3-028-553 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Prince Pierre Bonaparte, 1870. Engraving from a photograph by M. Disderi. 'The trial of Prince Pierre Bonaparte, by the High Court of Justice of the French Empire, for the manslaughter of Victor Noir, commenced at Tours on Monday last...[The prince,] elder brother of the Emperor Napoleon I.,...passed a wandering life in his youth and early manhood, taking part in the insurrections and revolutionary plots of South America, Italy, and Greece; he was once imprisoned in the Papal States, and once narrowly escaped pursuit on the Albanian coast. After the French Revolution of February, 1848, he came to Paris, and was elected one of the National Assembly...It will be remembered that his quarrel with the editors and writers of the Marseillaise, M. Henri Rochefort's paper, arose out of some letters written by the Prince in the Avenir de la Corse, provoked by their scurrilous attacks on the Bonaparte family. M. Paschal Grousset, one of the editors of the Marseillaise, sent him a challenge by the two persons, Ulric de Fonvielle and Victor Noir, who somehow came to blows with the Prince in his own house, so that one of them was shot by the Prince and killed...The indictment...charges the Prince with "voluntary homicide of the journalist, Victor Noir".' From "Illustrated London News", 1870.