The Paris Commune. The bloody week. Tuesday, May 23. All day long, fighting and blood in the streets of Paris, as the Versailles troops advance relentlessly. Batignolles, Place de Clichy, and the hill of Montmartre fall. General Dombrowski is killed at the foot of a barricade. The Versaillais massacre women, children, the elderly, and captured federates: taken to Parc Monceau, they are killed there. On one side, the Versailles troops launch incendiary shells, on the other, the Communards set fires to defend the barricades before being massacred. Even what evokes the Old Order against which they rose up, what the men and women of the Commune wanted to change, is burned. There are no agreed decisions, these are isolated acts. On this night of May 23, the Tuileries, the Court of Auditors, the Council of State, and the Palace of the Legion of Honor are engulfed in flames.
