 The sailors returned home and tried to found an independent republic.While Jacques Peirotes, at this time deputy at the "Landrat Elsass-Lothringen" and just elected mayor of Strasbourg, proclaimed the forfeiture of the German Empire and the advent of the French Republic, a self-proclaimed government of Alsace-Lorraine declared its independence as the "Republic of Alsace-Lorraine".French troops entered Alsace less than two weeks later to quash the worker strikes and remove the newly established Soviets and revolutionaries from power.