How sharp was the pain, how great the indignation, to which the Tsar's
Majesty was mightily moved, when he knew of the rebellion of the Streltsi,
betraying openly a mind panting for vengeance ! He was still tarrying at
Vienna, quite full of the desire of setting out for Italy - but, fervid
as was his curiosity of rambling abroad, it was, nevertheless, speedily
extinguished on the announcement of the troubles that had broken out in
the bowels of his realm. Going immediately to Lefort (almost the only person
that he condescended to treat with intimate familiarity), he thus indignantly
broke out: " Tell me, Francis, son of James, how I can reach Moscow
by the shortest way, in a brief space, so that I may wreak vengeance on
this great perfidy of my people, with punishments worthy of their abominable
crime. Not one of them shall escape with impunity. Around my royal city,
which, with their impious efforts, they planned to destroy, I will have
gibbets and gallows set upon the walls and ramparts, and each and every
one of them will I put to a direful death." Nor did he long delay the
plan for his justly excited wrath ; he took the quick post, as his ambassador
suggested, and in four weeks' time he had got over about three hundred miles
without accident, and arrived the 4th of September, 1698,- a monarch for
the well disposed, but an avenger for the wicked.
His first anxiety after his arrival was about the rebellion,in what it consisted,
what the insurgents meant, who dared to instigate such a crime. And as nobody
could answer accurately upon all points, and some pleaded their own ignorance,
others the obstinacy of the Streltsi, he began to have suspicions If everybody's
loyalty. . . . No day, holy or profane, were the inquisitors idle ; every
day was deemed fit and lawful for torturing. There were as many scourges
as there were accused, and every inquisitor was a butcher. . . . The whole
month of October was spent in lacerating the backs of culprits with the
knout and with flames ; no day were those that were left alive exempt from
scourging or scorching ; or else they were broken upon the wheel, or driven
to the gibbet, or slain with the ax....
To prove to all people how holy and inviolable are those wall s of the city
which the Streltsi rashly meditated scaling in a sudden assault, beams were
run out from all the embrasures in the walls near the gates, in each of
which two rebels were hanged. This day beheld about two hundred and fifty
die that death. There are few cities fortified with as many palisades as
Moscow has given gibbets to her guardian Streltsi.
[In front of the nunnery where Sophia was confined] there were thirty gibbets
erected in a quadrangle shape, from which there hung two hundred and thirty
Streltsi. The three principal ringleaders, who had tendered a petition to
Sophia touching the administration of the realm, were hanged close to the
windows of that princess, presenting, as it were, the petitions that were
placed in their hands, so near that Sophia might with ease touch them.