At the ramparts the sad truth was discovered. Long files of guards re-entered by all the gates, and at six o'clock the only army outside Paris was the guards on the plateau de Chatillon. A few shells falling in their midst completed the disorder. Some of the men threatened Duval, who was making desperate efforts to keep them together. He remained, surrounded only by a handful of men, but always equally resolute. The whole night he, usually so taciturn, did not cease repeating, "I will not retreat." The next day at eight o'clock the plateau and the neighbouring villages were surrounded by the brigade Derroja and the division Pelle. "Surrender and your lives will be spared," General Pelle had told them. The Parisians surrendered. The Versaillese at once seized the soldiers fighting in the ranks of the Federals and shot them. The prisoners, between two lines of chasseurs, were sent on to Versailles, while their officers, bare-headed, their _galons_ torn off, were put at the head of the convoy. At Petit-Bicetre they met the general-in-chief, Vinoy. He commanded the officers to be shot, but the chief of the escort reminding him of General Pelle's promise, Vinoy said, "Is there a chief?" "Myself," said Duval, darting from the ranks. Another advanced: "I am the chief of Duval's staff." Then the commander of the volunteers of Montrouge placed himself by their side. "You are awful scoundrels," said Vinoy; and, turning to his officers, "Shoot them." Duval and his comrades disdained to reply, cleared a ditch, and leant against a wall on which were inscribed the words, "Duval, horticulturist." They undressed, and, crying "Vive la Commune," died for it. A horseman tore off Duval's boots and carried them about as a trophy,[113] and an editor of the _Figaro_ took possession of his blood-stained collar. Thus the army of order inaugurated the civil war by the massacre of the prisoners. It had begun on the 2nd; on the 3rd, at Chatou, General Gallifet had three Federals shot who were surprised in an inn taking their meal, and then he published a ferocious proclamation: "War has been declared by the bandits of Paris. They have assassinated my soldiers. It is a merciless war which I declare against these assassins. I had to make an example." The general who called the combatants of Paris "bandits" and these assassinations "an example" was a scamp of high life, first ruined, then kept by actresses. Famous for his brigandage in Mexico, he had in a few years obtained a generalship of brigade by the charms of his wife, prominent in the orgies of the Imperial court. Nothing is more edifying in this civil war than the standard-bearers of the "honest people."