Peter the Great (18 page)

Peter's public rebuff of Sophia's lover shocked, angered and worried the Regent. It was the first direct challenge to her position, the first clear signal that the young Naryshkin Tsar would not automatically do whatever he was told to do. The truth that Peter was no longer a boy, that he was growing up and would one day be of age and that then the regency would become superfluous, was evident to everyone. Sophia scoffed at Peter's adolescent war games and boat building, but foreign observers, whose governments wanted an objective forecast of Russia's future, watched carefully what happened at Preobrazhenskoe. Baron Van Keller, the Dutch ambassador, had written The Hague praising Peter's demeanor, intellectual capacity and enormous popularity: "Taller than his courtiers, the young Peter attracts everyone's attention. They praise his intelligence, the breadth of his ideas, his physical development. It is said that he will soon be admitted to sovereign power, and affairs cannot then but take a very different turn."

Soph
ia did nothing to restrain or suppress her half-brother. Busy with state affairs, finding the boy and his mother no threat to her government, she simply left them alone. When Peter was twelve, she presented him with a collection of stars, buttons and diamond clasps. As he grew older, she put no restrictions on his demands for real muskets and cannon to be sent from the armory for use in his violently realistic war games. The flow of weapons was constant, but Sophia ignored it. In January 1689, he was allowed to sit for the first time at a meeting of the Council of Boyars. He found the discussion boring and did not often return. Beneath the surface, however, Sophia felt a growing sense of insecurity and anxiety. After seven years of wielding power, she had not only grown accustomed to it, she could not imagine giving it up. Yet she was well aware that she was a woman, and that the role of regent was a temporary one. Unless, somehow, her own position was formally changed, she would have to step aside when her brothers came of age. Now, that moment was close at hand. Ivan was married, with daughters, but he, of course, was not the problem. He was not only content but anxious that someone should lift from him the burden of rule. But Peter was entering manhood, as his marriage to Eudoxia Lupokhina had given strong evidence. It was a painful situation for Sophia; unless something was done, a crisis resulting in her own repudiation was inevitable.

In fact, Sophia had already taken some steps to improve her position, and had tried and been rebuffed in an attempt to take others. Three years before, in 1686, on the conclusion of the treaty of peace with Poland, Sophia had taken advantage of the general approval of her policies to begin to use the title of autocrat, normally reserved for tsars. Thereafter, this title was applied to her name in all official documents and at all public ceremonies, placing her on an equal status with her brothers, Ivan and Peter. Everyone knew, however, that Sophia was not equal because, unlike her brothers, she had not been crowned. Sophia hoped that this, too, would be possible. In the summer of 1687, she instructed Shaklovity to determine whether, in the event Golitsyn won a great victory over the Crimean Khan, she would have the support of the Streltsy if she had herself crowned. Shaklovity did as he was told; he urged the Streltsy to petition the two Tsars to allow the coronation of their sister. But the Streltsy, conservative in outlook, were opposed, and the project was temporarily laid aside. Nevertheless, the idea was kept alive by the appearance of an astonishing portrait of Sophia. Drawn by a Polish artist, it depicted the Regent seated alone, wearing the crown of Monomakh on her head and holding the orb and scepter in her hands, exactly as crowned male autocrats were usually painted. Her title was given as Grand Duchess and Autocrat. Beneath the picture was a twenty-four-line verse, composed by the monk Sylvester Medvedev, lauding the regal qualities of the lady portrayed and comparing her favorable to Semiramis of Assyria, the Empress Pulcheria of Byzantium and Queen Elizabeth I of England. Copies of the picture, printed on satin, silk and paper, circulated in Moscow, while others went to Holland with the request that the verses be translated into Latin and German and distributed throughout Europe.

To the boyars gathered around Peter and his mother, Sophia's assumption of the title was intolerable and her distribution of her portrait clothed in the Russian state regalia was menacing. They surmised that she meant to have herself crowned, marry her favorite, Vasily Golitsyn, and then either dethrone the two Tsars or dispose of Peter by whatever means were necessary. Whether in fact this was in Sophia's mind, no one can say. She had already achieved so much that perhaps she did indeed dream of formal, unchallenged rule with her loved ones sitting at her side. There is no evidence, however, that she was prepared to depose Peter, and Golitsyn, for his part, was extremely circumspect on the matter of marriage: There was still a Princess Golitsyn.

The one member of Sophia's party who was not shy about his hopes or intentions was Fedor Shaklovity. Repeatedly, he pressed upon her the necessity of crushing the Naryshkin party before Peter came of age. More than once, he urged groups of Streltsy to kill the leaders of Peter's party and perhaps even the Tsaritsa Natalya. He failed; Sophia was unwilling to take such drastic steps, and Golitsyn shrank from any violence. Yet, Shaklovity's devotion stirred Sophia. During the long weeks when Golitsyn was far away on his second fruitless campaign against the Crimea, even as she was writing her passionate letters to her "Little Father," Sophia may temporarily have taken Shaklovity as her lover.

Inevitably, time would have changed the relations between Peter and Sophia, but their confrontation was precipitated by the disastrous outcome of the second Crimean campaign. As long as Sophia's government was successful, it was difficult to challenge her, but Golitsyn's two campaigns revealed more than military failures: By calling attention to the relationship between the Regent and the army commander, they gave Sophia's enemies something specific to attack.

Peter himself had taken no part in either the peace treaty with Poland or the military campaigns against the Tatars, but he was keenly interested in military affairs and was as anxious as any other Russian to put an end to the Tatar raids into the Ukraine. Accordingly, he had followed with excitement the course of Golitsyn's military campaigns. When, in June 1689, Golitsyn returned from his second disastrous campaign, Peter was angry and contemptuous. On July 18, an incident brought this growing antagonism to public attention. At the festival celebrating the miraculous appearance of the icon of Our Lady of Kazan, Sophia appeared with her two brothers in the Assumption Cathedral, just as she had done in preceding years. When the service was over, Peter, after a whispered remark from one of his companions, walked over to Sophia and asked her to step out of the procession. This was an open challenge: to prevent the Regent from walking with the Tsars was to strip away her authority. Sophia understood the implication and refused to obey. Instead, she personally took the icon from the Metropolitan and, carrying it, defiantly continued to walk in the procession. Incensed and frustrated, Peter immediately left the procession and returned to fume and sulk in the country.

The tension between the two parties was mounting; rumors filled the air, each side feared a sudden move by the other and each was convinced that its own best strategy was to remain on the defensive. Neither party wished to forfeit the moral advantage by striking the first blow. Outwardly, Peter had no good reason to attack his half-sister and half-brother in the Kremlin. They were ruling according to the agreement of the 1682 coronation of the two Tsars; they had not in any way repudiated that agreement or infringed his prerogative. Similarly, Sophia could find no public excuse to attack Peter at Preobrazhenskoe; he was an anointed tsar. Although the Streltsy, on Shaklovity's urging, might support her against an attack by the Naryshkins and Peter's play troops, persuading them to march on Preobrazhenskoe to attack the Lord's anointed would be far more difficult.

These same considerations made both sides unsure of their actual strength. In numbers, Sophia held a great advantage; she had most of the Streltsy behind her, along with the foreign officers in the German Suburb. Peter's numerical strength was small: He had only his family, his companions, his play troops, who numbered about 600, and the probable support of the Sukharev Regiment of the Streltsy. Yet, though her physical strength was greater, it was based on weakness; Sophia could never be sure how deeply the loyalty of the Streltsy ran, and she had an exaggerated fear of even the small number of armed men gathered around Peter. That summer, wherever the Regent went, she was always surrounded by a strong guard of her own Streltsy. She lavished on them gifts of money and plied them with pleas and exhortations: "Do not abandon us. May we depend on you? If we are unnecessary, my brother and I will take refuge in a monastery."

As Sophia struggled to maintain her influence, Vasily Golitsyn, the returning "hero" of Perekop, remained silent, unwilling to become involved in any attack or open opposition to Peter and the boyars around him. Sophia's other admirer and lieutenant, Shaklovity, was more determined. Frequently, he went among the Streltsy and openly denounced the members of Peter's party; he did not mention Peter's name, but talked of elimin
ating his leading supporters an
d sending the Tsaritsa Natalya to a convent. , July ended and August began, the tension in Moscow rising with the heat. On July 31, Gordon noted in his diary: "The heat and bitterness are even greater and greater and it appears that they must break out soon." A few days later, he referred to "rumors unsafe to be uttered." Both sides waited nervously through the midsummer days and nights. The situation was layered with powdery, dry tinder. Any rumor could become the spark.

8

SOPHIA OVERTHROWN

The
crisis exploded on August 17, 1689. Earlier that summer, while Golitsyn was still in the south, Sophia had developed the habit of making pilgrimages on foot to churches and monasteries in the vicinity of Moscow. On the afternoon of the 17th, she asked Shaklovity to provide an escort of Streltsy to accompany her the following morning to the Donskoy Monastery about two miles from the Kremlin. Because a murder had recently occurred near the monastery, the company of Streltsy which Shaklovity ordered into the Kremlin was larger and better armed than usual. The march through the streets of this column of heavily armed musketeers [did not go unnoticed. Then, as the detachment was making its bivouac inside the Kremlin, an anonymous letter began to circulate in the palace warning that on that very night Peter's Preobrazhehskoe play soldiers would attack the Kremlin and attempt to kill Tsar Ivan and the Regent Sophia. No one took time to investigate the authenticity of the letter; it may even have been contrived by Shaklovity. Understandably, Sophia became extremely upset. To calm her, Shaklovity ordered the great Kremlin gates closed and summoned more Streltsy to garrison the citadel. Scouts were posted along the road to Preobrazhenskoe to report any sign of soldiers moving from Peter's camp in the direction of Moscow. Inside the Kremlin, a long rope was attached to the alarm bell of the cathedral so that it could be pulled from within the palace; a man running out to pull it might be cut down by pre-assigned assassins.

The people of Moscow watched the mobilization of the Streltsy with alarm and dread. They remembered the bloodbath seven years before, and now a new upheaval seemed very near. Even the Streltsy were uneasy. They assumed that they would be ordered to march on the Naryshkin court at Preobrazhenskoe, and, for many, the prospect was troubling. Peter, after all, was an anointed tsar whom they were sworn to defend, just as they were sworn to defend Tsar Ivan and the Regent Sophia. It was an unhappy business of mixed and hesitating loyalties. And, most important, no one wanted to be on the losing side.

Meanwhile, at Preobrazhenskoe, news of the tumult in Moscow caused excitement but no special precautions. During the evening, one of Peter's chamberlains rode into the city carrying a routine dispatch from the Tsar to the Kremlin. His arrival, however, was misinterpreted by some
of the nervous and overexcited
Streltsy. Knowing that he was from Peter, they pulled the chamberlain from his horse, beat him and dragged him into the palace to see Shaklovity.

This bit of violence had immediate and unexpected repercussions. During the preceding weeks, the older and more experienced of Peter's adherents, his uncle Lev Naryshkin and Prince Boris Golitsyn, a cousin of Sophia's favorite, Vasily Golitsyn, aware that a confrontation with Sophia and Shaklovity was coming, had been working quietly to gain informers among the Streltsy. Seven men had been won over, the chief of whom was Lieutenant Colonel Larion Elizarov, and their standing orders were to report any decisive move made by Shaklovity. Alerted by the mobilization of the Streltsy, Elizarov was watching closely for a sign that the soldiers would be ordered to march on the Naryshkin camp at Preobrazhenskoe. On learning that Peter's messenger had been dragged from his horse, beaten and taken to Shaklovity, he assumed that the attack on Peter was beginning. Two horses had been saddled, and two of Elizarov's fellow conspirators were ordered to ride urgently to warn the Tsar.

At Preobrazhenskoe, all was quiet when, a little after midnight, the two messengers galloped into the courtyard. Peter was asleep, but an attendant burst into his room and shouted that he must run for his life, the Streltsy were on the march, coming for him. Peter leaped from his bed and, still in his nightgown and with bare feet, ran to the stables, mounted a horse and galloped to a temporary hiding place in a nearby grove of trees where he waited while his companions brought his clothes. Then he dressed quickly, remounted and, accompanied by a small band, set off on the road to the Troitsky Monastery, forty-five miles northeast of Moscow. The trip took the rest of the night. When Peter arrived at six in the morning, he was so tired that he had to be lifted from his horse.