The Empire of Russia: From the Remotest Periods to the Present Time

by John S. C. Abbott

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.