Delescluze, Louis Charles

Delescluze, Louis Charles

(lwē shärl dəlāklüz`), 1809–71, French journalist and radical republican. In his active career he was often in prison or in exile. He supported the July Revolution of 1830 but came to oppose the regime of King Louis Philippe and took part in the February Revolution of 1848. The conservatism of the new leaders and the bloody suppression of the June DaysJune Days,
in French history, name usually given to the insurrection of workers in June, 1848. The working classes had played an important role in the February Revolution of 1848, but their hopes for economic and social reform were disappointed.
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 brought him further political disenchantment. A bitter opponent of the Second Empire of Napoleon IIINapoleon III
(Louis Napoleon Bonaparte), 1808–73, emperor of the French (1852–70), son of Louis Bonaparte (see under Bonaparte, family), king of Holland. Early Life
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, he engaged in increasingly radical journalistic attacks on the emperor. After the fall of the empire, Delescluze was elected (1871) to the national assembly, but he resigned to serve in the Commune of ParisCommune of Paris,
insurrectionary governments in Paris formed during (1792) the French Revolution and at the end (1871) of the Franco-Prussian War. In the French Revolution, the Revolutionary commune, representing urban workers, tradespeople, and radical bourgeois, engineered
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. He was perhaps the ablest leader in the commune, but he could not save it. When defeat by the government troops became inevitable, Delescluze deliberately placed himself in the line of fire and was killed.