Malakoff

Malakoff is a French commune in the department of Hauts-de-Seine in the Ile-de-France region, in the district of Antony, south of Paris.

The commune of Malakoff is located in a very close Parisian suburb: It borders the 14th arrondissement of Paris. It is located 5 km from the city centre. The communes bordering Malakoff are the following : To the north 14th arrondissement of Paris, to the south Châtillon, to the east Montrouge and to the west Vanves and Clamart. The surface area of the commune is 2.07 km². In 2017 the population was 30720.

The town of Malakoff, takes its name from the ultimate French victory in the Crimean War.

Malakoff was the name of a hill about 100 metres high in the eastern part of the city of Sevastopol. This name would come from a certain Michel Malakoff, a sailor whose house was on the side of this hill.

The structure, known in France as the Malakoff Tower, was actually a large fortress called by the Russians, Korniloff. The faces, depending on the configuration of the terrain, gave it a very irregular shape, having some analogy with a rectangle whose long sides were 300 meters long with walls ranging in thickness from 90 to 150 centimeters.

In the center of the fortress there was an old tower called the Malakoff tower. Its ground floor was completely covered by an earth embankment and armored. The name of this tower was finally extended by the French to the entire structure.

This fortress was erected at the top of Malakoff hill in the early 1850s to defend the city from a possible attack.

In May 1855 general Aimable Pélissier succeeded general François de Canrobert and became commander-in-chief of the French expeditionary force in the Crimea. The siege of Sebastopol had been going on for months. He gave the order to reinforce the pressure on the Russians of Sevastopol.

On 8 September, the French succeeded in seizing the fortified position of Malakoff thanks to an assault perfectly coordinated by General Patrice de Mac-Mahon. The fortress then became untenable and the Russians evacuated it after destroying its fortifications. Three days later, the city of Sevastopol finally surrendered.

Although Sevastopol was defended heroically and its attack would have cost the lives of many Allies, its fall would mark the beginning of Russia's defeat in the Crimean war.

Pélissier was rewarded for the capture of Malakoff by becoming the first Marshal of France of the Second Empire on September 12, 1855. He received the title of Duke of Malakoff.

**The taking of the Malakoff Tower by Horace Vernet 1858. Oil on canvas**

Horace Vernet (1789 -1863 ) with his oil on canvas painting reproduced the most glorious and decisive day of the Crimean War, a battle led by General Mac-Mahon.

At the top of the mound formed by the Malakoff redoubt, where the corpses of Russian soldiers and Zouaves lay among cannons and stakes, General Mac-Mahon, accompanied by his aides-de-camp, Colonel Lebrun and Captain Borel, spoke, pointing to the ground to an English officer who greeted him. In front of the group, Corporal Eugène Lihaut planted the General's flag, pierced with several bullet holes.

Shortly after the conflict, an entrepreneur by the name of Alexandre Chauvelot created an amusement park in Vanves dedicated to the Crimean War in which he reconstructed the Malakoff Tower in plaster. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood became accustomed to saying that they "lived in Malakoff". In 1883, the new commune was finally named after a separation from Vanves. The railway line linking Paris to Versailles, whose Vanves-Malakoff station was inaugurated the same year, determined this separation. The Malakoff tower was demolished in 1870 during the siege of Paris because of its use as a target by enemy gunners.

**The Malakoff Tower in the Attaction Park before 1870**

**3D Reconstruction of the Malakoff Tower on the exact location in today's Malakoff**
**Photo malakoff-patrimoine.fr/François Berthelot**

**11 novembre 1918 square and the City Hall**

Address: Ile de France, Hauts-de-Seine, Antony, Montrouge, 92240