[25] The result of the voting was made known at four o’clock on the
28th March. The papers devoted to the Commune asserted, on the
following day, that _two hundred and fifteen_ battalions were
assembled on that day, and that the average strength of each corps was
one thousand men. Who could have believed that the Place de l’Hôtel de
Ville was capable of accommodating so many! This farcical assertion of
the two hundred and fifteen battalions has passed into a proverb.
[26] When they turned the butt-ends (_crosses_) of their guns in the
air, as a sign they would not fight.