ALEXIS (1704)

Heir to the throne of Russia, who was accused of trying to overthrow his father, Peter I the Great.


After his mother, Eudoxia, was forced to enter a convent (1698), Alexis was brought up by his aunts and, after 1702, was educated by the tutor Baron Heinrich von Huyssen. Alexis dutifully obeyed his father by participating in the siege of Narva (1704), directing the fortification of Moscow (1707) during the Great Northern War, studying at Dresden in Saxony (1709), and marrying Princess Sophia Charlotte of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1711).


He did not develop, however, an enthusiasm for Peter´s wars and reforms and became increasingly hostile toward his father.


After Peter´s second wife, Catherine, provided the Tsar with another male heir (Nov. 8, 1715), Alexis was offered the choice of either renouncing his right of succession or becoming a monk. He was given a year in which to decide his future.


When Peter later ordered Alexis to join him and the Russian Army in Denmark (August 1716), Alexis, who not only was in poor health but also had become a heavy drinker, fled to Vienna, where the Holy Roman emperor Charles VI gave him protection. Peter, fearing that his foreign or domestic opponents might take advantage of his son´s flight and support Alexis as an alternative ruler, sent envoys to brin Alexis home.


Promising him a full pardon, the envoys persuaded Alexis to return to Moscow (Feb. 11 1718). Alexis soon discovered, however, that his father´s forgiveness was contingent upon his renunciation of his right to the throne and his denunciation of those who had helped him escape.


Although Alexis accepted these terms, Peter, using extraordinarily cruel methods, conducted an investigation of Alexi´s supporters, discovered the existence of a potential movement of reaction for which Alexis might become a rallying point, and concluded that his son was involved in a treasonous conspiracy. Alexis was then forced to confess before the Senate, and a special court tried and condemned him to death. Before his execution, however, he died from shock and the effects of torture in the Peter-Paul Fortress.