The Fall Of The Strelitz

History presents us with four instances of an imperial soldiery who took

the power into their own hands and for a time ruled as the tyrants of a

nation. These were the Pretorian Guards of Rome, the Mamelukes of Egypt,

the Janissaries of Turkey, and the Strelitz of Russia. Of these, the

Pretorian Guards remained pre-eminent, and made emperors at their will.

The other three came to a terrible end. History elsewhere records the
br /> tragic fate of the Mamelukes and the Janissaries: we are here concerned

only with that of the Strelitz corps of Russia.



The Strelitz were the first regular military force of Russia, a

permanent militia of fusileers, formed during the early reign of Ivan

the Terrible, and themselves in time becoming a terror to the nation.

The first serious outbreak of this dangerous civic guard was on the

nomination of Peter I. to the throne of the czar. They did not dream

then of the terrible revenge which this despised boy would take upon

them.



Two days after the funeral of the czar Theodore the insurrection began,

the Strelitz marching in an armed body to the Kremlin, where they

accused nine of their colonels of defrauding them of their pay. The

frightened ministers hastened to dismiss these officers, but this did

not satisfy the savage soldiery, who insisted on their being delivered

into their hands. This done, the unfortunate officers were sentenced to

be scourged, some of them by that fearful Russian whip called the knout.



Their success in this outbreak led the Strelitz to greater outrages. The

tiger in their savage natures was let loose, and only blood could

appease its rage. Marching to the Kremlin, they declared that the late

czar had been poisoned by his doctor, and demanded the death of all

those in the plot. Breaking into the palace, they seized two of the

suspected princes and flung them from the windows, to be received upon

the pikes of the soldiers in the street below. The next victim was one

of the Narishkins, the uncles of Peter the Great. He was massacred in

the same brutal manner and his bleeding body dragged through the

streets. Three of the proscribed nobles had fled for sanctuary to a

church, but were torn from the altar, stripped of their clothing, and

cut to pieces with knives.



The next victim was a friend and favorite of the Strelitz, who was

killed under the belief that he was one of the Narishkins. Discovering

their error, the assassins carried the mangled body of the young

nobleman to the house of his father for interment. The old man, timid by

nature, did not dare to complain of the savage act, and even rewarded

them for bringing him the body of his son. For this weakness he was

bitterly reproached by his wife and daughters and the weeping wife of

the victim.



"What could I do?" pleaded the helpless father; "let us wait for an

opportunity to be revenged."



A revengeful servant overheard these words and repeated them to the

soldiers. In a sudden fury the savages returned, dragged the old man

from the room by the hair of his head, and cut his throat at his own

door.



Meanwhile some of the Strelitz, seeking the Dutch physician Vongad, who

had attended the dying czar and was accused of poisoning him, met his

son and asked where his father was. "I do not know," replied the

trembling youth. His ignorance was instantly punished with death.



In a few minutes a German physician fell in their way. "You are a

doctor," they cried. "If you have not poisoned our master Theodore, you

have poisoned others. You deserve death." And in a moment the unlucky

doctor fell a victim to their blind rage.



The Dutch physician was at length discovered and dragged to the palace.

Here the princesses begged hard for his life, declaring that he was a

skilful doctor and a good man and had worked hard to save their

brother's life. They answered that he deserved to die as a sorcerer as

well as a physician, for they had found the skeleton of a toad and the

skin of a snake in his cabinet.



The next victim demanded was Ivan Narishkin, who they were sure was

somewhere concealed in the palace. Not finding him, they threatened to

burn down the building unless he were delivered into their hands. At

this terrifying threat the young man was taken from his place of

concealment and brought to them by the patriarch, who held in his hands

an image of the Virgin Mary which was said to have performed miracles.

The princesses surrounded the victim, and, kneeling to the soldiers,

prayed with tears for his life.



All their supplications and the demands of the venerable patriarch were

without effect on the savage soldiery, who dragged their captives to the

bottom of the stairway, went through the forms of a mock trial, and

condemned them to the torture. They were sentenced to be cut to pieces,

a form of punishment to which parricides are condemned in China and

Tartary. This tragedy went on until all the proscribed on whom they

could lay their hands had perished and Sophia felt secure in her power.



In the end, Ivan and Peter were declared joint sovereigns (1682), and

their sister Sophia was made regent. The acts of the Strelitz were

approved and they rewarded, the estates of their victims were

confiscated in their favor, and a monument was erected on which the

names of the victims were inscribed as traitors to their country.



The Strelitz had learned their power, and took frequent occasion to

exercise it. Twice again they broke out in revolt during the regency of

Sophia. After the accession of Peter their hostility continued. He had

sent them to fight on the frontiers. He had supplanted them with

regiments drilled in the European manner. He had organized a corps of

twelve thousand foreigners and heretics. He had ordered the construction

of a fleet of a hundred vessels, which would add to the weight of taxes

and bring more foreigners into the country. And he proposed to leave

Russia, to journey in the lands of the heretics, and to bring back to

their sacred land the customs of profane Europe.



All this was too much for the leaders of the Strelitz, who represented

old Russia, as Peter represented new. They resolved to sacrifice the

czar to their rage. Tradition tells the following story, which, though

probably not true, is at least interesting. Two leaders of the Strelitz

laid a plot to start a fire at night, feeling sure that Peter, with his

usual activity, would hasten to the scene. In the confusion attending

the fire they meant to murder him, and then to massacre all the

foreigners whom he had introduced into Moscow.






The time fixed for the consummation of this plot was at hand. A banquet

was held, at which the principal conspirators assembled, and where they

sought in deep potations the courage necessary for their murderous work.

Unfortunately for them, liquor does not act on all alike. While usually

giving boldness, it sometimes produces timidity. Two of the villains

lost their courage through their potations, left the room on some

pretext, promising to return in time, and hastened to the czar with the

story of the plot.



Peter knew not the meaning of the words timidity and procrastination.

His plans were instantly laid. The time fixed for the conflagration was

midnight. He gave orders that the hall in which the conspirators were

assembled should be surrounded exactly at eleven. Soon after, thinking

that the hour had come, he sought the place alone and boldly entered

the room, fully expecting to find the conspirators in the hands of his

guards.



To his consternation, not a guard was present, and he found himself

alone and unarmed in the midst of a furious band who were just swearing

to compass his destruction.



The situation was a critical one. The conspirators, dismayed at this

unlooked-for visit, rose in confusion. Peter was furious at his guards

for having exposed him to this peril, but instantly perceived that there

was only one course for him to pursue. He advanced among the throng of

traitors with a countenance that showed no trace of his emotions, and

pleasantly remarked,--



"I saw the light in your house while passing, and, thinking that you

must be having a gay time together, I have come in to share your

pleasure and drain a cup with you."



Then, seating himself at the table, he filled a cup and drank to his

would-be assassins, who, on their feet about him, could not avoid

responding to the toast and drinking his health.



But this state of affairs did not long continue. The courage of the

conspirators returned, and they began to exchange looks and signs. The

opportunity had fallen into their hands; now was the time to avail

themselves of it. One of them leaned over to Sukanim, one of their

leaders, and said, in a low tone,--



"Brother, it is time."



"Not yet," said Sukanim, hesitating at the critical moment.



At that instant Peter heard the footsteps of his guards outside, and,

starting to his feet, knocked the leader of the assassins down by a

violent blow in his face, exclaiming,--



"If it is not yet time for you, scoundrel, it is for me."



At the same moment the guards entered the room, and the conspirators,

panic-stricken by the sight, fell on their knees and begged for pardon.



"Chain them!" said the czar, in a terrible voice.



Turning then to the commander of the guards, he struck him and accused

him of having disobeyed orders. But the officer proving to him that the

hour fixed had just arrived, the czar, in sudden remorse at his haste,

clasped him in his arms, kissed him on the forehead, proclaimed his

fidelity, and gave the traitors into his charge.



And now Peter showed the savage which lay within him under the thin

veneer of civilization. The conspirators were put to death with the

cruellest of tortures, and, to complete the act of barbarity, their

heads were exposed on the summit of a column with their limbs arranged

around them as ornaments.



Satisfied that this fearful example would keep Russia tranquil during

his absence, Peter set out on his journey, visiting most of the

countries of Western Europe. He had reached Vienna, and was on the point

of setting out for Venice, when word was brought him from Russia that

the Strelitz had broken out in open insurrection and were marching from

their posts on the frontier upon Moscow.



The czar at once left Vienna and journeyed with all possible speed to

Russia, reaching Moscow in September, 1698. His appearance took all by

surprise, for none knew that he had yet left Austria.



He came too late to suppress the insurrection. That had been already

done by General Gordon, who, marching in all haste, had met the rebels

about thirty miles from Moscow and called on them to surrender. As they

refused and attacked the troops, he opened on them with cannon, put them

to flight, and of the survivors took captive about two thousand. These

were decimated on the spot, and the remainder imprisoned.



This was punishment enough for a soldier, but not enough for an

autocrat, whose mind was haunted by dark suspicions, and who looked upon

the outbreak as a plot to dethrone him and to call his sister Sophia to

the throne. In his treatment of the prisoners the spirit of the monster

Ivan IV. seems to have entered into his soul, and the cruelty shown,

while common enough in old-time Russia, is revolting to the modern mind.



The trial was dragged out through six weeks, with daily torture of some

of the accused, under the eyes of the czar himself, who sought to force

from them a confession that Sophia had been concerned in the outbreak.

The wives of the prisoners, all the women servants of the princesses,

even poor beggars who lived on their charity, were examined under

torture. The princesses themselves, Peter's sisters, were questioned by

the czar, though he did not go so far as to torture them. Yet with all

this nothing was discovered. There was not a word to connect Sophia with

the revolt.



The trial over, the executions began. Of the prisoners, some were

hanged, some beheaded, others broken on the wheel. It is said that those

beheaded were made to kneel in rows of fifty before trunks of trees laid

on the ground, and that Peter compelled his courtiers and nobles to act

as executioners, Mentchikof specially distinguishing himself in this

work of slaughter. It is even asserted that the czar wielded the axe

himself, though of this there is some doubt. The opinion grew among the

people that neither Peter nor Prince Ramodanofsky, his cruel viceroy,

could sleep until they had tasted blood, and a letter from the prince

contains the following lurid sentence: "I am always washing myself in

blood."



The headless bodies of the dead were left where they had fallen. The

long Russian winter was just beginning, and for five months they lay

unburied, a frightful spectacle for the eyes of the citizens of Moscow.



Of those hanged, nearly two hundred were left depending from a large

square gallows in front of the cell of Sophia at the convent in which

she was confined, and with a horrible refinement of cruelty three of

these bodies were so placed as to hang all winter under her very window,

one of them holding in his hand a folded paper to represent a petition

for her aid.



The six regiments of Strelitz still on the frontier showed signs of a

similar outbreak, but the news of the executions taught them that it was

safest to keep quiet. But many of them were brought in chains to Moscow

and punished for their intentions. Various stories are told of Peter's

cruelty in connection with these executions. One is that he beheaded

eighty with his own hand, Plestchef, one of his boyars, holding them by

the hair. Another story, told by M. Printz, the Prussian ambassador,

says that at an entertainment given him by the czar, Peter, when drunk,

had twenty rebels brought in from the prisons, whom he beheaded in quick

succession, drinking a bumper after each blow, the whole concluding

within the hour. He even asked the ambassador to try his skill in the

same way. It may be said here, however, that these stories rest upon

very poor evidence, and that anecdote-makers have painted Peter in

blacker colors than he deserves.



In the end the corps of the Strelitz was abolished, their houses and

lands in Moscow were taken from the survivors, and all were exiled into

the country, where they became simple villagers.