by several cyclones. Malaria also arrived in Réunion in 1868, three years after its arrival in Mauritius (both islands were malaria-free before the 1860s), and the disease became endemic in the island. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 as well as the French growing interest in colonizing Madagascar also marginalized Réunion. As a result of all these events, Saint-Denis entered a period of stagnation that lasted until World War II. The city even officially experienced population decline from the 1870s until the beginning of the 1920s, before recovering slightly after 1921 (see Demographics section). In 1868, bitter press campaigns opposing local liberal (anti-clerical) and clerical (pro-Jesuit) newspapers degenerated when the editor-in-chief of the clerical newspaper La Malle was rumored to have sexually assaulted the son of a merchant from Saint-Denis. The rumor led to five days of anti-clerical riots in the city in November-December 1868, with crowds of up to 2,000 gathering in front of the bishop's palace, shouting "Down with La Malle! Down with the Jesuits!", and ransacking the college (high school) of the Jesuits. On December 3, governor Marie Jules Dupré ordered the dispersal of the unarmed anti-clerical crowd assembled on the square in front of the Saint-Denis city hall, and the troops opened fire, killing 9 people and injuring another 30 people. The next day, a state of siege was declared. The tragedy had nationwide repercussions in France in the dying days of the Second French Empire which opposed liberals and conservatives. On November 3, 1870, after ships had brought the news of Napoleon III's fall and proclamation of the French Republic in Paris, governor Louis Hippolyte de Lormel announced the proclamation of the French Republic in Saint-Denis. That same year, the first telegraph line in Réunion was established between Saint-Denis and the southern Réunionese subprefecture of Saint-Pierre, in length. In December 1874, the Oudemans scientific mission sent by king William III of the Netherlands to Réunion to observe the transit of Venus established its observation camp at the seafront of Barachois, in Saint-Denis. A railway tunnel dug in the big lava flow separating Saint-Denis from La Possession was started in 1878 and completed in 1881, allowing trains to connect Saint-Denis with the new seaport of La Réunion under construction at Le Port in replacement of the old harbor of Barachois in Saint-Denis. It was the third-longest tunnel in the world at the time. In