CHAPTER V
The Courier Saphnov, who had been sent in advance from Petersburg, informed the Tsar that the Tsarevitch was following immediately after him, yet two months passed by and he did not appear. The Tsar would not believe for some time that his son had run away: “How can he? he would not dare.” But in the end he believed, and sent detectives along all roads and gave his Resident, Abraham Vesselóvsky, in Vienna, the following order: “It lies with you to make inquiries in Vienna, Rome, Naples, Milan, Sardinia, and Switzerland; whenever you get information of our son’s abode, after having carefully made investigations, go thither and follow him up; at the same time inform us at once by special messenger; yourself remaining incognito.”
Vesselóvsky, after a long search, at last came across his track. “We can trace him so far,” he wrote to the Tsar from Vienna—“A certain Lieutenant Kochánsky stayed at the Black Eagle outside the town. The waiter tells me that he took him to be some distinguished person, as he spent his money very freely, was not unlike the Tsar of Moscow, possibly his son—the which Tsar he had seen in Vienna.”
Peter was surprised; to him there was something strange and terrible in these words, “not unlike the Tsar.” It had never occurred to him that Alexis could resemble him.
“After a stay of only twenty-four hours at the inn,” continued Vesselóvsky, “he had his things taken away by a hired driver, and himself went on foot, after paying his bill, so that they do not know whether he has gone further or not. During his stay at the inn he bought his wife a man’s suit of brown colour which she put on. All further traces have disappeared. I have inquired in all the local inns, taverns, in private and public houses, but to no purpose. I have also engaged the help of detectives. I went myself along two mail roads which lead from here into Italy, the Tyrolese and the Carinthian Road, but nobody could supply me with the needed information.”
The Tsar, divining that the Emperor had welcomed the fugitive and was hiding him in his dominions, sent him a letter from Amsterdam.
“Most Serene and most mighty Emperor,
“I am compelled to announce to your Imperial Majesty, in fraternal confidence with heartfelt sorrow, a calamity which has unexpectedly befallen us. It concerns our son Alexis. We have grounds for believing that your Majesty is not unaware that his past behaviour was always in opposition to our fatherly will, to our greatest discomfort, and that his conduct in wedded life with your relative left much to be desired. Some time ago we ordered him to join us here, hoping by this means to sever him from his useless life and companions. Taking none of his servants appointed by us, but in the company of several young people, he abandoned the road to ourselves, and disappeared no one knows where, and to this day we remain in ignorance of his whereabouts. And we, convinced that he has taken this blameworthy decision on the advice of certain people, have fatherly compassion upon him, and, afraid lest he should bring eternal destruction upon himself by this insubordinate act, and still more, to prevent his falling into the hands of our enemies, have given a command to our Resident Vesselóvsky at your court, to find him and bring him hither. Therefore we pray your Imperial Majesty, should he be in hiding in your dominions, secretly or openly, to give orders that he be sent to us with our Resident, and under the safe convoy of several officers, in order that we may fatherly chide him for his well-being. And we shall eternally feel obliged to you for this service and mark of friendship.
“We remain,
“Your Imperial Majesty’s faithful brother,
“Peter.”
At the same time it was intimated to the Emperor, that if he refused to deliver Alexis up of his own goodwill, the Tsar would seek his son out like a traitor, with armed force.
Each piece of new information that reached the Tsar was a fresh insult to him. Under the feigned sympathy of Europe lurked a secret enmity. “A certain major-general, on his return from Hanover,” Vesselóvsky reported, “meeting me at court, spoke with me in the presence of the Ambassador of Mecklenburg; he sympathized with your Majesty’s illness, which he presumed had been caused by grief, from the fact that your Crown Prince ‘had become invisible,’ using the French phrase, ‘Il est éclipsé.’ I asked him where he got this false information from. He answered me that this information was true and authentic, and he had it from the Hanoverian ministers. To which I replied that it was a calumny, owing its existence to the ill-will of the Hanoverian Court.”
“The Emperor has good reason to support the Crown Prince,” reported Vesselóvsky, as an opinion which is current at the foreign court, “because the aforesaid Crown Prince is in the right as against his father, and had cause for escaping from his father’s dominions. Quite in the beginning, soon after the birth of the Tsarevitch Peter, your Majesty is supposed to have forced Alexis to abdicate the throne and to retire for the rest of his life to a hermitage. And when your Majesty was in Pomerania, seeing that the Crown Prince did not attempt to retire, you were supposed to have devised a new plan. This, was to lure him to Holland and, under the pretext of instruction, to place him on one of your war vessels, give the Captain orders to engage in a fight with a Swedish vessel, which it was arranged should stand close by, and thus cause the Tsarevitch to be killed. This was the reason for his flight.”
The Tsar was informed at the same time about the secret negotiations between the Emperor and King George the First of England. “The Emperor, prompted by ties of relationship, as well as by compassion for the sufferings of the Tsarevitch, and by the generosity of the imperial house towards all innocently persecuted persons, had granted shelter and protection to the Tsar’s son. He asked the King of England whether he, too, felt disposed as an Elector and relative of the house of Braunschweig, to protect the Tsarevitch. Attention was called to his miserable condition—‘Miseranda conditio’—the father’s evident and unrelenting tyranny—‘clara et continua paterna tyrannidas’—also suspicion of poisoning and such like Russian ‘galanterien.’”
The son became a judge, an accuser of the father.
And what more might happen? The Tsarevitch might become a weapon in the enemy’s hand—might kindle an insurrection in the heart of Russia, entangle the whole of Europe in the war, and God alone knows how this would end. “To kill him were too little!” mused the maddened Tsar.
Yet another feeling overpowered him, a new feeling. The father had become afraid of the son.