Maxime Vuillaume

In 1871 Vuillaume with Eugène Vermersch and Alphonse Humbert re-founded the newspaper Le Père Duchêne, which took its name from the journal of Jacques-René Hébert at the time of the French Revolution.

After the Bloody Week (la Semaine sanglante) in May 1871 which brought the Paris Commune to its end, he fled to Switzerland, with Eugène Protot and other communards, passing through the Jura.

From that position during the active phase of the excavation and construction of the Saint-Gotthard tunnel he was able to observe and write about the work at close hand.

By his numerous articles published in La Nature (a science review) under the pseudonym Maxime Hélène, he made generally known the progress of the works on the tunnel and the person of Louis Favre.

In 1878, Louis Favre entrusted to him, for the requirements of the digging of the tunnel, the management of the dynamite factory set up at Varallo Pombia in Piedmont.