Lause, Mark Giuseppe Garibaldi & the Army of the Vosges

Volunteer Forces of the Franco-prussian War 1870-1871

Sixty years before the International Brigades fought for the Spanish Republic, international volunteers took part in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, responding to the call of Giuseppe Garibaldi's Army of the Vosges to save the young French Republic from the new Prussian-dominated German Empire. Inspired by the still-vibrant radical visions of 1848 and supported by elements of Marx and Bakunin's First International, several thousand men (and women) came not only from neighbouring Spain, Italy and Belgium, but also from Germany itself, from Mediterranean countries and even from America to fight for a universal republic. Garibaldi and his volunteers faced enemies who were ultimately more powerful than the Prussian-led German Confederation. The French imperial interests that had triggered the war remained a dominant force in the republic, and their hostility to red republicanism was evident even before their bloody suppression of the Paris Commune. They shaped the history of the war, the international volunteers, and the French who fought alongside them. This study examines the politics of constructing historical memory to challenge this narrative and offers a different assessment of the present before it was translated into the new language of anarchism and socialism.