Paris Commune

The Paris Commune was a French revolutionary government that seized power in Paris on 18 March 1871 and controlled parts of the city until 28 May 1871. After the French Army's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, soldiers of the National Guard took the city and refused the authority of the Third Republic under Adolphe Thiers. The Commune separated church and state, remitted rents and abolished child labor. The army suppressed it in the semaine sanglante, the bloody week beginning on 21 May, killing in battle or executing an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Communards; Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels saw it as the first example of the dictatorship of the proletariat.