The Paris Commune () during the French Revolution was the government of Paris from 1789 until 1795. Established in the Hôtel de Ville just after the storming of the Bastille, it consisted of 144 delegates elected by the 60 divisions of the city. Before its formal establishment, there had been much popular discontent on the streets of Paris over who represented the true Commune, and who had the right to rule the Parisian people.François Furet and Mona Ozouf, eds A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution (1989), p. 519 The first mayor was Jean Sylvain Bailly, a relatively moderate Feuillant who supported constitutional monarchy. He was succeeded in November 1791 by Pétion de Villeneuve after Bailly's unpopular use of the National Guard to disperse a riotous assembly in the Champ de Mars (17 July 1791).
By 1792, the Commune was dominated by the Jacobins who were not in the Legislative Assembly due to the Self-Denying Ordinance. The new Commune meant that there was a revolutionary challenge to the Legislative Assembly, though its practical victories were limited and temporary. The violence provoked by the Jacobins and their excesses meant that the power of the Commune would end up being limited by increasing support for more moderate revolutionary forces until the Thermidorian Reaction and the execution of its leaders including Robespierre after his overthrow in July 1794 had led to its disestablishment in 1795.Furet, pp. 520–522
Legislative origins and early history When Louis XVI ascended to the throne, he initially sought to establish better relations with a Paris that had felt subordinated by Versailles, and in 1774 he restored the Parliament of Paris – a court of nobles that had previously been abolished. However its powers were limited, and economic pressures meant that Versailles imposed austerity measures on the military and policing structures of Paris, incentivising disloyalty to the crown amongst soldiers and the police.Alfred Fierro Histoire et dictionnaire de Paris (1996), p. 87 This coupled with the perceived frivolity of royal spending encouraged popular anger, and radical pamphleteering and meetings started to become a key part of the Parisian bourgeois intellectual culture. Amidst this anger and the wider contemporary social upheavals in France, on 25 June 1789, 12 representatives from three different parts of the city voted in favour of creating a united Parisian municipality. Further reforms proposed by Nicolas de Bonneville aimed to create a Parisian Bourgeois Guard that would later become a National Guard (and was composed of 48,000 citizens) and a Commune that would have its own assembly which named itself L'Assemblée Générale des Électeurs de la Commune de Paris and was established on 11 July, just days before the Bastille was stormed on 14 July.Charles-Louis Chassin, Les Élections et les Cahiers de Paris en 1789: L'Assemblée des trois ordres et l'Assemblée générale des électeurs au 14 juillet, (Paris: Jouaust et Sigaux, 1889), p. 447 On 20 July, each district of Paris elected 2 representatives, creating an assembly of 120 representatives who primarily came from the Third Estate. In Spring 1790 the departments of France were reorganized; the Paris Commune was divided up in 48 revolutionary sections of Paris and allowed to discuss the election of a new mayor. Louis XVI himself gave permission for this on 21 May 1790. Each section was granted its own popular militia, civil committee, and revolutionary committee. These sections acted as intermediaries between local populations (largely sans-culottes) and the legislative Paris Commune, and initially tended to deal with legal and civil concerns, but the sections were becoming increasingly radicalised and focused on political issues and struggles. On 24 February 1792 the Conseil Général de la Commune was installed: it consisted of 24 members, under whom were Etienne Clavière, Pierre-Joseph Cambon, Sergent-Marceau, René Levasseur and the King. Manuel was appointed as procureur of the commune, representing the King, gave a speech warning against anarchy.Municipalité de Paris. Installation du Conseil général de la commune, 24 février 1792 Early March the Paris Department was placed above the Commune in all matters of general order and security. According to Jan ten Brink it had the right to suspend the Commune's decisions and to dispose of the army against her in case of emergency.
The distinctions between an active and passive citizen were abolished by the Commune on 25 July 1792 as the Commune became increasingly Jacobin in its orientation, and ideas of full citizenship were beginning to take root. The theoretical basis for the establishment of the Commune meant that administrative power could be brought closer to the people in a revolutionary manner, and Paris could achieve localisation of revolutionaries to modernise the city and country, alongside creating a rational framework or administration that could function efficiently without agents of the state.Alan Forest, "Reimagining Space and Power" in A Companion to the French Revolution, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2012)
Insurrection on 10 August In the earlier days of the Commune, Feuillants and then Girondin bourgeois Republican forces had dominated, but an ascendant Jacobin presence amongst the Parisian political class became increasingly militant in its desire to establish control of the Commune, and it succeeded in doing so formally as part of an organised seizure of power in August 1792. As a result of this, the Paris Commune became insurrectionary in the summer of 1792, essentially refusing to take orders from the Constitutional Cabinet of Louis XVI. On the night of 9 August 1792 (spurred by the issue of the Brunswick Manifesto on 25 July) a new revolutionary Commune, led by Georges Danton, Camille Desmoulins and Jacques Hébert took possession of the Hôtel de Ville. Antoine Galiot Mandat de Grancey, the commander of the Paris National Guard and in charge of defending the Tuileries where the royal family resided, was assassinated and replaced by Antoine Joseph Santerre.Éric Hazan Une histoire de la révolution française (Paris: La Fabrique, 2012) p. 161. The next day insurgents assailed the Tuileries. During the ensuing constitutional crisis, the collapsing Legislative Assembly of France was heavily dependent on the Commune for the effective power that allowed it to continue to function as a legislature. The insurrectionary commune had elected Sulpice Huguenin during the night as its first president.Hazan, p. 167.
On 10 August and the following days, all 48 districts of Paris decided to elect representatives with unlimited powers (28 districts jointly made this decision on the eve of the assault on the Tuileries, whilst the remaining 20 joined them over the days that followed). The 11th district, covering an area which included Place Vendôme, elected Maximilien de Robespierre as its representative.Hazan, p. 168. At this time, 52 representatives formed the Departmental Council of the Commune. On 16 August, Robespierre presented a petition to the Legislative Assembly from the Paris Commune to demand the establishment of a provisional Revolutionary Tribunal that had to deal with the "traitors" and "enemies of the people". On 21 August, it succeeded in dissolving the separate department of Paris; the Commune took its place, combining local and regional power under one body.Hazan, p. 169. The all-powerful Commune demanded custody of the royal family, imprisoning them in the Temple fortress. A list of "opponents of the Revolution" was drawn up, the gates to the city were sealed, and on 28 August the citizens were subjected to domiciliary visits, ostensibly in a search for muskets. A sharp conflict developed between the Legislative and the Commune and its sections. On 30 August the interim minister of Interior Roland and Guadet tried to suppress the influence of the Commune because the sections had exhausted the searches. The Assembly, tired of the pressures, declared the Commune illegal and suggested the organization of communal elections. On Sunday morning 2 September the members of the Commune, gathering in the town hall to proceed the election of deputies to the National Convention, decided to maintain their seats and have Rolland and Brissot arrested.
September Massacres