page_title: Claude Lecomte
section_title: Execution
hierarchical_section_title: Claude Lecomte / Execution
caption_attribution_description: English: Following France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the fall of Napoleon III, thousands of Parisians revolted against the new royalist-leaning government and declared Paris an independent commune. Weeks of fighting ensued, during which Versailles troops attacked the city while the Communards threw up barricades, shot hostages, and burned government buildings. Soon afterward, Appert, a Parisian portrait photographer, issued “Crimes of the Commune,” a tendentious series of nine photographs of the insurrection that emphasized the criminal brutality of the rebels. Although based on real events, the photographs were utterly fabricated. Appert hired actors to restage each scene in his studio then cut and pasted the figures onto the appropriate backgrounds; atop the actors’ bodies he pasted headshots of the Commune’s key participants. The photographs were later banned by the French government for “disturbing the public peace” by sustaining anti-Communard sentiments—a testament to their effectiveness as political propaganda. N.B.: The former rue des Rosiers (Commune de Montmartre) was renamed rue du Chevalier-de-la-Barre in 1885. . Français&#160;: Exposition La Commune de Paris à l'Hôtel de Ville de Paris (18 mars - 28 mai 2011) - 18 mars&#160;: Assassinat des généraux Clément-Thomas et Lecomte, rue des Rosiers 6 à Montmartre - Photomontage d'Eugène Appert - Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris. N.B.: L'ancienne rue des Rosiers (Commune de Montmartre) a été rebaptisée rue du Chevalier-de-la-Barre en 1885.
context_page_description: Claude Lecomte was a French general killed by the National Guard of the Paris Commune.
context_section_description: He was about to leave for the provinces when the Uprising of March 18, 1871 broke out. The government of Adolphe Thiers charged Lecomte with retrieving cannons from Montmartre where the National Guard had brought them when the Prussians had advanced on the Champs Elysees. Lecomte waited in vain for his artillery teams to remove the cannon components. They were surrounded by a crowd opposing the removal of the guns, at which point Lecomte tried to withdraw, and then ordered his soldiers to load their weapons and fix bayonets. He thrice ordered them to fire, but the soldiers refused. Some of the officers were disarmed and taken to the city hall of Montmartre, under the protection of the mayor of the 18th arrondissement, and later prime minister, Georges Clemenceau. General Lecomte and the officers of his staff were seized by the guardsmen and his mutinous soldiers and taken to the local headquarters of the National Guard at the ballroom of the Château Rouge. The officers were pelted with rocks, struck, threatened, and insulted by the crowd. In the middle of the afternoon Lecomte and the other officers were taken to 6 Rue des Rosiers by members of a group calling themselves The Committee of Vigilance of the 18th arrondissement, who demanded that they be tried and executed. In the late afternoon, Lecomte was beaten and then shot in the back. Minutes later, another general, Jacques Leon Clément-Thomas, who was in civilian clothes, was recognized by the crowd, thrown on top of Lecomte's corpse, and slain in turn. Their bodies were left exposed at the site of the slaying for two days. A Doctor Guyon, who examined the bodies afterwards, found forty balls in the body of Clément-Thomas and nine balls in the back of Lecomte.,
  The legend that Generals Lecomte and Thomas were shot "in a regulation manner" by a firing squad was a fabrication: it is based on a photograph staged by the photographer Eugène Appert, which was taken in June, three months later. There was even an activist theater production (La Commune, historical drama, 1908), which portrays a pseudo-trial of the two generals before their execution.
  According to the Commune history written in 1876 by Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray, when General Lecomte was arrested by his men, the Vigilance Committee of Montmartre issued an order to the commander of the National Guard responsible for guarding the General at the Château Rouge to ensure his protection. The order came just after Lecomte was moved from that location.
caption: Assassinat des généraux Clément-Thomas et Lecomte, rue des Rosiers 6 à Montmartre - Photomontage d'Eugène Appert (Killing of Generals Clément-Thomas and Lecomte, 6 rue des Rosiers, Montmartre - Photomontage by Eugène Appert). Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris.
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