3-034-564 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Communist Trials at Versailles: interrogating the prisoners in the Orangery, 1871. 'There are in action four councils of war in France, all treating of the results of the insurrection of March 18...The...third council...is to try more particularly those who have provoked the insurrection, such as the members of the Comité Central, the civil and military chiefs of the Commune, and generally those who have actively participated in the crimes of the insurgents...The Times' correspondent says: "Among the earliest arrivals were General Chanzy, in civil costume; the romance writer Alexandre Dumas, fils; the vaudevilliste Ludovic Halevy, and a great number of elegantly-dressed ladies. Upon the platform to the right were ranged six rows of benches entirely occupied by journalists, reporters, and shorthand-writers, while on the left were...the accused...A line of gendarmes, with sword-bayonets fixed...stood below the platform"...The members composing the tribunal are seven officers, the president being Colonel Merlin...[Among the accused were Rossel, Rochefort, Ulysse Parent and Paschal Grousset]. "Assi came up dressed in the full uniform of a National Guard, and apparently enjoying hugely some joke which he was having with his guardian".' From "Illustrated London News", 1871.