| 200 | on | Sept. | 30th, | 1698 |
| 144 | " | Oct. | 11th, | " |
| 205 | " | " | 12th, | " |
| 141 | " | " | 13th, | " |
| 109 | " | " | 17th, | " |
| 65 | " | " | 18th, | " |
| 106 | " | " | 19th, | " |
“On some occasions a tree was used as a block; the victims placed in rows along it, and their heads struck off by men of Peter’s new guard. Others were hanged; as late as 1727 the heads stuck on pike points stood round the Lobnœ Mesto. In January 1699 came more enquiries, more tortures, more executions, and then the extermination of the Streltsi determined upon. There was a break from 1699 to 1704 as Peter required the remaining Streltsi to aid in the wars against Swedes and others, but after the revolt in Astrakhan, the executions were renewed. Stragglers and deserters from the corps, those related to them and who associated with them, were placed under a ban—they might not be employed by anyone; none might give them food, shelter, or assistance. They perished miserably. In such manner did Peter exterminate the old Muscovite militia.”
[F] Kostomarov, vol. ii. p. 516.
Peter’s cruelties, like those of Ivan Groznoi, did not pass unnoticed by the Church. His treatment of the Streltsi called forth a fierce denunciation from the Patriarch Adrian, who “beseeched him in the name of the Mother of God to desist.” “Get thee home!” answered Peter, “I know that I reverence God and his most Holy Mother; more, perhaps, than thou dost thyself. It is the duty of my sovereign office, and a duty I owe to God, to punish with the utmost severity crimes that threaten the general welfare.” Unfortunately the Church had been deprived of its privilege of intercession for the life of one accused, and Peter cared nought for the spiritual power of the Church, as already stated. He even with his own hand killed two priests, but afterwards expressed contrition. The Church regarded him almost as anti-christ; the citizens dreaded him and kept out of his way. “The nearer the Tsar the greater the danger,” a proverb of that time was believed in by all. Peter had his proverb also, “the knout is no angel but teaches men to speak the truth,” and even as Ivan did, he went constantly in fear of conspiracies, chiefly dreading his own relations. Eudoxia, now the nun Helena in a convent at Suzdal, was believed to have corresponded with Dositheus an Archimandrite who had predicted, or prayed for, Peter’s death. Glebov was the intermediary in the matter; he was impaled; the prelate was broken on the wheel; a brother of the ex-tsaritsa was tortured and beheaded; thirty others were executed or exiled, and Eudoxia herself flogged and confined in an isolated convent at New Ladoga. Peter, when there were no more conspirators, or accused, offered a bribe of six roubles to all who made secret accusations, and threatened with severe penalties any who held back information. The better to protect his informers from reprisals by the people, they went through the streets with their faces veiled, in order to search for those whose names they did not know, but whom they had overheard in indiscreet speech. The people hid away when “the tongue,” as the masked informer was called, was abroad in the streets, and for days the city would appear to be quite deserted.
“Peter was hairless and decreed that those who could grow beards should not be allowed to wear them. Ivan Naumov was flogged because he would not shave; 100 roubles was the ordinary fine for wearing a full beard, and many paid the tax repeatedly rather than submit to Peter’s order. These had also to wear a badge with the legend ‘a beard is a useless inconvenience,’ and pay a fine whenever passing the Redeemer Gate. There is a touch of irony in the fact that Peter died of a chill which, may be, the full beard of a Moscow Otets would have prevented. Although Peter was epileptic, he had no mercy for those who suffered similarly. A woman, who in addition to this infirmity was also blind, was put to the torture for disturbing a congregation. A tipsy man had thirty lashes with the knout for committing the like offence. A woman who found strange chalk marks on a barrel of beer in her cellar, knew not what they meant, nor did any one else; but she was put to the torture, and died under it because unable to decipher them. Those whom Peter wished specially to honour he made hangmen. An old boyard who liked not salad, as ‘sour things did not agree with him,’ was made to empty a large bottle of vinegar by Peter; and a Jewess in his company who declined to drink to the extent Peter wished, was there and then beaten by him and made to drink much more.”
It was an unequal struggle: a powerful autocrat attempting to force a proud, stubborn people from the habits they had been taught to revere, from practices that had made their city great and beautiful. The more successful Peter became the greater was the opposition. His courtiers wore wigs at court, as commanded, but even in the throne room removed them immediately Peter was out of sight. After ten years Peter knew that he could not conquer the Muscovites though he might kill them. As late as 1722, when he had ordered all ladies above ten years of age to appear at a reception, only seventy of the hundreds qualified did as commanded. At St Petersburg it was different. There, no feeling of shame, no loss of dignity followed the, to Moscow citizens, most ridiculous behaviour of westerns. Peter’s son Alexis, the Tsarevich, preferred Moscow and Muscovite customs: in him Moscow trusted, and for this Peter hated him. His friends wished him to enter a monastery until his father’s death and then “as they cannot nail the cowl to one’s head,” throw it off and assume the crown. He did not, and his boast to forsake St Petersburg and reinstate Moscow enraged Peter who, from that time, never ceased to search for conspiracies, prompted by, or on behalf of Alexis, and persecuted his son unmercifully. As all knew the young man was lured to St Petersburg by his mistress, who was lavishly rewarded for her perfidy by Peter, and that there he was repeatedly put to the torture, more than once with Peter himself as executioner, and that he died mysteriously one day after being “put to the question,” i.e. tortured, earlier in the day by a party of whom his father was one.
