Delescluze, Louis Charles

Delescluze, Louis Charles (1809-1871), French journalist, was born at Dreux on the 2nd of October 1809. Having studied law in Paris, he early developed a strong democratic bent, and played a part in the July revolution of 1830. He became a member of various republican societies, and in 1836 was forced to take refuge in Belgium, where he devoted himself to republican journalism. Returning in 1840 he settled in Valenciennes, and after the revolution of 1848 removed to Paris, where he started a newspaper called La Révolution démocratique et sociale. His zeal so far outran his discretion that he was twice imprisoned and fined, his paper was suppressed and he himself fled to England, where he continued his journalistic work. He was arrested in Paris in 1853, and deported to French Guiana. Released under the amnesty of 1859, he returned to France with health shattered but energies unimpaired. His next venture was the publication of the Réveil, a radical organ upholding the principles of the Association internationale des travailleurs, known as the “Internationale.” This journal, which brought him three condemnations, fine and imprisonment in one year, shared the fate of his Paris sheet, and its founder again fled to Belgium. In 1871 he was elected to the National Assembly, becoming afterwards a member of the Paris commune. At the siege of Paris he fought with reckless courage, and met his death on the last of the barricades (May 1871). He wrote an account of his imprisonment in Guiana, De Paris à Cayenne, Journal d’un transporté (Paris, 1869).