My Son:
I have received your letter of the 29th of June and the other of the 30th of July. Seeing that you talk of nothing in it but only of the state of your health, I write to you now to tell you that I demanded your resolution concerning the succession when I bade you farewell. You answered me then as usually, that you did not judge yourself capable of it by reason of your infirmity and that you had rather retire into a convent. I tell you to think once more seriously upon it, and afterward to write to me what resolution you have taken. I have expected it this seven months past, and you send me no word at all about it; therefore upon the receipt of my letter, choose one or the other. In case you determine for the first, which is to apply yourself in order to be capable of the succession, do not delay above a week to repair hither, where you may arrive in time enough to be present at the operations of the campaign. But if you resolve on the other side, let me know where, what time and even the day you will execute your resolution, that my mind may be at rest and that I may know what I am to expect from you. Send your final answer back to me by the same courier who is to deliver you this letter.
In the first case, mark to me the day when you intend to set out from Petersburg, and in the second when you will put it in execution. I repeat it to you that I absolutely will have you resolve on something, for otherwise I must judge that you only seek to gain time to pass it in your usual idleness.
Peter
Holding this letter in his hand, Alexis at last made up his mind. His decision was to take neither of the two courses Peter offered, but to flee, to find some place where the towering figure of his father could not reach him. Only two months earlier, as Kikin departed to escort Alexis' aunt the Tsarevna Maria to Carlsbad, he had whispered to the Tsarevich, "I am going to look for some place for you to hide." Kikin had not returned, and Alexis did not know where to go, but in his mind there burned only a single, overwhelming idea: to escape the iron hand which now reached out for him.
Alexis acted swiftly and with subterfuge. He went immediately to Menshikov in St. Petersburg, declared that he was leaving for Copenhagen to join his father and needed 1,000 ducats to pay for his trip. He visited the Senate, asked his friends there to remain faithful to his interests and received a further 2,000 roubles for his expenses. In Riga, he borrowed 5,000 gold roubles and 2,000 roubles in other coins. When Menshikov asked him what he was going to do about Afrosina while he was gone, Alexis replied that he would take her with him as far as Riga and then send her back to Petersburg. "You will do better to take her with you all the way," suggested Menshikov.
Before leaving St. Petersburg, Alexis confided his real intentions only to his manservant Afanasiev. But along the road, a few miles outside Libau, he met the carriage of his aunt Tsarevna Maria Alexeevna returning from her cure at Carlsbad. Although sympathetic to Alexis and the old ways, she was too frightened of Peter to offer any spoken opposition. Alexis sat in her carriage, telling her first that he was obeying his father's command and was on his way to join the Tsar. "Good," replied the Tsarevna, "it is necessary to obey him. That is pleasing to God." But then Alexis broke into tears and weepingly told his aunt that he wished to find some place to hide from Peter. "Where could you go?" asked the horrified Tsarevna. "Your father would find you no matter where." Her advice was to endure, hoping that in the end God would solve his problems. Meanwhile, she said, "Kikin was in Libau and perhaps he could give better advice.
In Libau, Kikin advised that Vienna might be safe, as the Emperor was Alexis' brother-in-law. Alexis seized the suggestion and he continued in his own coach as far as Danzig. There, dressed as a Russian officer and taking the name Kokhansky, accompanied by Afrosina disguised as a boy page, and with three Russian servants, he set off by way of Breslau and Prague for Vienna. Before he left, Kikin had given him urgent parting advice: "Remember, if your father sends somebody to persuade you to return, do not do it. He will have your publicly beheaded."
53
FLIGHT OF THE TSAREVICH
On the evening of November 10, 1716, Count Schonborn, 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 Schonborn 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."
Schonborn 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. Schonbom 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, Schonborn 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 Schonborn 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 Schonborn 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 Schonborn. "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 conc
ealed, 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 Schonborn 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 1 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 until 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 Schonborn, 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 Schonborn, 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 flight. With the passage of time, Afrosina's swelling body made plain the sex of the "page." As Count Schonborn 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 sevice. 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 Wolfenbuttel, 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.