On the evening of July 31, 1914, after their fruitless visit to the foreign ministry to argue for French neutrality in the coming war, Jean Jaurès and Jean Longuet (the grandson of Karl Marx) travelled by taxi to the offices of the party newspaper, L’Humanité , where the socialist leader made notes for his editorial for the next day, a last appeal for peace, before leaving with a few colleagues to dine at the nearby Café du Croissant on rue Montmartre. It was a stiflingly hot evening and Jaurès sat with his back to a drawn curtain, beside an open window. At about 9.15 a young man, Raoul Villain, fired two revolver shots at him from the street.…