The Empire of Russia: From the Remotest Periods to the Present Time

"As he had joined," writes an ancient historian, "the miter to the sword, having been a general in the army before he was an ecclesiastic, the affable and modest behaviour, so becoming the ministers of the altar, had tempered and corrected the fire of the warrior, and rendered his manners amiable to all that came near him."

The reign of Michael proved almost a constant success. His wisdom and probity caused him to be respected by the neighboring States, while the empire, in the enjoyment of peace, was rapidly developing all its resources, and increasing in wealth, population and power. His court was constantly filled with embassadors from all the monarchies of Europe and even of Asia. The tzar, rightly considering peace as almost the choicest of all earthly blessings, resisted all temptations to draw the sword. There were a few trivial interruptions of peace during his reign; but the dark clouds of war, by his energies, were soon dispelled. This pacific prince, one of the most worthy who ever sat upon any throne, died revered by his subjects on the 12th of July, 1645, in the forty-ninth year of his age and the thirty-third of his reign. He left but two children—a son, Alexis, who succeeded him, and a daughter, Irene, who a few years after died unmarried.

Alexis was but sixteen years of age when he succeeded to the throne. To prevent the possibility of any cabals being formed, in consequence of his youth, he was crowned the day after his father's death. In one week from that time Eudocia also died, her death being hastened by grief for the loss of her husband. An ambitious noble, Moroson, supremely selfish, but cool, calculating and persevering, attained the post of prime minister or counselor of the young tzar. The great object of his aim was to make himself the first subject in the empire. In the accomplishment of this object there were two leading measures to which he resorted. The first was to keep the young tzar as much as possible from taking any part in the transactions of state, by involving him in an incessant round of pleasures. The next step was to secure for the tzar a wife who would be under his own influence. The love of pleasure incident to youth rendered the first measure not difficult of accomplishment. Peculiar circumstances seemed remarkably to favor the second measure. There was a nobleman of high rank but of small fortune, strongly attached to Moroson, who had two daughters of marvelous beauty. Moroson doubted not that he could lead his ardent young monarch to marry one of these lovely sisters, and he resolved himself to marry the other. He would thus become the brother-in-law of the emperor. Through his wife he would be able to influence her sister, the empress. The family would also all feel that they were indebted to him for their elevation. The plan was triumphantly successful.

The two young ladies were invited to court, and were decorated to make the most impressive display of their loveliness. With the young tzar, a boy of sixteen, it was love at first sight, and that very day he told Moroson that he wished to marry Maria, the eldest of the beauties. Rich presents were immediately lavished upon the whole family, so that they could make their appearance at court with suitable splendor. The tzar and Maria were immediately betrothed, and in just eight days the ardent lover led his bride from the altar. At the end of another week Moroson married the other sister. Moroson and Miloslouski, the father of the two brides, now ruled Russia, while the tzar surrendered himself to amusements.

The people soon became exasperated by the haughtiness and insolence of the duumvirate, and murmurs growing deeper and louder, ere long led to an insurrection. On the 6th of July, 1648, the tzar, engaged in some civic celebration, was escorted in a procession to one of the monasteries of Moscow. The populace assembled in immense numbers to see him pass. On his return the crowd broke through the attendant guards, seized the bridle of his horse, and entreated him to listen to their complaints concerning the outrages perpetrated by his ministers. The tzar, much alarmed by their violence, listened impatiently to their complaints and promised to render them satisfaction. The people were appeased, and were quietly retiring when the partisans of the ministers rode among them, assailing them with abusive language, crowding them with their horses, and even striking at them with their whips. The populace, incensed, began to pelt them with stones, and though the guard of the tzar came to their rescue, they escaped with difficulty to the palace. The mob was now thoroughly aroused. They rushed to the palace of Moroson, burst down the doors, and sacked every apartment. They even tore from the person of his wife her jewels, throwing them into the street, but in other respects treating her with civility. They then passed to the palace of Miloslauski, treating it in the same manner. The mob had now possession of Moscow. Palace after palace of the partisans of the ministers was sacked, and several of the most distinguished members of the court were massacred.

The tzar, entirely deficient in energy, remained trembling in the Kremlin during the whole of the night of the 6th of July, only entreating his friends to strengthen the guards and to secure the palace from the outrages of the populace. Afraid to trust the Russian troops, who might be found in sympathy with the people, Alexis sent for a regiment of German troops who were in his employ, and stationed them around the palace. He then sent out an officer to disperse the crowd, assuring them that the disorders of which they complained should be redressed. They demanded that the offending ministers should be delivered to them, to be punished for the injuries they had inflicted upon the empire. Alexis assured them, through his messenger, upon his oath, that Moroson and Miloslauski had escaped, but promised that the third minister whom they demanded, a noble by the name of Plesseon, who was judge of the supreme court of judicature of Moscow, should be brought out directly, and that those who had escaped should be delivered up as soon as they could be arrested. The guilty, wretched man, thus doomed to be the victim to appease the rage of the mob, in a quarter of an hour was led out bareheaded by the servants of the tzar to the market-place. The mob fell upon him with clubs, beat him to the earth, dragged him over the pavements, and finally cut off his head. Thus satiated, about eleven o'clock in the morning they dispersed and returned to their homes.

In the afternoon, however, the reign of violence was resumed. The city was set on fire in several places, and the mob collected for plunder, making no effort to extinguish the flames. The fire spread with such alarming rapidity that the whole city was endangered. At length, however, after terrible destruction of property and the loss of many lives, the fury of the conflagration was arrested. The affrighted tzar now filled the important posts of the ministry with men who had a reputation for justice, and the clergy immediately espousing the cause of order, exhorted the populace to that respect and obedience to the higher powers which their religion enjoined. Alexis personally appeared before the people and addressed them in a speech, in which he made no apology for the outrages which had been committed by the government, but, assuming that the people were right in their demands, promised to repeal the onerous duties, to abolish the obnoxious monopolies, and even to increase the privileges which they had formerly enjoyed. The people received this announcement with great applause. The tzar, taking advantage of this return to friendliness, remarked,

"I have promised to deliver up to you Moroson and his confederates in the government. Their acts I admit to have been very unjust, but their personal relations to me renders it peculiarly trying for me to condemn them. I hope the people will not deny the first request I have ever made to them, which is, that these men, whom I have displaced, may be pardoned. I will answer for them for the future, and assure you that their conduct shall be such as to give you cause to rejoice at your lenity."

The people were so moved by this address, which the tzar pronounced with tears, that, as with one accord, they shouted, "God grant his majesty a long and happy life. The will of God and of the tzar be done." Peace was thus restored between the government and the people, and great good accrued to Russia from this successful insurrection.

During the early reign of Alexis, there were no foreign wars of any note. The Poles were all the time busy in endeavors to beat back the Turks, who, in wave after wave of invasion, were crossing the Danube. Upon the death of Ladislaus, King of Poland, Alexis, who had then a fine army at his command, offered to march to repel the Turks, if the Poles would choose him King of Poland. But at the same time France made a still more alluring offer, in case they would choose John Casimir, a prince in the interests of France, as their sovereign. The choice fell upon John Casimir. The provinces of Smolensk, Kiof and Tchernigov were then in possession of the Poles, having been, in former wars, wrested from Russia. The Poles had conquered them by taking advantage of internal troubles in Russia, which enabled them with success to invade the empire.

Alexis now thought it right, in his turn, to take advantage of the weakness of Poland, harassed by the Turks, to recover these lost provinces. He accordingly marched to the city of Smolensk, and encamped before it with an army of three hundred thousand men. Smolensk was one of the strongest places which military art had then been able to rear. The Poles had received sufficient warning of the attack to enable them to garrison the fortifications to their utmost capacity and to supply the town abundantly with all the materials of war. The siege was continued for a full year, with all the usual accompaniments of carnage and misery which attend a beleaguered fortress. At last the city, battered into ruins, surrendered, and the victorious Russians immediately swept over Lithuanian Poland, meeting no force to obstruct its march. Another army, equally resistless, swept the banks of the Dnieper, and recovered Tchernigov and Kiof.

Misfortunes seemed now to be falling like an avalanche upon Poland. While the Turks were assailing them on the south, and the Russians were wresting from them opulent and populous provinces on the north, Charles Gustavus of Sweden, was crossing her eastern frontiers with invading hosts. The impetuous Swedish king, in three months, overran nearly the whole of Poland, threatening the utter extinction of the kingdom. This alarmed the surrounding kingdoms, lest Sweden should become too powerful for their safety. Alexis immediately entered into a truce with Poland, which guaranteed to him the peaceable possession of the provinces he had regained, and then united his armies with those of his humiliated rival, to arrest the strides of the Swedish conqueror.

Sieges, cannonades and battles innumerable ensued, over hundreds of leagues of territory, bordering the shores of the Baltic. For several years the maddened strife continued, producing its usual fruits of gory fields, smouldering cities, desolated homes, with orphanage, widowhood, starvation, pestilence, and every conceivable form of human misery. At length, all parties being exhausted, peace was concluded on the 2d of June, 1661.

The great insurrection in Moscow had taught the tzar Alexis a good lesson, and he profited by it wisely. He was led to devote himself earnestly to the welfare of his people. His recovery of the lost provinces of Russia was considered just, and added immeasurably to his renown. Conscious of the imperfection of his education, he engaged earnestly in study, causing many important scientific treatises to be translated into the Russian language, and perusing them with diligence and delight. He had the laws of the several provinces collected and published together. Many new manufactures were introduced, particularly those of silk and linen. Though rigidly economical in his expenses, he maintained a magnificent court and a numerous army. He took great interest in the promotion of agriculture, bringing many desert wastes into cultivation, and peopling them with the prisoners taken in the Polish and Swedish wars. It was the custom in those barbaric times to drive, as captives of war, the men, women and children of whole provinces, to be slaves in the territory of the conqueror. Often they occupied the position of a vassal peasantry, tilling the soil for the benefit of their lords. With singular foresight, Alexis planned for the construction of a fleet both on the Caspian and the Black Sea. With this object in view, he sent for ship carpenters from Holland and other places.

All Europe was now trembling in view of the encroachments of the Turks. Several very angry messages had passed between the sultan and the tzar, and the Turks had proved themselves ever eager to combine with the Tartars in bloody raids into the southern regions of the empire. Alexis resolved to combine Christian Europe, if possible, in a war of extermination against the Turks. To this end he sent embassadors to every court in Christendom. As his embassador was presented to Pope Clement X., the pope extended his foot for the customary kiss. The proud Russian drew back, exclaiming,

"So ignoble an act of homage is beneath the dignity of the prince whom I have the honor to serve."

He then informed the pope that the Emperor of Russia had resolved to make war against the Turks, that he wished to see all Christian princes unite against those enemies of humanity and religion, that for that purpose he had sent embassadors to all the potentates of Europe, and that he exhorted his holiness to place himself at the head of a league so powerful, so necessary for the protection of the church, and from which every Christian State might derive the greatest advantages. Foolish punctilios of etiquette interfered with any efficient arrangements with the court of Rome, and though the embassadors of other powers were received with the most marked respect, these powers were all too much engrossed with their own internal affairs to enlist in this enterprise for the public good. The Turks were, however, alarmed by these formidable movements, and, fearing such an alliance, were somewhat checked in their career of conquest.

On the 10th of November, 1674, the King of Poland died, and again there was an attempt on the part of Russia to unite Poland and the empire under the same crown. All the monarchies in Europe were involved in intrigues for the Polish crown. The electors, however, chose John Sobieski, a renowned Polish general, for their sovereign. The tzar was very apprehensive that the Poles would make peace with the Turks, and thus leave the sultan at liberty to concentrate all his tremendous resources upon Russia. Alexis raised three large armies, amounting in all to one hundred and fifty thousand men, which he sent into the Ukraine, as the frontier country, watered by the lower Dnieper, was then called.

The Turkish army, which was spread over the country between the Danube and the Dniester, now crossed this latter stream, and, in solid battalions, four hundred thousand strong, penetrated the Ukraine. They immediately commenced the fiend-like work of reducing the whole province to a desert. The process of destruction is swift. Flames, in a few hours, will consume a city which centuries alone have reared. A squadron of cavalry will, in a few moments, trample fields of grain which have been slowly growing and ripening for months. In less than a fortnight nearly the whole of the Ukraine was a depopulated waste, the troops of the tzar being shut up in narrow fortresses. The King of Poland, apprehensive that this vast Turkish army would soon turn with all their energies of destruction upon his own territories, resolved to march, with all the forces of his kingdom, to the aid of the Russians. One hundred thousand Polish troops immediately besieged the great city of Humau, which the Turks had taken, midway between the Dnieper and the Dniester.

John Sobieski, the newly-elected King of Poland, was a veteran soldier of great military renown. He placed himself at the head of other divisions of the army, and endeavored to distract the enemy and to divide their forces. At the same time, Alexis himself hastened to the theater of war that he might animate his troops by his presence. The Turks, finding themselves unable to advance any further, sullenly returned to their own country by the way of the Danube. Upon the retirement of the Turks, the Russians and the Poles began to quarrel respecting the possession of the Ukraine. Affairs were in this condition when the tzar Alexis, in all the vigor of manhood, was taken sick and died. He was then in the forty-sixth year of his age. His first wife, Maria Miloslouski, had died several years before him, leaving two sons and four daughters. His second wife, Natalia Nariskin, to whom he was married in the year 1671, still lived with her two children, a son, Peter, who was subsequently entitled the Great, as being the most illustrious monarch Russia has known, and a daughter Natalia.

Alexis, notwithstanding the unpropitious promise of his youth, proved one of the wisest and best princes Russia had known for years. He was a lover of peace, and yet prosecuted war with energy when it was forced upon him. His oldest surviving son, Feodor, who was but eighteen years of age at the time of his father's death, succeeded to the crown. Feodor, following the counsel which his father gave him on his dying bed, soon took military possession of nearly all of the Ukraine. The Turks entered the country again, but were repulsed with severe loss. Apprehensive that they would speedily return, the tzar made great efforts to secure a friendly alliance with Poland, in which he succeeded by paying a large sum of money in requital for the provinces of Smolensk and Kiof which his arms had recovered.

In the spring of 1678, the Turks again entered the Ukraine with a still more formidable army than the year before. The campaign was opened by laying siege to the city Czeherin, which was encompassed by nearly four hundred thousand men, and, after a destructive cannonade, was carried by storm. The garrison, consisting of thirty thousand men, were put to the sword. The Russian troops were so panic-stricken by this defeat, that they speedily retreated. The Turks pursued them a long distance, constantly harassing their rear. But the Turks, in their turn, were compelled to retire, being driven back by famine, a foe against whom their weapons could make no impression.

The Ottoman Porte soon found that little was gained by waging war with an empire so vast and sparsely settled as Russia, and that their conquest of the desolated and depopulated lands of the Ukraine, was by no means worth the expenses of the war. The Porte was therefore inclined to make peace with Russia, that the Turkish armies might fall upon Poland again, which presented a much more inviting field of conquest. The Poles were informed of this through their embassador at Constantinople, and earnestly appealed to the tzar of Russia, and to all the princes in Christendom to come to their aid. The selfishness which every court manifested is humiliating to human nature. Each court seemed only to think of its own aggrandizement. Feodor consented to aid them only on condition that the Poles should renounce all pretension to any places then in possession of Russia. To this the Polish king assented, and the armies of Russia and Poland were again combined to repel the Turks.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE REGENCY OF SOPHIA

From 1680 to 1697

Administration of Feodor.—Death of Feodor.—Incapacity of Ivan.—Succession of Peter.—Usurpation of Sophia.—Insurrection of the Strelitzes.—Massacre in Moscow.—Success of the Insurrection.—Ivan and Peter Declared Sovereigns under the Regency of Sophia.—General Discontent.—Conspiracy against Sophia.—Her Flight to the Convent.—The Conspiracy Quelled.—New Conspiracy.—Energy of Peter.—He Assumes the Crown.—Sophia Banished to a Convent.—Commencement of the Reign of Peter.

Feodor, influenced by the wise counsels of his father, devoted much attention to the beautifying of his capital, and to developing the internal resources of the empire. He paved the streets of Moscow, erected several large buildings of stone in place of the old wooden structures. Commerce and arts were patronized, he even loaning, from the public treasury, sums of money to enterprising men to encourage them in their industrial enterprises. Foreigners of distinction, both scholars and artisans, were invited to take up their residence in the empire. The tzar was particularly fond of fine horses, and was very successful in improving, by importations, the breed in Russia.

Feodor had always been of an exceedingly frail constitution, and it was evident that he could not anticipate long life. In the year 1681 he married a daughter of one of the nobles. His bride, Opimia Routoski, was also frail in health, though very beautiful. Six months had hardly passed away ere the youthful empress exchanged her bridal robes and couch for the shroud and the tomb. The emperor himself, grief-stricken, was rapidly sinking in a decline. His ministers almost forced him to another immediate marriage, hoping that, by the birth of a son, the succession of his half brother Peter might be prevented. The dying emperor received into his emaciate, feeble arms the new bride who had been selected for him, Marva Matweowna, and after a few weeks of languor and depression died. He was deeply lamented by his subjects, for during his short reign of less than three years he had developed a noble character, and had accomplished more for the real prosperity of Russia than many a monarch in the longest occupation of the throne.

Feodor left two brothers—Ivan, a brother by the same mother, Eudocia, and Peter, the son of the second wife of Alexis. Ivan was very feeble in body and in mind, with dim vision, and subject to epileptic fits. Feodor consequently declared his younger brother Peter, who was but ten years of age, his successor. The custom of the empire allowed him to do this, and rendered this appointment valid. It was generally the doom of the daughters of the Russian emperors, who could seldom find a match equal to their rank, to pass their lives immured in a convent.

Feodor had a sister, Sophia, a very spirited, energetic woman, ambitious and resolute, whose whole soul revolted against such a moping existence. Seeing that Feodor had but a short time to live, she left her convent and returned to the Kremlin, persisting in her resolve to perform all sisterly duties for her dying brother. Ivan, her own brother, was incapable of reigning, from his infirmities. Peter, her half-brother, was but a child. Sophia, with wonderful energy, while tending at the couch of Feodor, made herself familiar with the details of the administration, and, acting on behalf of the dying sovereign, gathered the reins of power into her own hands.

As soon as Feodor expired, and it was announced that Peter was appointed successor to the throne, to the exclusion of his elder brother Ivan, Sophia, through her emissaries, excited the militia of the capital to one of the most bloody revolts Moscow had ever witnessed. It was her intention to gain the throne for the imbecile Ivan, as she doubted not that she could, in that event, govern the empire at her pleasure. Peter, child as he was, had already developed a character of self-reliance which taught Sophia that he would speedily wrest the scepter from her hands.

The second day after the burial of Feodor, the militia, or strelitzes as they were called, a body of citizen soldiers in Moscow, corresponding very much with the national guard of Paris, surrounded the Kremlin, in a great tumult, and commenced complaining of nine of their colonels, who owed them some arrears of pay. They demanded that these officers should be surrendered to them, and their demand was so threatening that the court, intimidated, was compelled to yield. The wretched officers were seized by the mob, tied to the ground naked, upon their faces, and whipped with most terrible severity. The soldiers thus overawed opposition, and became a power which no one dared resist. Sophia was their inspiring genius, inciting and directing them through her emissaries. Though some have denied her complicity in these deeds of violence, still the prevailing voice of history is altogether against her.