Page:Ernest Belfort Bax - A Short History of the Paris Commune (1895).djvu/17

 Rh each arrondissement. There were also some sub-committees, the most important being that of the Montmartre division, having its office in the Rue des Rosiers, and which has sometimes been mistaken for the Central Committee itself. The Central Committee was composed entirely of obscure men, till then utterly unknown to public life, but elected for their integrity and practical capacity by the comrades of their district.

The suppression of Red-Republican journals by General Vinoy, the treacherous condemnation to death of Flourens and Blanqui for the part taken by them in the affair of the 31st of October, coming on the 11th of March, the same day that the resolution to decentralise Paris became known, gave further edge to the popular fury and to the determination to resist. From this time, to the 18th the storm was visibly impending; but the Central Committee, backed by the International and the workmen's organisations, declared that the first shot should be fired by the other side.

There were at this stage three distinct elements in the Parisian movement—(1) The element of Municipal patriotism, the desire to see Paris remain paramount in France, possessing a municipal council with extensive local powers; (2) The determination to protect the Republic, as such, from the obvious Monarchical conspiracy being planned against it; and (3) The definitely Socialist Revolutionary element represented mainly, though not exclusively, by the International. The small middle-class, as might be expected, were in general moved by the first two objects; but, as we shall see, as the Revolution proceeded, its Socialistic telos, implicit from the first, came more and more to the fore, till in two or three weeks it had completely absorbed the whole movement. It is desirable to point this out, as there is a fatuous