At this moment the Versaillese occupied the bastion 16. At mid-day the rumour spread that the troops were issuing by the Rue de Paris and the ramparts. A crowd of men and women, driven from their houses by the shells, beset the gate of Romainville, asking with loud cries to be allowed to flee into the neighbouring fields. At one o'clock the drawbridge was lowered in order to give passage to some Freemasons who had been to the German authorities to ask them whether they would allow free passage to the fugitives. The crowd dashed out and dispersed in the houses of the Village des Lilas. Some women and children attempting to push on further and to cross the barricade thrown up in the middle of the road, the sergeant of gendarmerie of Romainville threw himself upon them, crying to the Prussians, "Fire! come, fire on this _canaille_!" A Prussian soldier fired, wounding a woman. Meanwhile the drawbridge had been raised. About four o'clock Colonel Parent, on horseback, and preceded by a trumpet, dared on his own authority to go and ask the Prussian troops for permission to pass. Useless degradation. The officer answered that he had no orders, and that he would refer to St. Denis. The same day the member of the Council, Arnold, who still believed in an American intervention, went to take a letter for Mr. Washburne to the German outposts. He was conducted from one officer to another, received rather rudely, and sent back with the promise that his letter would be forwarded to the ambassador. Near two o'clock several Versaillese battalions, having swept the strategic route, reached the Rue de Crimee by the Rue des Lilas and the open grounds of the fortifications, but were stopped in the Rue de Bellevue. From the Place du Marche three cannon joined their fire to that of the Place des Fetes in order to protect the Buttes Chaumont. These pieces were the whole day served by only five artillerists, their arms bare, without witnesses, needing neither chief nor orders. At five o'clock the cannon of the Buttes were silent, having no more munitions, and their gunners rejoined the skirmishers of the Rues Menadier, Fessart, and Des Annelets. At five o'clock Ferre brought up to the Rue Haxo the line soldiers of the Prince Eugene Barracks, removed since Wednesday to the prison of La Petite Roquette, which had just been evacuated, as also the Grande Roquette. The crowd looked at them, not uttering a single threat, for they felt no hatred to the soldiers, who belong, like themselves, to the people. They were quartered in Belleville church. Their arrival caused a fatal diversion. The people ran up to see them pass, and the Place des Fetes was dismantled. The Versaillese came up, occupied it, and the last defenders of the Buttes fell back on the Faubourg du Temple and the Rue de Paris.