Chapter 1336 French People's Commune Republic
However, although the president of the Paris Commune, Uhgus, was quite famous, but more importantly, he studied politics, economics, and military theories, and was still very lacking in practical organizational and management skills, after all, Uhgus even failed to run a small ancestral factory and went out of business, and his actual organizational skills may be somewhat inferior to ordinary people's imagination.
As the Paris Commune took control of the whole of Paris, he became less and less accustomed to the system of power in Paris as a whole, and soon one of the permanent members of the Paris Commune, a workers' leader named Louis Auguste Blanqui, took real power of the Commune.
Blanqui was already in his sixties, he was a well-known activist and revolutionary in the labor movement throughout France in his early years, studied at the University of Paris, but dropped out of school to participate in the barricade war against King Charles X, and later actively participated in the July Revolution of 1830 and joined the republican organization Friends of the People, becoming a left-wing leader of the Society of Friends of the People. In the course of his later career, Blanqui organized and staged more than a dozen workers' uprisings and was arrested many times, so he became well known to the majority of French workers. At the time of the Paris workers' uprising and the establishment of the Paris Commune, he launched another workers' uprising in Lyon, and although he was not in Paris, his reputation was so great that even in his absence from Paris, the workers' representatives in Paris elected him as a permanent member of the Commune.
After the Paris Commune had completely taken control of Paris, he was overjoyed, and immediately launched a workers' uprising in Lyon, occupied the town hall of Lyon, and announced to the public that he would support the Paris Commune as the leading body of France, and at the same time launched an appeal for the workers of all parts of France to unite in a violent uprising, overthrow the existing local rule, and follow the example of Paris and become the masters of this territory. At the same time, he secretly came to Paris, not only to serve as a member of the Commune, but also succeeded in winning over most of the members, and made the president of the Paris Commune, Friedrich Uhgus, and the vice president of the Paris Commune, Bautier, the executive vice president, himself the executive vice president.
Not long after, under Blanqui's leadership, the Paris Arsenal, which was in the hands of the Paris Commune, began to go into production frantically, making weapons and munitions at a rate of 200 cannons and 10,000 rifles per month. At the same time, the Paris Commune announced the reorganization of the National Guard, and newly recruited a large number of workers and soldiers, especially proletarian hired workers and vagrants, to establish the French People's Revolutionary Army. As for Bautier, he was appointed Minister of Education and Culture, who did not have much full effort, and as for Umgus, although he was still the president of the Paris Commune, he had been completely hollowed out, and he was only studying how to improve the system of the Paris Commune and how to extend the Commune to other European countries.
In the absence of Gross's neglect of government affairs, Blanqui, who had already taken full control of the real power, began a strict purge of Paris. I have to say that Blanqui is a genius born for political struggle. He openly declared that it was the duty of a revolutionary that all the members of the Paris Commune must fight incessantly, desperately until death.
After nearly thirty or forty years of workers' movements and insurrections, Blanqui knew very well that this society had to rely on its own strength, on the power of a large number of people, to take full control. And this process cannot rely on the so-called democratic parliamentary elections, but on violent struggle. Moreover, he absorbed the lessons of the French Revolution and social utopianism, as well as the lessons of the Lyon textile workers' revolt and the defeat of the Chartist movement in England.
After taking control of Paris, he preached that all the proletarian workers of all parts of France should unite to form a workers' united republic, and this proletarian worker, whom he defined as French, as long as he had no property, could be regarded as his own. Poor workers, soldiers, teachers, and servants who lived on their salaries could become masters of the Paris Commune. What is more, he set up a new "Paris Commune" newspaper and directly published articles declaring that the workers of Europe and other countries of the world, as long as the proletarian workers in the broad sense of the word, who do not have any property, can join France and even Paris, become a part of the Commune, and share all the wealth of the Paris Commune. Moreover, in the same issue of the newspaper article, Blanqui made public all the wealth inherited by the Second French Empire and the Provisional Government of France, which had been preliminarily liquidated by the Paris Commune:
In the city of Paris alone, the bills of exchange and account assets of the major banks are not counted, but only the gold and hard currency such as the pound sterling mark in the banks are nearly 12.4 billion francs, and if you add other fields, palaces, factories and mines, the total wealth of the city of Paris and its surroundings alone is estimated at 20 billion francs!
Now, on behalf of the Paris Commune, the powerful Blanqui announced that they would all be confiscated and become the common property of the Paris Commune and all proletarian workers, and everyone would have a share. Moreover, Blanqui also declared that the wealth of the other French cities, and indeed of France as a whole, belonged to all the members of the Commune. He called on all the workers, soldiers, craftsmen, and all other proletarians everywhere to take up arms and assemble to overthrow the exploitative rule of the capitalists and factory owners, and to become masters of all the wealth of factories, shops, farms, mines, banks, palaces, etc.
As soon as the news broke, the whole of France went crazy.
It was not the workers who responded, but the soldiers, especially the soldiers of the Nantes and Boer regiments, because most of them were originally the children of workers and hired peasants, and had no property at all, and they were very excited to hear that if they rose up and overthrew the local government, they could own their wealth. In particular, the news published in the Paris Commune newspaper was widely circulated, and the soldiers could not help but calculate that the whole of France, that is, the population of 36 million. And that is the wealth of Paris alone amounting to 20 billion francs. That translates to an average of 555 francs per person in France! And if it is divided among the 5 million people of the greater Paris area alone, it can reach 4,000 francs per capita!
As a result, soldiers in the armies of France all over France pledged their allegiance to the Paris Commune in droves, even entire battalions, and half divisions, in defiance of orders. Under this influence, almost two-thirds of France's army was loyal to the Paris Commune. The workers were even more frenzied, and they took up arms in great joy and stormed the factories, driving the owners away, and treating them as their own property. But because of the struggle for property, they began to fight among themselves, and many workers and rebel soldiers were killed and wounded. Upon learning of the whole situation, the Paris Commune, led by Blanqui, quickly issued a notice that although all wealth belonged to the workers and other proletariat, it did not have the right to dispose of it directly, but that the Commune exercised the right to dispose of it on behalf of everyone.
Moreover, Blanqui, who had already seized the power of Paris, directly announced that he would tear up all unequal treaties signed by the Provisional Government of Far France, but only the Treaty of Versailles with the German Empire, and not include the treaties in favor of France that colonized Tunisia and Algeria.
At this time, the newly formed German Empire also received news from Paris and was dumbfounded. Although they were only 100 kilometers away from Paris, Paris, which was already controlled by the frenzied Commune, completely blocked the news, and it was not until the Paris Commune newspaper published it that the story was discovered. At this time, it was discovered that the president of the French Provisional Government, Adolf Thiers, had already come to their army to report the situation, but no one paid attention to it because he was a deserter.
Suddenly, Germany was furious, and regardless of the threat of the British and Belgian troops approaching Luxembourg, he directly led the army to approach Paris again, not only to recover the compensation losses signed in the agreement, but also to completely capture Paris, or even completely occupy Paris and other places. As a result, the 150,000-strong German army once again approached Paris, and the newly born regime of the Paris Commune suffered a major crisis.
At this time, Blanqui also seemed to feel the pressure, and directly declared the establishment of the Republic of the French People's Commune, and he was enshrined as the spiritual leader but had no real power, and he himself was elected President of the Republic and Commander-in-Chief of the People's Revolutionary Army.