, she herself might have retained the real power in her
hands, as regent, as long as she lived; whereas Peter promised to have
strength and vigor to govern the empire himself in a few years, and, in
the mean time, while he remained in his minority, it was natural to
expect that he would be under the influence of persons connected with his
own branch of the family, who would be hostile to her, and that thus her
empire would come to an end.

So she determined to resist the transfer of the supreme power to Peter.
She secretly engaged the Guards on her side. The commander-in-chief of
the Guards was an officer named Couvansky. He readily acceded to her
proposals, and, in conjunction with him, she planned and organized a
revolution.

In order to exasperate the people and the Guards, and excite them to the
proper pitch of violence, Sophia and Couvansky spread a report that the
late emperor had not died a natural death, but had been poisoned. This
murder had been committed, they said, by a party who hoped, by setting
Theodore and his brother John aside, to get the power into their hands in
the name of Peter, whom they intended to make emperor, in violation of
the rights of John, Theodore's true heir. There was a plan also formed,
they said, to poison all the principal officers of the Guards, who, the
conspirators knew, would oppose their wicked proceedings, and perhaps
prevent the fulfillment of them if they were not put out of the way. The
poison by which Theodore had been put to death was administered, they
said, by two physicians who attended upon him in his sickness, and who
had been bribed to give him poison with his medicine. The Guards were to
have been destroyed by means of poison, which was to have been mixed with
the brandy and the beer that was distributed to them on the occasion of
the funeral.

These stories produced a great excitement among the Guards, and also
among a considerable portion of the people of Moscow. The guards came
out into the streets and around the palaces in great force. They first
seized the two physicians who were accused of having poisoned the
emperor, and killed them on the spot. Then they took a number of nobles
of high rank, and officers of state, who were supposed to be the leaders
of the party in favor of Peter, and the instigators of the murder of
Theodore, and, dragging them out into the public squares, slew them
without mercy. Some they cut to pieces. Others they threw dow