Some of the palace guard had given up their rifles and left their posts. Others had joined the revolutionaries. The looting of the palace began. It did not assume great proportions on this first day, but many valuable Articles had disappeared when night came. Government property of all kinds was sold openly in the streets by soldiers and civilians. Rifles could be had for a few marks, and even army automobiles were sold for from three to five hundred marks. Processions kept moving about the city, made up in part of soldiers and in part of armed civilians. Persons without red badges were often molested or mishandled. Cockades in the imperial or some state's colors were torn from soldiers' caps, their shoulder insignia were ripped off and their belts taken away by the embryo and self-constituted "red guard." The patriotic cockades inflamed their revolutionary hearts; the belts, being of good leather--a rare article--could be used for repairing the shoes of the faithful. Officers were hunted down, their shoulder-straps torn off and their swords and revolvers taken from them. Many officers were roughly handled. Hundreds escaped a like fate by a quick change into civilian clothing. The _mobile vulgus_ had forgotten that forty per cent of Germany's active officer corps had been killed in fighting for their country, and that a great part of those left were crippled by wounds. It saw in these men only the representatives of an iron discipline and of authority--and authority is hated by all truly class-conscious _Genossen_. It was this same feeling that led, on the following day, to the disarming of the police--a measure which so quickly avenged itself in an increase of crime from which even the proletariat suffered that their sabers and revolvers were restored to the police within a month. Thus far the revolution had been all but bloodless. The brave officer of the _Maikaefer_ and the four revolutionaries who fell before him were the only victims. But about 6:00 P.M., as an automobile ambulance turned into the palace courtyard, a single shot was heard. Observers thought they saw the smoke of the shot in the central entrance to the royal stables, which are situated across the street just south of the palace. While the source of the shot was being investigated a second shot was fired. Almost immediately machine guns began firing from the cellar windows and the first and second stories of the stables.[32] The crowd filling the square melted away. Members of the Soldiers' Council returned the fire. The shooting continued until late into the night, when members of the Soldiers' Council entered the stables. They found nobody there. [32] This story of the origin of Saturday evening's shooting comes from the Soldiers' Council, and is undoubtedly exaggerated. No other report of the incident is, however, available.