Peter the Great (128 page)

While all this blood was flowing, Peter waited, still unconvinced that all the opposition had been identified, but certain that what he had done so far was right and necessary. Congratulated by a foreign diplomat on having discovered a conspiracy and beaten down his enemies, the Tsar nodded in agreement. "If a fire meets with straw and other light stuff, it soon spreads," he said. "But if it finds iron and stone in its way, it is extinguished of itself."

After the trials and the bloody executions in Moscow, it was generally hoped that the affair of the Tsarevich was over. The major threads of the conspiracy, if such there may have been, had now been identified and rooted out. When Peter left Moscow for St. Petersburg in March 1718, he took Alexis with him. Traveling together, father and son led observers to believe that the breach between them was repaired. Yet, Peter's mind still seethed with suspicions and fears and the nation sensed his irresolution. "The more I consider the confused state of affairs in Russia," de la Vie wrote to Paris, "the less I see how these disorders will be brought to an end." Most people, he continued, "still wait and hope only for the end of his [Peter's] life to plunge into the slough of sloth and ignorance." The Tsar's immediate dilemma was that no real conspiracy had been found, but neither had the Tsarevich been proved a faithful son, nor had all those close to the throne revealed themselves as loyal subjects. Above all, nothing had been done to solve the problem that troubled Peter most. A dispatch from Weber enlarged on this dilemma:

Now comes the question: What shall be done further with the Tsarevich? It is said that he is going to be sent to a very distant monastery. This does not seem probable to me, for the further the Tsar removes him, the greater opportunity does he give to the restless mob for liberating him. I think that he will be brought here again and kept in the neighborhood of St. Petersburg. I will not decide here whether the Tsar is right or wrong to exclude him from the succession and give him his paternal curse. This is sure: the clergy, the nobility, and the common people respect the Tsarevich like a god.

Weber's guess was accurate. Although nominally free, Alexis was required to live in a house next to Catherine's palace and scarcely allowed out of Peter's sight. The Tsarevich, meanwhile, was cowed and seemingly uncaring. Without protesting, he had watched his mother, his tutor, his confessor and all his friends and adherents arrested. As they were interrogated, tortured, exiled, flogged and executed, he meekly stood by, greatful that he himself was not being punished. His only thought seemed to be to marry Afrosina. At the Easter service, Alexis formally congratulated Catherine in the traditional manner, then fell on his knees before her and begged her to influence his father to allow him to marry Afrosina soon.

The young woman arrived in St. Petersburg on April 15, but instead of being received into the waiting arms of her impatient lover, she was immediately arrested and taken to the Fortress of Peter and Paul.* Among her belongings were found drafts of two letters from Naples written in Alexis' hand, one to the Russian Senate, the other to the archbishops of the Russian Orthodox Church. To the Senate, he had written:

Gentlemen Most Excellent Senators:

I believe you will be no less surprised than all the world at my going out of the country and at my residing in a place unknown at present. The continued ill-usage and the disorders have obliged me to quit my dear native country. They designed to shut me up in a convent in the beginning of the year 1716. though I had committed nothing that had deserved it. None of you can be ignorant of it. But God, full of mercy, saved me by presenting to me last autumn an opportunity of absenting myself from my dear country and you, whom I could not have resolved to leave had I not been in the case where I found myself.

At present I am well and in good health, under the protection of a certain High Person [the Emperor], till the time when God who preserved me shall call me to return to my dear native country.

I desire you not to forsake me then, and as for the present, to give no credit to the news that may be spread of my death, or otherwise out of the desire they have to blot me out of the memory of mankind, for God keeps me in His guard and my benefactors will not forsake me. They have promised me not to forsake me, even not for the future, in case of need. I am alive and 1 shall always be full of good wishes for Your Excellencies and for the whole country.

The letter to the archbishops was very similar, except that Alexis added that the idea of shutting him up in a convent

*
The fate of her child by the Tsarevich is unknown. According to some accounts, the child was born in Riga as Afrosina traveled home. Other stories say that she delivered the infant in the fortress. In any case, the child disappeared from history.

"proceeded from the same persons who used my mother in like manner."

Four weeks passed before the next act of drama took place. In the middle of May, Peter decided to question the two lovers separately and then confront them with each other. He took Alexis with him to Peterhof, and two days later Afrosina was brought across the gulf from the fortress in an enclosed boat. In Mon Plaisir, Peter questioned them both, first the girl, then his son.

And here at Peterhof, Afrosina betrayed and doomed Alexis. Without torture, she confessed, responding to her royal lover's passion for her, his attempt to protect her, his willingness to give up a throne in order to marry and live quietly with her, by fatally incriminating him. She described the intimate details of their daily life during the time they were abroad. Through her mouth, all of the Tsarevich's fears and bitterness about his father came pouring out. Alexis, said Afrosina, had written several times to the Emperor complaining about his father. When he read in Pleyer's letter rumors of mutiny among the troops in Mecklenburg, and that there had been a rebellion in the towns near Moscow, he said to her happily, "Now, you see how God acts in His own way." When he read in a newspaper that the Tsarevich Peter Petrovich was ill, he rejoiced. He spoke to her constantly about the succession to the throne. When he became tsar, he told her, he would abandon St. Petersburg and all of Peter's foreign conquests and make Moscow his capital. He would dismiss Peter's courtiers and appoint his own. He would ignore the navy and allow the ships to rot. He would reduce the army to a few regiments. There would be no more wars with anyone, and he would content himself with Russia's old frontiers. The ancient rights of the church would be restored and respected.

Afrosina also recast her own role; only because of her continual urging, she said, had Alexis agreed to return to Russia. Further, she declared that she had accompanied him on his flight only because he had drawn a knife and threatened to kill her if she refused. Even when she slept with him, she declared, it had been the result of threats and force.

Afrosina's testimony strengthened many of Peter's suspicions. Writing later to the Regent of France, Peter declared that his son had "admitted nothing of his designs" until he was confronted with the letters found in the hands of his mistress. "By these letters, we have known clearly about the rebellious designs of a conspiracy against us, all the circumstances of which the said mistress has publicly, voluntarily, confessed without much examination."

Peter's next move was to summon Alexis and confront him with his lover's accusations. The scene at Mon Plaisir is portrayed in the famous nineteenth century painting by Nikolai Ge: The Tsar, wearing boots which are still in the Kremlin, is seated at a table on the black-and-white-tiled floor of the main hall, His face is stern, yet an eyebrow is raised; he has asked a question and is waiting for an answer. Alexis stands before him, tall, thin-faced, dressed in black like his father. He is worried, sullen and resentful. He looks not at his father but down to the floor while his hand, resting on the table, gives him support. It is a moment of decision.

Under his father's gaze, Alexis struggled to get free of the coils slowly crushing him: He had written to the Emperor complaining of his father, he admitted, but he had not sent the letter. He also admitted writing to the Senate and the archbishops, but declared that he had been forced to do so by the Austrian authorities on threat of expulsion from their protection. Peter then brought in Afrosina, and, to the Tsarevich's face, she repeated her accusations.* As his world crumbled around him, Alexis' explanations became feebler. It was true, he admitted, that the letter to the Emperor
had
been sent. He had spoken ill of his father, but he had been drunk. He had spoken about the succession and about returning to Russia, but only after his father's natural death. This he explained at length: "I believed my father's death was near when I heard that he had had a sort of epilepsy. As they said that older people who have had it can hardly live long, I believed he would die in two years at the furthest. I thought that after his death I might go out of the Emperor's dominions to Poland and from Poland into the Ukraine, where I did not question but everyone would declare for me. And I believed that at Moscow the Tsarevna Maria and the greater part of the archbishops would do the same. And as for the common people, I heard many persons say that they loved me.

"As for what remains, I was resolved absolutely not to return in my father's lifetime, except in the case I did; that is, when he recalled me."

Peter was not satisfied. He remembered that Afrosina had told him that Alexis had rejoiced when he heard rumors of a Russian army revolt in Mecklenburg. This suggests, the Tsar went on, that if the troops in Mecklenburg really had revolted, "you would have declared for the rebels even in my lifetime."

Alexis* answer to this question was disconnected but honest, and it did enormous damage: "If this news had been true and if they had called me, I would have joined the malcontents, but I had

*
Afrosina was released, pardoned, and Peter allowed her to keep an assortment of his son's possessions. She lived her remaining thirty years in St. Petersburg, where she eventually married an officer of the Guards.

no formed design whether I should go and join them or not untill I was called. On the contrary, if they had not sent for me, I should have been afraid of going thither. But if they had, I would have gone.

"I believed they would not call for me but when you were no more, because they designed to take away your life, and I did not believe that they would dethrone you and let you live. But if they had called me, even in your lifetime, probably I should have gone, if they had been strong enough."

A few days later, a further piece of damning evidence was laid before the Tsar. Peter had written to Veselovsky, his ambassador in Vienna, to demand of the Emperor why his son had been forced to write to the Senate and the archbishops. On May 28, Veselovsky's answer came. There had been a major uproar at the Austrian court. The Vice Chancellor, Count Schonborn, had been examined about the matter in the presence of the entire ministry, after which Prince Eugene of Savoy had reported to Veselovsky that neither the Emperor nor Count Schonborn had ever ordered the Tsarevich to write the letters. The truth was that Alexis had written them himself and sent them to Count Schonborn for forwarding to Russia. Schonborn, in his discretion, had not forwarded the letters, and they remained in Vienna. In sum, the Tsarevich had lied and in this lie had involved the Imperial court.

Peter needed to hear no more. The Tsarevich was arrested and placed in the Trubetskoy Bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Two high courts of justice, one ecclesiastical, the other secular, were convoked to consider what should be done with the prisoner. The ecclesiastical court was to consist of all the leaders of the Russian church, the secular court of all ministers, senators, governors, generals and many officers of the Guards. Before the two courts began their sessions, says Weber, Peter spent several hours a day, for a period of eight days, on his knees praying to God to instruct him what his honor and the welfare of the nation required. Then, on June 14, the proceedings began in the Senate Hall in St. Petersburg. Peter arrived accompanied by the ecclesiastical and secular judges, and a solemn religious service was held, asking for divine guidance. The whole assembly took places at a row of tables, and the doors and windows were flung open. The public was invited to enter; Peter wanted the affair to be heard by everyone. The Tsarevich was brought in under guard of four young officers, and the proceedings against him commenced.

Peter reminded his listeners that over the years he had never sought to deny the succession to his son; on the contrary, he had tried "by powerful exhortations to force [Alexis] to lay claim to it by endeavoring to make himself worthy of it." But the Tsarevich, turning his back on his father's efforts, had "made his escape and fled to the Emperor for refuge, claiming his assistance and protection in succoring and assisting him even with armed force
...
[to gain] the crown of Russia." Alexis, said Peter, had admitted that if rebellious troops in Mecklenburg had summoned him to be their leader, he would have gone to them even in his father's lifetime. "So that one may judge by all those circumstances that he had a mind for the succession, not in the manner his father- would leave it to him, but in his own way, by foreign assistance or by the strength of rebels, even in his father's lifetime." Further, throughout the investigations Alexis had continually lied and evaded telling the whole truth. As the pardon promised by the father had been conditional on total and honest confession, this pardon was now invalid. At the end of Peter's denunciation, Alexis "confessed to his father and his lord, in the presence of the whole assembly of the states ecclesiastical and secular, that he was guilty of everything described."