Note 75 — LXXI.

General Cluseret was a great personage for a time with the Communists, and his military talents were lauded to the skies, but suddenly he was committed to prison, and was succeeded in the command of the army by Rossel. The cause of his imprisonment is not clear. Some say that he was discovered to be in correspondence with the Thiers government, others that he was suspected of aiming at the Dictatorship. During the confusion that occurred on the first entry of the Versailles troops into Paris, when the Archbishop of Paris and the other so-called “hostages” had been barbarously assassinated, when the Louvre, the Palais Royal, and the Hôtel de Ville were in flames, Cluseret escaped from prison, and was not heard of again until it was reported that his body had been found buried beneath the rubbish of the last barricade. Was report correct?