Commune

Who were the Communards? British journalist Frederic Harrison assessed the Communards in Paris, writing, "The 'insurgents' ... are simply the people of Paris, mainly and at first working men, but now largely recruited from the trading and professional classes. The 'Commune' has been organized with extraordinary skill, the public services are efficiently carried on, and order has been for the most part preserved." In his view, the Commune, while being "one of the least cruel, has been perhaps the ablest revolutionary government of modern times." The average Communard was the average Parisian: young, between twenty-one and forty years of age, with the largest number men aged thirty-six to forty.