The adverse experiences which we have recorded brought the attempts at peaceful propaganda to a close, and the revolutionary party decided on the propaganda of action. They resolved to settle among the people and prepare them for a rising against the Government. Where peaceful teaching had failed, they sought to force a way by violent methods. It was a desperate policy to pursue among a people who had not been able even to understand the aims of the revolutionary party. It is very characteristic of the circumstances of Russia that the most successful attempt at thus organising a scheme for revolutionary action could gain the adhesion of the peasantry only by pretending that it had the sanction of the Tzar. Jacob Stephanovitz, one of the prominent members of the revolutionary party, gave it out in South-Western Russia that he had an order from the Tzar to form a secret society among the common people against the nobles, priests and officials who were opposing the imperial wishes to confer land and freedom on the peasants. Those to whom he addressed himself could hardly believe that the Emperor was so powerless, but he did eventually succeed in forming a society of about a thousand members. When the plot was discovered by the police, the peasants were naturally enraged at the deception which had been practised on them. It should be added that such a method of action did not meet with the approval of the party as a whole. Like the peaceful propaganda, the propaganda of action failed to gain a firm footing among the people. At every step the revolutionary party found the organs of the central power ready to suppress their efforts in the most summary way. They were now convinced that they must directly attack the autocracy and its servants, and as they had received no mercy they decided to show none; and thus began the resolute, systematic, and merciless struggle of the revolutionary party against the Tzardom. For this end they naturally made a great change in their mode of action. They adopted a strong organisation instead of the lax discipline or total want of discipline commended by Bakunin. Affairs were conducted by a secret central committee, who with unsparing energy carried out the new aims of the party. The first great act in this the third stage of the Russian revolutionary movement was the assassination of General Trepoff, Prefect of Police, by Vera Sassoulitsch, at St. Petersburg, in 1878. The occasion of the deed was the flogging, by command of Trepoff, of a political prisoner personally unknown to her. Her object was to avenge the cause of outraged humanity on the servant of the autocracy. At the trial she was acquitted by the jury, to the great surprise of the Imperial Court. An attempt by the police to apprehend her on leaving the place of trial was frustrated by the mob, and she succeeded in making her escape to Switzerland.