At the same time, an even grander scene is taking place on St. Petersburg's Palace Square.

The palace in the palace square refers to the Winter Palace, which is the royal palace where the tsar really deals with government affairs.

The Hermitage faces the Neva River, with a slight protrusion in the center, with 3 arched iron gates and a group of Atlas giants at the entrance.

The palace is surrounded by two rows of colonnades, which are imposing. The palace is inlaid with various colors of marble, malachite, lapis lazuli, porphyry and jasper; Decoration with gold and copper plating; It is decorated with sculptures, murals, and embroidered drapery of various textures.

The grandeur and scale of the Hermitage Square is astonishing, and its entire architecture is in perfect harmony.

All buildings were built in different eras and by different architects in different styles.

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 "hidden palace"), hence the name of the museum.

During her 34-year reign, Catherine II acquired a large number of works of art, including 16,000 coins and medals.

In the first decade of her reign, she acquired about 2,000 paintings. Her library's 38,000 volumes reflect her serious reading career, which she read as well as Rousseau's works, and corresponded with Voltaire for many years until his death in 1778.

Not only the portrait of Catherine is placed here, but also the famous paintings of Leonardo da Vinci, Gauguin, and Picasso are also placed here.

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

A group of workers and peasants with pitchforks, hammers, and sickles confronted the army at the gates of the palace, raising their weapons and shouting some kind of slogan.

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

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 large number of riots is still terrifying.

Ten years ago, in the same place, there was a general strike.

At that time, however, the government of the country had exacerbated the contradictions with a mishandling of the situation.

People call it "Bloody Sunday".

From the 15th century onwards, individual or collective petitions were established as a way to express grievances to the tsarist government, and this tradition was still followed in Tsarist Russian society at the beginning of the 20th century.

In 1904, encouraged by the liberal movement, the "Congress of Factory Workers of St. Petersburg", the legal organization of this country, decided to submit a petition in an independent capacity.

The content was completed by the leader of the conference, Fr. Gasbon, and was scheduled to be announced on 19 February.

In 1905, 6,000 people at the Ptiplov plant in St. Petersburg were members of the Californian organization. The director of the factory, in order to obtain greater profits, constantly offended the rights of the workers from the autumn of 1904.

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

But the outrageous factory management not only ignored the workers' pleas, but also replied defiantly and sarcastically: "Go to your 'assembly' and let it support you!" ”

After negotiations failed, the workers' congress decided to start a strike on 3 January 1905. By the next day, the strike at the Putilov plant began to spread to other factories.

On 5 January, 10,000 workers joined the strike. At the same time, the factory refused workers' demands to improve working conditions, and the strike intensified.

In the end, the leadership of the Gabang and the Congress believed that the discontent of the workers should be expressed directly to the highest authority, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and even to the Tsar himself, bypassing the officials and capitalists.

The Assembly then decided to take advantage of the strike to submit a petition to the authorities.

On 7 January, the contents of the petition were completed and distributed to all sectors of society.

The petition pointed out the difficulties in the situation of the broad masses of workers and put forward demands for reform, calling for reform in the tsar. At the same time, the number of people participating in the strike in the capital has already reached 150,000 and is beginning to spread to the surrounding areas.

On January 7, Justice Minister Muravyov asked Gabang to abandon the petition plan, but Gabang rejected his request. When Gabang offered to see the Home Secretary, he was also refused.

On the evening of January 8, Gabang agreed with the crowd that he would carry two large white and red handkerchiefs. When he successfully handed the petition to the Tsar, he would wave a white handkerchief to the crowd, and then the workers could revel in victory; But if it's red, it means defeat, and the workers can use it to start a rebellion against the authorities.

It was the first time in the history of the capital of the empire that a general strike broke out. The army assists the police in guarding power stations, gas factories, reservoirs, railway stations and large industrial enterprises.

When the strike in the capital was fierce on 4 January, the Minister of the Interior, Svyatopok-Mirsky, tendered his resignation. Tsar Nicholas II had a "long talk" with it.

In his resignation, he said that he had done nothing to reform the country at a time when the country's political situation was in serious turmoil.

The Tsar said that the country did not need any reform, but that "assembly and speech need to be stopped", and a startled Mirsky spread his hands and said: "If freedom of assembly and speech is forbidden, martial law can only be declared, everything is forbidden." ”

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

On the eve of Bloody Sunday, the tsar gave full power to his uncle, Grand Duke Vladimir Aleksandrovich, a soldier, who believed that the most effective use of force against popular resistance was the most effective. The tsar himself left the capital, "out of touch."

On 9 January, the workers' congress marched and at the same time the troops stationed in the capital completed their final deployments.

Just after 11 o'clock, the procession in Narva began to move. At the front of the procession, some workers carried flags, crosses, icons and portraits of the Tsar, followed by a sign that read "Soldiers! Don't shoot at people! "Big banner.

Gabang was in the second echelon, and he wore a military coat over his robe, surrounded by assistants and bodyguards.

The procession hummed prayers and sang hymns as they marched towards the palace. People who had just come out of the church also joined the procession; The police officers on duty took off their hats and stood, and even some officers joined in.

When the team was about to reach the gate, a group of cavalry blocked the way. The front row of the line stopped, and someone suggested finding another route, but the leader and the crowd behind him demanded that the front row go directly to the arch.

As the procession became more and more crowded, the crowd's songs of encouragement for courage grew louder and louder, and the procession kept moving fast. Suddenly the infantry dispersed, and a detachment of guards cavalry rushed out. The procession hastened to get out of the way, and Garbang shouted to the workers not to back off.

The workers were united again, still singing and moving forward. The military police occupying the gate of Narva suspected that Gabang was in the procession and wanted to arrest him.

An officer later said that two shots had been fired in the crowd and that several workers had attacked the soldiers with short sticks.

Enraged, the commander ordered the cavalry to disperse the crowd from the rear. But when they rushed over, the team got out of the way on their own.

Unable to disperse the crowd and not finding Gabon, the infantry had to line up in a strong human wall and point their rifles at the crowd.

The infantrymen came from Irkutsk, and before they arrived in the capital, they were informed by their superiors that there would be unrest here, and the procession was instigated by the rioters.

As the soldiers nervously stood in front of the advancing crowd, some of the policemen tried to reason with the leaders of the march. The police urged the workers to leave, but the workers continued to move on, holding hands and singing.

When the crowd was still more than 200 steps away from the army, the commander gave the order to open fire. The first two bullets were fired into the air, and the team continued to move forward.

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

The fire of the two groups of soldiers dispersed the crowd and caused mass casualties.

Vasilyev, Gabon's assistant and chairman of the assembly, died on the spot, and most of the seriously injured were workers in the first row of the procession holding holy relics and icons. Two other law enforcement officers, one dead and one wounded, were staying with the crowd at the time.

After the shooting stopped, the streets were littered with corpses and wounded. Some are crawling forward; Some lay in pools of blood;

Others have been evacuated to the side road; Others still walked in the direction of the Winter Palace.

And Gabang was in the middle of the crowd, and the bodies of the casualties of the workers in the front row protected him, and when the shooting stopped, he was lying on the ground in a panic, cursing the executioner in his mouth.

In the square in front of the Winter Palace, in order to prevent the marchers from reaching their final destination, the elite soldiers of the empire were deployed to the main roads leading to the square before 11 a.m.

They set up a cordon on the perimeter of the Alexandrovsky Garden, the infantry lined up on a wall, and placed heavy artillery in the square. The wounded, who had escaped from the scene of the bloodshed, came to the square with news of the massacre everywhere.

The angry crowd began to become more and more disrespectful to the military police, and more people laughed at the military police, but some workers still did not believe that the tsar would give the order to shoot.

The crowd gathered on the Hermitage Square waited for Gasbon to appear and present the petition to the Tsar.

At 2 p.m., neither the procession nor the tsar appeared. A few minutes later, the military police began to clear the field, but the crowd refused to budge.

The officer, fearing that the soldiers would waver, ordered the soldiers to advance 120 paces. The cavalry used the back of their sabers and whips to disperse the crowd, the infantry pointed their bayonets at the crowd, and 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., the military police continued to clear the scene.

The shooting on Hermitage Square shattered the last hope of a petition to the Tsar, and mass anti-government agitation began in the crowd.

Throughout the afternoon of January 9, the center of St. Petersburg was in a state of disorder and chaos.

The incident infuriated the workers, and that night the workers of St. Petersburg set up barricades to confront the military and police, and a wave of protest strikes broke out in various places.

This shows that there is no longer any chance of reconciliation between the tsarist government and the workers of this country.

"Bloody Sunday irretrievably shattered the image of the tsar's benevolent 'little father' that many Russians had always cherished, and the citizens of the entire empire turned against the tsarist regime.

This is also the basis of this march.

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

This time, though, there is no more of a tsar.

At the same time, the procession was trying to advance into the palace as the procession was outside.

As far as people could not see, a crowd of people dressed in fraternity thorns slipped from the garden to the vicinity of the Winter Palace, following the palace walls and climbing up the palace walls with great agility.

The façade of the palace had many protrusions, which were almost flat for the Assassins.

They nimbly climbed into the windows, landed in the corridors, in the rooms, and began to look for the location of Nicholas II in the palace.

Their heads were bowed, their faces hidden under their hoods, and there was no sound of even their footsteps.

Before the guards guarding the porch spotted them, the group of Assassins had already come to their side.

The guards were also quick to react, and they instantly clenched their guns, and even wanted to shout to let the rest of the people know about the presence of the intruders.

But the next moment, the assassin's palm stabbed out and slammed into his chin, and his eyes opened wide with the sound of the sword sprinting into the flesh, and he lost his breath almost instantly.

The other assassin was an almost perfect replica of his movements, and the guards on the other side were killed instantly.

The assassin withdrew his hand, the blood-stained Hidden Blade retracted into his sleeve without a trace, and the guard was also half-kneeling on the ground weakly, his eyes open, and his expression was incredulous.

The Assassin raised his hand to close his eyelids, which he had never let go, and whispered.

"Bless your soul with the Lord. Amen."

(End of chapter)