News from Paris

[News from Paris]

[“Neue Rheinische Zeitung” No. 25  
of 25 June 1848, Extra Supplement]

* Cologne, June 24, 10 o’clock in the evening. The letters from Paris of the 23rd have not arrived. A courier who passed through here relates that at the time of his departure from Paris the struggle between the people and the National Guard had broken out and that at some distance from Paris he heard heavy cannon-fire.

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[News from Paris]

[“Neue Rheinische Zeitung” No. 26  
of 26 June 1848, Extra Supplement]

* Cologne, June 25, 10 o’clock in the evening. Once again the letters from Paris have not arrived; the Paris journals that arrived today are from the 23rd and, had the post run its regular course, should have reached us here yesterday evening. The sole sources at our disposal in these circumstances are the confused and contradictory reports of Belgian papers and our own knowledge of Paris. On that basis we have tried to give our readers as faithful a picture as possible of the insurrection of 23 June.  

Time is lacking for further marginal glosses. We shall present our detailed view, as well as the longer report on the sitting of the Paris Chamber of the 23rd, tomorrow.

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Details on the 23rd of June

[“Neue Rheinische Zeitung” No. 26  
of 26 June 1848, Extra Supplement]

* The insurrection is a purely workers’ insurrection. The workers’ resentment has erupted against the government and the Assembly, which dashed their hopes, daily adopted fresh measures in the interest of the bourgeoisie against the workers, dissolved the Workers’ Commission in the Luxembourg,[17] restricted the National Workshops,[17] and enacted the law against riotous assemblies. The decidedly proletarian character of the insurrection emerges from every detail.

The boulevards, the great artery of Parisian life, were the scene of the first assemblies. From the Porte St. Denis down to the old Rue du Temple everything was crowded. Workers from the National Workshops declared they would not go to the Sologne to the National Workshops there; others related that they had set off thither yesterday but, already at the Barrière Fontainebleau, had waited in vain for the marching orders and the departure command which had been promised them the previous evening.

Towards ten o’clock the cry for barricades was raised. The eastern and south-eastern part of Paris, from the Quartier and Faubourg Poissonnière onwards, were rapidly barricaded, though at first still rather irregularly and without cohesion. The streets St. Denis, St. Martin, Rambuteau, the Faubourg Poissonnière and, on the left bank of the Seine, the approaches to the Faubourgs St. Jacques and St. Marceau—the streets St. Jacques, La Harpe, La Huchette and the adjoining bridges—were more or less heavily fortified. Flags were planted on the barricades bearing the inscription: “Bread or Death!” or: “Work or Death!”

The insurrection thus relied decidedly on the eastern part of the city, inhabited predominantly by workers; first on the Faubourgs Saint Jacques,

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Saint Marceau, Saint Antoine, du Temple, Saint Martin and Saint Denis, on the “aimables faubourgs”[18], then on the urban quarters lying between them (Quartiers Saint Antoine, du Marais, Saint Martin and Saint Denis).

Barricades were followed by attacks. The guard post on the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, which is stormed first in almost every revolution, was held by the Mobile Guard.[17] It was disarmed by the people.

But soon afterwards the bourgeois guard of the western quarters of the city advanced to its relief. It reoccupied the post. A second detachment occupied the high pavement in front of the Théâtre du Gymnase, commanding a long stretch of the boulevards. The people tried to disarm the forward posts; however, for the time being neither side made use of its weapons.

At last the order came to take the barricade thrown across the boulevard at the Porte Saint Denis. The National Guard[18] advanced, a police commissioner at its head; parleys were held; a few shots were fired—from which side is not clear—and the firing rapidly became general.

Immediately the post at Bonne Nouvelle also opened fire; a battalion of the second legion, which held the Boulevard Poissonnière, likewise advanced with loaded muskets. The people were surrounded on all sides. From their advantageous and partly sheltered positions the National Guard opened a heavy crossfire upon the workers. The latter defended themselves for half an hour; finally the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle and the barricades as far as the Porte Saint Martin were taken. Here, too, the National Guard had taken the barricades towards eleven o’clock from the side of the Temple and occupied the approaches to the boulevard.

The heroes who stormed these barricades were the bourgeois of the second arrondissement, which stretches from the Palais Ex-Royal[19] across the whole Faubourg Montmartre. Here live the rich shopkeepers[1] of the Rue Vivienne, Rue Richelieu and the Boulevard des Italiens, the great bankers of the Rues Laffitte and Bergère and the pleasure-loving rentiers of the Chaussée d’Antin. Here live Rothschild and Fould, Rougemont de Lowemberg and Ganneron. Here, in a word, are the Bourse, Tortoni[20] and all that hangs upon and dangles from them.

These heroes, the first and foremost victims of the red republic, were also the first on the spot. It is characteristic that the first barricade of 23 June was taken by the vanquished of 24 February. They advanced three thousand strong, four companies took an overturned omnibus at the double. The

1 Shopkeepers

8 Marx/Engels, Werke, Vol. 5

114 Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels – “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”

insurgents, however, appear to have re-established themselves at the Porte Saint Denis, for towards noon General Lamoricière had to move up with strong detachments of the Mobile Guard, troops of the line, cavalry and two cannon in order to take a strong barricade together with the second legion (the National Guard of the 2nd arrondissement). A platoon of the Mobile Guard was forced to retreat by the insurgents.

The fight on the Boulevard Saint Denis was the signal for engagement in all the eastern districts of Paris. It was bloody. Over 30 insurgents were killed or wounded. The enraged workers swore to break out on all sides the following night and to fight the “Municipal Guard of the Republic” to the death.

At eleven o’clock fighting was also going on in the Rue Planche-Mibray (the continuation of the Rue Saint Martin towards the Seine); one man was killed.

In the neighbourhood of the Halles, the Rue Rambuteau, etc., bloody collisions likewise occurred. Four or five dead lay on the spot.

At one o’clock an engagement took place in the Rue du Paradis-Poissonnière; the National Guard fired; the result is unknown. In the Faubourg Poissonnière two non-commissioned officers of the National Guard were disarmed after a bloody clash.

The Rue Saint Denis was cleared by cavalry charges.

In the Faubourg Saint Jacques the fighting was very violent. In the streets Saint Jacques and La Harpe, and on the Place Maubert, barricades were stormed with varying success and heavy grapeshot was fired. In the Faubourg Montmartre the troops also fired with cannon.

On the whole the insurgents were repulsed. The Hôtel de Ville remained free; by three o’clock the insurrection was confined to the Faubourgs and the Marais.

For the rest, few National Guardsmen without uniforms (i.e. workers who have no money to purchase the uniform) were to be seen under arms. On the other hand, there were men carrying luxury weapons, hunting guns, etc. Mounted National Guardsmen (from time immemorial the young men of the richest families) had also fallen in on foot with the ranks of the infantry. On the Boulevard Poissonnière National Guardsmen quietly allowed themselves to be disarmed by the people and then took to their heels.

At five o’clock the combat was still going on when a downpour of rain suddenly suspended it.

In individual places, however, the fighting continued until late in the evening. At nine

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o’clock shots were still being exchanged in the Faubourg St. Antoine, the centre of the working-class population.

Up to now the struggle had not been waged with all the violence of a decisive revolution. The National Guard, with the exception of the second legion, seems mostly to have hesitated to attack the barricades. The workers, furious though they were, confined themselves, as is understandable, to the defence of their barricades.

Thus the two sides parted in the evening, after each had given the other a rendezvous for the next morning. The first day of the struggle brought the government no advantages; the repulsed insurgents could, during the night, as indeed they did, reoccupy the lost positions. On the other hand, the government had two important facts weighing against it: it had fired grapeshot, and it had not defeated the émeute on the first day. But with grapeshot and with a night, not of victory, but of mere armistice, the émeute ceases and the revolution begins.

Written by F. Engels.

8*

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News from Paris

[“Neue Rheinische Zeitung”  
No. 27 of 27 June 1848]

* Cologne, June 26. The news from Paris arriving at this moment takes up so much space that we are compelled to omit all discursive articles.

Therefore, only two words to our readers. The resignation of Ledru-Rollin and Lamartine as well as their ministers, Cavaignac’s military dictatorship transplanted from Algiers to Paris, Marrast as civil dictator, Paris swimming in blood, the insurrection grown into the greatest revolution that has ever taken place, into the revolution of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie—this is our latest news from Paris. The gigantic outlines of this June revolution are not satisfied with three days, as were the July revolution and the February revolution, but the victory of the people is more beyond doubt than ever. The French bourgeoisie has dared what the French kings never dared: it has cast its own lot. Only with this second act of the French revolution does the European tragedy begin.

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The “Northern Star”  
on the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung”

[“Neue Rheinische Zeitung”  
No. 27 of 27 June 1848]

The organ of the English Chartists,[21] the “Northern Star”,[22] edited by Feargus O’Connor, G. Julian Harney and Ernest Jones, contains in its latest number an acknowledgement of the manner in which the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung” comprehends the English popular movement and represents democracy in general.

We thank the editors of the “Northern Star” for the friendly and genuinely democratic way in which they have mentioned our paper. We at the same time assure them that the revolutionary “Northern Star” is the only English paper whose recognition is of any consequence to us.

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