The Barricades of the Paris Commune
Barricades only played a part in the final week of the Paris Commune, but their imagery came to define the struggle – as the last line of defence for a revolutionary democratic experiment.
Seventy days elapsed between 18 March 1871, when the people of Paris seized the cannon of the National Guard in Montmartre, and 28 May, when the last shots were fired in Belleville. It was only in the final week that the barricade played a part, yet this is remembered as the symbol of the Paris Commune.
How did things get to such a pass, in that tragic week, when the Commune still possessed the assets of weapons, fortifications, and cannon?
When the Versaillais entered Paris, the various political tendencies present in the Commune united to confront the danger, but it was too late: the defence was not ready.
A barricades commission was established in early April, under Rossel, an officer of the engineers. It decided to construct lines of barricades around the city. The idea was for barricade-fortresses on the main communication routes, and lighter constructions elsewhere. Napoléon Gaillard, a master shoemaker, was charged by Rossel to undertake this work.
In fact, only a few of the large barricades envisaged were in place to meet the Versaillais: the largest of these—the ‘Château-Gaillard’—blocked the rues Saint-Florentin and Rivoli at the corner of the place de la Concorde. Others were erected at the Trocadéro, on the rue de Castiglione, and in the fourteenth arrondissement on the avenue de Maine at the Porte d’Orléans, but this was very far from being the second defensive wall originally planned.
The vanguard of the Versaillais troops entered Paris in the early hours of 21 May, flooding in ‘through the five gaping wounds of the gates of Passy, Auteuil, Saint-Cloud, Sèvres, and Versailles.’ During this time, the general council of the Commune held its last session in the Hôtel de Ville. It dealt only with regular
business.
On the morning of 22 May, a proclamation written by Charles Delescluze could be read on the walls:
Enough of militarism! No more staff-officers with their gold-embroidered uniforms! Make way for the people, for the combatants bare-armed! The hour of the revolutionary war has struck… The people know nothing of learned manoeuvres. But when they have a gun in their hands and paving-stones under their feet, they fear not all the strategists of the monarchical school.
In the words of Lefrançais, ‘it was essential to put an end to this nightmare of interminable siege… Better for all, in sum, this definitive face-to-face than the indefinite continuation of a struggle at a distance and with no outcome. The invaders were awaited almost with impatience, on the heights of Passy and the Trocadéro that they had taken possession of during the night.’
Defending the Commune
As it seemed impossible to mount a defence on the wide arteries of the west of the city, the Federals withdrew to a line running from the Batignolles to the Gare Montparnasse, via Saint-Augustin and Concorde. But this line soon collapsed, except at the Batignolles which formed a forward defence for Montmartre; here the Versaillais were stopped between the place Clichy and La Fourche.
The Butte Montmartre, however, which could have been an impregnable fortress, remained silent. On the Left Bank, where the rue de l’Université, the rue du Bac and the boulevard Saint-Germain were barricaded, soldiers filed through the avenue du Maine to the Gare Montparnasse.
By the evening of the 22nd, the Versaillais line stretched from the Gare des Batignolles to the Gare Montparnasse, by way of the Gare Saint-Lazare, Saint-Augustin, the Palais-Bourbon and the boulevard des Invalides. Early in the morning of the 23rd, the Versaillais launched a movement that skirted the fortifications and took all the northern gates from behind, from Asnières to Saint-Ouen – the Prussians had let them pass.
The Batignolles barricades gave way one after the other. Columns attacked Montmartre through the rue Lepic and the rue Clignancourt. The Montmartre cemetery saw bitter fighting, with Louise Michel taking up a rifle: ‘This time the shell fell close to me, coming down through the branches and covering me with flowers, close to Murger’s tomb…When I returned to my comrades, near the tomb on which stands the bronze statue of Cavaignac, they said to me: now keep still.’
On the place Blanche, at the mouth of the rue Lepic, the famous women’s barricade, commanded by the Russian revolutionary Elisabeth Dmitrieff and made up of militants from the Union des Femmes, held out for several hours, while other women came to reinforce the barricade on place Pigalle, at the bottom of the rue Houdon.
On the evening of 23 May, the Versaillais line extended from the Porte de la Chapelle to the place d’Enfer, by way of the Gare du Nord, the new Opéra, the boulevard des Italiens and the rue du Bac. ‘The place de la Concorde and the rue Royale, surrounded on their flanks, stood out like a promontory in the midst of a tempest,’ wrote Lissagaray.
That evening the massacre of prisoners began, and of all those suspected of taking part in the insurrection. Each army corps had its provost marshal who ordered executions and, so as to proceed more quickly, supplementary provosts were posted in the conquered streets.
During the night the Tuileries burned. On the Left Bank, the Légion d’honneur building and the Cour des Comptes likewise went up in flames. At ten in the evening, the barricade in the rue Saint-Florentin was evacuated, the Versaillais occupied the place Vendôme and took the barricade on the rue de Castiglione from behind. The Federals withdrew with great difficulty to the Hôtel de Ville.
In the morning of 24 May, the Versaillais pushed forwards on all fronts. They cannonaded the Palais-Royal, reached the Bourse and descended towards the Halles, where they met very strong resistance around Sainte-Eustache. On the Left Bank, they reached the Val-de Grâce and approached the Panthéon.
At eight o’clock, members of the Commune met at the Hôtel de Ville and decided to evacuate it. The building was set on fire, and the services of the war department withdrew to the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement. What
remained of the defence line was cut in two, and communication between the two banks became dangerous.
On the Left Bank, the Federals abandoned the rue Vavin, blowing up the powder works at the Luxembourg. Varlin and Lisbonne retreated to the Panthéon, defended by three barricades, the farther and higher one running between the mairie of the fifth arrondissement and the law faculty building.
But the Versaillais surged across the Pont Saint-Michel, where firing had stopped for lack of munitions. In the afternoon, the Panthéon was taken and the whole of the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève fell into the hands of the army. The massacres immediately commenced: on the rue Saint-Jacques, forty prisoners were shot.
Under Fire
At the mairie of the eleventh arrondissement, where the remnants of the battalions of the conquered quarters were gathered, it was Delescluze who spoke:
‘I propose,’ said he, ‘that the members of the Commune, engirded with their scarfs, shall make a review of all the battalions that can be assembled on the boulevard Voltaire. We shall then at their head proceed to the points to be reconquered.’
The defence of the east of Paris was organised. Around the Bastille, barricades defended the entry to the rue and faubourg Saint-Antoine. On the place du Château-d’Eau [now de la République], a wall of paving-stones blocked the entrance to the boulevard Voltaire. The rues Oberkampf, Angoulême, la Fontaine-au-Roi, and Faubourg du Temple were hastily barricaded at their lower ends.
The massacre continued in the neighbourhoods occupied by the army. ‘These are no longer soldiers accomplishing a duty’, said a conservative journal, La France. And indeed these were hyenas, thirsting for blood and pillage. In some places it sufficed to have a watch to be shot. The corpses were searched, and the correspondents of foreign newspapers called those thefts ‘the last perquisition.’ In response, the Federals executed Darboy, the archbishop of Paris, Deguerry, vicar of the Madeleine, and three Jesuits imprisoned with them in La Roquette.
On the night of the 24th, the Versaillais troops occupied a great swath surrounding the eleventh, nineteenth, and twentieth arrondissements, while Paris continued to burn.
At midday on the 25th, the army attacked the Butte-aux Cailles from the avenue d’Italie in the south and the Gobelins in the north. ‘For three hours,’ Lissagaray wrote, ‘a prolonged and obstinate firing enveloped the Butte aux Cailles, battered down by the Versaillese cannon, six times as numerous as Wroblewski’s… protected by the fire of the Austerlitz Bridge, the able defender of the Butte aux Cailles passed the Seine in good order with his cannon and a thousand men.’ The whole of the Left Bank was now in the hands of the Versaillais.
The barricades defending the entrance to the boulevard Voltaire and the boulevard du Temple came under fire from the Prince Eugène barracks [of the Republican Guard, on the place de la République], from the boulevard Magenta and the rue Turbigo.
The place du Château d’Eau was ravaged as by a cyclone. The walls crumbled beneath the shells and bullets; enormous blocks were thrown up; the lions of the fountains perforated or broken off, the basin surmounting it shattered. Fire burst out from twenty houses. The trees were leafless, and their broken branches hung like limbs all but parted from the main body.
By the evening, only two whole arrondissements remained in the hands of the Commune, the nineteenth and twentieth, along with half of the eleventh.
On the morning of Friday, 26 May, the fighting was concentrated on the Bastille, under attack from two sides, the boulevard Mazas [now Diderot] and the boulevard Beaumarchais. The Bastille succumbed at around two in the afternoon.
On the morning of Saturday, 27 May, the Versaillais occupied the Montreuil and Bagnolet gates, the place du Trône [now de la Nation], and spread from there into Charonne. From La Villette, their mortars devastated the Buttes-Chaumont. The artillery of the Federals, massed on the place des Fêtes, stopped firing in the afternoon for lack of munitions, and their gunners joined those defending the rue Fessart and the rue des Annelets.
At five in the morning on Sunday, 28 May, ‘we were at the giant barricade at the foot of the rue de Belleville, almost facing the Salle Favié,’ wrote Jules Vallès. In the course of the morning the resistance was reduced to the small quadrilateral bounded by the rue du Faubourg-du-Temple, the rue Saint-Maur, and the boulevard de Belleville.
The Last Barricade
Several streets today compete for the honour of having hosted the final barricade of the Commune. For Lissagaray, ‘the last barricade of the May days was in the rue Ramponeau. For a quarter of an hour a single Federal defended it. Thrice he broke the staff of the Versaillese flag hoisted on the barricade of the rue de Paris [now de Belleville]. As a reward for his courage, this last soldier of the Commune succeeded in escaping.’ Legend has it that this soldier was Lissagaray himself.
For others, the last barricade was that on the rue Rébeval; for Louise Michel it was that of the rue de la Fontaine-au-Roi:
An immense red flag floated above the barricade. The two Ferrés were there, Théophile and Hippolyte, also J.-B. Clément, Cambon, a Garibaldian, Varlin, Vermorel, Champy. The barricade on the rue Saint-Maur had just succumbed, that of La Fontaine-au-Roi stubbornly spat out fi re in the bloody face of Versailles. . . . At the moment when the last shots were fired, a young woman arrived from the barricade on the rue Saint-Maur, to offer her services. They tried to push her away from this place of death, but she stayed despite them.
This was the woman to whom Jean-Baptiste Clément would dedicate
his song, Le Temps des Cerises.
At one o’clock, it was all over.