Though he was not a scholar, he encouraged learning. There was, about this time, a second attempt made to assassinate the Czar. As Peter was often accustomed to attend conflagrations in Moscow, these conspirators formed the plan of setting fire to some building near the royal palace, and when the emperor, as was his wont, should come out to help extinguish the flames, he was to be assassinated. They then determined to go to the convent where Sophia was confined, release her, and proclaim her empress. This plot was, however, revealed to the Czar, and he thereupon ordered a small body of men to attend him, and he went at once to the houses of the various conspirators and arrested them. They were afterwards executed in a most barbarous manner. The criminals were brought out one by one. First their arms were cut off, then their legs, and finally their heads. The amputated limbs and heads were then hung upon a column in the market-place in Moscow, where they were left as a bloody warning to others, as long as the weather remained cold enough to keep them frozen. Thus ended the second conspiracy against the life of Peter the Great. In 1695 the Czar, in conjunction with other European powers, declared war again against the Turks and Tartars. Peter acquired great renown throughout Europe for his successful siege against Azof, to obtain which was one of the chief objects of the campaign. This success also increased Peter’s interest in the building of ships. He determined to establish a large fleet on the Black Sea, and in order to ascertain the best modes of ship-building, Peter resolved to make a journey to Western Europe. That he might not be burdened by fêtes and ceremonies, he adopted a disguise. Macaulay said of this journey, “It is an epoch in the history, not only of his own country, but of ours and of the world.” Various reasons have been given by different writers for this step of the Czar. Pleyer, the secret Austrian agent, wrote to the Emperor Leopold that the whole embassy was “merely a cloak for the freedom sought by the Czar, to get out of his own country and divert himself a little.” A document in the archives at Vienna states that the “cause of the journey was a vow made by Peter, when in danger on the White Sea, to make a pilgrimage to the tombs of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul at Rome.” Voltaire said, “He resolved to absent himself for some years from his dominions, in order to learn how better to govern them.” Napoleon said, “He left his country to deliver himself for a while from the crown, so as to learn ordinary life, and remount by degrees to greatness.” But later writers say, “Peter went abroad, not to fulfil a vow, not to amuse himself, not to become more civilized, not to learn the art of government, but simply to become a good shipwright.”