After a day of chants, debates and yelling at the police who evicted them from Zuccotti Square Tuesday, Occupy Wall Street protestors were overtaken by a wave of silence that rippled through the crowd at 5 p.m. as they learned they'd lost a court battle to rebuild the park.

Occupy Wall Street protestors had been hopeful all day that a state court would allow them to re-establish their two-month old encampment in Manhattan's Zuccotti Park, which was destroyed 16 hours earlier by hundreds of police officers in a surprise morning raid ordered by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Instead, the court allowed the city's new rules against structures and sleeping in the park to stand.

[bug id="occupy"]The false hopes deepened the impact of the court loss on Occupiers, who began living in the park near Wall Street in September in protest against an economic and political system that has benefitted the ultra-rich at the expense of the rest of society for decades.

The sidewalks around the park remained open to protestors, and after the shock of the ruling set in, the motley crew of protestors split along demographics. The young homeless settled in for sleep on the sidewalk on the west side of the park, while the seemingly unstoppable drum circle took to the sidewalk across from the park's northern edge.

Marine Sgt. Shamar Thomas marching Tuesday. Photo: Dawn Lim/Wired.com unknown

On the east side, a general assembly gathered to make decisions about how to proceed under the new rules.

Occupy remains determined not to fade away, despite the raid, the new rules and the imminent approach of winter.

"The whole world is watching," said one protestor, in a message echoed out telephone-style to the rest of the General Assembly. "What we do in this space will inspire people everywhere."

Tim Fitzgerald, an active member of Occupy's logistics group, told Wired.com that the legal fight wasn't over, either.

"We have really good lawyers and plan to appeal," Fitzgerald said, showing off the red indentations in his wrists from the cuffs put on him that morning when he was arrested, in the kitchen, for trespassing and disorderly conduct.

At 6 p.m., the police began allowing protestors back in the park, which led, despite light rain, to a party, albeit one best described as a bit beleaguered.

Photo: Dawn Lim/Wired.com

The police arrested more than 200 protestors in the morning, along with a number of reporters. Using bulldozers and garbage trucks, the police destroyed the encampment's medical facilities and library, tossing the books into a garbage truck. Sanitation crews power-washed the park after police dismantled the tent city that had grown over the last two months.

“No right is absolute and with every right comes responsibilities,” said Mayor Bloomberg Tuesday morning after the raid. “The First Amendment gives every New Yorker the right to speak out –- but it does not give anyone the right to sleep in a park or otherwise take it over to the exclusion of others –- nor does it permit anyone in our society to live outside the law.”

Following the evacuation, the movement moved north to Foley Square, where a General Assembly was held to decide the next course of action, though some people just curled up and went to sleep. During this meeting, the battered and angry (but mostly just exhausted) protestors got word from their legal team that they had acquired a restraining order from Judge Lucy Billings of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan. The crowd was jubilant.

A protestor spoke up, holding an American flag suspended between two bamboo poles, claiming it had been the last thing standing at Zuccotti Park and that the protestors should return it to the park. The flag quickly became totemic and was held high in the vanguard of protestors attempting to return to the park.

Photo: Dawn Lim/Wired.com

They marched, or trudged, downtown, past City Hall, fortified by a heavy police presence, to Sixth and Canal streets. It was there the legal plan was explained in what has become characteristic OWS communication: a three-part people’s mic. The legal team pointed out that if they weren’t allowed to return to the Zuccotti that the police would be in contempt of court.

A section of the protest moved on toward Zuccotti, arriving there to find the barricades. No one was being allowed back into Zuccotti Park, and a new set of rules had been posted to the barricades, specifically aimed at the Wall Street movement. The rules prohibit camping and/or the erecting other structures, lying down on the ground or on the benches, placing tarps on the property, or the storing any personal possessions anywhere in the park.

But the police had no intention of allowing the protestors back in before a final court ruling. They arrested the man with the flag, which they then confiscated.

For the rest of the afternoon, the park was surrounded by chanting protestors, including Marine Sgt. Shamar Thomas, a marine who gained viral fame for a – video decrying police treatment of unarmed Americans exercising their First Amendment rights. Throughout the afternoon, rumors pulsed through the crowd that the temporary injunction had turned permanent, but the police simply held their line until the news came at 5 p.m. that Occupy had lost in court.

The sweep of Zuccotti is part of a larger crackdown of the Occupy Wall Street movement, preceded by the evacuation of Portland’s Lownsdale and Chapman Squares over the weekend and the city of Oakland’s raid on protesters yesterday, and has been followed by Philadelphia, Toronto, Phoenix, among others, today.

Additional reporting and writing by Beth Carter and Ryan Singel