The Paris Commune. March 10, 1871, Friday. The French National Assembly decides to move from Bordeaux—where it had gathered due to the Prussian invasion and the siege of Paris—to Versailles and not to Paris, out of fear of revolutionary unrest. The French National Assembly was based in Bordeaux because of the Prussian invasion after the French defeat. Here, on the first of March, it had ratified the preliminary peace treaty with Prussia on the same day that Prussian soldiers marched along the Champs-Élysées in the part of Paris they occupied. On that same March 10, the National Assembly votes to end the moratorium on debts, promissory notes, and rents, thus overwhelming the very poor and indebted Parisian population and completing the ruin of artisans and shopkeepers. It abolishes the pay of the National Guards, which was 30 sous (1.5 francs of the time), bearing in mind that about 180,000 Parisians were enlisted in the National Guard.
