The Civil War in France
{"WorkMasterId":6487,"WpPageId":282478,"ParentWpPageId":189644,"Slug":"marx-civil-war-in-france","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/karl-marx/marx-civil-war-in-france/","RelativeUrl":"theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/karl-marx/marx-civil-war-in-france/","HasFullText":true,"RawHtmlLength":267321,"CleanHtmlLength":209980,"Kicker":"Philosophy Work","Title":"The Civil War in France","Deck":"Marx interprets the Paris Commune through class power, state form, democracy, violence, and proletarian self-government.","BackLink":{"Text":"Back to Karl Marx","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/karl-marx/"},"AuthorCard":{"Label":"Author","Title":"Karl Marx","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/karl-marx/","MediaHref":"","ImageSrc":"https://chrisdeasy.com/wp-content/uploads/karl-marx-01-mayall-1875-standard-portrait.jpg","ImageAlt":"Karl Marx, Mayall portrait, 1875","FilterTerra":"Western Europe","ClickText":"Karl Marx","ClickHref":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/karl-marx/","Copies":["1818 CE – 1883 CE","Trier, Rhine Province, Kingdom of Prussia","German philosopher of historical materialism, alienation, class struggle, ideology critique, political economy, capitalism, communism, religion critique, and social transformation."]},"ContextCards":[{"Label":"Period","Key":"Period:4","Title":"Modern History","DateText":"1800 CE – 1944 CE","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/eras-of-thought/philosophers-of-modern-history/"},{"Label":"Era","Key":"Era:11","Title":"Long 19th Century","DateText":"1870 CE – 1913 CE","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/eras-of-thought/philosophers-of-modern-history/philosophers-of-the-long-19th-century/"},{"Label":"Composition","Title":"1871 CE","Url":"","DateText":""}],"DateNote":"Displayed as 1871 CE for publication by the International Working Men\u0027s Association.","GeoCards":[{"Label":"Region","Key":"Region:1"},{"Label":"Terra Avita","Key":"TerraAvita:1"},{"Label":"Terra Avita Region","Key":"TerraAvitaRegion:3"},{"Label":"Modern Country","Key":"Country:DEU:1"}],"OriginalTitle":"The Civil War in France","Language":"German / French / English","DisciplineCards":[{"Label":"Primary Discipline","Key":"Discipline:political-philosophy"},{"Label":"Secondary Discipline","Key":"Discipline:ethics"}],"Tradition":"Historical materialism / critique of political economy","FullText":{"Title":"Full Text","Copy":"Full text from Marxists Internet Archive: The Civil War in France .","Url":"","Label":"","Kicker":"","Cards":[]},"CoreThesis":["Marx interprets the Paris Commune through class power, state form, democracy, violence, and proletarian self-government."],"Classification":{"AlternateTitles":"Address of the General Council on the Paris Commune","KeyConcepts":"Paris Commune; state; democracy; proletariat; revolution; class power; civil war","Methodology":"Historical-materialist analysis, critique of political economy, dialectical critique, philosophical polemic, archival manuscript work, journalism, and social theory.","Structure":"The page records an approved Marx work with explicit year, source evidence, and visible coauthorship, manuscript, posthumous, or Engels-edited status where needed."},"Arguments":["Marx interprets the Paris Commune through class power, state form, democracy, violence, and proletarian self-government."],"Influence":{"InfluencedBy":"Hegel, Feuerbach, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Aristotle, Epicurus, French socialism, British political economy, and nineteenth-century revolutionary politics.","InfluenceOn":""},"Significance":["Included as one of the twenty-seven direct Karl Marx work pages approved for the Karl Marx full-process repair.","The work anchors Marx\u0027s continuing relevance for capitalism, labor, alienation, class, ideology, religion critique, political economy, state power, social transformation, and historical explanation."],"EvidenceNote":["Accepted through Marxists archive, catalog, and scholarship evidence; HasFullText remains false."],"MainSections":[{"Kind":"RawSection","Title":"Full Versions","BodyHtml":"\u003cdiv class=\"dz-philo__full-version-grid\"\u003e\n \u003carticle class=\"dz-philo__full-version-card\"\u003e\n \u003cp class=\"dz-philo__full-version-provider\"\u003eMarxists Internet Archive\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003ch3 class=\"dz-philo__full-version-title\"\u003eThe Civil War in France\u003c/h3\u003e\n \u003cp class=\"dz-philo__full-version-meta\"\u003eHtmlText · LinkOnlyReady\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003ca class=\"dz-philo__full-version-link\" href=\"https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/index.htm\"\u003eOpen full version\u003c/a\u003e\n \u003c/article\u003e\n \u003c/div\u003e"},{"Kind":"TextSection","Title":"Core Thesis","Paragraphs":["Marx interprets the Paris Commune through class power, state form, democracy, violence, and proletarian self-government."]},{"Kind":"FieldSection","Title":"Classification","Fields":[{"Label":"Alternate Titles","Value":"Address of the General Council on the Paris Commune"},{"Label":"Key Concepts","Value":"Paris Commune; state; democracy; proletariat; revolution; class power; civil war"},{"Label":"Methodology","Value":"Historical-materialist analysis, critique of political economy, dialectical critique, philosophical polemic, archival manuscript work, journalism, and social theory."},{"Label":"Structure","Value":"The page records an approved Marx work with explicit year, source evidence, and visible coauthorship, manuscript, posthumous, or Engels-edited status where needed."}]},{"Kind":"TextSection","Title":"Arguments","Paragraphs":["Marx interprets the Paris Commune through class power, state form, democracy, violence, and proletarian self-government."]},{"Kind":"FieldSection","Title":"Influence","Fields":[{"Label":"Influenced By","Value":"Hegel, Feuerbach, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Aristotle, Epicurus, French socialism, British political economy, and nineteenth-century revolutionary politics."},{"Label":"Influence On","Value":"Marxism, socialism, communism, critical theory, labor movements, political economy, sociology, social philosophy, philosophy of history, and twentieth-century continental thought."}]},{"Kind":"TextSection","Title":"Significance","Paragraphs":["Included as one of the twenty-seven direct Karl Marx work pages approved for the Karl Marx full-process repair.","The work anchors Marx\u0027s continuing relevance for capitalism, labor, alienation, class, ideology, religion critique, political economy, state power, social transformation, and historical explanation."]},{"Kind":"TextSection","Title":"Evidence Note","Paragraphs":["Accepted through Marxists archive, catalog, and scholarship evidence; HasFullText remains false."]},{"Kind":"RawSection","Title":"Full Text","BodyHtml":"\u003cp class=\"dz-philo__section-copy dz-philo__full-text-source\"\u003eFull text from \u003ca href=\"https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/index.htm\"\u003eMarxists Internet Archive: The Civil War in France\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003carticle class=\"dz-philo__full-text-body\"\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\r\n\u003ch3\u003e\nIntroduction\n\u003c/h3\u003e\n\u003chr /\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026#160;\u003c/p\u003e \n\u003cp\u003e\n Written by Karl Marx as an address to the \u003ca href=\"../../../../../glossary/orgs/f/i.htm#general-council\"\u003eGeneral Council of the International\u003c/a\u003e, with the aim of distributing to workers of all countries a clear understanding of the character and world-wide significance of the heroic struggle of the Communards and their historical experience to learn from. The book was widely circulated by 1872 it was translated into several languages and published throughout Europe and the United States.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\nThe first address was delivered on July 23rd, 1870, five days after the beginning of the Franco-\u003ca href=\"../../../../../glossary/places/p/r.htm#prussia\"\u003ePrussian\u003c/a\u003e War. The second address, delivered on September 9, 1870, gave a historical overview of the events a week after the army of Bonaparte was defeated. The third address, delivered on May 30, 1871, two days after the defeat of the Paris Commune \u0026#8211; detailed the significance and the underlining causes of the first workers government ever created.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003ePublication Information:\u003c/span\u003e \u003cem\u003e The Civil War in France \u003c/em\u003e was originally published by Marx as only the third address (here comprising Chapters 3 through 6) separated into four chapters. In 1891, on the 20th anniversary of the Paris Commune, Engels put together a new collection of the work. Engels decided to include the first two addresses that Marx made to the International (Chapters 1 and 2) \u0026#8211; in this way providing additional historical background to the Civil War; Marx\u0026#8217;s account of the Franco-Prussian War (July to September, 1870). In this publication, basic titles have been provided for each chapter in brackets, to give the unfamiliar reader a basic guide to the historical events each chapter discusses. Also, Engels 1891 introduction has been separated into two parts: an introduction (below) and a \u003ca href=\"postscript.htm\"\u003epostscript\u003c/a\u003e. \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026#160;\u003c/p\u003e \n\u003chr /\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e\n1891 Introduction by Frederick Engels\u003cbr /\u003e\nOn the 20th Anniversary of the Paris Commune\u003c/h2\u003e\n\n\u003ch3\u003e\n[Historical Background \u0026amp;\u003cbr /\u003e Overview of the Civil War]\u003c/h3\u003e\n\n\u003chr /\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026#160;\u003c/p\u003e \n\n\n\u003cp\u003e\nThanks to the economic and political development of France since [the French Revolution of]\n1789, for 50 years the position of Paris has been such that no revolutions\ncould break out there without assuming a proletarian character, that is\nto say, the proletariat, which had bought victory with its blood,\nwould advance its own demands after victory. These demands were more or less\nunclear and even confused, corresponding to the state of evolution reached\nby the workers of Paris at the particular period, but in the last resort\nthey all amounted to the abolition of the class antagonism between capitalist\nand workers. It is true that no one knew how this was to be brought about.\nBut the demand itself, however indefinite it still was in its formulation,\ncontained a threat to the existing order of society; the workers who put\nit forward were still armed; therefore the disarming of the workers was\nthe first commandment for the bourgeois at the helm of the state. Hence,\nafter every revolution won by the workers, a new struggle, ending with\nthe defeat of the workers.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\nThis happened for the first time in 1848. The liberal bourgeoisie\nof the parliamentary opposition held banquets for securing reform of the\nfranchise, which was to ensure supremacy for their party. Forced more and\nmore, in their struggle with the government, to appeal to the people, they\nhad to allow the radical and republican strata of the bourgeoisie and petty\nbourgeoisie gradually to take the lead. But behind these stood the revolutionary\nworkers, and since 1830,\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#A\" name=\"Ab\"\u003e[A]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e these had acquired far more political independence\nthan the bourgeoisie, and even the republicans, suspected. At the moment\nof the crisis between the government and the opposition, the workers opened\nbattle on the streets; [King] Louis Philippe vanished, and with him the franchise\nreform; and in its place arose the republic, and indeed one which the victorious\nworkers themselves designated as a \u0026#8220;social\u0026#8221; republic. No one, however,\nwas clear as to what this social republic was to imply; not even the workers\nthemselves. But they now had arms in their hands, and were a power in the\nstate. Therefore, as soon as the bourgeois republicans in control felt\nsomething like firm ground under their feet, their first aim was to disarm\nthe workers. This took place by driving them into the insurrection of \u003ca href=\"../../../../../glossary/events/j/u.htm#june-insurrection-1848\"\u003eJune\n1848\u003c/a\u003e by direct breach of faith, by open defiance and the attempt to banish\nthe unemployed to a distant province. The government had taken care to\nhave an overwhelming superiority of force. After five days\u0026#8217; heroic struggle,\nthe workers were defeated. And then followed a blood-bath of the defenceless\nprisoners, the likes of which as not been seen since the days of the civil\nwars which ushered in the downfall of the Roman republic. It was the first\ntime that the bourgeoisie showed to what insane cruelties of revenge it\nwill be goaded the moment the proletariat dares to take its stand against\nthem as a separate class, with its own interests and demands. And yet 1848\nwas only child\u0026#8217;s play compared with their frenzy in 1871.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\nPunishment followed hard at heel. If the proletariat was not yet\nable to rule France, the bourgeoisie could no longer do so. At least not\nat that period, when the greater part of it was still monarchically inclined,\nand it was divided into three dynastic parties [\u003ca href=\"../../../../../glossary/orgs/l/e.htm#legitimists\"\u003eLegitimists\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"../../../../../glossary/orgs/o/r.htm#orleanists\"\u003eOrleanists\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"../../../../../glossary/terms/b/o.htm#bonapartism\"\u003eBonapartists\u003c/a\u003e] and a fourth republican\nparty. Its internal dissensions allowed the adventurer \u003ca href=\"../../../../../glossary/people/n/a.htm#napoleon-3\"\u003eLouis Bonaparte\u003c/a\u003e\nto take possession of all the commanding points \u0026#8211; army, police, administrative\nmachinery \u0026#8211; and, on December 2, 1851,\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#B\" name=\"Bb\"\u003e[B]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e to explode the last stronghold of the bourgeoisie, the National Assembly. The Second Empire opened the exploitation\nof France by a gang of political and financial adventurers, but at the\nsame time also an industrial development such as had never been possible\nunder the narrow-minded and timorous system of Louis Philippe, with its\nexclusive domination by only a small section of the big bourgeoisie. Louis\nBonaparte took the political power from the capitalists under the pretext\nof protecting them, the bourgeoisie, from the workers, and on the other\nhand the workers from them; but in return his rule encouraged speculation\nand industrial activity \u0026#8211; in a word the rise and enrichment of the whole\nbourgeoisie to an extent hitherto unknown. To an even greater extent, it\nis true, corruption and mass robbery developed, clustering around the imperial\ncourt, and drawing their heavy percentages from this enrichment.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\nBut the Second Empire was the appeal to the French chauvinism,\nthe demand for the restoration of the frontiers of the First Empire, which\nhad been lost in 1814, or at least those of the First Republic.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#C\" name=\"Cb\"\u003e[C]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e A French\nempire within the frontiers of the old monarchy and, in fact, within the\neven more amputated frontiers of 1815 \u0026#8211; such a thing was impossible for\nany long duration of time. Hence the necessity for brief wars and extension\nof frontiers. But no extension of frontiers was so dazzling to the imagination\nof the French chauvinists as the extension to the German left bank of the\nRhine. One square mile on the Rhine was more to them than ten in the Alps\nor anywhere else. Given the Second Empire, the demand for the restoration\nto France of the left bank of the Rhine, either all at once or piecemeal,\nwas merely a question of time. The time came with the Austro-Prussian War\nof 1866; cheated of the anticipated \u0026#8220;territorial compensation\u0026#8221; by \u003ca href=\"../../../../../glossary/people/b/i.htm#bismarck\"\u003eBismarck\u003c/a\u003e,\nand by his own over-cunning, hesitating policy, there was now nothing left\nfor Napoleon but war, which broke out in 1870 and drove him first to \u003ca href=\"../../../../../glossary/events/s/e.htm#sedan-battle\"\u003eSedan\u003c/a\u003e,\nand then to Wilhelmshohe [prison].\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\nThe inevitable result was the Paris Revolution of September 4,\n1870. The empire collapsed like a house of cards, and the republic was\nagain proclaimed. But the enemy was standing at the gates [of Paris]; the armies of\nthe empire were either hopelessly beleaguered in Metz or held captive in\nGermany. In this emergency the people allowed the Paris Deputies to the\nformer legislative body to constitute themselves into a \u0026#8220;\u003ca href=\"../../../../../glossary/orgs/f/r.htm#fgnd\"\u003eGovernment of\nNational Defence\u003c/a\u003e.\u0026#8221; This was the more readily conceded, since, for the purpose\nof defence, all Parisians capable of bearing arms had enrolled in the National\nGuard and were armed, so that now the workers constituted a great majority.\nBut almost at once the antagonism between the almost completely bourgeois\ngovernment and the armed proletariat broke into open conflict. On October\n31, workers\u0026#8217; battalions stormed the town hall, and captured some members\nof the government. Treachery, the government\u0026#8217;s direct breach of its undertakings,\nand the interventions of some petty-bourgeois battalions set them free\nagain, and in order not to occasion the outbreak of civil war inside a\ncity which was already beleaguered by a foreign power, the former government\nwas left in office.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\nAt last on January 28, 1871, Paris, almost starving, capitulated\nbut with honors unprecedented in the history of war. The forts were surrendered,\nthe outer wall disarmed, the weapons of the regiments of the line and of\nthe Mobile Guard were handed over, and they themselves considered prisoners\nof war. But the National Guard kept its weapons and guns, and only entered\ninto an armistice with the victors, who themselves did not dare enter Paris\nin triumph. They only dared to occupy a tiny corner of Paris, which, into\nthe bargain, consisted partly of public parks, and even this they only occupied\nfor a few days! And during this time they, who had maintained their encirclement\nof Paris for 131 days, were themselves encircled by the armed workers of\nParis, who kept a sharp watch that no \u0026#8220;Prussian\u0026#8221; should overstep the narrow\nbounds of the corner ceded to the foreign conquerors. Such was the respect\nwhich the Paris workers inspired in the army before which all the armies\nof the empire had laid down their arms; and the Prussian \u003cem\u003eJunkers\u003c/em\u003e,\nwho had come to take revenge at the very centre of the revolution, were\ncompelled to stand by respectfully, and salute just precisely this armed\nrevolution!\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\nDuring the war the Paris workers had confined themselves to demanding\nthe vigorous prosecution of the fight. But now, when peace had come after\nthe capitulation of Paris,\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#D\" name=\"Db\"\u003e[D]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e now, \u003ca href=\"../../../../../glossary/people/t/h.htm#thiers-louis-adolphe\"\u003eThiers\u003c/a\u003e, the new head of government, was\ncompelled to realize that the supremacy of the propertied classes \u0026#8211; large\nlandowners and capitalists \u0026#8211; was in constant danger so long as the workers\nof Paris had arms in their hands. His first action was to attempt to disarm\nthem. On March 18, he sent troops of the line with orders to rob the National\nGuard of the artillery belonging to it, which had been constructed during\nthe siege of Paris and had been paid for by public subscription. The attempt failed;\nParis mobilized as one man in defence of the guns, and war between Paris\nand the French government sitting at Versailles was declared. On March\n26 the Paris Commune was elected and on March 28 it was proclaimed. The\nCentral Committee of the National Guard, which up to then had carried on\nthe government, handed in its resignation to the National Guard, after\nit had first decreed the abolition of the scandalous Paris \u0026#8220;Morality Police.\u0026#8221; \nOn March 30 the Commune abolished conscription and the standing army, and\ndeclared that the National Guard, in which all citizens capable of bearing\narms were to be enrolled, was to be the sole armed force. It remitted all\npayments of rent for dwelling houses from October 1870 until April, the\namounts already paid to be reckoned to a future rental period, and stopped\nall sales of articles pledged in the municipal pawnshops. On the same day\nthe foreigners elected to the Commune were confirmed in office, because\n \u0026#8220;the flag of the Commune is the flag of the World Republic.\u0026#8221; \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn April 1 it was decided that the highest salary received by\nany employee of the Commune, and therefore also by its members themselves,\nmight not exceed 6,000 francs. On the following day the Commune decreed\nthe separation of the Church from the State, and the abolition of all state\npayments for religious purposes as well as the transformation of all Church\nproperty into national property; as a result of which, on April 8, a decree\nexcluding from the schools all religious symbols, pictures, dogmas, prayers\n\u0026#8211; in a word, \u0026#8220;all that belongs to the sphere of the individual\u0026#8217;s conscience\u0026#8221; \n\u0026#8211; was ordered to be excluded from the schools, and this decree was gradually\napplied. On the 5th, in reply to the shooting, day after day, of the Commune\u0026#8217;s fighters captured by the Versailles troops,\na decree was issued for imprisonment of hostages, but it was never carried\ninto effect. On the 6th, the guillotine was brought out by the 137th battalion\nof the National Guard, and publicly burnt, amid great popular rejoicing.\nOn the 12th, the Commune decided that the Victory Column on the Place Vend\u0026#244;me,\nwhich had been cast from guns captured by Napoleon after the war of 1809,\nshould be demolished as a symbol of chauvinism and incitement to national\nhatred. This decree was carried out on May 16. On April 16 the Commune\nordered a statistical tabulation of factories which had been closed down\nby the manufacturers, and the working out of plans for the carrying on\nof these factories by workers formerly employed in them, who were to be\norganized in co-operative societies, and also plans for the organization\nof these co-operatives in one great union. On the 20th the Commune abolished\nnight work for bakers, and also the workers\u0026#8217; registration cards, which\nsince the Second Empire had been run as a monopoly by police nominees \u0026#8211;\nexploiters of the first rank; the issuing of these registration cards was\ntransferred to the mayors of the 20 \u003cem\u003earrondissements\u003c/em\u003e of Paris. On\nApril 30, the Commune ordered the closing of the pawnshops, on the ground\nthat they were a private exploitation of labor, and were in contradiction\nwith the right of the workers to their instruments of labor and to credit.\nOn May 5 it ordered the demolition of the Chapel of Atonement, which had\nbeen built in expiation of the execution of Louis XVI.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThus, from March 18 onwards the class character of the Paris movement,\nwhich had previously been pushed into the background by the fight against\nthe foreign invaders, emerged sharply and clearly. As almost without exception,\nworkers, or recognized representatives of the workers, sat in the Commune,\nits decision bore a decidedly proletarian character. Either they decreed\nreforms which the republican bourgeoisie had failed to pass solely out of\ncowardice, but which provided a necessary basis for the free activity of\nthe working class \u0026#8211; such as the realization of the principle that \u003cem\u003ein\nrelation to the state\u003c/em\u003e, religion is a purely private matter \u0026#8211; or they\npromulgated decrees which were in the direct interests of the working class\nand to some extent cut deeply into the old order of society. In a beleaguered\ncity, however, it was possible at most to make a start in the realization\nof all these measures. And from the beginning of May onwards all their\nenergies were taken up by the fight against the ever-growing armies assembled\nby the Versailles government.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn April 7, the Versailles troops had captured the Seine crossing\nat Neuilly, on the western front of Paris; on the other hand, in an attack\non the southern front on the 11th they were repulsed with heavy losses\nby General Eudes. Paris was continually bombarded and, moreover, by the\nvery people who had stigmatized as a sacrilege the bombardment of the same\ncity by the Prussians. These same people now begged the Prussian government\nfor the hasty return of the French soldiers taken prisoner at Sedan and\nMetz, in order that they might recapture Paris for them. From the beginning\nof May the gradual arrival of these troops gave the Versailles forces a\ndecided ascendancy. This already became evident when, on April 23, Thiers\nbroke off the negotiations for the exchange, proposed by Commune, of the\nArchbishop of Paris [Georges Darboy] and a whole number of other priests held hostages in\nParis, for only one man, Blanqui, who had twice been elected to the Commune\nbut was a prisoner in Clairvaux. And even more from the changed language\nof Thiers; previously procrastinating and equivocal, he now suddenly became\ninsolent, threatening, brutal. The Versailles forces took the redoubt of\nMoulin Saquet on the southern front, on May 3; on the 9th, Fort Issy, which\nhad been completely reduced to ruins by gunfire; and on the 14th, Fort\nVanves. On the western front they advanced gradually, capturing the numerous\nvillages and buildings which extended up to the city wall, until they reached\nthe main wall itself; on the 21st, thanks to treachery and the carelessness\nof the National Guards stationed there, they succeeded in forcing their\nway into the city. The Prussians who held the northern and eastern forts\nallowed the Versailles troops to advance across the land north of the city,\nwhich was forbidden ground to them under the armistice, and thus to march\nforward and attack on a long front, which the Parisians naturally thought\ncovered by the armistice, and therefore held only with weak forces. As\na result of this, only a weak resistance was put up in the western half\nof Paris, in the luxury city proper; it grew stronger and more tenacious\nthe nearer the incoming troops approached the eastern half, the real working\nclass city.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt was only after eight days\u0026#8217; fighting that the last defender\nof the Commune were overwhelmed on the heights of Belleville and Menilmontant;\nand then the massacre of defenceless men, women, and children, which had\nbeen raging all through the week on an increasing scale, reached its zenith.\nThe breechloaders could no longer kill fast enough; the vanquished workers\nwere shot down in hundred by mitrailleuse fire [over 30,000 citizens of Paris were massacred]. The \u0026#8220;Wall of the Federals\u0026#8221; [aka Wall of the Communards] at the Pere Lachaise cemetery, where the final mass murder was consummated,\nis still standing today, a mute but eloquent testimony to the savagery\nof which the ruling class is capable as soon as the working class dares\nto come out for its rights. Then came the mass arrests [38,000 workers arrested]; when the slaughter\nof them all proved to be impossible, the shooting of victims arbitrarily\nselected from the prisoners\u0026#8217; ranks, and the removal of the rest to great\ncamps where they awaited trial by courts-martial. The Prussian troops surrounding\nthe northern half of Paris had orders not to allow any fugitives to pass;\nbut the officers often shut their eyes when the soldiers paid more obedience\nto the dictates of humanity than to those of the General Staff; particularly,\nhonor is due to the Saxon army corps, which behaved very humanely and let\nthrough many workers who were obviously fighters for the Commune.\u003c/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\nFrederick Engels\n\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\nLondon, on the 20th anniversary\n\u003cbr /\u003e\nof the Paris Commune, March 18, 1891.\n\u003c/p\u003e\n\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026#160;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003chr\u003e\r\n\u003ch2\u003eThe First Address\u003csup\u003e\u003ca\n href=\"publication-notes.htm#a1\"\u003e[1]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n July 23, 1870 \u003c/h2\u003e\n\n \u003ch3\u003e[The Beginning of the Franco-Prussian War] \u003c/h3\u003e\n \u003chr\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIn the \u003ca href=\"../../1864/10/27.htm\"\u003eInaugural Address\u003c/a\u003e of the \u003ca\n href=\"../../1864/iwma/index.htm\"\u003eInternational Working Men\u0026rsquo;s\n Association\u003c/a\u003e, of November 1864, we said: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;If the emancipation of the working classes requires\n their fraternal concurrence, how are they to fulfill that great mission with\n a foreign policy in pursuit of criminal designs, playing upon national\n prejudices, and squandering in piratical wars the people\u0026rsquo;s blood and\n treasure?\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eWe defined the foreign policy aimed at by the International in these\n words: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Vindicate the simple laws of morals and justice,\n which ought to govern the relations of private individuals, as the laws\n paramount of the intercourse of nations.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eNo wonder that Louis Bonaparte, who usurped power by exploiting the war of\n classes in France, and perpetuated it by periodical wars abroad, should, from\n the first, have treated the International as a dangerous foe. On the eve of\n the plebiscite\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#A\" name=\"Ab\"\u003e[A]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e he\n ordered a raid on the members of the Administrative Committee of the\n International Working Men\u0026rsquo;s Association throughout France, at Paris,\n Lyons, Rouen, Marseilles, Brest, etc., on the pretext that the International\n was a secret society dabbling in a \u003cem\u003ecomplot\u003c/em\u003e for his assassination, a\n pretext soon after exposed in its full absurdity by his own judges. What was\n the real crime of the French branches of the International? They told the\n French people publicly and emphatically that voting the plebiscite was voting\n despotism at home and war abroad. It has been, in fact, their work that in\n all the great towns, in all the industrial centres of France, the working\n class rose like one man to reject the plebiscite. Unfortunately, the balance\n was turned by the heavy ignorance of the rural districts. The stock\n exchanges, the cabinets, the ruling classes, and the press of Europe\n celebrated the plebiscite as a signal victory of the French emperor over the\n French working class; and it was the signal for the assassination, not of an\n individual, but of nations. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe war plot of July [19] 1870\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#B\"\n name=\"Bb\"\u003e[B]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e is but an amended edition of the \u003cem\u003ecoup\n d\u0026rsquo;etat\u003c/em\u003e of December 1851. At first view, the thing seemed so absurd\n that France would not believe in its real good earnest. It rather believed\n the deputy denouncing the ministerial war talk as a mere stock-jobbing trick.\n When, on July 15, war was at last officially announced to the \u003cem\u003eCorps\n Legislatif\u003c/em\u003e, the whole Opposition refused to vote the preliminary\n subsidies \u0026ndash; even \u003ca\n href=\"../../../../../glossary/people/t/h.htm#thiers-louis-adolphe\"\u003eThiers\u003c/a\u003e\n branded it as \u0026ldquo;detestable\u0026rdquo;; all the independent journals of Paris\n condemned it, and, wonderful to relate, the provincial press joined in almost\n unanimously. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eMeanwhile, the Paris members of the International had again set to work.\n In the \u003cem\u003eReveil\u003c/em\u003e of July 12, they published their manifesto \u0026ldquo;to\n the Workmen of all Nations,\u0026rdquo; from which we extract the following few\n passages: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Once more,\u0026rdquo; they say, \u0026ldquo;on the pretext of\n European equilibrium, of national honor, the peace of the world is menaced by\n political ambitions. French, German, Spanish workmen! Let our voices unite in\n one cry of reprobation against war! \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e[…] \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;War for a question of preponderance or a dynasty\n can, in the eyes of workmen, be nothing but a criminal absurdity. In answer\n to the warlike proclamations of those who exempt themselves from the blood\n tax, and find in public misfortunes a source of fresh speculations, we\n protest, we who want peace, labor, and liberty! \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e[…] \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Brothers in Germany! Our division would only result\n in the complete triumph of the despotism on both sides of the Rhine… \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Workmen of all countries! Whatever may for the\n present become of our common efforts, we, the members of the International\n Working Men\u0026rsquo;s Association, who know of no frontiers, we send you, as a\n pledge of indissoluble solidarity, the good wishes and the salutations of the\n workmen of France.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThis manifesto of our Paris section was followed by numerous similar\n French addresses, of which we can here only quote the declaration of\n Neuilly-sur-Seine, published in the \u003cem\u003eMarseillaise\u003c/em\u003e of July 22: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;The war, is it just? No! The war, is it national?\n No! It is merely dynastic. In the name of humanity, or democracy, and the\n true interests of France, we adhere completely and energetically to the\n protestation of the International against the war.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThese protestations expressed the true sentiments of the French working\n people, as was soon shown by a curious incident. The \u003ca\n href=\"../../../../../glossary/orgs/d/e.htm#december-10-society\"\u003eBand of the\n 10th of December\u003c/a\u003e, first organized under the presidency of Louis\n Bonaparte, having been masqueraded into \u003cem\u003eblouses\u003c/em\u003e \u003cspan\n \u003e[i.e., to appear as common workers] \u003c/span\u003eand let loose on\n the streets of Paris, there to perform the contortions of war fever, the real\n workmen of the Faubourgs \u003cspan\u003e[suburbs, workers\u0026rsquo;\n districts]\u003c/span\u003e came forward with public peace demonstrations so\n overwhelming that Pietri, the Prefect of Police, thought it prudent to stop\n at once all further street politics, on the plea that the real Paris people\n had given sufficient vent to their pent-up patriotism and exuberant war\n enthusiasm. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eWhatever may be the incidents of Louis Bonaparte\u0026rsquo;s war with Prussia,\n the death-knell of the Second Empire has already sounded at Paris. It will\n end, as it began, by a parody. But let us not forget that it is the\n governments and the ruling classes of Europe who enabled Louis Bonaparte to\n play during 18 years the ferocious farce of the Restored Empire. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eOn the German side, the war is a war of defence; but who put Germany to\n the necessity of defending herself? Who enabled Louis Bonaparte to wage war\n upon her? Prussia! It was Bismarck who conspired with that very same Louis\n Bonaparte for the purpose of crushing popular opposition at home, and\n annexing Germany to the Hohenzollern dynasty. If the battle of Sadowa had\n been lost instead of being won, French battalions would have overrun Germany\n as the allies of Prussia. After her victory, did Prussia dream one moment of\n opposing a free Germany to an enslaved France? Just the contrary. While\n carefully preserving all the native beauties of her old system, she\n super-added all the tricks of the Second Empire, its real despotism, and its\n mock democratism, its political shams and its financial jobs, its high-flown\n talk and its low \u003cem\u003elegerdemains\u003c/em\u003e. The Bonapartist regime, which till\n then only flourished on one side of the Rhine, had now got its counterfeit on\n the other. From such a state of things, what else could result but war? \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIf the German working class allows the present war to lose its strictly\n defensive character and to degenerate into a war against the French people,\n victory of defeat will prove alike disastrous. All the miseries that befell\n Germany after her wars of independence will revive with accumulated\n intensity. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe principles of the International are, however, too widely spread and\n too firmly rooted amongst the German working class to apprehend such a sad\n consummation. The voices of the French workmen had re-echoed from Germany. A\n mass meeting of workmen, held at Brunswick on July 16, expressed its full\n concurrence with the Paris manifesto, spurned the idea of national antagonism\n to France, and wound up its resolutions with these words: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;We are the enemies of all wars, but above all of\n dynastic wars. … With deep sorrow and grief we are forced to undergo a\n defensive war as an unavoidable evil; but we call, at the same time, upon the\n whole German working class to render the recurrence of such an immense social\n misfortune impossible by vindicating for the peoples themselves the power to\n decide on peace and war, and making them masters of their own\n destinies.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAt Chemnitz, a meeting of delegates, representing 50,000 Saxon workmen,\n adopted unanimously a resolution to this effect: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;In the name of German Democracy, and especially of\n the workmen forming the Democratic Socialist Party, we declare the present\n war to be exclusively dynastic…. We are happy to grasp the fraternal hand\n stretched out to us by the workmen of France…. Mindful of the watchword of\n the International Working Men\u0026rsquo;s Association: Proletarians of all\n countries, unite, we shall never forget that the workmen of all countries are\n our friends and the despots of all countries our enemies.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe Berlin branch of the International has also replied to the Paris\n manifesto: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;We,\u0026rdquo; they say, \u0026ldquo;join with heart and hand\n your protestation…. Solemnly, we promise that neither the sound of the\n trumpets, nor the roar of the cannon, neither victory nor defeat, shall\n divert us from our common work for the union of the children of toil of all\n countries.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eBe it so! \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIn the background of this suicidal strike looms the dark figure of Russia.\n It is an ominous sign that the signal for the present war should have been\n given at the moment when the Moscovite government had just finished its\n strategic lines of railway and was already massing troops in the direction of\n the Prut.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#C\" name=\"Cb\"\u003e[C]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e Whatever\n sympathy the Germans may justly claim in a war of defense against Bonapartist\n aggression, they would forfeit at once by allowing the Prussian government to\n call for, or accept the help of, the \u003ca\n href=\"../../../../../glossary/terms/c/o.htm#cossacks\"\u003eCossack\u003c/a\u003e. Let them\n remember that after their war of independence against the first Napoleon,\n Germany lay for generations prostrate at the feet of the tsar. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe English working class stretch the hand of fellowship to the French and\n German working people. They feel deeply convinced that whatever turn the\n impending horrid war may take, the alliance of the working classes of all\n countries will ultimately kill war. The very fact that while official France\n and Germany are rushing into a fratricidal feud, the workmen of France and\n Germany send each other messages of peace and goodwill; this great fact,\n unparalleled in the history of the past, opens the vista of a brighter\n future. It proves that in contrast to old society, with its economical\n miseries and its political delirium, a new society is springing up, whose\n International rule will be \u003cem\u003ePeace\u003c/em\u003e, because its national ruler will be\n everywhere the same \u0026ndash; Labour! The pioneer of that new society is the\n International Working Men\u0026rsquo;s Association. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003chr\u003e\r\n\u003ch2\u003eThe Second Address\u003csup\u003e\u003ca\n href=\"publication-notes.htm#a2\"\u003e[2]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n September 9, 1870 \u003c/h2\u003e\n\n \u003ch3\u003e[Prussian Occupation of France] \u003c/h3\u003e\n \u003chr\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIn our \u003ca href=\"ch01.htm\"\u003efirst manifesto\u003c/a\u003e of the 23rd of July, we\n said: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;The death-knell of the Second Empire has already\n sounded at Paris. It will end, as it began, by a parody. But let us not\n forget that it is the governments and the ruling classes of Europe who\n enabled Louis Bonaparte to play during 18 years the ferocious farce of the\n Restored Empire.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThus, even before war operations had actually set in, we treated the\n Bonapartist bubble as a thing of the past. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIf we were not mistaken as to the vitality of the Second Empire, we were\n not wrong in our apprehension lest the German war should \u0026ldquo;lose its\n strictly defensive character and degenerate into a war against the French\n people.\u0026rdquo; The war of defense ended, in point of fact, with the surrender\n of Louis Bonaparte, the \u003ca\n href=\"../../../../../glossary/events/s/e.htm#sedan-battle\"\u003eSedan\n capitulation\u003c/a\u003e, and the proclamation of the republic at Paris. But long\n before these events, the very moment that the utter rottenness of the\n imperialist arms became evident, the Prussian military \u003cem\u003ecamarilla\u003c/em\u003e had\n resolved upon conquest. There lay an ugly obstacle in their way \u0026ndash;\n [Prussian] King William\u0026rsquo;s own proclamations at the commencement of the\n war. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIn a speech from the throne to the North German Diet, he had solemnly\n declared to make war upon the emperor of the French and not upon the French\n nation, where he said: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;The Emperor Napoleon having made by land and sea an\n attack on the German nation, which desired and still desires to live in peace\n with the French people, I have assumed the command of the German armies to\n repel his aggression, and I have been led by military events to cross the\n frontiers of France.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eNot content to assert the defensive character of the war by the statement\n that he only assumed the command of the German armies \u0026ldquo;to repel\n aggression\", he added that he was only \u0026ldquo;led by military events\u0026rdquo;\n to cross the frontiers of France. A defensive war does, of course, not\n exclude offensive operations, dictated by military events. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThus, the pious king stood pledged before France and the world to a\n strictly defensive war. How to release him from his solemn pledge? The stage\n managers had to exhibit him as reluctantly yielding to the irresistible\n behest of the German nation. They at once gave the cue to the liberal German\n middle class, with its professors, its capitalists, its aldermen, and its\n penmen. That middle class, which, in its struggles for civil liberty, had,\n from 1846 to 1870, been exhibiting an unexampled spectacle of irresolution,\n incapacity and cowardice, felt, of course, highly delighted to bestride the\n European scene as the roaring lion of German patriotism. It re-vindicated its\n civic independence by affecting to force upon the Prussian government the\n secret designs of that same government. It does penance for its\n long-continued, and almost religious, faith in Louis Bonaparte\u0026rsquo;s\n infallibility, but shouting for the dismemberment of the French republic. Let\n us, for a moment, listen to the special pleadings of those stout-hearted\n patriots! \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThey dare not pretend that the people of Alsace and Lorraine pant for the\n German embrace; quite the contrary. To punish their French patriotism,\n Strasbourg, a town with an independent citadel commanding it, has for six\n days been wantonly and fiendishly bombarded by \u0026ldquo;German\u0026rdquo; explosive\n shells, setting it on fire, and killing great numbers of its defenceless\n inhabitants! Yet, the soil of those provinces once upon a time belonged to\n the whilom German empire.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#A\"\n name=\"Ab\"\u003e[A]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e Hence, it seems, the soil and the human beings grown\n on it must be confiscated as imprescriptible German property. If the map of\n Europe is to be re-made in the antiquary\u0026rsquo;s vein, let us by no means\n forget that the Elector of Brandenburg, for his Prussian dominions, was the\n vassal of the Polish republic.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#B\"\n name=\"Bb\"\u003e[B]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe more knowing patriots, however, require Alsace and the German-speaking\n Lorraine as a \u0026ldquo;material guarantee\u0026rdquo; against French aggression. As\n this contemptible plea has bewildered many weak-minded people, we are bound\n to enter more fully upon it. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThere is no doubt that the general configuration of Alsace, as compared\n with the opposite bank of the Rhine, and the presence of a large fortified\n town like Strasbourg, about halfway between Basle and Germersheim, very much\n favour a French invasion of South Germany, while they offer peculiar\n difficulties to an invasion of France from South Germany. There is, further,\n no doubt that the addition of Alsace and German-speaking Lorraine would give\n South Germany a much stronger frontier, inasmuch as she would then be the\n master of the crest of the Vosges mountains in its whole length, and of the\n fortresses which cover its northern passes. If Metz were annexed as well,\n France would certainly for the moment be deprived of her two principal bases\n of operation against Germany, but that would not prevent her from\n concentrating a fresh one at Nancy or Verdun. While Germany owns Coblenz,\n Mayence \u003cspan\u003e[i.e., Mainz]\u003c/span\u003e, Germersheim, Rastatt, and Ulm, all bases of operation against\n France, and plentifully made use of in this war, with what show of fair play\n can she begrudge France Strasbourg and Metz, the only two fortresses of any\n importance she has on that side? Moreover, Strasbourg endangers South Germany\n only while South Germany is a separate power from North Germany. From 1792 to\n 1795, South Germany was never invaded from that direction, because Prussia\n was a party to the war against the French Revolution; but as soon as Prussia\n made a peace of her own\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#C\"\n name=\"Cb\"\u003e[C]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e in 1795, and left the South to shift for itself, the\n invasions of South Germany with Strasbourg as a base began and continued till\n 1809. The fact is, a \u003cem\u003eunited\u003c/em\u003e Germany can always render Strasbourg and\n any French army in Alsace innocuous by concentrating all her troops, as was\n done in the present war, between Saarlouis and Landau, and advancing, or\n accepting battle, on the line of road between Mayence and Metz. While the\n mass of the German troops is stationed there, any French army advancing from\n Strasbourg into South Germany would be outflanked, and have its communication\n threatened. If the present campaign has proved anything, it is the facility\n of invading France from Germany. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eBut, in good faith, is it not altogether an absurdity and an anachronism\n to make military considerations the principle by which the boundaries of\n nations are to be fixed? If this rule were to prevail, Austria would still be\n entitled to Venetia and the line of the Minicio, and France to the line of\n the Rhine, in order to protect Paris, which lies certainly more open to an\n attack from the northeast than Berlin does from the southwest. If limits are\n to be fixed by military interests, there will be no end to claims, because\n every military line is necessarily faulty, and may be improved by annexing\n some more outlying territory; and, moreover, they can never be fixed finally\n and fairly, because they always must be imposed by the conqueror upon the\n conquered, and consequently carry within them the seed of fresh wars. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eSuch is the lesson of all history. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThus with nations as with individuals. To deprive them of the power of\n offence, you must deprive them of the means of defence. You must not only\n garrote, but murder. If every conqueror took \u0026ldquo;material guarantees\" for\n breaking the sinews of a nation, the first Napoleon did so by the \u003ca\n href=\"../../../../../glossary/events/t/i.htm#tilsit-treaty\"\u003eTilsit\n Treaty\u003c/a\u003e, and the way he executed it against Prussia and the rest of\n Germany. Yet, a few years later, his gigantic power split like a rotten reed\n upon the German people. What are the \u0026ldquo;material guarantees\u0026rdquo;\n Prussia, in her wildest dreams, can or dare imposes upon France, compared to\n the \u0026ldquo;material guarantees\u0026rdquo; the first Napoleon had wrenched from\n herself? The result will not prove the less disastrous. History will measure\n its retribution, not by the intensity of the square miles conquered from\n France, but by the intensity of the crime of reviving, in the second half of\n the 19th century, \u003cem\u003ethe policy of conquest!\u003c/em\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eBut, say the mouthpieces of Teutonic [German] patriotism, you must not\n confound Germans with Frenchmen. What \u003cem\u003ewe\u003c/em\u003e want is not glory, but\n safety. The Germans are an essentially peaceful people. In their sober\n guardianship, conquest itself changes from a condition of future war into a\n pledge of perpetual peace. Of course, it is not Germans that invaded France\n in 1792, for the sublime purpose of bayonetting the revolution of the 18th\n century. It is not Germans that befouled their hands by the subjugation of\n Italy, the oppressions of Hungary, and the dismemberment of Poland. Their\n present military system, which divides the whole able-bodied male population\n into two parts \u0026ndash; one standing army on service, and another standing\n army on furlough, both equally bound in passive obedience to rulers by divine\n right \u0026ndash; such a military system is, of course, \u0026ldquo;a material\n guarantee,\u0026rdquo; for keeping the peace and the ultimate goal of civilizing\n tendencies! In Germany, as everywhere else, the sycophants of the powers that\n be poison the popular mind by the incense of mendacious self-praise. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIndignant as they pretend to be at the sight of French fortresses in Metz\n and Strasbourg, those German patriots see no harm in the vast system of\n Moscovite fortifications at Warsaw, Modlin, and Ivangorod \u003cspan\n \u003e[All strongholds of the Russian Empire] \u003c/span\u003e. While gloating\n at the terrors of imperialist invasion, they blink at the infamy of\n autocratic tutelage. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAs in 1865, promises were exchanged between Gorchakov and Bismarck. As\n Louis Bonaparte flattered himself that the War of 1866, resulting in the\n common exhaustion of Austria and Prussia, would make him the supreme arbiter\n of Germany, so Alexander [II of Russia] flattered himself that the War of\n 1870, resulting in the common exhaustion of Germany and France, would make\n him the supreme arbiter of the Western continent. As the Second Empire\n thought the North German Confederation incompatible with its existence, so\n autocratic Russia must think herself endangered by a German empire under\n Prussian leadership. Such is the law of the old political system. Within its\n pale the gain of one state is the loss of the other. The tsar\u0026rsquo;s\n paramount influence over Europe roots in his traditional hold on Germany. At\n a moment when in Russia herself volcanic social agencies threaten to shake\n the very base of autocracy, could the tsar afford to bear with such a loss of\n foreign prestige? Already the Moscovite journals repeat the language of the\n Bonapartist journals of the War of 1866. Do the Teuton patriots really\n believe that liberty and peace will be guaranteed to Germany by forcing\n France into the arms of Russia? If the fortune of her arms, the arrogance of\n success, and dynastic intrigue lead Germany to a dismemberment of French\n territory, there will then only remain two courses open to her. \u003ca\n name=\"Db\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eShe must at all risks become the \u003cem\u003eavowed\u003c/em\u003e tool of\n Russian aggrandizement, or, after some short respite, make again ready for\n another \u0026ldquo;defensive\u0026rdquo; war, not one of those new-fangled\n \u0026ldquo;localized\u0026rdquo; wars, but a \u003cem\u003ewar of races\u003c/em\u003e \u0026ndash; a war with\n the Slavonic and Roman races.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#D\"\u003e[D]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e\n \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe German working class have resolutely supported the war, which it was\n not in their power to prevent, as a war for German independence and the\n liberation of France and Europe from that pestilential incubus, the Second\n Empire. It was the German workmen who, together with the rural laborers,\n furnished the sinews and muscles of heroic hosts, leaving behind their\n half-starved families. Decimated by the battles abroad, they will be once\n more decimated by misery at home. In their turn, they are now coming forward\n to ask for \u0026ldquo;guarantees\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; guarantees that their immense\n sacrifices have not been bought in vain, that they have conquered liberty,\n that the victory over the imperialist armies will not, as in 1815, be turned\n into the defeat of the German people\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#E\"\n name=\"Eb\"\u003e[E]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e; and, as the first of these guarantees, they claim an\n \u003cem\u003ehonorable peace for France\u003c/em\u003e, and the \u003cem\u003erecognition of the French\n republic\u003c/em\u003e. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe Central Committee of the German Social-Democratic Workmen\u0026rsquo;s\n Party issued, on September 5, a manifesto, energetically insisting upon these\n guarantees. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;We,\u0026rdquo; they say, \u0026ldquo;protest against the\n annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. And we are conscious of speaking in the\n name of the German working class. In the common interest of France and\n Germany, in the interest of western civilization against eastern barbarism,\n the German workmen will not patiently tolerate the annexation of Alsace and\n Lorraine…. We shall faithfully stand by our fellow workmen in all countries\n for the common international cause of the proletariat!\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eUnfortunately, we cannot feel sanguine of their immediate success. If the\n French workmen amidst peace failed to stop the aggressor, are the German\n workmen more likely to stop the victor amidst the clamour of arms? The German\n workmen\u0026rsquo;s manifesto demands the extradition of Louis Bonaparte as a\n common felon to the French republic. Their rulers are, on the contrary,\n already trying hard to restore him to the Tuileries\u003csup\u003e\u003ca\n href=\"#F\" name=\"Fb\"\u003e[F]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e as the best man to ruin France. However\n that may be, history will prove that the German working class are not made of\n the same malleable stuff as the German middle class. They will do their duty.\n \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eLike them, we hail the advent of the republic in France, but at the same\n time we labor under misgivings which we hope will prove groundless. That\n republic has not subverted the throne, but only taken its place, become\n vacant. It has been proclaimed, not as a social conquest, but as a national\n measure of defence. It is in the hands of a Provisional Government composed\n partly of notorious \u003ca\n href=\"../../../../../glossary/orgs/o/r.htm#orleanists\"\u003eOrleanists\u003c/a\u003e, partly\n of middle class republicans, upon some of whom the insurrection of \u003ca\n href=\"../../../../../glossary/events/j/u.htm#june-insurrection-1848\"\u003eJune\n 1848\u003c/a\u003e has left its indelible stigma. The division of labor amongst the\n members of that government looks awkward. The Orleanists have seized the\n strongholds of the army and the police, while to the professed republicans\n have fallen the talking departments. Some of their acts go far to show that\n they have inherited from the empire, not only ruins, but also its dread of\n the working class. If eventual impossibilities are, in wild phraseology,\n promised in the name of the republic, is it not with a view to prepare the\n cry for a \u0026ldquo;possible\u0026rdquo; government? Is the republic, by some of its\n middle class undertakers, not intended to serve as a mere stop-gap and bridge\n over an Orleanist restoration? \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe French working class moves, therefore, under circumstances of extreme\n difficulty. Any attempt at upsetting the new government in the present\n crisis, when the enemy is almost knocking at the doors of Paris, would be a\n desperate folly. The French workmen must perform their duties as citizens;\n but, at the same time, they must not allow themselves to be swayed by the\n national \u003cem\u003esouvenirs\u003c/em\u003e of 1792, as the French peasant allowed themselves\n to be deluded by the national \u003cem\u003esouvenirs\u003c/em\u003e of the First Empire. They\n have not to recapitulate the past, but to build up the future. Let them\n calmly and resolutely improve the opportunities of republican liberty, for\n the work of their own class organization. It will gift them with fresh\n herculean powers for the regeneration of France, and our common task \u0026ndash;\n the emancipation of labor. Upon their energies and wisdom hinges the fate of\n the republic. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe English workmen have already taken measures to overcome, by a\n wholesome pressure from without, the reluctance of their government to\n recognize the French republic.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#G\"\n name=\"Gb\"\u003e[G]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e The present dilatoriness of the British government is\n probably intended to atone for the Anti-Jacobin war [1792] and the former\n indecent haste in sanctioning the coup d\u0026rsquo;etat.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca\n href=\"#H\" name=\"Hb\"\u003e[H]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e The English workmen call also upon their\n government to oppose by all its power the dismemberment of France, which a\n part of the English press is shameless enough to howl for. It is the same\n press that for 20 years deified Louis Bonaparte as the providence of Europe,\n that frantically cheered on the slaveholders\u0026rsquo; rebellion.\u003csup\n \u003e\u003ca href=\"#I\" name=\"Ib\"\u003e[I]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e Now, as then, it drudges\n for the slaveholder. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eLet the sections of the International Working Men\u0026rsquo;s Association in\n every country stir the working classes to action. If they forsake their duty,\n if they remain passive, the present tremendous war will be but the harbinger\n of still deadlier international feuds, and lead in every nation to a renewed\n triumph over the workman by the lords of the sword, of the soil, and of\n capital. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eVive la Republique!\u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003chr\u003e\r\n\u003ch2\u003eThe Third Address\u003cbr\u003e\n May, 1871 \u003c/h2\u003e\n\n \u003ch3\u003e[France Capitulates \u0026amp; the Government of Thiers] \u003c/h3\u003e\n \u003chr\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIn September 4, 1870, when the working men of Paris proclaimed the\n republic, which was almost instantaneously acclaimed throughout France,\n without a single voice of dissent, a cabal of place-hunting barristers, with\n Thiers for their statesman, and Trochu for their general, took hold of the\n Hotel de Ville. At that time they were imbued with so fanatical a faith in\n the mission of Paris to represent France in all epochs of historical crisis\n that, to legitimate their usurped titles as governors of France, they thought\n it quite sufficient to produce their lapsed mandates as representatives of\n Paris. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIn our \u003ca href=\"ch02.htm\"\u003esecond address\u003c/a\u003e on the late war, five days\n after the rise of these men, we told you who they were. Yet, in the turmoil\n of surprise, with the real leaders of the working class still shut up in\n Bonapartist prisons and the Prussians already marching on Paris, Paris bore\n with their assumption of power, on the express condition that it was to be\n wielded for the single purpose of national defence. Paris, however, was not\n to be defended without arming its working class, organizing them into an\n effective force, and training their ranks by the war itself. But Paris armed\n was the revolution armed. A victory of Paris over the Prussian aggressor\n would have been a victory of the French workmen over the French capitalist\n and his state parasites. In this conflict between national duty and class\n interest, the Government of National Defence did not hesitate one moment to\n turn into a Government of National Defection. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe first step they took was to send Thiers on a roving tour to all the\n courts of Europe, there to beg mediation by offering the barter of the\n republic for a king. Four months after the commencement of the siege [of\n Paris], when they thought the opportune moment came for breaking the first\n word of capitulation, Trochu, in the presence of Jules Favre, and others of\n his colleagues, addressed the assembled mayors of Paris in these terms: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;The first question put to me by my colleagues on the\n very evening of the 4th of September was this: Paris, can it, with any chance\n of success, stand a siege by the Prussian army? I did not hesitate to answer\n in the negative. Some of my colleagues here present will warrant the truth of\n my words and the persistence of my opinion. I told them, in these very terms,\n that, under the existing state of things, the attempt of Paris to hold out a\n siege by the Prussian army would be a folly. Without doubt, I added, it would\n be an heroic folly; but that would be all…. The events [managed by himself]\n have not given the lie to my prevision.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThis nice little speech of Trochu was afterwards published by M. Carbon,\n one of the mayors present. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThus, on the very evening of the proclamation of the republic,\n Trochu\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;plan\u0026rdquo; was known to his colleagues to be the\n capitulation of Paris. If national defence has been more than a pretext for\n the personal government of Thiers, Favre, and Co., the upstarts of September\n 4 would have abdicated on the 5th \u0026ndash; would have initiated the Paris\n people into Trochu\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;plan,\u0026rdquo; and called upon them to\n surrender at once, or to take their own fate into their own hands. Instead of\n this, the infamous impostors resolved upon curing the heroic folly of Paris\n by a regimen of famine and broken heads, and to dupe her in the meanwhile by\n ranting manifestos, holding forth that Trochu, \u0026ldquo;the governor of Paris,\n will never capitulate\", and Jules Favre, the foreign minister, will\n \u0026ldquo;not cede an inch of our territory, nor a stone of our\n fortresses.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIn a letter to Gambetta, the very same Jules Favre avows that what they\n were \u0026ldquo;defending\u0026rdquo; against were not the Prussian soldiers, but the\n working men of Paris. During the whole continuance of the siege, the\n Bonapartist cut-throats, whom Trochu had wisely entrusted with the command of\n the Paris army, exchanged, in their intimate correspondence, ribald jokes at\n the well-understood mockery of defence. (See, for instance, the\n correspondence of Alphonse Simon Guiod, supreme commander of the artillery of\n the Army of Defence of Paris and Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, to\n Suzanne, general of division of artillery, a correspondence published by the\n \u003ca href=\"../../../../../glossary/periodicals/r/e.htm#rfjo\"\u003e\u003ci\u003eJournal\n officiel\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/a\u003e of the Commune.) The mask of the true heroism was at last\n dropped on \u003ca href=\"../../../../../glossary/orgs/f/r.htm#january-28\"\u003eJanuary\n 28, 1871\u003c/a\u003e. With the true heroism of utter self-debasement, the Government\n of National Defence, in their capitulation, came out as the government of\n France by Bismarck\u0026rsquo;s prisoners \u0026ndash; a part so base that Louis\n Bonaparte himself had, at Sedan, shrunk from accepting it. After the events\n of March 18 on their wild flight to Versailles, the \u003cem\u003ecapitulards\u003c/em\u003e left\n in the hands of Paris the documentary evidence of their treason, to destroy\n which, as the Commune says in its manifesto to the provinces, \u0026ldquo;those\n men would not recoil from battering Paris into a heap of ruins washed by a\n sea of blood.\" \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eTo be eagerly bent upon such a consummation, some of the leading members\n of the Government of Defence had, besides, most peculiar reasons of their\n own. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eShortly after the conclusion of the armistice, M. Milliere, one of the\n representatives of Paris to the National Assembly, now shot by express orders\n of Jules Favre, published a series of authentic legal documents in proof that\n Jules Favre, living in concubinage with the wife of a drunken resident at\n Algiers, had, by a most daring concoction of forgeries, spread over many\n years, contrived to grasp, in the name of the children of his adultery, a\n large succession, which made him a rich man, and that, in a lawsuit\n undertaken by the legitimate heirs, he only escaped exposure by the\n connivance of the Bonapartist tribunals. As these dry legal documents were\n not to be got rid of by any amount of rhetorical horse-power, Jules Favre,\n for the first time in his life, held his tongue, quietly awaiting the\n outbreak of the civil war, in order, then, frantically to denounce the people\n of Paris as a band of escaped convicts in utter revolt against family,\n religion, order, and property. This same forger had hardly got into power,\n after September 4, when he sympathetically let loose upon society Pic and\n Taillefer, convicted, even under the empire, of forgery in the scandalous\n affair of \u0026ldquo;\u003ca\n href=\"../../../../../glossary/periodicals/e/t.htm#l-etendard\"\u003eEtendard\u003c/a\u003e.\u0026rdquo;\n One of these men, Taillefer, having dared to return to Paris under the\n Commune, was at once reinstated in prison; and then Jules Favre exclaimed,\n from the tribune of the National Assembly, that Paris was setting free all\n her jailbirds! \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eErnest Picard, the Joe Miller of the Government of National Defence, who\n appointed himself Finance Minister of the republic after having in vain\n striven to become home minister of the empire, is the brother of one Arthur\n Picard, an individual expelled from the Paris \u003cem\u003eBourse\u003c/em\u003e as a blackleg\n (see report of the Prefecture of Police, dated July 13, 1867), and convicted,\n on his own confession, of theft of 300,000 francs, while manager of one of\n the branches of the \u003cem\u003eSociete Generale\u003c/em\u003e,\u003csup\u003e\u003ca\n href=\"#A\" name=\"Ab\"\u003e[A]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e Rue Palestro, No.5 (see report of the\n Prefecture of Police, dated December 11, 1868). This Arthur Picard was made\n by Ernest Picard the editor of his paper, \u003ca\n href=\"../../../../../glossary/periodicals/e/l.htm#l-electeur-libre\"\u003e\u003ci\u003el\u0026rsquo;Electeur\n Libre\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/a\u003e. While the common run of stockjobbers were led astray by the\n official lies of this finance office paper, Arthur was running backwards and\n forwards between the finance office and the \u003cem\u003eBourse\u003c/em\u003e, there to\n discount the disasters of the French army. The whole financial correspondence\n of that worthy pair of brothers fell into the hands of the Commune. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eJules Ferry, a penniless barrister before September 4, contrived, as mayor\n of Paris during the siege, to job a fortune out of famine. The day on which\n he would have to give an account of his maladministration would be the day of\n his conviction. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThese men, then, could find in the ruins of Paris only their\n tickets-of-leave\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#1\" name=\"1b\"\u003e[1]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e; they\n were the very men Bismarck wanted. With the help of some shuffling of cards,\n Thiers, hitherto the secret prompter of the government, now appeared at its\n head, with the tickets-of-leave men for his ministers. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eTheirs, that monstrous gnome, has charmed the French bourgeoisie for\n almost half a century, because he is the most consummate intellectual\n expression of their own class corruption. Before he became a statesman, he\n had already proved his lying powers as an historian. The chronicle of his\n public life is the record of the misfortunes of France. Banded, before 1830,\n with the republicans, he slipped into office under Louis Philippe by\n betraying his protector Lafitte, ingratiating himself with the king by\n exciting mob riots against the clergy, during which the church of Saint\n Germain l\u0026rsquo;Auxerrois and the Archbishop\u0026rsquo;s palace were plundered,\n and by acting the minister-spy upon, and the jail-\u003cem\u003eaccoucheur\u003c/em\u003e of the\n Duchess de Berry.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#B\" name=\"Bb\"\u003e[B]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e The\n massacre of the republicans in the Rue Transnonian, and the subsequent\n infamous laws of September against the press and the right of association,\n were his work.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#C\" name=\"Cb\"\u003e[C]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e\n Reappearing as the chief of the cabinet in March 1840, he astonished France\n with his plan for fortifying France.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#D\"\n name=\"Db\"\u003e[D]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e To the republicans, who denounced this plan as a\n sinister plot against the liberty of Paris, he replied from the tribune of\n the Chamber of Deputies: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;What! To fancy that any works of fortification could\n ever endanger liberty! And first of all you calumniate any possible\n government in supposing that it could some day attempt to maintain itself by\n bombarding the capital; […] but that the government would be a hundred\n times more impossible after its victory than before.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIndeed, no government would ever have dared to bombard Paris from the\n forts, save that government which had previously surrendered these forts to\n the Prussians. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eWhen King Bomba [Ferdinand II of Spain] tried his hand at Palermo, in\n January 1848, Thiers, then long since out of office, again rose in the\n Chamber of Deputies: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;You know, gentlemen, what is happening at Palermo.\n You, all of you, shake with horror [in the parliamentary sense] on hearing\n that during 48 hours a large town has been bombarded \u0026ndash; by whom? Was it\n a foreign enemy exercising the rights of war? No, gentlemen, it was by its\n own government. And why? Because the unfortunate town demanded its rights.\n Well, then, for the demand of its rights it has got 48 hours of\n bombardment…. Allow me to appeal to the opinion of Europe. It is doing a\n service to mankind to arise, and to make reverberate, from what is perhaps\n the greatest tribune in Europe, some words [indeed words] of indignation\n against such acts…. When the Regent Espartero, who had rendered services to\n his country [which M. Thiers never did] intended bombarding Barcelona, in\n order to suppress its insurrection, there arose from all parts of the world a\n general outcry of indignation.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eEighteen months afterwards, M. Thiers was amongst the fiercest defenders\n of the bombardment of Rome by a French army.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#E\"\n name=\"Eb\"\u003e[E]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e In fact, the fault of King Bomba seems to have\n consisted in this only \u0026ndash; that he limited his bombardment to 48 hours.\n \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eA few days before the February Revolution, fretting at the long exile from\n place and pelf to which Guizot had condemned him, and sniffing in the air the\n scent of an approaching popular commotion, Thiers, in that pseudo-heroic\n style which won him the nickname \u003cem\u003eMirabeau-mouche\u003c/em\u003e [Mirabeau the fly],\n declared, to the Chamber of Deputies: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;I am of the party of revolution, not only in France,\n but in Europe. I wish the government of the revolution to remain in the hands\n of moderate men… but if that government should fall into the hand of ardent\n minds, even into those of radicals, I shall, for all that, not desert my\n cause. I shall always be of the party of the revolution.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe February Revolution came. Instead of displacing the Guizot Cabinet by\n the Thiers Cabinet, as the little man had dreamt, it superseded Louis\n Philippe by the republic. On the first day of the popular victory, he\n carefully hid himself, forgetting that the contempt of the working men\n screened him from their hatred. Still, with his legendary courage, he\n continued to shy the public stage, until the June [1848] massacres had\n cleared it for his sort of action. Then he became the leading mind of the\n \u0026ldquo;Party of Order\u0026rdquo;\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#F\"\n name=\"Fb\"\u003e[F]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e and its parliamentary republic, that anonymous\n interregnum, in which all the rival factions of the ruling class conspired\n together to crush the people, and conspired against each other to restore to\n each of them its own monarchy. Then, as now, Thiers denounced the republicans\n as the only obstacle to the consolidation of the republic; then, as now, he\n spoke to the republic as the hangman spoke to Don Carlos: \u0026ldquo;I shall\n assassinate thee, but for thy own good.\u0026rdquo; Now, as then, he will have to\n exclaim on the day after his victory: \u003cem\u003eL\u0026rsquo;Empire est fait\u003c/em\u003e\n \u0026ndash; the empire is consummated. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eDespite his hypocritical homilies about the necessary liberties and his\n personal grudge against Louis Bonaparte, who had made a dupe of him, and\n kicked out parliamentarism \u0026ndash; and, outside of its factitious atmosphere,\n the little man is conscious of withering into nothingness \u0026ndash; he had a\n hand in all the infamies of the Second Empire, from the occupation of Rome by\n French troops to the war with Prussia, which he incited by his fierce\n invective against German unity \u0026ndash; not as a cloak of Prussian despotism,\n but as an encroachment upon the vested right of France in German disunion.\n Fond of brandishing, with his dwarfish arms in the face of Europe, the sword\n of the first Napoleon, whose historical shoeblack he had become, his foreign\n policy always culminated in the utter humiliation of France \u0026ndash; from the\n London convention\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#G\" name=\"Gb\"\u003e[G]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e of\n 1840 to the Paris capitulation of 1871, and the present civil war, where he\n hounds on the prisoners of Sedan and Metz\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#H\"\n name=\"Hb\"\u003e[H]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e against Paris by special permission of Bismarck. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eDespite his versatility of talent and shiftiness of purpose, this man has\n his whole lifetime been wedded to the most fossil routine. It is self-evident\n that to him the deeper undercurrents of modern society remained forever\n hidden; but even the most palpable changes on its surface were abhorrent to a\n brain (all the vitality of which) had fled to the tongue. Thus, he never\n tired of denouncing as a sacrilege any deviation from the old French\n protective system. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eWhen a minister of Louis Philippe, he railed at railways as a wild\n chimera; and when in opposition under Louis Bonaparte, he branded as a\n profanation every attempt to reform the rotten French army system. Never in\n his long political career has he been guilty of a single \u0026ndash; even the\n smallest \u0026ndash; measure of any practical use. Thiers was consistent only in\n his greed for wealth and his hatred of the men that produce it. Having\n entered his first ministry, under Louis Philippe, poor as Job, he left it a\n millionaire. His last ministry under the same king (of March 1, 1840) exposed\n him to public taunts of peculation in the Chamber of Deputies, to which he\n was content to reply by tears \u0026ndash; a commodity he deals in as freely as\n Jules Favre, or any other crocodile. At Bordeaux, his first measure for\n saving France from impending financial ruin was to endow himself with three\n millions a year, the first and the last word of the \u0026ldquo;Economical\n Republic,\u0026rdquo; the vista of which he had opened to his Paris electors in\n 1869. One of his former colleagues of the Chamber of Deputies of 1830,\n himself a capitalist and, nevertheless, a devoted member of the Paris\n Commune, M. Beslay, lately addressed Thiers thus in a public placard: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;The enslavement of labor by capital has always been\n the cornerstone of your policy, and from the very day you saw the Republic of\n Labor installed at the Hotel de Ville, you have never ceased to cry out to\n France: \u0026lsquo;These are criminals!\u0026rsquo;\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eA master in small state roguery, a virtuoso in perjury and treason, a\n craftsman in all the petty strategems, cunning devices, and base perfidies of\n parliamentary warfare; never scrupling, when out of office, to fan a\n revolution, and to stifle it in blood when at the helm of the state; with\n class prejudices standing him in the place of ideas, and vanity in the place\n of a heart; his private life as infamous as his public life is odious \u0026ndash;\n even now, when playing the part of a French Sulla, he cannot help setting off\n the abomination of his deeds by the ridicule of his ostentation. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe capitulation of Paris, by surrendering to Prussia not only Paris, but\n all France, closed the long-continued intrigues of treason with the enemy,\n which the usurpers of September 4 had begun, as Trochu himself said, on the\n very same day. On the other hand, it initiated the civil war they were now to\n wage, with the assistance of Prussia, against the republic and Paris. The\n trap was laid in the very terms of the capitulation. At that time, above\n one-third of the territory was in the hands of the enemy, the capital was cut\n off from the provinces, all communications were disorganized. To elect, under\n such circumstances, a real representation of France was impossible, unless\n ample time were given for preparation. In view of this, the capitulation\n stipulated that a National Assembly must be elected within eight days; so\n that in many parts of France the news of the impending election arrived on\n its eve only. This assembly, moreover, was, by an express clause of the\n capitulation, to be elected for the sole purpose of deciding on peace or war,\n and, eventually, to conclude a treaty of peace. The population could not but\n feel that the terms of the armistice rendered the continuation of the war\n impossible, and that for sanctioning the peace imposed by Bismarck, the worst\n men in France were the best. But not content with these precautions, Thiers\n even before the secret of the armistice had been broached to Paris, set out\n for an electioneering tour through the provinces, there to galvanize back\n into life the Legitimist party, which now, along with the Orleanists, had to\n take the place of the then impossible Bonapartists. He was not afraid of\n them. Impossible as a government of modern France, and, therefore,\n contemptible as rivals, what party were more eligible as tools of\n counter-revolution than the party whose action, in the words of Thiers\n himself (Chamber of Deputies, January 5, 1833), \u0026ldquo;Had always been\n confined to the three resources of foreign invasion, civil war, and\n anarchy\u0026rdquo;? They verily believed in the advent of their long-expected\n retrospective millennium. There were the heels of foreign invasion trampling\n upon France; there was the downfall of an empire, and the captivity of\n Bonaparte; and there they were themselves. The wheel of history had evidently\n rolled back to stop at the \u0026ldquo;Chambers introuvable\u0026rdquo; of 1816.\u003csup\n \u003e\u003ca href=\"#I\" name=\"Ib\"\u003e[I]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e In the assemblies of the\n republic, 1848 to 1851, they had been represented by their educated and\n trained parliamentary champions; it was the rank-and-file of the party which\n now rushed in \u0026ndash; all the Pourceaugnacs of France. \u003cspan\u003e[a\n character in one of Molière\u0026rsquo;s comedies, typifying the dull-witted,\n narrow-minded petty landed gentry.]\u003c/span\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAs soon as this Assembly of \u0026ldquo;Rurals\"\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#J\"\n name=\"Jb\"\u003e[J]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e had met at Bordeaux, Thiers made it clear to them\n that the peace preliminaries must be assented to at once, without even the\n honors of a parliamentary debate, as the only conditions on which Prussia\n would permit them to open the war against the republic and Paris, its\n stronghold. The counter-revolution had, in fact, no time to lose. The Second\n Empire had more than doubled the national debt, and plunged all the large\n towns into heavy municipal debts. The war had fearfully swelled the\n liabilities, and mercilessly ravaged the resources of the nation. To complete\n the ruin, the Prussian Shylock was there with his bond for the keep of half a\n million of his soldiers on French soil, his indemnity for five milliards\u003csup\n \u003e\u003ca href=\"#K\" name=\"Kb\"\u003e[K]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e, and interest at 5 per\n cent on the unpaid instalments thereof. Who was to pay this bill? It was only\n by the violent overthrow of the republic that the appropriators of wealth\n could hope to shift onto the shoulders of its producers the cost of a war\n which they, the appropriators, had themselves originated. Thus, the immense\n ruin of France spurred on these patriotic representatives of land and\n capital, under the very eyes and patronage of the invader, to graft upon the\n foreign war a civil war \u0026ndash; a slaveholders\u0026rsquo; rebellion. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThere stood in the way of this conspiracy one great obstacle \u0026ndash;\n Paris. To disarm Paris was the first condition of success. Paris was\n therefore summoned by Thiers to surrender its arms. Then Paris was\n exasperated by the frantic anti-republican demonstrations of the\n \u0026ldquo;Rural\u0026rdquo; Assembly and by Thiers\u0026rsquo; own equivocations about the\n legal status of the republic; by the threat to decapitate and decapitalize\n Paris; the appointment of Orleanist ambassadors; Dufaure\u0026rsquo;s laws on\n over-due commercial bills and house rents\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#L\"\n name=\"Lb\"\u003e[L]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e, inflicting ruin on the commerce and industry of\n Paris; Pouyer-Quertier\u0026rsquo;s tax of two centimes upon every copy of every\n imaginable publication; the sentences of death against Blanqui and Flourens;\n the suppression of the republican journals; the transfer of the National\n Assembly to Versailles; the renewal of the state of siege declared by\n Palikao, and expired on September 4; the appointment of Vinoy, the\n \u003cem\u003eDécembriseur\u003c/em\u003e\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#M\"\n name=\"Mb\"\u003e[M]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e, as governor of Paris \u0026ndash; of Valentin, the\n imperialist \u003cem\u003egendarme\u003c/em\u003e, as its prefect of police \u0026ndash; and of\n D\u0026rsquo;Aurelles de Paladine, the Jesuit general, as the commander-in-chief\n of its National Guard. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAnd now we have to address a question to M. Thiers and the men of national\n defence, his under-strappers. It is known that, through the agency of M.\n Pouyer-Quertier, his finance ministers, Thiers had contracted a loan of two\n milliards. Now, is it true or not \u0026ndash; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e1. That the business was so managed that a consideration\n of several hundred millions was secured for the private benefit of Thiers,\n Jules Favre, Ernest Picard, Pouyer-Quertier, and Jules Simon? and \u0026ndash; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e2. That no money was to be paid down until after the\n \u0026ldquo;pacification\u0026rdquo; of Paris?\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#N\"\n name=\"Nb\"\u003e[N]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAt all events, there must have been something very pressing in the matter,\n for Thiers and Jules Favre, in the name of the majority of the Bordeaux\n Assembly, unblushingly solicited the immediate occupation of Paris by\n Prussian troops. Such, however, was not the game of Bismarck, as he\n sneeringly, and in public, told the admiring Frankfort philistines on his\n return to Germany. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003chr\u003e\r\n\u003ch2\u003eThe Third Address\u003cbr\u003e\n May, 1871 \u003c/h2\u003e\n\n \u003ch3\u003e[Paris Workers\u0026rsquo; Revolution\u003cbr\u003e\n \u0026amp; Thiers\u0026rsquo; Reactionary Massacres] \u003c/h3\u003e\n \u003chr\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eArmed Paris was the only serious obstacle in the way of the\n counter-revolutionary conspiracy. Paris was, therefore, to be disarmed. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eOn this point, the Bordeaux Assembly [National Assembly] was sincerity\n itself. If the roaring rant of its Rurals had not been audible enough, the\n surrender of Paris by Thiers to the tender mercies of the triumvirate of\n Vinoy the \u003cem\u003eDecembriseur\u003c/em\u003e, Valentin the Bonapartist \u003cem\u003egendarme\u003c/em\u003e,\n and Aurelles de Paladine the Jesuit general, would have cut off even the last\n subterfuge of doubt. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eBut while insultingly exhibiting the true purpose of the disarmament of\n Paris, the conspirators asked her to lay down her arms on a pretext which was\n the most glaring, the most barefaced of lies. The artillery of the Paris\n National Guard, said Thiers, belonged to the state, and to the state it must\n be returned. The fact was this: From the very day of the capitulation, by\n which Bismarck\u0026rsquo;s prisoners had signed the surrender of France, but\n reserved to themselves a numerous bodyguard for the express purpose of cowing\n Paris, Paris stood on the watch. The National Guard reorganized themselves\n and entrusted their supreme control to a Central Committee elected by their\n whole body, save some fragments of the old Bonapartist formations. On the eve\n of the entrance of the Prussians into Paris, the Central Committee took\n measures for the removal to Montmartre, Belleville, and La Villette, of the\n cannon and \u003cem\u003emitrailleuses\u003c/em\u003e treacherously abandoned by the\n \u003cem\u003ecapitulards\u003c/em\u003e in and about the very quarters the Prussians were to\n occupy. That artillery had been furnished by the subscriptions of the\n National Guard. As their private property, it was officially recognized in\n the capitulation of January 28, and on that very title exempted from the\n general surrender, into the hands of the conqueror, or arms belonging to the\n government. And Thiers was so utterly destitute of even the flimsiest pretext\n for initiating the war against Paris, that he had to resort to the flagrant\n lie of the artillery of the National Guard being state property! \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe seizure of her artillery was evidently but to serve as the preliminary\n to the general disarmament of Paris, and, therefore, of the Revolution of\n September 4. But that revolution had become the legal status of France. The\n republic, its work, was recognized by the conqueror in the terms of the\n capitulation. After the capitulation, it was acknowledged by all foreign\n powers, and in its name, the National Assembly had been summoned. The Paris\n working men\u0026rsquo;s revolution of September 4 was the only legal title of the\n National Assembly seated at Bordeaux, and of its executive. Without it, the\n National Assembly would at once have to give way to the \u003cem\u003eCorps\n Legislatif\u003c/em\u003e elected in 1869 by universal suffrage under French, not under\n Prussian, rule, and forcibly dispersed by the arm of the revolution. Thiers\n and his ticket-of-leave men would have had to capitulate for safe conducts\n signed by Louis Bonaparte, to save them from a voyage to Cayenne\u003csup\n \u003e\u003ca href=\"#A\" name=\"Ab\"\u003e[A]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e. The National Assembly,\n with its power of attorney to settle the terms of peace with Prussia, was but\n an incident of that revolution, the true embodiment of which was still armed\n Paris, which had initiated it, undergone for it a five-months\u0026rsquo; siege,\n with its horrors of famine, and made her prolonged resistance, despite\n Trochu\u0026rsquo;s plan, the basis of an obstinate war of defence in the\n provinces. And Paris was now either to lay down her arms at the insulting\n behest of the rebellious slaveholders of Bordeaux, and acknowledge that her\n Revolution of September 4 meant nothing but a simple transfer of power from\n Louis Bonaparte to his royal rivals; or she had to stand forward as the\n self-sacrificing champion of France, whose salvation from ruin and whose\n regeneration were impossible without the revolutionary overthrow of the\n political and social conditions that had engendered the Second Empire, and\n under its fostering care, matured into utter rottenness. Paris, emaciated by\n a five-months\u0026rsquo; famine, did not hesitate one moment. She heroically\n resolved to run all the hazards of a resistance against French conspirators,\n even with Prussian cannon frowning upon her from her own forts. Still, in its\n abhorrence of the civil war into which Paris was to be goaded, the Central\n Committee continued to persist in a merely defensive attitude, despite the\n provocations of the Assembly, the usurpations of the Executive, and the\n menacing concentration of troops in and around Paris. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThiers opened the civil war by sending Vinoy, at the head of a multitude\n of \u003cem\u003esergents-de-ville\u003c/em\u003e, and some regiments of the line, upon a\n nocturnal expedition against Montmartre, there to seize, by surprise, the\n artillery of the National Guard. It is well known how this attempt broke down\n before the resistance of the National Guard and the fraternization of the\n line with the people. Aurelles de Paldine had printed beforehand his bulletin\n of victory, and Thiers held ready the placards announcing his measures of\n coup d\u0026rsquo;etat. Now these had to be replaced by Thiers\u0026rsquo; appeals,\n imparting his magnanimous resolve to leave the National Guard in the\n possession of their arms, with which, he said, he felt sure they would rally\n round the government against the rebels. Out of 300,000 National guards, only\n 300 responded to this summons to rally around little Thiers against\n themselves. The glorious working men\u0026rsquo;s Revolution of March 18 took\n undisputed sway of Paris. The Central Committee was its provisional\n government. Europe seemed, for a moment, to doubt whether its recent\n sensational performances of state and war had any reality in them, or whether\n they were the dreams of a long bygone past. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eFrom March 18 to the entrance of the Versailles troops into Paris, the\n proletarian revolution remained so free from the acts of violence in which\n the revolutions \u0026ndash; and still more the counter-revolutions \u0026ndash; of the\n \u0026ldquo;better classes\u0026rdquo; abound, that no facts were left to its opponents\n to cry out about, but the executions of Generals Lecomte and Clement Thomas,\n and the affair of the Place Vendome. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eOne of the Bonapartist officers engaged in the nocturnal attempt against\n Montmartre, General Lecomte, had four times ordered the 81st line regiment to\n fire at an unarmed gathering in the Place Pigalle, and on their refusal\n fiercely insulted them. Instead of shooting women and children, his own men\n shot him. The inveterate habits acquired by the soldiery under the training\n of the enemies of the working class are, of course, not likely to change the\n very moment these soldiers change sides. The same men executed Clement\n Thomas. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;General\u0026rdquo; Clement Thomas, a malcontent\n ex-quartermaster-sergeant, had, in the latter times of Louis Philippe\u0026rsquo;s\n reign, enlisted at the office of the republican newspaper \u003cem\u003eLe\n National\u003c/em\u003e, there to serve in the double capacity of responsible\n man-of-straw (\u003cem\u003egerant responsable\u003c/em\u003e) and of duelling bully to that very\n combative journal. After the February Revolution, the men of the\n \u003cem\u003eNational\u003c/em\u003e having got into power, they metamorphosed this old\n quarter-master-sergeant into a general on the eve of the butchery of June\n \u0026ndash; of which he, like Jules Favre, was one of the sinister plotters, and\n became one of the most dastardly executioners. Then he and his generalship\n disappeared for a long time, to again rise to the surface on November 1,\n 1870. The day before, the Government of National Defence, caught at the Hotel\n de Ville, had solemnly pledged their parole to Blanqui, Flourens, and other\n representatives of the working class, to abdicate their usurped power into\n the hands of a commune to be freely elected by Paris.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca\n href=\"#B\" name=\"Bb\"\u003e[B]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e Instead of keeping their word, they let\n loose on Paris the Bretons of Trochu, who now replaced the Corsicans of\n Bonaparte.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#C\" name=\"Cb\"\u003e[C]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e General\n Tamisier alone, refusing to sully his name by such a breach of faith,\n resigned the commandership-in-chief of the National Guard, and in his place\n Clement Thomas for once became again a general. During the whole of his\n tenure of command, he made war, not upon the Prussians, but upon the Paris\n National Guard. He prevented their general armament, pitted the bourgeois\n battalions against the working men\u0026rsquo;s battalions, weeded out officers\n hostile to Trochu\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;plan,\u0026rdquo; and disbanded, under the stigma\n of cowardice, the very same proletarian battalions whose heroism has now\n astonished their most inveterate enemies. Clement Thomas felt quite proud of\n having reconquered his June pre-eminence as the personal enemy of the working\n class of Paris. Only a few days before March 18, he laid before the War\n Minister, Leflo, a plan of his own for \u0026ldquo;finishing off \u003cem\u003ela fine\n fleur\u003c/em\u003e [the cream] of the Paris canaille.\u0026rdquo; After Vinoy\u0026rsquo;s\n rout, he must needs appear upon the scene of action in the quality of an\n amateur spy. The Central Committee and the Paris working men were as much\n responsible for the killing of Clement Thomas and Lecomte as the Princess of\n Wales for the fate of the people crushed to death on the day of her entrance\n into London. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe massacre of unarmed citizens in Place Vendome is a myth which M.\n Thiers and the Rurals persistently ignored in the Assembly, entrusting its\n propagation exclusively to the servants\u0026rsquo; hall of European journalism.\n \u0026ldquo;The men of order,\u0026rdquo; the reactionists of Paris, trembled at the\n victory of March 18. To them, it was the signal of popular retribution at\n last arriving. The ghosts of the victims assassinated at their hands from the\n days of June 1848, down to January 22, 1871,\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#D\"\n name=\"Db\"\u003e[D]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e arose before their faces. Their panic was their only\n punishment. Even the \u003cem\u003esergents-de-ville\u003c/em\u003e, instead of being disarmed\n and locked up, as ought to have been done, had the gates of Paris flung open\n wide for their safe retreat to Versailles. The men of order were left not\n only unharmed, but allowed to rally and quietly seize more than one\n stronghold in the very centre of Paris. This indulgence of the Central\n Committee \u0026ndash; this magnanimity of the armed working men \u0026ndash; so\n strangely at variance with the habits of the \u0026ldquo;Party of Order,\u0026rdquo;\n the latter misinterpreted as mere symptoms of conscious weakness. Hence their\n silly plan to try, under the cloak of an unarmed demonstration, what Vinoy\n had failed to perform with his cannon and \u003cem\u003emitrailleuses\u003c/em\u003e. On March\n 22, a riotous mob of swells started from the quarters of luxury, all the\n \u003cem\u003epetits creves\u003c/em\u003e in their ranks, and at their head the notorious\n familiars of the empire \u0026ndash; the Heeckeren, Coetlogon, Henri de Pene, etc.\n Under the cowardly pretence of a pacific demonstration, this rabble, secretly\n armed with the weapons of the bravo \u003cspan\u003e[i.e. hired\n assassin]\u003c/span\u003e, fell into marching order, ill-treated and disarmed the\n detached patrols and sentries of the National Guard they met with on their\n progress, and, on debouching from the Rue de la Paix, with the cry of\n \u0026ldquo;Down with the Central Committee! Down with the assassins! The National\n Assembly forever!\u0026rdquo; attempted to break through the line drawn up there,\n and thus to carry by surprise the headquarters of the National Guard in the\n Place Vendome. In reply to their pistol-shots, the regular\n \u003cem\u003esommations\u003c/em\u003e (the French equivalent of the English Riot Act)\u003csup\n \u003e\u003ca href=\"#E\" name=\"Eb\"\u003e[E]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e were made, and, proving\n ineffective, fire was commanded by the general [Bergeret] of the National\n Guard. One volley dispersed into wild flight the silly coxcombs, who expected\n that the mere exhibition of their \u0026ldquo;respectability\u0026rdquo; would have the\n same effect upon the Revolution of Paris as Joshua\u0026rsquo;s trumpets upon the\n walls of Jericho. The runaways left behind them two National Guards killed,\n nine severely wounded (among them a member of the Central Committee\n [Maljournal]), and the whole scene of their exploit strewn with revolvers,\n daggers, and sword-canes, in evidence of the \u0026ldquo;unarmed\u0026rdquo; character\n of their \u0026ldquo;pacific\u0026rdquo; demonstration. When, on June 13, 1849, the\n National Guard made a really pacific demonstration in protest against the\n felonious assault of French troops upon Rome, Changarnier, then general of\n the Party of Order, was acclaimed by the National Assembly, and especially by\n M. Thiers, as the savior of society, for having launched his troops from all\n sides upon these unarmed men, to shoot and sabre them down, and to trample\n them under their horses\u0026rsquo; feet. Paris, then was placed under a state of\n siege. Dufaure hurried through the Assembly new laws of repression. New\n arrests, new proscriptions \u0026ndash; a new reign of terror set in. But the\n lower orders manage these things otherwise. The Central Committee of 1871\n simply ignored the heroes of the \u0026ldquo;pacific demonstration\"; so much so,\n that only two days later, they were enabled to muster under Admiral Saisset,\n for that \u003cem\u003earmed\u003c/em\u003e demonstration, crowned by the famous stampede to\n Versailles. In their reluctance to continue the civil war opened by\n Thiers\u0026rsquo; burglarious attempt on Montmartre, the Central Committee made\n themselves, this time, guilty of a decisive mistake in not at once marching\n upon Versailles, then completely helpless, and thus putting an end to the\n conspiracies of Thiers and his Rurals. Instead of this, the Party of Order\n was again allowed to try its strength at the ballot box, on March 26, the day\n of the election of the Commune. Then, in the \u003cem\u003emairies\u003c/em\u003e of Paris, they\n exchanged bland words of conciliation with their too generous conquerors,\n muttering in their hearts solemn vows to exterminate them in due time. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eNow, look at the reverse of the medal. Thiers opened his second campaign\n against Paris in the beginning of April. The first batch of Parisian\n prisoners brought into Versailles was subjected to revolting atrocities,\n while Ernest Picard, with his hands in his trousers\u0026rsquo; pockets, strolled\n about jeering them, and while Mesdames Thiers and Favre, in the midst of\n their ladies of honor (?) applauded, from the balcony, the outrages of the\n Versailles mob. The captured soldiers of the line were massacred in cold\n blood; our brave friend, General Duval, the iron-founder, was shot without\n any form of trial. Galifet, the kept man of his wife, so notorious for her\n shameless exhibitions at the orgies of the Second Empire, boasted in a\n proclamation of having commanded the murder of a small troop of National\n Guards, with their captain and lieutenant, surprised and disarmed by his\n Chasseurs. Vinoy, the runaway, was appointed by Thiers, Grand Cross of the\n Legion of Honor, for his general order to shoot down every soldier of the\n line taken in the ranks of the Federals. Desmaret, the Gendarme, was\n decorated for the treacherous butcher-like chopping in pieces of the\n high-souled and chivalrous Flourens, who had saved the heads of the\n Government of Defence on October 31, 1870.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#F\"\n name=\"Fb\"\u003e[F]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e \u0026ldquo;The encouraging particulars\u0026rdquo; of his\n assassination were triumphantly expatiated upon by Thiers in the National\n Assembly. With the elated vanity of a parliamentary Tom Thumb permitted to\n play the part of a Tamerlane, he denied the rebels the right of neutrality\n for ambulances. Nothing more horrid than that monkey allowed for a time to\n give full fling to his tigerish instincts, as foreseen by\n Voltaire.[\u003cem\u003eCandide\u003c/em\u003e, Ch. 22](See \u003ca href=\"news.htm\"\u003enews articles\u003c/a\u003e)\n \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAfter the decree of the Commune of April 7, ordering reprisals and\n declaring it to be the duty \u0026ldquo;to protect Paris against the cannibal\n exploits of the Versailles banditti, and to demand an eye for an eye, a tooth\n for a tooth,\u0026rdquo; \u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#G\" name=\"Gb\"\u003e[G]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e\n Thiers did not stop the barbarous treatment of prisoners, moreover, insulting\n them in his bulletins as follows: \u0026ldquo;Never have more degraded\n countenances of a degraded democracy met the afflicted gazes of honest\n men\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; honest, like Thiers himself and his ministerial\n ticket-of-leave men. Still, the shooting of prisoners was suspended for a\n time. Hardly, however, had Thiers and his Decembrist generals \u003cspan\n \u003e[of the December 2, 1851 coup by Louis Bonaparte]\u003c/span\u003e\n become aware that the Communal decree of reprisals was but an empty threat,\n that even their gendarme spies caught in Paris under the disguise of National\n Guards, that even \u003cem\u003esergents-de-ville\u003c/em\u003e, taken with incendiary shells\n upon them, were spared \u0026ndash; when the wholesale shooting of prisoners was\n resumed and carried on uninterruptedly to the end. Houses to which National\n Guards had fled were surrounded by gendarmes, inundated with petroleum (which\n here occurs for the first time in this war), and then set fire to, the\n charred corpses being afterwards brought out by the ambulance of the Press at\n the Ternes. Four National Guards having surrendered to a troop of mounted\n Chasseurs at Belle Epine, on April 25, were afterwards shot down, one after\n another, by the captain, a worthy man of Gallifet\u0026rsquo;s. One of his four\n victims, left for dead, Scheffer, crawled back to the Parisian outposts, and\n deposed to this fact before a commission of the Commune. When Tolain\n interpellated the War Minister upon the report of this commission, the Rurals\n drowned his voice and forbade Leflo to answer. It would be an insult to their\n \u0026ldquo;glorious\u0026rdquo; army to speak of its deeds. The flippant tone in which\n Thiers\u0026rsquo; bulletin announced the bayoneting of the Federals, surprised\n asleep at Moulin Saquet, and the wholesale fusillades at Clamart shocked the\n nerves even of the not over-sensitive London \u003cem\u003eTimes\u003c/em\u003e. But it would be\n ludicrous today to attempt recounting the merely preliminary atrocities\n committed by the bombarders of Paris and the fomenters of a\n slaveholders\u0026rsquo; rebellion protected by foreign invasion. Amidst all these\n horrors, Thiers, forgetful of his parliamentary laments on the terrible\n responsibility weighing down his dwarfish shoulders, boasts in his bulletins\n that \u003cem\u003el\u0026rsquo;Assemblee siege paisiblement\u003c/em\u003e (the Assembly continues\n meeting in peace), and proves by his constant carousals, now with Decembrist\n generals, now with German princes, that his digestion is not troubled in the\n least, not even by the ghosts of Lecomte and Clement Thomas. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003chr\u003e\r\n\u003ch2\u003eThe Third Address\u003cbr\u003e\n May, 1871 \u003c/h2\u003e\n\n \u003ch3\u003e[The Paris Commune] \u003c/h3\u003e\n \u003chr\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eOn the dawn of March 18, Paris arose to the thunder-burst of \u0026ldquo;Vive\n la Commune!\u0026rdquo; What is the Commune, that sphinx so tantalizing to the\n bourgeois mind? \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;The proletarians of Paris,\u0026rdquo; said the Central\n Committee in its manifesto of March 18, \u0026ldquo;amidst the failures and\n treasons of the ruling classes, have understood that the hour has struck for\n them to save the situation by taking into their own hands the direction of\n public affairs…. They have understood that it is their imperious duty, and\n their absolute right, to render themselves masters of their own destinies, by\n seizing upon the governmental power.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eBut the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state\n machinery, and wield it for its own purposes. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe centralized state power, with its ubiquitous organs of standing army,\n police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature \u0026ndash; organs wrought after the\n plan of a systematic and hierarchic division of labor \u0026ndash; originates from\n the days of absolute monarchy, serving nascent middle class society as a\n mighty weapon in its struggle against feudalism. Still, its development\n remained clogged by all manner of medieval rubbish, seignorial rights, local\n privileges, municipal and guild monopolies, and provincial constitutions. The\n gigantic broom of the French Revolution of the 18th century swept away all\n these relics of bygone times, thus clearing simultaneously the social soil of\n its last hinderances to the superstructure of the modern state edifice raised\n under the First Empire, itself the offspring of the coalition wars of old\n semi-feudal Europe against modern France. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eDuring the subsequent regimes, the government, placed under parliamentary\n control \u0026ndash; that is, under the direct control of the propertied classes\n \u0026ndash; became not only a hotbed of huge national debts and crushing taxes;\n with its irresistible allurements of place, pelf, and patronage, it became\n not only the bone of contention between the rival factions and adventurers of\n the ruling classes; but its political character changed simultaneously with\n the economic changes of society. At the same pace at which the progress of\n modern industry developed, widened, intensified the class antagonism between\n capital and labor, the state power assumed more and more the character of the\n national power of capital over labor, of a public force organized for social\n enslavement, of an engine of class despotism. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAfter every revolution marking a progressive phase in the class struggle,\n the purely repressive character of the state power stands out in bolder and\n bolder relief. The Revolution of 1830, resulting in the transfer of\n government from the landlords to the capitalists, transferred it from the\n more remote to the more direct antagonists of the working men. The bourgeois\n republicans, who, in the name of the February Revolution, took the state\n power, used it for the June [1848] massacres, in order to convince the\n working class that \u0026ldquo;social\u0026rdquo; republic means the republic\n entrusting their social subjection, and in order to convince the royalist\n bulk of the bourgeois and landlord class that they might safely leave the\n cares and emoluments of government to the bourgeois\n \u0026ldquo;republicans.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eHowever, after their one heroic exploit of June, the bourgeois republicans\n had, from the front, to fall back to the rear of the \u0026ldquo;Party of\n Order\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; a combination formed by all the rival fractions and\n factions of the appropriating classes. The proper form of their joint-stock\n government was the parliamentary republic, with Louis Bonaparte for its\n president. Theirs was a regime of avowed class terrorism and deliberate\n insult towards the \u0026ldquo;vile multitude.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIf the parliamentary republic, as M. Thiers said, \u0026ldquo;divided them [the\n different fractions of the ruling class] least\", it opened an abyss between\n that class and the whole body of society outside their spare ranks. The\n restraints by which their own divisions had under former regimes still\n checked the state power, were removed by their union; and in view of the\n threatening upheaval of the proletariat, they now used that state power\n mercilessly and ostentatiously as the national war engine of capital against\n labor. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIn their uninterrupted crusade against the producing masses, they were,\n however, bound not only to invest the executive with continually increased\n powers of repression, but at the same time to divest their own parliamentary\n stronghold \u0026ndash; the National Assembly \u0026ndash; one by one, of all its own\n means of defence against the Executive. The Executive, in the person of Louis\n Bonaparte, turned them out. The natural offspring of the \u0026ldquo;Party of\n Order\u0026rdquo; republic was the Second Empire. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe empire, with the coup d\u0026rsquo;etat for its birth certificate,\n universal suffrage for its sanction, and the sword for its sceptre, professed\n to rest upon the peasantry, the large mass of producers not directly involved\n in the struggle of capital and labor. It professed to save the working class\n by breaking down parliamentarism, and, with it, the undisguised subserviency\n of government to the propertied classes. It professed to save the propertied\n classes by upholding their economic supremacy over the working class; and,\n finally, it professed to unite all classes by reviving for all the chimera of\n national glory. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIn reality, it was the only form of government possible at a time when the\n bourgeoisie had already lost, and the working class had not yet acquired, the\n faculty of ruling the nation. It was acclaimed throughout the world as the\n savior of society. Under its sway, bourgeois society, freed from political\n cares, attained a development unexpected even by itself. Its industry and\n commerce expanded to colossal dimensions; financial swindling celebrated\n cosmopolitan orgies; the misery of the masses was set off by a shameless\n display of gorgeous, meretricious and debased luxury. The state power,\n apparently soaring high above society and the very hotbed of all its\n corruptions. Its own rottenness, and the rottenness of the society it had\n saved, were laid bare by the bayonet of Prussia, herself eagerly bent upon\n transferring the supreme seat of that regime from Paris to Berlin.\n Imperialism is, at the same time, the most prostitute and the ultimate form\n of the state power which nascent middle class society had commenced to\n elaborate as a means of its own emancipation from feudalism, and which\n full-grown bourgeois society had finally transformed into a means for the\n enslavement of labor by capital. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe direct antithesis to the empire was the Commune. The cry of\n \u0026ldquo;social republic,\u0026rdquo; with which the February Revolution was ushered\n in by the Paris proletariat, did but express a vague aspiration after a\n republic that was not only to supercede the monarchical form of class rule,\n but class rule itself. The Commune was the positive form of that republic.\n \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eParis, the central seat of the old governmental power, and, at the same\n time, the social stronghold of the French working class, had risen in arms\n against the attempt of Thiers and the Rurals to restore and perpetuate that\n old governmental power bequeathed to them by the empire. Paris could resist\n only because, in consequence of the siege, it had got rid of the army, and\n replaced it by a National Guard, the bulk of which consisted of working men.\n This fact was now to be transformed into an institution. The first decree of\n the Commune, therefore, was the suppression of the standing army, and the\n substitution for it of the armed people. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal\n suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short\n terms. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or\n acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a\n working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same\n time. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eInstead of continuing to be the agent of the Central Government, the\n police was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the\n responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune. So were the\n officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of\n the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at\n \u003cem\u003eworkman\u0026rsquo;s wage\u003c/em\u003e. The vested interests and the representation\n allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the high\n dignitaries themselves. Public functions ceased to be the private property of\n the tools of the Central Government. Not only municipal administration, but\n the whole initiative hitherto exercised by the state was laid into the hands\n of the Commune. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eHaving once got rid of the standing army and the police \u0026ndash; the\n physical force elements of the old government \u0026ndash; the Commune was anxious\n to break the spiritual force of repression, the \u0026ldquo;parson-power\", by the\n disestablishment and disendowment of all churches as proprietary bodies. The\n priests were sent back to the recesses of private life, there to feed upon\n the alms of the faithful in imitation of their predecessors, the apostles.\n \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe whole of the educational institutions were opened to the people\n gratuitously, and at the same time cleared of all interference of church and\n state. Thus, not only was education made accessible to all, but science\n itself freed from the fetters which class prejudice and governmental force\n had imposed upon it. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe judicial functionaries were to be divested of that sham \u003ca\n name=\"p221\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eindependence which had but served to mask their abject\n subserviency to all succeeding governments to which, in turn, they had taken,\n and broken, the oaths of allegiance. Like the rest of public servants,\n magistrates and judges were to be elective, responsible, and revocable. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe Paris Commune was, of course, to serve as a model to all the great\n industrial centres of France. The communal regime once established in Paris\n and the secondary centres, the old centralized government would in the\n provinces, too, have to give way to the self-government of the producers. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIn a rough sketch of national organization, which the Commune had no time\n to develop, it states clearly that the Commune was to be the political form\n of even the smallest country hamlet, and that in the rural districts the\n standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely\n short term of service. The rural communities of every district were to\n administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central\n town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the\n National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and\n bound by the \u003cem\u003emandat imperatif\u003c/em\u003e (formal instructions) of his\n constituents. The few but important functions which would still remain for a\n central government were not to be suppressed, as has been intentionally\n misstated, but were to be discharged by Communal and thereafter responsible\n agents. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe unity of the nation was not to be broken, but, on the contrary, to be\n organized by Communal Constitution, and to become a reality by the\n destruction of the state power which claimed to be the embodiment of that\n unity independent of, and superior to, the nation itself, from which it was\n but a parasitic excresence. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eWhile the merely repressive organs of the old governmental power were to\n be amputated, its legitimate functions were to be wrested from an authority\n usurping pre-eminence over society itself, and restored to the responsible\n agents of society. \u003ca name=\"p221-years\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eInstead of deciding once in three\n or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people\n in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in\n Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search\n for the workmen and managers in his business. And it is well-known that\n companies, like individuals, in matters of real business generally know how\n to put the right man in the right place, and, if they for once make a\n mistake, to redress it promptly. On the other hand, nothing could be more\n foreign to the spirit of the Commune than to supercede universal suffrage by\n hierarchical investiture.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#A\"\n name=\"Ab\"\u003e[A]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIt is generally the fate of completely new historical creations to be\n mistaken for the counterparts of older, and even defunct, forms of social\n life, to which they may bear a certain likeness. Thus, this new Commune,\n which breaks with the modern state power, has been mistaken for a\n reproduction of the medieval Communes, which first preceded, and afterward\n became the substratum of, that very state power. The Communal Constitution\n has been mistaken for an attempt to break up into the federation of small\n states, as dreamt of by Montesquieu and the Girondins,\u003csup\u003e\u003ca\n href=\"#B\" name=\"Bb\"\u003e[B]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e that unity of great nations which, if\n originally brought about by political force, has now become a powerful\n coefficient of social production. The antagonism of the Commune against the\n state power has been mistaken for an exaggerated form of the ancient struggle\n against over-centralization. Peculiar historical circumstances may have\n prevented the classical development, as in France, of the bourgeois form of\n government, and may have allowed, as in England, to complete the great\n central state organs by corrupt vestries, jobbing councillors, and ferocious\n poor-law guardians in the towns, and virtually hereditary magistrates in the\n counties. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe Communal Constitution would have restored to the social body all the\n forces hitherto absorbed by the state parasite feeding upon, and clogging the\n free movement of, society. By this one act, it would have initiated the\n regeneration of France. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe provincial French middle class saw in the Commune an attempt to\n restore the sway their order had held over the country under Louis Philippe,\n and which, under Louis Napoleon, was supplanted by the pretended rule of the\n country over the towns. In reality, the Communal Constitution brought the\n rural producers under the intellectual lead of the central towns of their\n districts, and there secured to them, in the working men, the natural\n trustees of their interests. The very existence of the Commune involved, as a\n matter of course, local municipal liberty, but no longer as a check upon the\n now superseded state power. It could only enter into the head of a Bismarck\n \u0026ndash; who, when not engaged on his intrigues of blood and iron, always\n likes to resume his old trade, so befitting his mental calibre, of\n contributor to \u003cem\u003eKladderadatsch\u003c/em\u003e (the Berlin \u003cem\u003ePunch\u003c/em\u003e)\u003csup\n \u003e\u003ca href=\"#C\" name=\"Cb\"\u003e[C]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e \u0026ndash; it could only\n enter into such a head to ascribe to the Paris Commune aspirations after the\n caricature of the old French municipal organization of 1791, the Prussian\n municipal constitution which degrades the town governments to mere secondary\n wheels in the police machinery of the Prussian state. The Commune made that\n catchword of bourgeois revolutions \u0026ndash; cheap government \u0026ndash; a reality\n by destroying the two greatest sources of expenditure: the standing army and\n state functionarism. Its very existence presupposed the non-existence of\n monarchy, which, in Europe at least, is the normal incumbrance and\n indispensable cloak of class rule. It supplied the republic with the basis of\n really democratic institutions. But neither cheap government nor the\n \u0026ldquo;true republic\u0026rdquo; was its ultimate aim; they were its mere\n concomitants. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe multiplicity of interpretations to which the Commune has been\n subjected, and the multiplicity of interests which construed it in their\n favor, show that it was a thoroughly expansive political form, while all the\n previous forms of government had been emphatically repressive. Its true\n secret was this: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIt was essentially a working class government, the product\n of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the\n political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical\n emancipation of labor. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eExcept on this last condition, the Communal Constitution would have been\n an impossibility and a delusion. The political rule of the producer cannot\n co-exist with the perpetuation of his social slavery. The Commune was\n therefore to serve as a lever for uprooting the economical foundation upon\n which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class rule. With labor\n emancipated, every man becomes a working man, and productive labor ceases to\n be a class attribute. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIt is a strange fact. In spite of all the tall talk and all the immense\n literature, for the last 60 years, about emancipation of labor, no sooner do\n the working men anywhere take the subject into their own hands with a will,\n than uprises at once all the apologetic phraseology of the mouthpieces of\n present society with its two poles of capital and wages-slavery (the landlord\n now is but the sleeping partner of the capitalist), as if the capitalist\n society was still in its purest state of virgin innocence, with its\n antagonisms still undeveloped, with its delusions still unexploded, with its\n prostitute realities not yet laid bare. The Commune, they exclaim, intends to\n abolish property, the basis of all civilization! \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eYes, gentlemen, the Commune intended to abolish that class property which\n makes the labor of the many the wealth of the few. It aimed at the\n expropriation of the expropriators. It wanted to make individual property a\n truth by transforming the means of production, land, and capital, now chiefly\n the means of enslaving and exploiting labor, into mere instruments of free\n and associated labor. But this is communism, \u0026ldquo;impossible\u0026rdquo;\n communism! Why, those members of the ruling classes who are intelligent\n enough to perceive the impossibility of continuing the present system \u0026ndash;\n and they are many \u0026ndash; have become the obtrusive and full-mouthed apostles\n of co-operative production. If co-operative production is not to remain a\n sham and a snare; if it is to supersede the capitalist system; if united\n co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon common plan,\n thus taking it under their own control, and putting an end to the constant\n anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of capitalist\n production \u0026ndash; what else, gentlemen, would it be but communism,\n \u0026ldquo;possible\u0026rdquo; communism? \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe working class did not expect miracles from the Commune. They have no\n ready-made utopias to introduce \u003cem\u003epar décret du peuple\u003c/em\u003e. They know that\n in order to work out their own emancipation, and along with it that higher\n form to which present society is irresistably tending by its own economical\n agencies, they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of\n historic processes, transforming circumstances and men. They have no ideals\n to realize, but to set free the elements of the new society with which old\n collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant. In the full consciousness of\n their historic mission, and with the heroic resolve to act up to it, the\n working class can afford to smile at the coarse invective of the\n gentlemen\u0026rsquo;s gentlemen with pen and inkhorn, and at the didactic\n patronage of well-wishing bourgeois-doctrinaires, pouring forth their\n ignorant platitudes and sectarian crotchets in the oracular tone of\n scientific infallibility. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eWhen the Paris Commune took the management of the revolution in its own\n hands; when plain working men for the first time dared to infringe upon the\n governmental privilege of their \u0026ldquo;natural superiors,\u0026rdquo; and, under\n circumstances of unexampled difficulty, performed it at salaries the highest\n of which barely amounted to one-fifth of what, according to high scientific\n authority,\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#1\" name=\"1b\"\u003e(1)\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e is the\n minimum required for a secretary to a certain metropolitan school-board\n \u0026ndash; the old world writhed in convulsions of rage at the sight of the Red\n Flag, the symbol of the Republic of Labor, floating over the Hôtel de Ville.\n \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAnd yet, this was the first revolution in which the working class was\n openly acknowledged as the only class capable of social initiative, even by\n the great bulk of the Paris middle class \u0026ndash; shopkeepers, tradesmen,\n merchants \u0026ndash; the wealthy capitalist alone excepted. The Commune had\n saved them by a sagacious settlement of that ever recurring cause of dispute\n among the middle class themselves \u0026ndash; the debtor and creditor\n accounts.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#D\" name=\"Db\"\u003e[D]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e The same\n portion of the middle class, after they had assisted in putting down the\n working men\u0026rsquo;s insurrection of June 1848, had been at once\n unceremoniously sacrificed to their creditors\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#E\"\n name=\"Eb\"\u003e[E]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e by the then Constituent Assembly. But this was not\n their only motive for now rallying around the working class. They felt there\n was but one alternative \u0026ndash; the Commune, or the empire \u0026ndash; under\n whatever name it might reappear. The empire had ruined them economically by\n the havoc it made of public wealth, by the wholesale financial swindling it\n fostered, by the props it lent to the artificially accelerated centralization\n of capital, and the concomitant expropriation of their own ranks. It had\n suppressed them politically, it had shocked them morally by its orgies, it\n had insulted their Voltairianism by handing over the education of their\n children to the \u003cem\u003efréres Ignorantins\u003c/em\u003e,\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#F\"\n name=\"Fb\"\u003e[F]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e it had revolted their national feeling as Frenchmen\n by precipitating them headlong into a war which left only one equivalent for\n the ruins it made \u0026ndash; the disappearance of the empire. In fact, after the\n exodus from Paris of the high Bonapartist and capitalist \u003cem\u003ebohème\u003c/em\u003e, the\n true middle class Party of Order came out in the shape of the \u0026ldquo;Union\n Republicaine,\u0026rdquo;\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#G\" name=\"Gb\"\u003e[G]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e\n enrolling themselves under the colors of the Commune and defending it against\n the wilful misconstructions of Thiers. Whether the gratitude of this great\n body of the middle class will stand the present severe trial, time must show.\n \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe Commune was perfectly right in telling the peasants that \u0026ldquo;its\n victory was their only hope.\u0026rdquo; Of all the lies hatched at Versailles and\n re-echoed by the glorious European penny-a-liner, one of the most tremendous\n was that the Rurals represented the French peasantry. Think only of the love\n of the French peasant for the men to whom, after 1815, he had to pay the\n milliard indemnity.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#H\" name=\"Hb\"\u003e[H]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e\n In the eyes of the French peasant, the very existence of a great landed\n proprietor is in itself an encroachment on his conquests of 1789. The\n bourgeois, in 1848, had burdened his plot of land with the additional tax of\n 45 cents in the franc; but then he did so in the name of the revolution;\n while now he had fomented a civil war against revolution, to shift on to the\n peasant\u0026rsquo;s shoulders the chief load of the 5 milliards of indemnity to\n be paid to the Prussian. The Commune, on the other hand, in one of its first\n proclamations, declared that the true originators of the war would be made to\n pay its cost. The Commune would have delivered the peasant of the blood tax\n \u0026ndash; would have given him a cheap government \u0026ndash; transformed his\n present blood-suckers, the notary, advocate, executor, and other judicial\n vampires, into salaried communal agents, elected by, and responsible to,\n himself. It would have freed him of the tyranny of the \u003cem\u003egarde\n champêtre\u003c/em\u003e, the gendarme, and the prefect; would have put enlightenment\n by the schoolmaster in the place of stultification by the priest. And the\n French peasant is, above all, a man of reckoning. He would find it extremely\n reasonable that the pay of the priest, instead of being extorted by the\n tax-gatherer, should only depend upon the spontaneous action of the\n parishioners\u0026rsquo; religious instinct. Such were the great immediate boons\n which the rule of the Commune \u0026ndash; and that rule alone \u0026ndash; held out to\n the French peasantry. It is, therefore, quite superfluous here to expatiate\n upon the more complicated but vital problems which the Commune alone was\n able, and at the same time compelled, to solve in favor of the peasant\n \u0026ndash; viz., the hypothecary debt, lying like an incubus upon his parcel of\n soil, the \u003cem\u003eprolétariat foncier\u003c/em\u003e (the rural proletariat), daily growing\n upon it, and his expropriation from it enforced, at a more and more rapid\n rate, by the very development of modern agriculture and the competition of\n capitalist farming. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe French peasant had elected Louis Bonaparte president of the Republic;\n but the Party of Order created the empire. What the French peasant really\n wants he commenced to show in 1849 and 1850, by opposing his \u003cem\u003emaire\u003c/em\u003e\n to the government\u0026rsquo;s prefect, his school-master to the\n government\u0026rsquo;s priest, and himself to the government\u0026rsquo;s gendarme.\n All the laws made by the Party of Order in January and February 1850 were\n avowed measures of repression against the peasant. The peasant was a\n Bonapartist, because the Great Revolution, with all its benefits to him, was,\n in his eyes, personified in Napoleon. This delusion, rapidly breaking down\n under the Second Empire (and in its very nature hostile to the Rurals), this\n prejudice of the past, how could it have withstood the appeal of the Commune\n to the living interests and urgent wants of the peasantry? \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe Rurals \u0026ndash; this was, in fact, their chief apprehension \u0026ndash;\n knew that three months\u0026rsquo; free communication of Communal Paris with the\n provinces would bring about a general rising of the peasants, and hence their\n anxiety to establish a police blockade around Paris, so as to stop the spread\n of the rinderpest \u003cspan\u003e[cattle pest \u0026ndash; contagious\n disease].\u003c/span\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIf the Commune was thus the true representative of all the healthy\n elements of French society, and therefore the truly national government, it\n was, at the same time, as a working men\u0026rsquo;s government, as the bold\n champion of the emancipation of labor, emphatically international. Within\n sight of that Prussian army, that had annexed to Germany two French\n provinces, the Commune annexed to France the working people all over the\n world. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe Second Empire had been the jubilee of cosmopolitan blackleggism, the\n rakes of all countries rushing in at its call for a share in its orgies and\n in the plunder of the French people. Even at this moment, the right hand of\n Thiers is Ganessco, the foul Wallachian, and his left hand is Markovsky, the\n Russian spy. The Commune admitted all foreigners to the honor of dying for an\n immortal cause. Between the foreign war lost by their treason, and the civil\n war fomented by their conspiracy with the foreign invader, the bourgeoisie\n had found the time to display their patriotism by organizing police hunts\n upon the Germans in France. The Commune made a German working man [Leo\n Frankel] its Minister of Labor. Thiers, the bourgeoisie, the Second Empire,\n had continually deluded Poland by loud professions of sympathy, while in\n reality betraying her to, and doing the dirty work of, Russia. The Commune\n honored the heroic sons of Poland [J. Dabrowski and W. Wróblewski] by placing\n them at the head of the defenders of Paris. And, to broadly mark the new era\n of history it was conscious of initiating, under the eyes of the conquering\n Prussians on one side, and the Bonapartist army, led by Bonapartist generals,\n on the other, the Commune pulled down that colossal symbol of martial glory,\n the Vendôme Column.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#I\" name=\"Ib\"\u003e[I]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e\n \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe great social measure of the Commune was its own working existence. Its\n special measures could but betoken the tendency of a government of the people\n by the people. Such were the abolition of the nightwork of journeymen bakers;\n the prohibition, under penalty, of the employers\u0026rsquo; practice to reduce\n wages by levying upon their workpeople fines under manifold pretexts \u0026ndash;\n a process in which the employer combines in his own person the parts of\n legislator, judge, and executor, and filches the money to boot. Another\n measure of this class was the surrender to associations of workmen, under\n reserve of compensation, of all closed workshops and factories, no matter\n whether the respective capitalists had absconded or preferred to strike work.\n \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe financial measures of the Commune, remarkable for their sagacity and\n moderation, could only be such as were compatible with the state of a\n besieged town. Considering the colossal robberies committed upon the city of\n Paris by the great financial companies and contractors, under the protection\n of Haussman,\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#J\" name=\"Jb\"\u003e[J]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e the\n Commune would have had an incomparably better title to confiscate their\n property than Louis Napoleon had against the Orleans family. The Hohenzollern\n and the English oligarchs, who both have derived a good deal of their estates\n from church plunders, were, of course, greatly shocked at the Commune\n clearing but 8,000F out of secularization. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eWhile the Versailles government, as soon as it had recovered some spirit\n and strength, used the most violent means against the Commune; while it put\n down the free expression of opinion all over France, even to the forbidding\n of meetings of delegates from the large towns; while it subjected Versailles\n and the rest of France to an espionage far surpassing that of the Second\n Empire; while it burned by its gendarme inquisitors all papers printed at\n Paris, and sifted all correspondence from and to Paris; while in the National\n Assembly the most timid attempts to put in a word for Paris were howled down\n in a manner unknown even to the \u003cem\u003eChambre introuvable\u003c/em\u003e of 1816; with\n the savage warfare of Versailles outside, and its attempts at corruption and\n conspiracy inside Paris \u0026ndash; would the Commune not have shamefully\n betrayed its trust by affecting to keep all the decencies and appearances of\n liberalism as in a time of profound peace? Had the government of the Commune\n been akin to that of M. Thiers, there would have been no more occasion to\n suppress Party of Order papers at Paris that there was to suppress Communal\n papers at Versailles. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIt was irritating indeed to the Rurals that at the very same time they\n declared the return to the church to be the only means of salvation for\n France, the infidel Commune unearthed the peculiar mysteries of the Picpus\n nunnery, and of the Church of St. Laurent.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#K\"\n name=\"Kb\"\u003e[K]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e It was a satire upon M. Thiers that, while he\n showered grand crosses upon the Bonapartist generals in acknowledgment of\n their mastery in losing battles, signing capitulations, and turning\n cigarettes at Wilhelmshöhe,\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#L\"\n name=\"Lb\"\u003e[L]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e the Commune dismissed and arrested its generals\n whenever they were suspected of neglecting their duties. The expulsion from,\n and arrest by, the Commune of one of its members [Blanchet] who had slipped\n in under a false name, and had undergone at Lyons six days\u0026rsquo;\n imprisonment for simple bankruptcy, was it not a deliberate insult hurled at\n the forger, Jules Favre, then still the foreign minister of France, still\n selling France to Bismarck, and still dictating his orders to that paragon\n government of Belgium? But indeed the Commune did not pretend to\n infallibility, the invariable attribute of all governments of the old stamp.\n It published its doings and sayings, it initiated the public into all its\n shortcomings. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIn every revolution there intrude, at the side of its true agents, men of\n different stamp; some of them survivors of and devotees to past revolutions,\n without insight into the present movement, but preserving popular influence\n by their known honesty and courage, or by the sheer force of tradition;\n others mere brawlers who, by dint of repeating year after year the same set\n of stereotyped declarations against the government of the day, have sneaked\n into the reputation of revolutionists of the first water. After March 18,\n some such men did also turn up, and in some cases contrived to play\n pre-eminent parts. As far as their power went, they hampered the real action\n of the working class, exactly as men of that sort have hampered the full\n development of every previous revolution. They are an unavoidable evil: with\n time they are shaken off; but time was not allowed to the Commune. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eWonderful, indeed, was the change the Commune had wrought in Paris! No\n longer any trace of the meretricious Paris of the Second Empire! No longer\n was Paris the rendezvous of British landlords, Irish absentees,\u003csup\n \u003e\u003ca href=\"#M\" name=\"Mb\"\u003e[M]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e American ex-slaveholders\n and shoddy men, Russian ex-serfowners, and Wallachian boyards. No more\n corpses at the morgue, no nocturnal burglaries, scarcely any robberies; in\n fact, for the first time since the days of February 1848, the streets of\n Paris were safe, and that without any police of any kind. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;We,\u0026rdquo; said a member of the Commune, \u0026ldquo;hear\n no longer of assassination, theft, and personal assault; it seems indeed as\n if the police had dragged along with it to Versailles all its Conservative\n friends.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe \u003cem\u003ecocottes\u003c/em\u003e \u003cspan\u003e[\u0026lsquo;chickens\u0026rsquo; \u0026ndash; prostitutes]\u003c/span\u003e had refound the scent of their protectors \u0026ndash;\n the absconding men of family, religion, and, above all, of property. In their\n stead, the real women of Paris showed again at the surface \u0026ndash; heroic,\n noble, and devoted, like the women of antiquity. Working, thinking fighting,\n bleeding Paris \u0026ndash; almost forgetful, in its incubation of a new society,\n of the Cannibals at its gates \u0026ndash; radiant in the enthusiasm of its\n historic initiative! \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eOpposed to this new world at Paris, behold the old world at Versailles\n \u0026ndash; that assembly of the ghouls of all defunct regimes, Legitimists and\n Orleanists, eager to feed upon the carcass of the nation \u0026ndash; with a tail\n of antediluvian republicans, sanctioning, by their presence in the Assembly,\n the slaveholders\u0026rsquo; rebellion, relying for the maintenance of their\n parliamentary republic upon the vanity of the senile mountebank at its head,\n and caricaturing 1789 by holding their ghastly meetings in the \u003cem\u003eJeu de\n Paume\u003c/em\u003e.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#2\" name=\"2b\"\u003e(2)\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e There it\n was, this Assembly, the representative of everything dead in France, propped\n up to the semblance of life by nothing but the swords of the generals of\n Louis Bonaparte. Paris all truth, Versailles all lie; and that lie vented\n through the mouth of Thiers. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThiers tells a deputation of the mayors of the Seine-et-Oise \u0026ndash;\n \u0026ldquo;You may rely upon my word, which I have never broken!\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eHe tells the Assembly itself that \u0026ldquo;it was the most freely elected\n and most liberal Assembly France ever possessed\"; he tells his motley\n soldiery that it was \u0026ldquo;the admiration of the world, and the finest army\n France ever possessed\u0026rdquo;; he tells the provinces that the bombardment of Paris\n by him was a myth: \u0026ldquo;If some cannon-shots have been fired, it was not\n the deed of the army of Versailles, but of some insurgents trying to make\n believe that they are fighting, while they dare not show their faces.\u0026rdquo;\n He again tells the provinces that \u0026ldquo;the artillery of Versailles does not\n bombard Paris, but only cannonades it\". He tells the Archbishop of Paris that\n the pretended executions and reprisals (!) attributed to the Versailles\n troops were all moonshine. He tells Paris that he was only anxious \u0026ldquo;to\n free it from the hideous tyrants who oppress it,\u0026rdquo; and that, in fact,\n the Paris of the Commune was \u0026ldquo;but a handful of criminals.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe Paris of M. Thiers was not the real Paris of the \u0026ldquo;vile\n multitude,\u0026rdquo; but a phantom Paris, the Paris of the\n \u003cem\u003efrancs-fileurs\u003c/em\u003e,\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#N\"\n name=\"Nb\"\u003e[N]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e the Paris of the Boulevards, male and female \u0026ndash;\n the rich, the capitalist, the gilded, the idle Paris, now thronging with its\n lackeys, its blacklegs, its literary \u003cem\u003ebonhome\u003c/em\u003e, and its\n \u003cem\u003ecocottes\u003c/em\u003e at Versailles, Saint-Denis, Rueil, and Saint-Germain;\n considering the civil war but an agreeable diversion, eyeing the battle going\n on through telescopes, counting the rounds of cannon, swearing by their own\n honor and that of their prostitutes, that the performance was far better got\n up than it used to be at the Porte St. Martin. The men who fell were really\n dead; the cries of the wounded were cries in good earnest; and, besides, the\n whole thing was so intensely historical. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThis is the Paris of M. Thiers, as the emigration of Coblenz was the\n France of M. de Calonne.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#O\"\n name=\"Ob\"\u003e[O]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003chr\u003e\r\n\u003ch2\u003eThe Third Address\u003cbr\u003e\n May, 1871 \u003c/h2\u003e\n\n \u003ch3\u003e[The Fall of Paris] \u003c/h3\u003e\n \u003chr\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe first attempt of the slaveholders\u0026rsquo; conspiracy to put down Paris\n by getting the Prussians to occupy it was frustrated by Bismarck\u0026rsquo;s\n refusal. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe second attempt, that of March 18, ended in the rout of the army and\n the flight to Versailles of the government, which ordered the whole\n administration to break up and follow in its track. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eBy the semblance of peace negotiations with Paris, Thiers found the time\n to prepare for war against it. But where to find an army? The remnants of the\n line regiments were weak in number and unsafe in character. His urgent appeal\n to the provinces to succour Versailles, by their National Guards and\n volunteers, met with a flat refusal. Brittany alone furnished a handful of\n \u003cem\u003eChouans\u003c/em\u003e\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#A\" name=\"Ab\"\u003e[A]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e\n fighting under a white flag, every one of them wearing on his breast the\n heart of Jesus in white cloth, and shouting \u0026ldquo;Vive le Roi!\u0026rdquo; (Long\n live the King!) \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThiers was, therefore, compelled to collect, in hot haste, a motley crew,\n composed of sailors, marines, Pontifical Zouaves, Valentin\u0026rsquo;s gendarmes,\n and Pietri\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003esergents-de-ville\u003c/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003emouchards\u003c/em\u003e. This\n army, however, would have been ridiculously ineffective without the\n instalments of imperialist war prisoners, which Bismarck granted in numbers\n just sufficient to keep the civil war a-going, and keep the Versailles\n government in abject dependence on Prussia. During the war itself, the\n Versailles police had to look after the Versailles army, while the gendarmes\n had to drag it on by exposing themselves at all posts of danger. The forts\n which fell were not taken, but bought. The heroism of the Federals convinced\n Thiers that the resistance of Paris was not to be broken by his own strategic\n genius and the bayonets at his disposal. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eMeanwhile, his relations with the provinces became more and more\n difficult. Not one single address of approval came in to gladden Thiers and\n his Rurals. Quite the contrary. Deputations and addresses demanding, in a\n tone anything but respectful, conciliation with Paris on the basis of the\n unequivocal recognition of the republic, the acknowledgment of the Communal\n liberties, and the dissolution of the National Assembly, whose mandate was\n extinct, poured in from all sides, and in such numbers that Dufaure,\n Thiers\u0026rsquo; Minister of Justice, in his circular of April 23 to the public\n prosecutors, commanded them to treat \u0026ldquo;the cry of conciliation\u0026rdquo; as\n a crime! In regard, however, of the hopeless prospect held out by his\n campaign, Thiers resolved to shift his tactics by ordering, all over the\n country, municipal elections to take place on April 30, on the basis of the\n new municipal law dictated by himself to the National Assembly. What with the\n intrigues of his prefects, what with police intimidation, he felt quite\n sanguine of imparting, by the verdict of the provinces, to the National\n Assembly that moral power it had never possessed, and of getting at last from\n the provinces the physical force required for the conquest of Paris. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eHis bandit-warfare against Paris, exalted in his own bulletins, and the\n attempts of his ministers at the establishment, throughout France, of a reign\n of terror, Thiers was from the beginning anxious to accompany with a little\n by-play of conciliation, which had to serve more than one purpose. It was to\n dupe the provinces, to inveigle the middle class elements in Paris, and above\n all, to afford the professed republicans in the National Assembly the\n opportunity of hiding their treason against Paris behind their faith in\n Thiers. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eOn March 21, when still without an army, he had declared to the Assembly:\n \u0026ldquo;Come what may, I will not send an army to Paris.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eOn March 27, he rose again: \u0026ldquo;I have found the republic an\n accomplished fact, and I am firmly resolved to maintain it.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIn reality, he put down the revolution at Lyons and Marseilles\u003csup\n \u003e\u003ca href=\"#B\" name=\"Bb\"\u003e[B]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e in the name of the\n republic, while the roars of his Rurals drowned the very mention of his name\n at Versailles. After this exploit, he toned down the \u0026ldquo;accomplished\n fact\u0026rdquo; into a hypothetical fact. The Orleans princes, whom he had\n cautiously warned off Bordeaux, were now, in flagrant breach of the law,\n permitted to intrigue at Dreux. The concessions held out by Thiers in his\n interminable interviews with the delegates from Paris and the provinces,\n although constantly varied in tone and color, according to time and\n circumstances, did in fact never come to more than the prospective\n restriction of revenge to the \u0026ldquo;handful of criminals implicated in the\n murder of Lecomte and Clement Thomas,\u0026rdquo; on the well-understood premise\n that Paris and France were unreservedly to accept M. Thiers himself as the\n best of possible Republics, as he, in 1830, had done with Louis Philippe, and\n in 1849 under Louis Bonaparte\u0026rsquo;s presidency. While out of office, he\n made a fortune by pleading for the Paris capitalists, and made political\n capital by pleading against the laws he had himself originated. He now\n hurried through the National Assembly not only a set of repressive laws which\n were, after the fall of Paris, to extirpate the last remnants of republican\n liberty in France; he foreshadowed the fate of Paris by abridging what was\n for him the too slow procedure of courts-martial,\u003csup\u003e\u003ca\n href=\"#C\" name=\"Cb\"\u003e[C]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e and by a new-fangled, Draconic code of\n deportation. The Revolution of 1848, abolishing the penalty of death for\n political crimes, had replaced it by deportation. Louis Bonaparte did not\n dare, at least not in theory, to re-establish the regime of the guillotine.\n The Rural Assembly, not yet bold enough even to hint that the Parisians were\n not rebels, but assassins, had therefore to confine its prospective vengeance\n against Paris to Dufaure\u0026rsquo;s new code of deportation. Under all these\n circumstances, Thiers himself could not have gone on with his comedy of\n conciliation, had it not, as he intended it to do, drawn forth shrieks of\n rage from the Rurals, whose ruminating mind did neither understand the play,\n nor its necessities of hypocrisy, tergiversation, and procrastination. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIn sight of the impending municipal elections of April 30, Thiers enacted\n one of his great conciliation scenes on April 27. Amidst a flood of sentiment\n rhetoric, he exclaimed from the tribune of the Assembly: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;There exists no conspiracy against the republic but\n that of Paris, which compels us to shed French blood. I repeat it again and\n again. Let those impious arms fall from the hands which hold them, and\n chastisement will be arrested at once by an act of peace excluding only the\n small number of criminals.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eTo the violent interruption of the Rurals, he replied: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Gentlemen, tell me, I implore you, am I wrong? Do\n you really regret that I could have stated the truth that the criminals are\n only a handful? Is it not fortunate in the midst of our misfortunes that\n those who have been capable to shed the blood of Clement Thomas and General\n Lecomte are but rare exceptions?\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eFrance, however, turned a deaf ear to what Thiers flattered himself to be\n a parliamentary siren\u0026rsquo;s song. Out of 700,000 municipal councillors\n returned by the 35,000 communes still left to France, the united Legitimists,\n Orleanists, and Bonapartists did not carry 8,000. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe supplementary elections which followed were still more decidedly\n hostile. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThus, instead of getting from the provinces the badly-needed physical\n force, the National Assembly lost even its last claim to moral force, that of\n being the expression of the universal suffrage of the country. To complete\n the discomfiture, the newly-chosen municipal councils of all the cities of\n France openly threatened the usurping Assembly at Versailles with a counter\n assembly at Bordeaux. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThen the long-expected moment of decisive action had at last come for\n Bismarck. He peremptorily summoned Thiers to send to Frankfort\n plenipotentiaries for the definitive settlement of peace. In humble obedience\n to the call of his master, Thiers hastened to despatch his trusty Jules\n Favre, backed by Pouyer-Quertier. Pouyer-Quertier, an \u0026ldquo;eminent\u0026rdquo;\n Rouen cotton-spinner, a fervent and even servile partisan of the Second\n Empire, had never found any fault with it save its commercial treaty with\n England,\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#D\" name=\"Db\"\u003e[D]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e prejudicial\n to his own shop-interest. Hardly installed at Bordeaux as Thiers\u0026rsquo;\n Minister of Finance, he denounced that \u0026ldquo;unholy\u0026rdquo; treaty, hinted at\n its near abrogation, and had even the effrontery to try, although in vain\n (having counted without Bismarck), the immediate enforcement of the old\n protective duties against Alsace, where, he said, no previous international\n treaties stood in the way. This man who considered counter-revolution as a\n means to put down wages at Rouen, and the surrender of French provinces as a\n means to bring up the price of his wares in France, was he not \u003cem\u003ethe\n one\u003c/em\u003e predestined to be picked out by Thiers as the helpmate of Jules\n Favre in his last and crowning treason? \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eOn the arrival at Frankfurt of this exquisite pair of plenipotentiaries,\n bully Bismarck at once met them with the imperious alternative: Either the\n restoration of the empire or the unconditional acceptance of my own peace\n terms! These terms included a shortening of the intervals in which war\n indemnity was to be paid and the continued occupation of the Paris forts by\n Prussian troops until Bismarck should feel satisfied with the state of things\n in France; Prussia thus being recognized as the supreme arbiter in internal\n French politics! In return for this, he offered to let loose for the\n extermination of Paris the Bonapartist army, and to lend them the direct\n assistance of Emperor William\u0026rsquo;s troops. He pledged his good faith by\n making payment of the first installment of the indemnity dependent on the\n \u0026ldquo;pacification\u0026rdquo; of Paris. Such bait was, of course, eagerly\n swallowed by Thiers and his plenipotentiaries. They signed the treaty of\n peace on May 10 and had it endorsed by the Versailles Assembly on the 18th.\n \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIn the interval between the conclusion of peace and the arrival of the\n Bonapartist prisoners, Thiers felt the more bound to resume his comedy of\n conciliation, as his republican tools stood in sore need of a pretext for\n blinking their eyes at the preparations for the carnage of Paris. As late as\n May 18, he replied to a deputation of middle-class conciliators \u0026ndash; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Whenever the insurgents will make up their minds for\n capitulation, the gates of Paris shall be flung wide open during a week for\n all except the murderers of Generals Clement Thomas and Lecomte.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eA few days afterwards, when violently interpellated on these promises by\n the Rurals, he refused to enter into any explanations; not, however, without\n giving them this significant hint: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;I tell you there are impatient men amongst you, men\n who are in too great a hurry. They must have another eight days; at the end\n of these eight days there will be no more danger, and the task will be\n proportionate to their courage and to their capacities.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAs soon as MacMahon was able to assure him, that he could shortly enter\n Paris, Thiers declared to the Assembly that \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;he would enter Paris with the \u003cem\u003elaws\u003c/em\u003e in his\n hands, and demand a full expiation from the wretches who had sacrificed the\n lives of soldiers and destroyed public monuments.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAs the moment of decision drew near, he said \u0026ndash; to the Assembly,\n \u0026ldquo;I shall be pitiless!\u0026rdquo; \u0026ndash; to Paris, that it was doomed; and\n to his Bonapartist bandits, that they had state licence to wreak vengeance\n upon Paris to their hearts\u0026rsquo; content. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAt last, when treachery had opened the gates of Paris to General Douai, on\n May 21, Thiers, on the 22nd, revealed to the Rurals the \u0026ldquo;goal\u0026rdquo; of\n his conciliation comedy, which they had so obstinately persisted in not\n understanding. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;I told you a few days ago that we were approaching\n \u003cem\u003eour goal\u003c/em\u003e; today I come to tell you \u003cem\u003ethe goal\u003c/em\u003e is\n reached. The victory of order, justice, and civilization is at last\n won!\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eSo it was. The civilization and justice of bourgeois order comes out in\n its lurid light whenever the slaves and drudges of that order rise against\n their masters. Then this civilization and justice stand forth as undisguised\n savagery and lawless revenge. Each new crisis in the class struggle between\n the appropriator and the producer brings out this fact more glaringly. Even\n the atrocities of the bourgeois in June 1848 vanish before the infamy of\n 1871. The self-sacrificing heroism with which the population of Paris \u0026ndash;\n men, women, and children \u0026ndash; fought for eight days after the entrance of\n the Versaillese, reflects as much the grandeur of their cause, as the\n infernal deeds of the soldiery reflect the innate spirit of that\n civilization, indeed, the great problem of which is how to get rid of the\n heaps of corpses it made after the battle was over! \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eTo find a parallel for the conduct of Thiers and his bloodhounds we must\n go back to the times of Sulla and the two Triumvirates of Rome.\u003csup\n \u003e\u003ca href=\"#E\" name=\"Eb\"\u003e[E]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e The same wholesale\n slaughter in cold blood; the same disregard, in massacre, of age and sex, the\n same system of torturing prisoners; the same proscriptions, but this time of\n a whole class; the same savage hunt after concealed leaders, lest one might\n escape; the same denunciations of political and private enemies; the same\n indifference for the butchery of entire strangers to the feud. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThere is but this difference: that the Romans had no\n \u003cem\u003emitrailleuses\u003c/em\u003e for the despatch, in the lump, of the proscribed, and\n that they had not \u0026ldquo;the law in their hands,\u0026rdquo; nor on their lips the\n cry of \u0026ldquo;civilization.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAnd after those horrors look upon the other still more hideous face of the\n bourgeois civilization as described by its own press! \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;With stray shots,\u0026rdquo; writes the Paris\n correspondent of a London Tory paper, \u0026ldquo;still ringing in the distance,\n and unintended wounded wretches dying amid the tombstones of Pere la Chaise\n \u0026ndash; with 6,000 terror-stricken insurgents wandering in an agony of\n despair in the labyrinth of the catacombs, and wretches hurried through the\n streets to be shot down in scores by the \u003cem\u003emitrailleuse\u003c/em\u003e \u0026ndash; it is\n revolting to see the cafes filled with the votaries of absinthe, billiards,\n and dominoes; female profligacy perambulating the boulevards, and the sound\n of revelry disturbing the night from the \u003cem\u003ecabinets particuliers\u003c/em\u003e of\n fashionable restaurants.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eM. Edouard Herve writes in the \u003cem\u003eJournal de Paris\u003c/em\u003e, a Versaillist\n journal pressed by the Commune: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;The way in which the population of Paris [!]\n manifested its satisfaction yesterday was rather more than frivolous, and we\n fear it will grow worse as time progresses. Paris has now a \u003cem\u003efete\u003c/em\u003e day\n appearance, which is sadly out of place; and, unless we are to be called the\n \u003cem\u003eParisiens de la decadence\u003c/em\u003e, this sort of thing must come to an\n end.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAnd then he quotes the passage from Tacitus: \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Yet, on the morrow of that horrible struggle, even\n before it was completely over, Rome \u0026ndash; degraded and corrupt \u0026ndash;\n began once more to wallow in the voluptuous slough which was destroying its\n body and pulling its soul \u0026ndash; \u003cem\u003ealibi proelia et vulnera, alibi balnea\n popinoeque\u003c/em\u003e [here fights and wounds, there baths and restaurants].\u0026rdquo;\n \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eM. Herve only forgets to say that the \u0026ldquo;population of Paris\u0026rdquo; he\n speaks of is but the population of the Paris of M. Thiers \u0026ndash; the\n \u003cem\u003efrancs-fileurs\u003c/em\u003e returning in throngs from Versailles, Saint-Denis,\n Rueil, and Saint Germain \u0026ndash; the Paris of the \u0026ldquo;Decline.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIn all its bloody triumphs over the self-sacrificing champions of a new\n and better society, that nefarious civilization, based upon the enslavement\n of labor, drowns the moans of its victims in a hue-and-cry of calumny,\n reverberated by a world-wide echo. The serene working men\u0026rsquo;s Paris of\n the Commune is suddenly changed into a pandemonium by the bloodhounds of\n \u0026ldquo;order.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAnd what does this tremendous change prove to the bourgeois mind of all\n countries? Why, that the Commune has conspired against civilization! The\n Paris people die enthusiastically for the Commune in numbers unequally in any\n battle known to history. What does that prove? Why, that the Commune was not\n the people\u0026rsquo;s own government but the usurpation of a handful of\n criminals! The women of Paris joyfully give up their lives at the barricades\n and on the place of execution. What does this prove? Why, that the demon of\n the Commune has changed them into Megaera and Hecates! \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe moderation of the Commune during the two months of undisputed sway is\n equalled only by the heroism of its defence. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eWhat does that prove? Why, that for months the Commune carefully hid,\n under a mask of moderation and humanity, the bloodthirstiness of its fiendish\n instincts to be let loose in the hour of its agony\u003ca name=\"art\"\u003e!\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe working men\u0026rsquo;s Paris, in the act of its heroic self-holocaust,\n involved in its flames buildings and monuments. While tearing to pieces the\n living body of the proletariat, its rulers must no longer expect to return\n triumphantly into the intact architecture of their abodes. The government of\n Versailles cries, \u0026ldquo;Incendiarism!\u0026rdquo; and whispers this cue to all\n its agents, down to the remotest hamlet, to hunt up its enemies everywhere as\n suspect of professional incendiarism. The bourgeoisie of the whole world,\n which looks complacently upon the wholesale massacre after the battle, is\n convulsed by horror at the desecration of brick and mortar! \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eWhen governments give state licences to their navies to \u0026ldquo;kill,\n \u003cem\u003eburn\u003c/em\u003e, and destroy,\u0026rdquo; is that licence for incendiarism? When the\n British troops wantonly set fire to the Capitol at Washington and to the\n summer palace of the Chinese emperor,\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#F\"\n name=\"Fb\"\u003e[F]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e was that incendiarism? When the Prussians not for\n military reasons, but out of the mere spite of revenge, burned down, by the\n help of petroleum, towns like Chateaudun and innumerable villages, was that\n incendiarism? When Thiers, during six weeks, bombarded Paris, under the\n pretext that he wanted to set fire to those houses only in which there were\n people, was that incendiarism? \u0026ndash; In war, fire is an arm as legitimate\n as any. Buildings held by the enemy are shelled to set them on fire. If their\n defenders have to retire, they themselves light the flames to prevent the\n attack from making use of the buildings. To be burned down has always been\n the inevitable fate of all buildings situated in the front of battle of all\n the regular armies of the world. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eBut in the war of the enslaved against their enslavers, the only\n justifiable war in history, this is by no means to hold good! The Commune\n used fire strictly as a means of defence. They used it to stop up to the\n Versailles troops those long, straight avenues which Haussman had expressly\n opened to artillery-fire; they used it to cover their retreat, in the same\n way as the Versaillese, in their advance, used their shells which destroyed\n at least as many buildings as the fire of the Commune. It is a matter of\n dispute, even now, which buildings were set fire to by the defence, and which\n by the attack. And the defence resorted to fire only then when the Versailles\n troops had already commenced their wholesale murdering of prisoners. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eBesides, the Commune had, long before, given full public notice that if\n driven to extremities, they would bury themselves under the ruins of Paris,\n and make Paris a second Moscow, as the Government of National Defence, but\n only as a cloak for its treason, had promised to do. For this purpose Trochu\n had found them the petroleum. The Commune knew that its opponents cared\n nothing for the lives of the Paris people, but cared much for their own Paris\n buildings. And Thiers, on the other hand, had given them notice that he would\n be implacable in his vengeance. No sooner had he got his army ready on one\n side, and the Prussians shutting the trap on the other, than he proclaimed:\n \u0026ldquo;I shall be pitiless! The expiation will be complete, and justice will\n be stern!\u0026rdquo; If the acts of the Paris working men were vandalism, it was\n the vandalism of defence in despair, not the vandalism of triumph, like that\n which the Christians perpetrated upon the really priceless art treasures of\n heathen antiquity; and even that vandalism has been justified by the\n historian as an unavoidable and comparatively trifling concomitant to the\n titanic struggle between a new society arising and an old one breaking down.\n It was still less the vandalism of Haussman, razing historic Paris to make\n place for the Paris of the sightseer! \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eBut the execution by the Commune of the 64 hostages, with the Archbishop\n of Paris at their head! The bourgeoisie and its army, in June 1848,\n re-established a custom which had long disappeared from the practice of war\n \u0026ndash; the shooting of their defenceless prisoners. This brutal custom has\n since been more or less strictly adhered to by the suppressors of all popular\n commotions in Europe and India; thus proving that it constitutes a real\n \u0026ldquo;progress of civilization\u0026rdquo;! \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eOn the other hand, the Prussians in France, had re-established the\n practice of taking hostages \u0026ndash; innocent men, who, with their lives, were\n to answer to them for the acts of others. When Thiers, as we have seen, from\n the very beginning of the conflict, enforced the human practice of shooting\n down the Communal prisoners, the Commune, to protect their lives, was obliged\n to resort to the Prussian practice of securing hostages. The lives of the\n hostages have been forfeited over and over again by the continued shooting of\n prisoners on the part of the Versaillese. How could they be spared any longer\n after the carnage with which MacMahon\u0026rsquo;s praetorians\u003csup\n \u003e\u003ca href=\"#G\" name=\"Gb\"\u003e[G]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e celebrated their entrance\n into Paris? \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eWas even the last check upon the unscrupulous ferocity of bourgeois\n governments \u0026ndash; the taking of hostages \u0026ndash; to be made a mere sham of?\n \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe real murderer of Archbishop Darboy is Thiers. The Commune again and\n again had offered to exchange the archbishop, and ever so many priests in the\n bargain, against the single Blanqui, then in the hands of Thiers. Thiers\n obstinately refused. He knew that with Blanqui he would give the Commune a\n head; while the archbishop would serve his purpose best in the shape of a\n corpse. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThiers acted upon the precedent of Cavaignac. How, in June 1848, did not\n Cavaignac and his men of order raise shouts of horror by stigmatizing the\n insurgents as the assassins of Archbishop Affre! They knew perfectly well\n that the archbishop had been shot by the \u003ca href=\"ch03.htm#F\"\u003esoldiers of\n order\u003c/a\u003e. M. Jacquemet, the archbishop\u0026rsquo;s vicar-general, present on the\n spot, had immediately afterwards handed them in his evidence to that effect.\n \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAll the chorus of calumny, which the Party of Order never fail, in their\n orgies of blood, to raise against their victims, only proves that the\n bourgeois of our days considers himself the legitimate successor to the baron\n of old, who thought every weapon in his own hand fair against the plebeian,\n while in the hands of the plebeian a weapon of any kind constituted in itself\n a crime. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe conspiracy of the ruling class to break down the revolution by a civil\n war carried on under the patronage of the foreign invader \u0026ndash; a\n conspiracy which we have traced from the very 4th of September down to the\n entrance of MacMahon\u0026rsquo;s praetorians through the gate of St. Cloud\n \u0026ndash; culminated in the carnage of Paris. Bismarck gloats over the ruins of\n Paris, in which he saw perhaps the first installment of that general\n destruction of great cities he had prayed for when still a simple Rural in\n the Prussian \u003cem\u003eChambre introuvable\u003c/em\u003e of 1849.\u003csup\u003e\u003ca\n href=\"#H\" name=\"Hb\"\u003e[H]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e He gloats over the cadavers of the Paris\n proletariat. For him, this is not only the extermination of revolution, but\n the extinction of France, now decapitated in reality, and by the French\n government itself. With the shallowness characteristic of all successful\n statesmen, he sees but the surface of this tremendous historic event.\n Whenever before has history exhibited the spectacle of a conqueror crowning\n his victory by turning into, not only the gendarme, but the hired bravo of\n the conquered government? There existed no war between Prussia and the\n Commune of Paris. On the contrary, the Commune had accepted the peace\n preliminaries, and Prussia had announced her neutrality. Prussia was,\n therefore, no belligerent. She acted the part of a bravo, a cowardly bravo,\n because incurring no danger; a hired bravo, because stipulating beforehand\n the payment of her blood-money of 500 millions on the fall of Paris. And\n thus, at last, came out the true character of the war, ordained by\n Providence, as a chastisement of godless and debauched France by pious and\n moral Germany! And this unparalleled breach of the law of nations, even as\n understood by the old-world lawyers, instead of arousing the\n \u0026ldquo;civilized\u0026rdquo; governments of Europe to declare the felonious\n Prussian government, the mere tool of the St. Petersburg Cabinet, an outlaw\n amongst nations, only incites them to consider whether the few victims who\n escape the double cordon around Paris are not to be given up to the hangman\n of Versailles! \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThat, after the most tremendous war of modern times, the conquering and\n the conquered hosts should fraternize for the common massacre of the\n proletariat \u0026ndash; this unparalleled event does indicate, not, as Bismarck\n thinks, the final repression of a new society up heaving, but the crumbling\n into dust of bourgeois society. The highest heroic effort of which old\n society is still capable is national war; and this is now proved to be a mere\n governmental humbug, intended to defer the struggle of classes, and to be\n thrown aside as soon as that class struggle bursts out into civil war. Class\n rule is no longer able to disguise itself in a national uniform; the national\n governments are \u003cem\u003eone\u003c/em\u003e as against the proletariat! \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAfter Whit-Sunday, 1871, there can be neither peace nor truce possible\n between the working men of France and the appropriators of their produce. The\n iron hand of a mercenary soldiery may keep for a time both classes tied down\n in common oppression. But the battle must break out again and again in\n ever-growing dimensions, and there can be no doubt as to who will be the\n victor in the end \u0026ndash; the appropriating few, or the immense working\n majority. And the French working class is only the advanced guard of the\n modern proletariat. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eWhile the European governments thus testify, before Paris, to the\n international character of class rule, they cry down the \u003ca\n href=\"../../../../../glossary/orgs/i/n.htm#iwma\"\u003eInternational Working\n Men\u0026rsquo;s Association\u003c/a\u003e \u0026ndash; the international counter-organization of\n labor against the cosmopolitan conspiracy of capital \u0026ndash; as the head\n fountain of all these disasters. Thiers denounced it as the despot of labor,\n pretending to be its liberator. Picard ordered that all communications\n between the French Internationals and those abroad be cut off; Count Jaubert,\n Thiers\u0026rsquo; mummified accomplice of 1835, declares it the great problem of\n all civilized governments to weed it out. The Rurals roar against it, and the\n whole European press joins the chorus. An honorable French writer [Robinet],\n completely foreign to our Association, speaks as follows:\u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;The members of the Central Committee of the National\n Guard, as well as the greater part of the members of the Commune, are the\n most active, intelligent, and energetic minds of the International Working\n Men\u0026rsquo;s Association… men who are thoroughly honest, sincere,\n intelligent, devoted, pure, and fanatical in the \u003cem\u003egood\u003c/em\u003e sense of the\n word.\u0026rdquo; \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe police-tinged bourgeois mind naturally figures to itself the\n International Working Men\u0026rsquo;s Association as acting in the manner of a\n secret conspiracy, its central body ordering, from time to time, explosions\n in different countries. Our Association is, in fact, nothing but the\n international bond between the most advanced working men in the various\n countries of the civilized world. Wherever, in whatever shape, and under\n whatever conditions the class struggle obtains any consistency, it is but\n natural that members of our Association, should stand in the foreground. The\n soil out of which it grows is modern society itself. It cannot be stamped out\n by any amount of carnage. To stamp it out, the governments would have to\n stamp out the despotism of capital over labor \u0026ndash; the condition of their\n own parasitical existence. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eWorking men\u0026rsquo;s Paris, with its Commune, will be forever celebrated as\n the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are enshrined in the\n great heart of the working class. Its exterminators history has already\n nailed to that eternal pillory from which all the prayers of their priest\n will not avail to redeem them. \u003c/p\u003e\n \u003chr\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe General Council\u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eM. J. Boon, Fred. Bradnick, G. H. Buttery, Caihil,\n Delayhaye, William Hales, A. Hermann, Kolb, Fred. Lessner, Lochner, T. P.\n Macdonnell, George Milner, Thomas Mottershead, Ch. Mills, Charles Murray,\n Pfander, Roach, Rochat, Ruhl, Sadler, A. Ser- Railler, Cowell Stepney, Alf.\n Taylor, William Townshend.\u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eCorresponding Secretaries:\u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eEugene Dupont, For France Zevy Maurice, For Hungary Karl\n Marx, For Germany And Anton Zabicki, For Poland Holland James Cohen, For\n Denmark Fred. Engels, For Belgium And J.G. Eccarius, For The United Spain\n States Hermann Jung, For Switzerland P. Giovacchini, For Italy\u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eHermann Jung, Chairman John Weston, Treasurer George\n Harris, Financial Secretary J. George Eccarius, General Secretary\u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eOffice: 256 High Holborn Road, London, W.C., May 30, 1871\u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003chr\u003e\r\n\u003ch2\u003e1891 Introduction by Frederick Engels\u003cbr\u003e\n On the 20th Anniversary of the Paris Commune \u003c/h2\u003e\n\n \u003ch3\u003e[PostScript]\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#A\" name=\"Ab\"\u003e[A]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e \u003c/h3\u003e\n \u003chr\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eI did not anticipate that I would be asked to prepare a new edition of the\n Address of the General Council of the International on \u003cem\u003eThe Civil War in\n France\u003c/em\u003e, and to write an introduction to it. Therefore I can only touch\n briefly here on the most important points. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eI am prefacing the longer work mentioned above by the two shorter\n addresses of the General Council on the Franco-Prussian War. \u003cspan\n \u003e[\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm\"\u003eChapter 1\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca\n href=\"ch02.htm\"\u003eChapter 2\u003c/a\u003e]\u003c/span\u003e In the first place, because the second\n of these, which itself cannot be fully understood without the first, is\n referred to in \u003cem\u003eThe Civil War\u003c/em\u003e. But also because these two Addresses,\n likewise drafted by Marx, are, no less than \u003cem\u003eThe Civil War\u003c/em\u003e,\n outstanding examples of the author\u0026rsquo;s remarkable gift, first proved in\n \u003ca href=\"../../1852/18th-brumaire/index.htm\"\u003eThe Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis\n Bonaparte\u003c/a\u003e, for grasping clearly the character, the import, and the\n necessary consequences of great historical events, at a time when these\n events are still in process before our eyes, or have only just taken place.\n And, finally, because we in Germany are still having to endure the\n consequences which Marx prophesied would follow from these events. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eHas that which was declared in the first Address not come to pass: that if\n Germany\u0026rsquo;s defensive war against Louis Bonaparte degenerated into a war\n of conquest against the French people, all the misfortunes which befell\n Germany after the so-called wars of liberation\u003csup\u003e\u003ca\n href=\"#B\" name=\"Bb\"\u003e[B]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e would revive again with renewed intensity?\n Have we not had a further 20 years of Bismarck\u0026rsquo;s government, the \u003ca\n href=\"../../../../../glossary/events/a/n.htm#anti-socialist-law\"\u003eExceptional\n Law\u003c/a\u003e and the anti-socialist campaign taking the place of the prosecutions\n of demagogues,\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#C\" name=\"Cb\"\u003e[C]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e with\n the same arbitrary police measures and with literally the same staggering\n interpretations of the law? \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAnd has not \u003ca href=\"ch02.htm#Db\"\u003ethe prophecy\u003c/a\u003e been proved to the\n letter that the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine would \"force France into the\n arms of Russia,\" and that after this annexation Germany must either become\n the avowed tool of Russia, or must, after some short respite, arm for a new\n war, and, moreover, \"a race war against the combined Slavonic and Roman\n races\"? Has not the annexation of the French provinces driven France into the\n arms of Russia? Has not Bismarck for fully 20 years vainly wooed the favor of\n the tsar, wooed it with services even more lowly than those which little\n Prussia, before it became the \"first power in Europe,\" was wont to lay at\n Holy Russia\u0026rsquo;s feet? And is there not every day hanging over our heads\n the Damocles\u0026rsquo; sword of war, on the first day of which all the chartered\n covenants of princes will be scattered like chaff; a war of which nothing is\n certain but the absolute uncertainty of its outcome; a race war which will\n subject the whole of Europe to devastation by 15 or 20 million armed men, and\n is only not already raging because even the strongest of the great military\n states shrinks before the absolute incalculability of its final outcome? \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAll the more is it our duty to make again accessible to the German workers\n these brilliant proofs, now half-forgotten, of the far-sightedness of the\n international working class policy in 1870. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eWhat is true of these two Addresses is also true of \u003cem\u003eThe Civil War in\n France\u003c/em\u003e. On May 28, the last fighters of the Commune succumbed to\n superior forces on the slopes of Belleville; and only two days later, on May\n 30, Marx read to the General Council the work in which the historical\n significance of the Paris Commune is delineated in short powerful strokes,\n but with such clearness, and above all such truth, as has never again been\n attained on all the mass of literature which has been written on this\n subject. \u003c/p\u003e\n \u003chr\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIf today, we look back at the activity and historical significance of the\n Paris Commune of 1871, we shall find it necessary to make a few additions to\n the account given in \u003cem\u003eThe Civil War in France\u003c/em\u003e. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe members of the Commune were divided into a majority of the Blanquists,\n who had also been predominant in the Central Committee of the National Guard;\n and a minority, members of the International Working Men\u0026rsquo;s Association,\n chiefly consisting of adherents of the Proudhon school of socialism. The\n great majority of the Blanquists at that time were socialist only by\n revolutionary and proletarian instinct; only a few had attained greater\n clarity on the essential principles, through Vaillant, who was familiar with\n German scientific socialism. It is therefore comprehensible that in the\n economic sphere much was left undone which, according to our view today, the\n Commune ought to have done. The hardest thing to understand is certainly the\n holy awe with which they remained standing respectfully outside the gates of\n the Bank of France. This was also a serious political mistake. The bank in\n the hands of the Commune \u0026ndash; this would have been worth more than 10,000\n hostages. It would have meant the pressure of the whole of the French\n bourgeoisie on the Versailles government in favor of peace with the Commune,\n but what is still more wonderful is the correctness of so much that was\n actually done by the Commune, composed as it was of Blanquists and\n Proudhonists. Naturally, the Proudhonists were chiefly responsible for the\n economic decrees of the Commune, both for their praiseworthy and their\n unpraiseworthy aspects; as the Blanquists were for its political actions and\n omissions. And in both cases the irony of history willed \u0026ndash; as is usual\n when doctrinaires come to the helm \u0026ndash; that both did the opposite of what\n the doctrines of their school proscribed. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eProudhon, the Socialist of the small peasant and master-craftsman,\n regarded association with positive hatred. He said of it that there was more\n bad than good in it; that it was by nature sterile, even harmful, because it\n was a fetter on the freedom of the workers; that it was a pure dogma,\n unproductive and burdensome, in conflict as much with the freedom of the\n workers as with economy of labor; that its disadvantages multiplied more\n swiftly than its advantages; that, as compared with it, competition, division\n of labor and private property were economic forces. Only for the exceptional\n cases \u0026ndash; as Proudhon called them \u0026ndash; of large-scale industry and\n large industrial units, such as railways, was there any place for the\n association of workers. \u003cem\u003e(Cf. Idee Generale de la Revolution, 3\n etude.)\u003c/em\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eBy 1871, even in Paris, the centre of handicrafts, large-scale industry\n had already so much ceased to be an exceptional case that by far the most\n important decree of the Commune instituted an organization of large-scale\n industry and even of manufacture which was not based only on the association\n of workers in each factory, but also aimed at combining all these\n associations in one great union; in short an organization which, as Marx\n quite rightly says in \u003cem\u003eThe Civil War\u003c/em\u003e, must necessarily have led in\n the end to communism, that is to say, the direct antithesis of the Proudhon\n doctrine. And, therefore, the Commune was also the grave of the Proudhon\n school of socialism. Today this school has vanished from French working class\n circles; among them now, among the \u003ca\n href=\"../../../../../glossary/orgs/p/o.htm#possibilists\"\u003ePossibilists\u003c/a\u003e no\n less than among the \u0026ldquo;Marxists\u0026rdquo;, Marx\u0026rsquo;s theory rules\n unchallenged. Only among the \u0026ldquo;radical\u0026rdquo; bourgeoisie are there\n still Proudhonists. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThe Blanquists fared no better. Brought up in the school of conspiracy,\n and held together by the strict discipline which went with it, they started\n out from the viewpoint that a relatively small number of resolute,\n well-organized men would be able, at a given favorable moment, not only seize\n the helm of state, but also by energetic and relentless action, to keep power\n until they succeeded in drawing the mass of the people into the revolution\n and ranging them round the small band of leaders. this conception involved,\n above all, the strictest dictatorship and centralization of all power in the\n hands of the new revolutionary government. And what did the Commune, with its\n majority of these same Blanquists, actually do? In all its proclamations to\n the French in the provinces, it appealed to them to form a free federation of\n all French Communes with Paris, a national organization, which for the first\n time was really to be created by the nation itself. It was precisely the\n oppressing power of the former centralized government, army, political police\n and bureaucracy, which Napoleon had created in 1798 and since then had been\n taken over by every new government as a welcome instrument and used against\n its opponents, it was precisely this power which was to fall everywhere, just\n as it had already fallen in Paris. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eFrom the outset the Commune was compelled to recognize that the working\n class, once come to power, could not manage with the old state machine; that\n in order not to lose again its only just conquered supremacy, this working\n class must, on the one hand, do away with all the old repressive machinery\n previously used against it itself, and, on the other, safeguard itself\n against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without\n exception, subject to recall at any moment. What had been the characteristic\n attribute of the former state? Society had created its own organs to look\n after its common interests, originally through simple division of labor. But\n these organs, at whose head was the state power, had in the course of time,\n in pursuance of their own special interests, transformed themselves from the\n servants of society into the masters of society, as can be seen, for example,\n not only in the hereditary monarchy, but equally also in the democratic\n republic. Nowhere do \u0026ldquo;politicians\u0026rdquo; form a more separate, powerful\n section of the nation than in North America. There, each of the two great\n parties which alternately succeed each other in power is itself in turn\n controlled by people who make a business of politics, who speculate on seats\n in the legislative assemblies of the Union as well as of the separate states,\n or who make a living by carrying on agitation for their party and on its\n victory are rewarded with positions. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eIt is well known that the Americans have been striving for 30 years to\n shake off this yoke, which has become intolerable, and that in spite of all\n they can do they continue to sink ever deeper in this swamp of corruption. It\n is precisely in America that we see best how there takes place this process\n of the state power making itself independent in relation to society, whose\n mere instrument it was originally intended to be. Here there exists no\n dynasty, no nobility, no standing army, beyond the few men keeping watch on\n the Indians, no bureaucracy with permanent posts or the right to pensions.\n and nevertheless we find here two great gangs of political speculators, who\n alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most\n corrupt means and for the most corrupt ends \u0026ndash; and the nation is\n powerless against these two great cartels of politicians, who are ostensibly\n its servants, but in reality exploit and plunder it. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eAgainst this transformation of the state and the organs of the state from\n servants of society into masters of society \u0026ndash; an inevitable\n transformation in all previous states \u0026ndash; the Commune made use of two\n infallible expedients. In this first place, it filled all posts \u0026ndash;\n administrative, judicial, and educational \u0026ndash; by election on the basis of\n universal suffrage of all concerned, with the right of the same electors to\n recall their delegate at any time. And in the second place, all officials,\n high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers. The highest\n salary paid by the Commune to anyone was 6,000 francs. In this way an\n effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from\n the binding mandates to delegates to representative bodies which were also\n added in profusion. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eThis shattering of the former state power and its replacement by a new and\n really democratic state is described in detail in the third section of\n \u003cem\u003eThe Civil War\u003c/em\u003e. But it was necessary to dwell briefly here once more\n on some of its features, because in Germany particularly the superstitious\n belief in the state has been carried over from philosophy into the general\n consciousness of the bourgeoisie and even to many workers. According to the\n philosophical notion, \u0026ldquo;the state is the realization of the idea\u0026rdquo; or the\n Kingdom of God on earth, translated into philosophical terms, the sphere in\n which eternal truth and justice is or should be realized. And from this\n follows a superstitious reverence for the state and everything connected with\n it, which takes roots the more readily as people from their childhood are\n accustomed to imagine that the affairs and interests common to the whole of\n society could not be looked after otherwise than as they have been looked\n after in the past, that is, through the state and its well-paid officials.\n And people think they have taken quite an extraordinary bold step forward\n when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by\n the democratic republic. \u003ca name=\"state-oppression\"\u003e\u003c/a\u003eIn reality, however,\n the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by\n another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy;\n and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious\n struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like\n the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment,\n until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social\n conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the\n scrap-heap. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eOf late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with\n wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and\n good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look\n at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eFrederick Engels \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eLondon, on the 20th anniversary \u003cbr\u003e\n of the Paris Commune, March 18, 1891. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003eNext: \u003ca href=\"news.htm\"\u003e[Contemporary News Articles]\u003c/a\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\n \u003chr\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#Ab\" name=\"A\"\u003e[A]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e At\n the time Engels wrote the Introduction he was writing for the large audience\n who had already read the popular book by Marx. His intention was to give new\n historical data, making for a preface that would remind readers of the\n content inside the book, but also provide additional postscript information\n to prompt the reader to reread the work in whole. In this publication we have\n put the postscript information into this file, and the historical background\n and detailed account of the Civil War into the \u003ca\n href=\"intro.htm\"\u003eintroduction\u003c/a\u003e. In the original document, the introductory\n information was placed before the section break above (i.e. following the\n paragraph ending: \"…as has never again been attained on all the mass of\n literature which has been written on this subject.\") \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#Bb\" name=\"B\"\u003e[B]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e The\n national liberation war of the German people against Napoleon\u0026rsquo;s rule in\n 1813-14. \u003c/p\u003e\n\n \u003cp\u003e\u003csup\u003e\u003ca href=\"#Cb\" name=\"C\"\u003e[C]\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/sup\u003e In\n the 1820s in Germany \u0026ldquo;demagogues\u0026rdquo; was applied to the participants\n in the Opposition movement among the German intelligentsia, who came out\n against the reactionary political system in the German states and advocated\n the unification of Germany. \u0026ldquo;Demagogues\u0026rdquo; were ruthlessly\n persecuted by the authorities. \u003c/p\u003e\n \u003chr\u003e\r\n\u003chr\u003e\r\n\u003ch3\u003e\nNews Stories\n\u003c/h3\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e\nJune 8-12, 1871\u003cbr /\u003eAfter the defeat of the Paris Commune\n\u003c/h2\u003e\n\n\u003chr /\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eI\u003c/h4\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\n \u0026#8220;The column of prisoners halted in the Avenue Uhrich, and was drawn\n up, four or five deep, on the footway facing to the road. General\n Marquis de Gallifet and his staff dismounted and commenced an\n inspection from the left of the line. Walking down slowly and eyeing\n the ranks, the general stopped here and there, tapping a man on the\n shoulder or beckoning him out of the rear ranks. In most cases,\n without further parley, the individual thus selected was marched out\n into the centre of the road, where a small supplementary column was\n thus soon formed…. A mounted officer pointed out to General Gallifet a man\n and woman for some particular offence. The women, rushing out of the\n ranks, threw herself on her knees, and, with outstretched arms,\n protested her innocence in passionate terms. The general waited for a\n pause, and then with most impassible face and unmoved demeanor, said:\n \u0026#8217;Madame, I have visited every theatre in Paris, your acting will have\n no effect on me.\u0026#8217; (ce n\u0026#8217;est pas la peine de jouer la comedie)…. It\n was not a good thing on that day to be noticeably taller, dirtier,\n cleaner, older, uglier than one\u0026#8217;s neighbors. One individual in\n particular struck me as probably owing his speedy release from the\n ills of this world to his having a broken nose…. Over a hundred\n being thus chosen, a firing party told off, and the column resumed its\n march, leaving them behind. A few minutes afterwards a dropping fire\n in our rear commenced, and continued for over a quarter of an hour. \n It was the execution of the summarily-convicted wretches.\u0026#8221; (Paris Correspondent, \u003cem\u003eDaily News\u003c/em\u003e, June 8.)\n \u003c/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e \nThis Gallifet, \u0026#8220;the kept man of his wife, so notorious for her shameless\nexhibitions at the orgies of the Second Empire,\u0026#8221; went, during the war,\nby the name of the French \u0026#8220;\u003ci\u003eEnsign Pistol\u003c/i\u003e.\u0026#8221; \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n \u0026#8220;The \u003cem\u003eTemps\u003c/em\u003e, which is a careful journal, and not given to sensation,\n tells a dreadful story of people imperfectly shot and buried before\n life was extinct. A great number were buried in the Square round St. \n Jacques-la-Bouchiere; some of them very superficially. In the daytime\n the roar of the busy streets prevented any notice being taken; but in\n the stillness of the night the inhabitants of the houses in the\n neighborhood were roused by distant moans, and in the morning a\n clenched hand was seen protruding through the soil. In consequence of\n this, exhumations were ordered to take place…. that many wounded\n have been buried alive I have not the slightest doubt. One case I can\n vouch for. When Brunel was shot with his mistress on the 24th ult. \n in the courtyard of a house in the place Vendome, the bodies lay there\n until the afternoon of the 27th. When the burial party came to remove\n the corpses, they found the woman still living, and took her to an\n ambulance. Though she had received four bullets she is now out of\n danger.\u0026#8221; (Paris Correspondent, \u003cem\u003eEvening Standard\u003c/em\u003e, June 8.) \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp; \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eII \u003c/h4\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e \nThe following letter appeared in the [London] \u003cem\u003eTimes\u003c/em\u003e, June 13:\n\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n \u0026#8220;To the editor of \u003cem\u003eThe Times\u003c/em\u003e:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n \u0026#8220;Sir. \u0026#8211; On June 6, 1871, M. Jules Favre issued a circular to\n all the European Powers, calling them to hunt down the\n International Working Men\u0026#8217;s Association. A few remarks will\n suffice to characterize that document.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n \u0026#8220;In the very preamble to our statutes it is stated that the\n International was found \u0026#8220;September 28, 1864, at a public meeting\n held at St. Martin\u0026#8217;s Hall, Long Acre, London\". For purposes of\n his own Jules Favre puts back the date of its origin behind 1862.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n \u0026#8220;In order to explain our principles, he professes to quote \u0026#8220;their\n (the International\u0026#8217;s) sheet of the 25th of March, 1869\". And then\n what does he quote? The sheet of a society which is not the\n International. This sort of maneuvre he already recurred to when,\n still a comparatively young lawyer, he had to defend the \u003cem\u003eNational\u003c/em\u003e\n newspaper, prosecuted for libel by Cabet. \n Then he pretended to read extracts from Cabet\u0026#8217;s pamphlets while reading interpolations\n of his own \u0026#8211; a trick exposed while the court was sitting, and\n which, but for the indulgence of Cabet, would have been punished by\n Jules Favre\u0026#8217;s expulsion for the Paris bar. Of all the documents\n quoted by him as documents of the International, not one belongs to\n the International. \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n He says, for instance,\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n \u0026#8220;The Alliance declared\n itself Atheist, says the General Council, constituted in London in\n July 1869.\u0026#8221; \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n \u0026#8220;The General Council never issued such a document. On\n the contrary, it issued a document which quashed the original\n statutes of the \u0026#8217;Alliance\u0026#8217; \u0026#8211; L\u0026#8217;Alliance de la D\u0026eacute;mocratie\n Socialiste at Geneva \u0026#8211; quoted by Jules favre. \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n \u0026#8220;Throughout his circular, which pretends in part also to be directed\n against the Empire, Jules Favre repeats against the International\n but the police inventions of the public prosecutors of the Empire,\n which broke down miserably even before the laws courts of that\n Empire. \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n \u0026#8220;It is known that in its two Addresses (of \u003ca href=\"ch01.htm\"\u003eJuly\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"ch02.htm\"\u003eSeptember\u003c/a\u003e last)\n on the late war, the General Council of the International denounced\n the Prussian plans of conquest against France. Later on, Mr. \n Reitlinger, Jules Favre\u0026#8217;s private secretary, applied, though of\n course in vain, to some members of the General Council for getting\n up by the Council a demonstration against Bismarck, in favor of the\n Government of National Defence; they were particularly requested\n not to mention the republic. The preparations for a demonstration\n with regard to the expected arrival of Jules Favre in London were\n made \u0026#8211; certainly with the best of intentions \u0026#8211; in spite of the\n General Council, which, in its address of the 9th of September, had\n distinctly forewarned the Paris workmen against Jules Favre and his\n colleagues. \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n \u0026#8220;What would Jules Favre say if, in its turn, the International were\n to send a circular on Jules Favre to all the Cabinets of Europe,\n drawing their particular attention to the document published at\n Paris by the late M. Milliere?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n I am, Sir, your obedient servant,\u003cbr /\u003e\n \u003ci\u003eJohn Hales\u003c/i\u003e,\u003cbr /\u003e\n Secretary to the General Council of the International\n Working Men\u0026#8217;s Association \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n London \u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n June 12th, 1871\u003c/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn an article on \u0026#8220;The International Society and its aims,\u0026#8221; that pious informer, the \u003cem\u003eLondon Spectator \u003c/em\u003e(June 24th), amongst other similar tricks, quotes, \u003cem\u003eeven more \u003c/em\u003efully than Jules Favre has done, the above document of the \u0026#8220;Alliance\u0026#8221; as the work of the International, and that \u003cem\u003eeleven days \u003c/em\u003eafter the refutation had been published in \u003cem\u003eThe Times. \u003c/em\u003eWe do not wonder at this. Frederick the Great used to say that of all Jesuits the worst are the Protestant ones.\u003c/p\u003e\n\n\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026#160;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr /\u003e\r\n\u003chr\u003e\r\n\u003ch1\u003e\nImages of The Civil War in France\n\u003c/h1\u003e\n\n\u003chr /\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026#160;\u003c/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\nPhotographs of the Original Documents:\n\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\nFirst page of the \u003ca href=\"https://chrisdeasy.com/wp-content/uploads/philosophy-full-text-marx-civil-war-in-france-1911612353.gif\"\u003eFirst Address\u003c/a\u003e \u003cbr /\u003e\nFirst page of the \u003ca href=\"https://chrisdeasy.com/wp-content/uploads/philosophy-full-text-marx-civil-war-in-france-1847150946.gif\"\u003eSecond Address\u003c/a\u003e \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://chrisdeasy.com/wp-content/uploads/philosophy-full-text-marx-civil-war-in-france-1887103750.gif\"\u003eDecree of the establishment of the Commune \u003c/a\u003e \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://chrisdeasy.com/wp-content/uploads/philosophy-full-text-marx-civil-war-in-france-970579667.gif\"\u003eCover of the 1891 publication by Engels\u003c/a\u003e\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://chrisdeasy.com/wp-content/uploads/philosophy-full-text-marx-civil-war-in-france-888300805.gif\"\u003eManifesto on the Franco-Prussian War\u003c/a\u003e of the Brunswick Committee of the Social-Democratic Workers\u0026#8217; Party of Germany\n\u003c/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026#160;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\nContemporary Events:\n\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\nDrawing of \u003ca href=\"https://chrisdeasy.com/wp-content/uploads/philosophy-full-text-marx-civil-war-in-france-1344902858.gif\"\u003eThe monarchy dissolved and the proclamation of the Third Republic \u003c/a\u003e \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://chrisdeasy.com/wp-content/uploads/philosophy-full-text-marx-civil-war-in-france-115204948.gif\"\u003ePolitical cartoon of Napoleon III and Wilhelm I\u003c/a\u003e bathing together in the blood of the people\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://chrisdeasy.com/wp-content/uploads/philosophy-full-text-marx-civil-war-in-france-1546377522.gif\"\u003eWorkers solidarity in France\u003c/a\u003e \u0026#8211; showing Lyons and Paris attempting to join hands.\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://chrisdeasy.com/wp-content/uploads/philosophy-full-text-marx-civil-war-in-france-1024127466.gif\"\u003eFrench Army sent to Paris to disarm workers fraternizes\u003c/a\u003e and refuses to carry out their orders. \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://chrisdeasy.com/wp-content/uploads/philosophy-full-text-marx-civil-war-in-france-414083513.gif\"\u003eRed flag flying over the July Column \u003c/a\u003e in remembrance of the blood spilt by all workers who had been massacred nationally and internationally\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://chrisdeasy.com/wp-content/uploads/philosophy-full-text-marx-civil-war-in-france-2092205405.gif\"\u003eCommunards meet in the Hotel de Ville\u003c/a\u003e \n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"https://chrisdeasy.com/wp-content/uploads/philosophy-full-text-marx-civil-war-in-france-1997260969.gif\"\u003eMassacre of Communards\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003chr\u003e\r\n\u003ch1\u003eFirst and Second Drafts\u003c/h1\u003e\n\u003chr /\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003eSource:\u003c/span\u003e \u003cem\u003eThe Civil War in France\u003c/em\u003e, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, First edition 1966;\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003ePublishers Note:\u003c/span\u003e These two drafts of \u003cem\u003eThe Civil War in France\u003c/em\u003e follow the English text in the Archives of Marx and Engels, Moscow, 1934, Vol. III (VIII). Obvious corrections of spelling or grammar are not indicated. Necessary additions of words and translations of French and German words and passages which appeared in Marx\u0027s manuscript are put in square brackets.\u003cbr /\u003e\nSee also the \u003ca href=\"../publication-notes.htm#a3\"\u003eNotes on Publication from Volume 22 of the \u003ci\u003eMarx-Engels Collected Works\u003c/i\u003e\u003c/a\u003e;\u003cbr /\u003e \n\u003cspan\u003eWritten:\u003c/span\u003e by Marx in April-May 1871\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003eFirst published:\u003c/span\u003e in full text in English and Russian in the \u003cem\u003eArchives Marx and Engels\u003c/em\u003e, 1934, Vol. III (VIII). The original text is in English.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr /\u003e\n\u003ch4\u003eContents\u003c/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003e\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm#D1s1\"\u003eThe First Draft\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm#D1s1\"\u003eThe Government of Defence\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm#D1s2\"\u003eThe Commune\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm#D1s2i\"\u003e1\u003c/a\u003e. Measures for the Working Class\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm#D1s2ii\"\u003e2\u003c/a\u003e. Measures for [the] Working Class, but Mostly for the Middle Classes\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm#D1s2iii\"\u003e3\u003c/a\u003e. General Measures\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm#D1s2iv\"\u003e4\u003c/a\u003e. Measures of Public Safety\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm#D1s2v\"\u003e5\u003c/a\u003e. Financial Measures\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm#D1s3\"\u003eLa Commune\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm#D1s3i\"\u003e1\u003c/a\u003e. The Rise of the Commune and the Central Committee\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm#D1s3ii\"\u003e2\u003c/a\u003e. The Character of the Commune\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm#D1s3iii\"\u003e3\u003c/a\u003e. Peasantry\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm#D1s3iv\"\u003e4\u003c/a\u003e. Union (Ligue) R\u0026eacute;publicaine\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm#D1s3v\"\u003e5\u003c/a\u003e. The Commune as Representative of All Classes Not Living on Foreign Labour\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm#D1s3vi\"\u003e6\u003c/a\u003e. Republic Only Possible as Avowedly Social Republic\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm#D1s3vii\"\u003e7\u003c/a\u003e. The Commune (Social Measures) \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm#D1s3viii\"\u003e8\u003c/a\u003e. Decentralization by the Ruraux and the Commune\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e [\u003ca href=\"ch01.htm#D1s4\"\u003eFragments\u003c/a\u003e]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003e\u003ca href=\"ch02.htm#D2s1\"\u003eThe Second Draft\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch02.htm#D2s1\"\u003e1\u003c/a\u003e) Government of Defence. Trochu, Favre, Picard, Ferry, as the Deputies of Paris\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch02.htm#D2s2\"\u003e2\u003c/a\u003e) Thiers, Dufaure, Pouyer-Quertier\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch02.htm#D2s3\"\u003e3\u003c/a\u003e) The Rural Assembly\u003cbr /\u003e\n[There is no section 4.] \u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch02.htm#D2s5\"\u003e5\u003c/a\u003e Opening of the Civil War. [The] 18 March Revolution. Cl\u0026eacute;ment Thomas. Lecomte. The Vend\u0026ocirc;me Affair\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch02.htm#D2s6\"\u003e6\u003c/a\u003e The Commune\u003cbr /\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"ch02.htm#D2s7\"\u003e7\u003c/a\u003e) \u003cem\u003eSchluss\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[\u003ca href=\"ch02.htm#D2s8\"\u003eFragments\u003c/a\u003e]\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cspan\u003e\u003ca href=\"notes.htm\"\u003eNotes\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026#160;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003chr /\u003e\r\n\u003chr\u003e\r\n\u003ch1\u003eMarx-Engels Archive\u003c/h1\u003e\r\n\u003ch3\u003e\u0026#8220;File No Longer Available!\u0026#8221;\u003c/h3\u003e\r\n\u003chr /\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\nThe file you have tried to access was transcribed from the Marx Engels Collected Works. \u003ca href=\"../../admin/legal/lw-response.html\"\u003eLawrence \u0026amp; Wishart\u003c/a\u003e, who hold the copyright for the Marx Engels Collected Works, have directed Marxists Internet Archive to delete all texts originating from MECW. 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