Temporarily
checked by the play of machine guns which swept the bridge and
kept it clear for a time, they commenced wild, wasteful firing,
from the bridge-head and from along the Cardew wharves. Their
leaders were prepared, and sent snipers into the bridge towers,
but the machine guns continued to fire.
That the struggle would be on the bridge Doyle and his Council
had anticipated from the reports of the night before. They were
prepared to take a heavy loss on the bridges, but they had not
prepared for the thing that defeated them; that as the mob is
braver than the individual, so also it is more cowardly.
Pushed forward from the rear and unable to retreat through the
dense mass behind that was every moment growing denser, a few
hundreds found themselves facing the steady machine-gun fire
from behind the barricades, and unable either to advance or to
retire. Thus trapped, they turned on their own forces behind
them, and tried to fight their way to safety, but the inexorable
pressure kept on, and the defenders, watching and powerless, saw
men fling themselves from the bridges and disappear in the water
below, rather than advance into the machine-gun zone.
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