In
Honor Of The 145th Anniversary Of The Paris Commune –Jean-Paul
Jacques Paget’s Dilemma
Home, home for a few hours reprieve, a little rest, and some
precious bread, if young daughter Lilly had been able to obtain any at the
market was all that was on Jean- Paul Paget’s mind as he left the Hotel de
Ville (Town Hall) on that late march evening. He had a few days before, as a
proud and well known Proudhonist around the neighborhood been elected to the ad hoc committee of public safety for
the neighborhood, for the section, and for the Paris Commune that had been
established week before in the wake of the struggle between the Central
Committee of the National Guard and the old, good riddance, Theirs government
that had fled, fled tail between its legs, to Versailles and he hoped to oblivion.
This day however had not been a good day, not at all, since there were still
many hot disputes among the partisans about how to proceed next. All Jean-Paul
knew was that he was opposed to the Central Committee of the National Guard
trying to duck responsibility for defense of the revolution and that they,
meaning not just the committee but all of Paris had to pitch in and try to get
the damn Germans and their infernal army the hell away from Paris, far away.
And that latter concern was not just a show of French nationalism before the
wicked enemy on Jean-Paul’s part but a very practical consideration since his
son Leon was being held by the Germans as a prisoner of war waiting parole.
As Jean Paul meandered home and headed toward Rue Saint
Catherine he could see his young son Jean Jacques sitting on a chair behind a
makeshift barricade parapet, rifle in hand, defending the rue, the section,
hell, all of Paris, against the surrounding Germans but, more importantly, any
efforts by the Theirs bandits to try to cause a disruption in Paris. Jean- Paul
had immense pride in Jean-Jacques (and Leon too, for that matter, although he
had advised against going into the army, the national guard would have been a
better place for a son of the people ), a lad of only fourteen, yet the leader
of the young comrades who had erected the barricade Saint Catherine in a few
hours. And in a talk that that the pair had had one night Jean Jacques, after
listing all the “demands” he wished considered by the various committees,
expressed his willingness to die for the Commune if it came to it. That stopped
the old man for a moment, he was willing to die, no question, but to ask the
young, the future, to do so was a separate serious question that he was not
sure where he stood on. Probably events
and luck would sort that out.
After a couple of words with Jean-Jacques Jean-Paul went up
the street to home still heated up by the argument that he had with others on
the public safety committee, especially Varlin, a fellow Proudhonist, but
others as well, about the role of the National Guard. Basically his view was
that the Central Committee of the National Guard was necessary to keep a strong
military posture when Thiers was still a threat, a distant threat but a threat
nevertheless, and the Germans were hovering by. They, in turn, were trying to
dissolve themselves into street militias and other ad hoc formations and not take central political responsibility for
the defense of the Commune. Jean-Paul was not a military man but he remembered
what had happened in the June days of 1848 when he was a lad not much older
than Jean –Jacques and the practically defenseless Parisian working quarters
ran with blood because they had no proper military formations to fight against
the government onslaught. As he entered his house he had a queasy foreboding
feeling, a something foul in the air feeling …
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