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Between September 1870 and the end of May 1871, Paris was under a double siege, laid at first by the German armies, then by the army from Versailles. During this period, the city had to deal with the major crisis of overmortality. This forced the municipal administration of the cemeteries and the funeral director of Paris to break with hygiene and public health standards and to hurt Parisians’ sensibility and their “veneration of the dead.” This article is based on the archives of Parisian ceme­teries and on the papers published by Léon Vafflard, the funeral director of Paris. These data shed light on the new attitudes of contemporary French people towards mass graves and different means of burial in an urban context. They also help to re-evaluate the importance of the years 1870-1871, which are increasingly being viewed as a major crossroads in contemporary French history.