Perrinet Leclerc

This engraving by Auguste Trichon depicts Perrinet Leclerc opening the gates of Paris to the Burgundian troops on 29 May 1418. The scene shows armed men entering the city in a dark urban setting that heightens the clandestine and dramatic character of the episode. Perrinet Leclerc’s action played a decisive role in the capture of Paris by the Burgundians, at the heart of the civil war between Armagnacs and Burgundians during the Hundred Years’ War. Published in 1867 in volume 2 of the Dictionnaire populaire illustré d'histoire, de géographie, de biographie, de technologie, de mythologie, d'antiquités, des beaux-arts et de littérature, this illustration belongs to the nineteenth-century scholarly tradition that sought to give visual form to major political and military episodes of the past.