According to the account given by one of the inhabitants, the German officers asserted that the French were torturing the wounded by cutting off their limbs and plucking out their eyes. They were then in a state of terrible excitement. That day and part of the next the German soldiers gave themselves over to the most abominable excesses, sacking, burning and massacring as they went. After they had carried off from the houses everything which seemed worth taking away, and after they had dispatched to Metz the product of their rifling, they set fire to the houses with torches, pastilles of compressed powder and petrol which they carried in receptacles placed on little carts. Rifle shots were fired on every side; the unhappy inhabitants, who had been driven from the cellars before the firing, were shot down like game--some in their dwellings and others in the public streets. MM. Sanson, Pierson, Lallemand, Adam Jeanpierre, Meunier, Schneider, Raymond, Duponcel, and Hazotte, father and son, were killed by rifle shots in the streets. M. Killian, seeing himself threatened by a sabre stroke, protected his neck with his hand. He had three fingers cut off and his throat gashed. An old man aged 86, M. Petitjean, who was seated in his armchair, had his skull smashed by a German shot. A soldier showed the corpse to Mme. Bertrand, saying: "Do you see that pig there?" M. Chardin, Town Councilor, who was Acting Mayor, was required to furnish a horse and carriage. He had promised to do all he could to obey, when he was killed by a rifle shot. M. Prevot, seeing the Bavarians breaking into a chemist's shop of which he was caretaker, told them that he was the chemist, and that he would give them anything they wanted, but three rifle shots rang out and he fell, heaving a deep sigh. Two women who were with him ran away and were pursued to the neighborhood of the railway station, beaten all the way with the butts of rifles, and they saw many bodies heaped together in the station garden and on the road. Between 3 and 4 o'clock in the afternoon the Germans entered the butcher shop of Mme. Francois. She was then coming out of her cellar with her boy Stub, and an employee named Contal. As soon as Stub reached the threshold of the entrance to the door he fell severely wounded by a rifle shot. Then Contal, who rushed into the street, was immediately murdered. Five minutes afterward, as Stub was still groaning, a soldier leaned over him and finished him off with a blow of a hatchet on the back.