Read Saltychikha, the story of the most terrible Russian woman. How Saltychikha sat in captivity

In 1768, next to the Execution Place, the landowner Daria Saltykova, the famous Saltychikha, who tortured to death at least 138 of her serfs, stood at the pillory. While the clerk read out the crimes she had committed from a sheet, Saltychikha stood with her head uncovered, and on her chest hung a plaque with the inscription “Tormentor and Murderer.” After that, she was sent to eternal imprisonment in the Ivanovo Monastery...

The picturesque, quiet, surrounded by pine forest, the Saltykov estate in Troitsky, near Moscow, soon after the sudden death of the owner turned into some kind of cursed place. “It’s as if a plague has settled in those parts,” the neighbors whispered. But the residents of the “enchanted estate” themselves lowered their eyes and pretended that everything was as usual and nothing special was happening.

Meanwhile, the number of serfs was steadily declining, and a new grave mound appeared in the village cemetery almost every week. The cause of the inexplicable pestilence among the Saltykov serfs was not a mass epidemic, but a young widow, mother of two sons - Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova.

To the Empress with a complaint

In the spring of 1762, serfs Savely Martynov and Ermolai Ilyin escaped, setting out to get to St. Petersburg and convey a complaint against their mistress to the empress herself. The men were not afraid of either police raids or a possible march to Siberia.

Savely had nothing to lose at all. After Saltykova cold-bloodedly killed his three wives in a row, the peasant lost hope for a calm and happy life. family life.

Maybe a miraculous miracle happened or heaven heard the prayer of the serfs driven to extreme despair, but only the “written assault” - that was the name of the letter to Catherine II - still fell into the hands of the empress.

The empress was not embarrassed by either the noble title of the accused or her numerous patrons, and a few days after reading the complaint, a criminal case was opened against Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova, who was accused of numerous murders and cruel treatment of her serfs.

The investigation into the Saltychikha case lasted six years, dozens of volumes were covered and hundreds of witnesses were interviewed, and they all said that after the death of her husband, the new mistress of the estate seemed to have broken free. No one could have thought that the once timid and pious 26-year-old woman would begin in the most cruel way not only to mock her serfs, but also to brutally deal with anyone who made even the slightest mistake in housekeeping.

Over seven years, Saltykova killed at least 138 of her subjects. The reason for the execution could have been the lady's dissatisfaction with the quality of washing or cleaning. As witnesses later said in the Saltykova case, the landowner became furious because some courtyard girl could not cope with her duties around the house.

She grabbed whatever came to hand and began beating the unfortunate peasant woman. Then she could scald her with boiling water, rip out more than one clump of hair from her head, or simply set it on fire.

And if, after many hours of executions, the landowner was tired, and the victim still showed signs of life, then she was usually chained to a stake for the night. In the morning, the savage execution continued if even one drop of life was still hidden in the condemned woman.

Only a few of those tortured by Daria Saltykova were given funeral services in the church and buried in the village cemetery, as required by Christian customs. The bodies of the rest disappeared without a trace. And in the business books it was indicated that “one escaped, three were sent to our Vologda and Kostroma estates, and about a dozen more were sold at 10 rubles per head.” However, during the investigation it was not possible to find a single person from this list.

Revenge for dislike

This terrible woman was closely related to the Davydovs, Musins-Pushkins, Tolstoys, Stroganovs, moved in the highest circles of society, had the most influential connections, but at the same time she was completely illiterate and could not even write.

It is known for certain that the Troitsk landowner was very religious. She made pilgrimages to Christian shrines several times and never spared money on donations. But the cruel Saltychikha was the complete opposite of that Daria Nikolaevna, who was received with honor and respect in the best houses of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

All Moscow officials were afraid to take on such a dubious matter, in which the serfs went against their mistress, and even so influential and titled. In the end, the folder ended up on the desk of investigator Stepan Volkov. He, a rootless and non-secular man, was distinguished by impartiality and perseverance, and with the help of Prince Dmitry Tsitsianov he was able to successfully bring the matter to an end.

No matter how many obstacles Saltykova created for the investigation, she never managed to get away with it. Each new piece of evidence led to a whole chain of crimes. It turned out that long before the serfs handed over the complaint to Catherine II, more than 20 similar complaints written earlier were quietly gathering dust in the archives of Moscow authorities. But the authorities did not give effect to any of them. And sweeping searches of Saltykova’s estates and seized account books indicated that officials of these departments received rich gifts or some kind of financial assistance from Daria Nikolaevna.

Maybe that’s why the landowner herself, throughout the entire investigation, was not only confident of a safe release, but also continued to intimidate her serfs in every possible way. However, Catherine II was extremely offended by the behavior of her subject, who created a certain model of a “state within a state,” established her own laws, single-handedly decided “who to execute and who to pardon,” and thereby elevated herself to the rank of a royal person.

During the investigation, another fact emerged that took the investigation to a new level. It turned out that in addition to reprisals in her own lands, Saltykova was planning the murder of her noble neighbor Nikolai Tyutchev. The grandfather of the famous poet was in a love relationship with a young widow, but decided to marry someone else. It is quite possible precisely because he was aware of the strange inclinations of his exalted mistress. Daria Nikolaevna was going crazy with jealousy and resentment. She decided to take revenge on her unfaithful lover and his new passion.

Saltykov estate

On her instructions, trusted servants, who more than once helped her in domestic executions, purchased several kilograms of gunpowder. This would be enough to destroy to the last brick Tyutchev’s entire Moscow mansion, into which he then moved with his bride. But Saltykova realized in time that the murder of a nobleman and a serf were completely different things, and she abandoned her bloody intentions.

In the second year of the investigation, Saltykova was placed under guard. Only then did the frightened peasants begin to reluctantly talk about all the horrors that they had once witnessed. 38 cases of death at the hands of the landowner were fully proven: the victims were 36 women, girls and girls, and only two young men.

There were also double murders, when the landowner beat pregnant women until they miscarried, and later dealt with the mother herself. 50 people died from all sorts of diseases and fractures as a result of the beatings. Of course, there were still dozens of peasants who disappeared without a trace, whose bodies were not found, and traces were lost, but the available evidence was enough for the most cruel sentence.

"Tormentor and Murderer"

Four drafts of the Saltykova case, written by the empress in her own hand, have survived in the archives. Regularly for six years she received reports from detailed description all the landowner's atrocities. In the protocols of interrogations of Saltykova herself, investigator Stepan Volkov was forced to write the same thing: “He does not know his guilt and will not incriminate himself.”

The Empress realized that the landowner did not take advantage of the chance for repentance, and would not receive any concessions for her steadfastness. It was necessary to demonstrate that evil remains evil, no matter who creates it, and the law in the state is the same for everyone.

Daria Saltykova in the Donskoy Monastery

The sentence, which Catherine II personally drafted, replacing the surname “Saltykova” with the epithets “inhuman widow”, “monster of the human race”, “a completely apostate soul”, came into force on October 2, 1768.

Daria Saltykova was deprived of her noble title, maternal rights, as well as all lands and property. The verdict was not subject to appeal.

The second part of the sentence provided for civil execution. On the eve of the event, posters were posted around the city, and tickets were sent to titled persons for the execution of their former friend.

On November 17, 1768, at 11 o’clock in the morning, Saltychikha was taken to Lobnoye Mesto on Red Square. There she was tied to a pole with a sign “torturer and murderer” in front of a large crowd of Muscovites who had gathered in the square long before the condemned woman was brought there. But even an hour-long “disgraceful spectacle” did not make Saltykova repent.

She was then sent to eternal imprisonment in the Donskoy Monastery prison. For the first eleven years, she was literally buried alive in a “repentance pit” dug in the ground, two meters deep and with a grate laid on top.

Daria saw the light only twice a day, when the nun brought her meager food and a candle stub. In 1779, Saltychikha was transferred to solitary confinement, which was located in the monastery annex.

The new apartments had a small window through which the convict could look into the light. But more often they came to look at her. They say that Saltychikha spat through the bars on visitors and tried to get to them with a stick. It is also said that she gave birth to a child from the jailer.

After 33 years of imprisonment, Daria Saltykova died within the walls of the Donskoy Monastery and was buried in the monastery cemetery. The grave of the murderous landowner exists to this day, only the name of the villainess has been completely erased, and instead of a tombstone there remains a large stone stake.

There were a lot of Saltychikhs in Russia

The second Saltychikha” was popularly called the wife of the landowner Koshkarov, who lived in the 40s of the 19th century in the Tambov province.

She found special pleasure in tyranny over defenseless peasants. Koshkarova had a standard for torture, the limits of which she went beyond only in extreme cases. Men were supposed to be given 100 lashes of the whip, women - 80. All these executions were carried out by the landowner personally.

The pretexts for torture were most often various omissions in the household, sometimes very minor ones. So, the cook Karp Orlova Koshkarova whipped her because there were not enough onions in the soup.

Another “Saltychikha” was discovered in Chuvashia. In September 1842, landowner Vera Sokolova beat to death the courtyard wench Nastasya, whose father said that the mistress often punished her serfs by “pulling their hair, and sometimes forced them to flog them with rods and whips.”

And another maid complained that “the lady broke her nose with her fist, and from punishment with a whip there was a scar on her thigh, and in winter she was locked in a latrine in only a shirt, because of which she froze her legs...

Still from the serial drama “Bloody Lady” starring Yulia Snigir

Who did landowner Saltychikha really love, hate and kill?
The multi-part drama “Bloody Lady” starring Yulia Snigir, which started on the Rossiya-1 TV channel, was based on the biography of the most cruel woman in Russian history - the ruthless landowner Daria Saltykova.

As soon as they didn’t call Daria Saltykova (March 11, 1730 - 1801), who went down in history under the name Saltychikha, contemporaries and descendants - “black widow” and “black villainess”, “Satan in a skirt”, “sadistic noblewoman”, “serial killer”, “bloody landowner”, “Trinity cannibal”, “marquis de Sade in a female form”... Her name was pronounced with shudder for many decades, and Empress Catherine the Great, in her verdict on the villain, which she personally rewrote several times, even avoided calling this monster woman “she.”

The story told by director Yegor Anashkin in the new series “Bloody Lady” is close to what happened in real life, but in many ways softer than the harsh reality. Because if the director had filmed the worst atrocities that Saltychikha is said to have committed, the film would most likely simply have been banned.

Lady Macbeth of Podolsk district

The daughter of a leading nobleman, a descendant of Peter’s associate Nikolai Ivanov, Daria became Saltykova at the age of 20, having married in 1750 the captain of the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment, Gleb Saltykov. It was a typical marriage for its time - two noble families united to increase wealth. Historians have not come across any particular evidence of hatred towards her husband, as well as adultery on the part of the young wife, plausibly shown in the film “Bloody Lady”. In the same way, it remains unknown why the head of the family died after six years of marriage, leaving a 26-year-old widow with huge money and two sons in her arms - Fedor and Nikolai.

Subsequently, versions arose that Saltykova herself got rid of her husband, but they seem groundless to historians. Just after the death of her husband, she began to show sadistic tendencies.

Since her mother, who in reality was not a homicidal maniac, and grandmother lived in a monastery and abandoned the family fortune, Daria Nikolaevna turned out to be fabulously rich. She owned about 600 souls, vast estates in the Vologda, Kostroma and Moscow regions, several estates, including in the village of Troitskoye, Podolsk district, near Moscow, where she spent most of her time. In Moscow, in the Kuznetsky Most area, she had a luxurious mansion.

The widow led a secular lifestyle and at the same time was known as very pious - she made pilgrimages to shrines several times a year and spared no money for church needs.

Saltychikha’s terrible “fun” became known only a few years later. At first she began to brutally beat the servants for unscrupulous work done. Over time, the punishments became more and more sophisticated. She beat the victims with a log, doused them with boiling water, and tore out their ears with hot tongs. She ordered the survivors to be flogged to death, and she watched with pleasure. She often set fire to the unfortunate person’s hair or simply pulled it out with her own hands. She loved to torture and kill young brides just before marriage.

Still from the series “Bloody Lady”. Saltykova's husband was played by Fyodor Lavrov.

Mysterious passion.

According to witnesses, Saltychikha began to show her sadistic tendencies about six months after her husband’s death. The film "Bloody Lady" shows that the first signs mental illness appeared in the landowner in early childhood - but historians have not found such evidence. However, the director notes that he did not set out to make a historical film; “Bloody Lady” is rather a scary fairy tale.

Apparently, Daria Saltykova began to “touch” her mind precisely after the death of her husband. According to modern psychiatry, she had epileptoid psychopathy - a mental disorder in which a person often experiences “attacks” of sadism and unmotivated aggression.

The first complaints about her atrocities, which were far from isolated, date back to 1757 Every year Saltychikha became more and more cruel and sophisticated. According to the stories of the serfs, she flogged them to death - and if she got tired, she handed over the whip or whip to her assistants - haiduks, tore out the hair on women's heads or set them on fire, branded the ears of young women with a hot iron, scalded them with boiling water, froze them to death in the cold or in an icy pond in winter, she was even buried alive.

Especially often the victims of Saltychikha were young girls who served in the house, – the landowner’s anger could be caused by, say, an improperly tidied bed or a poorly swept floor. She often killed those who were guilty right on the spot. There is a version that the landowner experienced sexual attraction to beautiful women. This passion frightened her, destroyed her psyche - and forced her to commit crimes.

A still from the series “Bloody Lady” Daria Saltykova, performed by actress Yulia Snigir, is passionately in love, first with a relative of her hated husband, then with Nikolai Tyutchev (actor Vlad Sokolovsky)

Even the nobles were not protected from Saltychikha’s wrath; we know about Daria Saltykova’s completely “normal” love, which also almost ended in crime. One day, the object of her passion was surveyor engineer Nikolai Tyutchev, the grandfather of the famous Russian poet. When the object of her passion, the surveyor Nikolay Tyutchev decided to marry someone else, she first tried to persuade her servant to burn down their house, and then, when the newlyweds were about to leave, she ordered the peasants to kill them. The peasants, however, preferred to warn Tyutchev about the danger that threatened him. Saltychikha planned the murder of Nikolai Tyutchev several times, but each time her plans were thwarted.

A drawing from a book of the early 20th century depicting the atrocities of landowner Saltykova.

The case of the missing serf souls.

In 1762 two peasants - Savely and Ermolai who lost several wives one after another at the hands of the landowner, were able to convey a complaint against a 32-year-old sadistic landowner. Among the horrific episodes of this “case” is a story about the torture of a pregnant woman. The birth began during torture, which only provoked the landowner who was watching everything, who heartbrokenly screamed: “To death!”

Dabout the petitions of Saveliy and Ermolai , there were many complaints about Saltychikha (historians know of 21 complaints). But under the bureaucracy of that time, putting this or that matter “under the carpet” did not seem to be a big problem. And Saltykova herself belonged to a fairly well-born family, and by marriage. And she didn’t skimp on gifts for influential people. As a result, the complainants themselves suffered from the complaints. The investigation handed all of them over to the landowner.

An investigation was launched and horrifying details began to emerge. The peasants had been complaining about the landlady for about five years, but thanks to the connections of the noble landowner, the papers were not allowed to proceed, and the fate of the complainants turned out to be unenviable - some were punished with a whip for slander and sent to Siberia, others, upon their return, fell into the hands of the cruel landlady - and disappeared.

The most terrible rumor that was spread about the landowner Saltykova was that she drank the blood of young girls and was a cannibal. This supposedly explained the fact that the bodies or burials most of the souls listed as missing without a trace, During the investigation, which lasted for many years, it was never discovered. The whole thing was based on the stories of the serfs.

When the real investigation began, more and more terrifying details were revealed. The Moscow College of Justice conducted the investigation for 6 years! That is as long as the active sadistic entertainment of the “bloody lady” continued. Saltychikha's account books were presented as material evidence. Investigators found dozens of records of suspicious deaths. That is the mad landowner did not forget to keep her books. More often than others, young girls who had just joined the courtyard died, among them those same three unfortunate wives of the groom Ermolai.

In total, the investigation was able to discover a traceless the disappearance of 138 serf souls, “only” 38 cases of “bringing to death” were proven, in another 26 cases Saltychikha was recognized only as a suspect. This was enough to send Daria Saltykova to the chopping block.

Saltykova's sentence was pronounced on October 2, 1768 on behalf of Catherine II :

« Decree to our Senate. Having examined the report submitted to us from the Senate on the criminal cases of the famous inhuman widow Daria Nikolaeva’s daughter, we found that this monster of the human race could not have caused such a great number of murders over his own servants of both sexes in such different times with one movement of rage, characteristic of irritated hearts, but it must be assumed, although to the bitter insult of humanity, that she has a soul that is completely apostate to God and extremely tormenting.”

« Inhuman widow", "monster of the human race" deprived of the title of nobility and the right to be called by the surname of the father or husband.

This was followed by the so-called "disgraceful spectacle" Convict with a sign The “tormentor and murderer” was chained to the pillory on the scaffold. All residents of St. Petersburg could freely express their opinion to Saltykova. Further punishment was not severe. The sadist was sent to eternal settlement in the St. John the Baptist Convent in Moscow (currently operating, located at Maly Ivanovsky Lane).

For the first 11 years, Saltykov was in the “penitential cell.” This room dug in the ground looked more like crypt, about two meters high. Then the regime was significantly softened, the woman was transferred to a room with a real window. As contemporaries claim, hundreds of people came to look at Saltychikha through this very window. Someone spat and cursed, someone showed Christian forgiveness towards her...

There is a version that the high-profile Saltychikha case was beneficial to Catherine the Great and her supporters - in order to morally weaken Saltykov and not allow any opportunity to borrow Russian throne to representatives of the German Welf dynasty, to which three tragically deceased Russian emperors belonged (Peter II, Peter III and Ivan VI) and who was related to the Saltykovs. Therefore, it is quite possible that the landowner’s crime story could have been inflated.

Welfs(German: Welfen) - one of the oldest European dynasties of Frankish origin, whose representatives occupied the thrones of a number of European countries, in various German and Italian principalities, as well as Russia and Great Britain.

At the very last moment, Catherine commuted the death penalty life imprisonment in a special, “repentant” underground chamber - without light and communication with people. The empress referred to the landowner only as “he” - historians believe that in this way Catherine deprived her of not only her nobility, but also the right to be called a woman.

After 11 years, Saltychikha was transferred to a cell with a window, and visitors were also allowed to the place of her imprisonment to look at the villainess through the bars. IN recent years In her life, the prisoner had already behaved like a real madman - she cursed loudly, spat, and tried to poke onlookers with a stick.

Francois Hubert Drouet, 1762 - “Portrait of the Countess Daria Petrovna CHERNYSHOVA- SALTYKOVA" (1739 - 1802) . This portrait was considered for a long time to be a portrait of Saltychikha.

Was Saltychikha a beauty?

Saltychikha’s appearance is another sealed secret. In the film “Bloody Lady” she is played by the dark-haired, slender beauty Yulia Snigir. According to contemporaries, in her youth Daria Ivanova-Saltykova was indeed very pretty. But what she looked like is not known for certain.

Most often, numerous portraits of her namesake and married relative Daria Petrovna Saltykova, née Chernysheva, wife of Field Marshal Ivan Petrovich Saltykov, who was 9 years younger than the landowner Saltychikha.

Augustin Christian Ritt (1765 - 1799), “Portrait of Countess DARIA PETROVNA SALTYKOVA”, 1794. Another portrait of supposedly Saltychikha.

Already in our time historians managed to prove that all the portraits that were considered portraits of Saltychikha actually depict other women. Evidence has been preserved of those who saw Saltykova already in old age, during her imprisonment - they said that she "was a full woman."

Augustin Christian Ritt, “Portrait of a Wife,” mistakenly recognized as a portrait of Daria Saltykova.

What is surprising is that the murderer, who was in excellent health, lived to be 70 years old, of which she spent 33 years in a monastery. Daria Saltykova was buried in 1801 in the cemetery of the Donskoy Monastery, next to her relatives, but there were no people who wanted to visit her grave.

It is interesting that this story did not affect Saltychikha’s sons in any way; they continued to serve in the military line.

Classmates

The actions of Daria Saltykova, who is better known as Saltychikha, are striking in their cruelty. Over the course of 5 years, she brutally killed more than 100 serfs and almost sent the grandfather of the great Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev to the next world.

ABOUT Russian Empire Nowadays, they usually prefer to remember only the front side of “Russia, which we lost.”

“Balls, beauties, footmen, cadets...” waltzes and the notorious crunch of French bread, undoubtedly, all this was there. But this pleasant bread crunch was also accompanied by the crunch of the bones of the Russian serfs, who with their labor created this entire idyll.

And it’s not just a matter of backbreaking work - the serfs, who were in the complete power of the landowners, quite often found themselves victims of tyranny, bullying, and violence.

The rape of the courtyard girls by the gentlemen, of course, was not a crime. The master wanted it, the master took it, that’s the whole story.

Of course, there were also murders. Well, the master got excited in anger, beat the disobedient servant, and he took the ghost and died - who pays attention to such things.

But even against the background of the realities of the 18th century, the story of the landowner Daria Saltykova, better known as Saltychikha, looked terrible. It was so terrible that it came to trial and sentencing.

On March 11, 1730, a girl was born into the family of the stalwart nobleman Nikolai Ivanov, who was named Daria. Daria's grandfather, Avtonom Ivanov, was a famous statesman era of Peter the Great and left a rich inheritance to his descendants.

In her youth, a girl from a prominent noble family was known as the first beauty, and besides this, she stood out for her unprecedented piety.

Daria united her life with the captain of the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment, Gleb Alekseevich Saltykov, and married him. The Saltykov family was even more famous than the Ivanov family - Gleb Saltykov’s nephew Nikolai Saltykov would become His Serene Highness Prince, Field Marshal and would be a prominent courtier during the times of Catherine the Great, Paul I and Alexander I.

The life of the Saltykov spouses did not stand out in any way compared to the lives of other high-born families of that period. Daria gave birth to her wife and 2 sons - Fyodor and Nikolai, who, as was customary then, were immediately enrolled in service in the guards regiments from birth.

The life of landowner Saltykova changed when her husband died. She became a widow at the age of 26, becoming the owner of a large fortune. She was the owner of an estate in the Moscow, Vologda and Kostroma provinces. Daria Saltykova had approximately 600 serf souls at her disposal.

The large city house of Saltychikha in Moscow was located in the area of ​​Bolshaya Lubyanka and Kuznetsky Most. In addition, Daria Saltykova was the owner of the large Krasnoe estate on the banks of the Pakhra River. Another estate, the same one where most of the murders would be committed, was located next to the current Moscow Ring Road, where the village of Mosrentgen is currently located.

Until the story of her bloody deeds became known, Daria Saltykova was considered not just a high-born noblewoman, but a very respected member of society. She was respected for her piety, for her constant pilgrimage to shrines, she actively donated funds for church needs, and also gave out alms.

When the investigation into the Saltychikha case began, witnesses noted that during her lifetime, Daria’s wife was not prone to assault. Left without a husband, the landowner changed a lot.

Usually, it all started with complaints about the servants - Daria was dissatisfied with the way the floor was washed or the clothes were washed. The enraged mistress began to beat the disobedient maid, and her favorite weapon was a log. In the absence of one, they used an iron, a rolling pin - whatever was at hand.

At first, Daria Saltykova’s serfs were not very concerned about this - such things happened everywhere. The first murders also did not frighten me - sometimes the lady got excited.

However, from 1757, murders began to occur systematically. In addition, they became especially cruel and sadistic. The lady clearly began to enjoy what was happening.

In Saltychikha’s house there was a real “conveyor belt of death” - when the mistress was exhausted, further torture of the victim was entrusted to especially close servants - “haiduks”. The groom and the yard girl were entrusted with the procedure for disposing of the body of the deceased.

The main victims of Saltychikha were the girls who served her, but sometimes reprisals were also committed against men.

Most of the victims, after being brutally beaten by the mistress of the house, were simply beaten to death in the stables. At the same time, Saltychikha was personally present during the massacre, enjoying what was happening.

For some reason, many people believe that the landowner carried out these cruel reprisals in her old age. In reality, Daria Saltykova committed outrages between the ages of 27 and 32 - even for that time she was a very young woman.

By nature, Daria was quite strong - when the investigation began, the investigators found almost no hair on the heads of the women who died at her hands. It turned out that Saltychikha simply pulled them out with her bare hands.

While killing the peasant woman Larionova, Saltychikha burned the hair on her head with a candle. When the woman was killed, the lady’s accomplices put the coffin with the corpse in the cold, and placed the deceased’s living infant child on the body. The baby died from frost.

In November, the peasant woman Petrova was driven with a stick into a pond and kept standing in water up to her neck for a couple of hours until the unfortunate woman died.

Another of Saltychikha’s pastimes was dragging her victims around the house by the ears with hot curling irons.

Among the landowner's victims were several girls who were planning to get married soon, pregnant women, 2 girls aged 12 years.

The serfs tried to send complaints to the authorities - from 1757 to 1762, 21 complaints were filed against Daria Saltykova. But thanks to her connections, as well as bribes, Saltychikha not only avoided punishment, but also ensured that the complainants themselves went to hard labor.

The last victim of Daria Saltykova in 1762 was the young girl Fyokla Gerasimova. After beating her and tearing out her hair, she was buried alive.

Conversations about Saltychikha’s atrocities began even before the investigation began. In Moscow they said that she fried and ate babies and drank the blood of young girls. This, however, in reality did not happen, but what was there was more than enough.

Sometimes they say that a young woman has gone crazy due to the absence of a man. That's true. Despite her piety, she had men.

For a long time, landowner Saltykova had an affair with land surveyor Nikolai Tyutchev, the grandfather of the Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev. However, Tyutchev preferred another, and the enraged Saltychikha ordered her faithful assistants to kill her ex-lover. There was a plan to blow it up with a homemade bomb in the house of his young wife. But it was not a success - the performers were simply scared. Killing ordinary people is all right, but for reprisals against a nobleman one cannot avoid being racked and quartered.

Saltychikha prepared another plan, which involved an ambush attack on Tyutchev and his young wife. However, one of the alleged perpetrators notified Tyutchev of the impending attack in an anonymous letter, and the poet’s grandfather escaped death.

Perhaps Saltychikha’s actions would have remained a secret if in 1762 two serfs, Savely Martynov and Ermolai Ilyin, had not broken through with a petition to Catherine the Second, who had just ascended the throne.

They had nothing to lose - their spouses died at the hands of Saltychikha. The story of Yermolai Ilyin is completely terrible: the landowner killed 3 of his wives one by one. In 1759, the first wife, Katerina Semyonova, was beaten to death. In the spring of 1761, her second wife, Fedosya Artamonova, repeated her fate. In February 1762, Saltychikha killed Yermolai’s third wife, the quiet and meek Aksinya Yakovleva, to death with a log.

The Empress did not particularly want to quarrel with the nobility over the mob. But the scale and cruelty of Daria Saltykova’s crimes made Catherine II think. She decided to stage a show trial.

The investigation was going quite hard. High-ranking relatives of Saltychikha thought that the empress’s interest in the matter would disappear and it could be hushed up. Investigators were offered bribes and were hindered in any way from collecting evidence.

Daria Saltykova herself did not admit to what she had done and did not repent, even when she was threatened with torture. However, they were not used in relation to a well-born noblewoman.

Despite this, the investigation established that in the period 1757 to 1762, landowner Daria Saltykova lost 138 serfs under suspicious circumstances, of whom 50 were officially considered “died of disease,” 72 people disappeared without a trace, 16 were considered “to go to their spouse” or “left on the run."

Investigators were able to collect evidence to accuse Daria Saltykova of murdering 75 people.

The Moscow College of Justice found that in 11 cases the serfs slandered Daria Saltykova. Of the remaining 64 murders, 26 cases were classified as “remaining under suspicion,” meaning there was little evidence.

Despite this, 38 brutal murders committed by Daria Saltykova were recognized as fully proven.

Saltychikha’s case was sent to the Senate, which made a decision on the landowner’s guilt. But the senators did not make a decision on punishment, leaving it to Catherine II.

The Empress's archive contains 8 draft sentences - Catherine for a long time could not figure out how to punish a non-human in a female form, who was also a high-born noblewoman.

The sentence was confirmed on October 2 (October 13, new style) 1768. In her expressions, the Empress called everything by its proper name - Catherine called Daria Saltykova “an inhuman widow”, “a freak of the human race”, “a soul completely apostate to God”, “a tormentor and murderer”.

Saltychikha was sentenced to deprivation of her noble title and a lifelong ban on being called by the last name of her father or husband. The landowner was also sentenced to one hour of a special “reproachful spectacle” - she stood chained to a pillar on the scaffold, and above her head there was an inscription: “Tormentor and murderer.” She was later sent for life to a monastery, where she was to be kept in an underground cell, where no light enters, and with a ban on communication with people other than the guard and the nun-overseer.

Daria Saltykova’s “repentance chamber” was an underground room slightly more than 2 m high, into which no light penetrated at all. The only thing that was possible was to light a candle while eating. The prisoner was forbidden to walk; she was taken out of the dungeon only on major church holidays to the small window of the temple so that she could hear bell ringing and watch the service from afar.

The regime was softened after 11 years of imprisonment - Saltychikha was transferred to a stone extension of the temple, which had a small window and bars. Visitors to the monastery were allowed not only to look at the condemned woman, but also to communicate with her. People went to look at the landowner as if she were a strange animal.

Daria Saltykova was actually in excellent health. There is a legend that after 11 years of being underground, she began an affair with a guard and even gave birth to a child with him.

Saltychikha died on November 27, 1801 at the age of 72, having spent more than 30 years in prison. There is not a single evidence that the landowner repented of her deeds.

Modern criminologists and historians admit that Saltychikha had a mental disorder - epileptoid psychopathy. Some are even sure that she was a latent homosexual.

It is impossible to know for sure today. The story of Saltychikha became unique due to the fact that the case about the actions of this landowner ended with the punishment of the criminal. We know the names of some of the victims of Daria Saltykova, unlike the names of millions of people who were tortured by Russian landowners during the period of the existence of serfdom in the Russian Federation.

Investigators working on the case of Daria Saltykova seriously verified rumors that the landowner ate her victims, and that one of her favorite delicacies was women’s breasts. The rumors were not confirmed - Saltychikha liked the process of torture itself.

Saltychikha is a terrible fairy tale of Russian history. The name of the landowner who tortured and killed her serfs has not been forgotten to this day, although the details of the bloody deeds in her biography have already been erased from people's memory.

Name: Daria Saltykova (Saltychikha)

Date of birth: 1730

Age: 71 years old

Place of birth: Russian Empire

Place of death: Moscow

Activity: Russian landowner

Marital status: Was married

Residents of Teply Stan and the village of Mosrentgen, located on the other side of the ring road, do not even realize that the villainess Saltychikha committed atrocities here two and a half centuries ago.

Why did the ordinary noblewoman Daria Saltykova become a monster in human form? What made her one of the most famous mass murderers in history?

The plump investigative file of Saltychikha, stored in the Russian historical archive in St. Petersburg, does not provide answers to these questions. The actions in her biography cannot be explained even by bad heredity: Daria’s ancestors were completely normal people.

Grandfather, Duma clerk Avtomon Ivanov, headed the Local Prikaz under Peter the Great. During the Streltsy revolt, he took the side of the young tsar at the right time, for which he was awarded ranks and estates.

His son Nikolai, having served several years in the tsarist fleet, returned to his native Moscow region, where he rebuilt a manor house in the village of Troitskoye. In the year of Peter's death, he married Anna Tyutcheva - her parents' estate was located next door.

Nikolai and Anna had three daughters - Agrafena, Marfa and Daria. Soon after the birth of the youngest - Daria was born in March 1730 - Anna Ivanovna died.

The Ivanovs did not belong to those landowners who enthusiastically listened to the ideas of the European Enlightenment. In their house, everything was arranged as before: long sleep, abundant food and boredom. The daughters were not taught literacy, but they were taught what the future mistress needed - to run the house and keep the slaves in strict order.

Many gentlemen, in the old fashioned way, called serfs, who by law were considered the full property of the owner. In the end, even noble nobles signed petitions to the tsar “Your Majesty’s servant” - what can we say about the peasants?

In those years, Empress Anna Ioannovna and her favorite Biron could beat any nobleman with batogs, “cut off” his tongue and send him to Siberia. Russian life in the 18th century was saturated with cruelty, to which Daria had become accustomed since childhood.

According to custom, daughters were married off early. At the age of 19, it was Daria’s turn - she became the wife of 35-year-old captain Gleb Saltykov, a descendant of a rich and noble family. Thanks to this marriage, Daria acquired possessions in the Vologda and Kostroma provinces, as well as a house in Moscow, on the corner Kuznetsky Most and Bolshaya Lubyanka.

A year later, in 1750, she gave birth to a son, Fyodor, and two years later, Nikolai. Daria did little with the children, leaving them in the care of wet nurses and nannies. The husband spent almost all his time at work and often traveled to St. Petersburg on errands. During one of these trips he caught a cold and died in the spring of 1756.

After this, Daria almost completely abandoned the city house and returned to the Moscow region. By that time, her father had also died, leaving his beloved youngest daughter Troitskoye and the neighboring village of Teply Stan - once located there inn, where the coachmen warmed up with tea or something stronger.

About five hundred peasants lived in both villages - mostly women and children, since half of the men were taken to the recently started war with Prussia.

We don’t know exactly what 26-year-old Daria Saltykova, young in modern times, looked like. One source describes her as “a small, bony and pale person,” others write about “a woman of heroic build with a masculine voice.” However, everyone mentions her hot and fiery disposition.

Languishing without male love, after a year of widowhood she found a replacement for her late husband. According to legend, one fine day she heard shots in the forest and ordered the haiduks (that is, servants) to catch the daring trespasser of her property.

Soon a handsome young man in simple clothes was brought to her. Mistaking him for a peasant, Daria habitually ordered him to be whipped, but he knocked the nearest haiduk to the floor with a blow of his fist and shouted: “How dare you? I am captain Nikolai Tyutchev!” Having learned that a distant relative of her mother had stopped by her forest by mistake, carried away by hunting, Saltychikha softened and invited the uninvited guest to the table. And soon he found himself in her bed.

This “neighborhood” romance lasted for more than one year. Tyutchev was five years younger than Saltykova, but still tired of her violent temperament. In addition, he was a nobleman of the new generation, received a good education and felt uncomfortable next to his rude and illiterate roommate - there was nothing to talk about with her.

Therefore, he visited Troitskoye no more than once or twice a week, making the excuse of being busy with his job - he worked in the Land Survey Department. During these short visits, he could not help but notice with what fear the servants looked at their mistress. Although, of course, Daria hid the worst thing from “Svet-Nikolenka” - she was afraid that she would leave.

But there was plenty of horror in the estate. In those same years, marked by her love for Tyutchev, Daria Saltykova killed dozens of her peasants. Almost all of them were young women - among the victims there were only two men and five girls aged 11-15.

The landowner did not punish her serfs for crimes or any serious offenses. It was quite enough for a peasant woman to not wash the floors in the estate very clean or to wash the lady’s dresses poorly.

Saltykova beat the unfortunate people with everything she could get her hands on - a rolling pin, logs, even a hot iron. The screams and pleas of the victims brought the sadist into wild excitement.

Tired, she called the haiduks, who beat the women themselves or forced the husbands of the peasant women to do it - if they refused, the same fate awaited them. Saltychikha watched the execution from a chair, shouting: “Stronger, stronger! Beat me to death!”

Often obedient servants carried out this order. Then dead women They were carried to the basement, and at night they were buried at the edge of the forest. A paper about the “escape” of another peasant woman was sent to the treasury chamber. To avoid unnecessary questions, a five-ruble bill was usually attached to this document.

But more often it happened differently - after the torture the victim remained alive. Then she was again forced to wash the floors, although she could barely stand on her feet. Then with a cry: “Oh, you rubbish, you’ve decided to be lazy!” – Saltychikha again took up the task of “reasoning.”

Women were exposed naked in the cold, starved, and their bodies were torn with hot tongs. These scenes were repeated over and over again - the tormentor’s imagination was rather meager.

She beat the peasant woman Agrafena Agafonov with a rolling pin, and the grooms with “sticks and a batog, which is why her arms and legs were broken.” After beating Akulina Maksimova “without any mercy with a rolling pin and a roller on the head,” the lady burned her hair with a candle. She “taught” the 11-year-old daughter of the courtyard Antonov, Elena, with the same rolling pin, and then pushed her off the stone porch of the estate.

The same scenes took place in the Moscow house of Saltychikha, next to the fashionable shops of Kuznetsky Most. The maid Praskovya Larionova died there - first the sadist beat her herself, and then handed her over to the haiduks, shouting at the same time: “Beat her to death! I am responsible myself and am not afraid of anyone!”

Praskovya, beaten to death, was taken to Troitskoye, throwing her infant child, who froze on the way, into the sleigh. Katerina Ivanova was transported along the same road, whose groom Davyd “saw swollen legs from the battle and blood flowing from the seat.”

Over the years, Saltychikha became more inventive and used, as the investigation noted, “torture unknown to Christians.” For example, “pulling the ears with hot baking tongs and pouring hot water from the kettle over the head.”

And in November, peasant woman Marya Petrova was driven into a pond, where she was kept neck-deep in ice water for a quarter of an hour, and then beaten to death. Her corpse looked so terrible that even the Trinity priest refused to perform her funeral service. Then, according to long-standing habit, the body was buried in the forest.

More often than not, such problems did not arise: the dying victim was taken to the “back chamber” and given wine to drink, so that during the dying confession she would have the strength to at least mutter something.

If this did not happen, she was confessed “deafly” and buried in a rural cemetery. This happened to the groom’s wife Stepanida, who, on Saltychikha’s orders, was beaten by her own husband with rod butts - the thick ends of rods.

At the funeral, the groom stood under the supervision of the haiduks - so that he would not run to inform. True, such denunciations led nowhere - her husband’s noble surname and generous gifts to the authorities reliably protected Saltychikha. The complainants were put in a punishment cell, and then returned to the lady so that she could get even with them.

At times, the divergent Saltychikha organized real mass executions. In October 1762, already under investigation, she ordered her servants to beat four girls, including 12-year-old Praskovya Nikitina, again for unclean mopping.

As a result, Fekla Gerasimova was barely alive: “her hair was torn out, her head was broken, and her back was rotting from the beatings.” She, along with the others, was thrown in the garden in her shirt, and then they dragged her into the house and continued beating her. As a result, three of the four victims died.

Occasionally, Saltychikha also killed men. In April 1761, the elder Grigoriev did not protect Haiduk Ivanov, who was placed under his supervision, and who had done something wrong. The careless jailer was brought to Troitskoye and handed over to the grooms for punishment, who alternately beat him with their fists and whips. By morning the elder died.

Illustration by V.N. Kurdyumov for the encyclopedic publication “The Great Reform”, which depicts the torture of Saltychikha “in as soft a tone as possible.” Photo from commons.wikimedia.org

Grooms and haiduks were Saltychikha’s constant executioners, and they also had to kill their loved ones. One of them, Ermolai Ilyin, at the whim of the landowner, beat three of his wives to death - one after the other.

During the investigation, he testified that “by order of the landowner, he beat many girls and wives taken from different villages into the courtyard, who soon died from those beatings...” He, Ilyin, did not announce this anywhere and did not report it, being afraid of this landowner his own, and moreover, that the previous informers were punished with a whip; then if he, Ilyin, began to inform, he would also be tortured or even sent into exile.”

The last wife, Fedosya Artamonova, was finished off with a rolling pin by the lady herself, who forced her husband to bury her, warning: “Even though you will denounce, you will not find anything.”

But this time Saltychikha’s confidence in her permissiveness was not justified. The groom Ermolai nevertheless went to denounce, taking another serf Savely Martynov into the company.

They chose a good moment - July 1762, when Catherine II had just ascended the throne. The new queen who overthrew her husband Peter III, wanted to appear before Russia and the whole world as a defender of her subjects. The Saltychikha case turned out to be very opportune - the peasants’ complaint was transferred to the Justits College, and it began an investigation.

Another event coincided with this - Saltykova’s breakup with her lover Tyutchev. Tired of his girlfriend’s difficult character, the young officer announced before Lent that he was going to marry the daughter of a Bryansk landowner, Pelageya Panyutina.

Saltychikha was furious - on her orders, the treacherous Tyutchev was locked in a barn, but one of the courtyard girls helped him escape. In May, she and Panyutina got married and settled in Moscow, on Prechistenka.

But Saltychikha did not calm down - on her orders, the groom Alexey Savelyev bought five pounds of gunpowder at the artillery warehouse to blow up the house of the young couple. At the decisive moment, the groom got cold feet and announced that the gunpowder was damp and did not explode.

A month later, Saltychikha learned that the newlyweds would go to the Bryansk province past Teply Stan, and set up an ambush on the road. She was unlucky again - one of the guides, who had previously been friends with Tyutchev, warned him, and he canceled the trip.

After this, the landowner left her former lover alone, but he seemed to be seriously scared - that’s why he refused to testify against her. The investigation was already progressing with difficulty: Saltychikha herself denied all the accusations, and the court could not take into account the complaints of the peasants.

But Catherine, who personally kept the matter under control, was determined to see it through to the end. At the end of 1763, the College of Justice proposed that Saltykov be subjected to torture “in the search for the truth.”

However, the empress decided that torture was not European. She decided to assign “a skilled priest to Saltychikha for a month, who would exhort her to confess, and if this still does not make her feel remorse in her conscience, then he should prepare her for the inevitable torture, and then show her the cruelty of the search for a convicted criminal "

In other words, the criminal was taken to a dungeon and shown how others were tortured. But she was still silent. The priest’s admonitions did not help either: four months later he announced that “this lady is mired in sin” and it is impossible to get repentance from her.

In May 1764, a criminal case was opened against Daria Saltykova. She was put under house arrest, and investigators sent from the capital began to search not only the estate, but the entire Trinity. Only then did the peasants become bolder and show the authorities the “back chamber”, where traces of blood were still visible on the floor, and the pond in which the women were frozen, and fresh graves in the forest.

Old cases about Saltykova, closed for bribes, were brought up in the archives. In April 1768, the College of Justice issued a verdict according to which Saltychikha “killed a considerable number of her people, male and female, inhumanely and painfully to death.”

She was found guilty of 38 murders, although the actual number of victims ranged from 64 to 79 people. Later, much more came from somewhere larger number– 139 killed, which is still repeated by many authors. Encyclopedias prefer a more cautious estimate – “more than 100 people.”

Apparently, no one will know the true number of victims. On the one hand, a considerable part of the missing serfs could actually go on the run so as not to become victims of Saltychikha. On the other hand, some of the dead could go unnoticed: it is unlikely that the authorities showed great zeal in counting the killed peasants.

Saltychikha is not a unique phenomenon in world history. We know the names of no less terrible criminals. For example, Gilles de Rais - “Bluebeard” - killed more than 600 children in the 15th century, and the Hungarian Countess Erzsebet Bathory tortured almost 300 people already in the 17th century.

In the latter case, the coincidence is almost literal - the countess also took up atrocities after the death of her husband, and her victims were also mainly women and girls. True, she, according to rumors, bathed in their blood, wanting to preserve her beauty, and in addition made sacrifices to the devil.

With Saltychikha everything was different - every Sunday she went to church and zealously atone for her sins.

The Senate demanded the death penalty for the criminal. But she was still a noblewoman, so Catherine II, by decree of June 12, 1768, ordered to save her life, depriving her of all property, family name, maternal rights and even gender - she was ordered to “from now on call this monster a man.”

The empress’s decree said: “This monster of the human race could not cause that great murder of his own servants with one first movement of rage, but it must be assumed that she, especially compared to many other murderers in the world, has a soul that is completely apostate and extremely tormenting.”

In other words, the murders were not committed out of rage, but out of a natural tendency to violence. The word “sadism” was not yet known at that time, and the Marquis de Sade himself, as they say, walked under the table.

However, the Trinity lady was a classic sadist. However, torture and murder of serfs were commonplace in Russia at that time (albeit not on such a scale), and Saltykova’s case did not cause either horror or particular surprise in society.

On November 17, 1768, Saltychikha was subjected to “civil execution” - she was put in a pillory on Red Square with the sign “torturer and murderer” on her chest.

The punishment lasted only an hour, after which the former landowner was taken to the Ivanovsky Monastery on Solyanka and put in a semi-basement dungeon. Food was served to her through a barred window without opening the door.

Once a day she was taken out of her cell so that she could listen to the service in the temple - but from the outside, without going inside. The serf haiduks who participated in the beatings and murders, and the priest who confessed the victims of Saltychikha “in a deaf way” also had a hard time - they were beaten with a whip, their nostrils were torn out and they were sent to Nerchinsk for eternal hard labor.

Surprisingly, the criminal did not lose heart. She decided that the punishment would be reduced if she gave birth to a child, and took up the case. In 1778, she managed, if not to seduce, then to pity the guard soldier, and she became pregnant.

But “Mother” Catherine knew how to show firmness in the right cases. Saltychikha was not pardoned, but was only transferred from the basement to a stone outbuilding with a window. The child she gave birth to was sent to an orphanage, and traces of the compassionate soldier were lost in Siberia.

Saltykova’s calculation did not come true - on the contrary, her punishment became even more painful. The monastery was besieged by crowds of onlookers who looked into the prisoner’s window and mocked her. In response she swore last words and tried to reach the daredevils with a stick. Eyewitnesses recall that at that time she was ugly fat and dirty, with disheveled hair and “a face as pale as a sauerkraut.”

Meanwhile, Saltychikha's estate went to her brother-in-law Ivan Tyutchev. He soon sold it distant relative- to the same Nikolai Tyutchev, for whom the estate seemed to awaken not only terrible memories. He built a new house in Troitsky, laid out a park and equipped a pond with swans. Today, not a trace remains of all this - only an abandoned church has been preserved, where the victims of Saltychikha were once buried.

Nikolai Andreevich died in 1797, and twenty years later his grandson, the famous poet Fyodor Tyutchev, came to Troitskoye. He liked it on the estate - together with his teacher Amphitheater, they “left the house, stocking up on Horace or Virgil, and, sitting down in the grove, drowned in the pure pleasures of the beauties of poetry.”

As for Saltychikha’s own children, Fyodor died childless, and Nikolai, who died early, left a son, who also did not live long. Thus, the Ivanov family was extinguished.

Daria Saltykova no longer cared about this. She grew old in her cage room, accustomed to an inviolable routine and no longer trying to change it. In recent years, her legs became swollen and she could no longer go to church.

In November 1801, when the prisoner had not gotten out of bed or taken food all day, the monks entered the cell and found her dead. She was 71 years old, of which she spent almost half in captivity.

There was no cemetery in the Ivanovsky Monastery, and Saltychikha was buried in the Donskoy Monastery. Her tombstone has survived to this day, but the chamber, along with the monastery, burned down during the Great Fire of 1812. The Moscow house of the Saltykovs suffered the same fate - today in its place is Vorovsky Square.

They tried to quickly forget about the atrocities in the biography of the Trinity lady. Everything in this story was disgusting - the ferocity of Saltychikha herself, the slavish obedience of her victims, and the long inaction of the authorities.

It did not inspire writers, did not give rise to sonorous legends, like the story of Gilles de Rais or Count Dracula. All that remained were the terrible tales about the tormenting lady, in the reality of which even those who told them did not really believe.

Having married 35-year-old Gleb Saltykov at the age of 19, the lady tried on the role of a submissive wife and caring mother of two sons who were born shortly after the marriage. But the peace in the family nest did not last long: 7 years later, unable to cope with a cold, the head of the family died, and the young widow began to show signs of epileptoid psychopathy, which became the cause of her atrocities.

The Saltykovs' first-born, Fedor, was born in 1750, and just a year later their second child, Nikolai, was born. Both boys, according to noble tradition, were registered from birth to take part in military service to the guards regiments.

At the time of the initiation of a criminal case against Saltychikha, the boys were 11-12 years old, and after her arrest, guardians began to take care of the minor youths, who appointed Governor General of Yaroslavl Alexey Melgunov and Vice-President of the College of Justice Ivan Tyutchev.

Melgunov was assigned guardianship of Saltychikha's sons due to the fact that his second wife Natalia Saltykova was the niece of their father Gleb. A fan of fun and lavish life, who loved to amaze high society with luxurious receptions, she took good care of the boys she saw in her free time from their service.

The second guardian, Ivan Tyutchev, was the husband of Saltychikha’s older sister, Agrafena, his family not only took part in raising young Fyodor and Nikolai, but also had the right to dispose of their property. That is why in 1777, when the funds to pay government debts ran out, Tyutchev put up for sale the notorious family estate of Daria Saltykova - Troitskoye, which she inherited from her parent Nikolai Ivanov, where she committed cruel reprisals against the servants.

The buyer of the estate was one of the boys’ many paternal relatives, Boris Saltykov, who a few years later resold it to Nikolai Tyutchev, the same engineer for whom their mother Saltychikha went crazy with love.

By order of Catherine II, all of Saltykova’s property, preserved by the time her sons came of age, was to be transferred from the guardianship to their personal disposal.

Adult life

History has practically not preserved information regarding the biography of Fyodor Saltykov, leaving for posterity only a meager note that he died in 1801 and was buried in a sarcophagus on the territory of the Donskoy Monastery.

It is known about Nikolai Saltykov that he rose to the rank of second lieutenant, at the age of 21 he married Countess Anastasia Golovina, and at the age of 24 he died suddenly, leaving behind a daughter, Elizaveta Saltykova.

Saltychikha's only granddaughter married the French emigrant Count Gabriel Raymond-Moden, who was in charge of imperial hunting and celebrations at court. By the way, Elizabeth was also in good standing with the rulers and, thanks to her virtue, she was granted a knighthood of the Order of St. Catherine of the Lesser Cross.

Illegitimate

There is a version according to which Saltykova, imprisoned in the Ivanovo Monastery dungeon, had an affair with the guard guarding her. As a result of a prison affair, the murderer gave birth to a child, but neither gender nor further fate this child is unknown.