Peter The Great (1672 - 1725)
Tsar Alexis I (1629-1676),
son of Tsar Mikhail I and Eudoxia Streshneva
Natalya Naryshkina (1651-1694),
daughter of Kiril Naryshkin and Anna Leontyeva
Tsar Fedor III (1661-1682),
son of Tsar Alexis I and Maria Miloslavskaya
Within a year of Maria Miloslavskaya's death in 1669, Alexis I had found her successor. Depressed and lonely, he spent frequent evenings at the house of his intimate friend and chief minister, Artemon Matveyev, an unusual man for 17th century Russia. Artemon was interested in scholarly subjects and was fascinated by the Western culture. At the regular receptions which he held in his house for the foreigners living in or visiting Moscow, he questioned them intelligently on the state of politics, art and technology in their countries. Indeed, it was in the German Quarter, the settlement outside the city where all foreigners were required to live, that he found his own wife, Mary Hamilton. In Moscow, Matveyev and his wife lived as much as possible like modern 17th century Europeans. He dabbled in chemistry experiments in his home laboratory; and concerts, comedies and tragedies were performed in his small private theatre. To traditional Russians, the behavior of Matveyev's wife was shocking. She wore Western dresses, refused to seclude herself on an upper floor of her husband's house like most Moscow wives and appeared among his guests, sitting down with them at dinner and sometimes even joining in the conversation. It was during one of these evenings in the presence of the unusual Mary Hamilton that the eye of the widower tsar fell on a second remarkable woman in Matveyev's household.
Natalya Naryshkina was then eighteen years old, a shapely young woman with black eyes and long eyelashes. Her father, Kiril Naryshkin, a relatively obscure landowner of Tatar origins, lived in Tarus province, far from Moscow. In order to lift his daughter above the life of the rural gentry, Naryshkin had persuaded his friend Matveyev to accept Natalya as his ward and raise her in the atmosphere of culture and freedom that characterized the chief minister's house in Moscow. Natalya had profited from this opportunity. To have his ward elevated to Tsaritsa would seal Matveyev's own success: her relatives and friends would rise along with her; they would replace the Miloslavskys as the ruling power at the court. But it also meant stimulating the antagonism of the Miloslavskys, as well as the jeolousy of many of the powerful boyar families who already were suspicious of his role as the tsar's favorite. With this in mind, Matveyev begged that even if determined on his choice, Alexis I would nevertheless submit to the traditional process of publicly picking his bride from a flock of the assembled candidates. The notice had been given that on 11 February 1670, the inspection of all eligible young women would take place and Natalya was commanded to be present. A second inspection, by Alexis I himself, was scheduled for 28 April 1670. But soon after the first assembly, the rumors spread that Natalya had been chosen. Four days before the second inspection, anonymous letters were found in the Kremlin, which were accusing Matveyev of using some magic herbs to make Alexis I desire his young ward. An investigation was necessary and the marriage was postponed for nine months. Nothing was proved and finally, on 1 February 1671, to the joy of most Russians and the chagrin of the Miloslavskys, Alexis I and Natalya Naryshkina were married.
From the day of their marriage, it was clear to everyone that the forty-one years old tsar was deeply in love with his beautiful, black-haired wife. He wanted her constantly by his side and took her with him wherever he went. The first spring and summer, the newlyweds moved happily from one to another of the tsar's summer palaces around Moscow. Alexis I's delight in his new wife increased even more when, in the fall of 1671, he learned that she was pregnant. Both father and mother prayed for a son and, on 30 May 1672, she delivered a large, apparently healthy boy. The child was named Peter after the apostle. Alexis I had five years of marriage with Natalya; a second child, named Natalya after her mother, was born and lived; a third child, again a daughter Fedora, was born and died. At the court, the effect of the marriage had been strongly felt. The austere, painfully religious qualities of the tsar's earlier years gave way to a new, more relaxed spirit, a greater readiness to accept Western ideas, entertainments and techniques.
Suddenly, when Peter was only three and a half years old, the serenity of his nursery life was shattered. In January 1676, Alexis I, at forty-seven, healthy and active, took part in the annual ceremony of the blessing of the waters of the Moscow River. Standing in the frozen winter air during the long ceremony, he caught a chill. A few days later, in the middle of the performance of a play, Alexis I left the Kremlin theatre and went to bed. At first, illness did not seem dangerous, nevertheless, it grew steadily worse and, on 8 February, Alexis I died.
The successor to the throne was fifteen years old Fedor, the eldest surviving son of Maria Miloslavskaya. Although Fedor had never been well, in 1674 Alexis I had formally declared him to be of age, recognized him as the heir and presented him as such to his subjects and the foreign ambassadors. Now the great pendulum of power had swung back again from the Naryshkins to the Miloslavskys. Although Fedor's legs were so swollen that he had to be carried to his own coronation, he was crowned without opposition. The Miloslavskys came flooding triumphantly back to office. At the head of this clan stood his uncle Ivan Miloslavsky, who had hastened back from his post as Governor of Astrachan to replace Matveyev as chief minister. That Matveyev himself, as effective leader of the Naryshkin party, would in turn be banished to some ceremonial post was expected; it would balance the sending of Miloslavsky to Astrachan. Natalya, therefore, was saddened but resigned when Matveyev was ordered to depart for Siberia to become Governor of Verkoture. But she was shocked and terrified when she learned that, en route to his new post, Matveyev had been overtaken by new orders from Ivan Miloslavsky - he was to be arrested, stripped of all his property and conducted as a state prisoner to Pustozersk, a remote town north to the Arctic Circle. Actually, Ivan Miloslavsky's fear of his powerful rival had driven him even further: he had tried to have Matveyev condemned to death, charging him with theft from the Treasury, the use of magic and even an attempt to poison Alexis I. He pressed the new tsar hard, but Fedor refused the death sentence.
Deprived of their powerful champion and with their other supporters pushed from office, Natalya and her two children faded from public view. At first, Natalya feared for her children's physical safety, but as time passed, she relaxed; the life of a royal prince was till considered sacred, and Fedor III never exhibited toward his newly poor relations anything but sympathy and kindness. They remained in the Kremlin, cloistered in their private apartments, where Peter began his education.
Nikita Zotov, a clerk who worked in the tax collection department, was selected as Peter's tutor. Zotov, an amiable, literate man who knew the Bible well but was not a scholar, was overwhelmed at being chosen for his role. Zotov's assignment had been only to teach Peter to read and write, but he found his pupil eager to go further. Peter constantly urged Zotov to tell him more stories of the Russian history, of battles and heroes. Zotov won Peter's deep affection and, for as long as the tutor lived, Peter kept him close.
Between classroom and play in the Kremlin and at Kolomenskoe, Peter's life passed uneventfully during the six years (1676-1682) of Fedor III's reign. The tsar seemed very much his father's son - mild-mannered, indulgent and relatively intelligent, having been educated by the leading scholars of the day. Unfortunately, his scurvy-like disease frequently forced him to rule Russia lying on his back. The most notable reform of Fedor III was the abolition in 1682, at the suggestion of Vasily Golitsyn, of the system of mestnichestvo or 'place priority', which had paralyzed the whole civil and military administration of Moscow for generations. Henceforth all appointments to the civil and military services were to be determined by merit and the will of the sovereign, while pedigree (nobility) books were to be destroyed.
Although Fedor III had married twice in his brief life, he died without an heir. His first wife, Agaphia Grushetskaya, died in childbirth, followed a few days later by her newborn son in 1681. The death of this infant and the tsar's declining health increased the uneasiness of the Miloslavskys, who urged Fedor to marry again. He agreed, despite the warnings of doctors, because he had fallen in love with a beautiful, fourteen years old girl. Marfa Apraksina was not the choice of the Miloslavskys; she was a goddaughter of Matveyev and she asked, as a condition of her marriage, that the imprisoned statesman be pardoned and his property restored. Fedor III agreed, but before Matveyev could arrive in Moscow to congratulate the bride in person, the tsar, two months after his wedding, was dead.
Fedor III's death in May 1682 triggered the uprising. The Naryshkin brothers of Natalia Naryshkina availed themselves of the interregnum and persuaded Patriarch to proclaim her ten years old son Peter as the new tsar of Russia. In their turn, the Miloslavsky party spread rumours that the Naryshkins had strangled Maria's son, Ivan, in the Kremlin. They exploited the discontent of the Moscow regiments against their commanding officers and on 11 May 1682 the streltsy took over the Kremlin and lynched the leading boyars whom they suspected of corruption, including Artemon Matveyev, Afanasy Naryshkin and Ivan Naryshin. This uprising led to the proclamation of Peter's half-brother Ivan as the 'first' tsar and the relegation of Peter to second position, with Ivan's sister, Sophia Alexeyevna acting as a regent for them both.
Sophia had the intelligence, the ambition and the decisivness which her feeble brothers so overwhelmingly lacked. As a child, she persuaded her father to break the tradition and permit her to share the lessons of her brother Fedor, who was four years younger. Her tutor was the eminent scholar Semen Polotsky, a monk of the Polish ancestry from the famous academy in Kiev. She attended sessions of the boyar council; her uncle Ivan Miloslavsky and the chief minister, Vasily Golitsyn, included her in their conversations and decisions, so that her political views matured and she learned to judge the character of men. During the last week of Fedor's life, Sophia stayed at his bedside, acting as comforter, confidante and messenger, and became deeply involved in the affairs of state. Fedor's death and the sudden elevation to the throne of her half-brother Peter, rather than her full brother Ivan, were terrible blows to Sophia. She genuinely mourned Fedor, who had been her classmate and friend as well as her brother; further, the promise of Naryshkin restoration at the court meant the end of any special status for her, a Miloslavsky princess.
Ivan Miloslavsky, Ivan Khovansky and Vasily Golitsyn all had motives for inciting the streltsy, but, should such a revolt succeed, none of them could step forward and rule the Russian state. Only one person was a member of the royal family, had been the confidante of Fedor III and could act as the regent if Ivan mounted the throne. Only one person had the intelligence and courage to attempt to overthrow an elected tsar. No one actually knows the exact extent of Sophia's involvement in the plot and the terrible events that followed; some say it was done on her behalf but without her knowledge. But the evidence is strong that the chief conspirator was Sophia herself.
On 23 May, prompted by Sophia's agents, the streltsy demanded a change in the occupancy of the Russian throne. It was not proposed that Peter be dethroned; he had been elected and then proclaimed by Patriarch. Instead, the streltsy demanded that Peter and Ivan rule as co-tsars. If the position was not granted, they threatened to attack the Kremlin again. On 29 May another delegation of the streltsy appeared with a last demand: that because of the youth and inexperience of the both tsars, Sophia Alexeyevna become the regent. Patriarch and the boyars quickly consented. To confirm and entrench her triumph, Sophia moved rapidly to institutionalize the new structure of power. On 6 July 1682 the double coronation of the two tsars, Peter I and Ivan V, took place.
Relying on the streltsy, Ivan Khovansky wielded enormous political influence and often interfered in the government affairs. In June 1682 he was appointed to lead the Prikaz of Judges. His uncommon arrogance and vanity alienated Sophia and the Miloslavsky clan, while inducing jealousy on the part of other boyars. Eventually, the rumours about Ivan Khovansky's intention to usurp the throne prompted Sophia to evacuate Ivan and Peter to Kolomenskoe. In September 1682 a royal order declared Khovansky the mutineer and the patron of heretics, while the Boyar Duma had him sentenced to death. He was captured in Pushkino near Moscow and taken to Vozdvizhenskoe where he was beheaded together with his son.
Sophia installed her own lieutenants in the office: Ivan Miloslavsky remained a leading advisor until his death. Fedor Shaklovity, the commander of the streltsy, who won the respect of the restless soldiers and reinstalled firm discipline in the Moscow regiments, was a man from Ukraine region, of peasant stock and barely literate, but he was dedicated to Sophia and ready to see that her order was carried out. As the regency progressed, Fedor Shaklovity became even closer to Sophia, eventually rising to be secretary of the boyar council, whose members hated him fiercely because of his low origins. However, the chief figure of Sophia's regency - her advisor, her principal minister, her strong right arm, her comforter and eventually her lover - was Vasily Vasilyevich Golitsyn. He had a wife and grown children, but it did not matter. With Golitsyn, Sophia would share power and love, and together they would rule. Two years later, Sophia conferred on him the rare distinction of Keeper of the Great Seal; in effect, prime minister.
Naturally, Regent Sophia and the Miloslavskys worried about Ivan. His life might be short, and unless he produced an heir, they would be cut off from the succession. Thus, in spite of Ivan V's infirmities of eyes, tongue and mind, she decided that he must marry and attempt to father a child. Ivan bowed and took as his wife Praskovia Saltykova, the daughter of a distinguished family. In their initial effort, Ivan and Praskovia were partially successful: they conceived a daughter; perhaps next time it would be a son.
The political exile of the Naryshkins had been Peter's personal good fortune. The expulsion of his party from power had freed him from all but occasional ceremonial duties. He was at liberty to grow in the free, unrestricted, fresh air life of the country. To escape the Kremlin, Natalya began to spend more time at Alexis I's favorite hunting lodge at Preobrazhenskoe on the Yauza River. The house itself, a rambling wooden structure with red curtains at the windows, was small, but it stood in green fields patched with trees. Here, in the fields and woods of Preobrazhenskoe and on the bank of the Yauza, Peter could ignore the classroom and do nothing but play. His favorite game, as it had been from earliest childhood, was war.
As Peter grew older, his war games became more elaborate. In 1685, in order to practice the building, defense and assault of fortifications, the boy's soldiers worked for almost a year to construct a small fort of earth and timber on the bank of the Yauza. For a military game of this complexity, Peter needed a professional advise. The technical knowledge came from foreign officers in the German Quarter. These foreigners, originally summoned to act as the temporary instructors, stayed on to act as the permanent officers.
By the end of 1688, Peter was sixteen and no longer a boy. He agreed that the traditional collection of eligible young women be assembled at the Kremlin; he agreed that his mother should sort them out and choose the likeliest. Once this was done, Peter looked at the girl, made no complaint and ratified his mother's choice. Her name was Eudoxia Lopukhina; she was twenty and was said to be pretty, although no portrait of Eudoxia at this age has survived. She was devoutly Orthodox, completely uneducated, shuddered at all foreign things and believed that, to please her husband, she had to become his slave. Pink, hopeful and helpless, Eudoxia stood beside her tall, young bridegroom and became his wife on 27 January 1689.
Now that Peter was sixteen, a crisis was coming: members of the boyar party, gathered around him and his mother, were preparing to challenge the government of Regent Sophia. After seven years of unassailably competent rule, Sophia's administration was foundering. There had been two disastrous Crimean military campaigns. Now she, carried away by her passion for Vasily Golitsyn, the commander of the beaten armies, was trying to persuade Russian people to treat her lover as a conquering hero. The Naryshkins now demanded that Sophia step down and, in response, Fedor Shaklovity advised the regent to proclaim herself tsarina and attempted to induce the streltsy to a new uprising. However, most of them deserted Moscow for the suburb of Preobrazhenskoe. Feeling the power slipping from her hands, Sophia sent Patriarch to Peter, asking him to join her in the Kremlin. He refused her overtures, demanding Shaklovity's execution and Golitsyn's exile.
The struggle was over, the regency was concluded, Peter had won. Soon, Shaklovity and his streltsy accomplices were delivered to Peter and, after an official interrogation with the use of torture, Shaklovity was executed on 11 October 1689. Golitsyn's life was spared owing to the petitions of his cousin Boris Golitsyn, however, he was deprived of his boyar rank, all his property were confiscated and he was banished to Kargopol, Mezen and Kholmogory, where he died on 21 April 1714.
With Sophia's supporters annihilated, there still remained the central problem of what to do with Sophia herself. Peter's emissary arrived in the Kremlin to ask Ivan V to request Sophia to leave the Kremlin for the Novodevichy Convent on the city's outskirts. She was not required to take the veil as a nun and a suite of comfortable, well-furnished apartments was assigned to her; a large number of servants was to accompany her and she was to live a comfortable life, restricted in the fact that she could not leave the convent and could be visited only by her aunts and her sisters. Sophia understood that this kind of confinement, however luxurious, meant the end of everything in life that held meaning for her. Thus she resisted, refusing for more than a week to leave the Kremlin, however, the pressure became too great and she was escorted ceremonially to the convent, within the walls of which she would pass the remaining fifteen years of her life. Sophia may have plotted one last attempt at securing power, although her involvement is unclear. In 1698, the streltsy attempted to reinstate her in the Kremlin during Peter's absence from the country.
Marfa Apraksina (1664-1716),
daughter of Matvey Apraksin and
Domna Lovchikova
Sophia Alexeyevna (1657-1704),
daughter of Tsar Alexis I and
Maria Miloslavskaya;
Regent of Russia in 1682-1689
Vasily Vasilyevich Golitsyn (1643-1714),
Minister of Foreign Affairs and
Principal Minister of State in 1682-1689
Ivan V (1666-1696),
son of Alexis I and Maria Miloslavskaya,
Tsar of Russia in 1682-1696
Praskovia Saltykova (1664-1723),
daughter of Fedor Petrovich Saltykov and
Anna Tatishcheva
Now the government was administered by the group which had supported and guided Peter in the confrontation with Sophia. His mother, Natalya, now forty, was the nominal leader, but she was not as independent as Sophia and she was easily swayed by the men around her. Patriarch Joachim, unrelenting in his hostility to all foreigners, stood at her elbow, determined to expunge the Western viruses which had crept into Russia under Sophia and Vasily Golitsyn. Natalya's brother, Lev Naryshkin, received the vital office of Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was an amiable man of unexeptional intelligence whose joy was his new authority to give dazzling receptions and banquets, served on gold and silver plates, for the foreign ambassadors.
The boyar Tikhon Streshnev, an old friend of Alexis I and Peter's formal guardian, was entrusted with the conduct of all home affairs. The third of the governing trio in the council was Boris Golitsyn, who had successfully survived the lingering suspicion hanging over him for his effort to brake the fall of his cousin Vasily. For Russia, these changes in government was for the worse. The new administrators lacked the skill and the energy of their predecessors. Not a single important law was made in these five years. Nothing was done to defend Ukraine against the devastating raids of the Tatars. And there was brawling at the court and corruption in government.
Patrick Leopold Gordon (1635-1699),
a Scottish general and rear admiral ,
served in the Russian army
Franz Lefort (1655-1699),
a Russian military figure of Swiss origin, general admiral (1695) and close associate of Peter I
On 10 March 1690, Peter invited General Patrick Gordon to dine at the court in honor of the birth of his first son, Alexis. The general accepted, but Patriarch Joachim intervened, protesting vehemently at the inclusion of this foreigner at a celebration honoring the heir to the Russian throne. Furious, Peter deferred and the invitation was withdrawn, but the following day he invited Gordon to his country house, dined with him there and then rode back to Moscow with the general, conversing publicly throughout the ride. A week later, on 17 March, Patriarch Joachim died and left a testament urging Peter to avoid contact with all heretics, Protestant or Catholic, to drive them out of Russia and to eschew personally all foreign clothes and customs. Above all, he demanded that Peter appoint no foreigners to official positions in the state or army where they would be in a position to give orders to the Orthodox faithful. Peter's response, once Joachim was buried, was to order himself a new set of German clothes and, a week later, go to dine as Gordon's guest in the German Quarter. During the next five years after Sopia's fall, Gordon became not only Peter's hired general, but also a friend.
In 1690, Peter became friendly with another foreigner of a different kind, the gregarious Swiss soldier of fortune Franz Lefort. In considerable part, Lefort's success was due to his unselfishness. Although he loved luxury and its trappings, he was never grasping and took no steps to ensure that he would not be impoverished on the following day - a quality that endeared him even more to Peter, who saw to it that all Lefort's needs were amply cared for. His debts were paid, he was presented with a palace and funds to run it, and he was promoted rapidly to full general, admiral and ambassador.
For Peter, walking into Lefort's house was like stepping onto a different planet. Here were charm, hospitality, entertainment, relaxation and the exciting presence of women. Before long, Peter's eye fell on one of these young women. She was a flaxen-haired German girl named Anna Mons, the daughter of a wine merchant. Her reputation was blemished; she had already been conquered by Lefort. When Peter revealed his interest in her blond hair, bold laugh and flashing eyes, Lefort readily ceded his conquest to young Peter. The easy-mannered beauty was exactly what he needed: she could match him drink for drink and joke for joke, thus Anna Mons became his mistress.
On 4 February 1694, after the two days illness, Natalya Naryshkina died at forty two. Peter was at a banquet when he received a message that his mother was failing; he jumped up and hurried to her bedchambers. Natalya's death plunged Peter into grief and for several days, he could not speak without bursting into tears. The funeral was a magnificent state pageant, but Peter refused to attend. Only after her burial did he come to her grave to pray, alone. Nevertheless, gone with Natalya were the last bonds of restraint on Peter's actions. He had loved his mother and tried to please her, but increasingly he had been impatient. In last years, her constant effort to restrict his movements and curtail his desire for novelty and contact with foreigners had weighed on him.
In the winter of 1695 Peter announced that Russia would embark the following summer on a war against the Tatars and their overlords, the Ottoman Empire. Now, Peter dreamed of creating a fleet, but Russia's only seaport was frozen solid six months of the year and the nearest sea, the Baltic, was still firmly gripped by Sweden, the dominant military power in Northern Europe. Now, seeking the excitement of real combat, he looked for a fortress to besiege and Azov, isolated at the bottom of the Ukrainian steppe, suited admirably. Peter's compulsion to reach the sea and his desire to test his army both played a part in the Azov decision, but there were other reasons too - every summer the horsemen of the Tatar Khan rode north to raid Ukraine.
The first Azov campaign was a failure, which Peter blamed on multiple command, tactical errors and technical deficiencies. In particular, the Turks were able to replenish suppliers from the sea with no Russian ships to hinder them. Making no excuses, acknowledging failure, Peter threw himself into preparations for a second attempt. But, in the middle of Peter's effort, on 8 February 1696, Ivan V suddenly died. The difference between restless, energetic Peter and his silent, passive half-brother was so great that there remained great affection between them. During his travels, Peter had always written tender and respectful letters to his brother and co-monarch. Now that Ivan was gone, Peter took Ivan's young widow and her three daughters under his care. Praskovia, in gratitude, remained loyal to Peter for the rest of her life.
By the spring of 1696, the Russians had built a fleet of ships to block Turkish reinforcements for the garrison. On 27 May the Russian fleet under the command of Lefort reached the sea and blocked Azov. After massive bombardment from land and sea and seizure of the external rampart of the fortress by the Ukrainian on 17 July, the Azov garrison surrendered on 19 July. The Pasha, seeing his wall breached, had decided to accept the Russian offer of surrender under honorable conditions. The following day, with banners flying, the Turkish garrison marched out of Azov and through the Russian lines to board the Turkish ships which had been permitted to approach. Azov was now a Russian town and Peter ordered the immediate razing of all the siege works. The streets were cleared of ruins and rubble, the mosques were transformed into Christian churches. News of the Azov victory astonished Moscow. For the first time since the reign of Alexis I, a Russian army had won a victory.
In the spring 1697 Peter left Russia for the first time, bound for Western Europe. One of the stated aims of this so-called Great Embassy was to publicise Russia's success at Azov in the hope of obtaining further aid for the alliance against the Ottoman Empire. For Peter this also was to be a voyage of discovery in his quest for practical knowledge, ideas and inspiration. The tsar arrived in the Dutch Republic at the start of August 1697, where he worked incognito as a shipbuilder. He used the knowledge acquired during this period to modernise the Russian navy. In September, he met with William III of Orange, who governed both the Netherlands and England. On his invitation, Peter and part of the mission also went to England in January 1698, where he visited the Royal Observatory, the Royal Mint, the Royal Society and the University of Oxford.
In April 1698 Peter returned to the Dutch Republic before heading towards Vienna for his next major engagment. On 15 May, the Great Embassy left Amsterdam, their route lying through Leipzig, Dresden and Prague. In Dresden, capital of the electoral state of Saxony and a city so rich in architecture and art treasures, Peter was received especially warmly. Elector Augustus was now also Augustus II of Poland and, on Peter's arrival, he was away in his new kingdom, but he had left instructions that Peter, to whom in part he owed his new throne, be handsomely welcomed as a royal guest. Augustus II's representative gave a small private dinner that expanded into the kind of noisy, boisterous party the Russians loved. At Peter's request, the ladies were also invited, including Aurora von Konigsmark, the mistress of Augustus II and the mother of Maurice de Saxe.
Vienna was an inland city with no docks and Peter's next stop was to be Venice, where he hoped to learn the secrets of the Venetian war galleys. By 15 July, everything was arranged, the Great Embassy's passports were ready and some members of the suite were already on the road to Venice. Peter himself had just come away from his farewell audience when the latest post from Moscow arrived, bringing an urgent letter with disturbing news of the mutiny of the streltsy. At once, he decided to abandon the rest of the tour, cancel the visit to Venice and return directly to Moscow to face whatever awaited him there. On 19 July, he left Vienna on the road to Poland. He had reached Krakow when a messenger brought fresh and brighter news - the uprising had been successfully quelled.
On his homeward journey, passing through Rawa in Galicia, Peter met Augustus II, one of the most colourful characters of his era, who pursued titles, wealth and women with equal energy. He learned that Augustus II had designs on Swedish Livonia, which offered his new Polish kingdom outlets to the sea. Peter had returned from Holland and England imbued with the spirit of ships, navies, trade and the sea. So it is not surprising that the proposal to break through to the Baltic Sea, opening a direct maritime route to the West, appelaed to him.
Peter's visits to Europe impressed upon him the notion that European customs were in several respects superior to the Russian traditions. The tsar, beardless himself, regarded beards as unnecessary, uncivilized and ridiculous. They made his country a subject of mirth and mockery in the West. Thereafter, whenever Peter attended a ceremony, those who arrived with beards departed without them. By decree, all Russians except the clergy and the peasants were ordered to shave. Eventually those who insisted on keeping their beards were permitted to do so on paying an annual tax. Many were willing to pay this tax to keep their beards, but few who came near Peter were willing to risk his wrath with a chin that was not hairless. Not long after Peter compelled his boyars to shave their beards, he also began to insist they change from traditional Russian clothing to Western dress. Not surprisingly, Peter's transformation was much more readily accepted by women than by men. His sister Natalya and his widowed sister-in-law Praskovia were the first to set the example and many Russian noble women hurried to follow.
Peter's determination to rid himself quickly of all reminders of the old Russian customs and traditions had bleak results for his wife, Eudoxia. He had long wished to end his marriage and to shed this sad and cloying woman whom he had never loved and whom he had been forced to marry. From the beginning, it had been no secret that Peter went out of his way to avoid his wife. An Orthodox woman who believed that all foreigners were the source of heresy and contamination, Eudoxia could not bear to see her husband adopting their clothes, their language, their habits and their ideas. Thus, by trying to come between her husband and the glittering life he had found with his new friends, Eudoxia only made her position weaker. She also knew that Peter was unfaithful, that he kept Anna Mons in handsome style. She showed her jealousy openly, which just angered Peter, while her own attempts to please him with letters or marks of affection merely wearied him. In short, he was bored with her, embarrassed by her and longed to be free of her. Thus, after Peter had been in Moscow for several days, he summoned Eudoxia to meet him. For four hours they argued, Peter insisting that she must accept the veil and release him. Eudoxia, finding strength in desperation, steadfastly refused, pleading that her duty as a mother made it impossible for her to leave the world. Once incarcerated in a convent, she predicted, she would never see her son again. Peter left determined to have his way and one morning, soon after, a simple postal carriage was sent to the palace. Eudoxia was bundled into it and the carriage rattled off to the Pokrovsky Monastery in Suzdal. There Eudoxia's head was shaved and she was forced to take a new name as a nun Elena. The head of a convent, however, allowed her to live there much as a free woman would. She even found herself a lover, an officer named Stepan Glebov, who later would be executed by quartering.
There was grimmer work to be done: it was time for a final reckoning with the streltsy. A new round of trials, which began on 17 September 1698 and ended only in February 1700, aimed not to establish the streltsy guilt (which was already regarded as proven), but to elicit information on 'accomplices' and motives. Peter suspected the involvement of his half-sister Sophia, who had been residing in a comfort in Novodevichy Convent just a few miles away from the Kremlin. Several testimonies mentioned some plan to restore her to the power and some evidence emerged of secret letters passing between the convent and the streltsy through the mediation of Sophia's sisters and the streltsy wives.
Peter The Great by Pieter van der Werff (1690s)
Peter The Great by Sir Godfrey Kneller (1698)
Eudoxia Lopukhina (1669-1731),
daughter of Fedor Abramovich Lopukhin and Ustinia Bogdanovna Rtishcheva
Ilya Repin's 1879 painting portrays Sophia after her fall from power, confined to a cell in the Novodevichy Convent. Also in the painting,
outside the window, a hanging strelets shows the fate of those who saught to reinstate her.
The execution of streltsy in Red Square by Vasily Surikov (1881)
On 27 September Peter went in person to the convent to question Sophia, the first recorded meeting between them for nine years. Sophia denied that she had ever written to the streltsy. When he suggested that she might have reminded them that she could be called back to rule, she told him straightforwardly that on this matter they needed no letter from her; they would remember that she had ruled the state for seven years. In the end, Peter learned nothing from her. He spared his sister's life, but decided that she must be more closely restricted. She was forced to shave her head and take religious vows as the nun Susanna. He confined her permanently to Novodevichy Convent, where she was guarded and permitted to have no visitors. She lived in this fashion for another six years and died at forty seven in 1704. Her sisters Marfa and Catherine were politically exonerated, but Marfa, too, was sent to a convent for the rest of her days.
The first executions of the condemned streltsy took place on 10 October at Preobrazhenskoe. To make the connection between the streltsy and Sophia crystal clear, some of them were hanged from a huge square gallows erected near Novodevichy Convent. The supposed leaders of the plot were strung up directly outside the window of Sophia's room, with one of the corpses holding a piece of paper representing the streltsy petition asking her to rule. They remained dangling for the rest of the winter.
Despite this success of his grim policy, Peter decided that he could no longer tolerate the streltsy at all. Especially after this bloody repression, the hatred of the survivors would only increase and the state might once again be subjected to upheaval. The following spring, Peter disbanded the remaining streltsy regiments. Their houses and lands in Moscow were confiscated and they were sent into exile in Siberia and other distant regions to become simple villagers. They were forbidden ever to take up arms again and the local governors were warned against trying to recruit them for military service. The streltsy were swept away and with them the only serious armed opposition to his policies and the main obstacle to his reorganisation of the army. They were replaced with his own creation, the efficient guards regiments, trained on the Western model and imbued with support for Peter's policies.
On 3 July 1700 Russia signed a 30-years truce with the Ottoman Empire, which ratified Russia's possession of Azov, but did not grant control over Kerch or allow free navigation of the Black Sea, as Russia demanded. The news was announced in Moscow on 18 August with a splendid firework display and the next day Peter declared war on Sweden, citing its 'illegal' occupation of the provinces of Ingria and Karelia, which Sweden snatched during the Time of Troubles. Sweden was also opposed by Denmark, Norway, Saxony and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Command of the main army was given to Fedor Golovin, who had served as ambassador, foreign minister and now was to be a field marshal. In November 1700 a Russian army, with a weak artillery, inexperienced and quarreling commanders and unreliable supply lines faced a Swedish force at Sweden's port of Narva, where the Russians had arrived in September already exhausted and maintained a siege for a whole month, during which munitions and supplies ran out. In late October Charles XII landed at Pernau in the Gulf of Riga, reaching Narva in November. The fact that the Russian troops were thinly stretched out over a great distance in their camp made it easy for the Swedes to break through their ranks. Many of the Russian army, in poor physical and psychological shape, fled and the remainder surrended. After the battle, now Charles XII decided to concentrate his forces against the Commonwealth and Saxony, which gave Peter time to reorganize the Russian army. He ordered a complete overhaul in army training, with new standards of discipline and tactics based on European models.
Russia's achievements in the first few years of the war had much to do with the fact that it did not have to meet Charles XII's main army in pitched battle. The ignominy of Peter's defeat at Narva may have persuaded Charles XII that there was not much more to do in Russia, encouraging his decision to move against Augustus II in Poland. In July 1701 his army occupied Courland; the following July he defeated an army of Saxons and Poles and occupied Krakow. While Charles XII's attention was focused elsewhere, Russia scored a victory in the Baltic Sea when Boris Sheremetev's army beat General Wolmar Anton von Schlippenbach's forces at Erestfer in Livonia in December 1701, securing a further victory at Hummelshof in July 1702. There were more successes in August at Marienburg, that led to Martha Skavronskaya being brought to the court, and in October at the fortress of Noteborg on Lake Ladoga, captured after two weeks siege with the aid of naval support. Sheremetev then took the fortress of Nyenskans in May 1703, where Peter laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city - Saint Petersburg.
During these early years of war with Sweden, two people emerged who were to become the close friends of Peter's life, Alexander Menshikov and Martha Skavronskaya. Menshikov was born in November 1673, a year and a half after Peter himself, and spent his childhood as a stable boy on the state at Preobrazhenskoe. He was one of the first boys to enroll as a play soldier in Peter's youthfull military company. He stood next to Peter under the walls of Azov and, when Peter was making up his Great Embassy to Western Europe, he was one of the first to volunteer and be chosen. In 1700, at the outbreak of the war, Menshikov was still attached to Peter's private household. When the war began, he plunged into it, displaying a talent for military command as great as his talent for everything else. During the operations in Ingria in 1701, Menshikov distinguished himself as Peter's lieutenant. After the siege and capture of Noteborg, he was named governor of the fortress.
As Menshikov's life progressed, honors and rewards continued to shower on him - and his enemies proliferated. Born with nothing and then surrounded by many opportunities for acquiring wealth, he grabbed whatever he could. As he grew older, this trait became more pronounced - or at least less easy to hide. Peter, aware that his friend was using his offices to amass wealth and often was stealing directly from the state, tried several times to stop him. He was hauled before courts of justice, stripped of his powers, fined and even beaten by the infuriated tsar, but always the friendship of thirty years intervened, Peter's anger abated and Menshikov was reinstated.
The origins of Martha Skavronskaya are even more obscure than those of Menshikov. The likeliest stories is that she was one of four children of a Lithuanian peasant, possibly a Catholic, named Samuel Skavronsky. He had moved from Lithuania and settled in the Swedish province of Livonia, where in April 1684, in the village of Ringen near Dorpat, Martha was born. When she was still an infant, her father died of plague, followed soon after by her mother. The destitute children were scattered and Martha was taken into the family of Pastor Ernst Gluck, a Lutheran minister of Marienburg. Although not exactly a servant, she was expected to make herself useful, doing laundry and sewing, baking bread and looking after the other children.In adolescence, Martha grew into a comely, sturdy girl whose warm, dark eyes and full figure attracted attention. One story tells that Frau Gluck grew wary, fearing the effect of the blossoming girl on her growing sons or even on her husband. Martha was encouraged to accpet the suit of a Swedish soldier whose regiment was quartered in the neighborhood. She was betrothed to him and, according to some accounts, was actually married to him for a brief span of eight days in the summer 1702. At this point, the rapid success of the invading Russians compelled his regiment to evacuate Marienburg. Martha never saw her fiance or husband again.
With the Swedish withdrawal, Dorpat fell into hands of Sheremetev's army and along with the entire population, Pastor Gluck and his family were taken prisoners. Sheremetev, a sophisticated man, received the Lutheran family with kindness and accepted Gluck's offer to go to Moscow to serve the tsar as a translator. However, the attractive Martha did not go to Moscow, but remained for six months in the domestic service of Sheremetev himself. Her relations with her next protector, Menshikov, were closer and more complex. He was emerging as Peter's favorite when, visiting Sheremetev's house, he spotted her. Her comeliness had increased; her hands, once red with work, had become whiter and less coarse with her new, less arduous role. She had accepted the Orthodox faith and taken the Russian name of Catherine. No one knows how Menshikov persuaded Sheremetev to transfer the girl to his own household and, in the autumn of 1703, he took her to Moscow.
There is no proof that Catherine was Menshikov's mistress and there is circumstantial evidence that she was not. During these years, Menshikov was strongly attached to one of a group of girls who carried the title of Boyar Maidens and whose duties consisted only of being companions to the royal ladies. In 1694, after the death of Peter's mother, his younger sister Natalya moved in to live with him at Preobrazhenskoe, bringing with her a small group of such maidens, including two sisters Arsenevas, Darya and Barbara. As Peter's friend, Menshikov was welcomed at this feminine court around Natalya and there soon developed at attachment between him and Darya.
When Peter met Catherine in the autumn of 1703, she was then a member of Menshikov's household with a status which must have been quite clear to him. His own twelve years relationship with Anna Mons was breaking apart and here before him was an appealing, healthy girl in the full bloom of youth. She was far from a classic beauty, but her black eyes, her blond hair (which she later dyed black to lighten the appearance of her sun-tanned skin) and her full, womanly bosom already had caught the eye of a field marshal; the tsar was no less observant. Whatever her previous arrangements, from that time on Catherine became Peter's mistress. She continued to live in Menshikov's house in Moscow, which by this time was filled with women. At first, it had been kept for him by his own two sisters, Maria and Anna, but in December 1703 Anna Menshikova greatly advanced the family fortunes by marrying an aristocrat, Alexis Golovin, the younger brother of Fedor Golovin. Now it also included the Arsenev sisters, their aunt Anisya Tolstoy and Catherine.
The main matter on which Peter now was sternly insisting was Menshikov's marriage to Darya, which had been on his mind for some time. Repeatedly, Menshikov had promised, but repeatedly the wedding was postponed. At last in August 1706, Menshikov bowed and Darya became a wife who shared his thoughts and his burdens, looked after his comforts and accompanied him whenever she could on his travels and campaigns.
Once Menshikov was married, Peter began to think of taking the same step himself. In many ways, it seemed to offer more hazards than any advantages. Traditional Russians would find it an act of madness for the tsar to marry an illiterate foreign peasant. In the end, these arguments, strong though they were, were shouldered aside by Peter's need for this extraordinary woman and, in November 1707, Peter followed Menshikov's wedding with his own. For a while, he kept this marriage secret from the Russian people and even his ministers and the members of his family. Catherine was content with her status (never at any stage of her astonishing ascent did she push to go higher), but as she continued to bear his children and attach herself more deeply in his affections, Peter continued to worry about her.
Following several defeats, Augustus II of Poland abdicated in 1706. Charles XII of Sweden now turned his attention to Russia, invading it in the winter of 1708. After crossing Polish-Lithuanian lands, Charles XII defeated Peter's army at Golovchin in July 1708. The battle opened Peter's eyes to the fact that the Russian army was no longer the same disorderly mob which had fled from the battle at Narva. Here, in a battle in which the numbers of men actually engaged were almost equal, the Russians had fought well. In September 1708, in the battle at Lesnaya, Charles XII suffered his first loss after Peter crushed a group of the Swedish reinforcements marching from Riga. Deprived of this aid, Charles XII was forced to abandon his proposed march on Moscow.
Charles XII refused to retreat to Poland or back to Sweden, instead invading Ukraine. On 27 October Peter received an urgent message from Menshikov: Ivan Mazeppa, Hetman of the Ukrainian Cossacks, loyal to Peter for twenty-one years, had betrayed him and allied himself with the Swedish king. Peter withdrew his army southward, destroying along the way any property that could assist the Swedes. Deprived of local supplies, the Swedish army was forced to halt its advance in the winter of 1708-1709. Peter's purpose was not to fight a battle but simply to maintain pressure, to whittle away at the isolated Swedes, to deplete them, wear them down and demoralize them before spring.
After the coldest winter in Europe in a century, by the spring of 1709 Charles XII's force had shrunk to half of its original size. Short of supplies, the Swedish king laid siege to the Russian fortress at Poltava on the Vorskla River on 2 May. The Russian forces marched to relieve the siege and built a fortified camp on the Vorskla, 4 km north of Poltava. While observing the Russian position on 20 June, the Swedish king was struck by a stray bullet, injuring his foot badly enough that he could not stand. The battle, on 27 June 1709, was a decisive defeat for the Swedish forces, ending Charles XII's campaign and forcing him into exile in the Ottoman Empire.
As the great news of the victory spread across the continent, opinion in Europe, previously hostile to and even contemptuous of Peter and Russia, began to change. Proposals for new arrangements and new treaties came flocking to Peter. Frederick I of Prussia and Elector of Hanover, George I, both signaled their desire for Russian ties. Frederick IV of Denmark proposed to Russian ambassador a Danish-Russian alliance against Sweden. As soon as news of the battle arrived, Augustus of Saxony issued the proclamation repudiating his abdication and, with a Saxon army, he entered Poland and summoned his Polish subjects to renewed allegiance. On 9 October 1709, Peter and Augustus II signed a new treaty of alliance in which the tsar once again promised to help Augustus gain and hold the Polish throne, while Augustus again committed himself to fight against all the tsar's enemies.
Peter than sailed farther down the Vistula to Marienwerder to meet Frederick I of Prussia, who was alarmed by the emergence of this new power in Northern Europe but was eager to acquire some Swedish territories in Germany which might now be attainable. The tsar understood that the king's intention was to collect spoils without doing any fighting and he behaved coolly. However, the meeting was successful: a treaty was signed establishing a defensive alliance between Russia and Prussia. In this meeting Peter also arranged a marriage. This was the second foreign marriage Peter was then negotiating for a member of the Russian royal house and both represented a drastic change in Russian policy.
Since 1707, Peter had been dickering with the German House of Wolfenbuttel hoping to persuade Duke Ludwig Rudolph to permit his daughter Charlotte to marry his son Alexis. Negotiations had dragged, as the duke was in no hurry to marry a daughter to the son of a tsar on the verge of being toppled from his throne by the Swedish king. The obstacles to the marriage suddenly disappeared after the victorious battle at Poltava and dynastic links with Moscow now seemed highly attractive and a marriage contract was drawn up.
The second foreign marriage Peter arranged was between his niece Anna, daughter of his half-brother Ivan V and Praskovia Saltykova, and the young duke Frederick William of Courland, a nephew of Frederick I of Prussia. As part of the arrangements, the tsar agreed that the Russian troops, occupying Courland, a small principality south of Riga, would be withdrawn and that Courland would be allowed to remain neutral in future wars.
In 1709 Peter was able to spend only a couple of weeks in St Petersburg, but with military operations again focused on the Baltic Sea he was there for much of 1710. The Summer and Winter Palaces were begun, as were the mansions of Menshikov, Gavrila Golovkin and other magnates, the Alexander Nevsky Monastery and the wooden church of St Isaac of Dalmatia. Apprentice gardeners were summoned from Moscow, together with plants and seeds, exotic flowering, medicinal and fruit bearing species as well as native varieties. For Peter, the city's poor soils, the short summers and long, dark winters were no deterrent to transforming it into heaven on earth.
Fedor Alexeyevich Golovin (1650-1706),
first Russian chancellor, field marshal,
general admiral (in 1700)
Boris Petrovich Sheremetev (1652-1719),
a Russian diplomat and general field marshal during the Great Northern War;
became the first Russian count (in 1706)
Alexander Danilovich Menshikov (1673-1729),
a Russian statesman, whose official titles included Generalissimus, Prince of the Russian Empire and Duke of Izhora (Ingria)
Martha Skavronskaya,
later Catherine I (1684-1727),
the second wife of Peter I;
Empress of Russia from in 1725-1727
Charles XII (1682-1718),
son of Charles XI of Sweden and
Ulrica Eleonora of Denmark:
King of Sweden in 1697-1718
Peter I (1672-1725),
Tsar of Russia in 1682-1721 and
Emperor of Russia in 1721-1725
The autumn of 1710 marked St Petersburg's inauguration as Russia's ceremonial capital, when it witnessed a victory celebration, later followed by the wedding of Peter's niece, seventeen years old Anna Ivanovna, to Frederick William, Duke of Courland, also aged seventeen. The wedding, which took place on 31 October 1710 in the chapel of Menshikov's newly built palace, was the first important royal rite of passage to be held in St Petersburg and set the tone for others to come.
At the beginning of 1711 the newlywed duke and duchess set off for Courland, but when they just left the city Frederick died. The duke was already ill when he left St Petersburg from the effects of excessive drinking and 'unpleasantness' suffered at the hands of Menshikov. Over the years Anna received proposals from the various suitors, but nothing came of them. Her life alternated between Russia and Courland, where her household expenses were regulated by Peter down to the last detail.
Frederick's death contributed to the gloom which now descended on St Petersburg. On 23 December 1710 Peter had received the news that the Ottoman Empire had declared war on Russia and that his ambassador Peter Tolstoy had been thrown into the Seven Towers in Constantinople. The war of 1711, which led to the campaign on the Pruth, was not of Peter's asking; it was Charles XII who had instigated this fight between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless, once war came, Peter, still flushed with his success at Poltava, accepted the challenge with confidence and took rapid steps to prepare. A new, heavy tax was levied to support the upcoming military operations. The tsar meant to lead the Turkish campaign personally and on 6 March left Moscow with Catherine at his side. Before leaving, Peter summoned his sister Natalya, his sister-in-law Praskovia and her daughters. Presenting them to Catherine, he finally told them that she was his wife and should be considered the tsaritsa. He planned to marry her in public as soon as he could, he said, but if he were to die first, they were to accept Catherine as his legal widow.
Constantin Brancoveanu (1654-1714),
Prince of Walachia in 1688-1714
Dimitrie Cantemir (1673-1723),
Prince of Moldavia in 1693 adn 1710-1711
The key to Peter's campaign lay in the two principalities, Walachia and Moldavia. In 1711, Walachia was ruled by a prince (hospodar) named Constantin Brancoveanu, wily and flexible, who had come to office by poisoning his predecessor and had used his talents not only to cling to his title for twenty years but to build a powerful army and great personal wealth. From the sultan's viewpoint, Brancoveanu was too rich and powerful, thus he was marked for replacement once an opportunity arrived. Inevitably, Brancoveanu sensed this feeling and made a secret treaty with the Russian tsar. Walachia would provide the troops in the field and furnish supplies for the Russian troops who reached Walachia - supplies to be paid for, however, by Peter. In return, Peter promised to guarantee the independence of Walachia and the hereditary rights of Brancoveanu.
Moldavia was weaker and poorer than Walachia and its rulers had changed rapidly. The latest, Dimitrie Cantemir, in 1711 had been in the office for less than a year, appointed by the sultan with the understanding that he would help to seize and overthrow his neihgbor, Constantin Brancoveanu, for which service he would become prince of both Walachia and Moldavia. Arriving in his new capital Jassy, however, Cantemir also sniffed a shift in a fortune and began negotiating in the utmost secrecy with Peter. On 13 April he signed a treaty with the tsar, agreeing to assist a Russian invasion. In return, Moldavia was to be declared an independent state under the Russian protection. No tribute would be paid and the Cantemir family would rule as a hereditary dynasty.
After having gathered near the Moldavian capital Jassy, the combined army started in July 1711 the march southwards along the Pruth River with the intention of crossing the Danube. When the Turkish army crossed the Danube first, Brancoveanu made his choice. Just as the grand vizier was ordering his arrest, Brancoveanu suddenly switched sides. Using as a pretext a letter from the tsar whose tone, he said, offended him, Brancoveanu announced that he no longer considered himself bound by his secret treaty with the tsar and handed over to the Turks all the supplies he had massed for the Russian army with the tsar's money. This betrayal had an immediate and devastating effect on the Russian campaign. Nevertheless, Peter did not give up the campaign and in the battle, which took place on 9 July 1711, the Russian troops found themselves facing a combined, huge Turkish and Tatar force. Despite their superior numbers, the Turks suffered heavy losses in their first encounter with Russian artillery, but the Russians remained unaware of the extent of the damage inflicted. The battle was thus inconlclusive, but the Russians could not afford to wait for an outcome becausue of shortages of food and ammunition.
The conflict was ended on 21 July 1711 by the Treaty of Pruth, to the disappointment of the Swedish king. Anxious to concentrate on their conquests in the Mediterranean, Turkey contented itself with formal tokens of Russian withdrawal from Poland and, much to Charles XII's disgust, refused to give any further guarantees to Sweden. Russia agreed to surrender Azov and its district to Turkey and to destroy its southern fleet. However, Peter delayed the handover and the destruction of Taganrog fort until he received confirmation that Charles XII had left Turkey. Peter's allies, princes of Walachia and Moldavia, also lost - one his lands, the other his head. Cantermir escaped with the Russians, collected his wife and children in Jassy and returned to Russia with the tsar's army. There, Peter showered favors on him, granting him large estates near Kharkov. The fate of Brancoveanu had an appropriate twist: in the spring 1714, he was arrested and sent to Constantinople, where he and his two sons were beheaded.
In November, five months after the Treaty of Pruth, Azov and Tagonrog still had not been given up. The Turks responded to these prevarications by declaring war on Russia again. Conflict was averted and a second peace treaty was signed on 5 April 1712. Further delays by the Russians in withdrawing troops from Poland prompted yet another declaration of war by Turkey in October 1712. this time with Swedish and French backing. On 13 June 1713 a more lasting peace was finally signed at Adrianople.
After the initial truce with the Turks in July 1711 Peter did not return to Russia but travelled to Poland, reaching Warsaw in late August, and then on to Saxony, where he took the mineral waters, which he found a tedious experience. On 13 October he himself arrived in Torgau to attend the wedding of his son Alexis to Charlotte Christina Sophia of Wolfenbuttel in the palace of the queen of Poland the following day. It was a foregone conclusion that Alexis would marry a foreign princess and Charlotte was a good catch. The Brunswick-Wolfenbuttels were related by marriage to many of the royal and princely families of Europe. Charlotte's grandfather was Duke Anton Ulrich of Holstein-Gottorp and her sister was married to the Habsburg Emperor Charles VI.
During the first six months of marriage, Alexis was devoted to his young wife and Charlotte told everyone that she was happy. Like most young wives, Charlotte was highly sensitive to the relationship between her new husband and his family, and she wrote to her mother of her worry at the way Peter spoke of and treated his son. Once, hoping to help, she pleaded with Catherine to act as an advocate with the tsar on behalf of Alexis. In October 1712, at the end of a year of a marriage during which her husband had been mostly away with the army, Charlotte was suddenly commanded by Peter to go to St Petersburg to establish herself and wait for her husband. When Charlotte arrived in St Petersburg in spring 1713, Alexis had left the capital to join his father on the galley expedition along the coast of Finland. He returned at the end of the summer to the small house in which she was living on the bank of Neva. Meeting after a separation of almost a year, the couple was at first affectionate, but things soon went wrong. Alexis began to drink heavily with his friends, returning home to treat his wife abusively in front of the servants. Charlotte would forgive him, but every recurrence deepened the wound. Then, after a winter of heavy drinking, Alexis became ill. His doctors diagnosed tuberculosis and prescribed a cure at Carlsbad. Charlotte, eight months pregnant, was the last to know he was leaving; she learned it only as he walked out the door to take his seat in a carriage. During the six months of his absence, she heard nothing from him. On 12 July 1714, she gave birth to a daughter, Natalya, but Alexis failed to respond to this news.
Charlotte Christine Sophia of Brunswick-Luneburg (1694-1715),
it is possible the painting was made in connection with the upcoming wedding in 1711
Alexis Petrovich Romanov (1690-1718),
son and heir of Peter I and Eudoxia Lopukhina
In the middle of December 1714, Alexis returned to St Petersburg from Germany. At first, he behaved decently to Charlotte and was delighted with his daughter. Later, however, Charlotte wrote to her parents that her husband had reverted to his former conduct except that she rarely saw him any more. The reason was Afrosinia, a Finnish girl captured during the war. Blindly infatuated with her, Alexis took her openly into a wing of his own house, where he lived with her as his mistress. His treatment of Charlotte grew progressively worse. he took no interest in her. In public, he never spoke to her, but went out of his way to avoid her, moving to the opposite side of the room. He saw her once a week, coming grimly to make love in hopes of fathering a son to secure his own succession to the throne. He cared so little about her welfare that the house was in terrible repair and rain fell throught the roof into Charlotte's bedroom. When this news reached Peter, angry and disgusted, he upbraided his son for his neglect of his wife.
Nevertheless, there were occasional moments of happiness. Alexis was fond of his daughter and every mark of love he showed the child warmed the heart of the mother. On 12 October 1715, a second child was born, this time a son, whom Charlotte named Peter in fullfillment of a promise to her father-in-law. However, she came down with the fever and on 21 October she departed an unfortunate life.
On 19 February 1712, Peter formalized and publicly proclaimed his marriage to Catherine. The grand ceremony, which took place in Menshikov's private chapel, was intended to clarify her position as his wife and official consort to those who said that their private marriage in November 1707 was insufficient for a tsar and tsaritsa. It also was a mark of Peter's gratitude to this calm, devoted woman whose sturdy courage during the Pruth campaign had helped carry him through that disastrous episode.
Fedor Matveyevich Apraksin (1661-1728),
the elder brother of Marfa Apraksina;
one of the first Russian admirals, governed Estonia and Karelia in 1721-1723, presided over the Russian Admiralty from 1718 and commanded the Baltic Fleet from 1723
Natalya Alexeyevna (1673-1716),
daughter of Tsar Alexis I and his second wife, Natalya Naryshkina
Alexis Petrovich Romanov (1690-1718),
son and heir of Peter I and Eudoxia Lopukhina
Eudoxia Fedorovna Lopukhina (1669-1731),
the first wife of Peter The Great in 1689-1698
The Finnish campaign in summer 1713 and the next was efficient and relatively bloodless. The commander in these successful naval campaigns was General Fedor Apraxin, who also took personal command of the galley fleet. In July 1714 an impressive demonstration of Russian naval power ended in a victory over the Swedish fleet off Cape Hango in Finland, where Russian ships surrounded a Swedish squadron and boarded it with infantry. The Swedish seagoing fleet was superior, but less manoeuvrable in Finnish coastal waters.
Peter's second historic journey to the West in 1716-1717 had three purposes: to try to improve his health, to attend a royal marriage and to attempt a final blow at Charles XII and end the war with Sweden. Peter's doctors had long insisted that he go. For a number of years, his health had given them concern and it was not his epileptic convulsions that bothered them; they were of short duration and a few hours after they had passed, Peter seemed quite normal. But the fevers - sometimes as a result of unrestricted drinking, sometimes because of the fatigue of travel and worry, sometimes from a mixture of these causes - kept him in bed for weeks.
In February 1716 Peter set off to attend the wedding of his niece Catherine to Duke Karl Leopold of Mecklenburg, which was scheduled for 8 April 1716 in Danzig. The marriage contract, which brought with it the right of Russian merchants to trade in Mecklenburg, free passage to the Russian troops and the tsar's pledge to support the duke against his enemies, was signed before the couple met for the first time in March.
In May Peter met the king of Prussia in Stettin and the king of Denmark in Altona. The decision was taken to move Russian troops in preparation for a landing in Sweden, and in the meantime Peter and his companions went to Piermont to take the waters. The doctors banned consumption of alcohol, which meant that Peter's birthday had to be celebrated without the usual banquet. Peter was greatly saddened to hear of the death, on 18 June, of his sister Natalya, to whom he had been close since his childhood. Natalya was in many respects a model for Peter's 'new woman' and one of the first to relocate permanently to St Petersburg. The inventory of her possessions showed that her home was furnished in the Western fashions, together with many costumes and properties from her private theatre. Natalya was never married and there is nothing to indicate that Peter ever contemplated arranging a marriage for his sister - he preferred to have her with him.
In October 1716, Peter arrived in Amsterdam, where he spent most of the winter and, on 2 January 1717, at Wesel in the Netherlands, Catherine, who was on her way to join Peter, gave birth to a boy, who was named Paul, however, died soon after. From Amsterdam he proceeded to The Hague, Leiden, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Dunkirk. Easter 1717 found him in Calais and on 26 April he reached Paris, where he remained until June. On 11 October 1717, the tsar returned to St Petersburg and at this time Peter was forced to make a final decision in the case of his son, Alexis Petrovich.
At Alexis's birth, in February 1690, Peter was enormously proud, giving the court banquets and fireworks displays in honor of the new tsarevich. Yet, as the years went by, Peter saw little of his son. Absorbed by Franz Lefort and Anna Mons, by the Azov campaigns and the Great Embassy, the tsar left Alexis in the company of Eudoxia. Visiting his son meant seeing the boy's mother, toward whom he was openly contemptuous, thus Peter preferred to avoid them both. Naturally, young Alexis sensed the breach between his parents and understood that in his father's mind he was identified with his mother. And in his earliest years, Alexis saw Peter as disapproving, perhaps even a threat, an enemy. Then, suddenly, when Alexis was eight years old boy with a high forehead and dark, serious eyes, Peter wrenched his little world apart. In 1698, he sent his mother to a convent and Alexis was confided to the general supervision of his aunt Natalya. Alexis was also influenced during these adolescent years by Menshikov, who was appointed the official governor of the boy in 1705. Menshikov's duties were a general supervision of the education, finances and the overall training of the heir to the throne.
After taking the young Alexis along to participate in campaigns and sieges, Peter assigned him independent military tasks to carry out as heir to the throne. Unfortunately, try as he would, Peter never succeeded in interesting his son in war. Assigned military tasks, Alexis showed himself to be unwilling or incapable. Eventually, discouraged and disgusted, as well as caught up in the ever increasing tempo of the war, Peter turned his attention away from his son, leaving Alexis to himself in Moscow. In the capital, increasingly abandoned in favor of St Petersburg, Alexis was thrown into the company of those who preferred the old Russian order and feared the reforms and innovations of the tsar. The leader of this circle around Alexis was his confessor, Jacob Ignatyev, who came from Suzdal, where Eudoxia was incarcerated in a convent. The priest was in contact with the former tsaritsa, and in 1706, when Alexis was sixteen, he took the boy to see his mother. Peter, learning of this visit from his sister, was furious and warned Alexis never to go there again. Thus, involuntarily and inevitably, he became the focus of serious opposition to the tsar.
On 26 August 1716 Peter wrote to Alexis from abroad, urging him, if he desired to remain tsarevich, to join him and the army without any delay. Rather than face this ordeal, the tsarevich fled to Vienna and placed himself under the protection of his brother-in-law, Emperor Charles VI, who sent him for safety first to the Tirolean fortress of Ehrenberg and finally to the castle at Naples. He was accompanied throughout his journey by his mistress Afrosinia. Peter felt insulted: the flight of the tsarevich to a foreign potentate was a reproach and a scandal, and he had to be recovered and brought back to Russia at all costs. This difficult task was accomplished by Peter Tolstoy, the most unscrupulous of Peter's servants. Alexis would only consent to return on his father swearing, that if he came back he should not be punished in the least, but cherished as a son and allowed to live quietly on his estates and marry Afrosinia.
At the end of January 1718 Alexis arrived back in Moscow, where he learned that there were conditions attached to the unconditional pardon promised earlier: he must renounce the throne and name the 'acomplices' who helped him to flee. Fulfilling the first requirement was quite easy as Alexis had indicated his willingness earlier to abandon his claim to the throne. The manifesto declared Peter Petrovich as the new heir, sternly condemning as a traitor anyone who continued to regard Alexis as the successor. The prelude to Alexis' trial was the investigation of Eudoxia and her friends. She and Peter's only surviving half-sister, Maria, were arrested and brought to Moscow for questioning. The tsar was deeply suspicious of his former wife. Eudoxia had been in communication with Alexis and she had much to gain if her son were to sit on the throne. It was hard to believe that Eudoxia's way of life had gone completely unnoticed and unreported to Moscow for twenty years, or that Peter's anger now was directed solely at the offense against his honor.
In a public spectacle in March 1718 the Guards officer Stepan Glebov, Eudoxia's lover, was executed by an impalement after the prolonged torture sessions, having been convicted of committing an adultery and writing coded letters, which were never shown to contain anything incriminating. Many more were publicly knouted and sent into exile. The lesser of the women, icluding some nuns of the convent, were publicly whipped and transferred to convents on the White Sea. Eudoxia was not touched physically, but she was moved to a convent on Lake Ladoga, where she remained under strict supervision for ten years until the accession of her grandson, Peter II. Eudoxia then returned to the court and lived there until 1731, when she died in the times of Empress Anna. Maria, Peter's only half-sister, was judged to have encouraged opposition to the tsar and was imprisoned in Schlusselburg fortress for three years. In 1721, she was released and returned to St Petersburg, where she died in 1723.
Peter I interrogating his son Alexis by Nikolai Ge (1871)
After the trials and the bloody executions in Moscow, it was generally hoped that the affair of the tsarevich was over. The major threads of the conspiracy had now been indentified and rooted out. Meanwhile, Alexis was seemingly uncaring. Without much protesting, he had watched his mother, his tutor, his confessor and all his friends arrested. As they were interrogated, tortured, executed and exiled, he meekly stood by, grateful that he himself was not being punished. His only thought seemed to be to marry Afrosinia. The young woman arrived to St Petersburg on 15 April 1718, but instead of being received into the waiting arms of her impatient lover, she was immediately arrrested and taken to the Fortress of Peter and Paul. In the middle of May, Peter decided to question the two lovers separately and then confront them with each other. Without torture, Afrosinia confessed: through her mouth, Alexis' fears and bitterness about his father came pouring out. Alexis, said Afrosinia, spoke to her constantly about the succession to the throne. When he became tsar, he told her, he would abandon St Petersburg and all of Peter's foreign conquests and make Moscow his capital. Further, she declared that she accompanied him on his flight abroad only because he had drawn a knife and threatened to kill her if she refused. Even when she slept with him, she declared, it had been the result of threats and force. As his world crumbled around him, Alexis' explanations became feebler. He was arrested and placed in the Trubetskoy Bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress. The main charge against him was high treason: he had saught Austrian aid to overthrow and assassinate Peter. On 19 June 1718, Alexis received twenty five blows of the knout. No new confession was wrung from him, and on 24 June the torture was applied again. The daily log of the St Petersburg garrison states that in the morning on 26 June, the tsar, Menshikov and eight other nobles gathered in the fortress to attend a new interrogation at which torture was administered. The same day in the evening Alexis was found dead.
In official reports Alexis' death was attributed to a seizure. Unofficial versions included death by poison and the rumor that Peter had strangled Alexis with his bare hands. The simplest explanation of Alexis' death is the most likely: forty strokes of the knout were sufficient to kill a robust, healthy man; Alexis was not robust, and the shock and wounds caused by forthy lashes across his thin back could easily have killed him.The day after Alexis' death was the anniversary of the Battle of Poltava, and nothing was postponed or muted because of the tragedy. Although the tsarevich had died a condemned criminal, the services of mourning were conducted according to his rank. On 30 June 1718, the funeral and burial took place. Afrosinia was released, pardoned and Peter allowed her to keep an assortment of his son's possessions. She lived her remaining thirty years in St Petersburg, where she eventually married an officer of the Guards.
Since the proclamation of Peter Petrovich as Peter's heir, his development and upbringing had been closely monitored. Catherine's letters to the tsar offer glimpses of their pride and concern. In August 1718 she reported that baby Peter was always amusing himself drilling his soldiers and firing toy canon, just like his father. In view of all this tender concern and expectations, the laconic report of the boy's death on 25 April 1719, in the daily journal kept in Menshikov's household, makes painful reading. The loss was not entirely unexpected - it turns out that the boy had always been 'weak and puny', lagging far behind his cousin, Peter Alexeyvich, just a couple of weeks his senior. Catherine was too distraught to attend her son's funeral and Peter is said to have locked himself in his room for several days.
However, there were litle time for grieving. The navigation season was under way and as ever Peter found comfort in his ships and sailing, especially now that real action was once again in store. New Swedish king, Frederick I, informed Peter that he was ready to reopen negotiations, and a peace conference was convened on 28 April 1721, in the town of Nystad on the Finnish coast. However, with the negotiations at Nystad deadlocked over Livonia and no military truce arranged, Peter once again launched his fleet against the Swedish coast. Frederick I finally yielded Livonia and the main articles of the peace treaty granted Peter the territories he had so long desired. Livonia, Ingria and Estonia were ceded 'in perpetuity' to Russia, along with Karelia as far as Vyborg. The remainder of Finland was to be restored to Sweden. All prisoners of war to be freed and the tsar pledged that he would not interfere in Swedish domestic politics, confirming Frederick I's right to the throne.
News that peace had come after twenty-one years of war was received with jubilation in Russia. Peter was beside himself with excitement and the celebrations which took place were prolonged and prodigious. For an entire week, people remained masked and in fancy dress, dining, walking in the streets, rowing on the Neva, going to sleep and rising to begin again. On 22 October 1721, soon after the peace was made with Sweden, Peter was officially proclaimed Emperor of All Russia. Peter's imperial title was recognized by Augustus II of Poland, Frederick William I of Prussia and Frederick I of Sweden, but not by the other European monarchs.
In 1721, Karl Frederick, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp, traveled to Russia, hoping to win Peter's support for his claim to the Swedish throne and perhaps to seal it by marrying one of the Russian Emperor's daughters. Frederick I of Sweden saw the man's presence in St Petersburg as a threat and his incentive to the peace helped lead to the Treaty of Nystad 1721, one clause of which was a Russian guarantee not to support the duke's claims to the Swedish throne. Despite this disappointment, Karl Frederick stayed in Russia, persisting in his hope of marrying Princess Anna, who was tall, dark-haired and handsome like her mother. She was intelligent, well-mannered and high-spirited; when she appeared in the court dress with her hair dressed in European fashion and set with pearls, foreign envoys were impressed. When the Russian-Swedish alliance was signed in 1724, Karl Frederick was granted the title of Royal Highness and a Swedish pension. In December 1724, he was pleased to receive a message asking him to draw up a marriage contract between himself and Princess Anna. After a service and a dinner with the imperial family, the duke was betrothed to Princess Anna when the emperor himself took rings from each partner and exchanged them. Princess Anna lived only four years after her marriage and died when she was twenty. But fate used her and her husband to continue Peter's line on the Russian throne. They returned to Holstein, where at Kiel, shortly before her death, Anna gave birth to a son, whose name became Karl Ulrich Peter.
Peter The Great by Jean Marc Nattier (1717)
Emperor Peter The Great
by Paul Delaroche (1838)
Empress Catherine I by Jean Marc Nattier
After Catherine's coronation in 1724, more than ever the path to favor lay through the new empress. Yet, within few weeks of this triumph, Catherine found herself teetering on the brink of personal disaster, looking down at the possibility of her utter ruin. Among Catherine's attendants was a handsome young man named Willem Mons, the brother of Anna Mons. Elegant, clever, ambitious and opportunistic, he had chosen his patrons shrewdly, worked hard and risen to the rank of chamberlain and the post of secretary and confidant to Catherine. Mons' sister Matrena had achieved equal success. She was married to a nobleman named Fedor Balk, a major general who was Governor of Riga, while she herself was a lady-in-waiting and the closest confidante to the empress. It was whispered in St Petersburg and in Europe, that the empress had taken the handsome young chamberlain as a lover. However, the narture of Catherine's character argues against such a liaison. The empress was generous, warm-hearted and earthy, but she was also intelligent and she knew Peter. Even if her own affection for him had cooled (which is unlikely, especially after he had just crowned her empress), she certainly understood the impossibility of keeping an affair with Mons a secret and the horrible consequences when it was found out.
Even without this ultimate insult, it seems strange that Peter should so long have remained ignorant of Mons' corruption. It was a sign of his growing weakness, abetted by illness, that the emperor did not know what was an open secret to everyone else in St Petersburg. When he did discover the truth, retribution was swift and deadly. On the evening of 8 November 1724, Peter returned to the palace without a sign of anger, supped with Catherine and his daughters and had a trivial conversation with Mons. After Mons went home, undressed and was smoking his pipe before retiring, when General Ushakov entered and arrested him on a charge of receiving bribes. Mons' papers were seized, his room was sealed and he himself was taken away in chains. The next day, Mons was brought into Peter's presence. He was so frightened that he fainted; once revived, he confessed to everything he was accused of. He admitted taking bribes, taking revenue from the empress' estates for his own use and that his sister Matrena Balk was involved. Mons was doomed and on 14 November sentenced to death. After his beheading on 16 November, his sister received eleven blows of the knout, very lightly administered so that not much harm was done, and was exiled for life to Tobolsk in Siberia. Her husband was given permission to marry again if he wished.
Not surprisingly, this ordeal strained the relations between Peter and Catherine. Although her name had never been mentioned either by Mons or his accusers and no one dared charge her with taking bribes herself, it was widely suspected that she had known what Mons was doing and had ignored it. Peter himself seemed to link her with Mons by issuing on the day of the execution a decree addressed to all officers of state. Written in his own hand, it declared that because of abuses which had taken place in the empress' household without her knowledge, they were forbidden to obey any future order or recommendation she might make. Simultaneosly, the conduct of her financial affairs was removed from her control.
In 1724, Peter was only fifty-two, but his huge exertions, his ceaseless motion, the violent excesses of drinking in which he had indulged in his youth, had severely undermined his once magnificent constitution.
During the winter of 1722-1723, the pain in the urethra returned. At first, Peter mentioned it to no one except his valet and continued to drink and carouse in his normal way, but soon the pain grew stronger and he had to consult his doctors. For the next two years, he was constantly in and out of pain. He had to follow the doctors' advice, swallowing their drugs and limiting his drinking to a little kvas and an occasional glass of brandy. For a while, it seemed that Peter was recovering. On New Year's day, he was present at the customary fireworks and on Epiphany he went out onto the ice of the Neva River for the traditional Blessing of the Waters, catching another cold during the ceremony. By mid-January, the coolness which had developed between Peter and Catherine appeared to have vanished. On 16 January, the disease returned and compelled him to take to his bed. Probing gently, the doctors found that Peter had an inflammation of the bladder and intestine so severe that they believed gangrene was present.
By evening on the 26th, the emperor seemed a little stronger and the doctors began to talk of letting him get up and walk about the room. Encouraged, Peter sat up and ate a little oatmeal. Immediately, he was stricken with such violent convulsions that those in the room thought the end had come. On 27th Peter had become delirious; he never recovered consciousness and sank into coma, moving only to groan. Catherine knelt beside him hour after hour, praying incessantly that he might be released from his torment by death. At last, in the morning of 28th, Peter entered eternity.
The succession was quickly settled in favor of Catherine. While Peter still drew his last breaths, a group of his favorites, among them Menshikov and Peter Tolstoy - all of them 'new men' created by Peter, all with much to lose if the old nobility came back to power - had moved decisively to support Catherine. Guessing rightly that the Guards regiments would make the ultimate decision on the succession, they summoned these troops into the capital and massed them near the palace.
Peter The Great at his deathbed by Ivan Nikitin
Empress Catherine I by Louis Caravaque in 1726
Even with these precautions, the succession of the Lithuanian peasant girl, mistress and eventually wife and consort of the autocrat was far from certain. The other candidate was the nine years old Grand Duke Peter Alexeyevich. According to the Russian tradition, as the grandson of the dead emperor, he was the direct male heir and the vast majority of the aristocracy, the clergy and the nation regarded him as the rightful successor. Through the young grand duke, old noble families such as the Dolgorukys and the Golitsyns hoped to restore themselves to power and reverse Peter's reforms. In the result, the next morning, the forty-two years old widow came into the room weeping and leaning on the arm of the duke of Holstein-Gottorp. Those in the room cheered and the acclamation was taken up by the Guards regiments outside. A manifesto issued that day announced to the empire that the new Russian autocrat was a woman - Empress Catherine I.
Peter's body was embalmed and placed in a room hung with French tapestries presented to the emperor on his visit to Paris. For over a month, the public was allowed to come by and pay their respects. Then, on 8 March, the coffin was carried to the cathedral of Peter and Paul Fortress.
Catherine spoke frequently about her common origin and extended her own good fortune to all members of her family. She found her brother, Karl Skavronsky, serving as a groom in a post station in Courland, brought him to the capital, educated him and created him Count Skavronsky. Her two sisters and their families were also summoned to the capital. The elder sister had married a Lithuanian peasant named Simon Heinrich; the younger one, a Polish peasant named Michal Yefim. The families were established in the capital and their names changed to Henrikov and Yefimovsky.
At the time of Peter's death the Russian army was the largest in Europe. However, the military expense was proving ruinous to the Russian economy, consuming some 65% of the government's annual revenue. Since the nation was at peace, the empress was determined to reduce military expenditure. Catherine was able to have her way - the resulting tax relief on the peasantry led to the reputation of Catherine I as a just and fair ruler. However, the real ruler of the state during her reign was Alexander Menshikov. He promoted himself to the unprecedented rank of Generalissimus and was the only Russian to bear a ducal title. Upon finishing the construction of the Menshikov Palace on the Neva in St Petersburg, Menshikov intended to make Oranienbaum a capital of his ephemeral duchy. On 8 February 1726, a new governing body, the Supreme Privy Council, was created 'to lighten the heavy burden of government for Her Majesty.'
In November 1726, a storm backed up the Neva, forcing the empress to flee her palace in her nightdress 'in water up to her knees'. The flood soon subsided, but it had given Catherine a severe chill. Soon afterwards she began to suffer violent bleeding from the nose and her legs began to swell - a condition the gossips immediately attributed to the venereal disease. On 21 January 1727, she participated in the ceremony of the Blessing of the Waters on the Neva ice. This outing put her in bed for two months with fever and prolonged bleeding from the nose. She rallied and relapsed. The doctors diagnosed an abscess on the lung but they could do nothing for her. As soons as he heard, Menshikov came hurrying to her bedside brandishing a will for her to sign. Near the end, she named the young Peter Alexeyevich as her successor with the entire Supreme Privy Council to act as regents. Catherine died shortly after, on 17 May 1727, in the third year of her reign.
Emperor Peter II, Peter Alexeyevich (1715-1730),
son of Alexis Petrovich and Charlotte Christine Sophia of Brunswick-Luneburg
Maria Menshikova (1711-1729),
daughter of Alexander Menshikov and
Daria Arseneva
Catherine Dolgorukova (1712-1747),
daughter of Alexis Dolgoruky,
niece of Vasily Dolgoruky
Menshikov used his formidable powers to obtain Catherine's consent to marry the eleven years old boy to his sixteen years old daughter Maria. Once Catherine I was dead and Peter II proclaimed as emperor, Menshikov moved swiftly to reap his rewards. Within a week of his accession, the emperor was bodily transferred from the Winter Palace to Menshikov's palace on Vasilevsky Island. Two weeks later, young Peter's engagement to Maria Menshikova was celebrated. The Supreme Privy Council was filled with Menshikov's new aristocratic allies, the Dolgorukys and the Golitsyns. Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, whom Catherine I had installed on the Supreme Privy Council against Menshikov's wishes, now applied for permission to leave Russia with his wife, Princess Anna. Menshikov gladly saw them return to Kiel and sweetened the duke's departure with a generous Russian pension. It was in Kiel, on 28 May 1728, that Princess Anna died, shortly after giving birth to a son. A ball given in her honor to celebrate the birth had been followed by a display of fireworks. Although the Baltic weather was cold and damp, the happy mother insisted upon standing on an open balcony to get a better view. Within ten days, this eldest daughter of Peter The Great was dead.
In July 1727, Menshikov had the misfortune to fall ill. While his grip on the reins of power was briefly relaxed, Peter, his sister Natalya and his aunt Elizabeth Petrovna moved to Peterhof. People at the court began to comment that affairs of the state seemed to progress satisfactorily even without the presence of Menshikov. After his quick recovery, he appeared at Peterhof, but, to his amazement, Peter turned his back on him. Menshikov's fall came a month later, in September 1727. He was arrested, deprived of his offices and stripped of his decorations, him and his family - including daughter Maria - were exiled to an estate in Ukraine. In April 1728, Menshikov was accused of treasonable contacts with Sweden, his huge wealth was confiscated and he was exiled with his family to Berezov, a tiny village above the tundra line in northern Siberia. In this place, in November 1729, he died at the age of fifty-six, followed to the grave a few weeks later by his daughter Maria.
Emperor Peter II now passed into the hands of the Dolgorukys. Alexis and Vasily Dolgorukys were appointed to the Supreme Privy Council and in November 1729 the emperor's betrothal to Alexis' seventeen years old daughter Catherine was announced. It soon became clear that the emperor had no interest in his bride, perhaps influenced by his aunt Elizabeth Petrovna, who did not like Catherine. Early in January 1730, the fourteen years old emperor became ill. His condition was diagnosed as smallpox, he worsened rapidly and on 11 January 1730, the day fixed for his wedding to Catherine, he died. Accordingly, it devolved upon the Supreme Privy Council, dominated now by Dmitry Golitsyn, to choose a sovereign. The pleasure loving Elizabeth Petrovna, last child of Peter The Great, was considered too frivolous, and Catherine of Mecklenburg, the eldest daughter of Ivan V, was thought to be too much under the influence of her husband. The choice therefore fell on the second daughter of Ivan V: Anna, Duchess of Courland, who had been a widow since a few months after her marriage in 1711.