Note 47 — XXXVIII.

General Eudes was the Alcibiades, or rather the Saint Just, of the Commune. He had the face and manners of a fashionable tenorino, the luxurious taste of the Athenian, the cruel inflexibility of Robespierre’s protégé. He was born at Bonay, in the arrondissement of Coutances. His father was a tradesman of the Boulevard des Italians. In his examination before the Council of War in August, 1870, Eudes called himself a shorthand writer and law student, though his real position was said to be that of a linendraper’s clerk. His first notable exploit was the assassination of a fireman at La Villette. For this crime he was brought before the First Council of War at Paris. Here he informed the President, in somewhat unparliamentary terms, that “the betrayers of the country were not the Republicans, and that to destroy the Imperial Government was to annihilate the Prussians.” In spite of the eloquent appeal of his counsel, he was condemned to death. The events of the fourth of September prevented the execution of this sentence, and he lived to take an active part in the agitation of the thirty-first of October. He was again tried for this conduct and acquitted, together with Vermorel, Ribaldi, Lefrançais and others. Eudes’ name figures in the first decrees of the Commune, and on the last of those of the Committee of Public Safety. On the second of April he was appointed Delegate for War, and, conjointly with Cluseret, organised ten corps of the Enfants Perdus of Belleville. He promised to each of his volunteers an annuity of 300 francs and a decoration. Eudes was an atheist of the most violent type, and sayings are attributed to him which make one shudder.