[Louis Charles Delescluze]

Carte de visite portrait of Louis Charles Delescluze (1809-1871) a member of the Paris Commune which was the socialist and revolutionary government that ruled Paris from 18 March to 28 May 1871. 

Deleschluze journalist studied law in Paris, early in his life he developed a strong democratic bent, and played a part in the July revolution of 1830. He became a member of various republican societies, and in 1836 was forced to take refuge in Belgium, where he devoted himself to republican journalism. Returning in 1840 he settled in Valenciennes, and after the revolution of 1848 moved to Paris, where he started a newspaper called La Revolution democratique et sociale. He was twice imprisoned and fined, his paper was suppressed and fled to England, where he continued his journalistic work. He was arrested in Paris in 1853, and deported to French Guiana.

Released under the amnesty of 1859, he returned to France with health shattered but energies unimpaired. His next venture was the publication of the Reveil, a radical organ upholding the principles of the International Workingmen’s Association, founded in 1864. This journal, which, brought him three condemnations, fine and imprisonment in one year, shared the fate of his Paris sheet, and its founder again fled to Belgium. At the siege of Paris he fought with reckless courage, and was then elected in 1871 to the National Assembly, becoming afterwards a member of the Paris Commune.

Charles Delescluze met his death on the last of the barricades (May 25, 1871) during Adolphe Thiers’ assault on Paris. 

He wrote an account of his imprisonment in Guiana, De Paris e Cayenne, Journal d’un transporte (Paris, 1869). Etienne Carjat (1828-1906) photographer, Paris. Carjat was a French journalist, caricaturist and photographer. He co-founded the magazine, Le Diogene, and founded the review, Le Boulevard. He is best known for his photographic portraits of political, literary and artistic Parisian figures. He moved the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette in 1869.