France. Blanqui's leaning towards
violent measures was illustrated in 1870 by two unsuccessful armed
demonstrations: one on the 12th of January at the funeral of Victor
Noir, the journalist shot by Pierre Bonaparte; the other on the 14th of
August, when he led an attempt to seize some guns at a barrack. Upon the
fall of the Empire, through the revolution of the 4th of September,
Blanqui established the club and journal _La patrie en danger_. He was
one of the band that for a moment seized the reins of power on the 31st
of October, and for his share in that outbreak he was again condemned to
death on the 17th of March of the following year. A few days afterwards
the insurrection which established the Commune broke out, and Blanqui
was elected a member of the insurgent government, but his detention in
prison prevented him from taking an active part. Nevertheless he was in
1872 condemned along with the other members of the Commune to
transportation; but on account of his broken health this sentence was
commuted to one of imprisonment. In 1879 he was elected a deputy for
Bordeaux; although the election was pronounced invalid, Blanqui was set
at liberty, and at once resumed his work of agitation. At the end of
1880, after a speech at a revolutionary meeting in Paris, he was struck
down by apoplexy, and expired on the 1st of January 1881. Blanqui's
uncompromising communism, and his determination to enforce it by
violence, necessarily brought him into conflict with every French
government, and half his life was spent in prison. Besides his
innumerable contributions to journalism, he published an astronomical
work entitled _L'Eternite par les astres_ (1872), and after his death
his writings on economic and social questions were collected under the
title of _Critique sociale_ (1885).

A biography by G. Geffroy, _L'Enferme_ (1897), is highly coloured and
decidedly partisan.

BLANTYRE, the chief town of the Nyasaland protectorate, British Central
Africa. It is situated about 3000 ft. above the sea in the Shire
Highlands 300 m. by river and rail N.N.W. of the Chinde mouth of the
Zambezi. Pop. about 6000 natives and 100 whites. It is the headquarters
of the principal trading firms and missionary societies in the
protectorate. It is also a station on the African trans-continental
telegraph line. The chief building is the Church of Scotland church, a
fine red brick building, a mixture of Norman and Byzantine styles, with
l