Neither the man nor woman ever reached prison. Soldiers brought to the morgue late that night the body of "an unidentified man," alleged to have been shot while running away from his guards. One bullet had struck him between the shoulders and another in the middle of the back of the neck. The woman disappeared utterly.
On the following day (January 16th) it became known that both Liebknecht and Luxemburg had been killed. Exactly who fired the fatal shots was never clearly established, but an investigation did establish that the officers in charge of the men guarding the two prisoners were guilty of a negligence which was undoubtedly deliberate, and intended to make the killings possible.
The impression was profound. The Deutsche Tageszeitung, while deploring lynch law and summary justice, declared that the deaths of the two agitators must be regarded as "almost a Divine judgment." This was the tenor of all bourgeois comment, and even Vorwärts admitted that the dead man and woman had fallen as victims of the base passions which they themselves had aroused. They had summoned up spirits which they could not exorcise. There was nevertheless much apprehension regarding the form which the vengeance of the victims' followers might take, but this confined itself in the main to verbal attacks on the bourgeoisie and Majority Socialists, and denunciation of Noske's "White Guard," as the loyal soldiers who protected the law-abiding part of the population were termed. Disorders were feared on the day of Liebknecht's funeral, but none came.
The government gained a much needed breathing spell through these events. With Liebknecht and Luxemburg dead, Radek in hiding, Ledebour locked up and Eichhorn—as it transpired later—fled to Brunswick, the Spartacans, deprived of their most energetic leaders and shaken by their bloody losses of Bolshevik week, could not so quickly rally their forces for another coup. Their losses are not definitely known, but they were estimated at approximately two hundred dead and nearly a thousand wounded. The losses of the government troops were negligible.
Noske, who had taken over from Ebert the administration of military affairs, announced that there would be no further temporizing with persons endeavoring to overthrow the government by force. He issued a decree setting forth the duty of the soldiers to preserve order, protect property and defend themselves in all circumstances.
The decree said further:
"No soldier can be excused for failure to perform his duty if he have not, in the cases specified above, made timely and adequate use of his weapons to attain the purpose set forth."
Some six years earlier Police-President von Jagow had brought a flood of Socialist abuse on his head because, in a general order to the police, he referred to the fact that there had been an unusual number of escapes of criminals and attacks on policemen and added: "Henceforth I shall punish any policeman who in such case has failed to make timely use of his weapons." And now a Socialist issued an order of much the same tenor. The Genossen had learned by bitter experience that there is a difference between criticizing and governing, and that moral suasion occasionally fails with the lowest elements of a great city.
Defeated in Berlin, the Bolsheviki turned their attention to the coast cities. The "Republic of Cuxhaven" was proclaimed, with a school-teacher as president. It collapsed in five days as a result of the government's decisive action. An attempted coup in Bremen also failed, but both these uprisings left the Spartacans and Independents of these cities in possession of large supplies of arms and ammunition.
January 18th, the forty-seventh anniversary of the founding of the German Empire, brought melancholy reflections for all Germans. The Bolshevist-hued Socialists were impotently raging in defeat; the bourgeoisie lamented past glories; the Majority Socialists were under a crossfire from both sides. The Conservative Kreuz-Zeitung wrote: