Willem Mons: How Peter I Executed His Wife’s Lover

Although Peter I changed many historically established traditions in Russia, in some circumstances he displayed seemingly senseless cruelty more characteristic of medieval monarchs than an enlightened emperor. In particular, this concerns the execution of Willem Mons. Peter met the Mons family when he was still very young, visiting the German Quarter in Moscow. Merchant Johann-Georg Mons served as a supplier of goods for the Russian army, and his daughter Anna was Peter’s favorite for many years. Anna’s sister Matryona (Modesta) Mons became a lady-in-waiting to Peter’s second wife, Empress Catherine, in the 1720s, and also the wife of General Balk. Their brother Willem Mons initially served as the emperor’s adjutant, then as a chamberlain and camerer of the imperial court. Managing the sovereign’s estate office, the young man handled her correspondence and accounting, oversaw the palace economy, and accompanied Catherine on all her trips, including abroad.

Willem Mons was 30 years old. He had an open character, distinguished by cheerfulness and generosity. He was considered a dandy and maintained an expensive wardrobe. He wore colored wigs—preferring blue and violet. He wrote talented poetry and was whispered about as a tender lover. He was constantly in love, often with several ladies-in-waiting at once. All reciprocated his feelings. Mons’s appearance was described as: “Plump lips, tight cheeks, blue eyes, a deliciously soft roll—darling!” All this did not leave the young empress indifferent. Like many court officials, Willem Mons often took bribes for granting various privileges. His sister Matryona Mons usually acted as an intermediary between him and his “clients.” Gradually, Mons became so popular that members of the imperial family and the illustrious Prince Menshikov began to turn to him for resolving various issues. For his services, he usually received gifts, and many fawned over him. Naturally, there were also envious people, and trouble was already at the doorstep. Mons had a trusted man (whom we would call his personal secretary) named Yegor Stoletov. He was entrusted with sorting through the correspondence between the sovereign and Mons. Stoletov also managed all of his patron’s household affairs. He himself took bribes to ensure that someone’s request would reach the sovereign’s ears faster. Moreover, Stoletov was talkative and liked to boast about his closeness to the powerful. Willem Mons’s relatives and those close to him repeatedly urged him to remove Yegor Stoletov from affairs. Mons replied: “We have many gallows! If Yegor does any mischief, he will not escape the gallows.” And everything remained as before. Mons had another trusted man, Ivan Balakirev, a former steward and later a guardsman. We know him as a famous jester, but he became one only under Anna Ioannovna. Once Balakirev visited his friend, Ivan Suvorov, an apprentice in the wallpaper trade. He told him that he carried letters from the tsarina from Preobrazhenskoye to Mons in the village of Pokrovskoye. And those letters were dangerous. If anything happened, he would be the first to lose his head.

Suvorov already knew what kind of letters these were and soon (on the night of April 27) told his friend Mikhey Ershov about them. He added that one letter was “quite strong,” so it was scary even to talk about it. It contained a recipe for a herbal drink for the “master.” Apparently, it was poison... Ershov decided to report all this to the authorities (or, as they said then, to “submit a notice”). Presumably, he feared for himself: he might lose his head for failing to report. However, the notice had to wait, as coronation celebrations were underway in Moscow. Ershov handed over his denunciation only at the end of May, apparently not to the right people. The tsar never learned about it, but Catherine Alekseyevna found out, and on May 26 she suffered a stroke. When she began to recover, the tsar, reassured, left for St. Petersburg in mid-June.

On November 5, 1724, the palace footman Shiryaev was walking along Nevsky Prospect when suddenly someone slipped a letter into his hands, supposedly taken from the post office. Shiryaev tore open the envelope, inside was another one addressed to Tsar Peter. Palace servants were strictly forbidden to accept any letters or petitions addressed to the sovereign. Shiryaev thought it over and still took the envelope, unopened, to the emperor’s cabinet secretary Makarov. Inside the envelope was Mikhey Ershov’s May denunciation and, apparently, that “quite strong” letter mentioned earlier. Peter immediately ordered Ivan Suvorov to be brought to the Secret Chancellery. Stoletov and Balakirev were arrested and brought to the Peter and Paul Fortress. Interrogations “with severity” began. On November 8, Peter dined with Catherine. Mons was in high spirits that day and, according to the Saxon ambassador Lefort, “had the honor of talking with the emperor for a long time, not suspecting even a shadow of any displeasure.”

On November 5, 1724, a mysterious stranger met palace footman Shiryaev on Nevsky Prospect and handed him an anonymous letter addressed to the sovereign. Since the envelope was sealed, Shiryaev decided to take it to cabinet secretary Makarov. Eventually, it reached the emperor himself. The letter stated that Willem Mons, Ivan Suvorov (uncle of the future great commander), as well as the tsar’s jester Ivan Balakirev and steward Yegor Stoletov, were, so to speak, using their official positions to actively engage in bribery and had formed a conspiracy to poison the sovereign. The exact content of the text is unknown, but most likely it also mentioned the relationship between Mons and Catherine. Peter apparently did not fully believe in the existence of a conspiracy, but the news of his wife’s love affair with the dandy official literally enraged him. Earlier, he had arranged the punishment of the lover of his first wife, Evdokia Lopukhina—Stepan Glebov—even though they were no longer married at that time. Glebov was impaled, and Bishop Dosifey, who condoned the affair, was defrocked and broken on the wheel. Peter entrusted the investigation of Mons’s case to the head of the Secret Chancellery, Count Tolstoy. On November 8, Mons was arrested. The executioners did not even have time to begin torture. After the arrest, Peter personally came to Willem’s cell—he fainted, fearing torture, and confessed to all charges. At the trial on November 13, only economic charges were brought. Mons was accused of embezzling rent from estate villages, bribery, and embezzlement. His alleged accomplices were also tried. But only Mons was sentenced to death—execution by beheading.

On the morning of November 16, Mons was led to the scaffold, where the executioner was already waiting. Before the execution, he managed to give a Protestant pastor a gold watch, in the lid of which was set a portrait of Empress Catherine. After that, the former chamberlain took off his fur coat and laid his head on the prepared block himself. With one swing, the executioner cut off his head and, with a customary gesture, impaled it on a sharpened spike. Mons’s sister and main assistant, Matryona Balk, got off much lighter: she was merely whipped with a whip and exiled to Siberia. Yegor Stoletov and former jester Ivan Balakirev were sent to penal servitude. Only Ivan Suvorov managed to justify himself. But more guilty than Mons in this story was Catherine herself, according to historian Mikhail Fedorov. He also reminded that at that time, for adultery, the woman was punished, not the man—“buried up to the neck in the ground, and remained in that position until death.” As for Catherine, practically no punitive measures were applied to her. Perhaps the fact of adultery was never proven.

Eyewitness records:

“On the 16th, at 10 a.m., the executions announced the day before were carried out against the Senate, at the very place where Prince Gagarin was hanged several years ago. The former unfortunate chamberlain Mons, after the reading of his sentence with the exposition of some points of his guilt, was beheaded with an axe on a high scaffold...”

“All those present at this execution could not help but admire the firmness with which chamberlain Mons went to his death. After the sentence was read, he bowed to the reader in thanks, undressed himself, and lay down on the block, asking the executioner to begin as soon as possible. Before leaving the house where he was held in the fortress, he calmly said goodbye to everyone around him, many of whom, especially his close acquaintances and servants, wept bitterly, though they tried as much as possible to hold back their tears.”

“On the way back from Count Tolstoy’s house, the high guests (the empress, princesses, etc.) passed by both the place where chamberlain Mons’s body lay on the wheel and the place where his head was impaled on a spike.”

Mons’s body lay on the scaffold for several days.

Peter limited himself to bringing his wife to the execution site and showing her the head of her former favorite impaled on a spike. By that time, she was tied to a special wheel and displayed in the square for public viewing. Looking at this spectacle, Catherine said: “How sad it is that courtiers can be so corrupt.” It seems that with this phrase she tried to deny accusations of an affair with Mons, presenting the matter as if the embezzling official had nothing personally to do with her.

There is also a legend that Peter ordered Willem Mons’s preserved head to be placed in the empress’s bedroom to remind Catherine of the sin she had committed. A few days later, she fell to her knees before her husband and, standing there for three hours, managed to beg his forgiveness. At the end of the 18th century, Princess Catherine Dashkova discovered that two jars with preserved human heads were stored in the Kunstkamera basement: one supposedly belonged to Mons, and the other to Peter I’s favorite Maria Hamilton, who was executed for infanticide. In the 1880s, historian Mikhail Semevsky tried to find these exhibits but could not find any traces. There is a version that by order of Empress Catherine II, the heads were buried in the ground.

Sources:

https://kulturologia.ru/blogs/071117/36583/

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Монс,_Виллим_Иванович

https://radiosputnik.ria.ru/20191126/1561578150.html

https://goaravetisyan.ru/kaznit-nelzya-pomilovat-kak-petr-velikii-razdelalsya-s-lyubovnikom-zheny-roga/