Peter the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  Instantly, the calm created by Matveev dissolved in a roar of anger. The infuriated Streltsy remembered all their reasons for marching on the Kremlin: The Naryshkins were to be punished, hated boyars like Dolgoruky were to be destroyed. A torrent of frenzied Streltsy charged up the Red Staircase toward their commander. They seized him by his robe, lifted him above their heads and threw him over the balustrade onto the pikes of their comrades below. The crowd roared its approval, shouting, "Cut him to pieces!" Within a few seconds, the quivering body was butchered, bespattering everyone with blood.

  This first violent act unleashed savagery and madness. Brandishing sharp steel, lusting for more blood, the entire raging mass of the Streltsy stormed up the Red Staircase and into the palace itself. Their next victim was Matveev. He was standing in an anteroom of the banqueting hall talking to Natalya, who still held the hands of Peter and Ivan. Seeing the Streltsy rushing toward her shouting for Matveev, Natalya dropped Peter's hand and instinctively threw her arms around Matveev to protect him. The Streltsy pushed the two boys aside, tore the old man from Natalya and hurled her aside. Prince Cherkassky threw himself into the struggle, trying to pull Matveev free of his captors, but they flung him away. Before the eyes of Peter and Natalya, Matveev was dragged out of the room and across the porch to the balustrade at the head of the Red Staircase. There, with exultant cries, they lifted him high in the air and hurled him down, onto the upraised blades. Within seconds, the closest friend and prime minister of Peter's father, the guardian, confidant and chief support of Peter's mother, was hacked to pieces.

  With Matveev dead, there was nothing to stop the Streltsy. They ran unopposed through the state hails, private apartments, churches,.kitchens and even the closets of the Kremlin, clamoring for the blood of Naryshkins and boyars. Fleeing, the terrified boyars hid where they could. The Patriarch escaped into the Cathedral of the Assumption. Only Natalya, Peter and Ivan remained exposed, huddled together in a corner of the banqueting hall.

  For most, there was no escape. The Streltsy hammered down locked doors, looked under beds and behind altars, thrusting their pikes into every dark place where a human being might be hiding. Those who were caught were dragged to the Red Staircase and thrown over the balustrade. Their bodies were dragged from the Kremlin through the Spassky Gate into Red Square, where they were tossed onto a growing pyramid of dismembered human parts. With sharp blades at their throats, the court dwarfs were forced to help find the Naryshkins. One of Natalya's brothers, Afanasy Naryshkin, was hidden behind the altar in the Church of the Resurrection. A dwarf leading a pack of Streltsy pointed him out, and the victim was dragged by his hair to the steps of the chancel, where he was cut to pieces. The Privy Councillor and Director of Foreign Affairs, Ivanov, his son Vasily and two colonels were killed on the porch between the banqueting hall and the Cathedral of the Annunciation. The aged boyar Romodanovsky was caught between the Patriarch's palace and the Miracle Monastery, dragged by his beard to the Cathedral Square and there raised and tossed onto spear points.

  From the palace square inside the Kremlin, the bodies and pieces of bodies, often with swords and spears still sticking in them, were dragged through the Spassky Gate into Red Square. The passage of these grisly remains was accompanied by jeering cries of "Here comes the Boyar Artemon Sergeevich Matveev! . . . Here comes a Privy Councillor. Make way for him!" As the hideous pile in front of St. Basil's Cathedral grew higher and higher, the Streltsy shouted to the watching crowds, "These boyars loved to exalt themselves! This is their reward!"

  By nightfall, even the Streltsy had begun to tire of the butchery. . There was no place for them to sleep in the Kremlin, and most began to stream back through the city to their own houses. Despite the bloodshed, their day had been only a partial success. Only one Naryshkin, Natalya's brother Afanasy, had been found and killed.

  The chief object of their hatred, her brother Ivan, was still at large. Accordingly, they posted a heavy guard at all the gates of the Kremlin, sealing off escape, and swore to return to continue the search the following day. Inside the Kremlin, Natalya, Peter and their Naryshkin relatives spent a night of terror. Kyril Naryshkin, the Tsarita's father, her brother Ivan and three younger brothers remained concealed in the room of Peter's eight-year-old sister, Natalya, where they had been hiding all day. They had not been found, but they could not escape.

  At dawn, the Streltsy marched again with beating drums into the Kremlin. Still looking for Ivan Naryshkin, the two foreign doctors who supposedly had poisoned Tsar Fedor, and other "traitors," they entered the Patriarch's house on Cathedral Square. Looking through his cellars and under his beds, they threatened his servants with spears and demanded to see the Patriarch himself. Joachim came out, dressed in his most glittering ceremonial robes, to tell them that there were no traitors to be found in his house and that if they wished to kill someone there, they should kill him.

  And so the search went on, with the Streltsy continuing to hunt through the palace, and their prey, the Naryshkins, continuing to elude them. After two days spent in the dark closets of Peter's small sister's bedroom, Natalya's father, Kyril Naryshkin, three of his sons and the young son of Matveev moved to the apartments of Tsar Fedor's young widow, the Tsaritsa Martha Apraxina. There, Ivan Naryshkin cropped his long hair, and then the small group followed an old bedchamber woman down into a dark underground storeroom. It was the old woman's idea to bolt the door, but young Matveev said, "No. If you fasten the door, the Streltsy will suspect something, break down the door, find us and kill us." The refugees therefore made the room as dark as possible and crouched in the darkest corner, leaving the door open. "We had scarcely got there," said young Matveev, "before several Streltsy passed and looked quickly around. Some of them peered in through the open door, stuck their spears into the darkness, but left quickly, saying, 'It is plain our men have already been here.'"

  On the third day, when the Streltsy came again to the Kremlin, they were determined to wait no longer. Their leaders mounted the Red Staircase and delivered ah ultimatum: Unless Ivan Naryshkin was surrendered immediately, they would kill every boyar in the palace. They made it clear that the royal family itself was in danger.

  Sophia took charge. In front of the terrified boyars, she marched up to Natalya and declared in a loud voice, "Your brother will not escape the Streltsy. Nor is it right that we should perish on his account. There is no way out. lb save the lives of all of us, you must give up your brother."

  It was a tragic moment for Natalya. She had seen Matveev dragged away and slaughtered. Now she was asked to yield her brother to a frightful death. Terrible though the decision was, Natalya had no real choice. She ordered the servants to bring her brother to her. He came, and she led him into a palace chapel, where he received Holy Communion and the last rites, accepting her decision and his coming death with great bravery. Weeping, Natalya handed him a holy icon of the Mother of God to hold in his hands when he went to meet the Streltsy.

  Meanwhile, in the face of growing threats from the impatient Streltsy, the boyars became desperate. Why was Ivan Naryshkin lingering? At any moment, the Streltsy might carry out their threats. The aged Prince Jacob Odoevsky, gentle but frightened, came up to the weeping Natalya and Ivan and said, "How long, my lady, are you keeping your brother? For you must give him up. Go on quickly, Ivan Kyrilovich, and don't let us all be killed on your account."

  Following Natalya and holding the icon, Ivan Naryshkin walked to the door where the Streltsy were waiting. As he appeared, the mob uttered a hoarse shout of triumph and surged forward. Before his sister's eyes, they seized their victim and began to beat him. He was dragged by his feet down the Red Staircase, through the palace square and into a torture room, where for a number of hours they kept him in agony, trying to extract a confession that he had murdered Tsar Fedor and plotted to take the throne. Through it ail, Naryshkin clenched his teeth, groaned and said not a word. Then Dr. Van Gaden, the alleged poisoner of Fedor, was brought in. Under torture, he p
romised to name accomplices, but as his words were being written down, his torturers, realizing the state he was in, cried, "What's the use of listening to him? Tear up the paper," and stopped the farce.

  Ivan Naryshkin was now nearly dead; both his wrists and ankles had been snapped, and his hands and feet hung at strange angles. He and Van Gaden were dragged to Red Square and raised on the points of spears for a last presentation to the crowd. Lowered to earth, their hands and feet were chopped off with axes, the rest of their bodies cut into pieces and, in a final orgy of hate, the bloody remains were trampled into the mud.

  The slaughter was over. One final time, the Streltsy assembled before the Red Staircase. Satisfied that they had avenged the "poisoning" of Tsar Fedor, stifled the plot of Ivan Naryshkin and killed all the men who they believed were traitors, they wished to proclaim their loyalty. From the courtyard, they cried, "We are now content. Let Your Tsarish Majesty do with the other traitors as may seem good. We are ready to lay down our heads for the Tsar, the Tsaritsa, the Tsarevich and the Tsarevnas."

  Calm returned quickly. That same day, permission was given to bury the bodies which had been lying in Red Square since the first day of the massacre. Matveev's faithful servant trudged out carrying a sheet, in which he carefully collected all he could find of the mutilated body of his master. He washed the pieces and carried them on pillows to the parish church of St. Nicholas, where they were buried. The remaining Naryshkins went unharmed and unpursued. Three surviving brothers of Natalya and Ivan had escaped the Kremlin disguised as peasants. The Tsaritsa's father, Kyril Naryshkin, was forced by Streltsy pressure to shave his head and take the vows of a monk, and, as Father Cyprian, was sent to a monastery 400 miles north of Moscow.

  As part of the settlement, the Streltsy demanded their back pay, a sum of twenty roubles per man. Although it had no power to resist, the council of boyars could not grant this; there simply was no money. A compromise was reached by granting ten roubles per man. To raise this amount, the property of Matveev, Ivan Naryshkin and other boyars who had been killed was auctioned off, much of the Kremlin palace's sliver plate was melted down and a general tax was placed on the population.

  The Streltsy also demanded complete amnesty for their behavior and even a triumphal column in Red Square to honor their recent deeds. Inscribed in the column were to be the names of all their victims who were to be labeled as criminals. Once again, the government dared not refuse, and the column was quickly erected.

  Finally, in a move designed not only to conciliate the Streltsy but also to regain control over them, the musketeers were formally designated the Palace Guard. At the rate of two regiments a day, they were summoned to the Kremlin, where they were feasted as heroes in the banqueting hall and corridors of the palace. Sophia appeared among them to praise their loyalty and devotion to the throne. To honor them, she herself walked among the soldiers and handed them cups of vodka.

  Thus, Sophia came to power. Now there was no opposition: Matveev was dead, Natalya was overwhelmed by the tragedy that had engulfed her family, Peter was a boy of ten. Yet Peter was still Tsar. As he grew older, he would doubtless assert his power; the Naryshkins would wax in influence, and this Miloslavsky victory would prove only temporary. Accordingly, Sophia's plans required another step. On May 23, prompted by her agents, the Streltsy demanded a change in the occupancy of the Russian throne. In a petition sent to Khavansky, whom Sophia already had appointed as their commander, the Streltsy pointed out that there was a certain illegality to Peter's election as tsar; he was the son of the second wife, while Ivan, the son of the first wife and the older of the two boys, had been shunted aside. It was not proposed that Peter be dethroned; he was the son of a tsar, he had been elected and then proclaimed by the Patriarch. Instead, the Streltsy demanded that Peter and Ivan rule jointly as co-tsars. If the petition was not granted, they threatened to attack the Kremlin again.

  The Patriarch, the archbishops and the boyars assembled in the Facets Palace to consider this new demand. In fact, they had no choice: The Streltsy could not be opposed. Besides, it was argued, to have two tsars might even be an advantage: while one went to war, the other could stay home and govern the state. It was formally agreed that the two Tsars should reign jointly. The bells in the Ivan the Great Bell Tower were rung, and in the Assumption Cathedral prayers were sent up for the long life of the two most Orthodox Tsars Ivan Alexeevich and Peter Alexeevich. Ivan's name was mentioned first, as the Streltsy petition had asked that he be considered the senior of the two.

  Ivan himself was dismayed by this new development. Handicapped both in speech and in sight, he was reluctant to take any part in government. He argued with Sophia that he much preferred a quiet, peaceful life, but under pressure he agreed that he would appear with his half-brother on state occasions and occasionally in council. Outside the Kremlin, the population, in whose name the Streltsy supposedly put forward the new joint arrangement, was astonished. Some laughed aloud at the idea of Ivan—whose infirmities were well known—being tsar.

  There was the final, crucial question: As both boys were young, someone else would actually have to govern the state. Who would this be? Two days later, on May 25, another delegation of Streltsy appeared with a last demand: that because of the youth and inexperience of the two Tsars, the Tsarevna Sophia become the regent. The Patriarch and the boyars quickly consented. That same day, a decree announced that the Tsarevna Sophia Alexeevna had replaced the Tsaritsa Natalya as regent.

  Thus, Sophia assumed the leadership of the Russian state. Although she was filling a vacancy which she and her agents had created, Sophia was now in fact the natural choice. No male Romanov had reached sufficient age to master the government, and she surpassed all the other princesses in education, talent, and strength of will. She had shown that she knew how to launch and to ride the whirlwind of the Streltsy revolt. The soldiers, the government, even the people now looked to her. Sophia accepted, and for the next seven years this extraordinary woman governed Russia.

  To confirm and entrench her triumph, Sophia moved rapidly to institutionalize the new structure of power. On July 6, only thirteen days after the outbreak of the Streltsy revolt, the double coronation of the two boy Tsars, Ivan and Peter, took place. This hurriedly arranged ceremony was a curiosity unprecendented not only in the history of Russia but in the whole history of European monarchy. Never before had two co-equal male sovereigns been crowned. The day began at five a.m. when Peter and Ivan, dressed in long robes of cloth of gold embroidered with pearls, went to morning prayer in a palace chapel. From there they proceeded to the banqueting hall, where they solemnly promoted in rank a number of Sophia's lieutenants, including Ivan Khovansky and two Miloslavskys. The formal coronation procession moved out onto the porch and down the Red Staircase, two boys walking side by side, ten-year-old Peter already taller than limping sixteen-year-old Ivan. Preceded by priests sprinkling holy water, Peter and Ivan made their way through the vast crowd packed into Cathedral Square to the door of the Assumption Cathedral, where the Patriarch, wearing a dazzling golden robe sewn with pearls, greeted the two Tsars and held out his cross for them to kiss. Inside, the lofty cathedral glowed with light filtering down from the high cupolas, flickering from hundreds of candles, reflected on the surfaces of thousands of jewels.

  In the middle of the cathedral, directly under the enormous image of Christ with his hand upraised in blessing, on a raised platform covered with crimson cloth, a double throne awaited Ivan and Peter. It had been impossible in the short time available to create two exactly equal thrones, and so the silver throne of Tsar Alexis had been divided by a bar. Behind the seat on which both boys would sit, a curtain cloaked a small hiding place for their monitor, who, through a hole, could whisper the necessary information and responses during the ceremony.

  The ceremony began with the two Tsars approaching the iconostasis and kissing the holiest of the icons. The Patriarch asked them to declare their faith, and each on replied, "I belong to the Ho
ly Orthodox Russian Faith." Then a series of lengthy prayers and hymns prepared for the supreme moment of the ceremony, the placing on the heads of the Tsars the golden crown of Monomakh.

  This ancient, sable-fringed cap which supposedly had been given by an Emperor of Constantinople to Vladimir Monomakh, twelfth-century Grand Prince of Kiev, had been used in the coronation ceremonies of all Grand Princes of Moscow and, after Ivan IV took the new title of tsar, all the tsars of Russia.* Ivan was crowned, then Peter, then the cap was returned to Ivan's head and a replica, made especially for Peter, was placed on the brow of the younger Tsar. At the end of the service, the new rulers again kissed the cross, the holy relics and icons, and moved in procession to the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael to pay homage at the tombs of previous tsars, then to the Cathedral of the Annunciation and so back to the banqueting hall to feast and receive congratulations.

  The upheaval was over. In rapid and bewildering succession, a tsar had died; a ten-year-old boy, the minor child of a second wife, had been elected in his place; a savage military revolt had overthrown this election and spattered the young Tsar and his mother with the blood of their own family; and then, with all the jeweled panoply of state, the boy was crowned jointly with a frail and helpless older half-brother. Through all the horror, although he had been elected tsar, he was powerless to intervene.

  The Streltsy revolt marked Peter for life. The calm and security of his boyhood were shattered, his soul was wrenched and seared. And its impact on Peter had, in time, a profound impact on Russia.

  Peter hated what he had seen: the maddened, undisciplined soldiery of the old medieval Russia running wild through the Kremlin; statesmen and nobles dragged from their private chambers and bloodily massacred; Moscow, the Kremlin, the royal family, the Tsar himself at the mercy of ignorant, rioting soldiers. The revolt helped create in Peter a revulsion against the Kremlin with its dark rooms and mazes of tiny apartments lit by flickering candles, its population of bearded priests and boyars, its pathetically secluded women. He extended his hatred to Moscow, the