June 9th: Peter the Great

Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, was born on 9 June, 1672. Here are 10 facts you may not know about him:

1. His father died when he was three; at that time, his older half-brother, Feodor III, inherited the throne but was weak and sickly and died without an heir seven years later. The next in line was another half-brother, Ivan V, but he was not only physically ill but mentally disabled as well, so the nobles decided Peter, at the age of ten, should be the next Tsar. While the Russian people approved of the decision, Ivan's sister Sophia wasn't happy about it. After some political wrangling on her part, Ivan and Peter became joint Tsars.
2. Peter and Ivan had a double throne with a big hole in the back - so Sophia could be quite literally the power behind the throne. When nobles came for audiences with the Tsars, she would sit behind them and tell them what to say. This throne can be seen today in the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow.
3. The ten year old Peter didn't really care. He much preferred building boats and playing with his toy soldiers.
4. By the time he was 17, Peter was planning to take power from his half sister. He ran away to a monastery from where he gathered followers who believed he had what it took to oust her. When he finally did, Sophia was forced to give up all her titles and enter a convent. As he still wasn't of age to rule on his own, his mother was regent for a time. He was still jointly ruling with Ivan, officially, at least, until the latter died in 1696.
5. His mother arranged a marriage for him, to Eudoxia Lopukhina. The marriage was not a success and only lasted ten years, whereupon Eudoxia was also sent to a nunnery. About three years later, Peter took a mistress called Martha Skavronskaya, who converted to the Russian Orthodox Church and took the name Catherine. Rumour has it they married in secret in 1707, although there is no official record of it; but they were married officially in 1712.
6. Peter the Great was six feet eight inches (203 cm) tall, but was otherwise somewhat unprepossessing. He had narrow shoulders, small hands and feet and a small head. He also had facial tics, leading historians to believe he may have suffered from epilepsy.
7. Peter's reforms included the way people dressed at Court. He wanted his courtiers to dress fashionably as their contemporaries did in France. This is why he introduced a tax on Beards and long robes in 1698. Other reforms included changing the date of the new year from September to January; adopting the Julian Calendar; forbidding men to become monks before the age of 50 because he needed young men to serve in the army; and making St. Petersburg the capital.
8. Peter spent four months working in a shipyard, learning the skills, and helped to build his own ship, Peter and Paul. Not only did he learn the trade, but he head-hunted a number of experts and advisors. This all came in handy in his quest to make Russia a maritime power.
9. His eldest son, Alexei, was suspected of trying to overthrow him. He confessed to treason under torture, and was sentenced to death. The execution was never carried out because it needed the Tsar's signature, and Peter couldn't bring himself to sign his son's death warrant. So his heir died in prison, possibly from the effects of being tortured.
10. There is a legend that Peter died from rescuing some soldiers who were drowning in icy water, when he was recovering from bladder surgery. There is only one account of this, and some time elapsed between the incident and Peter's death, thus weakening the evidence of it being a direct cause; so historians tend to believe it was just that - a legend.