All this time the battalions were marching up and down crying "Vive Paris!" Popular orators harangued them, and the club, apprehensive of an imminent explosion, sent Gaston Crémieux, Bouchet, and Frayssinet, to ask the prefect to break up the ranks and communicate the despatches from Paris. The delegates were discussing with Cosnier, when a terrific clamour rose from without. The prefecture was besieged.
At four o'clock the battalions, on foot for six hours, had moved, headed by their drums. Twelve or thirteen thousand men having debouched through the Cannebière and the Rue St. Ferréol, drew up before the prefecture. The delegates of the club tried to parley, when a shot was fired, and the crowd, rushing into the prefecture, arrested the prefect, his two secretaries, and General Ollivier. Gaston Crémieux appeared on the balcony, spoke of the rights of Paris, and recommended the maintenance of order. The crowd cheered, but still continued to enter and ask for arms. G. Crémieux had two columns formed and sent them to the iron works of Menpenti, whose guns were surrendered.
During this tumult a Commission of six members was formed: G. Crémieux, Job, Etienne, a street-porter, Maviel, a shoemaker, Gaillard, a mechanic, and Allerini, who deliberated in the midst of the crowd. G. Crémieux proposed setting at liberty the prisoners just made, but from all sides they cried, "Keep them as sureties." The Admiral was conducted into a neighbouring room, closely watched, and—strange mania of all these popular movements—asked for his resignation. Cosnier, quite out of his latitude, signed what he was asked for.[106]
The Commission placarded that all the powers were concentrated in its hands, and feeling the necessity of strengthening itself, invited the municipal council and the club of the National Guard to send three delegates each. The council named David Bosc, Desservy, and Sidore; the club, Bouchet, Cartoux, and Fulgéras. The next day they made a moderate proclamation: "Marseilles has wished to prevent the civil war provoked by the circulars of Versailles. Marseilles will support a regularly constituted Republican Government sitting in the capital. The Departmental Commission, formed with the concourse of all Republican groups, will watch over the Republic till a new authority emanating from a regular Government sitting at Paris relieves it."
The names of the municipal council and of the club reassured the middle-class. The reactionists continued drawing in their horns, and the army had evacuated the town during the night. Leaving the prefect in the trap into which he had thrust him, the coward Espivent, on the investment of the prefecture, went to hide himself at the mistress's of a commander of the National Guard named Spir, on whom he afterwards conferred the knighthood of the Legion of Honour for this service to moral order. At midnight he sneaked off and rejoined the troops, who, without hindrance from the people, lulled into security by its victory, reached the village of Aubagne, about seventeen kilometres from Marseilles.
Thus Marseilles was entirely in the hands of the people. The victory was even too complete for heads prone to exultation. That "city of the sun" is not propitious to soft tints; its sky, its fields, its men all affect crude colours. On the 24th the civil guards hoisted the red flag and already deemed the Commission too lukewarm. Sidore, Desservy, and Fulgéras, regardless of their duty, kept aloof from the prefecture; Cartoux had gone to Paris for information, and so the whole burden weighed upon Bosc and Bouchet, who, with Gaston Crémieux, strove to regularise the movement. Having said that the red flag was inopportune, the detention of the hostages useless, they soon became suspected and menaced. On the evening of the 24th, Bouchet, quite discouraged, gave in his resignation, but, on G. Crémieux' complaint to the club of the National Guard, consented to resume his post.
These disagreements were already bruited about the town, and on the 25th the Commission was obliged to announce that "the most perfect accord united it with the municipal council." But the latter on the same day declared itself the only existing power, and called upon the National Guard to rouse from apathy. Trimming between the reaction and the people, it began that miserable play that was to end in ignominy.
While the Liberals were imitating the Tirards and the deputies of the extreme Left, to whom Dufaure referred in his despatches, Espivent in every point copied General Thiers. He had rifled all the administrative departments of Marseilles. The treasury office of the garrison had been shuffled off to Aubagne. Fifteen hundred Garibaldians of the army of the Vosges and soldiers who were rejoining their depots in Africa were left without bread, without pay, without feuilles-de-routes, and would have remained without refuge if Gaston Crémieux and Bouchet had not caused a provisional quartermaster to be named by the council. Thanks to the Commission, those who had shed their blood for France received bread and shelter. Gaston Crémieux said to them in an address, "You will remember when the time comes, the fraternal hand that we have held out to you." He was a gentle enthusiast, who beheld the revolution under rather a bucolic aspect.
On the 26th the isolation of the Commission became more obvious. No one armed against it, but no one joined it. Almost all the mayors of the department refused to placard its proclamations, and at Arles a manifestation in favor of the red flag miscarried. The fiery spirits at the prefecture did nothing to explain the import of the flag which they had unfurled, and, in the midst of this dull calm, in view of Marseilles looking on curiously, it hung from the campanile of the prefecture motionless and mute as an enigma.