Beside St. James's Park, Thomas Evans stared with bloodshot eyes and rasped at the core members of the London Corresponding Society around him, "Don't run!
"Think of your children starving, think of the family members who suffered and died because they had no money for treatment.
"We cannot yield to these butchers. Come with me and stop them.
"For our future, for freedom and human rights, don't run!"
At once, more than a dozen ragged workers gathered around him.
Most of them had lost their families or their jobs, and so they were filled with courage.
Evans directed the workers to hold their protest placards out like spears, while those in the rear picked up stones and hurled them at the cavalry. The charging Volunteer Cavalry immediately faltered and had no choice but to circle around this group.
Inspired, the surrounding protesters also moved toward Evans. Before long, two or three hundred people had gathered.
On the street to the west, an English Army Cavalry Captain lowered his Telescope, put away his pipe, and gestured to his deputy beside him. "I knew those amateurs couldn't be relied upon. We still have to do it ourselves."
More than ten minutes later, a cavalry squadron of the 15th Light Dragoons charged through Evans and the others in a wedge formation, scattering them apart. In the blink of an eye, thirty or forty people had been hacked to death.
"You are committing murd—"
A Saber easily pierced through Evans's neck, cutting his cry short.
Yet the screams of the surrounding crowd only grew louder. Several thousand people poured out from two nearby streets like a flood. A full third of them fell to the ground and were swiftly trampled into bloody pulp.
In a Cafe one street away, McCracken watched the hellish scene