The adhesion and convocation of the mayors dissipating all scruple, also made the bourgeois quarters vote. The elections became legal since plenipotentiaries of the Government had given their consent. Two hundred and eighty-seven thousand men voted, relatively a far greater number than in the elections of February; for since the opening of the gates after the siege, a great part of the easy classes had rushed to the provinces there to recruit their health.
The elections were conducted in a way becoming a free people. At the approach to the halls, no police, no intrigues. And yet M. Thiers dared telegraph to the provinces: "The elections will take place to-day without liberty and without moral authority." The liberty was so absolute that in all Paris not one single protestation occurred.
The moderate papers even commended the articles of the _Officiel_, in which the delegate Longuet set forth the part of the future Communal Assembly: "Above all, it must define its mandate, fix the boundaries of its attributes. Its first work must be the discussion and the drawing up of its charter. This done, it must consider the means of having that statute of the municipal autonomy recognised and guaranteed by the central power." The plainness, the prudence, the moderation which marked all official acts was beginning to move the most obdurate. Only the hatred of the Versaillese did not abate. That same day M. Thiers cried from the tribune, "No, France will not let those wretches triumph who would drown her in blood."
The next day 200,000 "wretches" came to the Hôtel-de-Ville there to instal their chosen representatives, the battalion drums beating, the banners surmounted by the Phrygian cap and with red fringe round the muskets; their ranks, swelled by soldiers of the line, artillerists, and marines faithful to Paris, came down from all the streets to the Place de Gréve like the thousand streams of a great river. In the middle of the Hôtel-de-Ville, against the central door, a large platform was raised. Above it towered the bust of the Republic, a red scarf slung round it. Immense red streamers beat against the frontal and the belfry, like tongues of fire announcing the good news to France. A hundred battalions thronged the place, and piled their bayonets, lit up by the sun, in front of the Hôtel-de-Ville. The other battalions that could not get into the place lined the streets up to the Boulevard de Sebastopol and to the quays. The banners were grouped in front of the platform, some tricolour, all with red tassels, symbolising the advent of the people. While the place was filling, songs burst forth, the bands played the _Marseillaise_ and the _Chant du Départ_, trumpets sounded the charge, and the cannon of the old Commune thundered on the quay.