Paris Commune was an uprising against the newly formed conservative government of France in 1871. The Commune of Paris, as it is also known, lasted from March 18 to May 28. Many who participated were socialists, who believed that working-class citizens should take control of the economy and government. However, the Paris Commune included people with a variety of political views. They united to oppose a transitional government that was expected to make France a monarchy again.
In September 1870, the Second Empire of Napoleon III collapsed as France was losing the Franco-Prussian War. About the same time, the army of Prussia, a German nation, surrounded Paris and laid siege to the French capital. Supplies of food and fuel ran short, and the winter was unusually cold. A truce ending the war was reached on Jan. 28, 1871.
On February 8, French voters elected a National Assembly to form a temporary government and to negotiate peace. Conservatives—who supported a restoration of the French monarchy and an end to the war—won the majority of National Assembly seats. Their views reflected the feelings of people in the French provinces. Republican candidates, who supported democratic government and wanted to continue the war, won only about a third of the seats. France’s cities, especially Paris, supported the Republicans.
In February and early March, the National Assembly met in Bordeaux in southwestern France, outside the area of German occupation. The assembly voted to stop paying the National Guard, the military corps of Parisian workers that had defended Paris against the Germans. Conservatives feared that the National Guard might aid in a general revolt against the government.
The National Assembly agreed to accept Prussia’s peace terms on March 1. That same day, German troops occupied Paris, which humiliated Parisians who had fought and suffered during the siege. The Germans withdrew from Paris on March 3. The National Assembly then moved to Versailles, the former royal palace outside of Paris. The decision to meet at Versailles further angered many Parisians, who did not want another monarch and felt that the assembly should meet in Paris, the nation’s capital.
Discontent spread rapidly through the city. Members of the National Guard were still armed and controlled several hundred cannons. They appointed a central committee and prepared to defy the government. On March 18, Adolphe Thiers, executive head of France’s temporary government, sought to restore order by sending French army troops to recover the cannons. An agitated crowd of Parisians met the troops. The French army would not fire on the crowd, and two generals were killed. The troops withdrew without retrieving the cannons, leaving Paris in the hands of the Republicans.
The Commune published decrees separating church and state. It authorized turning abandoned factories and workshops into worker-controlled cooperatives. It called for a new national political system of self-governing municipalities in a loose federation. It also considered social measures, such as providing free elementary school education for children, both boys and girls. The Communards—that is, participants in the Paris Commune—managed to carry out only a few of their ideas in the short life of the Paris Commune.
The Versailles government quickly moved to attack the Commune and to regain control of Paris. On April 2, French army troops from Versailles began to inflict a series of defeats upon the Commune’s forces. Communes with similar aims sprang up in Lyon, Marseille, Saint-Étienne, and Toulouse, but they were quickly suppressed by Versailles government forces. On May 10, the peace treaty formally ending the Franco-Prussian War was signed in Frankfurt, Germany.
On May 21, the Versailles troops entered Paris. During the next seven days, which became known as la semaine sanglante (the bloody week), the Versailles government forces crushed the Communards. The Communards resisted fiercely, setting up street barricades and burning areas they were forced to abandon. Several famous buildings were completely or partly destroyed by fire, including the Tuileries palace and the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall). The government troops swept across Paris to rid the city of the Communards, executing many of those who were not killed in battle. Estimates of the fatalities range from 17,000 to 30,000 Communards and from 400 to 900 government troops. Afterward, the Versailles government arrested about 40,000 rebels and deported more than 3,500 of them.
The story of the Paris Commune quickly grew into a legend among socialists. German philosopher and economist Karl Marx analyzed the events of the Commune in his book The Civil War in France (1871). V. I. Lenin, who helped establish Communist rule in Russia, read Marx’s analysis and learned from the mistakes of the Commune.
See also Franco-Prussian War; Socialism; Thiers, Louis Adolphe.
