o
fight till his army was destroyed, then made his escape, as so often
before, swimming the Volga and vanishing in the desert. Only about sixty
of his most faithful partisans accompanied him in his flight.

Michelson, failing to reach him in his retreat, took care that he should
not emerge into the cultivated districts. But in the end the Russians
were able to capture him only by treachery. They won over some of their
Cossack prisoners, among them Antizof, the nearest friend of the
fugitive. These were then set free, and sought the desert retreat of
their late leader, where they awaited an opportunity to take him by
surprise.

This they were not able to do until November. Pugatchef was gnawing the
bone of a horse for food when his false friends ran up to him, saying,
"Come, you have long enough been emperor."

Perceiving that treachery was intended, he drew his pistol and fired at
his foes, shattering the arm of the foremost. The others seized and
bound him and conveyed him to Goroduk in the Ural, the locality of
Antizof's tribe. Michelson was still seeking him in the desert when word
came to him that the fugitive had been delivered into Russian hands at
Simbirsk, and was being conveyed to Moscow in an iron cage, like the
beast of prey which he resembled in character.

On the way he sought to starve himself, but was forced to eat by the
soldiers. On reaching Moscow he counterfeited madness. His trial was
conducted without the torture which had formerly been so common a
feature of Russian tribunals. The sentence of the court was that he
should be exhibited to the people with his hands and feet cut off, and
then quartered alive. With unyielding resolution Pugatchef awaited this
cruel death, but the sentence, for some reason, was not executed, he
being first beheaded and then quartered. Four of his principal followers
suffered the same fate, and thus ended one of the most determined
efforts on the part of an impostor to seize the Russian throne that had
ever been known. The undoubted courage of the man was enough to prove
that he was not Peter III. Had he combined military capacity with his
daring he could readily have won the throne.

_THE FLIGHT OF THE KALMUCKS._

On the 5th of January, 1771, began one of the most remarkable events in
the history of the world, the migration of an entire nation, more than
half a million strong, with its women and children, flocks and herds,
and all that it possessed, to a n