The Paris Commune: Ten Weeks That Shook France

Paris seized its own capital on 18 March 1871 — and held it for ten weeks before the army crushed it in a single Bloody Week. This is how a besieged city turned its guns on its own government, and what it cost. This documentary traces the Paris Commune from the French army's defeat at Sedan in September 1870 through the German siege of Paris and the rise of a radicalized National Guard. It covers the 18 March 1871 uprising, when Paris seized its own capital and held it for just over two months. It follows the Commune's reforms and disputes in power, then the Bloody Week of May 1871, when the Versailles government retook the city and killed thousands of Communards. It ends with the trials, exiles, and lasting disagreement among historians, from Friedrich Engels to Robert Tombs, over what the Commune actually proved. CHAPTERS 0:00 The Archbishop's Execution 0:47 Defeat at Sedan 4:00 The Armistice and the Indemnity 5:51 The Montmartre Cannon Seizure 6:32 The Commune Takes Power 7:48 The Bloody Week Begins 8:41 Trials, Prisoners, and Exile 10:38 Judging the Commune's Legacy SOURCES [1] Owen Holland. "It Had to Come Back": The Paris Commune and H. G. Wells's When the Sleeper Wakes. ELH. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1353/elh.2019.0013 [2] Laura C. Forster. The Paris Commune in London and the Spatial History of Ideas, 1871–1900. The Historical Journal. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x1900... [3] Adam George Dunn. A Luxury Legacy for the Paris Commune. Cultural Politics an International Journal. 2016. https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-3436724 [4] Stéphanie Sauget. Enterrer les morts pendant le double siège de Paris (1870-1871). Revue historique. 2015. https://doi.org/10.3917/rhis.153.0557 [5] Eric Brandom. Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune par John Merriman. The French review. 2015. https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2015.0225 [6] Karine Varley. Reassessing the Paris Commune of 1871 : a response to Robert Tombs, 'How bloody was la semaine sanglante? a revision'. 2011. https://pureportal.strath.ac.uk/en/pu... [7] Colette Wilson. Paris and the Commune 1871–78: The politics of forgetting. Kent Academic Repository (University of Kent). 2007. https://web.archive.org/web/202507181... (archived) [8] Gerald S. Greenberg. The Paris Commune of 1871 and the Bibliothèque Nationale. Library trends. 2007. https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2007.0008 [9] Martin P. Johnson. Memory and the Cult of Revolution in the 1871 Paris Commune. Journal of women's history. 1997. https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2010.0188 [10] Roger V. Gould. Multiple Networks and Mobilization in the Paris Commune, 1871. American Sociological Review. 1991. https://doi.org/10.2307/2096251 [11] Jacques Rougerie. L'A.I.T. et le mouvement ouvrier à Paris pendant les événements de 1870–1871. International Review of Social History. 1972. https://doi.org/10.1017/s002085900000... [12] Adolphe Thiers (Wikipedia, en). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphe... [13] La Commune (Paris, 1871) (Wikipedia, en). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Comm...) [14] Paris Commune (Wikipedia, en). Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_C... ALSO CONSULTED Works consulted while researching this video that the narration does not cite. Listed for the record, not as recommendations. [15] 1871: the Paris commune, 1927. https://archive.org/details/1871ThePa... [16] 4. The Paris Commune and the “Bloody Week” of 1871, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501730702... [17] A short history of the Paris Commune, 1895. https://archive.org/details/shorthist... [18] Art, War and Revolution in France, 1870–1871: Myth, Reportage and Reality, 2000. https://books.google.com/books?id=_4h... [19] La Franc-Maçonnerie et la Révolution française, 1904. https://archive.org/details/lafrancma... [20] La caricature politique en France pendant la guerre, le siège de Paris et la Commune (1870-1871), 1890. https://archive.org/details/lacaricat... IMAGE CREDITS Legion federal belge - commune de paris.jpg — Lebrun (CC BY-SA 4.0). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi.... Archival images are in the public domain or released under the licences noted above. Full provenance for every image is kept with the production record for this video. Music: Brahms, Clarinet Trio Op. 114 - III. Andante grazioso by Paul Pitman (piano), Bang-Eun Lee (cello), Michael Arnold (clarinete) (CC0) — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... #paris #france #french #francaise Narration is AI-generated. Research, script, and sourcing are human-directed.