Georges Darboy

Catholic Church 1813–1871 ✕ Shot as a hostage

Archbishop of Paris taken hostage by the Commune and shot at La Roquette in Bloody Week

Born in Fayl-Billot in the Haute-Marne in 1813, the priest became bishop of Nancy and in 1863 archbishop of Paris, and sat as a senator of the Second Empire. In April 1871 he was seized under the Commune’s Decree on Hostages. The Commune repeatedly offered to exchange him for Blanqui, held in a prison in Brittany, but Thiers’s government refused every offer. On 24 May, in Bloody Week, he was shot with other hostages at La Roquette prison.