Communard Revolution (Commune)

The Communard Revolution (French: La Révolution des Communards) also known as the French Revolution of 1871, was the first workers revolt that successfully overthrew the previous ruling class. The revolution was brought about by years of liberal autocracy under Napoleon III, who held a firm grip on government while also allowing dissenting literature, notably anarchist and socialist writings of Proudhon and Blanqui, to proliferate. The monarchic bonapartist regime was toppled in the Battle of Sedan and a new Government of National Defense would be established by middle class conservatives in the Hotel De Ville. As food supplies ran low and Prussians continued to shell the city, workers would grow even more discontent. On 28 October, the news arrived in Paris that the 160,000 soldiers of the French army at Metz, which had been surrounded by the Germans since August, had surrendered. The news arrived the same day of the failure of another attempt by the French army to break the siege of Paris at Bourget, with heavy losses. On 31 October, the leaders of the main revolutionary groups in Paris, including Blanqui, Félix Pyat and Louis Charles Delescluze, called new demonstrations at the Hotel de Ville against the government. 20,000 armed protestors gathered in front of the hotel and set up barricades, demanding the resignation of the President and the establishment of a commune in paris. Demonstrators crowded into the building and began demanding an entitrely new government. Shots were fired from the hotel and the president, General Jules Louis Trochu, would be killed. The revolutionaries would declare a new government, the Paris Commune. The city would be consumed in revolutionary fervor and the property of the wealthy would be siezed by the national guard. The new commune would combine elements of Blanquism, Anarchism, and other radical ideologies and would implement universal suffrage. On November 1, the Paris Commune would hold electi Eugene Varlin, a radical socialist national guard and leader of the uprising. Varlin would send an emissary to Bismarck agreeing to peace and the cession of Alsace-Lorraine. Despite Bismarck's misgivings about socialists, he would agree out of pure pragmatism. The news of the armistice would spread across France like wildfire and lead to a chain of uprisings in cities across France, even the reactionary capital of Bourdeaux. Blanqui, the leader of the most radical faction of the revolution, established his own headquarters at the nearby prefecture of the Seine, issuing orders and decrees to his followers, intent upon spreading the communal revolution across France. Blanqui would form the People's Army which would quickly become the core military of the nascent Communard Republic.