3-043-761 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The British Embassy at Paris on the 23rd of May, 1871. Civil war in Paris: 'One or two incidents of the six days' street fighting, which are shown in our Engravings, require a little explanation. The mansion of the British Embassy, in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré, near the Elysée Palace, was struck by several shot and shell during the Monday's and Tuesday's fighting in the Champs Elysées quarter, knocking down a chimney and tearing a hole in the roof, but with no great amount of damage. There was a Communist barricade at the corner of the Rue d'Anjou St. Honoré, to take which the Government troops, under Colonel Piquemalle, made their way through the private gardens of the Embassy. This was done on the Tuesday, about three o'clock in the afternoon; the soldiers made a hole in the western wall of the garden, came in through it, and went out through another hole in the wall separating it from the garden of the next house. Colonel Piquemalle was brought back through the garden mortally wounded, but the barricade was stormed'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.