The country obeyed, giving everything with passive blindness. The contingents were raised without difficulty; there were no refractory recruits in rural districts, although the gendarmerie were absent with the army; the Leagues had given way on the first remonstrance. There was only a movement on the 31st October. The Marseilles revolutionists, indignant at the weakness of their Municipal Council, proclaimed the Commune. Cluseret, who from Geneva had asked the "Prussian" Gambetta for the command of an army corps, appeared at Marseilles, got himself named general, again backed out and retired to Switzerland, his dignity forbidding him to serve as a simple soldier. At Toulouse, the population expelled the general. At Saint-Etienne the Commune existed for an hour. But everywhere a word sufficed to replace the authority in the hands of the Delegation; such was the apprehension of everybody of creating the slightest embarrassment. This abnegation only served the reactionists. The Jesuits, who resumed their intrigues, had been reinstated by Gambetta at Marseilles, whence the indignation of the people had expelled them. The delegate cancelled the suspension of papers that had published letters from Chambord and D'Aumale. He protected the judges who had formed part of the mixed commission, released the one who had decimated the department of the Var, and dismissed the prefect of Toulouse for having suspended the functions of another in the Haute-Garonne. The Bonapartists mustered again.[61] The prefect of Bordeaux, an ultra-moderate Liberal, asking for the authorization to arrest some of their ringleaders, Gambetta severely answered him, "These are practices of the Empire, not of the Republic." Cremieux, too, said, "The Republic is the reign of law." Then the Conservative Vendee arose. Monarchists, clericals, capitalists, waited for their time; cowering in their castles, all their strongholds remained intact; seminaries, tribunals, general councils, which for a long time the Delegation refused to dissolve _en masse_. They were clever enough to figure here and there in the field of battle, in order to preserve the appearance of patriotism. In a few weeks they had seen through Gambetta and found out the Liberal behind the Tribune. Their campaign was sketched, conducted from the beginning, by the only serious political tacticians whom France possesses--by the Jesuits, masters of the clergy. The arrival of M. Thiers provided the apparent chief.