Paris was under siege. Two men set out on a risky journey with a war-important message sewn into their undershirt.
The balloon was 22 meters high and 18 meters in diameter.
Inventory list:
Bread and wine
250 kg mail (4 bags)
Sandbags
Cage with six carrier pigeons
Lighting device w/battery
Anchor with rope
La Ville d'Orléans was sent up at night to avoid Prussian artillery. The ascent took place from Gare du Nord, 24 November 1870, at 23:40. A large crowd waved the two aeronauts off.
Image: Etching from The Illustrated London News, 1870.
The engineer Paul Rolier was an experienced balloon pilot. He was newly married and his wife was not enthusiastic about the dangerous journey.
Photo: Norwegian Folk Museum
Léon Bézier had enlisted as a soldier and acted as a courier on the journey. As a suspect in a fraud case, he may have seen the assignment as an opportunity to avoid trial.
Photo: Norwegian Folk Museum
In Tours, Minister of War Gambetta had gathered an army to come to the aid of the Parisians.
The plan was to attack the Prussians at the same time as the city's own soldiers made a move. The message in Bézier's shirt was crucial to the coordination of the operation. Image: Etching from The Illustrated London News, 1870.
The wind conditions were anything but ideal this night. The aeronauts quickly realized that they did not know where the journey was going.
Cigarette paper is released to calculate the balloon's movements. Note the carrier pigeon cage.
Image: Simultaneous erasure, NTM C 01163
The strong wind in the upper air layers did not play well with the aeronauts. The gondola, which was going south to Tours, was blown all the way to Lifjell in Telemark, over 1,200 km as the crow flies from Paris.
To gain height, the heaviest postbag had to be lifted overboard.
Image: After Le Monde Illustré
It carried on, from Mandal all the way to Lifjell. The balloon was observed in several places along the way. After the two aeronauts got out of the gondola on Lifjell, the balloon continued and finally landed in Krødsherad.
Lifjell in Telemark: Rolier is thrown out of the basket when it sticks in a fir tree.
Bézier is stuck in the anchor line, but he finally manages to jump out while the balloon is held down by Rolier.
Photo: Fritz Bergen, drawing 1910.
In the snow on Lifjell, the two aeronauts watch the balloon disappear with mail and carrier pigeons on board.
It finally ended its journey at the farm Sandum at the foot of Norefjell in Krødsherad.
Image: Albert Tissandier, etching, Kleppensamlingen
The meeting between the French aeronauts and the Norwegians Klas and Harald Strand took place in this berth.
Neither of them mastered the other's language.
Image: Klas Strand by the seal at Geirsandstulen, facsimile, Kleppensamlingen
On the way to Kristiania, the French were treated as heroes. The locals had hung French flags in the windows and telegrams were sent from far and wide. Image: The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology
Over 800 hundred people sat down in Gamle Logen to pay tribute to France and the aeronauts.
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson gave the keynote speech, and Jonas Lie had written a song.
To France
Text: Jonas Lie
Melody: Gabriel Tischendorf
Now goes Stormen Sus
over the House of France,
and its children stand among flames in blood and in tears;
behind his free Tricolor,
became in Sorgen the great
and from Defeat reborn into saving Deed.
(…)
And, like these we saw
across the Great Sea
with his shining Courage and his faith in the Fatherland,
and who the Stomwhirl was
only one hand, which carried them
- then Faith and Hope will beat France's Bridge.
Morgenbladet reproduced Lie's text and described the festive dinner for its readers.
Facsimile of Morgenbladet 2 December 1870
1 December : The aeronauts leave Kristiania on the ship SS North Star to return to France via England.
By this time the French consul in Christiania had arranged for the message in Bézier's shirt to be telegraphed to Gambetta in Tours.
Photo: The Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection
2 December : Gambetta informs General Trochu in Paris that the aeronauts have appeared in Norway.
Image: Dispatch from Gambetta to Trochu, Kleppensamlingen
Gambetta's optimism was unfounded. Among other things, because of
the delays caused by Norway's journey to La Ville d'Orléans ended the French offensive with heavy losses.
In December, the heavy bombardment of Paris began. German guns spread destruction and fear. On January 28, 1871, the city capitulated. The last balloon, Balloon No. 67 – Le General Cambronne – was launched on the same day.
The French defeat paved the way for the coronation of the first emperor of unified Germany – Wilhelm I.
To humiliate France, the ceremony took place in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.
In the middle of the picture, in white uniform, stands Otto von Bismarck, the man who more than anyone else was the initiator of the German unification process.
The city's working population revolts. A revolutionary government rules Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871.
Karl Marx:
The first example of the "dictatorship of the proletariat"
At the end of May 1871, the Paris Commune was brutally put down on orders from the new French government.
The National Guard was deployed against revolutionary workers and Communards.
Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi's monument was destroyed during World War II.
