The Paris Commune of 1871 was a short-lived insurrection of the French capital against the Third Republic. Despite only lasting two months, this revolutionary government represented one of the most radical and divisive political experiments in European history. In just a few weeks, the Paris Commune passed a host of egalitarian and anti-clerical measures and introduced many concepts now considered commonplace in modern democracies, things like women's and worker's rights, the curtailment of child labor, and the secularization of schools. But all this came at a huge and deadly price.
So, what were the events leading up to the establishment of the Paris Commune, and what happened next? Click through and revisit the turbulent and rebellious France of the early 1870s.