"_Qui vive_?" cried the sentinel. "Friends!" the commander of the column hastened to reply. "Are you Republicans?" "Yes, and we have come to help you." "_Vive la République!_" the defenders of the barricade shouted in chorus. A friend of mine, called Rossignol, could not resist the pleasure of being the first to shake hands with his co-religionists; he leapt over the barricade, and went towards the National Guards shouting, "You are welcome!" But at the same instant a cry went forth from the ranks of the National Guard-- "Ah! brigands! We have got you at last." "Fire, friends!" cried Rossignol, "they are Philippists." And a discharge was fired from inside the barricade, killing five men of the National Guard. It was the counterpart of: "A moi d'Auvergne! c'est l'ennemi." Only, more luckily than the Chevalier d'Assas, Rossignol re-entered the barricade safe and sound through a hailstorm of bullets.[2] After a terrible struggle, and after returning to the charge three times, the National Guard was repulsed, and old men who had left off making their bullet casts, children who had stopped making wads to take up arms, laid their guns down and resumed their task. A lad of twelve had been wounded in the head by the first discharge; Jeanne could not make him leave the barricade, either in his capacity as leader or as a friend. The National Guard went away and left their dead and wounded; but, as soon as the field of battle was cleared, Jeanne and his men cleared the barricade and picked up the wounded, whom they carried to their ambulances. A medical student who was one of the insurgents dressed their wounds, aided by two women. About a hundred yards from the barricade of the rue Saint-Merry, one was erected in the passage du Saumon, which had its sentinels spread out all along the rue Montmartre. At eight at night, Maréchal Lobau gave orders to take it, no matter at what cost; he meant by daybreak the next day to clear the rue Montmartre. They fought all night long. Those who guarded the barricade made this oath over the bodies of the comrades who had fallen-- "We will either go out conquerors or be carried away dead!" The ground floor or _entresol_ of a café which no longer exists was used as an ambulance, whilst, from the windows of the first and second storeys, from time to time, there rained into an extended sheet cartridges thrown by unknown hands. There were only twenty defenders of the barricade. When, after a fight lasting nine hours, the soldiers at last cleared the barricade, they found eight dead men lying on the pavement, seven wounded and disabled lying on beds on the ground floor of the café, and a pupil of the École Polytechnique dying on the billiard-table. The four other insurgents had succeeded in escaping.