From 1870 onwards, Paris experienced a troubled period with the war against Prussia, the defeat, and the Commune uprising. The conservatives in the National Assembly bloodily quashed the insurrection and then decided that moral order should reign in the country. The vow of Alexandre Legentil and his brother-in-law Hubert Rohault de Fleury to ask God for forgiveness through the construction of a Basilique du Sacré-Cœur was timely. The choice of the Butte Montmartre, the site of the popular uprising of the Commune, is not without correlation either. The insurrection was briefly mentioned at the laying of the foundation stone in 1875.