The reply was a curt refusal, and the citizens prepared for the ordeal of battle.
Three more days passed quietly while the royalists placed their guns in position; then, at ten o'clock on the morning of October 28, 1848, the tocsin rang loudly, and the générale beat to arms. Instantly the citizens ran to their appointed places, and it must be admitted that very few showed traces of fear or cowardice. The men in blouses, accompanied by hundreds of women and girls, guarded the barricades; the students formed up on the ramparts, where all night they had lain by the long line of watch-fires; and the Nationals, rifle in hand, marched to their stations.
It was nearly noon when a signal-shot was fired from the Schwartzenberg heights, and immediately the bombardment began.
Shot and shell and flaming rockets came hissing and roaring into the city; but the civilian gunners stood to their pieces, and answered shot by shot, though without doing much damage to their opponents.
It was soon seen that the principal attack would be made by way of the Leopoldstadt and Landstrasse suburbs, to the former of which I hastened with my brother and Rakoczy.
The Croats and Chasseurs had already reached the Prater, from the houses and woods of which they poured a hot musketry fire upon the defenders of the first barricade. Men dropped fast, and we were soon busy carrying those who were seriously wounded into places of safety, where their hurts might be attended to by the surgeons.
"From the woods they poured a hot musketry fire upon the defenders." Page 54.]
The bullets fell thickly around us while we ran here and there with flasks of water to moisten the parched throats of the stricken men.
Some, alas! were dying, and for these we could do little but cheer their last moments; others, who possessed a chance of recovery, we raised in our arms and bore tenderly away.