L'armée de Versailles et les combats de rues pendant la Semaine sanglante (21 mai 1871-28 mai 1871)

Résumé En

A confrontation between the legitimate state authority, forced to take refuge at Versailles, and the Paris insurgents was inevitable once an insurrectional body had constituted itself on 18 March 1871 to direct the affairs of the city without reference to the government. Thus was the Paris Commune born. The army assembled at Versailles and loyal to Adolphe Thiers was thenceforth obliged not to maintain order in the capital but to regain control of the city in order to restore order. For a week the Versaillais and the Communard insurgents battled it out in ferocious street fighting. By the end of the week (dubbed ‘Bloody Week’), for the first time in the nineteenth century the army’s high command had succeeded in entirely wiping out an insurrection and saving the political regime. In more ways than one the street fighting prefigured the urban warfare.that would become commonplace in the twentieth century : the city became a battlefield, whether this came about in the context of a civil war or a conventional conflict. More than ever the maintenance of order, or its re-establishment, became of vital significance, cities being the concentration points of men, resources and above all of power.