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21 May: Army enters Paris

The final offensive on Paris by MacMahon's army began on Sunday, 21 May. On the front line in the southwest, soldiers camped just outside the city learned from an agent inside the walls that the National Guard had withdrawn from one section of the city wall at Point-du-Jour, and the fortifications were undefended. An army engineer crossed the moat and inspected the empty fortifications, and immediately telegraphed the news to Marshal MacMahon, who was with Thiers at Fort Mont-Valérien. MacMahon promptly gave orders, and two battalions passed through the fortifications without meeting resistance. The Versailles forces were able to swiftly capture the city gates of the Porte de Saint-Cloud, La Muette and the Porte de Versailles from inside. By four o'clock in the morning, fifty thousand soldiers had passed into the city, and advanced as far as the Champs-Élysées.

When he received the news from Dombrowski that the army was inside Paris, the Commune leader Delescluze refused to believe it, and refused to ring the bells to warn the city until the following morning. The trial of Gustave Cluseret, the former commander, was still going on at the Commune when they received the message from General Dombrowski that the army was inside the city. He asked for reinforcements and proposed an immediate counterattack. "Remain calm," he wrote, "and everything will be saved. We must not be defeated!". When they had received this news, the members of the Commune executive returned to their deliberations on the fate of Cluseret, which continued until eight o'clock that evening.

The first reaction of many of the National Guard was to find someone to blame, and Dombrowski was the first to be accused. Rumours circulated that he had accepted a million francs to give up the city. He was deeply offended by the rumours. They stopped when Dombrowski died two days later from wounds received on the barricades. His last reported words were: "Do they still say I was a traitor?"