In the Cause of Freedom

by Arthur W. Marchmont

Ladislas’ uplifted hand dropped. He staggered, and turned toward the mob, so that all saw by the red mark on his white, broad forehead where the bullet had struck him, and fell huddled up on the road.

It was the signal for the fight to break loose. A wild, deep groan of execration leapt from every throat behind the barricade, followed by shouts and cries of defiance. His fall at the hands of the troops had raised him to the place of martyr; and those who had been quick to jeer him now shrieked and yelled for vengeance upon his murderers.

Surely an irony of fate that he who had given his life in the cause of peace should by his death have loosed the wildest passion for blood.

A ghastly scene followed. As the soldiers charged the barricade, the mob offered a stubborn and desperate resistance. Many of them were shot down, but there were others ready to take their places. Time after time the troops reached and mounted the barricade only to be driven back. Once they carried it, and commenced to charge the crowd behind; but they were outnumbered many times, and the mob beat them, and hurled them back and pursued them even across the barricade, inflicting serious loss.

I seized that moment to run out and recover the body of my poor friend. I found him; and as I was carrying him out of the press of the tumult, the troops rallied, and the tide of the fight came surging back past me.

The chances of the struggle brought Bremenhof close up. He saw me, and with a cry of anger rushed to seize me.

Some of the mob had seen my effort to get Ladislas away. One of them had stayed to help and he was thus close at hand when the attempt was made to capture me. Thinking that the intention was to prevent my carrying Ladislas away, he pressed forward and with a savage oath thrust his revolver right in Bremenhof’s face and fired.

This act proved the turning point in the fight.

Fierce shouts of exultation went up as Bremenhof was recognized. The strikers halted, rallied and reformed, and they renewed the attack upon the troops with irresistible vigour and drove them back helter-skelter in all directions.

The mob had won; but at a cost which had yet to be counted. Nor did they stay to count it. The street resounded with whoops and yells of victory. Flushed and sweated with their exertions, the men were like children in their delight. They shook hands one with another, and laughed and sang and shouted and even danced in sheer glee.