How they dressed under Peter I: six interesting facts about the fashion of the Peter the Great era. Love adventures of Peter I

G. Kneller. Portrait of Peter I, 1697. Fragment

The family idyll of Peter with his first wife Evdokia Lopukhina did not last long: the tsar lost interest in his wife a year later, and soon exiled her to the Suzdal Intercession Monastery. For more than 10 years, Evdokia lived there all alone, but one day Major Glebov arrived from Moscow to Suzdal to conduct a recruitment. Having met the former queen, he lost his head. His feelings turned out to be mutual, and love correspondence grew into a relationship that lasted several years.

P. Gunst. Peter I. Engraving from the work of G. Kneller

Peter himself imprisoned his wife in a monastery and himself obtained a divorce from her, but, having learned about her infidelity, he was furious. During a search at Glebov's, love letters from the tsaritsa were found. Blinded by jealousy and anger, Peter I subjected Stepan Glebov to terrible torture. First, he received 34 blows with a whip on the rack, then sprinkled open wounds with burning coals, and after that he was tied to a board studded with nails. At the same time, the major courageously held on, confessing his guilt, but denying the guilt of the queen - although their love affair at that time was a proven fact.

Stepan Glebov was sentenced to death, however, for "high treason." The execution was sophisticated and painful: when the criminals were put on a stake, the execution tool passed through the human body, and death came quickly enough. But for Glebov they prepared a stake with a crossbar, which did not allow the point to pass through the whole body and prolonged the torment and agony. The stake was erected on Red Square, for everyone to see and intimidate. Glebov died only on the second day, without making a sound. He was not even allowed to take communion before his death - the priests were afraid of the royal wrath. The body of the executed was thrown into the ditch. But Peter did not stop there and after 3 years ordered the Holy Synod to anathematize him.

The first wife of Peter Evdokia Lopukhin

The second wife of Peter I, Catherine, cheated on him with the chamber junker Willim Mons, the brother of one of his former favorites. At that time, he was quite an influential person at the tsarina's court - he was in charge of finances and the palace economy, managed purchases, organized holidays and festivities, accompanied the tsarina on trips around Russia and abroad. Catherine's reputation was not impeccable - they said that she was always prone to drunkenness and debauchery, so it is not surprising that Mons soon became her lover.

The second wife of Peter Catherine I

On the night before the execution, Mons wrote poems in German in which he confessed his love for the queen. In November 1724, the sentence was carried out. Catherine was brought to the place of execution and forced to watch as Mons was beheaded. Then Peter ordered that the severed head be placed in a jar of alcohol and placed in his wife's bedroom.

P. Zharkov. Peter I, 1796. Fragment

Catherine miraculously managed to avoid the fate of Peter's first wife and her lover. If the queen had been convicted of adultery and executed, the question of the true paternity of her daughters would have arisen, and then none of the European princes would have married Russian princesses. Therefore, Peter pardoned his wife and was even able to forgive her. And after the death of the king in 1725, she became an autocratic empress and returned freedom to all those convicted in the case of Mons.

The second wife of Peter Catherine I

The day begins, and with it the Great Russian Tsar begins to plan his trip outside the Russian state. The king pondered for a long time the reason why he should leave. And then suddenly his secret agent returned and reported to him everything that he had seen. Peter the Great liked everything very much, and he even came up with a reason for his departure. For all his subordinates, he went to get new technologies, but in fact he was just tired of sitting at home and knitting socks for long evenings. Having equipped the expedition, which consisted of him alone, since this is a difficult and dangerous business. The king was not a blunder and reached Europe in two days on a plane of the Pegas Touristik company. First of all, he booked himself a hotel room and decided to look around. A lot of things immediately interested him: German beer, and Italian pizza and even English tea, but the only thing that horrified him was French paws, well, or not quite French, or rather not French at all, but frogs. He did not live long in Europe. It's time to return back. And the technologies are not new at all. But when Peter was getting out of the subway, a street vendor handed him a whole package of God knows what. And the Great Tsar went home with this bag, because he was not allowed on the plane with it, and he had nothing to pay for the luggage. The king walked for a long time and he stopped at one African tribe. And he decided to wash them all with soap, but African Americans did not wash off their natural skin color. He spat on them and went on in peace. This time he made a halt for lunch. Looks into the bag and thinks what to do with it? And he began to rub potatoes against each other, and so rubbed that his hands were already smoking and opening them, he saw her. Yes, that's it, french fries. Realizing the genius of his invention, Peter the Great proudly continued to carry a sack of potatoes. He affectionately called her potato. When he came home to his mother Russia, he saw how much she differed from Europe. Not a single cafe, not a single hotel. And so he decided to go straight home. The next morning his subjects came to his chambers. Before them appeared such a picture. The great Russian tsar slept in an embrace with a bag in some incomprehensible rags. They didn't wake him up. Waking up for dinner, he felt hungry and cold. And I immediately realized that he was in Russia. Putting his favorite potato on the bed, he decided to change. Wearing pajamas and a nightcap. Going down to the living room, where the servants were waiting for him, he solemnly announced his arrival from Europe. His subjects began to question him about overseas technologies. He immediately flew into his room like a young seagull. And with a beatific smile he returned with a sack of potatoes. Subsequently, he spoke about the technique of making french fries. But he did not yet know that a conspiracy was being prepared against him ...

When Julius Caesar became emperor, Senator Cicero accused the head of state of prostitution. Verbatim:
"Caesar made a springboard for a public career out of his ass!"

Caesar came to the palace to the 40-year-old Nicomedes IV, the last king of Bithynia, at the age of 19 and sold his body to him for a very modest amount of money for three years.

In view of his own complexes, Guy Julius Caesar spent a lot of money from the state treasury to buy young boys with a lush mop of hair on their heads, but exclusively hairless chests. However, Caesar was far from the last homosexual who ruled the Roman Empire, and not the most promiscuous.

For example, compared to the later reigning Tiberius, Caesar was just an angel in the flesh. In addition, Tiberius was also a pedophile. The elderly ruler was no longer able to achieve an erection on his own, therefore, before direct sexual intercourse, he demanded that he be aroused by babies, whom their mothers voluntarily gave to the pervert, literally tearing them off their breasts, and they, obeying innate instincts, sucked his penis themselves.

12-year-old boys, while bathing Tiberius in the pond, swam naked around him, swam between his legs, touching his genitals. And 16-year-old youths were engaged in group anal sex before his eyes, lining up like a train, and the head of state himself, when an erection did come, was attached to the back, thus closing the train.

Did you think that Richard the Lionheart was a model of a medieval knight? Yes, this is true, but he was by no means a knight for ladies - his heart finally and irrevocably belonged to French king Philip II Augustus, with whom he became so close friends at the age of 23 that he shared a bed with him for a year. Together they experienced a lot, even organized a crusade against Jerusalem, but the most banal jealousy destroyed their relationship. Philip could not forgive his lover that his people loved him a lot. more king, who, by the way, was 8 years younger than Richard.

Shakespeare, on the other hand, married as a result of a heterosexual experiment, William Shakespeare at the age of 34, and found that in sonnet 20, he sings of a person who turned out to be a guy, but who was beautiful, like a girl. From the masculine principle, he had only a member. "Your love is mine, though you were made to deliver
pleasure for women, ”admits William to his sweetheart.

Russian Emperor Peter I came to power at the age of 17, and by this age, he was already familiar with anal sex. The Swiss Franz Yakovlevich Lefort helped him with this. The imperial lover received the rank of admiral, and soon brought a street pie vendor named Sashka Menshikov to Peter. Until Lefort's death in 1699, they practiced threesomes. Left alone, two 27-year-old ambitious rulers traveled all over Europe, solving state issues and arranging sexual orgies. Later, Menshikov gave Peter his former mistress Katya, who, having married Peter I, became Catherine I.

The author of the book “Gay Story” Jiří Fanel decided to answer the question that has been worrying people since the time of Peter the Great: what was the size of his penis? After all, they say that he was the owner of especially overall advantages. Jiří made inquiries and found out that the member Russian emperor was 28 centimeters long and 8 centimeters in diameter.

The next ruler is the bugger of mother Russia - Alexander I, which is confirmed by the surviving correspondence of the king. Napoleon Bonaparte once admitted: “Alexander is the most beautiful man who lives on earth. It's a shame that he's gay, otherwise a lot of French women would like to try his body."

Alexander's lover was the Swede Gustav Moritz Armfeld, a handsome baron and general who roamed the beds of the powerful all his life, and he came to Alexander directly from the bed of the Swedish emperor Gustav III.

Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov slept all his life with the same military men as himself, and died at the moment when his own Russian soldier gave him a blowjob. The commander's heart could not stand it, and he left the earthly world, leaving his penis in the soldier's mouth.

The list of male homosexuality was diluted by Catherine II, having experimented several times in bed not with a man, but with a woman. But the experience was unsuccessful and ended in a grandiose scandal on the basis of jealousy and the exile of Catherine II's mistress Ekaterina Dashkova to the provinces.

American President George Washington married solely under the pressure of society, and then a 28-year-old widow with two children. Despite this, all his life he had a relationship with Alexander Hamilton, his secretary and speechwriter, who came to Washington's house at the age of 19.

The director of Russian counterintelligence for a long time could not understand why the beautiful spy sent to his vein failed to lure Alfred Victor Redl into bed and persuade him to become a double agent. When he understood, he smiled and a 20-year-old officer went to Vienna. After 2 weeks of sexual orgies, the head of the Austro-Hungarian counterintelligence began working for Russia.

Later, he personally led the search for a Russian spy at headquarters, being this same spy. Thus, he led a double, even, one might say, triple life for 12 years: at work, he handed over Austrian agents in St. Petersburg and Russians in Vienna to each other, and in free time dressed as a woman and broke away in brothels, as he was not only a pederast, but also a transvestite. Fortunately, the crazy money that he earned in intelligence was enough to rest. But in 1913 Redl was exposed, and early in the morning at dawn, knowing that in a few minutes they would come for him, Alfred Victor Redl shot himself.

Thomas Edward Laurens, known as Laurens of Arabia, in 1916 led the Arab uprising against the Turkish yoke together with Emir Faisal. Upon the advent of the emir to the post of the first king of Iraq, he was popularly nicknamed "the uncrowned king." In Iraq, Thomas met a young donkey driver Dagam, who, in turn, cured his lover of malaria and moved with him to London, attaching him to the University of London. Grateful Lawrence bought the two of them a house, but in 1918 Dagham died of typhus, and Thomas lived the rest of his life alone. He dedicated his memoirs to the mysterious S.A. This full name Dagama - Salim Ahmed.

The love of the whole life of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is the landowner Vladimir Shilovsky, who sponsored the composer and took him around Europe at his own expense. But the happiness of lovers was not long. While still young, Shilovsky died of consumption. But according to the preserved correspondence of Tchaikovsky with his brother Modest, also gay, you can shoot a film. He wrote to his brother: "I always remember Volodya, I dream about him every night."

At the age of 37, Tchaikovsky decided to try to become heterosexual and got married, but the marriage made the composer so depressed that he, having decided to commit suicide, stood for several hours in the cold Neve River, hoping to catch a cold and die, but the doctors saved Peter. Having not received a divorce from his wife, he sought comfort from Leshka Safronov, who came to their house at the age of 14 and soon performed not only the duties of a servant. Safronov also buried Tchaikovsky. However, after the death of Shilovsky, Pyotr Ilyich never found a permanent companion and changed sexual partners at an enviable rate, wandered around European brothels and once even slept with a black man.

Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky unrequitedly loved the artist Hartmann and fairly abused alcohol. He tried to seduce the underage son of Paul Naumov, his friend, who sheltered Modest in his house after he was evicted from the apartment for non-payment. One of the few with whom Mussorgsky had a chance to experience the sweetness of physical pleasure is his dormitory roommate in his youth, named Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The one who wrote "The Snow Maiden". He also finalized some of Mussorgsky's works after his death.

Hans Christian Andersen led a secluded life and never had a wife, friends or lovers. The only sexual experience of the children's storyteller was with a 14-year-old boy. Hans could not forget this incident in his whole life and, under the impression, after that he wrote a fairy tale about the hero Ole Lukoy.

In 1917, a huge scandal erupted in Russia when Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky caught the head of the Russian Provisional Government, Georgy Lvov, in Zimny giving a blowjob to a soldier. Lvov liked to arrange orgies at home in the manner of the Roman Empire. He was exiled by the Bolsheviks to Yekaterinburg, where he lived in the neighborhood with royal family. But soon he managed to escape - through Siberia to China, and from there to Paris, where he died in 1925.

But at one of the parties near Lvov, Sergei Dyagelev and Vatslav Nijinsky, the son of a general, the founder of the World of Art association, the organizer of Fyodor Chaliapin's tours around the world, a theater and artistic figure and a simple ballet dancer of Polish origin, met. The Russian politician became the first lover of Nijinsky, who came to Lvov's house at the age of 16 in 1906. The boy met Diaghilev only
3 years later.

Vaslav Nijinsky was infamous for his passion for exhibitionism. Not knowing the measures of his intrigues, Vatslav once thought of waving a member from the stage in front of the hall where Nicholas II was sitting, for which he was punished by a ban on performing at the Mariinsky Theater. That is why he leaves the expanses of Russia in 1911. Following him, his lover broke loose, who at that time was working on the creation of the troupe "Russian Ballets of Diaghilev" specifically for Nijinsky. However, the bitter experience did not teach the artist anything, and he continued to be naked, also being in Paris. After another scandal, the sculptor Auguste Rodin interceded for Vaclav and achieved the abolition of Nijinsky's punishment on his word of honor, for which he was rewarded with a night of love. However, Diaghilev was by no means pleased with this behavior of his lover, but he was completely infuriated by the fact that Nijinsky began to sleep with the Hungarian ballerina Romola Markus. On the
this was the end of their relationship.

Also, Mikhail Kuzmin, a poet, writer, composer, author of the infamous novel Wings, banned by Trotsky as bourgeois and decadent, also attended Lvov's "blue" parties. The main character of the book was a boy in love with an adult man. The mystery of Kuzmin's death in 1936 has not yet been revealed. But if it were not for the death of the writer, he would not have escaped arrest during the Stalinist repressions.

Mikhail Kuzmin became a friend and first lover of Lenin's People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Georgy Chicherin. They met at school, but while Kuzmin was not shy about his orientation, on the contrary, she oppressed Chicherin. A strongly believing mother sent the young boy to Berlin for an appointment with a psychic, but he failed to make him a heterosexual.

The main motto of Chicherin's policy is: "Live yourself and let others live!" Perhaps his career did not become long precisely because of not quite communist views and non-traditional orientation. But the talented young drug commissar never followed in the footsteps of his gay predecessors, making homophobic statements, who did it only to save their ass and divert bad suspicions from themselves.

Yaroslav Hasek, a former red commissar, became more famous thanks to his immortal soldier Schweik, and not revolutionary activity. There is not a single main protagonist in the book, not a single story is told by Schweik about his sexual adventures, all the intrigues take place with other characters. This is because Hasek was a homosexual, and Schweik largely copied from himself. Not like the bulk of the pederasts watching their beauty, the plump, drinking, noisy and cheerful Gashek rushed from one extreme to the other all his life, for which he was nicknamed "the young dragon" by his friends. He turned from a tramp into a politician, from a frequenter of gay dens into an exemplary family man. But, nature quickly took over, preventing Hasek from becoming an exemplary husband. It even drove him to a suicide attempt. The wife tried to understand her husband and left him, taking the child with her. Hasek and Yarmila Mayorova remained friends.

However, after the first unsuccessful marriage, the writer and revolutionary decided to try his luck again and married a Tatar woman, whom he brought to Prague from his homeland, the Tatar city of Bugulma. He lived with her for a few days and left. The Tatar was left alone in an unfamiliar country.

Ernst Röhm is the only person in the world who was with Hitler on you. Friend since youth and co-author" beer putsch"Hided in Bolivia while Hitler was imprisoned. At the invitation of the Fuhrer, he returned to Germany in 1930. Ernst Röhm was the founder of the SA assault squads, a fascist structure that had no equal until 1934
of the year.

Within 2 years, from 1931 to 1933, the number of people who were members of the SA increased from 100,000 to 800,000. This army had its own barracks and training bases. It was the stormtroopers who first began to destroy people who, in their opinion, belong to "unclean" races and are simply objectionable to the Nazis. Rem is a well-known pederast, and he never hid it from anyone. It so happened that he appointed the same people to senior positions in the SA, and not on purpose, but thanks to a coincidence. In SA, the cult of the male body - strong and beautiful, reigned, which led to the fact that the entire structure consisted of blue. Stormtroopers, who arrested Jews indiscriminately, never touched homosexuals. But when Hitler stopped trusting Remus, SS units were created to counterbalance the SA.

Himmler was appointed head of the SS. On June 30, 1934, the entire commanding elite of the SA gathered at the resort. On the first day, internal meetings were held, and on the second, Hitler was expected. But the day never came for them. That night is recorded in history as the Night of the Long Knives. Every single leader of the SA was destroyed by the SS units. They were all, without exception, lying in bed with their chauffeurs, adjutants and secretaries. The Nazis published in the newspapers photographs of the sexual orgies of stormtroopers and thus justified themselves before society for the brutal reprisal. Germany's strongest structure was destroyed with extraordinary ease, and its leader and organizer, Ernst Röhm, was shot on Hitler's orders.

Andy Warhol is the father of pop art. His "portraits of the dollar and Coca-Cola" are known throughout the world. He also invented phone sex and called it the only pure kind of sex. It is Warhol who is considered the spiritual father of AIDS.

Dozens of young guys who passed through Andy's studio every day allowed him to work at his own expense: he worked a little - sucked someone's dick, worked a little more - had a threesome, painted a new picture - passed a common syringe with heroin in a circle. The balding albino, almost blind, was extremely shy. It is impossible to understand how two such different person. Oddly enough, but precisely because of his timidity
Warhol slept with anyone indiscriminately, and injected himself and gave his lovers. Deep down, he dreamed of the purest thing in the world - phone sex.

According to Gay Stories, West Side Story is the favorite musical of all living buggers today. Its author Leonard Bernstein closes the remarkable work of Jiří Fanel. At the beginning of his career as a young man, the American composer had to sleep with many experienced conductors. With some - for pleasure, and with the rest - for the sake of a career. He could change such a course of life to the desired one only when he himself became famous. He changed several times a week the effeminate boys who always surrounded him. Five or six youths made Leonard's bed, splashed with him in the bath and changed his false teeth. However, at the same time, Bernstein was married and his wife was constantly asked how she was watching all this and whether she was disgusted that in her presence her husband was kissing 20-year-old boys. To which she answered frankly: "I'm waiting for him, as I've been waiting all my life ... What if one day he stops being a homosexual? Then I'll really be with him."

Perhaps the most characteristic, typical manifestation of the Petrine era in literature were the stories created at that time and distributed in lists along with the increasingly popular translated novels. They were, as it were, a continuation of those stories that arose in Russia in the 17th century, but at the same time they differed sharply from the old literature. New horizons, new perspectives and opportunities opened up before the Russian people. He was no longer closed by the narrow horizons of the Old Testament way of Muscovite Russia, he became a European.

In fact, translations and even adaptations of foreign secular novels have been popular in Russia since the 17th century. The 18th century preserves the stock of these novels, alien in origin, and greatly expands them. These are usually adventurous novels that tell of numerous and extraordinary adventures, often fantastic, of incredibly delightful young heroes, lovers and brave, wandering from country to country and finally crowning their adventures with marriage to their beloved. Such, for example, is “The story of the brave cavalier Evdon and beautiful princess Berfe”, the moral of which is the glorification of true love that overcomes all obstacles, or “The story of the brave Gishpan knight Ventian” (the so-called “Franzel-Ventian”, or “Franzel-Venetian”), or “The history of the Gishpan gentry Doltorn and the beautiful Princess Eleanor", or "The Story of Caleandra, Prince of Greece, and Neonelda, Princess of Trepison", apparently dating back to the German translation of the Italian novel by G. Marini (XVII century), and many others translated from German, French, Italian , polish languages. “History, in it he writes about the ruin of the city of Troy”, i.e. translation of a medieval chivalric novel on the Trojan War by Guido de Columna, even got into print in 1709, then was reprinted twice more, and was also distributed in lists.

On the basis of the assimilation of Western adventurous-knightly novels, their own Russian stories were also created, also mainly representing alterations, but already free, of popular translations; at the same time, they were, as it were, rebuilt on Russian soil, rebuilt internally, filled with their own, Russian content. In the center of them is always the image of a new hero, a young man of a Russian youth, before whom the reforms of Peter the Great opened the whole world, who rushed to conquer this world. He no longer wants to pray and be a slave. He wants to seize his personal happiness himself, he wants to make a career, achieve power and wealth. Peter's idea that it is not a "breed", but personal talents; willpower, perseverance, dexterity should give young people success in life, an idea that destroyed ossified feudal ideas turned out to be understandable to many of his young contemporaries. They saw how people without a family without a tribe quickly became generals, rich men, princes and counts, because they knew how to please the tsar, they knew how to learn what boyar sons sometimes learned with difficulty. And it was precisely among these young people, who yearned only for freedom in the use of their forces, that the image of the hero of the story of the Petrine era was created. This hero, a Russian nobleman, enterprising, courageous, aspires to the West, where there is more space for him, and where a person is more free from the fetters of the church and Moscow antiquity. This hero is the ideal of the new man; he is refined, well-bred, he knows how to dance and fight with swords, knows how to play the flute and compose gentle songs. Exciting dangers, adventures do not frighten him. On the contrary, after the stagnation of the life of Muscovite Russia, they seem to him a beautiful dream of a bright, active, strong-willed human activity. Therefore, the stories of the Petrine era, repeating the typical plots of Western adventurous literature, turned out to be close to the mind and heart of a Russian person brought up by the reform. Among the adventurous stories of this type, the best should be recognized - "History of the Russian sailor Vasily Koriotsky and the beautiful princess Heraclius of the Florensky land."

This "History" is built on a freely reworked plot of the "History of the Gishpan gentry Doltorn", which is very popular and known in many lists that are dissimilar to each other, i.e. discovering the creative attitude of Russian scribes-co-authors to its text. The Russian "History" tells about a certain noble youth Vasily Koriotsky, who lived in extreme poverty in "Russian Europe"; this is a very characteristic designation of the new Russia: the author wanted to emphasize to them that Russia is now a European country. Vasily decided to enter the service for the sake of money; what service did he choose? Of course, service in the Navy, the brainchild of Peter.

Under Peter, sea voyages became the dream of every young man brought up by the reform; the sea was a direct way to a wide and alluring world; the romance of distant travels seduced young men who were looking for ways to both advance and learn about life not in Moscow orders or in the backwoods of a village. Vasily became a sailor; he studied seafaring very well, “and for that science on the ships, the elder stayed and from all the senior sailors in great glory glorified." And here, in the author of the story, a man of the time of Peter the Great speaks, knowing that marine science is the best way to honor.

Finally, - again a feature of the era - Vasily is sent (of his own free will) to Holland "for the sciences of arithmetic and different languages". Vasily settled in Holland with a wealthy merchant, and he fell in love with him so much that he soon entrusted him with his trading affairs. Vasily earned a lot of money trading. And this again feature: respect for trade, which Peter promoted, craving for trade operations among the Russian nobility.

Vasily went to Russia to see his father; but a storm overtook him at sea. Vasily's ship was lost, and he himself ended up on a certain island; here he came to the robbers who lived on the island; his agility led him to become their chieftain, although he himself did not engage in robbery. One day he discovered a beautiful girl in the dwelling of the robbers, whom they held captive; it was the Florenskaya princess of Heraclius. Basil and Heraclius fell in love and fled together from the robber island. Then they had to experience many adventures, but at last they got married, and Vasily became King of Florensky. Thus, Vasily's diligence in the study of the sciences, his talents, his courage and the most faithful love for Heraclius were sooner or later rewarded, the poor nobleman became king, foreign kings and nobles bow before the brave Russian man.

Therefore, L.I. is right. Timofeev, saying: “Russian national consciousness, awakened and triumphant after the victory over the best Swedish army in Europe, after the world powers had to listen to the voice of Russia, also affected literary work, in creating the image of a victorious and successful hero-sailor” . Another feature of the story is also characteristic, which G.V. Plekhanov:

“Peter's reform not only taught progressive Russian people to respect the sciences and 'tools'. She opened before them new world previously unknown to them. The inhabitants of the Muscovite state have never been great homebodies: on the contrary, they willingly rushed to "new places", so willingly that they had to be tied to their place of residence. But although some service people and peasants who lived near the Lithuanian border sometimes sought refuge in the West, leaving for Lithuanian Rus, but in general they preferred to move to the East. Their mental gazes were also turned to the East... Since the time of the Petrine reform, things have changed. The eyes of advanced Russians turned to the West. Our acquaintance, Russian sailor Vasily Koriotskoy, was born in "Russian Europe". After his journey to Holland, England and France, he, "raising the sails", returns again to "Russian Europe". The beautiful queen of the Florensky land of Heraclius, telling him about her misadventures, reports how Russian merchants came to this land "from Europe by ships." Thus, the Russian land appears as if "Europia" par excellence.

Such a story as "The Story of Vasily Koriotsky" brought up in its reader the will, independence, self-confidence. In addition, she introduced the Russian people to the ancient tradition of Western European novels. At the same time, she was close to the reader, since in her he met many features that were well known to him in Russian. folk tale, and according to the old Russian story: for example, the beginning of the story, "robber" scenes, etc. And all this was set forth in a living language, moreover, the language of precisely that time, where the words and expressions of simple Russian speech were intertwined with ancient, Old Slavonic and, on the other hand, with newly introduced foreign ones. Here, for example, is an example of such variegation: “Last days in the morning, the captain of their team ran early from the sea and announced: Mr. Ataman, if you please, send a party of fellows to the sea, merchant galleys with goods are going along the sea. - Hearing that, the ataman shouted: "In front!". Here is the Old Slavonic turnover "minusshudni", i.e. at the end of the day (dative independent), and such Russian words as “well done”, and the old word “ponezhe” (because), which entered the clerical language, and foreign words characteristic of the military and state building of Peter’s time: “team”, “command”, “party” (detachment), “front”.

There were other stories in the time of Peter the Great, the main content of which was not the adventures of the heroes, but their feelings, subtle and deep experiences, in particular the experiences of love. They propagated the ideal of a perfect secular gentleman, the ideal of fidelity, the ideal of a serious feeling. This ideal was the conclusion from the lessons that were taught to the Russian people by “Butts of how different compliments are written”, and translated plays of the Petrine repertoire, and assemblies. Tales of this type, which told about the love of a gentleman of a new type, had great importance for Russian literature: they gave the first samples psychological analysis, instilled interest in the personality of a person, attention to it. Such, for example, is the first part of The Story of Alexander, the Russian Nobleman. In general, this "History" is a lengthy work, rather mechanically composed of several separate short stories of Western origin, united only by the name of the main character (and partly the second character, also a Russian nobleman, Vladimir), and the characterization of the hero varies from short story to short story. Here is a gallant-psychological story, and erotic anecdotes, and an adventurous chivalrous novel. The most interesting in this association is the first part, clearly separated from the rest of the short stories. It tells how a Russian nobleman, a very handsome and educated young man, went abroad; after visiting Paris, he settled in the city of Lille in France. He fell in love with a good girl here, the pastor's daughter Eleanor, and she fell in love with him. The mutual feelings of young people, their modest declarations of love, Alexander's graceful courtship of his beloved girl are described in detail in the story. They swore eternal loyalty to each other. But Alexander was seen by a noble and rich person, the daughter of General Hedwig Dorothea, and fell in love with him. She impudently sought the love of Alexander, and she managed to ensure that he cheated on Eleanor. Upon learning of this, Eleanor fell ill with grief. Alexander returned to her, cursing Hedwig Dorothea, but it was too late. Eleanor died forgiving Alexander.

As you can see, there are no rare adventures in this short story; it talks about simple, ordinary things, about ordinary people, the interest of the novel is only in psychological and domestic conflicts; its moral pathos is in justifying the honest love of the modest Eleanor (although not married to Alexander), and in condemning the frivolous passion of a noble person who, in contrast to Eleanor, herself achieves the love of the hero. The author of the story dwells on the image of the courtship of the irresistible Russian nobleman for Eleanor, on tender scenes, on the description of sighs, love languor, from which the hero is ready to die. He uses the whole apparatus of the gallant lyrics of the West, enthusiastically accepted and assimilated by the newfangled Russian "cavaliers" to express love feelings, and his story, no doubt, served as a model of gallant declarations of love, and indeed the whole manner of the author of the story, prone to salon sophistication, could not help but seduce Russian gentlemen who studied "polites". The words of P.N. are well applicable to the story about Alexander. Sakulina related to this material: “The Old Slavonic element of book speech is apparently dying out under the pressure of new elements of colloquial and business language» . V.N. Peretz writes about Alexander, the hero of the story, that when he is attacked by "sudden despondency", he plays the flute, and with this game attracts the attention of the heroine, the pastor's daughter Eleanor. Having fallen in love with her and doubting the success of the love adventure, he stays "all night in the great desporate." In a letter to Eleanor, he speaks of a "great sorrow," a "great flame" in his womb, which he can no longer endure; he asks Eleanor: “be the doctor of my illness; for it cannot be embraced by any dokhtur. And you can’t speed it up with help, I’m afraid, but don’t wake me a murderer ”; he promises that his fidelity "will not fail to the grave."

The lyrical nature of the short story leads to the appearance of abundant poetic inserts in it; in the scene when Eleanor dies, the presentation passes, as it were, into a poetic drama. All the features of the language and, in particular, the vocabulary of the time of Peter the Great, we can observe in the "History of Alexander". V.N. Peretz also notes Slavicisms in it: hail, in the rutsa, imashi, you want, rightly existing, voice, ochima, eliko, zelo, not bad, not, both, I am in illness, I will find, ramo, etc., and foreign words : madel (model), fartuna, foundation, recommend, person, company, - and mythological Mars and Saturn.

In addition to these two stories of the time of Peter the Great, the best of those that have come down to us, we should mention the everyday and psychological short story “The Story of the Russian Merchant John and the Beautiful Maiden Eleanor”. She is interesting already because her hero is not a nobleman, but a young merchant, and, moreover, the same gallant and educated gentleman as the nobles Vasily or Alexander. It is impossible not to see in this a reflection of the upsurge that gripped the top merchants under Peter. The Russian merchant's son Ioann travels on his father's orders to Paris "to study foreign sciences" - "to the noble merchant Anis Maltik"; he began an affair with Maltik's daughter Eleanor; then Eleanor's sister Anna-Maria, her rival (this situation is somewhat similar to the situation in the story about Alexander), informed her parents about everything. Maltik beat John and kicked him out, and forced Eleanor to marry a Frenchman, "a non-commissioned officer of the Life Guards." John returned to Russia, but all his life he could not forget Eleanor.

Very interesting changes took place in the first decades of the 18th century with the text of some stories, long known to the Russian reader, but now adapted by scribes to new tastes. So, for example, the ancient story about Akira the Wise was told in early XVIII century in a new way - not in relation to the plot, which has remained unchanged, but in relation to household accessories: a young man is taught "the science of any courtesy in deeds and in other courtesy"; on the occasion of the hero's victory, a celebration is held with "cannon firing", senators, couriers, a cabinet, etc. appear. For example, the legend about Pope Gregory and the story about Vasily Zlatovlas were also reworked.

The stories of Peter's time, as well as in the lyrics, reflected that cultural and moral growth the best people Russia, which was the result of the transformation of the country. G.V. Plekhanov writes about the time of Peter the Great: “Advanced Russians learned how to behave decently in society and say “compliments” to the ladies. Many of them, probably, mastered this art more willingly than the "navigational" science. Literature reflected the ongoing change in social habits. Heroes of some Russian stories of the first half of XVIII centuries they speak a language that, while largely preserving the old Moscow dullness, becomes supposedly refined and sometimes becomes pompous and sugary. When one of these gentlemen falls in love, it means that he was "stung by Cupid's arrow." Having fallen in love, they very soon come to "amazement", i.e. go crazy.

If K. Zotov reported to Peter that our midshipmen in Tula fought among themselves and cursed with the most shameful abuse, as a result of which their swords were taken away from them, then the characters in the stories show themselves to be more well-mannered. Angry at the cavalier Alexander, the cavalier Tignanor tells him not without chivalry: "Come, you beast, with me to a duel." And at every convenient and even inconvenient occasion, these well-bred "cavaliers" express their tender feelings by singing.

However, artistic merit literary works Peter's time were still not very high. A country occupied with the war and the reorganization of its entire way of life, the construction of factories, cities, ships, did not yet have the strength to create a new full-fledged art. But some time passed, and this art appeared.

The great Lomonosov was a full-fledged exponent of the progressive significance of Peter's time; his predecessors - each in a different way - were both Kantemir and Trediakovsky.

Peter's time left its mark in the poetic memory of the people. The attitude of the people to the activities of Peter was not unified. Even during Peter's lifetime, the people, painfully burdened, perishing both in the war and at construction sites, the people from whom three skins were torn, expressed their indignation at the tops who oppressed them in rumors, legends about the king. This indignation took shape in the religious current of the Old Believers, who often used it in a reactionary plan. It gave rise to legends about Peter as the Antichrist, or about the fact that not the real Peter sits on the Russian throne, but an impostor, with whom the Germans replaced the Orthodox sovereign. From the same environment came the popular print "How the mice buried the cat", which appeared after the death of Peter; this picture shows the deceased cat Alabrys (Peter), who during his lifetime “swallowed a whole mouse”; “Chukhonka widow Malanya” in the picture is Catherine 1.

However, even before the death of Peter, works of folk literature began to take shape, positively evaluating his image, and then for a long time preserved in the memory of the people and gave rise to a whole group of historical songs and legends about Peter.

“The nationwide activity of Peter, his military campaigns, individual episodes from the great Northern war(the capture of Shlisselburg, the siege of Vyborg, Riga, Revel, etc., especially the battle of Poltava) arouse the sympathy and approval of the masses, who understood the great importance of all this for strengthening the power of the Russian state. No wonder the song "The Birth of Peter I", created, of course, already in the years of Peter's success and glory, sings of him as "the first emperor on earth." Great, genuine sincerity emanates from the songs-lamentations, composed, apparently, among the soldiers on the death of Peter.

... The people, as can be seen from the historical songs, and especially from the numerous legends and anecdotes about Peter, liked Peter's simplicity, his accessibility in dealing with working people, they also liked the fact that the king himself did not shy away from physical work, and finally, his tall and strong figure.

The links between Russian literature of the time of Peter the Great and the literature of the 17th century are deep and varied. The ecclesiastical moralizing tradition continued to play a significant role. Even advanced journalism used the forms of church sermons (Feofan Prokopovich) and school religious drama. Tales about new people arose on the basis of translated stories of the last century, and poetry - on the basis of the tradition of Simeon of Polotsk. And yet it was precisely at the beginning of the 18th century that a great turning point occurred in the life of Russian literature. She turned more resolutely than ever to face the West. She put forward openly and persistently a secular, earthly human ideal and renounced the authority of the church and the Old Testament worldview. She laid a new foundation for the culture of a new stage, began a tradition that was directly continued by Lomonosov and eventually led to Pushkin.

It is known for certain that Tsar Peter I was distinguished not only by his progressive views on statehood, but also by his indefatigable love of women. According to contemporaries, the autocrat tried not to miss a single pretty female person and, allegedly, kept a special “bed register”, where he entered the names of those who should soon be in his bed and those who had already been there. Among others on this list was the noblewoman Maria Hamilton. The life story of this young woman keeps many secrets, many of which will most likely never be revealed.

Young lady-in-waiting
The exact date of birth of Maria Hamilton is unknown, but we know that young Maria appeared at the court of Peter I in 1709. Young age meant at that time no more than 16 years of age. A beautiful girl of good origin was accepted into her staff by the wife of Peter the Great, Ekaterina Alekseevna, and made her her maid of honor.
The ancestors of Maria Danilovna Hamilton came from a side branch of a large old Scottish noble family. Part of the Hamiltons from a large clan, fleeing the endless wars between England and Scotland and the brutal political repression that followed them, left the islands and moved to distant, cold and mysterious Russia. At that time, Ivan Vasilyevich IV, nicknamed the Terrible, was sitting on the throne in Moscow. He loved and favored many foreigners, so he received the Hamiltons who lost their homeland affectionately and gave them shelter. After a long time, the Scottish Hamiltons became Russified, intermarried with many Russian noble families, and their descendants occupied various positions in the state civil service, in the army and at court.

In the bed of the monarch
Once at the court, Maria Hamilton did everything to make Peter the Great notice her. And so it happened. Soon the young maid of honor was in the bed of the monarch.
However, Peter did not burn for long with passion for another beloved. The king was too fickle to be faithful even to the first beauty of the court. Having achieved his goal, Peter quickly lost interest in the young girl and stopped noticing her. However, Maria did not want to put up with the role of a rejected mistress. She tried as often as possible to catch the eyes of the king. In order to increase the likelihood of meetings, Hamilton agreed with the imperial batman Ivan Orlov.

Romance with a batman

It should be noted that at that time the batmen at the court were very influential people. They were recruited from the humble, but beautiful and prominent nobles. They corrected a variety of duties: they had to serve at court, played the role of executioners, flogged senators and noble nobles with sticks, and also scouted about the actions of governors-general and military commanders.
So, orderlies at the court at that time had great power and it was not humiliating for a noble lady to get along with such a person, especially if he was young, handsome and was a passionate lover.
Alas, in this case the end was tragic...

Jewel theft

Hamilton and Orlov met in secret. Their relationship continued for several years. In 1716 the tsar and his wife went to Europe. Favorite maid of honor of the queen and batman
Orlov went abroad in the royal retinue. The journey was long, and Peter often ordered to stop for a day so that the pregnant Ekaterina Alekseevna could rest. The courtiers wasted no time. They had fun, drinking and flirting with local girls. Ivan Orlov did not stand aside either.
Every day he became more indifferent to Mary, often insulted her and even beat her. She, in order to somehow appease her lover, began to steal the queen's jewelry, selling them and buying Orlov expensive gifts.
Then Maria became pregnant. According to the testimony of the maid, she managed to interrupt two previous pregnancies, the first in 1715, with medicines that she took from court doctors, saying that she needed funds "for constipation." Maria hid her belly, and having given birth to a baby, on November 15, 1717, she secretly drowned him. With the help of the maid Katerina Terpovskaya, she covered up the traces of the crime. But quite unexpectedly, the whole thing came out.

Under suspicion

In 1717, important papers disappeared from the sovereign's office. The tsar's batman Ivan Orlov, who was on duty on that ill-fated day, was suspected of involvement in this incident. In political investigation, Peter I was very quick at hand and incredibly cruel. The batman was immediately dragged for interrogation without giving him time to come to his senses. Frightened to death, Orlov threw himself at the feet of the autocrat and tearfully repented of his sins. He also confessed to secret cohabitation with His Majesty's former favorite, maid of honor Mary Hamilton.
The king immediately recalled that shortly before the incident with the papers, when cleaning one of the palace latrines in the cesspool, they found the corpse of a baby wrapped in a palace napkin. Raising his eyebrows sternly, he commanded:
- Take the lady-in-waiting Hamilton immediately!

First prisoners

Maria and Orlov were transported from Moscow to St. Petersburg and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. They became almost the first prisoners of the newly built prison. Questioning and torture ensued. On suspicion of killing a baby and stealing jewelry from the Empress, Maria was tortured twice.
Soon a maid was summoned for interrogation, from whom the investigation learned about the murdered baby: “First, Maria came to her ward, where she lived and pretended to be sick, and first lay down on the bed, and then soon ordered me to lock the doors and began to suffer from homeland . Soon getting out of bed, she sat down on the ship and, sitting, lowered the baby into the ship. And then I stood near her and heard that the ship knocked and the baby screamed ... Then, standing up and turning to the ship, Mary of the baby in the same ship with her hands, putting her finger in that baby’s mouth, began to crush and crushed.
Then Hamilton called the husband of her maid, the groom Vasily Semyonov, and gave him the corpse to throw away.
The Tsar himself began interrogating his former mistress. During the interrogations, Maria was steadfast and shielded Ivan Orlov in every possible way. The girl confessed to both theft and murder, but she did not testify against Orlov, even under torture claimed that he knew nothing about either the theft or the murder of a child ...

At the end of the interrogation, Peter the Great delivered his verdict: “The Great Sovereign, the Tsar and Grand Duke Pyotr Alekseevich of all great and small and white Russia, the autocrat, being in the office of the Secret Investigative Affairs, listening to the cases and extracts described above, indicating by his personal decree of the great sovereign: the girl Marya Hamilton, that she and Ivan Orlov lived fornication and was belly three times from him and she poisoned two children with medicines from herself, and strangled and threw the third one away, for such murder, she also stole diamond things and gold (chervonets) from the Empress Empress Ekaterina Alekseevna, in which she confessed from two searches, to be executed by death. But Ivan Orlov should be released, because he knew that the girl was a belly from him and repaired the above-described murder for her children, and how diamond things and gold stole did not know - what she, the girl, showed on the wanted list.

Maria Hamilton was beheaded on Trinity Square. The verdict was quite humane, since according to the Code of 1649, “a child-killer was supposed to be buried alive in the ground on the boobs, with his hands together and stomp his feet to death.” Maria went to the chopping block in a white dress decorated with black ribbons. According to some indications, during the execution in Russia, for the first time, a sword was used instead of an ax. Peter fulfilled his promise to the girl that the executioner would not touch her. After the execution, the king raised the severed head and kissed it. Then, as if nothing had happened, he explained to those present the anatomical structure of this part of the human body. Then he kissed her again, threw her on the ground and drove away.

Orlov, found not guilty, was released long before the execution of Maria Hamilton. Then he was granted the lieutenant of the guard. Well, no one has ever unraveled the mystery of the “Hamilton girl”. Why did this woman act so nobly in shielding the man who had betrayed her? Why did Peter, having kept his former favorite for six months in the dungeon of the Peter and Paul Fortress, never canceled his cruel sentence?
According to some indications, Peter's intransigence was due to the fact that the Hamilton babies could just as well have been conceived by him. It was rumored that the child strangled by Mary was from Peter, and he, knowing this secret, could not forgive his mistress for the murder of his son.

alcoholized head

By the way, the story of Hamilton did not end with the execution. At the end of the 18th century, Princess Ekaterina Dashkova, checking accounts Russian Academy Sciences, stumbled upon an unusually large consumption of alcohol, and suspected the custodian of alcohol abuse. But the superintendent Yakov Bryukhanov, called to the authorities, turned out to be a wizened old man who said that alcohol was not used by the Academy employees, but for scientific purposes - to change the solution in large glass vessels with two severed human heads, male and female, stored in the basement for about half a century. He also said that “he heard from one of his predecessors that an extraordinary beauty lived under Emperor Peter I, whom the king saw and immediately ordered to be beheaded. The head was placed in alcohol in the cabinet of curiosities, so that everyone and at all times could see what beauties would be born in Russia. And the man, according to the caretaker, was allegedly a kind of gentleman who was trying to save Tsarevich Alexei. Dashkova became interested in history, picked up the documents and found out that the alcoholized heads belonged to Maria Hamilton and Willim Mons (brother of Anna Mons, who was executed by Peter the Great because he was in favor with Catherine I). Empress Catherine II, a friend of Dashkova, also examined the heads, after which she ordered them to be buried in the same basement.