[Sidenote: 1682.]
Czar Theodore's eyes were scarcely closed, when the nomination of a
prince of only ten years old to the throne, the exclusion of the elder
brother, and the intrigues of the princess Sophia, their sister, excited
a most bloody revolt among the strelitzes. Never did the janissaries,
nor the prætorian guards, exercise more horrible barbarities. The
insurrection began two days after the interment of Theodore, when they
all ran to arms in the Kremlin, which is the imperial palace at Moscow.
There they began with accusing nine of their colonels, for keeping back
part of their pay. The ministry was obliged to break the colonels, and
to pay the strelitzes the money they demanded: but this did not satisfy
them, they insisted upon having these nine officers delivered up to
them, and condemned them, by a majority of votes, to suffer the Battogs,
or Knout; the manner of which punishment is as follows:--
The delinquent is stripped naked, and laid flat on his belly, while two
executioners beat him over the back with switches, or small canes, till
the judge, who stands by to see the sentence put in execution, says, 'It
is enough.' The colonels, after being thus treated by their men, were
obliged to return them thanks, according to the custom of the eastern
nations; where criminals, after undergoing their punishment, must kiss
the judge's hand. Besides complying with this custom, the officers gave
them a sum of money, which was something more than the custom.
While the strelitzes thus began to make themselves formidable, the
princess Sophia, who secretly encouraged them, in order to lead them by
degrees from crime to crime, held a meeting at her house, consisting of
the princesses of the blood, the generals of the army, the boyards, the
patriarch, the bishops, and even some of the principal merchants; where
she represented to them, that prince John, by right of birth and merit,
was entitled to the empire, the reins of which she intended to keep in
her own hands. At the breaking up of the assembly, she caused a promise
to be made to the strelitzes, of an augmentation of pay, besides
considerable presents. Her emissaries were in particular employed to
stir up the soldiery against the Nariskin family, especially the two
brothers of the young dowager czarina, the mother of Peter the First.
These persuaded the strelitzes, that one of the brothers, named John,
had put on the imperial robes, had seated himself on the throne, and had
attempted to strangle prince John; adding, moreover, that the late czar
Theodore had been poisoned by a villain, named Daniel Vongad, a Dutch
physician. At last Sophia put into their hands a list of forty noblemen,
whom she stiled enemies to their corps, and to the state, and as such
worthy of death. These proceedings exactly resembled the proscriptions
of Sylla, and the Roman triumvirate, which had been revived by
Christian II. in Denmark and Sweden. This may serve to shew, that such
cruelties prevail in all countries in times of anarchy and confusion.
The mutineers began the tragedy with throwing the two knez, or princes,
Dolgorouki and Matheof, out of the palace-windows; whom the strelitzes
received upon the points of their spears, then stripped them, and
dragged their dead bodies into the great square; after this they rushed
into the palace, where meeting with Athanasius Nariskin, a brother of
the young czarina, and one of the uncles of czar Peter, they murdered
him in like manner; then breaking open the door of a neighbouring
church, where three of the proscribed persons had taken refuge, they
drag them from the altar, strip them naked, and stab them to death with
knives.
They were so blinded with their fury, that seeing a young nobleman of
the family of Soltikoff, a great favourite of theirs, and who was not
included in the list of the proscribed, and some of them mistaking him
for John Nariskin, whom they were in search of, they murdered him upon
the spot; and what plainly shews the manners of those times, after
having discovered their error, they carried the body of young Soltikoff,
to his father to bury it; and the wretched parent, far from daring to
complain, gave them a considerable reward for bringing him the mangled
body of his son. Being reproached by his wife, his daughters, and the
widow of the deceased, for his weakness, 'Let us wait for an opportunity
of being revenged,' said the old man. These words being overheard by
some of the soldiers, they returned furiously back into the room,
dragged the aged parent by the hair, and cut his throat at his own door.
Another party of the strelitzes, who were scouring the city in search
of the Dutch physician, Vongad, met with his son, of whom they inquired
for his father; the youth trembling, replied, he did not know where he
was, upon which they immediately dispatched him. Soon after, a German
physician falling in their way, 'You are a doctor,' said they, 'and if
you did not poison our master, Theodore, you have poisoned others, and
therefore merit death;' and thereupon killed him.
At length they found the Dutchman, of whom they were in quest, disguised
in the garb of a beggar; they instantly drag him before the palace. The
princesses who loved this worthy man, and placed great confidence in his
skill, begged the strelitzes to spare him, assuring them that he was a
very good physician, and had taken all possible care of their brother
Theodore. The strelitzes made answer, that he not only deserved to die
as a physician, but also as a sorcerer; and that they had found in his
house, a great dried toad, and the skin of a serpent. They furthermore
required to have young Nariskin delivered up to them, whom they had
searched for in vain for two days: alleging, that he was certainly in
the palace, and that they would set fire to it, unless he was put into
their hands. The sister of John Nariskin, and the other princesses,
terrified by their menaces, went to acquaint their unhappy brother in
the place of his concealment, with what had passed; upon which the
patriarch heard his confession, administers the viaticum, and extreme
unction to him, and then, taking an image of the blessed Virgin, which
was said to perform miracles, he leads the young man forth by the hand,
and presents him to the strelitzes, shewing them, at the same time, the
image of the Virgin. The princesses, who in tears surrounded Nariskin,
falling upon their knees before the soldiers, besought them, in the name
of the blessed Virgin, to spare their relation's life; but the inhuman
wretches tore him from their arms, and dragged him to the foot of the
stairs, together with the physician Vongad, where they held a kind of
tribunal among themselves, and condemned them both to be put to the
torture. One of the soldiers, who could write, drew up a form of
accusation, and sentenced the two unfortunate princes to be cut in
pieces; a punishment inflicted in China and Tartary on parricides, and
called the punishment of ten thousand slices. After having thus used
Nariskin and Vongad, they exposed their heads, feet, and hands, on the
iron points of a balustrade.
While this party of the strelitzes were thus glutting their fury in the
sight of the princesses, the rest massacred every one who was obnoxious
to them, or suspected by the princess Sophia.
This horrid tragedy concluded with proclaiming the two princes, John and
Peter, in June, 1682, joint sovereigns, and associating their sister
Sophia with them, in the quality of co-regent; who then publicly
approved of all their outrages, gave them rewards, confiscated the
estates of the proscribed, and bestowed them upon their murderers. She
even permitted them to erect a monument, with the names of the persons
they had murdered, as being traitors to their country: and to crown all,
she published letters-patent, thanking them for their zeal and
fidelity.