German troops
march into Riga, having pushed aside the mostly unprepared 12th
Army. The army’s commander defended the performance of his troops, saying the
“most thoroughly propagandized” formations fought the hardest. These included a
brigade of Latvian sharpshooters who counterattacked under red banners, and the
marines of the Baltic Fleet. Bolshevik influence predominated in these
formations; moreover, they were fighting to defend their national capital and
home port.
But if the 12th
Army was as a whole unprepared, this suited General Kornilov’s plans perfectly
well. Trotsky observes that the generals of the Northern Front in Latvia were
in on Kornilov’s plot, but didn’t have to do anything affirmative, like
ordering withdrawals or conspiring with the Germans, to ensure that Riga would
fall. They could just await the expected result.
Nevertheless the
bourgeois papers blamed the peasant infantry.
Meanwhile
Kornilov assembled the high command at headquarters in Moghiliev and let some
of them in on his plot. Among other measures then taken, the cavalry were given
grenades, thought to be an effective weapon against urban crowds and buildings.
On the same day,
the Provisional Government placed two Romanov grand dukes under house arrest.
They needn’t have bothered, Trotsky says, as the counter-revolution had no
interest in restoring the monarchy, and the Bolsheviks were not fooled by the
gesture.
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