Communards

This article is about those associated with the Paris Commune. For the uncapitalized term (for a commune member in general), see commune (intentional community). For the band, see The Communards. For a staff cook, see brigade de cuisine.
Communards (National Guards) at Boulevard Voltaire
"The Commune arrested by Ignorance and Reaction"
Executed Communards (National Guards)
Communards executed in 1871
The corpses of Parisian Communards

The Communards (French: [kɔmynaʁ]) were members and supporters of the short-lived 1871 Paris Commune formed in the wake of the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

After the suppression of the Commune by the French Army in May 1871, 43,000 Communards were taken prisoner, and 6,500 to 7,500 fled abroad.[1] The number of Communard soldiers killed in combat or executed afterwards during the week has long been disputed—Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray put the number at 20,000, but estimates by more recent historians put the probable number between 10,000 and 15,000.[2] 7,500 were jailed or deported under arrangements which continued until a general amnesty during the 1880s; this action by Adolphe Thiers forestalled the proto-communist movement in the French Third Republic (1871–1940).

  1. ^ Milza, 2009a, pp. 431–432
  2. ^ Audin, Michele, La Semaine Sanglante, Mai 1871, Legendes et Conmptes, Libertalia Publishers (2021) (in French)