On the 18th, in the evening, the Versaillese surprised the Federals of Cachan by approaching them with the cry of "Vive la Commune!" However, we succeeded in preventing their movement towards the Hautes-Bruyeres. The Dominican monks who from their convent gave signals to the enemy were arrested and taken to the Fort de Bicetre. _19th._--Despite the Versaillese approaches, our defence did not become more vigorous. The bastions 72 and 73 threw a few occasional shells upon the village and the fort of Issy. From the Point du Jour to the Porte-Maillot we had only the cannon of the Dauphine gate to answer the hundred Versaillese pieces and check their works in the Bois de Boulogne. A few barricades at the Bineau and Asnieres gates and the Boulevard d'Italie, two redoubts at the Place de la Concorde and Rue Castiglione, a moat in the Rue Royale and another at the Trocadero; this was all that the Council had done in seven weeks for the defence of the interior. There were no works at the Mont-Parnasse Station, the Pantheon, the Buttes Montmartre, where two or three pieces had been fired off on the 14th, only to kill our own men at Laval's. At the terrace of the Tuileries about twelve navvies sadly dug away at a useless fosse. The Committee of Public Safety could not, they said, find workmen, when they had 1,500 idlers at the Prince-Eugene Barracks, 100,000 sedentary guards, and millions of francs to hand. An iron will and firm direction might still have saved everything; and we were now in the period of coma, of immense lassitude. The competitions, quarrels, and intrigues had relaxed all energy. The Council occupied itself with details, with trifles. The Committee of Public Safety multiplied its romantic proclamations, which moved nobody. The Central Committee thought only of seizing upon a power it was unable to wield, and on the 19th announced itself administrator of the War Office. Its members had made so sure of their sway, that one of them by a decree inserted in the _Officiel_ ordered all the inhabitants of Paris to "present themselves at their homes within forty-eight hours," on pain of "having their rent-titles on the grand livre burnt." This was the pendant of the civic card. Our best battalions, decimated, abandoned to themselves, were but wrecks. Since the beginning of April we had lost 4,000 men, killed or wounded, and 3,500 prisoners. There now remained to us 2,000 men from Asnieres to Neuilly, 4,000 perhaps from La Muette to Petit-Vanves. The battalions designated for the posts of Passy were not there, or stayed in the houses far from the ramparts; many of their officers had disappeared. At the bastions 36 to 70, precisely at the point of attack, there were not twenty artillerists; the sentinels were absent.