The first working class government in history, 1871
After the collapse of the Second Empire of Napoleon III in 1870 a National Assembly was elected in 1871 to conclude a peace treaty with Germany. It was controlled by conservative and royalist forces.
Amongst public unrest that the Assembly would restore the monarchy, the executive head of the provisional government Adolphe Thiers wanted to disarm the National Guard, which was composed mainly of workers and had defended Paris when it was besieged by German troops. When he attempted on 18 March 1871 to remove the Guard's cannons from their strategic positions overlooking Paris, a group of working class women opposed the government troops, who had to retreat.
The news of the attempt caused public outrage. The central committee of the National Guard organized municipal elections for 26 March. The revolutionary representatives of the working class received the majority of the vote and formed the Commune government. Its programme took up the demands of the French Revolution of 1789 - 1792 (such as separation of church and state) and introduced the 10-hour working day and a ban on night work for bakers.
Similar Commune governments were established in Lyon, Saint-Étienne, Marseille and Toulouse, but they were quickly crushed by national troops, which then concentrated their effort on Paris. On 21 May troops entered the city, and during the next seven days, known as la semaine sanglante (the bloody week), the barricades erected by the Communards were crushed street by street, with some 20,000 communards and 750 government troops killed.
When the Commune was defeated, the national government arrested about 38,000 communards and deported another 7,000.