Despite this decree, the Spartacans, who had erected street-barricades in that part of Berlin eastward and northward from Alexander Platz, put up a show of resistance for some days. They were, however, seriously shaken by their heavy losses and weakened by the wholesale defections of supporters who had joined them chiefly for the sake of looting and who had a wholesale respect for Noske as a man of his word. They had good reason to entertain this respect for the grim man in charge of the government's military measures. The government never made public the number of summary executions under Noske's decree, but there is little doubt that these went well above one hundred. A group of members of the mutinous People's Marine Division had the splendid effrontery to call at the office of the city commandant to demand the pay due them as protectors of the public safety. Government troops arrested the callers, a part of whom resisted arrest. Twenty-four of these men, found to have weapons in their possession, were summarily executed. _Die Freiheit_ and _Die Republik_ denounced the members of the government as murderers. The office of the Spartacans' _Die rote Fahne_ had been occupied by government troops on the day of the outbreak of the Bolshevik uprising. The _bourgeois_ and Majority Socialist press supported the government whole-heartedly, and the law-abiding citizens were encouraged by their new rulers' energy and by the loyalty and bravery of the government troops. There was a general recognition of the fact that matters had reached a stage where a minority, in part deluded and in part criminal, could not longer be permitted to terrorize the country. The uprising collapsed rapidly after the Spartacans had been driven from their main strongholds. They maintained themselves for a few days in Lichtenberg, a suburb of Berlin, and--as in the January uprisings--sniping from housetops continued for a week. No list of casualties was ever issued, but estimates ran as high as one thousand, of which probably three-quarters were suffered by the Spartacans. They were further badly weakened by the loss of a great part of their weapons, both during the fighting and in a general clean-up of the city which was made after the uprising had been definitely put down. As we have seen, the efforts of the German Bolsheviki, aided by the left wing of the Independent Socialists, to overthrow the government by force had failed wherever the attempt had been made. Not only in Berlin, but in a dozen other cities and districts as well, the enemies of democracy had been decisively defeated. In Munich and Brunswick alone they were still strong and defiant, but they were to be defeated even there later. In these circumstances it might have been expected that they would not again be able to cause serious trouble to the government. But a new aspect was put on circumstances by an occurrence whose inevitability had long been recognized by close observers.