Auguste Vaillant's bombing of the French Chamber of Deputies is presented in the book’s notes as an attack directed at Charles-Alexandre Dupuy during Dupuy’s first week as president of the Chamber. Its defining detail is Dupuy’s composed declaration that the session would continue, an institutional insistence on proceeding in the face of political violence.

The Attack and Its Target

On 5 December 1893, Charles-Alexandre Dupuy was elected president of the French Chamber of Deputies. During his first week in office, the anarchist Auguste Vaillant threw a bomb at him. The note identifies Dupuy as the target; it does not give further details about the bomb, injuries, or the immediate aftermath of the attack.

Dupuy’s Response

Dupuy responded calmly: ‘The session continues, gentlemen.’ The brief statement places the attack and the Chamber’s proceedings in direct contrast. Rather than recounting an extended confrontation, the account fixes attention on the act of continuing: the meeting is not allowed to be defined solely by the violence aimed at its presiding officer.

Place in the Historical Context

The note also situates the bombing within Dupuy’s subsequent political career. He served as Prime Minister of France from May 1894 to January 1895, and it was during that period that Captain Dreyfus was exiled to Devil’s Island. This later reference supplies context for Dupuy’s public life, but the note does not state that the bombing caused his premiership or connect the attack to the exile of Dreyfus.