WOMEN AND POLITICAL INSURGENCY

Transcription

1 WOMEN AND POLITICAL INSURGENCY

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3 Women and Political Insurgency France in the Mid-Nineteenth Century David Barry Lecturer in History University of Durham ~ in association with ~ -~UniversityofDurham

4 First published in Great Britain 1996 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG2l 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / First published in the United States of America 1996 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y.!0010 ISBN Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Barry, David, Women and political insurgency : France in the mid-nineteenth century I David Barry. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN (cloth) I. Women political activists-france-history-19th century. 2. Women revolutionaries-france-history-19th century. 3. Insurgency-France-History-19th century. 4. France-Politics and govemment I. Title. HQ F8B '09'034---<lc CIP David Barry 1996 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence pem1itting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WI P 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages I 97 96

5 Contents List of Tables List of Figures Preface Vll Vlll IX The Legacy of the 1789 Revolution: Defining the Issues 2 The Revolution of 1830 and the July Monarchy: the Heroines of Liberty 3 The February Revolution of 1848 and its Aftermath: the Call for the 'Democratic and Social Republic' 4 Defending Livelihoods and Neighbourhoods: the June Days of The Red Republican Interlude, The Rebellion of December 1851: the Death Throes of the Red Republican Cause 7 The Commune of 1871: the Great Venture in Female Citizenship 8 Conclusion Abbreviations used in the Notes and Bibliography Notes Bibliography Index v

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7 List of Tables 4.1 Women insurgents of June Arrested Women insurgents of June Convicted Statistics of domicile of convicted women in Paris 65 arrondissements 7.1 Professions of women tried before the fourth Conseil de Guerre 133 Vll

8 List of Figures 2.1 The departments The streets of Paris in Women on the barricade, near the Porte St Denis Illustrated London News, 1 July 1848 By permission of the British Library Women at bay at Montmartre Penny Illustrated Paper, 17 June 1871 By permission of the British Library 'Vive Ia Commune!' Illustrated London News, 20 May 1871 By permission of the British Library A petroleuse at work Penny Illustrated Paper, 10 June 1871 By permission of the British Library 151 VIII

9 Preface Recent years have seen the publication of numerous studies concerning the origin of collective political protest in the French Revolution of 1789 and its later manifestations in the nineteenth century. In consequence we have now a better understanding of why and how patterns of popular insurgency established themselves, and know something about their importance in the revolutionary tradition of France. Always the majority of insurgents were men, but in every phase of rebellion a variable minority of women participants was present. Their role has begun to receive systematic attention in the last 30 years. This has taken the form of particular studies of individual episodes, though in 1979 an attempt was made to review the reasons for the changing nature of French female protest over a broader span of the nineteenth century by Michelle Perrot, in her thought-provoking essay La Femme populaire rebelle, which was a source of inspiration for this work. The involvement of women in the French Revolution of 1789 is well known through particular stories learnt at school of the March of the Parisian Women to Versailles in October 1789, and of the knitting women (tricoteuses), who watched over the dispensing of revolutionary justice by the guillotine. The essay by Harriet Applewhite and Darline Levy in their edited work Women and Politics in the Age of the Democratic Revolution (1990) and particularly the meticulous study of Dominique Godineau, Citoyennes tricoteuses (1985), have filled in many lively details on the subject. They have done much to improve upon the sketchy, incidental picture of female participation from 1789 found in George Rude's earlier work The Crowd in the French Revolution (1960) by describing in a systematic way not merely the incidence and distinct character of female insurgency, but also its meaning and limitations. Likewise readers interested in the role of women rebels of the Paris Commune of 1871 can still read with profit Edith Thomas' monograph Les Perroleuses (1963, translated as The Women Incendiaries, 1967), which provides a lucid analysis of the why and wherefore of female mobilization in and an abundance of stimulating, well-written detail on many individual protagonists. Since 1985 a series of articles have appeared on the character and significance of female involvement in the Commune, both from a political and a symbolic point of view. Eugene Schulkind, in an article in Past and Present for IX

10 X Preface 1985, stressed the innovative and revolutionary nature of the Union des Femmes pour Ia Defense de Paris, while more recently still, Kathleen Jones and Franf1oise Verges (History of European Ideas, 1991) and David Shafer (French History, 1993) examined women Communards' claim to their own public space, the forms this took, and the varied male response to it. Martin Johnson's article 'Citizenship and Gender: The Legion des Federees in the Paris Commune of 1871 ', that appeared in French History in September 1994, after this manuscript had been finalized, describes how the women activists successfully breached a gender taboo by establishing an officially recognized war battalion in May 1871, laying claim to citizenship in yet another respect. The women of the Commune have been well served by biographies of their leaders, notably those concerning Louise Michel by Edith Thomas (1971, translated 1980) and Xavier de Ia Fourniere (1986), and concerning Paule Minck, by Alain Dalotel ( 1981 ). This leaves the intervening period poorly covered, especially the twenty-odd years of repeated upheaval from 1830 to What is known of female insurgency in this period rests largely on anecdotal or passing references in published secondary works. The article by Charles Tilly and Lynn Lees, 'The People of June 1848' (1975), while helpful in suggesting general criteria for defining the insurgents of the June Days, surveys them in a predominantly male context, and has little to say on women as a specific group. It was with the purpose of filling this gap, particularly for the period , that this study was originally conceived. Research in the Archives de Ia Guerre at Vincennes turned up many intriguing case histories of women arrested after the June Days and the rebellion of December It became clear that the assumptions of certain historians that the role of women in these conflicts was marginal and could be safely passed over in a few words was unjust, and that the manner and purpose of this female protest merited its own study. Using archival and primary printed sources this book seeks to demonstrate the significance of a continued pattern of female insurgency throughout the period from July 1830 to the rebellion of December 1851 and account for the varied size of its presence from episode to episode. While certainly a statistical minority, the protagonists were involved in actions and responses deriving from women's gender role and their exclusion at this time from political and civil rights. These actions will be examined and accounted for. In this period, only a small number of militantes among the demonstrators emerge as active combatants or neighbourhood organizers. Insurgent women evoked ambiguous responses - admiration and pride in July

11 Preface xi 1830 and February 1848, visceral condemnation in June 1848 and December These reactions will also be studied, and the discrepancies in their character accounted for. The second purpose of this book is to place this survey of French women and insurrection in the wider context of a pattern that evolved and shifted in character over the 'revolutionary period' of modern French history from 1789 to For example, the barricade emerged on a large scale as a weapon of rebellion only in July 1830, creating a new mode of defensive neighbourhood action in which women, with their strong involvement in community networks, could profitably participate. Yet there appear also to be elements of continuity with the past, particularly the primacy of economic misery in motivating women to rebel (though the expression might take political forms), and their imitation, in some cases self-consciously, of the patterns of street behaviour of the 1789 Revolution. Efforts have been made to locate evidence of an awareness on the part of rebel women that their actions were justified by a sense of tradition as time went on, and to find instances of personal involvement continuing from one outbreak to the next. The dimensions of the study have thus been expanded to provide a survey of the origins and background of the patterns of female militancy fostered in the 1789 Revolution; and, for the sake of completeness, the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871, the final and most sanguinary outburst of rebellion in nineteenth-century France, has been treated in a separate chapter. Writing this chapter made it apparent that adequate material exists for an entire new book on the significance of female insurgency in the Commune alone, particularly if the dossiers of arrested women in the Archives de Ia Guerre were utilized extensively. To keep within sight of the purposes defined here, however, and to respect the length imposed for the book, the survey of the Commune had necessarily to be made briefer than it might have been, and it is based on primary printed sources and recent secondary sources. Even so, it is hoped that some fresh explanatory light will have been shed by it. Insurrection has been studied in the context of emerging left-wing nidicalisni of the republican or socialist type, though it is clear that by the period of the Second Republic examples of female militancy on behalf of conservative royalist or Catholic causes were present. One or two are instanced in the text, and material for an article may well exist on this subject also. The book pays some attention to provincial insurgency, as a reminder that the history of nineteenth-century France cannot be viewed solely

12 xu Preface within the prism of Parisian activity; it must be admitted, however, that the evidence suggests that the provinces only rarely witnessed the same intensity of female militancy and consciousness as the capital. Where female participation in rebellion did occur, it owed its presence to strongly individual or local factors, and was short lived. This work was made possible and encouraged at various stages of its development by the comments and ideas of numerous people, among whom I would mention particularly Professor Pamela Pilbeam, of Royal Holloway, University of London, who read the draft manuscript, made suggestions for its revision, and was generally very encouraging in her response. The staff research seminar of Durham University History Department offered penetrating and thoughtful comments about an early draft that studied the women of June The undergraduates of my Special Subject class on 1848 and the French Second Republic shared my interest in the subject over many years, guiding and encouraging me with their thoughts and opinions. Research grants and terms of leave from the University of Durham enabled scholarship in France to be undertaken. I owe a debt of gratitude to the archivists of a number of French record offices, particularly the staff of the Archives de Ia Prefecture de Police de Paris, whose helpful and courteous attitude never wavered. The staff of the Archives de la Guerre and the Archives Nationales gave me valuable assistance in locating materials. I would wish to thank the helpful librarians of the Bibliotheque Marguerite Durand particularly, but also those of the Bibliotheque de 1' Arsenal and Bibliotheque Nationale. The maps and illustrations in the text are reproduced by kind permission of several copyright holders. I am indebted to the Trustees of the British Library for permission to reproduce the statistics in Table 7.1 from the Enquete parlementaire sur ['insurrection du 18 mars 1871 (Paris, 1872), and also for permission to reproduce the following illustrations: Women on the barricade, near the Porte St Denis (Illustrated London News, 1 July 1848); Women at bay at Montmartre (Penny Illustrated Paper, 17 June 1871); Vive la Commune! (Illustrated London News, 20 May 1871); and A petroleuse at work (Penny Illustrated Paper, 10 June 1871 ). At Durham University Wendy Duery worked rapidly and efficiently to produce an accurately typed manuscript for the publisher. Responsibility for the final text, and any errors in it, lies with the author. DAVID BARRY