53

FLIGHT OF THE TSAREVICH

On the evening of November 10, 1716, Count Schönborn, Vice Chancellor of the Imperial court in Vienna, was already in bed when a servant entered his chamber to announce that the heir to the Russian throne, the son of Tsar Peter of Russia, was in an anteroom demanding to see him. The astonished Schönborn immediately began to dress, but before he could finish, the Tsarevich burst into the room. In a state of near-hysteria, pacing rapidly from one side of the room to the other, Alexis poured out his appeal to the amazed Austrian. He had come, he said, to beg the Emperor to save his life. The Tsar, Menshikov and Catherine wished to deprive him of the throne, send him to a monastery and perhaps even to kill him. “I am weak,” he said, “but I have sense enough to rule. Besides,” he added, “God, not man, gives kingdoms and appoints heirs to a throne.”

Schönborn stared at the frantic young man, who was looking from left to right almost as if he expected his tormentors to pursue him right into the room. Raising his hand for calm, the Vice Chancellor offered a chair. Alexis swallowed hard, sank into the chair and asked for beer. Schönborn had no beer, but he offered his visitor a glass of Moselle wine and then, in a friendly and reassuring way, began asking questions to convince himself that this really was the Tsarevich.

When this was done, Schönborn explained to the sobbing Prince that the Emperor could not be roused that night, but would be informed the following morning. Meanwhile, it would be best for the Tsarevich to return to his inn and remain in concealment until it had been decided what to do. Alexis agreed and, after expressing his gratitude with another gush of tears, he left.

Alexis’ arrival put Emperor Charles VI in a delicate position. To step between father and son was risky. If there was rebellion or civil war in Russia, no one could tell who would win, and if Austria had backed the loser, who could say what form the winner’s revenge might take? In the end, it was decided expedient not to receive Alexis officially or take public notice of his presence in imperial territory. On the other hand, Alexis’ appeal to his brother-in-law would not be totally rejected. Retaining his incognito, the Tsarevich would be hidden within the empire until he effected a reconciliation with his father or some further development occurred.

Two days later, in great secrecy, Alexis and his small party (including Afrosina, whose disguise as a boy had not been penetrated) were escorted to the castle of Ehrenberg in the remote Tyrolean valley of the Lech River, where they lived under conditions of highest security. The commandant was not told the identity of his guest and believed him to be an important Polish or Hungarian nobleman. The soldiers of the garrison were restricted to the castle for the entire length of the Tsarevich’s stay; none was to go on leave and none was to be replaced. The visitor was to be treated as a guest of the Imperial court, served respectfully, and his table furnished with a lavish allowance of 300 florins a month. All mail coming to or from the guest was to be intercepted and forwarded to the Imperial Chancery in Vienna. Most important, no strangers were to be allowed anywhere near the castle. Anyone coming near the gate or attempting to speak to the guards was to be arrested immediately.

Enclosed by thick walls, lost in the high mountains and deep snows of the Alps, Alexis at last felt safe. Afrosina was with him, along with four Russian servants and many books. His only need was an Orthodox priest—an impossibility while he maintained his incognito, but he implored Schönborn to send one should he become ill or reach the point of death. During these five months, his contact with the world was through Count Schönborn and the Imperial Chancery in Vienna. From time to time, the Count would send him news. “People are beginning to say that the Tsarevich has perished,” ran one communication from Schönborn. “According to some, he has run away from the severity of his father; according to others, he has been put to death by his father’s orders. Others say that, while traveling, he was assassinated by robbers. Nobody knows exactly where he is. I enclose as a matter of curiosity what has been written from St. Petersburg. The Tsarevich is advised in his interest to keep himself well concealed, because active search will be made for him as soon as the Tsar’s return from Amsterdam.”

On the Russian side, awareness of the Tsarevich’s disappearance came more gradually than one would suppose. The Tsar’s family was dispersed: Peter was in Amsterdam, Catherine was in Mecklenburg, and travel in that time was slow and uncertain. Alexis supposedly was making his way over winter roads from St. Petersburg down the Baltic to join the army which was in winter quarters in Mecklenburg; travel conditions alone could explain a delay of weeks. Nevertheless, in time, people began to worry. Twice, Catherine wrote to Menshikov asking about Alexis. One of the Tsarevich’s servants, sent by Kikin to follow his master, lost the trail in North Germany and came to Catherine in Mecklenburg to report that he had traced Alexis as far as Danzig, where the Tsarevich appeared to have vanished. It was during these early weeks that Count Schönborn sent to the fugitive hidden in the Tyrol a letter written in January from St. Petersburg by the Austrian representative, Pleyer:

As no one up to this time had shown special attention to the Crown Prince, no one thought much about his departure. But when old Princess Maria [to whom Alexis had admitted his desire to flee] returned from the baths [Carlsbad] and visited the house of the Crown Prince and began to cry, “Poor orphans, who are without father and mother, how sorry I am for you!” and besides this, news was received that the Tsarevich had gone no further than Danzig, everyone began to inquire about him. Many high personages secretly sent to me and to other foreigners to ask if we had not received in our letters some news of him. Two of his servants came to me also with questions. They wept bitterly and said that the Tsarevich had taken here a thousand ducats for his journey and in Danzig two thousand more and had sent them an order to secretly sell his furniture and pay the drafts, and since then they had no news of him. Meanwhile, they say in whispers that he was seized near Danzig by the Tsar’s people and carried off to a distant monastery, but it is not known whether he is alive or dead. According to others, he has gone to Hungary or some other land of the Emperor.

Then Pleyer, who hated Peter, began to exaggerate. “Everything here is ripe for rebellion,” he told Vienna. He wrote of a plot which rumor said would kill Peter, imprison Catherine, free Eudoxia and set Alexis on the throne. He went on to catalogue the complaints of the nobility, to whom he had obviously been talking. “High and low talk of nothing else except the contempt shown to them and their children who are obliged to be sailors and shipbuilders, although they have been abroad to learn languages and have spent so much money; of the ruin of their property by taxes and by their serfs being carried off to build fortresses and harbors.” Pleyer’s letter, which Alexis gave to Afrosina to keep with her belongings, and which later turned up in the hands of his inquisitors in Moscow, was to do the Tsarevich great harm.

For Peter, spending the winter in Amsterdam before his visit to Paris, the rumors that his son had disappeared were alarming, and when they turned to fact, the Tsar was overcome with anger and shame. The flight alone was bad enough for Peter’s pride; worse was the fact that the defiance of the heir would stimulate and encourage all those dissident elements who hoped one day to overturn the Tsar’s reforms. It was imperative, therefore, to find the Tsarevich. In December, General Weide, commanding the Russian army in Mecklenburg, was ordered to search throughout North Germany. On the chance that the fugitive might be in the Hapsburg Emperor’s dominions, Abraham Veselovsky, the Tsar’s resident in Vienna, was summoned to meet Peter in Amsterdam. There, Peter ordered him to begin a discreet search within the imperial territories and handed him a letter addressed to Charles VI, requesting that if the Tsarevich did appear either openly or secretly in the Emperor’s lands, Charles would send Alexis back to his father under armed escort. Humiliated by having to write such a letter, Peter told Veselovsky not to give it to the Emperor unless evidence developed that Alexis actually was in imperial territory.

Grimly accepting the role of sleuth, Veselovsky went from Amsterdam to Danzig to pick up the Tsarevich’s trail. From Danzig, it led down the road to Vienna, and Veselovsky discovered that a man named Kokhansky, fitting the Tsarevich’s description, had passed that way from posthouse to posthouse several months before. In Vienna, the trail faded, and in interviews with Count Schönborn, with Prince Eugene and even with the Emperor himself, the detective could learn nothing. Reinforcement arrived in the person of Captain of the Guards Rumyantsov, a giant of a man, almost as big as Peter himself, who was a personal aide to the Tsar. Rumyantsov’s orders were to assist Veselovsky in seizing Alexis by force if necessary to bring him home.

By the end of March 1717, the efforts of Veselovsky and Rumyantsov began to produce results. A bribed clerk in the Imperial Chancery indicated that a search in the Tyrol might prove fruitful. Rumyantsov traveled there and learned that a mysterious stranger was rumored to be hidden in the castle of Ehrenberg. He prowled as close to the castle as he could, returned repeatedly and eventually caught a glimpse of a man who he was sure was the Tsarevich. Armed with this information, Veselovsky returned to Vienna and delivered the Tsar’s letter from Amsterdam to the Emperor. Alexis had been positively identified at Ehrenberg, Veselovsky declared, and it was obvious that he was living there with the knowledge of the Imperial government. His Imperial Majesty was respectfully requested to deal frankly with the Tsar’s request concerning his son. Charles VI hesitated, still uncertain how to deal with this unwanted entanglement. He told Veselovsky that he doubted the accuracy of his information from the Tyrol, but would investigate. He then sent an imperial secretary straight to the Tsarevich to tell him what had happened, show him Peter’s letter and ask whether he was now prepared to go back to his father. Alexis’ response was to break into hysterics. Running from room to room, weeping, wringing his hands, wailing aloud in Russian, he made it plain to the secretary that he would rather do anything than return. The secretary then announced the Emperor’s decision: that, as his present hiding place had been discovered and the Tsar’s demands could not be summarily rejected, the Tsarevich would be transferred to another place of refuge within the empire: the city of Naples, which had come to the Imperial crown four years earlier through the Treaty of Utrecht.

Alexis gratefully agreed. In great secrecy, he was conducted through Innsbruck and Florence to southern Italy, taking with him his “page” Afrosina and his servants, who called attention to themselves by getting drunk. Writing to Count Schönborn, the imperial secretary noted that “as far as Trento suspicious people followed us; all was well, however. I used all possible means to hold our company from frequent and excessive drunkenness, but in vain.” Early in May, the fugitive party arrived in Naples, and after a dinner at the Trattoria of the Three Kings, the Tsarevich’s coach rolled into the courtyard of Castle St. Elmo. The massive brown walls and towers of this fortress looking out over the blue Bay of Naples toward Mount Vesuvius were to be Alexis’ home for the next five months. He settled down in the warm sunshine and began writing letters to Russia, telling the clergy and the Senate that he was still alive and explaining his reasons for his flight. With the passage of time, Afrosina’s swelling body made plain the sex of the “page.” As Count Schönborn joked in a letter to Prince Eugene: “Our little page has at last been acknowledged as a female. She is declared to be a mistress and indispensably necessary.”

Unfortunately for the lovers, their belief that their hiding place remained secret was false. The “suspicious people” spotted by the secretary as they traveled south were none other than Rumyantsov and his men, who followed the Tsarevich through Italy and entered Naples on his heels. As soon as they were certain that the fugitives were settling into Castle St. Elmo for an extended stay, a courier hurried north to inform Tsar Peter. The messenger found him at Spa, where he was resting and taking the waters after his Paris visit.

When Peter heard the news, he was extremely angry. Nine months had passed since the Tsarevich’s flight, and throughout that time, as the Tsar passed through foreign territories and visited Western courts, he had borne the humiliation of his son’s defection. Now, in addition, he knew that not only had the Emperor lied to him about Alexis’ presence within his dominions, but that, as indicated by the move to a new asylum in Naples, Austria did not mean to give the Tsarevich up. Grimly, Peter wrote again to the Emperor, this time demanding the return of his renegade son.

To carry this ultimatum to Vienna, Peter had selected the most skillful diplomat in his service, Peter Tolstoy. The clever old fox, with his bushy black eyebrows and cold, impressive face, was now seventy-two. He had survived his original support of the Tsarevna Sophia in the struggle between brother and sister years before. He had survived twelve years as Russian ambassador in Constantinople and numerous incarcerations in the Seven Towers. Now, returning with Peter from Paris, Tolstoy was chosen for a final mission: He was to go to Vienna and inquire of the Emperor why a disobedient son had been given refuge. He was to hint to Charles VI the possible consequences of this unfriendly action. Further, if he could gain access to the Tsarevich, he was to present to Alexis a letter written by Peter, promising the son his father’s forgiveness if he returned. Meanwhile, locked in his own breast, Tolstoy carried Peter’s real orders: The Tsarevich was to be brought back to Russia, no matter what the means.

Tolstoy arrived in Vienna and immediately went with Veselovsky and Rumyantsov to an audience with the Emperor. There, he presented the Tsar’s letter, which declared that he knew exactly where Alexis was and that both as a father and as an autocratic sovereign he had a complete right to the restitution of his son. Charles listened and said little, but promised a quick reply. Tolstoy next went to the Princess of Wolfenbüttel, Alexis’ mother-in-law, who happened to be in Vienna visiting her daughter, the Empress. He begged her, in the interest of her grandchildren, the son and daughter of the Tsarevich, to exert her influence on behalf of the refugee’s return. She agreed, for she was well aware that if the Tsarevich did not submit to the Tsar, little Peter Alexeevich might be removed from the line of succession.

On August 18, the Imperial Council met to consider the dilemma. Alexis could not be summarily dispatched back to Peter; if the Tsar’s protestations of mercy later proved false, Austria would then be accused of having played a part in Alexis’ death. On the other hand, a large Russian army was stationed in Poland and North Germany. Such was Peter’s character, it was believed, that if thwarted he might divert his troops from the war against Charles XII to march on Silesia and Bohemia. The solution eventually reached was to reply to Peter’s letter that the Emperor had actually been performing a service for the Tsar by attempting to preserve the affection between father and son and by not allowing Alexis to fall into the hands of a hostile nation. The Emperor insisted to Tolstoy that Alexis was not a prisoner in Naples: He was and always had been free to go where he liked. Meanwhile, the Emperor instructed his viceroy in Naples that the Tsarevich was not to be forced into anything and that precautions were to be taken to make sure the Russians did not assassinate the fugitive.

On September 26, 1717, Alexis was invited to the Viceroy’s palace in Naples. Led into a chamber, he saw, to his horror, Tolstoy and Rumyantsov standing beside the Viceroy. The Tsarevich trembled; the Viceroy, Count Daun, had not told him of their presence, suspecting that if he had known, he would not have come. Alexis, aware that the giant Rumyantsov was an intimate of his father’s, expected the sudden flash of a sword blade. Gradually, Tolstoy, speaking in his most reassuring tones, persuaded the young man that they had come only to deliver a letter from Peter, to listen to his thoughts and to wait for his reply. Still trembling, the Tsarevich took the letter and read it.

My Son:

Your disobedience and the contempt you have shown for my orders are known to all the world. Neither my words nor my corrections have been able to bring you to follow my instructions, and last of all, having deceived me when I bade you farewell and in defiance of the oaths you made, you have carried your disobedience to the highest pitch by your flight and by putting yourself like a traitor under a foreign protection. This is a thing hitherto unheard of, not only in our family, but among our subjects of any consideration. What wrong and what grief have you thereby occasioned to your father, and what shame have you drawn upon your country!

I write to you for the last time to tell you that you are to do what Messrs. Tolstoy and Rumyantsov will tell you and declare to be my will. If you are afraid of me, I assure you and I promise to God and His judgment that I will not punish you. If you submit to my will by obeying me and if you return, I will love you better than ever. But if you refuse, then I as a father, by virtue of the power I have received from God, give you my everlasting curse; and as your sovereign, I declare you traitor and I assure you I will find the means to use you as such, in which I hope God will assist me and take my just cause into His hands.

As for what remains, remember I forced you to do nothing. What need had I to give you a free choice? If I had wished to force you, was it not in my power to do it? I had but to command and I would have been obeyed.

Peter

Finishing the letter, Alexis told the two envoys that he had put himself under the Emperor’s protection because his father had decided to deprive him of the crown and put him in a monastery. Now that his father promised pardon, he said, he would reflect and reconsider; he could not answer immediately. Two days later, when Tolstoy and Rumyantsov returned, Alexis told them that he was still afraid to go back to his father and would continue to ask the hospitality of the Emperor. Hearing this, Tolstoy put on a different face. Roaring with anger, storming about the room, he threatened that Peter would make war on the empire, that the Tsar eventually would take his son dead or alive as a traitor, that wherever he might flee, there would be no escape because Tolstoy and Rumyantsov had orders to remain close by until they took him.

His eyes staring with fright, Alexis grasped the Viceroy by the hand, pulled him into an adjoining room and begged Count Daun to guarantee the Emperor’s protection. Daun, whose orders were to facilitate the interviews while at the same time preventing violence, suspected his master’s dilemma. Believing that if he could help persuade the Tsarevich to return voluntarily he would be doing a service to all parties, he calmed Alexis. But he began to work with Tolstoy.

Meanwhile, Tolstoy turned his fertile mind to other intrigues worthy of his years in Constantinople. With 160 ducats, he bribed the Viceroy’s secretary to whisper in the Tsarevich’s ear that he had heard that the Emperor had decided to return the son to the angry father. Next, speaking again to Alexis himself, Tolstoy lied, saying that he had received a new letter from Peter announcing that he was coming to seize his son by force and that the Russian army soon would be marching toward Silesia. The Tsar himself meant to come to Italy, Tolstoy went on. “And when he is here, who can prevent him from seeing you?” he asked. At the thought, Alexis turned pale.

Finally, Tolstoy’s relentless mind located the key to Alexis’ decision: It was Afrosina. Observing the Tsarevich’s almost desperate need for the serf, he told the Viceroy that she was a major cause of the rift between father and son. Further, he suggested, Afrosina was still encouraging Alexis not to return home because there her own status would be questionable. At Tolstoy’s urging, Count Daun issued orders to remove the girl from Castle St. Elmo. When Alexis heard this, his defenses crumbled. He wrote to Tolstoy, begging him to come alone to the castle so that they might work out an agreement. His battle almost won, Tolstoy then persuaded Afrosina, with promises and gifts, to urge her lover to return home. She did as she was asked, begging her lover in tears to give up his last desperate idea: a flight to the Papal States to put himself under the protection of the Pope.

Alexis was now emotionally and psychologically battered to the point of submission. His choice lay between returning to Russia in the company of his mistress to receive his father’s pardon, or the removal of Afrosina and of the Emperor’s protection, leaving him at the mercy of Tolstoy and Rumyantsov or, worse, Peter himself. The choice was obvious, and when Tolstoy arrived, the Tsarevich quickly capitulated. Although hesitant and filled with fear and misgiving, he told the Ambassador: “I will go to my father on two conditions: that I may be allowed to live quietly in a country house and that Afrosina will not be taken away from me.” Tolstoy, mindful of Peter’s command to get the Tsarevich back to Russia by any means, instantly agreed; indeed, he promised Alexis that he would write personally to the Tsar asking permission for the Tsarevich to marry Afrosina immediately. Cynically, Tolstoy explained in his letter to Peter that this marriage would demonstrate that Alexis had fled not for serious political reasons but simply for frivolous love of a peasant girl. This in turn, Tolstoy added, would strip away any last sympathy the Emperor might have for his erstwhile brother-in-law.

Alexis wrote begging the Tsar’s forgiveness and entreating that the two conditions to which Tolstoy had agreed might be carried out. On November 17, Peter replied: “You ask for pardon. It has already been promised to you orally and in writing by Messrs. Tolstoy and Rumyantsov, and I now confirm it, of which you can be fully assured. As regards certain other wishes expressed by you [marriage to Afrosina], they will be allowed to you here.” To Tolstoy, Peter explained that he would permit the marriage if Alexis still wished it on his return, but that it must take place either on Russian soil or in one of the newly conquered Baltic territories. Peter also promised to grant Alexis’ wish to live in peace in a country house. “Perhaps he may doubt whether he will be allowed to do this,” the Tsar wrote to Tolstoy, “but let him reason thus: when I have pardoned such a great crime, why should I not allow this little matter?”

Once Alexis had agreed to return and had written this to the Emperor in Vienna, there could be no question of detention by the imperial authorities. The Tsarevich left Castle St. Elmo with Tolstoy and Rumyantsov, and, traveling slowly and feeling more relaxed, he made a pilgrimage to Bari to visit the shrine of St. Nicholas, the miracle worker. From there, he went to Rome, where he visited the holy shrines in a Vatican carriage and was received by the Pope. In a cheerful mood, he reached Venice, where he was persuaded to leave Afrosina behind so that she would not have to cross the Alps in winter in her delicate state.

For the Tsarevich’s wary escorts, Tolstoy and Rumyantsov, and for Veselovsky, who was waiting for them near Vienna, the passage through the Imperial capital posed something of a gauntlet to be run. Alexis was asking that the party halt in Vienna so that he could call on the Emperor and thank him for his hospitality. Tolstoy, however, was afraid that one or both of the brothers-in-law might have a change of mind which would upset the success of his mission. Accordingly, he arranged for Veselovsky to spirit the little party through Vienna in a single night. By the time the Emperor heard about it, the Tsarevich and his escorts were already north of the city in the town of Brünn in the imperial province of Moravia.

Charles was alarmed and indignant. He had suffered needles of conscience over what he had permitted to take place in Naples. To reassure himself, he had resolved to interview his brother-in-law in Vienna to make sure that the Tsarevich truly was returning to Russia voluntarily. The Emperor hoped, of course, that this was so; repatriation of the embarrassing guest would remove a large thorn from his own foot. But honor required that Alexis consent; the imperial dignity could not permit the Tsarevich to be dragged away by force. Thus, a meeting of the Council was hastily convened and a messenger dispatched to Count Colloredo, Governor of Moravia, commanding him to detain the Russian party until Alexis had personally assured the Governor that he was traveling freely at his own wish.

Tolstoy, finding his inn surrounded by soldiers, denied that the Tsarevich was in the party. He threatened to use his sword to prevent anyone from entering Alexis’ room, and promised that the episode would summon the vengeance of Tsar Peter. The Governor, taken aback, sent to Vienna for new instructions, and again he was ordered not to permit Tolstoy’s party to leave Brünn until he had seen and talked with the Tsarevich; if necessary, he was to use force to achieve this. This time, Tolstoy backed down. The interview was permitted, although the Governor’s request to speak to Alexis alone was ignored; Tolstoy and Rumyantsov remained in the room. Under the circumstances, Alexis spoke only in monosyllables, saying that he was anxious to return to his father and that he had not stopped to call on the Emperor because he lacked court clothes and a suitable carriage. The game was over. The forms of propriety and diplomatic etiquette had been observed. The Governor and, through him, the Emperor had discharged their obligations; permission to depart was granted. Within a few hours, Tolstoy had secured new horses and the Russian party was gone. It reached Riga in Russian-occupied territory on January 21, 1718. From there, Alexis was taken to Tver near Moscow, to await his father’s summons.

Afrosina remained in Venice, intending to travel in better weather and at a more leisurely pace. As he journeyed farther from her, Alexis wrote to her constantly, expressing his love and concern: “Do not trouble yourself. Take care of yourself on the road. Go slowly because the road in the Tyrol is stony, as you know. Stop where you want as many days as you like. Do not consider the money expense. Even if you spend much, your health is dearer to me than anything.” He counseled her on places to buy medicines in Venice and Bologna. From Innsbruck, he wrote, “Buy either here or somewhere else a comfortable carriage.” To one of her servants, he pleaded, “Do all you can to amuse Afrosina so that she will not be unhappy.” Arriving in Russia, his first concern was to send her some women servants and an Orthodox priest. His last letter, written from Tver, where he was awaiting his father’s summons, was optimistic: “Thank God, all is well. I expect to be rid of everything so as to live with you, if God allow, in the country, where we will not have trouble about anything.”

While Alexis was pouring his heart out to her, his beloved Afrosina was enjoying her new status as the favorite of both the son and—through her aid to Tolstoy—the father. She amused herself in Venice, riding in a gondola and buying cloth of gold for 167 ducats, a cross, earrings and a ruby ring. Most of her letters lack the urgency and passion displayed by her lover; indeed, they were written by a secretary, with the uneducated mistress usually adding a few lines in her large, ill-formed scrawl, begging Alexis to send her some caviar, smoked fish or kasha by the next courier.

In Russia, news of the Tsarevich’s return stirred mixed feelings. No one knew quite how to receive him: Was it the heir to the throne or a traitor to Russia who now waited outside Moscow to see his father? De la Vie, the French commercial agent, expressed this strange, uneasy mood: “The arrival of the Tsarevich caused as much joy to some as grief to others. Those who took his part were glad before his return in hope that some revolution would take place. Now all is changed. Policy takes the place of discontent and everything is quiet while waiting for the result of the affair. His return is generally disapproved, for it is believed that he will have the same fate as his mother.” Some observers, especially those who had hoped that the heir would outlast and succeed his father, were angry and disgusted. Said Ivan Naryshkin: “That Judas of a Peter, Tolstoy, has delivered the Tsarevich.” Said Prince Vasily Dolgoruky to Prince Gagarin: “Have you heard that that fool of a Tsarevich is coming here because his father has allowed him to marry Afrosina? He will have a coffin instead of a wedding!”