STRELITZ (Strjeltsi)  , a body of Russian household troops originally raised by the tsar Ivan the Terrible in the middle of the 16th century . They numbered 40,000 to 50,000 infantry, and formed the greater part of the Russian armies in the warsof the 16th and 17th centuries . They were a fierce and ill-disciplined force, individually brave and cruel in war, and almost ungovernable in peace . Their mutinies were frequent and dangerous, and at last, in 1682, an unusually serious out-break led Peter the Great to compass the abolition of the force . The Strelitz were gradually drawn to the western frontier of Russia, and in 1698 they rose in mutiny for the last time . Crushed in battle by Peter's general, Patrick Gordon, they ceased to exist as a military force, and about 2000 of them who fell into the hands of the tsar were barbarously tortured and put to death .