Besançon Commune

The Besançon Commune (in french "Commune de Besançon") was a short-lived revolutionary movement conceived in 1871, aiming at the setting of a local autonomous power based on Lyon and Paris experiences. It originates from sociological changes of the city and creation of unions. The Franco-Prussian War, the fall of the Second Empire, and the advent of the Third Republic, precipitate events. While many notables report an insurrectional context and an armed support from Switzerland, correspondences of James Guillaume and Mikhail Bakunin attest to a confrontation prepared between the end of May and the beginning of June 1871. But with the start of a large repression on May 21 until June 7, any attempt was compromised. Despite the hope of a restart, the months following the idea of an insurrection is definitively abandoned mostly with extinction of the groups and activities called anarchists in 1875.