The Hôtel de Ville burns during the fighting

A major explosion at an ammunition works killed and injured workers and nearby residents. Communards suspected sabotage, although the precise cause remained disputed.

The Commune directed that religious symbols and instruction be removed from schools and accelerated the creation of secular education. The policy accompanied efforts to improve education for girls.

Government troops entered through the Porte de Saint-Cloud after discovering that part of the western defences was unguarded. Their entry began the Bloody Week and the final destruction of the...

The Versailles Army occupied western Paris while Communards constructed barricades and organized neighbourhood resistance. The centralized defence rapidly fragmented into local battles.

Government troops captured Montmartre, the district where the uprising had begun. Jarosław Dąbrowski was mortally wounded during the fighting as the Commune lost much of northern and western Paris.

Communard officials executed Archbishop Georges Darboy and several other hostages in La Roquette prison while government forces carried out mass executions of captured Communards.

Several thousand Communards resisted a much larger government force around the Butte-aux-Cailles. Versailles troops eventually took the position and continued eastward.

Charles Delescluze, the Commune’s delegate for war, walked unarmed toward a barricade at the Place du Château-d’Eau and was killed by government fire.

A crowd of guards and civilians killed clergy, gendarmes and other prisoners in the Rue Haxo amid the collapse of Commune authority. Commune members including Eugène Varlin attempted unsuccessfully to...

Versailles troops arrested republican deputy and journalist Jean-Baptiste Millière and shot him on the steps of the Panthéon without trial.