HISTORICAL TIMELINES
The Timelines precede each Canto of this edition of The Terrible Year. This web page presents the Timeline as printed in the book, but is a "work-in-progress" as additional items will be added in preparation for a second edition. The timeline includes events elsewhere in Europe, Great Britain, and North America to help provide a fuller historical context for the reader.
TIMELINE - JANUARY TO JULY 1870
Ecumenical Council proposes the new dogma of Papal Infallibility, at a time when Italian unification challenged the Pope’s authority.
The British put down an uprising in Northwest Canada, and add the province of Manitoba.
MARCH 1 — Death of General Lopez, president/dictator of Paraguay, ending a war with Brazil and Argentina.
MARCH 30 — In the United States, the Fifteenth Amendment guarantees former slaves the right to vote.
MAY 8 — A plebiscite in France attempts to justify all the prior actions of Napoleon III’s regime, and allows him to claim popular consent for the coming war. More than 7.5 million French citizens vote “Yes.” After Hugo speaks out against the plebiscite in print, the French government issues a warrant for Hugo’s arrest, should he ever return to France. Hugo’s sons in Paris are arrested and briefly detained.
Summer — Both France and Prussia prepare for war. Each side waits for a suitable provocation.
JUNE 8 — Death of English novelist Charles Dickens, whose A Tale of Two Cities remains the most familiar work of fiction in English describing The French Revolution.
JULY 8 — A Prussian prince is offered the crown of Spain, prompting French protests.
JULY 18 — A telegram from Bismarck to the French ambassador is published in France, its tone and language regarded as a grievous insult.
The Vatican Council approves Pastor aeternus, the dogma of Papal Infallibility.
JULY 19 — France declares war on Prussia. Most European nations promptly declare neutrality, but the as-yet-unconsolidated German states join in with Prussia.
JULY 26 — Hugo learns that he has been accused of being part of an Orleanist plot to assassinate Napoleon III.
JULY 28 — Napoleon III leaves Paris to take command of the “Army of the Rhine” at Metz. His battle plan expected no resistance from southern German states, and anticipated (incorrectly) that Austria and Italy would join in the French advance.
TIMELINE - AUGUST 1870
AUGUST 2 A small French victory at Saarbrücken. General Douay loses an engagement at Weissenberg (Bavaria), and is killed.
AUGUST 6 A disastrous French loss at the Battle of Wörth. Marshall McMahon’s retreat left 6,000 French soldiers dead and 9,000 captured.
German armies are victorious against French General Frossard at Spicheren.
French General Bazaine refuses to come to the aid of Frossard.
AUGUST 15 Hugo and his family leave Guernsey, his home-in-exile, and arrive in Brussels, Belgium.
AUGUST 19 Hugo requests a passport to return to France, offering to volunteer for the National Guard.
AUGUST 30 French defeat at Beaumont (MacMahon’s forces).
AUGUST 31 MacMahon’s French forces arrive at Sedan.
TIMELINE - SEPTEMBER 1870
SEPTEMBER 1 Bavarian forces take Sedan. 13,000 French soldiers are killed, and 30,000 taken prisoner.
SEPTEMBER 2 Napoleon III surrenders to Prussian troops at Sedan.
SEPTEMBER 3 Hugo and his son Charles meet with French exiles in Brussels. Hugo writes: “Shouting newsboys pass, with enormous posters on which are the words, “Napoleon III, a Prisoner.”
SEPTEMBER 4 Paris learns that Napoleon III has been captured and that the French army was defeated by “300,000 enemies.” (The combined German forces were 240,000 but still a six-to-one match against the French).
Napoleon III is deposed by the Assembly, and the Third Republic of France is proclaimed at the Hotel de Ville.
SEPTEMBER 5 Victor Hugo arrives in Paris at 9:30 pm, greeted by an immense crowd. He addressed the public from the balcony of a cafe, and from his carriage. Hugo says, “In one hour you repay me for twenty years of exile.”
A mob of citizens break into the French Assembly, where the Opposition is already fully in control. A government of National Defense is declared. General Trochu, the Commandant of Paris, is elected President.
“Vigilance Committees” are formed in each district of Paris.
Empress Eugènie escapes to England.
SEPTEMBER 7 After receiving many visits from political figures, Hugo is informed of death threats against him.
SEPTEMBER 9 Hugo appeals to the Germans to spare Paris.
Continued requests for Hugo to take some role in the government. “Received a visit from General Montfort. The generals are asking me for commands, I am being asked to grant audiences, office-seekers are asking me for places. I reply: ‘I am nobody.’”
SEPTEMBER 11 The United States legation sends a representative to ask Hugo about wheher the U.S. Consul General should attempt to visit the King of Prussia on France’s behalf.
SEPTEMBER 13 Hugo, alone in his chamber, listens to battalions marching through the streets, singing the Marseillaise and the Chant du Depart.
The U.S. Consul General pays Hugo a visit.
SEPTEMBER 14 “I received a visit from the committee of the Société des Gens de Lettres, which wants me to be its president; from M. Jules Simon, Minister of Public Instruction; from Colonel Piré, who commands a corps of volunteers, etc.”
SEPTEMBER 16 Hugo writes: “One year ago to-day I opened the Peace Congress at Lausanne. This morning I wrote the ‘Appeal to Frenchmen’ for a war to the bitter end against the invasion.”
Parisians use a captured balloon over Montmartre, to watch for Prussian armies.
SEPTEMBER 17 Hugo donates 2,000 francs, collected in Guernsey by the French Consul there, for the benefit of the wounded.
SEPTEMBER 19 A self-appointed Republican Central Committee forms, claiming to represent Paris’s 20 districts (arrondissements) and demanding confiscation of food in private hands, and mandatory rationing.
Having surrounded the city, the Prussian Army begins its siege.
Louis Blanc, General Gambetta, and Jules Ferry call on Hugo for consultations.
SEPTEMBER 20 The Italian Army captures Rome, ejects the French garrison there, and Italian unification is achieved under King Victor Emmanuel II.
Unknown to Paris, the Versailles government begins negotiating terms of surrender with Bismarck.
SEPTEMBER 23 First balloon leaves Paris carrying mail. By January 1871, there were at least 66 balloon flights carrying communications and passengers. Some balloons arrive safely, while others fall within the Prussian lines.
Death of Prosper Merimée, author of Carmen.
SEPTEMBER 27 After a month-long siege, the city of Strasbourg surrenders to the Prussians, sealing German control of Alsace.
SEPTEMBER 30 At the end of the month, some 300,000 Parisians are enrolled in the National Guard. This was also a social safety-valve, providing income from the perennially-unemployed working people who had relied upon the now-closed state-run workshops as their last resort against starvation.
TIMELINE - OCTOBER 1870
OCTOBER 2 Rome is declared the capital of Italy.
OCTOBER 7 Minister of the Interior Leon Gambetta escapes from Paris by balloon to help lead the Army of the Loire. The balloon also carries out of Paris Victor Hugo’s three addresses, “To the Germans,” “To Frenchmen,” and “To Parisians.”
Hugo visits the restored Notre Dame Cathedral.
OCTOBER 8 Rationing of food begins. Hugo writes, “There has been no sugar in Paris for six days. The rationing of meat began to-day. We shall get three quarters of a pound per person and per day.”
National Guard soldiers from the working-class Belleville district stage a riot at the Hotel de Ville, proclaiming “Vive la Commune.” They are confronted by a determined mob of loyalist National Guard, and eventually disperse.
OCTOBER 9 Five delegates from the Ninth Arrondissement of Paris call on Hugo to “forbid me to get myself killed.” Hugo’s popularity with the poor and with radicals makes him a target.
OCTOBER 10 Hugo makes one of his few “demands”: that pawn shops be ordered to return goods pawned by the poor worth less than 15 francs. The government complies a few days later but complains that this action would cost 800,000 francs. Hugo replies. “Eight hundred thousand francs, all right. Take from the rich. Give to the poor.”
OCTOBER 11 Bavarian forces defeat The Army of the Loire near Orléans.
OCTOBER 12 A battalion commander brings Hugo the helmet of a dead Prussian soldier.
OCTOBER 13 Hugo enjoys a reunion with French poet Théophile Gautier.
OCTOBER 14 Prussian shelling causes the burning of the Château of St. Cloud.
Hugo corrects proofs for the first French edition of Les Châtiments, the poems he had written in exile and which had only reached France by stealth.
OCTOBER 16 Hugo writes: “There is no more butter. There is no more cheese. Very little milk is left, and eggs are nearly all gone.”
The Boulevard Haussmann is renamed after Victor Hugo.
OCTOBER 17 A postal balloon named the “Victor Hugo” is launched, with a letter from the author to London.
OCTOBER 18 Hugo visits his childhood home and garden at Rue des Feuillantines, only to find that the site has been paved over.
OCTOBER 20 The Republic of France issues its first new postage stamps.
Hugo’s banned polemic and satire against Napoleon III and his regime, Les Châtiments, is finally published in Paris.
OCTOBER 21 Hugo hears a rumor of the death of Alexandre Dumas. “He was a largehearted man of great talent. His death grieves me greatly.”
OCTOBER 22 The first printing of 5,000 copies of Les Châtiments is sold out. Another 3,000 are ordered. Hugo donates his royalties to a fund for manufactuirng a cannon for Paris’s defense.
“We are eating horsemeat in every style.”
OCTOBER 23 The Seventeenth Battalion begins a collection for a new cannon to be named after Victor Hugo.
OCTOBER 25 A public reading of Les Châtiments is used to raise money for another cannon.
OCTOBER 27 General Bazaine surrenders the city of Metz to the Prussians, who take 173,000 prisoners of war, including 70 generals and more than 4,000 officers. General Gambetta accuses Bazaine of treason, and Bazaine replies that “it was more important for his army to save France from its new government.” (Emerson 1512)
The American Legation arranges for fifty carriages of American, British and other foreigners to leave Paris and pass through Prussian lines. This would be the last authorized exit from the besieged city.
OCTOBER 29 Hugo authorizes a fourth edition of Les Châtiments, which would then total 11,000 copies printed in Paris.
OCTOBER 30 Thiers fails to negotiate an armistice with Prussia.
OCTOBER 31 Another attempt at establishing a Paris Commune. A mob led by Gistave Flourens and radicalized National Guard troops invades the Hotel de Ville, and briefly imprisons Trochu, Favre, and other officials, who are rescued that night by conservative National Guard battalions. Hugo is invited to preside over the insurrectionary body, and refuses. Hugo writes: “Blanqui, Flourens and Delescluze want to overthrow the provisional power, Trochu and Jules Favre. I refuse to associate myself with them.”
TIMELINE - NOVEMBER 1870
NOVEMBER 1 Louis Blanc calls on Victor Hugo to ask him how the Paris Commune should be run. Hugo had already refused a midnight visit from National Guard troops asking to come go to the Hotel De Ville to “preside” over the new government.
NOVEMBER 2 The Commune demands a “yes or no” answer from Hugo on his participation. Another intense discussion among Louis Blanc, Hugo, and Hugo’s sons.
NOVEMBER 4 Two Paris districts ask Hugo to be their elected Mayor. Hugo refuses.
Rehearsal for the public reading of Les Châtiments.
NOVEMBER 5 Public reading of Les Châtiments is given, the proceeds to go toward paying for a cannon to defend Paris.
Three more Paris districts ask Hugo to stand for Mayor.
Report of the death of Alexander Dumas turns out to be a rumor. The celebrated author is not dead, but in a state of paralysis.
NOVEMBER 7 The 24th Battalion calls on Hugo and asks him to help pay for an additional cannon.
NOVEMBER 9 The French briefly re-take Orleans after a battle at Coulmier, one of the few French successes during the war.
Most of the 7,000 francs collected at the reading of Les Châtiments is directed to making a cannon to be named “Châteaudun,” the rest going to pay for attendants, firemen, and lighting for the event. A second reading is planned to pay for another cannon.
NOVEMBER 11 Hugo visits wounded soldiers in part of a theater converted into a hospital.
NOVEMBER 13 Second public reading of Les Châtiments. Donations totalled 8,000 francs.
NOVEMBER 14 Paris begins using carrier pigeons to carry messages out of the besieged and starving city.
NOVEMBER 15 Hugo learns that enough money has been raised to pay for three cannons. He consents to have the second cannon named “Les Châtiments,” and the third, “Victor Hugo.”
NOVEMBER 16 Spanish Parliament elects a monarch, King Amadeo I, son of the King of Italy.
Edouard Thierry, administrator of the Comédie Française, refuses to allow a benefit performance of the final act of Hugo’s drama, Hernani.
NOVEMBER 17 When another committee comes to ask for another reading of Les Châtiments to pay for yet another cannon. Hugo notes in his Memoir, “I authorize whoever desires to do so, to read or perform whatever he likes that I have written, if it be for cannon, the wounded, ambulances, workshops, orphanages, victims of the war, or the poor, and that I abandon all my royalties on these readings or performances.”
NOVEMBER 20 Hugo notes that his grand-daughter, Little Jeanne, has begun to speak.
NOVEMBER 21 Sarah Bernhardt visits Victor Hugo.
NOVEMBER 23 Hugo writes: “For two days Paris has been living on salt meat. A rat costs eight sous.”
NOVEMBER 24 Death of French writer Comte de Lautréamont at age 24.
NOVEMBER 25 Public performance of Hugo’s works at the Théâtre Français, of excerpts from Hugo’s Hernani, Lucrezia Borgia, and selected poems from three collections including Les Châtiments.
A deputation of Americans visit Hugo to express their dismay over the U.S. abandonment of France in the war.
NOVEMBER 27 Paris undaunted in its cuisine. Hugo writes, “Pâtés of rat are being made. They are said to be very good. An onion costs a sou. A potato costs a sou.”
NOVEMBER 28 Death of French painter Frédéric Bazille, at age 28.
A crowd of 3,000 attend a free reading of Les Châtiments at the Opera. “The collection made in Prussian helmets by the actresses produced 1,521 francs 35 centimes in coppers.”
The Hugo family dines on a leg of antelope from the zoo.
NOVEMBER 29 and 30 Continual cannon fire from the battles outside Paris.
NOVEMBER 30 Queen Victoria calls on Empress Eugénie and her son at their rented house in Kent, England. Louis Napoléon is still a prisoner of the Prussians.
With trash uncollected, laundries closed, and sewers failing to perform patriotically, Paris reverts to some of its medieval perils, including outbreaks of cholera and smallpox. Human and animal waste pile up in the streets. Mortality rates rise.
TIMELINE — DECEMBER 1870
DECEMBER 1 The zoo continues to provide food for the Hugo family. “We ate bear for dinner.”
DECEMBER 3 Hugo asks to join his sons if they are called up to go on sorties with the National Guard. His son Victor is called, but Charles, who has two children, is to be spared for the moment. Hugo writes, “We shall be together in the combat. I will have a cape with a hood made for me. What I fear is the cold at night.”
DECEMBER 4 The Prussians re-take Orléans, taking 25,000 prisoners of war.
DECEMBER 5 Death of Alexandre Dumas, famed playwright and novelist, at age 68.
DECEMBER 6 Prussian army enters Rouen, capital of Normandy.
DECEMBER 8 The capture of Normandy cuts off communication between Paris and the rest of the world.
DECEMBER 9 A battalion of the National Guard calls on Hugo to forbid Hugo from going to the battle-front. He is told, “everybody can go to the front, whereas Victor Hugo alone can do what Victor Hugo does.”
DECEMBER 13 Privations: “Since yesterday Paris has been lighted with petroleum.” This would doubtless have been kerosene.
DECEMBER 14 Hugo and some friends study Goya’s engravings of The Disasters of War.
DECEMBER 15 Emmanuel Arago, Minister of Justice, tells Hugo that Paris will run out of meat by mid-February, and could subsist on brown bread for no more than five months.
DECEMBER 18 Under pressure from Bismarck, German principalities propose that Wilhelm of Prussia become “German Emperor.”
Three thousand more copies of Les Châtiments are ordered. Hugo learns that, without coal, Hetzel’s printing office might soon close.
DECEMBER 24-25 The Seine river freezes over. Most Parisians now have only brown bread.
DECEMBER 26 Continuing many days of discussions with Louis Blanc and others, Hugo is urged to try to intervene to force Trochu to either do something decisive, or resign. It is feared that such an intervention might interfere with a possible military success.
DECEMBER 27 Using their newly-arrived Krupp guns, Prussians fire nineteen shells into the Fort on Montrouge. Prussia was the first country to use these superior steel artillery guns.
DECEMBER 29 Théophile Gautier’s horse was to be requisitioned for food. Hugo persuades the authorities to spare the horse of a fellow writer.
Hugo writes, “I am being urged more strongly than ever, to enter the Government.”
DECEMBER 31 As the year ends, the Prussians rain 12,000 shells on the forts around Paris.
Paris laundries will be shut down, due to lack of coal.
At the Hugo dining table: “We have no longer even have horse to eat. Perhaps it is dog? Maybe it is rat? I am beginning to suffer from pains in the stomach. We are eating the unknown!”
TIMELINE — JANUARY 1871
Paris, its outskirts, and forts are bombarded by the Prussian siege guns for 23 days.
A large portion of the Army of the Loire falls back to Paris. General Gambetta presses civilians into military service.
Hugo hosts many dinner gatherings of politicians, and is pressed repeatedly to run for office or join various factions.
JANUARY 1 For New Year’s Day, the Hugo family dines on horse meat.
JANUARY 2 More of the menagerie at the Jardin de Plantes (Botanical Gardens) are slaughtered for food. Hugo writes: “The elephant at the Jardin des Plantes has been slaughtered. He wept. He will be eaten.”
JANUARY 3 At the Battle of Bapaume, French General Faidherbe, with 40,000 troops, is unable to prevail against 10,000 Prussians.
JANUARY 4 Hugo is informed that 25,000 Prussian shells were fired into the Paris region in six days. He does some math on the colossal stupidity of war: “It required 220 railway trucks to transport [the shells]. Each shot costs 60 francs; total, 1,500,000 francs. The damage to the forts is estimated at 1,400 francs. About ten men have been killed. Each of our dead cost the Prussians 150,000 francs.”
JANUARY 6-10 Battles between the remainder of the Army of the Loire and the Prussians, in fierce winter conditions, take a toll on both sides. Prussian shells fall on the Luxembourg Gardens late at night, where many sick and wounded men were being cared for in make-shift huts. At least sixteen streets inside Paris are hit by shells.
JANUARY 7 While walking in the Rue des Feuillantines, his childhood home, Hugo is nearly hit by a Prussian shell.
JANUARY 8 Brown bread is replaced with a ration of black bread in Paris.
No more public readings of Les Châtiments or other Hugo works are possible, as the theaters are now without light and heat.
Five school children are killed by falling shells in the Rue de Vaugirard.
JANUARY 10 Bombs fall on the Odéon Theater.
JANUARY 12 The Prussian army captures Le Mans.
The Hugos eat elephant steak.
JANUARY 15 Paris newspapers, still operating, publish Hugo’s poem, “Dans Le Cirque.”
JANUARY 18 Wilhelm I is proclaimed as German Emperor, completing the unification of the German states.
JANUARY 19 Despite starvation, a force of 100,000 men, under Trochu’s direction, makes a sortie out of Paris against the Fifth German Army Corp at Mont Valérian. After a day-long fight, and many casualties, the Parisians returned home. It was the last attempt to drive back the invaders from the countryside surrounding the capital.
French painter Henri Regnault, age 27, dies in the battle of Mont Valérian.
Trochu resigns his command.
French General Faidherbe is defeated at Saint Quentin, losing 18,000 prisoners of war to the Prussians.
JANUARY 22 A riot at the Hotel de Ville results in five deaths. Hugo is sickened to learn that armed groups, for and against the government, are attacking one another. Hugo writes: “Tumultuous demonstrations at the Hotel de Ville. Trochu is withdrawing. Rostan comes to tell me that the Breton mobiles are firing on the people. I doubt it. I will go myself, if necessary.
“I have just returned. There was a simultaneous attack by both sides. To the combatants who consulted me I said: ‘I recognize in the hands of Frenchmen only those rifles which are turned towards the Prussians.’
“Rostan said to me: ‘I have come to place my battalion at your service. We are five hundred men. Where do you want us to go?’
“’Where are you now?’ I asked.
“‘We have been massed towards Saint Denis, which is being bombarded,’ he replied. ‘We are at La Villette.’
“’Then stay there,’ said I. ‘It is there where I should have sent you. Do not march against the Hotel de Ville, march against Prussia.’”
JANUARY 22 After the attempted insurrection at the Hotel de Ville, the provisional government suspends 17 republican newspapers and bans political meetings.
JANUARY 23 Hugo hosts a conference of Parisian leaders at his home. They present several plans for moving forward with the French government, one by Ledru Rollin with 200 supporters, the other by the Republican Union with 50 members.
JANUARY 24 Flourens calls on Hugo to ask for advice. Hugo urges, “No violent pressure on the situation.” Flourens is arrested after leaving Hugo’s house.
JANUARY 25 News reaches Paris of many French defeats. Hugo is advised that capitulation is imminent.
JANUARY 27 Hugo writes: “Again they came to ask me to head a demonstration against the Hotel de Ville. All sorts of rumors are in circulation. To everybody I counsel calmness and unity.”
JANUARY 28 As part of the Armistice of Versailles, Paris surrenders. Surprisingly, the Prussians refrain from entering the city. Bismarck remarks to Jules Favre that the Empress Eugènie in exile attempted to negotiate her own peace treaty, presumably in favor of her son. Bismarck calls her “that goose of an Empress.”
JANUARY 29 The text of the Armistice is published in Paris.
TIMELINE - FEBRUARY 1871
FEBRUARY 1 Fighting continues between remaining French forces and the Germans. On February 1, in a battle that had spilled over into Switzerland, near La Ciuse in the Jura Mountains, the last shot of the war was fired. The Germans had prevailed in nearly every engagement.
FEBRUARY 2 Elections in Paris are postponed to February 8.
FEBRUARY 5 Republican newspapers in Paris offer their slate of candidates. Hugo’s name heads their lists.
FEBRUARY 6 Paris learns of the suicide of the defeated French general Bourbaki.
FEBRUARY 8 Elections for the National Assembly are held. The majority of seats go to monarchists.
FEBRUARY 12 Hugo makes a visit to the newly-named “Boulevard Victor Hugo” in Paris. He prepares to leave for Bordeaux to join the Assembly.
FEBRUARY 13 At home, Hugo reads to friends some of the poems that will be in the Paris Siege section of The Terrible Year.
FEBRUARY 14 Hugo passes through the Prussian lines to Bordeaux and procures lodgings.
FEBRUARY 15 Crowds greet and cheer on Hugo as he goes to join the Assembly. The other members of the Assembly do not take kindly to Hugo’s popularity. The poet writes: “While the enthusiastic people shouted ‘Long live the Republic!’ the members of the Assembly issued and filed past impassible, almost furious, and with their hats on, in the midst of the bare heads and the waving caps about me.”
FEBRUARY 16 The struggle for who will be the chief executive of France begins, with the left-leaning Paris against the will of monarchists, Bonapartists, and rival Republicans. The votes from Paris totaled 216,000 votes for Louis Blanc, 214,000 votes for Victor Hugo, and 200,000 votes for Garibaldi, the Italian hero who brought his own forces to fight for France. Crowds in the streets, and even some of the National Guard placed to protect the Assembly, again proclaim their favor of Victor Hugo.
FEBRUARY 17 The Assembly, in its role as the new self-designated governing body, elects Adolphe Thiers as the President of the French Republic. Thiers prepares to meet with the Prussians, who are still headquartered at Versailles.
FEBRUARY 18 Hugo is elected as President of the Left in the Assembly. They are completely outnumbered, and Hugo writes: “The meeting chose me as president. The speakers were Louis Blanc, Schoelcher, Colonel Langlois, Brisson, Lockroy, Millière, Clémenceau, Martin Bernard, and Joigneaux. I spoke last and summed up the debate. Weighty questions were brought up -— the Bismarck-Thiers treaty, peace, war, the intolerance of the Assembly, and the case in which it would be advisable to resign in a body.”
FEBRUARY 19 Hugo grows alarmed about Presient Thiers’ intentions, noting: “Thiers has appointed his Ministers. He has assumed the equivocal and suspicious title of ‘head president of the executive power.’ The Assembly is to adjourn. We are to be notified at our residences when it is to be convened again.”
FEBRUARY 20 Hugo is followed everywhere by immense crowds. Although he does nothing to encourage this, the enmity against him grows with each of these popular demonstrations.
FEBRUARY 21 Hugo presides over a meeting of the “Radical Left” faction.
FEBRUARY 25 Hugo doubts that the two factions of the Left will be able to work together. He writes: “Tonight there was a meeting of the two factions of the Left, the Radical Left and Political Left, in the hall of the Academy, in the Rue Jacques Bell. The speakers were Louis Blanc, Emmanuel Arago, Vacherot, Jean Brunet, Bethmont, Peyrat, Brisson, Gambetta, and myself. I doubt whether my plan for fusion or even for an entente cordiale will succeed.”
FEBRUARY 26 Hugo presides over another meeting of the Left, resigning his leadership of the Radical Left in hopes that the groups would join together.
The Treaty of Versailles is signed, ending the Franco-Prussian War. Alsace, Lorraine, Metz, and Thionville were all to be ceded to Germany. Germany demanded an indemnity of five billion francs, and German troops would be allowed to enter Paris.
The 26th of February is Victor Hugo’s 69th birthday.
In Paris, National Guardsmen, aided by crowds of civilians, begin moving cannons to the heights on Montmartre, Belleville, and other districts.
FEBRUARY 28 Adolphe Thiers reads the peace treaty from the podium at the Assembly. Hugo writes: “It is hideous. I shall speak tomorrow. My name is the seventh on the list, but Grévy, the president of the Assembly, said to me: "Rise and ask to be heard when you want to. The Assembly will hear you.”
Meetings of Assembly committees run late into the night. Hugo speaks at one of them.
TIMELINE - MARCH 1871
MARCH 1 The Assembly, with Victor Hugo in the opposition party, accepts the Peace Treaty by a vote of 546 to 107. Hugo writes: “The Empire was executed, also France, alas!”
MARCH 2 The Prussians enter Paris and hold a brief military parade.
Mail service resumes and Hugo receives several Paris newspapers.
A debate among the Left Assembly members. Hugo writes about their uncertainties: “Seeing that France has been mutilated, the Assembly ought to withdraw. It has caused the wound and is powerless to cure it. Let another Assembly replace it. I would like to resign. Louis Blanc does not want to. Gambetta and Rochefort are of my way of thinking.”
MARCH 3 The Prussian army leaves Paris.
Resignations from the Assembly begin. Hugo writes, “Louis Blanc called in company with three Representatives, Brisson, Floquet, and Cournet. They came to consult me as to what ought to be done about the resignation question. Rochefort and Pyat, with three others, are resigning. I am in favor of resigning. Louis Blanc resists. The remainder of the Left do not appear to favor resignation en masse.”
MARCH 4 Members of the Radical Left propose impeachments of the officials of the self-appointed Government of National Defense.
MARCH 5 The impeachment move is softened to a vote for an “inquiry.”
The government at Paris seems to break off communications with the Assembly. Hugo notes, “They say there is great agitation in Paris.”
MARCH 8 After the Assembly refuses to seat Garibaldi, who had been elected by the voters in Algeria (Algerians having full voting rights as French citizens). Attempts are made to annul the Algerian election results. Hugo attempts to defend Garibaldi, who had come with his own troops to defend France against Prussia, but he is shouted down.
Hugo resigns from the Assembly.
MARCH 9 Two different Left factions implore Hugo to reconsider his decision, but he refuses.
MARCH 10 The National Assembly at Bordeaux, regarding Paris as too unstable to govern, decides to move the national government to Versailles. Among its first actions was ending the moratorium on rents and debt-payments that had been in place during the war, and cancellation of daily pay for the National Guard. These actions were a direct provocation against the radicals in Paris.
MARCH 11 The national government orders six Paris republican newspapers shut down, and sentences two radical leaders, Blanqi and Flourens, to death in absentia.
MARCH 11-12 Hugo prepares to leave Bordeaux, and has many farewell meetings.
MARCH 13 Sudden death of Hugo’s son Charles.
MARCH 14 Charles Hugo’s coffin is placed in a repository in Bordeaux.
MARCH 17 President Thiers retreats to Versailles and many conservatives abandon their Paris homes and businesses, crowding into Versailles.
The radical leader Blanqi, who was expected by many to head the Commune, is arrested, and held by the Thiers government until the fall of the Commune. The demand for his release would come up frequently in hostage negotiations.
MARCH 18 Victor Hugo returns to Paris with the coffin of his son Charles. Huge crowds assemble to watch and to accompany the funeral procession to Père Lachaise.
Angry citizens and the National Guard of Paris prevent the French army in its second attempt to remove 171 cannons from the heights of Montmartre. Two Versailles generals are captured and killed. Radicals seize the Hotel de Ville and other strategic points in Paris, marking the beginning of the “Paris Commune.”
President Thiers orders all government officials, policemen, and troops to evacuate Paris. Many well-off citizens begin to flee the city. Some monarchists and conservative Republicans flee to Versailles.
MARCH 19 President Thiers cuts off all communications leaving Paris. At a secret meeting of the National Assembly, fears are expressed that the “Communards” are actually members of the Marxist International. Even President Theirs seems to feel that a repeat of the 1848 uprising was taking place.
Thiers, without consulting anyone in Paris, appoints Jean-Marie Saisset, a conservative, as head of the National Guard. A crowd of 3,000, intent on counter-revolution, march in the streets to support Saisset as “friends of order.”
MARCH 20 Publication of the first issue of the Official Journal of the Commune.
MARCH 21 Germany’s Chancellor Otto von Bismarck is elevated to the rank of Prince.
Victor Hugo and his household leave Paris for Brussels, in order to settle his late son’s business affairs.
A second march in favor of Saisset in front of the National Guard headquarters ends in chaos as shots are fired into its midst. The “friends of order” scatter.
MARCH 22 The Central Committee of the Commune meets with radicals from other French cities to encourage them to seize power in the same way as the Commune. Later that day, revolutionaries had already taken power in Marseilles, Lyons, and several other cities, meaning that Thiers’ government would have to contend with insurgencies in the provinces.
At Lyons, a Commune is proclaimed.
MARCH 23 Thiers ignores a delegation of moderate republicans who come to Versailles.
Workers’ groups within Paris begin to align themselves with the Commune, hoping for jobs and better working conditions (more than 300,000 in the city are unemployed.)
At Toulouse and Marseilles, Communes are proclaimed.
MARCH 26 The Paris Commune holds elections for the Paris city council. Thanks in part to non-participation by middle-class and upper-class voters, the new city government is dominated by socialists, anarchists, and revolutionaries.
The short-lived Commune at Lyons falls.
MARCH 28 The Paris Commune takes power. The French tricolor flag is replaced with a red flag.
MARCH 30 First open fight between the Commune and the national government, at Courbevoie. Communard leaders Gustave Flourens and Emile Duval are captured and summarily killed.
The Commune renews the moratorium on rents that had been in place during the siege. Landlords and property owners are outraged.
MARCH 31 Fall of the Commune at Narbonne.
TIMELINE - APRIL 1871
APRIL 1 Germany approves a new constitution.
President Thiers apppoints Patrice de Marshall MacMahon to lead the anticipated Versailles recapture of the forts around Paris, and Paris itself. He bides his time in April to build up sufficient troops, with much of the regular French army still held as prisoners by the Prussians.
APRIL 2 The Communards retreat from Courbevoie when Versailles forces double down. News reaches Paris of the executions of Flourens and Duval.
The Versailles army begins bombarding Paris, with much of the carnage and damage is in outer districts not particularly sympathetic to the Commune.
The Commune votes for full separation of Church and state, canceling all subsidies for religion and declaring the need for free public education (much of education had been in the hands of the church). More than half of the churches in Paris would be appropriated for political meetings and other uses.
APRIL 3 Two battles between the Commune and the Versailles forces, at Rueil and Meudon.
APRIL 4 A counterattack by the Versailles forces, taking more of the forts surrounding Paris.
The Commune votes to take hostages in retribution for the killing of Flourens and Duval. Targets include the Archbishop of Paris.
The attempt at a Commune in Marseilles fails. Another Commune is started in Limoges.
APRIL 5 After learning of the killing of more prisoners by the Versailles army, the Commune orders the arrest of more priests.
APRIL 6 Public funerals begin in Paris for the burial of victims of the Versaillais bombardment.
APRIL 7 Crowds cheer as National Guardsmen symbolically burn a guillotine in front a prison notorious for its executions.
APRIL 8 The Communards establish a union for women, a group that published “An Appeal to the Women Citizens of Paris.” Women are recruited for nursing and food preparation duties, as well as making uniforms and helping to build barricades.
APRIL 9 Parisian crowds enjoy a peaceful Easter Sunday. The Tuilieries Palace is opened to the public.
APRIL 10 The Paris Commune reforms qualifications for National Guard pensions to cover illegitimate children.
APRIL 11 A Women’s Union is established in Paris. Some Parisian women would enlist and fight on the battlefield.
After another Communard defeat outside Paris, the Versailles army is able to move its cannons closer to the city.
APRIL 12 The Commune issues a decree ordering the removal of the Vendôme column honoring Napoleon I’s military victories (this will not be carried out until May).
APRIL 15 The Paris home of President Thiers is raided by the Commune, who remove vast amounts of art, porcelain, bronzes, and other antiques, and then demolish the house.
APRIL 16 The Commune approves a plan to re-open closed government workshops, which had provided employment for the poor. The workshops had been a popular program to alleviate poverty. Worker-owned co-ops are granted the authority to take over abandoned factories.
Public demonstrations in Grenoble and Bordeaux in support of The Paris Commune.
APRIL 19 The Commune issues its “Declaration to the French People.”
The Paris newspaper, Le Rappel, publishes Hugo’s poem, “A Cry.”
The Commune borrows 700,000 francs in cash and 16 million francs in credit from the Bank of France in order to keep paying the National Guard and other employees. (The Bank was also loaning money to the Versailles government).
Landlords are forbidden to evict tenants for unpaid rent.
APRIL 21 Painter Gustave Courbet is put in charge of the Commune’s arts and education efforts.
Le Rappel publishes Hugo’s poem, “No Reprisals!”
APRIL 23 Demonstrations in London in support of the Paris Commune.
APRIL 24 The Commune invites unions to take over the workshops that the old government had closed and abandoned.
APRIL 25 The Battle of Fort d’Issy begins.
The Commune requisitions vacant houses.
APRIL 28 Committee of Public Safety, echoing the fear of counter-revolution and hearkening back to the revolution of 1789, is organized, creating more potential schisms within the disorganized Commune.
The Commune changes working hours for bakers so they they will not be required to work at night.
APRIL 29 A protest of some 10,000 Parisian citizens attempts to persuade the Commune to negotiate with Thiers’ government.
APRIL 30 Hugo finishes settling his late son’s affairs in Brussels. Moderate republicans gain in municipal elections held throughout France.
TIMELINE - MAY 1871
The Versailles army continues to take towns and forts around Paris, committing many summary executions of prisoners, including several nurses. Paris is overwhelmed with the wounded.
MAY 1 The Commune officially establishes The Committee of Public Safety.
The Commune appoints a new director for the National Library (Bibliotèque National), whose previous director had locked it up and fled the city.
MAY 4 Soldiers of the Versailles army mutilate the corpses of 300 Communards captured or killed on the previous day.
MAY 5 Despite an explosion of pro-Commune newspapers and journals, The Commune decides to ban two pro-Versailles newspapers, Le Figaro and Le Gaulois, and three others.
MAY 7 The Commune intervenes with pawnshops to restore pawned possessions to those working in “vital professions.” Many had to pawn their possessions during the siege.
The Paris newspaper Le Rappel publishes Hugo’s poem, “The Two Trophies.”
MAY 9 The Communuards abandon Fort Issy.
MAY 10 Peace of Frankfurt-am-Main is signed, ending the Franco-Prussian War.
MAY 12 Death of French opera composer Daniel François Esprit Auber, age 89.
The Commune issues a decree allowing workers to have more of a say on working conditions.
MAY 13 One church, Notre Dame de Lorette, is used as a military barracks, and later as a jail.
Communard forces abandon Fort Vanves.
MAY 15 Rifts appear within the Commune, as the Committee of Public Safety is viewed as dictatorial in nature. A number of the members want to withdraw into their own districts, presumably taking some of the National Guard with them. There are demands that the Commune should begin killing hostages unless the exiled radical leader Blanqi is allowed to return to Paris.
Paris trade unions meet with the Commune to discuss re-opening the closed workshops which had provided employment for the poor.
MAY 16 In a public ceremony, the memorial column to Napoleon I in the Place Vendôme is pulled down.
MAY 18 The Commune shuts down ten pro-Versailles newspapers.
The National Assembly at Versailles ratifies the Treaty of Frankfurt, ceding Alsace and Lorraine to Germany, and agreeing that France will pay war costs.
MAY 21 The Commune Council holds its last session.
The Versailles forces discover two entry points into Paris that had been abandoned by Communard soldiers. More than 100,000 troops begin pouring into Paris, joined by organized groups of anti-Communard volunteers.
The French Army begins the suppression of the Commune in the “Bloody Week.”
MAY 22-28 The “Semaine Saglante,” the Bloody Week.
MAY 22 (Monday) More than 130,000 troops of the Versailles government have entered Paris. There is little resistance and 1,500 Communard prisoners are taken. The Communards’ food and supply warehouse is seized. The Commune’s leaders fail to offer any organized resistance, and even the cannons at Montmartre, the crux of the whole split with the national government, are not used until it it too late. The Communards fall behind street barricades as the Versailles troops begin shooting all captured combatants.
Fires break out in houses with little or no chance of extinguishing them. Some are set by Communards to prevent the Versaillais advance; others, may have been caused by Versaillais bombardment. Historian Merriman quotes an official Communard order that read: “Blow up or set fire to the houses which may interfere with your system of defense. The barricades should not be liable to attack from the houses.”
The Communards burn down the Hotel de Ville, the city hall of Paris. Written orders are issued to burn the Palais Royal, the Ministry of Finance, the Naval Ministry, and the Louvre (the painter Courbet managed to persuade passersby to rescue the art from the Louvre.) The Louvre library is consumed, and buildings containing Empire archives and court records are set on fire.
Le Rappel in Paris publishes Hugo’s poem, “To Those Who Speak of Fraternity.”
MAY 23 (Tuesday) The Versailles army makes its assault on Montmartre and its barricades. Soldiers kill civilians indiscriminately along the way. Anti-Commune volunteers (“The Volunteers of the Seine”) enter houses alongside some barricades and fire down upon the Communards. Regular troops finish the job and kill all uniformed National Guard soldiers or armed civilians they encounter.
Communard leaders meet at the Hotel de Ville. Less than two dozen remain. The Versailles army closes in on working-class Belleville, one of the main Communard districts, with soldiers indiscriminately killing uniformed National Guardsmen and civilians.
Communard forces detonate the munitions stored at the Luxembourg Gardens to attempt to slow the Versailles troops.
Death of Communard general Jaroslaw Dabrowski, who had earlier that day tried to flee Paris, was apprehended, and then had a change of heart and “reenlisted.” Communard leader Rigault is captured and shot.
MAY 24 (Wednesday) The Committee of Public Safety calls on the Versailles soldiers to join the workers’ cause.
The Communards set fire to the Tuileries Palace, The Prefecture of Police, and the Palace of Justice.
The Versailles troops carry out mass executions of actual or suspected Communards, often with scant or no evidence that those captured were combatants. Well-off Parisians who had not fled the city report the hiding places of Commnards to the Versailles troops.
As Versailles forces close in, the Communards execute the Archbishop of Paris and five other hostages.
Battle of Butte-aux-Cailles.
MAY 25 (Bloody Thursday) Death of Communard leader Louis-Charles Delescluze at a barricade where he had exposed himself to enemy fire.
Execution squads use military war-time authority to commence thousands of execution of both combatants and civilians. With the participation of anti- Commune French citizens, it was, in effect, class war of the prosperous against the entire poor class of Paris.
MAY 26 (Friday) Versailles troops break through more barricades.
Even as the Commune collapses, fifty more hostages being held by the Commune at La Roquette are moved to Belleville and executed by firing squad.
President Thiers announces that his forces had taken more than 25,000 prisoners in Paris.
MAY 27 (Saturday) Some hostages escape from La Roquette prison. Some are killed by nearby residents, but the remainder are rescued by Versailles troops.
Even though the last Communards in Belleville had surrendered, parts of the district are shelled and burned. Many surrendering fighters are killed immediately.
Thousands of Communards are machine-gunned in Père Lachaise Cemetery, and thrown into mass graves.
MAY 28 (Sunday) With the final barricade overcome, the Commune ends, but arrests and executions continue.
Martial law is declared in Paris (and will continue for five years!) At least 43,000 Parisians are held as prisoners. The number of Communards, their supporters, or innocent bystanders killed will never be known, since many were thrown into mass graves — estimates range from 7,000 to 15,000 state-sanctioned killings.
Parisian citizens begin denouncing their neighbors to the police as Communards.
MAY 30 The King of Belgium expels Victor Hugo and his family from Brussels in outrage over his published statements on non-reprisals against supporters of the Commune, and his offer of sanctuary in his home. This followed on death-threats and a riot outside Hugo’s dwelling on Brussels.
TIMELINE — JUNE 1871
A month of mass arrests and executions. French citizens write 399,823 denunciations of their fellow citizens as Communards or supporters of the insurrection. As many as 50,000 Parisians are under arrest, many taken to prisons at Versailles and Satory. Twenty thousand Communard prisoners are held on prison ships; 8,000 more are transported to military forts and remote Atlantic islands, all awaiting trial by court martial under martial law.
JUNE 1 Hugo and his family leave Belgium and go to Luxembourg.
JUNE 2 Some Paris newspapers publish editorials pleading that the mass killings stop. The Paris Journal editor writes, “Let us not kill any more.”
Summary executions continue until mid-June.JUNE 8 Hugo travels to Vianden, where he remains until the end of the month. His excursions include visits to Thionville and Mondorf.
TIMELINE — JULY 1871
In the July elections in France, 57,000 votes are cast for Victor Hugo, even though he was not in France, and not a candidate.
JULY 1 Rome becomes the official capital of the nation of Italy.
JULY 2 Victor Emmanuel, king of the unified Italy, arrives in Rome.
TIMELINE — AUGUST 1871
Arrests and executions continue.
Hugo continues his stay at Vianden in Luxembourg.
TIMELINE - SEPTEMBER 1871
Hugo returns to Paris. He visits President Thiers to plead for amnesty for his friend Rochefort. His efforts are not successful.
SEPTEMBER 24 Hugo visits Sedan and Rheims.
AFTER 1871
1872
Hugo is not re-elected to his seat in the Assembly.
Feb 24 Sarah Bernhardt appears in a successful revival of Hugo’s drama Ruy Blas. The play is performed more than 100 times.
April 20 Publication of Hugo’s l’Année Terrible. The first printing sells out in one day.
August 14 Hugo and his family return to the channel island of Guernsey.
1873
The French government orders the reconstruction of the Vendôme column commemorating military conquests by Napoleon I.
The painter Courbet, who had been spared from punishment for his role in the Commune, is fined, imprisoned, and then exiled.
Jan 7 Death of Napoleon III in exile in Britain.
July Hugo and his family return to Paris.
December Death of Hugo’s son François-Victor.
1874
Publication of Hugo’s last novel, Ninety-Three (Quatrevingt-Treize).
The French government returns from Versailles to Paris. MacMahon replaces Thiers as president of France. Punishments against actual or perceived Communards continues, including more executions.
The first Paris exhibit by the Impressionist painters is held.
1875
The Assembly formalizes the French government as a republic.
Publication of Hugo’s Actes et Paroles, a collection of his speeches and other public writings.
Opening of the Palais Garnier opera house.
Premiere of Bizet’s opera Carmen.
Dedication of the restored Vendôme column.
1877
Nov 21 Sarah Bernhardt stars in a revival of Hugo’s drama Hernani.
Dec 31 Death of the painter Courbet, in exile.
1878
Hugo sufffers from a stroke, and goes to Guernsey to recuperate.
The Universal Exposition in Paris.
First use of electric lighting in Paris streets.
1879
March 3 Partial amnesty for Communards.
First telephone system in Paris.
Another revival of Hugo’s drama Ruy Blas, with Sarah Bernherdt.
1880
July 11 The French government offers total amnesty for those exiled or imprisoned after the Paris Commune.
July 14 First celebration of Bastille Day since 1802.
1881
The Chat Noir cabaret opens in Montmartre.
Opening of the reconstructed Paris City Hall, the Hôtel de Ville.
1882
Hugo is rel-elected as a Senator.
First publication of Hugo’s 1869 drama, Torquemada, a powerful portrayal of religious intolerance and antisemitism. The play would not be staged until 1936.
1883
Dedication of the statue, Monument to the Republic.
1885
May 22 Death of Victor Hugo.
Dec 30 Sarah Bernhardt stages, in Hugo’s memory, his early drama Marion de Lorme.
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