The city's narrow, labyrinthine streets had become a meat grinder. Soldiers from both sides were packed together, gunfire crackling like exploding beans.
Lead bullets tore through the air, smashing planks and glass before burying themselves in walls and flesh.
Flesh, blood, and shattered ruins formed new walls. If the Holy Alliance forces wanted to advance, they had to pay the price in blood—or wait for the artillery and rockets to be brought up from the rear.
Yet the British and Ottoman allied forces behind the barricades were unwilling to sit still and await death. They would first drive out civilians carrying all manner of furniture and quilts to draw fire, then burst out from the other side.
Along those streets thick with gunpowder smoke and blood, groups of Ottoman civilians marched forward, some holding doors, pot lids, and folding screens, others wrapped in layer after layer of quilts.
The sight was bizarre and absurd. The Holy Alliance troops who had entered the city did not hesitate. At an officer's command—
"Fire!"
The lead bullets easily punched through those "shields," and the strange procession fell in great swathes.
But before the Holy Alliance soldiers could even catch their breath, masses of allied troops charged out from the other side of the street.
A chaotic melee was on the verge of erupting. The dense volleys of old-fashioned muskets blanketed the entire street as though it had been covered by Smoke Grenades.
When the smoke cleared, only scattered furniture and the corpses of both sides lay mingled together. Blood streamed across the cobblestones, alongside soldiers who had died with their eyes still open.
The once deafening, chaotic noise gradually subsided, only to be swallowed again by thunderous explosions and battle cries.
Both sides once again faced off and slaughtered each other in the