Opposite 46 Rue Gérard, a quiet street, facing a small detached house typical of the Butte-aux-Cailles neighbourhood.

18 March 1871 in the 13th arrondissement

On 18 March 1871, Émile Duval led the uprising in the 13th arrondissement.

At 9.30 am, blank cannon shots were fired to call for a riot following the army’s attempted coup to retake the cannons in Montmartre and elsewhere. Émile Duval had 15 cannons positioned in front of the 13th arrondissement town hall and recruited young people to erect a barricade and dig a trench on Rue Godefroy (to protect the town hall). In this arrondissement, no fewer than 44 barricades were erected in an orderly and calm manner.

The police commissioners were arrested by the National Guard, and Duval had the Jardin des Plantes, Paris-Orléans station and the Say sugar factory occupied. He then received orders to seize the police headquarters on the Île de la Cité and the Notre-Dame bridge in order to advance towards the Hôtel de Ville. Duval then returned to the 13th arrondissement and had several generals, discovered at the Paris-Orléans station, arrested and imprisoned to prevent them from being shot on the spot. Rigault and Duval were confirmed in their military and prefectural posts by the Central Committee of the National Guard.

Émile Duval is in favour of marching on Versailles immediately and demands that the Central Committee take Mont-Valérien before 20 March, but he is rebuffed and tasked with guarding the Sainte-Pélagie prison. Meanwhile, General Vinoy of the Versailles army, aware of the strategic importance of the high ground south of Paris, immediately occupied Mont-Valérien, Fort Bicêtre and Les Hautes-Bruyères in Villejuif.

The election of the members of the Commune took place on 26 March. In the 13th arrondissement, a third of registered voters cast their ballots and overwhelmingly elected Meillet, Duval (around 6,000 votes), Chardon and Frankel (4,000 votes). Blanqui received only 190 votes. The Conservatives abstained en masse. According to Gérard Conte (a specialist in the history of the 13th arrondissement), this result suggests that there were probably instructions on how to vote, as Frankel, a Hungarian, was unknown in the 13th at that time: he did not live in the neighbourhood and had never come there to speak.

The death of Émile Duval

On 3 April, a large sortie by the National Guard was organised and Émile Duval took the lead of the column marching up to the Châtillon plateau. However, on the morning of the 4th, surrounded on all sides, he surrendered and was taken prisoner, along with his men, by General Pellé on condition that their lives would be spared, which the general accepted.

General Vinoy, arriving on the scene, asked: “Who are the officers?” Émile Duval stepped forward with his chief of staff and identified himself, and despite the promises made earlier, they were, on Vinoy’s orders, shot on the spot.

Léo Frankel secured the Commune’s approval to rename Place d’Italie as ‘Place Émile Duval’, and the wife of a National Guard soldier asked for her newborn to be christened ‘Duval’. ‘But he is not a saint,’ said the priest. ‘But he is a martyr, and he will be proud to bear his name.’

Today, a plaque dedicated to his name, unveiled in September 2025, is affixed to the pediment of the 13th arrondissement town hall.