The daughter of the Moldavian prince Maria Cantemir is the last favorite of Peter I. Their romance began already at the end of the life of the first Russian emperor. It was complicated by palace intrigues and the marriage of Peter to Catherine I. Mary became pregnant by the tsar, but the baby who was born soon died. The favorite survived the autocrat by 32 years.
Family
Maria Cantemir was born in 1700 in the family of the Moldavian Prince Dmitry Konstantinovich Cantemir. The girl spent her childhood in Istanbul, where her high-ranking father lived. In 1711, the ruler Dmitry swore allegiance to the Russian Tsar. Peter I then began the Prut campaign, intending to fortify himself on the Black Sea and weaken the Turkish sultan, whose vassal was formerly Cantemir. The military campaign failed. Peter I had to sign an unfavorable peace treaty, and his Moldavian defector remained in Russia (Peter called him “reasonable and capable of advice”).
Following the example of her father, Maria Cantemir, having Romanian roots, received a Greek education. She knew Latin and Italian, astronomy, basic mathematics, rhetoric, philosophy and history. Reading in ancient Greek opened ancient literature for her. The girl was fond of drawing and music.
Moving to Russia
In 1711In the year Maria Cantemir moved with her family to Kharkov, and in 1713 ended up in Moscow. In addition, her father was granted large estates in Sevsky and Kursk districts. The place of permanent residence of the family was a village near Moscow with the remarkable name Black Dirt. It was located on the road that led to the new capital of St. Petersburg. Previously, this estate belonged to Prince Vasily Golitsyn, the favorite of Princess Sofia.
Kantemir Maria Dmitrievna settled in a wooden house built in the old Russian style. One-story, with sloping roofs, it was very different from the architecture familiar to the child. Mary generally had to rediscover the world. The famous writer and translator Ivan Ilyinsky began to teach her Russian literacy. Maria's love of reading also came from her mother Cassandra, who was gifted with many good qualities. It was she who was responsible for raising children in those periods when the father could not take care of the children. Maria had a sister, Smaragda, and four brothers: Matvey, Konstantin, Sergei and Antioch (all of them were almost the same age as each other).
Istanbul teacher
Another teacher who influenced the fate of the last woman of Peter the Great was Anastassy Kondoidi. This man was a Greek priest and connected his life with the Kantemirov family back in the period when she lived in Istanbul. In the Turkish capital, the Russian tsar, as expected, had a carefully concealed spy network. Anastassy Kondoidi occupied an important position among those Moscow secret agents. He transmitted his information through the diplomat Peter Tolstoy. With the almightyCount Kantemir Maria Dmitrievna will maintain relations while already in the capital.
As for Kondoidi, it was he who introduced his pupil to Italian culture (the priest spent a lot of time on the Apennine Peninsula). The espionage activities of Anastasius aroused suspicion in Istanbul, and he had to flee the Ottoman Empire. He reunited with the Cantemirs after they moved to Russia, and in his old age, under the name of Athanasius, he became a monk.
Life in Moscow
The still very young mother of Maria Cantemir Cassandra died in 1713 at the age of 32. The foreign land burdened her, and the trials associated with moving and upheavals undermined her fragile he alth. The children were left in the care of the father alone. He gave them all his time until Kantemirov moved to St. Petersburg. Its reason was the rapprochement between Dmitry Konstantinovich and Peter.
In 1717 the tsar arrived in Moscow, where he lived for 2.5 months. It was one of the most difficult periods in the life of the autocrat. The day before, his son Alexei fled abroad. Now Count Tolstoy was trying to return the prince to his homeland, and Peter was in a bad mood in Moscow. At the beginning of 1718, the official abdication of Alexei from the throne followed. The ceremony of deprivation of the right to the throne took place in the Assumption Cathedral. Then Peter and Dmitry Kantemir began to communicate much more than before. The former Moldavian ruler began to visit the king frequently. Unfortunately, the subject of their frequent conversations at that time remained a mystery.
Meet the king
First time MaryCantemir saw Peter I in 1711 during the Prut campaign, when he, together with his wife Catherine, visited the Moldavian capital of Iasi. Personal acquaintance took place in 1717 in his father's house near Moscow. Peter 1, having de alt with his family affairs (the returned Tsarevich Alexei died in prison), got rid of many of his close officials, whom he suspected of treason. Now the king needed new people. This circumstance explains his summoning of Dmitry Kantemir to St. Petersburg.
Judging by how the Moldavian prince hesitated to move, he did not want to leave Moscow at all. Nevertheless, he could not refuse the formidable king. In the newly founded capital, he took with him the children, including the young Mary. Petersburg welcomed the guests with the orders of high society unprecedented in Moscow. The 57-year-old nobleman fell in love with the court beauty Anastasia Trubetskaya, whom he soon married. After this unexpected turn, Princess Maria Cantemir was forced to say goodbye to her former sedate secluded life.
In the capital
Petersburg high society lived according to the habits of the king. Peter 1 could not stand the Moscow patriarchy and made the new capital the abode of Western customs. For Maria, who was born in Moldova, such orders were all the more unusual. With great reluctance, she abandoned her usual oriental dress and put on European clothes fashionable in St. Petersburg.
Dmitry Kantemir with his young wife and eldest daughter was a regular guest at royal holidays. Peter lovedarrange assemblies, skating and balls. The holidays were especially plentiful in the winter of 1721-1722, which came after Russia's victory over Sweden in the Northern War. Prior to that, Peter was constantly on the road or in the army for two decades. He lived according to an inhuman schedule and made his entire country work in the same way. Now the weeks of unprecedented celebrations have come. Their apotheosis was a funny masquerade that lasted several days. Maria Cantemir and Peter the Great met several times at this never-ending holiday. In addition, they saw each other because of the joint work of the Tsar and Prince Dmitry.
Favorite
How could Maria Cantemir and Peter the Great become attached to each other? First of all, the Moldavian princess was very educated, especially by the standards of both ordinary and noble Russian women of that time. It is known that Peter was distinguished by wide erudition and curiosity. He was fond of science and was constantly drawn to something new. In addition, Mary differed from the surrounding women in that there was a lot of foreign and especially Greek in her. Almost nothing is known about the appearance of the girl. Her historical portraits were drawn posthumously and compiled according to fragmentary information from contemporaries.
The girl herself quickly obeyed Peter's charm. Meanwhile, the father of Maria Cantemir was going to marry the girl. Prince Ivan Dolgoruky asked for her hand. Dmitry Konstantinovich gave his consent, but Maria, who already had an affair with the emperor, refused the groom. It should be noted here that the king lived in marriage. He had a wife - the future Empress CatherineI. She was not just the wife of the sovereign. Catherine remained a longtime comrade of the autocrat. His wife accompanied him on military campaigns and did not shy away from public affairs. Replacing her was no easy feat.
Pregnancy
In 1722, Dmitry Kantemir wrote a detailed letter to the tsarina, in which he explained that he had no idea about his daughter's connection with the autocrat. However, biographers and historians agree that the prince was lying. The intermediary between him and Catherine was the same Count Peter Tolstoy, known for his intrigue. The ambitious former ruler hoped that the mistress of Emperor Peter the Great would eventually become his wife, and that the Cantemirs and the Romanovs would unite in a dynastic marriage.
Dmitry Konstantinovich's plans came closer to being realized when it became known that Maria was pregnant. Meanwhile, Peter was tired of peaceful life and set about organizing a campaign in Persia. Going east, he took with him Dmitry and his daughter as a retinue. The king needed Kantemir in order to compose appeals in Turkish for the inhabitants of the regions bordering Persia.
Unsuccessful delivery
The expedition to Persia started from Astrakhan in July 1722. Peter was bogged down in a new war for several months. While he was gone, Maria, who remained in Astrakhan, gave birth. She was resolved as a boy, but the child was premature and died quickly. After the death of the baby, Dmitry Kantemir's plans for Peter's marriage to his daughter fell apart. Moreover, during a campaign in Persia, the prince fell seriously ill. He was smittendryness (Maria's sister Smaragda died of the same disease).
The Kantemirs did not dare to leave Astrakhan for a long time. Finally, a solid winter road was established. At first, the family planned to get to Moscow, but on the way they turned to the Dmitrovka estate in the modern Oryol region. There, Dmitry Konstantinovich became even worse. Mary's father died on September 1, 1723.
Death of Peter
Princess Maria Cantemir, whose biography is a typical example of a rejected favorite, received her father's inheritance, but in fact turned out to be excommunicated from the court. In this position, she took up family affairs. The girl left four younger brothers and a very tiny sister from her father's second marriage.
The situation changed dramatically in the fall of 1724. Empress Catherine began an affair with chamber junker Willim Mons. The king became aware of this connection. Peter I was terrible in anger. He executed Mons, but did not deal with his wife, whom he himself crowned shortly before and made his heiress on the throne. However, their relationship was destroyed. Then Peter again became close to Maria Cantemir. However, this time the connection between the king and the favorite was not destined to continue. At the beginning of 1725, the autocrat fell ill, and died on February 8.
Later life
With the death of Peter, Mary fell into disgrace. However, it did not last long. When Catherine I died in 1727, the princess again became a court figure. She first lived in St. Petersburg, but then moved to Moscow closer to the brothers who served in the Mother See. Maria enjoyed the favor of Natalia, the sister of Emperor Peter I, and the next ruler, Anna Ioannovna, made her a maid of honor in 1830.
Cantemir never married. Her family relationships were limited to taking care of her brothers, sister and numerous lawsuits with her stepmother, the same age. The subject of the dispute was, of course, inheritance. In 1730, Maria Dmitrievna kept a literary salon in her own Moscow house. Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg Fyodor Naumov proposed to her, but was refused.
Recent years
In 1741, Maria attended the coronation of Elizabeth Petrovna, who ascended the throne after another palace coup. One of the princess's brothers, Antioch, moved to Paris. Relatives maintained a correspondence, curious for historians, in Modern Greek and Italian.
In 1745, the favorite of Peter I bought the Ulitkino estate near Moscow, where she began to live a quiet, measured life. There she built a new church, and in her will indicated that she wanted a monastery to appear on the site of the temple. Maria died on September 9, 1757.
