Édouard-Marie Vaillant

Édouard-Marie Vaillant (born Jan. 28, 1840, Vierzon, Fr.—died Dec. 18, 1915, Paris) was a French revolutionary publicist and politician who was exiled for his role in the Paris Commune of 1871. After his return, he became an important member of the Socialist Party.

Educated as an engineer, Vaillant subsequently studied medicine, first in Paris and later in Heidelberg, Tübingen, and Vienna. He returned to France, and during the German siege of Paris (1870–71) he wrote revolutionary articles propagating the thought of Auguste Blanqui, French socialist theoretician, whose friend and disciple he had become.

Vaillant participated in the Paris insurrection of March 18, 1871, and was elected a member of the Commune, the revolutionary government of Paris. With the defeat of the Commune, he fled to England, where he met Karl Marx. He was a member of the General Council of the First International (September 1871). In 1872, with other Blanquists, Vaillant withdrew from the International, believing it to be insufficiently revolutionary.

Vaillant was condemned to death in absentia in July 1872 and returned to France only after the general amnesty of 1880. There he was active in Blanquist groups until 1904.

Vaillant was elected a municipal councillor (1884) and from 1893 until the end of his life represented a Paris district in the National Assembly. He was an ardent advocate of the eight-hour day and of comprehensive social security. In 1898 he became leader of the Blanquists in the Chamber. In 1905, when the various socialist factions were united, he began his friendship and collaboration with Jean Jaurès, the leading socialist politician; together they were able to control all the socialist congresses until 1914. Though a lifelong pacifist, Vaillant regarded it as the duty of all socialists to defend France on the outbreak of World War I.