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The Crowd in the Lyon Commune and the Insurrection of La Guillotiere

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

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Paris and its Commune have so completely dominated historians' accounts of what transpired in France during the spring of 1871 that until the last decade scant attention was paid to the behavior of the provinces. Next to Paris, it was Lyon that produced probably the most significant movement – the Commune of March 22nd-25th and its sequel, the insurrection in the quarter of La Guillotière on April 30th. In each of these incidents legal proceedings and investigations were begun by the regular judicial authorities, but the Army took over the trial proceedings by virtue of a decree of August 8, 1870, which had placed the Department of the Rhône in a state of siege. The affairs were given separate trials before a conseil de guerre in 1871. Dossiers were compiled on all those individuals killed or ordered arrested in connection with the revolutionary events of March and April and were deposited in the Archives Départementales du Rhône, Series R, under the incident's name and date. There were enough judicial investigations undertaken, and fortunately done in such a thorough manner, that the author found in them the basis for a most fascinating crowd study.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1972

References

page 183 note 1 For an account of these events see the preceding article by Moissonnier, Maurice, and the author's work, “The First International and the Lyon Revolutionary Movement, 1864–1871”, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1970.Google Scholar

page 183 note 2 See table. The columns represent the judicial handling of those individuals involved in the revolutionary events in Lyon in March and April, 1871. Beside every column, the column with the letter A represents each category figured as a percentage of the total number of participants. The percentages have not been rounded off. Below is the key to what each column represents.

I. The Lyon Commune of March 22nd through 25th. Persons ordered arrested but not prosecuted: total 17.

II. The Lyon Commune of March 22nd through 25th. Persons ordered arrested and prosecuted: total 50.

III. A composit of columns I and II: total 67.

IV. The insurrection of La Guillotière. Persons killed: total 21.

V. The insurrection of La Guillotière. Persons wounded and persons ordered arrested but not prosecuted: total 162.

VI. The insurrection of La Guillotière. Persons ordered arrested and prosecuted: total 156.

VII. A composit of columns IV, V, VI: total 339.

page 186 note 1 Rougerie, Jacques, Procès des Communards, Paris, Julliard, 1964.Google Scholar

page 186 note 2 Ibid., pp. 125–134.

page 186 note 3 Bezucha, Robert J., “The ‘Republican’ Insurrection of 1834 in Lyon”, Paper read before the meeting of the American Historical Association, Toronto, Canada, 12 28, 1967, p. 6.Google Scholar

page 186 note 4 Statistique de la France, Série II, tome XXI, Resultats généraux du dénom-brement de 1872, Paris, Imprimerie nationale, 1873, pp. 5975.Google Scholar

page 187 note 1 Bezucha, “The ‘Republican’ Insurrection”, op. cit., p. 5.

page 187 note 2 Rougerie, Procès, op. cit., p. 125.

page 187 note 3 Statistique de la France, loc. cit.

page 187 note 4 Bezucha, “The ‘Republican’ Insurrection”, loc. cit., p. 5.

page 187 note 5 Statistique de la France, op. cit., p. 237

page 187 note 6 Rougerie, Jacques, “Composition d'une population insurgée: la Commune”, in: Le Mouvement Social, No 48 (0709, 1964), p. 35.Google Scholar

page 187 note 7 Rougerie, Procès, op. cit., p. 132.

page 187 note 8 Statistique de la France, op. cit., pp. 42–47.

page 188 note 1 Latreille, A. et Dutacq, F., Histoire de Lyon, tome III: De 1814 à 1940, Kleinclausz, éd. A., Lyon, Librairie Pierre Masson, 1952, pp. 160163.Google Scholar

page 188 note 2 Donné, Jean-Paul, “Une société en crise: La Commune à Lyon 1870–71”, unpublished D.E.S., University of Lyon, 1966Google Scholar, makes this conclusion after examining the social composition of those employed in a municipal workshop.

page 188 note 3 This conforms with Jacques Rougerie's interpretation of the Parisian Communards in his Procès, op cit., pp. 128–32.

page 188 note 4 Rudé, George, The Crowd in History, 1730–1848, New York, John Wiley and Sons, 1964, p. 5.Google Scholar