3-079-439 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Voyons, monsieur Réac..., 30 March 1871. ...il y en a pourtant bien assez! (Allegory of Paris pointing to a cemetery: Come on, Mr. Reactionary, there are quite enough of them!). Following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the fall of Napoleon III, thousands of working-class Parisians revolted against the new royalist-leaning, Versailles-based government and declared Paris an independent commune on March 28, 1871. This print, published just two days after the proclamation, shows Daumier's concern for the lives already lost in recent conflict and the bloodshed to come. A personification of the city of Paris points to a hillside filled with graves, and tells the cowering reactionary that there are more than enough dead. This satirical cartoon proved to be prophetic as the Commune ended two months later with violent suppression by the French Army, known as Semaine sanglante - (Bloody Week).