Examples include the Tsar's Imperial Guard firing on ordinary (and unarmed) Russians assembling to petition him about their grievances outside the winter palace in St. Petersburg in 1905. The revolution that deposed the Tsar and installed Lenin and his communists did not occur for another 12 years but it arguably began for real on that cold day in 1905. The Tsar was seen from that day on as someone with malicious intentions who could not be bargained with but only submitted to.

Americans are more familiar with a similar event that occurred in 1775 at a place called Lexington, in what was then still the colony – or province – of Massachusetts. The British authorities sent troops to disarm the militias that had formed in response to Massachusetts having been declared to be in a state of rebellion against the British authorities. The colonial militia resisted with force and so began what became the war.

Lexington was more like the Rubicon in that once the British crossed it – so to speak – there was no turning back.

As in Russia in 1905, it was either submit – or fight.