THE EARLY ROMANOFFS
THE feeble Michael had, we saw, provided an heir to the golden throne,
and, owing to the comparative length of his reign, his son Alexis had
reached a mature age when his turn came to rule. The portraits of all
the Tsars have been so thickly overlaid with rhetorical paint that we
have some difficulty in discerning their true historical features.
Alexis seems to have been a ruler of generally excellent intentions and
very moderate ability. He was at the time of his accession a youth of
sixteen: a tall, handsome youth, physically stronger than his father and
fond of hunting, but nervous and irritable. It needed no keenness of
vision to see that Russia was in a deplorable condition. The nobles and
officials were as corrupt as ever; the fiscal system and administration
of justice were atrocious; the merchants struggled feebly against
foreign competition, and the serfs were crushed to the ground under
their burdens. Alexis assuredly resented this corruption and
incompetence, and sustained the small efforts of his father and
grandfather to improve the country.
The Tsar’s mother died soon after his accession, and the customary place
of chief favourite and virtual ruler fell to Boris Ivanovitch Morozoff,
who had for the preceding three years had charge of the prince’s
education. Morozoff had the ambition and moral indelicacy which were
common to his time and class, and he and his friends grew rich. But
there was one cloud on the horizon of their prosperity. Alexis must soon
marry, and behind the bride, whoever she might be, Morozoff and his
friends saw the usual crowd of greedy relatives hastening to Moscow and
clamouring for wealth and power. Morozoff cleverly conceived his plans
to avoid this danger.
In the early part of the year 1647 the thrilling message went through
the Empire that the young Tsar would choose a bride, and every noble or
commoner who had, or thought that he had, a youthful daughter with the
required degree of health, beauty, and virtue, made application to the
officials. A swarm of officers spread over the Empire and conducted the
preliminary examination. Then some two hundred picked beauties, rotund
and blushing, were drafted to the imperial palace and packed into what
might seem to be a large harem. At night, when the palpitating maids had
retired to bed, the Tsar and his medical attendant went from bed to bed
and inspected the very wakeful beauties. The golden rose fell on this
occasion to Euphemia Voievolojski, the daughter of a noble who was in
poor circumstances. But the unexpected honour was too much for the
obscure provincial girl. She fainted from joy and agitation, and the
party of Morozoff, who were apprehensive of the coming of rivals, put a
grave interpretation upon her weakness. She must be epileptic, and
entirely unfit to rear a brood of little Romanoffs; and poor Euphemia
and her relatives, who for a moment had had golden visions, were
dispatched to Siberia.
Morozoff had another plan for marrying the Tsar. An obscure man of the
boyar class named Miloslavski had two pretty daughters, and Morozoff
designed to wed one and make a Tsarina of the other. Whether he was
already in love with Anna Miloslavski, or whether he merely felt it
prudent to annex her and her relatives when the Tsar married her sister,
is not apparent. It is enough that Alexis married Maria, and ten days
afterwards Morozoff wedded her sister Anna, and neatly secured the
linking of the ambition of Miloslavski with his own. Legend afterwards
said that the two girls had, not long before, sold mushrooms in the
public market at Moscow. Certainly their father had been poor and
insignificant, and just as certainly he and his relatives at once began
to heap up wealth by every corrupt device known in the tradition of the
Moscovite court. Other Miloslavskis came to court, and a fresh brood of
parasites fastened upon the veins of the country.
The Tsar was a good-humoured, indulgent man. Good-humour, which really
meant an indolent and short-sighted habit of extracting whatever
pleasure the actual circumstances afforded, was at that time, and
remained until the present crisis, the chief characteristic of Russia.
The democratic peasant of the primitive tribe had relieved his labours
with the song and the dance. The serf now had little joy in life, but,
while the song and dance were banned, a new and potent element of gaiety
had been introduced: brandy. Everybody drank, and nearly everybody drank
copiously. Alexis himself was sober in habit, though even he liked to
intoxicate others at his table, but drunkenness was the daily rule. The
Patriarch of Moscow got drunk, the priests and monks got drunk, and the
people--as far as their means went--followed the example of their lords
and pastors. Vast quantities of wine, hydromel, and especially brandy
were consumed, and pepper was mixed with the brandy to improve its
sting. Babies drank neat brandy. Wives lay drunk, side by side with
their husbands, in a state of alarming _deshabille_, in the sleighs and
coaches which ran noisily along the street. The few who resisted were,
as a jest, compelled to drink. Even nuns and delicate young girls had
more than once the option of emptying a flagon of brandy or enduring a
whipping. Women at times prostituted themselves, and men sold their
clothes, in order to get the precious _vodka_.
Russian life generally did not rise much above this level. The people
were, as I said, so illiterate and ignorant that scarcely one in a
thousand could read. Superstition throve in proportion to the ignorance,
and vice and brutality were not far behind. Women were atrociously
treated. The women of the richer class contrived, as we shall see, to
creep through the restrictions imposed upon them and share the license
of their lords, but in the great mass of the people the mother had a
generally deplorable position. Wives were often whipped or beaten
until the blood flowed, and many a brutal husband rubbed salt into the
wounds. At times a frantic wife killed her husband, and in such cases
the law exacted an awful penalty. In other cases bloodshed was too
common an event to be severely punished. Moscow was distinguished among
European cities for violence and bloodshed.
Vice and coarseness were still common enough all over Europe, but it is
the almost unanimous opinion of the foreign visitors to Russia at the
time, who wrote their impressions, that vice was particularly free at
Moscow. Unnatural vice was a matter of jest. When the theatre became
popular, as it presently did, the vice was coarsely suggested on the
stage. Word and gesture everywhere were licentious. As the immense
majority of the Russian families, which were usually large, huddled over
the stove in one room, day and night, during the six months’
winter, the atmosphere that the children breathed may be left to the
imagination. Except amongst the wealthier nobles, who were being
modified at this time by foreign culture and refinement, manners were
indescribably gross. On all this the mass of the clergy had, and
purported to have, no influence. The greater part of the monks were as
gross as the monks of Europe had been generally before the Reformation,
and the false standards of the better monks--who laid a fierce
anathema upon chess or the dance or Sunday-work and a blessing upon
ignorance--made their influence small and ineffective. Kiss the
ikons and be docile, was the general philosophy they recommended.
[IMAGE: img086.jpg Ivan the Terrible, by Antokolsky]
That the early Romanoffs made a few improvements in this chaotic and
half-barbarous world is not saying very much to their credit. But beyond
a vague perception that more foreign light must be imported they had no
plan or statesmanship, and they proceeded piece-meal, under pressure.
The foreign merchants who were introduced or permitted to enter kept
industry and trade in their own hands, and did little for the native
development of Russia. The avarice and corruption of the court and
officials thought only of extortion, never of wise development. The
people, even of Moscow, sank under taxation and injustice, and a certain
measure of independence grew out of their very misery.
One day in the summer of 1648 the Tsar and the Patriarch were returning
to the palace from some ceremony when a frantic group of the people
approached with cries of grievances. They were, as usual, driven off;
but the distress was acute and soon an angry and dangerous throng of
soldiers, artisans, and small merchants and shop-keepers besieged the
Kreml and demanded the justice of the Tsar upon the bloodsuckers. Either
in fear or in anger--for Alexis was apt to boil over when the misdeeds
of some noble “son of a bitch” (as the Emperor put it) were brought to
his notice--the Tsar handed over to the mob two of the most hated
officials, and they were savagely murdered. The Clerk of the Council,
who was held particularly responsible for the salt-tax, which restricted
the supply of salt-fish, was assassinated on a dung-hill. The whetted
appetite then turned against Morozoff’s palace, but it was ingeniously
protected from destruction by the Tsar’s sending to the mob an assurance
that it was his own property. Morozoff himself was hidden in a monastery
until the fury of the storm spent itself, but the Tsar had to
promise to punish him, and to appoint a reform-commission. The autocrat
shed a flood of facile Moscovite tears as he protested that the people’s
grievances should be remedied; and his servants discreetly scattered
money amongst the soldiers, who formed the more dangerous part of the
mob. The fires which now threatened the entire city were extinguished,
and the people slowly and sullenly returned to discipline.
The insurrection had spread to the provinces, and the former republics
of Pskoff and Novgorod showed that their spirit of independence was not
extinct. Pskoff, in fact, inaugurated a genuine rebellion and had to be
reduced by the imperial troops, after a siege. Novgorod plundered the
stores of its foreign merchants and murdered more than one supporter of
the corrupt autocracy. When the Archbishop Nikon (of whom we shall see
more) attempted to defend the cause of the Tsar (as he was careful to
write to that monarch), his palace was invaded and he sank under a rain
of stones which nearly ended his life. Only the sworn promise of a
reform of the Empire put an end to the bloody insurrection.
It was under these circumstances, and with the added evil of an economic
system which failed yearly and a constant danger from the Poles, that
the second Romanoff began the reform of his kingdom. Morozoff was
condemned to a luxurious internment in a monastery, from which he
contrived for a long time to watch his interests and influence the Tsar,
and the sturdy Archbishop of Novgorod began to enjoy favour. A
commission of inquiry was appointed, and many reforms of the taxes, the
administration of justice, and the court were brought about.
In 1652 the Patriarch of Moscow died, and Nikon, who had steadily
advanced, was appointed to fill his place. For the next six years Nikon
was chief favourite and councillor, and his story is so characteristic
of the time that it must be briefly told. He was the son of a provincial
peasant: a man of robust constitution and conscience, and of no small
ambition. His success as a ruler of monks had won for him the
archbishopric of Novgorod, and he knew how to capture the nervous and
superstitious monarch. He claimed visions, and his shrewdness was at
least supported by a vigorous will. Before long the Tsar was little more
than an instrument of his will, and an abject spiritual pupil. He would
protest with tears that he was unworthy to wear the crown, and it was
only by reliance upon the Patriarch’s strong counsel that he was
dissuaded from abdicating.
The Tsar, like his predecessors, loved the elaborate ritual of the
Church, and Nikon interested him in the work of ecclesiastical reform.
The Slav translation of the Bible was very corrupt, and the corrupt
texts and ancient superstitious usages were to be rooted out. While
Poles and Swedes and Turks threatened--while the country rotted in
ignorance and economic folly--an immense zeal was concentrated upon
the purification of the text of the Scriptures and upon such grave
issues as the shaving of the beard, and the number of fingers that one
must use in making the sign of the cross. The court was purified of
“heretics” and the forces of the Empire were put at the
Patriarch’s disposal for the purification of the entire country.
Easy-going Russia had as yet not recognised its many heresies. Provided
that one repudiated the Pope one was esteemed orthodox; and indeed most
of the priests and monks were too densely ignorant to examine a
man’s orthodoxy.
It was now seen that a vast amount of heresy existed in Russia, and
every weird phase of dissent was truculently persecuted. Whole colonies
of monks were infected, and in places their monasteries sustained for
several years the attacks of imperial troops. Nikon was astute as well
as ambitious. He would invite some ragged popular fanatic of Moscow to
drink wine at his table, and would make great nobles tremble before his
power. He acquired enormous wealth, made an impressive display of pomp
and luxury, and contrived to indulge the heavy sensuality which then
belonged to all classes. Russia had become an autocracy. Nikon would
make it a theocracy.
But in such a court a man must have the truculence of Ivan the Terrible
or Peter the Great to hold such a power, and the undercurrents of
intrigue began in 1657 to weaken the Patriarch’s position. Old
believers, dissenters, and discontented nobles concentrated their hatred
upon him. It was in the summer of 1658 that he began to perceive the
effect. A foreign prince was to be entertained, and Nikon was not
invited to the banquet. He complained, and was insulted; and he next
perceived that Alexis was absent from _his_ functions. He resolved to
try a desperate remedy. Summoning his clergy and the people, he solemnly
and tearfully laid his sacred vestments upon the altar and declared that
enemies compelled him to abandon his high office. He retired to the New
Jerusalem monastery near Moscow to await the summons of the Tsar to
return to office, but no summons came.
For several years Nikon fiercely fought his clerical and lay opponents
from the monastery. “Brigand, pagan, stinking dog,” he howled at his
enemies; and they retorted that he was a “mad wolf.” In 1664 two high
oriental prelates, the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, visited
Moscow, and it was felt that they might be induced to end the scandal by
condemning Nikon’s reforms. But Nikon was undoubtedly right, and the
Tsar had to end it in his own way. The Patriarch was degraded and
imprisoned for life in a distant monastery. The issue is a sad page of
ecclesiastical history. The ageing Nikon lit up the monastery with
debauch. Not only did his large consumption of brandy immoderately
increase, but he loved to have women, especially young women, brought
into the monastery and stupefied with drink. At night his cell took on a
Rabelaisian aspect; and he died in an odour of sulphur, and was solemnly
buried with all the honours of a patriarch, in the year 1681.
By this time another interesting revolution had taken place at the
court. Power had passed to the Miloslavskis, the family of the Tsarina,
and they followed the familiar tradition. It may at least be said that
under their lead, and that of the boyar Nastchokin, a measure of reform
was carried out, and the country was strengthened against its enemies.
The Cossacks of the south were still under the dominion of Poland, and,
after many years of oppression and revolt, they appealed to Moscow for
help and protection. In 1654 the Tsar declared war upon Poland and
wrested a good deal of Russian territory from it. The Swedes also were
at war with Poland, and in the north the ambition of Russia clashed with
that of Sweden. Alexis made peace with Poland and entered upon an
unsuccessful war with Sweden. It ended indecisively, and the Poles
returned to the attack and inflicted severe defeats upon the Russians.
The war later ended in a costly compromise.
The economic condition of the country was such that the new drain caused
frightful distress, and the people of Moscow stirred once more. Copper
roubles had had to be coined, and poverty became deeper. One summer day
in 1662 the Tsar was at chapel in his country mansion, a few miles from
Moscow, when he was told that a crowd from Moscow beset the palace and
clamoured to be heard. His officers had dared to tear down a placard on
which they had exposed their grievances. The pious Tsar vigorously
refused to leave his devotions for so profane a cause, but he was
overruled, and he confronted the mob. He would, he said, proceed to
Moscow at the close of the service and make an inquiry. He must come at
once, with them, they answered; and a few of the bolder climbed the
balcony and pulled at his cloak. He was, however, permitted to return
and finish his devotions after he had taken a solemn oath to inquire
into their grievances. When he came down to carry out his promise, he
found that a larger and more violent crowd surrounded the palace. Two
regiments of the militia were summoned and, as the vast crowd still
jeered and flourished weapons, the order was given, and thousands of the
people were shot. Hundreds of others were afterwards exiled, and the
growing spirit of popular independence was, apparently, stifled.
Favourite succeeded favourite at court. Nastchokin and the Miloslavskis
gave way to a new and remarkable noble named Artaman Matveeff. Nikon
had, as I said, disposed the Tsar in favour of progress, of a kind, and
Matveeff was for still larger and more comprehensive progress. The
industrious and gifted son of a small official, he had become one of the
most accomplished and refined of the progressive party. His wife was a
Scottish woman of the Hamilton family. Like so many other foreigners,
many of the Scots who were driven from their country by Cromwell found
their way to Moscow and settled in trade there. The foreign colony
outside the walls grew, and its comparative refinement and culture
impressed the imagination of many of the Russians. Matveeff married the
refugee, and his home had a western complexion. The Scottish lady would
not be confined behind curtains. The furniture was of the more elegant
western kind. A library, and even a chemical laboratory, formed part of
the establishment.
Matveeff seems to have won the attention of the Tsar in the course of
some employment about the court, and he went on to secure his
friendship. He was promoted to the office of chief minister, and the
Tsar liked to visit him in his stimulating home. We may presume that it
was in the foreign quarter, where the neat brick villas, surrounded by
flower-gardens and shrubs, were in vivid contrast to the dull and
slovenly aspect of the clusters of wooden Russian houses. A new romance
of the court was born of this intercourse.
Matveeff adopted a beautiful orphan girl named Natalia Naryshkin, whose
father had been a captain of the militia. The Tsar, whose wife had died
in 1667, without (as we shall see) leaving a very promising heir to the
throne amongst her numerous children, was much struck with the charm of
Natalia, as she waited at table. Legend says that he at once offered to
“find her a husband.” He at all events decided to marry her, and told
Matveeff. But the courtier was too prudent to provide a wife for the
Tsar in this personal fashion. He persuaded Alexis to issue the
customary summons to a competition of health and beauty, and some
hundreds were lodged in the palace and gravely inspected. There seems to
have been some danger of Natalia losing her fortune, or else the comedy
was carried out very thoroughly. Another maiden was selected, and the
opponents of Matveeff pressed her charms. But it was decided that her
hands were too thin for a model of Russian beauty, and the intrigue was
defeated. The Tsar duly discovered the grace and gifts of the pretty
brunette Natalia--which he was not supposed to have seen in any
respectable Russian house--and in January, 1671, she was raised
to the throne.
The young girl had no conception of the opposition which her entrance
into the court would cause. Not only were the brother and other
relatives of the late Tsarina entrenched in lucrative positions, but
several of her children survived, and a grim silent struggle for the
succession grew up about the ageing monarch. Every act of the new
mistress was invidiously discussed. She declined to be secluded in
women’s quarters; she refused to have closed curtains to her litter when
she went abroad; she despised paint and the tawdry display which Russian
women usually made. A Russian envoy who had visited Italy brought news
of a magical form of entertainment known as a theatre, in which painted
scenes of castles and landscapes were put together and disappeared, and
life was remarkably imitated. Natalia and Matveeff set up a theatre,
and, although they did not venture beyond biblical plays, the monks and
reactionaries and envious made a great outcry. She brought into the
world, on May 20th, 1672, a wonderfully vigorous boy--the future Peter
the Great--and malicious tongues whispered that such a child was
assuredly not the son of Tsar Alexis, whose earlier sons had been
feeble. Two daughters followed in the next three years, and the silent
struggle became more tragic. Which of the two families--that of the
first or the second Tsarina--would secure the succession? The Tsar
himself brooded over the difficult problem; and in the midst of his
brooding, in 1676, he died, and left the settlement to the court.
Maria Miloslavski had had thirteen children, and of these two sons and
six daughters were alive when the Tsar died. The younger son, Ivan, was
a weak-witted boy whom none could seriously regard as a future ruler of
Russia. The two eldest sons had died. There remained Prince Feodor, and
the Miloslavskis had little trouble in securing his accession. A charge
of magic and other evil practices was trumped up against Matveeff, and
he was flogged and sent to Siberia. Natalia and her three children were
still at court, and she made a spirited stand against the grown-up
daughters of her predecessor and the three aunts who lived at court with
them. Her brother Ivan was banished, and she seemed to be in danger of
losing all hope, when a fresh court-revolution modified and complicated
the struggle.
The young Tsar, Feodor, was an invalid. Few expected him to live long,
and the prospect gave edge to the keen rivalry for power. But a former
tutor of Feodor’s elder brother now crept into favour and cut out the
Miloslavskis. This man and his brother were admirers of Poland, and, in
order to prepare the way for Polish influence, they induced the sickly
Tsar to wed a young and undistinguished woman of Polish extraction named
Agatha Grouchstska. Polish nobles and officers flocked to the court, and
an entirely new prospect was opened when, in July, 1681, a child was
born. Natalia and her children were now living in a village not far from
Moscow. The Miloslavskis had been disposed to make a nun of her, but
they were now fighting desperately for their own power. Agatha, to their
relief, died in childbirth, and the baby died a few weeks later. The
resolute friends of Poland made a last effort. They induced the dying
Tsar to wed a relative of his dead wife. But death made an end of the
mockery. Feodor died, in his twenty-first year, a few weeks after his
marriage, and the intriguing Poles were swept out of court.
Before the Miloslavskis had time to marshal their forces, the friends
and relatives of Natalia, the Naryshkin, got together the boyars and
persuaded them that the boy Peter was now the only possible heir to the
throne. The elder prince, Ivan, son of the first wife of Alexis, was, as
I said, an obvious imbecile. Peter, on the other hand, was a sturdy and
intelligent boy who promised to become a vigorous man. Before the day
was out on which Feodor died Natalia was summoned to Moscow by the news
that her son was Tsar, and she herself soon rejoiced in the titles of
Tsaritsa and Regent. Her brother was recalled, and a speedy messenger
was sent to bring back her friend and patron, Matveeff, from Siberia. It
was on April 27th, 1682, that Feodor died and Natalia returned to power.
On May 11th Matveeff arrived from Siberia, and received the respect of
the troops. The new regime seemed to be solidly established. And four
days later Moscow was shaken by one of the most sanguinary revolutions
that we find in its chronicles, and the Miloslavskis returned to power.
The story of that revolution introduces us to one of the strangest
princesses of the Romanoff house, who was to rule Russia for the next
seven years.