Note 44 — XXXIV.

The biography of this general of the Commune is very imperfect, down to the time when he was elected for the 1st Arrondissement of Paris, and was thereupon appointed Minister of War, or in Communal phraseology, Delegate at the War Department. He seems to have been one of those beings, without country or family, but who are blessed, by way of compensation, with a plurality of names; we do not know whether Cluseret was really his own, or how many aliases he had made use of. It is said that he was formerly captain in a battalion of Chasseurs d’Afrique, but was dismissed the army upon being convicted of defalcations, in connection with the purchase of horses, and, that soon after his dismissal from the French army, he went to the United States, where he served in the revolutionary war, and attained to the rank of General. Then we have another story, to the effect that having been entrusted with the care of a flock of lambs, the number of the animals decreased so rapidly, that nothing but the existence of a large pack of wolves near at hand, could possibly have accounted for it in an honest way; this affair is said to have occurred at Churchill, Such vague charges as these however deserve but little credit. After closing his career as a shepherd, he became a defender of the Pope’s flock, enlisting in the brigade against which Garibaldi took the field. The next we hear of him is that he joined the Fenians, and made an attempt to get possession of Chester Castle, but that he fell under suspicion of being a traitor, and was glad to escape to France, where, report says, he found refuge with a religious community. “When the devil was sick, The devil a monk would be; But when the devil was well, The devil a monk was he!