Peter was reluctant to make a public example of his sister.  There ensued a series of punishments of the conspirators too revolting to be narrated.  The mildest of these punishments was exile to Siberia, there, in the extremest penury, to linger through scenes of woe so long as God should prolong their lives.  The executions being terminated and the exiles out of sight, Sophia was ordered to leave the Kremlin, and retire to the cloisters of Denitz, which she was never again to leave.  Peter then made a triumphal entry into Moscow.  He was accompanied by a guard of eighteen thousand troops.  His feeble brother Ivan received him at the outer gate of the Kremlin.  They embraced each other with much affection, and then retired to their respective apartments.  The wife and mother of Peter accompanied him on his return to Moscow.

Thus terminated the regency of Sophia.  From this time Peter was the real sovereign of Russia.  His brother Ivan took no other share in the government than that of lending his name to the public acts.  He lived for a few years in great seclusion, almost forgotten, and died in 1696.  Peter was physically, as well as intellectually, a remarkable man.  He was tall and finely formed, with noble features lighted up with an extremely brilliant eye.  His constitution was robust, enabling him to undergo great hardship, and he was, by nature, a man of great activity and energy.  His education, however, was exceedingly defective.  The regent Sophia had not only exerted all her influence to keep him in ignorance, but also to allure him into the wildest excesses of youthful indulgence.  Even his recent marriage had not interfered with the publicity of his amours, and all distinguished foreigners in Moscow were welcomed by him to scenes of feasting and carousing.

Notwithstanding these deplorable defects of character, for which much allowance is to be made from the neglect of his education and his peculiar temptations, still it was manifest to close observers even then, that the seeds of true greatness were implanted in his nature.  When five years of age, he was riding with his mother in a coach, and was asleep in her arms.  As they were passing over a bridge where there was a heavy fall of water from spring rains, the roar of the cataract awoke him.  The noise, with the sudden aspect of the rushing torrent, created such terror that he was thrown into a fever, and, for years, he could not see any standing water, much less a running stream, without being thrown almost into convulsions.  To overcome this weakness, he resolutely persisted in plunging into the waves until his aversion was changed into a great fondness for that element.