Drinking with the Enemy at 6 AM on a Saturday

In 19th century France, the National Guard was a "people's army" that was composed entirely of volunteers. Although commanded by the national government, it's main objective since the French Revolution had been guarding the National Assembly and, when Republics were in place, defending them. Although commanded by the national government, it was really distinct from the army in terms of its raison d'etre; in revolutionary periods, the National Guard was an independent military power to be reckoned with.

In the summer of 1870, Prussia's Otto von Bismarck baited Emperor Louis Napoleon into declaring a nationalism-fueled war on Prussia. I say "baited" because Bismarck had a far more powerful army than France did, and he knew it. Prussia quickly manhandled France and took Louis Napoleon prisoner by the end of the summer. With Louis Napoleon out of power, moderate republicans in Paris declared a new French Republic and provisional government on September 4. But the problem was that the Prussians soon had Paris completely surrounded, cutting off all supplies from the city until January 28, 1871. This period was known as the Siege of Paris. The provisional government surrendered to the Prussians on January 28. This was a very unpopular move from the perspective of Paris's patriotism-crazed workers and artisans. They didn't want to give in to the Prussians. There were also a number of domestic economic measures that the government had taken against the interests of Parisians.

This is a picture of the French national army's attempt to seize
cannons at Montmartre in the early morning of
March 18, 1871. They were not so successful here as they
were at Rue des Rosiers. Dawn had arrived while soldiers
waited for horses to pull the cannons away. A crowd
surrounded the army soldiers. When General Lecomte
ordered them to fire on the unarmed crowd, the
soldiers refused and instead turned their
guns on him, taking him prisoner. Later that day, a
Parisian crowd broke into the prison, pulled Lecomte
out, stood against a wall and publicly executed him.
Picture from: Wikipedia

While the French army was disarmed by the Prussians according to treaty agreements, the National Guard in Paris took control of the situation in the city. The Prussian army declared a victory march on the Champs Elysees--Paris's main street for large public parades. The Paris National Guard was suspicious of Prussian intentions and acted to secure about 400 cannons that had been left behind when the French army earlier evacuated the city. The National Guardsmen took them to working class neighborhoods where they could be easily protected by both Guardsmen and the sympathetic Parisian working-class crowds. The provisional government of France took this action to be a challenge to their authority by the National Guard, mainly because after the January 28 surrender, the National Guard didn't trust the provisional government anymore. The National Guard in Paris had set up its own governing authority independent of the national government; this was called the Central Committee of the National Guard. But it wasn't just the National Guard who were upset with the provisional government for surrendering to the Prussians. The majority of Parisian civilians were as well. Many soldiers in the French army were also angry with their government--so angry that many were on the verge of siding with the rebellious Parisians and National Guard instead of the government.

On March 18, 1871, the national army was tasked with confiscating the 400 cannons from the Paris National Guard. This was essential to breaking the resistance of the Parisians to provisional government authority. Sorry for all the background information, but it all sets the scene of the early morning action of March 18. This quote describes just one instance of the army's attempt to take the cannons on that day. My explanatory brackets are inserted throughout the quote.

"Vassal's [a French army officer] men arrived just before dawn, taking the sentries by surprise. Shots were exchanged. The main body of National Guards at first mistook the police for their own men, the uniforms being similar, and shouted to Vassal to beat the generale (call to arms). Realizing their mistake, they opened fire, wounding a chasseur. A skirmish followed, 120 National Guards being surrounded in their headquarters, a house in the Rue des Rosiers, at the top of the hill, where they soon surrendered. By 5:45 a.m. the summit was firmly in the hands of the government forces. For several minutes shooting continued from the bottom of the hill, but without effect. The operation was quickly under way: the sappers began filling in the trenches surrounding the gun park [trenches had been dug by Guardsmen to prevent the easy removal of the cannons; so the army needed to fill them in to move the cannons away], and the accompanying artillery officer counted the guns and went to fetch the horses waiting in the Champs Elysees and Place de la Concorde. The gendarmes [Parisian police allied with the government] searched the house in the Rue des Rosiers, finding some interesting documents. A number of 'important leaders of the [National Guard] Federation' were arrested. [A total victory by the army, right?! Go, French army! But wait...] From the bottom of the hill, however came the disquieting report of men of the 88th drinking in a bar with National Guards." (44) --Robert Tombs, The War Against Paris 1871

While their comrades were subduing National Guardsmen on the Rue des Rosiers, some French army soldiers chose to sit down at a bar with National Guardsmen who they were supposed to be fighting against at 6 AM on March 18, a Saturday morning!

Gutter Rabbits & Other Parisian Delicacies

"By October [1870, during the Siege of Paris] whatever social stigmas previously inhibited the well-to-do from buying horsemeat were abandoned amid its packaging in the accouterments of haute cuisine. At the commencement of the siege, there were 100,000 horses at Paris; at the end only one-third of that number remained. Towards mid-November, signs began to appear advertising dog and cat butchers, with cats being advertised as 'gutter rabbits.' It has been estimated that over 25,000 cats were eaten during the siege, often boiled and seasoned with pistachios, olives, pimentos, and cornichons. During the second to last week of November, a rat market opened up at the Place de l'Hotel de Ville, with rats selling for 10-15 sous, or one-third to one-half of a National Guardsman's daily salary. The rats were almost assuredly destined for the infamous salami de rat." (49) --David A. Shafer, The Paris Commune

"Cantine municipale pendant le siege de Paris"
by Henri Pille

The Siege of Paris occurred during the Franco-Prussian War that began in 1870. As the Prussian army closed in on and surrounded Paris in September 1870, they cut off all supply lines to the city. Parisians were forced to survive on their existing food and other supplies until the end of January 1871. As you can see, the food situation became very difficult. Their situation became even more pathetic when the extremely cold winter of 1870-1871 began. It was one of the coldest winters of the 19th century in Europe, being more than 2 degrees Celsius colder than average. (Shafer, 50) This meant that fuel for fire to keep warm and cook food was scarce. Lower class Parisians were likely eating either raw or undercooked cats and rats part of the time. Shafer also describes how all the animals in the city zoo were slaughtered in late December because zookeepers could no longer sustain them. The meat was sold to wealthy Parisians.

Poles vs. Poles

"[Polish nationalists--who were mostly Polish nobles and exiles] decided that a new Polish nation-state would require a democratic revolution that would involve all social groups, including especially the serfs, and set about planning one. They tried their hand at it in 1846, only their conspiracy went wrong from the start when the Prussian police discovered their plan and arrested the group's leaders. Undaunted, the activists in the Austrian province of Galicia went ahead with the uprising, but their movement against the government was a signal to the serfs to move against them. Noble insurgents were captured by serfs and, spurred on by the rumor that the Austrian authorities were offering rewards for insurgents, living or dead (an official had actually offered payment for information about their whereabouts), peasants turned on and murdered over a thousand nobles, priests, and estate managers. One Habsburg official remembered what happened when peasants came to him with the corpse of a Polish noble estate-owner to get their reward.

"Galician Slaughter" ("Rzez galicyjska") by Jan Lewicki
From: Wikimedia Commons

"We have brought Poles."
"Poles, how could that be," I answered, "what are you?"
"We aren't Poles, we are the emperor's peasants."
"Who are the Poles then?"
"Oh--the Poles! They are the lords, their estate managers, their clerks, the learned men, the well-dressed gentlemen."

The peasants thus denounced the revolutionaries and proclaimed their loyalty to the [Austrian] Emperor and even refused to refer to themselves as 'Polish.' Poles were the feudal landlords. In response to the modern, democratic conception of the nation proposed by the radical insurgents from the nobility, the peasants reasserted the old, medieval concept of the natio: the nation was the nobility, their feudal overlords, and they would have nothing to do with them." --Jonathan Sperber, The European Revolutions, 1848-1851

"I am their leader; I must follow them."

"...another version of the 1848 [European] revolutions... views them primarily as farce, a revolution

Alphonse de Lamartine, poet and Minister of
Foreign Affairs in the Second Republic.

made by revolutionaries who were at best incompetent dilettantes, at worst cowards and blowhards who stole away from the scene when the going got rough. This version features the story of the Parisian revolutionary (most versions have him being Alphonse de Lamartine, the poet who was Minister of Foreign Affairs in the provisional government of the French [Second] Republic) observing from his window a demonstrating crowd go by, springing up from his chair, and rushing out, proclaiming, "I am their leader; I must follow them." (1) --Jonathan Sperber, The European Revolutions, 1848-1851

Writing "Shit" On A Ballot

"In the run-up to the 8 May 1870 plebiscite on the liberal [French Second] Empire (increasingly appearing to be an oxymoron), orators addressed abstention from voting in terms of a strike.

Eugene Varlin, a workingclass activist,
advocated for the political application
of strikes, such as abstention from voting in a
8 May 1870 national plebiscite in France.
From: Eugene Varlin

Revolutionary republicans argued at the clubs that even the act of casting a 'no' vote was tantamount to both a validation of the Empire's legitimacy in fixing the parameters of political debate and cession to the leadership provided by liberal and moderate opponents of the regime. Instead, revolutionary republicans urged their audiences to spoil their ballots with expressions of protest (e.g., 'long live the '93 constitution,' 'long live the social and democratic republic,' or just simply, 'shit') and thereby engage in the equivalent of a strike against the extant political process." (25) --David A. Shafer, The Paris Commune