The first thing that was done by the Duma was to refuse to disperse and to resist the ukaze of the Czar that had prorogued its debates for an indefinite time. The socialist deputies went about trying to get the population of Petrograd to join in the vast movement of revolt they meant to bring about. The latter was but too willing to do so, and the want of provisions was the pretext which the people took to organise vast meetings, and a strike in all the factories. Great masses of men and women paraded the streets, and were dispersed by a formidable police force which had been assembled by Mr. Protopopoff and armed with machine guns that were used against the crowds, whenever these did not obey immediately the injunctions to disperse given to them by special constables and Cossacks gathered together in all the principal streets and squares of the capital. The regular troops had been consigned in their barracks and ordered to keep themselves ready to lend a hand to the police. But the unexpected happened. The soldiers had been worked upon by delegates from the workmen, and they declared that they would not obey orders, should any be given to them, to fire upon the populace assembled in the streets. The latter seemed quite sure of impunity, because notwithstanding the preparations made by the police to quell the revolutionary movement, the existence of which was already recognised everywhere, it refused to disperse, and on the contrary proceeded to commit the only acts of violence which were performed during the course of the mutiny. It threw itself on the prisons where political offenders were confined, plundered and burned them, and liberated their inmates. A few other excesses were performed, upon which the Duma constituted itself an executive committee, which assumed the task of restoring order in Petrograd. In the meanwhile, the Czar who had been kept in total ignorance of what was going on in the capital, had left Tsarskoie Selo for headquarters, after having signed the prorogation of the Chambers. In his absence, it was the Empress who was left sole mistress of the situation, and it is to her and to Protopopoff that were due all the attempts at repression which happily for all parties concerned were not allowed to be executed, at least not in their entirety.