When all Paris cried to them, "Defend us; drive back the enemy," they applauded, accepted, but said to themselves, "You shall capitulate." There is no more crying treason in history. The asinine confidence of the immense majority no more diminishes the crime than the foolishness of the dupe excuses the cheater. Did the men of the 4th September, yes or no, betray the mandate they received? "Yes," will be the verdict of the future. A tacit mandate, it is true, but so clear, so formal, that all Paris started at the news of the proceedings at Ferrieres. If the Defenders had gone a step farther, they would have been swept away. They were obliged to adjourn, to give way to what they termed the "madness of the siege," to simulate a defence. In point of fact, they did not abandon their idea for an hour, esteeming themselves the only men in Paris who had not lost their heads. "There shall be fighting since those Parisians will have it so, but only with the view to soften Bismarck." On his return from the review, this scene of hopeful enthusiasm manifested by 250,000 armed men is said to have affected Trochu, who announced that it would perhaps be possible to hold the ramparts.[11] Such was the maximum of his enthusiasm: to hold out--not to open the gates. As to drilling or organising these 250,000 men, uniting them with the 240,000 mobiles, soldiers and marines gathered together in Paris, and with all these forces forming a powerful scourge to drive the enemy back to the Rhine, of this he never dreamt. His colleagues thought of it as little, and only discussed with him the more or less cavilling they might venture upon with the Prussian invader.