Paris 1871: The Commune and the Crisis of the French Republic
When the French capital revolted against its own government
Paris on the Eve of the Commune
In the decades leading up to the Paris Commune, the French capital underwent one of the most dramatic transformations in its long history.
Under the Second Empire (1852–1870), Paris was reshaped—physically, demographically, and socially. By 1871, it had become not just the symbolic heart of France, but also a pressure cooker of urban tensions, class divisions, and political discontent poised to explode.
The city’s population surged from around 1.05 million in 1851 to over 1.8 million by 1870. This explosion was fueled primarily by rural migration. Tens of thousands of peasants from the impoverished central and southern departments of France streamed into the capital in search of work. Most settled in the crowded eastern and northern arrondissements—districts that would later form the militant backbone of the Commune and earn the name le Paris populaire.
This demographic boom coincided with the radical urban redesign overseen by Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, Napoleon III’s powerful Prefect of the Seine. Haussmann’s vision—imposed with sweeping force—dramatically altered the city’s layout and social fabric.
As historian John Merriman notes, Haussmann’s renovation of Paris pursued three key aims.
First, the new Paris was to be more spacious and sanitary than the disease-ridden, cholera-plagued old city. To this end, the capital's outdated sewage system was overhauled.
Second, wide boulevards and new infrastructure were designed to accelerate the flow of goods, capital, and people. Lined with cafés, shops, and hotels, the grand avenues helped give Paris its now-iconic modern look.
And third—more quietly but no less intentionally—the redesign aimed to blunt future uprisings. The narrow alleyways that had long sheltered revolutionaries were replaced with open, straight boulevards impossible to barricade and easy for troops to sweep clean.
To many, Haussmann’s works were a triumph of progress. But they came at a steep human cost. More than 100,000 apartments in 20,000 buildings were demolished. The working poor, evicted from central Paris, were pushed to the margins—into neighborhoods like Belleville, Ménilmontant, and the outer arrondissements of the 18th, 19th, and 20th. These peripheral zones became overcrowded, underserved, and increasingly radicalized.
While the city center grew wealthier, cleaner, and more bourgeois, the outskirts became poorer, angrier, and more politicized. The new arrivals were mostly unskilled laborers, small artisans, or factory workers. Jobs were plentiful in construction, textiles, and small workshops, but conditions were often brutal: long hours, low wages, and little job security. Worse still, the cost of living in Paris nearly doubled during the Second Empire, while wages rose by only 30%. By 1870, food alone was consuming about 60% of a worker’s monthly income.
Haussmannization also had a more subtle effect: it geographically segregated the population. As rents soared, the divide between rich and poor took on a spatial dimension. As the late Alistair Horne put it, Paris became a city of “resentful apartheid”—with the bourgeois west and the working-class east drifting ever further apart.
A barricade on the streets of Paris in 1871. Image Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barricade18March1871.jpg
These economic frustrations were compounded by political exclusion. Despite universal manhood suffrage on paper, Paris had no right to elect its own municipal leaders. The capital—France’s largest and most politically engaged city—was kept under tight government control.
By 1870, Paris had become a polarized metropolis. The rebuilding of the city had magnified rather than softened the fault lines of class. Western Paris, prosperous and loyal to empire, stood in contrast to the eastern quarters, poorer and increasingly restive.
Ironically, this occurred under an emperor who had once claimed to be the champion of the working class. Napoleon III did push through some modest reforms—he expanded maternal welfare, set up homes for injured workers, abolished prison hulks, and even granted the right to strike. But his motivations were at times as much political as humanitarian, the right to strike for instance aiming in part at weakening the influence of the Orléanist bourgeoisie rather than just empowering labor.
Not everyone was impressed by the glittering new capital. The conservative Catholic writer Louis Veuillot famously dismissed Napoleon’s Paris as “a city without a past, full of minds without memories, hearts without sorrows, souls without love! City of uprooted multitudes, shifting piles of human dust—you may become the capital of the world, but you will never have citizens.”
It was within this rapidly changing, deeply divided, and tightly controlled Paris that the seeds of revolution were sown. The Commune would not emerge in a vacuum—but from the fractures carved into the city’s very streets.
The Fall of the Empire and the Franco-Prussian War
Between 1789 and 1871, France experienced relentless political upheaval. In just 82 years, the country cycled through two empires, two monarchies, and three republics—before the Paris Commune even came into being.
By the summer of 1870, Napoleon III had ruled France for 18 years and had been a major political figure for nearly 22. The nephew of the legendary Napoleon Bonaparte, Louis-Napoleon spent much of his early life in exile. Yet even abroad, he never doubted his own destiny. With almost comical determination, he launched two failed coups against King Louis-Philippe—turning himself into a national punchline in the process.
After his first botched attempt, he managed to flee. But in the second, when he landed in France with a band of hired mercenaries, he was promptly arrested on the very same beach. So absurd was the spectacle that there weren’t even calls for his execution. “We do not shoot madmen,” one Parisian newspaper quipped. “We lock them up.” After a few years in prison, Louis-Napoleon escaped again and took refuge in London, biding his time.
That moment arrived in 1848.
Revolution toppled the monarch monarchy, and the Second Republic was born. Thanks largely to his name, Louis-Napoleon won the presidency in a landslide—securing more than two-thirds of the vote.
The constitution barred presidents from serving consecutive terms, but Louis-Napoleon had other plans. In no small part thanks to fears of the political left, by December 1851 Napoleon had sufficient support and he orchestrated a successful coup against the republic (the irony of a republic getting toppled by its own president was not lost on anyone), using the police and the military to crush dissent. By the following year, he had crowned himself Emperor.
Eighteen years later, he was still on the throne—but his regime was showing signs of decay.
By 1870, Napoleon III was 62 years old and in deteriorating health. His only heir was a 14-year-old boy. In the late 1860s, the Emperor had also relaxed some of his earlier authoritarian policies, allowing his opponents more space to organize and gain popular support. By the time the decade closed, his regime had lost its grip on public opinion in France’s major cities.
Still, the Empire might have endured—if not for a disastrous turn in foreign policy.
When the Spanish throne was offered to a Catholic Hohenzollern prince—a cadet branch of the royal Hohenzollern dynasty ruling Prussia—French officials were incensed. Though King Wilhelm I of Prussia was willing to withdraw the candidacy, France wanted more: a binding promise that no Hohenzollern would ever claim the Spanish crown.
In July 1870, the French ambassador, Count Bénédetti, met King Wilhelm at the spa town of Ems. The King was polite but noncommittal. Afterward, Wilhelm authorized a public summary of the meeting to be shared with the press.
Enter Otto von Bismarck. The Prussian chancellor received the King’s account and—whether by design or instinct—sharpened the language to make it sound more dismissive. The so-called “Ems Telegram” was released, and the reaction in Paris was explosive.
Napoleon III, however, initially hesitated.
Though the French army generally did well under his reign, recent attempts to modernize and expand it had been blocked. Yet under pressure from his ministers, the Empress, and an outraged public, the Emperor reluctantly declared war on Prussia on July 19, 1870.
It was a catastrophic miscalculation.
The French expected a quick campaign, but the Prussians—under Helmuth von Moltke—were much better organized. Within weeks, France found itself outnumbered (250,000 to 440,000) and outmaneuvered. Mobilization also descended into chaos, with French soldiers lacking basic supplies, and officers sometimes couldn't even locate their commands.
By early September, disaster was at hand.
After a string of defeats in August, one French field army was surrounded at Metz, and on September 2, Napoleon III and an entire second army surrendered at Sedan.
The Emperor’s capture destroyed what little legitimacy the Second Empire had and on September 4, republicans in Paris seized control and proclaimed the Third Republic.
But the war wasn’t over yet.
The new government refused to surrender. For four more months, it attempted to drive out the invading Prussians and German allies. In Paris, mobilization was swift. The capable General Trochu oversaw the defense of the capital, bringing in 150,000 regular troops and arming some 300,000 National Guardsmen—ordinary Parisians conscripted into service. Trochu had little faith in the latter, but for manning the ramparts, they would do.
Paris held out. Under siege and heavily bombarded, the city endured until January 1871, when the government finally agreed to an armistice.
Outside the capital, things went much worse, as the newly raised French armies failed to score any decisive victories. Facing continued defeats, the French leadership was forced to accept reality.
In late January, they signed an armistice with the Prussians.
Soon after, the provisional government called for national elections in February. To some, this seemed a logical move, giving the new French governments the legitimacy the votes of millions of Frenchmen rather than just the support of the Parisian mob that toppled the Second Empire, but the French republicans feared that elections held so soon after defeat would favor conservative and monarchist elements.
They were right. The newly elected National Assembly was dominated by royalists and reactionaries.
For radical Parisians, it was the final betrayal. And the seeds of the Commune were now ready to sprout.
Adolph Thiers was the leader of the French government during the Commune. Image Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Adolphe_Thiers_Nadar_2.JPG
Paris Turns Against the Government
Following their victory at Sedan in early September 1870, the Prussians and their German allies advanced into the interior of France and reached the outskirts of Paris by September 15. The siege began a few days later and would last until the end of January. The Germans refrained from storming the city, but sealed it off from the rest of the country and repelled all French attempts to break the blockade.
Conditions inside the capital deteriorated quickly. As food supplies dwindled, tensions soared, culminating in the October 31 coup attempt. Leftist political leaders stormed the Hôtel de Ville, detained members of the provisional government, and attempted to replace them with a new regime. The coup failed when loyalist soldiers retook the building. The hostages were released, and the instigators of the plot were later arrested. (You could consider adding a sentence about the atmosphere afterward—tense but unresolved—to bridge to winter conditions.)
If the siege and food shortages were not dire enough, the weather turned bitterly cold. A harsh winter gripped the city, and even the Seine River froze over.
After the armistice of late January, Parisians remained politically active. Many members of the National Guard formed the Central Committee of the National Guard, aimed at defending the republic from what they feared was an impending monarchist restoration.
Whether a confrontation between Paris and the new government was inevitable remains unclear, but the government's early actions in March made conflict virtually unavoidable. On March 7, the National Assembly—now dominated by conservatives—lifted the wartime moratorium on debts, rents, and pawned items. This decision hit working-class Parisians and small business owners hard, pushing many toward destitution.
Soon after, the government ordered the closure of several radical newspapers. Tensions reached a breaking point on March 18, when regular army units entered the city to seize cannons held by the National Guard. The operation, meant to be swift and decisive, collapsed due to logistical failures and wavering discipline among the troops. In the chaos, two French generals—Auguste Lecomte and Clément-Thomas—were captured by mutinous soldiers and summarily executed.
The die was cast. With no hope of taking the city by force, Adolphe Thiers ordered the regular army to evacuate Paris and regroup at Versailles. There, he hoped to rebuild the army and return to crush the insurrection.
As the government abandoned the capital, the National Guard took control, seizing key positions, walls, and forts. Although they failed to capture the provisional government, they now ruled the city. On March 26, elections were held with over 40% voter turnout—substantially higher in working-class districts—despite government calls for a boycott. The result was the formation of the Commune Council of Paris, better known as the Paris Commune.
Although the Commune was now nominally in control, the Central Committee of the National Guard continued to operate, resulting in a form of dual power.
Sworn in on March 27, the Commune moved quickly. It implemented a wave of social reforms, including:
Cancellation of rents accrued during the siege period;
Abolition of child labor and night work in bakeries;
Pensions for unmarried companions and children of fallen National Guardsmen;
Return of tools and household items pledged at pawnshops (up to 20 francs in value);
Postponement of commercial debts and elimination of interest payments;
Workers’ right to take over abandoned businesses, with the former owners to receive compensation.
The Commune also saw the rise of feminist voices like Louise Michel and Elisabeth Dmitrieff, who pushed for the abolition of prostitution, legal equality for all women regardless of marital status, and equal pay for equal work. On April 11, the Union des femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soins aux blessés (“Women’s Union for the Defense of Paris and Care of the Wounded”) was formed at Dmitrieff's initiative.
Another defining feature of the Commune was its fierce anti-clericalism. In retaliation for the execution of Communard prisoners, the Commune arrested prominent members of the clergy, including Archbishop Darboy, whom they held hostage. During its brief two-month rule, the Commune detained hundreds of religious figures. But the Commune’s hostility toward the Church was not just strategic; it was deeply ideological. It implemented the separation of Church and State, seized Church property, enforced secular education, and shut down several churches.
Many of these reforms—today considered standard in a democratic society—were seen as radical or even outrageous by conservative contemporaries.
Yet all these social advances depended on one brutal fact: the Commune had to survive. For that it needed a coherent military strategy—something the revolution never managed to forge. Authority was divided between the Commune Council and the Central Committee of the National Guard; neither side would yield, and joint planning stalled.
Radicals pleaded for an immediate offensive on Versailles in late March while Thiers’ army was still re-forming. Cautious leaders demurred, fearing a disastrous defeat. By the time they finally marched, in early April, Versailles had swelled with reinforcements and modern artillery. The Communard columns were beaten back in disarray. From that moment the initiative belonged to Thiers.
Throughout April and May, government forces tightened the noose. One by one they seized the ring of forts, then pounded the city with heavy guns. Shells slammed indiscriminately into working-class quarters and affluent neighborhoods alike. Even the American diplomat Wickham Hoffman, someone more likely to be a friend of the Versailles government, was appalled:
“It must always be a mystery why the French bombarded so persistently the quarter of the Arc de Triomphe—the West End of Paris—the quarter where nine out of ten of the inhabitants were known friends of the Government.”
Inside Paris, despair deepened. The Commune tried belatedly to centralize command, but mistrust and factionalism had taken root. Volunteers fought bravely on the ramparts, yet without a unified strategy the defense was doomed. The revolution that had promised to reshape France now fought simply to hold ground street by street.
The stage was set for the climactic struggle that would enter history as “La Semaine sanglante”—Bloody Week.
The Revenge of Versailles
Despite brave Communard resistance on the outskirts of Paris, by late May the city was ripe for the taking. Government forces succeeded in entering Paris on May 21 and quickly began to overrun the city.
Out of their depth, the Communard leadership once again failed to master the military situation or come up with a coherent defense plan, leaving National Guard units to fall back and defend their home districts.
The street fighting that began on May 21 lasted until May 28 and became known as the Bloody Week, marked by savage urban combat. The final outcome was never in doubt, as the outnumbered Communards never stood a chance against the better organized, armed, and led regular army.
Yet, chances are far more Communards died after surrendering than during the fighting itself, as Thiers’ army began purging Paris by executing prisoners en masse. Estimates vary, but at the highest count perhaps as many as 20,000 Communards were executed during the Bloody Week and its immediate aftermath.
From Versailles, Thiers proclaimed: “We are honnêtes gens... The punishment will be exemplary, but it will take place within the law, in the name of the laws.” Yet despite his proclamation, international voices increasingly condemned the savagery with which government forces took over Paris. The well-respected English newspaper The Times concluded: “The laws of war are soft and Christian when compared with the inhuman laws of vengeance by which the soldiers of Versailles shot, stabbed with bayonets, and ripped open the bodies of men, women and children taken prisoner over the past six days. History has never seen anything like this before.”
When the fighting ceased, a grim remnant of the City of Light greeted locals and visitors alike: the stench of corpses and the sight of torched buildings—including the Tuileries and the Palais Royal—testified to the murderous struggle that had just ended.
The reprisals against the Communards were not over. Captured Communards faced the justice of the French state, leading to the execution or imprisonment of many leaders. The famous artist Gustave Courbet was sentenced to six months in prison; feminist Louise Michel was sent to a deadly penal colony, among the few who survived; Gustave Genton and Jean-Baptiste François were captured, sentenced to death, and shot.
General Louis Rossel, who had tried to impose some military coherence on the Commune, was captured in the summer, sentenced to death, and executed in November.
Ironically, some Communards like Raoul Rigault (Police Prefect of the Commune) and Eugène Varlin received death sentences in absentia, even though both had been killed by firing squads during the Bloody Week. Two other notable figures who perished during the fighting were General Jarosław Dąbrowski and Jules Delescluze, both dying on the barricades.
Execution of captured Communards. Image Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ex%C3%A9cution_de_communards_parisiens_par_les_troupes_versaillaises.jpg
The Commune was initially widely denounced across France, and many of its fleeing members were only allowed to return after the general amnesty of 1880.
Over time, however, the memory of the Commune evolved, especially as the more conservative forces dominating the Third Republic began to lose influence from the late 1870s onward.
On the global stage, the Commune came to be regarded by many leading leftist figures as the first true proletarian revolution. Its fate and the mistakes it made served as both inspiration and warning to would-be socialist and communist revolutionaries throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
A notable example is the Russian Communists, whose early hesitation to overthrow the Provisional Government in 1917 was influenced significantly by the Paris Commune’s experience. Lacking broad nationwide support, the Commune was isolated within the capital and ultimately crushed by overwhelming government forces—a lesson the Bolsheviks took seriously in their own revolutionary strategy.
Merriman, John (2014). Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune.
Horne, Alistair (1989). The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-71