Secret Lives of the Tsars Read Online Free PDF

particularly vulnerable.
    Sophia’s chief minister (and reputed lover), Vasili Golitsyn, had led two disastrous military campaigns against the Crimean Tatars. But rather than acknowledge defeat, Sophia instead treated Golitsyn—“my lord and light and hope”—as a conquering hero. In the name of both tsars, Golitsyn was to be richly rewarded “for the glorious and splendid victory over the infidel.” Peter, however, was having none of it. For a weekhe refused to sanction the gifts to Golitsyn and his officers, and only later reluctantly agreed under pressure.
    “Everyone saw plainly and knew that the consent of the younger Tsar had not been extorted without the greatest difficulty,” wrote General Patrick Gordon, a Scottish soldier in the Russian service, “and that this merely made him more excited against the generalissimo [Golitsyn] and the most prominent members of the other party at court; for it was now seen that an open breach was imminent.”
    On the night of August 7, 1689, Peter was roused from his sleep at his country retreat at Preobrazhenskoe and told that the streltsy were marching out from Moscow to kill him and his family. Wearing just his nightshirt, the terrified tsar leapt onto his horse, raced to a hidden copse, and waited for his clothes to be brought to him. Then he rode all night to the Trinity Monastery, where, it was reported, “he immediately threw himself upon a bed and fell a weeping bitterly relating the case to the abbot and desiring the protection and assistance of them.” The wounds left seven years earlier, when the ten-year-old boy watched in terror as those closest to him were torn to pieces, were still raw.
    Several accounts from the period insist there really was a plot hatched in the Kremlin to kill the young tsar, although some historians have asserted that it was Peter’s own party—eager to force a confrontation with Sophia—that raised a false alarm. If so, it was an effective, though utterly heartless, ploy. The uncrowned regent now faced a formidable threat from an anointed tsar whose ire had been (perhaps artificially) aroused.
    A week after arriving at the monastery, Peter sent a written summons to the colonels of all the streltsy regiments, ordering them to attend him there. Sophia tried to stop such a disastrousexodus with what Patrick Gordon described as an “eloquent oration,” urging the streltsy to disobey and not “meddle themselves in the differences betwixt her and her brother.” When several voted to go anyway, she “took them up very sharply, telling them that if any went thither, she would cause [to] interrupt them, and strike off their heads.”
    It was imperative to Sophia’s survival that she quickly resolve the conflict that had so suddenly erupted. She set off with several of her sisters to see Peter, but before they could reach the monastery, the party was intercepted by a messenger from the tsar with orders to proceed no farther. When Sophia defiantly announced that she would continue the journey, another messenger arrived to inform her that she would be dealt with “dishonorably” if she continued to disobey.
    The next day Peter stepped up his offensive by ordering that Feodor Shaklovity, director of the streltsy department and one of Sophia’s most fervent supporters, be sent to him to face charges that he and his troops “intended to march to the village of Preobrazhenskoe and murder us, our mother, our sister and our courtiers.” The order clearly implicated Sophia in Shaklovity’s plot and so incensed her that she ordered the messenger bearing it to be immediately beheaded. Fortunately for him, an executioner could not be found on such short notice.
    As Sophia’s power ebbed away, she gathered the streltsy before her and delivered a series of rousing speeches, but to little effect. Shaklovity was arrested and, under torture, admitted to having considered killing the younger tsar and his family. Now, as the exodus to Peter’s camp