Obedient to the orders of their chiefs and pursuant to a carefully arranged plan, the socialists, the anarchists, the communists, the nihilists,--all the combined lawless hordes of the great city had gathered to strike their first real blow at society. They met with open opposition the firemen’s efforts to extinguish the flames. Hose was cut as fast as it could be laid. Engines were attacked and rendered useless. The entire police force was ordered out; but the fires, which by this time were raging in a hundred different streets, compelled their division into small parties. The firemen had been fought only by destroying their apparatus and by driving them from the buildings they were trying to save. The police, however, found that the mob was armed for them with deadlier weapons. Revolvers and rifles were more numerous among the rioters than clubs among the police. Divided as they were, and without hope of aid from reserves, the police were speedily overcome, one detachment after another falling back in defeat. The mayor was besought to order out the militia. But it was evident at once that he either sympathized with the mob or was afraid to take any earnest steps which might anger it. He had been elected as the representative of the worst political element in the city and nation. He professed to have scruples lest it should be found beyond his legal powers to summon the militia. Some of the merchants, disgusted and dismayed by his conduct, sent hasty despatches to the State capital, telling what was going on and begging for instant help. From Springfield orders were issued directing the entire militia of the State to rendezvous at Chicago. Morning dawned at last. It found every piece of fire-extinguishing apparatus in Chicago a useless wreck; it found the firemen scattered and unable to perform their duties; it found over seven hundred buildings in ashes, and a still greater number on fire and doomed to certain destruction; it found ninety-one of the police force dead on the pavements, and twice as many more suffering from disabling wounds in hospitals hurriedly extemporized in the parks and among the suburbs; it found the city in the complete possession of a maddened mob, a mob numbering over eighteen thousand fully armed men; it found gathering to oppose them a force of ill-armed, half-drilled, utterly inexperienced militia, numbering about one third as many. No one at Springfield had a correct appreciation of the magnitude or character of the _émeute_. Even the officers commanding the militia failed to comprehend the difficulty of the task before them.