Peter the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  19

  FIRE AND KNOUT

  Once the beards were shaved and the first reunion toasts drunk, the smile faded from Peter's face. There was grimmer work to be done: it was time for a final reckoning with the Streltsy.

  Ever since Sophia's downfall, the former elite troops of the old Muscovite armies had been deliberately humiliated. In Peter's sham battles at Preobrazhenskoe, the Streltsy regiments always made up the "enemy" whose role was always to lose. More recently, in real combat beneath the walls of Azov, the Streltsy had suffered heavy losses. They resented being made to dig like laborers, piling up earth for the siege works; they disliked being forced to obey the commands of foreign officers, and they grumbled at seeing their young Tsar so eager to follow the advice of these Westerners speaking incomprehensible tongues.

  Unfortunately for the Streltsy, the two Azov campaigns had conclusively demonstrated to Peter how inferior in discipline and fighting quality they were to his own new regiments, and he announced his intention to model his army along Western lines.

  After the capture of Azov, it was the new regiments which returned to Moscow with the Tsar to make a triumphal entry and be granted honors, while the Streltsy were left behind to rebuild the fortifications and to garrison the conquered town. This violated all precedents; the Streltsy's traditional place in peacetime was Moscow, where they guarded the Kremlin, kept their wives and families and ran profitable businesses on the side. Now, some of the soldiers had been away from home for almost two years, and this, too, was by design. Peter and his government wanted as few of them as possible in the capital, and the best way to keep them away was to assign them to permanent service on a distant frontier. Thus, wanting at one point to reinforce the Russian army on the Polish border, the government ordered 2,000 Streltsy of the regiments in Azov dispatched there. They were to be replaced in Azov by some of the Streltsy remaining in Moscow, while the Guards and other Western-style troops would remain in the capital to protect the government.

  The Streltsy marched, but their discontent mounted. They were furious at having to walk from one distant outpost to another hundreds of miles away, and even angrier that they were not allowed to pass through Moscow to see their families. Along the route, some of the soldiers actually deserted to reappear in Moscow, presenting petitions for back pay and asking permission to remain in the capital. Their petitions were rejected and they were ordered to return to their regiments immediately or face punishment. They returned to their comrades, telling them how badly they had been received. They also brought the latest news and gossip of the Moscow streets, much of it centered on Peter and his long absence in the West. Even before his departure, his preference for foreigners and his elevation of foreign officers to high places in the state and army had angered the Streltsy. Now their anger was fueled by fresh rumors.' Peter was said to have become a German, to have given up the Orthodox faith, even to be dead.

  As the Streltsy conferred excitedly among themselves, their personal grievances began to expand into a larger, political grievance against the Tsar their faith and their country were being subverted; the Tsar was no longer a tsar! A true tsar enthroned in the Kremlin, remote, appearing only in great processions covered with jewels and robes. This tall Peter who shouted and drank with carpenters and foreigners ail night in the German Suburb, who walked in triumphal processions in the wake of foreigners whom he had made generals and admirals, could not be a true tsar. If he was really the son of Alexis—and many doubted it—then he had been bewitched; and they pointed to his epileptic seizures as evidence that he was a child of the Devil. As all this boiled in their minds, the Streltsy realized their duty: to overthrow this changeling tsar, this false tsar, and re-establish the old traditional ways.

  Just at this moment, a new decree arrived from Moscow: The companies were to disperse themselves into garrisons in towns between Moscow and the Polish-Lithuanian border, and the deserters who had come to Moscow were to be arrested and exiled. This decree was the catalyst. Two thousand Streltsy decided to march on Moscow. On June 9, at a dinner at the Austrian embassy in Moscow, Korb, the newly arrived secretary to the embassy, noted, "Today for the first time a vague rumor of the revolt of the Streltsy struck terror." People remembered the revolt sixteen years before, and now, fearing a repetition of that slaughter, those who could began leaving the capital.

  In this atmosphere of panic, the Tsar's government met to face the danger. No one knew how many rebels there were, or how close they were to the city. The troops in Moscow were commanded by the boyar Alexis Shein, and at Shein's elbow, as he had been at Azov, was the old Scot, General Patrick Gordon. Shein agreed to accept the responsibility for suppressing the mutiny, but he asked that all members of the boyar council approve the decision unanimously and signify their approval by signing or setting their seals to the document. The boyars refused, probably in recognition that if the Streltsy should win, their signatures would doom them. Nevertheless, they agreed that it was essential to prevent the Streltsy from entering Moscow and inciting a larger rebellion. Whatever loyal troops could be found would be assembled and marched out to meet the Streltsy before they reached the city.

  The two Guards regiments, the Preobrazhensky and the Semyonovsky, were ordered to prepare to march on an hour's notice. To stamp out any sparks of rebellion that might have spread to them, the order declared that those who refused to march against the traitors would be proclaimed traitors themselves. Gordon went among the troops, exhorting them and assuring them that there was no more glorious and noble combat than that undertaken to save the sovereign and the state against traitors. Four thousand loyal troops mustered and marched westward out of the city, Shein and Gordon riding at their head. Most important, Colonel de Grage, an Austrian artillery officer, was there with twenty-five field cannon.

  The confrontation took place thirty miles northwest of Moscow near the Patriarch Nikon's famous New Jerusalem Monastery. Everything—numbers, leadership, artillery, even timing—favored the loyal forces. Had the Streltsy arrived only an hour earlier, they might have occupied the powerful monastery and been able to withstand a siege long enough to dishearten the loyal soldiers and persuade some of them to join the revolt; and the walled fortress would have been a tactical buttress to their position. As it was, the two sides met in open, rolling countryside.

  Near the monastery ran a small stream. Shein and Gordon took up a commanding position on the eastern bank, blocking the road to Moscow. Soon afterward, the long lines of Streltsy carrying their muskets and halberds began to appear, and the vanguard started to ford the river. To discover whether there was any chance of ending the rebellion peaceably, Gordon walked down to the riverbank to talk to the mutineers. As the first of the Streltsy emerged from the water, he advised them, as an old soldier, that night was close and Moscow too far to reach that day; it would be better to camp for the night on the far side of the river, where there was plenty of room. There they could rest and decided what to do in the following day. The Streltsy, exhausted and uncertain, not having expected to have to fight before reaching Moscow but now seeing the government troops drawn up against them, accepted Gordon's advice and began to make camp. To Gordon the Streltsy spokesman, Sergeant Zorin, handed an unfinished petition which complained:

  That they had been ordered to serve in different towns for a year at a time, and that, when they were in front of Azov, by the device of a heretic and foreigner, Fransko Lefort, in order to cause great harm to Orthodoxy, he, Fransko Lefort, had led the Moscow Streltsy under the wall at the wrong time, and by putting them in the most dangerous and bloody places many of them had been killed; that by his device a mine had been made under the trenches, and that by this mine he had also killed three hundred men and more.

  The petition continued with other complaints, including "that they had heard that Germans are coming to Moscow to have their beards shaved and publicly smoke tobacco to the discredit of Orthodoxy." Meanwhile, as Gordon parleyed with the rebels, Shein's troops ha
d quietly entrenched themselves on the commanding high ground on the eastern bank and De Grage had placed his cannon on the height, their muzzles pointing down across the stream at the Streltsy.

  At dawn the following day, satisfied that his own position was as strong as he could make it, Gordon again went down to talk to the Streltsy, who demanded that their petition be read to the loyal army. Gordon refused; the petition was actually a call to arms against Tsar Peter and a condemnation of Peter's closest friends, especially Lefort. Instead, Gordon spoke of Peter's clemency. He urged the Streltsy to return peacefully and resume their garrison duties, as no good could come of mutiny. He promised that if they would present their requests peacefully and with proper expressions of loyalty, he would see that they received satisfaction for their grievances and pardon for their disobedience up to that point. Gordon failed. "I used all the rhetoric I was master of, but all in vain," he wrote. The Streltsy answered only that they would not go back to their posts "until they had been allowed to kiss their wives in Moscow and had received their arrears in pay."

  Gordon reported this to Shein, then returned a third time with a final offer to pay their salaries and grant pardon. By this time, however, the Streltsy were restless and impatient. They warned Gordon, their former commander but also a foreigner, that he must leave immediately or get a bullet for his efforts. They shouted that they recognized no master and would take orders from no one, that they would not go back to their garrisons, that they must be admitted to Moscow, and that if their way was blocked, they would open the road with cold steel. Furious, Gordon returned to Shein, and the loyal troops prepared to fight. On the western bank, the Streltsy troops, too, formed ranks, knelt and asked the blessing of God. On both sides of the stream, countless signs of the cross were made as Russian soldiers prepared for battle against each other.

  The first shots came on Shein's command. With a roar, smoke billowed out from the cannon muzzles, but no harm was done. De Grage's guns had fired powder but not shot; Shein had hoped that this display of force might awe the Streltsy into submission. Instead, the blank volley had the opposite effect. Hearing the noise, but seeing no damage among their ranks, the Streltsy were emboldened to think that they were the stronger party. Beating their drums and waving their banners, they advanced across the river. At this, Shein and Gordon ordered De Grage to bring his guns into action in earnest. The cannon roared again, this time sending ball and shot whistling into the lines of the Streltsy. Over and over, De Grage's twenty-five guns fired into the mass of men before them. Cannonballs volleyed into the lines, lopping off heads, arms and legs.

  In an hour it was over. While the cannon still boomed, the Streltsy lay down on the ground to escape the fire, begging to surrender. From the loyal side, commands to throw down their arms were shouted. The Streltsy quickly obeyed, but even so, the artillery continued to fire, Gordon reasoning that if he silenced his guns, the Streltsy might gain courage and be persuaded to attack again before they could be properly disarmed.. And so the cowed and terrified Streltsy allowed themselves to be fettered and bound until they were truly harmless.

  With the rebels in chains, Shein was merciless. On the spot, with the entire body of mutinous Streltsy in chains and under guard on the battlefield, he ordered an investigation of the rebellion. He wanted to know the cause, the instigators, the objectives. To a man, each Strelets whom he questioned admitted his own involvement and agreed that he himself deserved death. But, equally to a man, all refused to give any details as to their goals or to betray any of their fellows as instigators or leaders. Accordingly, in the pleasant countryside near the New Jerusalem Monastery, Shein ordered the Streltsy put to torture. Knout and fire did their work, and at last one soldier was persuaded to speak. Agreeing that he and all his fellows deserved death, he admitted that had the rebellion been successful, they had intended first to sack and burn the entire German Suburb and massacre all its inhabitants, then to enter Moscow, kill all who resisted, seize the leading boyars, kill some and exile others. Following this, they would announce to the people that the Tsar, who had gone abroad on the malicious advice of the foreigners, had died in the West and the Princess Sophia would be called upon to act as regent again until the Tsarevich Alexis, Peter's son, should reach his majority. To advise and support Sophia, Vasily Golitsyn would be recalled from exile.

  Perhaps this was true or perhaps Shein had simply extracted by torture what he wished to hear. In any case, he was satisfied and, on the basis of this confession, ordered the executioners to begin their work. Gordon protested—not to save the lives of the condemned men, but to preserve them for more thorough interrogation in the future. Anticipating Peter's intense desire to get to the bottom of the mater on his return, he pleaded with Shein. But Shein was the commander and he insisted that immediate executions were necessary to make the proper impression on the rest of the Streltsy—and on the nation—as to how traitors were dealt with. One hundred and thirty were executed in the field and the rest, nearly 1,900, were brought back to Moscow in chains. There they were turned over to Romodanovsky, who distributed them in the cells of various fortresses and monasteries around the countryside to await Peter's return.

  Peter, rushing home from Vienna, had been informed along the way of the easy victory over the Streltsy and been assured that "not one got away." Yet, despite the quick snuffing out of the revolt which had never seriously threatened his throne, the Tsar was profoundly disturbed. His first thought, after the anxiety and humiliation of having his army rebel while he was traveling abroad, was—exactly as Gordon had known it would be—to wonder how far the roots of the rebellion had spread and what high persons might have been involved. Peter doubted that the Streltsy had acted alone. Their demands and charges against his friends, himself and his way of life seemed too broad for simple soldiers. But who had instigated them? On whose behalf?

  None of his boyars or officers could give him a satisfactory answer. They said that the Streltsy had been too strong under torture and that answers could not be forced out of them. Angry and suspicious, Peter ordered the Guards regiments to collect the hundreds of prisoners from cells around Moscow and bring them to Preobranzhenskoe. There, in the interrogation that followed, Peter resolved to discover whether, as he had written to Romoda-novsky, "the seed of the Miloslavskys had sprouted again." And even if this had not been a full-fledged plot to overthrow his government, he was determined to put an end to those "begetters of evil." Since his childhood, the Streltsy had opposed and threatened him—they had murdered his friends and relations, they had supported the claims of the usurper Sophia and they continued to scheme against him; only two weeks before his departure abroad, the plot of the Streltsy Colonel Tsykler had been discovered. Now, once again they had used violent language against his foreign friends and himself and had marched on Moscow intending to overthrow the state. Peter was weary of it all: the nuisance as well as the danger, the arrogant claims to special privilege and to fight only when and where they wished, the poor performance as soldiers, the fact that they were semi-medieval figures in a modern world. Once and for all, one way or another, he would be rid of them.

  Interrogation meant questioning under torture. Torture in Russia in Peter's day was used for three purposes: to force men to speak; as punishment, even when no information was desired; and as a prelude to or refinement of death by execution. Traditionally, three general methods of torture were used in Russia: the batog, the knout and fire.

  A batog was a small rod or stick about the thickness of a man's finger, commonly used to beat an offender for lesser crimes. The victim was spread on the floor, lying on his stomach, his back bared and his legs and arms extended. Two men applied batogs simultaneously to the bare back, one sitting or kneeling on the victim's head and arms, the other on his legs and feet. Facing each other, the two punishers wielded their sticks rhythmically in turn, "keeping time as smiths do at an anvil until their rods were broken in pieces and then they took fresh ones until they were ordered to s
top." Laid on indiscriminately over a prolonged time with a weakened victim, the batogs could cause death, although this was not usually the case.

  More serious punishment or interrogation called forth the knout, a savage but traditional method of inflicting pain in Russia. The knout was a thick, leather whip about three and a half feet long. A blow from the knout tore skin from the bare back of a victim and, when the lash fell repeatedly in the same place, could bite through to the bone. The degree of punishment was determined by the number of strokes inflicted; fifteen to twenty-five was considered standard; more than that often led to death.

  Applying the knout was skilled work. The wielder, observed John Perry, applied "so many strokes on the bare back as are appointed by the judges, first making a step back and giving a spring forward at every stroke, which is laid on with such force that the blood flies at every stroke and leaves a weal behind as thick as a man's finger. And these [knout] masters as the Russians call them, are so exact in their work that they very rarely strike two strokes in the same place, but lay them on the whole length and breadth of a man's back, by the side of each other with great dexterity from the top of a man's shoulders down to the waistband of his breeches."

  Normally, to receive the knout, the victim was lifted and spread across the back of another man, frequently some strong fellow selected by the knoutmaster from among the spectators. The victim's arms were tied over the shoulders of his stationary porter and his legs around the porter's knees. Then, one of the knoutmaster's assistants grabbed the victim by the hair, pulling his head out of the way of the rhythmic strokes of the lash that were falling on the outspread, heaving back.