Prince Ivan Dolgoruky: historical facts

On a cloudy autumn morning, November 19, 1739, a huge crowd gathered in the central square of Novgorod. She was attracted to the upcoming spectacle-no one other than the former favorite of Tsar Peter II, the once-powerful Prince Ivan Dolgoruky, had to rise to the scaffold. During the reign of Anna Ioannovna Russian people are accustomed to bloody executions, but this was a special case - the disgraced courtier was expecting quartering.

The descendants of the vindictive prince

Prince Ivan Alexeyevich Dolgoruky came from an old noble family, which was one of the numerous branches of the princes of the Obolensky. His name, he and his relatives owe their common ancestor ─ Prince Ivan Andreevich Obolensky, who received in the XV century for his vindictiveness a very expressive nickname Dolgoruky.

Representatives of this family are often mentioned both in historical documents and in legends of past centuries. In particular, the popular rumor has preserved a documentary unconfirmed story about one of the many wives of Ivan the Terrible, Maria Dolgorukaya.

The reality of this marriage is highly questionable, because by that time the loving Tsar had already been married four times before completely exhausted and even exceeded the limit granted by the Church Charter.

Perhaps, in this case, it is only about the next illegitimate cohabitation, which fully corresponded to the mores of Ivan the Terrible. Maria Dolgorukaya, according to researchers, is generally more of a fictional character than real.

Youth, held in Warsaw

Ivan Dolgoruky - the eldest son of Prince Alexei Grigorievich Dolgoruky - was born in 1708 in Warsaw and spent his childhood with his grandfather on the paternal line of Grigory Fedorovich. His upbringing was entrusted to the well-known writer and educator of German origin Henry Fick.

However, despite all the efforts to instill a stiffness and stoicness worthy of his birth, the boy could not succeed. Ivan was more fond of the carefree and very loose mores that reigned at the court of the Polish King Augustus II, where he constantly rotated. In 1723, Ivan was first in Russia. Below is his portrait.

Acquaintance with the future king

If you believe the information of contemporaries about the nature of Prince Ivan Dolgoruky, then from the crowd of courtiers, in those years he singled out unusually cordial kindness and the ability to dispose of people. This last quality was most clearly manifested in his relations with the grandson of Peter the Great by the Grand Duke Peter Alekseevich, who later ascended to the Russian throne under the name of Peter II. His portrait is presented below.

Despite the difference in age ─ Ivan Dolgoruky was seven years older than the Grand Duke, - between them from the first days of acquaintance, a close friendship began. Very soon they became an inseparable couple in all drinking, drinking and love affairs.

The beginning of a brilliant career

In 1725, after the death of Peter I and the accession of his wife Catherine I, Prince Dolgoruky received the rank of a gof-junker with his titled friend. But the true takeoff of his career followed two years later, when Grand Duke Peter Alekseyevich took over the Russian throne freed after the death of Catherine I and was crowned as the sovereign of Peter II.

Even during the reign of Catherine I, the former favorite of Peter the Great, AD Menshikov, was intensely disturbed by the influence of Prince Ivan Dolgoruky at court, who, by that time, had betrothal his daughter Maria to the young emperor. However, his attempts to remove an opponent from the capital were not crowned with success.

Moreover, whirling Peter in the incessant chorus of amusements, often arranged in the company of his beautiful aunt Elizabeth Petrovna (the future empress) and pretty maids of honor, Prince Ivan forced his friend to forget about the bride imposed on him by Menshikov. At the same time, he very cleverly matched his own sister Catherine.

The young darling of fate

In 1728, AD Menshikov, becoming a victim of court intrigues, fell into disfavor and with the whole family was exiled first to Rannenburg, and then further into the small Siberian town of Beryozovo, where he soon died. Since that time, his place at the throne was firmly occupied by members of the Dolgoruky family, who enjoyed unlimited influence on the emperor due to his location to Ivan, as well as the expected wedding in the future.

In the same year the whole courtyard, leaving the new capital, moved to Moscow, and along with it, the Dolgorukiye moved there. The young prince Ivan, becoming the favorite of the emperor, receives all conceivable and unthinkable favors. In his incomplete twenty years, he became a general from the infantry, the chief chamberlain of the imperial court, the major of the Life Guards of the Preobrazhensky regiment, and also the knight of the two highest state orders.

The new character traits of the prince

How the character of Ivan Dolgoruky changed by this time can be judged on the basis of the memoirs of the Spanish resident at the court of Peter II of the Duke de Liria. In particular, he writes that the prince's main features at that time were arrogance and arrogance, which, with complete lack of education, intelligence and insight, made communication with him in most cases extremely unpleasant.

However, the duke notices that despite this, there are often signs of kindness in him. As the main inclinations of the prince, he calls love for wine and women. It should be noted that the diplomat expresses not only his personal opinion, but also informs known to him the information of his contemporaries about the character of Prince Ivan Dolgoruky.

While his father, Aleksei G. was busy with the hassle and intrigues associated with the upcoming betrothal of the daughter of Catherine with a young emperor, Ivan indulged in rampant binges. He developed so widely that the description of the disgraces he devised found it necessary to present in his notes "On the damage of morals in Russia" the famous historian and publicist of the Elizabethan times Prince Scherbatov.

Marriage Chores

Nevertheless, the thought of the necessity to settle down finally came to his hungover head. He decided to start a new life with his marriage and made a proposal to someone else, but to Queen Elizabeth Petrovna herself, the daughter of Emperor Peter the Great, who died three years ago (her portrait is presented below). The young beauty managed to give her love to many lucky people who managed to reach her heart by that time, but she did not intend to enter into an unequal marriage (this was how her union with a person who did not belong to any reigning house could be regarded).

Having received a polite but very categorical refusal and remembering the old truth that a titmouse in a cage is much better than a crane in the sky, Prince Ivan Dolgoruky wooed to the fifteen-year-old daughter of the recently deceased Field Marshal Count BP Sheremetyev ─ Natalia Borisovna.

Since this marriage suited both his relatives and relatives of the bride, the news about the upcoming wedding was met with universal jubilation. Most of all Natasha herself was happy, who had time to fall in love with her Vanya for a cheerful disposition, a kind heart, and for the fact that everyone called him "the second person in the state".

The Beat of Destiny

Peter the Great and Ivan Dolgoruky, as true friends, went side by side even in the arrangement of their personal life. At the end of October 1729 the young tsar became engaged to the princess Ekaterina Alekseevna Dolgoruky, and two months later his favorite became the official bride of Natalia Sheremetyeva. However, soon followed by a tragedy, crossed out all their plans and fatally reflected on the history of Russia next decade.

In early January 1930, a few days before the wedding, the young sir fell seriously ill. According to one information, he caught smallpox, often visited in those years, Moscow, on the other ─ caught a cold during the hunt. Anyway, but his condition was rapidly deteriorating. The court physicians were forced to state that there is no hope of recovery, and the account of the remaining life goes on for hours.

last hope

Needless to say, what the princes of Dolgoruky and Ivan themselves experienced in those days, because with the death of Peter II, who did not manage to marry with his sister Catherine, the world of wealth, honor and prosperity that they had become accustomed to inevitably collapsed. The sick emperor was still trying to cling to life, and Dolgoruky was already catching the gloating glances of envious people.

Wanting to save the situation, Prince Alexei Grigoryevich (Ivan's father) made a will on behalf of the Emperor, according to which he allegedly declared his fiancée Ekaterina Dolgorukaya the successor of the throne. The calculation was that the son would slip this lime for signature to the dying and already losing mind of the sovereign, after which his daughter would become the empress with all the blessings for their family.

The collapse of all plans

However, the calculation was not justified. To get the true signature of Peter II, who died on January 19, 1730, failed, and his former favorite Ivan Dolgoruky, who was extremely clever in copying the hand of his master, signed his will. However, this trick was so much sewn with white thread that nobody could be misleading. Literally the next day, the Council of State was elected, who elected to the kingdom the Courlandese Duchess Anna Ioannovna, who was the daughter of her brother and co-ruler of Peter I, Ivan V.

With the accession of Anna Ioannovna (her portrait is presented above), the persecution of the Dolgoruky family broke out. Many of its representatives were sent by voivods to distant provincial places, and the head of the family with the children was exiled to the village. Previously, all of them were subjected to interrogations, regarding the will, the authenticity of which no one believed, but at that time the troubles were avoided.

Embarrassed wedding

The old acquaintances, who had recently crept before them, were now shying away from the disgraced family, as from the plagued. The only person who remained faithful was the bride of Ivan Natalia Sheremetyev, who did not want to leave her loved one in a difficult moment and was looking forward to the wedding with impatience. To her great joy, it took place in early April of the same year in Gorenki, the Dolgoruky estate near Moscow, which the late Tsar Peter II loved to visit.

But this happiness turned out to be short-lived. Three days after the wedding, a messenger from St. Petersburg arrived with a notice that the whole Dolgorukov family refers to the eternal settlement in Beryozov ─ the very backwoods in which, shortly before this, their sworn enemy, AD Menshikov, had finished his days.

As a result, Ivan Dolgoruky and Natalia Sheremetyev spent their honeymoon in jolting wagons on the roads of Siberia. Tsar's bride Ekaterina Alekseevna also went there, and carried the fruit of the hasty and premature passion of her fiancé under her heart.

Life in the prison

Prince Ivan Dolgoruky, a favorite of Peter II, turned out to be an exile, fully experienced the hardships that fall to the lot of those who, by the will of fate, were at odds with the authorities. Prince Princes, to which Ivan had become accustomed from childhood, had to be replaced by dark and stuffy cages of the Berezovsky prison, which he was strictly forbidden to get out of.

However, Ivan Dolgoruky, who was sociable by nature, soon got friends among the officers of the local garrison, and not only left his prison, but even began to drunk, as at the happy time of his life. He was brave with someone horrible and in the drunken he was extremely incoherent in language. This brought him to misfortune.

The denunciation and the beginning of the inquiry

Once, in a passion, he dared to call the Empress Anna Ioannovna to be the abusive words with witnesses. And, besides, boasted that he forged the signature of the late emperor in the will. By the morning Ivan completely forgot everything, but there was a man who remembered his words well and sent a denunciation to Petersburg (something, but the informers in Russia-mother always sufficed).

History has kept the name of this scoundrel. He was the scribe Tobol customs Tishin. No matter how friends the officers tried to ward off Ivan's misfortune, the case was given a move. An authorized person arrived from the capital who conducted an inquiry on the spot. Soon the prince, his two brothers, and with them many more people suspected of involvement in sedition, were sent from Berezov to Tobolsk and put in jail, where they were immediately interrogated.

Execution

Ivan Dolgoruky under the torture admitted his guilt and, in addition, stipulated many relatives involved, in his words, in the preparation of a false testament. In January 1739, he and all who passed with him on the case were taken to Shlisselburg, where the interrogations continued.

The fate of the unfortunate prisoners was decided by the "General Assembly" consisting of high dignitaries and convoked for sentencing political criminals. The public men, having familiarized themselves with the case materials, made decisions on each of the accused. They were all sentenced to death. The main culprit, Prince Ivan Alekseevich Dolgoruky, was quartered in 1739 on the central square of Novgorod, where he was taken along with the rest of the convicts.