Peter the Great (129 page)

Peter asked the ecclesiastical court—three metropolitans, five bishops, four archimandrites and other high churchmen—to advice him what a royal father ought to do with this modem Absalom. Desperately, the churchmen tried to avoid giving a direct answer. The case, they argued, was inappropriate for an ecclesiastical court. Pressed by Peter for a more substantial answer, they proceeded to show that if the Tsar desired to punish his son, he had the authority of the Old Testament to do so (Leviticus XX: "Everyone that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death," and Deuteronomy xxi: "If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son which will not obey the voice of his father . . . then shall his father
...
lay hold on him and bring him out unto the elders of his city. . . . And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die.") On the other hand, the churchmen said, if the Tsar wished to be merciful, there were many examples in the teachings of Christ, most notably the parable of the Prodigal Son.

Still not content with this pallid verdict, Peter turned to the 127 members of the secular court. He ordered them to judge his son fairly and objectively, "without flattering us, or being apprehensive. Do not be moved by the fact that you are to judge the son of your sovereign. For we swear to you by the Great God and His judgments that you have absolutely nothing to fear." On June 16, Peter specifically passed to the court the power to proceed against Alexis as it would against any other subject accused of treason, "in the form required and with the necessary examination"—i.e., torture.

Given these commands and assurances, the court summoned the Tsarevich to the Senate Hall and announced to him that "though they were much grieved by his past conduct," yet they
were obliged to obey their orders and, without regard for"his person and his being the son of their most clement sovereign, interrogate him." First came examination under torture. On June 19, Alexis received twenty-five blows of the knout. No new confession was wrung from him by this pain, and on June 24 torture was applied again. With fifteen more strokes of the knout tearing the flesh off his back in bloody ribbons, Alexis admitted that he had told his confessor, "I wish for my father's death!" In that abject state, ready to admit anything, he told his interrogator, Tolstoy, that he would even have been willing to pay the Emperor to supply him with foreign troops to use in seizing the Russian throne from his father.

This was sufficent. That same evening, June 24, the high court, unanimously and without discussion, "with afflicted hearts and eyes full of tears," pronounced sentence. Alexis was to die for the "design of rebellion, the like of which was hardly ever heard of in the world, joined to that of a horrid double patricide, first against the Father of his country and next against his Father by nature." The signatures that followed constituted an almost complete roster of Peter's lieutenants: Menshikov's name came first, followed by General-Admiral Fedor Apraxin, Chancellor Golovkin, Privy Councilors Jacob Dolgoruky, Ivan Musin-Pushkin and Tikhon Streshnev, Senator Peter Apraxin, Vice Chancellor Shafirov, Peter Tolstoy, Senator Dmitry Golitsyn, Generals Adam Weide and Ivan Buturlin, Senator Michael Samarin, Ivan Romodanovsky, Alexis Saltykov, Prince Matthew Gagarin, Governor of Siberia, and Kyril Naryshkin, Governor of Moscow.

The sentence now lay in Peter's hands; it could not be carried out without his approval and signature. Peter hesitated to sign, but very soon thereafter events were lifted beyond his control. An account of the final day is given by Weber

The next day being Thursday, the 26th of June, early in the moming, the news was brought to the Tsar that the violent passions of the mind and the terrors of death had thrown the Tsarevich into an apoplectic fit. About noon, another messenger brought advice that the Prince was in great danger of his life, whereupon the Tsar sent for the principal men of his court, and caused them to stay with him until he was informed by a third messenger that the
Prince, being past hopes, could
not outlive the evening, and that he longed to see his father.

Then the Tsar, attended by the aforesaid company, went to see his dying son, who, at the sight of his father, burst into tears, and with his hands folded spoke to him to this effect: That he had grievously and heinously offended the Majesty of God Almighty and of the Tsar, that he hoped he would die of this sickness, and that even if he lived, he was unworthy of life, therefo
re he begged his father only
to take from him the curse he laid upon him at Moscow; to forgive him all his heavy crimes, to give him his paternal blessing, and to cause prayers to be said for his soul.

During these moving words, the Tsar and the whole company almost melted away in tears; His Majesty returned a pathetic answer, and represented to him in a few words all the offenses he had committed against him, and then gave him his forgiveness and blessings, after which they parted with an abundance of tears and lamentations on both sides.

At five in the evening came a fourth messenger, a major of the Guards, to tell the Tsar that
the Tsarevich was extremely desirous once more to see his father. The Tsar at first was unwilling to comply with his son's request, but was at last persuaded by the company, who represented to His Majesty how hard it would be to deny that comfort to a son who, being on the point of death, might probably be tortured by stings of guilty conscience. But when His Majesty had just stepped into his sloop to go over to the Fortress, a fifth messenger brought the news that the Prince had already expired.

How, in fact, did Alexis die? No one knew, and no one knows today. The death of the Tsarevich provoked rumor and controversy first in St. Petersburg, then across Russia and Europe. Peter, concerned about the unfavorable impression which this mysterious demise would create abroad, ordered a lengthy official explanation sent to all the courts of Europe. Especially worried about the court of France, which he had so recently visited, he sent a courier to Paris with a letter addressed to his ambassador, Baron de Schleinitz, for delivery to the King and the Regent. After giving a history of the affair and the trial, he concluded:

The secular court, according to all the laws divine and human, were obliged to condemn him [Alexis] to death, with the restriction that it depended on our sovereign power and our paternal clemency whether to pardon him his crimes or to execute the sentence. And of this we notified the Prince, our son.

Nevertheless, we were still undecided, and did not know how to determine an affair of such great importance. On one side paternal tenderness inclined us mostly to pardon him his crimes, on the other we considered the evils into which we would replunge our state and the misfortunes which could arrive if we gave grace to our son.

In the midst of uncertain and distressing agitation, it pleased Almighty God, whose Holy Judgments are always just, to deliver by His divine grace our person and all our empire from all fear and danger and to end the days of our son Alexis who died yesterday. As soon as he had convinced himself of the great crimes he had committed against us and all our empire, and had received the
sentence of death, he was struck with a kind of apoplexy. When he recovered from this attack, having still his spirit and free word, he begged us to come to see him, which we did, accompanied by our ministers and senators, in spite of all the wrong he had done us. We found him with his eyes bathed in tears and marking a sincere repentance: He told us that he knew that the hand of God was on him and that he was at the point of accounting for all the actions of his life, and that he did not believe he would be able to be reconciled with God if he was not reconciled with his Sovereign Lord and father. After that he entered into new details of all that had passed, feeling himself guilty, confessed, received the Holy Sacraments, demanded our benediction and begged us to pardon all his crimes. We pardoned him as our paternal duty and the Christian religion obliged us to do.

This unexpected, sudden death has caused us a great sadness. However, we have found solace in believing that Divine Providence has wished to deliver us from all anxiety and to calm our empire. Thus we have found ourselves obliged to render thanks to God and to comport ourselves with all Christian humility in this sad circumstance.

We have judged it wise to give you knowledge of everything that has happened by express courier so that you will be sufficiently informed of it and that you will communicate it in the accustomed manner to His Most Christian Majesty [King Louis XV] and to his Royal Highness the Duke of Orleans, Regent of the Kingdom.

In case also that anyone wished to publish this event in an odious manner, you will have in hand what is necessary to destroy and solidly refute any unjust and unfounded tales.

Weber and De la Vie accepted the offical explanation and reported to their capitals that the Tsarevich had died from a stroke of apoplexy. But other foreigners were dubious, and a number of lurid accounts began to circulate. Pleyer first reported that Alexis had died of apoplexy, but three days later he informed his government that the Tsarevich had been beheaded with a sword or an axe (one account, many years later, depicted Peter himself beheading his son); a woman from Narva was said to have been brought into the fortress to sew the head back onto the body so that it could lie in state. The Dutch resident, De Bie, reported that Alexis had been bled to death by the opening of his veins w
ith a lancet. Later, there were
rumors that Alexis had been smothered with pillows by four Guards officers, including Rumyantsov.

The daily log of the St. Petersburg garrison states that at about eight a.m. on June 26, the Tsar, Menshikov, and eight others gathered in the fortress to attend a new interrogation at which torture was administered—on whom is not specified. "By eleven a.m. they had all departed," the log continued. "The same day at six o'clock in the evening, the Tsarevich Alexis Petrovich, who was under guard in the Trubetskoy Bastion, died." Menshikov's diary says that on that morning he went to the fortress, where he met the Tsar, then went to the Tsarevich Alexis, who was very ill, and remained there for half an hour. "The day was clear and bright with a light wind. On that day the Tsarevich Alexis Petrovich passed from his world into eternal life."

The truth is that none of these suggested causes—beheading, bleeding, smothering or even apoplexy—is required to explain Alexis' death. The simplest explanation is the most likely: Forty strokes of the knout were sufficent to kill a robust, healthy man; Alexis was not robust, and the shock and wounds caused by forty lashes across his thin back could easily have killed him.

No matter exactly how Alexis died, Peter's contemporaries held the Tsar responsible. And although many were shocked, there was also a widespread belief that Alexis' death was the most satisfactory solution to Peter's problem. As Monsieur de la Vie reported to Versailles, "The death of the Prince leaves no reason to doubt that all seeds of rebellion and conspiracy are totally extinguished. A death never occurred more opportunely in the reestablishment of public tranquility and in dissipating our fear of the ominous events that threatened us." A few days later, the Frenchman added, "It is impossible to praise the conduct of the Tsar too highly."

Peter did not evade the charge against him. Although he said that it was God who ultimately had taken Alexis' life, he never denied that it was he who had brought his son to a trial which had led to a sentence of death. He had not signed his approval of the sentence, but he was fully in accord with the verdict of the judges. Nor did he bother afterward to make a false display of grief. The day after the Tsarevich's death was the anniversary of the Battle of Poltava, and nothing was postponed or muted because of the tragedy. Peter celebrated a Te Deum for the victory and attended a banquet and a ball in the evening. Two day later, on the 29th, a ninety-four-gun ship, the
Lesnaya,
built according to Peter's own design, was launched at the Admiralty. Peter was present with all his ministers, and afterward, says one account, "there was great merrymaking."

Nevertheless, the ceremonies surrounding the Tsarevich's body reflected Peter's conflicting emotions. Although Alexis had died a condemned criminal, the services of mourning were conducted according to his rank. It was almost as if, now that Alexis was no longer there to threaten his father, Peter wanted him treated as properly befitted a tsarevich. On the morning after Alexis' death, his body was carried from the cell in which he died to the house of the governor of the fortress, where it was laid in a coffin and covered with black velvet and a pall of rich gold tissue. Attended by Golovkin and other high officials of state, it was carried to the Church of the Holy Trinity, where it lay in state, with the face and right hand uncovered in normal Orthodox fashion so that all who wished could kiss the hand or forehead in farewell. On June 30, the funeral and burial took place. In keeping with Peter's instructions, none of the gentlemen present wore mourning clothes, although some ladies were dressed in black. Foreign ambassadors were not invited to this strange royal funeral and were advised not to wear mourning, as the sovereign's son had died a criminal. Nevertheless, the preacher chose for his text the words of David, "O Absalom, my son, my son!" and some of those attending declared that Peter wept. Afterward, the coffin was borne from Trinity Church back to the fortess, with Peter and Catherine and all the high officers of state (most of whom had voted to condemn Alexis) following in procession carrying lighted candles. In the fortress cathedral, the coffin was placed in a new vault of the Tsar's family, resting beside the coffin of the Tsarevich's wife, Charlotte.