The trip to Trinity is over. Just like seven years ago, they sat out Moscow in the Lavra. The boyars with the patriarch and Natalya Kirillovna, after thinking, wrote on behalf of Peter to Tsar Ivan:
“... And now, sir, the time has come for our two persons to rule the kingdom entrusted to us by God ourselves, since they have come to the measure of their age, and the third shameful face, our sister, with our two male persons in titles and the reprisal of deeds, we do not deign to be ... "
Sophia was transported from the Kremlin to the Novodevichy Convent without much noise at night. Shaklovity, Chermny and Obrosim Petrov were beheaded, the rest of the thieves were beaten with a whip in the square, in the suburb, their tongues were cut out, and they were exiled to Siberia forever. Pop Medvedev and Nikita Gladky were later captured by the Dorogobuzh governor. They were terribly tortured and beheaded.
The awards were granted - land and money: three hundred rubles for the boyars, two hundred and seventy for the roundabouts, two hundred and fifty for the Duma nobles. To the stolniks who arrived with Peter at the Lavra - thirty-seven rubles each, those who arrived after - thirty-two rubles each, those who arrived before August 10 - thirty rubles, and those who arrived before August 20 - twenty-seven rubles each. The city nobles were granted eighteen, seventeen and sixteen rubles in the same order. To all ordinary archers for loyalty - one ruble without land.
Before returning to Moscow, the boyars sorted out the orders among themselves: the first and most important - Posolsky - was given to Lev Kirillovich, but already without the title of guardian. After the military and other needs had passed, it would be completely possible to abandon Boris Alekseevich Golitsyn - the patriarch and Natalya Kirillovna could not forgive him much, and especially that he saved Vasily Vasilyevich from a whip and block, but the boyars considered it indecent to deprive such a high family of honor : "Let's go for it - soon orders will be kicked out from under us - merchants, rootless clerks, foreigners and all sorts of vile people, look, they climb to Tsar Peter for prey, for places ..." Boris Alekseevich was given for feeding and honor order of the Kazan Palace. Upon learning of this, he spat, got drunk that day, shouted: “To hell with them, but I have enough for my own,” and the drunk galloped off to the patrimony near Moscow to sleep off ...
The new ministers, as the foreigners then began to call them, knocked out some clerks and clerks from orders and imprisoned others and began to think and rule according to the old custom. There were no significant changes. Only in the Kremlin palace did Lev Kirillovich walk around in black sables, imperiously slamming doors, tapping his heels pinchfully instead of Ivan Miloslavsky ...
They were old, well-known people - apart from ruin, extortion and disorder, there was nothing to expect from them. In Moscow and on Kukuy - merchants of all hundreds, tax-farmers, merchants and artisans in the settlements, foreign guests, ship captains - Dutch, Hanoverian, English - were looking forward with great impatience to new orders and new people. Various rumors circulated about Peter, and many put all their hope in him. Russia - a gold mine - lay under the age-old mud ... If not a new tsar will raise life, then who will?
Peter was in no hurry to go to Moscow. He left the Lavra with an army on a march to Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda, where the rotten log cabins of the terrible palace of Tsar Ivan the Fourth still stood. Here General Sommer staged an exemplary battle. It lasted a whole week, until there was enough gunpowder. And here Sommer's service ended - the poor fellow fell off his horse and was crippled.
In October, Peter went with some amusing regiments to Moscow. About ten miles away, in the village of Alekseevsky, large crowds of people met him. They kept icons, banners, loaves on dishes. On the sides of the road lay logs and planks with stuck axes, and on the damp earth lay, with their necks on logs, archers - elected - from those regiments that were not in the Trinity ... But the young tsar did not chop heads, did not get angry, although not was friendly.
“Take custody and do as I’m told…”
Have taken. They led. Outside the churchyard, they put father and son on a cart, on mats, a bailiff and dragoons jumped from behind. The driver, in a torn coat, in bast shoes, twirled the reins, and the bad horse dragged the cart from the laurel into the field at a pace. It was night, the stars were covered with dampness.
The trip to Trinity is over. Just like seven years ago, they sat out Moscow in the Lavra. The boyars with the patriarch and Natalya Kirillovna, after thinking, wrote on behalf of Peter to Tsar Ivan:
“... And now, sir, the time has come for our two persons to rule the kingdom entrusted to us by God ourselves, since they have come to the measure of their age, and the third shameful face, our sister, with our two male persons in titles and the reprisal of deeds, we do not deign to be ... "
Sophia was transported from the Kremlin to the Novodevichy Convent without much noise at night. Shaklovity, Chermny and Obrosim Petrov were beheaded, the rest of the thieves were beaten with a whip in the square, in the suburb, their tongues were cut out, and they were exiled to Siberia forever. Pop Medvedev and Nikita Gladky were later captured by the Dorogobuzh governor. They were terribly tortured and beheaded.
The awards were granted - land and money: three hundred rubles for the boyars, two hundred and seventy for the roundabouts, two hundred and fifty for the Duma nobles. To the stolniks who arrived with Peter at the Lavra - thirty-seven rubles each, those who arrived after - thirty-two rubles each, those who arrived before August 10 - thirty rubles, and those who arrived before August 20 - twenty-seven rubles each. The city nobles were granted eighteen, seventeen and sixteen rubles in the same order. To all ordinary archers for loyalty - one ruble without land.
Before returning to Moscow, the boyars sorted out the orders among themselves: the first and most important - Posolsky - was given to Lev Kirillovich, but already without the title of guardian. After the military and other needs had passed, it would be completely possible to abandon Boris Alekseevich Golitsyn - the patriarch and Natalya Kirillovna could not forgive him much, and especially that he saved Vasily Vasilyevich from a whip and block, but the boyars considered it indecent to deprive such a high family of honor : "Let's go for it - soon orders will be kicked out from under us - merchants, rootless clerks, foreigners and all sorts of vile people, look, they climb to Tsar Peter for prey, for places ..." Boris Alekseevich was given for feeding and honor order of the Kazan Palace. Upon learning of this, he spat, got drunk that day, shouted: “To hell with them, but I have enough for my own,” and the drunk galloped off to the patrimony near Moscow to sleep off ...
The new ministers, as the foreigners then began to call them, knocked out some clerks and clerks from orders and imprisoned others and began to think and rule according to the old custom. There were no significant changes. Only in the Kremlin palace did Lev Kirillovich walk around in black sables, imperiously slamming doors, tapping his heels pinchfully instead of Ivan Miloslavsky ...
They were old, well-known people - apart from ruin, extortion and disorder, there was nothing to expect from them. In Moscow and on Kukuy - merchants of all hundreds, tax-farmers, merchants and artisans in the settlements, foreign guests, ship captains - Dutch, Hanoverian, English - were looking forward with great impatience to new orders and new people. Various rumors circulated about Peter, and many put all their hope in him. Russia - a gold mine - lay under the age-old mud ... If not a new tsar will raise life, then who will?
Peter was in no hurry to go to Moscow. He left the Lavra with an army on a march to Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda, where the rotten log cabins of the terrible palace of Tsar Ivan the Fourth still stood. Here General Sommer staged an exemplary battle. It lasted a whole week, until there was enough gunpowder. And here Sommer's service ended - the poor fellow fell off his horse and was crippled.
In October, Peter went with some amusing regiments to Moscow. About ten miles away, in the village of Alekseevsky, large crowds of people met him. They kept icons, banners, loaves on dishes. On the sides of the road lay logs and planks with stuck axes, and on the damp earth lay, with their necks on logs, archers - elected - from those regiments that were not in the Trinity ... But the young tsar did not chop heads, did not get angry, although not was friendly.
Chapter Five
Lefort became big man. Foreigners living on Kukuy and visitors on trade business from Arkhangelsk and Vologda spoke of him with great respect. The clerks of the Amsterdam and London trading houses wrote about him there and advised: what happens, sending him small gifts is best of all good wine. When he was promoted to the rank of general for the Trinity campaign, the Kukuis folded up and offered him a sword. Passing by his house, they winked meaningfully at each other, saying: “Oh yes ...” His house was now cramped - so many people wanted to shake his hand, exchange a word, just remind him of themselves. Despite the late autumn, hurried work began on the superstructure and expansion of the house - they put up a stone porch with side entrances, decorated the front side with columns and stucco men. On the site of the courtyard, where there used to be a fountain, they dug a lake for water and fire fun. Guards were built on the sides for the musketeers.
Of his own free will, perhaps, Lefort would not have ventured to such expenses, but this was what the young tsar wanted. During the Trinity sitting, Peter needed Lefort like a smart mother to a child: Lefort understood his desires from a half-word, guarded him from dangers, taught him to see the benefits and disadvantages, and it seemed that he himself fell in love with him passionately, was constantly near the king, not to ask how boyars, dejectedly banging their foreheads on their feet, villages and little people, but for a common cause for both of them and common fun. Elegant, chatty, good-natured, like the morning sun in the window, he appeared - with bows, smiles - in Peter's bedchamber - and so the day began with fun, joyful worries, happy expectations. In Lefort, Peter loved his sweet thoughts about overseas lands, beautiful cities and harbors with ships and brave captains smelling of tobacco and rum - everything that he had dreamed of since childhood in pictures and printed sheets brought from abroad. Even the smell from Lefort's dress was not Russian, different, very pleasant ...
Peter wanted the house of his beloved to become an island of this alluring foreign land - Lefortov Palace was decorated for royal fun. Money, how much could be pulled from the mother and Lev Kirillovich, was not spared. Now that in Moscow, upstairs, they were sitting, Peter without looking back rushed to the pleasures. Passions broke through him, and here Lefort was especially needed: without him he wanted and did not know ... And what could their Russians advise? - well, falconry or blind men - to pull Lazar ... Ugh! Lefort understood his desires perfectly. He was like a leaf of hops in the dark beer of Peter's passions.
At the same time, work was resumed on the capital city of Preshpurg - the fortress was being prepared for spring military fun. The regiments were lined with new clothes: the Preobrazhenians in green caftans, the Semenovites in azure, Gordon's Butyrka Regiment in red. The whole autumn passed in feasts and dances. Foreign merchants and industrialists, between fun in the Lefort Palace, bent their line ...
The newly built ballroom was still damp, high semicircular windows were sweating from the heat of two huge hearths, and opposite them on a blank wall were mirrors in the form of windows. The oak brick floor was freshly waxed. The candles in the three-candlesticks on the wall with a mirror are lit, although twilight was just beginning. Soft snow fell. Sleighs drove into the yard between powdered heaps of clay and wood chips, - Dutch - in the form of a swan, painted with niello and gold, Russian - long, in a box - with piled pillows and bear skins, heavy leather carts - gear train, and simple cab sleighs, where, sitting with his knees up, laughing, was some foreigner who had hired a peasant for two kopecks from the Lubyanka to Kukuy.
In 1689, Shaklovity began to agitate the archery commanders to file a petition for the wedding of the ruler to the kingdom. The proposal did not receive support, and the princess "did not indicate to do that thing." In the same year, the coronation portrait of Sophia began to spread in Russia and abroad - in royal vestments and with a scepter, and in Moscow Shaklovity again gathered archers to organize her "elections" to the kingdom on the model of 1682.
At these meetings, according to the testimony of the archers during the investigation, it was about “leaving the bear, Queen Natalya” and Peter himself: “What should he let down? What was it for? There were proposals to place a grenade on the tsar's sleigh or to kill him during a fire. Objections, judging by the materials of the investigation, did not seem to follow, as well as any decisive actions. Apparently, the archers did not trust the princess and did not want to destroy Peter's supporters without an official order. Sophia did not dare to give it away, especially since there was no unity in the ranks of her adherents - for example, Sylvester Medvedev opposed the assassination attempt on the leaders of the competing "party" B. A. Golitsyn and L. K. Naryshkin.
After the failure of the second Crimean campaign in the summer of 1689, the contradictions between the court "parties" reached their apogee. The denouement came on the night of August 7-8, when two archers arrived in Preobrazhenskoye, who notified Peter of the alarm gathering of military people in the Kremlin and Lubyanka "for no one knows why." The frightened tsar with a few people immediately rode away from his residence and took refuge in the fortified Trinity-Sergius Monastery. Sophia didn't seem to know what to do. During these days she often prayed, walked surrounded by archers to the Donskoy and Novodevichy monasteries. She sent the boyars and the patriarch to Peter, urging her brother to return, but he refused. Joachim remained in the Trinity, members of the sovereign's court, soldiers' and archery regiments, and serving foreigners went over to the side of the seventeen-year-old tsar.
Sophia finally decided to go to her brother herself. But in the village of Vozdvizhensky, Peter's envoys said that if she dared to move on, then she would be "dishonestly dealt with." Having failed, the princess returned to Moscow. She still tried to persuade the archers, forced them to kiss the cross for loyalty to her ... But the outcome of the court conflict was decided by the archery commanders, who appeared on Trinity on August 30: Sophia's government lost its military support. The members of the Boyar Duma reached out to bow to Peter I. The archers themselves demanded that their chief Shaklovity be handed over for reprisal, and when the proud princess refused, they began to threaten her with a rebellion.
As a result, Sophia capitulated. Shaklovity and his "accomplices" were put under investigation and executed on September 12. Golitsyn at the decisive moment could not or did not want to fight for power - he left for his village near Moscow. Then he also came to the Trinity, listened to the death sentence on behalf of the young Peter, and then the news of the royal mercy - exile to northern Kargopol. Sophia still managed to send a messenger with a letter and money - the last gift to dear Vasenka.
The fate of the princess herself was also decided. The younger king wrote to his brother that their sister “took into control the state by her own will,” and not by law, and her reign brought both damage to both sovereigns and “a burden to the people.” Briefly reporting on the villainous intentions of Shaklovity with his accomplices, in which they “accused themselves on search and torture,” Peter outlined the main thing: “And now, sir, the time will come for our two persons, God-given to us, to rule the kingdom ourselves, if you have come to the measure of age of our own, but to the third shameful person, the sister of our t[sarevna] S[ofya] A[lekseevna], with our two male persons in titles and in justice of affairs, we do not deign to be ... Shameful, sir, at our perfect age to that shameful face to own the state past us!” Ivan did not mind - and he hardly had the opportunity to do otherwise. On September 7, a decree was issued to exclude the name of the princess from the title; she officially ceased to be the ruler and "moved" from the Kremlin to the Novodevichy Convent.
Peter himself sincerely believed that his life was in danger; he told his brother how Shaklovity and his friends “conspired with other thieves to kill our and our mother’s health, and they were guilty of this by search and torture.” Companions of Peter B. I. Kurakin and A. A. Matveev also cited a version of the conspiracy in their notes: “Princess Sofia Alekseevna, having gathered some regiments of archers to the Kremlin that night, with whom she wanted to send Scheglovity to Preobrazhenskoye in order to set fire to this chateau and the king Kill Peter Alekseevich I and his mother, and beat the whole court and declaring himself to the kingdom. In the future, such an assessment of events became generally accepted.
But even in the 19th century, some researchers expressed doubts about the existence of a conspiracy. The investigative file of Shaklovity, preserved with some losses, allows us to speak about the absence of organized actions by Sophia's supporters. All attempts to raise the archers to take active steps in defense of the ruler did not bring success. The princess did not give them sanctions, and her entourage itself was afraid of an attack from Preobrazhensky - it is no coincidence that on July 25, on the day of the celebration of the name day of the royal aunt Anna Mikhailovna, Shaklovity set up reinforced guards in the Kremlin on the occasion of Peter's arrival.
On August 7th, Sophia had no troops at her disposal at all, and her actions look more like a retaliatory measure. On the evening of the same day, an anonymous letter was found in the Kremlin, “and in that letter it is written that the amusing grooms, having gathered in the village of Preobrazhensky, wanted to come on August against the 7th day to their sovereign’s house at night and beat them all, the sovereigns.” Shaklovity sent three archers to Preobrazhenskoye for reconnaissance - they hurried to Peter with a denunciation. The archers urgently raised in the Kremlin and Lubyanka did not have a specific plan of action, which was confirmed by the scammers themselves, who did not provide any evidence of a threat to the life of the tsar.
At the first interrogation, Dmitry Melnov and Yakov Ladygin betrayed the comrades and like-minded people who sent them, led by the five-hundred Stremyanny Regiment Larion Elizariev, a confidant of Shaklovity, and they, having arrived at the Trinity two days later, filed detailed reports about plans to kill the "near people" of Tsar B. A. Golitsyn and the Naryshkins and the alleged removal of the patriarch.
The testimonies of L. Elizariev, I. Ulfov, D. Melnov, Y. Ladygin, F. Turka, M. Feoktistov and I. Troitsky became the basis for the search, which a month later brought Shaklovity and his associates to the chopping block. It was this seven who received not only a huge award - a thousand rubles each, but also the right to "be in other ranks, in which they want."
A few years later, in the autumn of 1697, Mishka Syrohvatov, an archer of the Stremyannyi regiment, who was in the newly conquered Azov, Mishka Syrohvatov, announcing the "sovereign's business", told the governor that it was Larion Elizariev and his friends who in 1689 were the most active supporters of Shaklovity: they handed out money on his behalf and led meetings. According to Syrokhvatov and the witnesses he presented, Elizariev and Feoktistov gathered archers at the moving hut on a memorable August night, sent three people to Preobrazhenskoye "to check on the great sovereign" and, having received the news of Peter's departure, "set off on the Trinity campaign." However, the scammer did not wait for the reward - according to instructions from Moscow, he was “mercilessly beaten with a whip on a goat” and left to live forever in Azov, and his tale did not in the least harm the career of those accused by him.
There appears to have been no real coup attempt. In an atmosphere of mutual suspicion, the actions of the archers, led by Elizariev, became the spring that set in motion the mechanism of all subsequent events - unless, of course, they were naive servants who mistakenly mistook the night gathering of archers for preparing an assassination attempt on Peter I, and not provocateurs, pushing the king to retaliatory steps. The above facts add touches to this version, but do not yet allow us to draw a final conclusion.
A ghostly chance to return to power and an active life appeared in the overthrown ruler at the end of the century. The archery regiments sent from Moscow to the Lithuanian border in 1698 were dissatisfied with their position. Their messengers themselves now sought to communicate with the disgraced princess and allegedly received letters (although it is still unclear whether Sophia herself wrote them or the streltsy leaders on her behalf) with a call to release her from imprisonment, “beat her with a forehead” - ask her to “go to Moscow against the former on the statehood ”and not to let Peter into the city.