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Again to attack the palace; to put Leo Narychkine and other partisans of Peter to death; to arrest his mother, and to expel the patriarch. They trusted that Peter and Natalia would perish in the tumult. The streltsi remained indifferent when Sophia, affecting to think her life threatened, fled to the Dievitchi monastery, and sent them letters of entreaty.
She had arrested certain "old believers," who at the discussion in the Palace of Facets had challenged the patriarchs and orthodox prelates, and she had caused the ringleader to be executed. Khovanski, chief of the streltsi, whether from sympathy with the raskol or whether he wished to please his subordinates, affected to share their discontent. The court no longer felt itself safe at Moscow.
He marched on the Kremlin and captured Sophia and those who had been in the conspiracy with her. Some of the Streltsi Guard who had taken part against him were tried and executed, and the Princess Sophia was shut up in a convent for the remainder of her life.
While the unpopular and harsh young ruler was away from home, the friends of the old Russian ways in Moscow set to work to undo all his reforms. A sudden rebellion among his life-guards, the Streltsi regiment, forced Peter to hasten home by the fast mail. He appointed himself executioner-in-chief and the Streltsi were hanged and quartered and killed to the last man.
Sophia took refuge with the Czarina and the two young princes in the fortified monastery of Troitsa, and summoned around her the gentlemen-at-arms. Khovanski was invited to attend, was arrested on the way, and put to death with his son. The streltsi attempted a new rising, but, with the usual fickleness of a popular militia, suddenly passed from the extreme of insolence to the extreme of humility.
Jansen, destined to the gibbet, marched among the prisoners . Peter wished to profit by this great success to found the naval power of Russia. By the decision of the douma three thousand families were established at Azov, besides four hundred Kalmucks, and a garrison of Moscow streltsi.
Their mere appearance sufficed to contradict all the calumnies. The streltsi hesitated, seeing they had been deceived. A clever harangue of Matveef, who had formerly commanded them, and the exhortations of the patriarch, shook them further. The revolt was almost appeased; the Miloslavskis had missed their aim, for they had not yet succeeded in putting to death the people of whom they were jealous.
The boyars of the douma deliberated on this proposal, and the greater number of the boyars were opposed to it. In Russia the absolute power had never been shared, but the orators of the terem cited many examples both from sacred and profane history: Pharaoh and Joseph, Arcadius and Honorius, Basil II and Constantine VIII; and the best of all the arguments were the pikes of the streltsi .
While he was on his way from Vienna to Venice, news reached him that the royal bodyguard, called the streltsi, had taken advantage of his absence of a year and a half and had mutinied at Moscow. In hot haste he hurried home and wreaked dire vengeance upon the mutineers.
He had only been saved by a streletz who had taken his place. Some asserted that Peter was still kept there; and in 1705 the streltsi and raskolniks of Astrakhan still gave out that it was a false czar who had come back to Moscow the true czar was a prisoner at Stockholm, attached to a stake.
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