The Following Is an Excerpt from an Eyewitness Account of Bloody

The following is an excerpt from an eyewitness account of Bloody Sunday, one of the events that sparked the Russian Revolution of 1905 (Evaluating the Evidence 23.2) : "The soldiers of the Preobrazhensky regiment, without any summons to disperse, shoot down the unfortunate people as if they were playing at bloodshed. Several hundred fall; more than a hundred and fifty are killed. They are almost all children, women, and young people. It is terrible. Blood flows on all sides. At 5 o'clock the crowd is driven back, cut down and repelled on all sides. The people, terror-stricken, fly in every direction. Scared women and children slip, fall, rise to their feet, only to fall again farther on. At this moment a sharp word of command is heard and the victims fall en masse. There had been no disturbances to speak of. The whole crowd is unarmed and has not uttered a single threat."
The author of this account was determined to make the point that

A) the Tsar was personally responsible for the violence of Bloody Sunday.
B) the Tsar's authority rested on a strong response to the protestors.
C) most of the protestors were professional revolutionaries and agitators.
D) the protestors were peaceful and had done nothing to provoke the soldiers' attack.