Paris Commune - Proclamation du 25 Mars

Paris Commune - Proclamation du 25 Mars, 1871

After the defeat of Napoleon III's army in the Franco Prussian War, the workers of Paris, completely surrounded by the Prussians, refused to accept the authority of the new Third Republic government.

While under seige, Parisians starved and froze to death. Some managed to save themselves by eating cats, dogs and rats. In March 1871, they established the Paris Commune

After seizing power, the Communards set about creating a new society, influenced by the radical ideas of feminism, anarchism, and revolutionary social democracy. In their vision for a new society, they separated church and state, abolished child labour, and handed over abandoned businesses to workers' cooperatives. Marx and Engels later described the Commune as the first 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.

At its first meeting on 28 March 1871, the Commune enacted several radical decrees. It abolished the death penalty and military conscription, and sent delegates to other cities in the hope of inspiring similar uprisings across France. 

In May, the national French army brutally suppressed the Commune during a week of fierce street fighting known as the "Bloody Week" ("La Semaine Sanglante"). Between 10,000 and 20,000 Communards were killed. The army took over 43,000 prisoners; of those, 95 were immediately sentenced to death, while thousands more were imprisoned or deported to penal colonies.

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On 26 March 1971, six days after the National Guard had taken control of Paris, elections were held that gave the working class a majority of seats on the council of the Paris Commune. The day before the elections, the National Guard produced their Proclamation of 25 March - giving their advice to Parisian electors.

The main body of the text translates into English as follows:

CITIZENS,

Our mission is complete; we will now yield our seats in your Town Hall to your newly elected representatives, your regular delegates.

Aided by your patriotism and dedication, we have been able to successfully complete the difficult task undertaken in your name. Thank you for your unwavering support; solidarity is no longer an empty word: the salvation of the Republic is assured.

If our advice can have any influence on your decisions, allow your most zealous servants to inform you, before the vote, of what they expect from today's ballot.

CITIZENS,

Do not lose sight of the fact that the men who will serve you best are those you choose from among yourselves, living your own lives, suffering the same hardships.

Beware of the ambitious as much as of the upstarts; both only consider their own self-interest and always end up seeing themselves as indispensable.

Beware also of talkers, incapable of taking action; they will sacrifice everything to a speech, an oratorical flourish, or a witty remark. - Also avoid those whom fortune has favoured too much, for too rarely is the wealthy man willing to regard the worker as a brother.

Finally, seek men of sincere convictions, men of the people, resolute, active, with sound judgment and recognized honesty. Give preference to those who will not seek your votes; true merit is modest, and it is up to the voters to know their representatives, not for the latter to present themselves.

We are convinced that, if you take these observations into account, you will finally have inaugurated true popular representation; you will have found representatives who will never consider themselves your masters.  

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Walter Crane wrote a poem about the Paris Commune:

IN MEMORY OF THE PARIS COMMUNE

BORN MARCH 18, 1871, AND DIED IN JUNE THE SAME YEAR

What winged shape, with waving torch aflame,
Wild with the winds of March, and streaming hair
Above the storm clouds, doth to men declare
Her message, and a memory doth claim?

A star through drifting smoke of praise and blame –
The toilers’ beacon, still to re-appear
With spring-tide hopes new quickening year by year
Since bright in Freedom’s dawn the COMMUNE came.

Maligned, betrayed, short-lived to act and teach,
Whose blood lies still upon the hands that slew;
E’en now, when Labour knocks upon the gate
That shuts on Privilege, he thinks of you,
And what men dared and suffered, and their fate
Who ruled a city, once, for all and each.

WALTER CRANE. MARCH, 1891.