Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
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.
On the side of the Narychkines was the interest excited by the precocious intelligence of Peter, and the position of legal head of all the royal family, which, according to Russian law, gave to Natalia Narychkine her title of czarina dowager. Both factions had for some time taken their measures and recruited their partisans. Who should succeed Feodor?
Athanasius Narychkine, a brother of Natalia, was thrown from a window onto the points of their lances. The following day the emeute recommenced; they tore from the arms of the Czarina her father Cyril and her brother Ivan; the latter was tortured and sent into a monastery.
Was it to be the son of the Miloslavski, or the son of the Narychkine? The Miloslavskis were first defeated on legal grounds. Taking the incapacity of Ivan into consideration, the boyars and the Patriarch Joachim proclaimed the young Peter, then nine years old, Czar.
Sophia's first step was to appear at Feodor's funeral, though it was not the custom for any but the widow and the heir to be present. There her litter encountered that of Natalia Narychkine, and her presence forced the Czarina-mother to retreat. She surrounded herself with a court of educated men, who publicly praised her, encouraged and excited her to action.
The tocsin sounded from four hundred churches of the "holy city"; the regiments of the streltsi took up arms and marched, followed by an immense crowd, to the Kremlin, with drums beating, matches lighted, and dragging cannon behind them. Natalia Narychkine had only to show herself on the "Red Staircase," accompanied by her son Peter, and Ivan who was reported dead.
At last it was publicly announced that a brother of Natalia Narychkine had seized the crown and seated himself on the throne, and that Ivan had been strangled. Love and pity for the son of Alexis, and the indignation excited by the news of the usurpation, immediately caused the people of Moscow to revolt, and the ringleaders cleverly directed the movement.
His court was composed of Leo Narychkine, of Boris Galitsyne, who had undertaken never to flatter him; of Andrew Matveef, who had marked taste for everything European; and of Dolgorouki, at whose house he first saw an astrolabe.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking