During this interval another sensation occurred. General Shuvaiev, Minister of War, and Admiral Grigorovitch, Minister of Marine, appeared in the Duma, and declared themselves on the side of the Duma and the people. This settled the fate of Sturmer. On his way to the front to procure the signature of the czar to the proclamation dissolving the Duma he was handed his dismissal. His successor was Alexander Trepov, also an old-time bureaucrat, but known not to be affiliated with the dark forces. It was hoped that he would conciliate the angry people. But Trepov never played an important part in later developments; the fight was now between the Duma and the people on the one hand and the Minister of the Interior, Protopopoff, on the other. This battle now began in earnest and was destined to be fought out to a bitter finish. With a brazen fearlessness which must be credited to him, Protopopoff now arraigned himself openly against the whole nation and the Duma, with only the few hundreds of individuals constituting the dark forces behind him. But these sinister forces included Rasputin, the all-powerful, the czarina, and, unconscious though he himself may have been of the part he played, the czar himself. Protopopoff now began persecuting the members and the leaders of the social forces as though they were the veriest street agitators for Socialism. Next he endeavored to have Paul Milukov assassinated, but the assassin repented at the last moment and revealed the plot. Then he gathered together former members of the Black Hundreds and recruited them into the police force and trained them in machine-gun practice. And finally he renewed the energy with which he had begun to organize revolutionary disorders among the workers. All Russia was against him, even to the great majority of the members of the Imperial family. His own mother had warned the czar that disaster threatened him. As early as December, 1916, the Grand Duke Nicholas Michailovitch had held a long interview with the czar in which he had openly denounced the czarina and Rasputin in such strong terms that when he had finished, having realized he had gone extremely far, he remarked: "And now you may call in your Cossacks and have them kill me and bury me in the garden." In reply the czar only smiled and offered the grand duke a light for the cigarette which he had been fingering in his nervous rage. It was by a member of the Imperial family that the first vital blow was struck at the dark forces. In the early morning hours of December 30, 1916, a dramatic climax was precipitated.