The fight, in that place at least, was over; the citizens had disappeared. The imperialists embraced each other, shook one another by the hand, laughed and danced and waved their caps in the air, shouted for Jellachich and the emperor, and finally ran on to pursue their victorious career. Round the captured barricade the dead lay thick, and the wounded as usual moaned piteously for water.
We went amongst them, doing the little that was possible to ease their pain, and helping to remove some into safer quarters.
To add to the horror, one of the houses caught fire, and it was feared that the whole street would soon be ablaze.
Farther off we could hear the booming of the heavy guns, the sharp rattle of musketry, the shouts of the combatants, the cheers and counter-cheers which told us how the battle was going.
From time to time, too, people brought reports of the fight, and they all boded ill to the insurgents.
The railway station of Gloggnitz, the Hôtel des Invalides, the Veterinary School, were taken one after the other by the imperialists, who, when night fell, were practically masters of the suburbs of Leopoldstadt and Landstrasse.
And such a night as that twenty-eighth of October I had never beheld. The town was on fire in more than twenty different places. Half the houses of the two suburbs were riddled by shot and shell; the flames were consuming the other half.
Red tongues of fire leaped into the sky, forming a grand but terrible spectacle.
The homeless people stood in the streets, some hopelessly dazed and stupid, others fighting the flames as sturdily as they had fought the Austrians; while a few philosophers, who had nothing at stake, looked on calmly at the conflagration.
As for us, our time was fully occupied in removing the wounded from the burning or threatened buildings. Throughout the night we toiled, and it was pleasant to see the genial Rakoczy, with his bright, cheerful face, giving water here, binding up a wound there, or helping to carry a sick man to a safer shelter.