Meanwhile the Prussians came nearer and nearer. On the 10th, they entered Laon, and General Hame, who was in command, surrendered the citadel in order to save the city. On that day the Republican Government issued an order to all owners of provisions and forage in the neighbourhood to move their goods into the capital. On the 18th the Crown Prince and the third army were at Chaumes, and two days later the long march of the Prussians was ended. The Crown Prince took up his headquarters at Versailles. The _Daily News_ correspondent, Archibald Forbes, who had accompanied the third army from Wörth to Sedan, and from Sedan to Paris, informed Fleet Street that: "The fortune of war has brought the Prussians to the Hampton Court of the French capital--has placed them at the very gates of {128} Paris. I need say no further word to make the situation more striking. Here are the dark blue uniforms and the spiked helmets in the stately avenues of Versailles. The barracks of the Imperial Guard give ample quarters to King William's soldiery, and there have been found immense stores of hay and oats which will make the Prussian horses fat, if only rest enough be given them for feeding." From that day until the end of the siege no regular mail went out of Paris. Balloons and pigeons carried the news of the imprisoned inhabitants into the provinces and beyond the seas. Sometimes a letter would be successfully fixed between the double soles of a crafty man's boots,[6] who would, on some pretext or another, succeed in making his way through the Prussian lines, or a note would be rolled up into a ball and be concealed in a pot of pomade and so proceed in unctuous quiet on its way out of the prison into the open. Henry Labouchere, some twenty-five years later, described how he managed to get his letters to the _Daily News_.[7] "More of my letters reached their destination, I believe, than those of other correspondents. The reason was this. The correspondents waited on Jules Favre, and asked him to afford them facilities for sending their letters. He kindly said that he would, and told us that whenever a balloon started we might give them, made up in a parcel, to the man in charge, who would make it his business to transmit them {129} to their destination so soon as the balloon touched land outside. There was a complacent smile on his countenance when we gratefully accepted this offer that led me to suspect that, whatever might happen to the letters, they were not likely to reach the newspaper offices to which they were addressed, unless they lauded everything. So, instead of falling a victim to this confidence trick, I placed my letters under cover to a friend in London, and put them into a post-box, calculating that, as each balloon took out about twenty thousand letters, those posted in the ordinary way would not be opened."