At the same time, an even grander scene was taking place on Palace Square in St. Petersburg.
The palace in Palace Square refers to the Winter Palace, the palace where the tsar actually handled government affairs.
The Winter Palace faces the Neva River, with a slightly protruding center, three arched iron doors, and a group of Atlas giants at the entrance.
There are two rows of colonnades surrounding the palace, which is majestic. The palace is inlaid with various marbles, malachite, azurite, spotted stone and jasper; decorated with gold and copper plating; and decorated with sculptures, murals and embroidered curtains of various textures.
The grandeur and scale of the Palace Square are astonishing, and all its buildings are very harmonious.
All buildings were built in different styles by different architects at different times.
It was originally the private museum of Empress Catherine II.
The empress was particularly fond of collecting paintings of all kinds.
In 1764, Catherine II purchased 250 paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens and others from Berlin and stored them in the Hermitage (French, meaning "Hermit Palace"), which gave the museum its name.
In order to demonstrate her power, during the 34 years of her reign, Catherine II continued to acquire and collect a large number of works of art of various types, including 16,000 coins and medals.
In the first ten years of her reign, she purchased approximately 2,000 paintings. The 38,000 books in her library reflect a serious reading life - she read Voltaire as well as Rousseau, and corresponded with Voltaire for many years until his death in 1778. .
Not only is the portrait of Catherine placed here, but famous paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Gauguin, and Picasso are also here.
But at this moment, the palace in front of the square was full of tension and flames.
A group of workers and peasants armed with pitchforks, hammers, and sickles confronted the army at the gate of the palace. They held their weapons high and shouted some slogans.
The troops at the gate of the palace had guns in their hands, and there were even a few mechas standing there, but their faces were solemn, and the weapons they held were hesitant to fire.
Because there are so many people gathered in this square, even if this group of people is nothing compared to mechas, the power of such a huge number to riot is still terrifying.
Ten years ago, there was a general strike in the same place.
But at that time, the government of this country intensified the conflict with wrong handling.
People called it "Bloody Sunday."
Beginning in the 15th century, individual or collective petitions were established as a way to express dissatisfaction to the tsarist government. Tsarist Russian society at the beginning of the 20th century still followed this tradition.
In 1904, inspired by the liberal movement, the country's legal organization, the St. Petersburg Factory Workers' Congress, decided to submit a petition as an independent.
The content was completed by Father Gabon, the leader of the conference, and was originally scheduled to be released on February 19.
In 1905, 6,000 people at the Putilov Factory in St. Petersburg were members of the Gabon Organization. In order to obtain greater profits, the factory director continued to violate workers' rights starting in the autumn of 1904.
At the end of the year, four factory workers who participated in a workers' meeting were fired by the foreman. Fired workers demand reinstatement of their jobs.
But the arrogant factory management not only ignored the workers' requests, but also responded provocatively and sarcastically: "Go to your 'congress' and let it support you!"
After negotiations failed, the workers' conference decided to start a strike on January 3, 1905. By the next day, the Putilov factory strike began to spread to other factories.
On January 5, 10,000 workers joined the strike. At the same time, the factory refused workers' demands for improved working conditions, and the intensity of the strike continued to increase.
Finally, Gabon and the Congress leadership believed that workers' grievances should be expressed directly to the highest authority, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and even to the Tsar himself, bypassing officials and capitalists.
Therefore, the conference decided to take advantage of the strike to submit a petition to the authorities.
On January 7, the content of the petition was completed and distributed to all walks of life.
The petition pointed out the difficult situation of the vast majority of workers and put forward demands for reform, calling on the tsar to reform. At the same time, the number of people participating in the strike in the capital has reached 150,000 and has begun to spread to surrounding areas.
On January 7, Justice Minister Muravyov asked Gabon to abandon the petition plan, but Gabon rejected his request. When Gabon asked to see the Minister of the Interior, he was also refused.
On the evening of January 8, Gabon made an agreement with everyone: he would carry two bandanas, white and red. When he successfully delivered the petition to the Tsar, he would wave a white handkerchief to the crowd, so the workers could rejoice in victory; but if it was red, it meant failure, and the workers could use this to launch a rebellion against the authorities.
This was the first ever general strike in the imperial capital. The military assisted the police in guarding power stations, gas plants, reservoirs, railway stations and large industrial enterprises.
When the strike in the capital took hold on January 4, Interior Minister Svyatopok-Mirsky submitted his resignation. Tsar Nicholas II had a "long conversation" with him.
He said in his resignation letter that he had done nothing in terms of political reform when the country's political situation was in serious turmoil.
The tsar said that the country did not need any reforms, but "needs to stop assembly and speech." A surprised Mirsky spread his hands and said: "If public assembly and freedom of speech are prohibited, then martial law can only be declared and everything is prohibited."
Nicholas calmly replied: "So what, it probably has to be like this."
On the eve of "Bloody Sunday", the Tsar handed over full power to his uncle, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexanderovich, who was a soldier. This person believed that using force to deal with popular resistance was most effective. The Tsar himself left the capital and "disassociated himself."
On January 9, the workers' conference began to march. At the same time, the troops stationed in the capital for security also completed their final deployment.
Just after 11 o'clock, the parade in Narva began to move. At the front of the procession, some workers carried flags, crosses, icons and portraits of the Tsar. Behind them was a large banner that read "Soldiers! Don't shoot at people!"
Gabon was in the second echelon. He wore a military coat over his cassock and was surrounded by assistants and bodyguards.
The procession hummed prayers and sang hymns as it made its way to the palace. People who had just walked out of the church also joined the march; the police on duty stood with their hats off, and even some police officers joined in.
As the procession approached the gate, a detachment of cavalry blocked the way. The front row of the team stopped, and someone suggested finding another route, but the leader and the crowd behind asked the front row to go directly to the arch.
As the team became more and more crowded, the crowd's songs of encouragement became louder and louder, and the team kept moving forward at a fast pace. Suddenly the infantry dispersed and a group of Guards Cavalry rushed out. The marchers quickly moved out of the way, and Gabon shouted to the workers not to back away.
The workers united again and moved forward still singing. The military police occupying the gate of Narva suspected that Gabon was in the parade and wanted to arrest him.
An officer later said that someone in the crowd fired two shots and that several workers attacked the soldiers with short sticks.
Enraged, the commander ordered the cavalry to disperse the crowd from the rear. But when they came, the team got out of the way.
Unable to disperse the crowd and unable to find Gabon, the infantry formed a strong human wall and pointed their rifles at the crowd.
This infantrymen came from Irkutsk. Before they arrived in the capital, they were informed by their superiors that there would be unrest here, and the march was instigated by the rioters.
As soldiers stood nervously in front of the advancing crowd, some police officers tried to reason with march leaders. The police urged the workers to leave, but the workers continued to move forward, holding hands and singing songs.
When the crowd was still more than 200 steps away from the army, the commander gave the order to fire. The first two bullets were fired into the air, but the team still moved forward.
Suddenly, the soldiers from Pskov, who did not understand anything, lost their minds and fired intensively at the crowd.
Two groups of soldiers opened fire to disperse the crowd, causing mass casualties.
Gabon's assistant and conference chairman Vasilyev died on the spot, and most of the seriously injured people were workers in the first row of the team holding holy objects and icons. Two other law enforcement officers, one killed and one wounded, were among the crowd.
After the shooting stopped, the streets were strewn with corpses and the wounded. Some people are crawling forward; some people fall in a pool of blood;
Others have evacuated to the side roads; others are still walking towards the Winter Palace.
Because Gabon was in the middle of the crowd, he was protected by the corpses of injured workers in the front row. When the shooting stopped, he was lying on the ground in panic, cursing the executioner.
In the square in front of the Winter Palace, in order to prevent the marchers from reaching their final destination, the empire's elite soldiers were deployed to the main roads leading to the square before 11 a.m.
They set up cordons on the perimeter such as the Alexandrovsky Garden, lined up infantry on human walls, and placed heavy artillery in the square. The wounded who escaped from the bloody scene came to the square, bringing news of massacres in various places.
The angry crowd began to disrespect the military and police more and more, and more and more people laughed at the military and police, but some workers still did not believe that the tsar would order the shooting.
A crowd gathered in the Palace Square waiting for Gabon to appear and deliver a petition to the Tsar.
At 2 p.m., neither the procession nor the Tsar appeared. After a few minutes, military police began to clear the area, but the crowd refused to budge.
The officer was worried that the soldiers would waver, so he ordered the soldiers to advance 120 steps. The cavalry used saber blades and whips to disperse the crowd, and the infantry pointed bayonets at the crowd, but the crowd did not leave.
After the bugle sounded three times, the soldiers fired the first wave of guns into the air and the second wave into the crowd. At 3 p.m., military police continued to clear the area.
The shooting in the Palace Square shattered the last hope of petitioning the Tsar, and the crowd began to riot against the government on a massive scale.
Throughout the afternoon of January 9, the city center of St. Petersburg was basically in a state of disorder and leaderlessness.
The incident angered the workers. That night, workers in St. Petersburg built barricades to confront the military and police. A wave of protests and strikes also broke out in various places.
This showed that there was no longer any chance of reconciliation between the tsarist government and the workers of this country.
“Bloody Sunday irreparably shattered the long-cherished image of the Tsar as a benevolent ‘little father’ to many Russians, and citizens throughout the Empire turned against the Tsarist regime.
This is also the basis of this march.
Just like in the past, the team carried flags, crosses, icons, and hummed hymns and prayers.
But this time, there is no longer a statue of the Tsar.
At the same time, the procession was outside trying to advance into the palace.
In a place that no one could see, a group of people wearing Brotherhood Assassin uniforms were sneaking from the garden on one side to the vicinity of the Winter Palace. They followed the palace wall and climbed up the palace wall very flexibly.
There are many protrusions on the outer wall of this kind of palace, which is like walking on flat ground for these assassins.
They flexibly climbed into the window, landed in the corridor and room, and began to look for Nicholas II's location inside the palace.
Their heads were lowered, their faces hidden under their hoods, and even their footsteps made no sound.
Before the guards guarding both sides of the porch noticed them, the group of assassins had already arrived beside them.
The guards' reaction speed was also very fast. They immediately clenched their guns and even wanted to shout to let the others know the presence of the intruder.
But the next moment, the assassin's palm thrust out from bottom to top and hit his chin. With the sound of the sword cutting into his flesh, he opened his eyes suddenly and lost his breath almost instantly.
The other assassin copied his movements almost perfectly, and the guard on the other side was also killed instantly.
The assassin retracted his hand, and the blood-stained hidden sword was retracted into his sleeve without leaving a trace. The guard was half-kneeling on the ground weakly, with his eyes open and a look of disbelief on his face.
The assassin raised his hand and closed his eyelids that he refused to put down, murmuring softly.
"Bless your soul with the Lord. Amen."
(End of chapter)
