If, on the one hand, the custom of raising a subject to the rank of czarina, was favourable to the females, there was another which was no less hard upon them; namely, that the daughters of the czars were very seldom married, but were most of them obliged to pass their lives in a monastery.
The princess Sophia, third daughter of czar Alexis, by his first marriage, was possessed of abilities, equally great and dangerous. Perceiving that her brother Theodore had not long to live, she did not retire to a convent; but finding herself situated between two brothers, one of whom was incapable of governing, through his natural inability; and the other, on account of his youth, she conceived the design of placing herself at the head of the empire. Hence, in the last hours of czar Theodore, she attempted to act the part that Pulcheria had formerly played with her brother, the emperor Theodosius.
[CHAP. IV.]
JOHN AND PETER.
Horrible Sedition among the Strelitzes.[21]
1682.
Czar Theodore's eyes were scarcely closed, when the nomination of a prince of only ten years old to the throne, the exclusion of the elder brother, and the intrigues of the princess Sophia, their sister, excited a most bloody revolt among the strelitzes. Never did the janissaries, nor the prætorian guards, exercise more horrible barbarities. The insurrection began two days after the interment of Theodore, when they all ran to arms in the Kremlin, which is the imperial palace at Moscow. There they began with accusing nine of their colonels, for keeping back part of their pay. The ministry was obliged to break the colonels, and to pay the strelitzes the money they demanded: but this did not satisfy them, they insisted upon having these nine officers delivered up to them, and condemned them, by a majority of votes, to suffer the Battogs, or Knout; the manner of which punishment is as follows:—
The delinquent is stripped naked, and laid flat on his belly, while two executioners beat him over the back with switches, or small canes, till the judge, who stands by to see the sentence put in execution, says, 'It is enough.' The colonels, after being thus treated by their men, were obliged to return them thanks, according to the custom of the eastern nations; where criminals, after undergoing their punishment, must kiss the judge's hand. Besides complying with this custom, the officers gave them a sum of money, which was something more than the custom.
While the strelitzes thus began to make themselves formidable, the princess Sophia, who secretly encouraged them, in order to lead them by degrees from crime to crime, held a meeting at her house, consisting of the princesses of the blood, the generals of the army, the boyards, the patriarch, the bishops, and even some of the principal merchants; where she represented to them, that prince John, by right of birth and merit, was entitled to the empire, the reins of which she intended to keep in her own hands. At the breaking up of the assembly, she caused a promise to be made to the strelitzes, of an augmentation of pay, besides considerable presents. Her emissaries were in particular employed to stir up the soldiery against the Nariskin family, especially the two brothers of the young dowager czarina, the mother of Peter the First. These persuaded the strelitzes, that one of the brothers, named John, had put on the imperial robes, had seated himself on the throne, and had attempted to strangle prince John; adding, moreover, that the late czar Theodore had been poisoned by a villain, named Daniel Vongad, a Dutch physician. At last Sophia put into their hands a list of forty noblemen, whom she stiled enemies to their corps, and to the state, and as such worthy of death. These proceedings exactly resembled the proscriptions of Sylla, and the Roman triumvirate, which had been revived by Christian II. in Denmark and Sweden. This may serve to shew, that such cruelties prevail in all countries in times of anarchy and confusion. The mutineers began the tragedy with throwing the two knez, or princes, Dolgorouki and Matheof, out of the palace-windows; whom the strelitzes received upon the points of their spears, then stripped them, and dragged their dead bodies into the great square; after this they rushed into the palace, where meeting with Athanasius Nariskin, a brother of the young czarina, and one of the uncles of czar Peter, they murdered him in like manner; then breaking open the door of a neighbouring church, where three of the proscribed persons had taken refuge, they drag them from the altar, strip them naked, and stab them to death with knives.
They were so blinded with their fury, that seeing a young nobleman of the family of Soltikoff, a great favourite of theirs, and who was not included in the list of the proscribed, and some of them mistaking him for John Nariskin, whom they were in search of, they murdered him upon the spot; and what plainly shews the manners of those times, after having discovered their error, they carried the body of young Soltikoff, to his father to bury it; and the wretched parent, far from daring to complain, gave them a considerable reward for bringing him the mangled body of his son. Being reproached by his wife, his daughters, and the widow of the deceased, for his weakness, 'Let us wait for an opportunity of being revenged,' said the old man. These words being overheard by some of the soldiers, they returned furiously back into the room, dragged the aged parent by the hair, and cut his throat at his own door.