ANTOINE VOLLON (1833-1900) Lot n° 9

Léon Gambetta Leaving Paris in an Airship in 1870 Oil on canvas, signed lower right. 33.4 x 39.8 cm. Following the fall of the Second Empire and the defeat at Sedan, the government of National Defense commissioned thirty-two-year-old Léon Gambetta, Minister of the Interior, who proclaimed the Republic on September 4, 1870, alongside Jules Favre and Jules Ferry, among others, to leave Paris, besieged by the Prussians, and organize resistance against the invaders in the provinces. To cross the Prussian lines, which made rivers and roads impassable, the spirited minister had the idea of taking to the skies in a hot-air balloon. He enlisted the help of sailors and gendarmes to make and knot the ropes, and workers to build three wicker gondolas. Photographer and balloonist Félix Tournachon, known under the pseudonym Nadar, lends his Montmartre workshops to weave the balloon envelopes, which are then transported to the Gare d'Orléans (today's Gare d'Austerlitz), where they are varnished and sewn. The Clichy and La Villette gasworks were used to fill the balloons. The minister's balloon, sixteen meters in diameter, was named Armand Barbès, after the famous revolutionary and republican activist of the 1830s-1840s, who had died a few months earlier. Inflated with gas lighting, it rose from the Butte Montmartre on the morning of October 7, 1870. Victor Hugo happened to witness the scene. In "Choses Vues", his diary, the novelist, who had returned less than a month earlier from a 19-year exile, recounts: "October 7. This morning, wandering along Boulevard de Clichy, I spotted a balloon at the end of a street entering Montmartre. I went over. A certain crowd surrounded a large square space, walled in by the sheer cliffs of Montmartre. In this space were three balloons, one large, one medium and one small. The large one was yellow, the medium one white, and the small one ribbed, yellow and red. The crowd was whispering: Gambetta is going to leave. Indeed, I spotted Gambetta in a heavy overcoat, under an otter cap, near the yellow balloon, in a group. He sat down on a paving stone and put on his fur-lined boots. He had a leather bag slung over his shoulder. He took it off, got into the balloon, and a young man, the aeronaut, tied the bag to the ropes above Gambetta's head. It was half past ten. The weather was fine. A light south wind. A mild autumn sun. Suddenly, the yellow balloon took off with three men, including Gambetta. Then the white balloon, also with three men, one waving a tricolor flag. Below Gambetta's balloon hung a tricolor flame. We shouted: "Long live the Republic! But the wind pushed Gambetta's balloon northwards towards the Prussian lines. ... The passengers let go of ballast to rise and escape enemy fire. Their balloon crashed mid-afternoon near Beauvais, where they were taken in by farmers. After three days of epic travel by horse-drawn carriage and train, Gambetta finally arrived in Tours, where he joined a government delegation headed by Adolphe Crémieux. Adolphe Crémieux, where, now also Minister of War, in four months he raised new armies of several thousand men "with incredible speed" (in the words of Prussian general Moltke). Although he was in favor of an "all-out war", Bazaine's capitulation at Metz on October 27, the failure of the "Loire army" to join forces with the besieged Parisians, and the surrender of the exhausted capital on January 28, were all too much for him. He resigned on February 6, 1871. After the Treaty of Frankfurt signed on May 10, 1871, which put an end to the war, he contributed to the continuation of the republican regime. Prussian General von der Goltz later wrote: "If ever, God forbid, our homeland were to suffer a defeat like the one France suffered at Sedan, I would dearly love to see a man like Gambetta, who could ignite it with the spirit of resistance pushed to its very limits". Gambetta's epic gesture and his relentlessness in the patriotic struggle left a lasting impression: there are 1,501 Gambetta streets in France France, making him the sixth most common proper name given to urban streets.