The History of Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia. Voltaire
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his way to the throne. Alexis disputed this very throne with him, and proposed to unite his extensive dominions to Poland, as the Jagellons had done; but in regard to Lithuania, the greatness of his offer was the cause of its being rejected. He is said to have been very deserving of the new kingdom, by the manner in which he governed his own. He was the first who caused a body of laws to be digested in Russia, though imperfect; and introduced both linen and silk manufactures, which indeed were not long kept up; nevertheless, he had the merit of their first establishment. He peopled the deserts about the Wolga and the Kama, with Lithuanian, Polish, and Tartarian families, whom he had taken prisoners in his wars: before his reign, all prisoners of war were the slaves of those to whose lot they fell. Alexis employed them in agriculture: he did his utmost endeavours to introduce discipline among his troops. In a word, he was worthy of being the father of Peter the Great; but he had no time to perfect what he had begun, being snatched away by a sudden death, at the age of forty-six, in the beginning of the year 1677, according to our style, which is eleven days forwarder than that of Russia.
Upon the death of Alexis, son of Michael, all fell again into confusion. He left, by his first marriage, two princes, and six princesses. Theodore, the eldest, ascended the throne at fifteen years of age. He was a prince of a weak and sickly constitution, but of merit superior to his bodily infirmities. His father Alexis had caused him to be acknowledged his successor, a year before his death: a conduct observed by the kings of France from Hugh Capet down to Lewis the Young, and by many other crowned heads.
The second son of Alexis was Iwan, or John, who was still worse treated by nature than his brother Theodore, being almost blind and dumb, very infirm, and frequently attacked with convulsions. Of six daughters, born of this first marriage, the only one who made any figure in Europe was the princess Sophia, who was remarkable for her great talents; but unhappily still more so for the mischief she intended against Peter the Great.
Alexis, by his second marriage with another of his subjects, daughter of the boyard Nariskin, had Peter and the princess Nathalia. Peter was born the 30th of May (or the 10th of June new stile), in the year 1672, and was but four years old when he lost his father. As the children of a second marriage were not much regarded in Russia, it was little expected that he would one day mount the throne.
It had ever been the character of the family of Romanow to civilize their state. It was also that of Theodore. We have already remarked, in speaking of Moscow, that this prince encouraged the inhabitants of that city to build a great number of stone houses. He likewise enlarged that capital, and made several useful regulations in the general police; but, by attempting to reform the boyards, he made them all his enemies: besides, he was not possessed of sufficient knowledge, vigour, or resolution, to venture upon making a general reformation. The war with the Turks, or rather with the Crim Tartars, in which he was constantly engaged with alternate success, would not permit a prince of his weak state of health to attempt so great a work. Theodore, like the rest of his predecessors, married one of his own subjects, a native of the frontiers of Poland; but having lost her in less than a year after their nuptials, he took for his second wife, in 1682, Martha Matweowna, daughter of the secretary Nariskin.20 Some months after this marriage, he was seized with the disorder which ended his days, and died without leaving any children. As the czars married without regard to birth, they might likewise (at least at that time) appoint a successor without respect to primogeniture. The dignity of consort and heir to the sovereign seemed to be entirely the reward of merit; and, in that respect, the custom of this empire was much preferable to the customs of more civilized states.
Theodore, before he expired, seeing that his brother Iwan was by his natural infirmities incapable of governing, nominated his younger brother Peter, heir to the empire of Russia. Peter, who was then only in his tenth year, had already given the most promising hopes.
If, on the one hand, the custom of raising a subject to the rank of czarina, was favourable to the females, there was another which was no less hard upon them; namely, that the daughters of the czars were very seldom married, but were most of them obliged to pass their lives in a monastery.
The princess Sophia, third daughter of czar Alexis, by his first marriage, was possessed of abilities, equally great and dangerous. Perceiving that her brother Theodore had not long to live, she did not retire to a convent; but finding herself situated between two brothers, one of whom was incapable of governing, through his natural inability; and the other, on account of his youth, she conceived the design of placing herself at the head of the empire. Hence, in the last hours of czar Theodore, she attempted to act the part that Pulcheria had formerly played with her brother, the emperor Theodosius.
CHAP. IV
JOHN AND PETER.
Horrible Sedition among the Strelitzes.21
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
This must certainly be a mistake of M. de Voltaire, or an error in the press; for the lady here spoken of was the daughter of Matthias Apraxim, a person on whom Theodore had lately conferred nobility.
Extracted wholly from the memoirs sent from Moscow and Petersburg.