3-039-188 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The French Siege of Paris: Communists' battery at the Trocadero, 1871. 'The French siege of Paris, as it may properly be called, still affords subjects for our Illustrations; and one of our Special Artists, who saw and sketched many scenes of the late war between the French and Germans, is now in Paris, having just left Versailles, to furnish us with sketches of this domestic war, which seems much worse than the other... The Communists have established a battery upon the artificial mound which is named the Trocadero, in memory of a victory gained by the French troops in Spain, fifty years ago, at the capture of the Trocadero fortress, at Cadiz, held by the Constitutionalists in the civil war of that time. This mound is situated near the suburb of Passy, close to the Seine at the Quai be Billy, opposite to the Pont de Jena and the Champ de Mars. It is too far away for the battery here to reach the positions held by the Versailles army on the left bank of the river, the whole width of the Bois de Boulogne lying between. The shells from the Trocadero, directed against Mont Valérien, have usually fallen short, doing mischief to the houses of Suresnes and Puteaux'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.