o was but
ten years of age, his successor. The custom of the empire allowed him
to do this, and rendered this appointment valid. It was generally the
doom of the daughters of the Russian emperors, who could seldom find a
match equal to their rank, to pass their lives immured in a convent.

Feodor had a sister, Sophia, a very spirited, energetic woman,
ambitious and resolute, whose whole soul revolted against such a
moping existence. Seeing that Feodor had but a short time to live, she
left her convent and returned to the Kremlin, persisting in her
resolve to perform all sisterly duties for her dying brother. Ivan,
her own brother, was incapable of reigning, from his infirmities.
Peter, her half-brother, was but a child. Sophia, with wonderful
energy, while tending at the couch of Feodor, made herself familiar
with the details of the administration, and, acting on behalf of the
dying sovereign, gathered the reins of power into her own hands.

As soon as Feodor expired, and it was announced that Peter was
appointed successor to the throne, to the exclusion of his elder
brother Ivan, Sophia, through her emissaries, excited the militia of
the capital to one of the most bloody revolts Moscow had ever
witnessed. It was her intention to gain the throne for the imbecile
Ivan, as she doubted not that she could, in that event, govern the
empire at her pleasure. Peter, child as he was, had already developed
a character of self-reliance which taught Sophia that he would
speedily wrest the scepter from her hands.

The second day after the burial of Feodor, the militia, or
_strelitzes_ as they were called, a body of citizen soldiers in
Moscow, corresponding very much with the national guard of Paris,
surrounded the Kremlin, in a great tumult, and commenced complaining
of nine of their colonels, who owed them some arrears of pay. They
demanded that these officers should be surrendered to them, and their
demand was so threatening that the court, intimidated, was compelled
to yield. The wretched officers were seized by the mob, tied to the
ground naked, upon their faces, and whipped with most terrible
severity. The soldiers thus overawed opposition, and became a power
which no one dared resist. Sophia was their inspiring genius, inciting
and directing them through her emissaries. Though some have denied her
complicity in these deeds of violence, still the prevailing voice of
history is altogether against her.

Sophia, having the te