Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/325

 BETWEEN THE CZAR AND THE SULTAN. 2S3 the back-rooms of the house. The rattle of chap.
 * musketry was incessant for more than a quarter XIV "

• of an hour after this ; and in a very few minutes ' the guns were unlimbered and pointed at the ' " Magasin " of M. Sallandrouze, five houses on ' our right. What the object or meaning of all ' this might lie was a perfect enigma to every ' individual in the house, French or foreigners. 1 Some thought the troops had turned round and ' joined the Eeds ; others suggested that they ' must have been fired upon somewhere, though ' they certainly had not from our house or any ' other on the Boulevard Montmartre, or we must ' have seen it from the balcony. . . . This ' wanton fusilade must have been the result of a ' panic, lest the windows should have been lined ' with concealed enemies, and they wanted to ' secure their skins by the first fire, or else it was ' a sanguinary impulse. . . . The men, as I ' have already stated, fired volley upon volley for ' more than a quarter of an hour without any ' return ; they shot down many of the unhappy ' individuals who remained on the Boulevard and ' could not obtain an entrance into any house ; 'some persons were killed close to our door.'* The like of what was calmly seen by tins Eng- lish officer, f was seen with frenzied horror by thousands of French men and women. 13th December 1851, and given also in the 'Annual Register.' + Another English officer, who was in that part of the Boule- vards which is at the corner of the Rue de Grammont, writes to mo thus: — ' Having been in Paris during the covjr> (?'<;7a^and
 * Letter from Captain Jesse, first printed in the ' Times,'