Rabble!

Geoffrey Fox

Description

1870.17-year-old apprentice bookbinder Etienne Bonin travels from revolutionary Lyon to even more revolutionary Paris seeking excitement and professional opportunity. By the spring of 1871 he is deeply committed to the insurrection for workers' power, to a new lover - Rose Durand, 16-year-old coworker and budding feminist from Belleville-and to his new comrades. Together they experience festive celebrations, institutional innovations, military disasters and the final "week of blood."tienne and Rose's coming of age in the midst of a revolution is also the story of the growth of a powerful working-class movement. The tradesmen and women involved in creating and defending the Paris Commune of 1871 were not just bookbinders, but also bronze workers, tin smiths, shoemakers, typographers, printers, laundresses, clothing and textile workers, carpenters and many others."Rabble" is the closest English equivalent to "canaille", the way the privileged classes described the rough and ready workers who had seized the city and were remaking it as a bastion of liberty, equality and fraternity. Those tradesmen and women managed to create the first self-governing, proto-communist society in the modern world, in what was the most advanced capitalist city of its age. They then had to defend it against massive bombardment and attacks, which would finally annihilate the Commune but not its ideals. These would be reborn in revolutions from 1917, and to our present day.

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 août 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800469808
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2021 Geoffrey Fox

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries
concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Any references to historical events, real people, or real places in this novel are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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To those who struggled, and those who struggle yet,
to make the world more just.


Contents
Avant-propos: Empire of the World

I. To the future
Iron rails to the future
Welcome to Paris
Behind the red lantern
Manure Street
The scribbler
Stranger in the Quinze-Vingts
In the brasserie Glaser
Veteran of all the wars
Two communications

II. The rabble – That’s me!
Crossing the bridge
A policeman’s worries
Plebiscite
Ink-shitters
The working class
At the Cirque Impérial
Binding threads
Le faux mouchard
The house on Dragon Court
Moist dreams
Workers of the World
The glove-maker’s counsel
Initiation
The new man
La Ricamarie

III. At war
To war with a light heart
The firehouse
Republic!
Beyond the barrier
At the Ambigu
The new uniform
On the ramparts
New régime in Dragon Court
Pigeons
The October protest
Coping
Assault on the palace
December
Bombs – Battles – Bindings
“Vive la Commune!”

IV. Insurgents
The 18th of March
Paris libre
Rue Saint Honoré, 1 e arrondissement (early)
Rue Perronet, 16 e arrondissement
Belleville (mid-morning)
Quartier des Quinze-Vingts, 12e arrondissement (just before noon)
A café near the Hôtel de Ville
Song of liberty
In Versailles
Storming heaven

V. Festival of Freedom
What now?
Gingerbread Fair
Rondeau à la Mazur
And in Versailles …
Festival of freedom

VI. Le chant du départ
Song of Departure
Smoke, fire and rain

Note on the author
Acknowledgments



Avant-propos: Empire of the World


The Illustrated London News
Saturday, October 12, 1867. Page 1
The Paris Universal Exhibition
(From our own Correspondent)
As our readers by now are well aware, France’s ‘Universal Exposition of Art and Industry’, occupying over fifty hectares of Paris’s enormous ‘Field of Mars’, is far too vast for a visitor to comprehend in a single day or, yea, in three or five. The immense crowds make it sometimes difficult even to shuffle in to see the more popular pavilions, such as the reconstructed Egyptian village where a dusky fellahin offers pony rides to children accompanied by their elegantly attired mothers or nurses, or the Chinese pavilion with its costumed giant – nearly seven feet tall! – and its display of fine porcelains and tapestries, or the large Japanese pavilion, where other costumed Orientals gesture toward scrolled paintings and other works unlike any known in our civilized Christian world…
For Emperor Napoleon III, the Exposition has been a golden opportunity to show off his ambitious program of refashioning the entire metropolis of Paris, under the stern but able direction of Baron Haussmann… It is all too much, too much to take in as one shuffles through the dense crowds of this palace! …
Fortunately, thanks to the invention of a celebrated French engineer, M. Henri Giffard, since the beginning of this month visitors have been able to view the immense palace and its exhibits in the Field of Mars safely from the air. We rise by a balloon tethered to the ground by a cable, which cable is powered, for the first time ever, by a steam winch, thus assuring the passengers a safe return to the point of departure. Your reporter and our illustrator hovered for more than ten minutes at an elevation of over 50 feet in the viewing basket beneath the immense balloon, inflated with 5,000 cubic meters of hydrogen, a process one may witness for the price of 1 franc. To ascend costs 20 francs, but even at that high price M. Giffard suffers no want of eager customers. Only last week, the Empress Eugenie herself ascended, from whom we assume that the illustrious engineer did not demand his 20 francs.
See the illustration on the previous page by our Mr Warwick of the view from up high…
* * *
“Ooh! You’d never get me up in something like that!”
“Don’t you worry, Blanche my dearest! At 20 francs a climb, not likely. That’s not for the likes of us.”
“So high! It would make a person dizzy, don’t you think, Jules?”
“Pretty high.”
“But then – to see all of Paris. Soaring like a bird, I’ll bet we could see as far as Belleville. Aah, it takes my breath away. Twenty francs, did you say?”
“That’s what that fellow over there said. In that line. I asked him. A week’s wages for me, nearly two for you. On top of the franc we had to pay just to get you in here.”
“But it would be wonderful. To be able to rise in a balloon like that. It should be for all of us, any person, any citizen.”
“When the revolution comes. We’ll have that and everything, beyond even what old Saint-Simon dreamed of. All the riches and machines and art we’ve seen here in the exposition, it’ll all be for everybody, for every honest worker.”
“When the revolution comes. Yes, that will be a heady day. But it didn’t work out that way the last time, did it? We had such dreams –”
“Ah yes, those dreams. And you were so beautiful then, you were my dream, I thought you were an angel come to earth when I first saw your face through all the smoke of that gunpowder. We dreamed that the rivers would flow with chocolate, and roast chickens and sausages appear in every kitchen, and all the wine or beer that any man can drink.”
“I’d settle for coal for the winter and schools where our children can learn to read and write without priests or nuns telling them lies and making them recite nonsense.”
“Right. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? First we’ll kill all the priests, or send them out to work. And then… But come. I want you to see our bronze association’s display. That’s why we came here, after all.”
“No, that’s not the only reason we came, not the only reason for me. It is just wonderful and amazing to see this part of Paris. But it’s why they gave you a free pass.”
“Yes, at least that’s something. An invitation by the Emperor himself, for all the members of our delegation. Something to be proud of.”
“Yes, Julot, I am proud of you. Not because of the Emperor, though – what does he know about fine bronze? But your comrades in the association chose you, that’s to be proud of. Why can’t we have a laundry workers’ association, with an exhibit gallery of our own? We could show people our modern steam tubs and the newest irons! Oh, but of course, that’s women’s work. Not for a universal exhibition with dukes and emperors and the like.
“Uhhh– Don’t turn your head, Jules, but when she passes, take a look at that young lady, coming out of that hall we were going in, the one on the arm of that short older man, her husband I suppose, and some other gentleman. That hat. And that dress with all the pleats, too, that would be a job to iron. But that hat!”
“Oh, her. Don’t worry about her, Blanche. Your bonnet looks just fine, you don’t want a little hat with a veil like a bourgeoise. We’re honest working people, we are. Here, this is the gallery, where those fellows with their fancy clothes and cigars and that girl you’re talking about are just coming out.”
* * *
“Those were some handsome pieces, eh? Amazing what a skilled craftsman can do with bronze. I’ll bet you’d love that nymph pushing away the faun, right, Victorine? With her hand across her breasts. She looked just like you!”
“Oh, please, René-Pierre! Not in front of our friend Hippolyte! What will he think?”
“Oh, right! Well, Polo, what do you think? Are we too scandalous for my friend the police superintendent?”
“No, no. Just too frivolous.”
“Oh, René-Pierre and Polo, Hippolyte. Did you see that couple? They were looking at us!”
“Yes?”
“As though we were the odd ones! Did you get a look at her dress, and that bonnet? Oh, I almost have to laugh!”
“And that fellow with her. A worker, obviously, with that cap, in what he considers his Sunday best. That’s a fine little jacket, eh? For a working man. What do you say, Polo? What does the imperial police have to say about letting people like that into the Universal Exposition?”
“Invited by the Imperial Commission, no doubt. He may be part of the bronze workers’ delegation responsible for what we just saw. Excuse me, Victorine, our friend René-Pierre knows full well, and he should have explained to you, the presence of the workers’ delegations. It’s because the Emperor is very concerned about the we