The Commune Besieged
The
troops of the Versailles government attacked on 2 April 1871, but only
the western outskirts. The next day, Communard
troops made their way towards Versailles itself, 25 km from Paris, but
were defeated en route. One of their leaders was shot by a local police
officer and another by a firing squad with his entire staff.
On 5 April, the Commune approved a new law – three hostages would be shot for every Communard executed by the Versaillais. Over the next three weeks, face to face fighting was rare but the artillery bombardments became increasingly heavy and damaging. On 25 April, a ceasefire allowed Neuilly, to the west of Paris, to be evacuated. Meanwhile the government army was garnering more and more support.
At the beginning of May the Communards sacked their war minister, replacing him with a soldier who had just pulled off a minor victory. Within days, outlying fortified villages began to fall - sometimes through treachery - and the Versailles troops started to commit crimes of war. On 8 and 9 May, the fighting reached the edge of the city and Thiers exhorted the citizens of Paris to submit.
The Communards appointed a new war minister. A major Versailles offensive was halted by Commune artillery but, within the week, one of the main powder depots on the avenue Rapp was destroyed in an unexplained explosion, perhaps the result of sabotage. Three days later, on 20 May, a traitor named Ducatel allowed the Versailles troops in to the city through the Porte de Saint-Cloud.
Once within the city, the government troops carried out somewhere between 10,000 and 25,000 summary executions of soldiers and civilians. Rape was common. These crimes of war lasted a full seven days, known as the semaine sanglante – the week of blood. The Communards retrenched burning several public buildings – the Tuileries, the Palace of Justice and the Hotel de Ville – seemingly in competition with the French and Prussian artillery bombardment to destroy the fabric of civil governance in the city.
As the Communards retreated, they began to enforce the 'hostage' law, killing among others the archbishop of Paris, who blessed his executioners. Attempts were made by the Parisians to bring the French troops on side through fraternisation and poster campaigns, but without success. Pushed back into northeast Paris, the Communards executed 50 hostages. An extraordinary battle raged between the gothic tombs of the Père Lachaise Cemetery, ending in the death of 147 Communards by firing squad.
On 28 May 1871, their last street barricade fell. The government troops were handed over 400,000 denunciations of Commune sympathisers.
Once the fighting was over, 10,000 Communards were condemned to death and a further 4,000 deported to New Caledonia, a French Pacific colony beyond New Zealand. By the time of their amnesty in 1880, Paris – and France – would be transformed, on the verge of an extraordinary economic and industrial expansion.
But the scars to the national psyche would remain.
