Back and back they drove the defenders, fighting their way through the streets and sparing none in the awful fury that beset them.

The defence was shattered; resistance was at an end; yet still the bloody work went on.

The combat had imperceptibly merged into a slaughter; demoralized and panic-stricken in the reaction from their late gallantry, the soldiers of Naples flung down their weapons and fled, shrieking for quarter.

But none was given.

The invader butchered every human thing he came upon, indiscriminant of age or sex, and the blood of some four thousand victims flowed through the streets of Capua like water after a thundershower.