3-028-370 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Funeral of Victor Noir: scene outside the Palace of the Corps Législatif, [Paris], 1870. On 11 January 1870, Noir, a journalist for the "Marseillaise" newspaper, was shot and killed by Prince Pierre Bonaparte, a cousin of the Emperor Napoleon III. The funeral took place '...in the cemetery at Neuilly; and it had been feared that some breach of the peace, leading to a sanguinary conflict, would have attended the proposed demonstration. The father and brother of the deceased, Messrs. Salmon, refused, however, to let this mournful ceremony be converted into an exhibition of political spite, or an exciting appeal to the feelings of the populace...There was a vast concourse of people along the road, and in front of the house in the Passage Massena, at Neuilly, where the deceased had lived, and from which his coffin was to be carried to the cemetery...in front of the Corps Législatif was a guard of soldiers, besides the force of sergents-de-ville...the Minister of War, General Leboeuf, and the Minister of the Interior, rode out, with an escort of Lancers, to see that the bridge was kept clear'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.