The father in this piece reproached his son with his manifold vices, his remissness in improving himself, his intimacy with the sticklers for ancient customs, his misbehaviour towards his consort: “He has,” says he, “violated conjugal faith, taking up with a low-born wench whilst his wife was living.” Alexis might fairly have pleaded that in this kind of debauchery he came immeasurably short of his father’s example. He afterwards reproaches him with going to Vienna, and putting himself under the emperor’s protection. He says that Alexis had slandered his father, intimating to the emperor Charles VI that he was persecuted; and that a longer stay in Muscovy was dangerous, unless he renounced the succession; nay, that he went so far as to desire the emperor openly to defend him by force of arms.[e]
Death of the Czarevitch Alexis
[1718 A.D.]
The proceedings against the czarevitch and his friends lasted for about half a year: they were begun in Moscow and continued in St. Petersburg; the cells of the fortress of the latter place were filled with prisoners, amongst whom were two members of the royal family—the czarevitch and Marie Alexievna; fresh persons were continually added to their number, denounced under the pressure of unbearable tortures. One of the differences between the legal proceedings of that period and the present consists in the fact that, when we now have the evidence of a crime before us, we endeavour to discover the persons guilty of it, whereas then they sought to find out whether someone had not done something criminal.
In May a “declaration” or manifesto was issued setting forth the czarevitch’s crimes. His whole life was related in the manifesto; mention was made of his idleness in studying, his disobedience to his father’s will, his ill treatment of his wife, and finally his flight and his apparent solicitation of the help of the German emperor and “the protection of an armed hand,”—which was not at all clearly proved by the evidence. There was, however, no mention in the manifesto of the fact that he had been promised an unconditional pardon and the permission to live at a distance with his beloved Euphrosyne. For all these offences, for his disobedience to his father, his treachery and dissimulation, the czarevitch and his “accomplices” were delivered up for judgment to the tribunal; but this tribunal was not an ordinary one: it was a special one, composed of persons named by Peter himself. Why was such a departure made from the usual order of things? In matters of peculiar importance, when it happened that persons in proximity to the throne were to be judged, it was not unfrequent in western Europe that special, so-called supreme tribunals were named. But this custom always gave reason to suppose that the members of those supreme tribunals were only chosen from amongst those who would be ready to fulfil the will of him who had named them.
The committee appointed to judge the czarevitch consisted of 127 members of the clergy and laity; in the instructions given by the czar to the first it was enjoined that they should act “without any hypocrisy or partiality”; in the instructions given to the laity the following was signified: “I ask you in order that this matter may be truthfully accomplished, without seeking to flatter me; without any respect for persons, to act righteously, and not to destroy your souls and mine, so that our consciences may be pure at the terrible day of judgment, and our country secure.” Such were the words that the czar addressed to the tribunal; they were fine in themselves, but their signification could not have been great, because the judges were not independent. The conceptions of the present time require that judges should not be afraid of being dismissed from their functions, of being deprived of the salaries accompanying these functions, and so on—then only can a judge be entirely impartial; but were the judges of the czarevitch and in general all the judges of that time in such a position? They were all persons in the government service and entirely dependent on their chiefs; in the present case whom was it they risked displeasing? The czar himself! It was natural that they should try and read the czar’s will in the eyes of Menshikov, Tolstoi, and others of his intimates.
On the 24th of June, 1718, the sentence of the supreme tribunal was pronounced. The clergy refused to pronounce sentence, but the laity unanimously decreed the penalty of death against the czarevitch. Execution, however, did not follow, but something far more terrible than a public death on the scaffold did—the czarevitch was tortured on the rack. In fact, during the last days of the sitting of the tribunal, he had been several times subjected to it and, he was even tortured after sentence had been passed upon him! All this was more than the feeble organism of the czarevitch could bear, and on the 26th of June he died in a cell of the Petersburg fortress. Amongst the number of his friends and sharers in his flight many were executed, others banished to distant places, to monasteries and fortresses; amongst the latter was also the czarevna Marie Alexievna, who was sent to Schlüsselburg.
Such is one of the darkest episodes of the reign of Peter. The czarevitch Alexis could not have continued the work commenced by his father; he could not have succeeded him; he might have been judged, even condemned, if the tribunal (but an impartial tribunal) had found him guilty, and his head might have fallen at the hands of the public executioner like that of a criminal. But he was promised pardon if he would return, and having returned he was delivered up to the tribunal, he was judged by persons in whose impartiality it is impossible to believe; finally he was tortured after sentence was pronounced, when everywhere, even to the most insignificant of men and the greatest of criminals, time is given to prepare for death. For these things history cannot forgive the czar. Upon contemporaries the judgment and death of the czarevitch produced a deep impression. There were persons who admired the czar’s decision to sacrifice his son to the welfare of the country and his great plans; they compared him to Brutus. But there were but few such persons and they for the greater part were foreigners and not Russians. The greatness of Brutus and civic virtues in general did not powerfully move the hearts of our forefathers; but each of them felt that it was unnatural for a father to take away his son’s life!
Terrible rumours as to the details of the czarevitch’s death began to be current amongst the people; some said that he had been secretly poisoned, others that he had been strangled, and yet others that the czar himself had cut off his head in the cell. All these were fables, but fables which, however, may even now be met with in the works of many foreign authors and which also prove how powerfully the imagination of contemporaries was affected by this event and how much it was talked of. That noble quality of human nature—sympathy with sufferings even when they are deserved—made the czarevitch dearer still to his numerous partisans. The idea that Peter had indeed been “changed” became stronger. The common people, the merchants, the clergy, even distinguished persons, when they were not afraid of being overheard, said: “Would such a thing have been possible if he were the rightful czar—would he have killed his son and made the czarevna take the veil?” In some more fanatical minds the idea became confirmed that the czarevitch was alive and the name of the unfortunate young man became, as did in previous times the name of the czarevitch Dmitri, an ensign for impostors and pretenders.[h]