On March 8th the people of Petrograd, especially the women, began to throng the streets, and the workers to quit the factories. Rodzianko, the President of the Duma, summoned a conference on the food-question, and he and Professor Milyukoff, the second hero of the revolution, strongly criticised the incompetence of the ministers. Rodzianko, a former officer of the Guards and husband of a Golitzin princess, was a noble of distinction, but he was an Octobrist and a friend of the people. The crowds were still larger in the streets on March 9th; and on Sunday, the 11th, they turned out in immense numbers and fraternised with the few troops who were visible. The guards, however, were imperfectly won, and on the Sunday afternoon they fired a volley into the crowd and about a hundred were killed or wounded. It is one of the strangest testimonies to the amazing condition of Russia that the crowds remained on the streets and said, sympathetically, to the soldiers: “We are sorry for you, brothers, you had to do your duty.” On the Monday morning it became known that the Tsar had suspended for two months the sittings of the Duma and the Imperial Council, and the revolution was inaugurated. Troops to the number of about 30,000 marched upon the arsenal, distributed arms to the people, and fought the police and the loyal troops. The Progressives and the Socialists formed a committee of twelve of their ablest representatives, including Rodzianko, Milyukoff, and Kerenski; and Rodzianko telegraphed to the Tsar a peremptory demand for a new government. The fight with the police, who mounted the roofs with rifles and machine-guns, was continued on the following day, but the public buildings fell one by one into the hands of the revolutionaries, and about midnight of the 13-14th the enterprise was crowned by the submission to the Provisional Government of the Preobrajensky Guards. Moscow soon sent its adhesion, and the troops in the field gradually assured the new government of their allegiance.