the young
prince and the physician before a tribunal which they had constituted
on the spot, and condemned them to what was expressively called the
punishment of "ten thousand slices." Their bodies were speedily cut
into the smallest fragments, while their heads were stuck upon the
iron spikes of the balustrade.

These outrages were terminated by a proclamation from the soldiery
that Ivan and Peter should be joint sovereigns under the regency of
Sophia. The regent rewarded her partisans liberally for their
efficient and successful measures. Upon the leaders she conferred the
confiscated estates of the proscribed. A monument of shame was reared,
upon which the names of the assassinated were engraved as traitors to
their country. The soldiers were rewarded with double pay.

Sophia unscrupulously usurped all the prerogatives and honors of
royalty. All dispatches were sealed with her hand. Her effigy was
stamped upon the current coin. She took her seat as presiding officer
at the council. To confer a little more dignity upon the character of
her imbecile brother, Ivan, she selected for him a wife, a young lady
of extraordinary beauty whose father had command of a fortress in
Siberia. It was on the 25th of June, 1682, that Sophia assumed the
regency. In 1684 Ivan was married. The scenes of violence which had
occurred agitated the whole political atmosphere throughout the
empire. There was intense exasperation, and many conspiracies were
formed for the overthrow of the government. The most formidable of
these conspiracies was organized by Couvanski, commander-in-chief of
the strelitzes. He was dissatisfied with the rewards he had received,
and, conscious that he had placed Sophia upon the throne through the
energies of the soldiers he commanded, he believed that he might just
as easily have placed himself there. Having become accustomed to
blood, the slaughter of a few more persons, that he might place the
crown upon his own brow, appeared to him a matter of but little
moment. He accordingly planned to murder the two tzars, the regent
Sophia and all the remaining princes of the royal family. Then, by
lavishing abundant rewards upon the soldiers, he doubted not that he
could secure their efficient cooeperation in maintaining him on the
throne.

The conspiracy was discovered upon the eve of its accomplishment.
Sophia immediately fled with the two tzars and the princes, to the
monastery of the Trinity. This was a palace, a