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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
Artillery that belonged to the National Guard of Paris. Some soldiers of the regular army units fraternized with the rebels and the revolt escalated.The barricades went up just as in 1830 and 1848. The Paris Commune was born. Once again the Hôtel de Ville (Town Hall) became the center of attention for the people in revolt; this time the Hôtel de Ville became the seat of the revolutionary government. Other cities in France followed the example of the Paris Commune, as in Lyon, Marseille, and Toulouse. All of the Communes outside Paris were promptly crushed by the Thiers government.An election on 26 March 1871 in Paris produced a government based on the working class. Louis Auguste Blanqui was in prison but a majority of delegates were his followers, called "Blanquists". The minority comprised anarchists and followers of Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1855); as anarchists, the "Proudhonists" were supporters of limited or no government and wanted the revolution to follow an ad hoc course with little or no planning. Analysis of arrests records indicate the typical communard was opposed to the military, the clerics, and the rural aristocrats. He saw the bourgeoisie as the enemy.After two months the French army moved in to retake Paris, with pitched battles fought in working-class neighbourhoods. Hundreds were executed in front of the Communards' Wall, while thousands of others were marched to Versailles for trials. The number killed during the "Bloody Week" (la semaine sanglante) of 21–28 May 1871 was perhaps 30,000, with as many as 50,000 later executed or imprisoned; 7,000 were exiled to New Caledonia; thousands more escaped to exile. The government won approval for its actions in a national referendum with 321,000 in favor and only 54,000 opposed.Political battlesThe Republican government next had to confront counterrevolutionaries who rejected the legacy of the 1789 Revolution. Both the Legitimists (embodied in the person of Henri, Count of Chambord, grandson of Charles X) and the Orleanist royalists rejected republicanism, which they saw as an extension of modernity and atheism, breaking with France's traditions. This conflict became increasingly sharp in 1873, when Thiers himself was censured by
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