 On 6 October, Defense Minister Léon Gambetta departed the city by balloon to try to organise national resistance against the Germans.On 28 October, the news arrived in Paris that the 160,000 soldiers of the French army at Metz, which had been surrounded by the Germans since August, had surrendered.The news arrived the same day of the failure of another attempt by the French army to break the siege of Paris at Bourget, with heavy losses.