Mes cahiers rouges

My Red Notebooks

Maxime Vuillaume

SEVENTH CAHIER OF THE TENTH SERIES

IV. Some People of the Commune

This cahier is the fourth installment of Maxime Vuillaume’s My Red Notebooks (Mes cahiers rouges), his extraordinary memoir of the Paris Commune of 1871. Vuillaume, who lived through the Commune as a young journalist and editor of the revolutionary newspaper Le Pere Duchene, offers a series of vivid, intimate portraits of the men and women who took part in those tumultuous months.

The previous installments dealt with the death of the hostages (the Archbishop of Paris and others shot by the Communards), the events at the Rue Haxo, and the days of the Pere Duchene. This fourth installment, subtitled “Some People of the Commune” (quelques-uns de la Commune), presents a gallery of individual portraits — figures both famous and obscure who played their parts in the insurrection and its bloody suppression.

Vuillaume writes from memory, decades after the events, but with the vividness of an eyewitness. His style is direct, often telegraphic, moving rapidly between scenes of violence, farce, pathos, and quiet heroism. He does not idealize the Commune or its defenders, but he writes with deep sympathy for those who risked everything for what they believed was a just cause, and with unflinching honesty about the brutality on both sides.

The sections include:

THE REPUBLIC OR DEATH! — Vuillaume’s encounters with Vermersch, the festive column, the founding cry of the Commune, the story of Mother Gaittet, questions of money, and the death and resurrection of the movement.

OUR AFTERNOONS — Life in the furnace of revolutionary Paris, the proclamation of the Commune, those who were absent, the determination to fight to the death.

The memoir continues with accounts of specific episodes and individuals from the Commune’s brief, violent existence — a work of historical testimony that combines the immediacy of journalism with the depth of personal recollection.

The full French text is available at the Archive.org link above.