It was said that, seeing a hesitation among his officers to repeat the command, Shortland himself seized a musket from a soldier and fired the first shot. Be that as it may, the firing became general from the walls as well as from the square; soldiers came to the doors of two of the casernes and fired through them, with the result, according to American accounts, that seven men were killed, thirty were dangerously wounded, and thirty slightly wounded; but according to the Return signed by Shortland and Dr. Magrath, five were killed and twenty-eight wounded. A report was drawn up, after the inquiry instituted directly following the event, by Admiral Duckworth and Major-General Brown, and signed by the Assistant Commissioners at the Inquiry, King for the United States, and Larpent for Great Britain, which came to no satisfactory conclusion. It was evident, it said, that the prisoners were in an excited state about the non-arrival of ships to take them home, and that Shortland was irritated about the bread affair; that there was much unauthorized firing, but that it was difficult exactly to apportion blame. This report was utterly condemned by the committee of prisoners, who resented the tragedy being styled ‘this unfortunate affair’, reproached King for his lack of energy and unwarrantable self-restraint, and complained of the hurried and imperfect way in which the inquiry was conducted and the evidence taken. At this distance of time an Englishman may ask: ‘If it was known that peace between the two countries had been ratified on March 20, how came it that Americans were still kept in confinement and treated as prisoners of war on April 6?’ On the other hand, it is hardly possible to accept the American view that the tragedy was the deliberate work of an officer of His Majesty’s service in revenge for a slight. By July, 1815, all the Americans but 450 had left, and the last Dartmoor war-prisoners, 4,000 Frenchmen, taken at Ligny, came in. These poor fellows were easy to manage after the Americans; 2,500 of them came from Plymouth with only 300 Militiamen as guard, whilst for Americans the rule was man for man. [Illustration: DARTMOOR PRISON Illustrating the ‘Massacre’ of 1815 A. Surgeon’s House. B. Captain Shortland’s House. C. Hospital. D. Barracks. E. _Cachot_, or Black Hole. F. Guard Houses. G. Store Houses. ] The last war-prisoners left Dartmoor in December, 1815, and from this time until 1850 it was unoccupied, which partially accounts for the utter desecration of the burial-ground, until, under Captain Stopforth, it was tidied up in garden fashion, divided into two plots, one for Americans, the other for Frenchmen, in the centre of each of which was placed a memorial obelisk in 1865. The present church at Princetown was built by war-prisoners, the stone-work being done by the French, the wood-work by the Americans. The East Window bears the following inscription: