The reactionary journals made much ado about this retreat. Paris was stirred by it. This fierce obstinacy of the combat began to open the eyes of the optimists. Till then many persons believed it all some dreadful misunderstanding and formed groups of conciliation. How many thousands in Paris failed to understand the plan of M. Thiers and the coalition till the day of the final massacre! On the 4th April some manufacturers and tradesmen had created the _National Union of the Syndical Chambers_, and taken for their programme, maintenance and enfranchisement of the Republic, acknowledgment of the municipal franchises of Paris. The same day, in the Quartier des Ecoles, professors, doctors, lawyers, engineers, and students placarded a manifesto demanding a democratic and laical Republic, an autonomous Commune and the federation of the communes. An analogous group placarded a letter to M. Thiers: "You believe in a riot, and you find yourself brought face to face with precise and universal convictions. The immense majority of Paris demands the Republic as a right superior to all discussion. Paris has seen in the whole conduct of the Assembly the premeditated design of re-establishing the monarchy." Some dignitaries of the Freemason lodges appealed at once to Versailles and to the Council: "Stop the effusion of such precious blood." Finally, a certain number of those mayors and adjuncts who had not capitulated till the eleventh hour, like Floquet, Corbon, Bonvalet, &c., pompously got up the _Republican Union League for the Rights of Paris_. Now they asked for the recognition of the Republic, the right of Paris to govern herself, and the custody of the town exclusively confided to the National Guard; all that the Commune had wanted--all that they had contented against from the 19th to the 25th of March. Other groups were forming. All agreed on two points--the consolidation of the Republic and the recognition of the rights of Paris. Almost all the Communal journals reproduced this programme, and the Republican journals accepted it. The deputies of Paris were the last to speak, and then only to fall foul of Paris. In that lachrymose and Jesuitical tone with which he has travestied history,[120] in those long-winded sentimental periods which serve to mask the aridity of his heart and the pettiness of his mind, that king of gnomes, Louis Blanc, wrote in the name of his colleagues: "Not one member of the majority has as yet questioned the Republican principle.... As to those engaged in the insurrection, we tell them that they ought to have shuddered at the thought of aggravating, of prolonging the scourge of the foreign occupation by adding thereto the scourge of civil discords."