The battle, or rather carnage, was of short duration. Under the skillful generalship of the Circles almost every woman’s charge was fatal and very many extracted their sting uninjured, ready for a second slaughter. But no second blow was needed; the rabble of the Isosceles did the rest of the business for themselves. Surprised, leader-less, attacked in front by invisible foes, and finding egress cut off by the convicts behind them, they at once⁠—after their manner⁠—lost all presence of mind, and raised the cry of “treachery.” This sealed their fate. Every Isosceles now saw and felt a foe in every other. In half an hour not one of that vast multitude was living; and the fragments of seven score thousand of the criminal class slain by one another’s angles attested the triumph of Order.