3-070-716 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

M. Leon Gambetta, Prime Minister of the French Republic, 1881. 'M. Gambetta is of Genoese family, but was born at Cahors, in the South of France. He...began to take an active part in politics, in opposition to the Empire of Napoleon III...A perilous dispute arose between the National Defence Committee at Paris...and the Delegate Government at Tours; and it became needful that M. Gambetta should go to Tours and use his personal influence to procure an arrangement. He effected this journey, in a singular manner, by means of a balloon, ascending from Paris, in company with his private secretary and the aeronaut, passing high over the Prussian lines, and drifting with the wind to Rouen, from which place, by an indirect westward route, he made his way to Tours, and there assumed the direction of the Government, in all those provinces of France, to the west and south, and in the centre, which remained free from invading armies. This most romantic incident of M. Gambetta's public life, which appealed strongly to the popular imagination, was followed by the exhibition of wonderful spirit and activity in rousing the nation to fresh efforts of self-defence, and in raising the Army of the Loire, and directing the operations through the winter'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.