FRENZIED COMBAT

THE SIDES OF THE HILL* THAT OVERLOOKS THE LEFT BANK WAS THE WORST SITE OF BLOODY WEEK FIGHTING 

*The Butte-aux-Cailles ("Quail hilltop")

                                 The Observatory seen from the Butte aux Cailles by Jean Millet, toward 1710 / zoom

"A perspective to delight 

the most blasé traveller [...]

The Panthéon's magnificent cupula, the drab and melancholy Val de Grâce, proudly look over an entire town [...]  from there, the proportions of the the two monuments appear gigantic [...] to the left, the Observatory seems a dark and gaunt spectre [...] then, from afar, the Invalides's elegant lantern flames between the Luxembourg's blue masses and the gray towers of Saint-Sulpice [...]" 

-- The Woman of Thirty by Balzac, 1842

Here the Versaillais officers can no longer spare unreliable troops: though their forces are six times more numerous than those of the Communards, it takes four attempts to take the hill.

-- Lissagary

First they avoid the barricade that guards the district entry* by advancing under fire along the islands of the Bièvre:

*Les Gobelins, the famous site of tapestry production since the 17th century and still where the district begins. 

Zoom (please scroll down)

Then their climb begins by this path...

Parc René Le Gall

The park is built on enlarged islands.

Across what was then a track... 

Boulevard Auguste Blanqui 

It linked the gate at the city's entrance with place d'Italie, site of City Hall and the prison where the monks would soon be killed.

To head up the hill under heavy fire, which they take at last toward 4 p.m.

      Engraving of the time, gone from the web

The thousand surviving Communards retire to the right bank in good order, where they disperse to defend their neighborhoods.  

# # #

That summit is five minutes

from place de la Commune...

The Brassai garden

From which the terrified residents

hear the screams and gun shots

from the fighting.

*    *    *

Next, 

Communard fighters