Peterloo Massacre Peterloo Massacre The Peterloo Massacre occurred at St Peter's Field, Manchester, England, on 16 August 1819, when cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000–80,000 who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation. The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 had resulted in periods of famine and chronic unemployment, exacerbated by the introduction of the first of the Corn Laws. By the beginning of 1819, the pressure generated by poor economic conditions, coupled with the relative lack of suffrage in Northern England, had enhanced the appeal of political radicalism. In response, the Manchester Patriotic Union, a group agitating
Rainiai massacre the perpetrators. Similar atrocities were committed in other places, like the Tartu massacre, in which almost two hundred and fifty people were murdered. A decision had been made to carry out the massacre after the June Revolt had taken place, during which the Lithuanian Activist Front had deposed the Soviet government in Lithuania, and Nazi Germany had invaded the Soviet Union. The Soviet authorities were unable to evacuate the inmates (political prisoners) of the Telšiai prison, but they did not want to abandon them, as the inmates would then have been freed by the local population or by the Germans.