1870-1871: Conflict, Commune and Crisis

1
1870-1871 Conflict, Commune and Crisis

• Dr Chris Pearson

2
Jules Clarétie
3
The Franco-Prussian War

• 19 July 1870 French Second Empire declares war on
  Prussia and its allies (Bavaria, Württemberg etc)
• Napoleon III becomes head of French forces on 28
  July 1870
• France 250,000 men and 43,000 horses
• Prussia and co 600,000 men and 70,000 horses

4
(No Transcript)
5
Édouard Detaille, Prisonnier
6
Alphonse de Neuville, The Cemetery of St Privat,
18 August 1870 (1881)
7

• What a country there was round Metz! All around
  were villages and farms burnt down, fields
  devastated, gardens trampled under foot, and to
  crown all, far and wide, fields of corpses
• Baron von der Goltz-Pasha, St
  Privat-la-Montagne and Metz, in Maurice,
  Franco-German War (1900), p.187.

8

• The countryside had been stripped bare as if a
  flight of locusts had passed over the land, and
  had thrown the inhabitants many degrees backwards
  in the scale of prosperity.
• Henry Knollys, From Sedan to Saarbruck, via
  Verdun, Gravelotte, and Metz By an Officer of
  the Royal Artillery (1870)

9
(No Transcript)
10
(No Transcript)
11
Caring for the wounded after the battle of
Gravelotte
12
Prussian commanders survey the battlefield
Ruined houses at Bazeilles
13
Napoleon III meeting Bismarck after Sedan, 2
September 1870
14
The aftermath of Sedan

• End of the Second Empire
• Third Republic established on 4 September 1870
  led by government of National Defence
• Nation-in-arms
• Mass militarization of society (Taithe,
  Citizenship and Wars, 24)
• 635,838 men housed and trained in army camps

15
(No Transcript)
16
Alfred Decaen and Henri Emile Brunner-Lacoste,
LAtillerie campée dans le jardin des Tuileries
(fin septembre) 1871
17
(No Transcript)
18
Siege food

• Jugged cat with mushroom
• Roast donkey and potatoes
• Rats, peas, and celery
• Mice on toast
• Probably not on sale in your local Tesco

19
(No Transcript)
20
Poor Nini, you ate a dog! Cartoon by Auguste
Bry (1871)
21
(No Transcript)
22
Total War?

• Total war, in which every aspect of state and
  society is mobilized towards the total
  destruction of the enemy, arguably not achieved
• But mass mobilization
• Women and children involved in humanitarian
  effort
• New technologies step towards total war

23
War casualties

• French casualties 470,521, 131,100 of whom died
  or missing
• German casualties 172,617, 45,000 of whom died
• Source B Taithe, Defeated Flesh (1999), 44

24
The end of the war

• Lack of food in Paris and military defeats in the
  provinces
• Ceasefire signed 26 January 1871
• France agrees to Germany demands for
  compensation, the annexation of Alsace and
  Lorraine, and a victory parade down the
  Champs-Elysées

25
The Creation of the Commune

• The National Assemblys measures against Paris
• Theirs tries to reclaim the National Guardsmens
  cannon from Montmartre hill
• Resistance to government troops
• Central Committee of National Guardsmen seizes
  town hall and declares commune (18 March 1871)

26

• Proletarians, whose names were unknown
  yesterday, brave men moved by a profound love of
  justice and human rights and by a boundless
  devotion to France and the Republic have resolved
  to deliver the country from the invader and
  defend our threatened freedom.
• Central Committee, Journal Officiel, 21 March
  1871

27
The elections of 26 March 1871

• All councillors republicans
• 35 out of 85 councillors wage-earners
• Goncourt brothers What is happening is nothing
  but the conquest of France by the worker The
  government is leaving the hands of those who have
  for those who have not.

28
The Communes aims

• Declaration to the French people
• The Commune represents the end of the old
  governmental and clerical world, of militarism,
  of bureaucracy, of exploitation, of privileges,
  to which the proletariat owes its slavery and the
  country its misfortunes and disasters The aim is
  to universalize power and property.

29

• The Commune was essentially a working-class
  government, the produce of the struggle of the
  producing against the appropriating class, the
  political form at last discovered under which to
  work out the economical emancipation of labour.
• General Council of the International
  Working-Mens Association, 30 May 1871, quoted in
  Karl Marx, The Civil War in France (1921), 33

30
Women under the Commune

• Joined in political discussions and set up
  cooperatives 43 in first few weeks of Commune
• Union of Women for the Defence of Paris created
  by Elizabeth Dmietrieff
• Assertions of gender equality women part of
  revolt as much as men, equal wages

31
(No Transcript)
32
(No Transcript)
33
(No Transcript)
34
(No Transcript)
35
Wall of Federates (Mur des fédérés), Père
Lachaise cemetery
36
The human cost of repressing the Commune

• Between 20,000-30,000 Parisians killed during the
  Bloody Week
• Between 43,522-47,000 more arrested (1,051 of
  whom were women)
• 30,000 released by 1874 of the rest 5,207
  imprisoned and 4,586 deported to New Caledonia

37
Ilya Repin, Meeting at the Mur des Fédérés (1883)
38
Explaining the Commune (1)

• Short term causes (war, siege, defeat,
  radicalization)
• Radicalization occurred beyond Paris
• Society was as endangered as the fatherland. Let
  us save the fatherland, but les us save society,
  which was nearing a disaster Let us struggle
  against the bloody barbarians and a so-called
  civilisation without justice! (Lyon Committee of
  Public Salvation)

39
Explaining the Commune (2)

• Strength of socialist associations from the 1860s
  onwards (Johnson, Paradise of Association 1980)
• Post-Haussmannization working class reclaiming of
  central Paris (David Harvey, Paris Capital of
  Modernity 2006)

40
Legacies of 1870-71 (1) Greater
Catholic-Republican Divisions
41
Legacies of 1870-1 (2) Gender Relations

• Negative images of the pétroleuses convinced men
  from across the political spectrum that women
  should not be granted political rights
• Feminists put off radicalism
• Crisis in masculinity?

42
Legacies of 1870-71 (2) revanche

• Republican politicians wary of overtly calling
  for revenge against Germany
• But Maurice Barrès and General Boulanger less
  hesitant
• and more nationalistic history teaching in
  schools
• Idea of national decline more pervasive

43
Remembering the war Lion de Belfort
44
Memorial on site of Sedan battlefield