Tsarish Majesty do with the other traitors as may seem good. We are ready to lay down our heads for the Tsar, the Tsaritsa, the Tsarevich and the Tsarevnas.'
Calm returned quickly. That same day, permission was given to bury the bodies which had been lying in Red Square since the first day of the massacre. Matveev's faithful servant trudged out carrying a sheet, in which he carefully collected all he could find of the mutilated body of his master. He washed the pieces and carried them on pillows to the parish church of St. Nicholas, where they were buried. The remaining Naryshkins went unharmed and unpursued. Three surviving brothers of Natalya and Ivan had escaped the Kremlin disguised as peasants. The Tsaritsa's father, Kyril Naryshkin, was forced by Streltsy pressure to shave his head and take the vows of a monk, and, as Father Cyprian, was sent to a monastery 400 miles north of Moscow.
As part of the settlement, the Streltsy demanded their back pay, a sum of twenty roubles per man. Although it had no power to resist, the council of boyars could not grant this; there simply was no money. A compromise was reached by granting ten roubles per man. To raise this amount, the property of Matveev, Ivan Naryshkin and other boyars who had been killed was auctioned off, much of the Kremlin palace's sliver plate was melted down and a general tax was placed on the population.
The Streltsy also demanded complete amnesty for their behavior and even a triumphal column in Red Square to honor their recent deeds. Inscribed in the column were to be the names of all their victims who were to be labeled as criminals. Once again, the government dared not refuse, and the column was quickly erected.
Finally, in a move designed not only to conciliate the Streltsy but also to regain control over them, the musketeers were formally designated the Palace Guard. At the rate of two regiments a day, they were summoned to the Kremlin, where they were feasted as heroes in the banqueting hall and corridors of the palace. Sophia appeared among them to praise their loyalty and devotion to the throne. To honor them, she herself walked among the soldiers and handed them cups of vodka.
Thus, Sophia came to power. Now there was no opposition: Matveev was dead, Natalya was overwhelmed by the tragedy that had engulfed her family, Peter was a boy of ten. Yet Peter was still Tsar. As he grew older, he would doubtless assert his power; the Naryshkins would wax in influence, and this Miloslavsky victory would prove only temporary. Accordingly, Sophia's plans required another step. On May 23, prompted by her agents, the Streltsy demanded a change in the occupancy of the Russian throne. In a petition sent to Khavansky, whom Sophia already had appointed as their commander, the Streltsy pointed out that there was a certain illegality to Peter's election as tsar; he was the son of the second wife, while Ivan, the son of the first wife and the older of the two boys, had been shunted aside. It was not proposed that Peter be dethroned; he was the son of a tsar, he had been elected and then proclaimed by the Patriarch. Instead, the Streltsy demanded that Peter and Ivan rule jointly as co-tsars. If the petition was not granted, they threatened to attack the Kremlin again.
The Patriarch, the archbishops and the boyars assembled in the Facets Palace to consider this new demand. In fact, they had no choice: The Streltsy could not be opposed. Besides, it was argued, to have two tsars might even be an advantage: while one went to war, the other could stay home and govern the state. It was formally agreed that the two Tsars should reign jointly. The bells in the Ivan the Great Bell Tower were rung, and in the Assumption Cathedral prayers were sent up for the long life of the two most Orthodox Tsars Ivan Alexeevich and Peter Alexeevich. Ivan's name was mentioned first, as the Streltsy petition had asked that he be considered the senior of the two.
Ivan himself was dismayed by this new development. Handicapped both in speech and in sight, he was reluctant to take any part in government. He argued with Sophia that he much preferred a quiet, peaceful life, but under pressure he agreed that he would appear with his half-brother on state occasions and occasionally in council. Outside the Kremlin, the population, in whose name the Streltsy supposedly put forward the new joint arrangement, was astonished. Some laughed aloud at the idea of Ivan—whose infirmities were well known—being tsar.
There was the final, crucial question: As both boys were young, someone else would actually have to govern the state. Who would this be? Two days later, on May 25, another delegation of Streltsy appeared with a last demand: that because of the youth and inexperience of the two Tsars, the Tsarevna Sophia become the regent. The Patriarch and the boyars quickly consented. That same day, a decree announced that the Tsarevna Sophia Alexeevna had replaced the Tsaritsa Natalya as regent.
Thus, Sophia assumed the leadership of the Russian state. Although she was filling a vacancy which she and her agents had created, Sophia was now in fact the natural choice. No male Romanov had reached sufficient age to master the government, and she surpassed all the other princesses in education, talent, and strength of will. She had shown that she knew how to launch and to ride the whirlwind of the Streltsy revolt. The soldiers, the government, even the people now looked to her. Sophia accepted, and for the next seven years this extraordinary woman governed Russia.
To confirm and entrench her triumph, Sophia moved rapidly to institutionalize the new structure of power. On July 6, only thirteen days after the outbreak of the Streltsy revolt, the double coronation of the two boy Tsars, Ivan and Peter, took place. This hurriedly arranged ceremony was a curiosity unprecendented not only in the history of Russia but in the whole history of European monarchy. Never before had two co-equal male sovereigns been crowned. The day began at five a.m. when Peter and Ivan, dressed in long robes of cloth of gold embroidered with pearls, went to morning prayer in a palace chapel. From there they proceeded to the banqueting hall, where they solemnly promoted in rank a number of Sophia's lieutenants, including Ivan Khovansky and two Miloslavskys. The formal coronation procession moved out onto the porch and down the Red Staircase, two boys walking side by side, ten-year-old Peter already taller than limping sixteen-year-old Ivan. Preceded by priests sprinkling holy water, Peter and Ivan made their way through the vast crowd packed into Cathedral Square to the door of the Assumption Cathedral, where the Patriarch, wearing a dazzling golden robe sewn with pearls, greeted the two Tsars and held out his cross for them to kiss. Inside, the lofty cathedral glowed with light filtering down from the high cupolas, flickering from hundreds of candles, reflected on the surfaces of thousands of jewels.
In the middle of the cathedral, directly under the enormous image of Christ with his hand upraised in blessing, on a raised platform covered with crimson cloth, a double throne awaited Ivan and Peter. It had been impossible in the short time available to create two exactly equal thrones, and so the silver throne of Tsar Alexis had been divided by a bar. Behind the seat on which both boys would sit, a curtain cloaked a small hiding place for their monitor, who, through a hole, could whisper the necessary information and responses during the ceremony.
The ceremony began with the two Tsars approaching the iconostasis and kissing the holiest of the icons. The Patriarch asked them to declare their faith, and each on replied, 'I belong to the Holy Orthodox Russian Faith.' Then a series of lengthy prayers and hymns prepared for the supreme moment of the ceremony, the placing on the heads of the Tsars the golden crown of Monomakh.
This ancient, sable-fringed cap which supposedly had been given by an Emperor of Constantinople to Vladimir Monomakh, twelfth-century Grand Prince of Kiev, had been used in the coronation ceremonies of all Grand Princes of Moscow and, after Ivan IV took the new title of tsar, all the tsars of Russia.* Ivan was crowned, then Peter, then the cap was returned to Ivan's head and a replica, made especially for Peter, was placed on the brow of the younger Tsar. At the end of the service, the new rulers again kissed the cross, the holy relics and icons, and moved in procession to the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael to pay homage at the tombs of previous tsars, then to the Cathedral of the Annunciation and so back to the banqueting hall to feast and receive congratulations.
The upheaval was over. In rapid and bewildering succession, a tsar had died; a ten-year-old boy, the minor child of a second wife, had been elected in his place; a savage military revolt had overthrown this election and spattered the young Tsar and his mother with the blood of their own family; and then, with all the jeweled panoply of state, the boy was crowned jointly with a frail and helpless older half-brother. Through all the horror, although he had been elected tsar, he was powerless to intervene.
The Streltsy revolt marked Peter for life. The calm and security of his boyhood were shattered, his soul was wrenched and seared. And its impact on Peter had, in time, a profound impact on Russia.
Peter hated what he had seen: the maddened, undisciplined soldiery of the old medieval Russia running wild through the Kremlin; statesmen and nobles dragged from their private chambers and bloodily massacred; Moscow, the Kremlin, the royal family, the Tsar himself at the mercy of ignorant, rioting soldiers. The revolt helped create in Peter a revulsion against the Kremlin with its dark rooms and mazes of tiny apartments lit by flickering candles, its population of bearded priests and boyars, its pathetically secluded women. He extended his hatred to Moscow, the
*The dual coronation of Ivan and Peter was the last time the Cap of Monomakh was used to crown a Russian
