It is mid-morning as the marchers approach. Cossacks draw their sabres and gallop at them. The crowd scatters in confusion. The tsar’s forces face them down. The people do not disperse. The troops raise their guns and begin to fire. The Cossacks flail nagaikas, their vicious whips. Gore melts the frost. The desperate people scream and slip and fall. When the carnage comes to an end, as many as 1,500 people lie dead in the drifts. This is Bloody Sunday.
