To the Barricades!

We've been on holiday!



After 5 nights in Paris, I've come back a wine buff. We didn't really do much. I had an amazing quiche. We went to a few cemeteries. Took a couple of public naps. 

On the Tuileries they have chairs adapted for napping.

We stayed in Montmartre, which you think is all cute streets and cafe culture but take a two minute walk in the opposite direction and you see this is not the case for most who live in the 18th Arrondissement.

No Housing = No Life. 

It's a bit like the East End, a former working class community which has been part gentrified, pricing out the people who live there. 

People come from all over the world to eat at the cafe where they filmed Amelie and be awed by the Sacre Coeur but for the people who live there it's a different story. 

Sounds familiar.

Tourists love the Sacre Coeur cos it's big and pretty but it's history is really quite sinister. 

In 1870, France was at war with Prussia. Prussia obviously doesn't exist anymore, but it was bits of Germany, Poland and Denmark. For the visual learners:  

Like Russia but with a P.

In the Montmartre district of Paris, workers had been taxed to pay for cannons to defend the city against the Prussian army which had surrounded them. The French government were doing a deal in secret to surrender against the wishes of the people.

One morning, when they thought everyone would still be in bed, the armed guards tried to steal the cannons away from the people. 


Unfortunately for them, they didn't bank on the Fish Mongers Wives, who were all up at that time anyway and caught them in the act.  

The fishwives then start abnging on every door in manor, waking everyone up to stop the State from stealing the cannons. Anyway, to cut a long story even shorter, they led an uprising against the corrupt, capitalist regime and set up a commune in Paris, which was the first time anyone had tried that. 

They returned everyone's stuff that they'd had to pawn to survive when they were under siege. They scrapped interest on debts, let workers take over companies which had been abandoned and even did away with night duty for bakers! 

Zut Alors!

If they needed to get stuff in and out of the city, the used hot air balloons and hoped for the best.


It all ended tragically when the French Government, under the leadership of Adolphe Theirs teamed up with their old enemy, the Prussians to crush the revolution. 30,000 men women and children were slaughtered in the one week. 

The rich were so terrified of anything like this ever happening again, they destroyed all monuments to the Paris Commune. In place they built the Sacre Coeur, to strike the fear of God into people and assert the authority of the church and the state over the people.

However, no-one has been able to white-wash the commune and its legacy from history. The whole episode inspired Karl Marx, who realised that when it comes to uprisings, you can be no half-measures. 

This is the grave of Adolphe Theirs. According to some old guy at Pere Lachaise cemetery, 100 years later, in 1971, Communist Party members tried to blow it up. That's what you get for murdering 30,000 civilians I suppose. 

You can find, amongst the fallen revolutionaries and monuments to those who fought fascism in the 20th Century, a small memorial to the Communards. 

People come here from all over the world to remember the triumph and the tragedy of the Paris Commune and those who fought for it. 

A word to the wise though, don't be like this guy. Eudes was giving such a barnstorming speech that he blew an aneurysm in his brain and died. 

To the Barricades! 

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