May 28, 1871: The Fall of the Paris Commune

May 28, 1871: The Paris Commune, the world's first attempt at a Communist government, falls.

During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871, the French National Guard had defended the capital of 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, soldiers of the National Guard seized control of the city on March 18, 1871. They killed two French army generals and refused to accept the authority of the Third Republic, instead attempting to establish an independent government.

The Commune governed Paris for two months, establishing policies that tended toward a progressive, anti-religious system of social democracy, including the separation of church and state, self-policing, the remission of rent, the abolition of child labor, and the right of employees to take over an enterprise that had been deserted by its owner. Feminist, socialist, communist and anarchist currents played important roles in the Commune. However, the various Communards had little more than two months to achieve their respective goals.

The national French Army suppressed the Commune at the end of May during La semaine sanglante ("The Bloody Week"), beginning on May 21. The national forces killed in battle or quickly executed between 10,000 and 20,000 Communards.

In its final days, the Commune executed the Archbishop of Paris, Georges Darboy, and about one hundred hostages, mostly gendarmes and priests. A total of 43,522 Communards were taken prisoner, including 1,054 women. More than half were quickly released. Fifteen thousand were tried, 13,500 of whom were found guilty. Ninety-five were sentenced to death, 251 to forced labor, and 1,169 to deportation, mostly to France's South Pacific colony of New Caledonia. Thousands of other Commune members, including several of the leaders, fled abroad, mostly to England, Belgium and Switzerland. All the prisoners and exiles received pardons in 1880 and could return home, where some resumed political careers in the now-firmly-established Third Republic.

Debates over the policies and outcome of the Commune had significant influence on the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, authors of The Communist Manifesto in 1848. Engels described the Commune as follows: "Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat."

In America, the Republican Party's hatred of Communism long predated Senator Joe McCarthy in the early 1950s. As early as 1896, while Police Commissioner of New York City, Theodore Roosevelt -- 12 years old at the time of the Commune -- gave campaign speeches for Presidential candidate William McKinley, suggesting that McKinley's Democratic opponent, William Jennings Bryan, and his populist ideas were comparable to the Paris Commune. 

Adrien Lejeune was the last surviving Communard, having lived until 1942, dying under the Nazi occupation.

The most lasting legacy of the Commune is "The Internationale," a song written in June 1871 by Eugène Pottier, to be sung to the tune of the French national anthem, "La Marseillaise." In 1888, Pierre De Geyter wrote its more familiar backing music. With such memorable lines as, "Arise, ye wretched of the Earth," and, "We have been nought, we shall be all," it has been the anthem of leftist movements ever since.

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May 28, 1871 was a Sunday. This was the 1st season of the 1st professional baseball league, the National Association. However, it was then considered taboo to play sports on Sundays, and some States prohibited it by law. Therefore, there were no games on this historic day.