The League, thus well whipped, went on the 14th to the Hotel-de-Ville. The Council, foreign to all these negotiations, left them entirely free, and had only forbidden a meeting announced at the Bourse by ill-disguised Tirards. It contented itself with opposing to the League its declaration of the 10th: "You have said that if Versailles remained deaf all Paris would rise. Versailles has remained deaf; arise." And to make Paris the judge, the Council loyally published in its _Officiel_ the report of the conciliators. FOOTNOTES: [119] Out of 400 pieces cast by Paris during the siege, the Government of the National Defence only accepted forty, on the pretence that the others were imperfect.--Vinoy, _Siege de Paris_, p. 287. [120] Sometimes even to falsification. In his account of the 9th Thermidor, he makes Barrere say to Billaud-Varennes, "Do _not_ attack Robespierre;" and on the strength of this expatiates on the greatness of his hero. Now, the report of Courtois that he quotes, hoping, no doubt, that no one would examine the accuracy of the statement, says, "Attack _only_," and not "Do _not_ attack." [121] It seems there was a split in the League. The Radicals, Floquet, Corbon, &c., disapproved of this semi-commanding attitude, and boasted of it later on before the Committee of Inquiry into the 18th March; but during the Commune they made no public protest against this address. CHAPTER XVI. THE MANIFESTO OF THE COUNCIL--THE COMPLEMENTARY ELECTIONS OF THE 16TH APRIL SHOW A MINORITY WITHIN THE COUNCIL--FIRST DISPUTES--THE GERMS OF DEFEAT. For the second time the situation was distinctly marked out. If the Council did not know how to define the Commune, was it not in the most unmistakable manner, and before the eyes of all Paris, declared to mean a camp of rebels by the fighting, the bombardment, the fury of the Versaillese, and the rebuff of the conciliators? The complementary elections of the 16th April--death, double election returns, and resignations had given thirty-one vacant seats--revealed the effective forces of the insurrection. The illusion of the 26th March had vanished; the votes were now taken under fire. Also the journals of the Commune and the delegates of the Syndical Chambers in vain summoned the electors to the ballot-box. Out of 146,000 who had mustered in these arrondissements at the election of the 26th March, there came now only 61,000. The arrondissements of the councillors who had deserted their seats gave 16,000 instead of 51,000 votes.