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

ultra-Orthodox woman he had married in 1689 only because his mother willed it. * He was seventeen at the time, bursting with vigor, and far from ready to settle down with the dull, clingy spouse imposed upon him. Peter soon abandoned Eudoxia, and, with her, the son she had delivered a year after the couple wed.
    But as Alexis grew up, the tsar began to take more notice, and he was bitterly disappointed by what he saw. While Peter was relentlessly energetic in the pursuit of his grand designs, his heir was a lazy intellectual, content to let the world pass him by as he dallied with his mistress and drank himself stupid. Certainly the sovereign shared his son’s fondness for drink, but he was appalled by Alexis’s indolence, as well as hisapparent affinity with those conservative factions resistant to the tsar’s efforts to westernize Russia. Peter was determined to reconstitute the tsarevitch into a man more like himself—an effort that would have devastating consequences in the end.
    It began with constant cajoling, which served to frighten the young man rather than improve him. After Alexis returned from a year of study in Germany, for example, he completely panicked when his father asked him what he had learned about geometry and fortifications; Alexis was terrified that the tsar might require him to execute drawings on the subject about which he was entirely incompetent. It was too horrible to contemplate, and rather than face such an ordeal, he returned to his home, picked up a pistol, and tried to shoot himself in the hand. The shot missed, but his hands were badly burned by the powder flash.
    In the face of what he viewed as his son’s complete dereliction of duty as heir to the Russian throne—particularly in learning the martial arts the tsar deemed essential in a future monarch—Peter sent Alexis a letter in 1715 expressing his deep dissatisfaction and frustration:
    “Remember your obstinacy and ill-nature, how often I reproached you for it and for how many years I almost have not spoken to you. But all this has availed nothing, has affected nothing. It was but losing my time, it was striking the air. You do not make the least endeavors, and all your pleasure seems to consist in staying idle and lazy at home. Things of which you ought to be ashamed (forasmuch as they make you miserable) seem to make up your dearest delight, nor do you foresee the dangerous consequences for yourself and for the whole state.”
    The tsar concluded his missive with a threat. If Alexis persistedin his waywardness, “I will have you know that I will deprive you of the succession, as one may cut off a gangrenous limb.” Rather than heed the warning and improve himself, though, the tsarevitch simply waived his rights as heir. Such easy capitulation unsettled Peter, as did Alexis’s apparent willingness to become a monk when confronted with that dire fate. Then the tsarevitch did the unthinkable. He ran away from home and sought asylum with the Austrian emperor.
    Peter was livid when he learned of Alexis’s ignominious flight. Not only had his heir shamed him in front of the world, but his escape would undoubtedly give those dissident elements in Russia encouragement to revolt in support of Alexis. The tsar sent his agents in pursuit of his son, but the Austrian emperor was reluctant to hand him over to an uncertain fate. Ultimately, though, Peter managed to lure the young man back to Russia with false promises of indemnity and even permission to marry Alexis’s peasant mistress, Afrosinia. In responding to his father’s siren song, Alexis sealed his doom.
    “Have you heard that that fool of a Tsarevitch is coming here because his father has allowed him to marry Afrosinia?” wrote Prince Vasili Dolgoruky to Prince Gagarin. “He will have a coffin instead of a wedding!”
    The tsar appeared conciliatory, at first, but as his suspicions of a conspiracy became inflamed, scores of people associated with the tsarevitch and his