In the hours and days that followed, Bane’s fiery oration was played constantly over the airwaves, as all that he prophesized came to pass.

“For an army will be raised…”

Mercenaries had handed out weapons to the prisoners escaping Blackgate. Shots were fired into the air in celebration, as the criminals rampaged through Gotham, encountering no resistance. Other men and women, eager to join in the looting, poured into the streets as well, swelling the ranks of the ad hoc army. They found the city ripe for the taking.

Looters invaded a tree-lined boulevard across from the park. What had once been one of Gotham’s tonier neighborhoods was overrun by a lawless horde that stormed the luxury apartment buildings. Gun-wielding rioters shot off the locks or battered down the doors. Hopelessly outnumbered, cowed doormen and security guards either retreated from the mob or else joined the insurrection. Mercenaries, convicts, gang members, vandals, anarchists, and opportunists whooped uproariously as they helped themselves to the homes of the rich and famous.

“The powerful will be ripped from their decadent nests…”

On Park Boulevard, looters ransacked a palatial penthouse apartment. High-end televisions, computers, and other pricy electronics were seized and fought over before being hauled out the door. Drawers were yanked out and dumped onto the floor, the better to rifle through their contents. Antique desks and chairs were overturned, priceless vases and paintings trashed.

The one-time owners of the apartment, an investment banker and his much younger trophy wife, cowered in a corner as the rioters rooted through their closets, tossing designer dresses and tailored suits onto the floor. Thirstier looters raided the well-stocked liquor cabinet, passing around rare vintages of wine and bottles of fifty-year-old Scotch and bourbon. Empty bottles shattered against the walls. Costly spirits spilled onto an imported Persian carpet. Cuban cigars were smoked with abandon.

* * *

“And cast into the cold world the rest of us have known and endured…”

At first, the terrified apartment owners thought that they themselves might be spared, that the rioters were only after their possessions. But then men with guns descended upon them and herded them roughly out into the street, where they were rounded up along with the rest of their scared and affluent neighbors. Despite the cold fall weather, and not even given a chance to dress for the outdoors, they were marched at gunpoint away from their former homes.

Raucous laughter followed them down the block. Thrown rocks and garbage pelted them. An empty bottle hit the banker in the face.

“Courts will be convened…”

The stock exchange, site of Bane’s first assault upon Gotham’s wheelers and dealers, was converted into a mock courthouse attended by crowds of jeering spectators. An escaped convict who had traded his orange prison jumpsuit for an ill-fitting black robe presided over the trial of the banker and his wife. They found themselves accused of high crimes and treason against the people of Gotham. They clung to each other, shivering in the dock, as Jonathan Crane, a convicted killer who had once terrorized the city, pronounced sentence on them.