Raoul Adolphe Georges Rigault, born on 16 January 1846 in Paris, where he also died on 24 May 1871, was a journalist and French politician, best known for his role during the Paris Commune of 1871. He is most notable for having saved the life of the French father of Impressionist painting, Auguste Renoir, from a firing squad; for having led a ruthless, French Revolution-style police operation during the Paris Commune; and for his unrelenting hatred of religion.
The New York Times in 1884 gives the following description of Rigault... According to the Association des Amies et Amis de laCommune de Paris 1871, Rigault was hated for being a "swagger of perversity", "scoundrel", "aristocrat of the thuggery", for making jokes about how he had improved the guilotine, for his "militant atheism," and for creating a police system of "informants and snitches."
As Revolutionary
Rigault had been a revolutionary since his youth. In 1866, he was arrested at a meeting of revolutionaries at the Café de la Renaissance in Saint-Michel, and in 1868, he served three months imprisonment for publishing a journal on Atheism. Rigault's revolutionary activity was anti-police and anti-establishment. He had "spent long hours with a spyglass propped up on a Seine bookseller's stall, peering into the Prefecture of Police across the water," and with this information, he kept "track of the coming and going of informers and plain-clothes men," and also managed the "undoing of a particularly harsh and licentious judge, Delesvaux, who delighted in sentencing revolutionaries."
Meeting with Renoir
While a fugitive in youth, he was hidden by Auguste Renoir, the famous painter, in the forests of Fontainebleau. He would return the favor by noticing Renoir destined for the firing squad in the Paris Commune, and having Renoir immediately pardoned and released.
While the majority of the Commune's politicians were extremely progressive or left-wing, The New Yorker describes Rigault as "the backward-looking aspect... A socialist polemicist of appetite and charm, he became, in effect, the head of the Commune's police force." One American woman, Madame de Hegermann-Lindencrone, held audience with Rigault as Chief of Police, and described his quarters as barren of furniture, "only the table... two or three plain chairs... Just such a chamber as Robespierre might have occupied during his republic," claiming that Rigault "took advantage of the unavoidable questions that belong to the making out of a passport."
Freeing of Prisoners
Like during most revolutions, his most popular acts as police chief were those in the beginning, when he freed those imprisoned by the imperial French government, which included revolutionaries, Anarchists, and Blanquists.
Blanquist Obsession
As police chief, the main occupation that Rigault worried himself with was with freeing Louis Auguste Blanqui, then being held by the monarchist forces of Versailles. His plan was to do a hostage trade of Archbishop Georges Darboy in exchange for Blanqui; but when this plan tragically failed, Darboy was executed by Commune forces in a stir of panic and desperation, killing one of the most reform-minded and democratically-oriented bishops of France.
Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Religion
If there was one issue over which the people of Paris instinctively and almost unanimously sympathized with Rigault, "this was his violent anticlericalism," according to the historian, Alistair Horne. As chief of police, he searched and investigated churches for evidence of sympathy with Versailles. The arrest of Archbishop Darboy was done at the hand of Rigault. The following famous dialogue took place between a Jesuit and Rigault... One historian of the Paris Commune wrote that, "Atheism was a cardinal tenet of Blanqui's faith, and his disciple Rigault was an adept at priest-baiting."
Death
After the Paris Commune, he was "simply executed with a bullet in the skull, on the street of Gay-Lussac on Wednesday, May 24, 1871." According to a more detailed account, Rigault had worn his National Guard uniform that day, in order to shame those who refused to keep up the fight. In this outfit, he was instantly picked up. At gunpoint by a Versailles officer, he was ordered to shout, "Long Live Versailles!" He responded, "You are assassins! Long live the Commune!" and was immediately shot.
