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Rh the Allies were, in 1814, fighting with the French for the possession of Montmartre; "and as though it had been a mimic combat"—of gladiators in the arena, or of the Red and Blue factions of charioteers in the Flaminian Circus—"encouraged first one party and then the other by their shouts and plaudits. Whenever either side gave way, they cried out that those who concealed themselves in the shops, or took refuge in any private house, should be dragged out and butchered, and they secured the larger share of the booty; for, while the soldiers were busy with bloodshed and massacre, the spoils fell to the crowd. It was a terrible and hideous sight that presented itself throughout the city. Here battle and death were raging: there the bath and the tavern were crowded. In one spot were pools of blood and heaps of corpses, and close by prostitutes and men of character as infamous. There were all the debaucheries of luxurious peace, all the horrors of a city most cruelly sacked, till one was ready to believe the country to be mad at once with rage and lust."

Amid this scene of carnage, it is some satisfaction to know that consign punishment fell on the German soldiers. They were driven to their last stronghold. The prætorian camp to which they had fled was desperately defended as well as strenuously assailed. The Flavians, expecting that Rome itself would stand a siege, had brought with them their artillery: with their catapults they cleared the battlements: they raised mounds or towers to the level of the ramparts: they applied fire to the gates. The gates were battered down; the walls were breached; quarter was denied; and, according to one account, fifty thousand men were slain.