The Paris Commune 1871
Translated: from the original for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2005.
In the provinces odious rumors are being spread.
In Paris there are 300,000 National Guardsmen, and even so troops are being brought into the city that are being lied to about the spirit of the Parisian populace. The men who organized the defeat, dismembered France, and delivered all our gold want to escape the responsibility they assumed by inspiring civil war. They count on the hope that you will be the docile instruments of the crime they are contemplating.
Citizen soldiers, will you obey the impious order to spill the same blood that flows in your veins? Will you tear out your own entrails? No! You will not agree to become patricides and fratricides.
What do the people of Paris want?
They want to preserve their arms, choose their own chiefs, and revoke them when they no longer have confidence in them.
They want the army to be returned to its homes in order to return hearts to their families and arms to their labor as quickly as possible.
Soldiers, children of the people, let us unite to save the republic. Kings and emperors have done us enough harm. Don’t sully your life. Orders don’t stand in the way of conscience’s responsibilities. Let us embrace in the face of those who want to set us at each other’s throats in order to conquer a rank, obtain a position, or return a king.
Eternal life to the republic!
Voted at the session at the Waux-hall, March 10, 1871
At the same session the delegates voted to congratulate the citizens of the Army of the Loire for the pious homage they rendered the martyrs of Liberty by bearing a wreath to the July Column.