station, was stabbed when he refused and had to be hospitalised. The other power station employees were forcibly evicted and the guard beaten. Some authors see these actions as having had an air of sabotage, thus considering it very likely that communist agitators played an important role in radicalising the miners. The local authorities took no action on the first day; indeed there were just 18 gendarmes in the vicinity. On the morning of 6 August, the leading authorities of Hunedoara County came to Lupeni, accompanied by 80 troops from the 4th frontier guards regiment and some 20 gendarmes. The mining company attempted to start the power station with strike-breakers in order to prevent the mines from being flooded and those underground from being asphyxiated, but the strikers maintained a cordon around the works. (A prosecutor later reported that the men inside the power station were "armed with stakes, iron bars, bludgeons and revolvers and were awaiting the authorities with aggressive poses".) The public prosecutor made a final demand that the strikers withdraw from the power station; the strikers replied with a howl of defiance. Some 40 gendarmes now present advanced, trying to intimidate the strikers. According to later testimony, the workers then threw objects toward the gendarmes, wounding those in the first line. When a striker fired a revolver, the 80 troops fired warning shots into the air. As the miners' aggressiveness was undiminished, the troops fired 78 bullets into the crowd (without orders, as established by an enquiry), some lodging in the power station's chimney. When the firing ceased, dozens of men lay on the ground; the rest, panic-stricken, fled quickly. Work at the station resumed immediately; troops and gendarmes guarded the station and all mine buildings. Casualties Different sources give different numbers of dead and wounded: 16 dead and 200 wounded; 22 dead and 58 wounded; 30 dead and over a hundred wounded; 32 dead and 56 wounded; 40 dead (including two troops); 58 dead and hundreds wounded. A more detailed report states that 13 miners died instantly and seven more in the following hours, with 23 hospitalised and gravely wounded. 30 were recorded with light wounds, but others went home undetected. 15 gendarmes were wounded and 10 soldiers, one gravely (knifed in the neck). The chief mechanic at the power station died of his wounds in hospital. Some 40 miners were arrested. On 9 August, the