Secret Lives of the Tsars (5 page)

The next day Peter stepped up his offensive by ordering that Feodor Shaklovity, director of the
streltsy
department and one of Sophia’s most fervent supporters, be sent to him to face charges that he and his troops “intended to march to the village of Preobrazhenskoe and murder us, our mother, our sister and our courtiers.” The order clearly implicated Sophia in Shaklovity’s plot and so incensed her that she ordered the messenger bearing it to be immediately beheaded. Fortunately for him, an executioner could not be found on such short notice.

As Sophia’s power ebbed away, she gathered the
streltsy
before her and delivered a series of rousing speeches, but to little effect. Shaklovity was arrested and, under torture, admitted to having considered killing the younger tsar and his family. Now, as the exodus to Peter’s camp became a stampede, Sophia was left alone at the Kremlin, stubbornly resistant to whatever fate awaited her. Peter addressed the Sophia problem
in a letter to his co-ruler, Ivan, with whom he had no quarrel, and indeed declared, “I shall be ready to honor you as I would my father.” Ivan would continue to serve as the senior tsar, but Sophia had to go.

Realistically, Ivan V had little choice in the matter, and soon enough Sophia was hauled away to a convent—never to emerge again. It was perhaps worse than death for the woman who had dared assert herself outside the
terem
and for a brief period wielded unprecedented, intoxicating power. She was “a princess endowed with all the accomplishments of body and mind to perfection,” Peter the Great later said of his half-sister, “had it not been for her boundless ambition and insatiable desire for governing.”

*
1
As historian Grigorii Kotoshikhin wrote, “Princes and noblemen are their [the tsarevnas’] slaves. And it would be considered an eternal disgrace if a lady were to be given away in marriage to a slave.”

*
2
Old Believers were those who refused to adopt the new church rituals decreed by Tsar Alexis—see footnote,
this page
.

*
3
A Russian’s first name was often followed by a patronymic—a variation of his or her father’s given name. Thus, Ivan V, son of Tsar Alexis, was called Ivan Alekseevich. In the interest of simplicity, the author has avoided the use of patronyms, except in source quotations and in
Chapter 5
.

Peter I (1696–1725): The Eccentricities of an Emperor

… debauchery and drunkenness so great that it is impossible to describe it.

—P
RINCE
B
ORIS
K
URAKIN

After the fall of the regent Sophia in 1689, Peter I continued to rule jointly with his half-brother Ivan V until the latter’s death in 1696. Then, as sole autocrat, Peter proceeded to utterly transform Russia. He had grown to be a giant of a man, standing nearly seven feet tall, with grand ambitions to match his stature. With relentless will, he opened his insulated realm to the rest of Europe, eagerly adopting new ideas and customs while forcing his often recalcitrant subjects to do the same. Having transformed the army and building a navy from nothing, the tsar was able to crush the power of the Swedish Empire, seizing its Baltic possessions and, in so doing, achieving for his kingdom open access to the sea for the first time. In the process, he built his magnificent new capital of St. Petersburg—known as Russia’s “window to the West”—undeterred by the marshy, inhospitable condition of the land he had chosen. It was these stunning accomplishments, among many, that earned Peter his sobriquet, “the Great.” But there was another side to this most dynamic monarch, when he behaved more like a depraved maniac than the enlightened ruler he so wanted to be
.

Mary Hamilton had a date with the executioner, and her escort to the fatal rendezvous was none other than her ex-lover, Peter the Great himself. She had hoped her past relationship with the tsar, as well as her status as one of his wife’s favorite ladies, might save her from her fate. But not even the beguiling white silk dress she wore for the occasion, adorned with black ribbons, was enough to move the implacable monarch—even as he stood by her side—for Mary’s crimes were unpardonable. Not only had she stolen the tsarina’s jewels and mocked her ruddy complexion, but, far worse, she had done away with a succession of unwanted children immediately after delivering them.

“I cannot save you without breaking laws both human and divine,” Peter whispered in his former mistress’s ear. “Accept your punishment in the hope that God will pardon you if you repent.” Although the tsar’s final words to her were delivered with a kiss, it was certainly not the reprieve Mary hoped to hear.

Having bid her farewell, Peter turned away while the headsman completed his grisly task. But the tsar wasn’t quite finished with the woman who had once shared his bed. There was a lesson to be learned and, ever the eager instructor, Peter didn’t waste the opportunity. Approaching the bloody heap that had been Mary Hamilton, he reached down and grabbed her head, lifted it up, and addressing the gathered spectators, began pointing out some of the anatomical features that had been exposed by the decapitation—the neatly sliced vertebrae, the gaping windpipe, and the draining carotid arteries. Having finished this impromptu lecture, Peter brought Mary’s cold lips to his, kissed them, then tossed her head back to the ground and strode away.

Perhaps it was the lingering horror of a ten-year-old boy, his own fate uncertain, being forced to watch as his uncles and other close family associates were torn to bits by a crazed mob of
streltsy
. Or maybe it was some kind of neurological disorder, manifested in those disconcerting episodes when the tsar’s eyes would roll back in their sockets while his body convulsed in severe tremors. Whatever the cause, Peter the Great showed himself to be decidedly unbalanced at times—his most impressive attributes often mingled with bizarre, sometimes vicious behavior.

Here was a sovereign whose insatiable curiosity drove him admirably to learn and master innumerable crafts—from shipbuilding to carpentry—but woe to that poor subject with a toothache, say, for he might find the wild-eyed tsar coming at him with a pair of pliers, ready to rip out the offending tooth as he honed his dentistry skills. There was no option but to submit. And while most monarchs left the death penalty to their professional executioners, Peter was known to hack off a few heads himself—yet another art mastered.

Absorbing and implementing the knowledge of the West was one of Peter the Great’s most ardent passions, and to that end he embarked on a tour of Europe in 1697. Hoping to avoid all the ceremony that would normally be due his rank as a visiting sovereign, the tsar traveled incognito. And though his identity was hardly a secret, he did manage to utilize his time learning rather than enduring endless cycles of hospitality. Peter was entranced by all the scientific, mechanical, and artistic wonders at his disposal. But at one point, during an anatomical lecture in Holland, he became infuriated at the
squeamishness of his companions when a human corpse was dissected. In retaliation, he made each man march up to the dead body and take a bite out of it.

After long days of learning, the tsar liked to unwind a little—much like a Viking. While Peter was visiting England during his extended European tour, the diarist John Evelyn’s elegantly appointed home was made available to him and his traveling companions for three months. It ended up in shambles, laid waste by a horde of drunken Russians led by their monarch. Windows were smashed, floors so stained with ink and grease that they had to be replaced, portraits used as target practice, feather mattresses and pillows shredded, furniture reduced to firewood. And that was just inside. Evelyn had spent years cultivating beautiful lawns and gardens, only to find them trampled into mud and dust, “as if a regiment of soldiers in iron shoes had drilled on [them].” Neighbors even reported seeing the drunken tsar pushed along in a wheelbarrow—a then-unknown contraption in Russia—right into the estate’s carefully cultivated hedges.

Despite much evidence to the contrary, Peter wasn’t a complete animal while visiting Europe. When the occasion called for it, he did manage to behave himself: “The Tsar surpassed himself during all this time,” wrote a member of the Prussian court. “He neither belched, nor farted, nor picked his teeth—at least I neither saw nor heard him do so.” And he absolutely enchanted Sophia, Electress of Hanover (mother of Britain’s future king George I), who recorded her impressions of the tsar after spending an evening with him:

“He has a great vivacity of mind, and a ready and just repartee. But, with all the advantages with which nature has endowed him, it could be wished that his manners were a little less rustic.… We stayed in truth a very long time at table, but
we would gladly have remained there longer still without feeling a moment of boredom, for the Tsar was in very good humor, and never ceased talking to us.… He told us that he worked himself in building ships, showed us his hands, and made us touch the callous places that had been caused by work.… He is a very extraordinary man. It is impossible to describe him, or even to give an idea of him, unless you have seen him. He has a very good heart, and remarkably noble sentiments. I must tell you also, that he did not get drunk in our presence, but we had hardly left when the people of his suite began to make ample amends.”

The tsar returned from his nearly yearlong European sojourn filled with dreams of breaking Russia free from its backward isolation and transforming it into an evolved, enlightened kingdom worthy of the civilized world’s respect. He started with the beards, which Russian men had worn with pride for generations as symbols of their faith and ancient values. To Peter, these bushy totems were nothing short of barbaric—the most outward reflection of crippling superstition and complacency. He ordered them off, but, of course, he couldn’t just leave that to the barbers. No, the tsar attacked with a razor the hairy faces of his courtiers, many of whom lost a fair amount of skin in the process. For those who could not bear to part with their beards, a special tax was instituted. Those who opted to pay were issued a bronze medallion to be worn around the neck, which (sometimes) protected them from the government’s roving enforcers.

The forced shearing led some to believe that Peter was actually the Antichrist, come to destroy the venerable Orthodox faith. “Look often at the icons of the Second Coming of Christ,” one treatise warned, “and observe the righteous standing at the right side of Christ, all with beards. At the left
stand the Muselmen and heretics. Lutherans and Poles and other shavers of their ilk, with just whiskers, such as cats and dogs have. Take heed whom to imitate and which side you will be on.”

Driven as he was to win wars and reform Russia, Peter never neglected the booze—prodigious amounts of it, enough to poison most men, which was in fact a distinct possibility many of the tsar’s drinking companions confronted as he demanded their full participation in his alcoholic excesses. As one commentator later wrote, “above all the apparent jollity and revelry of life there reigned the iron will of the head pedagogue, which knew no bounds—everyone made merry by decree and even to the sound of drumbeats, they got drunk and made merry under compulsion.”