On the morning of March 14, 1719, a beautiful young woman walked up onto a scaffold as if it were a holiday.
She wore a white silk dress, and black ribbons were braided into her luxurious, ash-colored hair. Even the executioner who had seen everything had never had to cut the head off of such a beauty.
The whiteness of her clothes symbolized happiness, and the condemned herself, it seemed, was full of joy. She still held out hope for salvation. Indeed, she had dressed and adorned herself not for the crowd, but for her supreme judge and master, Tsar Peter Alexeyevich. Once he saw her looking so beautiful, surely he would recall his passionate love for the lady-in-waiting Maria Hamilton. He would remember and, of course, have mercy.
And then, suddenly, the tsar rose up over the crowd of onlookers. Peter climbed the scaffolding, came up to Maria and kissed her. In fact, he only touched his lips to hers – a kiss quite different from those he had delivered in former days…
It had all begun in 1709, when the charming Maria Danilovna Hamilton had appeared at court – a lively, clever young woman, and one of good birth. The Hamiltons were among the oldest Scottish nobility. Some had chosen to save themselves from the endless wars between Scotland and England in the 15th and 16th centuries and departed Albion to seek their fortune in cold and distant Muscovy. Thomas Hamilton entered the tsar’s service in the time of Ivan the Terrible. His son Peter fully assimilated to the new situation, went into the service of “Nova-Gorod,” put down family roots, and became progenitor of the well-known Khomutovye clan, which was how the descendants of the Scottish Hamiltons russified their name.
One of the clan, Yevdokia Grigorevna Hamilton, was the wife of the famous boyar Artyomon Sergeyevich Matveyev, and tutor to tsaritsa Natalya Naryshkina. Matveyev was killed in May 1682 by rebellious musketeers (the streltsy) because of his loyalty to the heir, the future Peter the Great. So, with Peter’s ascension, the Hamiltons’ star began to rise. Some of them, like Maria Danilovna, made a career at court. Yekaterina Alexeyevna (later Catherine I), then still the tsar’s unwed wife, who had already given him two still-unrecognized daughters, took Maria into her suite, making her a lady-in-waiting. Both women shared a love for luxury, a passion for clothing and for the latest French fashion, and both also caught Peter’s experienced eye.
“Being captive of a lover is worse than being a prisoner of war,” said the tsar. “You can sooner get freedom from an enemy than from a woman’s shackles.” Of course, Peter was being disingenuous. He never allowed himself to be shackled by the fair sex. In fact, the monarch was distinguished by a pathological disloyalty to the women with whom he had extended relationships. After his attachment to Anna Mons, daughter of a wine-merchant from the Foreign Quarter, he had banished his lawful but detested wife, Yevdokia Lopukhina, to a monastery. But even during his decade-long affair with Anna Mons, he constantly had other lovers.
Peter was no tender romantic. In his love life he was a practical realist. He acted simply, rudely, and with force. He paid for love with money and gifts, and, if the woman was unhappy with payment, he might counter with the statement that “old timers serve me with zeal and intelligence, but this one serves badly.” That’s how he answered Alexander Menshikov, who had passed on the complaint of one such woman. To which Menshikov – no less a cynic than Peter – responded, “The pay fits the work.”
Peter hardly gave a second thought to whatever impression his affairs might make, whether with an English actress, with a harbor wench in Saardam, or with the wives of his vassals. He did not restrain his desires, and sought to possess every woman whom he liked, including relatives. It was said that in Berlin he ran into his niece, the Duchess of Mecklenburg, hurriedly came up to her, and with little hesitation led her off into a room where he set her down on a couch and, without closing the door or paying any attention to those remaining in the salon, shamelessly gave free reign to his passion.
In order to get what he wanted, the tsar did not even balk at naked deception. Thus, in 1706 in Hamburg, Peter promised the daughter of a certain Lutheran pastor that he would divorce Catherine, since the pastor would only agree to give his daughter to a lawfully wed husband. Vice-chancellor Shafirov was told to prepare the necessary documents. But, unfortunately for her, the trusting bride-to-be agreed to consummate the marriage early. She never saw the altar, and was bought off with a thousand ducats.
It is impossible to record all of Peter’s mistresses. According to historian Andrey M. Burovsky, “the total number of Peter’s illegitimate children was at least 90 or 100. It may be even higher.” The great quantity of the tsar’s offspring is comparable to that of the “Sun King,” Louis XIV. True, both were outpaced by Peter’s royal “brother,” August II the Strong, King of Poland, a renowned ladies’ man who allegedly had 700 “mistresses” and more than 350 children. We do not know whether August II recorded his amorous adventures, but Peter kept a special “Bed Register,” into which he put the names of those whom he required to make an appearance in the royal bed.
Maria Hamilton was one of those who landed in this register. She was a rare beauty, and, as we might say today, an incorrigible flirt (in the language of the day she had the quality of glazolyubnost – “eyes asking for love”). Peter recognized her gifts, and, again using a contemporary expression, he “could not fail but look at her with desire.” And so she was ordered to prepare the bed in the monarch’s bedroom. With an adventurous character and an irrepressible desire for luxury, the young woman, after becoming the royal favorite, soon started to measure herself for a crown. What did she care about the aging, low-born Catherine? How could Catherine ever compare with the truly regal, captivating Maria Hamilton?
But Maria was not to celebrate a victory. And Catherine had no reason to see a dangerous rival in Maria. Having quenched his appetite, the tsar suddenly became completely indifferent to Maria. For even though he continually sought out new amorous conquests, no favorite could replace “my dear light, Katerinushka.” What had attracted Peter to Maria? Only her sexual charms. Meanwhile, Catherine continued to captivate his heart, and served as companion to the tsar in all of his activities and cares. In contrast to Maria, she was necessary to him – as friend and confidante.
But, as is well known, nature abhors a vacuum, and the lady-in-waiting, singled out by the tsar himself, found many to comfort her. Vasily Vladimirov, in his article “The Russian Lady Hamilton,” writes that “It was mortally dangerous to get in Peter’s way, but afterward it flattered his vanity for others to sleep with the former royal favorite. The more so with such a beauty.” Yet the “mortal danger” remained, insofar as Peter did not forgive betrayal even by his former mistresses. This made courtiers seeking Maria’s romantic favors extremely cautious. William Mons, who briefly pursued Maria, warned her of the need to keep the secrets of the bedroom quiet. And Maria’s secrets were legion: she became pregnant several times, but each time was able to “rid herself” of the sinful burden, even though this was an extremely risky business.
Despite her subsequent love affairs, Maria never lost hope of gaining power over Peter’s heart again. But she apparently only realized the futility of this hope very late, and then set her sights on a royal attendant, Ivan Orlov. In Peter’s day, the tsar personally selected his attendants (Peter considered himself an excellent judge of physiognomies). They played an important role at court, as they were close to the tsar and were privy to many highly-sensitive governmental issues. He chose them not because they were “from the best noble families,” but according to their personal merit.
Outside of court, Orlov and Hamilton led a wild life – rowdy amusements, drinking, carousals, fights and then the all-reconciling bedchamber. Like his patron, Orlov was coarse and fickle; in the heat of passion he sometimes cursed Maria using street language, and even beat her. And Maria did not hesitate to return the favor with her own deceptions. But even so, their mutual attraction lasted several years, until something extraordinary occurred...
In 1717, the tsar lost a valuable packet of papers. He immediately suspected his attendant, Ivan Orlov, because he was the one who had dressed the sovereign on that fatal day. It later turned out that the packet had simply slipped into the lining of the tsar’s coat, but in the heat of the moment, Orlov was seized and beaten. Orlov had no idea of the cause of the tsar’s anger and threw himself on Peter’s mercy, confessing to his forbidden passion for Maria Hamilton. In this shameful matter, as well as in other sins, Orlov resolutely accused Maria as a way of protecting himself. Peter then recalled that they had recently found the tiny corpse of a newborn in the palace garden, wrapped up in an expensive kerchief. He connected the dots to Maria and promptly ordered her taken into custody.
Under torture, Maria confessed to everything – both her affair with Orlov and that she had twice aborted the fruits of illicit love. She revealed that, in order to cover her lover’s debts, she had also stolen money and other valuables from Catherine, her benefactress. The talkative Orlov also testified that Maria had told tales about how the tsaritsa had eaten wax as a way of getting rid of blackheads. This might seem like an insignificant trifle, one woman’s gossip about another, but at that time this was a serious crime: spreading rumors that besmirched her majesty, including the malicious revelation of the cosmetic secrets of Russia’s first lady.
And how did Catherine react to this? She maintained a genuine nobility and good nature in the face of this murky situation. After all, hanging in the balance was not merely the life of her lady-in-waiting, who had stolen from her to support a lover, but the fate of a former rival, whom Peter at one point might even have chosen over her, Catherine. The temptation to take revenge must have been very strong. Yet, instead, Catherine tried to intercede for the criminal, and even recruited the widowed tsarina (who had once been saved by a Hamilton) to the cause. Praskoviya Fyodorovna’s intercession was all the more significant in that, as everyone knew, she was little inclined to mercy.
But Peter was implacable: “I do not want to be either a Saul or an Agave, violating God’s law in an impulse of goodness.” Did he really respect divine and human edicts to such a degree? One cannot say that Peter’s order to have Maria Hamilton put to death for abortion and infanticide –the chief crime of which she was accused – was cruel and unusual; her actions violated both civil statutes and widely-accepted Orthodox principles.
Until the end of the 18th century, killing unborn children was illegal in Christian countries. In Russia, capital punishment for abortion had been written into law by Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s Law Code of 1649: “Capital punishment for the female sex may occur for sorcery, for murder [the punishment is] decapitation, and for killing children and other equally evil acts – burial in the ground alive.”
Before Peter, illegitimate children and their mothers lived miserable lives. In order to avoid this, and despite the threat of severe punishment, mothers either gave their illegitimate children to other families to raise, committed abortion, or, if they gave birth, put unwanted children to death. In order to prevent the latter, Peter published the law of November 4, 1715, “On Hospitals,” which noted that “ill-begotten children should not be discarded in indecent places, but should be brought to a hospital and secretly placed in the window.” Further, there was a warning to mothers who committed infanticide: if someone kills an infant, “then for this evil deed they themselves will be put to death.”
Nevertheless, in old Russia extenuating circumstances were often found to soften the punishment for serious crimes. Yet Peter, in deciding Maria’s fate, insisted on following the letter of the law; he demanded the revenge of an insulted lover. Unfaithful himself, betraying women without a second thought, the tsar would not forgive treachery even when committed by former favorites. He had become enraged when his discarded first wife dared to fall in love with someone else. He had her beloved, Major Glebov, cruelly tortured to death. Peter was also vindictive in his treatment of his former love, Anna Mons. He had her home and his expensive gifts to her confiscated, and she was put under house arrest for many years, forbidden even to attend church. He imprisoned some 30 souls in Preobrazhensky Prikaz for their involvement in “the Mons woman affair.” Peter was absolute monarch and proprietor, and did not wish to share anything with anybody, not even his past.
Maria Hamilton was tortured several times in the tsar’s presence, but to the very end refused to implicate her partner in crime. Orlov, on the other hand, only thought of evading responsibility, and blamed her for everything. This ancestor of the famous Orlovs – of the era of Catherine the Great – behaved in a far from heroic manner.
Some have hypothesized that the tsar was so implacable toward Maria because the murdered infant found in the palace garden belonged not to Orlov, but to him. But there is no evidence to support this conjecture.
… As she approached the executioner’s block, Maria swayed, starting to lose consciousness from terror. Peter considerately gave her support, helping her take the last step. Maria shuddered and fell on her knees before the sovereign. But the executioner had already taken the tsar’s place, and the unfortunate woman’s head rolled. A historian reports the shocking details:
“The Great Peter… lifted up the head and honored it with a kiss. Since he considered himself knowledgeable in anatomy, he considered it his duty in this situation to give a demonstration to the onlookers of the various parts of the head. He then kissed it a second time, threw it on the ground, crossed himself, and departed the place of execution.”
RL
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