiar with some of the other blessings we enjoy in this land of freedom.
For example, President Truman has for the last ear been carrying on a “loyalty” campaign to terrorize and drive out of the government all employees holding ideas which he labels as “subversive.” Mussolini, if I recall rightly, did the same.
Congress has passed a savage anti-labor law to discourage strikes and. regiment the unions. You yourself have written us how the fascist government issued similar decrees. Truman broke a national strike to make the railroads run on time. Mussolini achieved some of his fame in a like manner.
In Oklahoma a girt has been denied admission to the state law school solely because of the color of her skin. Mussolini’s fascist press also spouted “white supremacy” doctrines when, his planes dropped bombs and gas on the helpless Ethiopians.
Generals and bankers are the undisputed lords and masters in Washington, even as they were in Italy after the First World War. One of their chief demands is peace-time conscription; evidently they were impressed by the successes it won for Mussolini and Hitler.
The people groan under the burden of heavy taxes, extorted in the name of preserving peace through a vast war preparation program.
I could continue indefinitely in this vein about the “true conditions” in this country. But I don’t want you to get a wrong impression. I am not saying that America today is like fascist Italy in every respect, but that the capitalist class in America is like the capitalist class in fascist Italy – only more powerful and therefore more dangerous. If they have their way, an American Duce will put us all on a castor oil diet.
But we intend to see to it that they don’t have their way. When the American workers get done correcting things, we’ll take that atom bomb out of their hands and put them to work at useful labor. If they still want to make the railroads run on time, we’ll give them honest jobs as firemen or ticket-punchers.
Your devoted nephew,
John
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<h2 class="western">Albert Parker</h2>
<h1>The Negro Struggle</h1>
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<td><br>
<h4 class="motto">“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.</h4>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3>(22 February 1941)</h3>
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<p class="info">From <strong>The Militant</strong>, <a href="../../../../newspape/themilitant/1941/index.htm#m41_08" target="new">Vol. V. No.8</a>, 22 February 1941, p. 5.<br>
Transcribed & marked up by <a href="../../../../../../admin/volunteers/biographies/eocallaghan.htm" target="new">Einde O’ Callaghan</a> for the <strong>Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL)</strong>.</p>
<hr width="100%" noshade="noshade" size="1">
<a name="p1"></a>
<h4 class="western">Beware of Judas Goats!</h4>
<p class="fst">Under the title, <em>Beware of Disunity</em>, printed in this week’s <strong>Pittsburgh Courier</strong>, Edward Lawson, managing editor of <strong>Opportunity Magazine</strong>, has written the most nonsensical and disgusting article that, has yet appeared anywhere on the question of the Negro in the present war crisis. Lawson starts off by quoting a recent statement of the National Urban League:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“The Negro must guard against the possibility that, in the excitement of the nation-wide defense program, propagandists for various groups will attempt to stir up trouble between white and colored people.”</p>
<p class="fst">On this he comments:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“Today that possibility is a reality. In the press, on the radio, in countless letters and handbills – and even more often by word of mouth – we are hearing today the cry, ‘Let’s solve our own problems here in the United States before we presume to interfere in the problems that beset the European nations.’”</p>
<p class="fst">He points to recent statements of Dr. Robert Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, Dr. Etmnett J. Scott, leading Negro Republican, and John P. Davis, executive secretary of the National Negro Congress, to show that each (for different reasons) has advocated this view.</p>
<p>Lawson claims he doesn’t want to argue about the truth of their statements about conditions in this country, that he is willing to admit that. “But also,” he says in the “same breath, such statements “are dangerous.” And why?</p>
<p class="quoteb">“... because they paint for us an illusion ... that all our problems could be solved in one brief period of readjustment ... because, by oversimplifying a many-faceted situation, they lead to false hope ... because in their logical development they would set one race against another, here in America, at a time when we need more than anything else complete unity of spirit and full no-operation ... because, intentionally or not, they dovetail neatly into Hitler’s technique of propaganda against the democracies, which is divide and move in.”</p>
<p class="fst">Later he asks. “Could it be that Messrs. Hutching Scott, Davis, <em>et al.</em> are helping him (Hitler) to do this little job?”</p>
<p>The other little nugget in this treacherous article of Lawson’s is the following idea:</p>
<p class="quoteb">“If America were a totalitarian state, and if the dictator were sympathetic and fair-minded in his attitude toward minority groups, everything the Negro now desires could be accomplished overnight, by one stroke of the dictator’s pen, or one sweep of hie sword.</p>
<p class="quote">“Because America is a Democracy, the changes which we all desire for the betterment of onr lives must come gradually, through what we call the Democratic process.</p>
<p class="quote">“Those who would substitute some other process should first be required to demonstrate that their method would be more advantageous to us than the one we already have.”</p>
<p class="fst">Now we do not mention all this because we are particularly interested in defending any of the three men whom Lawson attacks. Hutchins is an isolationist who never before showed any interest in the Negro’s problems. Scott is a Republican, seeking to make political capital among the Negroes for his brand of capitalist politics. Davis is a Stalinist, interested in winning support among Negroes for Stalin’s foreign policy. With of these men will drop his interest in the Negro’s problems.<br>
</p>
<a name="p2"></a>
<h4 class="western">What Lawson Really Means</h4>
<p class="fst">But we ARE interested in defending the idea that Negroes have no reason to support this so-called war for democracy when they themselves are deprived of democracy by the capitalist class preparing this war.</p>
<p>What is the “disunity” that Lawson talks about? He is talking about disunity between the Negro and the bosses who Jim Crow the Negro. To Lawson, asking for equal rights for the Negro is “disunity.” “Beware of asking for your rights” is what he is warning the Negro people.</p>
<p>It is fair to ask: “Whose little job is Lawson helping?” Is he helping the Negro, or is he helping Senators Bilbo and Cotton Ed Smith, when he tells the Negvo to beware of fighting for his rights? Using Lawson’s own logic, one could easily assert that, “intentionally or not,” he is helping the cause of white supremacy.</p>
<p>Lawson says, in effect, that Hitler is helped by a struggle for equal rights for Negroes. This is a lie. Hitler could never be helped by a struggle to wipe out racial discrimination, he is greatly weakened in his own country whenever the idea of racial superiority is wiped out anywhere in the entire world. On the contrary, Hitler (and the American Bilbos) are greatly helped whenever anyone tries to tone down the struggle for racial equality.</p>
<p>No where in his entire article does Lawson advocate a struggle against Jim Crowism in the armed forces or in civilian life. This omission by a so-called Negro leader is treachery to his people.</p>
<p>We ask Lawson: how was the Negro emancipated? By gradualness? Or by civil war? With Lawson’s method, the Negro would still be a slave. And what has happened since 1877? The policy of gradual improvement has been followed, especially as exemplified by Booker T. Washington, and with what results? The Negro doesn’t have a single right more today than he had then. Thus history has tested Lawson’s method.</p>
<p>We reject both the fairy tale about the benevolent dictator and the falsehood about the gradual method, and we stick to our own policy of Negro and white labor unity against capitalist oppression and discrimination, in peace-time and in war-time.</p>
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Albert Parker
The Negro Struggle
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded.” – Karl Marx.
(22 February 1941)
From The Militant, Vol. V. No.8, 22 February 1941, p. 5.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Beware of Judas Goats!
Under the title, Beware of Disunity, printed in this week’s Pittsburgh Courier, Edward Lawson, managing editor of Opportunity Magazine, has written the most nonsensical and disgusting article that, has yet appeared anywhere on the question of the Negro in the present war crisis. Lawson starts off by quoting a recent statement of the National Urban League:
“The Negro must guard against the possibility that, in the excitement of the nation-wide defense program, propagandists for various groups will attempt to stir up trouble between white and colored people.”
On this he comments:
“Today that possibility is a reality. In the press, on the radio, in countless letters and handbills – and even more often by word of mouth – we are hearing today the cry, ‘Let’s solve our own problems here in the United States before we presume to interfere in the problems that beset the European nations.’”
He points to recent statements of Dr. Robert Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, Dr. Etmnett J. Scott, leading Negro Republican, and John P. Davis, executive secretary of the National Negro Congress, to show that each (for different reasons) has advocated this view.
Lawson claims he doesn’t want to argue about the truth of their statements about conditions in this country, that he is willing to admit that. “But also,” he says in the “same breath, such statements “are dangerous.” And why?
“... because they paint for us an illusion ... that all our problems could be solved in one brief period of readjustment ... because, by oversimplifying a many-faceted situation, they lead to false hope ... because in their logical development they would set one race against another, here in America, at a time when we need more than anything else complete unity of spirit and full no-operation ... because, intentionally or not, they dovetail neatly into Hitler’s technique of propaganda against the democracies, which is divide and move in.”
Later he asks. “Could it be that Messrs. Hutching Scott, Davis, et al. are helping him (Hitler) to do this little job?”
The other little nugget in this treacherous article of Lawson’s is the following idea:
“If America were a totalitarian state, and if the dictator were sympathetic and fair-minded in his attitude toward minority groups, everything the Negro now desires could be accomplished overnight, by one stroke of the dictator’s pen, or one sweep of hie sword.
“Because America is a Democracy, the changes which we all desire for the betterment of onr lives must come gradually, through what we call the Democratic process.
“Those who would substitute some other process should first be required to demonstrate that their method would be more advantageous to us than the one we already have.”
Now we do not mention all this because we are particularly interested in defending any of the three men whom Lawson attacks. Hutchins is an isolationist who never before showed any interest in the Negro’s problems. Scott is a Republican, seeking to make political capital among the Negroes for his brand of capitalist politics. Davis is a Stalinist, interested in winning support among Negroes for Stalin’s foreign policy. With of these men will drop his interest in the Negro’s problems.
What Lawson Really Means
But we ARE interested in defending the idea that Negroes have no reason to support this so-called war for democracy when they themselves are deprived of democracy by the capitalist class preparing this war.
What is the “disunity” that Lawson talks about? He is talking about disunity between the Negro and the bosses who Jim Crow the Negro. To Lawson, asking for equal rights for the Negro is “disunity.” “Beware of asking for your rights” is what he is warning the Negro people.
It is fair to ask: “Whose little job is Lawson helping?” Is he helping the Negro, or is he helping Senators Bilbo and Cotton Ed Smith, when he tells the Negvo to beware of fighting for his rights? Using Lawson’s own logic, one could easily assert that, “intentionally or not,” he is helping the cause of white supremacy.
Lawson says, in effect, that Hitler is helped by a struggle for equal rights for Negroes. This is a lie. Hitler could never be helped by a struggle to wipe out racial discrimination, he is greatly weakened in his own country whenever the idea of racial superiority is wiped out anywhere in the entire world. On the contrary, Hitler (and the American Bilbos) are greatly helped whenever anyone tries to tone down the struggle for racial equality.
No where in his entire article does Lawson advocate a struggle against Jim Crowism in the armed forces or in civilian life. This omission by a so-called Negro leader is treachery to his people.
We ask Lawson: how was the Negro emancipated? By gradualness? Or by civil war? With Lawson’s method, the Negro would still be a slave. And what has happened since 1877? The policy of gradual improvement has been followed, especially as exemplified by Booker T. Washington, and with what results? The Negro doesn’t have a single right more today than he had then. Thus history has tested Lawson’s method.
We reject both the fairy tale about the benevolent dictator and the falsehood about the gradual method, and we stick to our own policy of Negro and white labor unity against capitalist oppression and discrimination, in peace-time and in war-time.
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