How did the fates of the favorite favorites of Peter I develop: profitable marriages, a monastery and a block

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

According to the historian Nikolai Karamzin, Tsar Ivan the Terrible was distinguished by his insatiable love for women, and he was married 8 times. It combined incredible toughness and sensuality. Another tsar that everyone knows about without exception is Peter the Great. How was he doing on the love front? Has he outdone his royal predecessor or not? Read how many favorites Peter had, how they became them, whom he sent to the monastery, and whom he executed without regret.

Francois Guillaume de Villebois and Fyodor Golovkin, who described the personal life of the tsar

If Ivan the Terrible was honestly married to his wives, then Peter, who lived at a time when morals were lighter, sometimes did not. If you look deeper, it even played into the hands of women. After all, when Ivan the Terrible was tired of his wife, she suddenly died of poisoning or ended up in a monastery. Peter was free from the need to get rid of the unwanted, except that he forcibly tonsured his first wife as a nun, and publicly executed one mistress (even Ivan did not do this).

The descendants learn about the secrets of the family life of Peter I from court gossip, which were usually reflected in memoirs. There are two particularly distinguished authors: the great-grandson of Chancellor Gabriel Golovkin - Fyodor Golovkin (his memoirs are based on family traditions) and the emigrant from France Francois Guillaume de Villebois, who during his service turned into Admiral Nikita Petrovich Vilboa (and this is a contemporary of the tsar who described developments).

The selfish Anna Mons from the German suburb

When Peter reached the age of sixteen, his mother married the boyarina Evdokia Lopukhina. There was no talk of any love - it was a formality. But the fake relationship weighed on the king, and he began to look for entertainment on the side.

Peter began to travel to the German settlement, where he would meet Anna Mons, a beautiful woman, the daughter of a wine merchant. Lopukhina could not compete with a cheeky German woman who knew how to turn men. In 1692, Anna and Peter became lovers, and before that, the woman had an affair with the royal confidant Franz Lefort.

Mons became the common-law wife of Peter. In 1698, the tsar decided to get rid of Lopukhina and sent her to a monastery to live openly with Anna. But he was in no hurry to marry her. Maybe he didn't want to do this, since Mons was a Lutheran, or maybe he just wanted freedom. Memoirists argue that a selfish German woman was next to the tsar for profit, but in fact she did not love him and did not even feel sympathy. The relationship ended when Anna's love letters were found in the papers of the deceased Saxon envoy in 1703. Peter was angry. He took away the presented property from the relatives of Mons, and imprisoned the traitor herself under house arrest. In fairness, I must say that in the future the tsar forgave her and even gave her a blessing to marry the ambassador from Prussia.

Marta Skavronskaya - from mistresses to empress

One of the legitimate wives of Peter was Catherine I (real name - Marta Skvaronskaya), who also began as a common-law wife. Their meeting took place in 1703. Marta was not distinguished by a strict disposition and was the mistress of many high-ranking persons, for example, Field Marshal Pyotr Sheremetev and Alexander Menshikov.

Until 1712, Peter and Martha lived in a civil marriage, although the woman converted to Orthodoxy in 1708. The memoirist Vilboa wrote that this happened because she had an unbroken marriage with a certain Johann Kruse, a soldier from Sweden. He was taken prisoner during the battle at Poltava. When this story became known to Peter, Kruse was exiled to Siberia, where he later died. True, some historians believe that this may be just a romantic legend.

Boy-Baba Avdotya Rzhevskaya and insidious Maria Hamilton, executed by the tsar

Peter was fond of women, even already having a wife, Catherine. It is known that Alexander Menshikov, wishing to become a relative of the tsar, literally "slipped" him into Varvara Arsenyev, his wife's sister. But the miracle did not happen.

In a marriage with Catherine, children were born, but this did not prevent Peter from getting along with the young Avdotya Rzhevskaya in 1708. The meetings lasted for about a year, and then the tsar decided to get rid of his mistress and married her to Count Grigory Chernyshev. However, the relationship did not end there. Thanks to Peter, Avdotya received the nickname "Boy-Baba". She cheated on her husband, Chernyshev. When the count came with complaints to the king, he recommended that he simply flog her. Vilboa claims that Peter received the "French disease" from Rzhevskaya. But whether this is true is impossible to say now.

Being officially married to Catherine, Peter also met with Maria Hamilton, the daughter of a Scotsman in the Russian service. The story with Varvara repeated itself - for some time for comfort, and then the mistress was married to a confidant, Ivan Orlov. Despite her beauty, Maria was a cruel and greedy woman with a bad character. In 1718, a scandal erupted: the fact was revealed that Hamilton had stolen valuables from the empress, and also killed her children immediately after birth.

Peter I was outraged. Maybe he thought that his child was killed by an insidious mistress. After an investigation, on his orders, Maria was sentenced to death. The woman was executed publicly in 1719, her head was cut off.

The last mistress of Peter is Maria Cantemir, who was the sister of the diplomat and poet-satirist Prince Antioch Cantemir. In 1721, a woman gave birth to a dead child from the king. It was a terrible tragedy, after which the Kantemir family left for their estate. Peter again became close to Catherine and in 1724 Catherine became Empress. When she began an affair with Willim Mons, Peter decided to restore his love relationship with Mary, but died in 1725. If you count, then Peter the Great had six common-law wives. One of them managed to acquire the status of an official spouse.

However, women were not happy with this situation. And sometimes they took revenge on their husbands with royal blood for treason and neglect.