Ancient history

The Paris Commune:Repression

The Commune was finally defeated during the Bloody Week, which began with the entry of Versailles troops into Paris on May 21 and ended with the last fighting at the Père-Lachaise cemetery on May 28. The witnesses all evoke numerous summary executions on the part of the Versailles troops. There is talk, depending on the sources, of 10,000 to 25,000 summary executions, rapes, murders of communard workers during the bloody week. In return, it should be noted that the Communards destroyed part of Paris, in particular by deliberately burning down several historic public monuments:the Palais des Tuileries, the Palais de Justice, the Palais de la Légion d'honneur, and the Hôtel de Ville. .. Most of the Parisian civil registry was destroyed during these fires. It is nevertheless necessary to recall that the incessant bombardments of the French and Prussian regular troops were responsible for numerous fires.

At the same time, hostages are taken by the Communards. The Archbishop of Paris, Mgr Georges Darboy, was arrested on April 4, 1871 with four innocent people, according to the order of the Commune of Paris which acted according to the "decree of hostages" of 2 Prairial Year 79. He was locked up in prison de Mazas, and was executed at La Roquette following the Versailles attack on May 24, blessing his executioners.

The repression of the Communards was fierce:nearly 10,000 death sentences, 4,000 deportations to prison in New Caledonia, etc. The amnesty laws will not intervene until 1880.

The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre in Paris, was built from 1873 by the Church and the State to, among other things, "expiate the crimes of the communards".

The first proletarian revolutionary power, the Paris Commune has since been claimed as a model - but with different points of view - by the left, the far left and the anarchists; it inspired many revolutionary movements which drew lessons from it enabling them to undertake other revolutions (the Russian revolution and the councils (soviets), the Spanish revolution and the communities, etc.).