Those arrangements would include a collection of mercenaries grouped as "Marsellais" though they were "foreign vagabonds, dregs of all nations, Genosee, Corsicans and Greeks lead by a Pole named Lazowski" (Source: Blanc-Grilli in Loomis). Added to these were convicted murderers and those imprisoned for other violent crimes, released in time to join the "Marsellais" at the center of the brutal bloodlettings. At times those enacting violence were joined by mobs of locals, some of who had armed themselves in preparation for a defense of the city National Guardsmen and some "fédérés". In some cases makeshift "courts" were set-up, prisoners were pronounced "free" or "guilty" then all were lead to a central courtyard where they were bludgeoned, hacked, speared, decapitated. In other prisons, small bands of mercenaries entered cells which had held murderers days before, who turned their craft on the innocents brought in by the Committee, some as young as 10.