image banks
--l'assiette au beurre
--Les Quatre Saisons de la Kultur
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The images on these two pages come from the first illustrated edition of Victor Hugo's HISTOIRE D'UN CRIME (Paris: Eugene Hugues, 1879), an impassioned recording of the December 1852 coup d'état that brought the usurper he called "Napoléon le petit" to power, and sent Hugo into an eighteen year exile. The work was written in the few months following Hugo's flight, but only published in 1877, when Hugo feared a similar takeover by Maréchal Mac-Mahon, who had threatened the dissolution of the republican-dominated Chambre des députés. Among the images we find a brooding, contemplative Napoléon, scenes of violence on the barricades and in the boulevards, and the touching scene of Hugo embracing his wife and children before leaving France.
