The fort was placed too close to the city to be effective, and had a poor design that did not take into account recent experience of siege warfare.

After the armistice of February 1871 the fort was defended by National Guards of the Paris Commune against the French regular army in April–May 1871.

In 1814 and 1815 Paris was twice occupied by a coalition of British, Austrian, Russian and Prussian forces at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers was authorized by the cabinet in September 1840 to begin construction of the defense system, and was given funding.

[6] The decision about where to place the southern line of forts may have been influenced by the fact that in 1815 Field Marshal Blucher had arrived on the Issy and Vanves heights, overlooking Paris.

[7] The planners ignored the observation in 1840 by General Noizet that even the smooth-bore guns of that time could bombard Paris from the Châtillon plateau further to the south.

[7] The planners considered that the Châtillon hills to the south of the fort, with their scattered villages, parks and country houses, was out of range.

[6] The long-range rifled guns of 1870, placed on elevated parts of the hills, could easily reach the fort and the city.

[7] The fort was given a geometrical form in which the bastions included all standard elements, the tennaille,[a] ravelin[b] , redoubt of the covered way[c] and so on.

[13] The fort was an expensive structure that was very vulnerable to siege batteries, and that exposed long faces to enfilade fire.

Two days later the mob in Paris declared a republic, with General Louis-Jules Trochu as provisional head of government.

[14] King William of Prussia accepted the title of Emperor on 18 January 1871 in a ceremony in the Hall of Mirrors of Versailles.

[24] In February 1871 Adolphe Thiers, head of the French national government, signed an armistice with Otto von Bismarck, Prime Minister of Prussia.

On 18 March 1871 an attempt by the government to remove cannons from the hill of Montmartre triggered riots and the National Assembly withdrew to the suburb of Versailles.

[26] Civil war began when Thiers ordered the dissolution of the Paris National Guard, which was largely composed of working-class volunteers.

[26] Edmond Mégy was a militant railway engineer who had influence among the workers and was seen by the Blanquists as a reliable man of action.

[33] On the evening on 26 April 1871 the army attacked Issy-les-Moulineaux, which commanded the road from the fort to Billancourt Island on the Seine, with an intensive bombardment.

Inside the fort a company of utterly demoralized engineers refused to continue their work and the next morning the 92nd insisted on being relieved.

General Gustave Paul Cluseret told him to wait for reinforcements, but Mégy telegraphed that he was spiking the guns and evacuating the fort, which he did without delay.

[35] Meanwhile, the Communard generals Cluseret and Napoléon La Cécilia reached Issy, where a battalion of about 200 men were occupying the village.

The Versailles forces could now cause even greater damage to Paris and its defenses with gunfire from Forts Issy and Vanves.

On 20 May 1871 MacMahon's artillery batteries at Montretout, Mont-Valerian, Boulogne, Issy, and Vanves opened fire on the western neighborhoods of the city.

It contains 1,623 dwellings of which 330 are social housing, a 3,267 square metres (35,170 sq ft) bowling alley, 2,300 square metres (25,000 sq ft) of shops and public facilities, two schools, a swimming pool and a multi-use space, Le Temps des Cerises .

[42] The complex uses a geothermal heat network with two wells over 600 metres (2,000 ft) deep that reach the Early Cretaceous Albian aquifer.

The two wells are 580 metres (1,900 ft) apart at their feet to avoid thermal recycling, and the system is sealed to prevent any contamination of the water.