The Communards were members and supporters of the short-lived 1871 Paris Commune formed in the wake of France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. As a result of the Siege of Paris, the working classes of Paris were forced to eat cat or rat meat or go hungry, and this situation enabled the growth of socialist political clubs and newspapers. After Paris was occupied, socialist groups twice attempted to overthrow the provisional government of the French Third Republic. After the war's end, the French government of Adolphe Thiers relocated to Versailles, and, on 18 March 1871, the citizens of Paris rose up against the government when a detachment of soldiers was sent to retrieve munitions from the city. By the end of the day, most of the soldiers had defected to the Communards, who ruled Paris as an anarchist commune from 18 March to 28 May 1871. Thiers refused to bargain with the Communards, and he ordered the brutal suppression of the Paris Commune Revolt. His soldiers killed 18,000 Parisians and imprisoned 25,000, while thousands more were later executed. An inquest claimed that the main cause of the revolt was atheism, and 4,500 Communards were deported to New Caledonia in the hopes that they would find God through their suffering. In 1879, the Communards were subjected to a mass pardon by Prime Minister Jules Armand Dufaure.