The road along to Five Ways was desperately contested. The slaughter on both sides was awful, for a detachment of Russians coming up the Harborne Road had been utterly annihilated and swept away by the rifle fire of defenders concealed behind loopholed walls. At Five Ways the entrance to each of the five broad converging thoroughfares had been strongly barricaded, and as the enemy pressed forward the British machine guns established there caused terrible havoc. Behind those barricades men of Birmingham of every class, armed with all sorts of guns, hastily obtained from Kynoch's and other factories, struggled for the defence of their homes and loved ones, working with a dash and energy that greatly disconcerted the enemy, who had imagined that, in view of their victory in the battle, little resistance would be offered.
In the darkness that had now fallen the scenes in the streets were frightful. The only light was the flash from gun-muzzles and the glare of flames consuming private houses and public buildings. The civilian defenders, reinforced by Regular soldiers, Militia, and Volunteers, had made such excellent preparations for defence, and offered such strenuous opposition, that almost every foot the Russians gained in the direction of the centre of the city was fought for hand to hand. Both right and left Russian columns were now advancing up the Coventry, Stratford, Moseley, Pershore, and Bristol Roads, and in each of those thoroughfares the barricades were strongly constructed, and, being armed with Maxims, wrought frightful execution.
Gradually, however, one after another of these defences fell by reason of the organised attacks by such superior numbers, and the Russians marched on, killing with bayonet and sword.
In the city, as the night passed, the fighting in the streets everywhere was of the fiercest and most sanguinary description. In Corporation Street a huge barricade with machine guns had been constructed opposite the Victoria Law Courts, and, assisted by 200 Volunteers, who, inside the latter building, fired from the windows, the enemy were held in check for several hours.
Time after time shells fell from the Russian guns in the midst of the defenders, and, bursting, decimated them in a horrible manner; yet through the long close night there was never a lack of brave men to step into the breach and take up the arms of their dead comrades. Indeed, it was only when the enemy succeeded in setting fire to the Courts, and compelling the defenders to cease their vigorous rifle fire from the windows, that the position was won; and not until hundreds of Russians lay dead or dying in the street.