Peter the Great

by Robert K. Massie

  THE REVOLT OF THE STRELTSY

  Throughout the first half of Peter's life, the key to power in Russia was the Streltsy, the shaggy, bearded pikemen and musketeers who guarded the Kremlin and were Russia's first professional soldiers. They were sworn to protect "the government" in a crisis but often had difficulty deciding where the legitimate government lay. They were a kind of collective dumb animal, never quite sure who was its proper master, but ready to rush and bite anyone who challenged its own privileged position. Ivan the Terrible had formed these regiments to give a permanent professional core to the unwieldy feudal host which previous Muscovite rulers had led into battle. These older armies, consisting of squadrons of mounted noblemen and a horde of armed peasants, were summoned in the spring and sent home in the autumn. Usually, these summer soldiers, untrained and undisciplined, clutching whatever spear or axe lay at hand when they were mustered, fared badly against their better-equipped Western enemies, the Poles or the Swedes.

  On guard or on parade, the Streltsy were a colorful sight. Each regiment had its own vivid colors: a caftan or full-length coat of blue, green or cherry, a fur-trimmed hat of the same color, breeches tucked into yellow boots turned up at the toe. Over the caftan, each soldier buckled a black leather belt from which to sling his sword. In one hand, he carried a musket or arquebus, in the other a halberd or pointed battle-axe.

  Most of the Streltsy were simple Russians, living by the old ways, revering both tsar and patriarch, hating innovation and opposing reforms. Both officers and men were suspicious and resentful of the foreigners brought in to train the army in new weapons and tactics. They were ignorant of politics, but when they believed the country was veering from proper traditional paths, they easily convinced themselves that duty demanded their interference in affairs of state.

  In peacetime, they had not enough to do. A few detachments were stationed on the Polish and Tatar frontiers, but the bulk was concentrated in Moscow, where they lived in special quarters near the Kremlin. By 1682, they numbered 22,000—divided into twenty-two regiments of 1,000 men each—who with their wives and children were an enormous mass of idle soldiery and dependents quartered in the heart of the capital. They were coddled: the tsar provided the handsome log houses in which they lived, the tsar furnished their food, their clothing and their pay. In return they served as sentries in the Kremlin and guards at the city gates. When the tsar traveled in Moscow, the Streltsy lined his route; when he left the city, they provided an escort. They served as policemen, carrying small whips to break up fights. When the city caught fire, the Streltsy became firemen.

  Gradually, with so much extra time on their hands, the Streltsy drifted into trade. Individual Strelets opened shops. As members of the army, they paid no taxes on their profits and became rich. Membership in the regiments became desirable and enlistment a privilege passed down on an almost hereditary basis. As soon as a boy was old enough, he was enrolled in his father's regiment. Naturally, the richer the Streltsy became, the more reluctant they were to resume their primary duties as soldiers. A Streltsy with a profitable shop was likely to offer bribes rather than accept some arduous assignment. The Streltsy officers also profited from this large pool of manpower. Some used the idle musketeers as servants, others to build their houses or tend their gardens. Sometimes the officers embezzled the soldiers' pay, and soldiers' formal complaints to the government were usually ignored and the petitioners punished.

  This is exactly what happened in May 1682, as the young Tsar Fedor lay on his deathbed. The Griboyedov Regiment presented a formal petition accusing their colonel, Semyon Griboyedov, of withholding half their pay and forcing them to work during Easter Week on a house he was building outside Moscow. The commander of the Streltsy, Prince Yury Dolgoruky, ordered the soldier presenting the petition to be whipped for insubordination. But this time, as the petitioner was being led to the knout, he passed a watching group of his regimental comrades. "Brothers," he cried "why do you give me up? I gave the petition by your orders and for you!" Aroused, the Streltsy fell upon the guards and liberated the prisoner.

  This incident inflamed the Streltsy Quarter. Seventeen regiments immediately accused their colonels of cheating or maltreatment and demanded punishment. The Regent Natalya's fledgling government, just taking office, inherited the crisis and floundered badly. Many boyars of the oldest families of Russia—the Dolgorukys, Repnins, Romodanovskys, Sheremetevs, Sheins, Kurakins and Urusovs—had rallied behind Peter and his mother, but none knew how to placate the Streltsy. In the end, desperate to blunt the soldiers' hostility, Natalya sacrificed the colonels. Without investigation, she ordered the colonels arrested and stripped of rank, and their property and wealth divided to meet the soldiers' claims. Two of the colonels, one of them Semyon Griboyedov, were publicly knouted, while twelve others were given the lesser punishment of being beaten with sticks, called batogs, at the direction of the Streltsy themselves. "Beat them harder," they urged, until their officers fainted. Then, the Streltsy grumbled with satisfaction. "They have had enough. Let them go-"

  Allowing a mutinous soldiery to beat its officers was a risky way of restoring discipline. For the moment, the Streltsy were appeased, but in fact their new sense of power, their increased assurance that they were entitled and even obligated to purge the state of its enemies, had made them far more dangerous.

  The Streltsy thought they knew who these enemies were: the boyars and the Naryshkins. Sinister stories had been passed among them. It was rumored that Fedor had not died naturally, as had been announced, but had been poisoned by foreign doctors with the connivance of the boyars and the Naryshkins. These same enemies had then pushed aside Ivan, the rightful heir, in favor of

  Peter. Now that their diabolical schemes had succeeded, foreigners would be given power in the army and government, Orthodoxy would be degraded and trampled, and, worst of all, those faithful defenders of the old values in Muscovy, the Streltsy, would be horribly punished.

  These were stories which played on the traditional prejudices of the Streltsy. And other events were described in a manner calculated to arouse the soldiery. On taking office, Natalya had distributed wholesale new promotions in rank to all her Naryshkin relatives, even elevating her arrogant twenty-three-year-old younger brother Ivan to the rank of boyar. Ivan Naryshkin already was an object of dislike for his remark at Fedor's funeral. Now, fresh rumors spread: that he had rudely pushed the Tsarevna Sophia to the ground; that he had taken the crown and placed it on his own head, declaring that it looked better on him than on anyone else.

  But the stories had a source, the rumors a purpose. Who was behind this effort to arouse the Streltsy? One instigator was Ivan Miloslavsky, who was keenly anxious to overthow Peter, Natalya and the Naryshkin party. Having already been exiled himself during the previous period of Naryshkin dominance at court, he had retaliated by sending Matveev to six years of harsh internment in the Arctic; now, Matveev was returning to Moscow to act as chief advisor to the new Regent—Tsaritsa Natalya Naryshkina— and Ivan Miloslavsky knew what he could expect in this- latest shift of power. Another plotter was Prince Ivan Khovansky, a vain, incessantly noisy man whose soaring ambitions were constantly thwarted by his own incompetence. Relieved of his post as Governor of Pskov, he was called before Tsar Alexis, who told him, "Everybody calls you a fool." Never willing to accept this valuation, convinced by the Miloslavskys that high office awaited him at their hands, he was an active supporter of then-cause.

  Surprisingly, the plot also involved Prince Vasily Golitsyn, a man of Western tastes, caught on the Miloslavsky side because of the enemies he had made. During Fedor's reign, Golitsyn had urged reforms. It was he who drew up the new organization of the. army and proposed the abolition of precedence, and for this the boyars hated him. As the boyars now supported Natalya and the Naryshkins, Golitsyn was thrown among the Miloslavskys.

  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 Tsar Fedor and could act as regent if young Ivan mounted the throne. Only one person was now threatened with complete seclusion in a convent or terem and the extinction of all meaningful political or personal existence. Only one person had the intelligence and courage to attempt to overthrow an elected tsar. No one knows the exact extent of her involvement in the plot and the terrible events that followed; some say it was done on her behalf but without her knowledge. But the circumstantial evidence is strong that the chief conspirator was Sophia.

  Meanwhile, completely unaware, Natalya waited anxiously m the Kremlin for Matveev's return. On the day of Peter's election as tsar, she had sent messengers urging him to come quickly to Moscow. He started back, but his trip turned into a triumphal progress. Every town through which he passed offered thanksgiving services and a feast for the rehabilitated statesman. Finally, on the evening of May 11, after six years in exile, the old man re-entered Moscow. Natalya greeted him as her savior and presented him to the ten-year-old Tsar, whom he had last seen as a child of four. Matveev's hair was white and his step was slow, but Natalya was certain that, with his experience and wisdom, with the prestige he enjoyed among both boyars and Streltsy, the old man would soon be able to establish order and harmony.

  So it seemed for three days. During this time, Matveev's house was crowded with welcoming boyars, merchants and foreign friends from the German Suburb. The Streltsy, remembering him as an honorable former commander, sent delegations from the regiments to pay their respects. Even members of the Miloslavsky family came, with the exception of Ivan Miloslavsky, who sent word that he was ill. Matveev received them all with happy tears streaming down his face, while his house, cellars and courtyard overflowed with welcoming gifts. Peril seemed distant, but Matveev, newly arrived on the scene and still not in full control, underestimated the danger. Sophia and her party never relaxed, and the spark of revolt remained alive among the regiments. Matveev and Natalya, isolated in the Kremlin and enveloped in their happiness, did not feel the mounting tension, but others did. Baron Van Keller, the Dutch ambassador, wrote: "The discontent of the Streltsy continues. All public affairs are at a standstill. Great calamities are feared and not without cause, for the might of the Streltsy is great and no resistance can be opposed to them."

  At nine o'clock on the morning of May 15, the smoldering spark burst into flame. Two horsemen, Alexander Miloslavsky and Peter Tolstoy, both members of Sophia's intimate circle, galloped into the Streltsy Quarter, shouting, "The Naryshkins have murdered the Tsarevich Ivan! To the Kremlin! The Naryshkins will kill the whole royal family. To arms! Punish the traitors!"

  The Streltsy Quarter erupted. Bells tolled urgently, battle drums began to beat. Men in caftans buckled on their armor and their sword belts, grasped their halberds, spears and muskets and assembled in the streets ready for battle. Some of the musketeers chopped off the handles of their long spears and halberds to make weapons deadlier at close range. Unfurling their broad regimental banners embroidered with pictures of the Virgin, and beating their drums, they began to advance through the streets toward the Kremlin. As they approached, terrified citizens scurried out of their path. "We are going to the Kremlin to kill the traitors and murderers of the Tsar's family!" the soldiers shouted.

  Meanwhile, within the offices and palaces of the Kremlin, the day was proceeding normally. No one had the slightest idea of what was happening in the city or of the doom moving toward them. The great gates of the citadel were wide open, with only a scattering of sentries. A meeting of the council of boyars had just ended and the boyars were sitting quietly in their offices and in the public rooms of the palaces, or strolling and talking while waiting for their midday dinner. Matveev was just leaving the council chamber and coming out onto the staircase leading to the bedchamber when he saw Prince Fedor Urusov running toward him, out of breath.

  Urusov gasped out the news: The Streltsy had risen! They were marching through the city toward the Kremlin! Matveen, astounded and alarmed, returned to the palace to warn the Tsaritsa Natalya; he ordered the Patriarch to come immediately, the Kremlin gates to be closed, the duty regiment of Streltsy, the Stremyani Regiment, to man the walls and prepare to defend Peter, his family and the government.

  Scarcely had Matveev finished speaking when three messengers arrived one after another, each bringing worse news than his predecessor. The first announced that the Streltsy were already nearing the Kremlin walls; the second, that the gates could not be closed so quickly; and the third, that everything was too late, for the Streltsy were already inside the Kremlin. As he spoke, hundreds of rebellious musketeers were surging through the open gates, up the hill and into Cathedral Square in front of the Facets Palace. As they came, the soldiers of the Stremyani Regiment were swept along with them, abandoning their posts and joining their comrades from other regiments.

  At the top of the hill, the Streltsy poured into the square surrounded by the three cathedrals and the Ivan Bell Tower. Massed before the Red Staircase, which led from the square into the palace, they shouted, "Where is the Tsarevich Ivan? Give us the Naryshkins and Matveev! Death to the traitors!" Inside, the terrified boyars of the council, still uncertain as to what had provoked this violent assault, collected in the palace banquet hall. Prince Cherkassky, Prince Golitsyn and Prince Sheremetev were chosen to go out and ask the Streltsy what they wanted. They learned from the cries: "We want to punish the traitors! They have killed the Tsarevich and will kill the whole royal family! Give us the Naryshkins and the other traitors!" Understanding that in part the mutiny was due to a mistake, the delegation returned to the banquet hall and told Matveev. He in turn went to Natalya and advised her that the only way to calm the soldiers would be to show them that the Tsarevich Ivan was still alive and the royal family united. He asked that she take both Peter and Ivan to the top of the Red Staircase and show them to the Streltsy.

  Natalya trembled. To stand with her ten-year-old son in front of a howling mob of armed men calling for the blood of her family was an appalling assignment. Yet she had no choice. She took Peter by one hand and Ivan by the other and stepped onto the porch at the head of the staircase. Behind her stood the Patriarch and the boyars. When the Steltsy saw the Tsaritsa and the two boys, the shouting died and a confused murmur filled the square. In the hush, Natalya raised her voice and cried out, "Here is the Lord Tsar Peter Alexeevich. And here is the Lord Tsarevich Ivan Alexeevich. Thanks be to God, they are well and have not suffered at the hands of traitors. There are no traitors in the palace. You have been deceived."

  A new clamor arose from the Streltsy. This time, the soldiers were arguing among themselves. A few, curious and bold, climbed the staircase or placed ladders against the porch and mounted to get a closer look at the helpless trio standing bravely before them. They wanted to be sure that Ivan was still truly alive. "Are you really Ivan Alexeevich?" they asked the pathetic boy. "Yes," he stammered in an almost inaudible voice. "Are you really Ivan?" they asked again. "Yes, I am Ivan," said the Tsarevich. Peter, standing only a few feet from the Streltsy, their faces and weapons level with his eyes, said nothing. Despite the tremble in his mother's hand, he remained rigid, staring calmly, showing no sign of fear.

  Thoroughly bewildered by this confrontation, the Streltsy retreated down the steps. Obviously, they had been deceived— Ivan had not been murdered. There he stood, his hand held protectively by the Naryshkin Tsaritsa, whose family was supposed to have murdered him. There was no need for vengeance; all their glorious patriotic feelings began to seem foolishly out of place. A small group of Streltsy, not to be deterred from private vengeance against certain arrogant boyars, began to shout their names, but most stood silent and confused, staring uncertainly at the three figures on the porch above them.

  Natalya stood there for another minute, gazing down at the sea of pikes and halberds before her. Then, having done what sh
e could, she turned and led the two boys back into the palace. As soon as she disappeared, Matveev with his white beard and long robes stepped forward to the head of the staircase. Under Tsar Alexis, he had been a popular commander of the Streltsy, and many still remembered him favorably. He began to speak to them quietly, confidently, in a tone both proprietary and paternal. He reminded them of their loyal service in the past, of their reputation as defenders of the tsar, of their victories in the field. Without condemning them, more in sorrow than in anger, he asked how they could stain their great reputation by this rebellious tumult which was all the more lamentable as it was based on rumor and falsehood. He stressed that there was no need for them to protect the royal family, which, as they had just seen with their own eyes, was unharmed and safe. There was no need to threaten murder or violence to anyone. Quietly, he advised them to disperse, go home and ask pardon for their actions of the day. He promised that such petitions would be accepted and the outburst explained as excessive, misplaced loyalty to the throne.

  These confident, friendly words made a deep impression. The soldiers in front, who could hear them best, listened carefully and nodded in approval. In the rear, there still were loud arguments, while some shouted for silence so that they could here Matveev. Gradually, as Matveev's words sank in, the entire mob became quiet.

  When Matveev had finished, the Patriarch also spoke briefly, calling the Streltsy his children, admonishing them gently for their behavior, suggesting that they ask pardon and disperse. These words, too, were soothing, and it seemed that the crisis had passed. Matveev, sensing the better mood, saluted the Streltsy, turned and walked back into the palace to bring the good news to the distraught Tsaritsa. His departure was a fatal mistake.

  As soon as Matveev disappeared, Prince Michael Dolgoruky, the son of the Streltsy commander, appeared at the top of the Red Staircase. Humiliated by the mutinous behavior of the troops, he was now in a towering rage and foolishly chose this moment to attempt to reestablish military discipline. In the roughest language, he cursed the men and commanded them to return to their homes. Otherwise, he threatened, the knout would fly.