Page:John Reed - Ten Days that Shook the World - 1919, Boni and Liveright.djvu/190

148 This order shall be read in all regiments, battalions and squadrons.

 Signed: Minister-President of the Provisional Government and Supreme Commander A. F..

Telegram from Kerensky to the General in Command of the Northern Front:

Gatchina, about thirty kilometers south-west, had fallen during the night. Detachments of the two regiments mentioned—not the sailors—while wandering captainless in the neighbourhood, had indeed been surrounded by Cossacks and given up their arms; but it was not true that they had joined the Government troops. At this very moment crowds of them, bewildered and ashamed, were up at Smolny trying to explain. They did not think the Cossacks were so near… They had tried to argue with the Cossacks…

Apparently the greatest confusion prevailed along the revolutionary front. The garrisons of all the little towns southward had split hopelessly, bitterly into two factions—or three: the high command being on the side of Kerensky, in default of anything stronger, the majority of the rank and file with the Soviets, and the rest unhappily wavering.

Hastily the Military Revolutionary Committee appointed to command the defence of Petrograd an ambitious regular Army captain, Muraviov, the same Muraviov who had organised the Death Battalions during the summer, and had once