The Battle of Paris

All hope that a civil war might be avoided evaporated on either march thirtieth or march 30 first, depending on which book you read. National guardsmen patrolling outside the walls of paris ran into detachments of regular army who were sent by versailles government to reconnoitre the approaches to paris. This skirmish did not quite end the fantasy that this was not going to wind up with frenchmen firing bullets at each other. On april first, a joint meeting of the milit commission, the executive commission and the central committee of the national guard determined that within five days they had to go on the offensive or risk losing the initiative.