France: Second Empire and Third Republic 733defend Paris. The leaders of the Commune were drawn from a variety of po
litical persuasions: Jacobins, socialists, and republicans who wanted Paris to
become again the capital of an anticlerical republic. Some Communards had
been democratic-socialist activists during the Second Republic; others were
followers of the revolutionary Auguste Blanqui (1805—1881), who believed
that revolution could be achieved only by a small cell of determined men
seizing power. There were also a good many anarchists, who hoped that in
dependent Paris would serve as a model for a society of producers existing
without the tyranny of the state.
Revolutionary clubs sprang up. The Communards organized Paris’s
defense and enacted a number of significant social reforms. These included
the creation of a Labor Exchange, a place for workers to gather and find out
about jobs; the abolition of night baking (a grievance of bakers) because of
long hours and little sleep; the establishment of nurseries for working moth
ers; and the rights of workers’ organizations to receive preference when the
A cartoon dedicated to the National Guard during the Paris