EXECUTION OF THE STRELITZ BY COMMAND OF PETER THE GREAT
(Painted for The Historians’ History of the World by Thure de Thulstrup)
During his stay at Vienna, there happened nothing remarkable, except the celebration of the ancient feast of “landlord and landlady,” which Leopold thought proper to revive upon the czar’s account, after it had been disused during his whole reign. The manner of making this entertainment, to which the Germans gave the name of Wirthschaft, was as follows: The emperor was landlord, and the empress landlady; the king of the Romans, the archdukes, and the archduchesses were generally their assistants; they entertained people of all nations, dressed after the most ancient fashion of their respective countries. Those who were invited as guests drew lots for tickets; on each of which was written the name of the nation, and the character to be represented. One had a ticket for a Chinese mandarin, another for a Tatar mirza, another for a Persian satrap, or a Roman senator; a princess might happen to be allotted the part of a gardener’s wife, or a milkwoman; and a prince might act the peasant or soldier. They had dances suited to these different characters; and the landlord and landlady with their family waited at table. On this occasion Peter assumed the habit of a Friesland boor, and in this character was addressed by everybody, at the same time that they talked to him of the great czar of Muscovy. “These indeed are trifles,” says Voltaire, from whom the account is taken, “but whatever revives the memory of ancient customs is, in some measure, worthy of being recorded.”
THE INSURRECTION OF THE STRELITZ
Peter was preparing to continue his journey from Vienna to Venice and Rome when he was recalled to his own dominions by news of a general insurrection of the strelitz, who had quitted their posts on the frontiers, and marched on Moscow. Peter immediately left Vienna in secret, passed through Poland, where he had an interview with King Augustus, and arrived at Moscow in September, 1698, before anyone there knew of his having left Germany.[e]
When Peter I arrived from Vienna he found that his generals and the douma had acted with too great leniency. He cherished an old grudge against the strelitz; they had formed the army of Sophia which had been arrayed against that of the czar, and in his mind was still alive the memory of the invasion of the Kremlin, the murder of his maternal relatives, the terrors undergone by his mother in Troitsa, the plots that had well-nigh prevented his departure for the west, and the check placed by the mutineers on the plans he had matured for the good of his country during his journey through Europe. He resolved to seize the opportunity thus placed in his hands to crush all his enemies at one blow, and to inaugurate in old Russia a reign of terror that should recall the days of Ivan IV. The particular point of attack had been his taste for foreign fashions, for shaven chins, and abbreviated garments. These therefore should be the rallying-sign of the Russia of the future. Long beards had been the standard of revolt; long beards must fall. He ordered all the gentlemen of his realm to shave, and even performed that office with his own hand for some of the highest nobles of his court. On the same day the Red Square was covered with gibbets. The patriarch Adrian tried in vain to divert the anger of the czar. “My duty is to protect the people and to punish rebels,” was the only answer he received.
On the 10th of October a first consignment of two hundred prisoners arrived in the Red Square, followed by their wives and children, who ran behind the carts chanting funeral dirges. The czar ordered several officers to assist the headsman in his work. Johann Korb, an Austrian who was an eye-witness of the scene, relates that the heads of “five rebels were struck off by the noblest hand in Russia.” Seven more days were devoted to the executions, and in all about a thousand victims perished. Many were previously broken on the wheel or given up to other frightful tortures. The czar forbade the removal of any of the bodies, and for five months Moscow was given the spectacle of corpses hanging from the turrets of the Kremlin, or exposed in the public squares. Two of Sophia’s female confidantes were buried alive, and Sophia herself and the repudiated czarina, Eudoxia Lapukhin, noted for her attachment to old customs, were confined in monasteries. After the revolt of the inhabitants of Astrakhan, who murdered their voyevod (1705), the militia was abolished and the way was clear for the establishment of a new army.[g]
WAR WITH SWEDEN
[1699 A.D.]
The external relations as well as the domestic circumstances of the empire were at this juncture peculiarly favourable to the czar’s grand design of opening a communication with the Baltic. He had just concluded a treaty of peace for thirty years with the Turks, and he found himself at the head of a numerous army, a portion, at least, of which was well disciplined, and eager for employment. The death of General Lefort, in 1699, at the early age of forty-six, slightly retarded the progress of his movements; but in the following year he prepared to avail himself of events that called other powers into action and afforded him a feasible excuse for taking the field.