Chapter 17 Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich The transformative intentions of Peter the Great aroused many dissatisfied people who were ready to oppose the tsar with all measures within Russia; but of all the opponents of his spirit, the first place, according to the dignity of the breed, was occupied by his own son,

Pale Winter sun rises over Moscow, and an obscure light falls on the snow-covered roofs of the ancient city. At 9 o'clock in the morning on February 3, 1718, all the nobles of Russia gathered in the Throne Hall of the Kremlin Palace for an important meeting. Ministers and other senior government officials, the top of the clergy, representatives of the most noble families came together here to witness a historic event: the deprivation of the prince's rights to the throne and the proclamation of a new heir to the Russian throne. The dramatic and dangerous moment was emphasized by the presence in the Kremlin of three battalions of the Preobrazhensky Regiment, which, with loaded muskets, stood in a cordon around the palace.

Peter arrived first and took his place on the throne. Then Tolstoy introduced Alexei. The status of the prince became clear to everyone: he was without a sword, and therefore, was a prisoner. Alexei immediately confirmed this - he went straight to his father, fell to his knees, admitted his guilt and asked to be forgiven for his crimes. Peter ordered his son to get up, and the prince's written confession was read out:

Most merciful Sovereign Father! Potently recognizing his sin before you, as if he were his parent and Sovereign, he wrote a confession and sent it from Naples; so now I bring it, that I, forgetting the position of sonship and allegiance, left and succumbed to the patronage of the Caesar and asked him for my protection. In which I ask for gracious forgiveness and pardon.

Then the king officially accused his son of disobeying his father's orders, neglecting his wife, contacting Euphrosyne, deserting from the army and, finally, shamefully fleeing to a foreign country. Peter publicly announced that the prince asked only to save his life and was ready to renounce the inheritance. Out of mercy) Peter continued, he promised Alexei forgiveness, but only on the condition that the whole truth about his past misdeeds and the names of all his accomplices would be revealed. Alexei followed Peter into the small adjoining room without objection and swore that only Alexander Kikin and the servant Ivan Afanasyev knew that he was planning to run away. Then the father and son returned to the Throne Room, where Vice-Chancellor Shafirov read out the printed manifesto. The document listed accusations against the tsarevich, announced that he had been granted forgiveness, but that he was being disinherited, and proclaimed a new heir to the throne - Catherine's two-year-old son, tsarevich Pyotr Petrovich. From the palace, the entire assembly proceeded through the Kremlin courtyard to the Assumption Cathedral, where the prince kissed the Gospel and the cross and swore on the holy relics that after the death of his father he would become a faithful subject of his younger half-brother and would not try to ascend the throne. All those present also took an oath of allegiance to the new heir to the throne. In the evening, this manifesto was made public, and in the next three days all residents of Moscow were invited to come to the cathedral and also swear allegiance to the new heir. At the same time in Petersburg, messengers went to Menshikov and to the Senate with orders to swear allegiance to Pyotr Petrovich as heir to the throne, the entire garrison, the nobility, townspeople and peasants.

These two ceremonies in Moscow and St. Petersburg seemed to put an end to the tsarevich's case. Alexei renounced his claims to the throne, and a new heir was proclaimed. What more could you want? As it turned out, a lot, a lot. The terrible drama was just beginning.

The manifesto of Peter, read out at the Kremlin meeting, in which forgiveness was made dependent on whether Alexei would name his advisers and proxies, introduced a new shade into the relationship between father and son. In fact, the tsar broke the promise given to the prince by Tolstoy in the castle of Sant Elmo; Aleksey was promised unconditional forgiveness if he returned to Russia. Now he was required to name all the "accomplices" and tell about all the details of the "conspiracy".

The reason, of course, was the desire that tormented Peter to find out how far the threat to the throne, and even his own life, had gone. Every day the king became stronger in his intention to find out which of his subjects, and perhaps even of his own advisers and close associates, secretly took the side of his son. He could not believe that Alexei had escaped without anyone's help and without any secret intent. Therefore, from the point of view of Peter, there was no longer just family drama, but a political confrontation, on the outcome of which the future of all his undertakings depended. He made another son heir, but Alexei was still alive and at large. Could Peter be sure that after his death, the same nobles who, ahead of each other, signed the oath to the two-year-old Peter Petrovich, would not change their oaths just as hastily and would not rush to support Alexei? Moreover, how could he continue to live surrounded by familiar faces, not knowing for sure where the face is and where the mask is?

Exhausted by doubts, Peter decided to get to the bottom of what had happened. The first stage of the investigation began immediately after the announcement of the manifesto, in Preobrazhensky. Reminding Alexei of his promise to open everything, Peter wrote with his own hand a list of seven questions, which Tolstoy handed over to the tsarevich along with a warning from the tsar that if he kept silent about something or evaded an answer at least once, he would lose the forgiveness received. In response, Alexei wrote a long, incoherent tale about the events of his life over the past four years. Insisting that only Kikin and Afanasiev knew about the escape in advance, he also mentioned some other people to whom he told about himself and about his relationship with his father. Among those named were Peter's half-sister, Princess Maria Alekseevna, Abraham Lopukhin - the brother of Peter's first wife Evdokia, that is, Alexei's uncle, Senator Peter Apraksin - brother of the Admiral General, Senator Samarin, Semyon Naryshkin, Prince Vasily Dolgoruky, Prince Yuri Trubetskoy, Tsarevich Siberian , mentor of Tsarevich Vyazemsky and his confessor Ignatiev. The only person whom Alexei tried in every possible way to whitewash was Euphrosyne: “She hid the letters in a chest ... (and) she did not know about your letters to me and from me to you. And when I intended to run away, I took her by deceit, telling her to accompany her to Riga and from there I took her with me and told her and the people who were with me that I was ordered to go secretly to Vienna to work against the Turk and to live secretly, so as not to met the Turks. And they didn't know anything else from me."

Having acquired a list of names, Peter sent an urgent order to Menshikhov in St. Petersburg, where most of those named by Alexei lived. As soon as the couriers arrived, the city outposts were closed, and no one was allowed out of the city under any circumstances. The peasants who brought food to the markets were searched at the exit, so that none of the guilty would run away, hiding in simple sledges. Apothecaries were forbidden to sell arsenic and any other poison in case one of the accused chose a different form of flight.

Convinced that the city was locked up, Peter's agents struck. At midnight, fifty Guards soldiers slowly surrounded Kikin's house. The officer entered, found the owner in bed, grabbed him and, right in his dressing gown and night shoes, beat him into shackles and an iron collar and took him away before he even had a chance to say a word to his beautiful wife. In fact, Kikin almost escaped. He realized in advance that he was in danger, and bribed one of Peter's batmen to warn him if something happened. When Peter wrote the order to Menshikov, this orderly stood behind the king and managed to read everything. He immediately left the house and sent a messenger to Petersburg. But the messenger arrived in time a few minutes after Kikin's arrest.

Menshikov was also ordered to arrest Prince Vasily Dolgoruky, a lieutenant general, holder of the Danish Order of the White Elephant and head of the commission created by Peter to consider "forgery and embezzlement in the food part." According to the general opinion, he was in great favor with Peter, for he had just returned with the king from a journey that lasted a year and a half to Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Paris. Menshikov surrounded Dolgoruky's house with soldiers, then entered and announced the royal order to the prince. Dolgoruky handed over the sword with the words: "My conscience is clear, and more than one head will not be removed." The prince in shackles was taken to the Peter and Paul Fortress. That same evening, Menshikov arrested Senator Pyotr Apraksin, Abraham Lopukhin, Senator Mikhail Samarin and Tsarevich Vasily of Siberia. In addition, all the servants of Alexei and nine other people in chains were waiting to be sent to Moscow.

During February, more and more people fell into the thrown net. There were daily arrests in Moscow and St. Petersburg. They arrested Dositheus, Bishop of Rostov, one of the most influential churchmen in Russia, on the charge that he publicly prayed in church for the health of Evdokia and predicted the death of Peter. Evdokia herself and the only surviving sister of Peter, Maria, were also arrested and brought to Moscow for investigation. Peter strongly suspected his ex-wife. She was in relations with Alexei and would have won a lot if her son had been on the throne. On the day when Alexei was deprived of the throne, Peter sent the captain of the guard Grigory Skornyakov-Pisarsva to the monastery in Suzdal, where Evdokia had lived for nineteen years. Once there, Skornyakov-Pisarev discovered that Evdokia had long ago thrown off her monastic vestments and was dressing like a royal person. He found on the altar of the monastery church an inscription "Prayer for the Tsar and Tsarina", in which the names of Peter and Evdokia stood side by side, as if the Tsar had never divorced his wife. Finally, Skornyakov-Pisarev discovered that the former wife and former nun had taken a lover, Major Stepan Glebov, commander of the detachment assigned to guard her in Suzdal.

Forty-four-year-old Evdokia shuddered when she imagined how the giant who had once been her husband would react to all this. While she was being taken to Moscow, she wrote a letter and sent it ahead so that it would reach Peter before she herself. She prayed:

Most merciful sovereign! In past years, and in which I do not remember, during the stay of Semyon Yazykov, according to my promise, I was tonsured in the Suzdal Intercession Monastery in the old woman and I was named Elena. And after she was tonsured, she went about in a monastic dress for half a year and, not wanting to be a monk, leaving monasticism and throwing off her dress, lived in that monastery secretly, under the guise of monasticism, as a laywoman. And that my concealment appeared through Grigory Pisarev. And now I rely on Your Majesty's loving generosity. Falling down at your feet, I ask for mercy, that my crime of forgiveness, so that I do not die with a worthless death. And I promise to continue to be a monk and remain in monasticism until my death, and I will pray to God for you, Sovereign. Your Majesty's lowest slave, your ex-wife Avdotya.

The initial accusation against Evdokia did not seem too serious - the letters exchanged between Alexei and his mother were rare and harmless - but Peter, irritated by the behavior of his ex-wife, firmly decided to find out all the details of her Suzdal life. Glebov, father Andrey, the abbot of the monastery, and several nuns were arrested. It is hard to believe that for twenty years no one heard about the way of life of Evdokia and did not report it to Moscow, and that Peter's anger was caused only by an insult inflicted on his honor. Most likely, he was haunted by the belief in the existence of a conspiracy, the threads of which could go through the Suzdal monastery.

The prisoners flocked to Moscow from St. Petersburg, Suzdal and other places, and huge crowds of curious people gathered near the gates of the Kremlin in the hope of seeing something interesting or picking up the latest rumors. was called to Moscow higher clergy, court officials, generals and civil officials and almost all Russian nobility; daily trains of carriages with nobles and churchmen, accompanied by numerous servants, there was something to see here.

The clergy were needed to judge their brother, Bishop Dosifs of Rostov. He was found guilty, his church vestments were torn off and handed over to the secular authorities for interrogation under torture. When he was undressed, he turned to the clergy who condemned him and shouted: “Am I the only one guilty of this matter? Look into your hearts, all of you! What will you find there? Go to the people, listen to them. What do people say?

Whose name will you hear? * Under torture, Dosifsy did not confess to anything except affection for Alexei and Evdokia; it was not possible to beat a confession out of him, nor to prove any of his crimes or inflammatory speeches. And yet, as was the case with the archers two decades ago, the very evasiveness of the answers received from Dosifs seemed to irritate Peter and urge him to dig even deeper.

The leading figure of the investigation was Peter himself, who now and then rushed from his palace through the whole city, accompanied by only two or three servants. Contrary to the custom of all former Moscow tsars, he appeared not only as a judge in an ancient royal attire studded with gems, sitting in glory and wisdom on his throne, but also as chief prosecutor- in a European dress: trousers, camisole, stockings and shoes with buckles, demanding justice from the highest dignitaries of the state, secular and spiritual. Standing in the Throne Room, he angrily raised his voice, proving how dangerous his reign was and how terrible treason was. It was Peter who laid out the accusation against Dosifs, and when the tsar finished, the bishop of Rostov was doomed.

By the end of March, the Moscow stage of the investigation was over - a meeting of ministers, sitting as a temporary supreme court, delivered its verdict. Kikin, Glebov and the Bishop of Rostov were condemned to a slow, painful death; the rest were given a simpler execution. Many were publicly whipped and exiled. Secondary female criminals, such as the Suzdal nuns, were subjected to public flogging and were transferred to monasteries on the White Sea. Tsarina Evdokia was not punished corporally, but was taken to a distant monastery on Lake Ladoga. There she remained under the strictest supervision for ten years, until the accession to the throne of her grandson, Peter II. Then she returned to the court, lived until 1731 and died during the reign of Empress Anna. Princess Maria was accused of inciting disobedience to the king and was imprisoned in the Shlisslburg fortress for three years. She was released in 1721, she returned to St. Petersburg and died in 1723.

Many of the accused were fully acquitted or punished lightly. The Tsarevich of Siberia was exiled to Arkhangelsk, Senator Samarin was acquitted. The accusation against Senator Pyotr Apraksin was that he had lent the prince 3,000 rubles when he left Petersburg for Germany. When during the investigation it turned out that Apraksin could not have any information about the planned flight and believed that Alexei was going to the king, he was also acquitted.

Prince Vasily Dolgoruky, who confessed his sympathy for the prince, was saved from punishment by the pleas of his relatives, especially his elder brother, Prince Yakov, who reminded the tsar that the Dolgoruky family had long served him faithfully. But still, Vasily was deprived of the rank of general, his Order of the White Elephant was sent back to Copenhagen, and he himself was sent into exile to Kazan. Leaving Petersburg, he received permission to say goodbye to Tsarina Catherine. He appeared before her about an old black coat with a long beard and made a long speech in his own defense, not forgetting to complain that he had nothing left in the world except what he was wearing. Catherine, soft-hearted as always, sent him 200 ducats as a gift.

The execution of those condemned to death took place on March 26 on Red Square, under the walls of the Kremlin, with a huge crowd of people - A 200-300 thousand people, according to foreign observers. The Bishop of Rostov and three others had their arms and legs broken with a hammer, and the unfortunate ones were given over to a slow death on a wheel. Glebov, Evdokia's lover, got an even worse fate. At first he was beaten with a whip and burned with red-hot rods and coals. Then they stretched it out on a board studded with sharp spikes that pierced the body, and left it like that for three days. But he still did not confess to treason, In the end he was impaled. It was said that when he was tormented in the last torment, and a wooden point pierced his insides, Peter approached him. He invited Glebov to confess, and then he would have been finished off immediately so as not to torment him anymore. But Glebov allegedly spat in Peter's face, and the tsar left.

Kikin, who confessed that he advised the prince to seek refuge with the Austrian emperor, was also slowly tortured to death, from time to time brought to his senses and allowed to rest in order to prolong his suffering longer. On the second day of his execution, Peter approached him, Kikin was still alive on the wheel and begged the king to forgive him and release him as a monk. Peter refused, but showed a kind of mercy - he ordered to cut off his head.

Nine months later, the second act of this terrible retribution took place on Red Square. A friend of the prince, Prince Shcherbatov, was beaten with a whip, his tongue was cut off and his nostrils were torn out. They punished with a whip and three more, including a Pole translator who served with Alexei. Unlike the Russians, who met their fate with great humility, the Pole resisted with all his might, refused to voluntarily undress and lie down under the whip, so that it was necessary to rip off his clothes by force. All these people survived, but the next five were killed. These were Avraam Lopukhin - brother of Evdokia, confessor of Alexei Ignatiev, servant Afanasiev and two more people from the prince's servants. All were sentenced to be wheeled, but at the last minute the sentence was commuted and replaced with beheading. First, the priest died, then Lopukhin, and after him all the rest, and the latter had to lay their heads on the chopping block, stained with the blood of the former.

While all this blood was shed, Peter waited - not yet sure that the plot had been fully revealed, but convinced that what had been done was just and necessary. When a foreign diplomat congratulated him on the fact that he managed to identify and defeat secret enemies, the king nodded in agreement. “If the fire encounters straw and other fragile matter in its path, it will soon spread,” he said. But if he meets iron and stone, he goes out by itself.

After the Moscow tortures and bloody executions everyone had hope that the prince's work was over. The main threads of the conspiracy, if any, have already been identified and eradicated. Leaving Moscow for St. Petersburg in March 1718, Peter took Alexei with him. The father and son traveled together, and this led observers to believe that their relationship improved. But fears and suspicions still seethed in Peter's soul, and him. the state affected the entire state. “The more I reflect on the confused state of affairs in Russia,” de Lavie wrote in Paris, “the more it is incomprehensible to me how these disorders will be put an end to. Most people, - he continued, - the weight is still hoping and only waiting for his (Peter's) end to wallow in the quagmire of laziness and ignorance. the main problem for Peter was that, although no conspiracy, in fact, was revealed, but still no one proved to him that the prince was a devoted son, and all those standing at the throne were his faithful subjects. Moreover, nothing was done to solve the most painful issue for Peter. Weber, in his report, argued about it this way:

The question arises: what to do next with the prince? They say that they are going to send him to a very distant monastery. This does not seem probable to me, because the farther the tsar sends him, the more chances he will give the indefatigable mob to free him. I think that he will be brought here again and placed in the vicinity of St. Petersburg. I will not decide here whether the king is right or not by depriving him of the throne and imposing a paternal curse on him. One thing is true: the clergy, the nobility and the common people revere the prince as a deity.

Weber guessed right. Alexei was formally free, but he was required to settle in a house next door to Catherine's palace, and Peter did not take his eyes off him. The prince was so intimidated that this supervision did not seem to bother him. He meekly watched as his mother, mentor, confessor, all friends and supporters were seized. They were interrogated, tortured, exiled, flogged and executed, and he humbly stood by, grateful that he himself was not being punished. He seemed to think only of marrying Euphrosyne. During the Easter service, Alexei, as expected, congratulated Catherine, and then fell on his knees in front of her and begged to influence his father so that he would allow him to marry Euphrosyne as soon as possible.

The young woman arrived in St. Petersburg on April 15, but instead of immediately falling into the impatient arms of her yearning lover, she was immediately arrested and taken to the Peter and Paul Fortress*.

* The fate of this child, born of the prince, is unknown. According to some reports, the child was born in Riga when Euphrosyne was driving home. According to other sources, she gave birth already in the fortress. One way or another, this child disappeared without a trace from the pages of history.

In her things they found drafts of two letters from Naples, written by Alexei, one was addressed to the Senate, the other to the higher Orthodox clergy. The letter to the Senate said: Most excellent gentlemen, senators! As your grace, so, tea, and all the people, not without hesitation, my excommunication from the Russian regions and stay unknown to this time, to which nothing else forced me to leave my dear fatherland, only (as you already know) my always innocent anger and disorder, and even more so, which was at the beginning of last year, it was hardly and they did not clothe me in black clothes with need without any (as you all know) guilt. But the all-merciful Lord, through the prayers of all the offended comforters of the Most Holy Theotokos and all the saints, delivered me from this and gave me the opportunity to save myself by excommunication from my beloved fatherland (which, if not for this case, I would never want to leave), and now I find myself safely and it’s great under the protection of some high person until the time when the Lord who saved me will command me to return to the fatherland of the pack, in which case I ask you not to leave me forgotten, and I am always benevolent both to your mercy and to all the fatherland to my grave. Alexey.

The text of the letter to the clergy was very close to this, but there Alexei added that the idea to tonsure him as a monk comes from the same people "who did this to my parent."

Four weeks passed before the next act of the drama took place. In the middle of May, Peter decided to question both lovers separately, and then arrange for them to confrontation. He took Alexei with him to Peterhof, and two days later Euphrosyne was brought across the bay straight from the fortress in a closed boat. Peter interrogated both in Monplaisir, first the girl, and then the son.

And here, in Peterhof, Euphrosyne betrayed Alexei and doomed him to death. Of her own free will, not under torture, she repaid her royal lover - for all his passion for her, for all his efforts to protect her, for his willingness to give up the throne, if only to marry her and live quietly with her - by what she erected on him fatal accusations. She described in detail their life abroad, all the fears of the prince, all his bitterness against the king. She said that Alexei wrote to the emperor several times and complained about his father. That, having learned from Player's letters about rumors that there was a rebellion in the Russian troops in Mecklenburg, and an uprising in the cities near Moscow, he joyfully told her; "You see, the ways of the Lord are inscrutable." Reading in the newspaper that the prince fell ill Petr Petrovich Alexey rejoiced. He endlessly talked to her about accession to the throne and how, having become tsar, he would abandon St. Petersburg and all the conquered lands of Peter the Great and make Moscow his capital. He would dissolve Peter's court and take his own. He would have abandoned the fleet and let the ships rot. He would have reduced the army to a few regiments. He was not going to wage any more wars and would be content with the old borders of Russia. He would restore the ancient rights of the church and honor them.

Euphrosyne presented her role in such a way that it turned out that Alexei returned to Russia only thanks to her tireless persuasion. She stated that she accompanied him only because he threatened her with a knife and threatened to kill her if she refused. She even went to bed with him, because he forced her by force.

Euphrosyne's testimony reinforced many of Peter's suspicions. Later, in a letter to the regent of France, Peter announced that his son "did not confess to any malice" until he was shown letters found from his mistress. “From these letters, the rebellious intentions of the conspiracy against us became known to us, and the named mistress officially and voluntarily confirmed all their circumstances without special questions *.

* Euphrosyne was released, forgiven, and Peter allowed her to take some things of the prince for herself. The remaining thirty years of her life she lived in St. Petersburg and even married a Guards officer.

Peter's next step was to summon Alexei and accuse him of his beloved. This scene in Monplaisir is depicted in the famous painting by Nicholas Gay (1871); the tsar, in the same boots that are now kept in the Kremlin, is sitting at a table in the main hall, where the floor is tiled in black and white. His face is stern, one eyebrow is raised: he has asked a question and is waiting for an answer. Alexei is standing in front of him, tall, with an elongated, haggard face, dressed in black, like his father. He looks worried, gloomy, offended. The prince looks at the floor, not at his father, but leans on the table with his hand - he needs support.

This was the decisive moment. Under gaze. Petra Alexei tried to get out of the loop, which was tightening ever tighter: he admitted that he complained about the king in a letter to the emperor, but he did not send this letter. He also admitted that he wrote to the Senate and the clergy, but allegedly did this under pressure from the Austrian authorities, who otherwise threatened to deprive the fugitives of their protection. Then Peter ordered Euphrosyne to be brought in, and she repeated all the accusations, looking into the prince's face. The world for Alexei collapsed at once, and he began to stray and get frightened in his testimony. He confessed that the letter to the Emperor had in fact been sent after all. Yes, he really spoke badly about his father, but he was drunk. There was also talk of ascending the throne and returning to Russia, but only after natural death father. He explained this at length: “I thought my father’s death was close when I heard that he had something like epilepsy. I was told that elderly people could hardly live long after a seizure, and I reasoned that he would die at the latest in two years. I thought that after his death I would be able to leave the imperial possessions for Poland, and from Poland to Ukraine, where, I hoped, everyone would stand up for me. And I was sure that in Moscow Tsarevna Maria and most of the bishops would also be with me. As for ordinary people, I heard from many that they love me. I firmly intended not to return during the life of my father, except in the case in which I returned, that is, when my father himself called me.

Peter was not satisfied. He remembered the words of Euphrosyne that Alexei rejoiced at the rumors of a riot in the Russian troops in Mekyaenburg. And this means, the tsar continued, that if the troops in Mecklenburg really rebelled, "you would have taken their side already during my lifetime."

Alexey answered this incoherently, but honestly and terribly hurt himself: “If this turned out to be true and they called me, I would join the dissatisfied, but I did not decide whether I should go to them or not if they did not call me. Most likely, if I had not been invited, I would have been afraid to go there. But if they called, I would go. I thought that they would call me only when you were no longer there, because they planned to take your life, and I did not believe that they would overthrow you and leave you alive. But if they called me, even in your lifetime, I would probably go if they were strong enough.

A few days later, the king was presented with new incriminating evidence. Peter ordered that Veselovsky, the ambassador in Vienna, demanded an explanation from the emperor why the prince was forced to write to the Senate and the clergy. On May 28 Veselovsky's reply came. A terrible uproar arose at the Austrian court. Vice-Chancellor Count Schenborn was interrogated in the case in the presence of all ministers, after which Prince Eugene of Savoy reported to Veselovsky that neither the emperor nor Count Schönborn had ever ordered the prince to write these letters. The truth was that the tsarevich wrote them himself and sent them to Count Schönborn for transmission to Russia. Shenborn, due to his caution, did not send letters, and they remained in Vienna. In a word, the prince lied, and even involved the imperial court in his lies.

It was already too much. The prince was arrested and placed in the Trubetskoy bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress. Two supreme courts, one ecclesiastical and one secular, were convened to decide what to do with the prisoner. The ecclesiastical court included the entire top of the Russian church, and the secular court included all ministers, senators, governors, generals, and many guards officers. Before the hearings of the courts began, Peter, according to Weber, for eight days, for several hours on his knees, prayed to the Lord to instruct him on what to do in order to preserve his honor and not damage the well-being of the country. Then, on June 14, hearings began in the Senate Hall in St. Petersburg. Peter arrived, accompanied by spiritual and secular members of the court," they served a solemn prayer service, asking God for guidance in this unprecedented matter. The whole assembly was seated at tables that stood in a row, and then the doors and windows flung open and invited the public: Peter wanted everyone to hear how the proceedings were going. Four young officers under guard brought the prince and the trial began.

Peter reminded the audience that for many years he had never tried to deprive his son of the right to inherit the throne. On the contrary, he tried with all his might "to force (Aleksey) to claim the throne by trying to prove that he is worthy of it." But the prince, turning his back on the efforts of his father, “made an escape - ran to the emperor, asking for his help and protection, so that he would support and help him even military force... for the sake of gaining the Russian crown. Alexei, according to Peter, admitted that if the rebel units in Mecklenburg had called him to lead them, he would have gone to them even during his father's lifetime. “So it can be judged by all these circumstances that he thought to ascend the throne, but not in such a way that his father left him the throne, but in his own way, with foreign help or the force of the uprising, even during the life of his father.” In addition, during the investigation, Alexei constantly lied and did not want to tell the whole truth. And since the forgiveness promised to him by his father depended on a full and sincere confession, now this forgiveness is not valid. After Peter's accusatory speech, Alexei "confessed to his father and master, in the presence of the entire assembly of worldly and spiritual authorities, that he was guilty of everything named."

Peter asked the church court - three metropolitans; five bishops, four archimandrites and other high hierarchs - to advise him what the royal father should do with this new Absalom. The churchmen desperately shied away from a direct answer. This case, they argued, was not under the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical court. But forced by Peter to give a more thorough answer, they testified that if the king wanted to punish his son, then Old Testament allows you to do this (Exodus 21, Leviticus 20: “If anyone speaks ill of his father or his mother, let him die the death”, and Deuteronomy 21: “If anyone has a disobedient son and a destroyer, they did not listen to the voice of his father ... let them bring him before the guardians of their city and before the gates of their place ... and let the men of this city stone them and die”), On the other hand, the churchmen said, if the king wants to show mercy, then there are many examples of this in the teachings of Christ - just remember the parable of the prodigal son.

Still unhappy with this unintelligible verdict, Peter turned to the 127 members of the secular court. He ordered them to judge his son honestly and objectively, “without flattering (or chopping) me * and not fearing that this matter is worthy of a light punishment, and when you condemn me in such a way that it would be disgusting to me, which I swear to God and by His judgment, that in this you should not be afraid at all, so do not argue that your judgment should be inflicted on you, my son, as your Sovereign, without flattering us and without partiality.

* T. s. without thickening and flattery.

On June 16, Peter handed over to the court the authority to try Alexei as any other subject accused of treason "according to the accepted form and with the necessary search" - that is, with the use of torture.

Having received these orders and assurances, the court summoned the prince to the Senate hall and announced to him that “they are very saddened by his former behavior, but they are obliged to fulfill their duty and, regardless of his personality and the fact that he is the son of their most merciful monarch, interrogate him” First there was an interrogation under torture. On June 19, Alexei received twenty-five blows of the whip. These sufferings did not extort new confessions from him, and on June 24 the torture was used again. After fifteen new blows, from which the skin came off his back like bloody ribbons, Alexei admitted that he had told his confessor that he wanted his father dead. In this miserable and humiliated position, ready to confess to anything, he told his interrogator, Tolstoy, that he even wanted to pay the emperor for providing foreign troops in order to take the Russian throne from his father with their help.

That was enough. That evening, June 24th, high court unanimously and without further discussion, "with contrition of heart and outpouring of tears" delivered his sentence. Alexei had to die for "over the rebellious, of little use in the world, ungodly, double, deliberately killing his parents, precisely at the beginning on his Sovereign, like the father of the Fatherland and by nature on his most merciful parent" . The signatures under the verdict amounted to almost full list Peter's associates: the first was the name of Menshikov, followed by General Admiral Fyodor Apraksin, Chancellor Golovkin, Privy Councilors Yakov Dolgoruky, Ivan Musin-Pushkin and Tikhon Streshnev, Senator Pyotr Apraksin, Vice Chancellor Shafirov, Pyotr Tolstoy, Senator Dmitry Golitsyn, generals Adam Veide and Ivan Buturlin, Senator Mikhail Samarin, Ivan Romodanovsky, Alexei Saltykov, Prince Matvey Gagarin - Governor of Siberia, and Kirill Naryshkin, Governor of Moscow.

The final verdict depended on Peter; it was impossible to carry it out without royal approval and signature. Peter hesitated before signing, but very soon things got out of his control. Here is how Weber describes the last day of the tragedy:

The next day, Thursday, June 26, early in the morning, the king was informed that severe mental anguish and fear of death plunged the prince into an apoplexy. About noon, another messenger brought word that the life of the prince was in great danger, whereupon the king sent for the most important people of his court and ordered them to remain with him until a third messenger informed him that the prince's position was hopeless, he would not live to see the night and longed to see his father.

Then the king, accompanied by the above-named people, went to his dying son, who, at the sight of his father, burst into tears and, clasping his hands, told him that he had sadly and vilely offended the greatness of the almighty Lord and the king, that he hoped to die from this disease, and that even if he survived , then he is still unworthy of life, and therefore he only asks his father to remove the curse that he imposed on him in Moscow, forgive him all his grave crimes, give him a paternal blessing and order them to pray for his soul.

At these mournful words, the king and all those present burst into tears; His Majesty gave a touching answer, in a few words he presented all the insults that he had inflicted on him, and then he gave him forgiveness and blessed, after which they parted with many tears and lamentations from both sides.

At five in the evening a fourth messenger arrived, a major of the guards, to tell the tsar that the tsarevich was extremely anxious to see him again. At first, the king did not want to fulfill the request of his sons, but finally those around him persuaded him, presenting to His Majesty how cruel it would be to refuse this consolation to his son, who, being on the verge of death, may be tormented by pangs of conscience. But as soon as His Majesty stepped onto his sloop to cross to the fortress, the fifth messenger brought the news that the prince had already died.

How did Alexei actually die? Nobody knew then, and nobody knows now. The death of the prince gave rise to rumors and disputes, first in St. Petersburg, then throughout Russia, and then in Europe. Peter, worried about the unfavorable impression that this mysterious death could make abroad, ordered that a long official explanation of what had happened be sent to all the courts of Europe. He was especially worried about the reaction of the French court, which he had recently visited, and therefore sent a courier to Paris with a letter to the royal ambassador, Baron Schleinitz, to be presented to the king and regent. In the letter, Peter outlined the whole case and the course of the trial from an official point of view:

The secular court, in accordance with all God's and human laws, was to sentence him (Aleksey) to death, and it depended only on our royal will and paternal mercy to forgive his crimes or carry out the sentence. And we informed the prince, our son, about this.

However, we still had doubts and did not know how to solve a matter of such great importance. On the one hand, paternal feeling inclined us to forgive his sins, and on the other hand, we saw the disasters into which our state would plunge again, and those misfortunes that could happen if we took pity on our son. In the midst of these worries, the Almighty ... was pleased to save us and the entire state from all fears and troubles and end the days of our son Alexei, who passed away yesterday. When he realized how great the crimes he had committed, and heard the death sentence, he was struck by a kind of apoplexy. After this blow, but still retaining his mind and commanding speech, he asked us to visit him, which we did, accompanied by ministers and senators, in spite of all the evil done to us. We found him in tears, which spoke of sincere repentance. He told us that he feels the right hand of the Lord on himself and that soon he will be held accountable for everything he has done in life, and that he will not be able to find consolation if he does not receive forgiveness from his Sovereign and father. Then he again spoke about everything that happened to him, with the consciousness of his guilt, confessed, partook of the holy gifts, asked for our blessing and begged to forgive his crimes. We granted him forgiveness, as required by our paternal duty and the Christian faith.

His unintentional, quick death plunged us into great sorrow ... We reasoned that we should notify you of everything by courier, so that you have full information and, in the proper manner, conveyed this message to His most Christian Majesty (King Louis XV) and His royal highness regent for the Duke of Orleans. Also, in the event that anyone thinks to cover these events inappropriately, you will have truthful information to refute ... any false and unfounded speeches.

Weber and de Lavie accepted the official explanation and informed their capitals that the prince had died of apoplexy. But other foreigners doubted, and various sensational versions were used. Player first reported that Alexei had died of apoplexy, but three days later he informed his government that the prince had been beheaded with a sword or an ax (many years later there was even a story about how Peter himself cut off his son's head); according to rumors, some woman from Narva was brought to the fortress - to sew her head back in place so that the body of the tsar could be put up for parting. The Dutch resident de By reported that the prince was killed, releasing all the blood from him, for which his veins were opened with a lancet. Later they also said that four guards officers strangled Alexei with pillows, and Rumyantsev was one of them.

The notebook of the St. Petersburg garrison office testifies that on June 26, at about 8 o’clock in the morning, the tsar, Menshikov, and eight other people gathered in the fortress to be present for interrogation using torture - the name of the person under investigation is not indicated in the journal. “And then, having been in the garrison until 1:00, they dispersed,” it is written further. “On the same afternoon at 6 o’clock, while under guard in the Trubetskoy Roskat in the garrison, Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich reposed.” Menshikov's Daily Notes (diary) says that he went to the fortress that morning, where he met with the tsar, then went to Tsarevich Alexei, who was seriously ill, and stayed with him for half an hour. “The day was sunny, with a gentle wind. On that day, Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich moved from this world to eternal life.

The truth is that to explain the death of Alexei, no additional reasons are needed, either beheading, or bloodletting, or strangulation, or even an apoplexy. Forty blows of a whip would have been enough to kill any big man, and Alexei was not distinguished by a fortress, so the mental shock and terrible wounds from forty blows to his skinny back could well have finished him off.

Peter did not evade accusations. Although he said that it was the Lord who called Alexei to himself, he never denied that he himself had betrayed Alexei to the court that sentenced him to death. The king did not have time to approve the verdict, but he fully agreed with the decision of the judges. Nor did he trouble himself with hypocritical expressions of grief. The day after the death of the prince was the anniversary of Poltava, and the tragedy that had just unfolded did not force Peter to postpone the festivities or make them less noisy. He was present at the thanksgiving service in honor of the victory, at the feast, and in the evening at the ball. Two days later, on the 29th, the Admiralty launched the 94-gun ship Lesnaya, built according to Peter's own design. Peter was there with all the ministers, after which, according to one source, "there was great rejoicing."

And yet, the tormenting contradictions that tormented Peter's soul were reflected in the ceremonial of the funeral and burial of the prince. Despite the fact that Alexei died a convicted criminal, funeral services were held according to his rank. It seemed that now that Alexei was gone and he no longer posed a threat to his father, Peter wanted him to receive all the honors befitting a prince. The next morning after the death of Alexei, the body was transferred from the cell in which he died to the Commandant's House of the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he was laid in a coffin and covered with black velvet and rich brocade cover. Accompanied by Golovkin and other top dignitaries of the state, the coffin was carried to the Church of the Holy Trinity and put up for parting, and the face and right hand according to Orthodox custom, they remained open so that everyone who wanted to could give the last kiss. On June 30, a memorial service and burial took place. By order of Peter, none of the men present wore mourning, although some of the ladies were in black. Foreign ambassadors were not invited to these strange funerals of a member of the royal family and were advised not to wear mourning, since the son of the sovereign died as a criminal. Nevertheless, the priest chose David's words for the memorial service: “My son Absalom! my son, my son, Absalom!” - and some eyewitnesses later said that Peter sobbed. Then the coffin was taken from the Trinity Church back to the fortress, and Peter, Catherine and all the highest dignitaries (most of whom voted for the death sentence to Alexei) followed him in a whole procession with lit candles in their hands. In the Potrepavlovsky Cathedral, the coffin of the prince was placed in a new crypt of the royal family, next to the coffin of his wife, Charlotte. By the end of the year, Peter ordered a new medal to be knocked out, as if he wanted to perpetuate a certain victory. The medal depicts parted clouds and a mountain peak illuminated by the sun's rays, and at the bottom there is an inscription: "The horizon has cleared."

What can be said about this tragedy? Was it just a family drama, a clash of characters, when a rpoj tyrant father mercilessly torments and eventually kills his pitiful, helpless son?

In Peter's relationship with his son, personal feelings were inextricably intertwined with political reality. The nature of Alexei, of course, aggravated the confrontation between father and son, but the conflict was based on the issue of supreme power. Two monarchs - one on the throne, the other in anticipation of the throne - had different ideas about the welfare of the state and set themselves different tasks. But each, faced with bitter disappointment. While the reigning monarch was sitting on the throne, the son could only wait, but the monarch also knew that as soon as he was gone, his dreams the end will come and everything will turn back.

The history of feuds in the royal houses is long, which is just not there: the clash of characters between representatives of different generations, and mutual suspicion, and attempts to cunningly get into power, and the impatient expectation of the younger ones when the elders die and let go of power. There are many stories about how kings and princes sentenced their blood relatives for treason to the crown, or, having lost the fight, fled from their native land and sought refuge in foreign courts. During the life of Peter, Princess Mary, daughter of King James II of England, helped remove his father from the throne * James fled to France to wait for better times, and when he died, his son landed on the British coast twice to regain his father's throne. Who is considered a traitor? History invariably gives this name to the loser.

In times more distant, all the approaches to the thrones were thickly covered with the blood of royal families. Plantagenets, Tudors, Stuarts, Capetians, Valois and Bourbons destroyed their royal relatives for state reasons. The legendary Gloriana * - Elizabeth I of England kept her cousin Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots in prison for twenty-seven years, whose life flowed fruitlessly along with her beauty, and finally, unable to come to terms with the fact that Mary would succeed her on the throne, she ordered to be beheaded captive. By the way, the son of Mary, James VI of Scotland, was not at all saddened by the death of his mother: the path to the throne of Elizabeth was now open to him.

* The heroine of the poem by E. Spencer (1590-1596) "The Fairy Queen", where Queen Elizabeth is sung in allegorical form.

The murder of their own offspring by monarchs is a rarer crime. The same can be found in the ancient Greeks, whose tragedies revolve around obscure figures, semi-mythical, semi-divine, or in the Roman Empire, where the undisguised lust for power and the viciousness of the ruling elite allowed any crime. In Russia, Ivan the Terrible killed his son with an iron staff, but he was furious and half-mad. The strangest thing about Alexei's death is that it was the result of a cold-blooded and, apparently, objective trial. The fact that the father could stand and watch his son being tortured seems to be the most brutal of all known cruel episodes in Peter's life.

But for Peter, the legal procedure was the last official step necessary for the legitimate protection of the state and the work of all his life. Obviously, he was driven by political necessity, not personal malice. Moreover, in the opinion of Peter, he was still too coddling with his son. Which of his subjects could receive letter after letter, appeal after appeal, in which the king would beg to finally get down to business and fulfill his will? It was a concession to personal relationships - no small concession for Peter.

Interrogations revealed that treacherous speeches were made, burning hopes for the death of Peter were fed. Many were punished; so how could these minor culprits be condemned and the main one left unscathed? It was this choice that stood before Peter, and he offered it to the court. Peter himself, torn between paternal feeling and devotion to the cause of his life, chose the latter. Alexei was sentenced to death for state reasons. As for Elizabeth I of England, this was a difficult decision of the monarch, who set himself the goal of preserving at all costs "the state, on the creation of which he devoted his whole life.

Did Alexei really pose a threat to Peter already during the life of the tsar? Given the personalities of both, this seems unlikely. The prince had neither the strength nor the desire to lead a rebellion. Yes, he would like to come to power, he also wanted the death of Peter, but his only program was to wait in the confidence that he was desired by all of Rus' (“as for ordinary people, I heard from many that they love me”). Well, if Alexei had really replaced the tsar on the throne, would all that which Peter was afraid of happen? This also doesn't seem plausible. Yes, Alexei would not have brought to the end all the reforms of Peter the Great, something would have turned around the old way. But in general it would change a little. Alexei was not a medieval Moscow sovereign. He was raised by European tutors, studied in the West and traveled around Europe, was married to a European princess, was in the property with the Holy Roman Emperor. Russia would not be thrown back to caftans, beards and towers. History may slow down, but it does not turn back.

Finally, it seems that Alexei himself resigned himself to the verdict of the court and his father. He confessed everything and asked for forgiveness. His miserable, almost involuntary rebellion against the great king failed, his beloved Euphrosyne betrayed and left him, he was exhausted from torture. Maybe he just retired from life as he wanted to retire from ruling the country - too tired to live on, no longer able to exist in the overwhelming shadow of the man who was his father.