Also to pass and occupy Pavlovskoye, fortifying its southern side,
and to take up the railroad as far as Dno.
The troops must take all measures to strengthen the positions
occupied by them, arranging trenches and other defensive works.
They must enter into close liaison with the detachments of Colpinno
and Krasnoye Selo, and also with the Staff of the Commander in Chief
for the Defence of Petrograd.
Signed,
_Commander in Chief aver all Forces acting against the
Counter-revolutionary Troops of Kerensky,_
Lieutenant-Colonel MURAVIOV.
Tuesday morning. But how is this? Only two days ago the Petrograd
campagna was full of leaderless bands, wandering aimlessly; without
food, without artillery, without a plan. What had fused that
disorganised mass of undisciplined Red Guards, and soldiers without
officers, into an army obedient to its own elected high command,
tempered to meet and break the assault of cannon and Cossack
cavalry? (See App. IX, Sect. 1)
People in revolt have a way of defying military precedent. The
ragged armies of the French Revolution are not forgotten-Valmy and
the Lines of Weissembourg. Massed against the Soviet forces were
_yunkers,_ Cossacks, land-owners, nobility, Black Hundreds-the Tsar
come again, _Okhrana_ and Siberian chains; and the vast and terrible
menace of the Germans.... Victory, in the words of Carlyle, meant
"Apotheosis and Millennium without end!"
Sunday night, the Commissars of the Military Revolutionary Committee
returning desperately from the field, the garrison of Petrograd
elected its Committee of Five, its Battle Staff, three soldiers and
two officers, all certified free from counter-revolutionary taint.
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