Historical Tales Volume Viii Part 11

Two days after the funeral of the czar Theodore the insurrection began, the Strelitz marching in an armed body to the Kremlin, where they accused nine of their colonels of defrauding them of their pay. The frightened ministers hastened to dismiss these officers, but this did not satisfy the savage soldiery, who insisted on their being delivered into their hands. This done, the unfortunate officers were sentenced to be scourged, some of them by that fearful Russian whip called the knout.

Their success in this outbreak led the Strelitz to greater outrages. The tiger in their savage natures was let loose, and only blood could appease its rage. Marching to the Kremlin, they declared that the late czar had been poisoned by his doctor, and demanded the death of all those in the plot. Breaking into the palace, they seized two of the suspected princes and flung them from the windows, to be received upon the pikes of the soldiers in the street below. The next victim was one of the Narishkins, the uncles of Peter the Great. He was ma.s.sacred in the same brutal manner and his bleeding body dragged through the streets. Three of the proscribed n.o.bles had fled for sanctuary to a church, but were torn from the altar, stripped of their clothing, and cut to pieces with knives.

The next victim was a friend and favorite of the Strelitz, who was killed under the belief that he was one of the Narishkins. Discovering their error, the a.s.sa.s.sins carried the mangled body of the young n.o.bleman to the house of his father for interment. The old man, timid by nature, did not dare to complain of the savage act, and even rewarded them for bringing him the body of his son. For this weakness he was bitterly reproached by his wife and daughters and the weeping wife of the victim.

"What could I do?" pleaded the helpless father; "let us wait for an opportunity to be revenged."

A revengeful servant overheard these words and repeated them to the soldiers. In a sudden fury the savages returned, dragged the old man from the room by the hair of his head, and cut his throat at his own door.

Meanwhile some of the Strelitz, seeking the Dutch physician Vongad, who had attended the dying czar and was accused of poisoning him, met his son and asked where his father was. "I do not know," replied the trembling youth. His ignorance was instantly punished with death.

In a few minutes a German physician fell in their way. "You are a doctor," they cried. "If you have not poisoned our master Theodore, you have poisoned others. You deserve death." And in a moment the unlucky doctor fell a victim to their blind rage.

The Dutch physician was at length discovered and dragged to the palace.

Here the princesses begged hard for his life, declaring that he was a skilful doctor and a good man and had worked hard to save their brother's life. They answered that he deserved to die as a sorcerer as well as a physician, for they had found the skeleton of a toad and the skin of a snake in his cabinet.

The next victim demanded was Ivan Narishkin, who they were sure was somewhere concealed in the palace. Not finding him, they threatened to burn down the building unless he were delivered into their hands. At this terrifying threat the young man was taken from his place of concealment and brought to them by the patriarch, who held in his hands an image of the Virgin Mary which was said to have performed miracles.

The princesses surrounded the victim, and, kneeling to the soldiers, prayed with tears for his life.

All their supplications and the demands of the venerable patriarch were without effect on the savage soldiery, who dragged their captives to the bottom of the stairway, went through the forms of a mock trial, and condemned them to the torture. They were sentenced to be cut to pieces, a form of punishment to which parricides are condemned in China and Tartary. This tragedy went on until all the proscribed on whom they could lay their hands had perished and Sophia felt secure in her power.

In the end, Ivan and Peter were declared joint sovereigns (1682), and their sister Sophia was made regent. The acts of the Strelitz were approved and they rewarded, the estates of their victims were confiscated in their favor, and a monument was erected on which the names of the victims were inscribed as traitors to their country.

The Strelitz had learned their power, and took frequent occasion to exercise it. Twice again they broke out in revolt during the regency of Sophia. After the accession of Peter their hostility continued. He had sent them to fight on the frontiers. He had supplanted them with regiments drilled in the European manner. He had organized a corps of twelve thousand foreigners and heretics. He had ordered the construction of a fleet of a hundred vessels, which would add to the weight of taxes and bring more foreigners into the country. And he proposed to leave Russia, to journey in the lands of the heretics, and to bring back to their sacred land the customs of profane Europe.

All this was too much for the leaders of the Strelitz, who represented old Russia, as Peter represented new. They resolved to sacrifice the czar to their rage. Tradition tells the following story, which, though probably not true, is at least interesting. Two leaders of the Strelitz laid a plot to start a fire at night, feeling sure that Peter, with his usual activity, would hasten to the scene. In the confusion attending the fire they meant to murder him, and then to ma.s.sacre all the foreigners whom he had introduced into Moscow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DINING-ROOM IN THE PALACE OF PETER THE GREAT. MOSCOW.]

The time fixed for the consummation of this plot was at hand. A banquet was held, at which the princ.i.p.al conspirators a.s.sembled, and where they sought in deep potations the courage necessary for their murderous work.

Unfortunately for them, liquor does not act on all alike. While usually giving boldness, it sometimes produces timidity. Two of the villains lost their courage through their potations, left the room on some pretext, promising to return in time, and hastened to the czar with the story of the plot.

Peter knew not the meaning of the words timidity and procrastination.

His plans were instantly laid. The time fixed for the conflagration was midnight. He gave orders that the hall in which the conspirators were a.s.sembled should be surrounded exactly at eleven. Soon after, thinking that the hour had come, he sought the place alone and boldly entered the room, fully expecting to find the conspirators in the hands of his guards.

To his consternation, not a guard was present, and he found himself alone and unarmed in the midst of a furious band who were just swearing to compa.s.s his destruction.

The situation was a critical one. The conspirators, dismayed at this unlooked-for visit, rose in confusion. Peter was furious at his guards for having exposed him to this peril, but instantly perceived that there was only one course for him to pursue. He advanced among the throng of traitors with a countenance that showed no trace of his emotions, and pleasantly remarked,--

"I saw the light in your house while pa.s.sing, and, thinking that you must be having a gay time together, I have come in to share your pleasure and drain a cup with you."

Then, seating himself at the table, he filled a cup and drank to his would-be a.s.sa.s.sins, who, on their feet about him, could not avoid responding to the toast and drinking his health.

But this state of affairs did not long continue. The courage of the conspirators returned, and they began to exchange looks and signs. The opportunity had fallen into their hands; now was the time to avail themselves of it. One of them leaned over to Sukanim, one of their leaders, and said, in a low tone,--

"Brother, it is time."

"Not yet," said Sukanim, hesitating at the critical moment.

At that instant Peter heard the footsteps of his guards outside, and, starting to his feet, knocked the leader of the a.s.sa.s.sins down by a violent blow in his face, exclaiming,--

"If it is not yet time for you, scoundrel, it is for me."

At the same moment the guards entered the room, and the conspirators, panic-stricken by the sight, fell on their knees and begged for pardon.

"Chain them!" said the czar, in a terrible voice.

Turning then to the commander of the guards, he struck him and accused him of having disobeyed orders. But the officer proving to him that the hour fixed had just arrived, the czar, in sudden remorse at his haste, clasped him in his arms, kissed him on the forehead, proclaimed his fidelity, and gave the traitors into his charge.

And now Peter showed the savage which lay within him under the thin veneer of civilization. The conspirators were put to death with the cruellest of tortures, and, to complete the act of barbarity, their heads were exposed on the summit of a column with their limbs arranged around them as ornaments.

Satisfied that this fearful example would keep Russia tranquil during his absence, Peter set out on his journey, visiting most of the countries of Western Europe. He had reached Vienna, and was on the point of setting out for Venice, when word was brought him from Russia that the Strelitz had broken out in open insurrection and were marching from their posts on the frontier upon Moscow.

The czar at once left Vienna and journeyed with all possible speed to Russia, reaching Moscow in September, 1698. His appearance took all by surprise, for none knew that he had yet left Austria.

He came too late to suppress the insurrection. That had been already done by General Gordon, who, marching in all haste, had met the rebels about thirty miles from Moscow and called on them to surrender. As they refused and attacked the troops, he opened on them with cannon, put them to flight, and of the survivors took captive about two thousand. These were decimated on the spot, and the remainder imprisoned.

This was punishment enough for a soldier, but not enough for an autocrat, whose mind was haunted by dark suspicions, and who looked upon the outbreak as a plot to dethrone him and to call his sister Sophia to the throne. In his treatment of the prisoners the spirit of the monster Ivan IV. seems to have entered into his soul, and the cruelty shown, while common enough in old-time Russia, is revolting to the modern mind.

The trial was dragged out through six weeks, with daily torture of some of the accused, under the eyes of the czar himself, who sought to force from them a confession that Sophia had been concerned in the outbreak.

The wives of the prisoners, all the women servants of the princesses, even poor beggars who lived on their charity, were examined under torture. The princesses themselves, Peter's sisters, were questioned by the czar, though he did not go so far as to torture them. Yet with all this nothing was discovered. There was not a word to connect Sophia with the revolt.

The trial over, the executions began. Of the prisoners, some were hanged, some beheaded, others broken on the wheel. It is said that those beheaded were made to kneel in rows of fifty before trunks of trees laid on the ground, and that Peter compelled his courtiers and n.o.bles to act as executioners, Mentchikof specially distinguishing himself in this work of slaughter. It is even a.s.serted that the czar wielded the axe himself, though of this there is some doubt. The opinion grew among the people that neither Peter nor Prince Ramodanofsky, his cruel viceroy, could sleep until they had tasted blood, and a letter from the prince contains the following lurid sentence: "_I am always washing myself in blood._"

The headless bodies of the dead were left where they had fallen. The long Russian winter was just beginning, and for five months they lay unburied, a frightful spectacle for the eyes of the citizens of Moscow.

Of those hanged, nearly two hundred were left depending from a large square gallows in front of the cell of Sophia at the convent in which she was confined, and with a horrible refinement of cruelty three of these bodies were so placed as to hang all winter under her very window, one of them holding in his hand a folded paper to represent a pet.i.tion for her aid.

The six regiments of Strelitz still on the frontier showed signs of a similar outbreak, but the news of the executions taught them that it was safest to keep quiet. But many of them were brought in chains to Moscow and punished for their intentions. Various stories are told of Peter's cruelty in connection with these executions. One is that he beheaded eighty with his own hand, Plestchef, one of his boyars, holding them by the hair. Another story, told by M. Printz, the Prussian amba.s.sador, says that at an entertainment given him by the czar, Peter, when drunk, had twenty rebels brought in from the prisons, whom he beheaded in quick succession, drinking a b.u.mper after each blow, the whole concluding within the hour. He even asked the amba.s.sador to try his skill in the same way. It may be said here, however, that these stories rest upon very poor evidence, and that anecdote-makers have painted Peter in blacker colors than he deserves.

In the end the corps of the Strelitz was abolished, their houses and lands in Moscow were taken from the survivors, and all were exiled into the country, where they became simple villagers.

_THE CRUSADE AGAINST BEARDS AND CLOAKS._

The return of Peter the Great from his European journey was marked by other events than his cruel revenge upon the rebellious Strelitz. That had affected only a few thousand people; the reforms he sought to introduce affected the nation at large. The Russians were then more Oriental than European in style, wearing the long caftan or robe of Persia and Turkey, which descended to their heels, while their beards were like those of the patriarchs, the man deeming himself most in honor who had the longest and fullest crop of hair upon his face.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PETER THE GREAT.]

To Peter, fresh from the West, and strongly imbued with European views, all this was ridiculous, if not abominable. He determined to reform it all, and at once set to work in his impetuous way, which could not brook a day's delay, to deprive the Russians of their beards and the tails of their coats. He had scarcely arrived before the boyars and leading citizens of Moscow, who flocked to congratulate him on his return, were taken aback by the edict that whiskers were condemned, and that the razor must be set at work without delay upon their honorable chins.

This edict was like a thunder-clap from a clear sky. The Russians admired and revered their beards. They were time-honored and sacred in their eyes. To lose them was like losing their family trees and patents of n.o.bility. But Peter was without reverence for the past, and his word was law. He had ordered a mowing and reaping of hair, and the harvest must be made, or worse might come. General Shein, commander-in-chief of the army, was the first to yield to the imperative edict and submit his venerable beard to the indignity of the razor's edge. The old age seemed past and the new age come when Shein walked shamefacedly into court with a clean chin.

The example thus set was quickly followed. Beards were tabooed within the precincts of the court. All shared the same fate, none being left to laugh at the rest. The patriarch, it is true, was exempted, through awe for his high office in the Church, while reverence for advanced years reprieved Prince Tcherkasy, and Tikhon Streshnef was excused out of honor for his services as guardian of the czaritza. Every one else within the court had to submit to the razor's fatal edge or feel the czar's more fatal displeasure, and beards fell like "autumnal leaves that strow the brooks in Vallombrosa."

An observer speaks as follows concerning a feast given by General Shein: "A crowd of boyars, scribes, and military officers almost incredible was a.s.sembled there, and among them were several common sailors, with whom the czar repeatedly mixed, divided apples, and even honored one of them by calling him his brother. A salvo of twenty-five guns marked each toast. Nor could the irksome offices of the barber check the festivities of the day, though it was well known he was enacting the part of jester by appointment at the czar's court. It was of evil omen to make show of reluctance as the razor approached the chin, and hesitation was to be forthwith punished with a box on the ears. In this way, between mirth and the wine-cup, many were admonished by this insane ridicule to abandon the olden guise."