nner. Some were beheaded; some were broken on the wheel, and
then left to die in horrible agonies. Many were buried alive, their
heads only being left above the ground. It is said that Peter took such
a savage delight in these punishments, that he executed many of the
victims with his own hands. At one time, when half intoxicated at a
banquet, he ordered twenty of his prisoners to be brought in, and then,
with his brandy before him, which was his favorite drink, and which he
often drank to excess, he caused them to be led, one after another, to
the block, that he might cut off their heads himself. He took a drink of
brandy after each execution while the officers were bringing forward the
next man. He was just an hour, it was said, in cutting off the twenty
heads, which allows of an average of three minutes to each man. This
story is almost too horrible to be believed, but, unfortunately, it
comports too well with the general character which Peter has always
sustained in the opinion of mankind in respect to the desperate and
reckless cruelty to which he could be aroused under the influence of
intoxication and anger.

[Illustration: Peter turning executioner.]

About two thousand of the Guards were beheaded. The bodies of these men
were laid upon the ground in a public place, arranged in rows, with their
heads lying beside them. They covered more than an acre of ground. Here
they were allowed to lie all the remainder of the winter, as long, in
fact, as the flesh continued frozen, and then, when the spring came on,
they were thrown together into a deep ditch, dug to receive them, and
thus were buried.

There were also a great number of gibbets set up on all the roads leading
to Moscow, and upon these gibbets men were hung, and the bodies allowed
to remain there, like the beheaded Guards upon the ground, until the
spring.

As for the Princess Sophia, she was still in the convent where Peter had
placed her, the conspirators not having reached the point of liberating
her before their plot was discovered. Peter, however, caused the three
authors of the address, which was to have been made to Sophia, calling
upon her to assume the crown, to be sent to the convent, and there hung
before Sophia's windows. And then, by his orders, the arm of the
principal man among them was cut off, the address was put into his hand,
and, when the fingers had stiffened around it, the limb was fixed to the
wall in Sophia's chamber,