Within the country an economic crisis on the one hand, and on the other hand the Armenians’ aggressions, in the course of which they had massacred many Mussulmans, especially at Karabagh, had raised a widespread discontent against the Cabinet. Emboldened by the success of the Bolshevists, who benefited by these disturbances, their local accomplices, some Russian workmen supported by about a hundred Moslem workmen, helped to organise a series of raids. During the night of April 26-27 the northern frontier of Azerbaïjan was crossed at the railway station of Jalama by a Bolshevist armoured train, for the main body of the army of Azerbaïjan had been dispatched to Karabagh and Kasakg to repel an Armenian attack, so that only one armoured train and a few hundred soldiers had been left on the northern frontier. This small detachment could not prevent the advance of the Red forces which followed the train, though it did its duty bravely and destroyed the railway track. On April 27 the Bolshevist forces reached the station of Khatchmaz, where they were greeted by a group of local communists. At Baku, where the population lived in a state of indifference and passivity, the local communists, encouraged by the advance of the Russian Bolshevists, addressed an ultimatum to the Government, which had declared itself in favour of armed resistance, demanding the resignation of the Cabinet and the handing over of the Government to the revolutionary committee which had just been formed. This ultimatum was enforced by the threat of the bombardment of the town by the fleet of the Caspian Sea. The Government, which had vainly asked Georgia for assistance, and had proposed to Armenia, before the common danger, to put an end to the hostilities at Karabagh in order to withdraw its troops and dispatch them to the northern frontier, was compelled on April 28 to hand over the power to the people’s commissioners. The members of the Cabinet, against whom the Bolshevists had issued a writ of arrest, hurried away and the communists immediately resorted to their usual methods of terrorism and plunder.