January the barracks in Fort Issy were set on fire. Three of the four barracks in the interior of the fort were burnt and one was breached and made uninhabitable. By 14 January 1871 Fort Issy had almost stopped firing. On 16 January a Prussian battery began to demolish the casemates in the fort. On 25 January 1871 the French tried to build earthworks in and around Fort Issy under cover of fog, but were stopped. By the end of the bombardment the powder magazines had not been breached, although in one place the arch was exposed. 5 of the 19 casemates in the southwest curtain had been breached and the others damaged by fire from the short 24 pounder guns. 17 guns were dismounted. The embrasures had been destroyed. The Germans did not attempt systematic breaching operations, so the damage to the fort was caused by random shots. However, the "Park Battery" of Issy, outside the fort, was very hard to hit, and it was impossible to silence a mortar battery behind the railway embankment between Fort Issy and Fort Vanves. The guns outside the fort had proved to be more secure than those within it. During the bombardment the garrison of Fort Issy suffered on average 8 casualties per day. The greatest number of casualties in one day was three killed and eight wounded, but there were also losses from desertion. Bad mounting of the guns, poor gunnery and poor overall handling of the forts' artillery, meant that on the entire southern front the Germans lost just 50 men killed and 281 wounded, while they fired about 60,000 rounds. King William of Prussia accepted the title of Emperor on 18 January 1871 in a ceremony in the Hall of Mirrors of Versailles. A three-day armistice was declared on 28 January 1871, under which all the Paris forts would be surrendered and the main enceinte disarmed. On the morning of 29 January Fort Issy was occupied by the Prussian V corps. In February 1871 Adolphe Thiers, head of the French national government, signed an armistice with Otto von Bismarck, Prime Minister of Prussia. The agreement was ratified by the National Assembly in March 1871 and in May 1871 signed as the Treaty of Frankfurt. Paris Commune In March 1871 there was mounting tension between the conservative National Assembly and the working class Parisians. On 18 March 1871 an attempt