Perhaps, if the czar had not found it absolutely necessary to make such terrible examples, he might have employed part of those strelitzes whom he put to death, upon the public works; whereas they were now lost both to him and the state: the lives of men ought to be held in great estimation, especially in a country where the increase of inhabitants ought to have been the principal care of the legislature: but he thought it necessary to terrify and break the spirit of the nation by executions, and the parade attending them. The entire corps of the strelitzes, whose number not one of his predecessors had even dared to think of diminishing, was broke for ever, and their very name abolished. This change was effected without any resistance, because matters had been properly prepared beforehand. The Turkish sultan, Osman, as I have already remarked, was deposed and murdered in the same century, only for giving the janissaries room to suspect that he intended to lessen their number. Peter had better success, because he had taken better measures. Of this powerful and numerous body of the strelitzes, he left only two feeble regiments, from whom there could no longer be any danger; and yet these still retaining their old spirit of mutiny, revolted again in Astracan, in the year 1705, but were quickly suppressed. But while we are relating Peter's severity in this affair of state, let us not forget to commemorate the more than equal humanity he shewed some time afterwards, when he lost his favourite Le Fort, who was snatched away by an untimely fate, March 12, N. S. 1699, at the age of 46. He paid him the same funeral honours as are bestowed on the greatest sovereigns, and assisted himself in the procession, carrying a pike in his hand, and marching after the captains, in the rank of a lieutenant, which he held in the deceased general's regiment, hereby setting an example to his nobles, of the respect due to merit and the military rank. After the death of Le Fort, it appeared plainly, that the changes in the state were not owing to that general, but to the czar himself. Peter had indeed been confirmed in his design by his several conversations with Le Fort; but he had formed and executed them all without his assistance. As soon as he had suppressed the strelitzes, he established regular regiments on the German model, who were all clothed in a short and commodious uniform, in the room of those long and troublesome coats, which they used to wear before; and, at the same time, their exercise was likewise more regular. The regiment of Preobrazinski guards was already formed; it had taken its name from the first company of fifty men, whom the czar had trained up in his younger days, in his retreat at Preobrazinski, at the time when his sister Sophia governed the state, and the other regiment of guards was also established.