Théophile Charles Gilles Ferré (6 May 1845 – 28 November 1871) was one of the members of the Paris Commune. He authorized the executions 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.[1]
There are few known facts on Ferré's early life, although he may have worked as a law clerk. He was a follower of the revolutionary Louis-Auguste Blanqui and in July 1870, he was tried for being part of a plot to assassinate Louis Napoleon III, but he was acquitted because of a lack of evidence. During the Siege of Paris, he was elected to the Comité de vigilance de Montmartre (the Montmartre Committee of Vigilance).[2]
Paris was taken over by the revolutionary, Commune government in March 1871. Ferré served on the Commune's Committee of Public Safety, a body given extensive powers to hunt down enemies of the Commune. He was also briefly in charge of the revolutionary police force.[2]
On April 5, the Commune passed a decree that authorized the arrest of any person thought to be loyal to the French government in Versailles, those arrested were to be held as "hostages of the people of Paris". These included Georges Darboy, the archbishop of Paris, Abbé Deguerry, the curé of the Église de la Madeleine, and several hundred others. The Commune hoped to exchange their hostages for Louis-Auguste Blanqui, a revolutionary and honorary President of the Commune, who had been arrested by the French government on March 15.[3] However, the provisional head of the French government, Adolphe Thiers refused any negotiation with the Commune for the release of hostages.
On 21 May, French government forces entered Paris. This heralded a period of heavy fighting between government troops and National Guards that was known as the Semaine sanglante ("Bloody Week") with Government troops carrying out summary executions of captured National Guardsmen and suspected Communards. By the 24 May, the resistance of the Commune was starting to disintegrate. A delegation of National Guardsmen, led by Gustave Genton, a member of the Committee of Public Safety, came to the new headquarters of the Commune at the city hall of the 11th arrondissement and demanded the immediate execution of the hostages held at the prison of La Roquette. The new prosecutor of the Commune, Ferré hesitated and then wrote a note authorizing the executions.
Genton asked for volunteers to serve as a firing squad, and went to the La Roquette prison, where many of the hostages were being held. Genton selected six names from the list of hostages, including Georges Darboy, the Abbe Deguerry, Bonjean (président de chambre à la Cour de cassation), and Allard, Clerc, Ducoudray, three members of the Society of Jesus. The Director of the Prison, Francois, refused to give up the Archbishop without a specific order from the Commune. Genton sent a deputy back to Ferré to seek this. Ferré replied with the order, writing "and especially the archbishop" on the bottom of his note. The six hostages were then taken out into the courtyard of the prison, lined up against the wall, and shot.[4] Defenders of the Commune later justified the action of Ferré as an act of retaliation for the summary executions carried out by the French Army during Bloody Week.[5]
Ferré was later captured by French government forces. He was tried and sentenced to death at a court martial in August 1871. Early on the morning of the 28 November, he was executed by firing squad, alongside Louis Rossel and Pierre Bourgeois, former French Army members who had defected to the Commune. Ferré declined a blindfold, but was only wounded by the firing squad's volley. He was killed by a single shot fired as a coup de grâce.[6] Gustave Genton was also executed for his role in the killing of the hostages.
Louise Michel, the famed "Red Virgin" of the Commune celebrated in a poem by Victor Hugo, was deeply in love with Théophile Ferré. Both were from the same district: Montmartre. Both took the same defiant attitude at their trial, as described by Lissagaray in his Histoire de la Commune de 1871 (Bruxelles: Kistemaeckers ed, 1876), and both were eventually buried (Michel died in 1905) in the same cemetery.
Related Research Articles
The Paris Commune was a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris from 18 March to 28 May 1871. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the French National Guard had defended Paris, and working-class radicalism grew among its soldiers. Following the establishment of the Third Republic in September 1870 and the complete defeat of the French Army by the Germans by March 1871, soldiers of the National Guard seized control of the city on March 18. They killed two French army generals and refused to accept the authority of the Third Republic, instead attempting to establish an independent government.
Montmartre is a large hill in Paris's northern 18th arrondissement. It is 130 m (430 ft) high and gives its name to the surrounding district, part of the Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for its artistic history, for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur on its summit, and as a nightclub district.
Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers was a French statesman and historian. He was the second elected President of France and first President of the Third Republic.
Georges Darboy was a French Catholic prelate who served as Bishop of Nancy then Archbishop of Paris. He was among a group of prominent hostages executed as the Paris Commune of 1871 was about to be overthrown.
Louis Auguste Blanqui was a French socialist, political philosopher and political activist, notable for his revolutionary theory of Blanquism.
Louis Charles Delescluze was a French revolutionary leader, journalist, and military commander of the Paris Commune.
Louise Michel was a teacher and important figure in the Paris Commune. Following her penal transportation to New Caledonia she embraced anarchism. When returning to France she emerged as an important French anarchist and went on speaking tours across Europe. The journalist Brian Doherty has called her the "French grande dame of anarchy." Her use of a black flag at a demonstration in Paris in March 1883 was also the earliest known of what would become known as the anarchy black flag.
The Musée Carnavalet in Paris is dedicated to the history of the city. The museum occupies two neighboring mansions: the Hôtel Carnavalet and the former Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint Fargeau. On the advice of Baron Haussmann, the civil servant who transformed Paris in the latter half of the 19th century, the Hôtel Carnavalet was purchased by the Municipal Council of Paris in 1866; it was opened to the public in 1880. By the latter part of the 20th century, the museum was full to capacity. The Hôtel Le Peletier de Saint Fargeau was annexed to the Carnavalet and opened to the public in 1989.
The Vigilance Committee of Montmartre was a political association and provisional administrative organization established on the Rue de Clignancourt shortly before the Siege of Paris (1870–1871). Closely affiliated with the International Workingman's Association, its members had strong connections with the various anarchist and socialist tendencies of the time, particularly those represented by Karl Marx, Mikhail Bakunin, and Auguste Blanqui.
Ernest Granger was a French politician, a veteran of the Paris Commune of 1871, a Blanquist socialist and subsequently a Boulangist nationalist.
Gustave Tridon (1841–1871) was a French revolutionary socialist, member of the First International and the Paris Commune and anti-Semite.
Émile François Désiré Eudes was a French revolutionary, Blanquist socialist and participant in the Paris Commune.
Louis Charles Eugène Protot was a French lawyer (avocat) and a political opponent of the Second Empire. During the Paris Commune in 1871, he was minister of justice for a month before going into exile until 1880. After his return to France he was prevented from working at the Bar and earned a living as a specialist in Oriental languages.
Claude Lecomte was a French general killed by the National Guard of the Paris Commune.
Jacques Léon Clément-Thomas, was born in 1809 in Libourne (Gironde) and shot in Paris on 18 March 1871, one of the first deaths of the Paris Commune. A Republican of the old guard, Clément-Thomas was an army general, Commander in Chief of France's National Guard on two occasions, and a parliamentary deputy.
Raoul Adolphe Georges Rigault, was a journalist and French Socialist revolutionary, best known for his role during the Paris Commune of 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 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.
Marie Ferré (1845–1882) was a French activist involved in the Paris Commune.
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.
References
↑ Rougerie, Jacques, La Commune de 1871, Presses Universitaires de France, (1988), ( ISBN978-2-13-062078-5), pp. 118-119.
↑ Fernbach, David (ed.) Marx: The First International and After, p. 230, The Civil War in France
↑ Milza. Pierre, "La Commune", Paris, Perrin, March and April 2009, pp. 403-404
↑ Lissagaray, Prosper-Olivier, Histoire de la Commune de 1871 (1876) La Decouverte, 2005.
↑ "The Recent Executions". The Times. No.27234. London. Nov 30, 1871. p.12.
Sources
Prosper Olivier Lissagaray: Histoire de la Commune de 1871 (1876) Paris: Librairie Marcel Rivière - Bibliothèque des Sciences Politiques et Sociales, 1947
Bernard Noël: Dictionnaire de la Commune Paris: Champs Flammarion, 1978
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
