#1870's

Russell St, Melbourne, early 1870s

Looking sth along the west side from Lonsdale St.

That's Loel Harris, pawnbroker with the aggressive marketing on the corner site.

Boyes Bros Ironmongers is at #153,

On 8 February 1871, French citizens were called upon to elect a National Assembly. Throughout the country, supporters of continuing the war, led by Gambetta, were opposed by peace lists headed by conservatives and moderate republicans. Dominated by monarchists, the new assembly appointed the Orléanist Thiers as head of the executive power of the French Republic.

Brief reminder of the situation in January:

On 6 January, the delegates of the twenty arrondissements of Paris had another “red poster” put up, denouncing the incapacity and betrayal of the Government of National Defense and putting forward three watchwords: general requisitioning, free rationing, and a mass attack. This red poster ended with the words: “Make way for the People! Make way for the Commune!”

On 21 January, delegates of the National Guard, the Vigilance Committees, and political clubs organized a demonstration on the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville. Gustave Flourens, commander of the Belleville battalions of the National Guard, was released from Mazas Prison (where he had been imprisoned following the uprising of 31 October 1870). That same evening, Louis Trochu—held responsible for the failure of the Second Battle of Buzenval—handed over command-in-chief of the Army of Paris to Joseph Vinoy.

On 22 January, the crowd gathered on the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville. Louise Michel took up arms for the first time. The mobile guards opened fire, and the crowd dispersed. The toll of the repression was five dead (including Théodore Sapia); 83 insurgents were arrested, and 72 were imprisoned, among them Charles Delescluze, first at the keep of Vincennes and then at La Santé Prison. Several newspapers were banned, including Le Réveil, edited by Delescluze, and Le Combat, directed by Félix Pyat.

After France’s capitulation on 26 January 1871, the armistice of 28 January, signed by Jules Favre and Bismarck, provided for the organization of elections by the Government of National Defense. This armistice thus appeared to Parisians—who had endured the siege and hoped for a defense to the bitter end—as a shameful surrender.

On 6 February 1871, Gambetta resigned from his post as Minister of the Interior and urged the prefects to proceed with the organization of the elections.

For the elections of 8 February, the electoral rolls were finalized in just a few days, and the electoral campaign was virtually nonexistent. In the departmental capitals, often in newspaper editorial offices, improvised committees hastily selected candidates, many of whom were still serving in the army.

The electoral framework was set by the decree of 29 January 1871, which largely took over that of 15 September 1870. Abandoning the two-round single-member ballot in force under the Empire, the government reverted to the republican law of 15 March 1849 establishing list voting. Voting was now to take place at the cantonal administrative center, a measure experienced as a veritable “affront” by populations accustomed, under the Second Empire, to voting in their own commune. As in 1849, this provision was intended to encourage abstention among conservative rural populations.

Nevertheless, conservatives managed to form broad unity lists, bringing together diverse tendencies, from the liberal bourgeoisie close to Thiers to monarchist currents. Within this heterogeneous coalition, hostility to Gambetta and to the policy of “war to the bitter end” served as the main binding force. While these lists presented themselves as united around the themes of peace and liberties, they remained deliberately discreet on the question of the political regime. The republicans, for their part, appeared deeply divided when confronted with the choice between continuing the war and concluding peace.

As in 1849, the list system adopted was a majoritarian one: candidates were declared elected in descending order of the number of votes received, with a relative majority in principle being sufficient. However, no candidate could be elected unless they had obtained at least one eighth of the registered voters; failing this, a second round was held. In practice, a large number of deputies were nonetheless elected in the first round by relative majority. Thiers was thus elected in twenty-six departments, in what amounted to a form of plebiscite, leading to his appointment as head of the executive power. Gambetta, for his part, was elected in nine departments. Abstention was significant, but its extent remains difficult to assess: the number of registered voters is only rarely mentioned in the official records, a direct consequence of the material conditions under which the vote took place.

The National Assembly was theoretically to comprise 768 seats, fifteen of which were reserved for representatives of the colonies. In reality, of the 753 metropolitan seats, only 675 were actually filled, owing to seventy-eight multiple elections. In a France weighed down by defeat, the electorate largely turned toward its traditional elites. Jules Simon himself remarked on the surprise caused by the large number of Legitimist deputies elected—true “returnees” to political life, often with only limited parliamentary experience. Of all French parliamentary assemblies, this one granted the greatest place to noble representation: according to Jean Becarud, it included 225 nobles, nearly one third of the elected members. In rural and conservative France, the populations of the countryside thus returned to their traditional leaders. It should nevertheless be emphasized that this movement had already begun to take shape during the elections to the general councils at the end of the Second Empire; more broadly, it consecrated the influence of landowners residing on their estates.

The members of the Assembly also displayed a relatively high average age, and 27 percent of them had already sat in a legislative assembly. Political cleavages were not yet clearly stabilized: monarchists held around 400 seats, republicans—from moderates to radicals—nearly 250, while Bonapartists formed only a marginal group, mainly drawn from Corsica or the Charentes. It was to this Assembly that the heavy responsibility fell of concluding peace, rebuilding the country, and settling the question of France’s future political regime.

In this context, the royalists won a large majority of seats, with 214 Orléanists and 182 Legitimists elected. The elections of 8 February thus constituted a genuine defeat for the republicans, and even more so for the radicals. Gambetta’s Republican Union, though he himself was elected in eight departments, secured only around forty seats, among them Louis Blanc, Alphonse Gent, Émile Littré, Georges Clemenceau, and Arthur Ranc. Giuseppe Garibaldi was elected deputy for Nice, Paris, the Côte-d’Or, and Algiers—at a time when multiple candidacies were still permitted. However, the predominantly monarchist parliamentarians, alarmed by his support for a Nice separatist program, prevented him from speaking from the rostrum amid insults and jeers. His election was invalidated as early as 13 February by the National Assembly sitting in Bordeaux—Paris then being subject to the presence of Prussian troops and the upheavals of the Commune—on the spurious pretext that he was not French, even though he had been born during the first annexation of Nice by France.

By contrast, the moderate republicans, led by the “four Jules”—Jules Favre, Jules Ferry, Jules Grévy, and Jules Simon—comfortably exceeded the threshold of one hundred elected members. They were followed by the liberals forming the “center-left,” grouped around Thiers. Drawn largely from the great liberal bourgeoisie of Orléanist inspiration, these deputies shared a firm commitment to the principles of political and economic liberalism, which distinguished them from the monarchist right, as well as a conservative conception of social order, which set them apart from other republican currents. It was on this basis—one that may be described as “integral liberalism”—that the center-left parliamentary group was formed, destined to play a major role in the establishment of the Third Republic, hostile both to the Commune and to socialist movements.

Forty-three revolutionary socialists were put forward as candidates in the elections by the International, the Federal Chamber of Workers’ Societies, and the delegation of the twenty arrondissements of Paris. Seven were elected.

List of elected socialists: [No worries! Listing the names is perfectly fine—you won’t get any virtual whippings from me 😄]

Frédéric Cournet – 33 years old

Charles Delescluze – 61 years old

Ferdinand Gambon – 50 years old

Benoît Malon – 29 years old

Félix Pyat – 60 years old

Eugène Razoua – 40 years old

Costume designed by Jacqueline Durran for Alicia Vikander in Anna Karenina (2012)

"Mary, Queen of Scots" fancy dress worn by Alexandra, Princess of Wales (later Queen Alexandra), 1875