he
priests, who had come into the army of the insurgents to encourage them
in the fight, told them that a miracle had been performed. God had
averted the balls from them, they said. They were fighting for the honor
of his cause and for the defense of his holy religion, and they might
rely upon it that he would not suffer them to be harmed.

But these assurances of the priests proved, unfortunately for the poor
Guards, to be entirely unfounded. When General Gordon found that firing
over the heads of the rebels did no good, ho gave up at once all hope of
any adjustment of the difficulty, and he determined to restrain himself
no longer, but to put forth the whole of his strength, and kill and
destroy all before him in the most determined and merciless manner. A
furious battle followed, in which the Guards were entirely defeated. Two
or three thousand of them were killed, and all the rest were surrounded
and made prisoners.

The first step taken by General Gordon, with the advice of the Russian
nobles who had accompanied him, was to count off the prisoners and hang
every tenth man. The next was to put the officers to the torture, in
order to compel them to confess what their real object was in marching to
Moscow. After enduring their tortures as long as human nature could bear
them, they confessed that the movement was a concerted one, made in
connection with a conspiracy within the city, and that the object was to
subvert the present government, and to liberate the Princess Sophia and
place her upon the throne. They also gave the names of a number of
prominent persons in Moscow who, they said, were the leaders of the
conspiracy.

It was in this state of the affair that the tidings of what had occurred
reached Peter in Vienna, as is related in the last chapter. He
immediately set out on his return to Moscow in a state of rage and fury
against the rebels that it would be impossible to describe. As he
arrived at the capital, he commenced an inquisition into the affair by
putting every body to the torture whom he supposed to be implicated as a
leader in it. From the agony of these sufferers he extorted the names of
innumerable victims, who, as fast as they were named, were seized and put
to death. There were a great many of the ancient nobles thus condemned,
a great many ladies of high rank, and large numbers of priests. These
persons were all executed, or rather massacred, in the most reckless and
merciless ma