I weave fate in parallel time and space

Chapter 377 Bloody Sunday

Meanwhile, on Palace Square in St. Petersburg, something even bigger was happening.
The palace in Palace Square refers to the Winter Palace, which is the palace where the tsar really handles government affairs.

The Winter Palace faces the Neva River, with a slightly protruding center, three arched iron gates, and a group of Atlas giants at the entrance.

There are two rows of colonnades around the palace, which is magnificent.The palace is inlaid with marble, malachite, azurite, porphyry, and jasper; it is decorated with gold and copper plating; it is decorated with sculptures, murals, and embroidered curtains of various textures.

The grandeur and scale of the Palace Square are amazing, 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, Ekaterina II bought 250 paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens and others from Berlin and stored them in the Winter Palace (French, meaning "Hidden Palace"). name.

In order to demonstrate her power, during her 34 years in power, Ekaterina II has continuously acquired a large number of works of art of various categories, including 1 coins and medals.

During her first ten years in office, she purchased about 2000 paintings.The 3 volumes in her library reflect her serious reading life - she read Voltaire as well as Rousseau, with whom she corresponded for many years until his death in 8000 .

Not only the portrait of Ekaterina is placed here, but also the famous paintings of Da Vinci, Gauguin and Picasso.

But at this moment, the palace in front of the square was full of tension and flames.

A group of workers and peasants, holding pitchforks, hammers, and sickles, confronted the army at the gate of the palace. They held up their weapons and shouted some kind of slogan.

The troops at the gate of the palace held guns in their hands, and even stood a few mechas, but their faces were solemn, and the weapons they held in their hands did not dare to shoot.

Because there are too many people gathered in this square, even if this group of people is nothing compared to mechs, the power of such a huge number of riots is still frightening.

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, encouraged by the liberal movement, the country's legal organization, the St. Petersburg Factory Workers' Congress, decided to file the petition in an independent capacity.

The content was completed by Fr Gabon, the leader of the conference, and was originally scheduled to be announced on February 2.

In 1905, 6000 people at the Putilov factory in St. Petersburg were members of the Gabon organization.In order to obtain greater profits, the factory director has continuously violated the rights of workers since the autumn of 1904.

By the end of the year, four workers at the factory who had attended a workers' meeting were fired by the foreman.Fired workers demanded their jobs be reinstated.

But the overbearing factory management not only ignored the workers' request, but also responded provocatively and satirically: "Go to your 'meeting' and let it support you!"

After negotiations failed, the workers' conference decided to start a strike on January 1905, 1.By the next day, the Putilov factory strike began to spread to other factories.

On January 1, 5 workers joined the strike.At the same time, the factory rejected workers' demands for better working conditions, and the intensity of strikes continued to expand.

In the end, Gapon and the Congress leadership felt that the workers' grievances should be expressed directly to the highest authority, the Ministry of the Interior, and even the Tsar himself, bypassing the officials and capitalists.

Therefore, the General Assembly decided to take advantage of the opportunity of the strike to submit a petition to the authorities.

On January 1, the content of the petition was completed and distributed to all walks of life.

The petition pointed out the difficult situation of the broad masses of workers and made demands for reform, calling on the tsar to reform.At the same time, the number of strikers in the capital reached 15, and began to spread to surrounding areas.

On January 1, 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 1, Gabon made an appointment with everyone: he will carry two bandannas, white and red.When he successfully handed the petition to the tsar, he would wave a white handkerchief to the crowd, so the workers could revel in victory; but if it was red, it meant failure, and the workers could use it to revolt against the authorities.

It was the first general strike ever to break out in the capital of the Reich.The army assisted the police in guarding power stations, gas plants, reservoirs, railway stations, and large industrial enterprises.

When the strike in the capital began with ferocity on January 1, Interior Minister Sviatopok-Mirsky tendered his resignation.Tsar Nicholas II had a "long talk" 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 stated that the country does not need any reforms, but "it is necessary to stop assembly and speech." The surprised Mirsky spread his hands and said: "If the freedom of assembly and speech of the people is prohibited, then we can only declare martial law and prohibit everything."

Nikolay replied calmly: "So what, it probably has to be."

On the eve of "Bloody Sunday," the Tsar handed over power to his uncle, Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, a soldier who believed that the most effective way to deal with popular resistance was by force.The Tsar himself left the capital, "out of touch."

On January 1, the workers' congress began to march, and at the same time, the troops stationed in the capital to guard the city 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.

Humming prayers and singing hymns, the procession marched toward the palace.People fresh from the church joined the procession; the police officers on duty stood with their hats off, and even some police officers joined in.

When the procession was about to reach the gate, a detachment of cavalry blocked the way.The front row of the line stopped, and someone proposed to find 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.

Provoked, the prefect ordered the cavalry to disperse the crowd from the rear.But when they charged, the team stepped aside.

Unable to disperse the crowd and Gabon not found, the infantry formed a solid wall and pointed their rifles at the crowd.

The infantry came from Irkutsk. Before they arrived in the capital, they were informed by their superiors that there would be unrest here, and the parade 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 more than 200 steps away from the army, the commander gave the order to fire.The first two bullets hit the air, and the team kept moving forward.

Suddenly, soldiers from Pskov, who did not understand anything, lost their minds and fired at the crowd.

Fire from two columns of soldiers dispersed the crowd, causing mass casualties among the masses.

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 littered with dead bodies and wounded.Some are crawling forward; some are lying in pools of blood;

Others had been evacuated to the side road; others were still walking in the direction of 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 parade from reaching its final destination, before 11:[-] am, the elite soldiers of the empire were deployed to the main roads leading to the square.

They set up a cordon around Alexandrovsky Garden and other areas, infantry lined up as a wall, and heavy artillery was placed in the square.The wounded, fleeing the bloodshed, came to the square, bringing news of the massacre from all over.

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.

The crowd gathered in Palace Square waited for Gapon to appear to 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 into the air and the second into the crowd.At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, the military and police continued to clear the scene.

The shooting at Palace Square shattered the last hope of petitioning the tsar, and large-scale anti-government riots began in the crowd.

Throughout the afternoon of January 1, the center of St. Petersburg was basically in a state of disorder and chaos with no leader.

The occurrence of the incident angered the workers. That night, St. Petersburg workers built barricades to confront the military and police, and waves of protest and strikes were also set off 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 for this parade.

As in the past, the procession carried banners, crosses, icons and hummed hymns and prayers.

This time, though, there is no more statue of the Tsar.
At the same time, when the parade was outside trying to push forward 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.

This kind of palace has a lot of protrusions on the outer wall, which is like walking on the ground for these assassins.

They nimbly rolled into the window, landed in the corridor and the room, and began to search for Nicholas II's location inside the palace.

They lowered their heads, their faces were hidden under the hoods, and even their footsteps were silent.

Before the guards guarding both sides of the porch noticed them, the group of assassins had already arrived beside them.

The reaction speed of the guards was also very fast. They immediately clenched the guns in their hands, and even wanted to shout to let the rest of the people know the existence 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 this chapter)