Peter the Great-The Tsar of Russia

   Peter the Great - The Emperor of Russia (Part-3)

Peter the Great - Tsar of Russia

   Peter asked Alexei Petrovich to retire to a monastery and threatened to treat him as a criminal in case of his refusal. Alexei did not refuse and sent his acceptance immediately. Peter was puzzled and in the meantime, he reached Copenhagen at the head of a victorious army. In August 1716, he wrote to Alexei from Copenhagen to again retire to a monastery or report to him in the battlefield. Alexei decided to go to Copenhagen and as soon as he crossed Russia’s boundaries and he instead of heading towards Copenhagen, reached Vienna and beseeched his wife’s brother-in-law, Charles VI, to grant him refuge. Charles sent him, near Naples for safety. But Peter would not tolerate his son’s escape. On the one hand, he assured Alexei Petrovich forgiveness if he returned to him and, on the other hand, he threatened to occupy the Roman Empire by force in case Charles did not surrender and extradite Alexei.

   Alexei Petrovich was left with no option. Charles dared not incur the wrath of the Tsar. Thus, Alexei returned to Moscow on January 31, 1718. On February 3, Peter assembled high clergy and state officials and Alexei name all those who had helped him in his escape to Vienna, if he wanted to attain Peter’s forgiveness. Alexei had nothing to hide as he was not hatching a conspiracy against his father. He disclosed the requisite names. He also agreed to renounce his right to the throne in favor of Catherine’s son, Peter.

   Peter was in his fury and he alleged that Alexei’s mother, Eudoxia Lopukhina, was involved in this plot. He asked for the nuns from the convent in which Eudoxia was incarcerated and had them flogged mercilessly to pressurize them into admitting that she was really involved. But the nuns failed to company.

   Peter was bent upon humiliating Eudoxia and her son, Alexie Petrovich. He charged her of an illegitimate affair with an army officer named Glebov. Glebov was impaled and his friend, the Bishop of Rostov, was broken on a wheel. Eudoxia Lopukhina was banished to a remote Siberian convent to ultimately die of cold and hunger.

Emperor of Russia-Peter the Great

      Peter the Great - Tsar of Russia (Part-2)

Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich

   Peter was a man of harsh and volatile temperament. Human life was of no consequence to him and models of justice he ignored at will. He did not spare even the woman he loved and flirted with and made them not only bend but break before him.

   He had his first wife locked in a convent (monkery) and later she was ordered to take to the veil. He ordered his first mistress, Anna Ivanova Mons, into prison on learning that she had another lover. He had a short affair with one Marie Hamilton who later chose to mart Peter’s assistant, Ivan Orlov and gave birth to a child who died soon thereafter. Peter charged her of infanticide and sentenced her to death. Peter personally attended her execution.

   When Peter was 25 years old, he declared that he had discovered a plot against his life. The conspirators aimed at the re-establishment of Sophia’s regency with Peter’s infant son on the throne. Peter let loose a reign of terror and put a number of his military officers through torture chambers and executed them.
 
   As many as 1,700 men and women were charged with sedition. They were interrogated and mercilessly whipped which tore their flesh, their bones broken on the wheel and grilled on slow fire. Most of them, unable to bear the torture, made false confessions to the sedition charges. Then there were mass executions. Gallows and execution blocks were erected in the Red Square, around the convent in which Sophia was detained. Peter personally kept a record of executions in his diary: On September 30, 201 men were sent to gallows on October 11, 144: on October 12, 205; on October 13, 144; on October 17, 109; on October 18, 63; on October 19, 106; and on October 20 it was 2.

Peter the Great-Emperor of Russia

  Peter the Great-Emperor of Russia (Part-1)

Peter the Great

   Peter the Great was a clever despot. His full name was Peter Alekseyevich Romanov. He had fits of manic-depression in which he would indulge in the worst kinds of brutalities and take delight in them. Typically of his horribly cruel behavior was the way he treated hundreds of men and women who, he alleged, were plotting to overthrow him. They were mercilessly whipped which tore their flesh, their bones were broken on the wheel and then grilled on slow fire. Could the Devil be more ruthless than him?

   Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich’s fourteenth child was Peter (total sixteen, but two of them died in childhood). Nathalie Naryshkina’s was Tsar Alexis’s second wife and Peter was her first child, Peter was merely three years old at the time of the Tsar’s death in 1676. Tsar Alexis was succeeded by his eldest son, Fedor, a boy of 14, from his first wife Maria Miloslavskaya. Fedor was sickly and he died childless at 20. He left a brother, Ivan - a half-blind and mentally deficient boy of 15.

   Immediately after the death of Fedor (April 27, 1682) Peter’s mother succeeded in nominating Peter as his, successor. This was resented by Sophia Alexseyevna Romanov, the eldest of the six daughters of Peter’s father by his first wife. Sophia organized a military revolt which began on March 15 and resulted in the brutal murder of Peter’s maternal uncles and other supporters. She took control of the government in her hands on May 17. On May 26, she announced Ivan the first and Peter the second Tsar and herself became the regent for the duration of the minority of her brothers. She first refused regency, as a comic act on her part, and then accepted it on May 29, 1682. Thus she became Russia’s first woman ruler since the rule of Princess Olga in the tenth century. Sophia was not beautiful by any count. She was madly in love with Prince Vasili Golitsin, one of her father’s advisers, and he became Sophia’s most trusted counselor.