Early the following morning (June 12, 1888) the battle opened. For two days the desperate fight raged around the little town; and the two “Round Tops,” whose summits were the objects of constant attack by one party or the other, once more shed rivulets of blood down their steep and rocky sides. The allies were by far the better armed and the better disciplined; but the revolutionists fought literally “to the death.” They introduced a new and terrible element into civilized warfare by refusing to give quarter to their prisoners. The allied soldiers soon learned of this barbarism, and, despite the attempts of their officers to restrain them, retaliated in kind. Their rage became as furious as the fanaticism of their opponents.

The close of the second day found the hordes of the revolution in panic and flight. They were more than defeated, they were annihilated. Their disorganization was as rapid and complete as had been their first successes, a year before. Not a brigade was left to guard a retreat. The whole array of survivors dissolved into mere bands and scattered over the country.

Many thousand prisoners were taken, among them a few who had become known as leaders in the different revolutionary organizations. Kopf was caught hiding in a farm-yard, near Harrisburg, several days after the battle; he was sent to Germany for trial. Herr Liest had been killed during the first day’s battle. Wagner escaped, and has never since been heard of. It is thought he perished of starvation, or was killed during one of the raids which were frequently made by small bands of outlaws on scouting parties of the allies during the summer and fall. O’Halloran was captured during the pursuit after the battle. He had thrown himself into a ditch, and tried to conceal himself by hiding in a pool of mud and water, with his head covered by the weeds which grew from the sides of the filthy drain. He was dragged out and almost immediately recognized by an English soldier who had once met him in Ireland. He was court-martialled on the spot, charged with responsibility for the order to his followers to give no quarter to their prisoners, and shot at sunrise the following morning. A few other prisoners, who were proved guilty of murdering wounded and helpless men, were similarly tried and executed. Several thousand, who had been known in Europe as professional plotters and agitators, were sent back to their respective Governments in irons for trial on account of old offences.

Zealous effort was made by the allies to discover and arrest the mysterious leader whose edicts, emanating from the “Council of Seven,” had been so powerful in the early days of the revolution. Nothing was ever found to furnish even a clew to his identity. There are those, even now, who believe that he is still living, hidden in obscurity and seclusion, and ready to seize the first opportunity which chance may afford him to resume his warfare on organized society. But this is not likely. Whether he still lives, or whether he perished in the bloody closing of the revolution, the mystery in which he purposely enshrouded himself at the beginning of the struggle still hangs over him, and there is no real ground for the expectation that it will be ever lifted.

The revolution was at an end. For two months there was skirmishing and occasionally a fierce contest that might almost be called a battle between detachments of the allies and disintegrating bands of socialists or dynamiters who had taken refuge in various fastnesses of the land. It was six months before the last of the privateers which they had fitted out to ravage commerce was captured, and the seas were once more pronounced safe to trading vessels. But so far as any organization or real strength was involved, the struggle at Gettysburg had been conclusive. One by one the cities and forts of the whole country were garrisoned by the allies. The land was put under martial law.

XVII.
FOREIGN OCCUPATION.

Then came the question to the conquerors, What shall we do with the fruits of our victory? The problem was debated at length and anxiously in Paris and London and Berlin. At first it was proposed to imprison all the socialists, anarchists, nihilists, and dynamiters remaining in the country; but it was speedily found that this was impracticable. To say nothing of the others, the Irish who had taken active part in the revolution or contributed to its support, and who sympathized with the dynamite warfare on civilization, were not less than eight millions. All the jails and prisons in the world would not have confined them. Their organizations were proscribed and their meetings prohibited; but it was clear from a thousand indications that their spirit of hatred and cruelty remained unchanged, and that they waited only the opportunity to renew their crimes. The same was true in even greater degree of the socialists and anarchists. They regarded themselves as the friends and martyrs of liberty. The allies were to them simply minions of tyranny who had combined to crush out human freedom. It was believed that the patriots of the country, loyal to the old republican idea, still outnumbered the anarchists, and would outvote them at the polls. But they were peaceable men, devoted to trade and industry, and had already been proved powerless to enforce with arms the decrees their majorities might render at the ballot-boxes. The summer and autumn passed away, and the problem remained unsolved. It was decided at last to hold another pan-European conference, this time at Washington, in which all the Powers which had taken part in the conference of January at Berlin should meet and reach some definite decision regarding the future.