The Blanqui Reader by Louis Auguste Blanqui Peter Hallward Philippe Le Goff

Author:Louis Auguste Blanqui,Peter Hallward,Philippe Le Goff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC (Publisher Services)

Instructions for an Armed Uprising

1868

What follows is a purely military programme; it leaves entirely to one side political and social questions, which belong elsewhere, though it should go without saying that the revolution must be carried out for the benefit of labour against the tyranny of capital, and must reconstitute society on the basis of justice.

A Parisian insurrection that repeats past mistakes no longer has any chance of success today.

In 1830, popular fervour alone was enough to bring down a regime that was surprised and terrified by an armed uprising – an unprecedented event that it never foresaw.

That worked once. The government – which was still monarchical and counter-revolutionary, despite having emerged from a revolution – then learned its lesson. It set about studying street warfare, and the natural superiority of skill and discipline over inexperience and confusion was soon re-established.

Some will claim, however, that the people in 1848 triumphed by the same means as 1830. True. But let us have no illusions! The victory of February [1848] was nothing but the result of good fortune. If Louis-Philippe had seriously defended himself, force [force] would have remained with those in uniform.

The June Days [of 1848] proved this. It was then that we saw just how disastrous the tactics of insurrection could be, or rather its lack of tactics. Never before had an insurrection had such good odds of success: ten to one.

On one side was the government, in complete anarchy, its troops demoralised; on the other side, all the workers rising up and almost sure they would succeed. Why did they fail? Through lack of organisation. To understand their defeat, one need only analyse their strategy.

As soon as the uprising broke out, barricades were erected here and there in the workers’ districts, haphazardly, at many different locations.

Five, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty men, assembled at random, the majority unarmed, started to overturn carriages, dig up paving stones and pile them up, sometimes in the middle of the street, more often at intersections, in order to block the roads. Many of these barriers would hardly present an obstacle to the cavalry.

Sometimes, after making a rough start on the construction of their defences, those building a barricade left it to set off in search of rifles and ammunition.

In June there were more than 600 barricades: thirty at most bore the brunt of the fighting. Of the others, at nineteen out of every twenty not a single shot was fired. Hence those glorious reports relating the sensational capture of fifty barricades where not a soul was to be found.

While some dug up paving stones from the streets, others went in small groups to disarm the corps de garde or to seize gunpowder and weapons from the gunsmiths. All of this was done neither in unison nor under leadership but according to individual whim.

Meanwhile, a certain number of barricades that were higher, stronger and better constructed gradually started to attract defenders, who gathered around them. The location of these principal fortifications was determined not by careful calculation but by chance.

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