3-028-815 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Arrest of Beaury for the assassination plot in Paris, 1870. 'The arrest of the deserter Camille Beaury was certainly the most important capture with reference to the plot to assassinate the Emperor Napoleon that the French police have as yet made...On account of Beaury's intimacy with Gustave Flourens and numerous other Republicans, he was thought to be implicated in a plot against the established Government...M. Lagrange, one of the chiefs of the political police, while walking along the Boulevard, saw a gentleman, whom he recognised as Beaury, getting into a cab...M. Lagrange immediately jumped into an open cab and followed him. After driving about for some time and stopping at various places, Beaury ordered the cabman to drive to the Rue des Moulins. It was here, while paying the cabman, that M. Lagrange walked up to him and addressed him by name. Beaury, on hearing himself spoken to, turned round, whereupon two policemen in private clothes, who had been picked up during the drive, stepped forward and seized him from behind. On being searched, a loaded revolver was found concealed in his pocket, together with a compromising letter from Gustave Flourens. He moreover asserted that he had intended to shoot the Emperor that afternoon'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.