From Moscow, word that the _yunkers_ and Cossacks had surrounded the Kremlin and ordered the Soviet troops to lay down their arms. The Soviet forces complied, and as they were leaving the Kremlin, were set upon and shot down. Small forces of Bolsheviki had been driven from the Telephone and Telegraph offices; the _yunkers_ now held the centre of the city. … But all around them the Soviet troops were mustering. Street-fighting was slowly gathering way; all attempts at compromise had failed…. On the side of the Soviet, ten thousand garrison soldiers and a few Red Guards; on the side of the Government, six thousand _yunkers,_ twenty-five hundred Cossacks and two thousand White Guards. The Petrograd Soviet was meeting, and next door the new _Tsay-ee-kah,_ acting on the decrees and orders (See App. VIII, Sect. 3) which came down in a steady stream from the Council of People’s Commissars in session upstairs; on the Order in Which Laws Are to be Ratified and Published, Establishing an Eight hour Days for Workers, and Lunatcharsky’s “Basis for a System of Popular Education.” Only a few hundred people were present at the two meetings, most of them armed. Smolny was almost deserted, except for the guards, who were busy at the hall windows, setting up machine-guns to command the flanks of the building. In the _Tsay-ee-kah_ a delegate of the _Vikzhel_ was speaking: “We refuse to transport the troops of either party…. We have sent a committee to Kerensky to say that if he continues to march on Petrograd we will break his lines of communication….” He made the usual plea for a conference of all the Socialist parties to form a new Government…. Kameniev answered discreetly. The Bolsheviki would be very glad to attend the conference. The centre of gravity, however, lay not in composition of such a Government, but in its acceptance of the programme of the Congress of Soviets. … The _Tsay-ee-kah_ had deliberated on the declaration made by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries and the Social Democrats Internationalists, and had accepted the proposition of proportional representation at the conference, even including delegates from the Army Committees and the Peasants’ Soviets…. In the great hall, Trotzky recounted the events of the day. “We offered the Vladimir _yunkers_ a chance to surrender,” he said. “We wanted to settle matters without bloodshed. But now that blood has been spilled there is only one way—pitiless struggle. It would be childish to think we can win by any other means…. The moment is decisive. Everybody must cooperate with the Military Revolutionary Committee, report where there are stores of barbed wire, benzine, guns…. We’ve won the power; now we must keep it!” The Menshevik Yoffe tried to read his party’s declaration, but Trotzky refused to allow “a debate about principle.” “Our debates are now in the streets,” he cried. “The decisive step has been taken. We all, and I in particular, take the responsibility for what is happening….”