3-039-122 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Conflict in Paris: encounter on the Place Pigalle, 1871. One of several '...deplorable scenes of civil strife and ferocious outrage, carried in one instance to the extent of a massacre, and involving the perpetration of several deliberate murders, without the slightest justification, on the part of the Red Republican insurgents...[View of]...the encounter in the Place Pigalle...where a party of the revolted National Guards, meeting a company of Chasseurs of the regular army, the Captain of the latter force ordered his soldiers to fire upon the others, who had refused to disperse or quit the ground. The soldiers hesitated or demurred to obey, upon which the National Guards fired at the Captain, and killed him. Some gendarmes who were on the ground drew their swords, and prepared to charge the insurgents, but they were not supported by the soldiers; and the National Guards...got possession of the artillery brought there when the German army entered the Champs Elysées at the beginning of the month. General Lecomte, who had been left there by General Vinoy in command of the troops sent to protect these guns, was taken prisoner by the insurgents, and was shot, after a mock trial'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.