Early morning.
Molotov, commander of the Saint Petersburg Garrison's 2nd Guards Infantry Division and Grenadier Guards Regiment, stood on an earthen slope outside Saint Petersburg, awaiting further orders from military headquarters.
The uprisings at the Peter and Paul Fortress and elsewhere had been successfully suppressed the previous night. Only the Putilov Arms Factory remained in rebel hands, surrounded by a Don Cossack Cavalry Regiment.
Born into a traditional boyar noble family, Molotov was irritably smoking his pipe.
He was not troubled by how difficult the rebels were to handle, but by the losses caused by the unrest. Take the arms factory still occupied by the rebels: every day of shutdown meant considerable losses. Even if the battle were resolved immediately, repairing the damaged lathes and restoring production would come at an enormous cost.
Moreover, the rebellion in the city meant that the Russian Empire's war machine had nearly been stretched to its limit. If this continued, even if the Germans did not come for them, they would fall apart on their own.
The 2nd Guards Infantry Division, to which the Grenadier Guards Regiment belonged, was the only one of the five Guards Divisions directly under the royal family that had not followed the Tsar to Mogilev. With more than twenty thousand men, it was unquestionably elite.
Apart from that, Saint Petersburg's garrison troops were largely made up of soldiers recovered from the front and newly enlisted recruits.
Their combined numbers approached two hundred thousand, but these recovered soldiers and conscripted recruits were deeply war-weary, severely undertrained, and weak in combat.
These two hundred and twenty thousand men were the entire force currently stationed near Saint Petersburg by the Petrograd Military District.
"Commander, what exactly is military headquarters waiting for?"
The Captain Adjutant asked in confusion, "There are only a thousand