lasted about two hours, and afterwards the sovereign gave private audience to ministers until midday, when he took his first repast, ordinarily frugal to scantiness and eaten alone. During Lent the Tsar Alexis made but three meals each week, and ate fish but twice, on fast days taking only a morsel of black bread and a pickled mushroom; he drank either kvas or small beer: his devotions occupied five hours of each day, and often he prostrated himself more than a thousand times daily.
“Fast day or not the Tsar’s table was always well supplied, but of the seventy or more dishes usually served the greater part were presented to his courtiers and officers. After the midday repast, the sovereign invariably retired for a short sleep, arising for vespers at about three o’clock, when he was always attended by the court. Occasionally state business was transacted after evening service, but generally the remainder of the day was spent in recreations; theatricals, music and chess were chief among these. Court pilgrims were the Muscovite equivalent of the wandering minstrels of the British courts. The Tsar Alexis particularly was interested in the recitals of ‘experienced’ men who had travelled in distant parts of his kingdom and liked to hear often the recollections of the grey-beards who had known the Moscow of the ‘troublous times.’ If their stories failed, resource was had to a reading of the chronicles, ecclesiastical and profane. The pensioners were housed in the Kremlin near the royal palace, and were under the immediate protection of the Tsar, who himself not frequently followed some centenarian to the specially appointed burial place in the Bogo-yavlenni Monastyr.
“The Tsaritsas for the most part occupied themselves with their own devotions and the direction of the work rooms of the palace; very occasionally with their children they accompanied the Tsar to the Krasnœ Kriltso to be ‘beholden of the people.’ Sometimes they witnessed state ceremonies from a secluded corner of the throne room, and in the evening witnessed the amusements in the Potieshni Dvorets; were diverted by the tricks of mountebanks and jugglers; listened to songs, or watched the special dancers engaged for their amusement. Their journeys abroad were restricted to visiting the convents and churches, pilgrimages to the Troitsa Monastery, or the season’s change to a suburban palace. Although they attended High Mass in the cathedrals, they were seldom seen by the public, being always surrounded by a guard of chamber-women who carried ecrans and, arranging themselves before the Tsaritsa, screened her from the eyes of the curious. Doubtless the strict etiquette was departed from in the semi-state of the summer palaces at Kolomenskœ and Preobrajenskœ, and certainly the Tsaritsa Natalia failed in various ways to observe the strict seclusion of the Terem. A state procession in the days of Alexis was a wonderful pageant: on his visit to the Novo Devichi Convent he was preceded by 600 horsemen, three abreast, all dressed in cloth of gold. Grooms led the twenty-five white stallions harnessed to a coach draped with scarlet and gold: a guard of honour surrounded it; the Tsar followed in a smaller coach drawn by six white horses; boyards in state robes were his escort. Petitioners thronged the procession and their written requests were deposited in a special box carried behind the Tsar. The Tsarevich, with a long cortege, followed. The Tsaritsa was preceded by forty grooms with magnificent steeds, and her own coach drawn by ten white horses, and behind her the Tsarevna in a similar carriage drawn by eight horses. The waiting-women, to the number of twenty or more, rode astride white horses; they wore scarlet robes, white hats with yellow ribbons and long feathers; white veils hid part of their faces; top boots of bright yellow completed their costume. The guard consisted of 300 of the Streltsi with their showiest weapons, and behind them came pensioners, boyards and officers of the court.”—Zabielin.
The young Prince Peter had a small state coach to himself; it was drawn by small white ponies, and he had as a special retinue a number of dwarfs. In the golden age of the three Romanofs Moscow thrived as never before and became beautiful beyond other cities. Alexis busied himself in erecting new and better buildings where fire destroyed the old, and his example was followed by the boyards, who commenced of their own accord to build churches or to enrich those existing, and were even so western and modern as to present bells. It was under Theodore that Moscow attained its zenith and became known as the city of churches—“Forty-forties” their number, the Russian equivalent of “seventy times seven,” derived from “sorokov,” an ecclesiastical division, and also a “great gross”; the number actually in existence within the town limit is said to have been 1071. There were twenty-seven “Halls” within the Kremlin palaces; some twelve new courts of justice in the town; and eight royal residences in the suburbs. The boyard Dmitri Kaloshinim built a great church on the Devichi Pol-ye, and in addition to the academy in the Za-ikono-spasski Monastyr other schools were founded. The handicrafts of the west were generally practised, and many new trades learned and mastered, some 4300 foreigners being employed in Moscow in the manufacturing industries and the instruction of the citizens. It was at this period that most of the beautiful glass, faience and metal work that enriches the sacristies was produced, and then that the finest ecclesiastical buildings were erected. Some of the choicest antiquities of the Treasury (Orujen-ia Palata) date from this period. The boyards during the siege of the Poles and themselves in the Kremlin turned much of the old plate stored there into money; the specimens of earlier date had been hidden away, or were in the treasures of churches outside the Kremlin. Among the most interesting antiquities here are:—
In the entrance Hall.—The old bell of the Guardians of Novgorod, recast in 1683; the alarm bell of the city of Moscow, recast in 1714 from the old bell of the town; two plates recording the execution of the Streltsi. The staircase has old German suits of mail, some trophies and two pictures, one representing the battle of Dmitri Donskoi against the Tartars at Kulikovo, and the other the baptism of Vladimir the Great.
Room 1: Armoury.—Russian armour of the seventeenth century, notably a mounted model of the Voievode of the period; on the left of the entrance a Russian soldier of the same, also the helmet of the hero Mstislavski, and the helmet of the Tsar Mikhail Theodorovich.