Why Lille did not know “the time of cherries”

The Paris Commune, as short as it was, nevertheless had time to spread throughout the country during this spring of 1871. Outside the capital, insurrectionary movements were born in Marseille, Toulouse, Lyon, Narbonne, Saint-Étienne , Perpignan, Grenoble, Bordeaux, Nîmes, Rouen and even Algiers! Actions lasting a few days at most, but actions all the same, which contrast with the calm that never ceased to reign in Lille, Roubaix or Tourcoing. A disconcerting calm when you know that there lived a large working class proletariat, sensitive to republican and socialist ideas ….

– .