When Paris surrendered to Prussia in 1871 after their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, radicals on Montmartre, a hill in Paris, refused to yield. Their defiance resulted in the Commune, a seat of government that promoted a Parisian secession from France. To counter their rebellion, France erected a Catholic church, Sacré -Coeur, on their turf. It became the target of graffiti. In the years following the Commune, Montmartre retained its reputation as a hotbed of political defiance. Poets gathered in cafés, and musicians and artists joined them. These joints turned into raucous cabarets. The word cabaret is a composite of the words café and bar. Shadow plays with cut-out figures were projected onto a wall, avant-garde performances, puppet shows, and poetry readings dominated the scene. The café-concert provided an alternative to the opera, and the moulins, or dance halls, were filled with cabaret clientele. Although the café-concerts and the moulins were distinct from the cabarets (which were basically intellectual avant-garde performance halls) they became known as cabarets. In lieu of the rebellious atmostphere, the chanson, or political song, was revived. The most famous cabaret in Paris the Chat Noir, founded in 1991 by Rodolphe Salis, a mathematician and painter. Not the first cabaret, Le Chat Noir was based on another cabaret, La Grande Pinte (1878). Other cabarets in Paris included Les Quat'z'Arts, Le Rat Mort, Le Lapin Agile, L'Abbaye de Theleme, Le Divan Japonais, Le Mirliton, La Taverne du Bagne, L'Auberge du Clou, La Nouvelle Athenes, Le Tambourin, La Rouchefoucault, and Le Guerbois. At first an establishment for Salis' disgruntled poet friends, the Chat Noir "became the most sought out Montmartre establishment, not only by artists but by an ever growing public that included statesmen, foreign dignitaries, the fashionable, and even the bourgeios who was often the butt of Chat Noir humor and who considered himself lucky to get in." The cabaret was one of the only places that businessmen mingled with artists and the classes were not segregated. There was, however, a separate room for the regulars. The cabaret was an exclusive place, a private club that admitted and could accomodate few onlookers. It was only until after World War I that cabarets allowed the public more access. Although it closed in 1897, the Chat Noir was the longest running cabaret. It inspired many other cities including Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Krakow, Budapest, Warsaw, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Prague, Oslo, London, and Zurich.

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