He was made captain of the 23rd Mobile Guard battalion following the February revolution of 1848, and participated in the suppression of the June Days Uprising which was to later earn him hostility in certain socialist quarters.

[1] After brief spells in Northern Algeria and New York City he travelled to Naples in 1860 and participated in the foundation of the De Flotte Legion, a French Corps to assist in the fight for Italian unification, of which he was soon given command.

[5] Following his resignation he co-founded the New York City-based newspaper New Nation with Fremont, which adopted a radical Republican perspective, criticising Lincoln's gradualist approach to the issue of slavery.

[6] In 1866, the governor of New York, Reuben Fenton, entrusted Cluseret with a mission to organise the Fenian Brotherhood as part of a diversionary plan to undermine British influence in the Mediterranean.

He met a dozen members of the Reform League, including John Bedford Leno, in a private room of the "White Horse" in Rathbone Place.

He proposed that they create civil war in England and offered the service of two thousand sworn members of the Fenian body, and that he would act as their leader.

The next day the meeting was fully reported in The Times, although Leno's speech had been attributed to George Odgers, who had in fact been the only person to support Cluseret’s proposal.

He soon incurred the wrath of the French authorities, serving two months at Sainte-Pélagie Prison for an antimilitarist article published in his newly founded newspaper L'Art.

[9] After his initial attempts to obtain a commission in the French army were refused he set to work to organize the social revolution, first at Lyon and afterwards at Marseilles.

[8] Mikhail Bakunin placed much of the blame for the failure of the Lyon Commune revolution on Cluseret's refusal to arm the local volunteers.

[10] He quickly set about reorganising the National Guard, but his attempts to introduce a centralised militarism led to friction with the federalist Central Committee who withdrew their willing co-operation,[11] and routinely censored his proclamations.

His time in Geneva was however largely uneventful and with new adventure in mind, he departed for the Ottoman Empire in late September 1877 intent on recruiting volunteers to found a republic in Turkey.

[17] He made a brief return to France in 1880 following the amnesty offered to Communards, but again had to flee, this time for penning an article critical of General Ernest Courtot de Cissey.