The Regency of Sophia
Alexis Mikhailovitch had by his first wife, Maria Miloslavski, two sons (Feodor and Ivan) and six daughters; by his second wife Natalia Narychkine, one son (who became Peter I.) and…
From: 1682 C.E. To: 1689 C.E.
Location: Moscow, Russia
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“Peter the Great: Early Years: Regency of Sophia” From Russia by Alfred Rambaud, 1898.
Alexis Mikhailovitch had by his first wife, Maria Miloslavski, two sons (Feodor and Ivan) and six daughters; by his second wife Natalia Narychkine, one son (who became Peter I.) and two daughters. As he was twice married, and the kinsmen of each wife had, according to custom, surrounded the throne, there existed two factions in the palace, which were brought face to face by the death of Feodor.
The Miloslavskis had on their side the claim of seniority, the number of royal children left by Maria, and above all, the fact that Ivan was the elder of the two surviving sons; but unluckily for them, Ivan was notoriously imbecile both in body and mind. On the side of the Narychkines was the interest excited by the precocious intelligence of Peter, and the position of legal head of all the royal family, which, according to Russian laws gave to Natalia Narychkine her title of "Tzarina Dowager." Both factions had for some time taken their measures and recruited their partisans. Who should succeed Feodor? Was it to be the son of the Miloslavski, or the son of the Narychkine?
The Miloslavskis were first defeated on legal grounds. Taking the incapacity of Ivan into consideration, the boyards and the Patriarch Joachim proclaimed the young Peter, then nine years old, Tzar. The Narychkines triumphed: Natalia became Tzarina-Regent, recalled from exile her foster-father, Matvéef, and surrounded herself by her brothers and uncles.
The Miloslavskis' only means of revenge lay in revolt, but they were without a head; for it was impossible for Ivan to take the lead. The eldest of his six sisters was thirty-two years of age, the youngest nineteen; the most energetic of them was Sophia, who was twenty-five. These six princesses saw themselves condemned to the dreary destiny of the Russian tzarevni, and were forced to renounce all hopes of marriage, with no prospects but to grow old in the seclusion of the terem, subjected by law to the authority of a stepmother. All their youth had to look forward to was the cloister.
They, however, only breathed in action; and though imperial etiquette and Byzantine manners, prejudices, and traditions forbade them to appear in public, even Byzantine traditions offered them models to follow. Had not Pulcheria, daughter of an emperor, reigned at Constantinople in the name of her brother, the incapable Theodosius? Had she not contracted a nominal marriage with the brave Marcian, who was her sword against the barbarians? Here was the ideal that Sophia could propose to herself; to be a Tzardiévitsa, a woman-emperor. To emancipate herself from the rigorous laws of the terem, to force the "twenty-seven locks" of the song, to raise the fata that covered her face, to appear in public and meet the looks of men, needed both energy, cunning, and patience that could wait and be content to proceed by successive efforts.
Sophia's first step was to appear at Feodor's funeral, though it was not the custom for any but the widow and the heir to be present. There her litter encountered that of Natalia Narychkine, and her presence forced the Tzarina-Mother to retreat. She surrounded herself with a court of educated men, who publicly praised her, encouraged and excited her to action.
Simeon Polotski and Silvester Medviédef wrote verses in her honor, recalled to her the example of Pulcheria and Olga, compared her to the virgin Queen Elizabeth of England, and even to Semiramis; we might think we were listening to Voltaire addressing Catherine II. They played on her name Sophia (wisdom), and declared she had been endowed with the quality as well as the title. Polotski dedicated to her the 'Crown of Faith,' and Medviédef his 'Gifts of the Holy Spirit.'
The terem offered the strangest contrasts. There acted they the ‘Malade Imaginaire,' and the audience was composed of the heterogeneous assembly of popes, monks, nuns, and old pensioners that formed the Courts of the ancient Tzarinas. In this shifting crowd there were some useful instruments of intrigue. The old pensioners, while telling their rosaries, served as emissaries between the palace and the town, carried messages and presents to the turbulent streltsi, and arranged matters between the Tzarian ladies and the soldiers. Sinister rumors were skilfully disseminated through Moscow: Feodor, the eldest son of Alexis, had died, the victim of conspirators; the same lot was doubtless reserved for Ivan.
What was to become of the poor tzarévni, of the blood of kings? At last it was publicly announced that a brother of Natalia Narychkine had seized the crown and seated himself on the throne, and that Ivan had been strangled. Love and pity for the son of Alexis, and the indignation excited by the news of the usurpation, immediately caused the people of Moscow to revolt, and the ringleaders cleverly directed the movement. The tocsin sounded from 400 churches of the "holy city"; the regiments of the streltsi took up arms and marched, followed by an immense crowd, to the Kremlin, with drums beating, matches lighted, and dragging cannon behind them. Natalia Narychkine had only to show herself on the Red Staircase, accompanied by her son Peter, and Ivan who was reported dead. Their mere appearance sufficed to contradict all the calumnies. The streltsi hesitated, seeing they had been deceived. A clever harangue of Matvéef, who had formerly commanded them, and the exhortations of the Patriarch, shook them further. The revolt was almost appeased; the Miloslavskis had missed their aim, for they had not yet succeeded in putting to death the people of whom they were jealous.
Suddenly Prince Michael Dolgorouki, chief of the prikaz of the streltsi, began to insult the rioters in the most violent language. This ill-timed harangue awoke their fury; they seized Dolgorouki, and flung him from the top of the Red Staircase on to their pikes. They stabbed Matvéef, under the eyes of the Tzarina; then they sacked the palace, murdering all who fell into their hands. Athanasius Narychkine, a brother of Natalia, was thrown from a window on to the points of their lances. The following day the émeute recommenced; they tore from the arms of the Tzarina her father Cyril, and her brother Ivan; the latter was tortured and sent into a monastery.
Historians show us Sophia interceded for the victims on her knees, but an understanding between the rebels and the Tzarevna did exist; the streltsi obeyed orders. The following days were consecrated to the purifying of the palace and the administration, and the seventh day of the revolt they sent their commandant, the prince-boyard Khovanski, to declare that they would have two Tzars—Ivan at the head, and Peter as coadjutor; and if this were refused, they would again rebel.
The boyards of the douma deliberated on this proposal, and the greater number of the boyards were opposed to it. In Russia the absolute power had never been shared, but the orators of the terem cited many examples both from sacred and profane history: Pharaoh and Joseph, Arcadius and Honorius, Basil II. and Constantine VIII.; and the best of all the arguments were the pikes of the streltsi (1682).
Sophia had triumphed: she reigned in the name of her two brothers, Ivan and Peter. She made a point of showing herself in public, at processions, solemn services, and dedications of churches. At the Ouspienski Sobor, while her brothers occupied the place of the Tzar, she filled that of the Tzarina; only she raised the curtains and boldly allowed herself to be incensed by the Patriarch. When the raskolniks challenged the heads of the orthodox Church to discussion, she wished to preside and hold the meeting in the open air, at the Lobnoé Miésto on the Red Place. There was however so much opposition, that she was forced to call the assembly in the Palace of Facets, and sat behind the throne of her two brothers, present though invisible.
The double-seated throne used on those occasions is still preserved at Moscow; there is an opening in the back, hidden by a veil of silk, and behind this sat Sophia. This singular piece of furniture is the symbol of a government previously unknown to Russia, composed of two visible Tzars and one invisible sovereign.
The streltsi, however, felt their prejudices against female sovereignty awaken. They shrank from the contempt heaped by the Tzarevna upon the ancient manners. Sophia had already become in their eyes a "scandalous person" (pozornoé litzo). Another cause of misunderstanding was the support she gave to the State Church, as reformed by Nicon, while the streltsi and the greater part of the people held to the "old faith." She had arrested certain "old believers," who at the discussion in the Palace of Facets, had challenged the patriarchs and orthodox prelates, and she had caused the ringleader to be executed. Khovanski, chief of the streltsi, whether from sympathy with the raskol, or whether he wished to please his subordinates, affected to share their discontent.
The Court no longer felt itself safe at Moscow. Sophia took refuge with the Tzarina and the two young princes in the fortified monastery of Troïtsa, and summoned around her the gentlemen-at-arms. Khovanski was invited to attend, was arrested on the way, and put to death with his son. The streltsi attempted a new rising, but, with the usual fickleness of a popular militia, suddenly passed from the extreme of insolence to the extreme of humility. They marched to Troïtsa, this time in the guise of suppliants, with cords round their necks, carrying axes and blocks for the death they expected. The Patriarch consented to intercede for them, and Sophia contented herself with the sacrifice of the ringleaders.
Sophia, having got rid of her accomplices, governed by aid of her two favorites—Chaklovity, the new commandant of the streltsi, whom she had drawn from obscurity, and who was completely devoted to her, and Prince Vassili Galitsyne. Galitsyne has become the hero of an historic school which opposes his genius to that of Peter the Great, in the same way as in France Henry, Duke of Guise, has been exalted at the expense of Henry IV.
He was the special favorite, the intimate friend of Sophia, the director of her foreign policy, and her right band in military affairs. Sophia and Galitsyne labored to organize a Holy League between Russia, Poland, Venice and Austria against the Turks and Tatars. They also tried to gain the countenance of the Catholic Powers of the West; and in 1687 Jacob Dolgorouki and Jacob Mychetski disembarked at Dunkirk, as envoys to the Court of Louis XIV.
They were not received very favorably: the King of France was not at all inclined to make war against the Turks; he was, on the other hand, the ally of Mahomet IV,, who was about to besiege
Vienna while Louis blockaded Luxemburg. The whole plan of the campaign was, however, thrown out by the intervention of Russia and John Sobieski in favor of Austria. The Russian ambassadors received orders to re-embark at Havre, without going further south.
The government of the Tzarevna still persisted in its warlike projects. In return for an active co-operation against the Ottomans, Poland had consented to ratify the conditions of the Treaty of Androussovo, and to sign a perpetual peace (1686). A hundred thousand Muscovites, under the command of Prince Galitsyne, and fifty thousand Little Russian Cossacks, under the orders of the hetman Samoïlovitch, marched against the Crimea (1687). The army suffered greatly in the southern steppes, as the Tatars had fired the grassy plains.
Galitsyne was forced to return without having encountered the enemy. Samoïlovitch was accused of treason, deprived of his command, and sent to Siberia; and Mazeppa, who owed to Samoïlovitch his appointment as Secretary-at-war, and whose denunciations had chiefly contributed to his downfall, was appointed his successor. In the spring of 1689 the Muscovite and Ukranian armies, commanded by Galitsyne and Mazeppa, again set out for the Crimea.
The second expedition was hardly more fortunate than the first: they got as far as Perekop, and were then obliged to retreat without even having taken the fortress. This double defeat did not hinder Sophia from preparing for her favorite a triumphal entry into Moscow. In vain Peter forbade her to leave the palace; she braved his displeasure and headed the procession, accompanied by the clergy and the images and followed by the army of the Crimea, admitted the generals to kiss her hand, and distributed glasses of brandy among the officers.
Peter left Moscow in anger, and retired to the village of Preobrajenskoe. The foreign policy of the Tzarevna was marked by another display of weakness. By the Treaty of Nertchinsk, she restored to the Chinese Empire the fertile regions of the Amour, which had been conquered by a handful of Cossacks, and razed the fortress of Albazine, where those adventurers had braved all the forces of the East. On all sides Russia seemed to retreat before the barbarians.
Meantime Peter was growing. His precocious faculties, his quick intelligence, and his strong will awakened alike the hopes of his partisans and the fears of his enemies. As a child he only loved drums, swords, and muskets. He learned history by means of colored prints brought from Germany. Zotof, his master, whom he afterwards made "the archpope of fools," taught him to read. Among the heroes held up to him as examples, we are not surprised to find Ivan the Terrible, whose character and position offer so much analogy to his own. "When the Tzarevitch was tired of reading," says M. Zabiéline, "Zotof took the book from his hand, and, to amuse him, would himself read the great deeds of his father, Alexis Mikhaïlovitch, and those of the Tzar Ivan Vassilievitch, their campaigns, their distant expeditions, their battles and sieges: how they endured fatigues and privations better than any common soldier; what benefits they had conferred on the empire, and how they extended the frontiers of Russia."
Peter also learnt Latin, German, and Dutch. He read much and widely, and learnt a great deal, though without method. Like Ivan the Terrible, he was a self-taught man. He afterwards complained of not having been instructed according to rule. This was perhaps a good thing. His education, like that of Ivan IV., was neglected, but at least he was not subjected to the enervating influence of the terem—he was not cast in that dull mould which turned out so many idiots in the royal family. He "roamed at large, and wandered in the streets with his comrades."
The streets of Moscow at that period were, according to M. Zabiéline, the worst school of profligacy and debauchery that can be imagined; but they were, on the whole, less bad for Peter than the palace. He met there something besides mere jesters; he encountered new elements which had as yet no place in the terem, but contained the germ of the regeneration of Russia. He came across Russians who, if unscrupulous, were also unprejudiced, and who could aid him in his bold reform of the ancient society. He there became acquainted with Swiss, English, and German adventurers—with Lefort, with Gordon, and with Timmermann, who initiated him into European civilization.
His Court was composed of Leo Narychkine, of Boris Galitsyne (who had undertaken never to flatter him), of Andrew Matvéef (who had marked taste for everything European), and of Dolgorouki, at whose house he first saw an astrolabe. He played at soldiers with his young friends and his grooms, and formed them into the "battalion of playmates," who manœuvred after the European fashion, and became the kernel of the future regular army. He learnt the elements of geometry and fortification, and constructed small citadels, which he took or defended with his young warriors in those fierce battles which sometimes counted their wounded or dead, and in which the Tzar of Russia was not always spared.
An English boat stranded on the shore of Yaousa caused him to send for Franz Timmermann, who taught him to manage a sailing boat, even with a contrary wind. He who formerly, like a true boyard of Moscow, had such a horror of the water that he could not make up his mind to cross a bridge, became a determined sailor: he guided his boat first on the Yaousa, then on the lake of Pereiaslavl. Brandt, the Dutchman, built him a whole flotilla ; and already, in spite of the terrors of his mother, Natalia, Peter dreamed of the sea.
“The child is amusing himself," the courtiers of Sophia affected to observe; but these amusements disquieted her. Each day added to the years of Peter seemed to bring her nearer to the cloister. In vain she proudly called herself "autocrat"; she saw her stepmother, her rival, lifting up her head. Galitsyne confined himself to regretting that they had not known better how to profit by the revolution of 1682, but Chaklovity, who knew he must fall with his mistress, said aloud, "It would be wiser to put the Tzarina to death than to be put to death by her." Sophia could only save herself by seizing the throne—but who would help her to take it? The streltsi? But the result of their last rising had chilled them considerably.
Sophia herself, while trying to bind this formidable force, had broken it, and the streltsi had not forgotten their chiefs beheaded at Troïtsa. Now what did the emissaries of Sophia propose to them? Again to attack the palace; to put Leo Narychkine, Boris Galitsyne, and other partisans of Peter to death; to arrest his mother, and to expel the Patriarch. They trusted that Peter and Natalia would perish in the tumult. The streltsi remained indifferent when Sophia, affecting to think her life threatened, fled to the Dievitchi Monastyr, and sent them letters of entreaty.
"If thy days are in peril," tranquilly replied the streltsi. "there must be an inquiry." Chaklovity could hardly collect four hundred of them at the Kremlin.
The struggle began between Moscow and Preobrajenskoé, the village with the prophetical name (the Transfiguration or Regeneration). Two streltsi warned Peter of the plots of his sister, and, for the second time, he sought an asylum at Troïtsa. It was then seen who was the true Tzar; all men hastened to range themselves around him: his mother, his armed squires, the "battalion of playmates," the foreign officers, and even the streltsi of the regiment of Soukharef.
The Patriarch also took the side of the Tzar, and brought him moral support, as the foreign soldiers had brought him material force. The partisans of Sophia were cold and irresolute; the streltsi themselves demanded that her favorite Chaklovity should be surrendered to the Tzar. She had to implore the mediation of the Patriarch. Chaklovity was first put to the torture and made to confess his plot against the Tzar, and then decapitated.
Medviédef was at first only condemned to the knout and banishment for heresy, but he acknowledged he had intended to take the place of the Patriarch and to marry Sophia; he was dishonored by being imprisoned with two sorcerers condemned to be burned alive in a cage, and was afterwards beheaded. Galitsyne was deprived of his property, and exiled to Poustozersk. Sophia remained in the Dievitchi Monastyr, subjected to a hard captivity. Though
Ivan continued to reign conjointly with his brother, yet Peter, who was then only seventeen, governed alone, surrounded by his mother, the Narychkines, the Dolgoroukis, and Boris Galitsyne (1689).
Sophia had freed herself from the seclusion of the terem, as Peter had emancipated himself from the seclusion of the palace to roam the streets and navigate rivers. Both had behaved scandalously, according to the ideas of the time—the one haranguing soldiers, presiding over councils, walking with her veil raised; the other using the axe like a carpenter, rowing like a Cossack, brawling with foreign adventurers, and fighting with his grooms in mimic battles. But to the one her emancipation was only a means of obtaining power; to the other the emancipation of Russia, like the emancipation of himself, was the end.
He wished the nation to shake off the old trammels from which he had freed himself. Sophia remained a Byzantine, Peter aspired to be a European. In the conflict between the Tzarevna and the Tzar, progress was not on the side of the Dievitchi Monastyr.
Rambaud, Alfred. Russia. Peter Fenelon Collier, 1898.
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