In case also that anyone wished to publish this event in an odious manner, you will have in hand what is necessary to destroy and solidly refute any unjust and unfounded tales.
Weber and De la Vie accepted the offical explanation and reported to their capitals that the Tsarevich had died from a stroke of apoplexy. But other foreigners were dubious, and a number of lurid accounts began to circulate. Pleyer first reported that Alexis had died of apoplexy, but three days later he informed his government that the Tsarevich had been beheaded with a sword or an axe (one account, many years later, depicted Peter himself beheading his son); a woman from Narva was said to have been brought into the fortress to sew the head back onto the body so that it could lie in state. The Dutch resident, De Bie, reported that Alexis had been bled to death by the opening of his veins with a lancet. Later, there were rumors that Alexis had been smothered with pillows by four Guards officers, including Rumyantsov.
The daily log of the St. Petersburg garrison states that at about eight a.m. on June 26, the Tsar, Menshikov, and eight others gathered in the fortress to attend a new interrogation at which torture was administered—on whom is not specified. "By eleven a.m. they had all departed," the log continued. "The same day at six o'clock in the evening, the Tsarevich Alexis Petrovich, who was under guard in the Trubetskoy Bastion, died." Menshikov's diary says that on that morning he went to the fortress, where he met the Tsar, then went to the Tsarevich Alexis, who was very ill, and remained there for half an hour. "The day was clear and bright with a light wind. On that day the Tsarevich Alexis Petrovich passed from his world into eternal life."
The truth is that none of these suggested causes—beheading, bleeding, smothering or even apoplexy—is required to explain Alexis' death. The simplest explanation is the most likely: Forty strokes of the knout were sufficent to kill a robust, healthy man; Alexis was not robust, and the shock and wounds caused by forty lashes across his thin back could easily have killed him.
No matter exactly how Alexis died, Peter's contemporaries held the Tsar responsible. And although many were shocked, there was also a widespread belief that Alexis' death was the most satisfactory solution to Peter's problem. As Monsieur de la Vie reported to Versailles, "The death of the Prince leaves no reason to doubt that all seeds of rebellion and conspiracy are totally extinguished. A death never occurred more opportunely in the reestablishment of public tranquility and in dissipating our fear of the ominous events that threatened us." A few days later, the Frenchman added, "It is impossible to praise the conduct of the Tsar too highly."
Peter did not evade the charge against him. Although he said that it was God who ultimately had taken Alexis' life, he never denied that it was he who had brought his son to a trial which had led to a sentence of death. He had not signed his approval of the sentence, but he was fully in accord with the verdict of the judges. Nor did he bother afterward to make a false display of grief. The day after the Tsarevich's death was the anniversary of the Battle of Poltava, and nothing was postponed or muted because of the tragedy. Peter celebrated a Te Deum for the victory and attended a banquet and a ball in the evening. Two day later, on the 29th, a ninety-four-gun ship, the Lesnaya, built according to Peter's own design, was launched at the Admiralty. Peter was present with all his ministers, and afterward, says one account, "there was great merrymaking."
Nevertheless, the ceremonies surrounding the Tsarevich's body reflected Peter's conflicting emotions. Although Alexis had died a condemned criminal, the services of mourning were conducted according to his rank. It was almost as if, now that Alexis was no longer there to threaten his father, Peter wanted him treated as properly befitted a tsarevich. On the morning after Alexis' death, his body was carried from the cell in which he died to the house of the governor of the fortress, where it was laid in a coffin and covered with black velvet and a pall of rich gold tissue. Attended by Golovkin and other high officials of state, it was carried to the Church of the Holy Trinity, where it lay in state, with the face and right hand uncovered in normal Orthodox fashion so that all who wished could kiss the hand or forehead in farewell. On June 30, the funeral and burial took place. In keeping with Peter's instructions, none of the gentlemen present wore mourning clothes, although some ladies were dressed in black. Foreign ambassadors were not invited to this strange royal funeral and were advised not to wear mourning, as the sovereign's son had died a criminal. Nevertheless, the preacher chose for his text the words of David, "O Absalom, my son, my son!" and some of those attending declared that Peter wept. Afterward, the coffin was borne from Trinity Church back to the fortess, with Peter and Catherine and all the high officers of state (most of whom had voted to condemn Alexis) following in procession carrying lighted candles. In the fortress cathedral, the coffin was placed in a new vault of the Tsar's family, resting beside the coffin of the Tsarevich's wife, Charlotte.
At the end of the year, Peter had a medal struck, almost as if he were commemorating a victory. On the medal, clouds have parted and a mountaintop is bathed in rays of sunlight. Beneath the scene is the inscription: "The horizon has cleared."
Ultimately, what can one say about this tragedy? Was it simply a family matter, a clash of personalities, the awful, bestriding father relentlessly tormenting and eventually killing the pitiable, helpless son?
Peter's relationship with his son was an inseparable blend of personal feelings and political realities. Alexis' character helped stimulate the antagonism between father and son, but at the root of the trouble lay the issue of sovereign power. There were two sovereigns—the sovereign on the throne and the sovereign in waiting—with different dreams and different goals for the state. In achieving those dreams, however, each faced a gnawing frustration. As long as the reigning monarch was on the throne, the son had to wait, and yet the sovereign knew that, once he had departed, his dreams could be undone, his goals overturned. Power lay only in the crown.
There is, of" course, a long history of dissension in royal families, of clashing temperaments, suspicion and maneuvering of power between generations, of the impatience of the young for the older generation to die and yield power. There are also many stories of kings and princes condemning thier own kin for opposition to the crown, or, on the losing side, fleeing their homelands to seek refuge at a foreign court. In Peter's time,
Princess Mary, daughter of King James II of England, helped to drive her father from the throne. James fled to France to wait for better times; when he died, his son twice landed in Britain attempting to claim his father's throne. Who here was the traitor? Invariably, history bequeaths this title to the loser.
In earlier times, the path to royal thrones was deeply stained with family blood. Plantagenets, Tudors, Stuarts, Capetians, Valois and Bourbons all killed royal kinsmen for reasons of state. The fabled Gloriana, Elizabeth I of England, kept her cousin Mary Queen of Scots in prison for twenty-seven years while life and beauty wasted away and then, still unable to accept the fact that Mary would succeed her on the throne, had the prisoner beheaded. Amidst all this, Mary's son, King James VI of Scotland, gladly accepted his mother's death; her removal cleared his own path as Elizabeth's chosen heir.
Killing one's own royal children is a rarer crime. One must search back to the Greeks, whose tragedies revolve around dim figures, half myth, half god, or to imperial Rome, where naked personal ambition and court depravity made anything acceptable. In Russia, Ivan the Terrible killed his son with his iron staff, but Ivan was raging and half mad. To us, the most unsettling thing about Alexis' death is that it came as a result of a cool, supposedly objective judicial proceeding. That a father could stand by and permit his son to be tortured seems to us an incredible blot, the most brutal of all the violent episodes of Peter's life.