The Bonnet Rouge was an evening paper of decided pacifist tendency, which lost no occasion of belittling the military and political leaders and policy, not only of France, but also of England. The attention of the Government was drawn to it early in 1917, and its editor, Almeyreda, and its manager, Duval, were under lock and key by August, 1917.
The police investigations showed that the Bonnet Rouge was to a great extent dependent for its capital upon men whose ardor in the allied cause had not been notable, and revealed the astonishing fact that M. Malvy, as Minister of the Interior, had thought fit to subsidize the paper to the extent of $1,200 a month and to encourage it in other ways. It also became known to the public that Almeyreda before the war had been in the closest contact with M. Caillaux and that he had received from that politician, at the moment when Mme. Caillaux was being tried for the murder of M. Calmette, the editor of the Figaro, the sum of $8,000.
Duval, whose journeys to Switzerland had aroused the misgivings of the Government, was detained at the French frontier station, searched, and found to be in possession of a check for $32,800 drawn to the order of a Mannheim banking firm, the business relations of which will appear in subsequent trials. This check was photographed and was handed back to Duval by some one of the French military or civil secret service officials.
Almeyreda had hardly reached prison when he fell seriously ill and was removed to the infirmary prison at Fresnes. There he died. The official doctors first of all declared that he had been strangled, and then gave it as their opinion that he had committed suicide.
Louis J. Malvy, who was at the time Under Secretary of the Interior, and was Minister of the Interior under Ribot, will be tried by a parliamentary court on the charge of having been in personal relations with Duval and of having delivered to the Germans the scheme of the abruptly ended French offensive in the Champagne in April, 1917.
The City of Amiens.
Amiens, the old capital city of Picardy, goes far back into the military history of Europe. Probably deriving its name from the Belgic tribe of Ambiani, it was the centre of Julius Caesar's campaigns against those warlike tribes. Several Roman Emperors had military headquarters there, and it early gained importance as a bishopric. Evrard de Fouilloy, the forty-fifth Bishop, began the great Gothic cathedral of Amiens, one of the finest in the world, in the year 1220, the plans being made by René de Luzarches, while the work was completed by Thomas de Cormont and his son Renault in the year 1288, though the two great towers were not finished until a century later. Because it is intersected by eleven canals Louis XI. called Amiens "the little Venice."
Only second to the great cathedral in fame is the Hôtel de Ville, built between 1660 and 1760, in which, on May 25, 1802, was signed the famous treaty of Amiens, Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte, being plenipotentiary for France. The parties to the Peace of Amiens were France, England, Holland, and Spain. To Holland were restored the Cape of Good Hope, Guiana, and other colonies; France received Martinique and Guadeloupe; Spain received Minorca; Malta went to the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, while Egypt was restored to Turkey. England was secured in the control of India, and received Ceylon, (which had been first Portuguese and later Dutch,) and the island of Trinidad. But many of these dispositions were greatly modified thirteen years later, at the close of the Napoleonic wars.
In Amiens there is a famous Napoleonic Museum, which has many fine paintings by Puvis de Chavannes, including "War," "Peace," "Work," and "Rest." When, on Nov. 28, 1876, Amiens was captured by the army of the Prussians all religious monuments, including the cathedral, were scrupulously guarded against any possible damage, and the rights of private property were respected. Another of the titles of Amiens to fame is the fact that Peter the Hermit, leader of the First Crusade, was born there in 1050.