¹ The 1876 elections in France had produced a Chambre des Députés with a clear Republican majority; faced with this majority, MacMahon, President of the Republic, exercised his right to dissolve the parliament on 16 May 1877, appointed the monarchist de Broglie as head of a new government and prepared for new elections with a wholesale purge of the administration. The Republicans united under Grévy and Gambetta, and despite the ‘fixing’ of the elections by the MacMahon prefects, succeeded in winning 326 seats out of 533. The coup of 16 May had thus failed; the short-term effects of this crisis were the ending of a serious monarchist threat and the final establishment of the Republic. In the long term, the republicans' fear of any further exercises of presidential authority in this way meant the effective castration of the executive authority until 1958 and a consequent importance attached to legislative activity and manoeuvring.

² France had been represented, by Waddington as Foreign Minister, at the 1878 Berlin Congress, her first foreign ‘engagement’ since 1871. Waddington's role there, considering his achievements in reserving French rights in colonial and mediterranean matters, was not as null as Blanqui would have us believe, in accusing him of being Bismarck's dupe. But then Blanqui was using the occasion to indulge in some chauvinist polemic, and Waddington was a convenient ‘ploy’. He is notably more charitable to Grévy, despite the ‘oriental monarch’ gibe, largely because GréVy was the principle stumbling block to the ambitions of Gambetta, Blanqui's personal bête noire. On the Berlin Congress and Waddington's relations with Bismarck, see in particular Hanotaux, Hist. France Contemporaine, iv, 346–86Google Scholar, also Seignobos, , Hist, contentporaine viii, 292–3.Google Scholar

³ Blanqui's own line is expressed in La Patrie en Danger, a five-centime daily which he, Tridon and others started on 7 Sept. 1870. At first, they offered their ‘concours le plus énergique et le plus absolu, sans aucune r´eserve ni condition, si ce n'est qu'il maintiendra quand même la République’ to the Provisional Government. This ‘concours’ lasted … some ten days, after which it tailed off into attacks on that selfsame government. By February 1871 Blanqui, in a handout, is attacking the ‘gouvernement de la déroute nationale’, etc., with no word of his attitude the previous autumn.

⁴ On 24 October 1870, during the Siege of Paris, a house in the Impasse Massonnet, in the eighteenth arrondissement, was shattered by an explosion which revealed the presence of a group of Blanquists, busy manufacturing ‘Orsini’ bombs. Edmond Adam, Prefect of Police, reported the possibility that this bomb factory was: ‘organisée par la mairie du 18e arrondissement … la fabrication des nouvelles bombes, ordonnée d'abord en vue de la défense nationale, a change d'objectif à mesure que le danger paraissait moins imminent du côté des Prussiens, et elle se continuait en vue de quelque tentative révolutionnaire …’ (Bibl. Hist. Ville de Paris, Mss Series 27, carton 1.) The mayor of the 18th arrondissement was, of course, Clemenceau.

⁵ Gustave Geffroy refers to Blanqui's admiration for Clemenceau in his Clemenceau, Cres 1918, p. 153. In the same work he says of Clemenceau that ‘Blanqui restera une des admirations de sa vie’ (p.33).Google Scholar

⁶ See Mathiez, Albert, ‘Notes Inédites de Blanqui sur Robespierre’, in Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française, 1928, p. 311, n. 2.Google Scholar

⁷ Since the reference by Zévaès, archivists have searched in the jumbled mass of Blanqui papers for the letter to which Zévasès referred and of which Clemenceau boasted to his friends. The actual reference is Bibliothèque Nationale Mss, Papiers d'Auguste Blanqui, N.A.Fr. 9592–1, fos. 543–4.

⁸ On 31 March 1848 Jules Taschereau published, in the Revue Retrospective, a document taken from the secret archives of the Orleanist Monarchy concerning statements made about secret societies, especially ‘Families’ and ‘Saisons’, and about the uprising of 12 May 1839, led by Barbès and Blanqui and resulting in 50 deaths and 190 wounded. The implication behind the revelation was that it was Blanqui (although he was not named) who had ‘revealed all’ to the 1839 Minister of the Interior, Duchatel. Blanqui immediately demanded that all recognize this document as a fabrication by his enemies; nevertheless, he lost many supporters on its account during 1848. He refused to appear before a committee of enquiry set up by the clubs to investigate the allegations; his ‘explanation’ of the affair was little more than an account of his services and sufferings for the revolution, together with the usual attacks on his foes. A judicial enquiry threw heavy suspicion on Blanqui, and Barbés himself expressed his doubts on the affair. Although nothing came of these various investigations, most militants were by now certain that Blanqui had been the ‘informer’ of 1839. Proudhon wrote to Langlois on 7 Jan. 1851: ‘Je crois que Blanqui a fait des aveux’ (Correspondance, t. 4, p. 8).Google Scholar The whole affair is still rather mysterious, which perhaps explains why the inheritors of the revolutionary tradition have by now come to condemn the ‘Taschereau document’ and to exculpate Blanqui himself. But it has to be said that Blanqui never actually denied meeting the Minister on the dates in question, 22, 23 and 24 October 1839. Nor did he ever ask for the support or witness of Duchatel himself, who lived on until 1867. No one has satisfactorily explained Blanqui's equivocations in this matter. As for Blanqui's continued reputation, this has become so important in the historiography of the European Left, especially to the ‘libertarian’ elements, and even the Communists, that ir is more convenient to ignore the 1839 episode. As for the Parisians, convinced that they have named a major Boulevard after a National Hero, they would be loath to admit that they had honoured a common informer

⁹ Bibliothèque Nationale Mss, Papiers d'Auguste Blanqui N.A.Fr. 9592–1, fo. 365 v, where Blanqui has extracted a passage from the Petite Presse for Tuesday, 18 Feb. 1879, and underlined certain key quotes from a statement by Gambetta, notably the ‘hommes sages’ passage cited, and another saying ‘nous n'aborderons pas toutes les rfformes a la fois’.

¹⁸ Mars 1879. Mon cher XX une occasion se présente de causer un peu avec vous et j'en profite. Tout d'abord, je vous serre énergiquement les deux mains à votre descente de la tribune le 21 février, l'un de vos plus beaux jours de triomphe, et aussi l'un de mes meilleurs jours de chance, chance peut-être sans lendemain, qui ne m'en laisse pas moins votre débiteur. Croyez bien, mon cher XX, que cette dette-là ne sera jamais oubliée.

Maintenant, qu'adviendra-t-il, non plus seulement de moi mais de tout le monde. On s'estimait arrivé, l'horizon se r'ouvre indéfini, et bien brumeux, ce me semble. Je ne sais ce que vous pouvez apercevoir, vous, de haut, de mon creux, moi, je ne vois que la brume. M'est avis cependant que l'opportunisme ne dételle pas au relais et entend poursuivre sa route. Devant témoins, Gambetta vient de rendre cet oukase: ‘Nous continuerons à être des hommes sages, des hommes de bon sens et d'opportunité.’

C'est pas mal d'outrecuidance. L'opportunisme paraissait avoir une raison d'être,

¹⁰ Léon Gambetta.

¹¹ Fondrière - morass, quagmire.

¹² (a) On 11 July 1880 a full amnesty was finally granted to all but incendiarists and murderers. Despite the efforts of Clemenceau, Naquet and Lockroy, the government project of February 1879 limited the amnesty to a pardon, granted at the discretion of the President of the Republic.

(b) Blanqui is referring here to the mild follow-up given to the report of the Enquiry Commission on the 1877 elections. This report, presented by Henri Brisson, effectively pointed the finger of accusation at the members of the de Broglie and Rochebouet cabinets; the chamber rejected the report and voted to have posted in every commune in France a notice simply leaving the men of 16 May to ‘the judgement of the national conscience’.

(c) Legal action had been taken against certain ‘advanced’ newspapers and in the absence of any more recent press law (such as that which came into being on 29 July 1881) these actions were based on the decree of 17 Feb. 1852, imposed by Louis Napoleon in the period of dictatorship following his coup d'état.

¹³ This refers to the partial amnesty, or ‘pardon’ law, promulgated 4 Mar. 1879.

¹⁴ Since 4 Sept. 1870, it had been standard practice for governments and deputies to condemn the Second Empire and foremost, naturally, the coup d'état with which it began; all that was bad could only stem from the Empire and its consequences. Thus for Blanqui, during the Waddington ministry of 1879, a newspaper could only have been fined by Bonapartist judges.

¹⁵ Following the constitutional laws of 1875, a republican majority was elected in Feb. 1876. Following the 16 May and the dissolution of the parliament, a new Chambre was elected on 14 Oct. 1877. The next elections were due in 1881, and the extreme left were hoping for a revision of the ‘perfide constitution’.

¹⁶ At the dissolution of the Chambre by MacMahon in 1877, 363 deputies had voted on 19 June a motion of defiance against de Broglie, declaring that the Ministry did not have the confidence of the nation's representatives. These 363 deputies then stood on an unchanged programme, and it was agreed that no republican candidates would oppose them. 321 republicans were returned; the number rose to 327 after the colonial votes were in, and by the time some 70 elections had been invalidated for unfair governmental pressure, the number was nearer 400.

¹⁷ Adolphe de Granicr de Cassagnac (12 Aug. 1808–31 Jan. 1880) was a former conservative journalist and an ardent Bonapartist following his election as a government candidate in 1852. Later he was one of a small group of Bonapartist ultras opposed to the liberal empire after 1868. Re-elected in Feb. 1876, and still a Bonapartist, he was one of the 158 deputies who supported the government after 16 May, and following his re-election in October 1877 became an extremist on the right, particularly in clerical and educational matters.

¹⁸ Actually, certain of Clemenceau's post-1877 pronouncements were less than extreme-left, in particular his failure to support Brisson in pushing the accusations of the Enquiry Commission. But Clemenceau can here be seen to have achieved a quid pro quo, since in helping the de Broglie ministers get off lightly he was able to secure Bonapartist and even monarchist backing for his motion to liberate Blanqui on 27 May 1879. Later on, a number of Bonapartists also protested against the invalidation of Blanqui's election at Bordeaux.

In the three speeches mentioned by Blanqui, Clemenceau had worked up an impressive dossier against Alfred Leroux, a former Bonapartist and now government nominee in the 1877 Vendée elections. On 4 Nov. 1878 he had succeeded in getting Leroux's election invalidated, but this settling of a local account (Clemenceau was from the Vendee) adds little to Clemenceau's stature; but in Blanqui's eyes, this pitiless and successful pursuit against the ‘enemy’, the men of the fallen regime, was much in Clemenceau's favour.

The second speech concerned the amnesty, where Clemenceau had further endeared himself to Blanqui by referring to the latter as a ‘républicain éprouvé’; Blanqui preferred this title, since it did nor implicate him excessively with such activities as the Commune … in 1872 he had declared himself to have known men such as Raoul Rigault ‘only by name’, and had referred to the hostages of the Commune as ‘barbarous’.

The third reference concerns Clemenceau's interpellation of 3 Mar. 1879, which brought about the resignation of the Minister of the Interior, de Marcere, following a scandal over the powers of the Prefecture de Police. This too, of course, pleased Blanqui, who was much agitated over police personnel who had operated under the Empire. Certainly, the Clemenceau who shared Blanqui's views in these matters was far from the man who in 1906 was to become the ‘premier flic de France’. (On Clemenceau's demands for the replacement of police personnel in the 18th arrondissement after Sept. 1870, see Archives de la Prefecture de Police, B/a 362–4.)

¹⁹ The ‘Union Republicaine’ was Gambetta's party, reconstituted after June 1876, and bereft of its (weak) left elements. By 1879 Blanqui was counting on some sections of Gambetta's group splitting off and moving to join the small forces of the left. Significantly, Clemenceau in 1880 began to campaign to this end, publishing ‘La Justice’, attacking opportunism and its leaders with their talk of the opportune postponement of reforms. The Republic as envisaged by Blanqui and Clemenceau was by now very different from that of Gambetta.

²⁰ The truth of Blanqui's point about the ‘unity’ fetish is brought out in the later history of the French Socialist movement; it was one of his more perceptive criticisms.

²¹ In Blanqui's text the Latin sentence, here placed between dashes, appears above, between the alines.

²² Blanqui's overwhelming (and perhaps justified) paranoia, and his equally large (but less justified) sense of his own importance are well brought out in this paragraph.