Café du Croissant
A modest café on the rue Montmartre that history stopped at: the place where the socialist leader Jean Jaurès was shot dead on the eve of the First World War.
At a glance
The Café du Croissant stands on the rue Montmartre, in Paris’s 2nd arrondissement, in the old newspaper district near the former offices of L’Humanité. An ordinary café by appearance, it holds one of the most charged addresses in modern French history.
History
On the evening of 31 July 1914, Jean Jaurès — deputy, editor of L’Humanité and the leading voice of French socialism and anti-militarism — was dining at the Café du Croissant, close to his newspaper, while working to keep France out of the coming war. At 9:40 pm a young nationalist, Raoul Villain, shot him twice through the open window; one bullet struck his skull and killed him almost at once.
The timing was terrible: the next day France posted its general mobilisation, and war was declared three days later. Villain, a student at the École du Louvre, was acquitted in 1919 and later killed on Ibiza during the Spanish Civil War. The café has kept the memory of that night ever since.
What you see
The café preserves the feel of an early-twentieth-century Paris brasserie in the press quarter, its plainness part of the point.
A plaque marks the assassination, and the spot where Jaurès sat is remembered as a small place of pilgrimage for the French left.
Cultural significance
The murder of Jaurès is one of the symbolic thresholds of the twentieth century — the silencing of the man who tried hardest to stop the war, on the very eve of it. The Café du Croissant is where that moment happened, and it remains a site of memory for socialism and for the summer Europe went to war.
Key facts
- Event: assassination of Jean Jaurès, 31 July 1914, at 9:40 pm
- Victim: socialist leader, anti-militarist, editor of L’Humanité
- Assassin: Raoul Villain, a nationalist student (acquitted 1919)
- Aftermath: France mobilised the next day; war declared three days later
- Location: rue Montmartre, 2nd arrondissement, near the old L’Humanité offices
Practical information & getting there
The café is on the rue Montmartre, near the Grands Boulevards. Nearest Métro: Grands Boulevards (lines 8, 9) or Bourse (line 3). It operates as a bistro-brasserie.
Sources & resources
- Wikipedia — Café du Croissant / Assassination of Jean Jaurès
- France 24 — “France remembers murdered socialist hero Jean Jaurès”
- Council on Foreign Relations — “The Assassination of Jean Jaurès”
- Radical History — “Murder in Paris: the Assassination of Jean Jaurès”
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