His teaching had its effect. On July 26, Barcelona broke out into open revolt. There were only 1600 soldiers in the town to meet the assaults of the rioters. The general strike ordered by the workingmen's associations crippled all means of trade and commerce. The mobs first assailed the banks and stores, but finding them too strongly guarded turned their attention elsewhere. The city was placed under martial law, and the small detachment of troops were divided where the danger seemed most imminent. There was no thought of the churches, convents, and religious houses. Mr. Andrew Shipman, in his exposé of the case for McClure's Magazine, describes the horrors of the few days that followed. "The day of July 27 was a ghastly one, filled with smoke, murder, and terror. The kerosene can was used after looting had secured every valuable article, and before midnight the mob had attacked and burned some twenty-two institutions in the newer and outer part of Barcelona. The police pursued them as best they could; but the revolutionists were divided by their leaders into sections, attacking churches, schools, and houses simultaneously at remote distances from one another. During the night the King and ministry, who were communicated with by cable--for all telegraph lines were cut--suspended the constitutional guarantees, leaving the city and province in an actual state of war. "All day on the 28th the burning, looting, and destruction of churches, convents and schools went on; but by nightfall the troops had broken some of the barricades, and began to subdue some sections of the rioters. On Thursday, the 29th, they had the rioting under control, and the revolt was crushed. On Friday the roving bands of anarchists, rioters, and idlers were entirely stopped, and the next day street traffic began again. "It is sickening to tell of the savagery of the mob. Even the dead nuns were dragged from their coffins and paraded with revolting and obscene orgies, and then thrown into the gutters. Clerical teachers in the schools were stripped, tortured and shot. Even little children were not spared. Churches that had stood as monuments from the days of the Crusades were destroyed; while everything valuable was plundered from them, and from the schools and religious houses. They even stole the clothes and petty jewelry of the girls in the boarding schools." Immediately after the cessation of hostilities the arrest and punishment of the ring leaders were begun. Among those arrested was Francisco Ferrer, who was tried by a court-martial, found guilty of rebellion and treason, and, on October 13, 1909, was executed.