![]() ![]() At the last possible moment, the guns were lowered as a courier galloped up with an imperial decree reducing death sentences to imprisonment in a Siberian prison camp followed by service as a private in the army. One prisoner refused a blindfold and stared defiantly into the guns trained on them. ![]() The first three prisoners were seized by the arms and tied to the stake. They were given long white peasant blouses and nightcaps-their funeral shrouds-and offered last rites. Led to the Semenovsky Square, they heard a sentence of death by firing squad. O n December 22, 1849, a group of political radicals were taken from their prison cells in Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Fortress, where they had been interrogated for eight months. ![]()
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