Kitabı oku: «The Empire of Russia: From the Remotest Periods to the Present Time», sayfa 19

The great insurrection in Moscow had taught the tzar Alexis a good lesson, and he profited by it wisely. He was led to devote himself earnestly to the welfare of his people. His recovery of the lost provinces of Russia was considered just, and added immeasurably to his renown. Conscious of the imperfection of his education, he engaged earnestly in study, causing many important scientific treatises to be translated into the Russian language, and perusing them with diligence and delight. He had the laws of the several provinces collected and published together. Many new manufactures were introduced, particularly those of silk and linen. Though rigidly economical in his expenses, he maintained a magnificent court and a numerous army. He took great interest in the promotion of agriculture, bringing many desert wastes into cultivation, and peopling them with the prisoners taken in the Polish and Swedish wars. It was the custom in those barbaric times to drive, as captives of war, the men, women and children of whole provinces, to be slaves in the territory of the conqueror. Often they occupied the position of a vassal peasantry, tilling the soil for the benefit of their lords. With singular foresight, Alexis planned for the construction of a fleet both on the Caspian and the Black Sea. With this object in view, he sent for ship carpenters from Holland and other places.

All Europe was now trembling in view of the encroachments of the Turks. Several very angry messages had passed between the sultan and the tzar, and the Turks had proved themselves ever eager to combine with the Tartars in bloody raids into the southern regions of the empire. Alexis resolved to combine Christian Europe, if possible, in a war of extermination against the Turks. To this end he sent embassadors to every court in Christendom. As his embassador was presented to Pope Clement X., the pope extended his foot for the customary kiss. The proud Russian drew back, exclaiming,

"So ignoble an act of homage is beneath the dignity of the prince whom I have the honor to serve."

He then informed the pope that the Emperor of Russia had resolved to make war against the Turks, that he wished to see all Christian princes unite against those enemies of humanity and religion, that for that purpose he had sent embassadors to all the potentates of Europe, and that he exhorted his holiness to place himself at the head of a league so powerful, so necessary for the protection of the church, and from which every Christian State might derive the greatest advantages. Foolish punctilios of etiquette interfered with any efficient arrangements with the court of Rome, and though the embassadors of other powers were received with the most marked respect, these powers were all too much engrossed with their own internal affairs to enlist in this enterprise for the public good. The Turks were, however, alarmed by these formidable movements, and, fearing such an alliance, were somewhat checked in their career of conquest.

On the 10th of November, 1674, the King of Poland died, and again there was an attempt on the part of Russia to unite Poland and the empire under the same crown. All the monarchies in Europe were involved in intrigues for the Polish crown. The electors, however, chose John Sobieski, a renowned Polish general, for their sovereign. The tzar was very apprehensive that the Poles would make peace with the Turks, and thus leave the sultan at liberty to concentrate all his tremendous resources upon Russia. Alexis raised three large armies, amounting in all to one hundred and fifty thousand men, which he sent into the Ukraine, as the frontier country, watered by the lower Dnieper, was then called.

The Turkish army, which was spread over the country between the Danube and the Dniester, now crossed this latter stream, and, in solid battalions, four hundred thousand strong, penetrated the Ukraine. They immediately commenced the fiend-like work of reducing the whole province to a desert. The process of destruction is swift. Flames, in a few hours, will consume a city which centuries alone have reared. A squadron of cavalry will, in a few moments, trample fields of grain which have been slowly growing and ripening for months. In less than a fortnight nearly the whole of the Ukraine was a depopulated waste, the troops of the tzar being shut up in narrow fortresses. The King of Poland, apprehensive that this vast Turkish army would soon turn with all their energies of destruction upon his own territories, resolved to march, with all the forces of his kingdom, to the aid of the Russians. One hundred thousand Polish troops immediately besieged the great city of Humau, which the Turks had taken, midway between the Dnieper and the Dniester.

John Sobieski, the newly-elected King of Poland, was a veteran soldier of great military renown. He placed himself at the head of other divisions of the army, and endeavored to distract the enemy and to divide their forces. At the same time, Alexis himself hastened to the theater of war that he might animate his troops by his presence. The Turks, finding themselves unable to advance any further, sullenly returned to their own country by the way of the Danube. Upon the retirement of the Turks, the Russians and the Poles began to quarrel respecting the possession of the Ukraine. Affairs were in this condition when the tzar Alexis, in all the vigor of manhood, was taken sick and died. He was then in the forty-sixth year of his age. His first wife, Maria Miloslouski, had died several years before him, leaving two sons and four daughters. His second wife, Natalia Nariskin, to whom he was married in the year 1671, still lived with her two children, a son, Peter, who was subsequently entitled the Great, as being the most illustrious monarch Russia has known, and a daughter Natalia.

Alexis, notwithstanding the unpropitious promise of his youth, proved one of the wisest and best princes Russia had known for years. He was a lover of peace, and yet prosecuted war with energy when it was forced upon him. His oldest surviving son, Feodor, who was but eighteen years of age at the time of his father's death, succeeded to the crown. Feodor, following the counsel which his father gave him on his dying bed, soon took military possession of nearly all of the Ukraine. The Turks entered the country again, but were repulsed with severe loss. Apprehensive that they would speedily return, the tzar made great efforts to secure a friendly alliance with Poland, in which he succeeded by paying a large sum of money in requital for the provinces of Smolensk and Kiof which his arms had recovered.

In the spring of 1678, the Turks again entered the Ukraine with a still more formidable army than the year before. The campaign was opened by laying siege to the city Czeherin, which was encompassed by nearly four hundred thousand men, and, after a destructive cannonade, was carried by storm. The garrison, consisting of thirty thousand men, were put to the sword. The Russian troops were so panic-stricken by this defeat, that they speedily retreated. The Turks pursued them a long distance, constantly harassing their rear. But the Turks, in their turn, were compelled to retire, being driven back by famine, a foe against whom their weapons could make no impression.

The Ottoman Porte soon found that little was gained by waging war with an empire so vast and sparsely settled as Russia, and that their conquest of the desolated and depopulated lands of the Ukraine, was by no means worth the expenses of the war. The Porte was therefore inclined to make peace with Russia, that the Turkish armies might fall upon Poland again, which presented a much more inviting field of conquest. The Poles were informed of this through their embassador at Constantinople, and earnestly appealed to the tzar of Russia, and to all the princes in Christendom to come to their aid. The selfishness which every court manifested is humiliating to human nature. Each court seemed only to think of its own aggrandizement. Feodor consented to aid them only on condition that the Poles should renounce all pretension to any places then in possession of Russia. To this the Polish king assented, and the armies of Russia and Poland were again combined to repel the Turks.

CHAPTER XVIII
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.

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.