The men probably saw the great strength of the garrison at Moscow, and they returned to Azoff only with a sullen report of their helplessness. The military authorities then ordered part of the streltsui to the Polish frontier, and this drove the men to fury. They set out on the long march to Moscow, in full mutiny, with the intention, apparently, of exterminating Peter’s supporters. But the Tsar had left his best generals, Shein and Patrick Gordon, in command of the troops, and they met the mutineers outside Moscow. After a futile parley the cannon and the cavalry were turned upon the helpless foot-soldiers, hundreds were slain and thousands captured. The revolt was thoroughly suppressed long before Peter reached Vienna. But the young Tsar was in one of his moods of deliberate ruthlessness. The streltsui had deluged his mother’s palace with blood when he was a child; they had commemorated his departure by a plot and had taken advantage of his absence to rebel. These paid servants, these antiquated soldiers, presumed to criticise his plans and fancy themselves as masters of the Russian throne! And behind all their revolts he saw always, barely concealed in the gloom, the figure of his masterful half-sister. He resolved once for all to remove this source of irritation from his Empire. Immediately after his return fourteen torture-chambers were fitted up in the village of Preobrajenshote, and the captured streltsui were soon suffering all the agonies that Byzantine and Moscovite ingenuity could devise and the fiendish temper of the Tsar could augment. Peter himself hovered round while his victims writhed on human grid-irons or had their flesh torn from the bones by the knout. Many of their womenfolk were included in the ghastly torture, which went on night and day for three days. But Peter got no confession of the guilt of his sister, and he decided to act without it. On September 30th a first batch of two hundred of the unhappy rebels, part of them scarred and drawn with torture, were brought up for execution. It is credibly reported that Peter wielded the axe himself and severed five heads. His companions were told to follow his example, and few dared draw back. His infamous servant, Menshikoff, is said to have cut off twenty heads, and the horror of incompetent bungling by amateurs in such matters may be seen in other pages of mediæval history. In brief, the slaughter extended over several months, and thousands of the streltsui were executed. The ancient corporation was entirely broken and the fragments were included in the new army. In the Red Square at Moscow the heads of the rebels remained on the points of pikes until they rotted into grinning skulls. The wives and children were driven from Moscow. It was decreed that none should give them bread, and they disappeared silently into the plains and forests beyond. How many escaped famine or the wolves no man knows. Russia learned that it had an autocrat: Peter the Great.