The Duke of Guise during the Day of the Barricades

This engraving by **Paul Lehugeur**, drawn like other similar illustrations from his work _Histoire de France en cent tableaux_ (1883), depicts **Henri de Guise** at the heart of the **Day of the Barricades**, on 12 May 1588, when Paris rose up and immobilised the royal troops behind hundreds of improvised barricades. Carried by popular enthusiasm, Guise appears here as the true master of the capital, a few hours before Henri III was forced to flee to Chartres, abandoning Paris to the Catholic League. Produced nearly three centuries after the events, this image reflects the nineteenth-century taste for educational illustration of the great revolutionary or insurrectionary days of French history.