likely to infect the army, he convinced the Emperor of the necessity of convoking Parliament and of proclaiming a new Constitution. Soon he witnessed the increase of reaction, and resented the underhand struggle in which the Court camarilla and the landed gentry engaged against him.
The position of the omnipotent Minister was shaken. It was necessary to prop it up in order to save the situation. Witte resolved to organise a national procession to the Imperial Palace. Who was to lead it? The revolutionary leaders could be of no use, it was necessary to have a reliable man. He was found in the pope Gapon, who was very popular among the labouring classes. He led the multitudes of workmen, students, and intelligentsia in front of the Winter Palace. At the head of the procession went women and old men carrying portraits of the Tsar and the Tsaritsa, crosses, and holy ikons.
We know how the Imperial Guards, let loose by the reactionaries, massacred and dispersed the crowd. In the evening of the same day the streets of the city were bristling with barricades, and the flame of revolution blazed forth from the western front to the shores of the Pacific and to the Indian border. A revolution of the workmen and the intelligentsia which was drowned in blood by the Generals Trepov, Dumbadse, Dubasov, Meller-Zakomelski, Rennenkampf, Rinn, and others.
Witte's hand was active in the march of the revolu-
