The Paris Commune (1871)
The 72-day insurrectionary government of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War's aftermath, which enacted social and secular reforms and fought the Versailles government before being crushed in street fighting — an event whose interpretation has divided observers ever since.
Events
Defeat, Siege, and the Proclamation of the Republic
After Napoleon III's capture at Sedan, crowds in Paris proclaimed the Third Republic. The new Government of National Defense continued the war, and Prussian forces besieged Paris for four months, deepening the capital's rift with the conservative countryside and its own government.
Location: Paris, France
The Montmartre Uprising
Government troops sent to remove cannons held by the Paris National Guard on Montmartre were surrounded by crowds; soldiers refused to fire and fraternized with the crowd, and two generals were killed. Adolphe Thiers's government withdrew its administration and army to Versailles, leaving Paris under its National Guard.
Location: Montmartre, Paris
Elections and the Proclamation of the Commune
Elections on March 26 produced a Council of the Commune mixing republicans, Jacobins, and members of the First International. It proclaimed the Commune on March 28, asserting municipal self-government and elections open to all, including workers.
Location: Hotel de Ville, Paris
The Commune's Decrees
The Commune remitted rents accrued during the siege, separated church from state and schools from clergy, abolished night work for bakers, turned abandoned workshops into workers' cooperatives, and capped officials' salaries at a worker's wage — measures later cited as the outline of a workers' government.
Location: Paris
Civil War with Versailles
Versailles forces began attacks on Commune outposts; the Commune created a Committee of Public Safety to direct the war, a move that deepened internal divisions among its factions. Both sides took hostages as fighting intensified.
Location: Paris and its forts
The Bloody Week
Versailles troops entered the city through an unguarded gate and fought through barricaded districts street by street. In the final days, Commune forces shot hostages including the Archbishop of Paris, Georges Darboy, while summary executions of captured Communards multiplied.
Location: Paris
The Last Barricade and the Repression
The final barricade fell on May 28. Thousands of Communards were killed — at Père Lachaise cemetery, groups were shot against what became known as the Communards' Wall — and some 10,000 more were convicted, with many deported to New Caledonia.
Location: Rue Ramponeau, Belleville, Paris
Amnesty and the Commune in Memory
The Third Republic granted full amnesty to exiled and deported Communards, a step in consolidating republican legitimacy over the conservative order that had crushed the Commune. Marx's "The Civil War in France" (1871) and later Lenin made the Commune a foundational reference for revolutionary socialism, while others remembered it as urban insurrection against a besieged state.
Location: Paris, France