'Private Lives of the Monarchs': How did Peter the Great kill his son and why did he send 1st wife to convent?
Although Peter The Great is an emperor known for implemented sweeping reforms to modernize Russia, he also had a dark side that caused him to send his first wife away to a nunnery and torture his own son to death.
The last episode of the Smithsonian documentary 'Private Lives of the Monarchs' which aired on June 8, 9 pm EST, delved into the twisted life of Peter, who was also known as Peter I or Pyotr Alekseevich. Although he had dedicated his life to reorganizing the Russian army along modern lines, mimicking those in western Europe, and dreamt of making his kingdom a maritime power, his married life was anything but happy.
Since the Russian nobility still believed in arranged marriages at the time, Peter's mother wasted no time in getting him married in 1689 to Eudoxia Lopukhina when he was just 17. Although Eudoxia bore Peter his first son Alexei Petrovich, Peter never took to his wife and chose to keep multiple mistresses on the side from the very beginning. To him, Eudoxia represented everything that he found wrong with Russia at the time. "Hard to imagine that Eudoxia was ever going to please Peter. I mean she was dodgy; she was puritanical; she was terribly conservative," Tony McMahon, author, and historian said in the documentary.
As a result, he kidnapped their son from her when he was eight years old and sent her to a convent — a move that Peter the Great's favorite whenever he wanted to punish women who were closely related to him. After Peter divorced her in 1698, he married his second wife and the love of his life, Catherine I, who went on to serve as the Empress of Russia after Peter's death in 1725.
While married to Peter, Catherine bore 12 children, 10 of whom tragically died at an early age. But when it comes to his succession, Peter knew that there would be a clash between his first son and the rest of children — something he wanted to avoid because he despised Alexei.
"Alexei did not have exactly what you call a stable childhood. When your own father kidnaps you when you are eight and sends your mother to a convent... And there was a real clash of personality between him and his father. He is the kind of bookish nerd who is into poetry and into the fine arts whereas Peter is kind of a Jock basically who is into building stuff. I mean the two of them were never going to get on," McMahon said.
Nigel Jones, author and historian, added: "He began to see that Alexei was everything he despised in Russia — old, traditional, backward-looking — I think this combined with his neglect to the boy to produce something which actually was very close to murderous hatred."
Since Peter was too busy to take care of Alexei or give him the time of the day, the latter grew up in the company of reactionary boyars and priests, who encouraged him to hate his father and wish for the death of the Tsar. Alexei was eventually accused of conspiring to overthrow his father.
"Alexei actually tried to keep out of his father's way, physically. He tried to distance himself. And there is an exchange of letters in which Peter threatens the boy with the traditional punishment that he issued to all his relatives that's gotten in his way that he would send him to a monastery if he didn't bow the knee and do what his father wanted. But Alexei didn't. He got involved with the opposition to Peter. He might have conspired actively against his father. And therefore, he brought about his own destruction," Jones said.
On February 3, 1718, Alexei was brought before Peter where he dropped to his knees and begged for forgiveness. Initially, his father promised him mercy if he agreed to give up the names of those who supported his campaign against Peter. Alexei did give the names and most of the people on the list ended up receiving slow deaths in full public view, which was Peter's way of making an example out of traitors. But Peter was not satisfied and ordered his own son to be taken to his personal torture chamber build in the basement of Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, Russia. He died there on June 26, 1718, during a torture session.
"It was officially given out that Alexei had died of natural causes. That he had got an illness and sadly passed away. In fact, the evidence is pretty clear that Alexei was flogged with traditional brutal Russian whip... (Peter) almost certainly flogged his own son. I think he had two sessions. One with 15 strokes and one with 25 strokes and so Peter literally tortured his own son to death," Jones said.