Page:The Paris Commune - Karl Marx - ed. Lucien Sanial (1902).djvu/51

 8 town besieged by a foreign power, the existing Government was permitted to remain in office.

Finally, on the 28th of January, 1871, Paris, starved out, capitulated, but with honors hitherto unheard of in military history. The forts were surrendered, the line of fortifications disarmed, the weapons of the line and of the Garde Mobile were handed over to the Germans, and the men themselves were regarded as prisoners of war. But the National Guard retained its weapons and cannon, and only entered into a truce with the conquerors. The latter did not venture upon a triumphal entry into Paris. Only a small portion of Paris, for the most part consisting of public parks, did they attempt to occupy, and even this only for a few days. And during the whole time they, who had kept Paris in a state of siege for 131 days, found themselves in their turn surrounded by armed Parisian workmen, who carefully watched lest any "Prussian" should overstep the narrow limits of the quarter reserved for the foreign conqueror. Such respect the Parisian workmen extorted from that army, before which all the armies of the Empire successively had laid down their weapons; and the Prussian Junkers, who had come thither in order to take revenge on the hotbed of revolution, were compelled to stand and deferentially salute this very armed revolution.

During the war the Parisian workmen had confined themselves to demanding the energetic continuance of the struggle. But now, peace having been established after the capitulation of Paris, Thiers, the new head of the Government, could not help seeing that the rule of the propertied classes—of the great landlords and capitalists—was in continual danger so long as the Parisian workmen retained their arms. His first work accordingly was the attempt to disarm them. On the 18th of March he