Jacobin journalist of 1830 and 1848 who became the Commune’s war delegate and walked to his death on a barricade
Born in Dreux, he fought in the July Revolution of 1830, published republican papers after February 1848 and went into exile. Arrested under the Second Empire, he served time in the penal colony of Cayenne in Guiana, and in 1868 founded the newspaper Le Réveil. Elected to the National Assembly in February 1871, he resigned to join the Commune. A Jacobin “independent revolutionary”, he sat on the Committee of Public Safety and on 11 May became war delegate as a civilian. On 25 May, with defeat certain, he climbed onto the barricade at the Château-d’Eau and was shot dead.