stick which he happened to have in his hand, and thrust it so violently into his jaws— clenched in obstinate silence—to break mem open, and make him give tongue and speak. And these words too that fell from the raging man, 'Confess, beast, confess!' loudly proclaimed how great was his wrath.
Although the interrogations were supposedly conducted in secret, all Moscow knew that something terrible was happening. Yet, Peter was anxious to hide the savage work, especially from foreigners; aware of the reaction that this wave of terror would produce in the Western courts he had just visited, he attempted to seal off his torture chambers from Western eyes and ears. Nevertheless, rumors provoked enormous curiosity. One group of Western diplomats ventured out to Preobrazhenskoe on horseback to see what they could learn. Passing three houses from which came appalling howls and groans, they stopped and dismounted in front of a fourth which emitted even more atrocious shrieks. Entering, they were startled to see the Tsar, Lev Naryshkin and Romodanovsky. As they retreated, Naryshkin asked them who they were and why they had come. Angrily, he ordered them to go to Romodanovsky's house so that the matter could be looked into. Mounting their horses, the diplomats refused, telling Naryshkin that if he had anything to say to them, he could come to their embassy and say it there. Russian soldiers appeared and a Guards officer attempted to drag one of the-diplomats out of his saddle. Desperately, the unwelcome visitors spurred their horses and galloped to safety past the soldiers running to block their way.
Eventually, reports of the horror reached such magnitude that the Patriarch took it upon himself to go to Peter to beg for mercy. He went carrying an image of the Blessed Virgin, reminding Peter of the humanity of all men and asking for the exercise of mercy. Peter, resenting the intrusion of spiritual authority on temporal matters, replied to the churchman with great feeling: 'What are you doing with that image and what business is it of yours to come here? Leave immediately and put that image in a place where it may be venerated. Know that I reverence God and His Most Holy Mother more earnestly, perhaps, than you do. But it is the duty of my sovereign office, and a duty that I owe to God, to save my people from harm and to prosecute with public vengeance crimes that lead to the common ruin.' In this case, Peter continued, justice and harshness were linked, the gangrene ran deep in the body politic and could be cut out only with iron and fire. Moscow, he said, would be saved not by pity but by cruelty.
Everyone fell within the sweep of the Tsar's wrath. Priests discovered to have prayed for the success of the rebellion were condemned to execution. The wife of a minor official, passing in front of a gibbet erected before the Kremlin, said of the men hanging there, 'Alas! Who knows whether you were innocent or guilty?' She was overheard and denounced as one who expressed sympathy for condemned traitors, and she and her husband were arrested and examined. Able to prove that she was only expressing compassion for all humans who suffered, the couple escaped death, but was nevertheless exiled from Moscow.
Despite the wretched forced confessions, gasped between screams or torn from groaning, half-conscious men, Peter learned little more than Shein had already learned: that the Streltsy had meant to seize the capital, burn the German Suburb, kill the boyars and ask Sophia to rule them. If she refused, they would ask the eight-year-old Tsarevich Alexis and, as a last resort, Sophia's former lover, Prince Vasily Golitsyn, 'for he had always been merciful to us.' Peter did learn that no boyar or important member of the government or the nobility had been involved, but the most important questions were unanswered: Had there been a plot by important persons against his life and throne? And, most importantly, had Sophia known about or encouraged the uprising in advance?
Peter was deeply suspicious of his sister and could not believe that she was not always intriguing against him. To confirm his suspicions, a number of women, including wives of the Streltsy and all of Sophia's female attendants, were examined. Two chambermaids were brought to the torture rooms and stripped naked to the waist. One had already received several blows of the knout when Peter entered. He noticed that she was pregnant and for this reason absolved her from further torture, but both women were condemned to death.
Under torture, a Strelets, Vaska Alexeev, declared that two letters purporting to be from Sophia had been sent to the Streltsy camp and been read aloud to the soldiers. These letters supposedly urged the Streltsy to march on Moscow, seize the Kremlin and summon the Tsarevna to the throne. According to one account, the letters were smuggled out of Sophia's rooms inside loaves of bread given by Sophia to old beggar women. Other letters, less inflammatory, had been written by Sophia's sister Martha, informing Sophia that the Streltsy were marching on Moscow.
Peter went to Novodevichy himself to interrogate Sophia. There was no question of torture; according to one account, he alternated between weeping with her over the fate that had made them antagonists, and threatening her with death, using the example of Elizabeth I of England and Mary Queen of Scots. Sophia denied that she had ever written to the Streltsy. When he suggested that she might have reminded them that she could be called back to rule, she told him straightforwardly that on this matter they needed no letter from her; they would certainly remember that she had ruled the state for seven years. In the end, Peter learned nothing from her. He spared his sister's life, but decided that she must be more closely restricted. She was forced to shave her head and take religious vows, as the nun Susanna. He confined her permanently to Novodevichy, where she was guarded by one hundred soldiers and permitted to have no visitors. She lived in this fashion for another six years and died at forty- seven in 1704. Her sisters Martha and Catherine Miloslavskaya (also Peter's half-sisters) were politically exonerated, but Martha, too, was sent to a convent for the rest of her days.
The first executions of the condemned Streltsy took place on October 10 at Preobrazhenskoe. Behind the barracks, a bare field rose into a steep hill, and at the top the gallows were placed. A regiment of Guards was drawn up between the execution site and the large crowd of spectators, pushing and shoving, craning their necks to see. The Streltsy, many of whom could no longer walk, arrived in a procession of small carts, each containing two men seated back to back, each holding a lighted candle. Almost without exception, the condemned men were silent, but their wives and children, running beside the carts, filled the air with shrieks and calamitous sobbing. As the carts rumbled across the brook that separated the gallows from the crowd, the individual cries rose into a loud, collective wail.
When all the carts had arrived, Peter, wearing the green polish coat given him by Augustus, appeared with his boyars near the spot where the ambassadors of the Hapsburg empire, Poland and Denmark were watching from their carriages. As the sentence was being read, Peter shouted to the crowd to listen well. Then the guilty men began walking to the gallows, dragging logs tied to their feet to prevent escape. Each man tried to climb the gallows unaided, but some had to be helped. At the top, each made the sign of the cross in four directions and covered his own face with a piece of linen. Some put their heads in the nooses and jumped from the gallows, hoping to break their necks and find a quick end. In general, the Streltsy met death with great calm, following one another without any great sadness on their faces. Because the regular executioners were unable to handle so many, Peter ordered several military officers to mount the gallows and help with the work. That night, Korb reported, Peter went to supper at General Gordon's. He sat in gloomy silence, commenting only on the stubborn resistance of the men who had died.
This grim pageant was only the first of many similar scenes that autumn and winter. Every few days, several score or more were executed. Two hundred were hanged from the walls of the city on special beams extended out from the embrasures in the parapet, two Streltsy to each beam. At each gate to the city, six more bodies swung from gibbet, a reminder to all who entered of the fruits of treason. On October 11, 144 were hanged in Red Square, on beams projecting through the crenellations in the Kremlin wall. One hundred and nine were beheaded by axe and sword over an open trench at Preobrazhenskoe. Three brothers, among the most stubborn of the rebels, were executed in Red Square, two being broken on the wheel and left to die slowly while the third was beheaded before their eyes. The two survivors complained bitterly at the injustice of their brother being permitted to die so quickly and easily.
For some, there were special humiliations. For the regimental priests who had encouraged the Streltsy, a gibbet constructed in the shape of a cross was erected in front of St. Basil's Cathedral. The priests were hanged by the court jester, dressed for the occasion in clerical robes. To make the connection between the Streltsy and Sophia crystal clear, 196 were hanged from a huge square gallows erected near Novodevichy Convent, where the Tsarevna was imprisoned. Three, the supposed ringleaders, were strung up directly outside the window of Sophia's room, with one of the corpses holding a piece of paper representing the Streltsy petition asking her to rule. They remained dangling, near enough for her to touch, for the rest of the winter.
Not all the men of the four rebellious regiments were executed. Peter reduced the sentences of 500 soldiers under twenty years of age from death to branding on the right cheek and exile. Others had their noses or ears lopped off to mark them hideously as participants in treason. Throughout Peter's reign, noseless, earless, branded men, evidence of both the Tsar's wrath and his mercy, roamed the edges of his realm.
