alexpgp | LJ Idol 9.22: Sweep the leg...

Eugène Farcot stamped his feet and rubbed his hands. Although it was still September—the 23rd, in fact, the day of the autumnal equinox—the night had been chilly and he had been standing guard throughout most of it. Now, a few minutes before 6 o'clock, the sun had risen and he could get a good look at Paris's only remaining hope of communicating with the world outside—a 42,000-cubic-foot bag made of lightweight cloth, almost spherical (now that it had been filled with gas) and attached to a small gondola that hung beneath. The owner of the apparatus, a young man everyone called Duruof (although his real name was Dufour) had christened the contraption Neptune.

The last train carrying mail had left Paris for Le Mans at 5 pm on September 18th, 5 days before. Shortly after midnight on the 19th, the Prussians completed their encirclement of Paris and cut all rail and road links. The Prussians, for reasons they did not share with the French, had elected not to start by shelling the city into submission. Instead, they apparently intended to starve the city for a while. For their part, the French clung to the hope that the prolonged war was placing an unbearable strain on the economy of their enemy, and that ultimately, Prussia could still be defeated.

Be that as it may, the center of France's Second Empire now found itself isolated, except for an underwater telegraph line that, in anticipation of the impending siege, had been hurriedly laid in the Seine river over a series of successive nights, but the cable had proved inadequate, unreliable, and ultimately vulnerable to discovery by the Prussians. Given the situation, the State Telegraph Office had signed an agreement that some considered foolish, and that others—more kindly disposed—described merely as desperate: Mail was to be sent on its way by air, using lighter-than-air balloons.

Neptune had been constructed only two years previously, but between numerous appearances at public fairs, several "private" flights that Duruof had arranged with beautiful young women, and having been raised and lowered from Montmartre several times a day over the previous 17 days to reconnoiter Prussian troop movements, the apparatus was beginning to show signs of wear and tear. Patches dotted the surface of the envelope.

All during the previous night, a small army of volunteers had held the balloon down as it was being filled with gas, but this was neither easy nor safe. One prolonged wind gust had distorted the balloon's envelope and threatened to rupture its fabric. Later, another particularly strong gust almost succeeded in launching the half-inflated balloon into the air, and while this was prevented by the heavy rope that had held the aircraft captive during its reconnaissance flights, the shifting rope had swept the legs out from under half a dozen volunteers, who had to be carried away on stretchers.

At 7 o'clock a carriage belonging to the Administration of Posts arrived, along with a contingent of soldiers. Duruof supervised the weighing of three sacks of dispatches, each weighing almost 100 pounds, and watched as they were stowed in the gondola. Finally, a few minutes before 7:45, he wrapped his woolen coat tightly around himself and boarded Neptune. Exactly on the quarter hour, Duruof stuck his head out of the gondola's port and cried "Cast off!"

Once set free, Neptune shot upward like an arrow into a clear blue sky, to general shouts and cries of "Vive la République!" Farcot, standing off to the side to view the ascent, added "Vive Duruof!" to the cacophany before going home to get some sleep. It's good to know that such daredevils exist, the old man thought to himself.

At an altitude of nearly a mile above the ground, the balloon caught a layer of air that took it in a northeasterly direction at a speed of about 20 miles per hour. As it flew over the Prussian lines, Neptune attracted unwelcome attention, and despite the fact that the probability of hitting an object as big as Neptune at that altitude was very nearly zero, that didn't prevent shots from being fired.

As an experienced pilot, Duruof knew that one or two extra holes would not significantly impact his craft's airworthiness, because once at altitude, it was not only normal for Neptune to leak gas, but essential. This was because the gas inside the envelope expanded as the sun warmed the cloth envelope and the surrounding air, and the expanded gas provided buoyancy and kept the balloon in the air, but only if the extra gas could escape from the envelope. Of course, if the leakage were to become excessive because, say, a major seam were to tear open or a great number of ragged holes were to suddenly appear in the envelope, the flight would end swiftly, with dire results, but Duruof never let such thoughts enter his mind.

Upon hearing the faint sounds of shooting, Duruof took a moment to stretch his cramped legs while lying on his back, after which he lightened his aircraft even more, by dumping "ballast" overboard. This consisted of newspapers, freshly printed and containing news of Paris. As an afterthought, he also cast overboard a large handful of visiting cards that he had ordered printed with his name on them. That, for you, Bismarck! So you know who you're dealing with! thought Duruof, as he looked down at Versailles and the surrounding countryside. Despite the cold and the fact that people were shooting at him (albeit from far away), Duruof felt as he always did while in the air—free.

Exactly three hours and fifteen minutes after casting off, at 11 o'clock, Duruof landed his aircraft in a park near the town of Evreux, a little over 50 miles from Paris. The landing was rough, and although Neptune would never fly again, the cargo was safe and the pilot had walked away with only minor scrapes.

The mail sacks were handed over to the town's postmaster while Duruof set off for Tours and, eventually, to Lille, where he waited, in vain, for the winds to blow favorably to let him attempt a return to Paris by air.

The Siege of Paris came to an end on January 28, 1871, and with it ended what might be considered the first modern "regular" postal service by air. And while historians and philatelists may argue about how many balloons were involved in delivering mail during the Siege, nothing can detract from the daring of a small band of "aeronauts" like Duruof, who used their fabulous floating machines to keep the mail moving under most extraordinary conditions.

Balloon mail flown during the Siege of Paris, aboard either the balloon Parmentier or the balloon Gutenberg, which both departed the Orléans Station in Paris at around 1:30 am on December 17, 1870, and landed in the Marne region at 9 o'clock that morning. A second postmark was made on the back of this letter upon its arrival in Amsterdam on January 1, 1871.