nt to enable them either to rejoin
the regiments to which they belonged, or to return to their own homes.

At two o'clock A. M. the same envoy returned, and announced to the
general that the conditions had been accepted with one alteration, which
was that the troops, before marching out, should lay down their arms.
The messenger also intimated that if the offer he had brought were not
quickly accepted--say within two hours--the time for capitulation would
have gone by, and that he would not be answerable for what the people
might then do in their fury. The general accepted the conditions as
amended, and the envoy disappeared.

When the troops heard of the agreement, that they should be disarmed
before being allowed to leave the town, their first impulse was to
refuse to lay down their weapons before a rabble which had run away from
a few musket shots; but the general succeeded in soothing their sense of
humiliation and winning their consent by representing to them that there
could be nothing dishonourable in an action which prevented the children
of a common fatherland from shedding each other's blood.

The gendarmerie, according to one article of the treaty, were to close
in at, the rear of the evacuating column; and thus hinder the populace
from molesting the troops of which it was composed. This was the only
concession obtained in return for the abandoned arms, and the farce
in question was already drawn up in field order, apparently waiting to
escort the troops out of the city.

At four o'clock P.M. the troops got ready, each company stacking its
arms in the courtyard before: marching out; but hardly had forty or
fifty men passed the gates than fire was opened on them at such close
range that half of them were killed or disabled at the first volley.
Upon this, those who were still within the walls closed the courtyard
gates, thus cutting off all chance of retreat from their comrades. In
the event; however, it turned out that several of the latter contrived
to escape with their lives and that they lost nothing through being
prevented from returning; for as soon as the mob saw that ten or twelve
of their victims had slipped through their hands they made a furious
attack on the barracks, burst in the gates, and scaled the walls with
such rapidity, that the soldiers had no time to repossess themselves of
their muskets, and even had they succeeded in seizing them they would
have been of little use, as ammunition was t