The young prince sent for the patriarch, confessed his sins, partook of the Lord’s Supper, received the sacrament of extreme unction in preparation for death, and was then led out, by the patriarch himself, dressed in his pontifical robes and bearing an image of the Virgin Mary, and was delivered by him to the soldiers.  The queen and the princesses accompanied the victim, surrounding him, and, falling upon their knees before the soldiers, they united with the patriarch in pleading for his life.  But the mob, intoxicated and maddened, dragged the young prince and the physician before a tribunal which they had constituted on the spot, and condemned them to what was expressively called the punishment of “ten thousand slices.”  Their bodies were speedily cut into the smallest fragments, while their heads were stuck upon the iron spikes of the balustrade.

These outrages were terminated by a proclamation from the soldiery that Ivan and Peter should be joint sovereigns under the regency of Sophia.  The regent rewarded her partisans liberally for their efficient and successful measures.  Upon the leaders she conferred the confiscated estates of the proscribed.  A monument of shame was reared, upon which the names of the assassinated were engraved as traitors to their country.  The soldiers were rewarded with double pay.

Sophia unscrupulously usurped all the prerogatives and honors of royalty.  All dispatches were sealed with her hand.  Her effigy was stamped upon the current coin.  She took her seat as presiding officer at the council.  To confer a little more dignity upon the character of her imbecile brother, Ivan, she selected for him a wife, a young lady of extraordinary beauty whose father had command of a fortress in Siberia.  It was on the 25th of June, 1682, that Sophia assumed the regency.  In 1684 Ivan was married.  The scenes of violence which had occurred agitated the whole political atmosphere throughout the empire.  There was intense exasperation, and many conspiracies were formed for the overthrow of the government.  The most formidable of these conspiracies was organized by Couvanski, commander-in-chief of the strelitzes.  He was dissatisfied with the rewards he had received, and, conscious that he had placed Sophia upon the throne through the energies of the soldiers he commanded, he believed that he might just as easily have placed himself there.  Having become accustomed to blood, the slaughter of a few more persons, that he might place the crown upon his own brow, appeared to him a matter of but little moment.  He accordingly planned to murder the two tzars, the regent Sophia and all the remaining princes of the royal family.  Then, by lavishing abundant rewards upon the soldiers, he doubted not that he could secure their efficient cooeperation in maintaining him on the throne.