All this culminated on January the 9/22 1905 when a group of people 20 thousand people (workers, women, children and elder people) led by a priest and okhrana (secret police) double agent father Georgi Gapon gathered at six points around St Petersburg to petition Nicholas. The assembly was entirely peaceful as the crowd were dressed in their best clothes and took their families. To groups aims were set out before the march in a letter to the tsar sent by Gapon which said that the people still trusted the tsar and were going to tell him their needs at 2pm outside the winter palace, he asked the tsar to meet the people and give a speech to the people. This shows that the people still trusted the tsar at this point and believed he could help them achieve their objectives and he was still popular because in the letter Gapon uses words like “humblest”, “inviolability and he calls him “sire”, if you were going to over throw someone then you would not use such menial language.
The aims of the crowd were completely peaceful, all they wanted was; better wages, better living conditions, a reduction in the working day and an assembly where they could elect their own representatives.
The crowd met and did march towards the winter palace despite warnings from the army not to. The cities authorities put soldiers in selected parts of the city where they could gain strategic advantages; this included the monument to Russia’s victories over Napoleon in 1812 (when he tried to invade Russia) the Narva arch. Here the crowd met armed police and an assortment of army units including a group of Cossacks. It was these Cossacks who charged and broke the group up when they ignore orders from the police for them to halt. After this attack the crowd reformed and proceeded, the Cossack attacked again, then the army open fire with rifles and cannons packed with small iron balls. The official death toll is said to have under estimated the number of dead (130 killed and 450 injured) but a journalist’s estimation of 4600 killed and wounded is said to have been too high so the real number is not known.
The massacre dead irreparable damage both in Russia and also abroad. An American in Petersburg at the time has been quoted as saying, “the present ruler has lost the affection of the Russian people, and whatever the future may hold for the dynasty the present tsar will never be safe in the midst of his own people.” The Russian where also denied a loan by France and Germany because of the incident. After the shootings father Gapon denounced Nicholas as a “traitor to his people” and this shows how much popular opinion of Nicholas had reduced, it was Gapon who wrote the letter to the tsar before the march.
Nicholas knew that he had angered his people so the governor general of St Petersburg told him it would be prudent to meet with representatives of the factories and he grudgingly agreed. At this meeting the tsar told the representatives that he “forgave” them and that before they left they could go and get some food from his kitchen. This further angered the people because it shows that he did not respect them and that he was just trying to act as though he was lenient by not punishing them and also that he was generous by letting them have some of his food.
In conclusion, although the tsar was over-thrown by revolutionaries, it was not immediately linked to Bloody Sunday because it was 12 years later, however this event did bring sympathy for the workers cause and also made people see the flaw in the political system in Russia and did hasten the down fall of the Romanov Dynasty.
