and one corporal (other sources: two officers dead out of five). Meanwhile, Asensio's men had entered in the city by a breach in the city walls; the storming of the Puerta de la Trinidad was later seen as useless. Once inside the ramparts the military drove the Republican militia before them, knifing and bayoneting their way toward the city centre, including killing those who had thrown down their weapons and had their hands up. Street fighting raged past nightfall. The Legionnaires later captured 43 wounded milicianos in the military hospital, and afterward, killed them. Aftermath The battle contributed several days to the delay which allowed the government to organize its defenses around Madrid. The fall of Badajoz tore from the Republic the large region of Extremadura, north of Huelva, which was later subdued and swallowed up by the emerging Nationalist state. After the battle, Yagüe turned northeastward toward Madrid and the Tagus River. During his trek, he engaged Republican forces in pitched battles in the weeks that followed. The Battle of Badajoz followed patterns that continued throughout much of the summer: Republican militia seized the medieval fortresses dotting Castile, yet could not halt nor even slow down the advance of Franco's professional and better equipped troops. The Spanish regular army would prove able to sweep prepared defences held by superior enemy forces, but often suffered heavy losses of its best troops. By year's end, many of the Spanish Foreign Legion lay dead, scattered along a trail of walled towns stretching from Seville to the outskirts of Madrid. Massacre of civilians It has been widely reported that the Nationalists sacked Badajoz and killed thousands of prisoners and civilians, culminating in an infamous round of executions in the town's bull ring, where machine-guns were set up on the barriers around the ring. The screams of the dying could be heard many streets away. Murder and mass rape flared unchecked for several days, and Yagüe's failure to call a halt to the killings earned him the nickname, "The Butcher of Badajoz". Foreign correspondents, depending on their political sympathies, reported between an estimated 1,800 and 4,000 civilian deaths. There are various eyewitness accounts and other reports of the massacre of Badajoz, including some from foreign correspondents, such as Jay Allen (American), Mário Neves (Portuguese), and Marcel Dany and René Bru (French); there are also photographs that survive of the massacre. Today, most historians recognize