At first, resting in bed, Peter seemed to rally. He continued to work, summoning Osterman and other ministers to his bedsided, where they remained in discussions an entire night. On January 22, he spoke to the Duke of Holstein and promised to accompany him to Riga as soon as he was well. The following day, he suffered a relapse and, calling a priest, received the Last Rites. Tolstoy, Apraxin and Golovkin were admitted to his bedside, and in their presence Peter ordered the pardoning and release of all state prisoners except murderers, and granted an amnesty to young noblemen being punished for not presenting themselves for service. He also commanded Apraxin, who was weeping, and the other ministers to protect all foreigners in St. Petersburg in case he should die. Finally, still typically attentive to detail, he signed decrees regulating fishing and the sale of glue.
By evening on the 26th, the Emperor seemed a little stronger and the doctors began to talk of letting him get up and walk about the room. Encouraged, Peter sat up and ate a little oatmeal gruel. Immediately, he was striken with such violent convulsions that those in the room thought the end had come. The ministers, the members of the Senate, the senior officers of the Guard and other officials were hastily summoned to the palace to begin a vigil. Soon, the surges of pain through Peter's body became so great that Osterman begged him to think only of himself and forget all matters of business. In agony, crying out loudly from the intensity of the pain, Peter repeatedly expressed contrition for his sins. Twice more, he received the Last Rites and begged for absolution. On the 27th, the priest was Feofan Prokopovich, in whose presence Peter said fervently, "Lord, I believe. I hope." Soon after, he said, as if speaking to himself, "I hope God will forgive me my many sins because of the good I have tried to do for my people."
Through his ordeal, Catherine never left her husband's bedside, day or night. At one point, telling him that it would help him make his peace with God, she begged Peter to forgive Menshikov, still in disgrace. Peter consented, and the Prince entered the room to be pardoned for the last time by his dying master. At two o'clock on the afternoon of the 27th, perhaps thinking of the succession, the Emperor asked for a writing tablet. One was given to him, and he wrote, "Give all to . . ." Then the pen dropped from his hand. Unable to continue, meaning to dictate, he sent for his daughter Anne, but before the Princess arrived, he had become delirious.
He never recovered consciousness, but sank into a coma, moving only to groan. Catherine knelt beside him hour after hour, praying incessantiy that he might be released from his torment by death. At last, at six o'clock in the moming of January 28, 1725, just as she was pleading, "O Lord, I pray Thee, open Thy paradise to receive unto Thyself this great soul," Peter the Great, in the fifty-third year of his life and the forty-third year of his reign, entered eternity.
EPILOGUE
The cause of Peter's death has never been fully described in medical terms. Professor Hermann Boerhaave, the eminent physician in Leyden, received the urgent communication of the Emperor's symptoms sent by Horn and Blumentrdst, but before he could write out his prescripion, a second courier arrived with the news that the patient was dead. Boerhaave was stunned. "My God! Is it possible?" he exclaimed. "What a pity that so great a man should have died when a pennyworth of medicine might have saved his life!" Later, talking to other court physicians, Boerhaave expressed his belief that if the disease had not been concealed for so long and if he had been consulted earlier, he might have cured Peter's illness and allowed the Emperor to live for many years. But Boerhaave never told his nephew, who later became a physician to Peter's daughter Empress Elizabeth and who was responsible for passing this account along, what medicines he would have prescribed or what illness he would have been treating. Some doubt may be cast on the Professor's optimism by the facts that he never saw the patient and that, on autopsy, the area around Peter's bladder was found already to be gangrenous and his sphincter muscle so swollen and so hard that only with difficulty could it be cut with a knife.
The succession was quickly settled in favor of Catherine. While Peter still drew his last breaths, a group from the Emperor's inner circle of favorites, among them Menshikov, Yaguzhinsky and Tolstoy—all of them "new men" created by Peter, all with much to lose if the old nobility came back to power—had moved decisively to support Catherine. Guessing rightly that the Guards regiment would make the ultimate decision on the succession, they summoned these troops into the capital and massed them near the palace. There, the soldiers were reminded that Catherine had accompanied them and her husband on military campaigns. All arrears in military pay were swiftly paid in the name of the Empress. The Guards regiments were devoted to the Emperor, and Catherine was already popular with both officers and men; with these new inducements, they readily pledged their support.
Even with these precautions, the succession of the Lithuanian peasant girl, mistress and eventually wife and consort of the autocrat, was far from certain. The other serious candidate was the nine-year-old Grand Duke Peter, son of the Tsarevich Alexis. According to Russian tradition, as grandson of the dead Emperor he was the direct male heir, and the vast majority of the aristocracy, the clergy and the nation at large regarded him as the rightful successor. Through the young Grand Duke, old noble families such as the Dolgorukys and the Golitsyns hoped to restore themselves to power and reverse Peter's reforms.
The confrontation came on the night of January 27, a few hours before the Emperor's death, when the Senate and leading men of state assembled to decide the succession. Prince Dmitry Golitsyn, a member of the old nobility who had spent many years abroad and advocated a sharing of monarchical power with the aristocracy, proposed a compromise: young Peter Alexeevich should become emperor, but Catherine should be regent, assisted by the Senate. Peter Tolstoy, whose name was prominently linked with the prosecution and death of the Tsarevich Alexis and who therefore greatly feared the accession of Alexis' son, objected that rule by a minor was dangerous; the state needed a strong, experienced ruler, he insisted, and it was for this reason that the Emperor had trained and crowned his wife. When Tolstoy spoke, a number of officers of the Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky Guards who had filtered into the room shouted their agreement. At the same time, a roll of drums in the courtyard below brought the statesmen to the window. Looking out into the darkness, they made out the thick ranks of the Guard drawn up around the palace. Prince Repnin, commander of the Petersburg garrison and a member of the aristocratic party, flew into a rage and demanded to know why the soldiers were there without his orders. "What I have done, Your Excellency," stonily replied the commander of the Guard, "was by the express command of our sovereign lady, the Empress Catherine, whom you and I and every faithful subject are bound to obey immediate and unconditionally." The soldiers themselves, many of them in tears, cried out, "Our father is dead, but our mother still lives!" Under the circumstances, Apraxin's proposal "that Her Majesty be proclaimed Autocrat with all the perogatives of her late consort" was quickly accepted.