On 18 March at 5am, 6,000 soldiers commanded by General Lecomte stormed the Butte Montmartre to retrieve the 171 cannons that the National Guard had stored at the top of the Butte to prevent them from being seized by the German army that was marching along the Champs-Elysées from¹ to 3 March. The guard, Turpin, who was guarding the cannons, was killed, despite an attempt by Doctor Georges Clemenceau, mayor of the 18th arrondissement, to save his life. It was the first death of the Commune.

The inhabitants of Montmartre, mostly women, rushed to the soldiers' front to prevent them from taking the cannons, which had been paid for by popular subscription from Parisians. The soldiers were hungry and thirsty, and the logistics had not kept up. The women offered the soldiers bread and milk.

As the situation dragged on, General Lecomte ordered his soldiers to fire on the crowd three times. The soldiers put their rifles in the air and fraternised with the population and the national guard. Their general was arrested and shot by his own soldiers, along with General Clément-Thomas in civilian clothes, who was known to have committed massacres in 1848.

Eugène Varlin(1839 - 1871), a bookbinder, internationalist and member of the AIT, was elected to the Commune council and was one of the most valiant Communards. He was arrested on 28 May and taken to be shot on the very spot where the generals died.

Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray describes his assassination in the following terms:

"At Place Cadet, he was recognised by a priest who ran to find an officer. Lieutenant Sicre grabbed Varlin, tied his hands behind his back and led him towards the Buttes where General de Laveaucoupet was standing. General de Laveaucoupet. Varlin, who had risked his life to save the hostages in the rue Haxo, was dragged for a long hour through the steep streets of Montmartre. Under the hail of blows, his meditative young head, which had never had anything but fraternal thoughts, became a jumble of flesh, his eye hanging out of its socket. When he arrived at the headquarters in the Rue des Rosiers, he could no longer walk, he was being carried. They sat him down to shoot him. The soldiers ripped his body apart with their rifle butts. Sicre stole his watch and made himself an ornament.

Varlin was not the only one to suffer this fate in the same place.It was still Lissagaray who reported the massacre committed by the Versaillais:

Forty-two men, three women and four children picked up at random were taken to No. 6 in the Rue des Rosiers, forced to bend their knees, bareheaded, before the wall at the foot of which the generals had been executed on 18 March. Then they were killed.
A woman holding her child in her arms refused to kneel and shouted to her companions, "Show these wretches that you know how to die standing up".