Thiers wall

[1] An ambitious scheme of fortification for Paris proposed in 1689 by France's leading military engineer, Marshal Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, was not proceeded with.

After much debate, it was decided that the capital should be fortified in two ways; by a continuous wall which could be manned by the National Guard and would prevent infiltration or a surprise attack, and further out from that, by a chain of detached forts manned by the regular field army, which could prevent an enemy from establishing positions from which they could bombard the city and create a line so long that it would be difficult for besiegers to enforce a tight blockade.

[3] On 1 March 1840, Adolphe Thiers returned to office as prime minister and soon war threatened over the Oriental Crisis, when France found itself in opposition to Britain and Austria over events in Egypt.

[5] Thiers obtained the backing of his cabinet for the scheme while the deputies were away on holiday, but then found there was fierce resistance from the left, led by François Arago and Alphonse de Lamartine, who suspected that the government had ulterior political motives: that the fortifications, especially the detached forts, were intended to threaten the Parisians in case of a revolt against the monarchy.

The rampart was composed of packed earth and revetted by a vertical scarp (or front face) wall of stone, topped by a broad earthen parapet.

However, a United States Army commission who visited in 1856 noted that the glacis, which rose 6 metres (20 ft) above the floor of the ditch, only partially protected the vulnerable masonry of the scarp wall.

[14] The enceinte wall was serviced and supplied by the Rue Militaire ("military road") which passed directly behind the works; different sections of which were named after various Marshals of France and are collectively called the Boulevards des Maréchaux,[15] and were completed in their present form in 1861.

In the thirty years since the construction of the wall and the outlying forts, the range of artillery had almost doubled, and there were many vantage points in the hills surrounding the city from which modern guns could dominate the fortifications.

Some 80,000 men were employed in clearing fields of fire in front of the fortifications, including felling many of the trees in the parkland of the Bois de Boulogne, the wood from which was used to build obstacles.

[21] When the Prussians arrived on 2 September, they began a wide encirclement of Paris starting from the southwest which was completed a week later when they had entrenched themselves on all the commanding heights, a front of some 80 kilometres (50 mi).

Eventually, the loss of the Armée de la Loire at the Second Battle of Orléans which was the defender's main hope of relief and the starvation of the civil population resulted in a ceasefire on 26 January 1871 and a surrender two days later.

On the morning of 3 April, a massed foray westwards towards Versailles by 27,000 National Guards was easily dispersed by artillery fire from Fort Mont-Valérien which had been reoccupied by government troops.

[24] Once sufficient troops and guns had been gathered, the Versailles government began a bombardment of the Thiers wall itself, concentrating on a southwestern section at Point-du-Jour on the right bank of the Seine.

By 25 May the wall there was partly demolished, but there was no move to assault the breach until a friendly civilian appeared on the parapet to tell the attackers that the National Guard sentries had all gone off to find shelter, allowing the Versailles army to pour into the city.

[25] In the "Bloody Week" that followed, the Communards fought from one street barricade to another, although Haussmann's new wide and straight avenues gave the government artillery good fields of fire and enabled the infantry to outflank fixed positions.

On 3 September, the military governor, General Joseph Gallieni, ordered that the outlying forts be armed and the gates of the Thiers wall be made defensible by the addition of barbed wire[27] and barriers of oak beams pierced with embrasures.

The area between the two walls became known as the petit banlieue or "little suburb", which underwent rapid development over the following decades, primarily of working class housing and industrial sites, expanding from a population of 75,000 in 1831 to 173,000 in 1856.

[29] In 1853, the appointment of Georges-Eugène Haussmann as prefect began the huge renovation of Paris project, starting with the sweeping away of overcrowded slum housing in the city centre.

The zone was completely cleared in the siege preparations of 1870, but was reoccupied soon afterwards and several shanty towns developed, the population of which was swelled by migrants and Romani people from the provinces and neighbouring countries.

In the inter-war period, there were efforts to clear these slums but progress was slow due to legal disputes with land owners and was only completed during the wartime Vichy regime.

[33] In 1882, Martin Nadaud proposed the demolition of the wall to parliament, stating that "la grande ville étouffe dans sa camisole de force" ("the great city is choking in her straitjacket").

This mostly took the form of affordable housing known as habitations à bon marché or HBM, generally in austere seven-storey apartment blocks built around narrow alleys and courtyards.