A more moderate man, or one who claimed at least to have some sympathy with liberalism, Prince Sviatopolk-Mirski, was put in charge of the ministry of the interior, and the struggle passed to a new phase. On November 19th the police of St. Petersburg permitted a large meeting of members of the provincial Zemstvos, and a deputation of these was allowed to see Prince Mirski. They demanded free parliamentary institutions and manhood suffrage, and the Prince undertook to lay their demands before the Tsar. It is reported that the Dowager-Empress, the Grand Dukes, and the reactionary ministers violently opposed any concession, and we must assume both that they would be consulted and that they would give this advice. The Tsar was nervous and timorous, physically and mentally unequal to the great burden which now lay upon him. On December 12th he issued a ukase in which he promised reforms, but he described the demands of the representatives of the Zemstvos as “inadmissible” and inconsistent with “the fundamental laws of the Empire.” The bulk of his people were, he said, “true to the old foundations of the State-organisation,” and he would protect them from the intrigues of agitators. The battle continued. A great meeting at St. Petersburg was addressed openly by writers and scholars of distinction, and amongst the crowd the cry “Down with the Autocracy” was heard. Petitions and demands for representative institutions rained upon the Tsar from all classes of his subjects. Strikes and riots filled the daily press. On January 9th the notorious Father Gapon led 300,000 workers to the Winter Palace, to lay their grievances before the “Little Father,” and before evening the snows of St. Petersburg were stained with the blood of thousands. There were spurts of revolt at Kichineff, Odessa, Moscow, and even Kronstadt. On February 4th the Grand Duke Sergius, the most corrupt of the reactionaries, was assassinated. Prince Mirski resigned and was succeeded by Bulygin. Before the new minister was established, the Tsar issued a new ukase affirming the autocratic principle, but Bulygin insisted that he should modify this act of mad defiance, dictated by the palace-clique, by issuing on the same day a promise to convoke a consultative assembly of representatives of the people. He appointed a commission of inquiry, and in reply to a deputation from a second conference of the Zemstvos he announced that a National Assembly would soon be granted. The long-expected ukase appeared on May 10th. It opened on a note of repentance: “A State cannot be solid unless it holds as sacred the traditions of the past. We have failed in this, and God has punished us. The sovereignty of ancient Russia was indissolubly bound up with ‘the voice of the land,’ with the representatives of the people assembled in council.” For the first time the Romanoffs perceived that, centuries before their dynasty was cradled, Russia had had a past, and a democratic past.