Chapter 16 - The Treaty of Ambert
Chapter Sixteen: The Treaty of Ambert
Thanks for all the kind comments guys! Next post will have a map (got to work out how to upload it) and will take stock of the situation more generally before we get on with the story. So any clarifications anyone wants, let me know in the comments!
Chapter Sixteen: The Treaty of Ambert
“Let them pay through the nose and grow anaemic and ripe for defeat, or let them default and pay the Prussian creditor in blood”
Minister of the Interior, Charles Beulé, to his wife, 1871
It took three long weeks, three weeks of mistrust and skirmishing and positioning, for the peace talks to be arranged. The Communards, fearful of being executed, refused to leave their own territory. The Royalists resolutely refused to legitimise their regime by meeting them in Paris.
But the meeting had to happen. Both sides were at breaking point. MacMahon, exhausted, was trying in the countryside beyond Versailles to keep his army together with both hands. These men were conscripts, called up in 1870 to fight Prussians, and now, with the spring turning to summer, were desperate to get back to their farms and villages. They had been in uniform too long and the bitter defeat at the walls of Paris had seen morale plummet. Without access to the Bank of France in Paris, the King was unable to pay his men either, and each night pickets struggled to stop men slipping away into the night. In Paris, meanwhile, the dead were being counted. The Commune’s soldiers were workers and artisans, men it was supposed to serve, and such rates of casualty couldn’t be sustained. Whether they wanted it or not, both sides needed peace.
Finally the sleepy rural town of Ambert, nestled in the centre of the country, was selected. It rotunda market place, small and musty with the smell of grain, provided the venue for the two delegations.
Leading the Communard one was the trio of Leo Frankel , Eugene Varlin, and Emile Eudes, three young men sent by Blanqui and the Assembly to find whatever terms they could. For the Royalist the Minister of the Interior, Charles Beulé, a professor of archaeology, assembled his own weary team.
Debate was painfully slow. For the first day Beulé, under direct orders from MacMahon, refused resolutely any suggestion of power-sharing. Varlin and Eudes, from the outset, had proposed the reunion of the country under a Republic, with the abdication of the King, and new elections. Annoyed, Beulé simply dismissed the suggestion out of hand. “The King is here to stay gentlemen” he announced at one point, to which Eudes snapped “and so are we sir!”. At times the three days of peace talks seemed like a farce, albeit a not particularly funny one. On the morning of the second day the talks almost collapsed when it turned out that the Communards had been tapping the telegraph line of the Royalists, listening in to how their suggestions were being treated back at court. The situation was only diffused when the town clerk came forward to point out that the Royalists were also listening in to the Communards through the thin walls of their hotel room.
It was late on the third day that Frankel laid out the groundwork of the treaty as it became known. Perhaps his status as a foreigner, a Hungarian Jew, allowed him to think what was unthinkable for the other men present – the dismemberment of France. From La Havre in the north, along a strip of land just wide enough to include Paris but exclude Versailles, the border Frankel sketched out found the Loire valley and followed the river as far south as Saint Etienne. Then it crossed land to the Rhone, travelling back up a little to near Lyon, before switching to the Isere and following that river to the Italian border. Standing back, Frankel revealed a map that placed a third of the country, roughly, in the hands of the Commune.
“Many historians have, over the years, questioned the precise nature of the new border” wrote Professor Marc Bloc, in the 1927, “yet this is to misunderstand the nature of France at the time”.
Perhaps the best summary came in the two volumes of Eugen Weber’s Modern France. Peasants into Subjects (1976) and Workers into Comrades (1977) emphasised the split. Crucial is Weber’s discussion of language. In 1871, at the time of the division, he argued, only 30% of France spoke what was considered “French”. Loyalty to the region was much more important than to the nation for many, and played into political concerns. The Royalists had, since before 1789, viewed Paris as chaotic and ungovernable, whilst the Communards, looking back to the 1790s, were able to point to the West and South as essentially anti-Republican.
Whilst all men were, at first, aghast at Frankel’s suggestion, it seemed, the more they talked, to be the only solution. The Communards could never hope, beyond wild dreams, to conquer France entirely, let alone hold it down. The Royalists, meanwhile, lost the prestige of Paris but gained a buffer state.
Ever the opportunist, however, Beulé was able to sting the Communards one last time as they signed. There could be, he said airily as the ink dried, no question of the Kingdom of France paying for a peace treaty they did not agree too. The Communards had agreed it, he said looking at Varlin, so they had better pay.
After three days, it was decided, France would be split in two.
Thanks for all the kind comments guys! Next post will have a map (got to work out how to upload it) and will take stock of the situation more generally before we get on with the story. So any clarifications anyone wants, let me know in the comments!
Chapter Sixteen: The Treaty of Ambert
“Let them pay through the nose and grow anaemic and ripe for defeat, or let them default and pay the Prussian creditor in blood”
Minister of the Interior, Charles Beulé, to his wife, 1871
It took three long weeks, three weeks of mistrust and skirmishing and positioning, for the peace talks to be arranged. The Communards, fearful of being executed, refused to leave their own territory. The Royalists resolutely refused to legitimise their regime by meeting them in Paris.
But the meeting had to happen. Both sides were at breaking point. MacMahon, exhausted, was trying in the countryside beyond Versailles to keep his army together with both hands. These men were conscripts, called up in 1870 to fight Prussians, and now, with the spring turning to summer, were desperate to get back to their farms and villages. They had been in uniform too long and the bitter defeat at the walls of Paris had seen morale plummet. Without access to the Bank of France in Paris, the King was unable to pay his men either, and each night pickets struggled to stop men slipping away into the night. In Paris, meanwhile, the dead were being counted. The Commune’s soldiers were workers and artisans, men it was supposed to serve, and such rates of casualty couldn’t be sustained. Whether they wanted it or not, both sides needed peace.
Finally the sleepy rural town of Ambert, nestled in the centre of the country, was selected. It rotunda market place, small and musty with the smell of grain, provided the venue for the two delegations.
Leading the Communard one was the trio of Leo Frankel , Eugene Varlin, and Emile Eudes, three young men sent by Blanqui and the Assembly to find whatever terms they could. For the Royalist the Minister of the Interior, Charles Beulé, a professor of archaeology, assembled his own weary team.
Debate was painfully slow. For the first day Beulé, under direct orders from MacMahon, refused resolutely any suggestion of power-sharing. Varlin and Eudes, from the outset, had proposed the reunion of the country under a Republic, with the abdication of the King, and new elections. Annoyed, Beulé simply dismissed the suggestion out of hand. “The King is here to stay gentlemen” he announced at one point, to which Eudes snapped “and so are we sir!”. At times the three days of peace talks seemed like a farce, albeit a not particularly funny one. On the morning of the second day the talks almost collapsed when it turned out that the Communards had been tapping the telegraph line of the Royalists, listening in to how their suggestions were being treated back at court. The situation was only diffused when the town clerk came forward to point out that the Royalists were also listening in to the Communards through the thin walls of their hotel room.
It was late on the third day that Frankel laid out the groundwork of the treaty as it became known. Perhaps his status as a foreigner, a Hungarian Jew, allowed him to think what was unthinkable for the other men present – the dismemberment of France. From La Havre in the north, along a strip of land just wide enough to include Paris but exclude Versailles, the border Frankel sketched out found the Loire valley and followed the river as far south as Saint Etienne. Then it crossed land to the Rhone, travelling back up a little to near Lyon, before switching to the Isere and following that river to the Italian border. Standing back, Frankel revealed a map that placed a third of the country, roughly, in the hands of the Commune.
“Many historians have, over the years, questioned the precise nature of the new border” wrote Professor Marc Bloc, in the 1927, “yet this is to misunderstand the nature of France at the time”.
Perhaps the best summary came in the two volumes of Eugen Weber’s Modern France. Peasants into Subjects (1976) and Workers into Comrades (1977) emphasised the split. Crucial is Weber’s discussion of language. In 1871, at the time of the division, he argued, only 30% of France spoke what was considered “French”. Loyalty to the region was much more important than to the nation for many, and played into political concerns. The Royalists had, since before 1789, viewed Paris as chaotic and ungovernable, whilst the Communards, looking back to the 1790s, were able to point to the West and South as essentially anti-Republican.
Whilst all men were, at first, aghast at Frankel’s suggestion, it seemed, the more they talked, to be the only solution. The Communards could never hope, beyond wild dreams, to conquer France entirely, let alone hold it down. The Royalists, meanwhile, lost the prestige of Paris but gained a buffer state.
Ever the opportunist, however, Beulé was able to sting the Communards one last time as they signed. There could be, he said airily as the ink dried, no question of the Kingdom of France paying for a peace treaty they did not agree too. The Communards had agreed it, he said looking at Varlin, so they had better pay.
After three days, it was decided, France would be split in two.
