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Why did Victor Hugo return to Paris in 1870?
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Victor Hugo
French poet, novelist, and dramatist Victor Hugo, photograph by Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon). Hugo's best-loved works are the novels Notre-Dame de Paris (1831; The Hunchback of Notre-Dame) and Les Misérables (1862).
Victor Hugo returned to Paris in 1870 because that year marked the return of liberty and the reconstitution of the Third Republic following the defeat of France in the Franco-German War.12
His return ended a nearly 20-year period of exile, which he had entered after opposing the 1851 coup d'état led by Napoleon III. Upon his homecoming, Hugo became a symbol of republicanism and served briefly as a deputy in the National Assembly.231