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Alexius Mikhailovich

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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Century boyars, whose extortions made them generally detested. In May 1648 the people of Moscow rose against them, and the young tsar was compelled to dismiss both them and their patron Morozov. The successful issue of the Moscow riots was the occasion of disquieting disturbances all over the tsardom culminating in dangerous rebellions at Pskov and Great Novgorod, with which the government was so unable to cope that they surrendered, practically granting the malcontents their own terms. One man only had displayed equal tact and courage at Great Novgorod, the metropolitan Nikon, who in consequence became in 1651 the tsar's chief minister. In 1653 the weakness and disorder of Poland, which had just emerged, bleeding at every pore, from the savage Cossack war, encouraged Alexius to attempt to recover from her secular rival the old Russian lands. On the 1st of October 1653 a national assembly met at Moscow to sanction the war and find the means of carrying it on, and in April 1654 the army was blessed by Nikon (now patriarch). The campaign of 1654 was an uninterrupted triumph, and scores of towns, including the important fortress of Smolensk, fell into the hands of the Muscovites. In January 1655 the rout of Ochmatov arrested their progress; but in the summer of the same year, the sudden invasion by Charles X. of Sweden for the moment swept the Polish state out of existence; the Muscovites, unopposed, quickly appropriated nearly everything which was not already occupied by the Swedes, and when at last the Poles offered to negotiate, the whole grand-duchy of Lithuania was the least of the demands of Alexius. Fortunately for Poland, the tsar and the king of Sweden now quarrelled over the apportionment of the spoil, and at the end of May 1656 Alexius, stimulated by the emperor and the other enemies of Sweden, declared war against her. Great things were expected of the Swedish war, but nothing came of it. Dorpat was taken, but countless multitudes were lost in vain before Riga. In the meantime Poland had so far recovered herself as to become a much more dangerous foe than Sweden, and, as it was impossible to wage war with both simultaneously, the tsar resolved to rid himself of the Swedes first. This he did by the peace of Kardis (July 2, 1661), whereby Muscovy retroceded all her conquests. The Polish war dragged on for six years longer and was then concluded by a truce, nominally for thirteen years, which proved the most durable of treaties. By the truce of Andrussowo (February 1, 1667) Vitebsk, Polotsk and Polish Livonia were restored to Poland, but the infinitely more important Smolensk and Kiev remained in the hands of the Muscovite together with the whole eastern bank of the Dnieper. This truce was the achievement of Athanasy Orduin-Nashchokin, the first Russian chancellor and diplomatist in the modern sense, who after the disgrace of Nikon became the tsar's first minister till 1670, when he was superseded by the equally able Artamon Matvyeev, whose beneficent influence prevailed to the end of the reign. It is the crowning merit of the ever amiable and courteous tsar Alexius that he discovered so many great men (like Nikon, Orduin, Matvyeev, the best of Peter's precursors) and suitably employed them. He was not a man of superior strength of character, or he would never have submitted to the dictation of Nikon. But, on the other hand, he was naturally, if timorously, progressive, or he would never have encouraged the great reforming boyarin Matvyeev. His education was necessarily narrow; yet he was learned in his way, wrote verses, and even began a history of his own times. His last years, notwithstanding the terrible rebellion of Stenka Razin, were deservedly tranquil. By his first consort he had thirteen children, of whom two sickly sons and eight healthy daughters survived him. By his second consort, Natalia Naruishkina, he had two children, the tsarevich Peter and the tsarevna Natalia.

See Robert Nisbet Bain, The First Romanovs (London, 1905).

(R. N. B.)