to blow the fort up. Meanwhile, the Communard generals Cluseret and Napoléon La Cécilia reached Issy, where a battalion of about 200 men were occupying the village. The generals led them back to the fort, which the besiegers had not yet occupied since they suspected it was mined. When Cluseret returned to the city he was arrested. The fort was held for several more days. In May 1871 Raymond Adolphe Séré de Rivières directed the 2nd Corps of the Army of Versailles in the sieges of Fort d'Issy, Fort de Vanves and Fort de Montrouge. The army resumed the intense bombardment of Fort d'Issy. The army troops dug a trench through the Park of Issy between the fort and the city, and then sapped from this trench towards the north salient. The defenders abandoned the fort before the sap could reach the covered way. The fédérés abandoned Fort Issy on 8 May 1871 after fighting for two weeks. Fort Vanves fell on 13 May. The Versailles forces could now cause even greater damage to Paris and its defenses with gunfire from Forts Issy and Vanves. MacMahon's army worked its way systematically forward to the walls of Paris. On 20 May 1871 MacMahon's artillery batteries at Montretout, Mont-Valerian, Boulogne, Issy, and Vanves opened fire on the western neighborhoods of the city. Early in the morning of 22 May 1871 the Versailles army entered Paris by four gateways near the northwestern side of the Seine. South of the river engineers of De Cissey's troops broke through the fortifications at the Sèvres entrance. The defenders seem to have abandoned these defenses due to the heavy bombardment from Fort Issy and elsewhere. After bitter fighting the Commune was finally defeated by the government troops late in May 1871. The civil war left a legacy of profound distrust between the right and the left in France. Later history In 1871 Henri Félix Emmanuel Philippoteaux and his son Paul Philippoteaux produced a cyclorama depicting The Defence of the Fort d'Issy. This was a panoramic painting on the inside of a large cylinder designed to provide a viewer standing in the middle of the cylinder with a 360° view of the painting. The painting was three dimensional, with different canvasses and landscaping details, and was meant to immerse the viewer in the battle scene. The fortifications were not needed during World War I (1914–18), and the wall