On a hot June night in 1718, Peter I urgently summoned his closest associate Alexander Rumyantsev to his Summer Palace. Entering the tsar's apartments, the guard officer saw the crying tsar, who was surrounded and consoled by the people closest to the tsar: his wife, Ekaterina Alekseevna, the head of the Secret Chancellery, Count Peter Tolstoy, and the head of the Synod, Archbishop Theodosius. Seeing Rumyantsev, the tsar ordered him to take three officers and go to the Trubetskoy bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress, where Tsarevich Alexei was kept, in order to secretly kill his eldest son and heir. The end of the drama that Russian subjects watched for a long time has come.
This deadly conflict between father and son was predetermined by the position in which the heir to the Russian throne found himself. Tsarevich Alexei is the son of Peter I and his first wife Evdokia Lopukhina. The young family had neither love for each other, nor consent. At the age of eight, the boy was deprived of his mother, sending her forcibly to a monastery. Alexei was very worried about the separation from his mother, but the tsar forbade them to see. At the age of seventeen, Alexei secretly went to his mother in the Suzdal Pokrovsky monastery, which incurred his father's wrath. Peter did not love his son, he reminded him of an unsuccessful marriage, but nevertheless, the tsar ordered to give money for the maintenance of Alexei, and appointed him educators and teachers. Due to constant employment, the king did not follow the upbringing and education of his son, confident that fear and punishment would subordinate the child to him. Sure,with such an attitude towards himself, Alexei could not become a close person to his father. Later he will say: "Not only are the work of the military and other things from my father, but the very person is very sick to me …".
When the father had a second wife, Ekaterina Alekseevna, the relationship between father and son only worsened: the queen did not need a stepson. During the frequent absences of Peter I, he wrote letters to his son, but they did not find any support, approval or affection for Alexei. The king was constantly dissatisfied with his son, no matter how the prince did. Having given him to be raised by strangers, having dismissed the boy, after ten years he received an intelligent, educated enemy who did not want to continue his father's work.
It is mistakenly believed that the prince was cowardly and weak. In fact, Alexey was the true son of his father, possessed a strong will and reasonable stubbornness. The second historical mistake is the statement that Alexei organized a conspiracy against his father. Most likely, Peter I himself and his inner circle organized the dissemination of this false information.
Alexei resisted his father quite passively, demonstrating complete obedience and reverence for the sovereign and father. He was waiting for the hour when he himself would ascend the Russian throne, but for now it is necessary, gritting his teeth, to wait in the wings. The prince was not alone; he was supported by those aristocrats who were outraged by the approach of the "rootless upstarts" to the king.
Alexey meekly fulfilled his father's will by marrying the Wolfenbüttel Crown Princess Charlotte Sophia. The knot of tragedy between father and son dragged on even further after Charlotte gave birth to a son, who was named after his grandfather Peter. Charlotte died ten days after giving birth. At the same time, the wife of Tsar Peter I also gave birth to a boy. And he was also named Peter, but his father and mother called him affectionately "Lump". The tsar and tsarina doted in their little Lump, calling him among themselves "the master of St. Petersburg." At the same time, the tsar seemed to forget that there was a legitimate heir to the Russian throne - Tsarevich Alexei, who already had an heir himself.
Peter began to treat Tsarevich Alexei more and more harshly, demanding that he become different, otherwise “I will deprive you of your inheritance, [cut off] like a gangrenous ud, and do not imagine that I am writing this only as an accent: I will truly do it, for for my Fatherland and I didn’t pity people for my belly, and I don’t regret it, then how can I regret you, indecent,?”.
The intentions of Tsar Peter to deprive Alexei of the right of inheritance by bequeathing the throne to his beloved Shishechka became clearer and clearer. In order to exclude in the future even the possibility for Alexei to challenge Shishichka's right to the throne of Russia, the tsar requires his eldest son to officially renounce his right to the throne. The Tsarevich agrees to this demand, but Peter is not satisfied: he demands that Alexei go to the monastery. And even Alexey agrees to this. But Peter I is sure that these measures are not enough, and that after his death all agreements and documents will be null and void.
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The royal couple came to the conclusion that Alexei was dangerous for their children. In 1716, the tsar, temporarily arriving in Copenhagen, summoned Alexei to him by letter. In the letter, he demanded to specify in detail the route and time spent at each point on the way, wishing to personally control the movement of the prince. Alexei was very wary of the will of the sovereign, he was tormented by the thought that on the way they would arrange an attempt on his life, or his father, once again, would unleash his violent anger on him. Only fear for his life was the reason that Alexei, changing the route, went to Austria, where he asked for asylum, hoping that the wife of the Austrian emperor, being the sister of his deceased wife, would help him. This act was an act of despair, an attempt to break the deadly circle that was closing around him at a terrible speed.
Peter I immediately considered the flight of his son to be high treason. At the same time, Alexei could not find a place for himself, feeling his personal guilt before his father and the sovereign. To find and return his son to Russia, the tsar sent very skilled courtiers - Tolstoy and Rumyantsev. They found the prince quickly and Tolstoy skillfully kindled a feeling of guilt in Alexei's soul, offering to confess to his father.
The tragic denouement was brought closer by the prince's mistress, whom he trusted immensely and even took with him abroad. It was she who helped Tolstoy break the will of the tsarevich. How, later, it turned out that she was generously paid for this betrayal: after the death of Alexei, she received two thousand rubles from the Tsarevich's personal funds for her wedding (without any double meaning, this money can be called Judas' silver coins).
The tsarevich, who returned to Russia, was interrogated and tortured, and, most likely, the interrogations were conducted by the tsar himself. Peter I watched as his son was hung on a rack, his nails were torn off and he was beaten with a whip. In the summer, Peter I initiated the trial of the tsarevich. All the Tsar's associates unanimously pronounced the verdict that the sovereign-master expected from them: Guilty, worthy of death.
The services of Tolstoy and Rumyantsev were again needed to carry out the sentence. Tolstoy, entering the tsarevich's chambers located in the fortress, said: “Your tsarist highness! Arise! " He, having opened his hair and wondering what this is, gray on the liar and looking at us, did not ask anything out of confusion. Then Tolstoy, approaching him closer, said: “Sovereign Tsarevich! According to the court of the noblest people of the Russian land, you are sentenced to death for many treason to the sovereign, your parent and your fatherland. Behold, by the order of his royal majesty, we have come to you to execute that judgment, for the sake of this, through prayer and repentance, prepare for your end, for your life is already near its end. " As soon as the prince heard this, a great cry raised up, calling to him for help, but from this success he did not receive, and began to cry bitterly and say: “Woe to me, poor,woe to me, born of royal blood! " And when they saw that the prince did not want to pray, they took him by the arms, put him on his knees and one of us, who I don’t remember from fear, began to speak after him: “Lord! Into your hands I commit my spirit! " He, without saying that, with his hands and feet straighten up and break free even though. The same, I think, like Buturlin, rivers: “Lord! Rest the soul of your servant Alexei in the village of the righteous, despising his sins, like a philanthropist! " And with this word of the prince, they threw their backs on the lodge and, taking two down jackets from the head, covered his head, oppressing him, until the movement of his arms and legs subsided and his heart stopped beating, which he did soon, for the sake of his then weakness, and what he then said, that no one could make out, because from the fear of near death, his mind became darkened. And somehow it happened, we packed the body of the prince, as if sleeping and,after praying to God for a soul, they quietly left."
Now it is impossible to say for sure what words Catherine found for her husband at this terrible hour. One thing is clear, the woman's main argument is that Peter's son was his worst personal enemy and the enemy of the state. The royal couple became the executioners of the innocent legal heir to the throne, and their common child, Lumpy, was sleeping peacefully nearby. Knowing what role the queen played in the tapestry of Peter's eldest son, it is safe to say that Catherine's hands were also in the blood of Tsarevich Alexei. At this time, she was already expecting her second child and the couple were sure that another prince would be born. But, in August 1718, a girl was born to the imperial couple - Tsarina Natalia.
On the night when Alexei was executed, Catherine and Peter breathed freely. They were convinced that the problem of enthronement was finally resolved. But in April 1719 their hope and heir fell ill and died suddenly at the age of three. Until her death, the queen kept her son's toys: "A gold cross, silver buckles, a whistle with bells, a glass fish, a jasper cookware, a cap, a skewer, a golden hilt, a tortoiseshell whip, a cane." The family foundation between the royal spouses has cracked deeply. Peter's beloved son passed away, but another heir remained - Alexei's son, Peter Alexeevich, the same age as Shishechka. An orphan, unloved by his grandfather, the boy grew up to the delight of those who did not support the Tsar's reforms.
In February 1722, the tsar published the Charter on the Succession of the Throne, which became the most important document of the autocracy. In it is written: “To make this Charter, so that this is always in the will of the ruling sovereign, to whom he wants it, he will determine the inheritance and to the certain, seeing what indecency, he will cancel the packs, so that children and descendants do not fall into such anger as it is written above I will bridle this on myself. In other words, Peter I allowed the transfer of the throne to any of his subjects, but reserved the right to change this decision. That is, he allowed not to comply with the laws that he himself adopted!
In order to be able to transfer the throne to his wife Catherine, in May 1724 he crowned her as an empress in the Kremlin's Assumption Cathedral. Most likely, at the same time he drew up the corresponding will. In the autumn of the same year, Peter learned about his wife's betrayal with the young Wilim Mons. The king was furious: his wife's lover was executed, and there was a distance between the spouses.
Peter I did not consider his son Alexei and his grandson heir to the throne. And even dying in 1725, when asked to name his successor, he only said: "After, after." He hoped to recover, because he was then only 52 years old! But the "after" expected by him did not come, but Russia was waiting for a series of palace coups and chaos.
Peter I and his son Alexei found themselves on two poles of Russia's development path: the reformer tsar saw the future of Russia in integration with Europe, and his son wanted Russia to develop in its own way, based on the dogmas of the Orthodox faith. Yes, they were very different people, but the prince was the legitimate heir to the Russian throne and his murder may have influenced the course of history. And of course, the main reproach to the tsar was that, trying to give education in his state, he could not become a father, mentor for Alexei, did not give a crumbs of his love, did not raise the boy as a successor of his work, entrusting his education to strangers, mediocre, indifferent people.
The time has come to remove the label of a traitor from Tsarevich Alexei, and sympathize with the man who, by the will of fate, became the son of the Tsar, heir to the Russian throne, an unloved child and a victim of court intrigues. And who knows, had he stayed alive and got the throne, Russia could have avoided many tragic events that happened later.