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This engraving was published as the cover of L'Eclipse on 17 April 1870. It is a caricature of Léon Gambetta (1838-1882), a French lawyer and republican politician who proclaimed and played a prominent role in the French Third Republic.
On 2 September 1870, the French Army suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Sedan, in which the emperor Napoleon III surrendered and was taken prisoner. The news arrived in Paris on the night of 3 September, and early on 4 September large-scale protests began in the capital. Parisians broke into the Palais Bourbon, meeting place of the Chamber of Deputies, interrupting a session and calling for a Republic. Later that day, from the Hôtel de Ville, Gambetta proclaimed the French Republic to a large crowd gathered in the Place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville.
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