7 Russian monarchs who were killed

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

On December 4, 1586, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, was sentenced to death for conspiracy. Russian monarchs were also killed, only Russian "God's anointed" died, as a rule, not under a guillotine, but became victims of popular anger or palace intrigues.

The reign of Fyodor Godunov lasted only 7 weeks

On April 24, 1605, the very next day after the death of Tsar Boris Godunov, Moscow proclaimed his 16-year-old son Fyodor, a talented and educated young man fully prepared for the throne, to reign. But that time was vague - False Dmitry I moved to Moscow, who wove intrigues with the aim of seizing the throne and was able to lure Prince Mstislavsky and many of those who had recently supported the Godunovs to his side. The ambassadors who arrived in Moscow, on behalf of the impostor on the Execution Ground, read a message in which False Dmitry I called the Godunovs usurpers, himself - Tsarevich Dmitry Ivanovich, who allegedly managed to escape, promised all kinds of favors and benefits and called on to swear allegiance to himself. Popular unrest began, the crowd shouted "Down with the Godunovs!" rushed to the Kremlin.

With the connivance of the government of the boyars Fyodor Godunov, his mother and sister Ksenia were placed in custody, and False Dmitry I ascended the Russian throne. On June 20, 1605, Fyodor II Borisovich Godunov and his mother were strangled. This was the order of the new king. It was announced to the people that they themselves had taken the poison.

The first Russian imposter tsar was killed at his own wedding

Historians consider False Dmitry I an adventurer who posed as Tsarevich Dmitry - the escaped son of the Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible … He became the first impostor who managed to take the Russian throne. False Dmitry did not stop at anything in his desire to become tsar: he gave promises to the people and even staged his "confession" by Maria Naga, the mother of Tsarevich Dmitry.

But very little time passed during the reign of False Dmitry I, and the Moscow boyars were very surprised that the Russian Tsar did not observe Russian rituals and customs, but imitated the Polish monarch: he renamed the Boyar Duma to the Senate, made a number of changes to the palace ceremonial and devastated the treasury with entertainment, spending on the maintenance of Polish guards and presents for the Polish king.

In Moscow, a dual situation developed - on the one hand, the tsar was loved, and on the other hand, they were very unhappy with him. At the head of the disaffected were Vasily Golitsyn, Vasily Shuisky, Mikhail Tatishchev, Prince Kurakin, as well as the Kolomna and Kazan metropolitans. The archers and the assassin of Tsar Fyodor Godunov Sherefedinov were supposed to kill the tsar. But the assassination attempt, scheduled for January 8, 1606, failed, and its perpetrators were torn to pieces by the crowd.

A more favorable situation for the assassination attempt developed in the spring, when False Dmitry I announced his wedding to the Polish woman Marina Mnishek. On May 8, 1606, the wedding took place, and Mnishek was crowned queen. The party lasted for several days, and the Poles (about 2 thousand people) who arrived at the wedding robbed passers-by in a drunken stupor, broke into the houses of Muscovites, and raped women. False Dmitry I retired during the wedding. The conspirators took advantage of this.

On May 14, 1606, Vasily Shuisky and his associates decided to act. The Kremlin changed its guards, opened prisons and handed out weapons to everyone. On May 17, 1606, an armed crowd entered Red Square. False Dmitry tried to flee and jumped out of the window of the chambers directly onto the pavement, where he was seized by the archers and hacked to death. The body was dragged to Red Square, his clothes were torn off, a pipe was stuck in the mouth of the impostor king, and a mask was put on his chest. Muscovites scoffed at the body for 2 days, after which they buried it behind the Serpukhov Gate in the old cemetery. But this did not end there. There were rumors that "miracles are being done" over the grave. They dug up the body, burned it, mixed the ash with gunpowder and fired it from a cannon towards Poland.

Ivan VI Antonovich - the emperor who did not see his subjects

Ivan VI Antonovich - the son of Anna Leopoldovna, niece of the childless Russian Empress Anna Ioannovna and Duke Anton Ulrich of Braunschweig, great-grandson of Ivan V. He was proclaimed emperor in 1740 at the age of two months, and the Duke of Courland, EI Biron, was declared regent. But a year later, on December 6, 1741, a coup d'état took place, and the daughter of Peter I, Elizaveta Petrovna, ascended the Russian throne.

At first, Elizabeth thought of sending the "Braunschweig family" abroad, but she feared that they might be dangerous. The deposed emperor with his mother and father was transported to Dinamünde, a suburb of Riga, and then north to Kholmogory. The boy lived in the same house with his parents, but in complete isolation from them, behind a blank wall under the supervision of Major Miller. In 1756 he was transferred to the "solitary confinement" of the Shlisselburg Fortress, where he was called a "famous prisoner" and was kept in complete isolation from people. He couldn't even see the guards. The situation of the prisoner did not improve either under Peter III or under Catherine II.

During his imprisonment, several attempts were made to free the deposed emperor, the last of which turned out to be his death. On July 16, 1764, officer V. Ya. Mirovich, who was on guard in the Shlisselburg fortress, was able to win over part of the garrison to his side. He called for the release of Ivan and the overthrow of Catherine II. But when the rebels tried to free the prisoner Ivan VI, two watchmen who were with him were stabbed to death. It is believed that Ivan Antonovich was buried in the Shlisselburg fortress, but in fact he became the only Russian emperor whose burial place is not known for sure.

Peter III - emperor deposed by his wife

Peter III Fedorovich - German Prince Karl Peter Ulrich, son of Anna Petrovna and Karl Friedrich, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, grandson of Peter I - ascended the Russian throne in 1761. He was not crowned, ruled for only 187 days, but managed to conclude peace with Prussia, thus canceling out the results of the victories of the Russian troops in the Seven Years War.

Peter's indiscriminate actions in the domestic political arena deprived him of the support of Russian society, and many perceived his policy as a betrayal of Russian national interests. As a result, on June 28, 1762, a coup took place, and Catherine II was proclaimed empress. Peter III was sent to Ropsha (30 miles from St. Petersburg), where the deposed emperor died under unexplained circumstances.

According to the official version, Peter III died either from a stroke or from hemorrhoids. But there is another version - Peter III was killed by the guards in a fight that ensued, and 2 days before the officially announced death. Initially, the body of Peter III was buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, and in 1796 Paul I ordered to transfer the body to the Peter and Paul Cathedral.

Paul I was strangled with a scarf

Many historians associate the death of Paul I with the fact that he dared to encroach on the world hegemony of Great Britain. On the night of March 11, 1801, conspirators broke into the imperial chambers and demanded the abdication of Paul I from the throne.

The emperor tried to object, and, they say, even hit someone, in response one of the rebels began to choke him with a scarf, and the other stabbed the emperor in the temple with a massive snuffbox. It was announced to the people that Paul I had an apoplectic stroke. Tsarevich Alexander, who overnight became Emperor Alexander I, did not dare to touch his father's killers, and Russia's policy returned to the pro-English channel.

On the same days in Paris, a bomb was thrown at Bonaparte's motorcade. Napoleon was not hurt, but commented on the incident as follows: "They missed me in Paris, but got in Petersburg."

An interesting coincidence 212 years later, on the same day when the murder of the Russian autocrat happened, the disgraced oligarch Boris Berezovsky passed away.

Alexander II - Emperor, who was attacked by 8

Emperor Alexander II - the eldest son of the imperial couple Nicholas I and Alexandra Feodorovna - remained in the history of Russia as a reformer and liberator. Several attempts were made on Alexander II. In 1867, in Paris, a Polish emigrant Berezovsky tried to kill him, in 1879 in St. Petersburg - a certain Solovyov. But these attempts were unsuccessful, and in August 1879, the executive committee of the "Narodnaya Volya" decided to assassinate the emperor. After that, there were 2 more unsuccessful assassination attempts: in November 1879, an attempt was made to blow up the imperial train, and in February 1880, an explosion thundered in the Winter Palace. To fight the revolutionary movement and protect the state order, they even created a Supreme Administrative Commission, but this could not prevent the violent death of the emperor.

On March 13, 1881, when the tsar was driving along the embankment of the Catherine Canal in St. Petersburg, Nikolai Rysakov threw a bomb right under the carriage in which the tsar was traveling. Several people died from the terrible explosion, but the emperor remained unharmed. Alexander II got out of the wrecked carriage, approached the wounded, the detainee, and began to inspect the explosion site. But at this moment, the Narodnoye member-terrorist Ignatius Grinevitski threw a bomb right at the feet of the emperor, mortally wounding him.

The explosion tore the Emperor's stomach, tore off his legs and disfigured his face. Even in his mind, Alexander was able to whisper: "To the palace, I want to die there." They carried him into the Winter Palace and put him to bed, already unconscious. At the place where Alexander II was killed, the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood was built with donations from the people.

The last Russian emperor was shot in the basement

Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov, Nicholas II, - the last Russian emperor came to the throne in 1894 after the death of his father, Emperor Alexander III. On March 15, 1917, at the insistence of the Provisional Committee of the State Duma, the Russian emperor signed an abdication for himself and for his son Alexei and was placed under arrest with his family in the Alexander Palace of Tsarskoye Selo.

The Bolsheviks wanted to hold an open trial of the ex-emperor (Lenin was an adherent of this idea), and Trotsky was supposed to act as the main accuser of Nicholas II. But there was information that a "White Guard conspiracy" was organized to kidnap the tsar, and on April 6, 1918, the tsar's family was transported to Yekaterinburg and placed in the Ipatiev house.

On the night of July 16-17, 1918, Emperor Nicholas II, his wife Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, their five children and close associates were shot in the basement.

To somehow dispel the gloomy mood, we suggest you get acquainted with the murderous "hello" from the Victorian era from the artist John fair.