These newly-elected republican councillors might have effectively counterbalanced the authority of Versailles; the advanced press encouraged them. The _Tribune_ of Bordeaux had the honour first to propose a congress of all the towns of France, for the purpose of terminating the civil war, assuring the municipal franchises, and consolidating the Republic. The municipal council of Lyons issued an identical programme, inviting all the municipalities to send delegates to Lyons. On the 4th May the delegates of the councils of the principal towns of the Herault met at Montpellier. The _Liberte_ of the Herault, in a warm appeal reproduced by fifty journals, convoked the departmental press to a congress. A common action was about to take the place of the incoherent agitations of the last few weeks. If the provinces understood their own strength, the time, their wants--if they found a group of men equal to the occasion, Versailles, taken between Paris and the departments, would have been obliged to capitulate to Republican France. M. Thiers, with a vivid presentment of the danger, affected the attitude of a strong Government, and energetically forbade the congresses. "The Government would betray the Assembly, France, civilisation," said the _Officiel_ of the 8th May, "if it allowed the assizes of Communism and of the rebellion to constitute themselves by the side of the regular power issued from universal suffrage." Picard, speaking from the tribune of the instigation of the congress, said, "Never was there a more criminal attempt than theirs. Outside the Assembly there exists no right." The procureurs-generaux and the prefects received the order to prevent all meetings. Some members of the _Ligue des Droits de Paris_ on their way to Bordeaux were arrested. More was not needed to frighten the Radicals. The organisers of the congress of Bordeaux held their peace; those of Lyons wrote a piteous address to Versailles, to the effect that they had only intended convoking an assembly of the notables. M. Thiers, having attained his object, disdained to prosecute them, even allowed the delegates of eighteen departments to draw up their grievances, and seriously declare that they "made that one of the two combatants responsible who should refuse their conditions." And yet they might feel proud. Their chief had done less. Gambetta had retired to Spain, to St. Sebastien, and there, mute, without a sign of sympathy for those who sacrificed themselves for the Republic, he in a cynical _far niente_ awaited the issue of the civil war.