The character of Lecoq was based on a real-life thief turned police officer, Eugène François Vidocq (1775–1857), whose own memoirs, Les Vrais Mémoires de Vidocq, mixed fiction and fact.
The character of Javert is loosely based on Eugène François Vidocq, a criminal and adventurer who became a police official, though Vidocq wrote that he never arrested anyone who stole out of need.
In the winter of 1828–29, a French grifter-turned-policeman named Eugène François Vidocq published a pair of sensationalized memoirs recounting his criminal exploits.
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