He began his depredations on the Volga by seizing a fleet of boats belonging to the czar, which was on its way to Astrakhan, massacring part of the crews, and pressing all the rest into his service. Having devastated the whole country of the Volga, he descended into the Caspian, and having swept its shores, returned to the Volga laden with booty. For three years this flagitious ruffian continued his murderous career, repeatedly defeating the forces sent against him. At last, having lost a great number of men in his piratical incursions into Persia, he was hemmed in by the troops of the governor of Astrakhan, and forced to sue for pardon. The imperial commander thought it more prudent to accept Radzin’s voluntary submission than to risk an engagement with desperate wretches whose numbers were still formidable. Radzin was taken to Astrakhan, and the voyevod went to Moscow, to learn the czar’s pleasure respecting him. Alexis honourably confirmed the promise made by his general in his name, and accepted Radzin’s oath of allegiance; but instead of dispersing the pardoned rebels over regions where they would have been useful to the empire, he had the imprudence to send them all back to the country of the Don, without despoiling them of their ill-gotten wealth, or taking any other security for their good behaviour.
The brigand was soon at his old work again on the Volga, murdering and torturing with more wanton ferocity than ever. To give to his enormities the colour of a war on behalf of an oppressed class, he proclaimed himself the enemy of the nobles and the restorer of the liberty of the people. As many of the Russians still adhered to the patriarch Nicon, who had been deposed and sent to a monastery, he spread it abroad that Nicon was with him; that the czar’s second son (who had died at Moscow, January 16th, 1670) was not dead, but had put himself under his protection; and that he had even been requested by the czar himself to come to Moscow, and rid him of those unpatriotic grandees by whom he was unhappily surrounded.
These artifices, together with the unlimited license to plunder which Radzin granted to everyone who joined his standard, operated so strongly that the rebel found himself, at length, at the head of two hundred thousand men. The czar’s soldiers murdered their officers, and went over to him; Astrakhan betrayed its governor, and received him; he was master of the whole country of the lower Volga; and on the upper course of the river, from Nijni-Novgorod to Kazan, the peasants rose to a man and murdered their lords. Had Stenka Radzin been anything better than a vulgar robber and cut-throat, he might have revolutionised Russia; but he was utterly without the qualities most requisite for success in such an enterprise. Disasters overtook him in the autumn of 1670: a division of his army was cut to pieces; twelve thousand of his followers were gibbeted on the high-road, and he himself was taken in the beginning of the following year, carried to Moscow, and executed.
THE ANSWER OF ZAPOROGIAN COSSACKS TO SULTAN MUHAMMED IV
(From the painting by Elias Repin)
The Turks had by this time made war on Poland, and Alexis was bound by the Treaty of Andnissov, as well as by regard for the safety of his own dominions, to support the latter power. In 1671 the Turks made themselves masters of the important town of Kaminitz, and the Cossacks of the Ukraine, ever averse to subjection, could not tell whether they belonged to Turkey, Poland, or Russia. Sultan Muhammed IV, who had subdued and lately imposed a tribute on the Poles, insisted, with all the insolence of an Ottoman and of a conqueror, that the czar should evacuate his several possessions in the Ukraine, but received as haughty a denial. The sultan in his letter treated the sovereign of the Russias only as a Christian gospodin (hospodar), and entitled himself Most Glorious Majesty, King of the World. The czar made answer that he was above submitting to a Mohammedan dog, but that his sabre was as good as the grand seignior’s scimitar.
[1676 A.D.]
Alexis sent ambassadors to the pope, and to almost all the great sovereigns in Europe, except France, which was allied to the Turks, in order to establish a league against the Porte. His ambassadors had no other success at Rome than not being obliged to kiss the pope’s toe; everywhere else they met with nothing but good wishes, the Christian princes being generally prevented by their quarrels and jarring interests from uniting against the common enemy of their religion. Alexis did not live to see the termination of the war with Turkey. His death happened in 1676, in his forty-eighth year, after a reign of thirty-one years.