A (7:03)
First was Eudoxia, whom he was Never wild about. In 1698, after nearly 10 years of marriage, he had her banished to surprise a convent. Then Peter officially married his second wife, Catherine I, in 1707. Of course, Peter also had many mistresses, including the famous British actress of Drury Lane, Letitia cross. Between his two wives, Peter had 15 legitimate children, although only three of them survived to adulthood. But even when you look at that claim with modern eyes, it's heartbreakingly short term. Only one child by Catherine I, Elizaveta Petrovna, lived past her twenties. It is hard to imagine the grief of Catherine, who had 12 babies and watched 10 of them die as infants or as very young children. And it is hard to imagine what Peter the Great must have been thinking in autumn of 1715, when he was contemplating his heirs for the Russian throne. He had only one living son at this point, Tsarevich Alexei, the daughter of Eudoxia. Four other sons had died as infants. Alexei and his father had always had a strained relationship. After setting off fireworks and celebrations for little Alexei's birth, Peter largely lost interest in the boy. After all, he was the son of Peter's unloved first wife, Eudoxia. When Alexei was 8, his father sent his mother off to a convent, wrenching him away from her. Alexei was a somewhat sickly boy, cowardly and uninterested in military action. Not qualities that particularly excited Peter about an heir. Alexei was so afraid of his father that he once shot himself in the hand to avoid having to see him. Classic Alexei. Though he missed burning himself badly. And then he lied to his father that it was an accident. He wrote that he would rather be a galley slave or have a burning fever than have to go to see a Russian ship launched. His mother in law said that it is quite useless for his father to force him to attend to military matters, as he would rather have a rosary than a pistol in his hand. In other words, in his father's eyes he was just kind of a bunch of. But Peter nonetheless wanted his son to become a man he could trust as his successor. Starting when Alexei was 12, Peter took the boy along with him on various military sieges as preparation for his future as a military leader. When Alexei was 17, Peter put him in charge of the defense of Moscow. But Alexei never took an interest in his father's warring. He was meek. He accepted Peter's idea that he marry a German princess, Charlotte, in 1711, when he was 21 and she 17. Alexei doted on their daughter Natalia. But he drank so often and so much that he largely ignored his wife, Charlotte. Leaving her to a bedroom where the rain came through the roof in a storm, Peter had to reprimand his son to take some care of his wife. So by 1715, it was clear to Peter that his son Alexei was a weak candidate to be his heir to the empire. But in the autumn of 1715, there was reason to think that Peter. Peter's outlook might change. Two reasons, in fact, because there were not one, but two heavily pregnant women in Russian court. On October 23, 1715, Alexei's wife Charlotte gave birth to their second child, a boy. He was named Peter Alexevich. And one week after that, on November 9, 1715, Peter the Great's wife Catherine also gave birth to a son, Peter Petrovitch. The baby survived his first days and then weeks and then months of life. Peter wrote, God has sent me a new recruit. So by the time 1716 dawned, Peter the Great found himself in a very different position than he had been at the beginning of 1715. There were now two Little Peters in Russia, both legitimate heirs to his throne, which meant that suddenly, when it came to the Russian line of succession, Peter the Great had other options. The story of what happened next between Peter the Great and his oldest surviving son, Alexei, can be told in a set of fantastic letters that we still have. Between father and son, the whole story is there. Alexei's wife, Charlotte, died 10 days after giving birth to Alexei's son. On her funeral day, Peter the Great gave his son a letter, a declaration to my son, it read, you, my son, reject all means of making yourself capable of governing well after me. I say, your incapacity is voluntary because you cannot excuse yourself with want of natural parts and strength of body, as if God had not given you sufficient share of either. And though your constitution is none the strongest, yet it cannot be said that it is altogether weak. Peter articulated a philosophy of governing and his personal, personal disappointment in his son. He articulated his sadness that his son didn't care about war and described his belief that the Russian people would follow a leader like Alexei into forgetting about the importance of war. Peter said that physical sickness has nothing to do with a sovereign's inclination toward or interest in war, and gave the example of his even sicker brother, Ivan I, fifth, who was nonetheless interested in war. Unlike Alexei, the letter ends, I am a man, and consequently I must die. Peter wonders if Alexei is up to the succession and expresses that he is not and offers him a bit more time to see if he can rise to the occasion. If he doesn't, Peter says, then I will deprive you of the succession as one may cut off a a useless member. Harsh words, especially to get on the day of your wife's funeral. But to me, the most important and interesting part in the letter comes after also the most fateful and tragic. Do not fancy that I only write this, Peter said, to terrify you. To me, it's clear that Peter's great disappointment with his son is all about desire. He just wants his son to want the throne. Don't want to be disinherited, Peter is saying. If you want to rule, if you want to be interested in war, that is enough. And the tragedy is that Peter the Great and his son Alexei really were in this. Ships passing in the night. It's like they simply could not hear each other. If what Peter cared about most was Alexei wanting the throne, then the last thing Alexei should have done was accept the threat of his removal from the line of succession. Alexei went running to his advisors and on their counsel he wrote back to his father saying that if you will deprive me of the succession to the crown of Russia by reason of my incapacity, your will be done. I even most urgently beg it of you. It's like these two men just cannot see each other. It's not an incapacity that Peter hates in his son. He gives the positive example of his actually much weaker and more incapacitated brother. It's that very proclivity to accept meekness and powerlessness. And that was exactly what the ever disappointing Alexei did. In the meantime, Peter was getting sick and Alexei was basically just hoping to outlive his father and have this whole affair be over. But de escalation is not a thing in the Russian court. Peter wrote writes back to Alexei escalating. Accept the emperorship, says Peter, or else become a monk. Peter hopes that threats will make Alexei finally snap and want power. But he doesn't see his son just as his son does not see him. All threats do is make the boy even meeker. I will embrace the monastical state and desire your gracious consent to it. Alexei writes back to Peter. It really is kind of hard to avoid the conclusion that Alexei really would have been a kind of weak ruler who didn't really want to rule. But at this point, Peter is getting really angry at his weak son and Alexei is getting pretty afraid of his father. He really doesn't seem to want the throne. The one thing he actually seems to want is to be with his mistress, a woman named Afrosina. So in consultation with his advisors, Alexei decides to do something really foolish. He runs away. He dresses his mistress as a boy, Paige, and they get out of Dodge. The pair land in Vienna and Alexei asks his brother in law, Emperor Charles vi, to conceal him there. It really wasn't the most intelligent move. He kept on doing exactly the things that would most disappoint his father, and a disappointed Peter was soon an enraged one. Of course, the situation couldn't last long. Though Charles VI did agree to let Alexei hide at court, the disguise started failing pretty shortly thereafter. Afrosina was pregnant, so her disguise as a boy page fell apart. Peter found out that Vienna was hiding his son. And now the Russian and the Viennese emperors are both realizing that this could escalate to an international crisis. So everyone had to proceed with delicacy. Peter sent an emissary named Tolstoy, not the famous writer, to get Alexei back by any means, including outright duplicity if necessary. Naturally, Peter continued to threaten Alexei via letter. Not that his strategy of threats ever worked. He wrote, quote, if you return, I will love you better than ever, but if you refuse, then I declare you traitor and I assure you I will find the means to use you as such. Again, threats never worked with Alexei, but the key was the girl, the mistress that he loved, because Alexei did truly love her. All he wants, Alexei told Tolstoy, is to get to marry Afrosina and go live in a country cottage together with her. Would his father agree to that? It's a nice dream, but Alexei had noble blood running through his veins. As any listener of this podcast might already know, retiring to a cute cabin with a wife that you love is not really a likely option. But for an heir to a throne, Peter the Great promised that Alexei could marry the mistress. Alexei was not smart enough not to believe him. In an earlier letter to his son, Peter had quoted the Bible, King David said, all men are liars. This kid did not have the strategic mind he would have needed to find a way out out of his predicament. He could not out strategize his father and so Alexei agreed to go back to Russia. The historian Robert K. Massey, one of the most helpful sources for this episode, quotes the response to Alexei's choice, quote, he will have a coffin instead of a wedding. In February 1718, the Kremlin was full of as Alexei publicly confessed to running away to Europe and he renounced his claim to the throne, Peter accepted, pardoning his son on condition that Alexei share all of his co conspirators. It was the beginning of a brutal, bloody retribution that Peter enacted on Seemingly everyone except Alexei. At first, Peter found his ex wife, Eudoxia, who was living in a monastery, but not as a nun. Her lover was tortured. Her brother was killed, along with four others, condemned to death for having helped Alexei flee to Europe. And Alexei seemingly didn't care, as the people who helped him were investigated, tortured or killed. All he seemed to want to do was marry Afrosina, who, by the way, he wasn't physically with due to her pregnancy. He did not bring her back to Russia with him upon his return from Europe. But he wrote her loving, longing letters, desperate for her in their separation. Well, she kind of isn't writing that sort of letter back. Secretaries write her letters back to him. Once she adds an ask for caviar. But the worst for Alexei is yet to come. Peter the Great did for once, unlock the keys to his son. He found Emphasina. And without subjecting her to any torture at all, she betrayed her lover. Yes, she said, Alexei wants wanted Peter dead. He spoke of it often. She repeated the claims to Alexei's face. It's hard to imagine how much this must have pained him. The one thing he seemed to genuinely love in this life, the one thing he seemed to actually fight for. Who knows what he felt when he saw his beloved Afrosina again and had to watch her sell him out. His dreams of a country cottage shimmered before him. And then they were wiped out in an instant. Maybe whatever will he had left to live left him at that moment. After Afrosina's confessions, there was nothing else for it. Alexei went on trial. Peter called both an ecclesiastical court and a secular court. Do not be moved, he told them, by the fact that you are to judge the son of your sovereign, for we swear to you that you have absolutely nothing to fear. Of course, Peter had also promised Alexei that he could marry Afrosina and go live a cottagecore life with her. But nonetheless, Peter's orders to the jury were clear. Anyone else on trial would have been tortured to extract a confession. And so was Alexei. He was struck 25 times with a knot, a kind of whipping torture, on June 19. Five days later, he received 15 more blows. His back was bleeding. The whipping torture had killed stronger men than Alexei. He confessed to having wished for his father's death. And on June 24, the jury did what it had to do. After such a confession, it found Alexei guilty of rebellion against the Emperor. So Tsarevich Alexei, heir to the Russian throne, was condemned to death. But it was up to Peter the Great to decide whether to allow the central sentence to be carried out. In a tragic or perhaps gracious twist of fate, Peter never had to make a decision. Alexei fell ill. He requested his father see him, and Peter did, reportedly crying alongside his dying son. Alexei died on June 26, 1718, at the age of 28. No one official acknowledged it explicitly, but it's likely he simply did not survive the blows with the gnat. Alexei was stronger than he'd always thought, but weaker than his father had always wished. Peter had not signed off on condemning his own son to the death penalty, but he did allow the torture that almost certainly killed him. After Alexei's death, he was mourned like a tsarevich rather than a criminal interred in state. Peter the great died on February 8, 1725, at the age of 52. He did not name a successor, and after he died, the succession was confused, refusing. Of the two baby Peters who had given him such hope, his own little son had died in 1719 at age 3. His wife Catherine ruled as empress for two years until her own death in 1727. And then, maybe in small revenge for Alexei, it was his own son Peter who took the throne, though for not quite three years before he died at age 14. Peter the Great is not the only Russian monarch to have killed his son. Nearly 150 years earlier, in 1581, the first tsar of Russia, Ivan the Terrible, had flown into a rage and killed his own son and only competent heir when the boy was 27, almost exactly the same age as Alexei was when he died. But Peter was not raging like Ivan was when he coolly instructed the court to treat Alexei as they would any other accused criminal. So far as I know, said the historian Jonathan Daly, there were no other European monarchs who oversaw the torture of the their own children. What would Peter have done if his son had not died? Would he have sentenced his own son to the death penalty? We can't know. History can only be left to wonder. But at Alexei's funeral, the preacher quoted from the Old Testament. O Absalom, my son. My son. That's the story of Russian Emperor Peter the Great killing his son, albeit indirectly. But stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear about the women in the story.
