The Paris Commune

I remember that as a kid in the mid-1960s I saw a Life magazine article on the the uprising in Paris when the French army collapsed and the Germans won the Franco-Prussian war in 1871. The Parisians didn't like the fact that the French army simply collapsed and gave power to a right wing regime under Thiers, so they revolted. But Thiers ordered in the military:

On 21 May, government forces broke through the city's defences, and a week of street fighting, known as 'la Semaine Sanglante' (Bloody Week) began. Thousands of Parisians were killed in the fighting or summarily executed by courts martial. Thiers has often been accused of ordering this massacre - probably the worst in Europe between the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution of 1917 - but more likely he washed his hands of a massacre carried out by the army, thinking that it was a 'lesson' that the insurgents deserved.

I was shocked at the picture:


What bothered me was the text describing how small there people were, mostly around 5'1" to 5'4". The pictures show big heads and small bodies, the obvious result of malnutrition.

Life magazine also had a picture of men & women up against a wall being shot by a military firing squad. It was all very ugly.

The uprising in Paris was led by Leftists. Here's a bit from Wikipedia about the fury of the Right when it seized power back from the Communards:

Reprisals now began in earnest. Having supported the Commune in any way was a political crime, of which thousands could be, and were, accused. Some of the Communards were shot against what is now known as the Communards' Wall in the Père Lachaise Cemetery while thousands of others were tried by summary courts martial of doubtful legality, and thousands shot. Notorious sites of slaughter were the Luxembourg Gardens and the Lobau Barracks, behind the Hôtel de Ville. Nearly 40,000 others were marched to Versailles for trials. For many days endless columns of men, women and children made a painful way under military escort to temporary prison quarters in Versailles. Later 12,500 were tried, and about 10,000 were found guilty: 23 men were executed; many were condemned to prison; 4,000 were deported for life to New Caledonia. The number killed during La Semaine Sanglante can never be established for certain, and estimates vary from about 10,000 to 50,000. According to Benedict Anderson, "7,500 were jailed or deported" and "roughly 20,000 executed".

What was the crime of all these people? They were upset about an incompetent government that lost a war to Germany and the fact that most of the indemnity payments would fall on them and that "their" right wing national government was going to allow a victory march by the Germans in Paris. So they revolted. Then, the government that was too incompetent to defeat the Germans, came in and used professional military to "defeat" the citizens of Paris. It was a bloodbath.

When you think of how incompetent governments can be today, think back to this and realize that things could be far, far worse.