THE REGENCY OF SOPHIA.
From 1680 to 1697.
Administration of Feodor.--Death of Feodor.--Incapacity of
Ivan.--Succession of Peter.--Usurpation of Sophia.--Insurrection of
the Strelitzes.--Massacre in Moscow.--Success of the
Insurrection.--Ivan and Peter Declared Sovereigns under the Regency of
Sophia.--General Discontent.--Conspiracy against Sophia.--Her Flight
to the Convent.--The Conspiracy Quelled.--New Conspiracy.--Energy of
Peter.--He Assumes the Crown.--Sophia Banished to a
Convent.--Commencement of the Reign of Peter.
Feodor, influenced by the wise counsels of his father, devoted much
attention to the beautifying of his capital, and to developing the
internal resources of the empire. He paved the streets of Moscow,
erected several large buildings of stone in place of the old wooden
structures. Commerce and arts were patronized, he even loaning, from
the public treasury, sums of money to enterprising men to encourage
them in their industrial enterprises. Foreigners of distinction, both
scholars and artisans, were invited to take up their residence in the
empire. The tzar was particularly fond of fine horses, and was very
successful in improving, by importations, the breed in Russia.
Feodor had always been of an exceedingly frail constitution, and it
was evident that he could not anticipate long life. In the year 1681
he married a daughter of one of the nobles. His bride, Opimia
Routoski, was also frail in health, though very beautiful. Six months
had hardly passed away ere the youthful empress exchanged her bridal
robes and couch for the shroud and the tomb. The emperor himself,
grief-stricken, was rapidly sinking in a decline. His ministers almost
forced him to another immediate marriage, hoping that, by the birth
of a son, the succession of his half brother Peter might be prevented.
The dying emperor received into his emaciate, feeble arms the new
bride who had been selected for him, Marva Matweowna, and after a few
weeks of languor and depression died. He was deeply lamented by his
subjects, for during his short reign of less than three years he had
developed a noble character, and had accomplished more for the real
prosperity of Russia than many a monarch in the longest occupation of
the throne.
Feodor left two brothers--Ivan, a brother by the same mother, Eudocia,
and Peter, the son of the second wife of Alexis. Ivan was very feeble
in body and in mind, with dim vision, and subject to epileptic fits.
Feodor consequently declared his younger brother Peter, who was but
ten years of age, his successor. The custom of the empire allowed him
to do this, and rendered this appointment valid. It was generally the
doom of the daughters of the Russian emperors, who could seldom find a
match equal to their rank, to pass their lives immured in a convent.
Feodor had a sister, Sophia, a very spirited, energetic woman,
ambitious and resolute, whose whole soul revolted against such a
moping existence. Seeing that Feodor had but a short time to live, she
left her convent and returned to the Kremlin, persisting in her
resolve to perform all sisterly duties for her dying brother. Ivan,
her own brother, was incapable of reigning, from his infirmities.
Peter, her half-brother, was but a child. Sophia, with wonderful
energy, while tending at the couch of Feodor, made herself familiar
with the details of the administration, and, acting on behalf of the
dying sovereign, gathered the reins of power into her own hands.
As soon as Feodor expired, and it was announced that Peter was
appointed successor to the throne, to the exclusion of his elder
brother Ivan, Sophia, through her emissaries, excited the militia of
the capital to one of the most bloody revolts Moscow had ever
witnessed. It was her intention to gain the throne for the imbecile
Ivan, as she doubted not that she could, in that event, govern the
empire at her pleasure. Peter, child as he was, had already developed
a character of self-reliance which taught Sophia that he would
speedily wrest the scepter from her hands.
The second day after the burial of Feodor, the militia, or
_strelitzes_ as they were called, a body of citizen soldiers in
Moscow, corresponding very much with the national guard of Paris,
surrounded the Kremlin, in a great tumult, and commenced complaining
of nine of their colonels, who owed them some arrears of pay. They
demanded that these officers should be surrendered to them, and their
demand was so threatening that the court, intimidated, was compelled
to yield. The wretched officers were seized by the mob, tied to the
ground naked, upon their faces, and whipped with most terrible
severity. The soldiers thus overawed opposition, and became a power
which no one dared resist. Sophia was their inspiring genius, inciting
and directing them through her emissaries. Though some have denied her
complicity in these deeds of violence, still the prevailing voice of
history is altogether against her.
Sophia, having the terrors of the mob to wield, as her executive
power, convened an assembly of the princes of the blood, the generals,
the lords, the patriarch and the bishops of the church, and even of
the principal merchants. She urged upon them that Ivan, by right of
birth, was entitled to the empire. The mother of Peter, Natalia
Nariskin, now empress dowager, was still young and beautiful. She had
two brothers occupying posts of influence at court. The family of the
Nariskins had consequently much authority in the empire. Sophia
dreaded the power of her mother-in-law, and her first efforts of
intrigue were directed against the Nariskins. Her agents were
everywhere busy, in the court and in the army, whispering insinuations
against them. It was even intimated that they had caused the death of
Feodor, by bribing his physician to poison him, and that they had
attempted the life of Ivan. At length Sophia gave to her agents a list
of forty lords whom they were to denounce to the insurgent soldiery as
enemies to them and to the State.
This was the signal for their massacre. Two were first seized in the
palace of the Kremlin, and thrown out of the window. The soldiers
received them upon their pikes, and dragged their mutilated corpses
through the streets to the great square of the city. They then rushed
back to the palace, where they found Athanasius Nariskin, one of the
brothers of the queen dowager. He was immediately murdered. They soon
after found three of the proscribed in a church, to which they had
fled as a sanctuary. Notwithstanding the sacredness of the church, the
unhappy lords were instantly hewn to pieces by the swords of the
assassins. Thus frenzied with blood, they met a young lord whom they
mistook for Ivan Nariskin, the remaining brother of the mother of
Peter. He was instantly slain, and then the assassins discovered their
error. With some slight sense of justice, perhaps of humanity, they
carried the bleeding corpse of the young nobleman to his father. The
panic-stricken, heartbroken parent dared not rebuke them for the
murder, but thanked them for bringing to him the corpse of his child.
The mother, more impulsive and less cautious, broke out into bitter
and almost delirious reproaches. The father, to appease her, said to
her, in an under tone, "Let us wait till the hour shall come when we
shall be able to take revenge."
Some one overheard the imprudent words, and reported them to the mob.
They immediately returned, dragged the old man down the stairs of his
palace by the hair, and cut his throat upon his own door sill. They
were now searching the city, in all directions, for Von Gaden the
German physician of the late tzar, who was accused of administering to
him poison. They met in the streets, the son of the physician, and
demanded of him where his father was. The trembling lad replied that
he did not know. They cut him down. Soon they met another German
physician.
"You are a doctor," they said. "If you have not poisoned our sovereign
you have poisoned others, and deserve death."
He was immediately murdered. At length they discovered Von Gaden. He
had attempted to disguise himself in a beggar's garb. The worthy old
man, who, like most eminent physicians, was as distinguished for
humanity as for eminent medical skill, was dragged to the Kremlin. The
princesses themselves came out and mingled with the crowd, begging for
the life of the good man, assuring them that he had been a faithful
physician and that he had served their sovereign with zeal. The
soldiers declared that he deserved to die, as they had positive proof
that he was a sorcerer, for, in searching his apartments, they had
found the skin of a snake and several reptiles preserved in bottles.
Against such proof no earthly testimony could avail.
They also demanded that Ivan Nariskin, whom they had been seeking for
two days, should be delivered up to them. They were sure that he was
concealed somewhere in the Kremlin, and they threatened to set fire to
the palace and burn it to the ground unless he were immediately
delivered to them. It was evident that these threats would be promptly
put into execution. Firing the palace would certainly insure his
death. There was the bare possibility of escape by surrendering him to
the mob. The empress herself went to her brother in his concealment
and informed him of the direful choice before him. The young prince
sent for the patriarch, confessed his sins, partook of the Lord's
Supper, received the sacrament of extreme unction in preparation for
death, and was then led out, by the patriarch himself, dressed in his
pontifical robes and bearing an image of the Virgin Mary, and was
delivered by him to the soldiers. The queen and the princesses
accompanied the victim, surrounding him, and, falling upon their knees
before the soldiers, they united with the patriarch in pleading for
his life. But the mob, intoxicated and maddened, dragged the young
prince and the physician before a tribunal which they had constituted
on the spot, and condemned them to what was expressively called the
punishment of "ten thousand slices." Their bodies were speedily cut
into the smallest fragments, while their heads were stuck upon the
iron spikes of the balustrade.
These outrages were terminated by a proclamation from the soldiery
that Ivan and Peter should be joint sovereigns under the regency of
Sophia. The regent rewarded her partisans liberally for their
efficient and successful measures. Upon the leaders she conferred the
confiscated estates of the proscribed. A monument of shame was reared,
upon which the names of the assassinated were engraved as traitors to
their country. The soldiers were rewarded with double pay.
Sophia unscrupulously usurped all the prerogatives and honors of
royalty. All dispatches were sealed with her hand. Her effigy was
stamped upon the current coin. She took her seat as presiding officer
at the council. To confer a little more dignity upon the character of
her imbecile brother, Ivan, she selected for him a wife, a young lady
of extraordinary beauty whose father had command of a fortress in
Siberia. It was on the 25th of June, 1682, that Sophia assumed the
regency. In 1684 Ivan was married. The scenes of violence which had
occurred agitated the whole political atmosphere throughout the
empire. There was intense exasperation, and many conspiracies were
formed for the overthrow of the government. The most formidable of
these conspiracies was organized by Couvanski, commander-in-chief of
the strelitzes. He was dissatisfied with the rewards he had received,
and, conscious that he had placed Sophia upon the throne through the
energies of the soldiers he commanded, he believed that he might just
as easily have placed himself there. Having become accustomed to
blood, the slaughter of a few more persons, that he might place the
crown upon his own brow, appeared to him a matter of but little
moment. He accordingly planned to murder the two tzars, the regent
Sophia and all the remaining princes of the royal family. Then, by
lavishing abundant rewards upon the soldiers, he doubted not that he
could secure their efficient coöperation in maintaining him on the
throne.
The conspiracy was discovered upon the eve of its accomplishment.
Sophia immediately fled with the two tzars and the princes, to the
monastery of the Trinity. This was a palace, a convent and a fortress.
The vast pile, reared of stone, was situated thirty-six miles from
Moscow, and was encompassed with deep ditches, and massive ramparts
bristling with cannon. The monks were in possession of the whole
country for a space of twelve miles around this almost impregnable
citadel. From this safe retreat Sophia opened communications with the
rebel chief. She succeeded in alluring him to come half way to meet
her in conference. A powerful band of soldiers, placed in ambush,
seized him. He was immediately beheaded, with one of his sons, and
thirty-seven strelitzes who had accompanied him.
As soon as the strelitzes in Moscow, numbering many thousands, heard
of the assassination of their general and of their comrades, they flew
to arms, and in solid battalions, with infantry, artillery and
cavalry, marched to the assault of the convent. The regent rallied her
supporters, consisting of the lords who were her partisans, and their
vassals, and prepared for a vigorous defense. Russia seemed now upon
the eve of a bloody civil war. The nobles generally espoused the cause
of the tzars under the regency of Sophia. Their claims seemed those of
legitimacy, while the success of the insurrectionary soldiers promised
only anarchy. The rise of the people in defense of the government was
so sudden and simultaneous, that the strelitzes were panic-stricken,
and soon, in the most abject submission, implored pardon, which was
wisely granted them. Sophia, with the tzars, surrounded by an army,
returned in triumph to Moscow. Tranquillity was thus restored.
Sophia still held the reins of power with a firm grasp. The imbecility
of Ivan and the youth of Peter rendered this usurpation easy. Very
adroitly she sent the most mutinous regiments of the strelitzes on
apparently honorable missions to the distant provinces of the Ukraine,
Kesan, and Siberia. Poland, menaced by the Turks, made peace with
Russia, and purchased her alliance by the surrender of the vast
province of Smolensk and all the conquered territory in the Ukraine.
In the year 1687, Sophia sent the first Russian embassy to France,
which was then in the meridian of her splendor, under the reign of
Louis XIV. Voltaire states that France, at that time, was so
unacquainted with Russia, that the Academy of Inscriptions celebrated
this embassy by a medal, as if it had come from India.[10] The Crimean
Tartars, in confederacy with the Turks, kept Russia, Poland, Hungary,
Transylvania, and the various provinces of the German empire in
perpetual alarm. Poland and Russia were so humiliated, that for
several years they had purchased exemption from these barbaric forays
by paying the Tartars an annual tribute amounting to fifty thousand
dollars each. Sophia, anxious to wipe out this disgrace, renewed the
effort, which had so often failed, to unite all Europe against the
Turks. Immense armies were raised by Russia and Poland and sent to the
Tauride. For two years a bloody war raged with about equal slaughter
upon both sides, while neither party gained any marked advantage.
[Footnote 10: "La France n'avait eu encore aucune correspondance avec
la Russie; on ne le connaissait pas; et l'Académie des Inscriptions
célébra par une médaille cette ambassade, comme si elle fut venue des
Indes."--_Histoire de l'Empire de Russie, sous Pierre le Grand_, page
93.]
Peter had now attained his eighteenth year, and began to manifest
pretty decisively a will of his own. He fell in love with a beautiful
maiden, Ottokesa Lapuchin, daughter of one of his nobles, and,
notwithstanding all the intriguing opposition of Sophia, persisted in
marrying her. This marriage increased greatly the popularity of the
young prince, and it was very manifest that he would soon thrust
Sophia aside, and with his own vigorous arm, wield the scepter alone.
The regent, whose hands were already stained with the blood of
assassination, now resolved to remove Peter out of the way. The young
prince, with his bride, was residing at his country seat, a few miles
out from Moscow. Sophia, in that corrupt, barbaric age, found no
difficulty in obtaining, with bribes, as many accomplices as she
wanted. Two distinguished generals led a party of six hundred
strelitzes out of the city, to surround the palace of Peter and to
secure his death. The soldiers had already commenced their march, when
Peter was informed of his danger. The tzar leaped upon a horse, and
spurring him to his utmost speed, accompanied by a few attendants,
escaped to the convent of the Trinity, to which we have before alluded
as one of the strongest fortresses of Russia. The mother, wife and
sister of the tzar, immediately joined him there.
The soldiers were not aware of the mission which their leaders were
intending to accomplish. When they arrived at the palace, and it was
found that the tzar had fled, and it was whispered about that he had
fled to save his life, the soldiers, by nature more strongly attached
to a chivalrous young man than to an intriguing, ambitious woman,
whose character was of very doubtful reputation, broke out into open
revolt, and, abandoning their officers, marched directly to the
monastery and offered their services to Peter. The patriarch, whose
religious character gave him almost unbounded influence with the
people, also found that he was included as one of the victims of the
conspiracy; that he was to have been assassinated, and his place
conferred upon one of the partisans of Sophia. He also fled to the
convent of the Trinity.
Sophia now found herself deserted by the soldiery and the nation. She
accordingly, with the most solemn protestations, declared that she had
been accused falsely, and after sending messenger after messenger to
plead her cause with her brother, resolved to go herself. She had not
advanced more than half way, ere she was met by a detachment of
Peter's friends who informed her, from him, that she must go directly
back to Moscow, as she could not be received into the convent. The
next day Peter assembled a council, and it was resolved to bring the
traitors to justice. A colonel, with three hundred men, was sent to
the Kremlin to arrest the officers implicated in the conspiracy. They
were loaded with chains, conducted to the Trinity, and in accordance
with the barbaric custom of the times were put to the torture. In
agony too dreadful to be borne, they of course made any confession
which was demanded.
Peter was reluctant to make a public example of his sister. There
ensued a series of punishments of the conspirators too revolting to be
narrated. The mildest of these punishments was exile to Siberia,
there, in the extremest penury, to linger through scenes of woe so
long as God should prolong their lives. The executions being
terminated and the exiles out of sight, Sophia was ordered to leave
the Kremlin, and retire to the cloisters of Denitz, which she was
never again to leave. Peter then made a triumphal entry into Moscow.
He was accompanied by a guard of eighteen thousand troops. His feeble
brother Ivan received him at the outer gate of the Kremlin. They
embraced each other with much affection, and then retired to their
respective apartments. The wife and mother of Peter accompanied him on
his return to Moscow.
Thus terminated the regency of Sophia. From this time Peter was the
real sovereign of Russia. His brother Ivan took no other share in the
government than that of lending his name to the public acts. He lived
for a few years in great seclusion, almost forgotten, and died in
1696. Peter was physically, as well as intellectually, a remarkable
man. He was tall and finely formed, with noble features lighted up
with an extremely brilliant eye. His constitution was robust, enabling
him to undergo great hardship, and he was, by nature, a man of great
activity and energy. His education, however, was exceedingly
defective. The regent Sophia had not only exerted all her influence to
keep him in ignorance, but also to allure him into the wildest
excesses of youthful indulgence. Even his recent marriage had not
interfered with the publicity of his amours, and all distinguished
foreigners in Moscow were welcomed by him to scenes of feasting and
carousing.
Notwithstanding these deplorable defects of character, for which much
allowance is to be made from the neglect of his education and his
peculiar temptations, still it was manifest to close observers even
then, that the seeds of true greatness were implanted in his nature.
When five years of age, he was riding with his mother in a coach, and
was asleep in her arms. As they were passing over a bridge where there
was a heavy fall of water from spring rains, the roar of the cataract
awoke him. The noise, with the sudden aspect of the rushing torrent,
created such terror that he was thrown into a fever, and, for years,
he could not see any standing water, much less a running stream,
without being thrown almost into convulsions. To overcome this
weakness, he resolutely persisted in plunging into the waves until his
aversion was changed into a great fondness for that element.
Ashamed of his ignorance, he vigorously commenced studying German,
and, notwithstanding all the seductions of the court, succeeded in
acquiring such a mastery of the language as to be able both to speak
and write it correctly. Peter's father, Alexis, had been anxious to
open the fields of commerce to his subjects. He had, at great expense,
engaged the services of ship builders and navigators from Holland. A
frigate and a yacht had been constructed, with which the Volga had
been navigated to its mouth at Astrachan. It was his intention to open
a trade with Persia through the Caspian Sea. But, in a revolt at
Astrachan, the vessels were seized and destroyed, and the captain
killed. Thus terminated this enterprise. The master builder, however,
remained in Russia, where he lived a long time in obscurity.
One day, Peter, at one of his summer palaces of Ismaelhof, saw upon
the shore of the lake the remains of a pleasure boat of peculiar
construction. He had never before seen any boat but such as was
propelled by oars. The peculiarity of the structure of this arrested
his attention, and being informed that it was constructed for sails as
well as oars, he ordered it to be repaired, that he might make trial
of it. It so chanced that the shipwright, Brandt, from Holland, who
had built the boat, was found, and the tzar, to his great delight,
enjoyed, for the first time in his life, the pleasures of a sail. He
immediately gave directions for the boat to be transported to the
great lake near the convent of the Trinity, and here he ordered two
frigates and three yachts to be built. For months he amused himself
piloting his little fleet over the waves of the lake. Like many a
plebeian boy, the tzar had now acquired a passion for the sea, and he
longed to get a sight of the ocean.
With this object in view, in 1694 he set out on a journey of nearly a
thousand miles to Archangel, on the shores of the White Sea. Taking
his shipwrights with him, he had a small vessel constructed, in which
he embarked for the exploration of the Frozen Ocean, a body of water
which no sovereign had seen before him. A Dutch man-of-war, which
chanced to be in the harbor at Archangel, and all the merchant fleet
there accompanied the tzar on this expedition. The sovereign himself
had already acquired much of the art of working a ship, and on this
trip devoted all his energies to improvement in the science and
practical skill of navigation.
While the tzar was thus turning his attention to the subject of a
navy, he at the same time was adopting measures of extraordinary vigor
for the reorganization of the army. Hitherto the army had been
composed of bands of vassals, poorly armed and without discipline, led
by their lords, who were often entirely without experience in the arts
of war. Peter commenced, at his country residence, with a company of
fifty picked men, who were put through the most thorough drill by
General Gordon, a Scotchman of much military ability, who had secured
the confidence of the tzar. Some of the sons of the lords were chosen
as their officers, but these young nobles were all trained by the same
military discipline, Peter setting them the example by passing through
all the degrees of the service from the very lowest rank. He
shouldered his musket, and commencing at the humblest post, served as
sentinel, sergeant and lieutenant. No one ventured to refuse to follow
in the footsteps of his sovereign. This company, thus formed and
disciplined, was rapidly increased until it became the royal guard,
most terrible on the field of battle. When this regiment numbered five
thousand men, another regiment upon the same principle was organized,
which contained twelve thousand. It is a remarkable fact stated by
Voltaire, that one third of these troops were French refugees, driven
from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
One of the first efforts of the far-sighted monarch was to consolidate
the army and to bring it under the energy of one mind, by breaking
down the independence of the nobles, who had heretofore acted as petty
sovereigns, leading their contingents of vassals. Peter was thus
preparing to make the influence of Russia felt among the armies of
Europe as it had never been felt before.
The Russian empire, sweeping across Siberian Asia, reached down
indefinitely to about the latitude of fifty-two degrees, where it was
met by the Chinese claims. Very naturally, a dispute arose respecting
the boundaries, and with a degree of good sense which seems almost
incredible in view of the developments of history, the two
half-civilized nations decided to settle the question by conference
rather than by war. A place of meeting, for the embassadors, was
appointed on the frontiers of Siberia, about nine hundred miles from
the great Chinese wall. Fortunately for both parties, there were some
Christian missionaries who accompanied the Chinese as interpreters.
Probably through the influence of these men of peace a treaty was soon
formed. Both parties pledged themselves to the observance of the
treaty in the following words, which were doubtless written by the
missionaries:
"If any of us entertain the least thought of renewing the flames of
war, we beseech the supreme Lord of all things, who knows the heart of
man, to punish the traitor with sudden death."
Two large pillars were erected upon the spot to mark the boundaries
between the two empires, and the treaty was engraved upon each of
them. Soon after, a treaty of commerce was formed, which commerce,
with brief interruptions, has continued to flourish until the present
day. Peter now prepared, with his small but highly disciplined army,
to make vigorous warfare upon the Turks, and to obtain, if possible,
the control of the Black Sea. Early in the summer of 1695 the Russian
army commenced its march. Striking the head waters of the Don, they
descended the valley of that river to attack the city of Azov, an
important port of the Turks, situated on an island at the mouth of the
Don.
The tzar accompanied his troops, not as commander-in-chief, but a
volunteer soldier. Generals Gordon and Le Fort, veteran officers, had
the command of the expedition. Azov was a very strong fortress and was
defended by a numerous garrison. It was found necessary to invest the
place and commence a regular siege. A foreign officer from Dantzic, by
the name of Jacob, had the direction of the battering train. For some
violation of military etiquette, he had been condemned to ignominious
punishment. The Russians were accustomed to such treatment, but
Jacob, burning with revenge, spiked his guns, deserted, joined the
enemy, adopted the Mussulman faith, and with great vigor conducted the
defense.
Jacob was a man of much military science, and he succeeded in
thwarting all the efforts of the besiegers. In the attempt to storm
the town the Russians were repulsed with great loss, and at length
were compelled to raise the siege and to retire. But Peter was not a
man to yield to difficulties. The next summer he was found before
Azov, with a still more formidable force. In this attempt the tzar was
successful, and on the 28th of July the garrison surrendered without
obtaining any of the honors of war. Elated with success Peter
increased the fortifications, dug a harbor capable of holding large
ships, and prepared to fit out a strong fleet against the Turks; which
fleet was to consist of nine sixty gun ships, and forty-one of from
thirty to fifty guns. While the fleet was being built he returned to
Moscow, and to impress his subjects with a sense of the great victory
obtained, he marched the army into Moscow beneath triumphal arches,
while the whole city was surrendered to all the demonstrations of joy.
Characteristically Peter refused to take any of the credit of the
victory which had been gained by the skill and valor of his generals.
These officers consequently took the precedency of their sovereign in
the triumphal procession, Peter declaring that merit was the only road
to military preferment, and that, as yet, he had attained no rank in
the army. In imitation of the ancient Romans, the captives taken in
the war were led in the train of the victors. The unfortunate Jacob
was carried in a cart, with a rope about his neck, and after being
broken upon the wheel was ignominiously hung.