fluence
among the Lyons workmen, at which various questions relative to proposed
political changes were voted upon. But it was the following day, the
25th, that probably the most notable event of the insurrection took
place. "The next day, Sunday, was employed," Guillaume says, "in the
drawing up and printing of a great red placard, containing the program
of the revolution which the Central Committee of Safety of France
proposed to the people...."[5] The first article of the program
declares: "The administrative and governmental machinery of the State,
having become powerless, is abolished. The people of France once again
enter into full possession of themselves." The second article suspends
"all civil and criminal courts," and replaces them "by the justice of
the people." The third suspends "the payment of taxes and of mortgages."
The fourth declares that "the State, having decayed, can no longer
intervene in the payment of private debts." The fifth states that "all
existing municipal organizations are broken up and replaced in all the
federated communes by Committees of Safety of France, which will
exercise all powers under the immediate control of the people." The
revolution was at last launched, and the placard ends, "_Aux
Armes!!!_"[6]

While the Bakouninists were decreeing the revolution by posters and
vainly calling the people to arms, an event occurred in Lyons which
brought to them a very useful contingent of fighters. The Lyons
municipality had just reduced the pay of the workers in the national
dock yards from three to two and a half francs a day, and, on this
account, these laborers joined the ranks of the insurgents. On the
evening of September 27 a meeting of the Central Committee of Safety of
France took place, and there a definite plan of action for the next day
was decided upon. Velay, a tulle maker and municipal councillor,
Bakounin, and others advised an armed manifestation, but the majority
expressed itself in favor of a peaceful one. An executive committee
composed of eight members signed the following proclamation, drawn up by
Gaspard Blanc, which was printed during the night and posted early the
next morning: "The people of Lyons ... are summoned, through the organ
of their assembled popular committees, to a popular manifestation to be
held to-day, September 28, at noon, on the _Place des Terreaux_, in
order to force the authority to take immediately the most energetic and
efficacious measures fo