Adolphe Thiers - Collapse of The Empire and The Paris Commune

Collapse of The Empire and The Paris Commune

While Thiers had initially backed war with Prussia, as the diplomatic crisis unfolded during the summer of 1870, he suddenly reversed his stance, called for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, and was summarily denounced as unpatriotic. But when France's armies suffered defeat after defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (all within a period of a few weeks), he was now seen as the wise sage who'd advised against embarking on a rash war that France was not prepared to fight. He urged early peace negotiations, and refused to take part in the new republican Government of National Defense, which was determined to continue the war. In doing so, he was able to avoid any responsibility for the surrender in January 1871. In the latter part of September and the first three weeks of October 1870 he went on a tour of Britain, Italy, Austria and Russia in the hope of obtaining an intervention, or at least some mediation. The mission was unsuccessful, as was his attempt to persuade Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck and the Government of National Defence to negotiate.

When the French government was finally forced to surrender, Thiers triumphantly re-entered the political scene. In national elections, he was elected in twenty-six departments; on 17 February 1871 He was elected head of a provisional government, nominally "chef du pouvoir exécutif de la République en attendant qu'il soit statué sur les institutions de la France" (head of the executive power of the Republic until the institutions of France are decided). He succeeded in convincing the deputies that the peace was necessary, and on 1 March 1871 it was voted for by a margin of more than five to one.

On 18 March, a major insurrection began in Paris after Thiers ordered the army to remove several hundred cannons in the possession of the Paris National Guard. He evacuated his government and troops to Versailles. Parisians elected a radical republican and socialist city government on 26 March, entitled the Paris Commune.

Fighting broke out between government troops and the those of the Commune early in April. Neither side was willing to negotiate, and violence continued throughout April and May in the city's suburbs. On 21 May, government forces broke through the city's defenses, and a week of street fighting, known as 'la Semaine Sanglante' (Bloody Week) began. Thousands of Parisians were killed in the fighting or summarily executed by courts martial. Thiers has often been accused of ordering this massacre – probably the worst in Europe between the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution of 1917 – but more likely he washed his hands of a massacre carried out by the army, thinking that it was a 'lesson' that the insurgents deserved. He insisted on using legal means to prosecute the thousands of prisoners taken by the army, and over 12,000 were tried by special courts martial; of these 23 were executed, and over 4,000 transported to New Caledonia, from where the last prisoners were amnestied in 1880. This severe repression has always been blamed principally on Thiers, and has overshadowed his memory in France and more generally on the political Left. In any case, it left the socialist and workers' movements crippled for many years afterwards.