Henri Rochefort (1831-1913)

17th division, 1st line, 5

Director of the newspaper "La Marseillaise" and fiercely republican, he edited newspapers such as La Lanterne and Le Mot d'Ordre. He was deported to New Caledonia in 1873. After briefly sitting on the Government of National Defence, he supported the Paris Commune in his writings, albeit with reservations, without taking a direct part in its administration. Arrested after Bloody Week, he was deported and managed to escape in 1874 with 5 other deported Communards. On his return to France, he radically changed his political orientation, becoming a boulangiste and antidreyfusard.

François Nicolas Augustin Feyen-Perrin (1826 – 1888)

18th division OpenStreetMap

François Nicolas Augustin Feyen-Perrin was a painter, engraver and illustrator, renowned for his scenes of Breton life and realistic portraits. A friend of Gustave Courbet, he was involved in the Federation of Artists during the Paris Commune, taking part in the Federal Commission of Artists elected on 17 April 1871. Along with other members, he was responsible for looking after the Musée de Cluny, embodying the artists' commitment to collective, democratic management of culture under the Commune. Despite his committed past, he was awarded the Légion d'honneur in 1878 and remained respected in republican circles.

Élie Henri May (1842 – 1930)

This tomb is particularly difficult to locate. To find it, walk towards the end of Division 3, down the Avenue Cordier. Take the small staircase that leads to the upper level; on the first level, turn towards the inside of the division and after a few metres take the path that opens up on your right; there are around 33 graves and you will find it on the right-hand side.

3rd division, Israelites

A sergeant in the 204th battalion of the Garde Nationale during the Siege, he was appointed director of the Manufacture des Tabacs after 18 March. After the bloody week, Élie fled to New York. He arrived there with his brother at the beginning of September 1871. In 1918 he succeeded Dr. Edmond Goupil as president of the "Association fraternelle des anciens combattants et amis de la Commune", which he ran until his death in 1930.

Louise Michel's hiding place

5th division, 1st line

Fighting against Versailles troops in Montmartre cemetery, Louise Michel found refuge behind some tombs:

We already had wounded, and it was very difficult for me to get back, so I went to reconnoitre in spite of my comrades. A shell falling through the trees covered me with flowering branches which I shared between two graves, that of Mlle Poulin and that of Murger, whose genius seemed to be throwing flowers at us.

And elsewhere she describes the last battles in the cemetery:

"I went with the detachment of the 61st to the Montmartre cemetery, where we took up our positions. (...) Night had come, and there were a handful of us, all determined. Some shells came at regular intervals; it sounded like the ticking of a clock, the clock of death. On this clear night, perfumed with the scent of flowers, the marble seemed to be alive. (...) With the red flag at their head, the women had passed through; they had their barricade in the Place Blanche, where Elisabeth Dmitrieff, Madame Le Mel, Malvina Poulain, Blanche Lefebvre and Excoffon were (...). More than ten thousand women in the days of May, scattered or together, fought for freedom (...) Some of them, mistaken for oilmen, were shot on the spot with the others".

Charles Fourier (1772 – 1837)

23rd division, 2nd line

Charles Fourier, a French philosopher, was one of the pioneers of utopian socialism. Fourier proposed a reorganisation of society based on cooperation and the free expression of human passions, thanks to model communities called "phalansteries" where work became pleasure and each person chose his or her activities according to taste. A visionary, he set out to abolish wage-labour, promote the emancipation of women and defend a collective and egalitarian organisation of work.

Although he died in 1837, Fourier was an inspiration for certain committees of the Paris Commune in 1871, particularly in the fields of education and social organisation, where his ideas of cooperation, labour reform and the integral development of the individual influenced sectors such as art education and community practices. Some members of the Commune and workers' circles claimed the Fourierist heritage in their plans for social and educational reform. Communities inspired in part by Fourierism still exist today in France and elsewhere.

Pierre Ulysse Parent

9th division, 2nd row

To find Parent's grave: from Chemin Lepage, take Chemin Saint-Nicolas and follow the second row of graves on your right. Ulysse Parent's grave is number 44 in this row.

Pierre Ulysse Parent was a painter, illustrator and republican activist. The son of a watchmaker and a pupil of Drolling, he exhibited regularly at the Salon from 1870 to 1879. An opponent of the Second Empire, he became actively involved during the siege of Paris and became deputy mayor of the 9th arrondissement. On 26 March he was elected to the council of the Commune in the same arrondissement, but resigned on 5 April. However, he continued to support the Commune through his activism, particularly within Freemasonry. Arrested after the Semaine Sanglante, he was acquitted and went on to pursue a career as an elected republican and defender of artists, helping to bring Dalou's project for the Triomphe de la République to a successful conclusion.

Philippe (Filippo) Buonarroti (1761-1837)

12th division, 1st line (terreplein)

Buonarroti was a naturalised French Italian revolutionary and descendant of Michelangelo's brother. Involved in the French Revolution, he campaigned for radical equality and collective property, influenced by Rousseau and egalitarian thinkers. Having taken part in Babeuf's Conjuration des Egaux, he became one of the first theoreticians of communism, advocating the abolition of private property in favour of a community of goods. Throughout his life, he led secret societies and revolutionary networks across Europe, inspired Charbonnerie and, in 1828, published his major work on Babeuf, which influenced French and international socialism.
Buonarroti was a key figure in the egalitarian and revolutionary tradition in Paris: his work and ideas inspired some of the socialist and egalitarian currents present in the Paris Commune, particularly the Babouvists and Blanquists, who saw him as a precursor of the social revolutions and the fight for real equality.

Mass graves

As was the case for other Parisian cemeteries, Montmartre also had its share of massacres and hasty burials in mass graves, the size and memory of which bear witness to the scale of Versailles' repression during Bloody Week. Here, on the vast plot of land known at the time as the "field of turnips", the street battles and barricades ended in a collective tragedy: more than 4,000 bodies, federates and civilians alike, were buried in a jumble, in a pit nearly a hundred metres long and five metres wide, with the bodies lined up three rows high. Official figures, taken from the cemetery registers, put the number of anonymous deaths at 1,248, but contemporary estimates put the number of victims much higher, not least because many of the bodies collected from neighbouring districts and even as far away as Parc Monceau were brought here. As the boundaries of the cemetery have been altered, the location of these mass graves is now largely outside the current cemetery, notably beneath the site of the Bretonneau hospital.

This silent place was also the site of a memorial injustice: the Versailles authorities secretly buried Charles Delescluze, a major figure in the Commune and delegate for War, who was shot dead on 25 May on a barricade in the Place du Château d'Eau (now Place de la République). His body was dumped in a mass grave in Montmartre, to prevent it becoming a symbol of resistance and a place of remembrance for the survivors. Years later, Delescluze's remains were identified and transferred to Père-Lachaise, where his grave is today.

This part of the cemetery, with no monuments or plaques, is a rare reminder of the political violence that swept through Paris in 1871. In the tumult of the final days, fighting raged around the graves, causing extensive damage and a chaotic atmosphere. To preserve the memory of the dead, some survivors humbly planted flowers or made simple gestures to honour those of whom no individual trace remained.