Commune of Paris (1871): Comments

History > Social movement > the Commune of Paris > Comments < Paris < France < Europe ----- the Commune of Paris of 1871 caused the violent passions, enthusiastic and ignited for its partisans, strongly hostile even heinous for its adversaries. This event takes seat in the history of the Social movement where strong tensions accumulated since the French revolution revived by the fights, the insurrections and the revolutions of the 19th century which were worth many sufferings and blood poured by their protagonists. The Commune itself saw drawing up two very hostile parties. On a side the party of the having classes is (middle-class, nobility traditionnele and of empire), with its armed forces directed by generals of the Second Empire and its political apparatus: assembly the “rural ones” elected with an electorate maintained in the ignorance and the respect of the traditional social order. Other side they are the republicans, radicals, social which call their wishes the creation of a République that one starts to call the Sociale more and more: it is a party of lit intellectuals, thinkers, journalists, writers, who finds an echo growing in the working populations of the European cities.

The Commune will be concluded in a very great violence: the two opposite parties will underline each one the wrongs of the opposing side. The reaction will reproach to the communards the destruction monuments and buildings (Mise at bottom of the column Vendôme, destruction of the private mansion of Thiers, Incendie of the Town hall and other buildings like the palate of Tileries) and the execution of the hostages. The partisans of the Commune give a report on terrible repression during the bloody Semaine and in the year which followed, carried out summarily without any judgment, deportees, imprisoned, condemned to died or exiled. The precise evaluation is difficult certain go until 100 000 dead while the Appert general recognizes officially 17 000 executions.

It is in this context which one can apprehend the standpoint of writers that them social position arranges on the side of the easy classes frightened to see the working people that they scorn to call into question the social order which they enjoy.

Hostile quotations of writers to the Commune

Leconte de Lisle with José-Maria de Heredia: “The Commune? It was the league of all downgraded, of all the incompetents, all the envieux ones, all the assassins, of all the robbers, bad poets, bad painters, missed journalists, tenants of bottom stages. ”

Gustave Flaubert with George Sand: “The only thing, I return from there always there, it is a government of mandarins. The people are a minor eternal. I hate the democracy. ” “The first remedy would be to finish some with the vote for all, the shame of the human spirit. In an industrial company (public limit company), each shareholder votes because of his contribution. He should about it be thus in the government of a nation. ” “Obligatory education and free will not only make there increase the number of the imbeciles. In a hurry is to inform the rich person who, all in all, are strongest. ”

George Sand with Gustave Flaubert: “This Commune is a crisis of vomiting, the Saturnales of the madness. ”

communards according to Alphonse Daudet: “Of the heads of pawns, crasseux collets, hair luisants, the hats, the stockbreeders of snails, the savers of the people, the displaced ones, the sad ones, the carriages, the incompetents; why the workmen were interfered policy? ”

communardes according to Alexandre Dumas wire: “We will not say anything of their females by respect for the women, whom they resemble when they died. ”

Emile Littré: “I detest the war which the Parisian proletariat has just caused. It was made cruelly guilty with regard to the fatherland, drunk which it was savage doctrines: the narrow duty of the governments is to firmly repress socialism in its anarchistic variations. ”

Le Figaro : “It is asked formally that all the members of the Commune, that all the journalists who loosely made a pact with the triumphing riot, that all the shady Poles and the Wallachians of imagination passed by the weapons in front of the people gathered. ”

Edmond de Goncourt: “One cuts down them with the machine-gun. When I heard the death-blow, that relieved me. ”

Moderate positions

Emile Zola: “The blood bath which the people of Paris have just taken was perhaps a horrible need to calm some of its fevers. You will now see it growing in wisdom and splendor. ”

Victor Hugo (in Belgian Independence ): “That one overcome of Paris, that a man of the meeting known as Commune, that Paris very little elected and that, for my part, I never did not approve, that one of these men, was it my personal enemy, especially if he is my personal enemy, strikes with my door, I open. It is in my house. It is inviolable. ”

Declaration of partisans of the Commune

Jules Vallès: “I was always the lawyer of the poor, I become the candidate of work, I will be the deputy of misery! Misery! As long as there will be a soldier, a torturer, a priest, a gabelou, a twisted taper, a policeman believed on oath, an irresponsible civil servant, an irremovable magistrate; as long as there will be all that to pay, people, you will be miserable! ” “Social the arrives, hear you! It arrives at step of giant, bringing not death, but safety. ”

Others

Raoul Vaneigem: “So enthusiastic that I always was of the destruction of the Vendôme column by Courbet and the Commune of Paris, I persist in thinking that the Federate ones had made more useful work while seizing the reserves of Banque de France initially. ” ( For the abolition of the commercial company for an alive company , 2002)

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