They had heard their men brag for too many years about
their admirable policy of Schrecklichkeit to forget the lesson in this
fateful hour.
The most exciting scenes and the only ones in which any of the women
were killed were in the vicinity of the garrison. These interior
garrisons of the country had been one of the long debated problems. As
no women entered them and as it was not safe to attempt the corruption
of any of the men, there were but two alternatives: blow them up and
sacrifice the men wholesale or meet them with a superior force as they
rushed out to ascertain the nature of the explosions, and fight them in
open battle. Gisela had finally decided to give them a chance for their
lives, as she had no mind to shed any more blood than was unavoidable;
and these men, being no longer in their prime, must be overcome
eventually, no matter what their fury.
When she hovered over the Marztplatz in front of the garrison a few
moments after the last of the explosions, and while fire was still
raging in this military quarter of magazines, arsenals and laboratories,
men and women were mixed in a hideous confusion, shooting and slashing
indiscriminately. But there were thousands of women and only a few
hundred men, all of whom at one time or another had been wounded.
Finally the captain of this regiment of women ordered a swift retreat,
and simultaneously three machine guns opened fire from innocent looking
windows, but on the garrison building, not on the square.
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