Page:The Paris Commune - Karl Marx - ed. Lucien Sanial (1902).djvu/54

 Rh Thus, since the 18th of March, the class character of the Parisian movement, hitherto thrust into the background by the struggle against the foreign invasion, came clearly and emphatically to the fore. As in the Commune there sat almost exclusively workmen, or the recognized representatives of workmen, its decisions naturally bore a distinctively proletarian character. It either decreed reforms which the Republican bourgeoisie had omitted to carry out from pure cowardice, but which formed a necessary foundation for the free action of the working class, as, for instance, the carrying out of the principle that religion, as far as the State is concerned, is a purely private matter; or it adopted measures directly in the interest of the working class, and in a few cases even cutting deeply into the life tissue of the old order of society. But in a besieged city all this could not be carried beyond the first stages of realization. And from the beginning of May onwards the struggle against the ever increasing masses of the army of the Versailles Government claimed exclusive attention and energy.

On the 7th of April the Versaillese had seized the bridge over the Seine at Neuilly on the west side of Paris; on the other hand, on the 11th, they were beaten back with much loss by General Eudes in an attack they made on the south side. Paris was continually bombarded by the very people who had stigmatized the bombardment of the same city by the Prussians as a sacrilegious outrage. These very people went on their knees to the Prussian Government to implore the speedy return of the French military prisoners taken at Sedan and Metz, who were to reconquer Paris for them. The gradual arrival of these troops gave a decisive superiority to the Versaillese from the beginning of May onward. This showed itself even as early as the 23d of April, when Thiers broke off the