Peter's Soldiers 99During the next two years troops of both formations, and others besides,
were committed to battle against the Turks at Azov. The strategic city finally
fell in July 1696. The 13 strertsy regiments were given the most dangerous
assignments in the siege and sustained heavy losses. Several hundred men were
killed in an explosion for which their comrades blamed Lefort, one of the three
commanders; he also failed to pay them a bonus they had been promised and,
after the fortress had been captured, kept half of them on to do arduous con-
struction work. In June 1697 they set out on the return journey to Moscow but
while_ en route were suddenly sent to join a force assembling on the western
border, where famine was rife and accommodation desperately short. The men
were aggrieved that they had not been permitted to see their families, as was
the normal procedure after a campaign.^7
In March 1698 some 175 strertsy from four regiments absconded and came
to the capital in a body to submit a complaint. In particular they demanded
prompt payment of their grain allowance, which had been withheld. When
some concessions were made, they tried to exploit the situation-much as in
1682, although the numbers involved were now much smaller. Peter's absence
abroad, on his 'Grand Embassy' to western Europe, gave rise to fanciful
rumours. It was thought that he might 'have been killed, and in the popular
mind this aroused hopes for the succession of another ruler who would show
more respect for tradition-and might even bring about a social utopia such as
many commoners secretly yearned for. Sofia, confined in a Moscow convent,
was an obvious choice. There is no reliable evidence that, either now or later,
she gave any encouragement to the dissident troops;^8 but the belief that she
might back them fortified the men's resolve. The petitioners, ejected from
Moscow by Semenovsky guardsmen, were allowed to return to their units,
where they had the bpportunity to spread their views before they were
arrested. Fifty of them were promptly freed by their comrades and, as in 1682,
this act of defiance inevitably led to others. Having deposed their commanders
the mutineers, some 2,200 strong, decided to march on the capital. Most of
them seem to have had service grievances uppermost in mind, but political
aspirations were articulated more emphatically than in the earlier out-
break-which is not to say that their thinking had become any more
sophisticated.
The government reacted with despatch. General A. S. Shein, who was in
charge of military affairs in Peter's absence, put together a force of some(^7) Ustryalov, /storiya, iii. 152-7, 161; Buganov, Mosk. vosstaniya, pp. 363-6; Gordon,
Tagebuch, ii. 593, 598. The commander on the western border, M. G. Romodanovsky, was a
kinsman of their former chief opponent at Kozhukhovo who, as Peter's security adviser, was to
become their executioner.
8 Statements extracted by torture cannot of course be taken at face value, as has lightly been
done by pro-Petrine historians: for example, Ustryalov, /storiya, iii. 157-8. Had the evidence been
conclusive, the tsar would not have hesitated to execute Sofia instead of merely obliging her to
take the veil. Buganov plausibly suggests that the alleged correspondence between her and the
rebels may either have never existed or else have been forged by the mutineers (p. 375).