Editing Paris Commune (section)

=== Dispute over cannons of Paris ===

[[File:Battery of the Montmartre Hills WDL1246.png|thumb|A Battery in the Montmartre Hill, paid for by the Parisian via a subscription]]

At the end of the war, 400 obsolete muzzle-loading bronze [[cannon]]s, paid for by the Paris public via a subscription, remained in the city. The new Central Committee of the National Guard, now dominated by radicals, decided to put the cannons in parks in the working-class neighborhoods of [[Belleville, Paris|Belleville]], [[Buttes-Chaumont]] and [[Montmartre]], to keep them away from the regular army and to defend the city against any attack by the national government. Thiers was equally determined to bring the cannons under national-government control.

Clemenceau, a friend of several revolutionaries, tried to negotiate a compromise; some cannons would remain in Paris and the rest go to the army. However, neither Thiers nor the National Assembly accepted his proposals. The chief executive wanted to restore order and national authority in Paris as quickly as possible, and the cannons became a symbol of that authority. The Assembly also refused to prolong the moratorium on debt collections imposed during the war; and suspended two radical newspapers, ''{{lang|fr|[[Jules Vallès#Le Cri du Peuple|Le Cri du Peuple]]}}'' of [[Jules Valles]] and ''{{lang|fr|Le Mot d'Ordre}}'' of [[Victor Henri Rochefort, Marquis de Rochefort-Luçay|Henri Rochefort]], which further inflamed Parisian radical opinion. Thiers also decided to move the National Assembly and government from Bordeaux to Versailles, rather than to Paris, to be farther away from the pressure of demonstrations, which further enraged the National Guard and the radical political clubs.{{sfn|Milza|2009a|pp=8–9}}

On 17 March 1871, there was a meeting of Thiers and his cabinet, who were joined by Paris mayor Jules Ferry, National Guard commander General [[Louis d'Aurelle de Paladines]] and General [[Joseph Vinoy]], commander of the regular army units in Paris. Thiers announced a plan to send the army the next day to take charge of the cannons. The plan was initially opposed by War Minister [[Adolphe Le Flô]], d'Aurelle de Paladines, and Vinoy, who argued that the move was premature, because the army had too few soldiers, was undisciplined and demoralized, and that many units had become politicized and were unreliable. Vinoy urged that they wait until Germany had released the French prisoners of war, and the army returned to full strength. Thiers insisted that the planned operation must go ahead as quickly as possible, to have the element of surprise. If the seizure of the cannon was not successful, the government would withdraw from the centre of Paris, build up its forces, and then attack with overwhelming force, as they had done during the uprising of June 1848. The Council accepted his decision, and Vinoy gave orders for the operation to begin the next day.{{sfn|Milza|2009a|pp=9–11}}