In 1871 France was at war with Prussia — and losing badly. Napoléon III had been captured and he agreed to a humiliating peace. Many Parisians did not want to surrender to Prussia, and there were many who also felt the gains of the 1789 Revolution had been lost. The female incendiaries in support of the Paris Commune, les petroleuses External, were said to have literally set Paris on fire. The Paris Commune was a seizure of power by a popularly-led government that ruled Paris for three months. Members of the National Guard that had been defending Paris rose up against what was seen as a forced surrender to Prussia. Some call it a failed revolution, as it was extraordinarily violent and had the hallmarks of a French revolution — including barricades in the streets. However, after three months, it was crushed by the conservative forces of the French Government and Army that were still essentially in control of the French nation. These years were tumultuous and French citizens were dissatisfied on a number of fronts. Many Communards possessed a level of idealism that in some cases could be called naïve. The leaders of the Commune tended to lean toward anti-religious, feminist, communist and republican values. Although Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto had been published (1848), the word Commune refers not to the political ideology, but to the name of administrative divisions in France, the smallest of which is the commune (comparable to a township). In the midst of the Commune the nascent Impressionist movement was developing in Paris. Many of the well-known artists including Edouard Manet and Berthe Morisot remained in Paris during the Siege and others fought and were lost in the battles against Prussia including the promising artist Frédéric Bazille who died fighting German forces at age 28.

The French Government brutal suppression of the Commune remains a sensitive topic in French history. All sides felt provoked and wronged. Despite its inauspicious start, the Third Republic that came after Napoleon III's Second Empire would endure until 1940 when it was defeated by the German Nazis and replaced by the government of Vichy which collaborated with the Nazis. After the Liberation of France, the Fourth Republic was formed and lasted until 1958 when a new constitution was created by Charles de Gaulle establishing the current Fifth Republic.

During the Paris Commune some 4,000 French déportés were sent to New Caledonia as political exiles. New Caledonia (a group of islands off the coast of Australia) had been taken over by the French in 1853 with the intention of setting up a penal colony. Indeed by 1872 radical socialist activist Louise Michel was sent into exile in New Caledonia. Even in exile, where she lived for eight years, Michel found ways to advocate for marginalized groups. Befriending the indigenous Kanak people she met, she encouraged them to revolt against the French colonial power and contributed to the first French-Kanak dictionary. For more information about New Caledonia and their independence movements search the Library's catalog, New Caledonia--History--Autonomy and independence movements and this online article External. There are also books included below in the bibliography.

Émil Zola, one of the most notable literary figures in French history spent more than 20 years crafting his most successful novel, La Débâcle which chronicles the disastrous Franco-Prussian War and the resulting Paris Commune. While he did not take part in the war that ended the French Second Empire, he was methodical in his research. He visited battlefields, consulted historians and saved scraps of press-cuttings in preparation for writing this saga and the 19th and penultimate volume of Les Rougon-Macquart: La Débâcle. He started his work in 1891, decades after the events. La Débâcle was serialized in La Vie populaire. The reception of La Débâcle would continue to evolve as Zola became embroiled in one of the most controversial scandals in French history, The Dreyfus Affair. Zola's famous defense, J'Accuse, pointed a finger at the injustice of the French government (and military establishment) in the false conviction of the Jewish army officer, Alfred Dreyfus in 1898.

You can identify additional material by searching the Library of Congress Online Catalog using the following headings: Paris (France)--History--Commune, 1871. For primary sources on the Paris Commune see the Marxist International Archives, Paris Commune External and the Gallica External, the digital Library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. For satirical illustrations and caricatures by artists such as Honoré Daumier and Cham (Amédée Charles Henri, Comte de Noé) search HathiTrust Digital Library External and Gallica External.

For a recorded discussion, view the Library's presentation, The Ruins of Paris: Much of central Paris was burned during the Franco-Prussian War that saw the death of the Commune. The resulting ruins of Paris at once became a tourist attraction, and the subject of remarkable photographs made for the tourist trade. The novelist Gustave Flaubert came to visit the ruins, and found in them a lesson for his contemporaries: if only they had understood the novel he had published some months earlier, "Sentimental Education," this cataclysmic destruction never could have happened. Peter Brooks explores that cataclysm, and the specific role of photography in the historiography of the moment. To view the presentation by historian and Kluge fellow, Peter Brooks click the link here. Brooks is Sterling Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Yale and author of several books on this period.

The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Digital Primary Resources on The Paris Commune