On 2, 3 and 4 September 1792, some three hundred volunteers and supporters of the revolution, infuriated by Verdun being captured by the Prussian enemy, and rumours that the foreign enemy were conspiring with the incarcerated prisoners in Paris, raided the Parisian prisons. Jean-Paul Marat had called for preemptive action and between 1,200 and 1,400 prisoners were murdered within 20 hours (September Massacres), many of them Catholic nonjuring priests but also aristocrats, forgers and common criminals. In an open letter on 3 September the radical Marat incited the rest of France to follow the Parisian example. Danton and Robespierre kept a low profile in regard to the murder orgy. The Assembly and the city council of Paris ("la Commune") seemed inapt and hardly motivated to call a halt to the unleashed bloodshed.