La Commune

"The Paris Commune is a particularly dramatic event in our history. For over 70 days, patriotic and social demands fuel an uncompromising revolt. Despite its excesses and fatal errors, the magnificent popular momentum of the Spring of 1871 deserves to be better known. Indeed, through the abominable massacre known as the 'Bloody Week', the Versailles right led by Thiers will decapitate the nascent French socialist movement and its Proudhonian ideas. From that date, to its great misfortune, French socialism will gradually be gangrened by Marxism.

1871
The Parisians are humiliated
By defeat and anger
Read in their tired eyes

Full of contempt for all these people
The deputies have fled
Because for these courageous notables
France is always negotiable

But the people of Paris
Today have risen up
The politicians have betrayed
No question of surrender
Everywhere in the capital
Barricades are erected
Cannons are put in position
Everywhere there is insurrection

The poor people have nothing left
The Homeland is their only possession
They die to remind you
Of the spirit of community

The Prussians hold the streets
There is no government
But the Commune is proclaimed
It's the return of spring

For a while Paris is exhilarated
The central power is forgotten
Dreams of social justice
Singing the time of cherries

But for Thiers and all his clique
They had to silence the populace
Bleed these hysterical women
Shoot these wretches in their filth

Always facing
The invasion
It's the people who rise up
Versailles... Betrayal!
You fear for your riches!

If one day you stroll
Near the Père Lachaise cemetery
Don't forget to go
To the foot of the Wall of the Federates

Here the guys from the Commune
Sang their last song
And their bodies drowned in blood
Littered the mass graves

The bourgeois no longer tremble
Since that lovely month of May
The republic of bastards
Was born from the blood of the communards.