by the government to remove cannons from the hill of Montmartre triggered riots and the National Assembly withdrew to the suburb of Versailles. Soon after the radical Paris Commune was formed. Civil war began when Thiers ordered the dissolution of the Paris National Guard, which was largely composed of working-class volunteers. The Communards fought the superior forces of the Versailles army for control of Paris throughout April and May 1871. 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. Mégy had shot dead a policeman who tried to arrest him for conspiracy. He was defended at his trial in Blois in August 1870 by Eugène Protot (1839–1921) and saved from the death sentence on a technicality. Instead he was sentenced to 15 years hard labour. He managed to obtain his freedom, and after trying to start uprisings in Bordeaux and Marseille returned to Paris on 13 April 1871. He was promoted to colonel and given command of Fort d'Issy on 18 April 1871. The Versailles army had huge resources to overcome Fort Issy, including 53 batteries of guns, 60 naval guns, 70 battalions of infantry, cavalry, gendarmes and chasseurs, 10 engineer companies and a large reserve. General Ernest Courtot de Cissey sent a message to Colonel Mégy, with the permission of Marshal Patrice de MacMahon, offering to spare the lives of the fort's defenders, and let them return to Paris with their belongings and weapons, if they surrendered the fort. 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. The fort was almost ruined. On the morning on 29 April 1871 Mégy telegraphed that the fort had been outflanked on the right and could not be held without a reinforcement of 2,000 men. 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. He appeared at headquarters in Paris soon after. Mégy claimed he had left the fort because he had only seventeen men left, but he had left a man with orders