The Government were at the Foreign Office, and, after the first reverses, M. Thiers had given the order to fall back with all the troops on the Champ-de-Mars. When he saw the desertion of the National Guards of the Centre, he declared that it was necessary to evacuate Paris. Several Ministers objected, wanted a few points to be guarded, the Hotel-de-Ville, its barracks occupied by the brigade Derroja, the Ecole Militaire, and that they should take a position on the Trocadero. The little man, quite distracted, would only hear of extreme measures. Leflo, who had almost been made a prisoner at the Bastille, vigorously supported him. It was decided that the whole town should be evacuated, even the forts on the south, restored by the Prussians a fortnight before. Towards three o'clock the popular battalions of the Gros Caillou marched past the Hotel-de-Ville, headed by drums and trumpets. The Council believed itself surrounded.[83] M. Thiers escaped by a back stair, and left for Versailles so out of his senses that at the bridge of Sevres he gave the written order to evacuate Mont-Valerien. At the self-same hour when M. Thiers ran away, the revolutionary battalions had not yet attempted any attack or occupied any official posts.[84] The aggression of the morning had surprised the Central Committee, as it had all Paris. The evening before they had separated as usual, giving themselves a rendezvous for the 18th, at eleven o'clock at night, behind the Bastille, at the school in the Rue Basfroi; the Place de la Corderie, actively watched by the police, no longer being safe. Since the 15th new elections had added to their numbers, and they had appointed a Committee of Defence. On the news of the attack, some ran to the Rue Basfroi, others applied themselves to raising the battalions of their quarters: Varlin at the Batignolles, Bergeret, recently named chef-de-legion, at Montmartre, Duval at the Pantheon, Pindy in the third arrondissement, Faltot in the Rue de Sevres. Ranvier and Brunel, without belonging to the Committee, were agitating Belleville and the tenth arrondissement. At ten o'clock a dozen members met together, overwhelmed with messages from all sides, and receiving from time to time some prisoners. Positive intelligence only came in towards two o'clock. They then drew up a kind of plan by which all the federalist battalions were to converge upon the Hotel-de-Ville, and then dispersed in all directions to transmit orders.[85]