‘The revolution was so beautiful and pure’

Abstract

Chapter 6 focuses on the traumatic years of 1870–71, marked by the Franco-Prussian War, the siege of Paris and the Paris Commune. Based on Laurent-Pichat’s family correspondence and his daily journal, it highlights the suffering that these events inflicted on republican families, and the emotional weight that friendship carried during this critical period. Laurent-Pichat’s relationship with revolutionary Charles Delescluze, a leader of the Paris Commune who was killed on the barricades, illustrates how personal suffering and political trauma were enmeshed during the crisis of 1871, as they had been for French Revolutionaries. The chapter argues that the nineteenth-century understanding of friendship as an intense emotional connection between individuals enabled the bonds of affection between Laurent-Pichat and Delescluze to endure, despite the political gulf between them. The divisions opened up by the Commune, however, would leave their mark on the republican movement as it attempted to construct a secure Republic in its aftermath.