Editing Paris Commune (section)

== War with the national government ==

=== Mobilization of both sides and attack by the government army ===

In Versailles, Thiers had estimated that he needed 150,000 men to recapture Paris, and that he had only about 20,000 reliable first-line soldiers, plus about 5,000 gendarmes. He worked rapidly to assemble a new and reliable regular army. Most of the soldiers were prisoners of war who had just been released by the Germans, following the terms of the armistice. Others were sent from military units in all of the provinces. To command the new army, Thiers chose [[Patrice MacMahon]], who had won fame [[Second Italian War of Independence|fighting the Austrians]] in Italy under Napoleon III, and who had been seriously wounded at the Battle of Sedan. He was highly popular both within the army and in the country. By 30 March, less than two weeks after the Army's Montmartre rout, it began skirmishing with the National Guard on the outskirts of Paris.

The Versailles Army was the first to attack. On 21 March, it occupied the fort of Mont-Valérien where the Commune's fédérés had neglected to settle. This position, which dominated the entire near western suburbs of Paris, gave them a considerable advantage. On 30 March, General de Gallifet occupied the Courbevoie roundabout and on 2 April, the Versaillais seized Courbevoie and Puteaux, the fédérés retreating towards Neuilly.

=== Failure of the march on Versailles ===

[[File:ROUQUETTE(1871) p237 Affaire du Mont-Valerien.jpg|thumb|On 3 April, the Federates were pushed back to the Nanterre plain by artillery fire from the [[Fort Mont-Valérien]]]]

In Paris, members of the Military Commission and the executive committee of the Commune, as well as the Central Committee of the National Guard, met on 1 April. They decided to launch an offensive against the Army in Versailles within five days. The attack was first launched on the morning of 2 April by five battalions who crossed the Seine at the [[Pont de Neuilly]]. The National Guard troops were quickly repulsed by the Army, with a loss of about twelve soldiers. One officer of the Versailles army, a surgeon from the medical corps, was killed; the National Guardsmen had mistaken his uniform for that of a gendarme. Five national guardsmen were captured by the regulars; two were Army deserters and two were caught with their weapons in their hands. General Vinoy, the commander of the Paris Military District, had ordered any prisoners who were deserters from the Army to be shot. The commander of the regular forces, Colonel [[Georges Ernest Boulanger]], went further and ordered that all four prisoners be summarily shot. The practice of shooting prisoners captured with weapons became common in the bitter fighting in the weeks ahead.{{sfn|Milza|2009a|pp=138–139}}

Despite this first failure, Commune leaders were still convinced that, as at Montmartre, French army soldiers would refuse to fire on national guardsmen. They prepared a massive offensive of 27,000 national guardsmen who would advance in three columns. They were expected to converge at the end of 24 hours at the gates of the [[Palace of Versailles]]. They advanced on the morning of 3 April—without cavalry to protect the flanks, without artillery, without stores of food and ammunition, and without ambulances—confident of rapid success. They passed by the line of forts outside the city, believing them to be occupied by national guardsmen. In fact the army had re-occupied the abandoned forts on 28 March. The National Guard soon came under heavy artillery and rifle fire; they broke ranks and fled back to Paris. Once again national guardsmen captured with weapons were routinely shot by army units.{{sfn|Milza|2009a|pp=141–152}}

=== Decree on Hostages ===
Commune leaders responded to the execution of prisoners by the Army by passing a new order on 5 April—the Decree on Hostages, which will only be implemented when the insurrection is crushed (Bloody Week). Under the decree, any person accused of complicity with the Versailles government could be immediately arrested, imprisoned and tried by a special jury of accusation. Those convicted by the jury would become "hostages of the people of Paris." Article 5 stated, "Every execution of a prisoner of war or of a partisan of the government of the Commune of Paris will be immediately followed by the execution of a triple number of hostages held by virtue of article four." Prisoners of war would be brought before a jury, which would decide if they would be released or held as hostages.{{sfn|Milza|2009a|p=153}}

The National Assembly in Versailles responded to the decree the next day; it passed a law allowing military tribunals to judge and punish suspects within 24 hours. [[Émile Zola]] wrote, "Thus we citizens of Paris are placed between two terrible laws; the law of suspects brought back by the Commune and the law on rapid executions which will certainly be approved by the Assembly. They are not fighting with cannon shots, they are slaughtering each other with decrees."<ref>Zola, Emile, ''La Cloche'', 8 April 1871</ref> About one hundred hostages, including the Archbishop, were shot by the Commune before its end.{{sfn|Milza|2009a|p=153}}

=== Radicalisation ===

[[File:Edwin Buckman - A Republican Procession in London Sunday Morning - manifestation de soutien à la Commune de Paris le 16 avril 1871.jpg|thumb|Demonstration of seven thousand London workers on Sunday, 16 April 1871, between Clerkenwell Green and Hyde Park, in support of the Paris Commune]]

By April, as MacMahon's forces steadily approached Paris, divisions arose within the Commune about whether to give absolute priority to military defence, or to political and social freedoms and reforms. The majority, including the Blanquists and the more radical revolutionaries, supported by {{lang|fr|Le Vengeur}} of Pyat and {{lang|fr|Le Père Duchesne}} of Vermersch, supported giving the military priority. The publications {{lang|fr|La Commune}}, {{lang|fr|La Justice}} and Valles' {{lang|fr|Le Cri du Peuple}} feared that a more authoritarian government would destroy the kind of social republic they wanted to achieve. Soon, the Council of the Commune voted, with strong opposition, for the creation of a [[Committee of Public Safety (1871)|Committee of Public Safety]], modelled on and named after the committee that carried out the [[Reign of Terror]] (1793–94). Because of the implications carried by its name, many members of the Commune opposed the Committee of Public Safety's creation.

The committee was given extensive powers to hunt down and imprison enemies of the Commune. Led by [[Raoul Rigault]], it began to make several arrests, usually on suspicion of treason, intelligence with the enemy, or insults to the Commune. Those arrested included General [[Edmond-Charles de Martimprey]], the governor of [[Les Invalides]], alleged to have caused the assassination of revolutionaries in December 1851, as well as more recent commanders of the National Guard, including [[Gustave Cluseret]]. High religious officials had been arrested: Archbishop Darboy, the Vicar General Abbé Lagarde, and the Curé of the Madeleine Abbé Deguerry. The policy of holding hostages for possible reprisals was denounced by some defenders of the Commune, including Victor Hugo, in a poem entitled "No Reprisals" published in Brussels on 21 April.{{sfn|Milza|2009a|pp=346–347}} On 12 April, Rigault proposed to exchange Archbishop Darboy and several other priests for the imprisoned Blanqui. Thiers refused the proposal, arguing that it would encourage more hostage-taking. On 14 May, Rigault proposed to exchange 70 hostages for the extreme-left leader, and Thiers again refused.{{sfn|Milza|2009a|pp=345–350}}

=== Composition of the National Guard ===
[[File:Barricade Paris 1871 by Pierre-Ambrose Richebourg.jpg|thumb|A barricade constructed by the Commune in April 1871 on the Rue de Rivoli near the Hotel de Ville. The figures are blurred due to the camera's lengthy exposure time, an effect commonly seen in early photographs.]]

Since every able-bodied man in Paris was obliged to be a member of the National Guard, the Commune on paper had an army of about 200,000 men on 6 May; the actual number was much lower, probably between 25,000 and 50,000 men. At the beginning of May, 20 percent of the National Guard was reported absent without leave.{{sfn|Milza|2009a|p=319}}

By the end of the Commune, 43,522 prisoners were captured, 7,000 to 8,000 Communards had gone into exile abroad, and an estimated 10 to 15,000 Communards were killed, giving a total Commune force of about 65,000 men.

The National Guard had hundreds of cannons and thousands of rifles in its arsenal, but only half of the cannons and two-thirds of the rifles were ever used. There were heavy naval cannons mounted on the [[Thiers wall|ramparts of Paris]], but few national guardsmen were trained to use them. Between the end of April and 20 May, the number of trained artillerymen fell from 5,445 to 2,340.{{sfn|Milza|2009a|p=319}}

The officers of the National Guard were elected by the soldiers, and their leadership qualities and military skills varied widely. Gustave Cluseret, the commander of the National Guard until his dismissal on 1 May, had tried to impose more discipline in the force, disbanding many unreliable units and making soldiers live in barracks instead of at home. He recruited officers with military experience, particularly [[Polish people|Poles]] who had fled to France in 1863, after the Russians quelled the [[January Uprising]]; they played a prominent role in the last days of the Commune.{{sfn|Milza|2009a|p=317}} One of these officers was General [[Jaroslav Dombrowski]] ({{langx|pl|Jarosław Żądło-Dąbrowski}}), a Polish noble and a former [[Imperial Russian Army]] officer, who was appointed commander of the Commune forces on the right bank of the Seine. On 5 May, he was appointed commander of the Commune's whole army. Dombrowski held this position until 23 May, when he was killed while defending the city barricades.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Zdrada |first=Jerzy |url=http://jbc.bj.uj.edu.pl/dlibra/doccontent?id=144915&from=FBC |title=Jarosław Dąbrowski 1836–1871 |publisher=Wydawnictwo Literackie |year=1973 |access-date=2 February 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140220011704/http://jbc.bj.uj.edu.pl/dlibra/doccontent?id=144915&from=FBC |archive-date=20 February 2014 |url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Capture of Fort Issy ===
One of the key strategic points around Paris was [[Fort Issy]], south of the city near the Porte de Versailles, which blocked the route of the Army into Paris. The fort's garrison was commanded by Leon Megy, a former mechanic and a militant Blanquist, who had been sentenced to 20 years of hard labour for killing a policeman. After being freed he had led the takeover of the prefecture of Marseille by militant revolutionaries. When he came back to Paris, he was given the rank of colonel by the Central Committee of the National Guard, and the command of Fort Issy on 13 April.

[[File:La Commune de Paris - Les francs-maçons plantant leurs bannières sur les fortifications à Porte Maillot (1871).jpg|thumb|On 29 April 1871, the [[Freemasonry in France|Freemasons]] demonstrated peacefully and planted their banners on the fortifications at Porte Maillot, in order to ask the Versailles troops to stop the bombardments and to negotiate]]

The army commander, General [[Ernest de Cissey]], began a systematic siege and a heavy bombardment of the fort that lasted three days and three nights. At the same time Cissey sent a message to Colonel Megy, with the permission of Marshal MacMahon, offering to spare the lives of the fort's defenders, and let them return to Paris with their belongings and weapons, if they surrendered the fort. Colonel Megy gave the order, and during the night of 29–30 April, most of the soldiers evacuated the fort and returned to Paris, but news of the evacuation reached the Central Committee of the National Guard and the Commune. Before General Cissey and the Versailles army could occupy the fort, the National Guard rushed reinforcements there and re-occupied all the positions. General Cluseret, commander of the National Guard, was dismissed and put in prison. General Cissey resumed the intense bombardment of the fort. The defenders resisted until the night of 7–8 May, when the remaining national guardsmen in the fort, unable to withstand further attacks, decided to withdraw. The new commander of the National Guard, [[Louis Rossel]], issued a terse bulletin: "The tricolor flag flies over the fort of Issy, abandoned yesterday by the garrison." The abandonment of the fort led the Commune to dismiss Rossel, and replace him with Delescluze, a fervent Communard but a journalist with no military experience.{{sfn|Milza|2009a|pp=327–330}}

Bitter fighting followed, as MacMahon's army worked its way systematically forward to the [[Thiers wall|walls of Paris]]. On 20 May, MacMahon's artillery batteries at [[Montretout]], Mont-Valerian, [[Boulogne-Billancourt|Boulogne]], [[Issy-les-Moulineaux|Issy]], and [[Vanves]] opened fire on the western neighbourhoods of the city—[[Auteuil, Paris|Auteuil]], [[Passy]], and [[Trocadéro, Paris|Trocadéro]]—with shells falling close to [[Place Charles de Gaulle|l'Étoile]]. Dombrowski reported that the soldiers he had sent to defend the ramparts of the city between Point du Jour and Porte d'Auteuil had retreated to the city and that he had only 4,000 soldiers left at la Muette, 2,000 at [[Neuilly-sur-Seine|Neuilly]], and 200 at [[Asnières-sur-Seine|Asnières]] and [[Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine|Saint Ouen]]. "I lack artillerymen and workers to hold off the catastrophe."{{sfn|Milza|2009a|p=337}} On 19 May, while the Commune executive committee was meeting to judge the former military commander Cluseret for the loss of the Issy fortress, it received word that the forces of Marshal MacMahon were within the fortifications of Paris.