On 23 May 1871, the Versailles army attacked the Butte Montmartre from the north after the German armies had allowed it to cross their lines. Most of the Communards were waiting for them at the foot of the Butte on the south side.

Those protecting the north side were soon overwhelmed. There was one woman of great bravery whose name will remain unknown to us forever: the fédérée de l'impasse du Tertre.

"She was a beautiful girl from Montmartre, very much in love with her man, whose gold stripes as a Communard officer went to her head. When he fell behind the barricade where he was firing with his men, she, distraught with grief, rage and hatred in her heart against those who had killed the one she loved, put on her bloody uniform and fired at our soldiers, aiming especially at the officers.

As resistance became impossible, she did not want to flee with the others and remained alone, shooting. Finally, mortally wounded by a bullet to the throat, she instinctively dragged herself to the door of the little house they lived in together, in the Impasse du Tertre, and fell down expiring on the same pavement from which she had lived. The blood she vomited in torrents formed a gutter that ended at the mouth of the sewer" [ Le Courrier Français, 7 June 1885].

Her exceptional courage was sung by various Montmartre poets. Adolphe Willette painted a picture of him, which has now disappeared, but of which a photograph survives.