Editing Paris Commune (section)

=== Capture of Fort Issy ===
One of the key strategic points around Paris was [[Fort Issy]], south of the city near the Porte de Versailles, which blocked the route of the Army into Paris. The fort's garrison was commanded by Leon Megy, a former mechanic and a militant Blanquist, who had been sentenced to 20 years of hard labour for killing a policeman. After being freed he had led the takeover of the prefecture of Marseille by militant revolutionaries. When he came back to Paris, he was given the rank of colonel by the Central Committee of the National Guard, and the command of Fort Issy on 13 April.

[[File:La Commune de Paris - Les francs-maçons plantant leurs bannières sur les fortifications à Porte Maillot (1871).jpg|thumb|On 29 April 1871, the [[Freemasonry in France|Freemasons]] demonstrated peacefully and planted their banners on the fortifications at Porte Maillot, in order to ask the Versailles troops to stop the bombardments and to negotiate]]

The army commander, General [[Ernest de Cissey]], began a systematic siege and a heavy bombardment of the fort that lasted three days and three nights. At the same time Cissey sent a message to Colonel Megy, with the permission of Marshal MacMahon, offering to spare the lives of the fort's defenders, and let them return to Paris with their belongings and weapons, if they surrendered the fort. Colonel Megy gave the order, and during the night of 29–30 April, most of the soldiers evacuated the fort and returned to Paris, but news of the evacuation reached the Central Committee of the National Guard and the Commune. Before General Cissey and the Versailles army could occupy the fort, the National Guard rushed reinforcements there and re-occupied all the positions. General Cluseret, commander of the National Guard, was dismissed and put in prison. General Cissey resumed the intense bombardment of the fort. The defenders resisted until the night of 7–8 May, when the remaining national guardsmen in the fort, unable to withstand further attacks, decided to withdraw. The new commander of the National Guard, [[Louis Rossel]], issued a terse bulletin: "The tricolor flag flies over the fort of Issy, abandoned yesterday by the garrison." The abandonment of the fort led the Commune to dismiss Rossel, and replace him with Delescluze, a fervent Communard but a journalist with no military experience.{{sfn|Milza|2009a|pp=327–330}}

Bitter fighting followed, as MacMahon's army worked its way systematically forward to the [[Thiers wall|walls of Paris]]. On 20 May, MacMahon's artillery batteries at [[Montretout]], Mont-Valerian, [[Boulogne-Billancourt|Boulogne]], [[Issy-les-Moulineaux|Issy]], and [[Vanves]] opened fire on the western neighbourhoods of the city—[[Auteuil, Paris|Auteuil]], [[Passy]], and [[Trocadéro, Paris|Trocadéro]]—with shells falling close to [[Place Charles de Gaulle|l'Étoile]]. Dombrowski reported that the soldiers he had sent to defend the ramparts of the city between Point du Jour and Porte d'Auteuil had retreated to the city and that he had only 4,000 soldiers left at la Muette, 2,000 at [[Neuilly-sur-Seine|Neuilly]], and 200 at [[Asnières-sur-Seine|Asnières]] and [[Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine|Saint Ouen]]. "I lack artillerymen and workers to hold off the catastrophe."{{sfn|Milza|2009a|p=337}} On 19 May, while the Commune executive committee was meeting to judge the former military commander Cluseret for the loss of the Issy fortress, it received word that the forces of Marshal MacMahon were within the fortifications of Paris.