One or two soldiers fell; and I saw the officers going up and down the ranks urging the men to fire again; but they received the orders in sullen silence, and let the butts of their guns fall.

Only one sergeant ran to a machine-gun and began to set it going; but a tall young man, an officer too, ran out of the ranks and dragged him back by the collar; and the soldiers stood there motionless while the horror-stricken crowd, nearly wholly unarmed (for most of the armed men had fallen in that first discharge), drifted out of the Square.
I was told afterwards that the soldiers on the west side had fired also, and done their part of the slaughter.

How I got out of the Square I scarcely know: I went, not feeling the ground under me, what with rage and terror and despair.' "So says our eye-witness.

The number of the slain on the side of the people in that shooting during a minute was prodigious; but it was not easy to come at the truth about it; it was probably between one and two thousand.

Of the soldiers, six were killed outright, and a dozen wounded." I listened, trembling with excitement.