Chapter X: Part 10

But the confidants of the prince remonstrating to him how dangerous it would be to trust himself in a place where he could have no friends to advise him, and where he would be exposed to the anger of an incensed father, and the machinations of a revengeful step-mother; he, under pretence of going to join his father at Copenhagen, took the road to Vienna, and threw himself under the protection of the emperor Charles VI. his brother-in-law, intending to remain at his court till the death of the czar.

This adventure of the czarowitz was nearly the same as that of Lewis XI. of France, who, when he was dauphin, quitted the court of his father Charles VII. and took refuge with the duke of Burgundy; but the dauphin was much more culpable than Alexis, inasmuch as he married in direct opposition to his father's will, raised an army against him, and threw himself into the arms of a prince, who was Charles's declared enemy, and refused to hearken to the repeated remonstances of his father, to return back to his court.

The czarowitz, on the contrary, had married only in compliance with his father's orders, had never rebelled against him, nor raised an army, nor taken refuge in the dominions of an enemy, and returned to throw himself at his feet, upon the very first letter he received from him; for, as soon as Peter knew that his son had been at Vienna, and had afterwards retired to Tyrol, and from thence to Naples, which, at that time, belonged to the emperor, he dispatched Romanzoff, a captain of his guards, and the privy-counsellor Tolstoy, with a letter written with his own hand, and dated at Spa, the 21st of July, N. S. 1717. They found the prince at Naples, in the castle of St. Elme, and delivered to him his father's letter, which was as follows:--

'I now write to you for the last time, to acquaint you, that you must instantly comply with my orders, which will be communicated to you by Tolstoy and Romanzoff. If you obey, I give you my sacred word and promise, that I will not punish you; and that, if you will return home, I will love you more than ever; but, if you do not, I, as your father, and in virtue of the authority which God has given me over you, denounce against you my eternal curse; and, as your sovereign, declare to you, that I will find means to punish your disobedience, in which I trust God himself will assist me, and espouse the just cause of an injured parent and king.

'For the rest, remember that I have never laid any restraint upon you. Was I obliged to leave you at liberty to choose your way of life? Had I not the power in my own hands to oblige you to conform to my will? I had only to command, and make myself obeyed.'

The viceroy of Naples found it no difficult matter to persuade the czarowitz to return to his father. This is an incontestable proof that the emperor had no intention to enter into any engagements with the prince, that might give umbrage to his father. Alexis therefore returned with the envoys, bringing with him his mistress, Aphrosyne, who had been the companion of his elopement.

We may consider the czarowitz as an ill-advised young man, who had gone to Vienna and to Naples, instead of going to Copenhagen, agreeable to the orders of his father and sovereign. Had he been guilty of no other crime than this, which is common enough with young and giddy persons, it was certainly very excusable. The prince determined to return to his father, on the faith of his having taken God to witness, that he not only would pardon him, but that he would love him better than ever. But it appears by the instructions given to the two envoys who went to fetch him, and even by the czar's own letter, that his father required him to declare the persons who had been his counsellors, and also to fulfil the oath he had made of renouncing the succession.

It seemed difficult to reconcile this exclusion of the czarowitz from the succession, with the other part of the oath, by which the czar had bound himself in his letter, namely that of loving his son better than ever. Perhaps divided between paternal love, and the justice he owed to himself and people, as a sovereign, he might limit the renewal of his affection to his son in a convent, instead of to that son on a throne: perhaps, likewise, he was in hopes to reduce him to reason, and to render him worthy of the succession at last, by making him sensible of the loss of a crown which he had forfeited by his own indiscretion. In a circumstance so uncommon, so intricate, and so afflicting, it may be easily supposed that the minds of both father and son were under equal perturbation, and hardly consistent with themselves.

The prince arrived at Moscow on the 13th of February, N. S. 1717; and the same day went to throw himself at his father's feet, who was returned to the city from his travels. They had a long conference together, and a report was immediately spread through the city, that the prince and his father were reconciled, and that all past transactions were buried in oblivion. But the next day, orders were issued for the regiments of guards to be under arms at break of day, and for all the czar's ministers, boyards, and counsellors, to repair to the great hall of the castle; as also for the prelates, together with two monks of St. Basile, professors of divinity, to assemble in the cathedral, at the tolling of the great bell. The unhappy prince was then conducted to the great castle like a prisoner, and being come in his father's presence, threw himself in tears at his feet, and presented a writing, containing a confession of his faults, declaring himself unworthy of the succession, and imploring only that his life might be spared.[101]

The czar, raising up his son, withdrew with him into a private room, where he put many questions to him, declaring to him at the same time, that if he concealed any one circumstance relating to his elopement, his life should answer for it. The prince was then brought back to the great hall, where the council was assembled, and the czar's declaration, which had been previously prepared, was there publicly read in his presence.[102]

In this piece the czar reproaches his son with all those faults we have before related, namely, his little application to study, his connexions with the favourers of the ancient customs and manners of the country, and his ill-behaviour to his wife.--'He has even violated the conjugal faith,' saith the czar in his manifesto, 'by giving his affection to a prostitute of the most servile and low condition, during the life-time of his lawful spouse.' It is certain that Peter himself had repudiated his own wife in favour of a captive, but that captive was a person of exemplary merit, and the czar had just cause for discontent against his wife, who was at the same time his subject. The czarowitz, on the contrary, had abandoned his princess for a young woman, hardly known to any one, and who had no other merit but that of personal charms. So far there appears some errors of a young man, which a parent ought to reprimand in secret, and which he might have pardoned.

The czar, in his manifesto, next reproaches his son with his flight to Vienna, and his having put himself under the emperor's protection; and adds, that he had calumniated his father, by telling the emperor that he was persecuted by him; and that he had compelled him to renounce the succession; and, lastly, that he had made intercession with the emperor to assist him with an armed force.

Here it immediately occurs, that the emperor could not, with any propriety, have entered into a war with the czar on such an occasion; nor could he have interposed otherwise between an incensed father and a disobedient son, than by his good offices to promote a reconciliation. Accordingly we find, that Charles VI. contented himself with giving a temporary asylum to the fugitive prince, and readily sent him back on the first requisition of the czar, in consequence of being informed of the place his son had chosen for his retreat.

Peter adds, in this terrible piece, that Alexis had persuaded the emperor, that he went in danger of his life, if he returned back to Russia. Surely it was in some measure justifying these complaints of the prince, to condemn him to death at his return, and especially after so solemn a promise to pardon him; but we shall see, in the course of this history, the cause which afterwards moved the czar to denounce this ever-memorable sentence. For the present let us turn our eyes upon an absolute prince, pleading against his son before an august assembly.--

'In this manner,' says he, 'has our son returned; and although, by his withdrawing himself and raising calumnies against us, he has deserved to be punished with death, yet, out of our paternal affection, we pardon his crimes; but, considering his unworthiness, and the series of his irregular conduct, we cannot in conscience leave him the succession to the throne of Russia; foreseeing that, by his vicious courses, he would, after our decease, entirely destroy the glory of our nation, and the safety of our dominions, which we have recovered from the enemy.

'Now, as we should pity our states and our faithful subjects, if, by such a successor, we should throw them back into a much worse condition than ever they were yet; so, by the paternal authority, and, in quality of sovereign prince, in consideration of the safety of our dominions, we do deprive our said son Alexis, for his crimes and unworthiness, of the succession after us to our throne of Russia, even though there should not remain one single person of our family after us.

'And we do constitute and declare successor to the said throne after us, our second son, Peter,[103] though yet very young, having no successor that is older.

'We lay upon our said son Alexis our paternal curse, if ever at any time he pretends to, or reclaims, the said succession.

'And we desire our faithful subjects, whether ecclesiastics or seculars, of all ranks and conditions, and the whole Russian nation, in conformity to this constitution and our will, to acknowledge and consider our son Peter, appointed by us to succeed, as lawful successor, and agreeably to this our constitution, to confirm the whole by oath before the holy altar, upon the holy gospel, kissing the cross.

'And all those who shall ever at any time oppose this our will, and who, from this day forward, shall dare to consider our son Alexis as successor, or assist him for that purpose, declare them traitors to us and our country. And we have ordered that these presents shall be every where published and promulgated, to the end that no person may pretend ignorance.'

It would seem that this declaration had been prepared beforehand for the occasion, or that it had been drawn up with astonishing dispatch: for the czarowitz did not return to Moscow till the 13th of February, and his renunciation in favour of the empress Catherine's son is dated the 14th.

The prince on his part signed his renunciation, whereby he acknowledges his exclusion to be just, as having merited it by his own fault and unworthiness; 'And I do hereby swear,' adds he, 'in presence of God Almighty in the Holy Trinity, to submit in all things to my father's will,' &c.

These instruments being signed, the czar went in procession to the cathedral, where they were read a second time, when the whole body of clergy signed their approbation with their seals at the bottom, to a copy prepared for that purpose.[104] No prince was ever disinherited in so authentic a manner. There are many states in which an act of this kind would be of no validity; but in Russia, as in ancient Rome, every father has a power of depriving his son of his succession, and this power was still stronger in a sovereign than in a private subject, and especially in such a sovereign as Peter.

But, nevertheless, it was to be apprehended, that those who had encouraged the prince in his opposition to his father's will, and had advised him to withdraw himself from his court, might one day endeavour to set aside a renunciation which had been procured by force, and restore to the eldest son that crown which had been violently snatched from him to place on the head of a younger brother by a second marriage. In this case it was easy to foresee a civil war, and a total subversion of all the great and useful projects which Peter had so much laboured to establish; and therefore the present matter in question was to determine between the welfare of near eighteen millions of souls (which was nearly the number which the empire of Russia contained at that time), and the interest of a single person incapable of governing. Hence it became necessary to find out those who were disaffected, and accordingly the czar a second time threatened his son with the most fatal consequences if he concealed any thing: and the prince was obliged to undergo a judicial examination by his father, and afterwards by the commissioners appointed for that purpose.

One principal article of the charge brought against him, and that which served chiefly to his condemnation, was, a letter from one Beyer, the emperor's resident at the court of Russia, dated at Petersburg, after the flight of the prince. This letter makes mention of a mutiny in the Russian army then assembled at Mecklenburg, and that several officers talked of clapping up Catherine and her son in the prison where the late empress, whom Peter had repudiated, was then confined, and of placing the czarowitz on the throne, as soon as he could be found out and brought back. These idle projects fell to the ground of themselves, and there was not the least appearance that Alexis had ever countenanced them. The whole was only a piece of news related by a foreigner; the letter itself was not directed to the prince, and he had only a copy thereof transmitted him while at Vienna.

But a charge of a more grievous nature appeared against him, namely, the heads of a letter written with his own hand, and which he had sent, while at the court of Vienna, to the senators and prelates of Russia, in which were the following very strong assertions:--'The continual ill-treatment which I have suffered without having deserved it, have at length obliged me to consult my peace and safety by flight. I have narrowly escaped being confined in a convent, by those who have already served my mother in the same manner. I am now under the protection of a great prince, and I beseech you not to abandon me in this conjuncture.'

The expression, _in this conjuncture_, which might be construed into a seditious meaning, appeared to have been blotted out, and then inserted again by his own hand, and afterwards blotted out a second time; which shewed it to be the action of a young man disturbed in his mind, following the dictates of his resentment, and repenting of it at the very instant. There were only the copies of these letters found: they were never sent to the persons they were designed for, the court of Vienna having taken care to stop them; a convincing proof that the emperor never intended to break with the czar, or to assist the son to take up arms against his father.

Several witnesses were brought to confront the prince, and one of them, named Afanassief, deposed, that he had formerly heard him speak these words,--'I shall mention something to the bishops, who will mention it again to the lower clergy, and they to the parish priests, and the crown will be placed on my head whether I will or not.'

His own mistress, Aphrosyne, was likewise brought to give evidence against him. The charge, however, was not well supported in all its parts; there did not appear to have been any regular plan formed, any chain of intrigues, or any thing like a conspiration or combination, nor the least shadow of preparation for a change in the government. The whole affair was that of a son, of a depraved and factious disposition, who thought himself injured by his father, who fled from him, and who wished for his death; but this son was heir to the greatest monarchy in our hemisphere, and in his situation and place he could not be guilty of trivial faults.

After the accusations of his mistress, another witness was brought against him, in relation to the former czarina his mother, and the princess Mary his sister. He was charged with having consulted the former in regard to his flight, and of having mentioned it to the princess Mary. The bishop of Rostow, who was the confidant of all three, having been seized, deposed, that the two princesses, who were then shut up in a convent, had expressed their wishes for a revolution in affairs that might restore them their liberty, and had even encouraged the prince, by their advice, to withdraw himself out of the kingdom. The more natural their resentment was, the more it was to be apprehended. We shall see, at the end of this chapter, what kind of a person the bishop of Rostow was, and what had been his conduct.

The czarowitz at first denied several facts of this nature which were alleged against him, and by this very behaviour subjected himself to the punishment of death, with which his father had threatened him in case he did not make an open and sincere confession.

At last, however, he acknowledged several disrespectful expressions against his father, which were laid to his charge, but excused himself by saying, he had been hurried away by passion and drink.

The czar himself drew up several new interrogations. The fourth ran as follows:--

'When you found by Beyer's letter that there was a mutiny among the troops in Mecklenburg, you seemed pleased with it; you must certainly have had some reason for it; and I imagine you would have joined the rebels even during my life-time?'

This was interrogating the prince on the subject of his private thoughts, which, though they might be revealed to a father, who may, by his advice, correct them, yet might they also with justice be concealed from a judge, who decides only upon acknowledged facts. The private sentiments of a man's heart have nothing to do in a criminal process, and the prince was at liberty either to deny them or disguise them, in such manner as he should think best for his own safety, as being under no obligation to lay open his heart, and yet we find him returning the following answer: 'If the rebels had called upon me during your life-time, I do verily believe I should have joined them, supposing I had found them sufficiently strong.'

It is hardly conceivable that he could have made this reply of himself, and it would be full as extraordinary, at least according to the custom in our part of the world, to condemn a person for confessing that he might have thought in a certain manner in a conjuncture that never happened.

To this strange confession of his private thoughts, which had till then been concealed in the bottom of his heart, they added proofs that could hardly be admitted as such in a court of justice in any other country.

The prince, sinking under his misfortunes, and almost deprived of his senses, studied within himself, with all the ingenuity of fear, for whatever could most effectually serve for his destruction; and at length acknowledged, that in private confession to the archpriest James, he had wished his father dead; and that his confessor made answer, 'God will pardon you this wish: we all wish the same.'

The canons of our church do not admit of proofs resulting from private confession, inasmuch as they are held inviolable secrets between God and the penitent: and both the Greek and Latin churches are agreed, that this intimate and secret correspondence between a sinner and the Deity are beyond the cognizance of a temporal court of justice. But here the welfare of a kingdom and a king were concerned. The archpriest, being put to the torture, confirmed all that the prince had revealed; and this trial furnished the unprecedented instance of a confessor accused by his penitent, and that penitent by his own mistress. To this may be added another singular circumstance, namely, the archbishop of Rezan having been involved in several accusations on account of having spoken too favourably of the young czarowitz in one of his sermons, at the time that his father's resentment first broke out against him; that weak prince declared, in his answer to one of the interrogations, that he had depended on the assistance of that prelate, at the same time that he was at the head of the ecclesiastical court, which the czar had consulted in relation to this criminal process against his son, as we shall see in the course of this chapter.

There is another remark to be made in this extraordinary trial, which we find so very lamely related in the absurd History of Peter the Great, by the pretended bojar Nestersuranoy, and that is the following:

Among other answers which the czarowitz Alexis made to the first question put to him by his father, he acknowledges, that while he was at Vienna, finding that he could not be admitted to see the emperor, he applied himself to count Schonborn, the high chamberlain, who told him, the emperor would not abandon him, and that as soon as occasion should offer, by the death of his father, that he would assist him to recover the throne by force of arms. 'Upon which,' adds the prince, 'I made him the following answer: "This is what I by no means desire: if the emperor will only grant me his protection for the present, I ask no more."' This deposition is plain, natural, and carries with it strong marks of the truth; for it would have been the height of madness to have asked the emperor for an armed force to dethrone his father, and no one would have ventured to have made such an absurd proposal, either to the emperor, prince Eugene, or to the council. This deposition bears date in the month of February, and four months afterwards, namely, after the 1st of July, and towards the latter end of the proceedings against the czarowitz, that prince is made to say, in the last answers he delivered in writing:--

'Being unwilling to imitate my father in any thing, I endeavoured to secure myself the succession by any means whatever, _excepting such as were just_. I attempted to get it by a foreign assistance; and, had I succeeded, and that the emperor had fulfilled _what he had promised me_, to replace me on the throne of Russia even by force of arms, I would have left nothing undone to have got possession of it. For instance, if the emperor had demanded of me, in return for his services, a body of my own troops to fight for him against any power whatever, that might be in arms against him, or a large sum of money to defray the charges of a war, I should have readily granted every thing he asked, and should have gratified his ministers and generals with magnificent presents. I would at my own expense have maintained the auxiliary troops he might have furnished to put me in possession of the crown; and, in a word, I should have thought nothing too much to have accomplished my ends.'

This answer seems greatly strained, and appears as if the unhappy deponent was exerting his utmost efforts to appear more culpable than he really was; nay, he seems to have spoken absolutely contrary to truth in a capital point. He says the emperor had promised to procure him the crown by force of arms. This is absolutely false: Schonborn had given him hopes that, after the death of his father, the emperor might assist him to recover his birth-right; but the emperor himself never made him any promise. And lastly, the matter in question was not if he should take arms against his father, but if he should succeed him after his death?

By this last deposition he declares what he believes he should have done, had he been obliged to dispute his birth-right, which he had not formally renounced till after his journey to Vienna and Naples. Here then we have a second deposition, not of any thing he had already done, and the actual commission of which, would have subjected him to the rigorous inquiry of the law, but of what he imagines he should have done had occasion offered, and which consequently is no subject of a juridical inquiry. Thus does he twice together accuse himself of private thoughts that he might have entertained in a future time. The known world does not produce an instance of a man tried and condemned for vague and inconsequential notions that came into his head, and which he never communicated to any one; nor is there a court of justice in Europe that will hear a man accuse himself of criminal thoughts; nay, we believe that they are not punished by God himself, unless accompanied by a fixed resolution to put them in practice.

To these natural reflections it may be answered, that the czarowitz had given his father a just right to punish him, by having withheld the names of several of the accomplices of his flight. His pardon was promised him only on condition of making a full and open confession, which he did not till it was too late. Lastly, after so public an affair, it was not in human nature that Alexis should ever forgive a brother in favour of whom he had been disinherited; therefore, it was thought better to punish one guilty person, than to expose a whole nation to danger, and herein the rigour of justice and reasons of state acted in concert.

We must not judge of the manners and laws of one nation by those of others. The czar was possessed of the fatal, but incontestable right of punishing his son with death, for the single crime of having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom against his consent; and he thus explains himself in his declaration addressed to the prelates and others, who composed the high courts of justice. 'Though, according to all laws, civil and divine, and especially those of this empire, which grant an absolute jurisdiction to fathers over their children (even fathers in private life) we have a full and unlimited power to judge our son for his crimes according to our pleasure, without asking the advice of any person whatsoever: yet, as men are more liable to prejudice and partiality in their own affairs, than in those of others, and as the most eminent and expert physicians rely not on their judgment concerning themselves, but call in the advice and assistance of others; so we, under the fear of God, and an awful dread of offending him, in like manner make known our disease, and apply to you for a cure; being apprehensive of eternal death, if ignorant perhaps of the nature of our distemper, we should attempt to cure ourselves; and the rather as in a solemn appeal to Almighty God, I have signed, sworn, and confirmed a promise of pardon to my son, in case he should declare to me the truth.

'And though he has violated this promise, by concealing the most important circumstances of his rebellious design against us; yet that we may not in any thing swerve from our obligations, we pray you to consider this affair with seriousness and attention, and report what punishment he deserves without favour or partiality either to him or me; for should you apprehend that he deserves but a slight punishment, it will be disagreeable to me. I swear to you by the great God and his judgments, that you have nothing to fear on this head.

'Neither let the reflection of your being to pass sentence on the son of your prince have any influence on you, but administer justice without respect of persons, and destroy not your own souls and mine also, by doing any thing to injure our country, or upbraid our consciences in the great and terrible day of judgment.'

The czar afterwards addressed himself to the clergy,[105] by another declaration to the same purpose; so that every thing was transacted in the most authentic manner, and Peter's behaviour through the whole of this affair was so open and undisguised, as shewed him to be fully satisfied of the justice of his cause.

On the first of July the clergy delivered their opinion in writing. In fact, it was their opinion only, and not a judgment, which the czar required of them. The beginning is deserving the attention of all Europe.

'This affair (say the prelates and the rest of the clergy) does in no wise fall within the verge of the ecclesiastical court, nor is the absolute power invested in the sovereign of the Russian empire subject to the cognizance of his people; but he has an unlimited power of acting herein as to him shall seem best, without any inferior having a right to intermeddle therein.'

After their preamble they proceed to cite several texts of scripture, particularly Leviticus, wherein it is said, 'Cursed be he that curseth his father or mother;' and the gospel of St. Matthew, which repeats this severe denunciation. And they concluded, after several other quotations,[106] with these remarkable words:

'If his majesty is inclinable to punish the offender according to his deeds and the measure of his crimes, he has before him the examples in the Old Testament, if on the other hand, he is inclined to shew mercy, he has a pattern in our Lord Jesus Christ, who receives the prodigal son, when returning with a contrite heart, who set free the woman taken in adultery, whom the law sentenced to be stoned to death, and who prefers mercy to burnt-offerings. He has likewise the example of David, who spared his son Absalom, who had rebelled against and persecuted him, saying to his captains, when going forth to the fight, "Spare my son Absalom." The father was here inclinable to mercy, but divine Justice suffered not the offender to go unpunished.

'The heart of the czar is in the hands of God; let him take that side to which it shall please the Almighty to direct him.'

This opinion was signed by eight archbishops and bishops, four archpriests, and two professors of divinity; and, as we have already observed, the metropolitan archbishop of Rezan, the same with whom the prince had held a correspondence, was the first who signed.

As soon as the clergy had signed this opinion, they presented it to the czar. It is easy to perceive that this body was desirous of inclining his mind to clemency; and nothing can be more beautiful than the contrast between the mercy of Jesus Christ, and the rigour of the Jewish law, placed before the eyes of a father, who was the prosecutor of his own son.

The same day the czarowitz was again examined for the last time, and signed his final confession in writing, wherein he acknowledges himself 'to have been a bigot in his youthful days, to have frequented the company of priests and monks, to have drank with them, and to have imbibed from their conversations the first impressions of dislike to the duties of his station, and even to the person of his father.'

If he made this confession of his own accord, it shews that he must have been ignorant of the mild advice the body of clergy, whom he thus accuses, had lately given his father; and it is a still stronger proof, how great a change the czar had wrought in the manners of the clergy of his time, who, from a state of the most deplorable ignorance, were in so short a time become capable of drawing up a writing, which for its wisdom and eloquence might have been owned, without a blush, by the most illustrious fathers of the church.

It is in this last confession that the czarowitz made that declaration on which we have already commented, viz. that he endeavoured to secure to himself the succession by any means whatever, except such as were just.

One would imagine, by this last confession, that the prince was apprehensive he had not rendered himself sufficiently criminal in the eyes of his judges, by his former self-accusations, and that, by giving himself the character of a dissembler and a bad man, and supposing how he might have acted had he been the master, he was carefully studying how to justify the fatal sentence which was about to be pronounced against him, and which was done on the 5th of July. This sentence will be found, at length, at the end of this volume; therefore, we shall only observe in this place that it begins, like the opinion of the clergy, by declaring, that 'it belongs not to subjects to take cognizance of such an affair, which depends solely on the absolute will of the sovereign, whose authority is derived from God alone;' and then, after having set forth the several articles of the charge brought against the prince, the judges express themselves thus: 'What shall we think of a rebellious design, almost unparalleled in history, joined to that of a horrid parricide against him, who was his father in a double capacity?'

Probably these words have been wrong translated from the trial printed by order of the czar; for certainly there have been instances in history of much greater rebellions; and no part of the proceedings against the czarowitz discover any design in him of killing his father. Perhaps, by the word parricide, is understood the deposition made by the prince, that one day he declared at confession, that he had wished for the death of his father. But, how can a private declaration of a secret thought, under the seal of confession, be a double parricide?

Be this as it may, the czarowitz was unanimously condemned to die, but no mention was made in the sentence of the manner in which he was to suffer. Of one hundred and forty-four judges, there was not one who thought of a lesser punishment than death. Whereas, an English tract, which made a great noise at that time, observes, that if such a cause had been brought before an English parliament, there would not have been one judge out of one hundred and forty-four, that would have inflicted even a penalty.

There cannot be a stronger proof of the difference of times and places. The consul Manlius would have been condemned by the laws of England to lose his own life, for having put his son to death; whereas he was admired and extolled for that action by the rigid Romans: but the same laws would not punish a prince of Wales for leaving the kingdom, who, as a peer of the realm, has a right to go and come when he pleases.[107] A criminal design, not perpetrated, is not punishable by the laws in England[108] or France, but it is in Russia. A continued formal and repeated disobedience of commands would, amongst us, be considered only an error in conduct, which ought to be suppressed; but, in Russia, it was judged a capital crime in the heir of a great empire, whose ruin might have been the consequence of that disobedience. Lastly, the czarowitz was culpable towards the whole nation, by his design of throwing it back into that state of darkness and ignorance, from which his father had so lately delivered it.

Such was the acknowledged power of the czar, that he might put his son to death for disobedience to him, without consulting any one; nevertheless, he submitted the affair to the judgment of the representatives of the nation, so that it was in fact the nation itself who passed sentence on the prince; and Peter was so well satisfied with the equity of his own conduct, that he voluntarily submitted it to the judgment of every other nation, by causing the whole proceedings to be printed and translated into several languages.

The law of history would not permit us to disguise or palliate aught in the relation of this tragic event. All Europe was divided in its sentiments, whether most to pity a young prince, prosecuted by his own father, and condemned to lose his life, by those who were one day to have been his subjects; or the father, who thought himself under a necessity to sacrifice his own son to the welfare of his nation.

It was asserted in several books, published on this subject, that the czar sent to Spain for a copy of the proceedings against Don Carlos, who had been condemned to death by his father, king Philip II. But this is false, inasmuch as Don Carlos was never brought to his trial: the conduct of Peter I. was totally different from that of Philip. The Spanish monarch never made known to the world the reasons for which he had confined his son, nor in what manner that prince died. He wrote letters on this occasion to the pope and the empress, which were absolutely contradictory to each other. William prince of Orange accused Philip publicly of having sacrificed his son and his wife to his jealousy, and to have behaved rather like a jealous and cruel husband, and an unnatural and murderous father, than a severe and upright judge. Philip suffered this accusation against him to pass unanswered: Peter, on the contrary, did nothing but in the eye of the world; he openly declared, that he preferred his people to his own son, submitted his cause to the judgment of the principal persons of his kingdom, and made the whole world the judge of their proceedings and his own.

There was another extraordinary circumstance attending this unhappy affair, which was, that the empress Catherine, who was hated by the czarowitz, and whom he had publicly threatened with the worst of treatment, whenever he should mount the throne, was not in any way accessary to his misfortunes; and was neither accused, nor even suspected by any foreign minister residing at the court of Russia, of having taken the least step against a son-in-law, from whom she had so much to fear. It is true, indeed, that no one pretends to say she interceded with the czar for his pardon: but all the accounts of these times, and especially those of the count de Bassewitz, agree, that she was greatly affected with his misfortunes.

I have now before me the memoirs of a public minister, in which I find the following words: 'I was present when the czar told the duke of Holstein, that the czarina Catherine, had begged of him to prevent the sentence passed upon the czarowitz, being publicly read to that prince. 'Content yourself,' said she, 'with obliging him to turn monk; for this public and formal condemnation of your son will reflect an odium on your grandson.'

The czar, however, would not hearken to the intercession of his spouse; he thought there was a necessity to have the sentence publicly read to the prince himself, in order that he might have no pretence left to dispute this solemn act, in which he himself acquiesced, and that being dead in law, he could never after claim a right to the crown.

Nevertheless, if, after the death of Peter, a formidable party had arose in favour of Alexis, would his being dead in law have prevented him from ascending the throne?

The prince then had his sentence read to him: and the memoirs I have just mentioned observe, that he fell into a fit on hearing these words: 'The laws divine and ecclesiastical, civil and military, condemn to death, without mercy, those whose attempts against their father and their sovereign have been fully proved.' These fits it is said, turned to an apoplexy, and it was with great difficulty he was recovered at that time. Afterwards, when he came a little to himself, and in the dreadful interval, between life and death, he sent for his father to come to him: the czar accordingly went, and both father and son burst into a flood of tears. The unhappy culprit asked his offended parent's forgiveness, which he gave him publicly: then, being in the agonies of death, extreme unction was administered to him in the most solemn manner, and soon after he expired in the presence of the whole court, the day after the fatal sentence had been pronounced upon him. His body was immediately carried to the cathedral, where it lay in state, exposed to public view for four days, after which it was interred in the church of the citadel, by the side of his late princess; the czar and czarina assisting at the funeral.

And here I think myself indispensably obliged to imitate, in some measure, the conduct of the czar; that is to say, to submit to the judgment of the public, the several facts which I have related with the most scrupulous exactness, and not only the facts themselves, but likewise the various reports which were propagated in relation to them, by authors of the first credit. Lamberti, the most impartial of any writer on this subject and at the same time the most exact, and who has confined himself to the simple narrative of the original and authentic pieces, relating to the affairs of Europe, seems in this matter to have departed from that impartiality and discernment for which he is so remarkable; for he thus expresses himself.

'The czarina, ever anxious for the fortune of her own son, did not suffer the czar to rest till she had obliged him to commence the proceedings against the czarowitz, and to prosecute that unhappy prince to death: and, what is still more extraordinary, the czar, after having given him the knout (which is a kind of torture) with his own hand, was himself his executioner, by cutting off his head, which was afterwards so artfully joined to the body, that the separation could not be perceived, when it was exposed to public view. Some little time afterwards, the czarina's son died, to the inexpressible regret of her and the czar. This latter, who had beheaded his own son, coming now to reflect, that he had no successor, grew exceedingly ill-tempered. Much about that time also, he was informed, that his spouse, the czarina, was engaged in a secret and criminal correspondence with prince Menzikoff. This, joined to the reflection, that she had been the cause of his putting to death with his own hand his eldest son, made him conceive a design to strip her of the imperial honours, and shut her up in a convent, in the same manner as he had done his first wife, who is still living there. It was a custom with the czar to keep a kind of diary of his private thoughts in his pocket book, and he had accordingly entered therein a memorandum of this his intention. The czarina having found means to gain over to her interest all the pages of the czar's bed-chamber, one of them finding his pocket-book, which he had carelessly left on the table, brought it to Catherine, who upon reading this memorandum, immediately sent for prince Menzikoff, and communicated it to him, and, in a day or two afterwards, the czar was seized with a violent distemper, of which he died. This distemper was attributed to poison, on account of its being so sudden and violent, that it could not be supposed to proceed from a natural cause, and that the horrible act of poisoning was but too frequently used in Russia.'

These accusations, thus handed down by Lamberti, were soon spread throughout Europe; and, as there still exist a great number of pieces, both in print and manuscript, which may give a sanction to the belief of this fact to the latest posterity, I think it is my duty to mention, in this place, what is come to my knowledge from unexceptionable authority.

In the first place, then, I take it upon me to declare, that the person who furnished Lamberti with this strange anecdote, was in fact a native of Russia, but of a foreign extraction, and who himself did not reside in that country, at the time this event happened, having left it several years before. I was formerly acquainted with him; he had been in company with Lamberti, at the little town of Nyon,[109] whither that writer had retired, and where I myself have often been. This very man declared to me, that he had never told this story to Lamberti, but in the light of a report, which had been handed about at that time.

This example may suffice to shew, how easy it was in former times, before the art of printing was found out, for one man to destroy the reputation of another, in the minds of whole nations, by reason that manuscript histories were in a few hands only, and not exposed to general examination and censure, or of the observations of contemporaries, as they now are. A single line in Tacitus or Sallust, nay, even in the authors of the most fabulous legends was enough to render a great prince odious to the half of mankind, and to perpetuate his name with infamy to successive generations.

How was it possible that the czar could have beheaded his son with his own hand, when extreme unction was administered to the latter in the presence of the whole court? Was he dead when the sacred oil was poured upon his head? When or how could this dissevered head have been rejoined to its trunk? It is notorious, that the prince was not left alone a single moment, from the first reading of his sentence to him to the instant of his death.

Besides, this story of the czar's having had recourse to the sword, acquits him at least of having made use of poison. I will allow, that it is somewhat uncommon, that a young man in the vigour of his days should die of a sudden fright, occasioned by hearing the sentence of his own death read to him, and especially when it was a sentence that he expected; but, after all, physicians will tell us that this is not a thing impossible.

If the czar dispatched his son by poison, as so many authors would persuade us, he by that means deprived himself of every advantage he might expect from this fatal process, in convincing all Europe that he had a right to punish every delinquent. He rendered all the reasons for pronouncing the condemnation of the czarowitz suspected; and, in fact, accused himself. If he was desirous of the death of his son, he was in possession of full power to have caused the sentence to be put in execution: would a man of any prudence then, would a sovereign, on whom the eyes of all his neighbours were fixed, have taken the base and dastardly method of poisoning the person, over whose devoted head he himself already held the sword of justice? Lastly, would he have suffered his memory to have been transmitted to posterity as an assassin and a poisoner, when he could so easily have assumed the character of an upright though severe judge?

It appears then, from all that has been delivered on this subject in the preceding pages, that Peter was more the king than the parent; and that he sacrificed his own son to the sentiments of the father and lawgiver of his country, and to the interest of his people, who, without this wholesome severity, were on the verge of relapsing again into that state from which he had taken them. It is evident that he did not sacrifice this son to the ambition of a step-mother, or to the son he had by her, since he had often threatened the czarowitz to disinherit him, before Catherine brought him that other son, whose infirm infancy gave signs of a speedy death, which actually happened in a very short time afterwards. Had Peter taken this important step merely to please his wife, he must have been a fool, a madman, or a coward; neither of which, most certainly, could be laid to his charge. But he foresaw what would be the fate of his establishments, and of his new-born nation, if he had such a successor as would not adopt his views. The event has verified this foresight: the Russian empire is become famous and respectable throughout Europe, from which it was before entirely separated; whereas, had the czarowitz succeeded to the throne, every thing would have been destroyed. In fine, when this catastrophe comes to be seriously considered, the compassionate heart shudders, and the rigid applauds.

This great and terrible event is still fresh in the memories of mankind; and it is frequently spoken of as a matter of so much surprise, that it is absolutely necessary to examine what contemporary writers have said of it. One of these hireling scribblers, who has taken on him the title of historian, speaks thus of it in a work which he has dedicated to count Bruhl, prime minister to his Polish majesty, whose name indeed may seem to give some weight to what he advances. 'Russia was convinced that the czarowitz owed his death to poison, which had been given him by his mother-in-law.' But this accusation is overturned by the declaration which the czar made to the duke of Holstein, that the empress Catherine had advised him to confine his son in a monastery.

With regard to the poison which the empress is said to have given afterwards to her husband, that story is sufficiently destroyed by the simple relation of the affair of the page and pocket-book. What man would think of making such a memorandum as this, 'I must remember to confine my wife in a convent?' Is this a circumstance of so trivial a nature, that it must be set down lest it should be forgotten? If Catherine had poisoned her son-in-law and her husband she would have committed crimes; whereas, so far from being suspected of cruelty, she had a remarkable character for lenity and sweetness of temper.

It may now be proper to shew what was the first cause of the behaviour of the czarowitz, of his flight, and of his death, and that of his accomplices, who fell by the hands of the executioner. It was owing then to mistaken notions in religion, and to a superstitious fondness for priests and monks. That this was the real source from whence all his misfortunes were derived, is sufficiently apparent from his own confession, which we have already set before the reader, and in particular, by that expression of the czar in his letter to his unhappy son, 'A corrupt priesthood will be able to turn you at pleasure.'