| Battle of Courbevoie | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Paris Commune | |||||||
 | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 France (Versaillais) |  Paris Commune (Communards) | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Joseph Vinoy Émile Bruat Martin Daudel Gaston de Galliffet | Unknown | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 9,000 | 500–600 | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 5 deaths, 21 wounded | 17 deaths, 25 imprisoned | ||||||
The Battle of Courbevoie was the first battle of the 1871 Paris Commune.
Two days into the Commune, on 30 March, exploratory Versaillais troops arrived at a Communard post on the approaches of Courbevoie, near Neuilly-sur-Seine. The troops hesitated when General Gaston Galliffet ordered them to fire. Galliffet charged on horseback, taking prisoners as the Commune retreated. This rallying of pro-government troops made the soldiers more willing to fire on fellow Frenchmen. President Adolphe Thiers, reassured, ordered their return without attempting to capture more Communards. [1]
Galliffet returned with two brigades on 2 April to attack Courbevoie's Rond-Point. A Versaillais military surgeon general, attempting to negotiate, was killed on approach by Communards who mistook his uniform for that of a colonel. A battle ensued. [2]
The Versaillais won the battle and took Courbevoie. When government forces fell back, some Communards mistakenly believed their side was victorious. The Versaillais had captured 30 Communards, five of whom became the first to be summarily executed. [2]
Communards who fell back to Paris reported on Joseph Vinoy's orders for all those captured to be shot. In response, the Council of the Commune ordered a sortie counterattack. Later on April 2, the Commune informed the National Guard that the Versaillais had provoked civil war. The Versaillais' willingness to execute Communards marked a turning point for the Communards, convincing them that Thiers would use unrestricted warfare and that Paris must be defended. [3]
The death of the military surgeon general was used in Versaillais propaganda. [2]
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the War of 1870, was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the North German Confederation led by the Kingdom of Prussia. Lasting from 19 July 1870 to 28 January 1871, the conflict was caused primarily by France's determination to reassert its dominant position in continental Europe, which appeared in question following the decisive Prussian victory over Austria in 1866. According to some historians, Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck deliberately provoked the French into declaring war on Prussia in order to induce four independent southern German states—Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria and Hesse-Darmstadt—to join the North German Confederation; other historians contend that Bismarck exploited the circumstances as they unfolded. All agree that Bismarck recognized the potential for new German alliances, given the situation as a whole.
The Paris Commune was a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris from 18 March to 28 May 1871.
The Communards’ Wall at the Père Lachaise cemetery is where 147 Commune soldiers along with another 19 officers were executed on May 28, 1871, during the Semaine sanglante, the suppression of the Paris Commune. The soldiers were buried in a common grave at the foot of the wall.
The Communards were members and supporters of the short-lived 1871 Paris Commune formed in the wake of the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.
Louis Charles Delescluze was a French revolutionary leader, journalist, and military commander of the Paris Commune.
Gustave Paul Cluseret was a French soldier and politician who served as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and Delegate for War during the Paris Commune.
Gaston Alexandre Auguste, Marquis de Galliffet, Prince de Martigues, was a French general, best known for having taken part in the repression of the 1871 Paris Commune. He was Minister of War in Waldeck-Rousseau's cabinet at the turn of the century, which caused a controversy in the socialist movement, since independent socialist Alexandre Millerand also took part in the same government, and was thus side by side with the Fusilleur de la Commune.
Pétroleuses were, according to popular rumours at the time, female supporters of the Paris Commune, accused of burning down much of Paris during the last days of the Commune in May 1871. During May, when Paris was being recaptured by loyalist Versaillais troops, rumours circulated that lower-class women were committing arson against private property and public buildings, using bottles full of petroleum or paraffin which they threw into cellar windows, in a deliberate act of spite against the government. Many Parisian buildings, including the Hôtel de Ville, the Tuileries Palace, the Palais de Justice and many other government buildings were in fact set afire by the soldiers of the Commune during the last days of the Commune, prompting the press and Parisian public opinion to blame the pétroleuses.
Théophile Charles Gilles Ferré was one of the members of the Paris Commune, who authorized the execution of Georges Darboy, the archbishop of Paris, and five other hostages, on 24 May 1871. He was captured by the army, tried by a military court, and was shot at Satory, an army camp southwest of Versailles. He was the first of twenty-five Commune members to be executed for their role in the Paris Commune.
Events from the year 1871 in France.
The Thiers wall was the last of the defensive walls of Paris. It was an enclosure constructed between 1841 and 1846 and was proposed by the French prime minister Adolphe Thiers but was actually implemented by his successor. The 33 kilometres (21 mi) long wall and ditch made a complete circuit around the city as it stood at the time of the July Monarchy. It was bombarded by the Prussian Army during the Franco-Prussian War, captured by government troops during the Paris Commune and refortified at the start of the First World War. However, by then it had become obsolete as a fortification and was a barrier to the expansion of the city. The area immediately outside of it, known as "the zone", had become a shanty town. The wall was demolished in the interwar period; its path today can be traced by the Boulevards of the Marshals which originally ran just behind the fortifications and by the Boulevard Périphérique which was later built just outside. A few remnants of the wall can still be seen.
Eugène Varlin was a French socialist, anarchist, communard and member of the First International. He was one of the pioneers of French syndicalism.
Claude Lecomte was a French general killed by the National Guard of the Paris Commune.
Fort d'Issy was one of the fortifications of the city of Paris, France, built between 1841 and 1845. It was one of six forts built to the south of the main wall around the city. The fort was placed too close to the city to be effective, and had a poor design that did not take into account recent experience of siege warfare. It was quickly silenced during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. After the armistice of February 1871 the fort was defended by National Guards of the Paris Commune against the French regular army in April–May 1871. The defense was irresolute and the fort was soon occupied. Today the site of the fort is an "eco-district", an ecologically friendly residential area.
This chronology of the Paris Commune lists major events that occurred during and surrounding the Paris Commune, a revolutionary government that controlled Paris between March and May 1871.
The semaine sanglante was a weeklong battle in Paris from 21 to 28 May 1871, during which the French Army recaptured the city from the Paris Commune. This was the final battle of the Paris Commune.
The Battle of Meudon took place on 3 April 1871 between the Paris Commune and Versaillais government forces near Meudon in the Île-de-France. The battle was part of the attempts by the Paris Commune to seize Versailles, the seat of Adolphe Thiers’ government, and it ended in a defeat for the Federates.
The Massacre in the Rue Haxo was a massacre of priests and gendarmes by communards during the semaine sanglante at the end of the Paris Commune in May 1871.
Crimes de la Commune is a series of photomontages produced by French photographer Ernest-Charles Appert at the end of the Paris Commune. A Parisian photographer accredited to the Tribunal de la Seine, and sometimes cited as the forerunner of bertillonage, he photographed Communards incarcerated in Versailles and used these portraits in photomontages. This practice of committed photomontage is the subject of much debate. Furthermore, these photographs raise issues of both commercial practice and copyright.
The fires of Paris during the Commune were the premeditated destruction of monuments and residential buildings in Paris mainly during Bloody Week, the period when Paris was recaptured by the Versailles army from Sunday, May 21 to Sunday, May 28, 1871.
