Can You Cancan?

In a time when the world seems upside down, where black is called white and night called day, it is perhaps instructive to look back to other chaotic times. I admit a fondness for “lost” history. By that I mean events which were awesome in scope but now are almost completely forgotten. I realize that most people do not harbor a great fascination for history (along with many mathematics courses, specifically, statistics). I truly understand as they are often taught without joie de vivre to say the least.

Two stories stand out in my mind but I must save one for later. This story is of the 1870 Siege of Paris, the fall of the city, the establishment of the Commune and the civil war that followed―resulting in the virtual destruction of the heart of Paris and the death of thousands. Never heard of it? That’s my point precisely.

Ok, in order to get to the good stuff we have to hop and skip through the preliminaries. France under the Second Empire was a great place if you had money and liked to party. Napoleon’s nephew Louis Napoleon ruled it from 1852-1870 calling himself Napoleon III―offhand I have no idea what happened to Napoleon II―but no matter. Louis took power in a coup d’etat in the chaotic aftermath of the Revolution of 1848. (Don’t ask.) He promised much in the way of political freedoms but after some consideration of the mood and habits of the French populace, who with little encouragement turned to murderous mayhem―he reneged.

His reign was marked by thousands of parties, fetes, pomp and good times―rather like New Orleans at its most elegant and decadent. Alas, parties must end and by 1870 things were getting very shaky both politically and financially. So Louis picked a fight with an upstart neighborhood toughie, Prussia. It was a singularly bad idea. Prussia was delighted, having long been regarded as a joke. They had just knocked over Austria and were looking for someone else to stomp into the ground. The Franco-Prussian War followed. (Don’t look; it was awful.) Napoleon III pathetically lost the battles, the war and his throne. Meanwhile France decided to fight on. Prussia, delighted once again, surrounded The City of Lights and commenced a siege.

Paris was surrounded by 14 well-built forts, note please “well built” not “up to date.” They had impressively thick walls and a service railway which ran around a circuit to each fort. Their common problem was that they were not proof against “plunging fire” i.e. shells dropping in from above, the very latest fashion in warfare. Still the forts were no pushovers. Thus began the Siege of Paris.

It lasted four and a half months and it was again awful. As usual, the universal law that whatever enterprise you undertake will take longer and cost more than you originally thought, applied with a vengeance. The German cannons supplied by Krupp were the best in the world―at plunging fire.

Despite elaborate precautions the city ran short of food; rich and poor citizens resorted to eating pets, pigeons, horses, zoo animals, rats and anything including, it was rumored, people. Trees lining Paris’ new wide avenues were cut for firewood and defense works.

Even so, people came from all over to join in. You just have to love it. Journalists, adventurers and bored rich kids flocked to the pending event. One landlord advertised that “English gentlemen wishing to attend the Siege of Paris…” could rent “comfortable apartments or completely shell proof basement rooms for impressionable persons.”

Everybody got what they paid for and learned in the process what plunging fire really meant―it was really awful.

Paris surrendered on January 28, 1871. The Germans got to declare an Empire― the second Deutsches Reich―eventually followed by the Third Reich. See how it all fits? In the miserable aftermath, the French government, such as it was, began to reorganize. That endeavor was interrupted by the declaration of La Commune de Paris in late March. It was a loose (to put it mildly) amalgam of socialists, anarchists and other assorted leftist radicals. They were tired of the kind of governance which had dominated France since the Revolution. You know riots, murder, beheadings, invasions, the English ―all the usual annoyances.

They took advantage of the spontaneous organizing going on which had citizens arming themselves and building defenses against possible German occupation. After a brief ceremonial occupation, the Germans left and were content to sit on the outskirts of the city eating bratwurst, sauerkraut, and drinking Deutsche bier (Though the French do make rather good beer). Watching the French in murderous social chaos was entertaining payback for the damage and death the original Napoleon inflicted on the German states.

The French “government” retreated to Versailles to organize an army, not to mention an effective government. They came up with the Army of Versailles, which to this day does not inspire martial ardor. Meanwhile the Communards took up the favorite pastimes of leftists after forming a government; that of endless doctrinal disputes, policy fights and deciding who to kill. They were just getting to the who-to-kill part in earnest when the Versailles Army showed up and began the now expected siege. Communards were forced to break off from firing squads and face an enemy more ruthless than the Germans.

The following battle was awful. The Versailles Army mercilessly destroyed historic buildings, whole blocks of newly built apartments, public buildings, hospitals and markets. The battle set off huge fires which raged through the center of Paris, leaving smoldering rubble. They hauled out anyone who remotely resembled a Communard, killed them and dumped the bodies into mass graves. Historians estimate that between 20,000 and 30,000 Communards died. All the left got out of this disaster was an inspirational “romantic” memory of a putative socialist paradise.

As I’ve mentioned, it was awful. Yet today all we remember of Louis Napoleon’s Second Empire is the cancan―originally sans undies―popular in Second Empire hot nightspots.