who held in his hands
an image of the Virgin Mary which was said to have performed miracles.
The princesses surrounded the victim, and, kneeling to the soldiers,
prayed with tears for his life.

All their supplications and the demands of the venerable patriarch were
without effect on the savage soldiery, who dragged their captives to the
bottom of the stairway, went through the forms of a mock trial, and
condemned them to the torture. They were sentenced to be cut to pieces,
a form of punishment to which parricides are condemned in China and
Tartary. This tragedy went on until all the proscribed on whom they
could lay their hands had perished and Sophia felt secure in her power.

In the end, Ivan and Peter were declared joint sovereigns (1682), and
their sister Sophia was made regent. The acts of the Strelitz were
approved and they rewarded, the estates of their victims were
confiscated in their favor, and a monument was erected on which the
names of the victims were inscribed as traitors to their country.

The Strelitz had learned their power, and took frequent occasion to
exercise it. Twice again they broke out in revolt during the regency of
Sophia. After the accession of Peter their hostility continued. He had
sent them to fight on the frontiers. He had supplanted them with
regiments drilled in the European manner. He had organized a corps of
twelve thousand foreigners and heretics. He had ordered the construction
of a fleet of a hundred vessels, which would add to the weight of taxes
and bring more foreigners into the country. And he proposed to leave
Russia, to journey in the lands of the heretics, and to bring back to
their sacred land the customs of profane Europe.

All this was too much for the leaders of the Strelitz, who represented
old Russia, as Peter represented new. They resolved to sacrifice the
czar to their rage. Tradition tells the following story, which, though
probably not true, is at least interesting. Two leaders of the Strelitz
laid a plot to start a fire at night, feeling sure that Peter, with his
usual activity, would hasten to the scene. In the confusion attending
the fire they meant to murder him, and then to massacre all the
foreigners whom he had introduced into Moscow.

[Illustration: DINING-ROOM IN THE PALACE OF PETER THE GREAT. MOSCOW.]

The time fixed for the consummation of this plot was at hand. A banquet
was held, at which the principal conspirators assembled, and where they
s