Second Strelizen Rebellion
The Second Strelizan Uprising was an unsuccessful uprising that broke out during the absence of the Russian Tsar Peter I during the Great Embassy in June 1698. After a brief battle in front of Moscow , the four Streliz regiments were defeated and most of the survivors were interrogated, tortured and executed in the following months .
Peter I. traveling
The Strelizos were founded in the 1940s and 50s as the first standing army in the Moscow state as part of the military reforms of Ivan IV . They feared that they would lose their traditional rights under Peter I. Since the first Strelizi uprising of 1682 , the Strelizi were the domestic political opponents of Tsar Peter I and his modernization course . In February 1697, Peter I discovered high treason by Colonel Ivan Zykler and the boyars Fyodor Pushkin and Alexei Sokovonin, and he himself led the investigation. According to the confessions obtained under torture, before his departure for Western Europe, Peter I had all participants in the conspiracy publicly executed and other marginally involved distributed into the interior of tsarism , where they were mixed with the other troops. The aim of this conspiracy was to bring Peter's half-sister Sofia back to power. The guard of Sofia imprisoned in the Maiden Monastery was then increased to a hundred men. The danger of a riot had been averted for a moment and was rekindled by the absence of Peter I. The reasons for this were:
- the privilege given to the newly established regular troops, mostly led by foreign specialists, at every opportunity over the Strelizi,
- their transfer to the borders of the empire (including 3,000 Strelizi to Azov , later expanded to ten Strelizi regiments) and the associated family separation,
- a conspiracy of Orthodox priests who agitated against the large numbers of immigrant foreigners.
For the duration of his absence, Peter I set up a Regency Council with extensive powers. Prince Romodanovsky was commissioned as governor of Moscow to ensure security and order. After a hard winter with no pay and sufficient provisions, 175 Strelizos moved from the borders of the empire to Moscow to claim the outstanding wages. At the beginning of May 1698 these deserters returned to service in their regiments in Velikiye Luki and Rzhev . After Peter I learned of the events, he demanded that the deserters be severely punished. On June 2, the Regency Council instructed Romodanowski to relocate the stricken regiments concerned and to arrest the deserters. On the way to the new locations, the regiments suddenly stopped. They refused to march on and removed their officers. On the basis of rumors that the families of the Strelizos were to be banished from Moscow, these approximately 2,600 Strelizos now moved against Moscow. The boyar duma decided on June 11th to send an army under the leadership of General Schein to meet the Strelizi and General Gordon was to stand aside. The government army was about 3700 strong and had 25 cannons.
Suppression of the conspiracy
About 25 kilometers from Moscow, General Gordon and his troops encountered the insurgent Strelizos. On 17./18. June the Strelizos attacking without a plan were defeated in a short time. 70 dead and around 40, mostly seriously wounded, were counted among the victims. Only four wounded were reported to the government army. General Gordon had all of the Strelitzen captured and started investigations with Schein. During this, 130 strikers were accused of instigating the unrest and hanged. The remaining strelizi around 1870 were distributed to four monasteries and imprisoned there.
Peter I only got news of this uprising when he was in Vienna . He broke off his trip and immediately returned to Moscow. When Peter I reached his summer residence Preobrazhenskoye near Moscow on August 24, 1698 , General Gordon had already put down the rebellion. The regular troops of the Poteschnye had given him such good help that Peter I rewarded them richly and later raised them to his bodyguard.
He had an example made of the remaining 1870 prisoners, as the investigations that had been carried out up to then had, in his opinion, been completed too quickly and without satisfactory results. Peter I commissioned the Secret Chancellery with the judicial investigation of the Streliz uprising using torture. Peter started an extermination operation that lasted several months. From October 1698 to February 1699 over a thousand people were publicly executed. The corpses or their heads were left to rot on the gates and walls of Moscow, and many had to hang on the gallows until they were dissolved. 1100 Strelitz lost their life in this way, minors were banished to Siberia , Astrakhan and Azov , the Streliz corps abolished, the name abolished and declared dishonorable.
During the suppression of the Strelizi uprising in 1698, Peter I suspected his first wife Evdokija of participating in the conspiracy and banished her to the Suzdal Monastery in 1698 .
consequences
After the annihilation of the Strelizi, nothing stood in the way of Peter I's reform plans . He introduced extensive reform measures that meant a break with the past and the traditional Muscovite ways of life.
literature
- Alexander Moutchnik: The "Strelizen uprising" of 1698. In: Heinz-Dietrich Löwe (Ed.): People's uprisings in Russia. From the time of turmoil to the “Green Revolution” against Soviet rule (= research on Eastern European history. Vol. 65). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-447-05292-9 , pp. 197-222.