The compact mass—for perhaps half the column had entered the yard—swayed like the wheat-field before the gust, then like the same cropped by the scythe, reeled and fell down. Hardly a third was left alive.
These few fled, passing under the fire from two lines of guns and the barracks firing at close range. The musketeers would have killed each other but for the thick screen of fugitives between.
This curtain was ripped in wide places; four hundred men were stretched on the ground pavement, three hundred slain outright.
The hundred, more or less badly injured, groaned and tried to rise, but falling, gave part of the field of corpses a movement like the ocean swell, frightful to behold.
But gradually all died out, and apart from a few obstinate fellows who persisted in living, all fell into immobility.
The fugitives scattered over the Carrousel Square, and flowed out on the water-side on one hand and on the street by the other, yelling, "Murder—help! we were drawn into a death-trap."
On the New Bridge, they fell in with the main body. The bulk was commanded by two men on horseback, closely attended by one on foot, who seemed to have a share in the command.
"Help, Citizen Santerre!" shouted the flyers, recognizing in one of the riders the big brewer of St. Antoine, by his colossal stature, for which his huge Flemish horse was but a pedestal in keeping; "help! they are slaughtering our brothers."
"Who are?" demanded the brewer-general.
"The Swiss—they shot us down while we were cheek by jowl with them, a-kissing them."