Speech delivered at the Peace Congress, in Lausanne (1871)
Mme André Léo
Ladies, Gentlemen,
In 1867 when the League of Peace and Freedom was formed, it was the expression in Europe, and especially in France, of a very moral, very just idea, which was astonished to still find in the [legal] code of civilised nations, or calling themselves such, laws of war; which was indignant that, from time to time, threats, rumours of war, took place in court politics and came to disturb public affairs. There was then, on the part of writers and publicists, a sort of crusade, to which your league gave more consistency, and whose impact it prolonged. It turned out to be, at the same time, a protest against those imperial and royal powers which dispose of the lives of men, and which only listen to themselves and their monstrous calculations. They have in fact, despite you, despite public opinion, waged the war of 1870. Monarchs cannot be converted. Fortunately, this is not the case with the sense of the people. It understood. The feeling of the evils of war and their folly had spread rapidly amongst the people, and this feeling was largely responsible for the bewilderment and indignation caused in France by the declaration of war on July 15. It can be said with certainty, and you admit it: wars, falsely called national, are only monarchical wars. War and monarchy stand together; they live and die together. Your league is Republican. On this point you do not hesitate, and your work is defined, as well as your action.
But there is another war, which you had not considered, and which far exceeds the other in devastation and frenzy. I am talking about civil war.
It has existed in France since 1848; but many persisted in not seeing it. Today, what deaf man has not heard the cannons of Paris and Versailles? And those shootings in the parks, in the cemeteries, in the waste grounds, and in the villages around Paris? – What blind man has not seen those cartloads of corpses that were hauled, first during the day, then at night; those prisoners, men, women, children, who were led to their death by the hundreds, by firing squad or machine guns? And those long lines of unfortunates, defeated, ragged, who were insulted, who were beaten, who were made to bow on their bended knees, to the shame of humanity, on the road to Versailles? Who does not hear in his heart (unless he does not have one) the cry of these 40,000, taken without trial, crammed for four, six months, in the hulks of our ports.
They have bestowed upon these horrors, like veils, all the words that the language lends to rhetoricians to fight the truth. Being so guilty, there were many accusations. There was a lot of shouting to prevent people from hearing. For four months, especially during the first two months, slander has flowed full force, from all these venomous sheets, which mark with infamy the causes they embrace. And the others, overcome with fear, under the terror that reigned, cowardly, without scrutiny, repeated these accusations, these slanders. The murdered have been branded assassins, the robbed thieves, the victims executioners.
I know what can be said against the Commune. More than anyone, I deplored, I cursed the blindness of these men – I am talking about the majority[1] – whose stupid incapacity has lost the most beautiful cause. What suffering, day after day, to see it perish! But today, this resentment expires in pity. Since May, I need to recall these wrongs of the Commune. Such a flood of crimes has passed over them that we no longer see them. Such a debauchery of infamies followed these faults that they became honourable in comparison.
Allow me, to answer the doubts that probably exist on this subject in many minds, to compare, as succinctly as possible, the actions of the two parties. Because, in my opinion, it is a question of you taking sides in this terrible drama, which is not over, which will not end for a long time, and which admits no neutrals. You cannot call yourself the League of Peace and Freedom, and remain indifferent to these massacres, to this violence.
What are the revolutionaries of Paris accused of? Of pillage, murder, arson.
This pillaging, this pillaging of the houses of Paris under the Commune is a slander signed Thiers, and spread in thousands of copies, with France’s money, to deceive France. There was no looting. There were questionable financial measures, fair enough; less questionable perhaps than those of M. Poyter-Quertier[2]; but some arbitrary confiscations which took place were immediately condemned and remedied, and order – I am speaking about the true one, of the one which is both security and decency, an order quite different from the order of luxury, despotism and debauchery, and of that order of Warsaw[3] which currently reigns in Paris – true order existed during those two months, when Paris was entirely in the hands of the poor. Those who lived there know it. While there have been exceptions here and there, they have been rare. Priests alone have been the object of regrettable personal persecutions – I do not pretend to excuse everything, I am telling the truth and I am comparing. – Certain people will tell you about the dangers they faced. Question them well: they suffered only their own fears. Let them show you their wounds.
In certain agencies, due to the actions of certain employees, misappropriations have taken place. – Are monarchical administrations exempt from these accidents? All agencies were disorganised and we had less than two months, with daily battles, to recreate everything and put it in order. Certainly, there was still much to do; but time ran out. At least there was a great relative economy, a great general simplicity. At the Ministry of Public Education, instead of this troop of men in livery that had been retained on the 4th of September [1870 when the Third Republic was proclaimed], there was a handyman, a receptionist and a doorman.
Since then, what has happened in this Paris, returned to the power of the men of order? All houses were searched, searched from top to bottom, not just once, but twice, three and four times. And during these searches, thefts, lootings, were frequently committed. I have many specific facts; I will only cite one general one. All those who were shot were stripped of what they had on them, money and jewellery. And the money, and often the jewellery, was distributed to the soldiers as a reward for murder.
There were no murders under the Commune, except for the execution at checkpoints of a few spies (seven in all), a usual occurrence in war. All this great uproar, all these threats, all this pastiche of 93, which the majority of the Commune [council] made, consisted only of words, of phrases, of decrees. It was a pose. The hostage law was not applied, thanks to the minority; thanks also, I believe, to the secret repugnance of these imitators of the terror, who in spite of themselves were of their time and their party – because today’s democracy is humane. The hostage law was only applied on the evening of the 23rd, when communal power in fact no longer existed (its last session was on the 22nd). these executions took place on the sole orders of Raoul Rigault and [Théophile] Ferré, two of the most unfortunate personalities of the Commune, who until then had never stopped demanding bloody measures, always in vain.[4]
But it must be added that they only took place after two days and two nights of Versailles executions; that after two days and two nights, during which the men of order had shot, by the hundreds, prisoners taken on the barricades: men who had laid down their weapons, women, adolescents aged 15 and 16; people snatched from their homes, the denounced, the suspected, whoever? They did not have time to look closely. They killed in heaps; to save time, they resorted to machine guns. Enough witnesses heard their mournful crack, in the Luxembourg, or on the pavements, alongside the railings, their feet slipping in the blood; at the Lobau barracks, in the St. Victor district, on the side of the Villette…
There is a whole investigation to be done regarding the fires. But three specific points must be established:
1. These fires are overstated, exaggerated beyond measure, and they were used in an odious way for the purposes of revenge.
2. Several were started by the shells of the attackers.
3. The houses burnt by the federals[5] were only burnt for purposes of defence, and not for this fantastic plan that is attributed to them of burning down Paris. Soldiers entered houses adjoining the barricades from behind and from there fired at the defenders. So they had to either burn the insides of these houses, or abandon the fight.
As for the fire at the Tuileries, the Prefecture of Police, the Palais de Justice, the Legion of Honour, etc., the names of those responsible are not known, and when we recall the first failed fire at the Prefecture of the Police, the previous November; when we think of the interest that some people had in the destruction of certain papers; of the Versailles agents who filled Paris; of the intelligence of the fames, which respected everything whose loss, in monuments or collections, would have been irreparable; when we think of the dubious situation of the legal power vis-à-vis France, which was hostile to it, and which, if it did not approve of the Commune, at least recognised the legitimacy of Paris’ claims; of the danger presented by the execution of the plan of extermination, dictated by a Medici policy, at the same time caressed by an implacable hatred –the conqueror could succumb to such a danger by his victory – we understand that a great crime, attributed to the federals, could alone, by arousing public anger, allow this extermination, this vengeance; and we can suspect, in this burning of Paris, one of the most appalling mysteries that history has to penetrate.
The history of republics, such as the current French republic, unfortunately closely resembles that of empires. It is not to be seen on the surface, and it is not in the open that it proceeds. For those who have observed it well, it is none other, since September 4th, that the development of an immediately formed monarchical plot, and which goes to war, at the same time as the Prussians, against the Republic. And this underlying war is the principle one; because the other becomes the terrain, the lair [le tapis franc], and receives its outcome.
Monarchists, as we well know, never had a homeland, any more than their princes; thus we see them, as soon as France is defended, rushing without shame, like hungry jackals, upon this prey. The first concern of the republicans of September 4th is not the national enemy, it is popular democracy. After all, William is a king[6]; between kings and conservatives, they always come to an agreement; the worst thing is to pay, and that is the people’s business! But demagoguery! But socialism! Great gods! Have the people as master instead of governing them! This gilded idleness being fought over, which they had conquered, at the price, already, of so many other capitulations! – They had only this focus, this fear, and they sacrificed France to it. The victorious Republic, wresting the country from the abyss into which the monarchy had thrown it, could be the end of the old world.
Paris above all, Paris! It was that which aroused their terror. Socialist Paris, armed Paris, deliberating in its clubs[7], in its council and administering itself! This genius so long captive, and even then dangerous! Finally freed! What an example! What propaganda! What a peril!
And then, Paris is the only place where the throne can be seated. But the people occupied this place, the armed people! It had to be cleared at all costs. But the pretext for such a measure could only be a misdeed of the people, an abuse of their weapons, an insurrection in short? Which at the same time would make it possible to shoot and imprison the democrats. – This plan is not new, it is almost as old as aristocracies. Conservatives no longer invent… but they perfect. Never before has anything of this kind been done on such a grand scale.
Who, from the end of February until March 18, almost every day, as trains passed through rural stations, made these noises: They are fighting in Paris! Paris is aflame! Which made the peasants say with fury: After so many misfortunes, those Parisian brigands will not let us live in peace!
Who then had used the five months of the siege, the five months of the forced silence of Paris, to persuade the country folk that it was the republicans who had forced the Empire into war? And that the Parisians not only refused to fight against the Prussian; but also prevented Trochu[8] from making sorties, by the need to contain their uprisings?
Who dared to repeat it from the tribune, this same brazen slander, in the face of incensed Paris, before the outraged conscience of all those who had shared the pain of this siege, worse than the hardships, and the ardent patriotism of the Parsian people, guilty only of too much patience and credulity towards its rulers?
This is how France was turned against Paris, which had created the Republic and wanted to keep it. This is how the victim was besmirched before executing her, and all sympathies were ruined around her, before setting the trap where she was to perish. According to all the moderate newspapers, the attack of 18 March was a provocation.[9] The immediate departure of the government from all public services, the removal of funds and all administrative material, shows a plan decided in advance. The uprising became a revolution. The great courage of the little stagehand in this drama did not falter. Paris was once again isolated, and the official slander which the Empire had made an institution, became a government service, supported simultaneously by the entire chorus of unofficial slander. Paris was in flames and blood… in the provinces. Children were thrown into the Seine; old people were nailed to walls. – Humanity seems divided into the stupid and the naïve, into those who govern and those who are governed. Good people believed all this… because it was said so. I have seen educated people, intelligent people, democrats, only enter Paris trembling.
How many independent minds are there who have said to themselves: When the victors alone have the right to speak, when the vanquished can allege nothing or deny anything, it is justice and common sense to withhold judgement?
How many people are there who wanted to doubt the slanderous accusations, spread in full columns by the newspapers, unofficially and odiously repeated by others, about the men and the facts of the Commune, and on all those who had taken part in the communal revolution in general? Well, I ask to cite two facts as examples; and if they have too great a personal character, which I would have avoided on any other occasion, it is because the more direct the testimony, the more conclusive it is:
Not content with having me arrested, interrogated, then released, without ever having ceased to be at liberty… in a prudent hiding place, a newspaper whose title I refrain from saying out of modesty, dared to mix with extracts from articles written by me, lines which it also signed with my name, and in which it made me ask the Commune… for executions. – I was again made to deliver a speech at the fall of the column and carried in triumph after this speech, when I did not set foot on Place Vendôme, and did nothing but lament these childish demolishers.[10]
Here is the other fact: We learned by letter of the arrival in Switzerland of one of our friends. Three days later, the Paris-Journal printed that this same person had just been arrested in a house of ill-repute, and added to this tale brazen words, spoken, it said, by this Communard.
These two facts, which I can, as you see, testify with complete confidence, tell you what to think about the rest? And does not such a scheme, implemented under the guarantee of the government, and by this government itself, demonstrate the existence of a faction capable of all infamies and all crimes, to achieve its goal? The existence of a plan pursued together and which has its watchword and its roles prepared?...
From all parts of France, what steps have not been taken to ward off this fatal war, to save Paris? How many deputations! So many attempts! So many mediation initiatives! So many instances! The Commune took care to show itself in a good light by open acquiesce; but it refused nothing, since no concession was ever made on the Versailles side. The non possumus of M. Thiers was equal to that of the Pope.[11] We asked him in vain: Do you want to accept this? That? He only wanted one thing, the very thing we were trying to prevent: the extermination of the democrats and the crushing of Paris.
And he succeeded! This plot of lies, murder and monarchy has succeeded. That paths to the throne are now cleared. Liberty has regained its chains; thought has its shackles; once again, thanks to fear, everything is permitted to those who rule. The city which was the capital of the world, and which is no longer even the capital of France, has lost its citizens; but it found its dead children and its courtesans. All that it had of generous blood flowed into its streams and reddened – this is not a figure of speak – the waters of the Seine; and for eight days and eight nights, in order that the Paris of the revolution once again became the Paris of Empires, it was turned into an immense human slaughterhouse!
I have seen those days of blood; I heard during those horrible nights, the sounds of soldiers firing and machine guns. I have received many testimonies; I have collected the confessions written by the assassins themselves, in the midst of their ferocious joy; and the feeling of indignation which arose within me will never subside! And as long as I live, wherever I can be heard, I will testify against the monstrous incarnation of selfishness, hypocrisy and ferocity, which the vulgar fool accepts under the name of the party of order, and which behind this tradename brazenly shelters its gambling dens, its cutthroats and its brothels.
And we are still taking about 93! And the red spectre, all in tatters, still serves as a scarecrow for the bird! What was this red terror of the last century, the only one (because the democracy no longer supports this), what was this fatal crisis, explained by famine and threat, whose tricolour terrors are much more terrible compared to the terror of 71, and which always grow in rage and intensity? What month of 93 equals this bloody week, during which 12,000 corpses – their newspapers say so – lay strewn on the ground of Paris? The prisons were sufficient in 93; today they need the fields at Versailles and the hulks in the ports. The tricolour terror prevails with all the superiority of the machine gun over the guillotine; of all the distance that separates premeditation from anger in evil. The guillotine, at least, only killed in broad daylight and only took one life at a time. They killed for eight days and nights at first; then, only at night for more than a month. Two honourable people, who live at two opposite points in the vicinity of the Luxembourg, told me that they still heard, on the night of July 6, the grim shots.
No matter what I do, I see only 64 victims of the side of the Commune – if we persist in attributing to it the execution of the hostages, which it did not order – and on the other side, I see, according to lowest number, 15,000 – many say 20,000. – But who can know the number of deaths in a slaughter without restraint, in a massacre without judgement, whose whole rule is the more or less drunkenness of the soldier, the more or less political fury of the officer? Ask the families who search in vain for a missing father, brother, or son, whose death certificate they will never have.
When we contemplate such facts and see disapproval attached… to whom? To the victims! We are stunned, and we wonder what is this joke that we call opinion, human conscience? Yes, it is the murderers who accuse! The world is filled with their cries alone! And we even refuse the right of asylum to the victims, alleging outraged morality and sacred decency! What happened to the meaning of words? This world calls itself sceptical; this century claims to be incredulous; and it believes the tears of Thiers! the indignation of Jules Favre! the sensitivity of the executioners and the oaths of the deceivers! Why not [believe] in the honour of Louis Bonaparte?
Alas! Will unfortunate humanity’s politics ever consist of anything other than a change of names?
You, gentlemen, who here represent the intelligent thought of the enlightened classes, who believe in peace, who believe in freedom, and consequently in human conscience, your duty is to protest against such crimes. To pretend not to see them, when they fill the world, when this country where you are is strewn with the debris of this shipwreck, would be too puerile and too false, and I repeat, your duty is to oppose it. You are the League of Peace, and they are slaughtering! And the interrupted shootings begin again… in Marseille… soon in Versailles. Previously, it was without judgment; now they add a parody of justice but it is always the victors executing the vanquished. You are the League of Liberty, and 40,000 men are crammed into holds [of ships]; and all freedoms, once again, are violated; and terror has reigned in Paris for four months! It is the old barbarism, victorious over the instincts of the new world. You must protest against it, and banish from humanity these cutthroats and condemners.
For, even apart from freedom, you are not one of those who confuse peace with silence, and you know what such a regime is preparing, and that it is not peace. The resistance to progress, the oppression of freedom, the negation of new needs, these are not the works of peace that the humanity of the 19th century suffers? All these, you know well, only serve to prepare for new wars, terrible social wars, like the one that has just taken place. You all believe that the peace of today’s world is linked to the development of the intellect, the morality and the well-being of peoples. Now, how does the government of Versailles, this government which also claims to be the saviour of order, morality and the public good, fulfil this triple goal?
Is it through its financial laws, which impose the costs of war onto the consumption of the poor? And which finds nothing better to tax, moreover, than the need to think?
Is it through the immense hatred with which it filled souls? Is it through its murders, its insults, its proscriptions?
We know what state these conservatives have put industry in. Already depopulated by the cemetery, the workshop became deserted by emigration, which occurred in Paris for the first time, and took on Irish proportions. Our best workers (amongst those who remain) will take their skills, their processes abroad, ad France, once again, as in the aftermath of the Reformation, as after the revocation of Edict of Nantes, bled by the murderous blade of its most vital forces, will scatter the rest all over the world. Let us note in passing that these proscriptions in the past took place at least for beliefs; today for greed.
It is the conviction of all of you that there is no way out of the fatal period in which we are living than through popular education – there is no middle ground – live by universal suffrage, or die from it. If it remains in the darkness into which it is plunged, we shall die of it – and it cannot be denied that France is already very sick and much diminished. – We will live a broader, happier, stronger life, if the light penetrates into it. Well, what is the present government doing for public education?
The revolution of 18 March had removed from the school the priest’s foul and fatal teaching. It was returned to him. Would this government, defender of morality, therefore ignore this horrible corruption of childhood morals which, despite so many obstacles to its disclosure, erupts in such terrible and frequent scandals? No, perhaps, but what does it matter to them? Loriquet’s history[12] and the dogma of obedience are such precious teachings for the elector! And then does corruption not encourage stupidity?
At the head of public education is a man, the sole flotsam of September 4, whose name was for the naïve an advent.[13] Lightweight author of several large books, Religion naturelle amongst others, this man has above all built his reputation on this grand subject, on this first necessity of serious public education. He has had it under his direction for a year. During the siege [of 1870-1], most of the municipalities of Paris, full of zeal in this regard, appointed commissions, which proposed reforms, and first of all the exclusion of priests from public education. The minister did not contradict them, he even graciously urged them to formulate plans; he received their petitions; but granted none. The commissions soon learnt that the director of the service, the true head of the ministry, was still the same cleric to whom his Majesty Napoleon III had deigned to entrust these delicate functions. It was in vain to ask for a change; he remained; he is still there. – Who will not admire the dedication of the titular minister, thus covering the continuation of the obscurantist system with a reputation acquired by the democratic idea? The love of order at all costs can alone dictate such sacrifices; but it is clear that they are considered necessary, and that on this point nothing is to be expected, nothing to be hoped for.
No; because there are in reality only two parties in this world: that of enlightenment and peace through freedom and equality; that of privilege through war and ignorance. There is not, there cannot be, an intermediate party; I mean a serious party.
So let us finally stop – it will not be too soon – letting ourselves be deceived by this official message, whose entire history is nothing but one long perjury, and let us try to disabuse the world of it. It is time, it is high time, to break not only with the evils it causes us, with the ruins it causes, with the misfortunates it accumulates, but also with its frightful immorality. Do we not see that every monarchy, every aristocracy, in other words, every privilege, is by nature obliged to lie, to be deceitful, because it is in disaccord with justice? Faced with this instinct of equity, of equality, which, despite everything, is the basis of human conscience, and whatever we do, the basis of all judgement, the word privilege has always rung false, the meaning of injustice. Privilege has always been immortality; but more and more it feels itself to be and is recognised as such. What to do about this danger? If not talking about morality, talking about it a lot, making yourself its teacher and adjudicator – that is what they all do. And more and more with a chilling art, that at the same time makes fear more refined, and their new support bolder: the ignorance of the masses.
There have always been well-chosen speeches from thrones; but in the past, at least to a certain extent, the speaker himself believed in them, which is no longer possible today. Now, the more sincerity is lacking, the more order, morality, Providence intervene. Napoleon III, in the aftermath his crime[14], produced masterpieces of this type. He had this difficult task of speaking to two different audiences at the same time: the enthralled countryfolk, who took him for the Messiah, and the intellectuals, who, either enemies or accomplices, knew him. And he accomplished this happy fusion of hypocrisy and cynicism, which deserved to be a school, and now serves as a model for his successors.
By going through these kinds of speeches, we could observe how the more the crime grows, the higher the tone rises; how the more the murderer slaughters, the more he becomes indignant against the slain; that the more he betrays, the more he calls the holy truth to witness; that the more he indulges and abuses the public coffers, the more his serene brow rises above the clouds. When the capitulation was already prepared, the day after January 22, Jules Ferry[15] exclaimed: A heinous crime has been committed!... and the men, the fathers of families, who fell under the bullets of the Hôtel-de-Ville, in a desperate effort to wrest Paris from the hands of the wretches who lost it, he accuses them of having sold their lives to the Prussians, and still speaks brazenly of the interests of defence.[16]
It was after five days and five nights of massacre, after thousands of men who had laid down their arms were shot by soldiers, that this good M. Thiers finds in his heart a surge of indignation, on the subject of an officer shot, he said, by these scoundrels, WITHOUT RESPECT FOR THE LAWS OF WAR.
The word is nowhere to be found, and all this is very successful in its genre. – But where are we going? What happens to the language, the moral sense, human faith, in this appalling abuse? Should we wait until the tainted vocabulary no longer has words for an honest mouth to use? Honest! This word itself is withered. Everything that once called for respect, now calls for a smile, awakens irony. Noble and serious language no longer exists. This is frightening, for it is not only the language that is lost, but all that truly unites men and consolidates their relationships. It is the basis of all natural and true sentiments, confidence, which disappears; it is social probity that succumbs, leaving common life as sterile as the desert, and less safe. And they complain about the slackening of morals, the weakening of characters! When, at what we call the social summit, in broad daylight, are displayed, as an example for all eyes to see: contempt for oaths, debauchery, murder, slander and hypocrisy as a profession, which has become callous!
I know well that it can be said: these are the rages and convulsions of agony. I believe it too. But think about it, this agony can be long. Popular ignorance and monarchy are two curved lines which, when welded together, form a circle, which one can turn for a long time, where we return, alas! you see it, even after breaking it. There are agonies which are putrefactions, and which poison everything around them; obsolete things that pervert childhoods. It is a matter of life or death; infection or health, for us, for our children, for many generations perhaps. See how almost quarter-centuries have passed, from empires to kingships, and consider that for 80 years, we have not even been able to return to the starting point. Finally, see where France is. Do you not think that perhaps this is enough of such experiments, and that it is time to stop them? Who can feel the strength of soul, or of inertia, necessary to endure again such tears, such cataclysms, to witness such horrific spectacles?
And yes, what security could we enjoy, as long as the same unhealthy and criminal ambitions make the world their dupe and their prey? Who does not know the secret of the tragicomedy that is being played out? After this new, much more terrible June[17], there will be a new suppression of the word Republic, a new restoration. Even the most shameful flatters itself that it is the easiest. It did not lose the countryside; it holds all the positions, which the great republicans of September 4 left it, and the army, which at the price of the slaughter of Paris, has returned to it…
But this one or others, what does it matter? it is the same degradation, the same certain corruption. There are not two systems. In the past, rulers, believing in their principle, had at least, or could have, this kind of honour, which in certain cases produced virtue and greatness. But today, they are nothing more than players in the stock market of public imbecility, who rise and fall with it; they know it very well, speculate on it, and fall from Louis XIV to Robert Macaire.[18] The current means of rule, whether it is empire, royalty, or a so-called Republic in the hands of an aristocracy, are: lies, fear, corruption, slander, aided by opportune shootings. – But systems also get worse as they age; because the means are wearing out, and they must go harder and harder… What a future!... if not the end?
However, many people, whom words frighten, see no misfortunate to be feared except in the re-establishment of the monarchy. These are difficult to convince.
France, abandoned to the foreigner; the betrayals and malfeasance of 1870; the armistice and peace of 1871, the civil war, the massacre of Paris, the tricolour terror, public education for the priests, the press for the financiers, justice for the middlemen, the army for the assassins, administration for the corrupt, politics to the Basiles[19], what can a monarchy do better? Let us stop obsessing over effects in favour of causes. The throne is nothing other than a barricade for the use of aristocracies. It occupies the enemy, receives blows, and when after fifteen or twenty years, it is breached, they are free to declare that it was worthless, make proclamations to the victors, and immediately work to rebuild another.
If you are consistent, gentlemen, if you are sincere, contemplating the thirteen months that have passed since September 4, so many intrigues, so many crimes, so much duplicity, so many horrors, you will recognise – not only that peace between nations is incompatible with monarchy – but that the peace of nations, and public morality, are incompatible with the existence of aristocracies. And you will add to your name, this other revolutionary dogma, equality, which you wrongly neglect; for freedom cannot exist without it, anymore than it can exist without freedom.
***
However divided they may be, ready to devour each other as soon as they are no longer afraid, and when it comes to the spoils, they nevertheless all united. Mac-Mahon and Changarnier, Thiers and Rouher, the Duke of Aumale and Jules Favre, Jules Simon and Belcastel, Vacherot and du Temple, Ferry and Hausmann. They all unite against the great enemy, the Satan of popular revolt.
Thiers forgot Mazas and the Orléans confiscation. Audran de Kerdrel has forgotten Deutz and Blaye. We see the Villemessants of every newspaper, the Galiffets of every alcove, the St. Arnauds of every bank, the old and exhausted folk of all regimes, toasting, wailing, denouncing and killing together. They all endured the slaps on the cheeks they gave each other, and worked, with touching accord, to shoot, to incarcerate, to decree and to budget like good brothers. – Because these people have a faith; an unshakable and deep faith. The Count of Chambord, the Count of Pairs, Bonaparte, these are their saints; but above their saints, they have one God, Privilege, and on his alter they sacrifice their resentments and their divisions.
This is their strength; and they will always have it, as long as it is not destroyed by a greater contrary force; for, in such an event, they will always do so.
Why do the democrats act differently? That is what makes them weak.
Because they do not have a single faith; nor a deep faith. Because they are divided into an infinity of little chapels, more monarchical than they wish to appear, and above all into two great sects, one of which adores freedom, the other equality.
Which is basically a fight between the supporters of the Virgin of Atocha and those of the Virgin of Loreto; for liberty and equality are one and the same God in two persons.
Our dogma comes from the Sinai of the great Revolution, great, because it was revealing, great, much less by what it did than by what it said. Whoever claims to be a democrat dates its birth from the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Certainly, no one rejects it, and it is even the liberals who talk the most about 1789. Well, what does it say? – “Free and equal.”
And it could not say otherwise; for from the moment when right, the new right which will renew the world, is founded on merely being a man, there can be no equality without freedom, nor freedom without equality. One absolutely implies the other. Dig into one of the two terms and you find the other at the bottom.
– If you enjoy advantages, which I cannot obtain myself and which are necessary to me, if I am not your equal, you are my benefactor or my master. I am not free.
– If the equality decreed by you offends my conscience, dictates my tastes, kills my efforts, I am not free; you are my pope and my king.
To be free is to be in possession of all the means to develop according to one’s nature. If this freedom is yours – and is it not just and true? – we agree; for this is precisely our equality; and we only have to seek together the measures by which human society will achieve this legitimate, natural end.
Well, yes, even if this opinion, or at least this hope – because we do nothing without a hope, however weak it may be – even if it seemed naïve to many, I believe it would be easy to elaborate, on the ground of the principles of the Revolution, a treaty of alliance, a programme common to all sincere democrats, a programme after which everyone would be left free to stop or to continue on their path. All that is needed is genuine goodwill; the serious study of issues, in the light of principles; instead of harsh criticism, and always a little personal, which increases misunderstandings, the search for points of connection. The time and resources that we waste in denigrating each other, fighting each other and discrediting the cause through the noise of these dissensions should be used to develop and spread the idea. Finally, it would be necessary to renounced one’s faults, which is obviously difficult, and one’s prejudices, which is no less so; but which nevertheless would not be impossible for men walking on the path of ideas and progress. As in all things, the most difficult is the first step of questioning established things; but the mind which has made this effort can make them all, provided that its motive is sincere research.
Also, it is only to the sincere that I address myself, leaving others to mock such illusions; it is for those who feel the imminence of the danger where France is, where the revolution is throughout the world; and who suffer in the depths of their soul, from so many faults and puerilities on this side, from so many crimes on the other; of growing demoralisation, in the face of so many abjurations and betrayals; of the deadly doubt that invades human consciousness; to those who have found lessons in the sights we have before our eyes; especially to those who see, who feel coming, in the distance, the terrible battle, where the material appetites from below will in the end take revenge on the material appetites of what is called above, and will be unrestrained, as the others have been merciless; the bloody, fierce, inexpiable war, like the one that has just taken place – but more decisive, because the aristocracies cannot exterminate the people, but the people can exterminate the aristocracies.
And how can we be surprised that, by dint of such examples, this people, in their misery, lose what they have of patience, ideals and goodness? Is it therefore because of its ignorance that it would be obliged to more virtue? Who can measure the hatred amassed at this hour in the hearts of widows, fathers, daughters, brothers, orphans? – Ah! It is by killing that they respond to our demands; well, it is no longer any point in parleying. – In the end, defence becomes attack. Wild rage responds to wild rage. The men of the people are not stoic philosophers. Who can be outraged by this? Is it the intellectuals who are killing them? Or even those who let them kill?
I return to my dream of union, as insane as it may be. However, we must never despair. Sometimes, when chateaus burn, there are nights like August 4.[20]
The main point that divides liberal and socialist democrats is the question of capital, the same, in a more precise form, as this question of freedom and equality, which I spoke about earlier. I do not think I can deal with it extensively here; I only want to point out a fact that is as true as it is not generally understood: that is, the greater part of the bourgeoisie, all the middle and poor bourgeoisie suffer as much as the people from the current regime of capital.
Everyone knows, and pities, the future of the young man without a fortune, freshly graduated, full of hope, and with all the ambition that a classical education confers, who faces the struggle of life. If he has talent, he is likely to be crushed, either by ineptitude or by envy; if he has genius, he is pretty much lost; if he has character, there is no doubt about it.
Why? – Because ardent, generous, natural forces are in this world like the arms of a drowning man which finds nothing to hold on to. Because they cannot [succeed] by themselves, and depend on the good pleasure of another, chosen by chance, a hereditary monarch, who finds himself, by right of birth, judge of all kinds of merit – or by right of conquest; but these are even worse; they are, in concept, Gensérics or Attilas.[21] – Is it finally the monarchical order everywhere, that is to say of favour, of intrigue and of abuse, not of freedom and justice. They complain of the lack of virile forces; but instead of striving to produce, they are employed in struggle. What we find at the beginning of life is not the paved road, it is the thicket, it is the obstacle. How many stop halfway, weary, desperate, in this terrible helplessness, which capacity, even courage, cannot remedy, because everything depends on a choice, an encounter, a protector. Those who manage, exhausted, worn out, aged, think only of rest, and it is these extinguished forces that share with the chosen by chance or the parvenus of intrigue, the empire of the world. Young and pure forces are nowhere in control, and so it is that, contrary to the laws of nature, senility dominates virility; that the past kills the future; that instead of marching forward, humanity stomps on the spot; that all noble aspirations abort under the obsolete direction of selfishness and pusillanimity; that the generous impulses, the fertile ideas, with which, in spite of everything, the heart of man of this century is full, only leading to the platitude of facts.
Humanity has in its archives, and rereads with delight the story – always the same under different names – of this man of genius, who after many trials, in which he almost perished, at last arrived at triumph. Surely nothing could be more moving and more beautiful. But we let ourselves falsely believe about this beautiful fairy tale that the same thing always happens in reality, and that, sooner or later, the man of talent always finds along the way this serendipity, which saves him and the crown. We forget that chance is not justice and that inevitably, for this saved person, a thousand perish, for lack of help, of facilities, which every human should find in the social environment, if society were order instead of chaos, a science instead of an empiricism.[22]
Then, it is not just about the man of genius. Relatively, from the social point of view, but absolutely, from the being it concerns, an unused ability is always a torment and a misfortune.
This law of capital is therefore of an aristocratic nature; it tends more and more to concentrate power in a small number of hands; it inevitably creates an oligarchy, mistress of national forces; it is therefore not only anti-egalitarian, but anti-democratic; it serves the interest of a few against the interest of all. It is one of the expressions, not of the new truth, but of that conception of the past which, on earth as in heaven, in religion as in politics, always admits only a select few. It is therefore in opposition to the new conception of Justice; with the irresistible tendency which in these times makes everything tilt towards the side of quantity; with this instinct which more and more penetrates the masses – an instinct of which we should hasten to make a morality and a science, before, inevitably growing in strength and power, it attacks the facts itself, perhaps more brutally.
This law ultimately, I repeat, is in opposition to the very interest of most of those who defend it; to the interest of all those who have not found in their cradle the golden key that opens life’s doors.
It holds in serfdom, just like the poor, this great majority of the bourgeoisie who lives from their work, from their ability, and who even, perhaps, depends more than the labourer on the good -pleasure and favour of the capitalists, the great and the good. Only, closer to the sources of wealth, it believes that it can more easily wet its lips, and even when the flow escapes it, still hopes – or quenches its thirst only at the price of these favours, these abdications, which are the shame, the weakness and the misfortune of these times.
For many minds, however, this law of capital is inevitable, insurmountable. – It is the superstition of experience. – Injustice is not inevitable. Solutions have been proposed; they should be examined without bias. There are ones which are more radical than others; but all require to be approached with complete and sincere hatred of the past of divine right, with complete and sincere faith in the revolution of human right, with the desire for equality.
You posed this problem in your programmes, but have you addressed it frankly enough? In all the ardour, in all the independence of which your thought, of which your conscience is capable? Did you begin, as in the past one would place one’s sandals at the threshold of a temple, by laying aside the habits, the prejudices of the old world? And above all the interests which unite your cause to its? And even the concessions that, on the advice of your ambition, despite your good will, despite your conscience, you have already made to it? All these links which are chains, both for character and for thought? One must be in such a state of mind in order to come to an understanding with the disinherited.
Yes, all the sons of the [French] revolution, all those who accepts its principles in their sublime entirety, can walk together on this great road, lined by a host of lost conquests, which can be followed for a long, long time, in good order, before arriving at the various paths that lead to unknown lands.
But you have to want it. It is necessary on both sides to adjure their prejudices, their resentments, and certain disdains which still belong to the aristocratic spirit. A doctrine that proclaims the rights of the disinherited, which makes society responsible for the vices of the poor, which condemns all injustices and declares happiness possible for all, must necessarily attract to itself, must necessarily attract to it not only – and unfortunately not enough – the poverty stricken, but also all dissatisfied with the current order, all egoisms offended, all ambitions deceived, legitimate or not, healthy or unhealthy. Thus, Magdalene, Simon, the Samaritans compromised Jesus. They admire this… in the Gospel. At the club, they get indignant and withdraw, shaking in their shoes. In fact, Jesus’s sinners were repentant; the new ones are hardly so. But what does this accomplish? Democracy is a healer; a hospital follows in its wake. It is its misfortune, and its glory. Happy, if it only had its working-class supporters, and if the bourgeoisie did not send it its rejects, its lazy, and its conceited inadequates, which they are so good at producing! Because it is they above all who, to make themselves better heard, shout out foolish things; who easily dazzle the people with a rhetoric full of words, and empty of common sense; who, for the pleasure of becoming leaders, lead it into crazy and disastrous enterprises; which, instead of leading it to reflection, of instructing it in justice, only incite in it hatred and passion. It is these escapees from college who, having only mementos and phrases from books in their heads, turn the communal idea, the diffusion of freedom, into its opposite, the Committee of Public Safety[23]. – For, what many do not know, what must be said and repeated, is that the revolution of March 18 was not in the hands of socialism, as is intentionally stated; but remained always in the hands of Jacobinism, of bourgeois Jacobinism, by its majority, composed mainly of journalises, men of 1848, students, club members. The minority, worker and socialist, sometimes hindered, almost always protested, but was never able to give its direction to affairs.
But if the democratic party is not perfect in all its members – which moreover is a fact for all parties – what does it matter to those who deeply believe in the principles, and feel their duty to work ardently for their realisation? In this world, and in this time, struggle is everywhere; but you must fight or perish. These pruderies, or these discouragements, have nothing resembling conviction and devotion, and they authorise the reproaches that the people in turn make to the liberal bourgeoisie, when they accuse them of being only amateurs in democracy, who willingly reap the applause and the profits, but shy away as soon as they fear incriminating themselves; who go forward, as long as their interest or their vanity finds its reward; but who drop the people, whom they have urged to follow them, as soon as they see things turning serious, and threaten their coffers or their reputation – in this world as it should be, where what we call conveniences takes precedence over faith and true honour. It again claims – it is still the people who speak – that most of these men lack the heart to understand its sufferings, and to want something other than what they lack for themselves. It recalls that in the hands of such leaders, its revolutions always turned into political compromises, where its rights alone were forgotten; it concludes from the difference in conditions to that of sentiments, and is not far from encompassing under the same name all those who are not with it. – An unjust judgement regarding personal intentions; but just in this sense, that at the time we are in, when situations have become so clear-cut, when the time is so decisive, compromises are no longer possible.
On the other hand, it must be recognised that advanced democrats, and socialists in general, deserve precisely the opposite reproach for their unwavering desire to apply the next day the truth that they have, or which they believe their have discovered, the day before. They are in this error, which seems to me very fatal, of believing that we can violate public opinion in order to go father. – I believe on the contrary that this is one of the reasons why we are moving so slowly. – they forget that the life of a thinker has two sides: the right for himself to go as far as he can, and to explore the absolute – the duty, towards others, to make himself understood. Now, one can only be understood by people by speaking to them in their language, and by taking them to the point where they are, in order to bring them, if possible, to oneself. The advanced party, in a word, is intolerant – and it is not the only one – but it only shows it more.
And yet, I persist in believing that a treaty of alliance would be possible, which, setting the convictions and freedom of each person aside, would unite against the enemy of social peace, and in the embodiment of a common programme, all fractions of the democracy. For there any many points on which we can agree, ahead of those on which we can divide: all freedom to be regained, of the press, of distribution, of assembly; the establishment of communal freedom; the single and progressive tax; the organisation of the national and citizen army; and finally and above all perhaps, democratic, free and integral education.
As long as a child is born, having no other fairies in its cradle than death, ready to cut short, for want of care, its frail existence, and the misery which, if it escapes death, will stunt its limbs or will atrophy its faculties, doom it to the incessant sorrows of cold and hunger, and even also, alas! to maternal harshness, instead of this celebration of life which the rich or well-off woman gives to her child; as long as it is raised in the street, in the hovel, its sorrowful childhood will be deprived, even of innocence; so long as its intelligence will receive at most only superstitious, and moreover strictly verbatim, education, which makes today’s primary school so baneful, so sterile and so cold; as long as it grows up with no other ideal than the cabaret, it will have no other future than the day-to-day work of the beast of burden – humanity in the majority of its members will be deprived of its rights; society will live the impoverished, narrow, corrupt and troubled life of selfishness; equality will only be an illusion, and war, the most horrible, the most bitter of all wars, whether unleashed or latent, will desolate the world, dishonouring humanity.
***
After a lively interruption, on the part of a certain section of the audience, silence was restored and this speech could have been heard, at which time the President of the Congress prohibited the speaker from continuing.
I had been invited to attend the Congress of Peace and Freedom by one of the members of the Committee, with the guarantee of full and complete freedom of discussion, and not only me but my friends from the International and the Commune. From this invitation addressed to outcasts, I had concluded a sincere desire to know the truth and to bring it to light.
Yet, in this assembly which deals with the most vital and burning questions of our time, and declares its intention to intervene in politics in the name of morality, the floor was withdrawn from an eye-witness, whose sincerity no one has the right to contest, to the most significant current event and the most fecund in moral, social and political implications.
And on what pretext? That the speaker was not addressing the issue. What? The agenda was the social question; and to discuss before the Congress of Peace and Freedom the social war, its horrors and the intrigues and crimes of those who wage it in the present and prepare it anew in the future, that was not addressing the issue!
What then does the Congress of Peace understand by the name of war? Is it not the shedding of blood, the violence of man against man, murder in short? Is the social war not a war? – But it is the most bitter and most cruel! How then can this Congress recuse itself, when its verdict on such facts is called upon in the name of peace, morality and justice?
It is a great and cruel error on the part of the liberal bourgeoisie to believe that by turning a blind eye to such enormous and grave facts, it can escape their consequences and retain for itself some influence and some value. To pose as a moralist and say: This crime, because it is powerful, does not concern us; [take part] in politics, and only address theories; as worshippers of freedom, and refuse speech to those who demand it – what serious results can they flatter themselves with?
The bourgeoisie has the pen, the word, the influence. It could become the organ of the slaughtered, oppressed, defeated people. In this it would have been nothing more than the organ of justice.
I came to this Congress with hope; I came away profoundly saddened. What should we say now to those who speak of bias and question good faith? What can be done against an increasingly pronounced split, when union alone could ward off the terrible crisis which, sooner or later, instead of reason and justice, will have to resolve the problem? For men attached to the bourgeois milieu, what they call propriety stifles principles. They live by compromise; may they not die of it!
André Léo
Lausanne, 27 September 1871
[1] The Parisian Municipal Council was electing using male universal suffrage. The largest grouping, of twenty-five, were various revolutionaries inspired by the Jacobins, Blanquists numbered nine, while twenty-five were members of the International (“Internationalists”), and the rest were from a variety of radical groups (only one person could be considered a Marxist). Overall, revolutionaries in the Jacobin-Blanquist tradition were in the majority, with the Internationalist minority being predominantly libertarian, whether Mutualists (like Eugène Pottier) or Collectivists (Eugène Varlin). The differences between the two groupings came to a head when, in the last days of the Commune, the majority voted to create a Committee of Public Safety modelled on the one created by the Jacobins during the Great French Revolution, with a minority of council members (essentially those active in the International) opposing it as a violation of socialist and communal principles. (Translator)
[2] Augustin Thomas Pouyer-Quertier (1820-1891) was Minister for Finance of France. (Translator)
[3] A reference to the fall of Warsaw during the November Uprising (1830–31), a rebellion in Poland against the Russian Empire which was ruthlessly crushed. August Spies, in his address to the court, also referred to "the order that the Russian general spoke of when he telegraphed to the Czar after he had massacred half of Warsaw, ‘Peace reigns in Warsaw!’” (Black Flag Anarchist Review Vol. 3 No. 2 [Summer 2023], 67) as did Peter Kropotkin in in his article “The Coming Anarchy” (The Nineteenth Century, August 1887) which was later included in the pamphlet Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and Principles (1891). (Translator)
[4] Raoul Adolphe Georges Rigault (1846-1871) was a journalist and Blanquist, Chief of Police during the Commune; Théophile Charles Gilles Ferré (1845-1871) was a Blanquist member of the Paris Commune; Both were involved in authorising the execution of the archbishop of Paris and five other hostages on 24 May 1871. Marx and Engels apparently quoting this speech has Léo describe Bigault and Ferré as “the two sinister figures of the Commune” (Les prétendues scissions dans l’Internationale [Geneva: Association internationale des travailleurs, 1872], 15). While saying that Léo’s comments were a “mistake” which he and others had criticised at the time, James Guillaume also noted that this was a “new example of how Karl Marx respects the text of the writers he claims to quote”. (L’internationale, documents et souvenirs [Paris: Société nouvelle de librairie et d’édition, 1907] II: 218). (Translator)
[5] Léo uses the word federals (les fédérés) which was the term the Communards used to describe themselves, appropriately as they were seeking a federal France. (Translator)
[6] William I or Wilhelm I (1797-1888) was King of Prussia from 2 January 1861 and German Emperor from 18 January 1871 until his death in 1888. During the Franco-Prussian War, he was head of State and in command of all the German forces. (Translator)
[7] During the Commune, as during the 1848 Revolution, various popular clubs were formed in neighbourhoods to discuss politics and issues arising during the revolt. These were considered as vehicles for the assertion of direct sovereignty by means of association. Attempts were made to federate these and other groupings during the Commune. (Translator)
[8] Louis-Jules Trochu (1815-1896) was a French military leader and politician. He was commander-in-chief of French forces during the Siege of Paris. (Translator)
[9] A reference to the decision by the French government to send two brigades of soldiers to seize National Guard cannons on the butte of Montmartre. A crowd gathered to oppose this but, when ordered to, the troops refused to fire on it. In response, the government ordered the ordered the evacuation of all the regular forces and government ministries from the city to Versailles. So began the Paris Commune. (Translator)
[10] A reference to the Vendôme Column, erected under orders of Napoleon in 1810, to celebrate the victory of Austerlitz. During the Commune, legislation was passed authorising the dismantling of the imperial symbol and it was taken down on 16 May, 1871 (Translator)
[11] Non possumus is a Latin, Catholic, religious phrase that translates as “we cannot”. It was not intended to express incapacity but, on the contrary, absolute moral determination to obey the Catholic Faith. In the 19th century, non possumus dominated Papal diplomacy. (Translator)
[12] Jean Nicolas Loriquet (1760-1845) was a French Jesuit who practiced historical falsification so that his works on history reflected his aim “that there was nothing that would pervert the young” in them. (Translator)
[13] Jules François Simon (1814-1896) was Minister of Education, Religion, and Arts in the Government of National Defence formed on 4 September 1870. He resumed the portfolio of Education in the first cabinet of Thiers’s presidency. (Translator)
[14] A reference to the coup d’état of Louis-Napoleon on December 2, 1851 -- the anniversary of his uncle's, Napoleon Bonaparte’s, coup d'état of 18 Brumaire (becoming First Consul of France). Louis-Napoleon was the elected President of the Second Republic but disbanded the National Assembly (in the name of defending universal male suffrage) and rewrote the constitution to expand the powers of his position and had this ratified in a plebiscite. Another plebiscite confirmed him as Emperor (Napoleon III) and the Second Republic was replaced by the Second Empire in December 1852. (Translator)
[15] Jules François Camille Ferry (1832-1893) was a French politician. Elected republican deputy for Paris in 1869, he protested against the declaration of war with Germany, and on 6 September 1870 was appointed prefect of the Seine by the Government of National Defence. In this position, he administered Paris during the siege, and after the Paris Commune was obliged to resign. (Translator)
[16] On January 22, 1871, a contingent of France’s National Guard marched on Paris's City Hall (Hôtel de Ville). The group opposed the armistice that was being drafted, believing that the French government had sabotaged their military. Demonstrators released Gustave Flourens and marched on the City Hall, where Breton Mobile Guards defended the building. Five died, and 18 were wounded. Both Louise Michel and André Léo took part in the demonstration, with Michel dressed as a National Guard with a rifle and called for a Commune. (Translator)
[17] The June Days was an uprising in Paris from 22 to 26 June 1848 in response to plans to close the National Workshops, created by the Second Republic in order to provide work and a minimal source of income for the unemployed. The National Guard crushed the rebellion, with over 10,000 people killed or injured and another 4,000 were deported to French Algeria. The uprising marked the end of the hopes of a “Democratic and Social Republic” and the victory of the liberals over the Radical Republicans. (Translator)
[18] Robert Macaire is a fictional character created by the playwright Benjamin Antier (1787–1870) in the play l’Auberge des Adrets. In French culture Macaire represents an archetypal villain, being an unscrupulous swindler. (Translator)
[19] Presumably a reference to Basile Gras (1836-1901), a French officer involved with the Siege of Paris in 1870. (Translator)
[20] A reference to when, during the French Revolution, the National Constituent Assembly announced on the night of 4 August 1789 that it “abolishes the feudal system entirely” and ended, in theory if not in practice, both the seigneurial rights of the Second Estate (the nobility) and the tithes gathered by the First Estate (the Catholic clergy). Kropotkin discusses this in chapter 17 of his Great French Revolution. (Translator)
[21] Gaiseric (c.389-477) was king of the Vandals and Alans from 428 to 477. He invaded Italy, capturing and plundering Rome in June 455; Attila (c.406-453) was the ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death. He was one of the most feared enemies of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, invading both. (Translator)
[22] In other words, something founded on mere experience without the aid of science or a knowledge of principles and so rejecting any recourse to theory or reasoning. (Translator)
[23] The Committee of Public Safety was created in April 1793 by the National Convention and formed the de facto executive government in France during the Reign of Terror (1793–1794). Its official role was to protect the newly established republic against foreign attacks and internal counter-revolution but it soon applied its methods against the left. The Jacobin-Blanqui majority of the Commune voted to create such a committee in its last days and were opposed by the Internationalist minority. (Translator)