[Footnote 82: Delescluze’s wild life began
at Dreux, in 1809. Driven from home on account
of his bad conduct, he came to Paris, and obtained
employment in an attorney’s office, from which
he was very soon afterwards, it is said, discharged
for robbery. In 1834, he underwent the first
of his long list of imprisonments, for the part he
took in the April revolution, and in the following
year, being compromised in a conspiracy against the
safety of the state, he took refuge in Belgium, Where
he obtained the editorship of the Courrier de Charleroi.
In 1840 he returned to Paris, where he founded a journal
called the Revolution Democratique et Sociale,
which brought him fifteen months’ imprisonment
and twenty thousand francs fine. After a long
period of liberty of nearly eight years, he was condemned
to transportation by the High Court of Justice, but
the condemnation was given in his absence, for he had
slipped over to England, where he remained until 1853.
On his returning in that year to France he was immediately
imprisoned at Mazas, transferred afterwards to Belle-Isle,
and then successively to the hulks of Corte, Ajaccio,
Toulon, Brest, and finally to Cayenne. These sojourns
lasted until 1868, when the amnesty permitted him to
return to France, where he made haste to bring out
another new journal, Le Reveil, which of course
earned him fines and imprisonments with great rapidity,
three of each within the twelvemonth.
In the month of February, 1871, he was elected deputy
by a large number of votes; and later, when the Assembly
went to Bordeaux, sat there for some time, and then
gave in his resignation, in order to take part with
the Commune.
By the Commune he was made delegate at the Ministry
of War, after the pretended flight of Rossel, and
in a sitting of the 20th of April, in which the project
of burning Paris was discussed, Delescluze ended his
speech with the words—“If we must
die, we will give to Liberty a pile worthy of her.”]
[Footnote 83: He was convinced of the hopelessness
of any further struggle after the capture of Fort
Issy; gave in his resignation, and hid himself to
escape the vengeance of his former colleagues.
He was supposed to be in England or Switzerland, whereas,
in fact, he had fled no farther than the Boulevard
Saint Germain. He was arrested by the police
on the ninth of June, disguised as an employe of the
Northern Railway. He was first interrogated at
the Petit Luxembourg, and afterwards conducted handcuffed
to Versailles, where three mouths after he was tried
by court-martial and sentenced to military degradation
and death.]
[Footnote 84: “A plot had just been discovered
between Bourget of the Internationale, Billioray,
member of the Commune, and Cerisier, captain of the
101st Battalion of the insurgent National Guard.
For a certain sum of money they were to deliver Port
Issy into the hands of General Valentin, of the Versailles
army. The succession of Rossel to the Ministry
of War frustrated the whole project.
