During the 1871 Paris Commune, the people of Paris created the world’s first socialist state.
It was a moment of high drama in French history, where the suffering of the people under Louis-Napoleon III’s Second Empire, followed by the starvation, hunger and violence of the Prussian Siege, saw the people of Paris spontaneously seize power in a ‘peaceful’ Revolution.
What followed was a ten-week blossoming of social measures for the benefit of the people, including the secularisation of schools, the abolishment of the death penalty, measures for the education of girls and women, the introduction of social pensions, fair work measures introduced into workplaces, and a cap on the salaries of all elected representatives.
The ousted government in Versailles returned to attack the Commune only weeks later, and after eight weeks of civil war, somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 people were killed in one week in May, in what became known as ‘Bloody Week’. The Commune was defeated.
After Bloody Week, another 40,000 prisoners were taken to trial in Versailles, including 8,000 poor women, known as ‘pétroleuses’ (petrol girls), who were accused of setting fire to Paris.
Louise Michel turned herself in during Bloody Week, and represented herself spectacularly during her trial. She was exiled to New Caledonia for her brave and iconic role in the Paris Commune.
The artist Charles-Albert Arnoux Bertall published a book, Les Communeux: Types, Caractères, Costumes, in 1871, which became a popular guide to the kinds of people who could be seen on the streets of Paris during the Commune. It was reprinted two more times in the following decade, demonstrating its immense popularity with a curious population … Read more
The 1871 Paris Commune was an accidental revolution that occurred in Paris after the fall of their last Emperor to the Prussians. For seventy-two days, Paris ruled herself: and built a society with new laws that we might now consider features of modern democracy: free education, the separation of church and state, social welfare, the … Read more
The Order for Trial of Louise Michel following the Paris Commune and Bloody Week, December 1871
The petroleuses of the Paris Commune The pétroleuses remain one of the most enduring and controversial myths of the 1871 Paris Commune. According to the accounts of the Versailles government and conservative press at the time, these were working-class women who supposedly roamed the city during the Bloody Week (Semaine Sanglante), when the Versailles army killed forty … Read more
Portraits of the Communards This gallery gathers the faces of the Paris Commune, a brief but transformative seventy-two-day period where the working class of Paris seized the reins of power. These portraits of the Communards offer a window into a small sample of the people who sought to build a “Universal Republic.” Some of these … Read more
The stunning gazetted report of the trial of Louise Michel, along with her testimony, for her involvement in the 1871 Paris Commune as a pétroleuse.
A gallery of 1871 Paris Commune pétroleuse portraits – the world’s first photographic ‘mug shots’ – taken of the alleged petrol girls, by photographer E. Appert.
A gallery of Appert portraits of the Communards, taken for the military trials after Bloody Week and the Paris Commune 1871.
Hundreds of children fought for the Paris Commune alongside their parents. More than 600 were imprisoned afterwards and held to account for their “crimes”.
A collection of maps of Paris and Versailles during the 1871 Paris Commune, as well as Second Empire Paris, and after Bloody Week.