Massacre (16 page)

Communard General Gustave Cluseret described Rigault’s obsession with the police: ‘He could not knock down a bock – and he drank many – without talking about the police.’ US citizen Lili Morton was enthusiastic about the Commune, but soured slightly when she met Rigault. She needed a pass to leave Paris, and went to see him carrying a letter of introduction, but the head of the police received her rudely and she was interrogated ‘diabolical[ly]’. The American got her passport, but left repulsed by the ‘wicked expression … [in] his cunning eyes’.
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Rigault, for all his faults, was devoted to the cause and aided communards whenever he could. Cattelain remembered his boss as an ‘ardent revolutionary, sometimes brutal, but always subject to sentiments of humanity’, emphasising ‘the extreme instability of his character’. He could be vicious, but also compassionate. Every day people showed up asking to see him. Women came to beg for help; their families did not have proper lodging and were hungry. Some even turned up asking for help even though their men were fighting on the side of Versailles. The Commune provided spouses of national guardsmen with seventy-five centimes per day, but this was not enough. Rigault provided some of them with rooms in the Lobau barracks. And, having been been aided by Renoir when he was on the run from imperial police several years earlier, he also made it possible for the Impressionist to get out of Paris to paint in the countryside.
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Maverick journalist Henri Rochefort was no fan of Rigault. But he admitted that he was ‘made of the stuff from which veritable revolutionists are cut out’. He sacrificed all for the cause of revolution. Rigault was fearless – no danger caused ‘his face to pale’. Rigault was the kind of man who could tell someone, ‘I’m very fond of you, but circumstances unfortunately compel me to have you shot. I am, therefore, going to do so!’
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Rigault set up eighty neighbourhood police offices and had at his disposal a brigade of 200 agents given the task of sniffing out Versaillais spies. In the morning, at least when he was awake, Rigault convoked a sort of council which went over the reports that had come in during the previous twenty-four hours. Political policing remained, predictably, Rigault’s central focus. About 3,500 people were arrested during the Commune, among them 270 prostitutes. The prisons of Paris were full. Rigault had ordered the arrest of over 400 people between 18 and 28 March, even though many, including Georges Clemenceau, were quickly released.
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As the weeks passed, the arrests of those accused of working for Versailles increased, and included a member of the International who had been an imperial police spy. Rigault’s political opponents within the
Commune objected to his dictatorial methods. Tensions mounted between Rigault and the Central Committee. Rigault responded memorably to a critic, ‘We are not dispensing justice, we are making revolution.’
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On 13 April, Rigault drew more fire when he ordered the arrest of Gustave Chaudey, former deputy mayor, follower of the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and a friend and former editor of
Le Siècle
. Chaudey was also a friend of Courbet, who had painted a portrait of him in 1870 and who protested about his arrest. Chaudey had ordered Breton guardsmen to fire from the Hôtel de Ville on demonstrators on 22 January, killing several people, including Rigault’s friend Théophile Sapia. Élie Reclus, who described Chaudey as haughty and something of a mediocrity, suggested that the journalist had been incarcerated by the Commune, to which he had rallied, because he had forcefully opposed all ‘who do not appear to be acting in good faith’.
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Who were the Communards? British journalist Frederic Harrison assessed the Communards in Paris, writing that the ‘“insurgents” … are simply the people of Paris, mainly and at first working men, but now largely recruited from the trading and professional classes. The “Commune” has been organised with extraordinary skill, the public services are efficiently carried on, and order has been for the most part preserved.’ In Harrison’s view, the Commune was ‘one of the least cruel … [and] perhaps the ablest revolutionary government of modern times’.
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The average Communard was the average Parisian, young, between twenty-one and forty years of age, the largest number being men between thirty-six and forty years. Three-quarters had been born outside of Paris and were part of the waves of immigration, above all from north-eastern France but also from the north-west, along with seasonal migrants from Creuse in the centre. Some 45 per cent of Communards were married and 6 per cent widowers, although many workers lived in
union libres
(common-law marriages), which the Commune legitimised. Only 2 per cent had received secondary education. At a time of increased literacy, only about 11 per cent were illiterate, although many ordinary Parisians enjoyed only basic reading and writing skills.
³³

Most Communards were drawn from the world of Parisian work, including artisans and craftsmen who produced
articles de Paris
and jewellery. Their numbers included skilled and semi-skilled workers, many working with wood, shoes, printing, or small-scale metal production, and construction workers, as well as day-labourers and domestic servants. Shopkeepers, clerks and men in the liberal professions were also well
represented. They were part of ‘the people’ who had suffered during the siege and felt threatened by monarchist machinations.
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Some 70 per cent of female Communards came from the world of women’s work, particularly textiles and clothing trades. Some courageously provided food and drink to Communard fighters or served as doctors’ assistants, tending wounded Communard fighters. Louise Michel saw nothing against the incorporation of prostitutes into the corps of women helping the wounded: ‘Who has more right than these women, the most pitiful of the old order’s victims, to give their lives for the new?’ The Commune accorded pensions to widows and children, whether ‘legitimate’ or not, of men killed fighting for the Commune.
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But however average or ordinary most Communards were, many observers – foreign and local alike – saw the Commune as a pitched conflict between classes. In his relatively short time at the US Legation, for instance, Wickman Hoffman took note of ‘the class hatred which exists in France’. For the American, it was ‘something we have no idea of, and I trust that we never shall. It is bitter, relentless and cruel; and is, no doubt, a sad legacy of the bloody Revolution of 1789, and of the centuries of oppression which preceded it.’
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Hippolyte Taine, a conservative historian, was sure that the Commune was a proletarian revolution. On 5 April he wrote that, most fundamentally, the ‘present insurrection’ was socialist: ‘The boss and the bourgeois exploit us, therefore we must suppress them. Superiority and special status do not exist. Me, a worker, I have abilities, and if I want, I can become the head of a business, a magistrate, a general. By good fortune, we have rifles, let’s use them to establish a Republic in which workers like us become cabinet ministers and presidents.’
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Edmond Goncourt and his brother Jules had assessed shortly before the latter’s death a year earlier that ‘the gap between wages and the cost of living would kill the Empire’. A workman had indeed reason to ask, ‘“What good does it do me for there to be monuments, operas, café-concerts where I have never set foot because I don’t have the money?” And he rejoices that henceforth there will be no more rich people in Paris, so convinced is he that the gathering of rich people into one places raises prices.’
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The economic and political divisions in the Parisian
quartiers
did seem to bear out the Commune’s origins in class conflict. The more plebeian neighbourhoods of Paris led the way in support for the Commune. The social geography of Paris reflected a divide between the more prosperous western half of the city and the People’s Paris of the eastern districts; and
between the centre and the proletarian periphery. The divide had only been intensified by Baron Georges Haussmann’s massive urban projects during the Second Empire, but, with the uprising on 18 March, the periphery had arguably conquered the
beaux quartiers
. This is not to say that there were not some who opposed the Commune in poorer areas such as the Eleventh, Twelfth, Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Arrondissements, or devoted Communards in the relatively more privileged Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Arrondissements. Social geography, however, counted for much.

The Second Arrondissement embodied the social and political divide that could be found even within a relatively prosperous district. The western parts were more bourgeois, more anti-Communard, and highly suspicious of proletarian Belleville and its national guardsmen and the ‘Vengeurs de Flourens’ who came down to parade in the conservative
quartiers
below. In the earlier weeks of the Commune, many residents were for conciliation and a negotiated settlement, and voted for moderate representatives in the election of 26 March. The more plebeian eastern neighbourhoods of the Second Arrondissement sent delegates to the Commune, which was not the case for the middle-class residents to the west. Some 12,000 people required living assistance in the
arrondissement
and were more likely to be guardsmen because they depended on the 1.50 francs a day payment for their families. A mechanic put it this way: ‘I have seven children and my wife was ill. I had no other means of feeding my family.’
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Given the needs of its plebeian supporters, the organisation of work remained a significant goal for Communard militants. The ‘Déclaration du peuple français’ of 19 April called for the creation of institutions that would provide credit for ordinary people, facilitating the ‘access to property’ and the ‘freedom of labour’. Ideas and even concrete projects for the ‘organisation of work’ were in the air, amid confidence that the defence of the National Guard cannons on 18 March had inaugurated a new era, full of possibilities that would make Paris and the world a better place.
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Thus the ‘social question’ – the condition of the poor and reforms that could be put in place to help them – remained important to many ordinary Parisians. The idea that revolution could bring about reforms that would reduce or even eliminate the considerable differences in conditions of life, opportunities and expectations remained entrenched in the collective memory of Parisian workers. Eugène Varlin put it this way: ‘We want to overthrow the exploitation of workers by the right of labour [
le droit au travail
] and the association of workers in corporation.’ Workers hoped
that newly established cooperatives would reflect the organisation of the Commune itself: decentralised and locally governed. The anarchist Proudhon’s influence could be seen in many workers’ organisations in many trades. The Proudhonists and the Blanquists imagined that France, like Paris, would evolve into a federation of communes, becoming a free country just as Paris had become a ‘free city’ (
ville libre
). Such echoes could be heard at the meeting of women in the Church of the Trinité on 12 May when a speaker thundered, ‘The day of justice approaches with giant strides … the workshops in which you are packed will belong to you; the tools that are put into your hands will be yours; the gain resulting from your efforts, from your troubles, and from the loss of your health will be shared among you. Proletarians, you will be reborn.’
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This was a time of big dreams.

The regulations established by a workshop set up in the Louvre to repair and convert weapons reflect how some workers envisioned manufacturing operating in the future. Foremen and charge-hands (who supervised lathes) were to be elected, just as the National Guard units elected officers. They also laid out the responsibilities of the administrative council – consisting of the manager, the foreman, the charge-hand and one worker ‘elected from each workbench’ – which would set salaries and wages, and would ensure that the work day did not exceed ten hours.
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On 16 April, the Commune ordered a survey of workshops abandoned by employers who had fled Paris so that ultimately these could be taken over by workers’ cooperatives. A few were indeed turned over to cooperatives. A small cooperative iron foundry started up in Grenelle. Members moved into one workshop four days later and another after two weeks. The cooperative, employing about 250 workers, produced shells that were crucial to the city’s defence against Thiers. Workers elected ‘managing directors’ – not a very socialist term – led by thirty-nine-year-old Pierre Marc, who had inherited a foundry from his father. The cooperative paid rent to the previous owner of the shop. Workers employed in the cooperative earned less than their counterparts employed at the Louvre shell factory. Producers cooperatives were thus organised along traditional class lines and workers were expected to show up with their
livrets
(work identity papers), which they had been required to have with them since 1803, although this obligation had been widely resented.
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In addition to reorganising Paris’s workers, the Commune also endeavoured to improve their working conditions. The abolition of night baking by a decree issued on 20 April was one such concrete social measure in the interest of labour taken by the Commune. The debate centred on
advantages for bakers, and the fact that their virtual night slavery was ‘for the benefit of the aristocracy of the belly’. Some master bakers resisted, fearing the loss of clients, and the application of the measure was postponed until 3 May, with another decree the next day threatening the seizure of bread produced before 5.00 a.m. and distributing it to the poor. But many Parisians still demanded warm croissants first thing in the morning, making it difficult for the Commune to enforce the measure. Other Communard decrees established a maximum salary for municipal employees (6,000 francs a year), forbade employers from taking assessed fines from workers’ wages (which had become an increasing practice during the Second Empire), and established labour exchanges in each
arrondissement
.
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