Secret Lives of the Tsars by Michael Farquhar Read Free Book Online

was pleased to hold the garland over the bride’s head according to the Russian custom. The ceremony being over, the company went … to the Prince Menshikov’s palace.… Several small tables were placed in the middle of the hall for the new-married couple and the rest of the dwarfs, who were all splendidly dressed after the German fashion.… After dinner the dwarfs began to dance after the Russian way, which lasted till eleven at night. It is very easy to imagine how much the Tsar and the rest of the company were delighted at the comical capers, strange grimaces, and odd postures of that medley of pygmies, most of whom were of a size the mere sight of which was enough to produce laughter. One had a high hunch on his back, and very short legs, another was remarkable by a monstrous big belly; a third came waddling along on a little pair of crooked legs like a badger; a fourth had a head of prodigious size; some had wry mouths and long ears, little pig eyes, and chubby cheeks and many such comical figures more. When these diversions were ended, the newly married couple were carried to the Tsar’s house and bedded in his own bedchamber.”
    It should perhaps be noted that Peter’s interest in dwarfs extended beyond mere amusement. He was fascinated by “oddities” of all kinds, human and animal, and among the numerous objects he collected for his cabinet of curiosities—displayed beside such items as the neat rows of teeth he hadextracted from his subjects and the severed head of Mary Hamilton pickled in alcohol—were the remains of deformed infants he encouraged his subjects to send him, dead dwarfs, and the skeleton of a giant who stood nearly eight feet tall.
    Entertainment for Peter sometimes took on a menacing quality. “In the winter he has large holes cut in the ice and makes the fattest lords pass over them in sleds,” reported Foy de la Neuville (a possible pseudonym for an unknown diarist). “The weakness of the new ice often causes them to fall in and drown.” Prince Boris Kurakin reported that on some occasions people’s clothes were torn off them and they were made to sit on ice, their bare behinds exposed, then violated with candles, with air blown up them with bellows. There was at least one fatality from this unique form of fun, but Peter at play was still far less dangerous than when his wrath was stirred.
    This was especially evident in 1698, after an abortive uprising by four regiments of the streltsy —those “begetters of evil,” as Peter called them, whose vicious rampage sixteen years earlier had left the young tsar in mute terror as they slaughtered his family in front of him. Now the nightmares that had haunted him ever since became real again. Only this time, he was no longer a helpless little boy. And though otherwise progressive in his thinking, Peter the Great delivered a retribution that was utterly medieval in its barbarity.
    The tsar had already done much to humble the unruly and arrogant streltsy in the years following their first revolt, essentially reducing them to common foot soldiers deprived of all the privileges and prestige they had once enjoyed. Thus sparked the second revolt, which erupted while Peter was away on his extended tour of Europe. The uprising had been quickly crushed and a number of participants already torturedand executed, but not nearly enough to satisfy Peter. He canceled the rest of his planned itinerary in the West and immediately sped home to deal with the treasonous streltsy himself.
    After hacking off the beards of his subjects, the tsar started hacking off heads. But first he was determined to discover if there had been a larger conspiracy behind the streltsy revolt, and, if so, how high among his boyars it went. Two thousand or so rebels still languished in prison, and Peter wanted answers from them. To that end, what author Robert K. Massie termed as “an assembly line of torture” was set up outside the tsar’s country estate of