He offered his services to Gambetta and received the command of the Northern Army, but was recalled on 10 November and transferred to the Army of the Loire. In command of the hastily trained and ill-equipped Army of the East, Bourbaki made the attempt to raise the siege of Belfort, which, after the victory of Villersexel, ended in the repulse of the French in the three days' battle of the Lisaine. Other German forces under Manteuffel now closed upon Bourbaki, and he was eventually driven over the Swiss frontier with the remnant of his forces. His troops were in the most desperate condition, owing to lack of food; and out of 150,000 men under him when he started, only 87,000 men with 12,000 horses escaped into Swiss territory. They crossed the western border of Switzerland at Les Verrières, Sainte-Croix, Vallorbe and in the Vallée de Joux at the beginning of February 1871. They were disarmed and detained for six weeks before being repatriated in March. Rather than submit to the humiliation of a probable surrender, Bourbaki had delegated his functions to General Clinchant on 26 January 1871 and tried to commit suicide that night. He fired a pistol at his own forehead, but the bullet somehow "flattened as if against a cast-iron plate" and his life was saved. General Clinchant carried Bourbaki into Switzerland, where he recovered sufficiently to return to France.