Early in the morning all the members of the National Guard of Passy and Auteuil were summoned to arms and ordered to assist the troops, and were specially enjoined to maintain order in their rear as they advanced. Numbers of Communist prisoners were taken by the troops as they worked their way forward, and upwards of 8,000 were despatched under a strong escort to Versailles. The order for the National Guard to assemble was received with intense satisfaction, the younger and unmarried men had been forced into the ranks of the Communists, but many had during the last day or two slipped away and remained in hiding, and all were anxious to prove that it was loyalty and not cowardice that had caused them to desert. Cuthbert was out all day watching, from points where he could obtain shelter from the flying bullets, the advance of the troops. When he returned he told Mary that everything was going on well so far, but he added, "The work is really only beginning; the barrier at the Place de la Concorde and the batteries on the terrace of the Tuileries are really formidable positions, and I hear that on the south side the advance has been entirely arrested by one of the barricades there. The Insurgents never intended to hold the outlying suburbs, and even the batteries on the Trocadero were built to aid the Forts and not for fighting inside the walls. You see every yard the troops gain now drives the Communists closer and closer together, and renders the defence more easy. It may be a week yet before the Commune is finally crushed. I should think that before the troops advance much further on this side they will storm Montmartre, whose batteries would otherwise take them in rear." The next day three divisions marched against Montmartre, and attacked it simultaneously on three sides. The Communists here who had throughout the siege been the loudest and most vehement in their warlike demonstrations, now showed that at heart they were cowards. Although their batteries were armed with over a hundred guns, they offered but a momentary resistance and fled, panic-stricken, in every direction, some thousands being taken prisoners by the troops. On the other hand, throughout the rest of Paris, the fighting became more and more severe and desperate. The Northern Railway Station was defended successfully throughout the day. On the south side of the river but little progress was made by the troops, and they remained stationary also in the Champs Elysees, the barriers in front being too strong to be stormed without frightful loss. These, however, would be turned by the divisions who had captured Montmartre, and the troops descending by different routes to the Boulevard des Italiennes, worked their way along as far as the Porte St. Denis, and this threatened the flank of the defenders of the Place de la Concorde and the Tuileries.