The Barricade, rue de la Mortellerie, June 1848

In June 1848 Paris fought a four-day civil war. The new republic had closed the National Workshops that gave work to the unemployed, the workers of the eastern districts rose, and the army and the militia retook the city. Meissonier, then known for tiny scenes of card players in old costume, was an artillery captain in the National Guard. He saw the insurgents holding a barricade near the Hôtel de Ville killed, and made a watercolour of the dead. He gave that sheet to Delacroix, who had been deeply moved by it, and it is now in the Louvre too. This oil, only 29 centimetres high, followed and was shown at the Salon of 1850 to 1851. Bodies lie tangled across the torn-up cobbles, one in red trousers sprawled over the paving stones. The street in the title, rue de la Mortellerie, had officially become rue de l'Hôtel-de-Ville in 1835.