Lindsey Hughes, A Note on the Children of Peter the Great
The problems of royal succession in eighteenth-century Russia were exacerbated by a dearth of adult male heirs, a situation rectified only in the latter half of the century with the birth of the four sons of Paul I and Maria Fedorovna. But earlier Romanovs could hardly be accused of wilfully failing in their procreative duties. Tsar Aleksei had thirteen children by his first wife Maria Miloslavskaia, eight girls and five boys, bom between 1648 and 1669. (Maria died at the age of 43 just after the birth of her final daughter). His second marriage to Natalia Naryshkina resulted in three children, notably Peter himself. Peter followed in his father's footsteps by marrying twice, Evdokia Lopukhina in 1689 and Catherine in 1712, but there seems to be no consensus on how many legitimate children he fathered. (Children born to mothers other than his two wives would require a separate study.) Robert K. Massie's "melancholy list" of the children of Peter and Catherine contains twelve names.(1) M. I. Semevskii counted eleven.(2) A wall chart of the dom Romanovykh, acquired in the Moscow Metro in 1991, lists three children (one with a question mark) from the first marriage and eight from the second, but on closer inspection turns out to be based on a chart from a standard encyclopedia.(3) So, how many children were there? The survey that follows makes no claims to offering a definitive solution to the puzzle, but may leave the record a little bit straighter. Readers of this Newsletter are invited to send in corrections.
Only one of the sons of Peter's first marriage - Aleksei, born 18 February 1690 - reached adulthood. A second son, Alexander, was born on 3 (18?) October 1691 and died on 14 May 1692. His funeral, when he was laid to rest beside Tsarevich Il'ia (Tsar Fedor's infant son, who died in l681), was attended by the patriarch, boyars and Tsar Ivan "in deep mourning", but not by Peter himself.(4) Some reference books mention a third son, Pavel, said to have died in 1693, but neither his birth nor his death are mentioned in the admittedly incomplete palace records (dvortsovye razriady). When the Danish envoy Just Juel visited the Cathedral of the Archangel in Moscow in 1711 he mentioned only the tomb of Alexander, whom he referred to in error as "the present monarch's elder son".(5)
The uncertainties about the family of Peter and Catherine are much greater. Several writers mention sons Peter and Paul, born in 1704 and 1705 respectively, their existence deduced from a few laconic references.(6) "Petrushka" first appears in a letter from Peter, dated March 1705 and lacking its beginning, to Catherine's companions Daria and Varvara Arsen'eva (the future wife and sister-in-law of Alexander Menshikov), in which he begs them "don't abandon my Petrushka. Matushki, please have some clothes made for my son, and when you travel make sure he has enough to drink and eat."(7) This must have been the "little son" referred to by Catherine in a letter of 27 November 1704, whom Peter was supposed to "release from prison" when he came to Moscow, a jocular reference, according to Semevskii, to Catherine's pregnancy.(8) If Petrushka was born in December 1704, he must have been conceived in St Petersburg in the spring of 1704, whilst his brother Paul was the result of Peter's stay in Moscow in December-January 1704-5. In October 1705 Catherine and her friends congratulated Peter on the capture of Mitau castle in Courland "as a result of your efforts", adding that they, too, had been amusing themselves "thanks to your efforts" and congratulating him on the birth of a son. There was a postscript: "Peter and Paul ask for your blessing and send you greetings".(9) To the best of my knowledge, neither boy is mentioned again; lists which include them usually state that they died before 1707. Neither appears among the members of the imperial family buried in the Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul, suggesting that they were not officially acknowledged and/or were buried elsewhere.(10)
The first adequately documented and officially recognised child was Ekaterina (Catherine), born on 27 December 1706.(11) In a letter dated 29 December gospodin colonel Peter was informed of the happy event and asked not to grieve on account of the birth of a daughter.(12) Peter replied to Catherine via her companion Anisa Tolstaia from Zotkiew in Poland on 8 January 1707 : "Thank God that the mother also came through the birth safely. You write that all is well (k miru. as the old saying goes) and if that's so, one can be more pleased with the birth of a daughter than of two sons." He sent a gift for mother and daughter and instructed Catherine to make her way to Kiev, there to await further instructions as the roads were bad.(13) Ekaterina died on 27 July (June?) 1708.
Anna - the future mother of Tsar Peter III - was born on 27 January 1708. Peter wrote to Catherine on 29 January: "I think that my letter should reach you just at the time of the emergence of the goose from the cellar. I am longing to hear about it, and. God willing, hope to hear that everything has gone well... I miss you."(14) On 3 February Tsarevich Aleksei wrote to Peter from Moscow to report that he and his aunt Natalia had acted as godparents for the "new arrival."(15)
The future empress Elizabeth, born on 8 December 1709, has been documented elsewhere. After her there was a longish gap before the birth of two more obscure daughters, Natalia (3 March 1713, referred to as Maria in some sources) and Margarita (8 September 1714), who died within a month of each other in 1715.(16) After so many daughters and deaths there was naturally great rejoicing at the birth on 28 (29?) October 1715 of Tsarevich Peter Petrovich, who entered the world just a few days after Peter's first grandson, Peter Alekseevich.(17) When Peter Petrovich was proclaimed heir in Aleksei's stead in 1717, his parents watched his development with pride and anxiety. On 28 June 1717 Peter wrote from Germany: "Petrushenka, how are you? Greetings on our joint nameday tomorrow. God grant that I see you happy. I was unable to read your letter, but I'll put it away until I get home and them you can tell me what it says. Give regards and a kiss to your sisters from me."(18)
In July 1718 Catherine wrote that Peter had been ailing because of teething, but now, with God's help, was in good health and had cut three eye-teeth. "And please take care, Dad, because he has a bone to pick with you, namely when I tell him that his papa has gone away he doesn't like it; he likes it much better when you tell him that his papa is here."(19) In August she reported that Peter Petrovich was amusing himself drilling his soldiers and firing cannons.(20) The laconic reports of the boy's death on 25 April 1719, here in an extract from the daily journal kept by Alexander Menshikov's household, make painful reading: "His Excellency [Menshikov] visited the palace and spend about an hour in the apartments of His Royal Highness the tsarevich, then left for home. At four in the afternoon General Apraksin sent an orderly with the news that the tsarevich had died, at which His Excellency left at once for the palace, went to the apartments and made the necessary arrangements for the funeral." The scribe adds the poignant detail that at the time of his death Peter Petrovich was three feet four inches tall. The next day the tsarevich was interred in the Alexander Nevskii monastery, the body transported by boat to the accompaniment of a thirty-one gun salute from the fortress and later laid to rest to the sound of a regiment of the grenadiers of the rifles of the Preobrazhenskii guard.(21)
On 2 January 1717 another son, Paul, had been born in Wesel in the Netherlands. Peter wrote to Catherine on 4 January, rejoicing at the birth of "another recruit".(22) The next day celebratory letters were despatched to dignitaries at home and abroad: "I inform you that on the second day of this month in Wesel my wife (khoziaka) gave birth to little soldier Paul, having failed to reach me here. Please inform the officers and men. I recommend him to the officers to be under their command and to the men as their comrade. Give all of them regards from me and the newborn."(23) To his niece Ekaterina loannovna, married to the Elector of Mecklenburg in April 1716, he boasted: "You are probably envious that we old folk are more productive than you young ones."(24) Sadly, as Peter was dispatching these letters his son was already dead. Catherine wrote to Prince Boris Kurakin on 8 January: "It is with deep sorrow that I inform you that the almighty God saw fit to transport our new-born son Tsarevich Paul from this world four hours after his birth. Truly, this sadness is very painful, but what's done is done and so we bow to the will of God.(25) In a letter dated 11 January Peter acknowledged receipt of Catherine's letter concerning "the sudden event which turned joy to sorrow, but I can only respond as did Job, that man of many sorrows, that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away."(26)
Their last daugher, another Natalia, was born on 19 (20) August 1718. Peter received a note to the effect that "Your wife has given birth to a daughter, who cries: oh! oh! Her name is Natalia; be so good as to congratulate her."(27) She died a little more than a month after her father, on 4 March 1725. According to the envoy from Holstein, Bergholz, she was strikingly pretty, nice and well brought up "and would not have been inferior to the other princesses, her sisters, in beauty if God had deigned to prolong her life."(28) Several portraits of her survive, as they do of Peter Petrovich.
After a period of adequate, albeit patchy, documentation, uncertainty returns at the end of the reign. Bergholz claims that Catherine bore a premature (stillborn?) child in September 1721, remarking on her absence from the wedding of Count Pushkin on account of ill health.(29) Many writers mention a third boy named Peter, said to have been buried on 24 October 1723, but without reference to the date of his birth.(30) On closer inspection this turns out to be the reburial of Peter Petrovich (died 1719), whose remains were transferred from the Church of the Resurrection of Lazarus to the Church of the Annunciation in the Alexander Nevskii monastery on that date.(31) Massie's list ends with another Paul, allegedly born and died in 1724. This was a busy year for Catherine, with her coronation in May and the trial and execution of William Mons in the autumn. She suffered some sort of attack on 26 May and was still very weak when she returned to St Petersburg in July.(32) Could this have been the result of a premature birth? For the dme being the existence of this last child remains unconfirmed.
Paucity of information at the beginning of Peter and Catherine's relationship is explained partly by the irregular nature of their liaison. Uncertainties may also reflect changes in court record-keeping. Peter's own birth in May 1672, like those of his siblings, was noted in the court records Ñ razriadnye or dvortsovye zapiski (later published as dvortsovye razriady) Ñ which listed ceremonies, mainly of a religious nature, including liturgies for royal births, baptisms and funerals. These zapiski appear to have been discontinued around 1700, having already begun to change radically in content in the mid-1690s.(33) The records which replaced them, for example the calendars or pokhodnye zhurnaly, often had a quite different focus and were far from consistent in recording births and deaths.(34) The Supplement to the Ecclesiastical Regulation of 1721 specified that parish priests were to keep registers (metriki) of birth and deaths and forward the data to the Synod, but frequent repeats of the instruction suggest that they often failed to do so.35 However, this omission at grass roots level hardly explains the vagueness about such matters in the palace. Peter seems to have been a model father to his second family in all respects except that of accurate record-keeping.
- Lindsey Hughes (School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London)
References
(1) R. K. Massie, Peter the Great. His Life and World (London, 1981), p. 377, note.(2) M. I. Semevskii, Tsaritsa Katerina Alekseevna. Anna i Villem Mons 1692-1724 (StPb., 1884/1990), pp. 342-3.
(3) Sovietskaia istoricheskaia entsiklopediia, XII (M., 1969), p. 126.
(4) Sbornik vypisok iz arkhivnykh bumag o Petre Velikom, I (M., 1872), p. 123; Dvortsovve razriady, IV (M., 1854), pp. 614-6; Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii, III (StPb., 1830), no. 1419, p. 116.
(5) J. Juel, 'Iz zapisok datskogo poslannika lusta lulia', Russkii arkhiv (1892), kn. 3, p. 126.
(6) See, for example, Semevskii, p. 335.
(7) Pis'ma i bumagi Imp. Petra Velikogo, (PiB), III (StPb., 1893), p. 283. The editor identifies Petrushka as the "first child of Peter the Great by Ekaterina Alekseevna" (p. 770).
(8) Semevskii, p. 334.
(9) PiB, III, p. 954.
(10) G. B. Bogdanov, Istoricheskoe. geograficheskoe i topograficheskoe opisanie Sanktpeterburga, ot nachala zavedeniia ego s 1703 po 1751 god (StPb., 1779), p. 283.
(11) She was buried in the cathedral (ibid., p. 283); Semevskii, p. 81.
(12) Semevskii, p. 335. The letter is dated here 1707 in error. Given the well-attested dates of Anna's birth in January 1708, Catherine could hardly have given birth to Ekaterina in December 1707.
(13) PiB, V, p. 13: Pis'ma russkikh gosudarei i drueikh osob tsarskogo semeistva, I (M., 1861), 1. The "little one" is mentioned again in a letter to Menshikov, 26 December 1707: PiB, VI, p. 200.
(14) PiB, VIII(i), pp. 43-4.
(15) Pis'ma tsarevicha Alekseia Petrovicha, k ego roditeliu gosudariu Petru Velikomu, gosudarvne Ekaterine Alekseevne i kabinet-sekretariu Makarovu (Odessa, 1849), p. 23. See also PiB, VIII(i), p. 65 (8 February), pp. 71-2 (18 February, to Alexis), p. 390 (13 February: congratulations from Menshikov).
(16) Bogdanov, p. 283. According to this source, Natalia died on 27 May, Margarita on 27 July. Semevskii gives Natalia's birthdate as 27 March.
(17) See, for example, the allegorical engraving "To the illustrious royal union forged by God" (Zubov and Picart, 1715) in M. A. Alekseeva, Graviura petrovskogo vremeni (L., 1990), p. 139.
(18) Sanktpeterburgskii filial Instituta rossiiskoi istorii Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk (SFI), fond 270, delo 84,1. 552 (Appended to a letter to Menshikov).
(19) Pis'ma russkikh gosudarei, 1, 76.
(20) Ibid., p. 80.
(21) 'Podennye zapiski kn. A.D. Menshikova', Rossiiskaia Natsional'naia Biblioteka, Otdel rukopisei, fond 480, ed.khr. 2,1. 35-35 ob.
(22) Pis'ma russkikh gosudarei, I, no. 83.
(23) SFI, fond 270, delo 84,1. 24 [To Prince Golitsyn, Semenovskii Regiment].
(24) SFI, fond 270, delo 84, l.44.
(25) Ibid., delo 86, l. 1.
(26) Ibid., delo 84, l. 67.
(27) Pis'ma russkikh gosudarei, I, 82.
(28) F.W. von Bergholz, Dnevnik kammer-iunkera Berkhgol'tsa, vedennyi im v Rossii v tsarstvovanie Petra Velikogo s 1721-1725 g. (M., 1902-3), 1725, p. 86.
(29) Ibid. (M., 1857), 1721, p. 180.
(30) E.g. Semevskii, p. 342. Bogdanov, p. 374.
(31) Petersburgskii nekropol' ili spravochnii istoricheskii ukazatel' lits ... po nadgrobnvm nadpisiam Aleksandronevskoi lavry (Moscow, 1883), p. 103.
(32) Semevskii, p. 169, 172.
(33) On Peter's birth see Dvortsovye razriady, Ill (1645-76) (StPb., 1852), 889; Dopolneniia k III tomu Dvortsovykh razriadov (StPb., 1854), pp. 463, 469.
(34) Pokhodnye zhurnaly Petra 1695-1726 (StPb., 1853-5); 2nd ed. (StPb., 1910-13).
(35) J. Cracraft, The Church Reform of Peter the Great (London, 1971), p. 246.