But though there was uneasiness in the capital, the counter-revolution came to the citizens as a complete surprise. In the afternoon of the 12th a British officer, who had just arrived in the capital, visited the various barracks, and found the troops peacefully drilling or performing their other ordinary duties, the officers and men alike seeming happy and contented, and an Inspector of Police of great experience informed him that the city had never been more quiet and orderly. During the early hours of the 13th, while it was still dark, people were awakened by the tramp of soldiery in the streets (successive bodies of men marching in silence), wondered a little what these unwonted movements signified, and then went to sleep again. When they went out a few hours later the citizens found the whole city at the mercy of nearly twenty thousand mutinous troops. The plot had been carefully organised with the same extraordinary secrecy that had characterised the Young Turk revolution of the previous July, and no one save those concerned had any suspicion as to what was about to happen. Before dawn the troops, after shooting some of their officers and binding and imprisoning others, marched through the streets under the command of their non-commissioned officers, and concentrated in the neighbourhood of the House of Parliament. The Salonica Chasseurs, who, as Macedonian troops, had been regarded as being wholly loyal to the Young Turk cause, took a leading part in the revolt. A large number of marines also joined the mutineers and were guilty of the murder of many officers. When the sun rose the square outside the Parliament House and the Mosque of St. Sophia was packed with the mutineers and a great number of _softas_ and _hodjas_ in their turbans and flowing robes, who harangued the soldiers and inflamed their fanatical zeal. In front of St. Sophia waved the red and green banner of the Sheriat. Brave officers who occasionally arrived to remonstrate with their men were immediately killed.