Les Cinq Cents Millions de la Bégum: From the Franco-Prussian War to the Paris Commune

After recalling how Les Cinq Cents Millions de la Bégum (The Begum’s Fortune) was born from a rewriting of L’Héritage de Langevol, a careful reading of many passages of the text—placed in parallel with the events that marked the Commune in the spring of 1871 as well as with the cultural imaginary associated with it, reflected among other things in iconography and witness accounts—shows in the novel the imprint of the particular communist imaginary of Grousset and the actors of the Parisian uprising.