Aviatrix Games Presents

Z
Red Carnations
on a Black Grave
Z By Catherine Ramen
 Z
Game Design & Writing
Catherine Ramen
Credits
Graphic Design & Layout
Jason Pitre

Illustration Sensitivity Reading

Juan Ochoa & Additional Writing
Amr Ammourazz
Editing Mike Duncan
Lisa Padol Kevin Nguyen
Brand Robbins Jeffrey Lawrence
Ciel Sainte-Marie

Legal
Z
From date of publication until 18 March 2031, this work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This means you are free to:
Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work;
Remix — to adapt the work; and
Sell — to make commercial use of the work

Under the following conditions:

Attribution — Attribute this work to Catherine Ramen.
Rights — You must use the same license for your work.
Moral Rights — Respect the work, and don’t use it to do harm.

On March 18, 2031, this text will be released into the public domain.

For more information visit www.aviatrixgames.com or email

info@aviatrixgames.com.

g
2
LES ŒILLETS ROUGES
À Théophile Ferré, condamné à mort

Si j'allais au noir cimetière

Frère, jetez sur votre sæur
Comme une espérance dernière
De rouges æillets tout en fleurs.
—Louise Michel

THE RED CARNATIONS

For Théophile Ferré, condemned to death

Brother, if I should go at last

Into a cold and black tomb,
Let fall on my grave like hopes past
Some red carnations all in bloom.

—Louise Michel

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 Montmartre, March 1871
Our long winter was coming to an end. The siege had been lonely, hungry,
tense, exhausting, and traumatic. Every day we had stared into a pitiless
void. Is today the day a random artillery shell kills me? My husband? My
wife? My child? Is today the day we run out of food? Have we scrounged the
last potato? Captured the last rat? Will we find fuel for one last fire? Or will
we be cold forever? Will the water—little more than a thick stew of mud,
blood, and sewage—rot me from the inside out? Or will I die of some
disease? Cholera? Tuberculosis? Will I go visit my mother and find her dead?
Will my son’s nagging cough kill him before dawn? Will any of us make it
out of these malnourished slums alive? We asked these questions every day,
but the pitiless void had no answers. Just the blank silence of a never-ending
siege. Cut off from the outside world, we had not even known if there was a
world left to live for. Inside Paris, we knew only war, famine, pestilence,
and death. For us, the apocalypse was at hand.
But the world had not yet ended. Not that we could have known. There
hadn’t been any news for months. Sometimes we had sent off bundles of
letters in clandestine balloons. Huge sacks filled with our scribbled fear,
longing, and hope. But replies never came. We had not even known if
France was winning or losing the war. Were we holding out for imminent
rescue or were we the last stubborn redoubt of the Republic? From time to
time, the generals marshaled a battalion of National Guard to try to break
out, selecting the youngest, strongest, and bravest among us to charge out of
the gates for freedom. But they had been mowed down by German artillery
and machine guns. There was no escape.
After these massacres, we passed around dangerous and seductive rumors
that we had been set up by our own leaders. That in secret meetings,
faraway places, the Government of National Defense feared the people of
Paris more than the armies of Germany. That they solemnly intoned,
“Better Bismarck Than Blanqui” and sent our boys to die in suicidal
jailbreaks because they were terrified of what we might do when the war
was over. What might happen if we emerged proud and defiant and
undefeated. We might demand the dignity we had earned in this long
terrible winter: I have starved for France; I have a right to food. I have
frozen for France; I have a right to shelter. I have died for France; I have a
right to live. This terrified them in their secret meetings in faraway places.

4
Or so it was said.
Then came the ultimate betrayal: surrender. The surrender had come
with equal parts desperate relief and grinding anguish. What had it all
been for? All that we had seen when we stared into the pitiless void. The
war. The siege. The sleepless nights. The endless days. The destruction.
The degradation. The dead wives. Dead husbands. Dead children. All of
it. What had it been for? Nothing. The Government of National Defeat
surrendered us to the enemy. Word spread that Thiers had cut a deal with
Bismarck. To hand the indomitable Parisians to the Germans. To keep us
cowed while Thiers prepared to turn the bayonets of the French army
away from Prussian infantrymen and toward Parisian beggars. Why
would he do this? What was he so afraid of? What kept him awake at
night? That we might demand food for our bellies and coal for our fires?
Fear we earned these things not with our labor but with the plain fact of
our humanity? After all that we have sacrificed for the Republic, did he
really lay awake at night afraid that we might steal from him, never
thinking twice about what he had stolen from us?
During the siege, when we suspected we were being led by generals who
feared us more than the Germans, we had resolved to protect ourselves. To
see to our own defense. We pooled our money and resources. Passed hats.
Paid subscriptions. We manufactured our own cannons. We mounted them
in our own backyards. There were not many, but they were ours. We paid
for them. We forged them. We manned them night and day. And now that
our long winter was coming to an end, there were more rumors. New
rumors. That the government in Versailles had decided they wanted to
take our cannons. What we had purchased, and built, and manned in
service of a cause they had betrayed. They were hypocrites. They were
liars. We knew they wouldn’t hesitate to hang a starving child for stealing
a moldy piece of bread. Now they were going to take what was ours? The
symbol of our resilient survival? No. They have no right. If they come, we
will show them that they may have surrendered, but we never will. Let
them face our pride, anger, desperation, courage, misery, hope, hunger,
and rage. Let them come. We will never surrender.

5
 PART 1 - THE RULES OF THE GAME
Red Carnations on a Black Grave 10
Table of Contents
What This Game Is About 10
What The Players Do 12
Who Are the Characters? 12
Playing With Respect 15
Titles 17
Playing the Game 18
Safety Considerations 20
Choose Characters 21
Pick Questions 23
Cards 27
Setting Scenes 29

PART 2 - THE GAME

Prologue: They've Come For Our Guns! 34
Montage 37
Act One — Carnival of the Oppressed 39
Act Two — First Defeats, Last Defiance 41
Act Three — The Bloody Week 43
Epilogue — Satory 45
Facilitating the Game 46
Debrief 52

PART 3 - HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Historical Background of France 56
An All Too Brief History of France 56
From Terror to Empire 57
From Restoration to Revolution 58
From Revolution to Revolution 59
The Chequered Life of Louis-Napoléon 61
The Second Empire 62

6
 Poland and Revolution 63
Socialism and Anarchism Before and After the Commune 65
The Franco-Prussian War 68
Prelude to the Commune 69
Why a Commune? 69
Monarchism in France After the Revolution 72
The Commune of Paris 74
The Commune is Formed: March, 1871 74
The National Guard 75
The Commune Endangered: April, 1871 78
The Masons and the Commune 81
The Unbelievable Life of Louise Michel 83
The Commune of Paris Under Siege: May, 1871 86
Justice in the Paris Commune 87
The Generals of the Paris Commune 88
The Bloody Week (May 21-28, 1871) 89
Aftermath 92
Satory 94
Legacy 96
Historical Background of Algeria 98
Historical Background of Martinique 100
Historical Background of New Orleans 102
Historical Background of Vietnam 104

PART 4 - APPENDICIES
Playsets 108
The Characters 110
Pronunciation 119
Selected Ludography 121
A Communard Catechism 122
Kickstarter Backers 124

7
 Part 1

8
Z
The Rules of
the Game
Z
9
 Red Carnations on
a Black Grave
Puisqu’il semble que tout cœur qui Since it seems that all hearts
bat pour la liberté n’a droit qu’à which beat for liberty only have
un peu de plomb, j’en réclame une the right to a bit of lead, I
part, moi ! Si vous me laissez demand my share! If you let me
vivre, je ne cesserai de crier live, I will not cease to cry out for
vengeance […] J’ai fini… Si vous vengeance […] I am finished…
n’êtes pas des lâches, tuez-moi… If you are not cowards, kill me…

Louise Michel at the court martial of the Communards.

WHAT THIS GAME IS ABOUT

This is a story game about the Paris Commune, a brief but intense
revolution during the spring of 1871 led by by groups of socialists,
anarchists, communists, and other radicals. Together they tried to
build a new, egalitarian society that would guarantee work, freedom,
and an end to exploitation for all the people of the world.
It was not meant to be. The conservative national government of
France, based in the Palace of Versailles (once the decadent residence
of the ancien regime) assembled an army and invaded the capital. Over
the course of the last week of May 1871—the so-called Bloody Week
(Semaine Sanglante)—the forces of Versailles attacked the city block by
block in a rampage of murder and arbitrary execution. No one knows
for sure how many people died that week, but it was probably between
20,000 and 30,000; many had no connection to the Commune. Some
were even on the side of the Versaillais.

10
 After the Bloody Week, 40,000 captives were taken to the prison camp
of Satory, near Versailles. Many died in the brutal conditions of the
prison; many others were executed by firing squad. Some were allowed
to go to trial; over 100 were sentenced to death, and many others
deported to exile in prison colonies or sentenced to hard labor inside
France. Some of the leading Communards escaped into exile in
England or Switzerland. A general amnesty in 1880 allowed the return
of the survivors.
France then tried to forget the Commune, a decades-long process that
persists to this day. While some Communards entered politics during
the Third Republic, and some others (like Louise Michel) remained
outspoken opponents of the regime, many others simply moved on.
The judgment of history was that the Commune had been led by
dangerous, crazed radicals who wanted the world (and Paris) to burn;
in time, their fierce defense of republicanism was seen as having
prevented a royal restoration, but otherwise the Commune was allowed
to sink into the shadows of history.
Some paid attention, however; Lenin and the Bolsheviks studied it exten-
sively, and formulated their own strategies of revolution to succeed where
the Commune failed. (Apocryphally, Lenin is said to have danced for joy on
the seventy-third day after the October Revolution, the moment the
Bolshevik regime had outlasted the Commune.) The Soviet Union, the
Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War, and independence move-
ments and leftist revolutionaries around the world have summoned up the
shade of the Commune to link their goals with its high idealism. On the
right, the Commune haunts the imagination: the possibility of a genuine
working class regime, despising wealth and privilege, is conjured as a
threat to order and authority. Today, in Montmartre and Paris, graffiti still
proudly proclaims "Vive La Commune!"

11
 WHAT THE PLAYERS DO
The players take turns framing scenes exploring these issues during the
72-day life of the Commune. They portray characters who live in
Montmartre, a radical working-class neighborhood of Paris, struggling
with their messy personal lives and the demands of defending Paris and
forging a revolution. In the end, the events of the Bloody Week sweep
over them. Many will die; some will have a chance to decide whether to
hold onto their beliefs in the face of almost certain death, or betray them
and hope for mercy from the government. However, even at that point,
there will be an element of randomness, for not all who were brave were
killed, nor were all who betrayed their comrades spared.
One player should also be the Facilitator. The Facilitator’s role is to
help guide the other players through the rules and help ensure a safe
and enjoyable time for all the participants. Groups that have
experience playing the game can share the role of Facilitator among all
the players if that feels more comfortable.

WHO ARE THE CHARACTERS?

Each player controls two characters in Red Carnations. In play, you
may discover that you are more interested in exploring one of your
characters’ stories than the other. Or you may find yourself exploring
both equally. The game does not require you to make one of your
characters more important than the other. Keep in mind, however, that
in Act Three of the game, one of your characters will die.
Many of the characters that appear in it were historical people; but
for most of them, there are few easily accessible historical records. This
game is a romance. That is, it presents the characters in the manner of
the romanticized accounts of the Commune, and their depiction
"prints the legend" as it were.
No disrespect is meant to any historical person. Some details have
been changed to make the game more interesting.

12
 There are eighteen characters in Red Carnations — twelve standard
characters and six expansion characters. The standard characters are:

Lodoïska Caweska, a Polish revolutionary and heavily-armed member

of the National Guard.

Jean Guy, Joséphine's husband, a corporal in the National Guard. He

died during the Bloody Week.

Joséphine Marchais, a washerwoman married to a soldier in the

National Guard. She is Dominique’s assistant. She would be sentenced
to death as a pétroleuse (a female arsonist), but her sentence was
commuted to hard labor.

Marie Marchandon, a young widow who would be arrested along with

her family after the Bloody Week.

Léonard Marchandon, Marie's father, the owner of a wine shop and a

revolutionary in 1848 who was sent to prison for insurrection.

Marguerite Marchandon, the mother of Marie and wife of Léonard.

Amanda Mercier, a prostitute and mother of Camille.

Camille Mercier, the child of Amanda. (Note: the name Camille is not
gendered in French, and Camille can be any gender the player wishes.)

Louise Michel, a teacher and radical who fought with the National
Guard and was an important voice in many of the Commune's most
radical committees. She was transported to New Caledonia in 1873 and
remained a vocal opponent of the government upon her return in 1881.

Dominique Rousseau, an immigrant from an old and wealthy free

family of color (gens de couleur libre) in Martinique. She went to
medical school in the United States and worked as a physician and
midwife in Montmartre.

Tariq Tannoudji, a spahi, an Algerian cavalry soldier. He fought in the

war against the Prussians and stayed in Paris afterwards.

Félix Vincent, a young proletarian poet and would-be journalist who

sometimes worked for Léonard.

13
 The six expansion characters are:

Gustave Courbet, one of France's leading artists and a lifelong

socialist, he was an important member of the Commune's committees.

Elisabeth Dmitrieff, a young Russian who was involved in the

organization of women in the Commune.

Anna Jaclard, a Russian journalist working with her husband Victor

for the International.

Victor Jaclard, a one-time medical student now commanding one of

the units of the National Guard.

Nguyen Van Vinh, a young man from Vietnam sent to study in France
by the Catholic Church.

Pierre (Peter) Williams, an African-American man and veteran of the

Union Army, originally from New Orleans.

14
 Playing With Respect
By James Mendez Hodes

Red Carnations on a Black Grave characters often belong to

different demographics than their players. This is okay! We already
have plenty of historical context to inspire our roleplay without
worrying unduly about “how a real nineteenth-century Frenchwoman
(or whoever) would act.” That said, following these precepts keeps
portrayals respectful, which keeps players safe at the table:

Prioritize being kind over being right.

Accept in advance that you may get things wrong, it will feel
uncomfortable when you do, and you will nonetheless listen to others’
advice and modify your behavior.
When corrected, thank the person who corrects you, apologize briefly
and/or ask for clarification if necessary, and modify your behavior. Do
not make long, elaborate apologies, or wax lyrical about your intent.
When you’re talking about intense or possibly traumatic content,
speak slowly and leave space for others to jump in and use the X-Card.
Don’t force people to talk over you or interrupt you if they want to
engage with a safety mechanism.
Distinguish clearly between your out-of-character and in-character
views and statements, but don’t hide behind “it’s what my character
would do” if your in-character behavior engenders discomfort.
Give your characters some traits which do and some traits which don’t
relate to their identity categories.

15
15
 Although nineteenth-century Europeans may not have shared our
modern views about race, gender, sexuality, and ability, warn other
players and give them the opportunity to opt out of or veil a scene if
your roleplay is likely to venture into offensive territory.
Avoid speaking slurs and hate speech aloud, even if your character or
NPC would reasonably say such a thing. Instead, summarize or
describe what they’re saying.
As the Commune’s disdain for organized religion pertained
specifically to abuses within nineteenth-century France’s Roman
Catholic Church, few (although far from zero) Communards hated on
lay Catholics in general, especially not within their own ranks.
Remember that Catholics remain a persecuted minority in many
regions, and secure your co-players’ consent before roleplaying ardent
religious intolerance.
The Paris Commune’s ideology and organization differed drastically
from modern socialist and communist movements, though some
continuities exist. Lean into this opportunity to roleplay a broad
spectrum of conflicting views. Do not harangue other players for
misremembering or misunderstanding leftist political particulars.
Red Carnations on a Black Grave’s engagement with systemic
oppression is an important quality of the game. Nevertheless,
individuals—especially individuals who have experienced identity-based
systemic oppression in real life—may feel intense, inalienable reactions to
situations during play which remind them of those experiences.
Roleplaying such situations is especially likely to evoke these reactions, so
please tread lightly. Players’ ability to feel comfortable and enjoy their
Red Carnations experience (or feel it is rewarding) without feeling
unwanted out-of-character harm is the first priority in our game, and it is
more important than historical accuracy or anything else in the game.

16
 Titles
There are a few titles characters can have in the game. These titles tell
us a little more about who they are and what they do in the Commune. A
character’s titles, if any, are printed on their card. Some of the
Inspiration cards in the game allow characters to acquire new titles; if
this happens, just make a note on a piece of paper. The titles are:

National Guard: A member of the National Guard, the citizen’s

militia. Founded during the first Revolution, the Guard had often been
the deciding factor in the many Parisian uprisings in the nineteenth
century. Originally a middle-class organization, during the Prussian
siege it was reinvented as a working class militia that provided work for
the hungry citizens of Paris. Their duties are to patrol the fortifications
that ring the city, help build barricades, serve as police auxiliaries, and
attack the Versailles armies on the field.

Communard: Technically, all the characters are Communards,

supporters of the Commune, but the title "Communard" means
someone who is an active member of the Commune, either directly in
the government, or by being on several of the important, quasi-
governmental committees. One of the most important of these is the
Union des femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soins aux blessés: The
Women's Union for the Defense of Paris and the Care of the Wounded.

Freemason: A member of the Parisian Masonic lodge. Unlike most

Masonic lodges, it does not require its members to believe in God.
Many of the original revolutionaries of 1789 had been Masons, and the
Masons of 1871 strongly supported the Commune.

International: A member of the International Workingman's Association,

known to history as the First International. A union of socialist and
communist labor organizers, headed by Karl Marx from London.

17
17
 Playing the Game
Jusqu'où vous voulez aller?
How far are you willing to go?

Red Carnations on a Black Grave is played in a series of Acts

which take place during different periods in the Commune’s brief
history. During each Act, the players have one or more scenes where
they explore the lives of their characters and the situations those
characters find themselves in. Before each Act, there are short
historical background passages to read aloud. Each passage is
assigned to the player of a different character, as well as to the
Facilitator. If a character isn’t being played, just let one of the players
present read that section. Everyone should read at least two passages
over the course of the game.
The Prologue is a short sequence used to introduce our characters,
set just after the moment the Commune’s revolution begins: the
attempt by the national army to seize the National Guard’s cannons in
Montmartre. The soldiers refused their duty and arrested and executed
their general.
Each of the next three Acts is a full round where every player gets at
least one chance to set a scene. Act One takes place in the heady early
days of the Commune’s existence, when real social change seemed at
hand. Act Two takes place after the first attacks by the national army
against the Commune, when hopes dim as the army arrives to besiege
Paris; the situation has become desperate, but many Communards
remain defiant. Act Three takes place during the “Bloody Week” when
the army assaulted the city, massacring many Communards.
Characters who survive are taken prisoner and, in the Epilogue, must
decide where their loyalties lie.

18
 A FEW NOTES ABOUT TONE
Red Carnations on a Black Grave deals with dark and difficult subjects. The
final massacre of the Communards cannot be prevented; death will come for
many of the characters in the game. A central question of the game is to
discover why they were willing to carry on in the face of certain defeat: what
did they believe in so strongly that martyrdom was not too high a price to pay?
At the same time the Commune was often a time of great joy and limitless
possibilities. Perhaps for the first time in history, the workers were firmly in
control of their destiny, and the freedom that allowed was breathtaking.
And there were many events of a light-hearted kind: parties, free concerts,
free lessons, weddings, baptisms (civic ceremonies, of course), and all the
moments, good and bad, of daily life.
This game benefits when everyone is clear about the kind of tone they
want it to have. A serious tone will probably create a more enjoyable
experience for everyone, but doesn't mean that there is no humor or joy.
Simply respect your fellow players and try to help them have the excellent
experience you wish to have.

PREPARATION
Red Carnations on a Black Grave can be played by four to six people and
requires the card decks included with the game. These are:
� A red Flag Card used to show who has the first turn in the Act
� 18 Character Cards
� 18 Question Cards
� Inspiration Cards, which can be used as inspiration for setting
scenes in the game. There are 33 Placards (used in Acts One
and Two) and 10 Bloody Week Cards (used in Act Three).
� 18 Fate Cards, which describe a character’s ultimate fate at the
end of the game
Shuffle the Character Cards and the Placards. Give the Flag Card to
the person wearing the most red. Break ties in favor of non-male
people in whatever manner makes sense for your group.
Let the person with the Flag Card know that they will be setting the
first scene of the game and make sure they are comfortable with this.
If they prefer, they can give the card to someone else.

19
 Safety Considerations
Red Carnations on a Black Grave deals with many serious subjects.
A significant portion of the characters in this game are doomed to die
or suffer other violence when the Commune is crushed in May 1871.
Additionally, many mature subjects are addressed in the game—
questions of the oppression of genders, classes, and races; questions of
violence against the defenseless; and difficult questions about the
nature of power and its inherent oppressiveness.
We all need a safe space to explore these issues. Below are several safety
tools that can help you grapple with them in an emotionally healthy way.

LINES AND VEILS

Have a discussion at the start of the game about lines, areas you don't
want to explore and won't include in the game, and veils, areas where
the concept can be part of the game but the action will "cut away" or
"fade to black" whenever they are introduced.

THE X-CARD
The X-Card is a technique developed by John Stavropolous. You can
find the full article about it here: www.tinyurl.com/x-card-rpg
Here's how to use it: at the start of play, somebody (usually the
Facilitator, the person who knows the game best and is guiding people
through playing it) says:

“I’d like your help. Your help to make this game fun for everyone. If
anything makes anyone uncomfortable in any way… [ draw X on an
index card ] …just lift this card up, or simply tap it [ place card at the
center of the table ]. You don’t have to explain why. It doesn't matter
why. When we lift or tap this card, we simply edit out anything
X-Carded. And if there is ever an issue, anyone can call for a break
and we can talk privately. I know it sounds funny but it will help us
play amazing games together and usually I’m the one who uses the X-
Card to protect myself from all of you! Please help make this game
fun for everyone. Thank you!"

20
 Ch�se Characters
Turn over the first three Character Cards. Take turns selecting
characters from the three displayed, starting with the person with the
Flag Card, then going around the table to the left. Each time a character
is selected, turn over a new Character Card. Once each player has one
character, reverse the selection order—so the last player to pick their first
character gets first choice of their second character and so on.
When all players have two characters, turn over the remaining cards
(if any). These will be played communally by all the players—if a scene
requires one of these characters, the person with narrative control can
ask another player to portray one of them.
The randomness of this process is encouraged to create new and
interesting mixes of stories. However, if you want to play one of the
characters that wasn’t chosen and the rest of the players agree, feel free
to swap one of your characters out. (Swapping both would be bad form.)

PLAYSETS
While you can simply shuffle all 18 cards together and see what
combinations get chosen, you can also arrange the deck to give the
game a more unified theme. There are several playsets included in the
rules that let you choose from a smaller selection of the game's
characters. The playsets are written for four, five, or six players.

21
 PLAY EXAMPLE:
PICKING CHARACTERS

Karim, Thuy, Jason, Nicole, Richard, and Maryse have decided to play
Red Carnations on a Black Grave. Karim is the Facilitator and, after
everyone is sitting around the table, he deals out three Character Cards.
Karim: Okay, we have Louise Michel, a 40-year-old woman who is a
schoolteacher. We have Dominique Rousseau, a 28-year-old woman
who is a physician and a midwife. And we have Lodoïska Caweska
who is in the National Guard. They were a citizen's militia loyal to
the Commune.
Jason: Ooh, I want to play her!
Karim: Great, let me draw another card. Tariq Tannoudji is a 29-
year-old cavalryman from Algeria who is also in the National Guard.
Richard: I'd like to play Tariq.
Karim: The next card is Amanda Mercier, she's 28 and a sex worker
and the mother of Camille, who is another character, and is the lover
of Lodoïska.
Nicole: I'd like to play her, and see what their relationship will look like!
Karim: Let me draw a card... okay, here's Camille Mercier, who is 12
years old. I'll take Louise, because I want to see what this improbable
friendship with Tariq looks like. Let me draw another card to make
sure we have three showing. Okay, this is Jean's wife Joséphine, she's
a washerwoman and works as Dominique's assistant. Thuy, you get
to pick next…

22
 Pick Questions
Once all the characters have been chosen, take a moment to read over
the Character Cards and the question printed on each. In a moment, you
will choose two more questions about the characters and their situation.
The questions exist to help guide the story of the game and to give
players some idea of the kinds of scenes they may wish to set. The
personal questions on the Character Cards are explicitly written to be
answered over the course of the game. In play you may discover that
you are more interested in some questions than others, or that you
don’t find an answer for everything. This is fine! However, keeping your
questions in mind is often a useful way to find scene ideas.
Deal out two Question Cards to each player. Starting with the player on
the right of the player with the Flag Card, each player reads out the
question on one of their cards and answers it. Many of the cards ask you to
name a character as part of the answer; you can ask their player to provide
the answer, or you can answer it yourself. If you do the latter, make sure
that the answer you come up with is acceptable to the other player.
If a question refers to “you” or “your character” you should answer
the question yourself about one of the characters you control.
If one of your questions is an issue that you don’t find interesting or is
difficult for you personally, discard the card and draw another one
from the deck. Feel free to do the same if the question just doesn’t
make sense with your current setup (for example, a card that references
a character not in play.)

Safety Issues
Some of the questions asked on the cards may involve subjects that are
personal or hard to deal with for a player. It is for this reason that
players are allowed to discard questions. To preserve their privacy, don’t
sort through the discard pile after players discard questions.

23
 THE QUESTIONS
� What story do you tell people about your father?
Why are you ashamed of the truth?
Name another character who knows the truth about him.

� Who has started a newspaper?

How did they get the money?

� One character is Camille's father.

Does Camille know that this character is their father?

� Who has Dominique treated for a medical condition?

What was it, and what complication did she discover while
treating them?

� What gender are you now?

What was your gender as a child?
What do others see you as?

� One of your characters dedicated a work of art to another

character. Who did they choose?
What did the subject think of the work?
Why did your character choose them as the subject?

� One of your characters saved another character’s life.

Whose life did they save?
Why did your character decide to risk themselves?

� What did you do that landed you in prison?

Who did you meet there?

� What was your religious upbringing?

What made you lose your faith?

� Who is Amanda's best customer?

Why does she ask for more money from them?

� Who does one of your characters suspect of betraying the

Commune?
Is that character aware of their suspicions?

� Who is pregnant?
Who is the father of the child?
How did they react? (Or do they not know yet?)

g
24
� Name the character one of your characters is in love with, and ask
their player if they return the affection.

� Choose a character that one of your characters is trying to convert to

their beliefs. Ask their player if they are receptive or if they resist.

� Who was a confidential informant for the Imperial police before

the Commune? Name a character who knows this secret, and ask
their player why haven't they said anything about it.

� What pressing debt have you been unable to pay?

Who do you owe it to?

� During the winter, Paris was besieged by the Prussian Army and
almost everything (especially food) ran out.
What was the worst thing you did during the Prussian siege?
Did someone help you?

� Who did you go to when you were desperately in need of something?

What was it you needed?
Did the other character help you or spurn your request?

It may be that a question interests a player but they don't have the
answer to it yet. This is okay! At the start of the game, everyone is
interested in finding out the relationships between the characters; even
if you give an answer to the question at the start of the game, you will
probably refine and even reconsider it as you play.
Once everyone has asked two questions, we are ready to begin reading
the historical introductions.

Playing Communally
Everyone has a responsibility to be aware of the other people at the table
and to help everyone be as awesome as they can be. Try to be
considerate when you ask to enter a scene, or ask for an extra scene. At
the table, everyone is a comrade, pulling together to make the best story
possible. Respect your comrades, and show them kindness.

25
 PLAY EXAMPLE: CHARACTER
QUESTIONS
Continuing with the previous example, each player has now chosen two
characters. Karim deals out two Question Cards to each player.
Karim: We're now going to use the questions on these cards to help us
add some more relationships between our characters to the game.
We'll take turns asking and answering these questions.
Jason: Do we ask both of them on our turn?
Karim: No, just one, we'll do two rounds. That way if someone has
an idea you'd like to incorporate into your answer you'll be able to.
Thuy: Who can we ask to answer the questions?
Karim: Anyone! Or rather, that depends on the card. If it says you,
you should answer the question for one of your characters.
Richard: What if it names another character?
Karim: Some cards mention a specific character, so your answer
should be about them. Sometimes the card will tell you to ask their
player something. If they don't, you can make up the answer for their
character yourself if you want. Just check in with them to make sure
it's okay. Also, you can discard a card and draw another if you don't
like the question for any reason.
Maryse: I'm getting rid of this card and drawing another. Richard, you’re
still First Player.
Richard: Cool. I'll start. "One of your characters saved another
character’s life. Whose life did they save? Why did your character decide
to risk themselves?" I'm going to answer the first part, I think it’s Tariq
and he rescued Lodoïska. Hrm... is it okay to say he's in love with her?
Jason (who is playing Lodoïska): Oh very much yes!
Karim: Awesome! Thuy, why don't you go next?
Thuy: "Who has started a newspaper? How did they get the money?" I'm
going to say it's Louise. Karim, do you mind me saying she stole the money?
Karim: I think she'd say she appropriated it, but that works for me!
Play continues until everyone has answered both Question Cards.

26
 Cards
There are two kinds of cards used during the game: the Placards and
the Bloody Week Cards. We use the Placards during Acts One and
Two, and the Bloody Week Cards in Act Three. Each Placard or Bloody
Week Card has a title, a brief note about the event it relates to, and
three evocative impressions you can use for your scene. It’s never
necessary to use a Placard, or if you do use it, to use the impressions
on the card; they are there purely to inspire you and to open up your
creativity.
The Placards evoke the myriad posters, advisements, and notices that
papered the walls of Paris during the Commune. (The majority of them
are modeled after actual affiches from the Commune.) They provide
historical context and ideas for scenes for the players. At the start of
each Act, the player with the Flag Card discards any Placards in play,
and then draws three more and places them in the middle of the table.
When it is their turn, a player may use any of the cards as inspiration.
If the group feels like a card has been resolved, discard it and draw
another card in its place.
During Act Three, instead of the Placard deck, use the Bloody Week
deck. The Bloody Week deck has events and situations specifically
related to the assault of the French army on Paris.

PLAYING SCENES
Red Carnations on a Black Grave is played in a series of scenes. The
scene is set by the player whose turn it is, and that player has ultimate
narrative authority during the scene—that is, if there is any question about
What happens next? or Does this happen? that player has the final word.

MONTAGE
At the end of the Prologue and again at the end of Act Two a special
kind of scene called a Montage is played out. This consists of brief
glimpses of each of the characters in the game, only a few sentences,
with no dialogue. The Montage is conducted in two rounds, with each
player narrating their scene about only one of their characters at a
time; this way you can build off of other players' answers if you like.
(Players have the option to do a final Montage scene immediately after
the Third Act but it is not required.)
27
 PLAY EXAMPLE: A MONTAGE
The game is now ready to begin. After finishing the readings for the
Prologue, the players get ready to start a Montage to introduce their
characters.
Karim: What we need to do now is introduce our characters with a
short description of something they are doing either before, after, or
during the French Army comes to take away the cannons on
Montmartre. It should just be an image, a couple of sentences of
description, without any dialogue. Maryse, you have the Flag Card,
so you get to go first.
Maryse: Do I do both my characters at once?
Karim: No, it's the same as the Question round, we'll go around the
table twice so people have the chance to build on each other's ideas.
Maryse: Great. So okay, it's right at the moment when the soldiers
were getting ready to shoot into the crowd. We see Jean pressed in
among the rest of the people, shoved up against one of the cannons.
He's nervous and terrified, knees shaking. Then suddenly the moment
is over, the tension breaks, and everyone is celebrating. It takes a
long moment, but Jean suddenly realizes he's still alive. He got
through it, and it was because he was with everyone else. He
suddenly laughs and begins to sing... what's a good song?
Jason: The Marseillaise?
Maryse: Perfect! Richard, you go next.
Richard: We see Camille running through the streets of Montmartre.
It's evening of that day, the bars are all packed with people singing
and drinking, but Camille is still out, carrying a huge French flag
and it's trailing in the breeze behind the child…
Play continues until everyone has narrated a Montage scene for each of
their characters.

28
 Setting Scenes
After the Montage the game will move onto a series of regular scenes. There are
three Acts in the game, and each player gets to set at least one scene per Act.
When it is your turn, you become the narrator. The narrator sets the scene by
describing where it takes place and who is in the scene. One of the characters
controlled by the narrator should be in the scene. If there is ever a scene where
two characters controlled by the same player are present, the narrator should
ask a different player to play the supporting character.

WHAT IF I WANT TO JOIN A SCENE?

The narrator has final authority on who is or isn't in a scene, but if you
have a good idea, suggest it! It may be just what the narrator was looking for.
You can suggest it before the narrator has set a scene, when the narrator has
cast the scene, or even during the scene itself. (In the last case, make sure
you wait for the right moment to ask—it's better to let a good but unrealized
idea go unused than to step on the emotional payoff of someone else's scene.)

PLAYING EXTRA SCENES

If, at the end of the round, one or more players have an idea for a scene
that seems really useful, relevant, or interesting, they can ask the table for
another scene. It's up to the table to decide, by consensus (just like the
Commune did). Be aware of time issues and of the different moods of each
Act of the game.
If you are playing with fewer than six players, playing out some extra
scenes helps give the group more time to learn about their characters.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD SCENE?

A good scene is usually about more than just where and when it happens—it
should be about who the scene involves. One strategy is to try and come up with
a question for the scene (you don’t have to say it out loud; just think about it) and
then use the scene to try to answer that question. This tends to drive characters
into conflict or reveal their desires and secrets.
The people who lived in the Commune were often passionate about it, and
that passion can be a wonderful thing to bring out at the table. But that is far

29
 from the only emotion possible. Characters may be grimly realistic about
their chances, or think that the Commune misjudged the moment, or
even not wish to bring about a Social Revolution; cynicism and even
defeatism were as much a part of life in the Commune as they have been
among any group threatened by a hostile world.
Politics will tend to emerge naturally from the course of the game.
Focusing scenes on the characters and on their emotions, secrets, and
relationships generally makes for more emotional, sharper play. So often,
the more interesting questions to ask are not things like What does this
character support? but rather Why does my character support the
Commune taking over Léonard’s wine shop? or even Will Félix want to
marry me now that we've lost the shop? Support for the Commune was
hardly uniform, universal, and consistent; quite the opposite, the
Commune was famously contentious and faction-ridden. Exploring the
differences between characters who want the same thing but have very
different plans to achieve it is one of the core subjects of this game.
The best advice is to leave your heart on the table if you can. Don’t close
your characters off; let them give vent to their emotions; let them bring
their secrets and the secrets of others out into the open; let them laugh,
cry, fight, love and despair as their bloody destiny draws ever nearer.

PLAY EXAMPLE: A SAMPLE SCENE

It's the Second Act and the Commune faces increasing threats both from
outside Paris and within the city's walls. On Jason's turn, he looks over the
Placards currently showing and thinks he can use one to set a scene.
Jason: I'd like to have a little moment of respite for some of our characters.
I'm going to use this card, "A Ball." It says: "A public ball is held at the
Moulin de la Galette, the open air cabaret in Montmartre that is a favorite
of working class Parisians." I definitely want Joséphine there, she needs
some time with her husband!
Maryse: Perfect, Jean still has a few things to say to her about the
meeting she went to last week.

30
Jason: Great! So it's the late afternoon going on into the early evening--
golden hour, the setting sun looks especially beautiful. The place is packed
with dancing couples, there's a little band playing a kind of sad waltz--
strings, an accordion, maybe a clarinet. We’ve been dancing together.
There's a break in the music, and Joséphine looks at you bashfully, like
she did the night you came to ask her to marry you. "We haven't danced
together like this in so long, have we, husband?"
Maryse: "Joséphine, you're as lovely now as you were when we got married."
Jason: She sighs. "I wish we could have had a child though."
Maryse: This is old pain. I pat you on your shoulder and give it a loving
squeeze. "I wish we had more time together...but there's so much to do with
the Guard…"
Jason: "And I'm so busy helping Dominique at the clinic…"
Maryse: Jean frowns. "And afterwards. I don't think it's a good idea for you
to go to those meetings! Some of the people there are dangerous to know."
Jason: "But shouldn't I be doing my part too? Or is that only men's work?"
Maryse: "That's not what I meant! I just mean, that, well if it was known
that you were friends of them and that got out…"
Jason: "But that would only be a problem if we lose. You said the
situation was getting better. Was that another lie?"
Maryse: You fight dirty! (laughs) I think Jean is stammering, trying to think
up a response.
Richard: Sounds like the right time for Tariq to come into the scene. He
comes running up in his uniform, saber clanging against his leg. Out of
breath, he says, "Citizen, we need you at the front immediately!"
Maryse: "I'm coming! Forgive me, dearest." He tries to kiss Joséphine.
Jason: She lets him, but she looks at them both with genuine fear.
Richard: Tariq takes off his cap to her. "Citizen, you look quite lovely
tonight." Then he runs off.
Jason: Oh no! Everything is worse! That's the perfect place to end the scene.

31
 Part 2

32
Z
the Game

Z
33
 P�logue:
They'veComeForOurGuns!

March 18, 1871

THE PARIS COMMUNE
The facilitator reads:
This game is about the Paris Commune, a working-class revolution in
1871. We‘ll be playing characters that live in Montmartre, one of the
most radical districts of Paris.
For 72 days, the Commune was one of the most progressive
governments in history. During its brief lifetime it tried to create a
state with worker's rights, free education, and the liberation of
women as its foundations. The conservative government
headquartered in Versailles invaded Paris at the end of May and
crushed the Commune.

PARIS IN THE 1870S

Marguerite's player reads:
Paris was the most important city in continental Europe. Under
Emperor Napoléon III (nephew of the more famous Napoléon), the
center of the city had been rebuilt with broad boulevards and chic
restaurants and boutiques: the "capital of humanity". But in the poor
neighborhoods on the outskirts, like Montmartre, unemployment was
high and people lived in cramped, crowded conditions without
running water or indoor plumbing. Conditions were ripe for another
of the once a generation Parisian revolutions.

34
 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR
Marie's player reads:
In 1870, the Emperor was lured into a war against Prussia and its
German allies. The war was a disaster; the Emperor and most of the
army were captured in September. A Republic was proclaimed and
tried to continue the war. The Prussians besieged Paris. The winter
was cold and food ran out; the rich ate animals from the zoo, the
poor dogs, cats, and rats. The only way to get mail out of the city was
by balloon. Finally, the Republic surrendered to the Germans.

THE SOUL OF THE REPUBLIC

Léonard's player reads:
Parisians felt betrayed. Despite the large number of troops of the
National Guard—a militia that was often the only paying work
during the siege—the government never supported them for an attack
against the Prussians. When the national elections returned a
parliament with a monarchist majority, Paris felt sure that the
Republic would fall and any hope they had for a more equal society
would be destroyed. Several insurrections broke out. The battle for
the soul of the French Republic was about to begin.

Louise's player reads:

The government, now led by Adolphe Thiers [ah-DOLF tea-AIR] agreed to pay
5 billion francs in reparations; the Germans remained dug in east of Paris.
The National Guard's cannons in Montmartre had been bought by its
inhabitants, not the government, but Thiers ordered their seizure to
prevent insurrection. Before dawn on March 18th, 1871, soldiers of
the French Army came to take the guns but were confronted by a
crowd of Montmartre's women. The commander ordered his soldiers
to shoot the women, but they arrested and executed him instead. The
National Guard took over Paris and ordered elections for a new
government for Paris and France: the Commune.

35
36
 Montage
Each player now takes a turn narrating a brief Montage scene in both
of their character’s lives during the day of March 18th, 1871. Begin
with the player holding the Flag Card and proceed to their left.
Each player should only narrate a scene about one of their characters
on their turn, so we will take two circuits around the table. This allows
other players to build on the details previously heard.
This can be from before, after, or during the attempt to seize the
National Guard’s cannons.
The scene should be very short—just an impression of the character
and shouldn’t last more than a minute or two.
Your narration should help give us a sense of who your character is,
and what they do. The characters in this game are all in the working
classes of Paris, people whose daily lives have often been erased in
history. Show us what they do, who they love, how they react to the
news of this sudden revolution. Do they accept the execution of the
general? Did anyone speak in his defense? Do any of the characters
oppose the creation of the Commune?
After each player has introduced their characters, move on to Act One.

Characters cannot die in the Montage.

37
Carnival of the Oppressed
In which the Commune establishes itself and begins the Social Revolution.

Tariq's player reads:

By evening on the 18th, the army and government had fled Paris in a
disorganized retreat to the former royal palace in Versailles, twenty
kilometers west of Paris.
Other communes sprang up: Lyon, Marseilles, Toulouse. Most were
quickly crushed by the Versailles government. In Algeria, a revolt
began against the French colonists.
Lodoïska's player reads:
Elections were quickly held in Paris. A council of delegates,
decentralized and using direct democracy, took over the government.
Some people wanted to march right away for Versailles and attack
the government before they could regroup. While we debated, the
Versailles forces were already moving toward Paris.
Dominique's player reads:
Overdue rents were forgiven. Goods pawned at the government pawn
shops (the payday lenders of the time) were reclaimed. Complete
separation of church and state (a working-class dream) was decreed.
Everywhere there were lectures and free classes. And committees! For
welfare, building barricades, and many other things.

� Deal out three of the Placards and place them in a row next to the deck.
� The player with the Flag Card passes it to the player on their left.
This player now sets a scene involving one of their own characters.
� Going around clockwise, each player takes a turn setting a scene.
� If, after a scene that used a Placard, the group feels that the card
has been resolved, discard it and draw another card in its place.
� When every player has set a scene, and there is consensus
to move on, go to Act Two.

Characters cannot die in Act One

First Defeats, Last Defiance
In which the Commune fights the first battles of the civil war, and paranoia increases.
Jean's player reads:
On April 3rd, the National Guard and many women marched out of
Paris toward Versailles. Everyone was sure the army wouldn’t shoot
fellow citizens.
The Versailles forces had quietly recaptured forts along the way. They
mercilessly cut down the marchers, executing anyone who surrendered.
The Commune promised to retaliate by killing hostages. The second
siege of Paris had begun.
Félix's player reads:
The Commune began to adapt to war. Every man between 18 and 40
years old had to serve in the National Guard. The political police
hunted for treason. Searches for men who did not report for the
Guard became intrusive and even violent, but when the commander
called for 12,000 men to muster, fewer than 2,000 actually came.
Amanda's player reads:
On May 9th, Fort Issy, crucial for the defense of Paris, fell after weeks
of heavy fighting. The Commune created a Committee of Public
Safety and gave it dictatorial powers. Meanwhile the work of the
Commune continued, becoming more radical, more socialist, and
more egalitarian as the final showdown loomed nearer.

� Discard any Placards that are face up. Deal out three new Placards
and place them in a row next to the deck.
� The player with the Flag Card hands it to the player on their left.
Starting with this player, each player sets a scene.
� When every player has set a scene, and there is consensus to move
on, each player narrates a brief Montage scene about one of their
characters on the eve of the invasion of Paris.
� When every player has set a scene, the Montage is finished, and
there is consensus to move on, take a short break before going on
to Act Three.

At most, one and only one

character can die in Act Two
Frenzied. Violent. Morbid.
 The Bl�dy Week
Joséphine's player reads:
On May 21st, the Army invaded Paris. The Communards defended the
city from behind street barricades, but without organization, each section
fighting on its own. The city burned, from shelling or revenge. The
Tuileries Palace (once home to the Emperor), the Hôtel de Ville, and the
Palais Royal were all destroyed by the flames.
The Army massacred anyone they thought was part of the Commune; the
bourgeois of the city happily denounced their neighbors to the vengeance
of the government.
May 28th: The last survivors surrendered at dawn. Many were executed. Over 40,000
people were imprisoned at Camp Satory, outside Versailles. The Commune was over.

� Discard any Placards in play. Deal out three Bloody Week Cards and
place them in a row next to their deck. The Bloody Week Cards
function just like Placards, but are focused on the events of the
Army’s invasion of Paris. A player can use a Bloody Week Card for
inspiration or use their own ideas.
� The player with the Flag Card hands it to the player on their left.
Starting with this player, everyone narrates a scene on their turn.
� On their turn, the player narrating can include the death of their
character during their scene, or simply narrate it at the beginning, or
use any other combination that seems like it would be interesting. If a
player only has one character, that character must survive.
� It is never necessary to use your scene to show how your character
dies; sometimes it is more interesting to check in on the character that
survives. If another player agrees, you can include the death of your
character in a scene they are narrating.
� If, after a scene that used a Bloody Week Card, the group feels that the
card has been resolved, discard it and draw another card in its place.
� When every player has set a scene and there is consensus to move on,
any player who wishes may make one final Montage scene. This works
the same as the other Montages except you are not required to narrate
a scene about both your characters, nor is any player required to do a
montage. You can narrate the death of your character at this point.
� Go to the Epilogue.

Characters will die in this act. At some point in this

round each player must decide which one of their
characters dies during the Bloody Week.
44
 Satory
Camille's player reads:
Between 10,000 and 30,000 people died during Bloody Week.
Nobody knows the exact number.
At Satory, disease and hunger killed many prisoners; others were shot
with no trial or only a perfunctory court martial.
In Algeria, the rebellion was crushed. The country was safe again for colonization.
Some Communards were put on trial. Most chose not to cooperate with the
government forces, remaining contemptuous and defiant to their death.
Many were sentenced to death; others were deported to a tropical
island near Australia called New Caledonia, or given hard labor.
Some managed to escape into exile.
In 1880, a general amnesty was announced. Some of the surviving
Communards returned home; others never did.

� Each player must select one of three choices for their character:
▪ Remain defiant and try to go to trial
▪ Cooperate with the prosecutors and hope for a reduced sentence
▪ Try to escape into exile
� When you have made your choice, draw a Fate Card from the
appropriate deck and read your fate on the back without revealing it.
� Note that a character's titles may affect their fate. If a card has
more than one title that could apply to your character then you
may choose whichever fate you prefer for your character.
� Some cards will require you to deal with another player by asking
them questions, or altering the fate of their character.
� None of the cards are guaranteed to give you the result (defiance,
cooperation, or escape) that you may want, and death is still
possible no matter which deck you draw from. One of the Attempt
Escape cards, however, lets that character escape into exile safely,
with no other conditions.
� Players then take turns narrating a brief epilogue scene for their
character that reveals their fate. You can include what happens to
them after the Amnesty in 1881, if you like.
� After everyone has finished narrating their epilogue scene, the
game is over. A guide to debriefing and decompressing after the
game follows this section.
45
 Facilitating the Game
Your job as Facilitator is to ensure the smooth and enjoyable play of
the game. Here are some guidelines for doing that.

1. Get everyone seated comfortably. Allow a few moments to relax

and reduce tension.

2. “This is a storygame about the Paris Commune, a brief revolution in

1871. We will each be playing two characters who lived in
Montmartre, a working class district of Paris, during the Commune.
While we can change the details of what happened in history, the
general outline of events will remain the same: Paris will be
attacked by the French Army and thousands, including many of our
characters, will die.”

3. Determine First Player (page 19). Say, “The player with this Flag
Card will be responsible for setting the very first scene of the game.
If you would rather someone else start first, give the Flag Card to
another player.”

4. “Let’s talk a bit about the content, aim, tone, and subject matter of
the game.”
▪ “ The goal of the game is to explore why so many of these poor
and working-class people went defiantly to their deaths, come to
grips with what they wanted to get from their revolution, and to
explore their emotions, doubts, triumphs, joys, and tragedies.”
▪ “ This game is serious in tone. A great deal of tragedy will
unfold during it. The experience will be more enjoyable if we
keep this in mind. However, the Commune was also a period of
joy and liberation for many. Exploring that aspect of it will
enrichen our story.”
▪ “ The game will try to teach us enough history about the period
to be able to play our characters honestly. We will explore
death, poverty, and loss. There are children and sex workers
who are characters in the game. We will have a discussion of
any lines we don’t wish to cross regarding these subjects.”

46
5. Lines and Veils, and the X-Card (page 20)

6. Preparation (page 20). If using a playset, build a deck of Character

Cards as listed in the playset (pages 108-109)

7. Explain characters, cards, and the final fate in the epilogue. Say:
“Each player will be playing two characters. If we have any
characters left over and we need them in a scene, ask someone at
the table to play them.”

8. Scenes. Say, “The game will start with a brief montage to introduce
your characters. Then we will play out a series of scenes. There are
three rounds of at least six scenes. In each round we’ll all get at least
one chance to set a scene.”
▪ “When you start a scene, describe for us when and where it
takes place, and then say which characters are in the scene. If it
is your turn, one of the characters you are playing should be in
the scene. If for some reason you need both your characters in
the scene, ask someone else to play one of them.”
▪ “When it is your turn, you have narrative authority over the
scene. That means that if there is any question of what happens
next you have final say. You can also move the scene forward in
time, do flashbacks, change locations, or whatever other ideas
occur to you.”
▪ “This game is very politically charged. However, the politics
will usually emerge from the game itself. In your scenes, it’s
usually better to start from a place of considering your
characters’ personal lives and emotional states, rather than
diving directly into political content.”
▪ “If you want to join a scene and it is not your turn, ask the player
whose turn it is if you can join. Likewise, if you ever want to
include an extra scene in a round, ask your comrades at the table
if that’s all right. If it is, play out the scene as normal.”

47
 9. Mention the historical readings. “Before each round,
different players will have a short paragraph or two to
read about the history of that round. All of us will have
to read something by the end of the game.”

10. Choose Characters (page 21)

▪ Deal out three Character Cards and ask the First
Player to choose one. After they have made their
selection, draw another Character Card.
▪ Moving clockwise around the table, each player
selects a Character Card and draws a
replacement.
▪ When everyone has one card, start with the
player who chose last and proceed
counterclockwise around the table until everyone
has two characters.

11. Pick Questions (page 23)

▪ Each player draws two Question Cards and
doesn’t reveal them.
▪ Say: “We’re going to be asking some questions
about the characters and their situation. If a
card refers to ‘You’ or ‘Your Character’ you
should answer the question yourself. Many cards
will ask you to name another character. You can
ask their player to answer the question or answer
it yourself. If you answer a question about
another character yourself, make sure the other
player is comfortable with your answer.”
▪ “If the card has a question you are
uncomfortable with or doesn’t make sense,
discard it and draw a new one.”

12. This is a good point to take a short break before

beginning play.

48
13. Prologue: They've Come for Our Guns! Have the
appropriate players read the introductions
(pages 34-35).

14. Begin prologue montage (page 37).

▪ Each player will set a short scene for each of their
characters. Scenes should take less than five minutes to
describe and generally shouldn’t have any dialogue. Do
the scenes in two rounds where each player does a
montage scene for only one of their characters, allowing
other players to build on previous scenes if desired.
▪ Say, “Your narration should help give us a sense of who
your character is, and what they do. The characters in
this game are all in the working classes of Paris, people
whose daily lives have often been erased in history.
Show us what they do, who they love, how they react to
the news of this sudden revolution. Do they accept the
execution of the general? Did anyone speak in his
defense? Do any of the characters oppose the creation of
the Commune?”

15. Start the first Act.

▪ Each Act has short historical readings that are read by
the players of the characters noted in the text. Have
these players read now. If the text is assigned to a
character not in the game, either assign it to someone
or read it yourself, as facilitator.
▪ Rotate the Flag Card to the left, making that player
First Player.
▪ Demonstrate a Placard. Explain the optional nature.
▪ “These cards are called Placards. They recall the many
posters that were put up during the brief life of the
Commune. Each card has a historical event on it and a
few sense impressions. You can use a Placard in your
scene if you like, but you are never required to do so.”
▪ “If, after a scene that uses a Placard, we feel that we
have said all we need to about the event on the card,
we can discard it and draw another.”

49
 16. Play out Act One, making sure each player gets to set at least one
scene. Then move on to Act Two.

17. Clear all the Placards still on the table and draw three new cards.
Rotate the Flag Card to the left again.

18. Follow the same procedure for the readings as in Act One.
Remember in Act Two AT MOST ONE character may die. (That’s
total, not per player.)

19. After the montage at the end of Act Two take another short break.

20. Act Three is the Bloody Week.

▪ Explain the mechanic of Bloody Week that will kill many
characters. Make sure that everyone is aware that one of their
characters will be dead by the end of this Act.
▪ “On their turn, the player narrating can include the death of
one of their characters during their scene, or simply narrate it at
the beginning, or use any other combination that seems like it
would be interesting.”
▪ Say, “It is never necessary to use your scene to show how your
character dies; sometimes it is more interesting to check in on
the character who survives. If another player agrees, you can
include the death of your character in a scene they are
narrating.
▪ Show the Bloody Week deck; indicate that it works much the
same as Placards do.
▪ If a player had a character die in Act Two, then their character
MUST survive the Bloody Week.

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21. Epilogue. Explain the three decks and the epilogue scene (page
45). Inform players that characters may still die in the Epilogue.
▪ “Now you must choose one of three fates for your surviving
character. When you have made your choice, draw one of the
cards from the appropriate deck and read your fate on the other
side without revealing it.”
▪ “Note that a character's titles may affect their fate. If a card has
more than one title that could apply to your character, then you
my choose whichever fate you prefer for your character.”
▪ “Some cards will require you to deal with another player by
asking them questions, or altering the fate of their character.”
▪ “None of the cards are guaranteed to give you the result
(defiance, cooperation, or escape) that you may want, and
death is still possible no matter which deck you draw from. One
of the Attempt Escape cards, however, lets that character escape
into exile safely, with no other conditions.”
▪ Have the players reveal their fate in whatever order they wish.
After revealing their fate, players then take turns narrating a
brief epilogue scene for their character that reveals their fate.
They can include what happens to the character after the
Amnesty in 1881, if they like.

22. Debrief (page 52)

51
 Debrief
After the game, emotions and feelings may be especially hard to
describe, or potentially raw. This portion of the game is included to give
you a framework for moving forward with your emotions after such a
heavy experience. This debrief is in two parts and allows you to talk to
you co-players and process your character’s (and your own) experiences.

PART 1: REFLECTION
Directly after the game, allow everyone at least five minutes to get up,
move around, grab tissues, use the restroom, etc. When everyone
comes back, nominate someone to lead the debrief group in taking
several deep breaths together.
“Breathe in... breathe out…”
Once everyone has exhaled, ask the players to go around the circle
and introduce themselves again. This gives each player a strong barrier
between who they are now, and who they have played. After each of the
debrief questions, go around the room and answer. Remember to give
space for everyone to answer and discourage cross talking. Before
beginning, tell them they are allowed to pass, but encourage everyone
to speak and listen. You do not have to go in order of where people are
sitting, but you do have to check in and make sure everyone who wants
an opportunity to answer, gets an opportunity.
� What is one thing you admire about your characters?
� What is one thing that you dislike about your characters?
� Talk about a scene you were not in, that helped define the spirit of
the Commune.
� What was the hardest choice either of your characters made? What
made it hard?

52
� What moment of play made you feel hopeful? Inspired?
� How do your characters’ fates make you feel? What can you learn
from them?
� What was one moment from play that made you really believe in
the Commune?
� How do you think you would have fared in the Commune? What would
you have done differently? Would you have done anything differently?
� Is there anything going on in the world that reminds you of the
spirit of the Commune?
� How do you think your version of the Commune would want to be
remembered?

PART 2: A WALL OF MEMORIES

One of the ways the Commune is still remembered today is graffiti on
the walls of Paris. Hand out sheets of paper to all the participants and
provide something to draw with. Instruct everyone to take ten minutes
writing or drawing a poster, much like the great political posters in
Paris, which represents the journey of their character in the Commune
and what they would have wanted to leave behind. It can be an image, a
word, or even a letter from their character to the citizens of Paris.
When they are ready, instruct them to place them on a wall (or a table
if that is not possible) and give everyone some time to look over them.

FURTHER DEBRIEF SUGGESTIONS:

Before everyone leaves, suggest that they consider having a debrief
buddy, someone whom they can contact and discuss their feelings with
after the game. Starting a discord chat, messaging thread, or even an
email group can help process the bleed by allowing players to interact
in a closed, yet welcoming space.

53
 Part 3

54
Z
Historical
Backg�und
Z
55
 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

France
The Paris Commune was the last act in a ninety-year long story of
revolution in France, with conflicts that began before the French
Revolution. To understand the story of the Commune, we need to
understand the story of the forces that led to its brief and tragic life.

AN ALL TOO BRIEF HISTORY OF FRANCE

The region that became modern France has always been an important
part of Europe. Conquered in turn by Celts, Romans, and Franks, its
large territory and population have made it central to the history of
western Europe. The Kingdom of France was gradually built by
bringing more and more of the regions of France under the control of
the king, until under the Bourbon dynasty's Louis XIV (1638–1715), it
had become the dominant military power in Europe. However, beneath
its success was the legacy of its patchwork construction: a mass of
conflicting laws, rights, and obligations that made the administration
of the kingdom a nightmare. Most importantly, the taxes required by
the Crown to pay for the wars of conquest could not be imposed
directly; changes to the tax structure required the consent of the
Estates-General, France's medieval parliament that kings rarely liked to
convene (since the nobles, clergy, and merchants—the three Estates—
would always demand concessions from him.) Instead, France turned to
borrowing the money it needed.

56
 After supporting the United States during the American Revolution,
the finances of the country were in a dire state; unable to secure new
loans, King Louis XVI (1754–1793) finally convened the Estates-General
in 1789. Seizing their chance to modernize the economy and filled with
Enlightenment idealism, the Third Estate took over the proceedings,
resisting orders to disband. The capture of the infamous Bastille prison
in Paris brought things to a head—a revolution had begun, and the king
no longer controlled events. Initially desiring only a constitutional
monarchy like that of England, the intransigence of the king (and his
attempt to flee the country in 1791) gradually radicalized the National
Assembly (the new parliament) until they declared a Republic in 1792.
The next year the king was executed, and a general war erupted
throughout Europe that would last almost 25 years.

FROM TERROR TO EMPIRE

During 1793-1794, faced with monarchist revolts in France, war with
most of Europe, and the betrayal of some military officers, the radical
Committee of Public Safety, under Maximilien Robespierre (1754-
1793) instituted a dictatorial reign of terror. Public executions rose,
including those of many of the aristocrats who had not yet fled the
country, but also of heroes of the Revolution such as Georges Danton
and ordinary citizens unfortunate enough to be suspected of counter-
revolutionary thought. Finally, in 1794, more conservative forces
seized power and ruled France as an oligarchy until the rise of its most
successful general to power: Napoléon Bonaparte.
Born in Corsica, trained at military school in France, Bonaparte rose
from an artillery officer to the Emperor of the greatest empire in
Europe since the days of the Caesars. His legendary campaigns in Italy
and Egypt gave him the popular support to seize power in 1798;
leading his armies into battle, he trounced the armies of all the great
European powers time and time again. In France, he defended many of
the reforms of the Republic (while dispensing with the actual Republic)
and forged its army into an unstoppable machine. Eventually, the
tenacity of the British and his own overconfidence led to his downfall:
an interminable guerrilla war in Spain and the disastrous invasion of
Russia collapsed his power. The victorious allies restored the Bourbons
to power. They were immediately unpopular.

57
 FROM RESTORATION TO REVOLUTION
Restored to power by the victorious Allies, the first post-Napoléon king of
France was Louis XVI's brother, who reigned as Louis XVIII. (Louis XVI's
son, the heir apparent or Dauphin, had been sent to live with a cobbler's
family during the Terror and died mysteriously sometime later; however, he
was considered to be the uncrowned Louis XVII.) In the famous words of
the French statesman and diplomat Talleyrand, the Bourbons had
"forgotten nothing and learned nothing." Louis XVIII, overweight and
gouty, tried to return France to an absolutist monarchy, never accepting
that times had changed throughout Europe. A telling example was the
return to the Bourbon's pure white flag instead of the blue, white, and red
tricolor flag of the Revolution and the Empire: that flag was "tainted" by
republicanism (and regicide), true, but it had been the flag that led
France's armies through first a defense of the nation and then the conquest
of most of Europe. It was tremendously popular, and forbidding it was a
perfect example of the cluelessness of the restored monarchy.
Louis XVIII died in 1824 and was replaced by his brother, Charles X. Even
more than Louis, Charles wanted to restore complete authority to the crown.
His belief was that Louis XVI had been too lenient with the Estates General, so
he cracked down completely on dissent, paid the families of nobles displaced
during the Revolution an enormous indemnity, and censored criticism of the
Catholic Church. He also disbanded the National Guard, a symbol of the
independent power of the people. All these moves were unpopular; in July
1830, the French army was sent to conquer Algeria mostly as an attempt to win
the regime some glory.
Meanwhile the mostly-defanged parliament was in crisis; despite an
anti-royal majority, Charles refused to allow a government to be formed. On
July 25, 1830, he issued a set of decrees that revoked liberty of the press,
dissolved parliament, and disenfranchised the middle class in the new
elections. The result was riots in Paris that quickly blossomed into a
revolution; over the course of the three "Glorious Days" (July 26–29, 1830)
barricades were set up in the streets with the tricolor flying above. A
committee of bankers and journalists, including future prime minister
Adolphe Thiers, forced the abdication of Charles and installed his cousin
Louis-Phillippe, the Duke of Orleans, on the throne. The next 18 years are
called the July Monarchy in honor of the "Three Glorious Days."

58
 FROM REVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION
The son of an aristocratic supporter of the Revolution (who was later
executed during the Terror), Louis-Philippe initially proved to be
popular. He reigned under the title not of "King of France" but "King
of the French" and was known as "The Citizen King." He even brought
back the tricolor as the official flag. Under his rule, France became the
constitutional monarchy the original revolutionaries had intended, and
the middle class and industrialists controlled the government at last.
However, the situation was unstable; there were frequent insurrections
in Paris (especially the one in 1832 that is depicted in Victor Hugo's
Les Misérables), including multiple attempts by Napoléon Bonaparte's
nephew, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, to seize power.
The changes wrought by industrialization resulted in massive
migration into the cities of France from the countryside, creating a
large body of working poor who lived in dire conditions, often working
14-hour days and yet barely making enough to survive. Europe,
however, was dominated by the conservative governments that had
redrawn its map after the fall of Napoléon, governments unresponsive
to the demands of the poor. From this mix of repression and poverty
arose new political philosophies, especially and most importantly
socialism: the belief that the workers should control both their
livelihoods and the industries that employed them.
Europe experienced a series of poor harvests between 1846 and 1848,
creating an economic crisis and driving its impoverished workers to the
point of starvation. Despite this, Louis-Philippe banned most
opposition groups from organizing. This brought out crowds in protest
in February, 1848; the King's government fell and even bringing in the
opposition leader Adolphe Thiers as prime minister did not appease
them. Refusing Thiers's advice to call out the military to suppress the
now-rioting protesters, Louis-Philippe abdicated, and shortly after, a
Second Republic was proclaimed.

59
 Europe soon was rocked by revolution almost everywhere: Prussia,
Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy. It was a great moment of liberal
hope, when it seemed like the conservative forces would be swept away
and replaced by governments more responsive to the people and
especially the impoverished workers. But it was not to be; the
revolutions failed, often quite bloodily, throughout Europe, and the
forces of conservatism ultimately gained in popularity.
In France, this resulted in the tragedy of the June Days (June 23–26,
1848). One of the reforms of the Second Republic was government
workhouses to provide useful paid labor for unemployed workers; despite
the fact that the government barely supported these workhouses, they
proved very popular with the working class (but unpopular with rich
landowners who were taxed in order to pay for them). When it was
announced that the workhouses would be closed (and those who wanted
work could just join the army instead), Paris rose up in revolt again. The
barricades were thrown up, but this time the military, including the
National Guard, was sent in to repress them. Some 10,000 people died in
the resulting struggle, which crushed the working class. The general
commanding the battles was made head of state.
Later that year, an election was held for the new position of
President of the Republic. It was convincingly won by none other
than Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, who skillfully welded nostalgia for
the glory of the French Empire to a vaguely socialist ideals. His
sympathies were anti-democratic; forbidden by the new constitution
from running for a second term, in December of 1851 he organized a
military coup that made him effectively a dictator; he followed this up
with an election in November of 1852 that created a new French
Empire with him as its emperor.

60
THE CHEQUERED LIFE OF LOUIS-NAPOLÉON
Charles-Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was born in 1808; his parents
were Napoléon Bonaparte's younger brother Louis (who was the King
of Holland at the time) and Napoléon's daughter-in-law Hortense
Beauharnais. With the fall of the First Empire in 1815, he and his
mother went into exile, settling in Switzerland. For his entire life, he
spoke French with a slight German accent. In 1830, he and his mother
secretly entered Paris and met with Louis-Philippe, but were not
allowed to settle in France.
In 1836 Louis-Napoléon staged his first attempt at a coup, appearing
in Strasbourg with the support of local Bonapartists. The coup was
over practically before it began and he fled, first to Switzerland, later to
Brazil and New York, finally settling in London. In 1840, he launched
his second coup attempt, sailing across the the Channel to Boulogne,
where he was immediately arrested. He was thrown in prison, where he
wrote his famous pamphlet The Extinction of Poverty, which won him
some support from the working class. In 1846, with the help of
Bonapartist supporters, he dressed up as another prisoner and left
prison on a work detail, never to return. (The name of the other
prisoner, Badinguet, became a derogatory nickname for Louis-
Napoléon from that point on.)
When the July Monarchy was overthrown, he returned to Paris and
turned his name and populist programs into a political movement that
made him the first President of the Second Republic and then
Emperor. His rule was known for its glamour and the remodeling of
Paris, but never his competency as a ruler. After being captured by the
Prussians and forced to abdicate, he returned to London, where he
died in 1873.
A notorious seducer, he had one son with his wife, the glamorous
empress Eugénie, and several other children with the various other
women he slept with. His heir, Napoléon, joined the British army and
died during the Zulu War of 1879.

61
61
 THE SECOND EMPIRE
Under the Empire, France continued a rapid industrialization and its
prestige rose throughout Europe. Napoléon III (the title he assumed;
his uncle's only son, Napoléon II, died in 1832) tried to give an
imperial dignity to France and especially Paris, whose stature as the
center of European culture was continually on the rise in this period.
He appointed Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann (1809–1891) to
recreate the city as a modern and elegant capital. The old warren of
medieval streets in the center of Paris was demolished, and in its place,
new broad streets lined with identical blocks of apartment buildings
rose. Haussmann's major innovation was the network of grand
boulevards, broad avenues that ran in straight lines across the map of
Paris; these helped solve the notorious traffic problems of the old city
and created new commercial and public spaces. Paris also grew in size,
annexing neighborhoods around the city (such as Montmartre).
Although Napoléon III had said that "the Empire means peace" as a
way of reassuring the rest of Europe (which was understandably
nervous about another Emperor Napoléon ruling France), he involved
the country in a number of small wars in Europe, most notably the
Crimean War (1853–56) in alliance with Great Britain against Russia,
and in the Second Italian War of Independence against Austria.
Probably his most important legacy is the reconciliation with Great
Britain (the Suez Canal was the result of this cooperation), and
following the Crimean War, closer ties to Russia.
Abroad, the French Empire expanded greatly during this period,
claiming large parts of central Africa, continuing the conquest and
colonization of Algeria, and colonizing Indochina. But Napoléon III also
involved France in the disastrous attempt to conquer Mexico (1862-67),
overthrowing the liberal government of Benito Juarez and installing an
Austrian archduke, Maximillian, as Emperor. Some six thousand French
troops died in the attempt, which cost over 300 million francs.

62
 POLAND AND REVOLUTION
No history of European revolutions would be complete without a
mention of Poland and the many Polish revolutionaries who fought in
most of the major revolutionary conflicts of the period. Poles fought in
the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Italian uprisings
of the 1830s, and of course the revolutions of 1848.
Poland had been one of the most powerful kingdoms in Europe
during the 16th century—Polish cavalry had saved Vienna from an
Ottoman invasion in 1588—but with the rise of Russia, Austria, and
Prussia, and a period of internal weakness, the kingdom was eventually
swallowed by the great powers around it. Most of Poland after the
Napoléonic Wars was ruled by Russia. In 1863, the most extensive
revolt against Russian rule broke out in January. Although the
revolutionaries fought bravely, they were hopelessly outnumbered by
the Russian army. France, long a supporter of Polish rights, outwardly
supported the revolutionaries, but privately assured Russia that it and
the other great powers would not intervene.
By the end of the revolution in 1864, between 10,000 and 20,000
revolutionary Polish soldiers were dead; hundreds more were executed
by the Russians, and some 10,000 people exiled to Siberia. Many of the
revolutionaries fled Poland, taking up the cause of liberty in other
struggles; two of the Commune's best generals were Polish.

63
63
 The Second Empire was, in theory, a constitutional monarchy; in practice,
the Emperor controlled the police and used them to suppress dissent and
censor the press when he needed to. Opposition centered around
unrepentant republicans, inspired by the novelist Victor Hugo (1802-1885),
and the new socialist groups that emerged in France during this time.
The history of nineteenth century socialism is extremely complicated
(and cannot be done justice here) but in broad strokes, in France it
played out along three main lines. First there were the followers of
Marx and Engels, internationalist in scope and generally trying to
bring about socialist policies through existing political means, such as
organizing, creation of opposition political parties, and strikes and
other mass actions. Second were the anarchists, followers of the
Frenchman Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) and the Russian
Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876), who believed that through voluntary
cooperation with collectivist communes, the state would eventually
wither away; they rejected working within the political system at all
(this would eventually lead to bitter conflict with the Marxists). Third
were the followers of Louis-Auguste Blanqui (1805–1881). Blanqui, a
lifelong political radical who spent more years of his life in prison than
out of it, was a socialist but is most notable for his theory of revolution.
Blanqui believed that a popular movement or organizing the people
would never lead to the overthrow of the social system; instead, only a
dedicated band of professional revolutionaries, operating in secret,
could overthrow the existing government and establish a dictatorship
that would be able to enact revolutionary policies. These three groups
existed in uneasy alliance with each other (with frequent conflicts)
throughout this period; some of them formalized this alliance by
participating in the International Workingman's Association (generally
called the First International, 1864–1877), an umbrella organization
of socialist groups led largely (but not exclusively) by Marx.

64
 SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM BEFORE
AND AFTER THE COMMUNE
By Jeffrey Lawrence

The Paris Commune finds its roots in the February Revolution of

1848, itself part of the “Spring of the People” that brought spasms of
fear to the old order across Europe and a sense of class consciousness
to those not of the birthright aristocracy. Despite sharing root
linguistics with the “communism” that developed in Russia after the
October Revolution of 1917, the Commune as a whole had as little in
common with that particular type of socialism-devolved-into-
totalitarianism as it did with the tinpot dictators propped up by
imperialists in Central and South America. The Commune was a first
grasp at the brass ring of social justice, more successful in its
implementation, though less so in longevity.
While the lifespan of the Second Republic was fleeting, its mere
existence set a tone for France that would echo through the coming
years. Absolute monarchy and autocracy were not foregone conclusions.
The common, working people could indeed seize power from the
aristocrats and turn the machines of state towards the betterment of all.
Reactionary monarchist forces within France did end the Republic and,
by 1851, establish the Second Empire under Napoléon III, but the seeds
were sown.
The Communards’ Wall stands as a memorial in a Paris cemetery,
remembering those who carried that name—but “Communard” as a
likeminded, pasteurized whole misses the mark of who they truly were.
Indeed, the Communards who supported the Paris Commune were a
union and collaboration of like-minded factions—all on the political
left, yes—but distinct from each other in their thinking and goals, even
as they banded together to stand against Louis-Napoléon III’s ongoing
repression and the deprivations of the Franco-Prussian War.

65
65
 Forming what might be considered the center of the Communards’
radical movement would be those supporters of the International
Workingmen's Association, the First International. One could argue
that all of the Communards took some place within the International,
and indeed, the IWA counted among its ranks at founding anarchist
Mikhail Bakunin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and his capitalism
reformation platform, and Karl Marx himself. As a whole, these
varying schools of thought would find a center in the Association with
a Marxist train of thought, advocating for a revolution that would lead
to "government of the working class for the working class,” as he stated
it. These would find their members among the many trade unions that
revolted in 1848 for improved working conditions and pay, and their
ideological heirs.
On the right wing of the Communards stood an early form of the
Radical Republicans, who included in their number the mayor of
Montmartre, Georges Clemenceau. Clemenceau sought to bridge the
gap between the more radical factions of the Communards with the
newly-formed national government, intent on forming a republic
responsive to the needs of the working people and the apparatuses of
the state—a desire which did not endear him to either leftists eager for
radical change or conservatives eager to preserve the status quo.
Clemenceau was stripped of his post by the Commune itself and left
Paris. He would later go on to be the leader of a revanchist French
national government during the Great War some forty-odd years later.

66
 The extreme left of the Communard movement held the Blanquists—
supporters of Louis-Auguste Blanqui and his take on revolution— as
being one that is best led by small, independent cells of professional
revolutionaries that would foment not a popular rebellion and
revolution, but rather a form of a coup d’état. There are significant
parallels between the October Revolution of 1917 and the totalitarian
Soviet Union ruled by a political elite and Blanquism. Indeed, critics of
the state Lenin established point to it as Blanquism brought to its
natural end, including the cadre of revolutionaries not ceding control to
the masses they did not trust the revolution to in the first place.
Blanqui’s followers operated in small units of ten or so armed men who
remained in contact with each other only through code and limited
communications — all the better to maintain secrecy and not expose the
whole body politic if one member were captured or turned by enemies of
the revolution. Another major critique of Blanquism is that Blanqui and
his followers’ efforts seemed to give short shrift to the establishment of
the new state that would follow the revolution, preferring to plan for the
revolution itself. This might lend itself to the throwing out of the old, but
with no basis for governance afterwards, could leave the government
vulnerable to reactionary counterrevolution.
Anarchists stood in a peculiar space in the Commune. Unlike the
Radical Republicans who sought to weld together the Communard
ideals with the more conservative Second Republic, or Blanqui’s and
Marx’s adherents who wanted to seize the control of reigns of the state,
the Anarchists wished to dismantle the national state completely,
leaving in its place small, democratic pockets, controlled by only those
who lived there, in a fully participatory socialist democracy. They felt
that the Commune did not go far enough in that it left lines of control
intact, and blamed this error for the Commune’s eventual failure.
Despite their differing beliefs, for the spring of 1871, these various
socialist groups banded together to rule Paris and attempted to change
the face of Europe for the betterment of the working classes. Perhaps if
their revolution had lived, they would have been torn asunder by internal
strife like that the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks struggled with forty years
later. This was not to be. The violent overthrow of their regime by the
professional and conservatively commanded French Army saw to that.
History remembers them all the same on Communards’ Wall.

67
 As Napoléon III aged, his empire aged with him, its seams becoming
more and more apparent. Liberalization reforms resulted in greater
and greater criticism of the government and more boldness by its
radical opponents. The rise of Prussia and the push for German
unification was perceived as a threat by the Emperor, but his responses
were confused and sometimes contradictory. The masterful political
strategist Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) was able to manipulate the
situation to Prussia's advantage, going so far as to alter a diplomatic
telegram to make it appear that the King of Prussia had insulted a
French envoy. Bismarck's hope was that it might lead to a war that
would finally unify Prussia and northern Germany with the southern
German states that had so far not aligned themselves with Prussia. The
resulting scandal in France, along with desire for the prestige a
successful war would bring to France (and the resulting rise in
popularity of the regime) convinced Napoléon to declare war on
Prussia on July 19, 1870—as Bismarck had planned.

THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR

Although France had a large army equipped with modern technology
(the new Chassepot bolt-action rifle was one of the best of its time), it was
ill-prepared for war and lacked any coherent battle plan. The Emperor
decided to lead the army himself, although he was so debilitated by gout
and gallstones that he could not mount a horse. The Prussians, on the
other hand, had one of the most professional armies in Europe, governed
by a general staff that had plans for any contingency. As Bismarck had
hoped, the other German states allied themselves with Prussia, laying the
groundwork for eventual unification.
Under pressure to act, Napoléon ordered the invasion of German
territory but almost immediately saw that his forces were overextended
and began to retreat. The Prussian forces caught up with the army and
inflicted a series of defeats, following it back into France itself. One
French army was besieged near the city of Metz; the rest of the forces,
including those led by the Emperor himself, were surrounded, and the
attempt to break free during the Battle of Sedan (September 1, 1870)
ended in defeat. The next day, the Emperor and the army he
commanded surrendered to the Prussians. Two days later, a new
republic was proclaimed in Paris, ending the Second Empire.

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 PRELUDE TO THE COMMUNE
Despite the crushing defeat at Sedan, the new government vowed to
continue the war until the Prussians were evicted from France. Calling
themselves the "Government of National Defense", they began to organize
new armies to attack the Prussians. Bismarck would have preferred to end
the war, but doubted that the Government of National Defense had the
legal authority to sign a peace treaty (it had not been elected, and the
Emperor had not yet abdicated) and the refusal of the French to agree to
cede the French territories of Alsace and Lorraine to the Prussians, which
was Bismarck’s main demand. As a result, the Prussian army steadily
advanced towards Paris, surrounding and besieging the city at the end of
September. (The siege led to a protest of some National Guard units, led
by Eugène Varlin, which called for the establishment of a Commune, but
it was dispersed without incident.)

WHY A COMMUNE?
The fundamental idea behind the Commune of Paris was to give the
city its own unified government. For most of its long existence as the
capital of France, Paris was ruled directly by the King. After the French
Revolution, the city was divided into twelve (later twenty)
arrondissements, postal and municipal districts. During the Second
Empire, these arrondissements were the only civic government the city
had. This deliberately fragmented political structure left the city in the
hands of the national government, which was generally unresponsive to
the needs of its poorer citizens. So for the supporters of a Commune,
the idea of making Paris self-governing and able to make its own policy
was something they believed would improve the lives of all its citizens.
The word Commune also recalled the original Paris Commune, the
unified government of the city from 1792 to 1795 that was controlled by
some of the most radical of the revolutionaries and was able to put so
much pressure (through mobilization of the Parisian people) on the
national government that it was often the effective government of
France. So "Commune" always had a built-in radical, republican, and
democratic meaning—it was the revolutionary Commune that had
brought about the Committee of Public Safety and the Terror, after all,
so the very word haunted the imagination of aristocrats everywhere.
Paris was finally given autonomy in 1968.

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 The Prussians cut the telegraph lines into Paris, leaving the city
isolated and with food supplies rapidly running out. The committed
republican (and future prime minister) Léon Gambetta (1838–1882),
who was the minister of the interior in the new government, departed
Paris by flying a balloon over the Prussian lines; similar balloon flights
would be the only way to get news into and out of Paris over the course
of the siege. What news reached Paris was dismaying: the surrender of
Marshal Patrice de Mac Mahon's army in Metz, and the failure of an
attack against the Prussian lines. On October 31, Blanqui and other
radical leaders led 15,000 demonstrators to the Hôtel de Ville (which
housed the Parisian government). Although they seized the building,
military units (including National Guardsmen) arrived and peacefully
evicted the demonstrators.
Paris was strongly fortified with thick walls, a deep moat, and a ring
of forts around the city—the result of a building program put in place
decades earlier by none other than Adolphe Thiers. Because of this,
the Prussians never risked a direct assault against the city. However, as
winter came on, conditions in Paris rapidly worsened. It was one of the
coldest winters in recent years, and the city's food supplies were
eventually exhausted. The animals of the Paris zoo were butchered and
served in high-end restaurants; the rest of the city had to content itself
with horses, dogs, and rats. Work ground to a halt, leaving the greatly
enlarged National Guard as the only reliable paying work in the city;
the 30 sous (1.50 francs) it paid per day was barely enough to keep a
person from starving.
The war continued to go poorly, with all attempts to relieve Paris
repulsed by the Germans. Inside the city, some urged using the large
National Guard contingent to attempt a breakout. The military
governor of Paris, Louis-Jules Trochu (1815–1896) never attempted
such an attack. The military quality of the Guard was doubtful, and a
significant loss would have left Paris open to the Prussians.
Nevertheless, it seemed like the government was deliberately refusing
to do all in its power to save the city.

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 The war was beginning to strain the Prussian army as well—or, as it
became after January 18, 1871, the army of the German Empire;
Bismarck's life-long dream of German unification was finally achieved
with the proclamation of the King of Prussia as Wilhelm I, Emperor of
Germany. The army had already begun to shell Paris in an attempt to
force French surrender.
On January 22, 1871, radicals led by the Blanquists once again
gathered at the Hôtel de Ville, demanding that the military be put
under civilian control and the election of a commune for the city.
Shots were fired by the defenders of the Hôtel de Ville, killing six
demonstrators. Coupled with the failure of the most recent attempts to
break the siege, the Government of National Defense finally asked for
an armistice with the Germans on January 26, 1871. Paris was spared
military occupation by the Germans, but the regular army was
disarmed. To preserve order in the city, the National Guard was not
disarmed, a point which was soon to become very important.
The terms eventually agreed to were very harsh for France: while she
kept her overseas colonies, the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine—which
had many fortifications crucial to the defense of France's eastern
border—were annexed by the German Empire, and an indemnity of 200
million francs was to be paid to the Germans. Bismarck also demanded
that there be elections to finally give France a government with some
claim of legitimacy. These were held only ten days after the armistice
agreement; only in Paris was there any kind of campaigning. The
elections created a new national assembly that was dominated by
monarchists who wanted to turn France back into a kingdom. Paris
was the only part of France that elected any radical members of the
assembly; the public was outraged by the conservative, monarchist
majority in the government. On February 17, 1871, the National
Assembly voted to give Adolphe Thiers the title of "Chief of the
Executive Power," making him the head of state. Two weeks later the
victorious Germans marched down the Champs-Élysées and under the
Arc de Triomphe, while most of Paris seethed in resentment.

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 MONARCHISM IN FRANCE
AFTER THE REVOLUTION
Monarchism in France since the Revolution has meant
more than just the belief that France should be a Kingdom
(or Empire); it has become inextricably tied to a conservative
outlook, often religiously Catholic, and very often
functioning as a sort of umbrella principle for conservatives
to rally under. Certainly in 1871, to be conservative in
France meant you were very likely to support some form of
monarchy. Then as now this took three basic forms:
Legitimists believe that only the descendants of the family
of Louis XVI have the right to be king. During the time of
the Commune, their candidate was Henri, Count of
Chambord, grandson of Charles X. He died childless, and
today, Legitimists support the Spanish branch of the
Bourbon family.
Orléanists believe that Louis-Philippe was a legitimate
king of France and therefore only the descendants of the
family of Louis-Philippe have the right to be king. During
the time of the Commune, this was Philippe, Count of Paris;
the Orléanists tried to work out a deal where the childless
Count of Chambord would make Philippe his heir.
Bonapartists believe that the descendants of the
Bonaparte family have the right to rule as Emperor of
France. Bonapartism has also become associated with many
more policies given the long and contradictory careers of the
two Bonaparte emperors; mostly it means a sort of
enlightened despotism with a somewhat egalitarian social
view. At the time of the Commune, the Bonapartists
followed either the deposed and exiled Louis-Napoléon or
his son Napoléon, the Prince-Imperial.

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 This was followed by a body blow to the city's working classes: the
National Assembly ended the wartime moratorium on collecting
rent and unpaid loans, and allowed the government-run pawnshops
to sell property that was not reclaimed. This was especially cruel to
poorer Parisians, many of whom had pawned tools, clothes, and
furniture to feed themselves during the siege. (The government
pawnshops had long been a target of reformers; their predatory
practices made them analogous to modern payday lenders.) These
laws resulted in more than 150,000 Parisians immediately
defaulting on bills and loans, creating widespread financial
hardship and uncertainty.
Fearing another insurrection, the National Assembly decided to
move to Versailles on March 10, a move heady with symbolism —
Versailles had been the seat of the Bourbon monarchy in its
decadent last century. Remaining in Paris, Thiers now cast a
worried glance at the northwestern, working-class districts of
Montmartre and Belleville. The citizens of those neighborhoods
had banded together to buy older cannons for their National Guard
units when the government failed to arm them (an early example of
successful crowdfunding!) These guns were now moved to the top
of the Butte Montmartre, one of the highest points in the city,
where they could easily fire down on any invaders. On March 17,
Thiers ordered units of the national army to seize the cannons and
drag them down the hill. In the early morning hours of March 18,
two brigades of soldiers quietly moved through the streets of
Montmartre, heading to the Champs des Polonais (site of the
present-day present-day Sacré-Cœur Basilica) where most of the
cannons were parked.

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 The Commune of Paris
THE COMMUNE IS FORMED: MARCH, 1871
Initially the soldiers had little difficulty in achieving their objective.
They had taken Montmartre by surprise, and with barely a shot fired—
the only casualty was a National Guardsman on sentry duty named
Turpin, who was shot and later died. Soon the cannons on the Butte
Montmartre were in the army's possession, and proclamations by
Thiers saying the seizure of the cannons was necessary for the public
order were pasted up.
But now their difficulties began. The expedition had been organized
so hastily that there were not enough horses to haul away the guns.
While the soldiers waited for them to be fetched, Montmartre's
women, including Louise Michel, began to gather on the Champs
Polonais. They blocked the horses that began to arrive, and began to
mingle with the soldiers, offering them bread and wine. Meanwhile
National Guardsmen began to organize and move towards the army
troops. At the Champs Polonais, the commander of the army troops,
General Lecomte, finally ordered his men to fire into the crowd to
chase them away. The angry crowd pleaded with the soldiers not to
fire into people who were their wives, their mothers, their children.
Three times Lecomte issued his order, and three times the crowd
held its breath. After the third order, one of the army officers,
Captain Lalande, told Lecomte that he was under arrest. The troops
turned their rifles upside down, butts in the air, a sign they would not
fire. Thiers's gamble had failed.

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 THE NATIONAL GUARD
The National Guard (French: Garde Nationale) was formed during the
first days of the Revolution in 1789 to support the National Assembly; its
first commander was the Marquis de Lafayette. The Guard eventually
was made a citizen's militia; all active citizens capable of carrying a
weapon were supposed to enroll in it. (Active citizenship had an income
requirement, meaning from its start, the Guard was a middle-class
organization.) To symbolize their status as the first revolutionary military
force, it wore a uniform of a blue coat trimmed with red and white
pantaloons—the colors of the tricolor flag. (In the period of the
Commune, the uniform consisted of a forage cap, a dark blue coat, and
dark blue trousers with a red stripe up the leg, unlike the regular army's
"troops of the line" which wore red trousers with a blue stripe.)
During the Revolutionary years, it served as the armed forces of
radical Parisians; the bayonets of the Guard were one way the city
controlled the National Assembly. During the Empire, Napoléon used
them as a citizen's militia reserve, similar to the present-day National
Guard in the United States.
Louis XVIII was willing to let the Guard continue, recognizing their
symbolic value as a surviving Republican institution; but in one of his
many misguided ideas, Charles X disbanded the Guard in 1827. Many of
its members kept their muskets, however, and used them during the July
Revolution. Louis-Philippe re-established the Guard during his reign.
For most of its history, the Guard was composed of solid, middle-class
citizens. It generally had republican leanings, given its pedigree, and so
was feared by monarchists and conservatives. In February 1848, the
Guard sided with the protesters in Paris and so brought down the July
Monarchy. However, during the June Days, they turned against the
protesters and took part in the bloody fighting in the streets of the city.
In fact, through 1870, whichever side the Guard took would win
control of Paris (and therefore France).

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 Napoléon III disliked the Guard because of its revolutionary and
republican history and so did not give it a major role in Imperial
defense policy. During the war with Prussia, however, the Guard finally
became a true citizen's militia—all men between 18 and 40 were
supposed to enroll in it. Ultimately there were about 400,000
Guardsmen in Paris. The Guard had a tradition of electing its own
officers (this is less strange than it seems—until the end of the 19th
century, the priThuy job of an officer was to get his troops to stand in
the line of fire and shoot back), and the new working-class Guard units
elected radicals to lead them, creating an enormous armed republic
within the walls of Paris.
During the Commune, the Guard was often called les fédéres, "the
federated [troops]," a name that hearkened back to the original fédéres of
1792, armed units invited from all over France to come to the
"Celebration of the Federation," the third anniversary of the fall of the
Bastille; they would form the core of the revolutionary armies of France.
After the fall of the Commune, the National Guard was disbanded. In
2016, it was re-established as a military and police reserve force.

Similar events took place in Belleville and the rest of Paris; shots were
fired only a few times, and the army troops either retreated or came
over to the side of the Parisians. By evening, the remaining government
officials in Paris, including Thiers, had fled the city for Versailles,
beginning an exodus of the city's well-to-do citizens. The Central
Committee of the National Guard, dominated by radicals, placed itself
in control of the city and ordered new elections for March 26. On
March 28, a new government, the Council of the Commune of Paris,
met in the Hôtel de Ville and set out immediately to enact a sweeping
program of reforms.
The Commune council had about 65 delegates and little central
direction, relying on a rambunctious style of deliberation. Authority
was divided among the executive commissions of the existing ministries
of the French Republic. Because the Commune believed that referring
to an executive as "Minister of War" and the like was elitist, it used the
title "Delegate to the Ministry of War" for each of its executives. (The
Ministry of War was particularly ill-fated and destined to have several
changes of leadership during the Commune's brief life.) Factions were
immediately apparent, breaking along expected lines:

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Internationalists, led mostly by Léo Frankel, a watchmaker originally
from Hungary who headed the Ministry of Labor and Exchange.
Proudhonist anarchists, for whom the Commune meant popular
democracy and was an example of the kind of withering away of the
state they advocated.
Blanquists, who were eager for Blanqui, "the natural leader of the
Commune," to be released from prison (Thiers had imprisoned him on
March 17).
Neo-Jacobins, who, despite their frightening name (the Jacobins had
controlled France during the Terror), were for the most part reformist
republicans—the "good government wonks" of the Commune. That said,
they favored more centralization of authority.

The Commune's council was mimicked in each of the

arrondissements of the city, making the Commune less a unified city-
state and more of a federation of individual districts, which further
diluted the Council's power.
One of the first and most pressing concerns of the Commune was
whether or not they should send National Guard forces to Versailles to
seize control of the government. The morale of the army was low, and
it had already demonstrated an unwillingness to fire on French
citizens; moreover, an advance by the Guard could lead to the first
battle of a civil war, and a negotiated settlement still seemed possible
(and in fact a council of the mayors of Paris's arrondissements,
including future prime minister Georges Clemenceau, went to
Versailles, where it was ignored by Thiers). Debate continued for two
weeks, by which time it was far too late for such an action to succeed.
Meanwhile, other Communes sprang up in France. Lyon, the heart of
France's industry, rose up on March 23, followed the next day by
Marseille, Narbonne, Toulouse, Saint-Étienne, and the town of Le
Creusot. Only Marseille's Commune lasted more than a few days; there
some 6,000 soldiers, sailors, and National Guardsmen attacked 2,000
Guardsmen loyal to the Marseille Commune on April 4, capturing the
city and arresting its leader, Gaston Crémieux, who was executed.

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 In Versailles, Thiers made preparations to retake Paris. In 1848, he had
been prevented from crushing the nascent insurrection and had watched
the fall of Louis-Philippe as a result. He was determined not to let the same
thing happen this time. Almost immediately, he began to assemble an
army, placing Patrice de Mac Mahon in command and isolating the troops
from any source of news that was not favorable to the Versailles
government. He also increased their food and wine ration, which helped
win the troops over. The Volunteers of the Seine, a unit composed of
aristocratic young men who rallied to the Versailles cause gave him some
6,000 troops to add to the 55,000 he already had. Thiers, however,
continued to wait, realizing that more than 100,000 men would be
required to take Paris. He began to negotiate with the German
government, eventually winning the early release of French prisoners of
war; over 25,000 of them would fight in the final attack on Paris. From the
start, Thiers sold the suppression of the Commune as a chance for the
army to win back the honor it had lost in the war with Prussia, to reclaim
France from the hands of a rabble intent on destroying society; he also, no
doubt, exploited the long-held antipathy of rural French people for Paris.
The harsh discipline of army life provided the rest of the motivation; when
the time came, the Army of Versailles would fight without mercy and with
no thought of crossing over to fight with their fellow citizens in Paris.

THE COMMUNE ENDANGERED: APRIL, 1871

On March 30, 1871, a small patrol of Versailles troops led by General
Gaston de Galliffet (1831–1909) encountered the National Guard near
Courbevoie, 8 kilometers west of Paris. When his troops hesitated, he
personally led them on a charge that scattered the Guard and proved that
the Versailles troops would fight against the Communards. This was
followed up on April 2 by a larger engagement of two brigades of the
Versailles forces (French: les Versaillaises) that was another victory for
Thiers's men. Thirty National Guard prisoners were taken and then
executed by order of General Joseph Vinoy (1800–1880), who had been the
military commander of Paris during the Prussian siege, and then
commander-in-chief of the French army; it was he who had negotiated the
armistice with the Prussians.

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 Using the theory that any member of the National Guard or other
armed forces of France who were taken prisoner were guilty of
desertion, military justice allowed their execution, and Vinoy was
zealous in carrying out that commission (as Galliffet would also prove
to be). The Bloody Week would prove that the army would ultimately
make no distinction between the soldiers of the Commune and its
ordinary citizens.
In response, the Commune finally ordered an assault on Versailles.
Assembling a large force (supposedly 20,000 National Guardsmen but
probably fewer), they marched out of the city before dawn on April 3,
1871 in four columns, assured by their leaders that the army would
once again come over to their side like it did on March 18. As one of
the columns approached the great fortress of Mont-Valérien, once held
by the Guard, but later inexplicably abandoned, it erupted in cannon
fire: the Versaillais had recaptured it and turned its guns against the
National Guard, inflicting heavy casualties. The other columns also
faced strong resistance, and the entire attack, poorly organized and
led, collapsed, the Guard fleeing as best it could back to the city. One
of the leaders of the march, Gustave Flourens (1838–1871) was
captured and hacked to death by a gendarme; he had been one of the
most committed and energetic Communards, and his loss was a
disaster. In retaliation for his death and the death of other prisoners,
the Commune promised to take hostages and execute three of them for
every prisoner shot by the Versaillais. The Archbishop of Paris, Georges
Darboy (1813–1871), along with several other prominent religious
leaders, were arrested and made part of the Commune's hostages.
The failures on the military front were accompanied by sweeping
changes on the political front. The Commune remitted rent collected
during the Prussian siege; it abolished child labor and night work in the
bakeries of the city; granted pensions to the children and companions of
National Guardsmen who had died in the line of duty, even if they were
not married; returned all tools and any other goods worth less than 20
francs from the government pawnshops; allowed workers to take over any
companies whose owners had fled the city; and on April 3, 1871, created
a formal separation between church and state for the first time in the
history of France.

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 THE MASONS AND THE COMMUNE
Paris's Grand Orient Lodge of the Freemasons, founded in 1773, is one
of the oldest in Europe and has long been a supporter of liberalism and
republicanism; its members have included Benjamin Franklin, Georges
Danton, and the Marquis de Lafayette. It was a strong supporter of the
French Revolution (many Jacobins were members of the Lodge). The
Lodge has always had a strong commitment to democracy, the separation
of church and state, and human rights. (Membership has also never
required belief in a deity.)
During the Commune, the Masons mostly supported the Communards,
although they urged reconciliation with the Versailles government,
attempting to open negotiations between Thiers and the Council.
(Unsurprisingly, Thiers refused.) On April 29, 1871, the Masons even
marched in full regalia through Paris and placed their banner on the walls of
the city indicating it was under their protection—a touching if futile gesture.

This last deserves a slightly closer look. The Catholic Church in

France had a close relationship with the government (a result of the
first Napoléon's strongarming of the Pope); the salaries of priests were
paid by the government, and the French church had substantial
independence from Rome. Most of the education in France was
provided by parochial schools. These schools, however, had little
incentive to provide first-rate educations, especially for lower-class
students, and generally contented themselves to teach boys their letters
and girls their catechisms. Education was also neither free, nor
compulsory. The Commune's decree immediately suspended the
payment of salaries to the religious orders and ordered a commission
to study how to put the public buildings owned by the Church to best
use. (In many parts of Paris, free schools sprang up and education of
minors was made a state function.) There was a darker side to these
changes, however; the resentment felt by the radicals (and many
working-class Parisians) towards the Church resulted in the arrest of
priests and nuns, and the seizure of many churches, which—as they had
been in the first Revolution—were now turned into political clubs,
which faithful Catholics saw as a sacrilege.

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 One of the most important groups to be formed during this flowering of
radical action inside the Commune was the Women's Union for the Defense
of Paris and the Care of the Wounded (Union des femmes pour la défense de
Paris et les soins aux blessés). Founded in Montmartre by a young Russian
Member of the International, Elisabeth Dmitrieff (1850–1910) and
including her fellow Internationalists Nathalie Lemel and André Léo, the
anarchist Paule Minck, and the indefatigable radical Louise Michel, the
Women's Union pushed a program of gender and wage equality for women,
and famously admitted sex workers into their ranks; curiously they did not,
however, push for women's suffrage. A collection of some of the finest radical
minds and writers of their generation, the Women's Union was an important
milestone in the history of women's politics.
One radical action the Commune did not go through with was to seize the
assets of the Bank of France, which had been left inside the city when the
government fled. This included over 80 million francs in gold. The
Commune instead negotiated a series of loans from the Bank (which had to
be approved by Thiers!) and never tried to claim the rest of the money, an
action Karl Marx later criticized them for.
Meanwhile the military situation became worse and worse. The Versailles
forces closed in on the capital, capturing the suburb of Neuilly on April 6;
the shelling of Paris, begun as early as April 2, grew in intensity as heavier
guns came in range after April 12. In retaliation Communards burned down
Thiers's house on May 12.

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 THE UNBELIEVABLE LIFE OF LOUISE MICHEL
The legendary life of the arch-provocateur Louise Michel (1830–1905) has an
almost fairy tale beginning: she was born and raised in a castle. Her mother
Marianne was a maid to Charles-Étienne Demahis, a poor nobleman who lived
in the Château de Vroncourt in the Haute-Marne region of northeastern
France. She was an illegitimate child; her father was supposed to be Laurent
Demahis, Charles-Étienne's son, but it may have been the older man himself.
She was given a good education and allowed the run of the dilapidated château,
especially its large library; her youth gave her a life-long love of books, and
cats, as the château had many to help control the mice. Even as a young girl,
Louise was a republican — she and her best friend used to pretend to be
prisoners about to be guillotined during the Terror, giving impassioned
speeches defending liberty before being executed.
After the death of her grandparents, she attended a school for teachers in
Chaumont and taught there and in Paris, where she opened a school in 1865.
She had unusual methods for a teacher of the day, liking to take her students
outside and teaching them La Marseillaise (a dangerous idea during the Second
Empire). Once in Paris, she became closely tied to radical circles, becoming
acquainted with Louis-Auguste Blanqui and meeting Théophile Ferré and his
sister Marie; she would remain devoted to the two Ferrés for the rest of her life.
By the late 1860s, she was a committed radical, writing poetry and articles for
journals, starting a correspondence with the famous writer and liberal Victor
Hugo (1802–1885), and contributing to the manifesto A Re-Vindication of the
Rights of Women.
Michel was at the front of the crowd that confronted the soldiers in
Montmartre on March 18, 1871, and quickly involved herself tirelessly in as
much of the Commune's work as she could. She was an arch-militant, urging
women to take up arms and defend the city along with the men. She was an
important member of the Women's Union, and even (according to her)
developed a plan to go to Versailles and assassinate Adolphe Thiers. (She
claimed to have made the trip to Versailles but to have been unable to get close
enough to the Chief of the Executive to kill him.) She was finally arrested
during the Bloody Week after hearing that soldiers had threatened to arrest
her mother if she did not surrender; although her mother shared none of her
radical opinions, Louise was her devoted protector for as long as she lived.

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 At her trial she refused to give any defense, freely admitting her actions
and only offering corrections when the Council of War accused her of
something that she did not do. Her contemptuous speech before
sentencing, promising eternal vengeance and daring the court to sentence
her to death, became one of the Commune's most inspirational legacies;
her friend Victor Hugo wrote the poem "Viro Major" ("Greater Than A
Man") in tribute to her defiance. The Council of War did not accept her
dare, and she was sentenced to be deported to the island of New Caledonia.
She was transported there in 1873 on the ship Virginie, where she spent
much time with her friend and fellow member of the Women's Union,
Nathalie Lemel. Prior to this, Louise had been a believer in socialism and
the social revolution, but during the voyage, Lemel convinced her to adopt
anarchism as her political belief.
On New Caledonia, she became a teacher again, to the children of the
deported Communards, the indigenous Kanak people, and later, the
Iqbayliyen (or Kabyle) from Algeria who had been deported after their own
failed revolt in 1871. (She was more welcoming of both the Kanaks and the
Iqbayliyen than her fellow Communards.) She claimed to have given some
Kanak warriors parts of the red scarf she had worn during the Commune
when they launched a doomed rebellion against the colonial authorities.
After being amnestied in 1880, she travelled to Australia and asked for
transport on a French packet ship back to France; the embassy refused to
give her passage until she threatened to go on a speaking tour of Australia.

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Supposedly, she smuggled several cats on board the ship. Once back in
France, she dove again into politics, attending the anarchist congress in
London in 1881, and then in March of 1883 a demonstration on the
Champs-de-Mars in Paris that ended in a riot; during the demonstration, she
proudly carried a black flag, the symbol of anarchism. She was arrested after
the riot and sentenced to six years in prison, although she was released in
1886. While in prison, both her friend Marie Ferré and her mother died.
Once out of prison, she resumed her radical activities. She was shot and
seriously wounded during a speech in Le Havre in 1888; in 1890, she moved
to London, where she opened a short-lived anarchist school and toured
Europe giving speeches; in 1895, she met Emma Goldman in London. The
last decade of her life was spent traveling between England and France and
touring Algeria in 1904. When she died in 1905, her funeral was attended
by 100,000 people in Paris. She was buried in the same cemetery as her old
friend Théophile Ferré, for whom she had written her best-known poem,
"The Red Carnations," while they were both imprisoned in Satory.
Louise Michel never married, which is why she became famous as the
"Red Virgin of Montmartre," although many have speculated she may have
been involved with Théophile Ferré or his sister Marie (whose picture she
kept with her for her entire life). In Paris, there is a Métro station named
after her in the same suburb where she is buried, and the large sloping
park directly in front of Sacré-Coeur is called Square Louise-Michel, a
fitting final provocation for one of history's great provocateurs.

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THE COMMUNE OF PARIS UNDER SIEGE: MAY, 1871
The Commune had abolished the standing army as part of its program of
reforms, instead making the National Guard a true citizen's militia
composed of all male citizens between the ages of 18 and 40. But despite the
worsening crisis, desertion was endemic in the Guard. Efforts were made to
find deserters and enlist those who had not yet reported for duty; as they
were generally conducted by hardliners in the Commune government, these
searches became intrusive and often ended in the arrest of their targets.
Even with these measures, desertion continued, sapping the Commune's
already-dubious military strength.
On May 1, at the instigation of the Jacobins on the Commune Council, a new
Committee of Public Safety was created and given executive authority to manage
the defense of the city. Despite its fearsome historical name, the new Committee
was little better equipped than the Council had been to cut through the confusion
that plagued the Commune's efforts, mostly succeeding only in increasing the
paranoia of its leaders and alienating the Internationalists and anarchists on the
Council; on May 15, they temporarily left the Council as a protest.
Besides burning Thiers's house, the Communards made another gesture aimed
at the symbols of the old regime: on May 16, 1871, the tall triumphal column in
the Place Vendôme dedicated to the victories of Napoléon Bonaparte—made in
imitation of similar Roman columns, and forged from cannons captured in
battle—was pulled down to the cheers of a huge crowd that had gathered to watch
the destruction. The organizer of the destruction was the famous artist Gustave
Courbet (1819–1877), a lifelong socialist and member of the Council. (After the
fall of the Commune he was ordered to pay 323,000 francs for its replacement,
but he died before any money was collected.)
Outside of the city, the fighting now concentrated on Fort Issy, which
guarded the Seine River to the southwest of Paris which was the easiest route
for the Versaillais to take to capture Paris. For two weeks, it was shelled
continually by the army, finally falling on May 8 and giving Thiers's troops
another vantage point to use in shelling Paris. The Versaillais approached
nearer and nearer to the city, killing any prisoners they took and driving the
National Guard within the walls of Paris.
Those walls were now the last obstacle between the Commune and the
army created for its destruction. The army planned the bombardment that
would be required to breach the gates and allow the assault to begin. But it
would never need to carry out this plan. On May 21, the Versaillais were able
to simply walk into the city.

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 JUSTICE IN THE PARIS COMMUNE
During its short life, the Commune undoubtedly made many
strides toward establishing an egalitarian society; at the same
time, however, its Ministry of Justice was capable of cruel and
arbitrary arrest. It was headed by Raoul Rigault (1846–1871),
a committed Blanquist. Rigault had intensely studied the
police before the Commune in order to discover its spies
among the radical groups; after the uprising of March 18, he
and some other Blanquists seized the Prefecture of Police and
took it over. Fond of wine and food and an opponent of
organized religion, Rigault freed Paris's political prisoners,
used the police records to hunt down those who had helped the
police before the Commune—and aggressively pursued anyone
he thought was helping the Versailles government. (A Jesuit
was arrested once and when questioned, said he was a servant
of God, who was everywhere; Rigault put him down as
employed by “some God, a vagrant.”) Rigault supported the
enforcement of enlistment into the National Guard and
generally had no tolerance for anything less than absolute
devotion to the cause of the Commune. He died on May 24,
killed by Versailles troops.
Rigault's chief deputy was Théophile Ferré, a resident of
Montmartre and close friend of Louise Michel. He was a lawyer
who had once been accused of being part of a conspiracy to kill
Napoléon III; under Rigault, he became a prosecutor and
member of the Commune Council. It was Ferré who signed the
fateful order to execute Archbishop Darboy. He was captured
by the Versailles and executed by them on November 28, 1871.

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87
 THE GENERALS OF THE PARIS COMMUNE
During its brief and turbulent history, the Commune placed its trust in several
military leaders, none of which were able to prevent the final catastrophe. Its first
Delegate to the Ministry of War was the adventurer Gustave Paul Cluseret (1823–
1900). He was a lifelong soldier and graduate of the military academy of Saint-Cyr;
despite having fought against the revolutionaries during the June Days, he was a
republican and anti-Bonapartist. He fought in Algeria and in the Crimean War and
then joined the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–1865) as a
brigadier general. In 1866, he joined the Irish revolutionary group the Fenians in
their revolt against the British. A professional soldier (if one with a very high
opinion of himself), Cluseret was aware of the faults of the National Guard and
while committed to the cause, was unable to form them into an effective force. He
was arrested on May 1 by the Committee of Public Safety, but was acquitted. He
managed to hide in Paris after the Bloody Week and escape disguised as a priest. He
would later return to France and serve in the Chamber of Deputies.
His successor was Louis-Nathaniel Rossel (1844–1871), a captain in the
French Army. He tried to better defend Fort Issy and build new barricades, but
quickly despaired of being able to defend the city with the National Guard and
the suspicious Committee of Public Safety at his back. He resigned on May 9
and went into hiding in the city before being captured and executed on
November 28, 1871.
His successor was Charles Delescluze (1809–1871), a journalist and radical
who was 62 years old and had no military experience. Overwhelmed by the job
and depressed by the ease with which the Versailles forces were taking the city,
on the evening of May 25, 1871, he put on his red sash, walked to a nearby
barricade, and exposed himself to enemy fire, dying almost immediately.
The Commune did have, of course, many brave defenders and a few good
commanders. The best of these were two Polish soldiers, Jarosław Dąbrowski
(1836–1871) and Walery Wróblewski (1836–1908), both veterans of the 1863
Polish uprising against the Russian Empire. Dąbrowski was made Commander-in-
Chief of the Commune's forces shortly before the Bloody Week and was in charge
of the defense of the crucial western walls of the city. Brave and tenacious, he was
nonetheless accused of accepting a bribe from the Versaillais; his death from
wounds received during the fighting avoided the need for a trial. Wróblewski was
also a tenacious defender of his sectors of the city, and was able to escape in the
confusion at the end of the Bloody Week. He was later one of the secretaries of
the General Council of the First International.

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 THE BLOODY WEEK: MAY 21-28, 1871
Around 3 pm on May 21, 1871, a Versailles sympathizer noticed that
the Guard had abandoned a portion of the walls, leaving them
undefended. Versailles troops entered the fortifications, opened one of
the city's gates, and soon the Army of Versailles was pouring into the city.
The Commune initially dismissed reports that troops were entering the
city; the Council was more concerned with the trial of General Cluseret,
its first minister of war. The Versailles troops moved cautiously through
the city; they encountered little resistance, since the wealthier western
regions of Paris were more sympathetic to Thiers and the national
government. Already, however, the sumThuy execution of anyone caught
bearing arms against the government had begun.
The next day, the Versailles completed their conquest of the western
parts of the city, moving along both banks of the Seine. The Commune's
response was disorganized; the demoralized guard units began to return
to their home neighborhoods, rather than confront the troops of the
line. Barricades arose in the streets and people defended the ones they
had already built, but the Army had not studied street fighting in vain:
wherever possible they went around the barricades, or seized buildings
on either side of them and fired down into the defenders. Artillery was
brought inside the city and used effectively against the barricades as well.
In desperation, the Commune turned to fire for defense. The fires it
set generally had two purposes: to destroy buildings near barricades
and other fortified points to prevent the army from using them to flank
the position, or to create a barrier of flames that the army would not be
able to cross. The latter technique was used spectacularly on the Rue
de Rivoli, one of the most expensive streets in the city and the first of
Baron Haussmann's remodeling projects. The damage done was
tremendous, but of limited military use in the defense of the city.

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89
 On May 23, Montmartre, the home neighborhood of Louise Michel
and most of the Women's Union as well as some of the Commune's
staunchest defenders, fell to the army. The cannons parked on the
Butte Montmartre were finally seized by the army, ten weeks after the
attempt to take them sparked the revolt that became the Paris
Commune. (The guns had been so poorly maintained that most could
not be fired, and they played no part in the defense of Paris.) That
evening, the Commune gave orders to burn the Tuileries Palace, which
stood between the Louvre and the Tuileries Gardens. This palace was
once the home of Louis XVI and Napoléon III, whose wife had
extensively and expensively remodeled it. Now it burned, both because
the Commune could no longer defend it, and as a final desperate blow
to royalty. Its gutted ruin was demolished after the fighting ended, and
it has never been rebuilt.
By May 24, organization had completely broken down within the
Commune; the remaining neighborhoods fought on their own as best
they could. The Hôtel de Ville, the center of the Commune's
government, was now impossible to defend so it was abandoned and
burned, along with the Palace of Justice, the Prefecture of Police, and
the Palais-Royal. (There was a certain logic to some of these moves—to
destroy records of the Commune government that might be used as
evidence at a trial, or to destroy police records.)
The executions carried out by the army were increasing in intensity.
Prisoners were lined up in the Luxembourg Garden, the pleasant oasis
of the middle class on the Left Bank, and routinely shot by firing
squads. Courts-martial were set up, but their verdicts were almost
always a death sentence. National Guardsmen frantically tried to
discard their uniforms, as being captured in one meant immediate
execution; their trousers, with their telltale red stripe up the legs,
proved hardest to replace with civilian clothes. Even ordinary citizens
who were captured faced execution: if their hands showed signs of
black powder residue from firing a gun, they were slated for death.

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 May 24 was also the day the Commune finally carried out its threat to kill
hostages. Théophile Ferré, the acting minister of justice, sent an order to
kill Archbishop Darboy and five other priests held in the prison of La
Roquette. Darboy, who was already very ill, forgave his executioners. This
act of vengeance was used for decades afterwards to indict the Commune.
(Another 60 hostages, including ten priests, were executed two days later
on the orders of a local National Guard colonel.)
By now, it was clear that the fighting was hopeless for the Communards,
but still they stubbornly resisted, fighting block by block. Many tried to
flee the city; the Germans, who occupied the suburbs to the north,
refused to let refugees pass. Some did however manage to escape,
beginning months of long struggle to stay hidden or escape France.
By May 27, only the working class neighborhood of Belleville still held
out against the Versaillais. Their last stand came in Père-Lachaise
cemetery, resting place of great artists and statesmen. There on the
morning of May 28, the last defenders of the Paris Commune surrendered.

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 AFTERMATH
Just how many people died during the Bloody Week remains
uncertain and probably always will. There was of course great incentive
for the army to hide the results of its activities; even so, they claimed
17,000 people had been killed or executed during the Bloody Week, a
number supported by the amount of burials paid for by the
governments of the arrondissements of Paris. Analysis of census
records for 1872 suggests that some 35,000 people were unaccounted
for between 1870 and 1872. Some surviving Communards claimed
100,000 casualties, which is almost certainly too high; somewhere
between 15,000 and 35,000 dead seems the safest estimate. What is
clear is that the death toll was enormous, and concentrated in a few
districts of Paris. Bodies were stacked up in the streets; some were
buried beneath the paving stones.
Paris came under martial law. The authorities received almost
400,000 denunciations of people for supporting the Commune. Think
about what that means: support of the Commune in that moment was a
serious crime, punishable with lengthy imprisonment, exile, or even
death. Four hundred thousand times, people in Paris felt the need to
denounce their fellow-citizens to severe punishment at the hands of
authority. There was also a bounty of five hundred francs for turning
in a Communard. If anything, this makes the denunciations worse.
Large sections of Paris were burned out and destroyed; some had even
been shelled by artillery. Surviving pictures of this period show scenes
that look like the ruined towns of Flanders during World War I: streets
choked with rubble, buildings reduced to single tottering walls, empty
husks of apartments and stores. The financial investment in restoring
the city must have been huge and immediate—witness contemporary
fiction set in Paris a few years later that makes no mention of the damage
or even of the Commune itself. The wholesale project of consigning the
Commune to historical oblivion had already begun.

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 There would be no monuments to the Commune save those the
Communards and their successors made themselves; the most
enduring one is the Mur des Féderés, the wall in Père-Lachaise
Cemetery where about 150 National Guardsmen were shot after
surrendering on May 28, 1871. It has become a shrine for the left in
France, and site of an annual May Day rally. But the victors built their
own shrine to their success: in 1873, the National Assembly authorized
the construction of a grand new basilica cathedral in Montmartre,
Sacré-Cœur de Paris. Perched on the highest point of the city, it floats
elegantly over it, its onion-shaped domes looking like the balloons that
once made their desperate passage over the Prussian lines from that
very place in 1870. If you visit it today, you will be told that is was built
by devout industrialists who wished to expiate the sins of the nation
that resulted in the disaster of the Franco-Prussian war; but the very
location of the cathedral gives the lie to that. It is built just next to the
former site of the Champs Polonais, where the cannons of 18 March
had been located, and actually on top of the place where General
Lecomte was shot. The act passed by the National Assembly itself said
that Sacré-Coeur was built to make up for the crimes of the Commune.
All of this came after the Commune had been crushed and its
supporters punished. And for that to happen there would be a need for
more blood sacrifice from the defeated at the hands of the victors.

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 SATORY
About 40,000 people were captured by the army during the Bloody
Week, including over 1,000 women, some of whom were marched out of
Paris clutching infants to their breast. Many were wounded, but no
provision was made for them; like everyone else, they would have to walk
the entire distance from eastern Paris to prison camps outside of Versailles.
Almost none of the prisoners had been combatants during the Bloody
Week — those had already been executed by the army, or made their
escape. The vast majority were simply in the wrong place at the wrong
time. General Galliffet made a show of walking along a line of
prisoners, mocking them, and sending elderly and wounded prisoners
out to be shot.
Many prisoners died on the way to Versailles, of untreated wounds or
from being too sick or infirm to make such a long march. Some, of course,
were simply shot by soldiers. Arrival in Versailles brought no relief; the
women were crowded into Chantiers prison, and many of the men
crammed into the old military barracks at Camp Satory, which quickly
became an unsanitary hellhole. Guards threatened to shoot prisoners at
Satory if they showed any defiance, and sometimes carried out their
threats. Chantiers was little better; at both prisons, food and water were
often withheld, even food brought for the prisoners by their families.
The formal legal theory held by the victors of Versailles was that the
Commune had been an unlawful rebellion and so, military justice was
called for. A series of courts-martial, the Councils of War, began trying
the Communard prisoners. Around 22,000 prisoners were released
before trial, leaving nearly 16,000 people who were prosecuted by the
military. 13,500 of them were found guilty; almost a hundred were
sentenced to death, another thousand were deported to the island
colony of New Caledonia in the Pacific, and the rest were given prison
sentences, often including hard labor.

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 Those prisoners who were considered leaders of the Commune were
given special treatment and their own separate trials. The death
sentence was handed down to 270 of them (though 175 of these
sentences were in absentia, the defendants having evaded capture);
only about 25 were actually shot, and the National Assembly reviewed
the sentences in October 1871, reducing or commuting many of them.
Something close to 10,000 people managed to escape into exile,
mostly to England, Belgium, and Switzerland. Some faded into
obscurity, while others became even more militant.
Many of the most active Communards, including Louise Michel and
André Léo, were sent to New Caledonia, a marginal colony on a
tropical island being exploited for its hardwood and mineral resources.
Louise Michel kept herself active there, doing botanical experiments
and teaching the indigenous Kanak people; she even compiled a
dictionary of their language, and supposedly gave covert support to
their failed 1878 revolt against the colonial occupation.
On July 11, 1880, a general amnesty to all those convicted for
participating in the Commune was handed down, allowing the exiles to
return to France. (Notably, the Algerians who had fought in their own
revolt against France in 1871 were not given an amnesty.) Some never
returned; others, like Louise Michel returned and became active once
again in politics; some Communards even were elected to the National
Assembly in the years after the amnesty.

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 LEGACY
Adolphe Thiers's victory resulted in him becoming the first President
of the Third Republic in August of 1871. His triumph was relatively
short-lived, although he showed his characteristic opportunism by
sliding towards the republican faction of the Assembly despite his
monarchist inclinations. In 1873, he was ousted in a parliamentary
coup that made Patrice de Mac Mahon, the former commander-in-chief
of the Army of Versailles, the new President. Mac Mahon too failed to
bring about a monarchical restoration in France, and the Third
Republic, an unwieldy and often unworkable mix of clerical, leftist,
and monarchist factions that was unloved and unwanted by all of them,
somehow managed to continue to blunder forward until defeated by
the Germans in 1940.
The fall of the Commune also caused the downfall of the First
International. Karl Marx believed that the lesson of the Commune was that
the proletariat could not simply take over the existing institutions of the
government, but had to destroy them and build a revolutionary
government of their own—mostly siding thus with people who believed the
Commune's lack of leadership and insistence on preserving the norms of
civic government had been responsible for its collapse. Bakunin's
supporters, on the other hand, found that the Commune's decentralization
and spirit of voluntary association was exactly the kind of community they
believed would ultimately destroy the state; they rejected Marx's ideas as
authoritarian, and felt that his control of the International was becoming
dictatorial. In 1872, Marx ejected Bakunin from the International, causing
a spilt between anarchists and socialists that is still felt today. The
truncated International Workingman's Association managed to limp
forward until 1877. When the Second International was formed in 1889,
the anarchists were conspicuously not included. (The theme song of the
Second International, the famous working-class hymn known as the
Internationale, was written by an ex-Communard.)
The Third Republic mostly attempted to forget that the Commune
had ever existed. Instead of a noble experiment in radical equality
between the classes that was crushed by a conservative-led massacre,
the Commune was painted as a collection of drunks, uneducated clods

96
attempting to control a government they did not understand, and most
of all, man-hating, fire-setting Amazonian women, ugly and mannish.
Over time, a new legend emerged, that the sacrifice of the Commune
had been so horrific that it discredited the conservative parties,
allowing the Third Republic to survive and avoiding the attempt to find
a new King of France. (In actuality, Henri, Count of Chambord—the
Legitimist or Bourbon pretender to the throne—was acceptable to a
majority of the monarchists of the National Assembly in 1871, but his
refusal to continue to keep the Tricolor as the national flag cost him
enough support to prevent him from becoming king.)
Until the Russian Revolution, however, the Commune was the closest
thing to a successful socialist revolution the world had ever seen, and it
was studied and valorized by leftists. Certainly in Lenin's insistence that
the revolution would be led by a cadre of committed professional
revolutionaries, we can see Blanqui's heavy influence; the Bolsheviks
consciously used imagery from the Commune and even had the support
of a few surviving Communards. (Legend has it that on the 73rd day
after the October Revolution, Lenin did a little dance in the Winter
Palace to celebrate having outlasted the Commune.) As the left became
disillusioned with the great socialist victories of the 20th century—which
seemed always to end in authoritarian regimes—the Commune was
revived as a symbol of a noble and egalitarian socialism. Certainly the
Commune can be something for everyone, as it held so many
contradictory elements within it—anarchists, social democrats,
communists, all can find some part of the Commune to claim and
champion. The confusion, the Communards’ battles for the meaning of
the Commune while Paris burned, those are lost to the mists of romantic
history, of visions of heroic figures silhouetted against the flames from
the top of the barricades. That the true meaning of the Commune may
have been that for ten weeks or so, people who had been bent and bowed
by the weight of poverty and oppression could finally stand tall and stare
the world in the face, daring it to call them inferior, that gets lost in the
mazes of theory and competing historical claims.
But in Montmartre, to this day, you can see graffiti of Louise Michel's
stern face painted on walls, or the slogan elle n'est pas morte: it is not dead.

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 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Algeria
By Amr Ammourazz

Algeria’s history with France goes back much further, with conflicts
surrounding piracy stemming back to the 1500s. Around 1795, France took
a major loan of grain from Algeria to feed Napoléon’s armies, then spent the
next three decades refusing to pay it back, going as far as taking military
action to avoid doing so. This led to escalating diplomatic clashes, blockades
by France, and short skirmishes, culminating in 1830 with the French
invasion of Algeria.
During the conquest, they recruited local horsemen and designated
them spahis, attaching them to French regiments to use against their
own populations. These troops formed the basis for the spahi regiments
created in 1834, consisting of Arab and Imaziɣen troops under the
command of a French officer.
In 1871, Algeria was primed for a revolution. France’s demands for
more grain to feed its armies came at the cost of the local populations,
which faced hunger and shortages, and that was before the drought
came. European colonizers (colons) seizing even more land from the
Muslim locals further embittered the displaced. The withdrawal of
soldiers for the Franco-Prussian War led to a weakened military
presence. Defeats in said war chipped away at the government’s glamour.
This is the context in which the French government passed a series of
decrees which abolished the independence of self-governing tribes and
voided all debts owed to chieftains. And these are only the highlights of
five years leading up to the Franco-Prussian War. The French
colonization of Algeria was an extended period of cultural genocide and
gaslighting on a nationwide scale, with atrocities frequently committed
by the French military.

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 After declaring themselves rulers of Algeria, the French began a
campaign to associate French language and culture with prosperity
and superiority, and Arabic and the native Tamaziɣt languages with
poverty. They indoctrinated wealthy Algerians into the fold, teaching
them the language as a gesture of status.
Ever since the 1860s, Algerians had been able to become French citizens,
equal in every way under the law… as long as they renounced Islam and all
associated culture. Otherwise, they were subject to all the rules and
regulations of a French Citizen, with none of the rights. The French-
speaking Algerians took the deal, but for a country consisting almost
entirely of Arabs and Imaziɣen, the message could not have been clearer.
Muslims weren’t even second rate; they just didn’t qualify as people.
In January of 1871, a spahi squadron ordered to reinforce France in
the Franco-Prussian War mutinied, setting off a chain of unrest which
was violently quelled. On March 16th, just two days before the birth of
the commune, ex-spahi Cheikh Mokrani led 6,000 troops in an attack
which kicked off the Mokrani revolt. This was doomed to fail not even a
year later, but they didn’t know it yet.
Tariq grew up in this climate, and would have been distinctly aware of
the rising tensions and calls for revolt just before he was sent to serve in
the Franco-Prussian War a year ago. Playing an Algerian character
means being aware of this history, and always having it in the back of
your mind, especially when interacting with matters of the royalty of
the Versailles regime, those directly responsible for the oppression of
your people. It means relating to the plight of the Commune, and
understanding that, if it fails, what happens to the Commune will pale
in comparison to what happens to your people.

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 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Martinique
By Ciel Sainte-Marie

Martinique is the third largest island of the Lesser Antilles islands,

located in the Eastern Caribbean Sea. It was the birthplace of
Joséphine Bonaparte who was the first wife of Napoléon I and Empress
of France from 1804 until 1810.
The French landed in Martinique in 1635, under the reign of Louis XIII,
and fought with the indigenous Kalinago, whom they eradicated from the
island by 1658. The main export of Martinique was sugar, with sugar cane
plantations covering much of the coastal land of the island worked by
slaves imported from Africa by the French to labor on these plantations.
Despite the official end of slavery in 1848, abolition did very little to
change the daily conditions of the former slaves who were granted
their freedom and were now known as les nouveaux libres. Most of
these people had left the sugar plantations and were now living as
peasants in rural impoverishment. The Second French Empire was an
insidiously coercive regime with high taxes, low labour wages, and a
disciplinary system that in many ways replicated the degradation and
violence of slavery for the new citizens.
By law, any individual without regular employment was considered a
vagabond, a category which the newly freed slaves who had become
peasants fell under. Under the guise of “suppressing vagrancy”, the law
required laborers to carry both a livret (or “booklet”) that held the stamp
of their employer, and a kind of domestic passport that recorded their tax
payments. Those without these documents faced mandatory detention.
Fines against them were converted into workdays in labour camps.
In February 1870, racially-charged injustices were coming to a head
when an altercation took place between Léopold Lubin, a black
tradesman, and Augier Maintenon, assistant commissioner of the
French Navy. Maintenon is said to have ordered Lubin to move aside

100
and salute him and when Lubin refused, he was thrown to the ground
and whipped. Lubin took his revenge by returning the whipping on
April 25th, and he was convicted of libel and assault when the case was
brought to court. Lubin was sentenced to prison, heavy fines, and
deportation to Guyana. To much of the island’s population, this was an
all too common racially-biased injustice.
The case caught the attention of Lumina Sophie, a daughter of a
former slave who raised funds for Lubin’s defense. Further provocations,
such as the flying of white flags by supporters of white supremacy and
other failings of the legal system fueled an uprising of over a thousand
citizens in Rivière-Pilote on September 22nd. Lumina and other
demonstrators demanded Lubin’s release and marched on the public jail.
Houses were burned and a state of emergency was declared across
communes in Southern Martinique. The revolt ended on September
26th, and Lumina was taken into custody. Other leaders had gone
missing or were found dead. The events of the “Insurrection of the
South” were later cloaked in an official silence by the government.
In the Spring of 1871, during the time of the Paris Commune,
Martinique was seeing to the fates of the insurgents who had pushed
back against the racism and misuse of power of the béké (white)
population of the island the previous September. From April to May,
over 500 prisoners involved in the revolt stood trial in court and
received sentences ranging from forced labor for life to execution.
Lumina, singled out as the spark of the revolt by officials, was
sentenced to a life-long imprisonment on charges of insurrection. She
was deported to a prison in Guyana eight years later, where she died in
custody from illness and ill-treatment. Dominique's resistance thus
belongs to a long tradition of Martinique women who fought back.

101
 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

New Orleans
By Jeffrey Lawrence

Prior to the eruption of the American Civil War in 1861, New Orleans
occupied a peculiar position in the Deep South, owing to its unique history.
Formally founded in 1718 by the French, the site of the city was selected due to
its command of the passage out of the interior of North America via the
Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. Trade along this route, down the river,
and into the Gulf of Mexico made the city prosperous. Briefly from 1763 until
1800, New Orleans, along with the massive Louisiana territory, was ceded to
Spain following France’s defeat in the Seven Years’ War. In 1802, Spain ceded
it back to France. The next year, Napoléon Bonaparte sold it to the United
States to pay in part for France’s costly war debts.
The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) and subsequent abolition of slavery by
the French Empire (1793) resulted in a massive influx of former Haitians to
New Orleans, where slavery was still legal. France’s system of slavery was not
chattel slavery as would be practiced in the cotton states, and allowed both
white people and people of color to own slaves. The new immigrants into New
Orleans brought with them this pre-revolutionary Haitian culture and their
human possessions. This particular twist on the “peculiar institution”
persisted throughout the antebellum years, with some New Orleanian people of
color maintaining a status as freemen in a section of the country where that
was otherwise unheard of.
When the American Civil War (1861–1865) began, Louisiana joined the
Confederacy. New Orleans, however, was a tempting target for the Union, and it
was captured in early 1862. Occupation by the Union forces offered new
opportunities for some Louisianians of color. Seeking new sources of
volunteers with declining enlistments, Lincoln’s government began to allow
black men to serve in the Army. The first wave of enlistments were mostly free
men, though "contrabands"—slaves that had escaped bondage—and men freed
by the Proclamation bolstered their ranks. The Emancipation Proclamation (1
January 1863), and subsequent creation of the United States Colored Troops
(USCT) saw some 20,000 black men in Federal service by the end of the war.

102
 Most USCT regiments were led by white officers, as endemic racism in the
north precluded the thought that African-Americans could be effective as
officers. Black soldiers’ pay was half that of their white counterparts, though,
following protest, that was corrected by June 1864. Most USCT units never
saw combat, serving largely as general laborers, though actions such as the
54th Massachusetts at Fort Wagner stand as a counterpoint. Black soldiers
were reviled in the south, and could expect dramatically harsher treatment if
captured. At Fort Pillow, Tennessee, an entire garrison of largely black troops
who had surrendered were massacred at the orders of Confederate general
Nathan Bedford Forrest.
The 1st Louisiana Native Guard was unusual for such soldiers. Free
Louisianians of color had a history serving in the local militia, and were led
by Creole officers of color. Formed in the summer of 1862, they lacked
official approval from Washington, but were not rejected either. Consisting of
primarily people who had escaped slavery, they retained a core of free men
from the militia. The Native Guard saw mostly guard duty at forts, but also
participated in the Siege of Port Hudson.
When the war ended in 1865, former Confederates were stripped of their
voting rights and barred from holding office, while voting rights were
granted to African-American and Creole (mixed-ethnicity people descended
from French and African slaves). Given the preponderance of non-whites, the
people of color dominated the municipal government and the police force.
The “New Orleans Massacre of 1866” when a mob of whites, former
government leaders, and Confederates attacked, mutilated, and murdered
marchers of color on a parade route, was a violent reaction to this dramatic
change in status.
In 1872, former Confederates were given back voting rights, and subsequently
regained control of the city government, though Radical Republicans and
African-Americans retained command of the municipal police until the
departure of Union troops at the end of Reconstruction in 1877. As states fell
back into the hands of former rebels, the first Jim Crow laws were signed into
effect, and the long shadow of violent racism fell again over the south. New
Orleans was not spared the impact, and while free, many found themselves worse
off after the war than before. Many of New Orleans’s residents of color began to
emigrate, and some of the first African-Americans to emigrate to Paris were
francophones from New Orleans, like Pierre (Peter) Williams.

103
 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Vietnam
By Kevin Nguyen

Vietnam has a long and tumultuous history of colonization at many

hands including those of China, Japan, and, most notably, France. The
ripples of these breaches can still be felt today. Take, for instance, the
now en vogue Banh Mi: a sandwich built on French baguette with pâté,
mayonnaise, your choice of charcuterie or Chinese barbecue pork, and
pickled carrots and daikon. If that doesn’t sum up the history of
Vietnam in a single bite, I don’t know what to tell you.
It would be easy to say that Vietnamese people and people of the
Vietnamese diaspora hate or love France but the issue for many is much
more complicated than that. By 1871 France and her people had:

� Helped bring Christianity to Vietnam

� Saved the prince who would become Emperor of Vietnam
� Promised official aid in the reunification of Vietnam under the
Emperor
� Did not deliver such aid
� Sent French troops who—in some minds—were instrumental in
ending the civil war and establishing the current ruling Nguyen
Dynasty
� Made it possible for Christians to live peacefully within Vietnam
during the Nguyen Dynasty
� Acted to protect Vietnamese and visiting Christians later
persecuted by the Nguyen dynasty
� Attacked Vietnamese forces and sunk the Vietnamese Navy
� Invaded and occupied several Vietnamese cities, citing the treaty
promising aid for the reunification of Vietnam—which France did
not fulfill—from over half a decade previous as justification
� Transitioned their occupation into full blown colonization of large
territories
� And continued to expand those territories up until just a few years
before the events of Red Carnations on a Black Grave.

104
 Even contemporary Vietnamese at the time would likely find their feelings
mixed at best in regards to France and its relationship to Vietnam. The
degree to which an informed Vietnamese person of the time would view
France as an ally or an enemy would depend on their own personal history.
One might expect Nguyen Van Vinh in Red Carnations to lean heavily one
way or the other but extremism either way—while possible—would be rare.
A loyal mandarin of the Nguyen Dynasty and a Vietnamese Catholic Priest
would obviously have differing opinions on the matter. To totally praise or
damn France while portraying a Vietnamese person of the time in this
game would act to depreciate the complex nature of Vietnam and France’s
relationship and caricature the person being played.

One might also consider that under the Third Republic, France would go on to:
� Colonize northern Vietnamese territories
� Colonize central Vietnamese territories
� Unify these northern and central colonies with the southern colony of
Cochinchina into the colony of French Indochina, all while spreading
and assimilating territories of neighboring southeast Asian nations.
One could easily take this timeline of events as justification for
Vietnamese disdain for the French, but even today, Vietnamese people and
people of the Vietnamese diaspora struggle with their feelings towards
France’s involvement in Vietnam’s history.
I would encourage players taking on the role of Nguyen Van Vinh who
wish to play the character in an honest and sophisticated manner to think
carefully about how they portray the character in their iteration of Red
Carnations on a Black Grave. Might they have some sympathy for France,
perhaps be a Catholic, or possibly have some French ancestry, seeing the
good they brought and remembering how they were friends of Vietnam for
a time, hoping they could be again? Would they feel harshly critical of
France, seeing how it forces itself onto others for its own gain, mirroring
the conflict between France and the Commune? Where on the scale might
they fall, feeling both sympathy and criticism for France?

105
 Part 4

106
Z
Appendices
Z
107
 Playsets
Z STANDARD GAME
This is the standard set-up for the game
and features all the original characters.

4
Tariq, Dominique, Jean, Joséphine, Amanda, Lodoïska,
Camille, Félix or Louise.

5 Tariq, Dominique, Jean, Joséphine, Amanda, Lodoïska,

Camille, Félix, Louise, Marie or Léonard.

6 Tariq, Dominique, Jean, Joséphine, Amanda, Lodoïska,

Camille, Félix, Louise, Léonard, Marguerite, Marie or Pierre.

POLITICAL GAME
This set-up emphasizes the most politically
active of the characters, plus those impacted by
the results of the Commune's struggle.

4
Louise, Elisabeth, Gustave, Victor, Anna, Félix,
Dominique, Tariq or Nguyen.

Louise, Elisabeth, Gustave, Victor, Anna, Félix,

5 Léonard, Marguerite, Marie, Dominique or Tariq.

6 Louise, Elisabeth, Gustave, Victor, Anna, Félix, Tariq,

Dominique, Léonard, Marguerite, Marie, Pierre or Nguyen.

108
 OUTSIDERS GAME
This set-up emphasizes characters who come from outside
the Commune, or are somehow set apart from society;
Marie is included because her widowhood marks her.

4 Pierre, Nguyen, Dominique, Tariq, Elisabeth, Victor, Anna,

Lodoïska or Marie.

5 Pierre, Nguyen, Dominique, Tariq, Elisabeth, Victor, Anna,

Lodoïska, Amanda, Camille or Marie.

6 Pierre, Nguyen, Dominique, Tariq, Elisabeth, Victor, Anna,

Lodoïska, Amanda, Camille, Félix, Marie or Louise.

STREETS OF MONTMARTRE GAME

This set-up emphasizes characters with strong ties
to the community and everyday workers.

4
Jean, Joséphine, Amanda, Camille, Lodoïska, Léonard,
Marguerite, Marie or Dominique.

5 Jean, Joséphine, Amanda, Camille, Lodoïska, Léonard,

Marguerite, Marie, Félix, Dominique, or Pierre.

6 Jean, Joséphine, Amanda, Camille, Lodoïska, Léonard,

Marguerite, Marie, Félix, Pierre, Nguyen, Dominique or Louise.

109
 The Characters
Z LODOÏSKA CAWESKA
Polish Amazon
Lover of Lodoïska Caweska is a 30-year-old woman and a
Amanda revolutionary socialist originally from Poland. She is
a soldier in the National Guard and usually is
carrying several weapons.
National Guard
When the Russians crushed the Polish
revolt in 1863, what did you lose?

GUSTAVE COURBET
Painter
Gustave Courbet is a 51-year-old man and one of the
Works with leading artists of his generation, painting everyday
Victor life in a grand manner. He is a life-long socialist and
active in the Commune’s government.
Whose love did you lose, and can you
Communard
ever regain it?

110
ELISABETH DMITRIEFF
Revolutionary
Elisabeth Dmitrieff is a 21-year-old Russian woman Works with
sent by Karl Marx to observe conditions in the Louise
Commune. Despite her age, she has become an
important member of many committees, especially
the Women’s Union. The International
Who gives you the strength to fight on? Communard

JEAN GUY
Soldier
Jean Guy is a 33-year-old man who works as a
butcher’s assistant and corporal in the National Husband of
Guard. He is the common-law husband of Joséphine. Joséphine
Why didn’t you join the army and fight
against the Prussians in 1870? National Guard

111
 ANNA JACLARD
Journalist
Wife of Victor Anna Jaclard is a 27-year-old Russian woman.
Born Anna Vasilyevna Korvin-Krukovskaya, she has
written for radical circles in Russia; Dostoevsky
The International proposed to her but she turned him down. She is
married to Victor Jaclard, a fellow radical.
What story about yourself have you
never told anyone?

VICTOR JACLARD
Military Commander
Husband of
Anna Victor Jaclard is a 31-year-old man trained in medicine
and mathematics who became a radical opponent of
Admirer of
Napoléon III. He is commander of a National Guard
Léonard
unit and a member of the International.
Works with
Are you truly ready to die for this revolution?
Gustave

National Guard
The International

112
JOSÉPHINE MARCHAIS
Washerwoman
Joséphine Marchais is a 32-year-old washerwoman
who helps the National Guard units by fetching Wife of
water and helping Dominique care for the wounded. Jean
She is the common-law wife of Jean Guy. Assistant to
When you dream of fire, what do you Dominique
see burning?

LÉONARD MARCHANDON
Former Political Prisoner
Husband of
Léonard Marchandon is a 46-year-old man who was Marguerite
sent to prison in 1848 for being a revolutionary. He
owns a popular wine shop. He is married to Father of
Marguerite and is the father of Marie. Marie

What tragedy can you not Employer of

forgive yourself for causing? Félix

Communard
Freemason

113
 MARGUERITE MARCHANDON
Dressmaker
Marguerite Marchandon is a 42-year-old woman who
Wife of
raised her daughter by herself for many years while
Léonard
her husband was in prison. She works as a
Mother of dressmaker and in the family wine shop.
Marie
What did you have to do to get your
husband out of prison?

MARIE MARCHANDON
Young Widow
Daughter of Marie Marchandon is a 22-year-old widow of a man
Marguerite named Albert Christophe. She works in her father’s
wine shop and at the Women’s Union. She is the
Daughter of daughter of Marguerite and Léonard.
Léonard
What secret about your dead husband
have you not told anyone?

114
AMANDA MERCIER
Prostitute
Amanda Mercier is a 28-year-old woman who arrived Mother of
in Paris while still a young girl. She worked as a model Camille
for artists until she became pregnant with Camille. Lover of
Had you ever loved anyone else before Lodoïska
you met Lodoïska?

National Guard
Communard

CAMILLE MERCIER
Child
Camille Mercier is the 12-year-old child of Amanda. Child of
They are also currently a student of Louise when Amanda
they have the time.
(Note that Camille is not a gendered name in French Student of
and Camille can be of any gender.) Louise

Who have you asked to teach you how to shoot?

115
 LOUISE MICHEL
The Red Virgin of Montmartre
Former teacher Louise Michel is a 40-year-old woman; the illegitimate
of Félix daughter of a nobleman, Louise is a schoolteacher,
Current teacher and a radical. She works tirelessly in the Montmartre
of Camille committees and serves in the National Guard.

Improbable What sacrifice have you made that you

friend of Tariq regret most bitterly?

Works with
Elisabeth
Tutor of
Nguyen

National Guard
Communard

NGUYEN VAN VINH

Student
Nguyễn Văn Vinh is a 17-year-old man born in
Tutored by Saigon, part of French-occupied Cochinchina. A
Louise French missionary priest sponsored him to become a
student at a Catholic school in Paris. He is expected
to return home after his education, as part of either
the church or to serve the colonial administration of
the region. (Note: Nguyễn is his family name.)
Why do you think you were chosen to
be schooled in France?

g
116
DOMINIQUE ROUSSEAU
Midwife & Physician
Dominique Rousseau is a 28-year-old woman from Manager of
an old and wealthy free family of color in Joséphine
Martinique. She graduated from a medical school in
the United States and is now a midwife and Friend of
physician for the neighborhood women. Pierre

What cause do you fight for, and why

have you chosen to fight for it in Montmartre? The International

TARIQ TANNOUDJI
Algerian Cavalryman
Tariq Tannoudji ( ) is a 29-year-old man. He is
a spahi, a member of a light cavalry unit brought Improbable friend of
from Algeria by the French Army to fight against the Louise
Prussians.
Do you regret staying in Paris instead of National Guard
joining the revolt that recently started in Algeria?

g 117
 FÉLIX VINCENT
Poet
Ex-student of Félix Vincent is a 28-year-old man. He is a radical
Louise proletarian poet, an occasional journalist, and
former student of Louise.
Works for
Léonard Why haven’t you joined the
National Guard?
The International
Freemason

PIERRE WILLIAMS
Veteran
Pierre “Peter” Williams is a 32-year-old man from a
Friend of
French-speaking family of Creoles of color in New
Dominique
Orleans, Louisiana. He moved to Boston and was
active in the Abolitionists, then joined the Union
Army as part of one of the African-American
Freemason
regiments. He deserted just before the end of the war
and moved to Paris, where he now works as a baker.
Is there anything that can break through
your disillusionment?

118
 P�nunciation
Z
This game includes a rather large number of French personal and
place names. It is never necessary to use French pronunciation if you
don't know it! The character names have been deliberately chosen
(where possible) to be names with a direct English equivalent. However,
if you want to include a little more historical flavor into the game, here
is a rough guide to pronunciation of some names and words.
In general, the transliteration of non-French names (such as Tariq or
Lodoïska) has followed French practice.

CHARACTERS
Lodoïska Caweska: This is a Polish name; in French it would be loh-
doh-ees-KAH kah-vehs-KAH. The Polish pronunciation of the last
name is closer to tcha-VEHS-kah.
Gustave Courbet: goo-STAHV coor-BAY
Elisabeth Dmitrieff: This is a Russian name; the French pronunciation
would be ay-lees-a-BET dmee-tree-EHF. In Russian, closer to yeh-lee-zah-
VYET-ah DMEE-tree-uff.
Jean Guy: ZHAHN GEE
Anna Jaclard: ah-NAH zhah-KLAR
Victor Jaclard: veek-TOHR zhah-KLAR
Joséphine Marchais: zhoh-say-FEEN mahr-SHAY
Léonard Marchandon: lay-oh-NAHR mahr-shahn-DAWN
Marguerite Marchandon: mahr-guh-REET mahr-shahn-DAWN
Marie Marchandon: mah-REE mahr-shahn-DAWN
Amanda Mercier: ah-mahn-DAH mair-see-AY
Camille Mercier: kah-MEE mair-see-AY
Louise Michel: loo-EESS mee-SHELL

119
 Dominique Rousseau: doh-mee-NEEK roo-SOH
Tariq Tannoudji:
This is an Arabic name. In French, tah-REEK tah-noo-DJEE.
The Arabic pronunciation of the first name is closer to TAH-rek.
Nguyễn Văn Vinh: This is a Vietnamese name. NYU-wen VAHN VEEHN
Félix Vincent: fay-LEEKS vahn-SAWN
Pierre Williams: This is a French-English name; in French it would be
pronounced pee-AIR veel-YAHMS.
Patrice de Mac Mahon: pah-TREES duh mahk-MAWN
Adolphe Thiers: ah-DOLF tee-AIR

FORCES, PLACES, AND IDEAS

Fort Issy: Fort ee-SEE.
Hôtel de Ville: oh-TELL duh VEEL
La Commune: The French pronunciation is lah comm-OOHN
La Marseillaise (the French national anthem): lah mahr-say-AYZ
Montmartre: This is fairly hard for English speakers to pronounce! A
good approximation is moan-MAHRtchruh, where the final "tchruh"
sound is said pretty quickly and sort of trailing off.
Palais Royal: pah-LAY roy-AHL
Paris: In French, pah-REE.
Satory: sah-toh-REE
Semaine Sanglante: literally, "Bloody Week." suh-MAWN sahn-
GLAHNT.
Tuileries Palace (Palais de Tuileries): twee-luh-REE (pah-LAY duh
twee-luh-REE)
Versailles: vehr-SIGH
Versaillais: The armed forces from Versailles; vehr-sigh-YAY

g
120
Selected Ludography
Z This game would not exist without the work of
Frederik Jensen and his game Montsegur 1244.
This marvelous story game about the doomed
Cathar resistance to French Crusaders was the
inspiration for the early shape of this game.

The Pompey Crew’s Witch: The Road to

Lindisfarne is another fantastic story game with
tragic possibilities that exerted another strong
influence on Red Carnations on a Black Grave,
in both the expectations of the kind of deeply
emotional play I wanted to make possible and as
another example of a game with a fixed structure
that allows enormous variety in how the game
plays each time.

Both these games in turn strongly drew from

the early story game Archipelago by Matthijs
Holter and from related games such as Love in
the time of Seið by Matthijs Holter and Jason
Morningstar, whose own Fiasco introduced me to
the possibilities of improvising scenes using
randomly chosen elements.

121
 A Communard Catechism
Z
What is the Commune?
A decentralized, Socialist, working class insurrection in Paris during the
spring of 1871. It lasted 72 days before being crushed by the French Army.

What did the Commune want?

Democracy, an inalienable right to work, de-centralization of the
government, and local rule for Paris. More radically: the destruction of
privilege, women’s equality, Socialism.

Had anything like this happened before?

Every generation since the Revolution of 1789 had overthrown the
French government. The most recent important revolution was the
Europe-wide revolutions of 1848—revolutions that were for worker’s
rights, liberty, and self-determination. In June 1848, the French
Republic crushed a working-class insurrection in Paris; within a few
years, Napoléon Bonaparte’s nephew, Louis-Napoléon, proclaimed
himself Emperor Napoléon III.

What is the most recent history?

The French Empire was disastrously defeated by the Prussians in 1870. A
new republic was proclaimed and tried to keep fighting the war, but Paris
was besieged and almost starved during the winter of 1871—rich people
ate the animals of the city zoo; the poor ate rats and dogs. The
government finally signed a humiliating armistice, losing two whole
provinces to the Germans and agreeing to 5 billion francs in reparations.
Parisians despised the government for agreeing to the armistice.

What is the National Guard?

A people’s militia, founded during the first Revolution. Whichever side
they fought on had won every revolution since their founding. During
the siege, the Guard was almost the only paid work available; the 30
sous a day it paid were barely enough to live on.

122
What is the International?
The International Workingman’s Association, the socialist/communist
activist group headed by Karl Marx from London and known to history
as the First International.

Who are the Commune’s enemies?

The national government, which has fled to the Palace of Versailles
(once home to the Kings of France) about 20 kilometers west of Paris.
The government is supposed to be a republic, but the majority of
legislators are in favor of restoring some kind of monarchy. It is led by
the long-serving conservative politician Adolphe Thiers (pronounced
tea-AIR), once a man of the left but now despised by the radicals.

What was Montmartre like in 1871?

Montmartre was a densely-packed working class neighborhood on a
high hill overlooking the rest of Paris. Almost no buildings had
running water or indoor plumbing. Because it was close to vineyards,
wine was cheap, and there were still a few working windmills. The
district had a radical reputation (“Montmartre is coming down on us!”
was said to strike terror in the rich bourgeoisie of central Paris.)

What’s this about balloons?

During the siege, the only way for mail or people to get into or out of
Paris was by balloons launched from the top of Montmartre’s hill.

How can I be a better Communard?

1. Insist on using the Revolutionary title "Citizen" instead of
"Monsieur", "Madame", or "Mademoiselle"
2. Wear a red scarf, around the neck or tied around the waist
3. Hate organized religion, especially since the government paid the
salaries of priests
4. Talk about overthrowing capitalists, the right to work, and the
Social Revolution
5. Start a committee or three, a free school, or a worker's collective.

123
 Kickstarter Backers
Z
Supporters: Camdon Wright, Carlos, Jack, Jacob Alan Sturgeon, James Mendez Hodes, Lacy,
Laura47, ldpaulson, Lisa Mollica, Miguel Angel Espinoza, Stephen Dewey, The Creative Fund
by BackerKit, Tim Hutchings, Carnation, Aaron Lim, Adam Poppenheimer, Adam Rajski,
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James Goode, jenskot, Jesse Ross, Jessica Hammer, Jim B., Joe Beason, john geary, John Holt,
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John Taber, Joli St. Patrick, Jon Callas, Jonah Eisenstock, Jonathan Bristow, Jonathan Darden,

124
Jonathan Korman, Jonathan Mayer, Josh Matthews, Josh Rice, Justin, Justin Koopmans, K.G.
Orphanides, karl deckard, Karma Choying, Kate Bullock, Kate Johnson, Kathryn, Katy Grenfell,
Kaylee, Kevin Bates, Kevin Lemke, Kevin Petker, Kirk Rahusen, Kurt, Kyle Kiefer, Lionel
Artom-Ginzburg, Lisa Padol, Liz Miller, Lon Sarver, Lorenzo Grompone, Luke Walls, MageAkyla,
mai_neh, Maia, Marc Kevin Hall, Marc Majcher, Margaret McArthur, Mark Hickernell, Matt
Bevilacqua, Matthew Cole, Matthias, maxwell merchant, Mel White, Micah Pearce, Michael
Bellecourt, Michael Bowman, Michael Crowley, Michael Dunn O'Connor, Michael Heywood,
Michael Sergio, Michael Tomczak, Michael X Heiligenstein, MidwestJedi, Miguel, Mike Addison,
Mike Ferdinando, Mike Stevens, Misha B, mithaler, MWL, Naomi Wixon, Nathaniel Miller, Nicola
Urbinati, Nicolaas Webb, Nicole Lindroos of Green Ronin, Olivia Montoya, Patrick Ewing, Patty
Kirsch, Paul Niesen, Peter Graff, Peter Larsen, Peter Mazzeo, Peter McDonald, Phil Vecchione,
Philip Rogers, Phredd Groves, Pierre Vial, Preston Kussmann, Quincy Jackson, Rachel E.S.
Walton, Rhett Simmons, Richard Chancellor, Rob Abrazado, Robert Bohl, Robert Mittel-Carey,
Robert Van Steenburg, Rourke, rrs, Ryan Connolly, Ryan Elliott, Ryan Poe, Sam Zeitlin, Samuel
Grenny, sarge2401, Sawyer Redden, SC, Scot Ryder, Scott Caslow, Scott Mina, Scott Paeth,
Sebastian Pines, Seraphina Malizia, Seth Wiener, Karim, Shoshana Kessock / Phoenix Outlaw,
Simeon Maier, Simon Moody, starfetcher, Steph Britto Leal, Stephan Pennington, Stephen Cole,
Stephen Toropov, Steve Burnett, Steve Wright, Steven desJardins, Steven Schwartz, Steven
Trojanowski, Steven Watkins, Stuart Dollar, Susanne Vejdemo, Tanya Floaker, Tayler Stokes, The
Geeky Gimp, Thomas Kent Belmore, Thomas P., Tim Rudloff, Todd Kelley, Tomer Gurantz,
Tommaso Boggia, Trevor Sullivan, Tucker Lance, Victor Olsson, Vincent Eaton-Valencia, Violet
Henderson, Vivian Paul, walter, Wylie Maercklein, Xavid, XIG Games, Yoshi Creelman
The International, Adam Drew, Ainar Petersen Miyata, Alan, Alan Graham, Alex Caldararu, Alex
Gray, Alex Nelson, Alex White, Anders Russell, Andreas Sewe, Angel Garcia “Hijos del Rol“,
Anonymous, Anonymous, Anonymous, Aşkın-H. Doğan, Aurélie Chouinard, Avery Alder, Bastien
Marcel Pierre, behrmann, Blair Hoplight, Bobbo Malmström, Brad, Brand, Cameron, Christian Vogt,
Christopher Fridehäll, Cleo “Thorn“ Schmitz, Contesse, Craig McCahill, David Buzaglo Olofsgård,
David Morrison, Donogh, Eben, Edward Da Fonseca, Eike Kronsi, Eleanor Hingley, Etienne
T.Harvey, Fery, Gero Niemeyer, Graeme Comyn, Hans Andersson, Harald Eckmüller, HKDID, Hugh
N, Ingmar Vogelsang, J C, James, jamie, Jan Freyberg, Jiayang Wu, John Niven, Jonas Hansson, Jonas
Möckelström, Jonathan Cook, Joshua DeGagne, Ken Marquetecken, Kimberley Lam, Kristofer
Kalmark, Kurt Ellison, Laura Poplin, Laurel Halbany, Leandro, Leon Harper, Liam Caffrey, Liam
Murray, Linus Råde, Ludovico Alves, Margana, Mark Humphreys, Markus Dernevik, Markus
Widmer, Mathieu Leocmach, Matthias Ott, Matthis Denecke, Michael Pevzner, Mikael Tysvær,
Morgan Gate-Leven, Morgan McEvoy, Neil Webber, Niall, Nils Kadesjö, Ningxuan Wen, Nocker, Oliver
Jackson, Owen Brush, Patrice Mermoud, Paul Kalupnieks, Paul Rivers, Paul Schulzetenberg, Rafael
Carneiro Vasques, Raphael Proust, Rei Poh, Richard Greene, Richard Plant, Robby Koreman,
robdeobald, Roxanne Panchasi, rymdtrollkarl, Sean Martin-Iverson, Sean Richards, Simon Matthee,
Spenser Isdahl, Stephanie Metzger, Stephen Cammack, Sweth Chandramouli, TadCooper, Thomas
B., Thomas Gaëtan, Tim Olsson, timothy, Tom Maher, Travis Jordan, Trent, tuxmentat, Willem van
der Horst, William L. Munn (Adept Icarus), YG Mitchell, Zach Patterson
Communard, Brian Larson, End Transmission Games, Frédéri “V.K. Friedrich“ Pochard,
Gareth Anderson, Harry Silman, Joseph Hopkinson, Katharine White, Lucian Kahn, Marshall
Miller, Matt, Mikhail Solovyev, Norbert Veres, Patrick Ferguson, Patrick Goldberg, Peter
Moody, Richard Ruane, River Williamson, Sebastian, Shervyn von Hoerl, Tim Witten
Firebrand, Fred Ramen, George Hope & Jason Pitre.

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 CHARACTERS
Adolphe Thiers — 5, 35, 58, 59, 70, 71, 73, 74, 78, 82,
83, 86, 89, 96, 120, 123

Amanda Mercier — 13, 24, 41, 115, 119

Anna Jaclard — 14, 112, 119
Camille Mercier — 13, 24, 45, 115, 119
Dominique Rousseau — 13, 24, 39, 98, 101, 117, 120
Index

See also Locations, Martinique

Elisabeth Dmitrieff — 14, 82, 111, 119
Félix Vincent — 13, 41, 118, 120
Gustave Courbet — 14, 86, 110, 119
Jean Guy — 13, 41, 111, 119
Joséphine Marchais — 13, 43, 113, 119
Léonard Marchandon — 13, 35, 113, 119
Lodoïska Caweska — 13, 39, 110, 119
Louis-Auguste Blanqui — 4, 64, 66, 67, 70, 71, 77, 83, 87, 97
Louise Michel — 3, 11, 13, 35, 74, 82-85, 87, 90, 95, 97, 116, 120
Marguerite Marchandon — 13, 34, 114, 119
Marie Marchandon — 13, 35, 114, 119
Napoléon III — 34, 59, 61, 62, 65, 67, 72, 76, 87, 90, 122
See also Factions and Events, Third Republic
Nguyen Van Vinh — 14, 105, 116, 120.
See also Locations, Vietnam
Pierre (Peter) Williams — 14, 103, 118, 120.
See also Locations, New Orleans
Tariq Tannoudji — 13, 39, 99, 117, 120
See also Locations, Algeria
Victor Jaclard — 14, 112, 119

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FACTIONS AND EVENTS
Ancien Regime — 10
First International — 17, 64, 66, 77, 82, 86, 88, 96, 123
Franco-Prussian War — 17, 25, 35, 61, 65, 68–70, 76, 78, 93, 98, 99, 122
See also Locations, Prussia
Freemason — 17, 81
National Guard — 17, 35, 37, 58, 69-71, 73–80, 86-91, 93, 122
Paris Commune — 10, 17, 30, 34, 35, 37, 39, 41, 46, 53, 56, 65, 69,
72, 74, 76, 78, 81, 82, 84, 86–89, 91, 93, 96, 97, 99

Semaine Sanglante — 10-13, 43, 80, 83, 88, 89, 92, 94, 120
See also Scenes, Act Three: The Bloody Week
The Women's Union for the Defense of Paris and the Care of the Wounded —
17, 82, 83, 84, 90

Third Republic — 11, 96, 97, 105

Union des femmes pour la défense de Paris et les soins aux blessés
See The Women's Union for the Defense of Paris and the Care of the Wounded

LOCATIONS
Algeria — 45, 58, 62, 84, 85, 88, 95, 98, 99
Martinique — 100, 101
Montmartre — 4, 11, 12, 18, 34, 35, 62, 66, 73, 74, 82, 83,
85, 87, 90, 93, 97, 120, 123

New Caledonia — 13, 45, 84, 94, 95

New Orleans — 102, 103
Poland — 63
Prussia — 35, 60, 63, 68, 71, 78
See also Factions and Events, Franco-Prussian War
Satory — 11, 85, 94, 120
See also Scenes, Epilogue: Satory
Versailles — 5, 10, 11, 34, 73, 76–78, 80, 83, 94, 120, 123
Vietnam — 104, 105

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 RULES
Bloody Week Cards
See Scenes, Act Three: The Bloody Week
Character Cards — 19, 22, 47, 48
Character Death — 37, 39, 41, 43, 45, 50, 51
Facilitator — 12, 18, 20, 34, 46-51
Fate Cards — 19, 45, 47, 51
Flag Card — 19, 21, 23, 27, 37, 39, 41, 43, 46, 49, 50
Inspiration Cards — 17, 19
Narrative Authority — 21, 27, 47
Placards — 19, 27, 39, 41, 43, 49, 50
Question Cards — 19, 23, 24, 25, 48
Questions — 19, 23, 24, 25, 48
Safety Tools — 20, 23, 47, 52, 53

SCENES
Prologue: They've Come For Our Guns! — 34
Montage — 27, 28, 37, 41, 43, 47, 49, 50
Act One: Carnival of the Oppressed — 18, 27, 39, 49
Act Two: First Defeats, Last Defiance — 27, 41, 50
Act Three: The Bloody Week — 12, 18, 27, 43, 50
Epilogue: Satory — 45, 51
See also Locations, Satory

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