d on their charity, were examined under
torture. The princesses themselves, Peter's sisters, were questioned by
the czar, though he did not go so far as to torture them. Yet with all
this nothing was discovered. There was not a word to connect Sophia with
the revolt.

The trial over, the executions began. Of the prisoners, some were
hanged, some beheaded, others broken on the wheel. It is said that those
beheaded were made to kneel in rows of fifty before trunks of trees laid
on the ground, and that Peter compelled his courtiers and nobles to act
as executioners, Mentchikof specially distinguishing himself in this
work of slaughter. It is even asserted that the czar wielded the axe
himself, though of this there is some doubt. The opinion grew among the
people that neither Peter nor Prince Ramodanofsky, his cruel viceroy,
could sleep until they had tasted blood, and a letter from the prince
contains the following lurid sentence: "_I am always washing myself in
blood._"

The headless bodies of the dead were left where they had fallen. The
long Russian winter was just beginning, and for five months they lay
unburied, a frightful spectacle for the eyes of the citizens of Moscow.

Of those hanged, nearly two hundred were left depending from a large
square gallows in front of the cell of Sophia at the convent in which
she was confined, and with a horrible refinement of cruelty three of
these bodies were so placed as to hang all winter under her very window,
one of them holding in his hand a folded paper to represent a petition
for her aid.

The six regiments of Strelitz still on the frontier showed signs of a
similar outbreak, but the news of the executions taught them that it was
safest to keep quiet. But many of them were brought in chains to Moscow
and punished for their intentions. Various stories are told of Peter's
cruelty in connection with these executions. One is that he beheaded
eighty with his own hand, Plestchef, one of his boyars, holding them by
the hair. Another story, told by M. Printz, the Prussian ambassador,
says that at an entertainment given him by the czar, Peter, when drunk,
had twenty rebels brought in from the prisons, whom he beheaded in quick
succession, drinking a bumper after each blow, the whole concluding
within the hour. He even asked the ambassador to try his skill in the
same way. It may be said here, however, that these stories rest upon
very poor evidence, and that anecdote-makers have