After the events of the 27th, Prince Gortchakof called his officers and chief functionaries together. The Archbishop soon appeared, complaining of the violation of the churches; and there came also several dignitaries of the town, who had held a meeting at the house of one of the principal bankers, M. Kronenberg. There was likewise Count Zamoyski himself, with two other delegates of the Agricultural Society, MM. Ostrowski and Poloçki, all holding discourses, of which the tenor was mournful and proud. Prince Gortchakof did not disguise from himself either the gravity of the situation, or the odium of the part assigned to the army. What is more, he absolutely denied having given the pitiless orders which had just been executed, and he let fall a curious expression as he did so. ‘Do you,’ he said, ‘take me for an Austrian? I have given one order, and one only, and that is, that even on the production of an order signed by my own hand, the citadel is not to be given up to you.’ What was most essential at this moment was to appease wrath, to calm men’s minds, and to efface the late bloodshed. Prince Gortchakof showed himself ready for the most important transactions. He was ready to dismiss the head of the police, Colonel Trepow; ready for an enquiry into the conduct of General Zabolotsky; to withdraw the military to their barracks till the victims of the 27th had been buried; and also to create a Commission of Public Safety, under the auspices of Count Zamoyski, with the concurrence of a Russian much esteemed and honoured in Warsaw, Marquis Paulueri. He accepted the offer of the students to act as the police of the town; and by that evening an address to the Emperor was in general circulation. Thousands of signatures were rapidly affixed to this document, which was the energetic expression of the griefs and of the wishes of the Polish nation. ‘Our nation,’ it declared, ‘which used to be governed by liberal institutions, has, for the last sixty years, endured the cruellest sufferings. Without any organ for sending up to your throne the expression of our pains and of our need, we are forcibly constrained to have no other utterances than the cries of those martyrs which are daily offered as a holocaust. A country, once the centre of civilisation to its neighbours of the West, cannot, also, develope itself, either morally or physically, while its Church, its legislature, its public education, and its whole social organisation, do not bear the stamp of its national genius and of its historical traditions.’ The signatures of the Archbishop and of the Grand Rabbi headed this address; and those Poles who were in Government offices, as well as the Marshals of the nobility, tendered their resignations, in order to join in the manifestation.