The soldiers fired faster and faster.

At every discharge, the walls cracked again.

Suddenly an officer of artillery galloped up, and cried, 'Hold! hold!' The house was leaning forward; another ball, and it would have fallen on the guns and the gunners.
"The artillerymen were so drunk that many of them, not knowing what they were doing, allowed themselves to be killed by the rebound of their guns.

The balls came simultaneously from Porte Saint-Denis, Boulevard Poissonniere and Boulevard Montmartre; the drivers, hearing them whizzing past their ears in every direction, lay down upon their horses, while the gunners hid underneath the caissons and behind the wagons; soldiers were seen to drop their caps and fly in dismay into Rue Notre-Dame-de-Recouvrance; troopers, losing their heads, fired their carbines in the air, while others dismounted and made a breastwork of their horses.

Two or three of the latter, without riders, ran here and there, mad with terror.
"The most horrible amusements were blended with the massacre.