for the peasantry. Arrest and trial Shortly after the meetings centering on Belinsky's letter, the arrests began. All those associated with the letter were treated harshly, some merely for 'failure to report' on those who took part in publishing it. Among these was the poet Pleshcheyev who, according to the verdict, "for distributing Belinsky's letter, was deprived of all rights of the state and sent to hard labor in factories for 4 years." Some members escaped prosecution. These included V. A. Èngel (later an active participant in Herzen's Polar Star), Dostoevsky's brothers Andrey and Mikhail (who had strenuously opposed the publication of provocative material), well-known Slavophile theorist Nikolai Danilevsky, writer Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, and the poet Apollon Maykov (Valerian's brother). After the arrests on April 22, 1849, the members of the circle were at first detained at the Peter and Paul Fortress. The Commission of Inquiry headed by General Nabokov questioned the prisoners individually on the basis of information supplied by Antonelli, and documents confiscated at the time of the arrest. The trial was to take place according to military law rather than the far more lenient civil law. Of the sixty men originally arrested, fifteen were sentenced to execution by firing squad, others to hard labour and exile. Reviewing the decision the highest military court, the General-Auditariat, ruled that a judicial error had been made and that all the remaining prisoners should be executed. However, when submitting the sentence to the Tsar they included a plea for mercy and a list of lesser sentences. Mock execution and exile The Tsar agreed to the lesser sentences, but gave explicit instructions that only after the entire ritual of preparation for execution had been completed should the prisoners be told that their lives had been spared by an act of imperial grace. On the morning of December 22 the prisoners were taken from their cells without explanation and transported to Semonovsky Square. The sentence of death by firing squad was read out over them, and the first three prisoners—Petrashevsky, Mombelli and Grigoryev—were seized and tied to stakes in front of the firing squad. A minute elapsed before the drum roll indicating retreat was heard and the soldiers lowered their rifles. Grigoryev, who in prison had been showing signs of derangement, completely lost his senses, and spent the remainder of his days as a helpless mental invalid. Dostoevsky, who had been next in line,