All their swaggering of the evening before had only been meant to frighten Paris, to encourage the men of order, and provoke a _coup-de-main_. The incident had occurred, but the Central Committee triumphed. For the first time M. Thiers began to believe that this Committee, able to repress a riot, might after all be a Government. The news in the evening was more reassuring. The fusillade seemed to have roused the _men of order_. They were flocking to the Place de la Bourse. A great many officers just returned from Germany came to offer their help. The reactionary companies were establishing themselves solidly in the mairie of the ninth arrondissement and reoccupying that of the sixth, dislodging the Federals of the station of St. Lazare, guarding all the approaches of the occupied quarters, and forcibly arresting the passers-by. They formed a town within the town. The mayors were constituting a permanent committee in the mairie of the second arrondissement. Their resistance was now provided with an army. FOOTNOTES: [96] The aggression was so evident, that not one of the twenty court-martials that searched into every detail of the revolution of the 18th March dared allude to the affair of the Place Vendome. [97] Their names were published in the _Journal Officiel_. CHAPTER VII. THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE TRIUMPHS OVER ALL OBSTACLES AND CONSTRAINS THE MAYORS TO CAPITULATE. The Central Committee was equal to the occasion. Its proclamations, its Socialist articles in the _Officiel_, the truculence of the mayors and deputies, had at last rallied round it all the revolutionary groups. It had also added to its members some men better known to the masses.[98] By its order the Place Vendome was provided with barricades; the battalions of the Hotel-de-Ville were reinforced; strong patrols remounted the boulevards before the reactionary posts of the Rues Vivienne and Drouot. Thanks to it, the night passed tranquilly. As the elections on the next day had become impossible, the Committee declared they could only take place on the 26th, and said to Paris: "The reaction, excited by your mayors and your deputies, has declared war on us. We must accept the struggle and break this resistance." It announced that it would summon before it all the journalists libelling the people. It sent a battalion of Belleville to reoccupy the mairie of the sixth, and replaced by its delegates the mayors and adjuncts of the third, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and eighteenth arrondissements, in spite of their protestations. M. Clemenceau wrote that he yielded to force, but would not himself resort to force. This was all the more magnanimous that his whole force consisted of himself and his adjunct. The Federals installed themselves at the Batignolles on the railway lines, and stopped the trains, thus preventing the occupation of the St. Lazare station. Lastly, the Committee proceeded energetically against the Bourse.