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HOW BLOODY WAS LA SEMAINE SANGLANTE OF 1871? A REVISION*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 August 2012

ROBERT TOMBS
ROBERT TOMBS*
Affiliation:
St John's College, Cambridge
*
St John's College, Cambridge CB2 1TPrpt1000@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

The dominant memory of the Paris Commune has been of disproportionate violence wreaked on the Communards by a brutal government. However, accounts of the extent of the bloodshed rest on flimsy foundations. A range of archival evidence suggests that the death toll has been greatly exaggerated, and a revised estimate is here proposed. How and why the number of deaths became crucial to the history of the Commune from an early date is explored. If the killing was in reality on a far less apocalyptic scale, how does this affect the narrative of nineteenth-century French politics and its ‘memory’?

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The Historical Journal , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , September 2012 , pp. 679 - 704
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

*

A short early version of this article was given at the Modern European History Seminar at Cambridge, and at the 17th George Rudé Seminar in Sydney, July 2010; and a more elaborate version at the 57th Annual Meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies at Charleston, SC, in February 2011. I would like to thank the organizers and all who commented, especially Philip Nord and David Shafer (respondents at Charleston), and Karine Varley and Quentin Deluermoz (for online commentaries in an H-France ‘salon’). Jacques Rougerie has made very helpful suggestions and criticisms, as have the journal's two anonymous referees. None of them agree with all the arguments put forward, which has made their comments doubly valuable. I am grateful to Patrick Turner for help with research, and to Alex Dowdall and Marion Lenoir for permission to quote from their unpublished dissertations.

References

1 Bernstein, Samuel, Auguste Blanqui and the art of insurrection (London, 1971), p. 341Google Scholar.

2 Lenoir, Marion, ‘L'echo de la Commune de Paris dans la presse anglaise, 1871–1880’ (mémoire de maîtrise, Université de Bourgogne, 2001), p. 194Google Scholar.

3 Annales de l'Assemblée Nationale, iii (1871), p. 135. Unless otherwise stated, French sources are in my translation, except where there is reason to quote the original wording.

4 Baldick, Robert, ed., Pages from the Goncourt journal (Oxford, 1978), p. 194Google Scholar.

5 Marx, Karl, The civil war in France (London, 1871)Google Scholar, final words.

6 Cissey to Marshal de Mac-Mahon, 4 June 1871, Vincennes, Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre (SHAT) série Lucarton 92; Gen. L'Hériller to Gen. Douay, 29 May 1871, SHAT Lu 35.

7 Lissagaray, Prosper-Ollivier, Histoire de la Commune de 1871 (Paris, 1972, which reproduces the revised edition of 1896), p. 381Google Scholar; Pelletan, Camille, La semaine de mai (Paris, 1880) p. 396Google Scholar.

8 See Ni Dieu ni maître (9 Jan. 1881) and La Marseillaise (7 Jan. 1881). I am grateful to Dawn Dodds for these references.

9 Shafer, David A., The Paris Commune (London, 2005), pp. 97–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Hayward, Jack, Fragmented France (Oxford, 2007), p. 158CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Wilson, Colette E., Paris and the Commune, 1871–1878: the politics of forgetting (Manchester, 2007), p. 1Google Scholar.

12 Milza, Pierre, L'Année terrible (2 vols., Paris, 2009)Google Scholar, ii:La Commune, p. 468.

13 Gildea, Robert, Children of the revolution: the French, 1799–1914 (London, 2008), p. 244.Google Scholar

14 Michael Rowe, ‘New regimes’, in Times Literary Supplement (21 Nov. 2008), p. 23.

15 Starr, Peter, Commemorating trauma: the Paris Commune and its cultural aftermath (New York, NY, 2006), p. 34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 [Bajac, Quentin, ed.,] La Commune photographiée (Paris, 2000), pp. 70–1Google Scholar, 112.

17 Robert Tombs, ‘The forces of order and the suppression of the Paris insurrection of 1871’ (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, 1980), p. 308.

18 Tombs, Robert, The war against Paris 1871 (Cambridge, 1981), p. 191Google Scholar.

19 Robert Tombs, ‘The wars against Paris’, in Stig Förster and Jörg Nagler, eds., On the road to total war: the American civil war and the German wars of unification, 1861–1871 (Cambridge, 1997), p. 564.

20 Cissey to Mac-Mahon, 29 May 1871, SHAT Lu 92.

21 Tombs, War, p. 161.

22 Garcin, report, May 1871, SHAT Lu 95.

23 Report by 2nd division of 2nd corps, SHAT Lu 7.

24 General de Cissey to Thiers and Mac-Mahon, 3.10 a.m., and Mac-Mahon to Thiers and Le Flô (minister of war), 6.30 a.m., 26 May 1871, SHAT Li 119.

25 Cissey to Mac-Mahon, 7.00 a.m., 26 May 1871, SHAT Li 119, and telegram to Col. Leperche (commanding southern suburbs), 27 May 1871, SHAT Lv 10.

26 Tombs, ‘Forces of order’, p. 298.

27 Dossier Quesnot, SHAT 6e Conseil de Guerre, dossier 229.

28 For example, four Poles from the force in the 13th arrondissement are known to have been shot at the Luxembourg. Gosset, Hélène, ‘Les Polonais dans la Commune de Paris’, Cahiers Internationaux, 96 (1958), pp. 46–62Google Scholar. It was common to shoot foreign insurgents.

29 Statement by Quesnot, 15 Nov. 1871, SHAT 6e Conseil de Guerre, dossier 229.

30 Milza, Pierre, for example, presents this as refutation of my questioning of the death toll: ‘on ne voit pas très bien ce qui lui permet [à l'historien britannique] d'avancer un bilan du massacre aussi éloigné de celui que propose le général Appert.’ Milza, Année terrible, ii, p. 468Google Scholar.

31 Lissagaray, Histoire, p. 381.

32 Rapport d'ensemble de M. le général Appert sur les opérations de la justice militaire relatives à l'insurrection de 1871 (Versailles, 1875).

33 ‘Déposition de M. le maréchal Mac-Mahon’ (28 Aug. 1871), in Enquête parlementaire sur l'insurrection du 18 mars 1871 (Paris, 1872), p. 183.

34 See for example reports by Generals Faron, Bruat, and Vergé, 14 June 1871, SHAT Li 125.

35 Conseil municipal de Paris: procès-verbaux (1871–5); Compte générale des recettes et dépenses pour l'exercise 1871 (Paris, 1872); Session ordinaire du budget de 1872 (15 novembre 1871–31 mars 1872): procès-verbaux (Paris, 1872), e.g. pp. 121, 201.

36 Sampling of electoral registers, of the Registres des Actes de Décès (série v.4E), and those of the Direction-Générale de l'Enregistrement, des Domaines et du Timbre (série DQ8) at the Archives de Paris (AP) proved inconclusive.

37 La situation industrielle et commerciale de Paris en octobre 1871: rapport de l'enquête faite par une fraction du conseil municipal (Paris, 1871), p. 19.

38 11 August. 1871, Conseil municipal de Paris: 1ere session extraordinaire de 1871: procès-verbaux (n.d.), p. 61.

39 Compared with same months of 1869–70. Enquête sur les actes du gouvernement de la défense nationale (Annales de l'assemblée nationale, annexes, xx–xxvi), xxi, pp. 464–5.

40 Madeleine Egrot, ‘La question de subsistances à Paris sous la Commune de 1871’ (DES dissertation, Université de Paris, 1954), p. 104; police report, 19 Apr. 1871, Paris, Archives de la Préfecture de Police (APP) série Ba carton 364–5.

41 Conseil municipal de Paris: session du budget de 1872 (fin) et sessions d'avril à juillet 1872 (Paris, 1872), pp. 9–10.

42 Du Camp, Maxime, Les convulsions de Paris (4 vols., Paris, 1878–80), ii, p. 426Google Scholar.

43 ‘Inhumations à la suite des journées du 21 au 28 mai 1871’, AP série V0 (NC) carton 234.

44 Tombs, Robert, ‘Victimes et bourreaux de la semaine sanglante’, in 1848: Révolutions et Mutations du XIXe siécle, 10 (1994), p. 87Google Scholar.

45 Especially the AP série 1326W (on Parisian cemeteries). I owe special thanks to a former Cambridge history student, Patrick Turner, who kindly undertook exploratory research at the AP, and also made valuable interpretative suggestions, and to Madame Christiane Filloles, of the AP, for her advice.

46 AP 1326W carton 60.

47 ‘État des exhumations, faites après la Commune (1871) des cadavres qui avaient été inhumés sous la voie publique’ (12 Feb. 1880), AP 1326W 60. See also APP Db carton 420.

48 Paris, Archives de l'Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP) série 542 FOSS.

49 Du Camp records this in annotations (vol. ii, facing pp. 422 and 424) in a copy of his Convulsions, in the reserve section of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Reserve Lb57 6528C). See also Pelletan, La semaine, pp. 376–8.

50 The Montmartre register (vol. 82) is erratic, and the real total may be somewhat higher than 739. I had intended to double check the AP figures against registers in all the Paris cemeteries, and re-examine those I consulted earlier, but was refused permission due to a change in regulations, on the intriguingly Balzacian grounds that the registers might contain ‘secrets de famille’. I have not given up hope of completing this research, though do not expect that the registers of the smaller cemeteries, where they exist, would modify the overall picture.

51 ‘Rapport de l'ingénieur en chef’, 8 June 1871, AP VO (NC) 234.

52 Pelletan, La semaine, pp. 372–7.

53 A police report said 1,000, APP Ba 365–2 (24); Du Camp said 754, Convulsions, ii, p. 425; Pelletan said 972, La semaine, p. 388.

54 ‘État indiquant le nombre de corps inhumes sans mandat du 20 au 30 mai 1871’, signed Inspecteur-général Feydeau, 12 Feb. 1880, AP 1326W 60; Montmartre Registre d'inhumation, vol. 82 (Mar.–June 1871). The Ivry Registre d'inhumation, vol. 11 (July 1870 – Dec. 1871) shows no record of extraordinary burials during May 1871.

55 See correspondence in AP 1326W 60.

56 See report ‘Carrières d'Amérique: Éboulements …’ (21 Jan. 1872), AP 1326W 60; and comments made in Conseil municipal de Paris: procès-verbaux (nov. 1871 – mars 1872) (29 Jan. 1872), pp. 247–8.

57 In all sixty-two bodies were found in the Square Saint-Jacques, the Square du Temple, and the Square des Batignolles combined. ‘État des exhumations faites par les soins de l'administration du service des cimetières’ (11 Aug. 1872), AP 1326W 60.

58 ‘État des exhumations faites après la Commune (1871) des cadavres qui avaient été inhumés sur la voie publique’, AP 1326W 60. This document is referred to by both Du Camp and Pelletan.

59 Pelletan, La semaine, p. 394.

60 AP VO (NC) 234; Du Camp, Convulsions, ii, p. 425.

61 The official figure of 877 soldiers killed covers the whole period of the civil war, not only the fighting inside Paris. Around 500 soldiers killed seems a not excessive estimate – less than 0.5 per cent of the troops engaged.

62 Directeur des Affaires Municipales to M. Deschamps, conseiller municipal, 14 June 1888. AP 1326W 60.

63 These figures represent only an ‘order of magnitude’, so I prefer round figures rather than spurious exactitude. The lower figure is based on the cemetery administration's calculation of burials (5,321) plus the total of recorded exhumations (1,328) minus a substantial estimate (900) for non-Communard dead (hostages, soldiers, and civilians) = 5,749. The higher figure is the cemetery total (5,321), the exhumations (1,328), the administration's upper estimate for the Carrières d'Amérique ignoring double-counting (800), plus a notional figure for undiscovered bodies (300), minus a low estimate (400) for non-Communard dead = 7,349. It might be objected that some people killed during 21–8 May would have been buried after 30 May (the period covered by the main cemetery statistics); but, equally, some buried during that period would have died beforehand. There seems no way of checking, so I have somewhat arbitrarily assumed that they roughly cancel each other out.

64 ‘De l'influence du siège de Paris et des événements de la Commune sur le nombre et la gravité des affections traitées dans les hôpitaux civils’, AP-HP 542 FOSS file 125 .

65 List dated 15 Dec. 1885, AP 1326W 8.

66 ‘Plan d'occupation de la partie désaffectée du cimetière de Charonne’ (8 June 1896), AP VSS 7.

67 Return of ‘Corps inhumes sans mandat’ includes 134 ‘inconnus’, AP 1326W 60. The cemetery register is very incomplete for the whole month of May 1871.

68 Pelletan, La semaine, pp. 393–4.

69 Fiaux, Louis, Histoire de la guerre civile de 1871 (Paris, 1879), p. 568Google Scholar. I am grateful to Jacques Rougerie for this reference.

70 SHAT Li 126 (12).

71 Lissagaray, Histoire, p. 380; Pelletan, La semaine, p. 378.

72 Report by Inspection générale, 8 Oct. 1874, AP 1326W 60.

73 The body was buried by order of the military in a common grave in the Montmartre cemetery without identifying signs; but the staff knew exactly where it was, and it was exhumed on 26 Nov. 1883 and reburied at Père Lachaise.

74 Report to inspecteur-général from garde-conservateur, 10 June 1871, AP 1326W 60.

75 For examples, Tombs, War, p. 184.

76 Researchers wishing to take up this question might seek evidence that large numbers of undiscovered bodies were later found in Paris or the suburbs, or seek eye-witness accounts reporting large numbers of bodies being convoyed outside the city, for example by foreign journalists, among the few non-combatants abroad in the streets during the fighting.

77 ‘Une plaisanterie déplacée’, Pelletan, La semaine, p. 393.

78 Tombs, War, pp. 174–6.

79 See e.g. list of men shot at Lobau barracks, which indicates the sort of people targeted, APP Ba 365–1.

80 Registre d'inhumation, vol. 87 (May–Nov. 1871). For detailed breakdown, see Tombs, Robert, La guerre contre Paris 1871 (Paris, 1997), pp. 333–4Google Scholar.

81 There were 2,555 admissions of Communards, and 784 deaths from March to June. ‘Admissions dans les hôpitaux’, AP-EP 542 FOSS 112.

82 It is a striking comment on conditions in Parisian industry that the report notes that the number of fractures caused by bullets during the fighting was about the same as that caused in normal times by work accidents.

83 For major operations, the death rates reached 70–90 per cent. See Taithe, Bertrand, Defeated flesh: welfare, warfare and the making of modern France (Manchester, 1999), p. 60Google Scholar.

84 For a recent, unfortunately not very scholarly, history of hospitals during the Commune, see Martineaud, Jean-Paul, La Commune de Paris, l'assistance publique et les hopitaux en 1871 (Paris, 2004)Google Scholar.

85 Lissagaray and Pelletan report that a doctor and several wounded Communards were massacred at the Saint-Sulpice ambulance by soldiers on 25 May. The cemetery register shows seventy-five bodies arriving from that ambulance on that day, compared with twenty-four the following day, and two the day after that. The seventy-five might have been murdered by troops. From a purely statistical point of view, it does not alter the overall picture.

86 Approximate for several reasons. Statistics are given monthly, so it is not possible to be exact about how many died during la semaine sanglante. As a control, there were 760 more hospital deaths in May 1871 than in May 1872 – although the population in 1871 was much lower and there were far fewer industrial injuries. So all in all, a figure of several hundred dying of wounds in civilian hospitals during la semaine sanglante seems the right order of magnitude. Of course, Communard casualties continued to die during June and July, though in smaller numbers. AP-HP 542 FOSS 125 ‘Tableau comparatif B’.

87 From ‘De l'influence du siège de Paris et des événements de la Commune sur le nombre et la gravité des affections traîtées dans les hopitaux civils’, in AP-HP 542 FOSS 125.

88 Tombs, ‘Victimes et bourreaux’, p. 91.

89 Letter, Gen. Berthe to Gen. Faron, 31 May 1871, SHAT Li 124; report, 3rd Division, Army of Reserve, SHAT Li 116; police report, Guillaume, 30 May, APP Ba 365–1.

90 Daudet, Alphonse, Contes du lundi (Paris, 1873)Google Scholar.

91 See Tillier, Bertrand, La Commune de Paris, revolution sans images? (Paris, 2004), pp. 256–7Google Scholar.

92 Pelletan, La semaine, pp. 385, 394.

93 A member of the Paris municipal council, M. Dumas, stated that ‘over 400 people shot at Mazas prison’ were buried on his authority at Bercy cemetery. If true – it is corroborated by the cemetery record of 425 burials – these too must have been victims of the court martial. Conseil municipal de Paris: année 1877: procès-verbaux (Paris, 1878), p. 301.

94 The courts martial were often called prévôtés – provost-marshal's courts.

95 Political offences had carried no death penalty since 1848. Moreover, military law forbade summary courts martial on French soil. However, the government of national defence had passed an emergency decree on 2 Oct. 1870 establishing such courts with jurisdiction over civilian ‘accomplices’ as well as soldiers, with a mandatory death penalty without appeal for a wide range of offences including theft, desertion, and incitement to revolt. Many army units must have become accustomed to having such tribunals during the war, and presumably continued to operate them during the Commune. The decree applied until the end of hostilities, but much of France, including Paris, remained under martial law, SHAT Lhs 4.

96 Records of such interrogations are in cahier 309, SHAT Ly 35. Several lists survive of men executed, containing details of identity.

97 Prévôt to chief of staff of 4th Corps, 24 May 1871, SHAT Lu 35.

98 Pelletan's numbers would require each of the main courts martial to have passed a death sentence every two minutes twenty-four hours a day for four days. There could have been more than one tribunal. Even so, this seems improbable.

99 Even works that attempt to focus on the issue do not manage to go beyond evocations of familiar horrors, e.g. Burton, Richard D. E., Blood in the city: violence and revolution in Paris, 1789–1945 (Ithaca, NY, and London, 2001)Google Scholar.

100 In an on-line comment on an earlier version of this paper, in H-France Salon, vol. 3, issue 1, pp. 1–13.

101 Zola, Émile, La débâcle (Paris, 1971), p. 496Google Scholar.

102 Furet, François, Revolutionary France, 1770–1880 (Oxford, 1992), p. 506Google Scholar.

103 Alain Corbin, Time, desire and horror: towards a history of the senses, trans. Jean Birrell (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 176–9.

104 Boime, Albert, Art and the French Commune: imagining Paris after war and revolution (Princeton, NJ, 1995)Google Scholar, and Wilson, Paris and the Commune.

105 See Caron, Jean-Claude, Frères de sang: la guerre civile en France au XIXe siècle (Paris, 2009), pp. 182–5Google Scholar, 225–7.

106 Lissagaray, Histoire, p. 439; he had made the same point in Les huit journées de mai derrière les barricades (Brussels, 1871), pp. 155–6; Pelletan too, La semaine, p. 398.

107 Pelletan, La semaine, p. 403.

108 New Left Review (July–Aug. 2004).

109 Alex Dowdall, ‘Narrating la semaine sanglante, 1871–1880’ (M.Phil. dissertation, Cambridge, 2009), on which the following section draws.

110 Lissagaray, Journées de mai, p. 168.

111 Malon, Benoît, La troisième défaite du prolétariat français (Neuchâtel, 1871), p. 474Google Scholar.

112 Anonymous, L'ordre règne a Paris! mai et juin 1871 (Geneva, 1872), p. 14Google Scholar.

113 Pierre Vésinier, History of the Commune of Paris, trans. J. V. Weber (London, 1872), p. 336.

114 E.g. Duret, Théodore, Histoire de quatre ans, 1870–1873 (Paris, 1880)Google Scholar.

115 Dowdall, ‘Narrating’, p. 42.

116 Tombs, War, p. 188.

117 General de Cissey, commander of 2nd army corps, to Mac-Mahon, 12 May 1871, SHAT Li 123.

118 Rougerie, Jacques, Procès des Communards (Paris, 1964), pp. 63–4Google Scholar.

119 Details in Louis Giard, ‘Les élections à Paris sous la IIIe République’ (thèse de doctorat de 3e cycle, Université de Dakar, 1968), pp. 55–74.

120 Philippe Darriulat, ‘Ca branle dans le manche: chanter les Communes pour justifier l’événement et construire sa mémoire’, paper at conference ‘Regards sur la Commune de 1871 en France’, Narbonne, 24–6 Mar. 2011.

121 Madeleine Rebérioux, ‘Le mur des fédérés’, in Pierre Nora, ed., Les lieux de mémoire (3 vols., Paris, 1984–92), i, pp. 620–1.

122 Hutton, Patrick H., The cult of the revolutionary tradition: the Blanquists in French politics, 1864–1893 (Berkeley, CA, 1981)Google Scholar, ch. 6; see also Caron, Frères de sang, pp. 268–71.

123 By Paul Moreau-Vauthier. See Tillier, Révolution sans images, pp. 428–9.

124 One secretary-general, Duclos, Jacques, himself wrote a history: La Commune de Paris à l'assaut du ciel (Paris, 1971)Google Scholar.