The authorities soon heard of the movement and acted swiftly and savagely to suppress it. Apparently its existence was revealed to the authorities on February 28, 1847. The matter was referred to St. Petersburg and on April 5, Shevchenko and his friends were arrested. An investigation and trial followed and on May 30, he received the verdict that he was to be enrolled in the army in the Orenburg Independent Corps with the rank of private and the tsar added in his own handwriting, “under the strictest supervision with the prohibition of writing and drawing.” Shevchenko had been a free man for only nine years. Now he was back in bondage under an even more intolerable yoke, torn away from his beloved Ukraine and condemned to live as a soldier in the most remote area of eastern Russia on the borders of Asia. At first his service was none too rigorous, for sympathetic commanders attached him to two expeditions to explore the Sea of Aral and allowed him to make sketches for the records of the expedition. When this came to the attention of the authorities in Petersburg, the privileges were speedily revoked and the tsar’s instructions were carried out literally. Finally Shevchenko was sent to the fortress of Novo-Petrovsk. After the death of Nicholas I, the new tsar Alexander II pardoned him in 1857. Influential friends in the capital interceded for him and he heard in May that he was to be liberated but the official formalities were slow and it was the end of July before he was finally released, and he was able to start on his way home. He had reached Nizhny Novgorod on his way to Petersburg, when he was again detained, for his amnesty had not given him the right of residence in either of the capitals. It was March, 1858, before he was able to go further and even then he had to remain under police supervision. On his way to St. Petersburg, he stopped at Moscow to visit his friend Shchepkin, the celebrated actor, and he was kindly entertained by the Aksakov family. In St. Petersburg, he resumed his studies at the Academy of Art and he renewed many old friendships, especially with Count and Countess Feodor Petrovich Tolstoy, who had been instrumental in securing his release. At their home he met such literary men as Count Aleksyey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, and in fact all of the conservative and liberal group of cultured writers, who appreciated the real value of art, literature, and freedom. In 1859 he secured permission to pay another visit to Ukraine for the first time in twelve years and he spent the summer dreaming of marriage and of securing a little home for himself on the banks of the Dnieper. It was all in vain. On his return to St. Petersburg, he did succeed in securing the liberation from serfdom of his family but that was all. His health began to fail and he died the day after his birthday on February 26, 1861, just on the eve of the liberation of the serfs.