History of the Commune of 1871. Lissagaray
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like Picard. For the timid or ambitious they founded the "open Left," a bench of candidates for public office; and in 1870 a number of Liberals indeed solicited official functions. For the "intransigeants" there was the "closed Left," where the irreconcilable dragons Gambetta, Crémieux, Arago, Pelletan guarded the pure principles. The chiefs towered in the centre. These two groups of augurs thus held every fraction of bourgeois opposition—the timorous and the intrepid. After the plebiscite they became the holy synod, the uncontested chiefs of the small middle-class, more and more incapable of governing itself, and alarmed at the Socialist movement, behind which they showed it the hand of the Emperor. It gave them full powers, shut its eyes, and allowed itself to drift gradually towards the parliamentary Empire, big with portfolios for its patrons. The thunderbolt of the defeats galvanised it into life, but only for a moment. At the bidding of the deputies to keep quiet, the small middle-class, the mother of the 10th August, docilely bent its head and let the foreigner plunge his sword into the very bosom of France.
Poor France! Who will save thee? The humble, the poor, those who for six years contended for thee with the Empire.
While the upper classes sell the nation for a few hours of rest, and the Liberals seek to feather their nests under the Empire, a handful of men, without arms, unprotected, rise up against the still all-powerful despot. On the one hand, young men who form the bourgeoisie have gone over to the people, faithful children of 1789, resolved to continue the work of the Revolution; on the other hand, working-men unite for the study and the conquest of the rights of labor. In vain the Empire attempts to split their forces, to seduce the working-men. These see the snare, hiss the professors of Cæsarian socialism, and from 1863, without journals, without a tribune, affirm themselves as a class, to the great scandal of the Liberal sycophants, maintaining that 1789 has equalized all classes. In 1867 they descend into the streets, make a manifestation at the tomb of Manin, and, despite the bludgeons of the sbirri, protest against Mentana. At this appearance of a revolutionary socialist party the Left gnashes its teeth. When some working-men, ignorant of their own history, ask Jules Favre if the Liberal bourgeoisie will support them on the day of their rising for the Republic, the leader of the Left impudently answers, "Gentlemen workmen, you have made the Empire; it is your business to unmake it." And Picard says, "Socialism does not exist, or at any rate we will not treat with it."
Thus set right for the future, the working-men continue the struggle single-handed. Since the re-opening of the public meetings they fill the halls, and, in spite of persecution and imprisonment, harass, undermine the Empire, taking advantage of every accident to inflict a blow. On the 26th October 1869 they threaten to march on the Corps Législatif; in November they insult the Tuileries by the election of Rochefort; in December they goad the Government by the Marseillaise; in January, 1870, they go 200,000 strong to the funeral of Victor Noir, and, well directed, would have swept away the throne.
The Left, terrified at this multitude, which threatens to overwhelm them, brands their leaders as desperadoes or as police agents. They, however, keep to the fore, unmasking the Left, defying them to discussion, keeping up at the same time a running fire on the Empire. They form the vanguard against the plebiscite. At the war rumors they are the first to make a stand. The old dregs of Chauvinism, stirred by the Bonapartists, discharge their muddy waters. The Liberals remain impassible or applaud; the workingmen stop the way. On the 15th July, at the very same hour when Ollivier from the tribune invokes war with a light heart, the revolutionary socialists crowd the boulevards crying, "Vive la paix!" and singing the pacific refrain—
"Les peuples sont pour nous des frères
Et les tyrans des ennemis."
From the Château d'Eau to the Boulevard St. Denis they are applauded, but are hissed in the Boulevards Bonne Nouvelle and Montmartre, and come to blows with certain bands shouting for war.
The next day they meet again at the Bastille, and parade the streets, Ranvier, a painter on porcelain, well known in Belleville, marching at their head with a banner. In the Faubourg Montmartre the sergents-de-ville charge them with drawn swords.
Unable to influence the bourgeoisie, they turn to the working-men of Germany, as they had done in 1869:—"Brothers, we protest against the war, we who wish for peace, labour, and liberty. Brothers, do not listen to the hirelings who seek to deceive you as to the real wishes of France." Their noble appeal received its reward. In 1869 the students of Berlin had answered the pacific address of the French students with insults. The working-men of Berlin in 1870 spoke thus to the working-men of France: "We too wish for peace, labour, and liberty. We know that on both sides of the Rhine there are brothers with whom we are ready to die for the Universal Republic." Great prophetic words! Let them be inscribed on the first page of the Golden Book just opened by the workmen.
Thus towards the end of the Empire there was no life, no activity, save in the ranks of the proletariat and the young men of the middle-class who had joined them. They alone showed some political courage, and in the midst of the general paralysis of the month of July 1870, they alone found the energy to attempt at least the salvation of France.
They lacked authority; they failed to carry with them the small middle-class, for which they also combat, because of their utter want of political experience. How could they have acquired it during eighty years, when the ruling class not only withheld light from them, but even the right to enlighten themselves? By an infernal Machiavelism they forced them to grope their way in the dark, so that they might hand them over the more easily to dreamers and sectarians. Under the Empire, when the public meetings and journals reappeared, the political education of the workmen had still to be effected. Many, abused by morbid minds, in the belief that their affranchisement depended on a coup-de-main, gave themselves up to whoever spoke of overthrowing the Empire. Others, convinced that even the most thorough-going bourgeois were hostile to Socialism, and only courted the people in furtherance of their ambitious plans, wanted the workmen to constitute themselves into groups independent of all tutelage. These different currents crossed each other. The chaotic state of the party of action was laid bare in its journal, the Marseillaise, a hot mish-mash of doctrinaires and desperate writers united by hatred of the Empire, but without definite views, and above all, without discipline. Much time was wanted to cool down the first effervescence and get rid of the romantic rubbish which twenty years of oppression and want of study had made fashionable. However, the influence of the Socialists began to prevail, and no doubt with time they would have classified their ideas, drawn up their programme, eliminated the mere spouters, entered upon serious action. Already, in 1869, working-men's societies, founded for mutual credit, resistance and study, had united in a Federation, whose headquarters were the Place de la Corderie du Temple. The International, setting forth the most adequate idea of the revolutionary movement of our century, under the guidance of Varlin, a bookbinder of rare intelligence, of Duval, Theisz, Frankel, and a few devoted men, was beginning to gain power in France. It also met at the Corderie, and urged on the more slow and reserved workmen's societies. The public meetings of 1870 no longer resembled the earlier ones; the people wanted useful discussions. Men like Millière, Lefrançais, Vermorel, Longuet, etc., seriously competed with the mere declaimers. But many years would have been required for the development of the party of labour, hampered by young bourgeois adventurers in search of a reputation, encumbered with conspiracy-mongers and romantic visionaries, still ignorant of the administrative and political mechanism of the bourgeois régime which they attacked.
Just before the war some discipline was attempted. Some tried to move the deputies of the Left, and met them at Crémieux'. They found them stupefied, more afraid of a coup-d'état than of the Prussian victories. Crémieux, pressed to act, answered naïvely, "Let us wait for a new disaster, as, for instance, the fall of Strasbourg."
It was indeed necessary to wait, for without these shadows nothing could be done. The small Parisian middle-class believed in the extreme Left, as it had believed in our armies. Those who wished to do without them failed. On the 14th the friends of Blanqui attempted to raise the outlying districts, attacked the quarters of the firemen of La Villette, and put the sergents-de-ville to flight. Masters of the field, they traversed the boulevard up to Belleville, crying, "Vive la République! Death to the Prussians!" No one joined them. The crowd looked on from afar, astonished, motionless, rendered suspicious by the police agents, who thus