Chapter 3: The End of the War
... With the Anglo-Prussians offensive rolling through northern France, the French army was routed and broken. The last desperate attempt of the French to hold off the Central Powers was defeated at Nancy on May 18, with the First and Second armies almost evaporating in the rout.
With the Prussian army predicted to reach Paris within a fortnight, General Foch planned to make the city a fortress. Foch's diary reads, "Paris shall be our bastion. We shall crush them in the streets of the city and make the Seine red with their blood. We shall never surrender, and we shall never retreat!
They shall rule over ashes and blood!" With this aim in mind, Foch directed the remnants of the 1st and 2nd to Paris, to fortify the city.
However, at this point the rotten edifice that was the French war effort was crumbling. As rioting broke out in the western cities over food shortages (reaching near starvation levels in rural areas) and the ongoing war, the Imperial government had lost its authority to rule. In Lyon and Nantes, the Trade Unionists and the SFIO were already organising for a strike. The military dictatorship run by Foch and his cronies Nivelle, Petain, and Joffre was viewed as a complete and utter sham, and when Foch called for "Ashes and Blood" enough was enough. The French armies halted, and on May 19, flat out refused to fight.
The battle of Nantes
When the reached Paris at 11 AM, the collapse was immediate. Nivelle knew the war was lost at this point - he went into his office, pulled out his pistol, and shot himself. Foch and Joffre (by this point entirely divorced from reality), however, refused to admit defeat, and demanded to initiate proceedings to draft the remaining male population of Paris into the war. Petain, however, refused to go along with the plan, and at 1:30 PM met with Emperor Louis I to advise him to surrender. Hearing of Foch's plan to destroy Paris, the Emperor dismissed Foch and Joffre from office at 4:00 PM.
Within 24 hours France collapsed into chaos. Entire armies literally melted away from desertion, taking their weapons with them. The SFIO immediately declared a general strike, with the socialist politician leading them. The military and the police refused to march on the strikers, with many tearing off their badges and joining the mob. Foch and Joffre fled to Spain, leaving Petain alone to govern. With the Prussians continuing to march on Paris and the strikers demanding the total surrender, Petain advised Louis to abdicate and flee the country. In the early hours of May 29, the remaining members of the French government issued their surrender to the Central Powers. Louis I was forced to abdicate, and fled the country to seek asylum in the Confederacy. With the government paralysed, Georges Clemenceau and the SFIO seized control of Paris and declared the French Third Republic, and prepared to sign a lasting peace treaty . The Great War was over.
The SFIO marching on Paris
Chapter 4: The Communist Revolution
Despite Clemenceau declaring the Third Republic, France was not yet stable. The new French Assembly (staffed mainly by the SFIO, though the conservative Action Libérale and Fédération Républicaine, the far right Parti la Orleans and the Parti Nationale (the forerunners of Deloncle's FNS) began to meet in April, to create a French constitution for the new Republic while the British and Germans began to build the framework of the true peace treaty. However, as the chaos and uncertainty continued into June, the Communists made their move.
In April, the more radical Trade Unionists in Marseille, Rouen, and Toulouse met with the Communists throughout the big cities in France. Together, they hatched a plan. The time was rife for revolution - the quasi-socialists were too weak to hold onto power, they felt, and that now was the time to bring the capitalist system down. The Trade Unionists were infuriated by Clemenceau's tendency to compromise with the right wing delegates at the Assembly, as well as the numerous conservative additions to the new constitution - for example, the strong powers of the elected President to supersede the Prime Minister and Assembly if required. With France seemingly unravelling before their eyes, the Communists and Trade Unionists formed the Front Socialiste, led by young Henri Barbe, and declared an open revolution on May 5th.
The revolt took the weakened Republic by surprise. Marseille fell almost immediately to Communist marchers and rebels, with Paris becoming the scene of a three day riot before the city was taken by the communists. Rennes, Nantes, and Caen fell to the communists immediately. The rioters set up Communes across the country, and declared the new revolution and the Worker's Republic of France. The Assembly was forced to flee Paris, and withdrew to Dijon where they begged assistance from the French citizenry and the rest of the world to assist in defeating the rebellion.
The tiny remaining French army marched on Paris, but was unable to take the city in the face of the barricades. Tired of fighting, several brigades outright defected and joined the Communists, while in Toulon, the navy's sailors mutinied, threw their soldiers overboard, and took the city for the Communists. With Paris having been seized for a week and the military powerless to stop them, while the Italians and British mobilised to asset the Republic, Clemenceau was forced to ask Petain and Joffre for assistance. The two generals swiftly organised the Bataillons de Patriote, composed of angry, decommissioned right-wing veterans, radicalised by the trials of the war and their post-war reception. The Patriotes, wielding the weapons gone missing after Nantes and staffed by the same men, were ready within three days. On May 18th, the few regular artillery brigades opened fire on Paris, and the day after the Patriotes under Petain stormed Paris in an orgy of bloodletting. Civilian casualties were high, from both the shelling and the fighting, and the regulars took no prisoners. Barbe himself was killed in the fighting - the exact circumstances are unclear, with Petain claiming he was killed in the fighting while the autobiography of another communist leader claiming that he was arrested and shot in the back of the head by the Patriotes.
Communists man a machinegun position against the Patriotes during the battle for Paris
Similarly, the Patriotes recaptured Rennes and Nantes. British forces were swiftly moved from their positions in Belgium and retook Caen for the French, while the mutineers in Toulon and rebels in Marseille were defeated by Italian soldiers. The humiliation for the French was palpable - not only were they unable to protect their own capital from revolution, they were forced to beg assistance from their occupiers to put it down. Petain in particular was furious, writing in his diary of his temptation to march into Dijon and depose Clemenceau. This likely fed back into Petain's desire to run for the Presidency after the Third Republic was properly proclaimed on April 6, with Clemenceau unveiling the Constitution from Dijon - Paris was still a hotbed and the Assembly was reluctant to return until May.
The Dijon Constitution attempted to emulate Great Britain in many ways, being modelled on the successful democracy across the Channel. The executive would be largely under the control of a Cabinet and Prime Minister selected from the 151-man Assembly, with the President selecting the largest party or (more likely, coalition) to appoint their Prime Minister after every election every 4 years. However, the President had more powers - at any point, if 50% of the Assembly willed it, they could remove the Prime Minister's right to govern and appoint their own cabinet with themselves at the head. The Orleanists, Republicaine and the Nationales forced this caveat through, desiring a strong power to usurp the powers of the Assembly and curb what they thought would be the 'anarchic tendencies' which they believed were typical of an elected legislature. Little did they know how right they would be.
Petain announcing victory at Toulon to Clemenceau
Nice title.
