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 FROM THE LI BRARY OF 
 MRS. H. RUSSELL AMORY. 
 
 GIFT OF HER CHI LDREN 
 R. W. AND NINA PARTRIDGE, 
 
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 BOHN'S STANDARD LIBRARY. 
 
 HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

 
 -'*-» 
 
 THE 
 
 HISTORY OF RUSSIA, 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE PRESENT TIME. 
 
 ©omptlctt from tf)c most 3utf)cnttc Sources, 
 
 INCLUDING THE WOEKS OF 
 
 KAKAMSIN, TOOKE, AND SEGUE. 
 
 BY 
 
 WALTER K. KELLY. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 HENRY G. BOIIN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 
 
 MDCCCLIV.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The literature of England is singularly deficient in the 
 department of Russian history. Travellers have given us 
 some insight into the actual condition of the empire ; and 
 for portions of its history under the present and the pre- 
 ceding reign we may turn with advantage to some recent 
 works. But when we desire to study, from its infancy in 
 the ninth century to its present stage of growth, the whole 
 life of that anomalous member of the European confederacy, 
 which pretends to exercise a despotic hegemony over the 
 rest, our English guides give but scanty help, and often mis- 
 lead on essential points. 
 
 Tooke's five ill-digested volumes long enjoyed a consider- 
 able reputation, which was partly adventitious, because for 
 many years they had exclusive possession of the field, and 
 partly deserved, in so far as they were made up of trans- 
 lations from works of merit, especially those of Levesque 
 and Castera. Segur's single volume, of which there is an 
 English translation, is valuable for its pregnant summary of 
 that dreary portion of the early annals of Russia, which even 
 Karamsin, the national historian, apologises for giving in 
 detail. But Segur's faults are many and capital — a painfully 
 unnatural style ; elaborate indirectness ; a perverse ingenuity 
 in giving dissertations when he should narrate ; and above 
 all, a preposterous idolatry of Peter the Eirst. Of certain 
 works by living Englishmen it becomes us to speak with 
 reserve ; but all our respect for the literary ability of their 
 authors cannot restrain us from saying, that they too err 
 with Segur in misplaced admiration of the reforms effected 
 by Peter. The reign of that monarch was the turning-point 
 in the history of Russia. The empire is at this day what he 
 and his successors, inheritors of his system as well as of his 
 throne, have contributed to make it. "We judge that system
 
 VI PBEFACE. 
 
 by its results. If these are irredeemably bad, what praise is 
 due to the source from which they flow ? 
 
 An original history of Eussia, derived to any great extent 
 from primary Eussian authorities, is certainly not to be looked 
 for at this moment. We must content ourselves with making 
 the best use of such secondary materials as already exist. 
 Happily these are both copious and instructive, and need only 
 to be selected with discrimination, and judiciously arranged. 
 This is the task we have undertaken, with what success it 
 is for our readers to decide. The authors whose works have 
 been chiefly consulted or put under contribution for the pre- 
 sent volume are as follows : 
 
 For the earlier portions— Segur, Karamsin (whose eleven 
 volumes reach only to the 16th century), Tooke, Leclerc, 
 and Levesque. 
 
 For the period of the false Dmitris — Karamsin and Me- 
 rimee. 
 
 For that of the first two Eomanofs — Tooke, Levesque, and 
 Schnitzler. 
 
 For that of Peter I. — Levesque, Schlosser, Von Halein, 
 Pelz, Segur, Voltaire, Villebois, and Staehlin. 
 
 For the subsequent periods — Schlosser, Levesque, Mann- 
 stein, Villebois, and Castera. 
 
 In writing Eussian words, we have generally represented 
 the native orthography not by French, German, or Polish, 
 but by English equivalents : e. g. OtchaJcof not Gczahow, 
 Vorontzof not Woronzoiv. In conformity, however, with a 
 usage which, we cannot approve, we have retained the form 
 Czar, whereas the true pronunciation is accurately repre- 
 sented by Tzar. 
 
 The consonant j, wherever occurring in Eussian words, is 
 to be sounded as in French, or like the * in the English word 
 fusion. The Germans employ ;' where English usage requires 
 y, as Jermolqff for Yermolof. The German ff at the end of 
 such names as Orlof, Eomanof, Gortchakof, would indicate 
 too much stress on the single consonant with which they end 
 in Eussian. 
 
 W. K. K. 
 
 London, July, 1854.
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL L 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Synoptical View ......... 1 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Rurik— Oleg — Igor 7 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 The Regent Olga — Sviatoslaf .16 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Yaropolk — Vladiinir — Russia Christianised . . . .26 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Sviatopolk — Yaroslaf — First Russian Code — Liberties of Nov- 
 gorod . . .37 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 General Survey of the Second Period, from 1054 to 123G . 48 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Grand-Princes of the Second Period — Vladimir Mono- 
 machus — Andrew . 57 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Third Period, from 1237 to 1462 67 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Decline of the Tatar Power — Alexander Nevski — Ivan Kalita . 76 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Decline of the Tatar Power — Dmitri Donskoi — Vassili Dmitrie- 
 vileh S7
 
 VIU CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER X. page 
 
 Vassili IV.— The Russian Church in the Third Period . . 95 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 Beginning of the Fourth Period, from 1462 to 1613 — Ivan III. 
 the Great . 105- 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Ivan III. continued . 120 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Vassili IV. Ivanovitch— Ivan IV. the Terrible . . .132 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Manners and Condition of the Russians in the Sixteenth Century 146 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Feodor I. — Extinction of the Dynasty of Rurik — Boris Go- 
 dunof— The False Dmitri 156 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Feodor Borissovitch — The False Dmitri .-.-.'. . 180 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 Vassili Ivanovitch Shuiski 200 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Accession of the House of Romanof — Michael— Alexis — 
 Feodor II 213 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 Ivan V. and Peter 1 226 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 Peter the First 234 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Peter's Schemes of Conquest — Conspiracy to murder him — 
 He travels to acquire Knowledge — Rebellion and Extinction 
 of the Strelitz — Peter the Author of a Spurious Civilisation . 243
 
 CONTENTS. IX 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. p AGE 
 
 War with Sweden— Battle of Narva 2G0 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Petersburg founded — Narva and Dorpat taken — Defeats at 
 Gemauers and Eraustadt — Augustus loses the Crown of 
 Poland . 272 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 Charles XII. invades Russia — Battle of Poltava — Baltic Pro- 
 vinces conquered — War with Turkey — Capitulation of the 
 Pruth 284 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Peter's Acquisitions in the North — Operations in Pomerania, 
 &c. — Steinbock and his Array made Prisoners — Intrigues of 
 Gortz- Naval Victory of Aland 297 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 Charles XII. liberated from Captivity — Political Aspect of 
 Europe at that Period — Project of Peace between the Czar 
 and the King of Sweden — Peter's Second Visit to Holland — 
 Cabals of Alberoni and Gortz 308 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 The Czarevitch Alexis disinherited — Afterwards .brought to 
 Trial, condemned to Death, and poisoned by his Father . 319 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 The Burlesque of the Conclave — Institutions of the Year 1718 
 — Peace of Nyst'adt — Peter's Financial Resources . . 337 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 Peter is surnamed the Great — The Patriarchate abolished — 
 The Tchin instituted — Persian Campaign . . . .354 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 Death of Peter — Retrospect — His Political Testament . . 307 
 
 b
 
 X CONTEXTS. , 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. PAQE 
 
 Personal Characteristics of Peter 1 377 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 Catharine I.— Peter II 392 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 Anna Ivanovna chosen Empress — Defeats an attempt to limit 
 her Sovereign Power — Interferes successfully in Poland — 
 The Persian Provinces resigned — War with Turkey — A\ r ar- 
 like Attitude of Sweden — Death of Aune — Characteristics of 
 her Reign 404 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 Ivan VI. — The Regent Anue — Elizaveta Petrovna — War with 
 Sweden — Treaty of Abo 420 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 Marriage of Elizabeth's Heir — Growing Antipathy between the 
 Courts of Russia and Prussia — The Seven Years' War — 
 Death of Elizabeth — Her Character 433 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 Accession of Peter III. — End of the Seven Years' War — Gene- 
 rous Acts of Peter III. — Meditated Expedition against Den- 
 mark 451 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 Peter III. dethroned ami murdered — Accession of Catharine II. 461 
 
 Appendix to Vol. I. 479
 
 SYNOPTICAL VIEW. 
 
 From time immemorial the more temperate portions of 
 the vast territory, now ruled by the czar, were parcelled out 
 amongst barbarous tribes, which owned no common bond of 
 union, nor even a collective national appellation. It was in 
 the ninth century of our era that the first step was taken 
 towards combining those loose elements under the sway of 
 a conquering race, who imposed their own name on the van- 
 quished. From that point, therefore, we date the rise of the 
 Eussian empire. In its history we discern five great periods, 
 two dynasties, five capitals, and twelve remarkable princes, 
 exclusive of those of the fifth period, which is not yet ended. 
 
 Of these five prominent periods, the first, comprehending a 
 space of a hundred and ninety -two years, from a.d. 862 to 1054, 
 presents to our view the foundation of the empire, in Nov- 
 gorod, by Eurik the Great, a leader of Varages, Varangians, 
 or Vaeringar, from the Baltic sea ; its enormous extension 
 under the potent Oleg, who, as regent for Eurik' s son Igor, 
 gave to this rising state Kief as its capital, together with a 
 large part of the present European Eussia. Then follows 
 the protracted reign of the weak Igor, an insignificant prince, 
 though he was son of Eurik, pupil of the great Oleg, and 
 husband of the celebrated Olga. 
 
 To this reign succeeds a second regency, that of St. Olga, 
 
 u
 
 2 HISTOItY OP RUSSIA. 
 
 the widow of Igor. This princess, the first Christian Russian 
 who exercised sovereign authority, was baptised at Constan- 
 tinople. She is famous for the crafty and terrible revenge 
 which she took for the murder of her husband, upon the 
 Drevlians, whose subjugation she completed. Her adminis- 
 tration is remarkable. To her the republic of Pskof was 
 indebted for its liberties, which rendered it so flourishing 
 during the space of six centuries. It was this princess who 
 divided the north of Russia into various administrative 
 districts. Down to the period of the annalists, her greatness 
 continued to fill the memories and the hearts of the people. 
 
 She was the mother of Sviatoslaf, a rough, inflexible, im- 
 petuous warrior, — the Achilles, the Charles the Twelfth of 
 that epoch. As Oleg had removed his capital from Nov- 
 gorod to Kief, so did Sviatoslaf remove his to Bulgaria ; 
 each remove being an approach towards the coveted empire 
 of the Greeks. But he was driven from it; and, in his 
 retreat, his skull became the cup of the leader of the Pet- 
 chenegans, on the same soil where, eight centuries later, 
 Charles the Twelfth was destined to be overcome by Peter 
 the Great, in consequence of similar obstinacy. 
 
 Subsequent to him, and to Taropolk, a prince who was a 
 mere cypher, this first period displays to us the highest 
 Gothic glory of the Russian empire, under Vladimir the 
 Great, and its conversion to Christianity in 988. Then suc- 
 ceeds Sviatopolk. Were it not for his fratricides, and the 
 first invasion of Kief by the Poles, of which he was the 
 prompter, this miscreant would pass almost unperceived 
 between his father, the great Vladimir, and his brother 
 Yaroslaf the legislator, the fifth eminent man of this 
 dynasty, with whom the first period closed in 1054. 
 
 In the second period, from 1054 to 1236, comprising a 
 hundred and eighty years, a period wholly engi'ossed by dis- 
 cord and internal strife, the empire was divided and sub- 
 divided, like a private property, among the descendants of 
 Rurik.
 
 SYNOPTICAL VIEW. 6 
 
 Amidst a throng of these princes, who reciprocally con- 
 tended for their appanages, and especially for the throne of 
 Kief, we hardly distinguish an uninterrupted series of seven- 
 teen paramount princes, succeeding from hrother to brother, 
 and from uncle to nephew, down to the obscure Tury, who 
 was Blain by the Tatars in 1237. Of the seventeen Grand- 
 Princes, ranged in this singular order of succession, two only 
 were men of historic note : Vladimir Monomachus, in 1114, 
 and Andrew, about 1157. 
 
 The first of these restored to the empire a moment of 
 unity, by the ascendant of his valour and his virtues, in spite 
 of the efforts of the Polovtzy, nomad tribes of the south, 
 whom he succeeded in crushing. The second, abandoning 
 Kief, made Vladimir the capital of his empire. His policy 
 raised him above the unfortunate times in which he lived. 
 He is the only one who seemed to be aware of the cause of 
 so much dissension, and who strove to annihilate it. 
 
 The third period opened in 1237, with the subjugation of 
 Russia, in consequence of its intestine divisions. It con- 
 tinued for two hundred and twenty- five years, till 1162. 
 
 A multitude of Russian princes, the Grand- Prince, three 
 of his sons, and their mother, were massacred by the Tatars ; 
 but two brothers of the Grand-Prince still survived, who 
 successively filled his place. The eldest had five sons, all of 
 whom in succession wielded the degraded sceptre. The third 
 of these brothers, St. Alexander Nevsky, was a great man, 
 in every sense of the word. He was a hero, victor over the 
 Teutonic knights, the Swedes, and the Lithuanians, who had 
 flung themselves upon the falling Russian empire ; and he 
 died a martyr to his patriotic devotedness, after having 
 thrice bent his way to the extremity of Asia, to disarm the 
 Tatar wrath, which was about to crush the remnant of his 
 imprudent and unruly subjects. 
 
 Two of his sons, unworthy of him, ascended the throne, after 
 two of their uncles. Mikhail of Tver, their cousin, succeeded 
 to them about 1300. Then began a contest of twenty-eight 
 
 b2
 
 4 HISTORY OF EUSSIA. 
 
 years, fraught with treason, baseness, and perfidy, between 
 the princely branch of Tver and that of Moscow. But in 
 1328 the Grand- Princedom was secured by the latter, in the 
 person of Ivan I., surnamed Kalita. 
 
 This prince is worthy of note, because with him recom- 
 menced, firstly, the reuniting of the appanages with the 
 Grand- Princedom of Moscow, which was become the capital ; 
 secondly, the rallying of the appanaged princes round the 
 Great-Prince ; thirdly, the re-establishment of succession in 
 the direct line ; and, lastly, a system of concentration of 
 power, by which the Russian empire was one day to be again 
 raised up, and transformed into that stupendous mass which 
 we now behold. 
 
 This direct succession, and this system, were intermitted 
 but for an instant, to revive in 1362, in the great Dmitri 
 Donskoi, the first conqueror of the Tatars, and to pass to 
 his son and grandson, the two Vassili; finalby, to produce in 
 1462, after the lapse of a century, the uncontested autocracy 
 of Ivan III. 
 
 It was in 1462, and with that great Ivan, that the fourth 
 Russian period began ; it ended in 1613, and lasted only a 
 hundred and fifty-three years. 
 
 The Russian republics of the north, and the Tatars, sank 
 beneath his power, which he always employed opportunely, 
 circumspectly, progressively, and with Machiavellic dexterity. 
 By degrees, the chain with which the Tatars weighed down 
 the Russians came wholly into the hands of this Grand- 
 Prince, who bound with it both the victors and the van- 
 quished, the one by means of the other, and remained sole 
 and absolute master. 
 
 His grandson, Ivan IV., great in crime, carried to excess 
 the concentration of this power, in which everything was 
 swallowed up : manners, morality, patriotism, and the few 
 privileges which, under Ivan III., the Russian nobility had 
 either preserved or acquired, by serving him against the 
 princes who held appanages, the Russian commonwealth, and
 
 SYNOPTICAL VIEW. 5 
 
 the Tatars. This madman killed the only one of his three 
 sons who was able to wear his ponderous crown. The result 
 was that, after having rested nominally on the head of his 
 feeble successor, it passed to that of a descendant of a 
 Tatar, his treacherous minister, whom it crushed, as it did 
 all the Eussians, Poles, and Swedes, who subsequently dared 
 to seize or aspire to it. 
 
 Thus did this insane despotism destroy itself. It gave up 
 the corrupted state to invasions from the West, in the same 
 manner that, three centuries and a half before, internal dis- 
 sensions had laid it open to invasion from the East. This 
 similar effect of an opposite kind of excess lasted fifteen 
 years ; and it seemed as if the empire, brought to its last 
 gasp, were to close its existence with its fourth period. 
 
 Eut it was re-invigorated at that crisis, by the election of 
 a new dynasty; in 1613 the family of Eomanof ascended the 
 throne. With them begins the fifth great period of Eussian 
 history, to be followed perhaps in our own day by a sixth ; 
 for while we write this, the empire is hurrying towards a 
 momentous crisis. The splendour of the fifth period begins 
 towards the end of the seventeenth century, with the reign 
 of Peter the Great. 
 
 To guide us to this illustrious man through the obscurity 
 of eight centuries, we have, as already stated, a series of 
 twelve remarkable princes. In the first period, the period 
 of foundation and aggrandisement, we behold Murik, the 
 Eounder ; Oleg, the Conqueror ; Olga, the Eegent ; Vladimir, 
 the Christian ; Taroslaf, the Legislator. 
 
 In the second, the period of dissensions, the valiant and 
 virtuous "Vladimir Monomachus, and the politic Andrew. 
 
 In the third, that of complete slavery, the victorious and 
 devoted St. Alexander Nevsky, the able Ivan I, and Dmitri 
 Donskoi, the first who vanquished the Tatars. 
 
 Lastly, in the fourth, that of deliverance and of despotism, 
 Ivan III, the Autocrat, and Ivan IV., the Terrible. 
 
 But, independent of these twelve beacons, we descry other
 
 6 HISTOBY OJF RUSSIA. 
 
 directing points, landmarks, which also may afford us assist- 
 ance in classing our observations, and analysing this vast 
 mass of history. 
 
 "We have remarked, that the present capital of Russia is 
 the fifth which the empire has had. In 862, the conquering 
 genius of Eurik placed the first in Novgorod. From 882, 
 the still greater genius of Oleg, together with the allurement 
 of a milder climate, and of the riches, the knowledge, and the 
 comforts of Greek civilisation, fixed the second in the south, 
 at Kief. In 1167, internal dissensions, the attacks of the 
 Poles in the west, those of the nomad tribes in the south, 
 and the policy of Andrew, drew back the third towards the 
 east, and established it at Vladimir. The fourth, >and most 
 central, the great Moscow, which was to re -unite with it all 
 the empire, rose in 1328, and subjugated the three others 
 by the Machiavellism of Tury, and the talent of Ivan Kalita, 
 its first princes, and by its position between Novgorod, the 
 first metropolis, and Vladimir, the third. Lastly, about 1703, 
 the genius of civilisation established the fifth, St. Petersburg, 
 on the northern frontier, at the head of the Gulf of Finland, 
 and on the very coast whence, eight hundred and forty years 
 earlier, the barbarian Purik, the creator of this empire, com- 
 menced his march for the purpose of founding it.
 
 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 EUEIK — OLEG — IGOE. 
 
 Haying thus sketched the outline of Russian history, let 
 us proceed to its principal details ; and, without pausing on 
 the almost diluvian origin which is assigned to the primitive 
 tribes ; without repeating the names of Japhet, Russ, Slavan, 
 or Scythes, from whom the Russians, the Slavonians, and the 
 Scythians are supposed to be descended, let us state that the 
 most anciently known inhabitants of Russia were, the Scy- 
 thians, to the south ; the Slavonians, in the centre ; and the 
 Einns, to the north. Of their earliest source nothing is 
 known with certainty; but everything leads us to believe 
 that the Russian Varangians were Normans.* 
 
 Till the time of Rurik, the history of these tribes is full of 
 uncertainty : all that we can discern is, that, down to the 
 ninth century, the extensive territory, which now consti- 
 tutes European Russia, had often been inundated by great 
 and opposite irruptions ; those from Central Asia, and those 
 from Scandinavia. If, however, we may judge from the last 
 Tatar irruption, previous to 860, that of the Khozars (or Cha- 
 zares), it will appear that the Asiatic invasions never pene- 
 trated, in a northern direction, beyond the spots where Kief 
 and Kaluga are now situated. 
 
 As to the Norman irruptions, with the exception of that 
 of Amala, king of the Goths, and son of the gods, who, about 
 the year 250, carried with him, against the Roman empire, all 
 the Slavonians of the country comprehended between Einland 
 and the Borysthenes, they appear to have flowed off" to the 
 
 * See Appendix.
 
 8 HISTORY OF ETTSSIA. [CH. I. 
 
 right, towards the south-west ; so that, from the Oka and 
 the Upper Dniepr as far as the Baltic, all the Slavonian 
 and Finnish tribes who dwelt in the centre and the north of 
 European Russia, and thus were between the two irruptions, 
 were able to live in tranquillity, to multiply, and even already, 
 as was the case with the great Novgorod, to acquire riches 
 by means of a considerable commerce. 
 
 At the time of which we have now to speak, this republican 
 mother of a most despotic empire, had become so powerful 
 that it was a common saying among its neighbours : " Who 
 can dare to oppose God and Novgorod the great ?" Its com- 
 merce extended to Persia and even to India, and from Constan- 
 tinople to Vineta, a very commercial city on the mouth of 
 the Oder. The nations around it were its tributaries, from 
 Lithuania to the Ural Mountains, and from Bielo Ozero and 
 the lake of Rostof to the "White Sea. About the middle of 
 the ninth century, however, anarchy arose in the republic, 
 either from the abuse of liberty or the pride of wealth. In 
 this state of things a geographical circumstance drew down 
 war on Novgorod. Its most active commerce was carried on 
 through the Baltic, through the midst of the Russian Varan- 
 gians, Scandinavian warriors who were then masters of that 
 sea. A passage was to be obtained only by tribute or by 
 force : hostilities ensued, and the Novgorodians were rendered 
 tributary. 
 
 They recovered their independence after a while, but did 
 not retain it long. The weakness consequent upon internal 
 dissensions induced them, in the year 862, to invite the three 
 Varangian brothers, Rurik, Sinaf, and Truvor, either to rule 
 over them, as an old chronicle alleges, or, much more pro- 
 bably, to serve as auxiliaries for their defence against foreign 
 aggression. The brothers accepted the invitation, and esta- 
 blished themselves on the three principal frontiers of the 
 republic — Rurik at Old Ladoga, near the Volkhof ; Sinaf at 
 Bielo Ozero, which was then situated on the northern bank of 
 the lake of the same name ; and Truvor at Izborsk, near 
 Pleskof. In these positions the Varangian princes were able 
 to protect the republic from attacks from without ; but along 
 with the power to defend they had also the power to oppress, 
 and consequently the will to use it. Encircling the commer- 
 cial city they commanded all its outlets. Rather than re-
 
 A.D. 879] OLEG THE EEGENT. 9 
 
 linquish all ideas of traffic, Novgorod preferred to submit, 
 and Eurik took peaceable possession of it in 864, after the 
 death of his two brothers without issue. He now assumed 
 the title of Grand- Prince (Veliki Kniaz), and portioned out 
 all the cities among his companions in arms. The country 
 thenceforth became Russia ; and from this epoch we must 
 date that new name of the many Slavonian and Finnish tribes 
 of European Eussia, and also the origin of their slavery. 
 
 Most of the Eussian historians reckon Oskhold and Dir, 
 sovereigns of Kief, among the Varangians who accompanied 
 Eurik to Novgorod. They relate that these two brothers, 
 being dissatisfied with the Grand- Prince, set out in quest of 
 fortune in the direction of Greece, at the head of a body of 
 adventurers of their own nation. On their way they made 
 themselves masters of Kief; and two years afterwards they 
 attacked Constantinople ; but they suffered a severe repulse, 
 and with difficulty returned to Kief, bringing home no other 
 fruit from their disastrous expedition than a strong desire to 
 embrace that religion to which they probably ascribed the 
 better fortune of their Greek foes. The Byzantine writers 
 give the year 851 as the date of this enterprise, thus making 
 it precede the reign of Eurik by eleven years ; and this, ac- 
 cording to Levesque, is confirmed by one ancient Eussian 
 chronicle. However this may be, it appears from an epistle 
 of the patriarch Photius, written towards the end of 866, that 
 the sovereigns of Kief had already embraced Christianity, 
 and received a bishop and a priest from Constantinople. 
 
 After the death of his brothers, Eurik reigned fifteen 
 years in Novgorod, and died in 879, leaving to his kinsman 
 Oleg the regency, and the guardianship of his son Igor, then 
 aged four years. 
 
 The dominion founded by Eurik was rapidly and prodi- 
 giously enlarged by his successor. Oleg appears to have 
 possessed in a high degree the virtues and the vices most 
 incident to the age in which he lived: a true specimen 
 of barbaric greatness ! brave, crafty, insatiable, adventurous, 
 indefatigable ; faithful, as with respect to Igor, his ward, 
 and yet capable, on occasion, of the most savage treachery, 
 as in his conduct to Askhold and Dir. After the capture 
 of Smolensk in 882, he set his heart on the possession 
 of Kief ; but as its intrepid sovereigns and their Varan-
 
 10 HISTOBT OF RUSSIA. [CH. I. 
 
 gian warriors were not likely to prove an easy conquest, lie 
 determined to employ stratagem. Leaving his army behind, 
 and taking Igor with him, he descended the Dniepr with 
 a few boats, in which some armed men were concealed, 
 and landed below the high bank on which stood the ancient 
 city of Kief. He then sent a message to Askhold and Dir, 
 saying that some Varangian merchants, on their way to 
 Greece by order of the prince of Novgorod, desired to see 
 them as friends and men of the same race. la accordance 
 with the simple habits of the times, the two princes went 
 out without hesitation to meet the supposed merchants, and 
 had no sooner reached the place of ambush than they were 
 surrounded by Oleg's armed followers. "You are neither 
 princes, nor of princely birth," he cried; "but I am a 
 prince, and this is the son of Eurik." As in these words he 
 pronounced their doom, Askhold and Dir were laid dead at 
 his feet. 
 
 By this nefarious deed Oleg obtained undisputed posses- 
 sion of Kief. Transported with admiration of his conquest, 
 " Let Kief," he exclaimed, " be the mother of all the 
 Russian cities !" This it became in fact, for nearly three 
 centuries ; and he made it his capital ; not that he might 
 enjoy repose in it, but because it was nearer at hand to the 
 Greek empire, — a prey which was greedily coveted by the 
 barbarians under his command. 
 
 But to this pillage he did not lead them till he had well 
 connected his two capitals by a chain of conquests. To esta- 
 blish this connexion he first subdued, or won over, all the 
 Slavonian, Finnish, and Lithuanian tribes, which had till 
 then been independent, or tributaries to the degenerated 
 Khans of the eastern Khozars. 
 
 In Slavonia itself, where he was desirous of fixing his 
 authority, he was cautious in the use of his power, and 
 moderate in the tributes which he imposed. He tolerated 
 nascent Christianity in Kief, and firmly established there his 
 pupil Igor. 
 
 But, when he had completed the founding of his empire, 
 he breathed into all the vanquished tribes, who became his 
 subjects, the adventurous and ferocious avidity of the victors, 
 which he had hitherto restrained. Putting himself at the 
 head of both parties, inflaming their passions by his own,
 
 A.D. 901] oleg's teeaty with the geeek empeeoe. 11 
 
 and combining them in one and the same horrible thirst of 
 blood, of glory, and of plunder, he passed with eighty thou- 
 sand men, in two thousand barks, the cataracts of the 
 Borysthenes, devastated the Greek empire by atrocious bar- 
 barities, and, like Mahomet, conveyed his fleet over a cape, 
 or, as the chronicle affirms, mounted his vessels on wheels, 
 navigated them by land with all sails set, to launch them 
 again in the very port of Byzantium ; he then fixed his shield 
 on the gate of that capital as a trophy, and wrested from the 
 emperor an ignominious treaty, and an enormous ransom. 
 Thus, even the second sovereign of Bussia made himself as 
 formidable to the Greek emperor as his successors have 
 been to the sultan of Constantinople. 
 
 Oleg's Varangian guard, who seem to have been also his 
 council, were parties with him to this treaty, for their assent 
 appears to have been requisite to give validity to an agree- 
 ment affecting the amount of their gains as conquerors. 
 These warriors swore to the treaty by their gods Perune 
 and Voloss, and by their arms, placed before them on the 
 ground : their shields, their rings, their naked swords, gold 
 and steel, the things they loved and honoured most. The 
 gorged barbarian then departed with his rich booty to Kief, 
 to enjoy there an uncontested authority, and the title of 
 Wise' Man or Magician, unanimously conferred upon him by 
 popular admiration. 
 
 Eight years after this event Oleg sent ambassadors to 
 Constantinople to conclude a treaty of alliance and com- 
 merce between the two empires. This treaty, preserved in 
 the old chronicle of Nestor, is the first written monument of 
 Bussian history, for all previous treaties were verbal. It is 
 of value, as presenting to us some customs of the times in 
 which it was negotiated, and as proving that the Bussians 
 had already laws. Those historians, therefore, are in an 
 error, who attribute their first laws to a prince a century 
 posterior to Oleg. 
 
 Here follow some of the articles that were signed by the 
 sovereigns of Constantinople and of Kief respectively : 
 
 II. " If a Greek commit any outrage on a Bussian, or a 
 Bussian on a Greek, and it be not sufficiently proved, the 
 oath of the accuser shall be taken, and justice be done. 
 
 III. " If a Bussian kill a Christian, or a Christian kill a
 
 12 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. I. 
 
 Russian, the assassin shall be put to death on the very spot 
 where the crime was committed. If the murderer take to 
 flight and be domiciliated, the portion of his fortune, which 
 belongs to him according to law, shall be adjudged to the 
 next of kin to the deceased ; and the wife of the murderer 
 shall obtain the other portion of the estate which, by law, 
 should belong to him. 
 
 IV. " He who strikes another with a sword, or with any 
 other weapon, shall pay three litres of gold, according to the 
 Russian laiv. If he have not that sum, and he affirms it 
 upon oath, he shall give the party injured all he has, to the 
 garment he has on. 
 
 V. " If a Russian commit a theft on a Greek, or a Greek 
 on a Eussian, and he be taken in the fact and killed by the 
 proprietor, no pursuit shall be had for avenging his death. 
 But if the proprietor can seize him, bind him, and bring him 
 to the judge, he shall take back the things stolen, and the 
 thief shall pay him the triple of their value. 
 
 X. " If a "Eussian in the service of the emperor, or tra- 
 velling in the dominions of that prince, shall happen to die 
 without having disposed of his goods, and has none of his 
 near relations about him, his property shall be sent to 
 Eussia to hi3 heirs ; and, if he have bequeathed them by 
 testament, they shall be in like manner remitted to the 
 legatee." 
 
 We see, then, that the Eussian laws laid great stress on 
 oaths, a characteristic always observable among people in a 
 state of simplicity. They pronounced the sentence of death 
 against the murderer, and in this respect were wiser than 
 those ancient laws, which, by inflicting only a pecuniary 
 mulct, left the rich at liberty to be guilty with impunity. 
 AVives had a part of the estate of their husbands. The 
 punishment did not involve the entire confiscation of goods, 
 and the widow and orphan were not punished for the crime 
 of which they were innocent. Eobbery which attacks only 
 property, was punished by the privation of property, and the 
 law maintained a just proportion between the penalty and 
 the crime. The citizens, secure in their possessions, were 
 under no apprehension that the sovereign would seize upon 
 their heritage, and might even dispose of their effects in 
 favour of friendship. Lastly, since the Eussians made tes- 
 taments, the art of writing was not unknown to them.
 
 A.D. 913] ACCESSION OF IGOR. 13 
 
 The names of the ministers who negotiated the two 
 treaties of peace between Greece and Russia are preserved. 
 As none of these names are Slavonian, it appears that the 
 Slaves had retained no share in the administration: the 
 "Varangians alone were in possession of all places of trust, 
 and the ancient masters of the country had only to obey 
 them. 
 
 Oleg governed for thirty-three years the dominions of which 
 he was only the trustee. There were doubtless at that time 
 neither laws, nor usages holding the place of laws, that could 
 force him to surrender the sovereign authority to his ward. 
 Besides, the Russians were averse to being governed by 
 young princes ; a dislike which for several centuries esta- 
 blished among them the order of succession from brother to 
 brother, and from uncle to nephew. Properly speaking, says 
 Karamsin, this prince is to be regarded as the founder of the 
 empire's greatness, for to him it owes its finest and richest 
 provinces. Rurik's sway extended from Esthonia, the Slave 
 sources and the Volkhof, to Bielo Ozero, the mouth of the 
 Oka and the city of Rostof ; Oleg subjugated all the countries 
 from Smolensk'to the Sula, the Dniestr, and probably to the 
 Carpathian Mountains. 
 
 It was not to be supposed that such a man should die like 
 an ordinary mortal : a miraculous life must have a miracu- 
 lous end. Nestor relates that Oleg had a favourite horse 
 which he rode constantly till the soothsayers predicted that 
 it would be the cause of his death. The animal was then 
 put aside, and Oleg heard no more of it for some years. At 
 last, recollecting the prediction, he inquired what had become 
 of the horse, and was told that it had long been dead. Exult- 
 ing, then, in the discomfiture of the soothsayers, he desired to 
 see the bones, and being taken to the place where the skeleton 
 lay, he set his foot on the skull, saying, " So this, then, is the 
 creature destined to be my death." That instant a serpent 
 that lay coiled up within the skull darted out and gave the 
 prince a bite, of which he died. 
 
 Igor, the son of Rurik, was near forty years of age when 
 he succeeded Oleg in 913. He ascended the throne under 
 trying circumstances, for contemporaries and posterity ex- 
 pect great things of the successors of great princes, and 
 have little indulgence for their short-comings. The death of 
 the victor revived the courage of the vanquished, and the
 
 14 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. I. 
 
 Drevlians raised the standard of revolt against Kief; but 
 Ivor soon quelled them, and punished them by augmenting 
 their tribute. The Uglitches, who dwelt on the southern 
 side of the Dniepr, contended longer for their liberty against 
 the voyevode Sveneld, whom Igor had despatched against 
 them. One of their principal towns, named Piresetchen, 
 held out a siege of three years. At last they too were 
 subdued and made tributary. 
 
 Meanwhile new enemies, formidable from their numbers 
 and their thirst for pillage, showed themselves on the frontiers 
 of Eussia : these were the Petchenegans, famous in the Rus- 
 sian, Byzantine, and Hungarian annals, from the tenth to 
 the twelfth century. They were a nomad people, of the 
 Turcoman stock, whose only wealth consisted in their lances, 
 bows and arrows, their flocks and herds, and their swift 
 horses, which they managed with astonishing address. The 
 only objects of their desires were fat pastures for their 
 cattle, and rich neighbours to plunder. After their ex- 
 pulsion from the deserts of Saratof, the Petchenegans turned 
 westward, extended their dominion from the Don to the 
 Aluta, and divided their conquests into eight provinces, four 
 of them to the east of the Dniepr, between the Russians 
 and the Khozars, and four to the west of that river, in Mol- 
 davia, Transylvania, on the Bug, and about Gralicia, in the 
 neighbourhood of the Slave tribes dependent on Kief. The 
 Petchenegans had thought of sacking Kief, but desisted 
 from the attempt on seeing the formidable nature of the 
 resistance they would have to encounter, and retired peace- . 
 ably to Bessarabia or Moldavia. Thenceforth occupying 
 the ground between the Greek and the Russian empires, 
 subsidised by the one for its defence, and courted by the other 
 from commercial motives, for the cataracts of the Dniepr 
 and the mouths of the Danube were in the hands of those 
 marauders, the Petchenegans were enabled for more than 
 two hundred years to indulge their ruling propensity at the 
 expense of their neighbours. Having concluded a treaty 
 with Igor, they remained for five years without molesting 
 Russia ; at least Nestor does not speak of any war with them 
 until 920, nor had tradition afibrded him any clue to the 
 result of that campaign. 
 
 The reign of Igor was hardly distinguished by any impor-
 
 a.d. 941-4] igoe's expeditions. 15 
 
 tant event until the year 941, when, in imitation of his 
 guardian, he engaged in an expedition against Constantinople. 
 If the chroniclers do not exaggerate, Igor entered the Black 
 Sea with ten thousand barks, each carrying forty men. The 
 imperial troops being at a distance, he had time to overrun 
 and ravage Paphlagonia, Pontus, and Bithynia. Nestor 
 speaks with deep abhorrence of the ferocity displayed by 
 the Bussians on this occasion ; nothing to which they could 
 apply fire or sword escaped their wanton lust of destruction, 
 and their prisoners were invariably massacred in the most 
 atrocious manner, — crucified, impaled, cut in pieces, buried 
 alive, or tied to stakes to serve as butts for the archers. At 
 last the Greek fleet encountered the Eussian as it rode at 
 anchor near the Pharos, prepared for battle and confident 
 of victory. But the terrible Greek fire launched against 
 the invaders struck them with such dismay that they fled in 
 disorder to the coasts of Asia Minor. Descending there to 
 pillage, they were again routed by the land forces, and 
 escaped by night in their barks, to lose many of them in 
 another severe naval defeat. By the confession of the Rus- 
 sian chronicles, Igor scarcely took back with him a third 
 part of his army. 
 
 Instead of being discouraged by these disasters, Igor 
 prepared to reveuge them. In 944 he collected new forces, 
 took the Petchenegans into his pay, exacting hostages for 
 theh* fidelity, and again set out for Greece. But scarcely 
 had he reached the mouths of the Danube when he was met 
 . by ambassadors from the emperor Bomanus, with an offer to 
 pay him the same tribute as had been exacted by Oleg. 
 Igor halted and communicated this offer to his chief men, 
 whose opinions on the matter are thus reported by Nestor : 
 "If Caesar makes such proposals," said they, "is it not 
 better to get gold, silver, and precious stuffs, without fight- 
 ing? Can we tell who will be the victor, and who the 
 vanquished? And can we guess what may befal us at sea? 
 It is not solid ground that is under our feet, but the depths 
 of the waters, where all men run the same risks." 
 
 In accordance with these views Igor granted peace to the 
 empire on the proposed conditions, and the following year 
 he concluded with the emperor a treaty, which was in part a 
 renewal of that made by Oleg. Of the fifty names attached
 
 16 HISTOET OF ItUSSIA. [CH. II. 
 
 on the part of Eussia to this second treaty, three are Slave, 
 the rest Norman. 
 
 Igor, being now advanced in years, was naturally desirous 
 of repose, but the insatiable cupidity of his comrades in arms 
 forced him to go to war. From the complaints of his war- 
 riors it appears that the Russian, like the German princes, 
 furnished their Faithful Band with clothing, arms, horses, 
 and provisions. " We are naked," Igor's companions and 
 guards said to him, " while the companions of Sveneld have 
 beautiful arms and fine clothing. Come with us and levy 
 contributions, that we may be in plenty with thee." It was 
 customary with the Grand-Prince to leave Kief every year, 
 in November, with an army, and not to return until April, 
 after having visited his cities and received their tributes. 
 "When the prince's magazine was empty, and the annual 
 contributions were not sufficient, it became necessary to find 
 new enemies to subject to exactions, or to treat as enemies 
 the tribes that had submitted. To the latter expedient Igor 
 now resorted against the Drevlians. Marching into their 
 country he surcharged them with onerous tributes, besides 
 suffering his guards to plunder them with impunity. His 
 easy success in this rapacious foray tempted him to his 
 destruction. After quitting the country of his oppressed 
 tributaries, the thought struck him that more might yet be 
 squeezed out of them. With this view he sent on his army 
 to Kief, probably because he did not wish to let his voyevodes 
 or lieutenants share the fruit of his contemplated extortions, 
 and went back with a small force among the Drevlians, who, > 
 driven to extremity, massacred him and the whole of his 
 guard near their town of Korosten. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE EEGENT OLGA — SVIATOSLAF. 
 
 Sviatoslae, Igor's only son, and the first prince who bore 
 a Russian name, was very young at the death of his father in 
 945. He had for tutor the hoyard Asmuld ; Sveneld com- 
 manded the army ; and Olga, the widow of Igor, aided by 
 the counsels of these eminent men, undertook the regency.
 
 A.D. 945] OLGA'S EEYENGE OS THE DEEVLIANS. 17 
 
 Her first care was to revenge her husband's death on the 
 Drevlians, who were now dreaming not only of impunity 
 but of a great accession of power, to be obtained by the 
 marriage of their prince Male with his mortal enemy Olga. 
 The account given by Nestor of this passage in the regent's 
 history is strongly tinctured with fable ; but it is interesting 
 as a record of traditions based upon the usages of the times 
 in which they had birth. 
 
 " Twenty of the most considerable men among the Drev- 
 lians," says the chronicler, "came to Kief, and said to Olga: 
 1 We have killed your husband, because he plundered and 
 devoured like a wolf. But our princes are good, and make 
 our country thrive. Come and marry our prince Male.' 
 And Olga replied : ' Your proposal seems good to me ; for 
 after all I cannot bring my husband to life again. To-morrow 
 I will entertain you before my people ; return now to your 
 barks, and when my people come to you to-morrow, say to 
 them : We will not go on horseback or on foot, you must 
 carry us in our barks; and my people will carry you on 
 their shoulders.' 
 
 " Olga had a wide and deep pit dug in front of a house 
 outside the city. Next day she went to that house, and 
 sent for the ambassadors. And they said : ' We will not go 
 on foot or on horseback ; carry us in our barks.' The men 
 of Kief replied : ' We are your slaves ; our prince is slain, 
 and our princess is willing to marry your prince.' The 
 Drevlians, seated proudly in their barks, were carried before 
 the house in which Olga was, and were flung into the pit 
 with their barks. And Olga cried to them : ' How do you 
 like your entertainment ?' In vain they cried, ' Forgive us 
 the death of Igor !' She ordered them all to be buried alive, 
 and the pit was filled up. 
 
 " Then Olga sent to the Drevlians, and said : ' If you 
 sincerely wish for me, send me men of the highest considera- 
 tion, that I may repair to you with honour, and that the 
 people of Kief may let me go.' The Drevlians, on hearing 
 this message, chose the most considerable men of their 
 country and sent them to her. On their arrival, Olga had a 
 bath prepared, and sent word to them : ' Take a bath, and 
 then come into my presence.' The bath was heated, the 
 
 o
 
 18 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [C. II. 
 
 Drevlians entered it and began to bathe ; but the doors were 
 then made fast, the house was set on fire by her orders, and 
 they were all burnt alive. 
 
 " Again she sent word to the Drevlians : ' I am about to 
 repair to you. Get ready a large quantity of hydromel in 
 the place where you killed my husband, that I may weep 
 over his tomb, and celebrate the trizna (the funeral banquet) 
 in his honour.' The Drevlians hearing this, brought much 
 honey and brewed it. Olga taking with her only a small 
 number of friends lightly armed, came to the tomb and wept 
 over it. Then she had a great mound raised over it, and 
 when this was done, she ordered the trizna to be set out. 
 Then the Drevlians began to drink, and Olga ordered her 
 people to serve them. And the Drevlians said to Olga: 
 ' Where are our friends whom we sent to you ?' She replied : 
 ' They are coming after me with the friends of my husband.' 
 And when the Drevlians had drunk their fill, she- ordered 
 her friends to cut them to pieces, and they killed five thou- 
 sand of them." 
 
 Eeturning to Kief, Olga called out her forces and began a 
 campaign, taking her young son with her, that he might thus 
 early be inured to arms. She laid waste all the country of 
 the Drevlians, and sacked and destroyed their towns. At 
 last she laid siege to their capital, Korosten — the name of 
 which, signifying ivall of lark, indicates what was the struc- 
 ture of the city, at least at its origin. It was, perhaps, built 
 of more solid materials at the time of which we are speaking, 
 but all the houses were still wooden. This suggested the 
 last stratagem ascribed to Olga by the traditions which Nestor 
 has followed. Finding she could not force the city to sur- 
 render, she sent this message to the inhabitants : " Why do 
 you hold out so obstinately ? All your other towns are in 
 my power ; the rest of your people are peacefully tilling their 
 fields whilst you persist in dying of hunger. You have no 
 more to fear from me ; I have sufficiently revenged my 
 husband." The Drevlians offered her a tribute of honey and 
 furs, but Olga, with affected generosity, refused it, and said 
 she would be content with three sparrows and a pigeon from 
 each house. These being supplied with alacrity, the im- 
 placable widow let them all loose in the evening with lighted 
 matches tied to their tails. The birds flew back to their
 
 A.D. 955] OLGA BAPTISED. 19 
 
 nests in the town, and consequently set it on fire in a 
 thousand places. The inhahitants escaped the flames only 
 to fall under the swords of the besiegers. The prince and all 
 the principal men perished in the massacre; but few pri- 
 soners were made, and only the lowest of the populace were 
 left alive to languish under heavy impositions. 
 
 After chastising the Drevlians the regent visited the 
 northern part of her dominions, regulated the contributions, 
 divided the lands into bailiwicks and communes, built towns 
 and villages, and marked her route by many other measures 
 that did honour to her administrative capacity. It was 
 probably at this time that, by certain privileges bestowed on 
 her native town of Pskof, she laid the foundation of its 
 greatness, and enabled it to become the capital of an im- 
 portant province. 
 
 Though idolatry continued to be the prevailing religion of 
 Russia, Christianity had constantly gained ground in Kief 
 since the baptism of Askhold and Dir. The treaty con- 
 cluded between Igor and the Greeks gives manifest proof 
 that Christians were not only tolerated in the Russian 
 capital, but were in all respects on a footing of equality 
 with their Pagan countrymen. Olga became desirous of 
 embracing their religion, and, in order to do so in a more 
 august manner, she went to Constantinople to be instructed 
 and baptised by the patriarch (a.d. 955). The imperial 
 throne was then filled by Constantine Porphyrogeneta, 
 who has himself left us a detailed account of the honours 
 paid to the Russian princess on that occasion. It was the 
 emperor himself who led Olga to the baptismal font and 
 gave her the name of Helena. 
 
 Olga's example was followed by few of her subjects. 
 " "Would you have me be a laughing-stock to my friends ?" 
 was Sviatoslaf's reply to the pious exhortations of his 
 mother. He prohibited none from being baptised who 
 would ; but he took no pains to conceal his contempt for 
 Christians, whom he looked upon as cowards, grounding his 
 opinion, perhaps, on the general character of the Greeks of 
 his day. 
 
 It is not precisely known at what time Sviatoslaf took 
 the reins of government in his own hand ; but the most 
 probable opinion is, that they wero remitted to him by his 
 
 c2
 
 20 HISTORY 03? RUSSIA. [c. II. 
 
 mother at her departure for Constantinople. Before we 
 follow him in bis battles we will consider him for a moment 
 in bis ordinary course of life, which was that of the ancient 
 Scythians, of several of the Tatar hordes, and indeed of most 
 nations in primitive times. 
 
 Though in the earlier years of his reign we do not find 
 that he had any war to carry on, his first care was to collect 
 an army, less formidable for its numbers than for the 
 ferocious courage of its soldiers. Looking upon a palace as 
 nothing better than a prison, he made the camp his only 
 abode. His troops, in their frequent and rapid movements, 
 were followed by no kind of baggage ; and the prince re- 
 fused to have any himself. Without any utensil for pre- 
 paring his meals or boiling his victuals, he contented him- 
 self with cutting up the meat he ate, and broiling it himself 
 upon the coals, just like one of Homer's heroes. But one 
 thing which distinguished Sviatoslaf from them was, that 
 he frequently lived only on horseflesh. By this manner of 
 life, resembling that of the Kalmuks, he was enabled like 
 them to carry on war at a distance without any embarrass- 
 ment or concern for the subsistence of his army ; since the 
 same animal that carried the warrior afterwards served him 
 for food. This hero, who kept so poor a table, was not 
 more delicately lodged. He had no tent ; but braving all 
 the inclemency of the Russian sky, he lay on the bare 
 ground, or at most with a piece of the coarsest felt beueath 
 him, with a saddle for his pillow and a horsecloth for his 
 covering. It was with no common devotion his soldiers 
 followed a leader who shared every toil and privation equally 
 with the meanest in the camp. The nobility of Sviatoslaf 's 
 character is testified by the chroniclers. Far from seeking 
 the advantages of unforeseen attacks, his were always pre- 
 ceded by a formal declaration of war. Amidst the odious 
 treachery of those barbarous times, the mind rests with a 
 grateful sense of relief ou this trait of chivalric honour. 
 
 Tiie bauks of the Oka, the Don, and the Volga were the 
 first scenes of his triumphs. He subdued the ViatckhoB, 
 tributaries to the Khan of the Khozars, then turned his 
 victorious arms against 1 hat once so mighty potentate, de- 
 feated him in a bloody battle, and took his capital, Sarkel or 
 Biclovess, a city on the Hon fortified by Greek engineers
 
 A.D. 964-8] SVIATOSLAF's WAES. 21 
 
 (a.d. 964). Nestor gives us no details as to the subsequent 
 operations of the priuce in that direction, but contents him- 
 self with saying that Sviatoslaf subjugated also the Tasses 
 and the Kassogs, the former being probably the Ossians or 
 Ossitians of Daghestan, the latter the Circassians, whose 
 country was called Kassakhi in the tenth century. At this 
 epoch, too, the Eussians became masters of all the possessions 
 of the Khozars on the eastern coasts of the sea of Azof, and 
 Sviatoslaf was able to secure these remote conquests by an 
 easy communication between Tmutarakan and Kief by way 
 of the Black Sea and the Dniepr. Thenceforth the Khozars 
 appear no more in history. 
 
 Opportunity for a still more important conquest was fur- 
 nished by the repeated incursions of the Hungarians upon 
 the Greek territory, and the secret succours afforded them 
 by the Bulgarians, the treacherous allies of the empire. 
 Nicephorus Phocas implored against the latter the aid of 
 Sviatoslaf, and purchased it by subsidies. There was no 
 difficulty in engaging in such an enterprise a prince who was 
 ever in quest of battles. Sviatoslaf entered the Danube 
 with a fleet containing sixty thousand men, took all the 
 towns belonging to the Bulgarians, and seeing himself thus 
 master of ancient Moesia, resolved to transfer thither the 
 seat of his empire to the city of Pereiaslavetz, now Tamboly. 
 Meanwhile he had nearly lost his family and his ancient 
 capital. 
 
 The Petchenegans had taken advantage of the absence of 
 the valorous Grand-Prince to invade Bussia for the first time, 
 and had laid siege in great force to Kief (a.d. 968), where the 
 princess Olga was with her grandchildren. The only succour 
 that could be looked for was from a Russian commander 
 named Prititch, who was posted on the other side of the 
 Dniepr ; but his army was small, and he could have no com- 
 munication with the town, which was nearly reduced by 
 famine. At last a daring young warrior, who spoke the 
 language of the besiegers, undertook to convey intelligence 
 to Prititch. Leaving the city with a bridle in his hand, he 
 went straight to a group of Petchenegans, and asked had 
 they seen Ins horse. The Petchenegans thinking he was 
 one of their own people, oft'ered him no impediment, and did 
 not discover their mistake till he had plunged into the river
 
 22 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [O. II. 
 
 and was swimming rapidly to the opposite bank. The 
 arrows they shot after him missed their mark, and a boat 
 sent out by his countrymen took him on board. Prititch, 
 learning from the envoy that the Kievians were on the point 
 of surrendering, resolved to run all hazards to save at least 
 the family of his sovereign. At daybreak next morning the 
 besiegers saw the Dniepr covered with Russian barks, ad- 
 vancing to the sound of trumpets, which were answered by 
 loud shouts of joy from the town. Believing that it was the 
 terrible Sviatoslaf coming in person to the relief of his 
 capital, the Petchenegans were seized with a panic, and 
 Kief was rescued. The prince of the Petchenegans per- 
 ceived the small number of the enemy, but durst not en- 
 counter them. He requested an interview with the Russian 
 voyevode, and asked him if he was the Grand- Prince. Pri- 
 titch adroitly replied that he was only the commander of 
 Sviatoslaf's vanguard, and that he himself was advancing 
 with a formidable army. The two courteous enemies ex- 
 changed gifts at parting, like Glaucus and Diomede, on the 
 prince's part his scimitar, his arrows, and his horse ; on the 
 voyevode's, his buckler, cuirass, and sword ; and the Petche- 
 negan raised the siege and retired with his troops. 
 
 Sviatoslaf hastened back from Bulgaria on hearing of the 
 invasion of his own dominions, and restored peace to them 
 by defeating the Petchenegans, and driving them back over 
 the frontier. His mother died soon after at an advanced 
 age, — a woman, says Karamsin, whom tradition has charac- 
 terised as crafty and deceitful, the church as a saint, and 
 history as a wise and able ruler. Her dcatli removed what 
 to Sviatoslaf seemed the only obstacle to the execution of 
 his ill-advised scheme of transferring the seat of empire to 
 the banks of the Danube. He told his boyars " that he 
 preferred Pereiaslavetz as a residence to Kief ; the Bulgarian 
 capital was, in a manner, the centre of the riches of nature 
 and of art ; the Greeks imported thither gold, textile fabrics, 
 wine and fruits ; the Bohemians and the Hungarians silver 
 and horses ; and the Russians furs, wax, honey, and slaves." 
 
 Before he set out on his second expedition to Bulgaria 
 (a.d. 970), he conferred on his son Yaropolk the govern- 
 ment of Kief, gave the country of the Drevlians to Oleg his 
 second son, and sent to Novgorod Vladimir, a natural son
 
 A.D. 971] WAR BETWEEN SVIATOSLAE AND ZIMISCES. 23 
 
 born to him by Malusha, one of Olga's attendants. Thus 
 Sviatoslaf was the first who introduced the custom of be- 
 stowing private appanages on the princes of the blood ; a 
 pernicious custom, which often brought Russia to the brink 
 of ruin. 
 
 Having thus provided for the administration of his do- 
 minions, he began his march against the Bulgarians. It 
 must be observed, that on coming to the assistance of Kief 
 he had brought with him all his forces, and consequently 
 abandoned the whole of his conquests, secure of regaining 
 them at any time with ease. Such is the method pursued 
 by barbarians in carrying on war ; and all nations have once 
 been barbarians. 
 
 The Bulgarians suffered Sviatoslaf to advance to the walls 
 of Pereiaslavetz, and there rushed upon him with no less 
 fury than courage. The Russians, repulsed, thinned, and 
 already defeated, thought of nothing but selling their lives as 
 dear as they could. Their force seemed now to increase 
 with their efforts ; the astonished conquerors fell back, were 
 confused, dispersed, and surrendered to Sviatoslaf both the 
 victory and their town ; and he was once more master of 
 Bulgaria. 
 
 In the mean time Nicephorus was assassinated by John 
 Zimisces, who succeeded him. The new emperor saw what 
 an error his predecessor had committed in alluring the 
 Russians to the banks of the Danube ; for the daring and 
 warlike Sviatoslaf was a far more formidable neighbour than 
 the Bulgarians. Zimisces consequently summoned Svia- 
 toslaf to evacuate his conquest in pursuance of the treaty 
 concluded with Nicephorus. The Russian prince haughtily 
 refused compliance, and told the emperor's envoys that he 
 would soon be in Constantinople, and would drive the Greeks 
 into Asia. To this breach of treaty the Russians Avere in- 
 cited by a patrician named Kalokir. It was he who had 
 treated with them in the name of JSTicephorus ; and, having 
 formed the intention to employ their arms in order to raise 
 himself to the imperial throne, he thought their aid not 
 dearly purchased by the relinquishment of Bulgaria.* 
 
 The Greek emperor prepared to open the campaign at the 
 
 * Script. Hist. Byzant.
 
 24 HISTOET OF EUSSIA. [c. II. 
 
 return of spring ; and Sviatoslaf, in order to be a match for 
 him, joined to his own troops the subjected Petchenegans, 
 Hungarians, and Bulgarians, and thus had the command, it 
 is said, of three hundred thousand men. He made an in- 
 cursion into Thrace, burnt and ravaged whatever he met, 
 and setup his camp before Adrianople ; but he was defeated 
 by a stratagem of the commandant of that town. 
 
 The Russians, however, remained masters of Pereiaslavetz ; 
 and Zimisces marched against them himself the following 
 year. The city was taken by assault ; but eight thousand 
 Russians threw themselves into the royal citadel. It was 
 held to be impregnable ; but the besiegers succeeded in 
 setting it on fire. No resource being left to the wretches 
 within, many of them leaped from the summit of the rock, 
 the greater part perished in the flames, and the remainder 
 were carried into captivity. The Russian prince had not 
 shut himself up in Pereiaslavetz : afflicted though not de- 
 sponding at the loss of the city, he kept the field with some 
 troops, and exhibited a dreadful example of ferocity, by 
 causing three hundred Bulgarians to be slain of whose fide- 
 lity he entertained some suspicions. 
 
 The emperor followed up his victory, and made himself 
 master of several towns. Durostole on the Danube was the 
 most considerable of those that yet remained, and it was 
 easy to foresee that the Greeks would lose no time in com- 
 mencing the siege of it. 
 
 Accordingly, after an obstinate combat, in which the 
 Russians were at last repulsed, it was blockaded by land and 
 by sea. The scarcity of provisions in the city was increas- 
 ing from day to day ; but the Russians, though continually 
 more harassed, showed no abatement of courage : they made 
 frequent sorties, which only added to their losses ; and 
 Sviatoslaf, in one of these fights, with difficulty escaped cap- 
 tivity. 
 
 His counsellors advised him to sue for peace ; but he pre- 
 ferred death to any degree of submission. He ordered a 
 general sortie to be made the next day ; and having no hope 
 but in victory, he forbade any return, and ordered the gates 
 to be shut as soon as the soldiers were out of the town. 
 His commands were executed : but, after the most obstinate 
 resistance, the Russians were beaten, and Sviatoslaf was re-
 
 A.D. 972] DEATH OF SVIATOSLAF. 25 
 
 duced to the necessity of applying for peace. This victory 
 appeared so important and so difficult in the eyes of the 
 Greeks, that they thought they could do no less than ascribe 
 it to a miracle. They pretended that Theodore the martyr 
 had fought for them on a white horse. 
 
 If we may rely upon Nestor, the Eussians were always 
 victorious ; but more credit is due to the narrative of the 
 Greeks, as better agreeing with the miserable end of Svia- 
 toslaf. If he had been conqueror, would he have retreated 
 into Eussia badly attended ? Would he have abandoned 
 Bulgaria, the price of so much blood ? Besides, what the 
 Eussian chronicle relates of the treaty of peace proves to a 
 certainty that Sviatoslaf was vanquished, for all its stipula- 
 tions are in favour of the empire alone. 
 
 By Nestor's account, Sviatoslaf, the victor, had only ten 
 thousand men. According to the historians of Byzantium, 
 Sviatoslaf, the vanquished, had three hundred thousand men 
 before Adrianople, and again three hundred thousand in the 
 battle near Durostole. It may be supposed that the Greeks 
 were desirous of increasing their fame, by exaggerating the 
 forces of their enemy, and that Sviatoslaf, who had brought 
 few troops out of Eussia, found his army increase on the way 
 by the junction of all those barbarians whom the hope of plun- 
 der would allure to his standard. The same may be said of 
 the divers nations that ruined the Eoman empire : each of 
 them seemed exceedingly numerous when engaged in action, 
 because a crowd of other nations took part in its enter- 
 prise. 
 
 In short, whether victor or vanquished, Sviatoslaf, very 
 badly attended, regained the road to his ancient territories. 
 It was to no purpose that Sveneld, Igor's illustrious voye- 
 vode, represented to him the danger of going up the Borys- 
 thenes : he embarked. The Petchenegans, being informed 
 by the Bulgarians of the route he had taken, waited for him 
 near the rocks, by which the famous cataracts of that river 
 are formed. The autumn being far advanced when he arrived 
 near that spot, he was obliged to pass the winter there, and 
 had to experience all the horrors of famine. On the return 
 of spring he attempted to open himself a passage through 
 the ranks of his enemies, but was defeated and killed ; and 
 his skull, ornamented with a circle of gold, was used as a
 
 26 HISTORY OF RUSSIA, [c. III. 
 
 goblet by the prince of the Petchenegans. Only a small 
 remnant of the Eussian army escaped under the command of 
 Sveneld, to bring to Kief the news of their intrepid prince's 
 death. 
 
 Sviatoslaf s overthrow was, after all, a fortunate event for 
 the Eussian empire. Kief was already a sufficiently eccentric 
 capital ; had Sviatoslaf established the seat of government on 
 the Danube, his successor wovdd have gone still further ; and 
 Eurik, instead of being the founder of a mighty empire, 
 ' would have been nothing more than the principal leader of 
 one of those vast but transient irruptions of the northern 
 barbarians, which often ravaged the world without leaving 
 behind any permanent trace of their passage. But in the 
 Greek emperor Zimisces, Sviatoslaf met with a hero as per- 
 tinacious as himself, and with far more talent, and the 
 Eussians, driven back within the limits of Eussia, were com- 
 pelled to establish themselves there. 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 TAKOPOLK — VLADIMIR — RUSSIA CHRISTIANISED. 
 
 After the death of Sviatoslaf, Taropolk reigned in Kief, 
 Oleg in the country of the Drevlians, and Vladimir in Nov- 
 gorod. The monarchical power existed nowhere in the 
 state ; for it does not appear that Yaropolk had any autho- 
 rity over the appanages of his brothers. The effects of this 
 partition of the empire were soon displayed in the civil war 
 which broke out in 977. Its instigator was the celebrated 
 voyevode Sveneld, the companion in arms of Igor and 
 Sviatoslaf. lie had to revenge on Oleg the murder of his 
 son, slain by that prince, who bad found him hunting on his 
 territory ; and to this end he induced Yaropolk to make war 
 on Oleg, and re-unite the country of the Drevlians to the 
 dominions of Kief. The armies of the two brothers met ; 
 that of Oleg was defeated, and he himself perished in his 
 flight by the breaking down of a bridge thronged with fugi- 
 tives. The victor forgot his triumph in grief for his brother's 
 fate. He shed tears over the lifeless remains of Oleg, and
 
 I 
 
 A.D. 977] FIEST CIVIL WAB, IN RUSSIA. 27 
 
 vented his remorse in passionate accusations against himself 
 and Sveneld. 
 
 Vladimir, prince of Novgorod, now became alarmed for his 
 own safety, and crossing the sea took refuge with the Varan- 
 gians. Taropolk sent his voyevodes to take possession of 
 the territory ahandoned by his brother, and thus became 
 sovereign master of all Russia. 
 
 Meanwhile, though a fugitive, without domains and with- 
 out an army, Vladimir never renounced the design of reco- 
 vering and aggrandising his power. During the two years 
 he remained among the Varangians, the countrymen of his 
 ancestors, he participated in the daring enterprises of those 
 Norman vikingar whose flags swept all the seas of Europe. 
 At last, having assembled a large force of Varangian adven- 
 turers, he returned to Novgorod, and drove out Varopolk's 
 voyevodes, bidding them tell his brother that he should see 
 him soon at Kief. 
 
 Kogvolod, a Varangian, who ruled in Polotsk, whether by 
 right of conquest, or by grant from Kurik, had a daughter 
 named Eogneda, of great beauty, already betrothed to Taro- 
 polk. Vladimir, who was preparing to seize his brother's 
 throne, resolved also to wrest from him his intended consort. 
 Accordingly, he sent ambassadors to Polotsk to demand the 
 hand of the princess ; but she rejected him with disdain. 
 " I will never," said she, " unboot the son of a slave ;" for 
 Vladimir's mother was, as we have said, one of Olga's at- 
 tendants. It was at that time the custom for brides to pull 
 off the boots of their spouses on the wedding night. The 
 vindictive Vladimir, on receiving this insulting answei*, 
 marched against the prince of Polotsk, defeated him, killed 
 him and his two sons, and forced the young princess to 
 receive his hand, yet reeking with the blood of her family. 
 After this horrible vengeance he advanced towards Kief, 
 where Taropolk shut himself up without venturing to risk a 
 battle. A villain named Blude, a voyevode of Taropolk' s, 
 loaded with his bounties, but already sold to Vladimir, con- 
 trived to lull Ins prince into a profound security. The town 
 was naturally strong, and the inhabitants were faithful to 
 their sovereign. The traitor Blude, perceiving this, found 
 means to raise suspicions in the breast of his master against 
 the citizens of Kief, and persuaded him to take flight, while
 
 28 HISTOEY OF RUSSIA. [c. III. 
 
 it was yet in his power, if he would avoid being delivered 
 into the hands of his brother. The inhabitants, deserted 
 by their prince, were obliged to admit his rival. 
 
 Taropolk, pursued by his brother, was blockaded in his 
 new retreat at Rodnia, which became a prey to the horrors of a 
 famine so dire, that its memory has passed into a common 
 Russian proverb. "What was even worse, his ear was still beset 
 by the wretch who had obtained his confidence for the sake of 
 betraying it. He might have found an asylum among the 
 Petchenegans ; but he chose rather to repair to Kief and 
 throw himself into the hands of Vladimir, by whose orders 
 he was murdered in their father's palace. Such was the sad 
 end of Sviatoslaf 's eldest son after a reign of seven years, 
 four of them as prince of Kief, and three as monarch of all 
 Russia. 
 
 The wife of Yaropolk was a Greek nun of great beauty, 
 taken captive by Sviatoslaf, and given by him to the eldest of 
 his sons. She happened to be pregnant when Taropolk was 
 killed, and was compelled to share the bed of her husband's 
 murderer. Vladimir immediately acknowledged the child in 
 her womb : it was the miscreant Sviatopolk, who was born to 
 visit on the sons of him who adopted him. the guilt of his 
 father's murderer. 
 
 Next to the Varangians, it was to Blude, the false friend 
 of Yaropolk, that Vladimir was indebted for his nefarious 
 successes. Accordingly, for three days he showed the traitor 
 great honour, and accumulated the prime dignities on his head. 
 But that term being elapsed : " I have fulfilled my promise," 
 said he ; " I have treated thee as my friend ; thy honours 
 exceed thy most sanguine wishes : to-day, as judge, I con- 
 demn the traitor and the assassin of his prince." Having ut- 
 tered these words, he put Blude to death. 
 
 The Varangians had reinstated Vladimir on the throne of 
 Novgorod, and had followed him against his brother : on this 
 plea they thought they had the right to require that he should 
 oblige the inhabitants of Kief to pay them a tribute. Vla- 
 dimir, being at that time not sufficiently strong to venture 
 upon offending them by a downright refusal, amused them 
 by promises, until he had put himself in a condition to be 
 afraid of them no longer. Upon this they narrowed their 
 demands, and asked only permission to go and seek their for-
 
 A.D. 984] TLADIMIR THE GREAT. 29 
 
 tune in Greece. He gladly complied with their request, re- 
 tained the boldest of them in his service, and privily advertised 
 the emperor of the departure of the rest, praying him to 
 cause them to be arrested, and to disperse them in several 
 parts of his dominions, that they might be incapacitated from 
 causing danger either to Russia or to the empire. 
 
 After he had thus consolidated his power, Vladimir displayed 
 great zeal for the honour of his pagan deities. He had a new 
 statue of Perune, with a silver head, erected near his palace, 
 and other idols he placed on the sacred hill. If remorse for fra- 
 tricide had any share in his motives for propitiating the gods, 
 at least there was nothing ascetic in his piety. Besides six 
 wives, by whom he had those twelve sons among whom he 
 partitioned the empire, this lascivious despot had in several 
 towns establishments of concubines, amounting in all to eight 
 hundred. He did violence with impunity to his female 
 subjects, though this is the rock on which tyrannies usually 
 split, and no wife or maid of any attraction was safe from 
 the lust of this second Solomon, as Nestor calls him. 
 
 He loved war no less than women. He forced back to 
 obedience all those tributary nations that had revolted after 
 the death of Sviatoslaf, and he brought others under the 
 yoke. He recovered from Metchislaf, king of Poland, Oleg's 
 conquests in Gallicia, which had been lost again under the 
 reign of the weak Yaropolk. He made himself master of the 
 country of the Tatviagues, between Lithuania and Poland, 
 and of all Livonia ; and waged successful war on the 
 people of eastern Bulgaria, whose country corresponded 
 nearly to the present government of Kazan. 
 
 Vladimir resolved to return thanks to the gods for the 
 success they had granted to his arms, by oifering them a 
 sacrifice of the prisoners of war. His courtiers, more cruel 
 in their piety than even their prince, persuaded him that a 
 victim selected from his own people would more worthily 
 testify his gratitude for these signal dispensations of Heaven. 
 Tlir choice fell on a young Varangian, the son of a Christian, 
 and brought up in that faith. The unhappy father refused 
 the victim : the people, enraged at what they deemed an in- 
 sult to their prince and their religion, stormed the house, 
 and murdered both father and son. They have been ca- 
 nonised by the Russian church as its only martyrs.
 
 30 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [c. III. 
 
 It was about this time (984) that a curious and touching 
 incident occurred, which is related in the continuation of 
 Nestor's chronicle. Bogneda had forgiven Vladimir the 
 murder of her father and her brothers, but could not forgive 
 his infidelities. The Grand-Prince, having preferred other 
 women to her, had turned the unfortunate princess out of his 
 palace. One day, when he had gone to see her in her lonely 
 abode on the banks of the Libeda, near Kief, he fell fast 
 asleep, and Bogneda thought to seize that opportunity to 
 stab him, but Vladimir woke in time to prevent the blow. 
 Resolving to execute vengeance upon her with his own hand, 
 he ordered her to put on her wedding attire, and await her 
 death on a sumptuous bed in her handsomest apartment. 
 She obeyed ; her implacable judge entered the room, but 
 there he was met by Bogneda' s young son Isiaslaf, who, in 
 obedience to his mother's instructions, presented Vladimir 
 with a drawn sword, saying : " Thou are not alone, father ! 
 thy son will be witness to thy deed." — " Who thought of 
 seeing thee here ?" said Vladimir, throwing down the sword. 
 Immediately quitting the place, he convoked his boyars and 
 asked their advice. " Prince," they said, " spare the cul- 
 prit for sake of this child, and give them for appanage the 
 principality which was Eogvolod's." Vladimir consented, 
 built a new city called Isiaslavle, in the present government 
 of Vitebsk, and thither he sent Bogneda and her son. 
 
 Vladimir's rude greatness, and the rumours of his warlike 
 exploits, awakened the attention of neighbouring states, and 
 made them desirous of attaching him to the religion they 
 severally professed. Pour of them contended for his con- 
 version. The conquering religion of Mahomet was recom- 
 mended to him by the eastern Bulgarians ; the description 
 of its paradise and its lovely houris fired his voluptuous 
 imagination ; but he could not overcome his repugnance to 
 circumcision and the interdiction of wine. " Wine," he 
 said, " is the delight of the Russians ; we cannot do without 
 it." Catholicism, offered to him by the Germans, he dis- 
 liked, because of its pope, an earthly deity, which appeared 
 to him a monstrous thing ; and Judaism, because it had no 
 country, and he thought it neither rational to take advice 
 from wanderers under the ban of Heaven, nor desirable to 
 share their punishment.
 
 A.D. 9S8] VLADIMIR BESIEGES KHEKSON. 31 
 
 But, at the same time, his attention was fixed on the 
 Greek religion, which his ancestress Olga had followed, and 
 which had recently been preached to him by a philosopher of 
 Byzantium. He summoned his boyars, took their opinions, 
 and deputed ten of them to examine the religions in question 
 in the countries where they were professed. The envoys 
 went forth and returned. Mahometanism and Catholicism 
 they had seen in poor and barbarous provinces ; but they 
 had witnessed with rapturous admiration the solemnities of 
 the Greek religion in its magnificent metropolis and adorned 
 with all its pomp. Their report made a strong impression 
 on Vladimir and on the boyars. " If the Greek religion was 
 not the best," they said, " Olga your ancestress, the wisest 
 of mortals, would never have thought of embracing it." The 
 Grand- Prince resolved, therefore, to follow that example. 
 
 Vladimir might easily have been baptised in his own 
 capital, where there had long been Christian churches and 
 priests ; but he disdained so simple a mode of proceeding as 
 unworthy of his dignity. Only the parent church could 
 furnish priests and bishops worthy to accomplish the con- 
 version of himself and his whole people ; but to ask them of 
 the emperor seemed to him a sort of homage at which his 
 haughty soul revolted. He conceived a project, therefore, 
 worthy of his times, his country, and himself: namely, to 
 make war on Greece, and by force of arms to extort instruc- 
 tion, priests, and the rite of baptism. He assembled a nu- 
 merous army, and repaired by sea to the rich and powerful 
 Greek city of Kherson, the ruins of which still exist near 
 Sevastopol, and closely besieged it, telling the inhabitants 
 that he was prepared to remain three years before their walls 
 if their obstinacy was not sooner overcome. 
 
 However, after carrying on the siege for six months, 
 Vladimir had made no progress: he was even threatened 
 with being obliged to raise the siege, and was in great 
 danger of never becoming a Christian. But a traitorous 
 citizen, named Anastasius, who appears to have been a 
 priest, tied a letter to an arrow, and shot it from the top of 
 the ramparts. The liussians learnt by this paper, that be- 
 hind their camp was a spring, from which the town derived 
 its sole supply of fresh water by subterraneous pipes. Via-
 
 32 niSTORT OF ETJSSIA. [c. III. 
 
 dimir ordered this source to be sought out : it was found ; 
 the water was diverted into other channels, and the horrors 
 of thirst compelled the citizens to surrender. 
 
 In consequence of his victory, Vladimir could now receive 
 baptism in the manner he desired. But this sacrament was 
 not the sole object of his ambition : he aspired to a union by 
 the ties of blood with the Caesars of Byzantium. In his 
 case, as in that of most of the princes who adopted Chris- 
 tianity, political reasons had at least an equal influence with 
 devotion ; and when Vladimir was baptised in 9SS, and mar- 
 ried Anna, the sister of the Grecian sovereign, it was as 
 much his intention by this match to acquire a claim upon 
 the Greek empire, as by his baptism to have pretensions to 
 the kingdom of heaven. Persuaded that his name excited too 
 much awe to run any hazard of a refusal, he sent to the em- 
 perors Basilius and Coustantine to demand their sister in 
 marriage, threatening, if they dared to reject his proposal, 
 that he would take Constantinople. After some delibera- 
 tion, conditions were hazarded : it was required at least that 
 the Russian prince should make the first advance by becoming 
 a Christian. At length, being too weak to prolong the alter- 
 cation, the Greek emperors conveyed to him the princess 
 their sister, who was by no means flattered by the conquest 
 she had made. 
 
 ' Vladimir then listened to some catechetical lectures, re- 
 ceived the rite of baptism and the name of Basil, married 
 the princess Anna, restored to his brothers-in-law the con- 
 quests he had recently made, and brought off no other 
 reward of his victories than some archimandrites and popes, 
 sacred vessels and church-books, images of saints and conse- 
 crated relics. 
 
 On his return to Kief his mind was wholly intent on over- 
 throwing the idols which but lately were the object of his 
 adoration. As Perune was the greatest of deities to the 
 idolatrous Russians, it was him that Vladimir, after his con- 
 version, resolved to treat with the greatest ignominy. Ho 
 had him tied to the tail of a horse, dragged to the Borys- 
 thenes, and all the way twelve stout soldiers, with great 
 cudgels, beat the deified log, which was afterwards thrown 
 into the river. 
 
 Perune, though beaten and drowned at Kief, without
 
 A..D. 988] EUSSIA. CHRISTIANISED. 33 
 
 working one miracle, was not quite so patient at Novgorod. 
 "When the idol had been precipitated from a bridge into the 
 Volkhof, it rose to the surface of the water, and, throwing a 
 staff upon the bridge, cried out in a terrible voice, " Citizens, 
 that is what I leave you in remembrance of me." The 
 story is preserved in the chronicles of Novgorod ; and, in 
 consequence of this tradition, the young people of the town 
 were wont, on the day which had been kept as the anniver- 
 sary of the god, to run about the streets with sticks in their 
 hands striking at one another unawares ; but this custom has 
 long ceased. 
 
 People in a low state of civilisation have too few ideas to 
 acquire a strong attachment to any religion. The Rus- 
 sians very easily abandoned the worship of their idols ; for, 
 though Vladimir caused it to be published that those who 
 persevered in idolatry should be regarded as enemies of 
 Christ and of the prince, it does not appear that Russia 
 underwent any persecutions, and yet it soon became Chris- 
 tian : of such force was the example of the sovereign. At 
 Kief he one day issued a proclamation ordering all the in- 
 habitants to repair the next morning to the banks of the 
 river to be baptised ; which they joyfully obeyed. " If it be 
 not good to be baptised," said they, "the prince and the 
 boyars woidd never submit to it." 
 
 With the zeal of a new convert, Vladimir now carried to 
 excess the virtues of Christianity, as be had done before by 
 the vices of Paganism. He wasted the revenues of the state 
 in alms, in pious foundations, and in public repasts, to imitate 
 the love-feasts of the primitive Christians. He no longer 
 dared to shed the blood of criminals, or even of the enemies 
 of his country. Prom this exaggeration, however, he was 
 soon reclaimed. 
 
 Vladimir, in the sequel of his reign, had frequent wars 
 to conduct, especially against the Petchenegans. In one 
 of the incursions made by that people, the two armies were 
 on the eve of an engagement, being separated only by the 
 waters of the Sula, which falls into the Dniepr. The hostile 
 prince advanced, and proposed to Vladimir to spare the blood 
 of their subjects and decide the quarrel by single combat be- 
 tween two champions. The people whose soldier should be 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. III. 
 
 vanquished should be bound to abstain for three years from 
 taking arms against the other. 
 
 The Eussian prince very faintly accepted the proposal, 
 because he had no soldier robust enough to match the cham- 
 pion of the Petchenegans. When the day appointed for the 
 combat was arrived, he was obliged to solicit a further delay. 
 This he obtained, though without foreseeing what advantage 
 was to be derived from it ; a prey to uneasiness and vexation, 
 he could scarcely call up one glimmering hope. He was in 
 this agitation of mind, when an old man, who served in the 
 army with four of his sons, came and told him he had still a 
 fifth son at home, endowed with prodigious strength. The 
 young man was sent for in haste. Being brought before the 
 prince, he desired permission to make a public trial of his 
 force. A powerful bull was irritated with red-hot irons : the 
 youth stopped the animal in his furious course, knocked him 
 down, and tore off his skin and flesh by handfuls. This ex- 
 periment gave the prince just ground of hope. The time 
 fixed for the duel arrived ; the champions advanced between 
 the two camps, and the Petchenegan laughed disdainfully 
 on beholding the apparent weakness of his beardless adver- 
 sary. But being presently attacked with no less impetuosity 
 than vigour, and seized and crushed, as in a vice, between the 
 arms of the young Eussian, he was stretched lifeless in the 
 dust. The Petchenegans, seeing their champion fall, were 
 struck with terror and fled. The Eussians, regardless of their 
 compact, profited by this confusion, pursued them, and com- 
 mitted great slaughter. 
 
 The victorious champion, who was only a simple currier, 
 was raised with his father to the rank of nobility, and gave 
 his name to the town which the prince caused to be built on 
 the spot where the duel was fought. It was called Pe- 
 reiaslavl, or Victory-town. 
 
 It might be supposed that the Petchenegans, with whom 
 the treaty had been so badly observed, would not have hesi- 
 tated to infringe it in their turn. However, they did not 
 again take up arms till three years were at an end : they 
 then laid siege to Vassilef, a town built by Vladimir on the 
 Stughna. lie endeavoured to succour it ; being defeated and 
 wounded, it was only by hiding under a bridge that he saved 
 his life (99G). In the following year, Vladimir having gone
 
 A.D. 1015] DEATH OP YLADIMIR THE GREAT. 35 
 
 to Novgorod to collect an army, the Petchenegans took ad- 
 vantage of his absence to approach the capital and lay siege 
 to Bielgorod. They invested it so closely that the famished 
 inhabitants were on the point of surrendering, when, as the 
 old chronicler tells us, they were saved by a ruse, which, to 
 say the least of it, seems more ingenious than probable. One 
 of their elders had two wells dug, and vats let down into 
 them, the one filled with hydromel, the other with dough. 
 This done, he invited some of the Petchenegan chief men to 
 come to him, as if for the purpose of negotiating. The de- 
 puties were entertained at the mouths of the wells, and they, 
 imaginiug that the ground produced of itself such good food 
 and drink, went back and told their princes that the town 
 could not be reduced by famine. Accordingly, the Petche- 
 negans raised the siege. 
 
 Vladimir, whom fortune almost always accompanied, and 
 who was rarely deserted by victory, had his last days em- 
 bittered by domestic vexations. Taroslaf his son, to whom 
 in the distribution of his domains he had given Novgorod, 
 refused to pay the tribute he owed him as his vassal, and 
 applied to the Varangians for assistance against his father. 
 The aged Vladimir, obliged to march against a rebellious son, 
 died of grief upon the road (a.d. 1015), after having reigned 
 forty-five years. If we recollect that he imbrued his hands 
 in the blood of his brother Varopolk, we shall not think his 
 end unmerited. 
 
 This rough-hewn colossus, however, had great qualities : 
 if he was not always able to repress his turbulent neigh- 
 bours, he generally frustrated their incursions. He caused 
 deserts to be cleared by colonies established for that purpose : 
 he built towns, and while he was rendering his country more 
 flourishing, he thought it his duty to provide for its embel- 
 lishment, and invited from Greece architects and workmen 
 eminent for their skill. By their means he raised conve- 
 nient and substantial churches, palaces, and other buildings* 
 The young nobles were brought up in seminaries endowed 
 
 * The Russian towns at this period were all of wood; nevertheless 
 many of them already indicated considerable opulence. The German 
 annalist Dittmar, contemporary with Vladimir, says that Kief con- 
 tained four hundred churches, and eight great markets. Adam of 
 Bremen calls it a second Constantinople. 
 
 d2
 
 3G HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. III. 
 
 by the prince, to -winch his bounty had attracted able 
 masters from Greece. Parents saw with horror these strokes 
 aimed at ignorance, and the honours that were paid to 
 foreign services. It was necessary to use violence in taking 
 their children to place them in the new establishments, 
 where they were to be taught reading and writing, unholy 
 arts identified with sorcery. 
 
 Vladimir, who waded through the blood of his brother to 
 the throne of Kief, received from his nation the surname of 
 the Great, was advanced to the rank of a saint, and is re- 
 cognised by the national church as coequal with the Apostles. 
 He raised Pussia to its highest degree of Gothic glory, but he' 
 undid everything by the partition of the empire among seven 
 of his ten sons. 
 
 This fault, however, was so pertinaciously repeated by 
 subsequent Grand-Princes, that we must look for the cause 
 of it rather in the manners of the times, and the force of cir- 
 cumstances, than in the improvidence of its authors. These 
 partitions were indispensable. A city was given to a prince 
 to make provision for one part of his expenditure ; another 
 city for another part ; there was no other means of providing 
 for these objects. 
 
 And, besides this, as the military leaders, such as Eogvo- 
 lod of Polotsk, Sveneld, and the dukes, who are mentioned 
 in the early treaties with Byzantium, were possessed of fiefs, 
 or governments, it was not natural that the princes of the 
 blood should remain without them. It would even have 
 been more dangerous to leave such large and distant pos- 
 sessions in the hands of men who were not related to the 
 dynasty. 
 
 This may induce us to believe that the massacre of the 
 family of Kogvolod by Vladimir, and the brutality by which 
 that prince compelled the sole surviving heiress to marry 
 him, arose from the circumstance of that family, which was 
 only allied to the Kuriks, having already converted Polotsk 
 into an hereditary fief. 
 
 Ik'sidcs, what could have been done with the Enssian 
 princes of the blood ? Were they to be forced to live at the 
 court, and at the expense of the Grand-Prince, without any 
 command, and merely as subjects of the first rank ? But, at 
 that time, this would have been contrary to the nature
 
 A.D. 1015] SVIATOPOLK. 37 
 
 of things ; such a course is practicable only where long ex- 
 perience and advanced civilisation have made the general 
 interest predominant. Could these princes be shut up in 
 seraglios ? There were none in Russia ; their existence 
 there is impossible. The climate stimulates too much to 
 all kinds of activity ; it is hostile to effeminacy, and to a 
 contemplative life : what gratification could seraglios pos- 
 sibly afford ? They were there looked upon as intolerable 
 prisons. What, then, was to be done ? Was the genealogical 
 tree to be pruned in every generation, and the princes to be 
 lopped from it like useless branches ? But neither _ did 
 the climate prompt to such extreme means ; the spirit of 
 Christianity, too, which was then in all its fervour, was 
 repugnant to them. This spirit had a much more powerful 
 influence over the thinking people of the North, than over 
 the impassioned people of the South, and of that East 
 whence it came, but where it could not remain. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SVIATOrOLK — TAROSLAE — FIRST RUSSIAN CODE — LIBERTIES 
 
 OF NOVGOROD. 
 
 Sviatopolk, the successor of Vladimir, did, however, in 
 1015, conceive such atrocities. But, as a plurality of wives, 
 and licentiousness of manners, had multiplied the princes of 
 the blood ;* as, also, the appanages, and the vastness of the 
 territory, kept those princes at a wide distance from each 
 other, liis attempts on the lives of his brothers could not be 
 simultaneously executed. Yaroslaf, one of the intended 
 victims, escaped, and by him Sviatopolk was punished. 
 
 Vladimir's favourite son Boris, whom he had destined to 
 be his successor, was at the time of his father's death en- 
 gaged in ;an expedition against the Petchenegans at the 
 head of an army of fifty thousand men. Had he been more 
 enterprising or less scrupulous, and complied with the en- 
 treaties of his soldiers, he might easily have expelled Sviato- 
 
 * Witness Sviatopolk, who made no distinction between his bastards 
 and his legitimate offspring.
 
 38 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. IV. 
 
 polk from Kief. But he rejected the advice of his army, 
 declaring it to be but just that the eldest brother should 
 succeed to the paternal throne. The consequence of this 
 generosity was, that the army forsook him, and the assassins 
 commissioned by his brother despatched him in his tent. 
 Two more of the brothers met a similar fate ; and all the 
 rest had the same to apprehend. 
 
 But Taroslaf, the prince who had received Novgorod for 
 his portion, aided by his subjects, hurled the fratricide from 
 the throne. Sviatopolk then fled to his father-in-law Boles- 
 las, king of Poland, and added to his crimes by laying open 
 the heart of his country for the first time to the attacks of 
 the Poles. Boleslas defeated Yaroslaf on the Bog, took 
 Kief, and replaced his son-in-law on the throne (a.d. 1018). 
 But then the monster, thinking his sway firmly established, 
 attempted to rid himself of his allies by massacre, — a treachery 
 which they sufficiently revenged by abandoning him to his 
 own resources, after plundering his. capital. Yaroslaf had 
 meanwhile carried the news of his own defeat to Novgorod, 
 and, discouraged by his misfortunes, was preparing to cross 
 the sea and seek refuge with the Varangians, when the 
 Novgorodians gave him a fresh proof of their attachment by 
 destroying the ships that were to convey him away, and 
 raising funds by voluntary contributions in order to engage 
 auxiliaries for his service. Once more he marched against 
 Sviatopolk, and defeated him in a desperate battle on the 
 very spot where Boris had been murdered. The fratricide 
 deserted his army before the fight was ended, to die of fear 
 whilst flying from the avenging sword of Yaroslaf. 
 
 Of the nine earliest princes of this first dynasty, Yaroslaf 
 was the fifth great man. His reign began by the sword ; 
 but it was not with the splendour of the sword that it Avas 
 to shine. Yet, with a single blow, he destroyed the Petche- 
 negans. It is known, too, that he made himself felt by 
 Finland, Livonia, Lithuania, and Bulgaria : for a moment, he 
 inspired even Byzantium with dread. But his expeditions 
 in that quarter were generally entrusted to lieutenants : little 
 glory was reaped from them ; the last, in 1013, terminated dis- 
 gracefully the wars of the Russians against the Greeks.* 
 
 * But for the civil Avars by which the power of Russia was soon 
 afterwards broken, says Karanisin, the Avorld " might have seen the 
 accomplishment of au ancient prophecy Avritten by an unknown hand
 
 A.D. 1019-54] YAKOSLAF. 39 
 
 After the JNovgorodians had twice replaced Taroslaf on 
 the paramount throne, we see him again precipitated from 
 it in 102G hy his brother Mstislaf: hut this prince of 
 Tmutarakan stopped him midway in his fall, and gene- 
 rously restored to him one-half of the empire, the immensity 
 of which is sufficiently indicated by Novgorod and Tmutara- 
 kan,* the original appanages of these two princes. 
 
 Ten years of a singular good understanding succeeded to 
 the short contest between the warrior and the legislator ; 
 after which the death of Mstislaf left Yaroslaf sole pos- 
 sessor of this shapeless and colossal empire. It was not, 
 then, to the genius of w r ar that he owed his power and 
 his renown ; it was to a genius of another kind. In Taroslaf 
 the "Wise, Russia especially reveres its first legislator, the 
 renovator of the liberty of Novgorod, the founder of a great 
 number of cities. 
 
 It admires in this prince the disseminator of instruction 
 and of civilisation. It was he who caused the Holy Scrip- 
 tures to be translated into Slavonian : w T ith his own hand 
 lie transcribed several copies of tliem. Russia is indebted 
 to him for many schools, and, among others, for that in 
 which three hundred young Novgorodians were educated. 
 Its history still tells of the throng of Greek priests whom 
 he invited, the only teachers that could then be given to the 
 people. 
 
 It applauds his toleration of the Ingrian and Livonian 
 idolaters ; his enlightened protection of the women of Suz- 
 dal, who Avere accused of sorcery. These hapless females 
 were about to become the victims of a people exasperated 
 by famine, which it attributed to their magical incantations : 
 he saved them ; for his piety was as free from superstition 
 and weakness, as it was possible to be in that age. 
 
 The Russian church ow r ed to him a momentary freedom, 
 which his chddren renounced. Undismayed by the thun- 
 
 in the tenth or eleventh century under the statue of Bcllerophon, in 
 the Tauric place, in Constantinople: it was to the effect that the 
 Kussians were one day to possess themselves of the capital of the 
 Empire of the Eajst." 
 
 * Novgorod, whose possessions hordered on the Baltic: Tmutarakan, 
 the key to the confluence of the Sea of Azof with the Black Sea. See 
 the inscription discovered in the isle of Taman, under Catherine II., 
 and the dissertation hy Muschin-ruschkin. See also Levesque, and 
 Karamsin.
 
 40 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [Cli. IV. 
 
 ders of the mother church, it was he who resolved that the 
 appointment of Eussian bishops, and their councils for the 
 election of metropolitans, should be independent of the 
 patriarch of Byzantium. 
 
 Already Eussia rises from its long obscurity : Vladimir 
 and Taroslaf have made it European by their conquests 
 towards the "West, by religion, by the seeds of knowledge, 
 and by their alliances ; the daughters-in-law of Yaroslaf were 
 Greek, German, and English princesses ; his sister was queen 
 of Poland ; his three daughters were queens of Norway, 
 Hungary, and France. 
 
 Yet a code for the empire was still wanting, and that, too, 
 it received from Yaroslaf. It is chiefly in the codes of bar- 
 barians that we must look for their history. The earliest 
 Eussian code was written about the year 1018, and, in the 
 first instance, for Novgorod alont. 
 
 Erom this, however, we are not to conclude that no laws 
 existed before the time of Yaroslaf, a circumstance which 
 is impossible, as, prior to the reign of Eurik, there were 
 large commercial cities. Besides, there are traces of them 
 in the treaties concluded by Igor and Oleg with Leo and 
 Constantine. But we know that, before the conquest of 
 Slavonia, it was divided into numerous hunting, pastoral, agri- 
 cultural, and commercial tribes, each of which had its laws 
 or its usages. The Eussians came, commingled under 
 their dominion all these tribes, and, likewise, their laws and 
 customs, and blended with them something of their own 
 Scandinavian laws. 
 
 It appears that neither the one nor the other were 
 written ; and as the first Grand- Princes did not perplex 
 themselves with attempts to make them harmonise ; as they 
 thought of nothing but conquering, and estimated their 
 power solely by their warriors, and the tributes which those 
 warriors gained for them ; this occasioned a confusion of 
 the laws and customs, in which many of them were lost, 
 and such sinister consequences, that Yaroslaf was compelled 
 to frame an ordinance, to prevent the most grievous anarchy 
 from ruining Novgorod, the only city that was left under 
 his sway. 
 
 This event was, no doubt, the immediate cause of the 
 code, and, particularly, of the very remarkable charter of the 
 Novgorodian franchises.
 
 A.D. 101S] yakoslaf's code of laws. 41 
 
 The chronicle of that period says, that, in 1018, Novgo- 
 rod, being driven to despair by the Varangians, did itself 
 justice by slaughtering them ; that the irritated prince 
 avenged this violence by the massacre of the principal Nov- 
 gorodians, whom he had inveigled into his palace ; but that 
 at this moment was spread the news of Sviatopolk's triple 
 fratricide ; that, then, Taroslaf, threatened by his brother, 
 and finding himself without guards, and deserted by his 
 subjects, sought the latter, and threw himself weeping into 
 their arms. Those arms they opened to receive him without 
 rancour, employed them on his behalf, and by means of 
 them twice raised him to the sovereignty of the empire. 
 
 Without some explanation, this fact is wholly impro- 
 bable. That Taroslaf may have softened the Novgorodians 
 by his repentance, is possible ; but that he should instantly 
 have converted them into an army most devoted and per- 
 severing in his cause, is not credible, unless we suppose an 
 interchange of benefits, a compact, in short, between the 
 prince and his people. Besides, the epoch of the revolt, 
 the veugeance, and the reconciliation, agrees with the date 
 of the franchises which Yaroslaf conceded to the Novgoro- 
 dians, and with that of his code. 
 
 This code is remarkable. It is despotism which promul- 
 gates it. " Eespect this ordinance : it must be the rule of 
 your conduct. Such is my will."* 
 
 Its two first enactments, according to Leclerc, or, accord- 
 ing to Karamsin, its first, constitute the law the public 
 avenger only in default of private vengeance. The law, 
 therefore, came in aid only of the weak ; the strong did jus- 
 tice for themselves. None but the relations of a man who 
 had been slain had a right to avenge his death. The law did 
 not even regulate judicial combats ; this is being not merely 
 barbarous, but absolutely savage. 
 
 This same law distinguishes several classes. If no avengers 
 exist, it says, the murderer shall pay into the treasury of the 
 state the double fine (eighty grivnasf) for the murder of a 
 
 * Leclerc. 
 
 f The Russians had as yet little or no coined money; gold and silver 
 circulated as bullion, and the common currency was pieces of skins 
 called yuni. A grivna at this period was a certain number of kunis 
 equal in value to half a pound of silver. However, as these pieces of 
 skin had no intrinsic value, they underwent a continual depreciation as
 
 42 HISTOEY OF ErSSIA. [en. IV. 
 
 boyar, or a thiun of the prince ; forty grivnas for the murder 
 of a free Russian, whether Varangian, or Slavonian, a soldier, 
 or a scribe, a husbandman, a merchant, whether native or 
 foreign, and perhaps, also, for the murder of a hired man, for 
 the latter was still free.* 
 
 The life of a female was estimated at only half the worth 
 of a man's ;t a brutal law, and well worthy of that barbarous 
 period in which strength was above all things respected. 
 
 For the murder of a slave, nothing was to be paid to the 
 treasury ; all that was required was, that the value of him 
 should be paid to his owner, if he had been killed without 
 a sufficient cause ; that is to say, without the slave having in- 
 sulted a freeman. 
 
 This value was estimated according to the occupation of 
 the slave. An artisan, a schoolmaster, a nurse, the superin- 
 tendent of a village, acting either for a Grand- Prince or for a 
 boyar, was worth only twelve grivnas (see the first law) ; 
 just as much as the insulted honour of a citizen (see the 
 third), or the fine for killing a head of cattle (see, from Ka- 
 ramsin, the seventh). Others were valued as low as six, and 
 even five grivnas. That these unfortunate beings were not 
 free, is proved by the wills of several princes, who at 
 their death emancipated a great number of them ; but the 
 objects of this posthumous beneficence could make no better 
 use of their liberty than to sell themselves again. 
 
 Perpetual slavery, extending to their posterity, was the lot 
 of all prisoners of war, and of all persons bought from 
 foreigners ; slavery, for a limited period, was the portion of 
 those who sold themselves, of insolvent debtors, freemen 
 who, without conditions, married a slave, servants out of em- 
 ployment, hired servants who did not fulfil their engage- 
 ments ; in a word, all the weak who made themselves the 
 slaves of the strong, to obtain subsistence and protection. 
 
 The rapidity with which the pest of slavery must have been 
 diffused will appear from two facts : that, on the one hand, a 
 
 silver became more abundant, until in tbe thirteenth century a silver 
 grivna was equal to seven kuni grivnas of Novgorod. 
 
 * This seems to be proved by the last paragraph of the third article, 
 according to Karamsin; and also by the fine for the murder of a female 
 servant, which was eighteen grivnas, twelve of which were taken by 
 the state. 
 
 | See, in Karamsin, the third paragraph of the first article.
 
 A.D. 1018] YAROSLAr'S CODE OF LAWS. 43 
 
 debtor became a slave, and on the other, that the legal in- 
 terest of money was forty per cent. 
 
 The second law* made the district responsible for the 
 public safety within the bounds of its territory, when it could 
 not give up to the prince the murderer, his wife, and his 
 children : a law which was then useful, but which seems to 
 bear out this remark, that the more widely civilisation is 
 spread, the more its penal justice is brought to act on in- 
 dividuals ; and that, in proportion as barbarism exists, the 
 more is that justice compelled to swell the number of col- 
 lective responsibilities. 
 
 The third lawf rates the loss of a member almost as 
 highly as that of life. This marks a hunting and warlike 
 people. On the plucking out a part of the beard, it inflicts a 
 fine four times greater than that which it decrees for the loss 
 of a finger. This brings to recollection the importance which 
 the Goths and Germans attached to their hair, and may 
 serve as a proof of a common origin ; as may, also, the penalty 
 of loss of liberty for stealing a horse, which is a Saxon law. 
 There existed, likewise, another enactment, which was wholly 
 Jutlandic, both in its spirit and letter ; that which prohibited 
 the making use of a horse without the owner's consent. It 
 must be added, that our ordeals by boiling water and red- 
 hot iron are contained in this code.J 
 
 The enumeration of the mulcts for blows seems to have 
 been dictated by a delicacy like our own, with respect to the 
 point of honour ; insults are fined four times more heavily 
 than wounds. 
 
 From the seventh law.§ which appears to compel a Koble- 
 gian or a Varangian, and not a Slavonian, to take an oath, it 
 is difficult to draw any conclusion, except that, as in Lom- 
 
 * Of Yaroslaf, according to Kararnsin; but Leclerc attributes it to 
 Isiaslaf, bis son. 
 
 f The second, according to Karamsin's arrangement. 
 
 { See Ewers, das altrste llccht der llussen, where he proves the re- 
 semblance of the ancient Russian law with that of the German* See, 
 also, Struve, Discourse to the Academy of Sciences, in 1 75G, though re- 
 cently refuted in Ilussia (Patriotic Annals, Jan., 182(5), but without 
 being able to explain the singular conformity of the Russian and Scan- 
 dinavian laws, otherwise than by assigning to them a common and 
 Germanic origin. 
 
 § Translation by Leclerc.
 
 44 HISTORY OF EUSSIA. [CH. IV. 
 
 bardy and France, each party followed its own usage ; that 
 this was the usage of the Varangians ; that it could belong 
 only to a decidedly warlike people, and not to a commercial 
 people, among whom other sureties than words were requi- 
 site ; that finally, the Varangians were greater barbarians 
 than the Slavonians ; for, when justice allows a denial on 
 oath to be sufficient, the oppressed has no other resource 
 than an appeal to arms : a custom which would be the parent 
 of barbarism, if it were not its offspring. 
 
 The thirteenth law, according to Leclerc's arrangement, 
 confirms the existence of the three classes, which the second 
 had already indicated ; the class of slaves and that of free- 
 men, which it protects against that of the nobles and boyars, 
 whose violence it seems to apprehend. 
 
 These freemen were the husbandmen or farmers, hired 
 servants,* and country landholders ; probably, those Odno- 
 vortzy, of whom there were still about thirty thousand re- 
 maining in the time of Peter the Great ; but the majority of 
 the freemen dwelt in the cities. They were divided into 
 centuries, and they chose a chief, who was a kind of tribune. 
 This civil and military magistrate of the people, who bore 
 the denomination of Tyssiatchsky, had a guard, and w T as 
 upon an equal footing with the most eminent boyars of the 
 prince. 
 
 As to the nobles, they were doubtless descendants from 
 the Varangian and Slavonian warriors of Kurik and his suc- 
 cessors, who had large shares in the conquest ; they were 
 the voyevodes, or military leaders, the boyars, or direct coun- 
 sellors of the princes, and the officers of their guai'ds. 
 
 Among various regulations relative to inheritances, we 
 observe (law the thirtieth), that the prince was the heir of 
 such free men as died without male issue ; but that, in no 
 case, had he a claim to the succession of a boyar, or an 
 officer of his guard : a circumstance which could not fail, in a 
 short time, to produce a nobility exclusively possessed of 
 property. 
 
 According to Karamsin, tins code neither inflicted corporal 
 punishments (except, indeed, slavery, which includes them 
 nil), nor made any difference in the compositions or fines be- 
 
 * See the twentieth law, in Karamsin's arrangement.
 
 A.D. 1018] YAItOSLAF's CODE OF LAWS. 45 
 
 tween the Varangians and the Slavonians. But, in the first 
 place, the code of Yaroslaf was not promulgated till after the 
 amalgamation of the two people ; and, secondly, as it appears 
 that the prince's guard consisted entirely of Varangians, it 
 will be seen in the first and thirteenth laws, that the latter 
 were not without their privileges. 
 
 The sixteenth law* regulates the maximum of what a pro- 
 prietor, or a possessor, whether of a fief or a freehold, may 
 demand, by the week and by the day, from his farmers ; for 
 the peasant w r as not then a serf, but a cultivator. 
 
 In the various versions of these laws, there is no trace of 
 taxation. The daring refusal of Taroslaf to pay tribute to his 
 father, the great Vladimir, is the only proof that appanages 
 were bound in this way to the Great- Principality. It does 
 not otherwise appear, that even the fiefs and estates paid 
 imposts to the Grand-Prince ; the lord or proprietor seems 
 to have had, in his possessions, the same right of customs and 
 tribute that the prince had in his own domain. 
 
 All that was not appanage, fief, or private property, be- 
 longed to the sovereign. The Grand-Prince, like the lord, 
 subsisted on the fines which he imposed for offences, and on 
 the tribute which he received from his estates : this tribute, 
 as is now the case with Siberia, was paid in kind, where 
 there were no other means of payment, and in moneyf, 
 where the use of money had been introduced by commerce 
 Avith Cherson, Byzantium, and Vineta. 
 
 The expression tribute is here used instead of revenue, 
 because all this bore the aspect of conquest. 
 
 Under this point of view, it appears that the only mark of 
 the lord's dependence — and this may well be called a tax — 
 was military service, and that, too, with all its burdensome 
 charges : the lord was bound to join the prince, armed, 
 mounted, supplied with provisions, and numerously at- 
 tended. 
 
 The judges went circuits : on the spot they empannelled 
 twelve respectable jurors, who were sworn, as in Scandinavia, 
 
 * Lcclcrc's translation ; he attributes it to Isiaslaf, the son and 
 successor of Yaroslaf. 
 
 f Karamsin says that money was coined at Kief, in the time of 
 Yaroslaf, which bore his effigy. See also Weydemeyer.
 
 46 HISTOKT OF EUSSIA. [CH. IV. 
 
 or in Denmark,* since the time of Lodbrog, a monarch of 
 the eighth century. 
 
 Several other laws extended protection to movable and 
 immovable property ; they are so judiciously framed for the 
 interests of commerce, that it is evident they were enacted 
 with a particular reference to Novgorod. 
 
 This code sufficed for the enormous empire comprehended 
 between the Volga and the Lower Danube, the Northern 
 Dwina and the Niemen, the Black Sea and the Baltic. 
 
 It excites surprise to find in it so many contradictions, 
 and such a disproportion between the penalties ; but to what 
 a variety of circumstances and different interests they were 
 to be applied ! Doubtless, its provisions were not all enacted 
 at once, nor were the whole of them meant to extend to all 
 classes. 
 
 It is, nevertheless, one of the most remarkable monuments 
 of the Gothic age. This code, and the franchises granted 
 to the Novgorodians, constitute the glory of Taroslaf. A 
 summary of these franchises will give an idea of those which 
 existed in the Russian cities of that epoch, but with great 
 modifications, resulting from the greater or less degree of 
 power which each of the cities possessed. 
 
 The vast importance of that republic is strikingly mani- 
 fested by the largess which Taroslaf gave to the army that 
 placed him on the throne of Kief. Here, as elsewhere, the 
 degree of consideration enjoyed by the receiver, is indicated 
 by the magnitude of the sum received : ten grivnas to each 
 voyevode, ten grivnas to each Novgorodian, a single grivna 
 to each Varangian or Russian. The Varangians must, 
 indeed, have declined greatly in consequence since the pre- 
 ceding reign, when they sought to extort a ransom from the 
 Kievians. That nation was now looked upon merely as a 
 nursery of brave men, useful to the prince, but dangerous 
 to the country : their influence in Russia seems to have 
 ended with the re-establishment of the liberty of Novgorod, 
 and with the reign of Yaroslaf. 
 
 But it is now time to explain this very predominant 
 power of Novgorod, which we have seen thrice giving the 
 whole of Russia to Vladimir and to Yaroslaf. Its republican 
 
 * Sec Karamsin, who cites Saxo-Graramaticus (vol. ii.p. 79).
 
 A.D. 1018] CONSTITUTION OF NOVGOROD. 47 
 
 existence, constantly more worthy of note down to the period 
 of Ivan III. (14S0), is a remarkable phenomenon in the 
 midst of this land of slavery. 
 
 The geographical situation of that city, which at first 
 occasioned its submission to the Varangians, became after- 
 wards the cause of its strength. 
 
 In fact, the Novgorodians being, by that situation, out of 
 the reach of the nomads of the south and east, and always 
 attracted towards the north by their commerce, remained 
 stationary, without going, like the rest of Russia, to be dis- 
 seminated and lost in the south. This peace in the north, 
 while the south was exhausting itself; the remoteness of the 
 Grand-Princes, after Oleg had removed the capital to Kief; 
 their circumspect conduct towards a city which they looked 
 upon as their asylum ; all contributed to give new vigour to 
 Novgorod, and to restore to it its pristine independence. 
 
 In consequence, it soon became lord-paramount of Ingria, 
 Carelia, a considerable part of Permia, of Pleskof, and of 
 Torjock. On the north it was bounded by Archangel, on 
 the south, by Tver. It had a JNamestnick, who was usually 
 a prince of the blood, the lieutenant of the Grand- Prince, 
 general of the army, and even judge, but only when his in- 
 tervention was sought for ; a Posadnick, the burgomaster or 
 mayor ; a Tisiatski, or Tyssiatchsky, the boyar of the Com- 
 mons, the tribune of the people, who watched over the pro- 
 ceedings of the Namestnick and Posadnick ; boyars of the 
 city council, or senate (all which offices were elective and 
 temporary) ; Zitieloudie, or proprietors of the first class, out 
 of which the boyars were chosen ; and, lastly, the merchants 
 and the people. 
 
 This republic, considered as an appanage of the Grand- 
 Principality, and as a state within a state, entrusted with the 
 defence of the northern and north-western frontiers, had its 
 assemblies of the people, which were convoked by the sound 
 of a famous bell, called vetchevoy : every citizen, without 
 distinction, had the right of voting. The prince was not 
 present at their deliberations. Here were decided war, 
 peace, the election of magistrates, sometimes the choice of 
 the bishop, and even that of the prince ; at least, in a great 
 majority of cases, the approbation of this assembly was 
 necessary.
 
 48 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. V. 
 
 The prince was not acknowledged till he had sworn to 
 govern agreeably to the ancient laws of the republic; to 
 entrust the government of the provinces only to Novgorodian 
 magistrates, approved of by the Posadnick ; and to attempt 
 no infringement on the exclusive right of the republic to sit 
 in judgment on its own citizens, to tax itself, and to carry 
 on its commerce with Germany. 
 
 He also engaged neither to give to his boyars, nor allow 
 them to acquire, any of the villages dependent on Novgorod ; 
 not to encourage emigration from among the Novgorodians ; 
 not to cause any of them to be arrested for debt ; and 
 lastly, to oblige his own boyars and judges to travel at their 
 own expense in the Novgorodian provinces, and to reject the 
 evidence of slaves. 
 
 It was on such conditions that these haughty and restless 
 republicans allowed the prince to administer justice, con- 
 jointly with judges chosen by themselves. 
 
 They paid him no taxes ; they merely made him free gifts ; 
 they even pushed their pretensions so far as to regulate the 
 hours which their sovereign was to dedicate to pleasure ; 
 they expelled several of their princes, and even of their 
 bishops. This liberty, which too often degenerated into 
 licentiousness, was maintained for four centuries, in spite of 
 the distant power of the Grand- Princes. But, transferred 
 from Kief to Vladimir and Moscow, that power, by degrees, 
 acquired concentration as it drew nearer to the republic, 
 and ended, at length, by overwhelming it. 
 
 Such were the concessions made by Taroslaf to a people 
 who had twice been able to send forth forty thousand men 
 to raise him to the throne. 
 
 CHAPTEE Y. 
 
 GENERAL SURVEY OF THE SECOND PERIOD, FROM 1054 TO 
 
 1236. 
 
 Thus, as far back a3 the eleventh century, Eussia had a 
 paramount throne, an acknowledged dynasty, a European 
 religion, a code ! It advanced towards civilisation at the same 
 pace as the rest of Europe ; and nothing was wanting for it
 
 A.D. 1054-1230] SECOND PERIOD. 49 
 
 but to persist in the same noble career, when it stopped 
 short, tottered, and fell. Having, during the first period of 
 its history, witnessed the growth of its rude and barbaric 
 glory, let us seek, amidst the gloom of the second, and in its 
 moral and political situation, the causes of its decline and of 
 its fall. 
 
 The time for conquests was gone by. The misfortunes of 
 Sviatoslaf, and his warlike excesses, had excited a disgust of 
 them ; under Vladimir and Yaroslaf, the natural frontiers 
 had been acquired ; in what remained, there was little tempta- 
 tion ; and, besides, the victories of Boleslas king of Poland, 
 and his capture of Kief, showed that the territories to the 
 west offered no easy prey. Internal disturbances, which 
 sprang from the partitions of the empire, subsequent to the 
 reign of Sviatoslaf, called back the attention of the Eussians 
 to themselves. Their conversion did not allow of their 
 marching to plunder Constantinople, which was become the 
 metropolis of their religion. Compelled, thenceforth, to 
 think rather of restraining their own subjects, than of con- 
 quering those of other mouarchs, the Grand-Princes, softened 
 by Christianity, and enlightened by the priests, were at 
 length made aware that, to govern their people, it behoved 
 them to give to that people laws, property, and instruction. 
 
 Such was their idea ; their means we have seen ; let us 
 now behold the obstacles and the result. 
 
 The commerce of the empire with Asia and with the 
 Greeks ;* the military service of numbers of Eussians at 
 Constantinople ; the expeditions, often crowned with suc- 
 cess, which were directed towards that centre of civilisation 
 by the Grand-Princes ; the situation of Cherson, which, in 
 many respects, may be compared with that of Marseilles; 
 all these were causes productive of improvement. To these 
 must be added, the journey of Olga to Constaiftinoplo, and 
 her conversion ; the numerous cities and schools founded by 
 Vladimir and Yaroslaf; the laws promulgated by the latter; 
 the many Greek priests and artisans of all kinds, whom they 
 both attracted into Eussia ; the seventy years' duration of 
 
 * Yakut the Geographer: ohservc the effect of Asiatic civilisation on 
 the great Bulgarians of the Volga, who, in the tenth century, from the 
 time of Vladimir the Great, were agriculturists, manufacturers, and 
 merchants, and dwelt in cities built of stone.' 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 HISTORY OF ETJSSIA. [CH. Y. 
 
 their reigns, and their ardent efforts to civilise their people ; 
 and, lastly, the slaves whom they brought hack from their 
 expeditions, who re-peopled the country, aud, when they 
 were Greeks, enlightened it : all these circumstances, no 
 doubt, must have contributed to the instruction of the 
 Russians, and begun to render them superior to their neigh- 
 bours. 
 
 Of this we may form a judgment from what is said by 
 contemporaries* with respect to Kief, which they denomi- 
 nate the Capua, the Constantinople of the North ; the great 
 wall of brick that surrounded it ; its gilded gate, like that of 
 Byzantium ; its four hundred churches ; its luxury ; the rich 
 and splendid dresses worn by its inhabitants ; its hot-baths ; 
 the effeminacy of its manners, by which the Polish army was 
 corrupted ; lastly, its sumptuous feasts, at which were to be 
 found the wines of the Greeks, their silver plate, and even 
 the productions of the Indies. There can be no doubt, also, 
 that the long possession, since the time of Oleg, had softened 
 manners, formed ties, and rendered some duties sacred. 
 
 But barbarism, renewed by continual wars, stifled these 
 germs of civilisation. 
 
 To conceive the difficulties which this empire had to en- 
 counter, we must figure to ourselves the capital of the Great- 
 Princes in the midst of deserts, where unknown hordes sud- 
 denly disappeared from view, to rush forth again incessantly 
 in irruptions as sudden. Surrounded by barbarians, they 
 themselves being wholly barbarous, and reigning over bar- 
 barians, on whose obedience, from the few laws, cities, and 
 properties they possessed, they had but an imperfect hold ; 
 these princes found it impossible to govern such distant pro- 
 vinces in any other manner than by traversing them with an 
 army during one half of the year, or by committing extensive 
 portions of them to lieutenants, able to keep in order and 
 defend them. Hence, civil wars between the great vassals ; 
 such wars as raised Vladimir and Yaroslaf to the throne ; 
 and, as the result of these dissensions, the overturning of 
 established fortunes, and their transference into the hands 
 
 * See Karamsin, and Dittmar of Merseburg, who died in 1018; and, 
 at a later period, Plan-Carpin himself admiring the exquisite work- 
 manship of the rich throne of the Khans, which was made by llussian 
 goldsmiths.
 
 A.D. 1054-123G] SECOND TEEIOB. 51 
 
 of new men, the offspring of conflicts and revolutions ; and, 
 lastly, nascent civilisation perpetually exposed to interrup- 
 tion. 
 
 The introduction of Christianity, however, was one of the 
 most direct steps which was taken towards that civilisation ; 
 and if the efforts of Olga, Vladimir, and Taroslaf had 
 not been thwarted, we are justified in believing that the 
 period upon which we are about to enter would have been 
 less stained with blood. During this second period, the 
 genius of Christianity inspired with their noblest actions 
 the numerous descendants of Eurik, among whom Russia 
 was divided; of the best of them it made truly great 
 men ; of the wickedest it modified the manners, and some- 
 times arrested their guilty hands. Karamsin remarks, that 
 in no family of barbarian princes were there ever seen 
 more violent dissensions and fewer fratricides. Although 
 diverted from their religious subtleties by the coarse rusti- 
 city which surrounded them, dependent on the sovereigns, 
 and having everything to lose by this barbarism, the Greek 
 priests, who were the lights of that dark age, often spoke 
 the sublime language of Christianity. 
 
 But how was it possible to civilise barbarians surrounded 
 by barbarians ? Olga was not listened to ; her son Sviatos- 
 laf even resisted her. He could not brave the ridicule which 
 has been at all times the most powerful of anti-religious 
 weapons. This weapon was too weak against Vladimir ; 
 but he undertook too late his own reformation, and that 
 of others. 
 
 There existed other obstacles to the civilisation of the 
 Russians ; they are to be found in the antipathy with which 
 the despised Greeks and their new religion inspired the 
 minds of the people, against the arts, the sciences, and the 
 manners introduced by these foreigners. 
 
 We may believe, also, that the generation which was 
 going off the stage, had the selfishness to wish that it might 
 not be so much surpassed by that which was to replace it. 
 Can those who have declined into the vale of years, bear to 
 hear it asserted, that everything which lias occupied their 
 whole life is but ignorance, barbarism, triviality, and 
 clownishness ? Are they thus to lose the rights derived 
 
 e 2
 
 52 history op Russia. [en. V. 
 
 from experience, the sole benefit, and that so dearly bought, 
 which remains to the aged ? 
 
 Add to this, that, in those barbarous times, the "want of a 
 system of tactics, and the nature of the Aveapons, gave all 
 the advantage to mere physical strength ; a circumstance 
 which conferred on the exercises of the body a precedence 
 over those of the mind. 
 
 The various sackings of Kief, also, from the time when the 
 partitions of the empire commenced, destroyed to the very 
 root the entire labours of Olga, Vladimir, and Taroslaf. 
 
 Against a voluntary and general barbarism, the means of 
 instruction are so feeble, that, far from dividing in order to 
 spread them, the prince is compelled to unite them under 
 his protection : it is necessary that he should first call 
 round him the rising generation, that they may come to 
 seek that instruction, which cannot seek them : this is the 
 reason of civilisation being so long confined within the 
 limits of a single city. 
 
 Now we shall see, in this second period of the Eussian 
 history, that Kief, taken in 980 by the "Varangians of Vla- 
 dimir, burned in 1015 by those of Taroslaf, and plundered in 
 1018 by the Poles, was captured and re-captured by them 
 in 1069 and 1077 ; and, lastly, that after having passed 
 violently from hand to hand for more than a century, it 
 was completely sacked in 11G9, and nearly destroyed in 
 1201. 
 
 In the downfal of Kief, that mother of all the Eussian 
 cities, would have been comprehended that of civilisation, 
 were not the human mind so adapted to its seeds, that, 
 when once they are sown there, they become indestructible. 
 
 The Grand-Princedom, however, passed from Kief to Vla- 
 dimir ; the navigation of the Borysthenes, more and more 
 impeded by the Polovtzy Tatars, and others, was forgotten. 
 The Grand-Princes thus withdrew from their civilisers, the 
 Greeks ; while, on the other hand, the Greeks withdrew from 
 them, repelled by the civil commotions of Eussia. 
 
 This is the reason why, about the middle of the twelfth 
 century (1108), the date of the fall of the second Eussian 
 capital, manners became more fierce, or, rather, manners were 
 wholly changed ; they were no longer those of Kief, softened 
 by Byzantium, but those of central Eussia, still Pagan and
 
 A.D. 1054-1236] SECOND PERIOD. 53 
 
 barbarous, whither the seat of government had recoiled. 
 Judicial combats were then added to the fire and water 
 ordeals ; political assassinations and civil wars were multi- 
 plied ; and to all these elements of confusion was added a 
 singular order of succession. Thus torn to pieces, the empire 
 was laid open to the Poles, to the Hungarians, and especially 
 to the Polovtzy Tatars, who assisted the Eussian princes to 
 devastate it : at length appeared the Mongol Tatars ; split 
 into fractions, the state resisted without concentrating its 
 efforts, and was destroyed. 
 
 Then, while it was plunged in this abyss, and for several 
 ages, the Tatar invasion poured forth on it the profuse stores 
 of its barbarism, its treacheries, and all the vices of slavery. 
 Robbery, " like a contagious disease, attacked every kind of 
 property."* Oppression, with its hideous train of hatred, 
 stratagems, dissimulation, gloomy and stern manners, poison- 
 ings, mutilations, and horrible executions, established its 
 sway : it extended over the whole country ; it penetrated 
 into all hearts, and withered and brutalised them during 
 two centuries. 
 
 Such a horrible tyranny rendered legitimate all means of 
 escaping from it ; then, everything was confounded : the dis- 
 tinction of good and evil ceased to exist ; crime lost its shame, 
 and punishment its infamy. The very name of honour va- 
 nished ; fear alone held absolute dominion ! 
 
 In the second period, upon which we are now entering, at 
 the commencement of the twelfth century, Vladimir Mono- 
 machus, that Christian hero, could yet say, " Put not even 
 the guilty to death, for the life of a Christian is sacred." 
 But, at the close of the fourteenth century, when his spirit 
 again revived in the great Dmitri Donskoi, we find that 
 worthy descendant of the Christian hero of the Eussians 
 under the necessity of re-establishing capital punishments. 
 Very soon, the justice of his successors became more fero- 
 cious, either from the Tatar manners having become predo- 
 minant, or from necessity, in order to render punishment 
 commensurate with crime. 
 
 All this evil had its source in the division of the empire 
 into appanages, — an evil which, as we have seen, was in- 
 
 * Karamsin.
 
 54 HISTOET OF RUSSIA. [CH. T. 
 
 evitable with so inany princes of the blood, in such a climate, 
 and among such men ; a system, in short, by which alone it 
 was practicable to govern such numerous tribes, having no 
 means of intercommunication, and dispersed over so wide a 
 space. 
 
 During the first period of the Eussian history, it has been 
 seen, that the genius of the last two reigns checked the 
 spread of that endemic distemper which was so pernicious 
 to all the states founded by the men of the North. But, on 
 the death of Taroslaf, this debilitating fever seized on the 
 empire, divided among his five sons. Of the second period, 
 the first twenty-four years, which comprise the reign of 
 Isiaslaf, the son and successor of Yaroslaf, were deeply con- 
 taminated by its pestilential influence ; several civil wars 
 broke out, and that prince was twice driven from his throne 
 by his relatives ; and twice re-established by Boleslas II. 
 king of Poland. On his death, another principle of decom- 
 position was superadded to that of the appanages ; the order 
 of hereditary succession, which, though transiently inter- 
 rupted by the prolongation of Oleg's regency, had, since the 
 time of Kurik, always passed from father to son, then under- 
 went a change. "With the consent even of the children of 
 Isiaslaf, Vsevolod, his brother, became his heir, and the order 
 of succession from brother to brother was established. 
 
 This is said to have been founded on a custom, for which 
 the only precedent quoted is the regency of Oleg ; without 
 sufficiently considering that so antiquated a proceeding, and 
 one which had not occurred a second time in the course of a 
 hundred and sixty-five years, could not be in accordance 
 with the national manners. 
 
 The Russians may be supposed to have obeyed a natural 
 instinct, which seems repugnant to the submission of an 
 uncle to his nephew; or, rather, to have wished, by this 
 means, to avoid minorities, or to prevent quarrels between 
 the young princes, who would have more respect for an 
 elderly prince, who was their uncle. The fact is, that, in 
 those simple and rude times, this mode of succession, at once 
 so singular and so pernicious, appears to have originated in 
 a scrupulous and overstrained respect for the right of primo- 
 geniture. The appellation of elder was held in such reve- 
 rence, that, down to the close of the fifteenth century, it was
 
 A.D. 1054-1 23G] SECOND PERIOD. 55 
 
 sufficient to designate the possessor of paramount authority. 
 Thus we shall see that the direct succession was not re- 
 established till the Grand- Princes of Moscow had secured, 
 beforehand, the recognition of their sons and grandsons, as 
 the seniors of all the other priuces. " I acknowledge thee 
 as my elder," was their symbol of submission. 
 
 To the same deference for the right of eldership we must also 
 attribute the succession from uncle to nephew, a consequence 
 of the heirship between brothers. The brothers having suc- 
 ceeded each other according to their order of birth, and the 
 last of them being extinct, it was not to his son that the 
 sceptre devolved, but to his nephew ; that is to say, to the 
 son of the eldest brother who had possessed the throne. 
 
 From this truly singular mode of succession resulted two 
 fatal consequences. In the first place, a still further parcelling 
 out of the empire into appanages, and new occasions of civil 
 war. It was quite natural that, during bis life, a Grand- 
 Prince should strengthen his children against an uncle, who, 
 it was certain, would ere long favour his own offspring at the 
 expense of his nephews. 
 
 Tin's system of parcelling. out did not spare even the do- 
 main of the crown. It appears that Taroslaf the Legislator 
 left it so powerful, in comparison with the appanages, that 
 he might well believe its paramount influence to be secure 
 and incontestable. But this vast domain was soon subdi- 
 vided, like the rest of the empire. 
 
 This fault was committed by the Grand-Princes them- 
 selves ; whether it was that they were indifferent as to pre- 
 serving unmutilated a domain, which, after their decease, 
 was to pass to another branch ; or, more probably, that they 
 were interested in leaving it weak against their children, by 
 whom it was not to be inherited; or that they knew not 
 from what other source to provide them with appanages. 
 
 The second result of this order of heirship was, the pro' 
 gressive weakening of the power of the Grand-Princes ; not 
 only from the want of a solid point of support, in conse- 
 quence of the domains being thus broken into fragments, 
 but also from the want of an invariable system of »<>yitu- 
 ment. In fact, always strangers to the Grand- Principality, 
 the princes arrived there from their appanages, with their 
 boyars, men devoted to them, whom they glutted at the
 
 56 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. T. 
 
 expense of the old possessors.* The frequent transference 
 of the sceptre, perpetually disappointing the hopes of the 
 subjects, accustomed them not to attach themselves to any 
 branch of the Puriks. 
 
 On the other hand, as the Grand-Princes did not ascend 
 the throne till they were somewhat advanced in years, the 
 reigns were shorter ; a circumstance which interrupted all 
 plans, and perpetually gave rise to new revolutions, or new 
 systems of government : for the system of government could 
 not be transmitted from brother to brother, and from uncle 
 to nephew, as from father to son. 
 
 This order of succession was, therefore, during the second 
 period, one of the main causes of the progressive weakness 
 of the Grand- Princes and of the state : so certain is this, that, 
 in the third period, and in spite of the additional calamities 
 produced by the Tatar invasion, we shall see the state again 
 revive with the paramount authority, by the re-establish- 
 ment of the direct succession in one of the branches of this 
 multitude of princes. 
 
 As to the Prussian nobility, we must remark, that, amidst 
 all the quarrels which, in the second period, arose respecting 
 appanages, there is no allusion to them, but only to the 
 princes. The reason of this is, that the continually con- 
 quering movement of the first period, the manners, the mu- 
 tability of all secondary fortunes in the midst of these revo- 
 lutions of appanages ; in fine, the scarcity of cities, resi- 
 dences, and strong places, had prevented the voyevodes from 
 perpetuating themselves in their commands, as those mili- 
 tary leaders had done everywhere else, at that period. After- 
 wards, when cities began to be founded, the princes were 
 multiplied also, and divided them among themselves ; no 
 one even imagined that they could belong to anybody but 
 those princes ; so absolute and exclusive appears to have 
 been, at all times, the devotion to the family of liurik. 
 
 To belong to that race was enough : whether the princes 
 
 * Among a thousand other instances, see what the Russian historian 
 says with respect to Yury of Suzdal, who thrice usurped the throne of 
 Kief. His favourites, and a swarm of adventurers, who nocked to 
 seek their fortune in his train, trampled as they pleased on the citi- 
 zens of that capital, and plundered and insulted them. The princes 
 often carried off all the hoyars of a city, &c.
 
 A.D. 1051] GRAND-PRINCES OF THE SECOND PERIOD. 57 
 
 were good or bad, the Russians accepted them all. They 
 allowed themselves to be transferred from hand to hand, 
 divided and subdivided, given and resumed, just as the princes 
 thought proper. The family of Eurik looked upon the state 
 as its property. Listen to one of them, named Oleg, who was 
 summoned, in 1096 or 1097, to the congress of Kief by his 
 kinsmen, and was informed that, at the meeting, the bishops, 
 the ancient boyars, and the most distinguished citizens, 
 were to be consulted. "I am a prince," replied he, " and 
 am not made to take advice from monks and the mob." "We 
 shall witness many other examples of the submissiveness of 
 the people, and of the pride of the Euriks. 
 
 This congress, however, which was convoked in 109G, that 
 of the sons of Yaroslaf the Legislator, in 1059, for the de- 
 liverance of their uncle, and those which were subsequently 
 held, indicate to us the form of government during this 
 second period. It was an assemblage of appanaged princes 
 descended from Eurik,* who recognised the sovereign of 
 Kief as Grand-Prince and Lord-Paramount. These princes 
 often held a congress, in which important affairs were decided, 
 appanages distributed, and high offences judged. " The 
 fault which costs the boyar his head," said one of them,f 
 " costs the prince his appanage." 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE GRAND-PRINCES OE THE SECOND PERIOD — YLADIMIR 
 MONOM AC HTJ S — ANDREW. 
 
 Now that all these causes of barbarism — the order of 
 succession from brother to brother, partitions, intestine dis- 
 sensions, and the exclusive authority of the Euriks — are 
 appreciated, and that a glimpse has been given of the mode 
 of government, let us revert to the history of the main facts, 
 for the understanding of which it was necessary to premise 
 these general considerations. 
 
 * About the year 1150 there were more than seventy- one, all sove- 
 reigns, 
 f Sviatoslaf, in 117G.
 
 58 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. VI. 
 
 Isiaslaf, the son of Yaroslaf the Great, began the second 
 disastrous period, by twenty-four years of civil war, two de- 
 positions, two appeals to foreign intervention for the purpose 
 of effecting his restoration, and by a change in the mode of 
 succession to the throne, which he left to his brother Vsevo- 
 lod, without any opposition being offered by his two sons. 
 
 But what boots it to dwell on the name of Isiaslaf; or that 
 of a Vsevolod, his successor, who reigned fifteen years ; or of 
 a Sviatopolk, the nephew of Vsevolod, and son of his eldest 
 brother, who succeeded him, and for twenty years occupied a 
 throne, winch was much more an object of envy from the 
 wealth and luxury of Kief, than from the contested power 
 which it conferred ? What can we learn from these annals, 
 except that they are filled with outrages, usurpations, vio- 
 lated treaties, and pillagings, either between the Russian 
 princes, or between them and the Polovtzy Tatars, the Poles, 
 or the Hungarians? Of these facts, therefore, the major 
 part of which is unworthy of being remembered, we shall 
 select only such as may show us the colour of the times, and 
 give us a leading and general idea of that epoch.* 
 
 Now, as early as the opening years of the reign of Vsevolod, 
 about 1084, there rises to vieAV the noble form of his son, 
 Vladimir Monomachus, the hero of the second period of the 
 Russian history. His first actions were distant campaigns 
 for the redress of injuries. A tutelary genius amidst the 
 crowd of princes possessing appanages, he was incessantly 
 emploj-ed in succouring the weak against the unjust aggressor. 
 In their frightful incursions, the Polovtzy always found him 
 the foremost to arrest their progress. The only fact with 
 which he can be reproached is, that he once allowed himself 
 to violate his faith with these robbers, who never kept theirs ; 
 that he availed himself of treachery against the treacherous, 
 and gave them up to the slaughter, while they were slumber- 
 ing amidst the fruits of their rapine, among Avhich Vladimir 
 
 * The national historian of Russia himself is our warrant for so 
 cursory a treatment of this ignoble period: " Un ecrivain c'tranger ne 
 trouverait aucune jouissanee dans la peinture dc ces funestes epoques, 
 steriles en actions gloricuses, et signalees par des guerres civiles de peu 
 d'importance, entre les nombreux souverains, dont les ombres, teintes 
 du sang de leurs sujets infortune's, passent sous ses yeux dans l'obscu- 
 rite des siecles." — Karamsin, trad, par St. Thomas et Jauffret, ii. 84.
 
 A.D. 1097] VLADIMIR MON03JACHUS. 59 
 
 doubtless reckoned the treaty they had recently extorted 
 from him. 
 
 But by how many great actions did he not atone for this 
 great error ! "When,*in 1093, his father died in his arms, on the 
 throne of Kief, which he bequeathed to him, and of which 
 all good citizens implored his acceptance, he refused it. 
 Absurd as was the established order of succession, he re- 
 spected it, and transmitted the sceptre to his cousin Sviato- 
 polk. " His father," said he, "was the senior of mine; he 
 reigned first in the capital. I wish to preserve Eussia from 
 the horrors of a civil war." 
 
 He did more ; during twenty years he persisted in this 
 generous conduct. Eemaining a faithful vassal of Sviatopolk, 
 whose guard consisted of only eight hundred warriors, _ he 
 perpetually hastened to his aid in the unjust wars and im- 
 prudent combats in which, notwithstanding Vladimir's re- 
 monstrances and reproaches, the rash monarch involved him- 
 self. In fighting for this sovereign, Vladimir lost in the 
 waves a beloved brother, whom he vainly endeavoured to 
 save at the risk of his own life ; and he lost even his appa- 
 nage of Tchernigof, which the flagitious Oleg, his kinsman, 
 claimed as his inheritance, and succeeded in wresting from 
 him. 
 
 This Oleg woidd neither submit to the amovability of 
 fiefs, nor to the congress of 1097, in which the princes di- 
 vided the appanages between them : he had sworn on the 
 cross to be satisfied with his share, but he, and David his 
 brother, again appealed to the Polovtzy. They perpetually 
 laid open Russia to those robbers ; their whole existence was 
 nothing but a tissue of treasons. 
 
 Thanks to the influence of Christianity, the feudal con- 
 tests of the Eussian princes, not less blood-stained than 
 those of other barbarians, had yet been rarely stained hitherto 
 with any blood but that which flowed in battle. For nearly 
 a century, Sviatopolk, the fratricide, had remained a solitary 
 monster in an age of discord, by which he had been held in 
 abomination. Towards the close of the eleventh century, 
 however, the detestable race of the traitor Oleg, witn whom 
 nothing was sacred, renewed these monstrosities ; his brother 
 David, to Avhom the public peace, restored by the congress 
 of 1097, was insupportable, framed a plot, slandered Vladi-
 
 60 nisToitr of russia. [ch. vi. 
 
 mir, and tore out the eyes of one of his kinsmen, whose ap- 
 panage he coveted. 
 
 But this crime, so common in Greece, was unprecedented 
 in Russia, and excited the utmost abhorrence. A new con- 
 gress of the Russian princes was assembled under a vast tent, 
 and there, too, the genius of Vladimir Monomachus was pre- 
 dominant. " Thou pretendest that thou hast cause of com- 
 plaint," said they to David; "thou art now seated on the 
 same carpet with thy brothers. Speak ; which of us dost 
 thou accuse r" David, disconcerted, kept silence, and the 
 princes quitted the tent. They mounted their horses ; and 
 held a council, all of them completely armed, as was the 
 custom under alarming circumstances. Then separating, 
 each of them went to consult his boyars ; and David, con- 
 demned, and cast out with horror, was deprived of his appa- 
 nage. Nevertheless, from the pity of his kinsmen he received 
 four towns and four hundred grivnas for his subsistence ; so 
 much did these descendants of Rurik respect his blood, even 
 when it was most impure ; so much had Christianity softened 
 them since the time of Vladimir the Great, who abolished 
 the penalty of death, and of Isiaslaf his grandson, who again 
 suppressed it, after it had been restored by Taroslaf his 
 father. 
 
 At length, the death of the infamous Oleg, the last con- 
 gress in which the influence of Monomachus shone so greatly, 
 his generosity, and his active valour, suspended the civil dis- 
 sensions, and put an end to new wars against the Poles and 
 the Polovtzy. During the thirty-five years of the reigns of 
 Vsevolod and Sviatopolk, Vladimir, who had refused the 
 sovereignty of Russia, had been its tutelary genius. 
 
 But, in 1113 Sviatopolk died, Kief fell into utter con- 
 fusion, and massacred its Jewish inhabitants, and Mono- 
 machus, who was always appealed to whenever the want of 
 order and justice was experienced, was again called to the 
 throne ; but this hero of duty again rejected the sceptre ; he 
 declared that the son of his enemy, the offspring of the per- 
 fidious Oleg, had an hereditary title to it. His high renown, 
 however, his age, and the existing circumstances, triumphed : 
 a unanimous assent and resolve, and the revolt of the 
 Kievians, compelled him to reign. For it is remarkable, that 
 he was elected by a general and solemn assembly of the
 
 A.D. 1125] TLADIMIE HONOU ACHUS. 61 
 
 citizens of Kief ; this, however, does not establish the rights 
 of the people, there being then nothing fixed : a great man 
 could make infringements in everything, and procure them 
 to be made. Besides, this prince refused to avail himself of 
 the election, which proves that he did not consider it valid. 
 
 At length, however, he yielded ; and order was quickly 
 restored by the expulsion of the Jews from the whole of the 
 Eussian territory. Vladimir protected tbeir retreat, and 
 made their exde be respected : it lasted for six centuries, 
 untd the conquest of Poland, where their race was numerous, 
 led to its partial and gradual abolition. 
 
 At the same time, the lot of those who were slaves by 
 contract, or for debt, and even that of the perpetual slaves, 
 was ameliorated ; the passions, restrained in the interior of 
 the state, vrere now turned towards external objects, and the 
 civil wars were succeeded by useful wars against the enemies 
 of the country. 
 
 In conclusion, this great man left to Eussia better laws, 
 and to his children the remembrance of his actions, of which, 
 on his death-bed, he traced the picture, and offered it to them 
 as a model. 
 
 "My dear children," said he, " praise God, love men; for 
 it is neither fasting, nor solitude, nor monastic vows, that can 
 give you eternal life ; it is beneficence alone. 
 
 " Be fathers to the orphan ; be yourselves judges for the 
 widow. Put to death neither the innocent nor the guilty, 
 * for nothing is more sacred than the life and soul of a Chris- 
 tian. 
 
 " Keep not the priests at a distance from you ; do good to 
 them, that they may offer up prayers to God for you. 
 
 " Violate not the oatli which you have sworn on the cross. 
 My brothers said to me, ' Assist us to expel the sons of 
 Botislaf, and seize upon their provinces, or renounce our 
 alliance.' But I answered, 'I cannot forget that I have 
 kissed the cross.' 
 
 " Bear in mind that a man ought to be always employed : 
 look carefully into your domestic concerns, and fly from 
 drunkenness and debauchery. 
 
 " Love your wives, but do not suffer them to have any 
 power over you. 
 
 "Endeavour constantly to obtain knowledge. Without
 
 62 HISTORY OF ETJSSIA. [CH. VI. 
 
 having quitted his palace, my father spoke five languages ; a 
 thing which captivates for us the admiration of foreigners. 
 
 "^In war, he vigilant ; he an example to your voyevodes : 
 never retire to rest without having posted your guards : 
 never take oif your arms whde you are within the enemy's 
 reach ; and, to avoid ever heing surprised, he early on horse- 
 back. 
 
 " When you travel through your provinces, do not allow 
 your attendants to do the least injury to the inhabitants; 
 entertain always, at your own expense, the master of the 
 house in which you take up your abode. 
 
 " If you find yourself affected by some ailment, make three 
 prostrations down, to the ground before the Lord ; and let 
 the sun never find you in bed. As soon as the first gleams 
 of day appeared, my father, and all the virtuous men by 
 whom he was surrounded, did thus — they glorified the Lord ; 
 they then seated themselves to deliberate, or to administer 
 j ustice to the people, or they went to the chase, and in the 
 middle of the day they slept ; which God permits to man, as 
 well as to the beasts and the birds. 
 
 " For my part, I accustomed myself to do everything that 
 I might have ordered my servants to do : night and day, 
 summer and winter, I was perpetually moving about; I 
 wished to see everything with my own eyes. Never did I 
 abandon the poor or the widow to the oppressions of the 
 powerful. I made it my duty to inspect the churches and 
 the sacred ceremonies of religion, as well as the management 1 
 of my property, my stables, and the vultures and hawks of 
 my hunting establishment. 
 
 " I have made eighty-three campaigns and many expedi- 
 tions ; I concluded nineteen treaties with the Polovtzy ; I 
 took captive a hundred of their princes, whom I set free 
 again ; and I put two hundred to death by throwing them 
 into rivers. 
 
 " No one has ever travelled more rapidly than I have done. 
 Setting out in the morning from Tchernigof, I arrived at 
 Kief before the hour of vespers. 
 
 " In my youth, what falls from my horse did I not expe- 
 rience ! wounding my feet and my hands, and breaking my 
 head against the trees; but the Lord watched over me. 
 
 " In hunting, amidst the thickest forests, how many times
 
 A.D. 1125] LINEAGES OF MONOMACnUS AND OLEG. 63 
 
 have I myself caught wild horses, and hound them together ! 
 How many times have I been thrown down by buffaloes, 
 wounded by the antlers of stags, and trodden under the feet 
 of elks ! A furious wild boar rent my sword from my bald- 
 rich ; my saddle was torn to pieces by a bear ; this terrible 
 beast rushed upon my courser, which he threw down upon 
 me ; but the Lord protected me. 
 
 " my children, fear neither death nor wild beasts ; trust 
 in Providence ; it far surpasses all human precautions." 
 
 Vladimir Monomachus was married three times, and had 
 five children, who survived him. Mstislaf, the eldest, who 
 succeeded him as Grand-Prince, was the son of Gyda, daugh- 
 ter of Harold, the last Saxon king of England. Mstislaf 
 inherited all his father's virtues. Had he lived as long, 
 he might have secured the repose of Russia ; but after his 
 brief reign of six years we again behold the dissevering 
 force of feudalism in full operation, and the pernicious law 
 of succession appealed to by the descendants of the wicked 
 Oleg ; again we behold all the princes armed and arrayed 
 against each other as in a state of nature. In the thirty- 
 eight years that elapsed between the reign of Mstislaf and 
 that of Andrew of Suzdal, appanages Avere indefinitely mul- 
 tiplied. In this short interval, eleven princes, chiefly de- 
 scendants of Oleg and Vladimir, renewed, with various 
 success, the contest of their fathers : they besieged the bar- 
 baric throne, and scrambled with each other for its rude 
 dominion. 
 
 At length, towards the middle of the twelfth century, by 
 means of partition on partition, and civil war on civil Avar, 
 the Grand-Principality had dAviudled to little more than the 
 city of Kief. Its paramount sovereignty was nothing but a 
 vain title ; and yet, Avhether it arose from the influence of a 
 name, or that it was still looked upon as the Capua, the 
 Babylon of the Russians, the metropolis of their religion, 
 the emporium of their commerce, the source of their civili- 
 sation, it is certain that all the anarchy of the princes con- 
 tinued to be obstinately bent against Kief: the eye becomes 
 bewildered in gazing upon the confusion. 
 
 In the midst of it, hoAvever, some traces are visible of the 
 struggle between the descendants of Vladimir Monomachus 
 and those of Oleg. The latter, still reprobated by the people,
 
 64 HISTOB.Y OF BUSSIA. [CH. VI. 
 
 looked for support to the nomad barbarians of the south ; 
 the former sought it from the love of their people and from 
 the Hungarians, who were, at least, equal to the Russians in 
 civilisation. It would appear as if these lineages, like those 
 of Cain and Abel, always retained the distinguishing marks 
 of their origin. 
 
 But, at length, one of the appanaged princes, Igor of 
 Suzdal, obtained the ascendancy in this chaos, and for a 
 short time even inspired a hope that he would reduce it to 
 order. Like the founder of the third Trench dynasty, his 
 strength lay in his patrimony. The principality of Suzdal 
 included the present governments of Taroslaf, Kostroma, 
 Vladimir, Moscow, and a part of Novgorod, Tver, Nijni 
 Novgorod, Tula, and Kaluga. But this vast country, the 
 centre of Russia, was, in the eyes of the prince who reigned 
 over it, nothing more than a cheerless place of banishment. 
 He could see there, he declared, only an inclement climate, 
 uncultivated deserts, gloomy forests, and a people plunged 
 in ignorance. Kief alone could charm him ; he made him- 
 self master of it, or rather, Kief made itself master of 
 him ; and there he soon after died, more the victim of sensual 
 pleasures than of the weight of years. 
 
 The host of appanaged princes instantly started up again ; 
 again they rushed to seize upon the throne of Kief, carried 
 it by assault, and passed and repassed on it with such ra- 
 pidity, that the eye is baffled in its attempt to follow them. 
 
 One alone, whose youth was that of Achilles, withdrew 
 from this ambitious crowd: it was Andrew, the heir of 
 Suzdal. He viewed that great appanage with very different 
 eyes from his father. "Here," said he, " still abide simpli- 
 city of manners, the obedience of the people, and the devoted 
 fidelity of the boyars ; while at Kief, a city which is on the 
 frontier of the Hungarians, the Poles, and the Polovtzy, all 
 is pillage, murder, civil and foreign war." Thus, while he 
 left the rest of the princes to tear each other to pieces, and 
 exhaust themselves round Kief, he regarded it with contempt, 
 and kept himself apart in his patrimony. There he appeared 
 to reflect deeply ou the calamities of his country. It was 
 especially in the divergent position of Kief, and in the par- 
 titions of the empire, that he discovered the cause of them. 
 Ror this reason he refused all grants of territory in his own
 
 A.D. 116S] ANDREW OF SUZDAL. 65 
 
 vast domain, even in favour of Lis nearest relations, and 
 commenced a war of extermination against appanages. For 
 this reason it was that he rendered his Vladimir worthy of 
 heing the Russian capital ; that he aggrandised Moscow, a 
 creation of his father ; founded around him a number of 
 cities, peopled them with the Bulgarians of the Volga, -whom 
 lie had subjugated,* and drew into Central Russia, by the 
 attraction of peace, the population of the south, -which fled 
 from the horrors of all kinds of war. 
 
 At length, in 1168, after having been repulsed by the 
 proud and fickle Novgorod, he led his army against Kief; 
 and this second capital of the Russians, taken by storm, 
 despoiled, and degraded, resigned the supremacy to Vla- 
 dimir. 
 
 In the following year, however, the numerous troops of 
 Andrew, commanded by one of his sons, having under him 
 seventy-one princes of the blood, were again foiled before 
 Novgorod, where reigned a son of the prince of Kief. Nov- 
 gorod was at the climax of its power : as the emporium of the 
 commerce of Persia and India with Germany, it had been 
 recently admitted into the llanseatic league. But, though 
 it twice successfully resisted all the forces of Andrew, it 
 yielded to his policy ; and the first capital of the Russians, 
 like the second, acknowledged a third city as the metropolis. 
 
 Andrew had triumphed in this part of his double combat ; 
 but in that of the appanages, custom, backed by too powerful 
 interests, prevailed against him. Opposed to a single Grand- 
 Prince, whose interest it was to destroy the system, there 
 was a throng of princes, all sovereigns, who must necessarily 
 be anxious for its continuance ; and not only those princes, 
 but also their guards, and the whole of the boyars, that 
 multitude of adventurers retained by each of the descend- 
 ants of Rurik, all of whom subsisted on this usage and its 
 attendant defects. 
 
 The whole of them, therefore, revolted. It was in vain 
 that the brothers and nephews of Andrew, to whom he had 
 
 * Andrew did not personally make war after his accession to the 
 throne. This, perhaps, is the reason why, from the date of his reign, 
 the chronicles give the name of court to that which they previously 
 denominated the yuurd of the prince. 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 G6 HISTORY OE RUSSIA. [CH. VI. 
 
 refused appanages, were banished, and forced to fly as far as 
 Byzantium ; the rest of Russia, divided among his kinsmen, 
 had the upper hand. Kief and Novgorod escaped from his 
 grasp ; his armies of fifty thousand men were baffled by an 
 inveterately rooted custom ; it was victorious, and all the 
 policy of Andrew availed only to secure for him an empty 
 homage. Finally, in his own patrimony, which, at least, he 
 was desirous to preserve entire and undivided, he was cruelly 
 assassinated by his subjects, and died hated and unavenged. 
 
 The fall of this Grand-Prince, and of his plan of at- 
 taining order and strength by the concentration of power, 
 took place in 1174. This great effort was made too soon, as 
 appears from the triumphant resistance which custom op- 
 posed to it ; and too late with reference to the Tatar inva- 
 sion, which occurred fifty-four years subsequently. For, 
 even supposing a succession of able princes, and a series of 
 well-directed efforts, half a century would not have been suf- 
 ficient to give to Eussia, by the centralisation of power, all 
 the energy of which she was susceptible, and which, indeed, 
 was indispensable for her safety. All history proves that 
 such a concentration of power in a feudal state, and in the 
 face of such formidable and hostile interests, has ever been a 
 task of difficult and tedious accomplishment. 
 
 Far from persisting in carrying this great conception into 
 effect, the first successor of Andrew weakly allowed to be 
 broken up into appanages the vast domain of Suzdal, which, 
 by its temporary union in one hand, had become the nucleus 
 of empire. The second suffered the Grand- Principality to be 
 disputed with him, by one of the princes to whom he had 
 given an appanage out of his own domain. The third went 
 still further : he ingenuously declared that he did not require 
 any homage from the princes holding appanages, and that to 
 God alone were they accountable for their conduct. 
 
 Thus, the result of this third change of the capital was, 
 to transport the frenzy of civil war iuto the middle of 
 Eussia, to break it up into appanages, and to remove the 
 centre of government not only from Greece, its commerce, 
 and its civilisation, but also from the most European of 
 the Eussian provinces. The latter, seeking to obtain some 
 point of support within reach, were not slow in becoming
 
 A.D. 1237] THE TATAE INVASION. 67 
 
 Hungarian, Polish, and Lithuanian. Finally, this change 
 of residence completed the decomposition of the north of 
 Europe, at the very moment when Central Asia, united in 
 one mass, and under a single chief, was ready to pour down, 
 with overwhelming weight, upon that unfortunate country. 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 THIED PEEIOD, FEOM 1237 TO 1462. 
 
 A geeat conqueror had now arisen in the vicinity of 
 Eussia, at the precise instant when that unhappy country 
 had no other means of defence than the fragments of a power 
 worn out and rent to pieces by discord. 
 
 In consequence of this, nothing more was required to 
 crush her than a single lieutenant of Genghis-Khan, and 
 two efforts, one of which was made in 1221, through the de- 
 files of Caucasus, the other, in 1237, on the side of eastern 
 Bulgaria (the country of Kasan). The first, which was 
 merely an incursion, cost the victor only one battle ; the 
 second, some insignificant combats, but many sieges. 
 
 Let us, in the first place, investigate the causes of this in- 
 vasion, of its rapid success, and of the long duration of this 
 last triumph of Asia ; we will then trace the slow and gradual 
 progress of the Eussians towards independence. 
 
 The principal causes of this great invasion of Europe by 
 Asia are to be found in the genius of Genghis-Khan, who 
 united the Mongols* and Tatars, and in the manners of those 
 two people. 
 
 That ambitious prince could attain greatness by war 
 alone ; he was a barbarian ; he held command over shepherds, 
 who, like their flocks, were compelled to be migratory ; how, 
 in those vast deserts, would it have been possible to keep 
 them dependent on him, elsewhere than in camps ? How 
 could he retain them united in camps, otherwise than by 
 continual conquests; without which, these shepherd tribes 
 were under the necessity of separating into a multitude of 
 
 * Mogols, according to De Guignes and Karainsin; and Mongols, 
 according to Malte-Brun, Dcppine, and Levesque. 
 
 f2
 
 G8 HISTORY OF BUSSIA. [en. VII. 
 
 hordes, to find the means of subsistence ? War, perpetual 
 Avar, therefore, could alone satiate his desires, 'and give a 
 relish to his power. "When he had devoured the whole of 
 Asia, Europe was required. 
 
 To say that the Russians had interfered in defence of the 
 Polovtzy, and had murdered the Tatar envoys, who came to 
 propose an insidious alliance, would he to assign a puerile 
 cause for this mighty invasion. Lured, like all their prede- 
 cessors, hy the riches of Byzantium, would these greedy 
 harbarians have passed hy Russia without giving her a 
 thought ? "Would not Kief, which was almost in their road, 
 and the Greek luxury of the Russians, have been sufficient 
 to attract them? They had heard of them, in 1221, from 
 the Polovtzy, and in 1237 from the Silver Bulgarians,* 
 whose plundering excursions had made them too well ac- 
 quainted with the wealth of the Russians. Besides, the 
 Polovtzy and the Bulgarians of the Volga were at war with 
 the Tatars, and the conquest of these by the latter naturally 
 led to that of Kief and Vladimir. 
 
 As to the causes of the rapid success of the Tatars, we 
 must, in the first place, ohserve, that the circumstance of 
 their pastoral habits preventing them from becoming at- 
 tached to any country, could not fail to forward the vast 
 and ambitious projects of Genghis-Khan. This kind of life 
 reiiders a people fit for the profession of arms, and keeps 
 them ever ready for action. The nomad nations are armies ; 
 irregular, indeed, but easily put in motion, prompt, and 
 always on foot ; whatever they leave behind them can be 
 guarded by old men, women, and children. To such nations 
 war is not an event ; for long marches produce but little 
 change in the habits of a wandering people : their houses, 
 their provisions, march along with them ; and this is of some 
 importance in uncultivated plains and uninhabited forests. 
 The Tatars, therefore, had over the Russians the advantage 
 which standing armies have over hasty levies. 
 
 Here, however, we must call to recollection the existence 
 of the permanent guards of the Russian princes, to which must 
 be added those of the cities, though the latter had doubtless 
 less military experience than the former; hut the national 
 
 * Or Bulgarians of the Volga.
 
 A.D. 1237] THE TATAR INVASION. 09 
 
 authors give us to understand, that the permanence of these 
 guards had induced a habit of wholly committing to them all 
 that related to war, and that the people were become unfit 
 for bearing arms. 
 
 Add to this, that here, as was the case wherever the 
 Normans established themselves with their military govern- 
 ment, there could be no warriors but free men and pro- 
 prietors ; and even from these we must deduct the traders 
 and the clergy. Now, continual wars had so much increased 
 the number of monks, hired servants, and slaves, and so much 
 diminished that of free men and landholders, that there re- 
 mained scarcely warriors enough to make head against the 
 Polovtzy. 
 
 Amidst a ruin and depopulation which was so general, 
 even the guard of the prince must necessarily lose much of 
 its original strength. It has been seen, that about the year 
 1100, the guard of the Grand-Prince consisted of only eight 
 hundred men, and that he lost it. Hence it happened that, 
 with the exception of one battle and some trivial skirmishes 
 in the field, the Tatars encountered no resistance except 
 from the cities, in which all who had fled to them for refuge — 
 peasants, priests, and populace, were converted into warriors 
 by despair. 
 
 Even tins did not take place till the second invasion : to 
 the first, we see the inhabitants of those cities opposing no- 
 thing but processions of priests and suppliants, whom the 
 barbarians amused themselves by trampling under their 
 horses' feet. 
 
 Another cause of the nature of this second war, a war 
 wholly of sieges, was, that in barbarous times, when tactics 
 were unknown, an impetuous cavalry must have had the supe- 
 riority in an npen country : now, the Tatars being always in 
 the saddle, and being masters of the provinces which pro- 
 duced the finest horses, were the best horsemen in the world. 
 The Eussians, on the contrary, were infantry ; their guards 
 being overwhelmed, and the rest badly armed and undis- 
 ciplined, could not keep their ground, except in cities, 
 against such furious cavalry. 
 
 The annalists boast much of the obstinate defence made by 
 the cities, the greater part of which suffered themselves to bo 
 taken by assault, and destroyed, rather than surrender. The
 
 70 HISTORY OF EUSSIA. [CH. VII. 
 
 example of the sacking of one city did not deter another from 
 exposing itself to the same fate. In this is supposed to be 
 manifest the same tenacious firmness even to death, which 
 now forms a distinguishing feature in the Bussian character. 
 But the truth was, that as the Tatars gloried in being equally 
 faithless and pitiless, no treaty could be made with, nor any 
 quarter expected from them. It was their maxim, that " the 
 vanquished can never be the friends of the victors ; the death 
 of the former is necessary for the safety of the latter." 
 
 Now, with the reduction which had taken place in the war- 
 like class of the Bussians, let us contrast the enormous magni- 
 tude of the Tatar armies. Plan-Carpin, the ambassador sent 
 to Baty by the Pope, saw that Khan surrounded by six 
 hundred thousand warriors, of whom a hundred and fifty 
 thousand were Tatars. There was, at that period, no art 
 which could counterbalance such an astounding disproportion 
 of force. Bubruquis,* who was the envoy from St. Louis to 
 Mangu-Khan, gives us as vast an idea.of them. 
 
 There were also other causes which gave the superiority to 
 the Tatars. Among the Gauls, as among all barbarians, it 
 was by cries repeated from village to village that intelligence 
 was transmitted ; the more thickly the country was peopled, 
 the more speedily was the news conveyed. In Bussia, where 
 the dwellings were separated by deserts, this kind of com- 
 munication was perpetually interrupted, so that a prince was 
 often surprised in his capital by the enem_y ; this was a great 
 advantage on the side of an assailant always ready, and so 
 rapid in his movements. 
 
 There is reason to believe, likewise, that the Mongols, who 
 were situated so near the mines of Nertshinck, and had be- 
 come masters of the Ural and the Caucasus, were provided 
 with better arms than the Bussians ; accordingly, the annalists 
 speak with horror of the long and steeled arrows of those 
 Tatars, of their huge scimitars, their pikes with hooks, and 
 
 * Tliis monk was bold to think that he could convert Mangu; but 
 the Khan replied to him: "The Mongols are not ignorant of the 
 existence of a God, and they love him with all their hearts: there arc 
 as many, and more ways of being saved, than there are fingers on your 
 hands ; and, if God has given you the Bible, he has given us the 
 Magi," &c.
 
 A.D. 1237] TIIE TATAE INVASION. 71 
 
 those terrible battering-rams -which in one day overthrew 
 the walls of Kief, their strongest city. 
 
 Another circumstance which we must figure to ourselves 
 is, the sudden organisation of these wandering hordes in 
 divisions of ten thousand men, regiments of a thousand, 
 companies of a hundred, and detachments often. "We must 
 also admire the annual assemblage of all the chiefs in the 
 presence of Genghis ; his sole means of knowing them, 
 keeping them in a sort of connexion, and impressing their 
 minds with his authority, throughout so vast an extent : for 
 it was in the midst of deserts that the splendour of his 
 genius burst forth ; it is there, especially, that we witness 
 what can be accomplished by the influence of one man over 
 so many men and events, and even in spite of nature. 
 
 Fanaticism had its share. In one of these general as- 
 semblies, a prophet had predicted to Genghis-Khan that he 
 would be master of the world. We must also remark, that, 
 among the Mongols, the three highest crimes were adultery, 
 witchcraft, and cowardice; and that, in fine, men who had 
 such fiery passions, who were so ignorant, and who were 
 bound to risk their lives under pain of death, could not fad to 
 be formidable soldiers. 
 
 Besides, it is not very astonishing that the disunited Rus- 
 sians should have been overthrown by the Mongols, united 
 to the Tatars. To sum up the whole, the genius of Genghis, 
 the impulse given by him, the confidence which he be- 
 queathed, and the enthusiasm inspired by forty years of 
 victory, are striking causes of success. 
 
 These nomad hordes pushed their conquests as far as into 
 Hungary, and beyond Poland ; but a dearly-bought victory 
 in Silesia, and the poverty of Brandenburg, having disgusted 
 them, they confined themselves to Russia. 
 
 Yet, with the assistance of the Polovtzy, the Alans might 
 have defended the entrance of European Russia against the 
 Tatars, who, in the first instance, attacked it by the south- 
 west of the Caspian, and the defiles of Caucasus; but, de- 
 ceived by offers of friendship, and by the remembrance of a 
 common origin, the Polovtzy abandoned the Alans. As soon 
 as the latter were crushed, and the Caucasus was penetrated, 
 the war fell in turn on the Polovtzy, who, driven to the
 
 72 HISTORY OP RUSSIA. [CH. VII. 
 
 Dniepr, implored aid from the princes of Kief and Ga- 
 litsch. 
 
 Those princes were aware of their true interest, and united 
 with the Polovtzy. It was then that the Tatar envoys were 
 killed, who came to offer to the Russians the same friendship 
 with which they had lured the Polovtzy. The league of the 
 Russians was imperfect : by a feigned retreat, they were 
 drawn to the banks of the Kalka, near the mouth of the 
 Don. There the prince of Galitsch was desirous of van- 
 quishing without the help of the prince of Kief, who, on his 
 part, allowed him to be defeated, and was slaughtered in his 
 turn : all the south of Russia was ravaged, after which the 
 Tatars withdrew. 
 
 This sketch of their first expedition, in 1221, shows with 
 what prudent and deceptive policy these Tatars prepared for 
 a war which they were to carry on with all the fury of bar- 
 barism : what Montesquieu says of the character of Attila 
 well portrays the Tatar character, which, patient and subtle 
 in policy, is implacable and furious in war. 
 
 There are yet two additional reasons to be assigned for 
 the general conquest of Russia, in 1237, by Batj r , grandson 
 of Genghis, and Khan of the Kaptchak. In the first place, 
 famine, a plague, the earthquake of 1230, and a paroxysm of 
 intestine dissension, had weakened the Russians ; while, on 
 the contrary, the pacific reign of Zuzi-Khan, had prepared 
 the Kaptchak ; secondly, the Grand- Prince of Vladimir 
 (Yury, or George) was an idiot, who never thought of form- 
 ing an alliance with the Bulgarians, and allowed himself to 
 be beaten in detail. As he was solely occupied in adorn- 
 ing the churches, perpetuating mendicity by alms, and fat- 
 tening the monks, he believed that God would do the rest. 
 
 The infamy of the Russian princes, who, at the outset, 
 deserted each other ; who, as we shall see in the sequel, next 
 employed themselves in mutually completing the work of 
 their own destruction ; and ended with choosing Baty as the 
 arbiter of their quarrels ; this, and the establishment, on 
 the Russian frontier, of the great Tatar empire of Kaptchak,* 
 
 * Kaptchak, or the Golden Horde, a Khannat, which, according to 
 Levesque, was comprehended between the Volga, the Yaik, and the 
 Don; and, according to De Guignes, extended much farther towards 
 the north-east of the Caspian. It is even believed, that the Sir, or 
 ancient Jaxartes, was its boundary.
 
 A.D. 1237] THE TATAR INVASION. 73 
 
 which extended from the north of the Caspian to the hanks 
 of the Don, were causes not only of the successes of the 
 Tatars, hut also of the duration of their supremacy in 
 Russia. 
 
 The Khans of Kaptchak, Astrakhan, Ivasan, and the Crimea, 
 long drew from the wandering hordes a swarm of soldiers, 
 ready to engage in any enterprise, having little to lose, every- 
 thing to gain, and nothing to leave behind them. Their 
 number was kept up by the slaves whom they captured ; 
 they enrolled their vanquished enemies under their standards, 
 and thus made their conquests supply the means of conquer- 
 ing. In Eussia, however, the difference of religion, climate, 
 and manners became an obstacle. They could govern it 
 only from a distance, and as paramount sovereigns. It was 
 necessary for them to have armies there, to oppose the 
 Lithuanians, the Swedes, and the Livonians, their common 
 enemies; for those three people, combined with the Hun- 
 garians and the Poles, had risen at once against Eussia, and 
 rushed upon that fallen prey. But the Tatars not being 
 men to be retained in a country, the climate of which was 
 repugnant to all their habits, they left the Eussian princes 
 there to reign and to fight for them. This addition of 
 European wars, which began in the twelfth and thirteenth 
 centuries, weakened the Eussians, and thus contributed to 
 the continuance of the Tatar yoke. 
 
 Here might be enumerated the famines, which were a 
 consequence of the Tatar invasion and of Eussian impro- 
 vidence ; and next, the endless dissensions between the 
 Eussian princes and in the republics ; but all these causes 
 of the long endurance of slavery were equally the causes of 
 the conquest. 
 
 From the spot where Kasan now stands, to as far as 
 Vladimir, the seat of the Eussian empire, the Tatars de- 
 stroyed everything ; such was their custom. AVhy should a 
 pastoral and migratory people have spared the cities ? Pas- 
 turage was all they stood in need of* This solitude flattered 
 
 * See, in 1223, the assembly of the Mongol chiefs, several of whom 
 proposed to Genghis-Khan to massacre all the inhabitants of the con- 
 quered countries, in order to convert those vast and populous regions 
 into pasturage. (De Guignes, vol. iii. 4to.)
 
 74 HISTOKT OP BTJSSIA. [CH. VII. 
 
 their pride and ensured their safety. Could they allow to be 
 left in their rear a population which might have become an 
 army ; armies being then the same thing as the population ? 
 Like all similar barbarians, they made war upon walls ; for 
 to such tribes, walls arc enemies ; at home, because tbey are 
 in opposition to their manners ; among their neighbours, 
 because they are an obstacle to their violence. 
 
 The deserts which these Tatars made, and which would 
 have stopped the progress of any other than a nomad people, 
 were no impediment to them. Their horses found pasture in 
 them, and horses were everything in their eyes. But the 
 principal end which the Tatars had in view, in thus spreading 
 destruction, was to root their power deeply by terror ; for, as 
 soon as they had produced the desired effect, they treated 
 with honour the Russian princes who applied to them, though, 
 at the same time, they enfeebled them by insidious partitions. 
 They founded Sarai,* and then Kasan, and thus established 
 themselves in the vicinity of their conquest. 
 
 After Baty, Burgai caused a general census of the Rus- 
 sians to be made. He sent governors (baskaks) with forces 
 into each principality, imposed taxes, and placed a governor- 
 general on the frontier. He prohibited, under pain of death, 
 the plundering of the monasteries ; exempted the priests 
 from all tribute ; and did not fear to augment their temporal 
 power, that he might secure in his interest their spiritual 
 power, which they knew better how to make use of. In the 
 disgracing of the princes of Kief and of Vladimir, who had 
 recognised the Pope, the Tatar displayed his care to defend 
 the Greek religion which he did not profess, but of which 
 he knew the ascendancy over these tributary tribes, and 
 which he considered as a barrier between Russia and the 
 rest of Europe. 
 
 The weakening of the feudal tie in Russia had facilitated 
 the conquest ; the policy of the Khans completed the un- 
 loosing of that tie. They themselves collected the tribute 
 of each district ; they received the homage and the appeals 
 of every prince ; and, when they committed the fault of re- 
 establishing a Grand-Prince, they allowed several rivals to 
 
 * Capital of the Kaptchak : according to Abulgasi, a Tatar prince 
 and historian, it was situated on the Volga, north of Astrakhan.
 
 A.D. 1300] THE TATAB DOMINION. 75 
 
 lay claim to this paramount sway, made them wait their 
 decision, and sometimes retained them at their Horde for 
 two whole years. At the same time, they prevented the 
 settling of any order of succession. In a word, they made 
 themselves lords paramount ; for, at the outset, they adopted 
 the plan of not permitting any prince, great or small, to 
 assume the government of his states before he had journeyed 
 to the Great Horde to solicit the investiture. 
 
 The effect of these journeys, to accomplish which a year 
 was barely sufficient, was to leave the principalities without 
 Russian chiefs, and under the authority of the Tatar baskaks ; 
 to prove the supremacy of the Grand- Khans ; to make known 
 to these Mongols with what kind of men they had to deal ; 
 to ruin the competitors by the customary presents ; and, 
 lastly, as accusers of the princes were never wanting among 
 their kinsfolk and rivals, to make them dread the terrible 
 vengeance of the Khans, in case of their having to reproach 
 themselves with so much as a sigh for independence. 
 
 Several princes were summoned to the Great Horde, tried, 
 and executed. But these Tatars, who thus cruelly punished 
 the insubordination of the Russian princes, joined with them 
 in their foreign wars. They even served them in their civil 
 wars ; and this was the manner in which they did so : a 
 Russian prince journeyed to the Horde to impeach the 
 Grand- Prince, in whose place he prayed to be substituted ; 
 and he returned with a Tatar army, which permitted him to 
 reign over ashes and blood. 
 
 The granting of these succours was not always dictated 
 by policy. The Tatars, like the Huns, ravaged without con- 
 quering ; it was tribute and slaves that they required. Had 
 they wished to govern their conquests, they could not have 
 plundered them ; a habit which it was impossible for them to 
 relinquish. The tribute was for the Khan, the plunder for 
 the Horde ; it was necessary, from time to time, to satisfy 
 tli is craving for prey, for the mass of the Tatar empire was 
 composed of such incoherent parts, that war, which destroys 
 everything, was its only means of preservation ; it was indis- 
 pensable to its existence, because it bound together the whole 
 of these scattered tribes, by directing all their interests, and 
 all their passkms, towards one object.
 
 76 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. VIII. 
 
 As it is only by convulsions that a body verging on disso- 
 lution can manifest its strength, so was it only in the violent 
 state of war that this empire resumed its collective form. 
 "What other vehicle than a burning and impetuous fever, 
 stimulated by all the most fervid passions, could have circu- 
 lated with rapidity enough to animate and move at onceall 
 the gigantic members of this enormous empire ? Nothing 
 but the renown of a victor, the cry of war, was sufficiently 
 powerful to make itself simultaneously heard through all the 
 parts of a dominion which were so remote from each other, 
 and dissevered by vast deserts. 
 
 Accordingly, no sooner did that war-cry cease to be loudly 
 heard ; no sooner did the Khans, exhausted or glutted with 
 blood, and fixed by luxury in cities which could not, like the 
 tent of Genghis, be removed to a distance, seek to enjoy at 
 home the repose of which they had robbed the world, than 
 their sway was narrowed to their slaves and the cities, and 
 the insubordination of the hordes convinced them how 
 little consistence there was in an empire composed of so 
 many wandering nations, and of such various and conflicting 
 interests. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 DECLINE OE THE TATAR POWER — ALEXANDER NEVSKI — 
 
 IVAN KALITA. 
 
 We have seen Asia, when rallied, surprise and subjugate 
 disunited Eussia ; we are now about to see Asia falling to 
 pieces in its turn, and Eussia, after having successively 
 banded together all its people, at length avenging its injuries. 
 But, in reverting back to the right path, it imitated the pro- 
 gress of Nature, who so slowly and methodically composes 
 that which she so rapidly decomposes. 
 
 Habitual war, and the consequent recognition of no other 
 law, no other virtue, than force ; the want of order in the 
 succession to the Khanship ; the facility with which the 
 chiefs of wandering hordes could revolt ; the indispensable
 
 A.D. 1350] DECLINE OF THE TATAR POWEB. 77 
 
 necessity, in a too extensive empire, of entrusting large por- 
 tions of it to lieutenants ; the rebellion and the conquests of 
 the Nogays, iu 1259 ; the ravages of Timur, in 1380 ■ all 
 these causes contributed to the disunion and enfeebling of 
 the Kaptchak, which may be dated, particularly, from the 
 middle of the fourteenth century, after the reign of Usbek, 
 more than a century posterior to its foundation. We speak 
 here only of the empire of the Kaptchak, one of the five 
 divisions of the great empire of Genghis-Khan. The latter 
 subsisted but forty years in its complete state. Of its brief 
 duration "sve need seek no other cause than its immense 
 extension ; for a man may, indeed, devastate the world, but 
 it can be governed by God alone. 
 
 The first successors of Genghis-Khan, however, claimed 
 nothing less than the possession of the whole earth, which he 
 had bequeathed to them by will.* For the conquest of 
 Europe they assigned eighteen years. But, of these arrogant 
 beings, Octay, the first after Genghis, died by poison ; an 
 event which probably contributed to postpone the impending 
 invasion of Constantinople, Vienna, Dresden, and Berlin. 
 The second, Gaiuk, or Kaiuk, held the throne but transiently ; 
 Mangu, the third, sustained reverses ; and Kublai, the fourth 
 of these pretended sovereigns of the world, could not even 
 make himself master in his own territories.f 
 
 "We have seen the causes of the Tatar invasion, its success, 
 and its permanence, and also the first principles of the dis- 
 solution of the Tatar empire. We are now to trace the 
 progress of the Russians towards their independence. 
 
 In the first place, we remark that the Grand-Princes, and 
 even the princes holding appanages, were obliged to journey 
 to the abode of the Mongol Khan to obtain the right of 
 governing. As these journeys took up a year, the authority 
 of the princes at home, during so long an absence, remained 
 weak, fluctuating, and uncertain. But ere long, the Kapt- 
 chak, or Golden Horde, threw off" its dependence on the 
 Mongol Khan, and the Russian princes had then to travel 
 only to Saraito solicit the crown. 
 
 On the other hand, nearly at the same epoch, and in the 
 
 * See rian-Carpin. -f See Abulgasi.
 
 78 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. VIII. 
 
 Kaptchak itself, thus severed from the great Mongol empire, 
 another dismemberment took place. Nogay, one of its 
 warriors, a conqueror from the north of the Black Sea, 
 rendered himself independent. As early as 1262, or 1266, 
 his revolt against the Golden Horde affording to the Russians 
 some hope of recovering their freedom, they massacred 
 the Tatars who resided among them. No long time after, 
 in 1281, a Grand-Prince, Dmitri, even opposed these No- 
 gays to the Kaptchaks, and re-established himself by their 
 influence. 
 
 These beginnings of division among the conquerors, how- 
 ever, weakened them at the expense of Russia alone, which 
 served as their field of battle, and the prize of their vic- 
 tories. 
 
 But that which excites surprise is, that there still existed 
 a Grand-Prince at that epoch. Wliile Baty and Burgai 
 were completing the conquest of Russia, chance so ordered 
 it, that Alexander Nevsky, one of the sons of the Grand- 
 Prince of Vladimir, and consequently prince of Novgorod, 
 was a great warrior and statesman. He rebuilt and repeopled 
 numerous Russian cities ; heroically defeated his European 
 enemies, the Teutonic knights and the Lithuanians ; re- 
 covered the Neva from the Swedes ;* and won the good-will 
 of the Tatars, whom he considered as too formidable to be 
 attacked. 
 
 By the same chance it happened that, at the very time 
 when Alexander gained the esteem of the Khan, the prince 
 of Kief drew upon himself the hatred of the Tatars and 
 Russians, by submitting to the Pope ; and Andrew, prince 
 of Vladimir, marrying the sister of this prince of Kief, and 
 refusing to pay the Khan his tribute, involved himself in the 
 same disgrace with his brother-in-law. All these principa- 
 lities the Khan gave to Alexander Nevsky ; some authors are 
 of opinion that he even aided him to seize upon them. 
 
 But the Russians were not disposed to submit either to 
 the Tatar yoke, or to the sceptre of the Grand-Prince ; so 
 that Alexander's whole life was spent in vanquishing Itaa 
 people, in punishing or pardoning their revolts, or in hurrying 
 to entreat forgiveness for them at the feet of the Khan, 
 
 * Hence his surname, Nevsky.
 
 A.I). 1262] ALEXANDER NEVSKT. 79 
 
 whom they were perpetually insulting. At Rostof, Vladimir, 
 Suzdal, and other towns, the Tatar collectors were massacred, 
 forced to adopt the Christian faith, or hunted out of the city. 
 No sooner were these acts known, at Horde, than the Khan 
 commanded not only the Grand- Prince, but all the other 
 Russian princes, to appear before him ; adding, that they 
 should come each at the head of his troops, for that the Khan 
 intended to make a campaign, in which he required the assist- 
 ance of the Russians. It was manifest, however, that he 
 only wanted to deprive Russia of her armed defenders, in 
 order to be the better able to penetrate into the empire. 
 Alexander, who had already made trial of the consideration 
 he had acquired in the mind of the Khan, now conceived the 
 perilous resolution of repairing alone to the Horde, there, by 
 submissiveness and prudence, to avert the wrath impending 
 over Russia. Twelve months was Alexander obliged to tarry 
 in the Horde before he could appease the wrath of the Usbek. 
 At length, after having obtained his dismissal, and a promise 
 that the Khan would forgive what had happened, and forego 
 his purpose of raising an army, he died suddenly on his road 
 home, in the year 1262, under circumstances that render it 
 extremely probable that poison had been administered to him 
 in the camp of the Khan, shortly before his departure. His 
 father had already experienced a similar fate, falling sick and 
 dying on the journey back from the Horde : and after him it 
 likewise befel some of his successors. It may easily be be- 
 lieved, indeed, that the rough, uncleanly, and irregular 
 manner of life in use among the Tatars, to which the Russian 
 princes were not accustomed, as well as the affronts and 
 humiliations of various kinds experienced by them in the 
 Horde, must have deeply affected them, and had a detri- 
 mental influence on their health ; but these considerations 
 by no means account for the fact that so many of them died 
 on the return journey. Alexander's ascendancy at home was 
 becoming too great to be endured by the conquerors. He 
 died the victim of his patriotism, but remained immortal in 
 the hearts of his subjects, who canonised him ; his virtues 
 restored in the minds of the Russians the paramount supre- 
 macy of Vladimir. 
 
 This Grand-Principality was, it is true, long a subject of 
 discord held out to the ambition of the Russian princes, and,
 
 SO HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. VIII. 
 
 while they contended for it with their own sword and that of 
 the Tatars, the Khan ruled it with sovereign sway. If it 
 chanced that one of these princes ventured to attack the 
 Grand- Prince, without having appealed to the Tatars, and 
 even in spite of them, it was because success would procure 
 for him riches, with which he might conciliate the Tatar 
 governors and the Khan himself; hut this success was un- 
 certain ; and the Russian princes at length perceiving that a 
 journey to the Horde decided the possession of the crown, 
 war became thenceforth useless. Very soon, therefore, it 
 was only at the Horde, and to acquire an ascendancy in the 
 miud of the Khan, that they contended with each other ; 
 fewer civil wars occurred, the Tatars w^ere more rarely called 
 in, and Russia had time to breathe. 
 
 The Khans committed a serious fault in preserving a 
 Grand-Prince ; it was a still more striking one, and a con- 
 sequence of the first, to place in his hands a sovereignty 
 disproportioned to those by which he was surrounded, to 
 select him for too long a time from the same branch, and to 
 give him armies to establish himself, and the means of 
 seducing even themselves by the most costly presents. The 
 consequence of this was, that the appanaged princes dared not 
 enter so readily into a contest with the Grand- Princes, who 
 were already more powerful than themselves, and were so 
 formidably supported. Not daring to contend with them, 
 they turned their arms against each other, and thus en- 
 hanced by their own weakness the strength of the Grand- 
 Princes. 
 
 Nevertheless, till 1324, that is, for a century posterior to 
 the Tatar invasion, the power of the Grand-Princes was 
 doubtful ; but then, amidst the crowd of pretenders to the 
 Grand-Princedom, two rival branches made themselves con- 
 spicuous, and the other princes of the blood resigned to them 
 an arena, in which the scantiness of their own resources no 
 longer permitted them to appear. 
 
 One of these branches was that of the princes of Tver ; 
 the other that of the princes of Moscow. 
 
 The princes of Tver (about 1300) succeeded to the Grand- 
 Principality of Vladimir, which devolved to them in the order 
 of the succession ; they resided at Tver. If we consider the 
 position of Moscow between Tver and Vladimir, and the
 
 A.D. 1328] THE RIVAL PRINCES OF TVER AND MOSCOW. 81 
 
 fickleness of the jNovgorodians, we shall perceive why it was 
 impossible that the Grand- Princes of Tver conld ever extend 
 their power beyond the limits of their patrimony. In fact, 
 the prince of Moscow, whom the situation of his appanage 
 made the rival of the Grand- Prince of Tver, and who could 
 cut off all communication between Tver and Vladimir, had 
 only to win over Novgorod, in order to reduce the Grand- 
 Prince within the bounds of Tver ; and this was what actually 
 happened. 
 
 Moscow, however, as being the weakest, must have fallen, 
 but that one of its princes, Yury, married, in 1313, the sister 
 of Usbek-Khan. It was then that, after having excited the 
 hatred of the Novgorodians, in persisting to subdue them by 
 means of the Tatars, Mikhail of Tver drew down upon his 
 head all the wrath of Usbek, by defeating Yury, and taking 
 prisoners his wife, who was the Khan's sister, and Kavadgi, 
 a Tatar general, who came to put the prince of Moscow in 
 possession of the Grand-Princedom. 
 
 Por Usbek, after having preferred and supported the rights 
 of Mikhail of Tver to the Grand- Principality, had changed 
 his mind in favour of Yury of Moscow, who was become his 
 brother-in-law. The enmity of Usbek, however, remained 
 suspended, until his sister, the wife of Yury, and the prisoner 
 of Mikhail, expired at Tver. Yury then hastened to the 
 Horde, and accused Mikhail of having poisoned the princess. 
 The offended pride of Usbek lent itself to this base calumny ; 
 he entrusted the investigation of the affair to Kavadgi ; Mik- 
 hail appeared to the summons ; the vanquished passed sen- 
 tence on his vanquisher, whom he caused to be put to death ; 
 and the infamous Yury of Moscow was appointed Grand- 
 Prince in the place of his murdered rival (1320). His 
 triumph was short: being accused of withholding the tribute 
 due to the Khan, he journeyed to the Horde, and was assas- 
 sinated by the son of his victim, who was himself immediately 
 executed by Usbek. This vengeance restored the Grand- 
 Principality to the branch of Tver, in the person of princo 
 Alexander, Michael's second son. It remained in it for 
 three years ; but then, in 1328, this madman caused all tho 
 Tatars at Tver to be massacred. To the brother of Yury, 
 Ivan I., surnamed Kalita,* prince of Moscow, Usbek imme- 
 
 * Or the Purse. 
 
 VOL. I. O
 
 82 HISTOET OF KTJSSIA. [CH. VIII. 
 
 diately gave Vladimir and Novgorod, the double possession 
 of which always distinguished the Grand- Princedom. This 
 concession formed, in the hands of Ivan, a mass, the con- 
 nexion of which Tver, weakened as it was, did but little 
 diminish. Consequently, with this power, and the troops 
 that Usbek added to it, Ivan speedily compelled all the 
 Russian princes to combine, under his orders, against the 
 prince of Tver ; who, after having undergone various mis- 
 fortunes, was executed with his son at the Horde. 
 
 Here begin the two hundi'ed and seventy years of the 
 reign of the branch of Moscow. This first union of the 
 Eussians, under Ivan I., denominated Kalita, constitutes an 
 epoch ; it exhibits the ascendancy of this second Grand- 
 Prince of Moscow over his subjects ; an ascendancy the 
 increase of which we shall witness under his successors ; and 
 for which, at the outset, this branch of the Euriks was 
 indebted to the support they received from the Tatars. For, 
 as a word from the Khan decided the possession of the 
 throne, that one of the two rival branches of Moscow and 
 Tver was sure to triumph which displayed the most shrewd 
 and consistent policy towards the Horde. It was not that 
 of the princes of Tver which thus acted. On the contrary, 
 they sometimes solicited the protection of the Khans, and 
 sometimes fought against them ; we have ever seen one of 
 them ordering the massacre of the Tatars in his principality. 
 
 The princes of Moscow pursued a different system ; they, 
 no doubt, detested the yoke of the Khans as much as their 
 rivals did ; but they were aware that, before they could cope 
 with the Tatars, the Eussians must be united, and that it 
 was impossible to subject and unite the latter without the 
 assistance of the former. They therefore espoused the 
 daughters of the Khans, manifested the utmost submission 
 to the Horde, and appeared to be wholly devoted to its 
 interests. 
 
 Now this policy, which, at the commencement of the 
 Mongol invasion, acquired for Alexander Nevsky the empire 
 of all Eussia, gave it, seventy-four years later, still more 
 completely to Ivan I. : for the sway of the Tatars was then 
 more recognised ; the Eussians were more docile to their 
 yoke ; and the cities, which composed the Grand- Principality, 
 were more powerful in themselves, and also by comparison
 
 A.D. 1328-41] IVAN I. KALITA. 83 
 
 with the rest of Eussia, which became daily more and more 
 exhausted. 
 
 The wealth of Ivan I. was another cause of the extension 
 of his power. 
 
 The complaints of the prince of Tver, in 1323, prove that 
 Yury I., Grand-Prince of Moscow, when he undertook to 
 execute the vengeance of his brother-in-law Usbek, against 
 Tver, was also entrusted with the collecting of the tributes ; 
 which, however, he retained, instead of sending them to the 
 Horde. Ivan Kalita, his son and successor, profited by this 
 example. Thus it was, that by making themselves lieu- 
 tenants of the Khan, the Muscovite Grand-Princes first 
 became the collectors, and finally the possessors, of the taxes 
 throughout the whole of Russia; and thus they succeeded 
 to all the rights of conquest enjoyed by the Tatars, and to 
 their despotism. 
 
 There can be no doubt that one of the most copious 
 sources of power to those sovereigns was the periodical 
 census and the perpetual imposts, so alien to feudalism, and 
 especially to a feudalism of princes : these imposts and cen- 
 suses nothing but the Tatar conquest could have established, 
 and they were inherited by the Grand- Princes. Already, in 
 the first half of the fourteenth century, these taxes had ren- 
 dered I\ an Kalita rich enough to purchase entire domains 
 and appanages,* the protection of Usbek-Khan, and the pre- 
 ference of the primate, who removed his residence from 
 Vladimir to Moscow, by which means the latter city became 
 the capital of the empire. 
 
 It was by virture of his authority as collector for the 
 Tatars that Ivan Kalita practised extortion upon his subjects. 
 In 1377, we see him requiring a double tribute from the 
 Novgorodians, under pretext that such was the will of the 
 khan. Armed against the Russians with the dread inspired 
 by the Tatar name, and against the Tatars with the money 
 of the Russians ; intoxicating the Khan and his courtiers 
 with gold and adulation in his frequent journeys to the 
 Horde ; he was enabled, as lord-paramount, to bring about 
 the first union of all the appanaged princes against his com- 
 
 * In the governments of Novgorod, Vladimir, Kostroma, and Eostof, 
 and the cities of Duglitch, Bielozersk, and Galitch.— See Karamsin, 
 and an act of Dmitri Donskoi. 
 
 G2
 
 84 HISTOET OF ETJSSIA. [CH. VIII. 
 
 petitor, the prince of Tver, whom he drove from Pskof and 
 from Russia, being aided by the primate with the thunder of 
 the Church, then heard in the empire for the first time. 
 The nobility imitated the clergy. Impelled either by fear, 
 or cupidity, several boyars of other princes rallied round 
 this Grand-Prince, preferring the fiefs of so rich and so 
 potent a lord-paramount to those of the petty princes whom 
 they abandoned. 
 
 Ivan Kalita pushed forward with horrible vigour in his 
 ambitious career. " "Woe, woe to the princes of Rostof !" 
 exclaims Nicon, " because their power was destroyed, and 
 everything was concentrated in Moscow." In fact, from the 
 Kremlin,* which he fortified, Ivan proclaimed himself the 
 arbiter of his kinsfolk ; he reigned in their principalities by 
 the medium of his boyars ; he arrogated to himself the right 
 of being the sole distributor of fiefs, judge, and legislator ; 
 and if the princes resisted, and dared to wage against him a 
 war of the public good,^ he hurried to the Horde, with purse 
 in hand, and denunciation on his lips ; and the short-sighted 
 Usbek, deceived by this ambitious monitor, was impolitic 
 enough to disembarrass him of the most dangerous of his 
 competitors, whom he consigned to frightful torments. The 
 prince of Tver and his son were the most remarkable vic- 
 tims of this atrocious policy. 
 
 . Meanwhile, Lithuania, which, from the period of the first 
 overwhelming of Russia by the Tatars, had emancipated it- 
 self from its yoke, was now become a conquering state. 
 About 1320, Guedimin, its leader, seized on the Russian 
 appanages of the south and west, which had long ceased to 
 be dependent upon the Grand-Principality of Vladimir. 
 Kief, Galitch, Volhynia, became sometimes Lithuanian, 
 
 * Kremlin, originally Krcmnik, from kremen, fire-stone. See Ka- 
 ramsin, and the Chronicle of Troitski. The Kremlin is situated on a 
 very rocky hill. 
 
 f From 1333 to 1339, the princes who held appanages espoused the 
 cause of the prince of Tver against the Grand-Prince of Moscow, 
 whom they called a tyrant. In 133!), the Grand-Prince of Moscow 
 returned to the Horde, and so terrified Usbek-Khan by his denuncia- 
 tions against the prince of Tver and other princes, that the Khan 
 immediately summoned them to the Horde, in order to restrain, or get 
 rid of them. See Karamsin.
 
 A.D. 1328-41] IVAN I. KALITA. 85 
 
 sometimes Polish or Hungarian : driven to despair, their in- 
 habitants emigrated ; they formed the two military republics 
 of the Zaporogue and Don Cossacks. Eallying around them 
 the unfortunate of all countries, they were destined to 
 become one day strong enough to make head against the 
 Turks and Tatars, between whom they were situated ; and 
 thus to embarrass the communication between those two 
 people, whom a common religion, origin, and interest con- 
 spired to unite. 
 
 The G-rand-Principality was, on the other hand, repeopled 
 by unfortunate fugitives from the southern Eussian pro- 
 vinces, who sought refuge at Moscow.* The empire, it is 
 true, lost in extension ; but it was thus rendered more pro- 
 portionate to the revived power of its Grand-Prince, who 
 had also fewer competitors in it : those who remained could 
 not, in point of resources, be compared with the Grand- 
 Principality.' After all, it was much better that the latter 
 should one day have to recover some provinces from a 
 foreign foe, than from its domestic enemies : it was suffering 
 an external evil instead of an internal one, which is the 
 worst of all. 
 
 Thus, the Machiavellism of Ivan prospered. It is true 
 that, by the confidence with which he inspired the Horde, 
 and the terrible war which he waged against his kinsmen, he 
 restored to Kussia a tranquillity to which she had long been 
 a stranger. A dawning of order and justice reappeared 
 under a sceptre acquired and preserved by such horrible acts 
 of injustice ; the depredations to which Russia had been 
 a prey were repressed ; commerce again flourished ; great 
 marts' and new fairs were established, in which were dis- 
 played the productions of the East, of Greece, and of Italy ; 
 and the treasury of the prince was swelled still further by 
 the profit arising from the customs. f 
 
 Such were the rapid effects of the first steps which Ivan 
 
 * Sec the emigration of Rodion, and of seventeen hundred Kievian 
 boyar followers, who, about 1304 or 1333, sought an asylum at Moscow. 
 
 f See Kamenevitch (translated by Karamsin), describing the great 
 mart of Mologa on the Volga, where the commerce of Asia and of 
 Europe met in the seventy inns of its Slavonian suburb; and where 
 seven thousand two hundred pounds' weight of silver were collected for 
 the treasury of the prince.
 
 86 HISTORY OF ETJSSIA. [CH. YIII. 
 
 took to execute the system of concentration of power ; this 
 great political impulse was so vigorously given, that it was 
 perpetuated in his son Semen, or Simeon the Proud, to whom 
 Ivan left wherewithal to purchase the Grand-Princedom 
 from the Horde, and in whom he revived the direct succes- 
 sion. Accordingly, Simeon effected, against Novgorod, a 
 second union of all the Russian princes. It is to be re- 
 marked, that lie was obliged to cede one half of the taxes to 
 his brothers ; but, at the same time, he reserved to himself 
 the whole authority, which soon gives to its possessor the 
 mastery of the revenue. 
 
 Simeon having died without children, in 1353, after a 
 reign of twelve years, Ivan II., his brother, purchased the 
 sovereignty with the wealth of Kalita. After the six years' 
 reign of Ivan II., this system and this order of succession 
 were, indeed, transiently interrupted in the person of a 
 prince, alien to the branch of Moscow ; but we shall soon 
 see the great Dmitri Donskoi establish them as fixed prin- 
 ciples ; that prince did not neglect to increase the wealth* of 
 his grandfather Ivan. The people had given to Ivan the 
 surname of The Purse ; as much, perhaps, with allusion to 
 his treasures, as to the purse, filled with alms for the poor, 
 which is said to have been always carried before him. At a 
 later period, the constantly progressive riches of the Grand- 
 Princes of Moscow enabled them to enfeoff directly from the 
 crown lands three hundred thousand boyar followers ; and 
 next, to keep up a body of regular troops, sufficiently strong 
 to reduce their enemies and their subjects.f 
 
 This system of concentration of power which Ivan Kalita 
 commenced, by means of his wealth, by the union of the 
 sceptre with the tiara, and by restoring the direct order of 
 succession ; his horrible but skilful Machiavellism against the 
 
 * See the treaty of Dmitri Donskoi with Vladimir his uncle, who 
 promised to pay to him the tribute of his appanage, which bore the 
 name of the Khan's tribute; and the second treaty with the same 
 Vladimir, by which the latter prince engaged that his boyars should 
 pay to Dmitri the same tax which the Grand-Prince might think 
 proper to impose on his own boyars. 
 
 •f It was thus that, in France, in 14-45, Charles VII. took advantage 
 of the exactions of the English, and of the terror which they inspired, 
 to render perpetual the temporary taxes, and to keep up a permanent 
 corps of twenty-five thousand men.
 
 AJ>. 1359] DECLINE OE THE TATAE POWEE. 87 
 
 princes holding appanages ; finally, tlie fifty years' repose 
 which, thanks to his policy, and to their dissensions, the 
 Tatars permitted Russia to enjoy ; these are the circum- 
 stances which entitle Ivan to be considered as standing next 
 after Alexander JN~evsky among the most remarkable Grand- 
 Princes of the third period. It was he who had the sagacity 
 on this stubborn soil to open and to trace so deeply the path 
 which led to monarchical unity, and to point out its direction 
 so clearly to his successors, that they had nothing to do but 
 to persevere in it, as the only safe road which it was then 
 possible for Eussia to follow. 
 
 This concentration of power brought about great changes 
 from 1320 to 1329 ; as, at that epoch, all the Eussian princes 
 in concert solicited from the Horde the recal of the Tatar 
 governors. It was then that, more firmly fixed, the throne 
 of the Grand-Princes became the rallying-point of the 
 Eussians : along with the consciousness of their strength, it 
 inspired them with a public spirit, wbieh emboldened them. 
 This good understanding was, in reality, an effect of the as- 
 cendancy which a direct and sustained succession, in a single 
 branch of the Euriks, had already given to it over all the 
 others. 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 DECLINE OE THE TATAR POWEE — DMITEI DONSKOI — VASSILI 
 
 DMITItlEVITCH. 
 
 In fact, sometimes natural justice, sometimes Oriental 
 negligence and cupidity, often the fear of being disobeyed, 
 and lastly, and especially, the power and riches of the princes 
 of Moscow, whose presents always surpassed those of the 
 other princes ; all these motives had induced the Khans to 
 allow the succession to the Grand- Principality to descend 
 regularly from father to son in the branch of Moscow.* This 
 
 " Fsbek, it is true, with Machiavellian policy, designated all the 
 children of Ivan T. as his successors; but, in 1340, he allowed Simeon, 
 the oldest and ablest of them, to make himself sole master of the 
 throne. lanisbck-Khan nominated Ivan II., the brother of Simeon, 
 after his death and that of his children, to the exclusion of a prince of 
 the branch of Tver or Ncvsky. A prince Dmitri, of the Nevskoi
 
 88 niSTOET OF RUSSIA. [CH. IX. 
 
 natural order of succession Dmitri Donskoi, in 1359, esta- 
 blished by a treaty, in which his kinsmen consented to re- 
 nounce the mode of succession from brother to brother. It 
 was the most remarkable among them, Vladimir the Brave, 
 who was the first to sign this act. In several other conven- 
 tions, Vladimir acknowledged himself the vassal and lieu- 
 tenant, not merely of Dmitri, but also of Vassili his son, and 
 even of the son of Vassili, when he was only five years of 
 age. This example, set by a prince who, of all the possessors 
 of appanages, was the most renowned for his prudence and 
 his valour, was followed by the others. Thus, like the Capets, 
 kings of France, did Ivan I., and particularly Dmitri Donskoi, 
 begin the monarchy by restoring the direct succession, in 
 causing, while they lived, their eldest sons to be recognised 
 as their successors. Afterwards we see Vassili, son of Dmitri, 
 persevering in this practice, and Vassili the Blind, his grand- 
 son, raising up his tottering throne, and preparing the 
 autocracy of the fourth Bussian period, by associating with 
 himself his next heir, the great Ivan III. 
 
 It is easy to conceive the infallible effect of this order of 
 succession, and with what promptitude it must necessarily 
 have extended and consolidated the power of the Grand- 
 Princes. In fact, the ideas of the father being transmitted to 
 the son by education, their policy was more consistently fol- 
 lowed up, and their ambition had a more direct object ; for 
 no one labours for a brother or nephew as for his own 
 children. The nobles could not fail to attach themselves 
 more devotedly to a prince whose son and heir, growing up 
 amongst them, would know only them, and would recompense 
 their services in the persons of their children ; for the neces- 
 sary consequence of the succession of power in the same 
 branch, was the succession of favours and dignities in the 
 same families. 
 
 Even before Dmitri had established the principle, the 
 
 branch, who had been made Grand-Prince by a whim of Naurus-Khan, 
 ■was deposed in 1362 by Murath-Khan, who chose Dmitri Donskoi, 
 grandson of Ivan I., and son of Ivan II. Taktamuisch also gave the 
 throne to Vassili II., the eldest son of Donskoi (1389). Lastly, Ulu- 
 Mahomet nominated Vassili III., son of Vassili II , and father of the 
 Great Ivan III., whom this long succession rendered so powerful that 
 he completely crushed the Horde.
 
 A.D. 1359-S9] DMITRI II. DONSKOI. 89 
 
 boyars saw the advantages which this order of succession 
 held out to them. Here, as elsewhere, the fact preceded the 
 law. This was the reason of their restoring the direct line in 
 the grandson of Ivan Ivalita ; it was they who made him 
 Grand-Prince at the age of twelve years, and who subjected 
 the other princes to him. In like manner, about 1430, they 
 maintained this order of succession in Vassili the Blind. 
 Contemporary annalists declare that these ancient boyars of 
 the Grand-Principality detested the descent from brother to 
 brother ; for, in that system, each prince of the lateral branch 
 arrived from his appanage with other boyars, whom he always 
 preferred, and whom he could not satisfy and establish but 
 at the expense of the old. On the other hand, the most im- 
 portant and transmissible places, the most valuable favours, 
 an hereditary and more certain protection, and greater hopes, 
 attracted a military nobility around the Grand- Princes. In 
 a very short time, their elevation to the level of the humbled 
 petty princes flattered their vanity, and completed their 
 junction with the principal authority. This circumstance 
 explains the last words of Dmitri Donskoi to his boyars, 
 when he recommended his son to their protection. " Under 
 my reign," said he, " you were not boyars, but really Russian 
 princes." In fact (to cite only some examples), we see that 
 his armies were as often commanded by boyars as by princes, 
 and that, from this epoch, it was no longer a prince of the 
 blood, but a boyar of the Grand- Prince, who was his lieu- 
 tenant at Novgorod. 
 
 Nay, more, when the succession from father to son was 
 once established, there were, at the very beginning, two 
 minorities (those of Dmitri, and of Vassili, his grandson), 
 during which the boyars composed the council of regency, 
 governed the state, and were the equals, and even the supe- 
 riors, of the princes who held appanages. This will explain 
 why, in 1392, the boyars of Boris, the last prince of Suzdal, 
 gave up him and his appanage to Vassili Dmitrievitch of 
 Moscow. The motive is to be found only in their interest ; 
 as the Grand-Prince of Moscow entrusted them with the 
 government of the appanages, and thus substituted the 
 nobles in the place of the princes. 
 
 A very remarkable circumstance, with respect to Dmitri 
 Donskoi, is, on the one hand, the energy with which he sub-
 
 90 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [ch. n. 
 
 dued those princes, and, on the other, his circumspect treat- 
 ment of his bojars. According to Karamsin, it is more 
 especially to their pride and jealousy of the tyssiatchsky of 
 Moscow (the boyar of the city, or of the Commune, a sort of 
 civil and military tribune, elected by the people), that we are 
 to attribute the abolition of that office by Donskoi. During 
 the preceding reign, another tyssiatchsky of Moscow, who 
 claimed precedence of even the boyars of the Grand- Prince, 
 had been murdered by them. 
 
 When this hereditary protection afforded by the Grand- 
 Princes of the Moscow branch was once fairly established, 
 the nobles of each appanage, who constituted its army, had 
 thenceforth an asylum, and, as it were, a tribunal for redress, 
 to which they could appeal whenever they were dissatisfied 
 with their prince. It was this which made Tver fall before 
 Ivan Kalita ; for the sovereign prince of that first and last 
 rival of Moscow having preferred to his boyars the people 
 of Pskof, who had defended him, the former withdrew to 
 Moscow. 
 
 The power of Ivan Kalita being once raised by the Ta- 
 tars' aid, and by the re-establishment of the direct line 
 of 'succession, and thoroughly developed by his son and 
 grandson, Simeon the Proud and Dmitri Donskoi, it fol- 
 lowed, as a natural consequence, that he who was most able 
 to reward and to punish drew round him, and retained, the 
 whole of the nobles. These constituted the sole strength 
 of the appanaged princes ; their defection, therefore, com- 
 pleted the subjugation of the princes. Dmitri Donskoi was, 
 therefore, in reality sovereign, as is proved by his treaties 
 with the princes who held appanages, all of whom he reduced 
 to be his vassals. And, accordingly, notwithstanding the 
 appanages which he gave to his sons, and the dissensions 
 which arose out of that error — an error as yet, perhaps, un- 
 avoidable — the attachment of the nobles, for which we have 
 just assigned a reason, always replaced the legitimate heir on 
 the throne. 
 
 Already, so early as about 1366, the Russian princes could 
 no longer venture to contend against their lord-paramount 
 by any other means than by denunciations to the Horde; but 
 to what Klum could they be addressed ? Discord had created 
 several : what result was to be hoped from them ? Divided
 
 A.D. 1359-89] DMITKI II. DONSKOI. 91 
 
 among themselves, the Tatar armies had ceased to he an 
 available force. The journeys to the Golden Horde, which 
 had originally contributed to keep the Russian princes in awe, 
 now served to aftbrd them an insight into the weakness of 
 their enemies. The Grand- Princes returned from the Horde 
 with the confidence that they might usurp with impunity ; 
 and their competitors with envoys and letters, which even 
 they themselves well knew would he of no avail. It was, 
 then, obvious in Russia, that the only protecting power was 
 at Moscow : to have recourse to its support was a matter of 
 necessity. The petty princes could obtain it only by the 
 sacrifice of their independence; and thus all of them be- 
 came vassals to the Grand-Prince Dmitri. 
 
 TSevGt did a great man arise more opportunely than this 
 Dmitri. It was a propitious circumstance, that the dissen- 
 sions of the Tatars gave them full occupation during the 
 eighteen years subsequent to the first three of his reign :* 
 this, in the first place, allowed him time to extinguish the 
 devastat bag fury of Olguerd the Lithuanian, son of Guedimin, 
 lather of Jagellon, and conqueror of all Lithuania, Volhynia, 
 Smolensk, Kief, and even of the Taurida ; secondly, to unite 
 several principalities with his throne ; and, lastly, to compel 
 the other princes, and even the prince of Tver, to acknow- 
 ledge his paramount authority. 
 
 The contest with the latter was terrible : four times did 
 Dmitri overcome Mikhail, and four times did the prince of 
 Tver, aided by his son-in-law, the great Olguerd, prince of 
 Lithuania, rise again victorious. In this obstinate conflict, 
 Moscow itself was twice besieged, and must have fallen, had 
 it not been for its stone Avails, the recent work of the first 
 regency of the Muscovite boyars. But, at length, Olguerd 
 died ; and Dmitri, who, but three years before, could appear 
 only on his knees at the Horde, now dared to refuse the Khan 
 his tribute, and to put to death the insolent ambassador who 
 had been sent to claim it. 
 
 We hau- seen thai, fifty years earlier, a similar instance of 
 temerity caused the branch of Tver to fall beneath that of 
 Moscow; but times were changed. The triple alliance of 
 the primate, the boyars, and the Grand-Prince, had now 
 
 * From 1362 to 1380.
 
 92 HISTOET OF RUSSIA. [CH. IX. 
 
 restored to the Russians a confidence in their own strength : 
 they had acquired boldness from a conviction of the power of 
 their Grand-Prince, and from the dissensions of the Tatars. 
 Some bands of the latter, wandering in Muscovy in search 
 of plunder, were defeated ; at last the Tatars have fled before 
 the Russians ! they are become their slaves, the delusion of 
 their invincibility is no more ! 
 
 The burst of fury which the Khan exhibited on learning 
 the murder of his representative, accordingly served as a 
 signal for the confederation of all the Russian princes against 
 the prince of Tver. He was compelled to submit to the 
 Grand- Prince, and to join with him against the Horde. 
 
 Russia now began to feel that there were three important 
 things which were indispensably necessary to her ; the 
 establishment of the direct succession, the concentration of 
 the supreme power, and the union of all parties against the 
 Tatars. The movement in this direction was taken very 
 opportunely ; for it happened simultaneously that Mamai- 
 Khan was also disembarrassed of his civil wars (1380), and 
 he hastened with all his forces into Russia to re-establish his 
 slighted authority ; but he found the Grand-Prince Dmitri 
 confronting him on the Don, at the head of the combined 
 Russian princes and an army of two hundred thou- 
 sand men. Dmitri put it to the choice of his troops 
 whether they would go to encounter the foe, who were en- 
 camped at no great distance on the opposite shore of the 
 river, or remain on this side and wait the attack ? "With 
 one voice they declared for going over to the assault. The 
 Grand-Prince immediately transported his battalions across 
 the river, and then turned the vessels adrift, in order to cut 
 off all hopes of escaping by retreat, and inspire his men with 
 a more desperate valour against an enemy who was three 
 times stronger in numbers. The fight began. The Russians 
 defended themselves valiantly against the furious attacks of 
 the Tatars ; the hosts of combatants pressed in such numbers 
 to the field of battle, that multitudes of them were trampled 
 under foot by the tumult of men and horses. The Tatars, 
 continually relieved by fresh bodies of soldiers as any part 
 was fatigued by the conflict, seemed at length to have victory 
 on their side. Nothing but the impossibility of getting over 
 the river, and the firm persuasion that death would directly 
 transport them from the hands of the infidel enemy into the
 
 A.D. 13S9-1I25] VASSILI III. DMITEIEVITCH. 93 
 
 mansions of bliss, restrained the Eussians from a general 
 flight. But all at once, at the very moment when everything 
 seemed to be lost, a detachment of the Grand- Prince's army, 
 ■which he had stationed as a reserve, and which till now had 
 remained inactive and unobserved, came up in full force, fell 
 upon the rear of the Tatars, and threw them into such amaze- 
 ment and terror that they fled, and left the Eussians masters 
 of the field. This momentous victory, however, cost them 
 dear ; thousands lay dead upon the ground, and the whole 
 army was occupied eight days in burying the bodies of the 
 dead Eussians : those of the Tatars were left uninterred upon 
 the ground. It was in memory of this achievement that 
 Dmitri received his honourable surname of Donskoi. 
 
 Subsequently, however, and even during this reign, there 
 were many civil wars in Bussia ; Moscow was several times 
 burned by the Tatars. Two years after the victory of the 
 Don, Taktamuisch, a lieutenant of Tamerlane, who was be- 
 come master of the Ivaptchak, surprised and ravaged the 
 Grand-Principality, and rendered it tributary; and Tver 
 once more raised its head. Seventy years later.we still find 
 two Eussian princes disputing at the Golden Horde for the 
 possession of the Grand- Principality. But the two prin- 
 ciples destructive of the Tatar empire, — namely, its own dis- 
 sensions and the power of the Grand-Princes, — gradually 
 acquired tlie predominance, and ended by sweeping every- 
 thing before them. "We see the Khans, even after their 
 victories, uniformly concentrating authority in the hands of 
 the Grand- Princes of Moscow, and annihilating themselves 
 by engaging more and more in internal divisions. Donskoi, 
 meanwhile, had so firmly founded the authority of the Grand- 
 Princes, — he took such prudent steps on his death-bed, in 
 13S9, and left such an illustrious example, that he seemed to 
 have bequeathed, not his greatness of mind, but his skill and 
 his good fortune to his successor Vassili. 
 
 Pliant and patient with his European and Asiatic neigh- 
 bours, Vassili III. Dmitrievitch was haughty, and even fero- 
 cious and inexorable, to his kinsmen and to his unruly sub- 
 jects. In his proceedings, circumspect at first, but perse- 
 vering ami inflexible, we discover the aristocratic policy of 
 the council of boyars and priests to which his father had 
 confided his youth. 
 
 His triple object was, firstly, to repress the Lithuanians ;
 
 94 HISTOET OF ETJSSIA. [CH. IX. 
 
 and as he was the son-in-law of the Lithuanian prince, he 
 comhated him rather by policy than by arms ; secondly, to 
 liberate Eussia from the yoke of the Tatars ; and it was by 
 their means that, following the example of his ancestors, he 
 continued the system of re-uniting the appanages to the 
 Grrand-Principality ; for that was his third purpose, which 
 he deemed it prudent to achieve before he thought of the 
 second. Like his predecessors, therefore, he journeyed, in 
 1392, to oiler homage to the Horde for his sceptre, propitiate 
 it by presents, and purchase from it the investiture of seven 
 appanages, of which he had despoiled his kinsmen ; their own 
 boyars put them into his hands, and those princes were, 
 consequently, under the necessity of mingling in the ranks 
 of his courtiers, or of dying in captivity or in exile. 
 
 Eighteen years afterwards, when, having lost his old coun- 
 sellors, and being too eager to enfranchise himself, Vassili 
 drew on his head the wrath of the Khans, by his refusal of 
 the tribute, he promptly reverted to the policy of his fathers, 
 and returned again to the Horde, to ensure its favour by 
 renewed homage. In reward for this supple policy, whole 
 provinces dependent on Novgorod, the principalities of Suzdal 
 and of Tchernigof were united to the Grand-Principality ; 
 and thenceforth the paramount throne was raised to a dis- 
 proportionate height above the petty thrones by which it was 
 surrounded. 
 
 "Wars, horrible punishments, and Machiavellian policy, all 
 were employed by Vassili Dmitrievitch to render the proud 
 Novgorod the tributary of Moscow; and as his power grew 
 with that of the primate, he strove to subject the republic to 
 the civil jurisdiction of that priest. 
 
 At length, hi 1425, ending as he began, he closed a reign 
 of thirty-six years, by requiring all the Eussian princes to 
 swear that they would hold no correspondence with the 
 Tatars and Lithuanians ; he compelled them to acknowledge 
 his son Vassili III., then only five years old, as their lord- 
 paramount, and whoever dared to refuse he expelled from 
 his appanage. 
 
 It was in the reign of Vassili Dmitrievitch that money 
 began to be coined in Eussia. Before this time the chronicles 
 make frequent mention, first of grivnas, and afterwards of 
 rubies ; but by these words were understood a certain
 
 A.D. 1425-G2] VASSILI IV. VASSILIEVITCH. 95 
 
 weight of silver. Foreign commerce, therefore, was carried 
 on after the manner of the East by barter, or by exchange 
 against gold or silver taken by weight. For petty trans- 
 actions the current money was bits of marten skins called 
 niortki, and still smaller scraps of fur, consisting of squirrels' 
 heads, or even the ears only, called polushki, worth some 
 fraction of a farthing. Moscow and Tver were the first 
 towns that employed a Tatar coin, named denga, from the word 
 tanga, which means mark. At first the legend was only in 
 the Tatar language ; then Tatar on one side, Russian on the 
 other ; and finally Russian only. Polish and G-erman coins 
 were abundant in Novgorod in the beginning of the fifteenth 
 century ; but in 1420 the city established its own mint. Its 
 coin, which represented a throned prince, was for a long 
 time current at about twice the value of that of Moscow or 
 Tver. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 VASSILI IV. — THE ETTSSLAST CHUECH IN THE TIIIED TEEIOD. 
 
 Sucn as we have described was the political march of the 
 Grand- Princes from the time of Ivan Kalita. In 1398, 
 however, the state was more than ever in danger of being 
 irretrievably destroyed, and these princes of Moscow, proud 
 as they might be of their Machiavellian skill, had reason to 
 thank the Russian good-fortune for the salvation of their 
 empire. 
 
 On its right and on its left arose at once two conquerors, 
 who seemed ready to devour it. On the east, there was 
 Tamerlane ; on the west, Vitovt the Lithuanian. The first, 
 with his four hundred thousand warriors, had already con- 
 quered the rebellious Kaptchak, and touched on the Russian 
 frontier : already the second was at Kaluga and at Viazma ; 
 he had surprised Smolensk, and penetrated to Novgorod; 
 and trembling Muscovy expected to bo crushed between 
 these two colossuses, when, all at once, they both turned 
 aside, bent their course to the south, met, and came into 
 collision. Russia, which thoy had so closely compressed, 
 now breathed again ; she arose astonished : on her left she
 
 96 HISTORY OP RUSSIA. [CH. X. 
 
 beheld Vitovt, lier European oppressor, beaten down before 
 Kutlui, the lieutenant of Tamerlane. She turned her still 
 terrified gaze towards the victorious east, but the terrible 
 Mongol had vanished in the deepest recesses of Asia ; he 
 seemed to have appeared solely to inflict a mortal blow on 
 the rebellious Kaptchak, that Horde which was fattened with 
 Russian blood and gold. It was thus that discord, passing 
 from the Russians to the Tatars, prepared for the north of 
 Europe a triumph over Asia, the termination of which it is 
 impossible to foresee. 
 
 At the same time, and by an equally propitious fortune, 
 subsequently to Jagellon and Vitovt, Lithuania and Poland 
 came to blows ; these other enemies of Russia rent each 
 other to pieces : like the Tatars, they exhausted their own 
 strength ; their sterile dynasties were interrupted ; a demo- 
 cracy of nobles gained the upper hand ; and the sceptre 
 became more and more elective ; while that of the Grand- 
 Princes, in spite of the faults of Vassili the Blind, the son of 
 Vassili, struck deep root, by means of its divine right, and 
 of its direct succession, and became more flourishing by the 
 length of the reigns. 
 
 This longevity of the Muscovite Grand-Princes was another 
 very remarkable cause of the prodigious growth of their power. 
 The reigns of Ivan Kalita, and his lineal descendants, Simeon 
 the Proud, Ivan II., Dmitri Donskoi, Vassili his son, and 
 Vassili Vassilievitch his grandson, were of thirteen, twelve, 
 six, twenty-seven, thirty-six, and thirty-seven years ; this was 
 enough to found the paramount sway of the Grand- Princes 
 of Moscow. In the succeeding period we shall see this 
 longevity increasing, like the power, in their successors Ivan 
 the Great, Vassili, and Ivan the Terrible, whose reigns were 
 of forty-three, twenty-eight, and forty-nine years. So that 
 in 1425, when the reign arrived of Vassili Vassilievitch, the 
 last prince of the third period, so rooted was the custom of 
 acknowledging as Grand-Prince no one but the eldest son of 
 the Grand- Prince, that this Vassili succeeded his father when 
 he was ten years old ; and although he was several times 
 dethroned, the habit of respect and of fidelity always replaced 
 him on the throne. After such protracted reigns, the rights 
 of the sovereign were marked out, the path traced for his 
 successor, and the habits of his subjects formed.
 
 A.D. 1425-62] YASSILI IV. VASSILIEVITCir. 97 
 
 Nevertheless, on the birth of this Yassili Yassilievitch, a 
 miracle was deemed useful, to ratify more fully his right to 
 the throne of his father ; the new-born prince was proclaimed 
 Grand- Prince by a voice from heaven. The precaution, how- 
 ever, appears to have been quite supererogatory ; the first 
 event of this reign is a proof of its being so : it stands alone 
 in history. 
 
 Tury, the uncle of the young sovereign, making an appeal 
 to the ancient order of succession, laid claim to the throne. 
 An excommunication by the primate, which he at first de- 
 spised, but which an unexpected pestilence rendered effica- 
 cious, suspended the enforcement of his pretensions. They 
 were renewed, however, as the contagion diminished ; and 
 A'assili and his uncle proceeded to dispute for their rights 
 before the Horde. But the Khan was so completely in- 
 fluenced by the address of the boyars who accompanied the 
 Grand- Prince, and so carried away by the general impulse, 
 I he unwisely declared for the lineal heir, released him 
 from all tribute to the Horde, and even decreed that the uncle 
 should hold the bridle of his nephew's horse, on the entrance 
 of the latter into his capital. But from this decision the am- 
 bitious Yury appealed to arms ; Moscow, taken by surprise, 
 fell into his hands, and his nephew Yassili was exiled to an 
 appanage. 
 
 Would it not appear as if the lineal succession were again 
 overthrown, and that a long and furious war would be re- 
 quired to restore it ? Not so ; the manners of the time, and 
 respect for the lineal order — that custom founded on the 
 general interest, and already existing for eighty years, were 
 s.illicient to secure its triumph; and that, too, in the course 
 of a few days, without a single sword being drawn, or a 
 drop of blood shed. Public opinion, disarmed as it was, 
 yet stronger than a victor, neutralised his victory : priests, 
 people, nobles, all disavowed him ; all, even the son of 
 the usurper, abandoned his cause. The entire population 
 of the great Moscow followed the lineal heir into his banish- 
 ment ; the conqueror, struck with dismay, remained alone ; 
 and, vanquished by this terrific insulation, he descended 
 from his solitary throne, and restored it to the legitimate 
 heir. 
 
 The errors of Vassili, however, subsequently precipitated 
 
 VOL. I. U
 
 98 HISTOEX OF RUSSIA. [ch. X. 
 
 him twice from the throne, first into the fetters of the Tatars, 
 and next into those of the son of Yury, who put out his eyes 
 in retaliation ; but legitimacy always triumphed by its in- 
 herent strength, even in spite of this blind, imprudent, and 
 unfortunate Grand-Prince, whom it perpetually raised up 
 again. The son of Tury was, indeed, speeddy deserted by 
 his nobles ; they replaced Vassili the Blind on the throne. 
 The usurper was vanquished, pursued, despoiled ; he died of 
 poison administered by his own followers, and Novgorod, 
 which had given him an asylum, was compelled to ransom 
 itself. 
 
 Thus, the Tatar yoke was broken ; the humiliation of the 
 possessors of appanages was consummated ; that of the Rus- 
 sian republics of Novgorod, Pskof, and Yiatka was com- 
 menced ; the paramount sway was established ; and the 
 lineal succession, which began de facto under Ivan Kalita, 
 acquired the force of a right under Dmitri Donskoi, was 
 rendered, both de facto and de jure, incontestable at the 
 close of the long reign of Vassili the Blind, when the force 
 of public opinion had obstinately overthrown his last com- 
 petitor, and when he associated with him his son, the great 
 Ivan III., in the government of the empire. 
 
 Among the means which co-operated in this great work of 
 autocracy, the reader can hardly have failed to recognise the 
 powerful and persevering hand of the priests. It remains for 
 us. then, to seek in the spirit of the history of the Prussian 
 Church one more cause of the elevation of the Grand- Princes 
 of Moscow. 
 
 In those times of ignorance, the Greek religion and its 
 priests could not be otherwise than one of the most power- 
 ful means of instruction and of government. An edict of 
 Vladimir, issued about the year 1 000, is said to have granted 
 immense privileges to the Russian clergy ; modern historians, 
 however, attach no faith to this story. But of what import- 
 ance to us is the truth ? it would prove nothing but the 
 blindness of a prince, and would be of no avail to establish a 
 right against nature. 
 
 If we look at this question only with a reference to 
 manners, or to obtain an insight into the respective positions 
 of the different orders of the state, in either case the fact is
 
 A.D. 1237-1462] THE CHURCH IN THE THIRD PERIOD. 99 
 
 enougli without the right. Now, it is certain that, as far 
 back as the year 1200, the Eussian clergy were covered with 
 the spoils of their flocks ; that, in numerous cases, they 
 sentenced to death, and without appeal ; that the monks, 
 like the nobles elsewhere, had a number of fortified dwellings, 
 of which they were the formidable defenders ; that their 
 primate had a court, boyars, guards, and an Asiatic luxury ; 
 that there were public ceremonies at which the proudest 
 sovereigns walked before him, humbly holding the bridle of 
 the ass on which this pontiff rode; and that in all state 
 affairs the primate was the first who was consulted — a very 
 natural circumstance, as many of these heads of the clergy 
 came from Greece, and were looked upon as lights amidst 
 the surrounding darkness. 
 
 Another fact is, that in the civil commotions the Eussian 
 priests were often mediators, ambassadors — even umpires ; a 
 part which they were also called upon to perform in virtue of 
 their ministry, consecrated to charity and peace. 
 
 The Tatar invasion added to their power : in the desperate 
 resistance of the Russian cities, the Khans witnessed the 
 mighty influence which the clergy possessed over the minds 
 of the people ; it was for this reason that Baty, Burgai, and 
 their successors, treated them with respect, and even ex- 
 onerated them from all tribute. Thenceforth, being the only 
 persons who were allowed to be rich and at peace,* they 
 bought or coveted everything ; Eussia was covered with 
 monasteries, in which males and females were blended ; and, 
 as all other subjects were horribly oppressed, all flocked to 
 these convents : nobles, merchants, even princes, were anxious 
 to become monks. Such was, besides, the superstition of the 
 age, that the majority of the Grand-Princes of the first race 
 expired in the monkish habit. 
 
 In 1339, an archbishop of Novgorod having been taken 
 
 * See the firman of Usbek, in 1313; he declares, that "the Church 
 is the sole judge of the Church in all cases, and of all who live on its 
 domains. That he renounces the tribute due to him from the lands of 
 the clergy, as well as all his other rights, such as those of customs, 
 plough-money, tolls, farm-tax, and relays for his service. That who- 
 ever shall contravene this safeguard shall he punished with death; and 
 not only for the forcible carrying off of sacred property, but even if 
 they dare merely to condemn, or to blame, the Greek religion."
 
 100 HISTORY OP RUSSIA. [CH. X. 
 
 prisoner by the Lithuanians, the republic was on the point 
 of ransoming him at the cost of a province, of three cities, 
 and even of its independence. 
 
 An earthquake, frightful plagues, particularly that of 
 1352, and, at a later period, the fear of the end of the world, 
 which an ancient prediction announced for this epoch, con- 
 summated the work attributed to Vladimir : the major part 
 of the dying bequeathed their property to monasteries. 
 
 The legislation of the Russians was, likewise, such as to 
 give them a tendency to this unworthy conduct : among men 
 who could buy off earthly justice by pecuniary sacrifices, it 
 was no unnatural conclusion that heavenly justice might be 
 bought off by donations. And then, at Byzantium, as at 
 Home, it had become an established dogma, that a man might 
 gain the riches of heaven by disappointing his heirs, and be- 
 queathing his earthly riches to the men of Grod ; which, as- 
 suredly, was closing existence with one of the most selfish 
 acts of his whole life. 
 
 As to the toleration displayed by the Khans, we know not 
 whether it ought to be attributed solely to their policy, or 
 rather to their religious apathy, and to their being ac- 
 customed to rule people of different religions ; one thing is 
 certain, that several Russian bishops resided in the court of 
 these pagan princes ; and that the Tatars were believers in 
 ■the efficacy of all prayers, whatever might be their form, and 
 wished that they should be offered up for them. In truth, 
 their faith, nomadic like themselves, without any external 
 practices, without auy point of union, with scarcely anything 
 to allure and attach the senses of so lively a people, could not 
 be an object of much importance. How then could this 
 religion, so vague that it hardly deserves the name of one, 
 have been intolerant ? The interest of their priests might have 
 rendered it so ; but it does not appear that, among these 
 wandering nations, the priests were ever able to become a 
 corporate body, or to acquire the spirit of one. 
 
 At a later period, Mahoinetanism, which these Tatars em- 
 braced, did not, however exclusive it may be, render them 
 less tolerant ; and it is remarkable that, far from penetrating 
 iuto European Russia, that religion stopped short on its 
 frontier. !Such of the Asiatic conquerors as entered this part 
 of our globe to establish themselves there became converts
 
 A.D. 1237-1462] THE CHURCH IN THE THIRD PERIOD. 101 
 
 to Christianity. Would it not seem as if these two religions 
 had finally and invariably divided the different parts of the 
 world according to its great geographical divisions ? Let 
 vis here remark, availing ourselves of the light thrown on 
 the subject by the profound genius of Montesquieu, that 
 the causes of polygamy, and of the slavery of women and 
 men in the East, are all equally so of the partition which 
 Mahometanism and Christianity have made of Asia and of 
 Europe. Now, almost all these causes are connected with 
 the climate ; and the reason is, that a religion having, still 
 more than the laws, its roots in the manners, the climate 
 must have considerable influence over it. Neither could the 
 doctrine of fatalism, which springs from indolence, as well 
 as leads to it, possibly take root in a rigorous, niggardly, 
 variable climate, which stimulates and requires active labour. 
 This was another reason for the distribution of religion ac- 
 cording to temperature. It has been objected, that Chris- 
 tianity itself came from Asia; but this confirms still more 
 forcibly the preceding assertion, since it was compelled to 
 quit that continent. 
 
 However that may be, Usbek, at the beginning of the 
 fourteenth century, became a Mahometan. He thought that, 
 either from tolerance, apathy, or pride, his predecessors had 
 been negligent in rallying under the same creed the van- 
 quished slaves, who were not to be despised. It is said that 
 he was desirous to divest them of the too obvious marks of 
 dissimilarity and opposition. 
 
 This Khan seems to have been deeply impressed with the 
 power of the Kussian clergy at this epoch ; of this we may 
 judge by the attentions which he lavished on the primate 
 when he visited his Horde. But the Christian must natu- 
 rally have been distrustful of a Mahometan prince who 
 reduced all his hordes under the law of the Prophet. In fact, 
 about 1327, a rumour was all at once spread abroad, that 
 Schevkal,* a kinsman of Usbek, and his ambassador at Tver, 
 had gone thither to massacre the family of the Grand-Prince, 
 to set himself on the throne, and to raise the standard of the 
 Prophet. 
 
 The general massacre of the Tatars in that principality 
 
 * Stchelkhan, according to Levesque.
 
 102 HISTOET OE RUSSIA. [cH. X. 
 
 must have convinced Usbek of the emptiness of his projects. 
 Perhaps his wars with Persia induced him. to postpone the 
 execution of them till another time ; perhaps, even, they were 
 falsely attributed to him ; as he contented himself with 
 ravaging Russia and changing its Grand- Prince. To ascer- 
 tain the truth of the fact is now both impossible and useless ; 
 suffice it, that the belief in it proves the active disquietude of 
 Christianity at coming in contact with a hostile religion, 
 equally exclusive with itself. The dread of Tatar intolerance, 
 therefore, had the effect of rallying the priests round the sole 
 power which was able to protect them. They felt that the 
 Grand-Prince could defend them against Mahometanism 
 and Catholicism only by means of the united force of the 
 Russians, and that force they exerted themselves to place 
 within his grasp. 
 
 This policy dates more particularly from the period when 
 Kief was under the yoke of the Nogays and the Lithuanians.* 
 Kief had preserved its pretensions to the paramount au- 
 thority ; the primate still resided there : about 1290, it 
 became uninhabitable ; the pontiff then established himself 
 at Vladimir, and subsequently at Moscow. The head of the 
 Church formed a junction with the head of the State, and 
 the religious power with the civil power. After that period 
 it was obvious, from the more consistent and undeviating 
 march of the Grand-Princes, that their progress was directed 
 by the constantly adroit and able policy of the priests. 
 
 Besides, notwithstanding the general prevalence of super- 
 stition, the priests could not escape from the disastrous con- 
 sequences of civil dissensions ; and as they were as little 
 enabled to turn them to advantage, it became their interest 
 to form an alliance with the power most interested in putting 
 a stop to such excesses. 
 
 We see, in fact, that the Metropolitan Photius became the 
 Grand-Prince of Moscow's firmest support, because that 
 throne was his sole protection against the encroachments of 
 the nobles upon the domains of the clergy. The same interest 
 united him with that Grand-Prince against Vitovt, the 
 Lithuanian, who, by means of a very remarkable council of 
 bishops,t had liberated the Church of Kief, which he had 
 
 * From 1299 to 1320. f See Karamsin, vol. v. p. 274.
 
 A.D. 1237-1462] THE CHURCH IN THE THIRD PERIOD. 103 
 
 conquered, from the supremacy of Moscow, as well as from 
 that of Byzantium. 
 
 Listen, also, in 1328, to the prophetic accents of the Me- 
 tropolitan Peter, choosing Moscow as his residence, and 
 requiring of Ivan Kalita to build a cathedral there. " My 
 bones," said he to him, " shall rest in this city ; here will the 
 primates fix their abode ; it will overthrow all its enemies. 
 You and your successors will become great and famous." In 
 1332, this pontiffpersevered in this close alliance, in spite of 
 the terrible Lithuanian Guedimin, into whose hands he had 
 fallen. 
 
 After the death of Ivan II., in 1359, one of the appanage! 
 princes obtained the Grand- Principality from the Horde ; 
 but the primate, who was obliged to go to crown him at 
 Vladimir, refused to reside with him. The prelate returned 
 to concert, with the Muscovite boyars, the means of restoring 
 the sovereignty to the grandson of Ivan Kalita, the lineal 
 heir of the princes of Moscow, who was then only twelve 
 years of age. He went still further ; for, proceeding in the 
 work of legitimacy and concentration, he hurled the thunders 
 of the Church against those princes who refused to acknow- 
 ledge the supremacy of this child. 
 
 In 1415, it was also a monk of Moscow, a dependent on 
 the primate, who predicted the birth of Yassili the Blind, 
 the grandson of the hero of the Don. This monk published 
 throughout the empire, that he had heard a voice from 
 heaven miraculously proclaim, as Grand- Prince of all Bussia, 
 the young lineal heir of the throne of Moscow, at the very 
 moment in which he saw the light. 
 
 Lastly, in 1417, in a remarkable letter from the Eussian 
 bishops to the usurper Dmitri,* observe how they maintain 
 Vassal to be the only sovereign by the grace of God, and 
 bow they threaten Dmitri with the wrath of Heaven for his 
 revolts; "but for which," they add, "Bussia would have 
 been emancipated from the Tatar yoke." 
 
 Previously, in 1425, the primate of that day had proclaimed 
 
 the accession of this same Yassili, aged only ten years, and 
 
 summoned his uncles to acknowledge him as their sovereign. 
 
 1 14, in 1429, this young prince was near being expelled 
 
 See Karaoisin, vol. v. p. 403.
 
 104 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. X. 
 
 from the throne by his uncle Tury of Galitch. The per- 
 nicious and absurd order of succession, from brother to 
 brother, was on the point of being restored, when the same 
 primate stopped Yury by that excommunication which, as 
 we have before seen, derived additional weight from an 
 opportune pestilence ; for, in Russia, it was necessary that 
 the moral force of anathemas should be backed by physical 
 force, without which the excommunication was impotent, as 
 was shown by Pskof in 1337, and Nijni Novgorod in 1365. 
 Everything, therefore, prompted the clergy to lean for sup- 
 port on the Grand-Princes, and to enlarge the protecting 
 power of Moscow with all that they could aggregate to it. 
 Faithful to this policy, the primates had, consequently, a 
 considerable share in the elevation of the Grand- Princes and 
 the deliverance of their country. 
 
 Here terminates the third period of this history : in the 
 fourth, we shall behold Russia emancipating herself from her 
 foreign masters to become the slave of her own princes. 
 Pour centuries of calamity, arising from the partition of 
 power, had demonstrated the indispensable necessity of con- 
 centrating that power ; this single idea, which the Grand- 
 Princes of the branch of Moscow faithfully transmitted to 
 each other, sufficed to raise up the prostrate empire ; such 
 mighty efficacy has a firm and consistent will. This idea 
 predominated for two hundred and sixty years ; but, spread- 
 ing in proportion as it encountered fewer obstacles, it went 
 beyond the mark, and produced the most atrocious despotism 
 that imagination can conceive. 
 
 The fourth period will exhibit to us the final emancipation 
 of Russia from the Tatar yoke ; but when will the mark be 
 effaced which that vile servitude imprinted on the character 
 of the Russian people ? National pride and the sense of 
 personal honour were crushed out of their hearts by that 
 calamity, and cunning and greed, the especial vices of slaves, 
 became their leading characteristics. " From Vassili Taro- 
 slavitch," says Karamsin, "to Ivan Kalita (1272-1328), the 
 most disastrous period of our history, the aspect of Russia 
 was that of a gloomy forest rather than an empire. Might 
 took the place of right, and pillage, authorised by impunity, 
 was exercised alike by Russians and Tatars. There was no 
 safety for travellers on the roads, or for families in their
 
 A.D. 1462] FOURTH PERIOD. 105 
 
 homes ; and robbery, like a contagious malady, infested all 
 properties. When the gloom of these horrible disorders 
 began to disperse, and law, that soul of social order, awoke 
 from its lethargy, it was necessary to have recourse to a 
 severity unknown to the ancient Russians. The good and 
 generous Monomachus said to his children, ' Put not even 
 the guilty to death, for the soul of a Christian is sacred ;' 
 and yet Dmitri, Mamai's victor, whose soul was not less noble 
 than* that of the vanquisher of the Polovtzy, restored the 
 punishment of death as the sole means of appalling crime. 
 Pecuniary fines had formerly sufficed to check robbery among 
 our ancestors, but in the fourteenth century this offence was 
 punished with the gibbet. To the Russians of Taroslaf's 
 age blows were unknown except in the heat of a quarrel. 
 The Tatar yoke introduced corporal punishments among us ; 
 for a first theft the culprit was branded; and in the reign of 
 Yassili the Blind flogging with the knout began to be in- 
 flicted even upon persons of the highest station for offences 
 against the state ; but what efficacy could the shame of such 
 punishments have in a country where a branded man was not 
 excluded from society? If we have seen crimes in our 
 ancient history, the times of which we are now speaking 
 present much more odious traits of ferocity in princes and 
 people — ferocity aggravated by the sense of oppression and 
 abject fear. Circumstances always serve to explain the moral 
 qualities of a people. However, as the effect is often more 
 lasting than the cause, the descendants, living under differ- 
 ent circumstances, retain some traces of the virtues or vices 
 of their ancestors; and it may be that the character of the 
 Russians exhibits to this day some of the blots with which the 
 barbarity of the Mongols defiled it." 
 
 CHAPTEK XI. 
 
 BEGINNING OF THE FOURTH PERIOD, FROM 14G2 TO 1613 — 
 IVAN III. THE GREAT. 
 
 The spirit of the history of the whole of this fourth period 
 — the period of despotism — stands fully displayed in its first
 
 106 HISTOKT OF RUSSIA. [CH. XI. 
 
 reign, that of Ivan III. This prince ascended the throne in 
 1462, at the age of twenty-two ; he reigned forty-three years. 
 The three succeeding reigns present the continuation, and 
 the horrible abuse, of the system of Ivan III. and the down- 
 fal of his race, the effect of that system, which itself was but 
 an expansion of that of his ancestors. 
 
 The life of Ivan the Great, like all great lives, had one 
 uniform object ; in him the pursuit of autocracy was an ex- 
 clusive passion, but free from the rashness, confusion, and 
 violence usually attendant on such a condition of mind. 
 From the age of twenty-three he proved himself capable of 
 regulating its march, and subjecting it to the slow move- 
 ments of a policy at once insidious even to perfidy, and cir- 
 cumspect even to cowardice, but ever invariable. 
 
 Ivan III. wished to be independent out of his domains, 
 and autocrat within ; he had, therefore, numerous enemies 
 among his neighbours and his subjects ; but he succeeded 
 in uniting, by turns, all these enemies against a single one, 
 and thus successively subdued the one by the other. 
 
 It was necessary for him to subdue Kasan and the 
 Golden Horde, to which he was yet tributary ; the great 
 communities, or Russian republics, of Novgorod, Pskof, and 
 Viatka, which affected a sovereignty almost equal to his own ; 
 and the princes, his kinsmen, proud of the appanages which 
 they still retained, and determined to live in them as masters. 
 At the same time he had to repress Lithuania, which was 
 always ready to offer to all these hostile powers the pro- 
 tection of a sovereignty, long the fortunate rival of that of 
 Moscow, which it had straitened on the west, south, and 
 north, by successively seducing from it its great vassals. 
 
 Such were his adversaries. For allies, he made use, at 
 home, of his nobles, princes, and subjects of southern and 
 central Eussia, who were inured to slavery, against his 
 northern subjects, who were yet free ; afterwards, he em- 
 ployed his nobles and his old and new slaves against the 
 princes of his blood. Lastly, his omnipotence sufficed him 
 against his boyars, when he stood no longer in fear of them, 
 after the humiliation of his other enemies, and the creation 
 of a swarm of petty nobles, his immediate vassals. 
 
 As to the Golden Horde and Lithuania, his external ad- 
 versaries, he sought enemies for them in Persia, in Sweden,
 
 A.D. 1462] IVAN III. THE GKEAT. 107 
 
 in Hungary, at Vienna, and even at Rome ; but the cele- 
 brated Stephen, Hospodar of Wallachia, and Menghli- 
 Ghirei, Khan of the Crimea, who were placed between and 
 in dread of the Golden Horde, Turkey, and Lithuania, were 
 the foes of his foes, and his own natural allies. These he 
 distinguished above all others ; his Machiavellian policy, 
 whde it incessantly deceived them, still contrived to retain 
 them on the side of Russia, aud in perpetual hostility with 
 Lithuania, till he found the favourable moment for striking 
 it in his turn. 
 
 Such were the allies and the opponents of Ivan III. At 
 the beginning of his reign he acknowledged all their rights ; 
 he cajoled all the hostile powers which he wished to destroy ; 
 he flattered all their pretensions, and even patiently sub- 
 mitted to the abuse of them. 
 
 From the time of his accession, however, the fourfold con- 
 test which he was to sustain against the Lithuanians, the 
 possessors of appanages, the Russian republics, and the 
 Tatars, began with the latter ; but, remark with what pre- 
 cautions ! If he does not pay the tribute of the Khan, if he 
 does not go to pick up his crown at the feet of that sovereign, 
 do not imagine that his young pride haughtily rejects the 
 shameful necessities imposed upon him by a half-vanquished 
 barbarian. No ; he merely eludes them, and, while he fur- 
 tively withholds the tribute, he humbly acknowledges him- 
 self a tributary. By-and-by the Tatar residents, their re- 
 tinue, their merchants, who were yet established even in the 
 Kremlin, were at length excluded from it. "Who would not 
 suppose that, in a powerful sovereign, this so much desired 
 enfranchisement was the effect of a noble burst of indigna- 
 tion ? Not so. On the contrary, it was by insidious pre- 
 texts, and by meanly purchasing the protection of a Tatar 
 woman, that the Grand- Prince surreptitiously obtained from 
 the Khan the order that these Mongols should no longer 
 dwell as masters in the very abode of the Russian sovereign. 
 
 At a later period, all that the high spirit of his wife, the 
 daughter of the emperor of Byzantium, could obtain from 
 the autocrat, was, that he would avoid going to meet the 
 Mongol envoy; that he would no longer degrade himself by 
 spreading under the hoofs of this barbarian's steed a carpet 
 of sable fur ; that he would not go to prostrate himself at his
 
 10S H1STOET. Or EL'SSIA. [CH. XI. 
 
 feet ; that he would refuse to hear on his knees the letter of 
 the Khan ; and would not submit to present the cup of 
 koumiss to the envoy of his master, and shamefully lick 
 from the neck of the barbarian's horse the drops of the 
 beverage which might fall upon it. 
 
 And yet, as early as the first years of his reign, eastern 
 Bulgaria, and Kasan, the first and largest Tatar city, had 
 yielded to his arms ; nay more, before that triumph aud 
 after, the Golden Horde, which had thrice risen in a body 
 against him, had thrice fallen again, and the remnant of it, 
 closely pursued, had at length been destroyed, even in its 
 haunt. 
 
 Behold, then, Asia vanquished, and Muscovy liberated ! 
 History will, doubtless, henceforth represent the prince 
 under whom this mighty revolution was effected in no other 
 light than that of a formidable warrior, a glorious conqueror 
 in his triumphal car ! But history dares not ; not even na- 
 tive history, captive, and submissive, like everything that 
 springs from the Russian soil ; far, indeed, from thus repre- 
 senting this prince, she depicts him displaying, in an age of 
 combats, nothing but a feigned desire to combat. Some- 
 times, he announced his departure for Kasan with his armies, 
 which he afterwards left to others the task of conducting ; 
 sometimes, he at length set off himself, only to stop on the 
 road on the slightest pretext, not blushing to let his war- 
 riors march without him, and constantly recommending to 
 them to shun all decisive engagements. 
 
 Yet more remains behind; in 1469, after assembling all 
 Bussia, and exhausting all the resources of war, when his 
 army was marching to certain triumph, he stopped short ! 
 To so many arms, all fully prepared, the vain hope of some 
 negotiations made him prefer having recourse to policy ; but 
 indignattt Bussia rushed forward in spite of its prince : the 
 general, who, iu obedience to his orders, endeavoured to hold 
 it back, was left alone. Ivan learned that the Bussian war- 
 riors had chosen another leader, and, finally, that, maugre his 
 pusillanimity, they had triumphed over the inhabitants of 
 Kasan. It was not till then, not till the fortunate and un- 
 punished daring of his subjects had thoroughly convinced 
 him of the weakness of Kasan, that he urged against it all 
 the princes engaged in his service, and even his guard ; but
 
 A.D. 1468-SO] IVAN III. THE GliEAT. 109 
 
 he himself continued at Moscow, still seriously alairned by 
 the last convulsions of the feeble enemy, though, to give the 
 final blow to that enemy, he had despatched the colossal 
 forces of the whole of Russia ! 
 
 It was thus that he attacked; how, then, did he defend 
 himself ? How did it happen that the Golden Horde, which 
 so long bore sway, was thrice repulsed, and at length irre- 
 trievably destroyed ? What were the combats of this new 
 Dmitri Donskoi, or, at least, those at which this Louis XIV. 
 was present ? "What was the Actium of this Augustus ? 
 How vanquish so often, without a victory ? History does 
 not record even one. On the first invasion of Russia by the 
 Horde, he hardly dared to give orders for his own defence ; 
 Russia was saved by the Tatars of the Crimea alone. "With 
 a Bpect to the second (1468), he relied solely upon numbers, 
 and collected forces so disproportionate to the danger, that 
 it was dissipated by the mere rumour of their march. " In 
 the eves of the Khan," says the annalist, " our army moved 
 and shone like the waves of a majestic sea illumined by 
 the rays of the sun." It was merely by this display that 
 Ivan contented himself with a second time vanquishing his 
 enemy, whose flight was not even disturbed by the wary 
 autocrat. 
 
 On the third invasion by the Golden Horde, in 1480, when 
 lie had subdued the most dangerous of the Russian republics ; 
 when he had succeeded in rallying his brothers to the 
 general cause ; when Lithuania, held in check by the Khan 
 of the Crimea, was sufficiently occupied in providing for its 
 own safety ; in short, when all Russia, ardent and in arms, 
 advanced proudly as far as the Oka to meet the Tatars, he 
 alone was discouraged ! — he deemed himself conquered ! He 
 alarmed the capital by the flight of the czaritza, whom he 
 sent to find an asylum in a remote part of the north. He 
 stopped on the approach of the enemy, deserted his army, 
 and retired to the distant Moscow to hide his terrors ; he 
 even recalled his son to that city. At the moment when 
 all might be lost, he seemed resolved to risk nothing that was 
 connected with his person. 
 
 But the priests, the people, even that son, were indignanb, 
 and broke forth into murmurs : " Why had he overburdened 
 them with taxes, without payingthe Khan his tribute ? And
 
 110 HISTOET OP BTJSSIA. [CH. XI. 
 
 when lie had brought the enemy into the heart of the country, 
 why did he refuse to fight for it ?" He convoked the bishops 
 and boyars, for the purpose, as he said, of asking their advice ; 
 but they replied,* " Does it become mortals to dread deatli ! 
 It is in vain to fly from fear : march boldly against the enemy ; 
 such is our advice !" His son, far from obeying him, declared 
 " that he would unshrinkingly wait the coming of the Tatars ; 
 that he would rather die at his post than follow the example 
 of his father." 
 
 Thus driven back towards his army by the general clamour, 
 the pusillanimous autocrat returned to his troops to cool the 
 ardour which glowed in their breasts ; the fear which pos- 
 sessed a single individual fettered the courage of all. Moscow 
 learned that its sovereign, trembling behind a river (the 
 Lugra), which divided him from the danger, was chaffering 
 for a remnant of disgrace, that he was negotiating his own 
 dishonour ! Perhaps he was about to degrade himself and 
 Russia so flagrantly as to kiss the stirrup of the Mongol ! 
 Then it was that the primate addressed him : " Moved by our 
 tears, you set out once more to combat the enemy of the 
 Christians, and now you implore peace from that infidel who 
 scorns your prayer ! Ah, prince, to what counsels have you 
 lent your ear ? Is it not, to throw away your shield, and 
 shamefully take flight ? From what a height of grandeur 
 are you not descending ! AVould you give up Russia to fire 
 and sword, and the churches to plunder? And whither 
 would you fly ? Can you soar like the eagle ? "Will you fix 
 your nest amidst the stars ? The Lord will cast you down 
 even from that asylum ! No ! you will not desert us ; you 
 will blush at the name of fugitive, and traitor to your 
 country!" 
 
 But neither these animating exhortations, nor the fresh 
 reinforcements which thronged from all quarters, nor the 
 insidated situation of his enemy, whom the Lithuanian prince 
 could not second, nothing, in short, had power to move that 
 most personal of all feelings, autocratic selfishness ! Dis- 
 armed of his Machiavellian policy, in which his genius entirely 
 consisted ; in the midst of two hundred thousand warriors, 
 Ivan believed himself powerless ; without a blow struck, he 
 
 * By the mouth of Vassian, Archbishop of Rostof. See Karamsin, 
 vol. vi. p. 183.
 
 A.D. 1480] IVAN III. THE GEEAT. Ill 
 
 imagined himself destitute of resource ; and when the ice of 
 a premature winter had obliterated the river which served as 
 a barrier between the two armies, he was seized with con- 
 sternation, determined to fall back, and could not even retreat 
 but with a disorderly flight ! 
 
 Now at length, it may be supposed, we shall behold a 
 tyrant stripped of all his delusive qualities, reduced to iris 
 i intrinsic value, and consigned in this shameful nudity to 
 the contempt of his people, whom he deserted. Not so. 
 However low he might have fallen, the immense interval 
 which separated him from the people, and even from his 
 nobles, was not yet traversed: the demigod had not yet 
 touched the earth: in him was still respected his whole 
 ancestral line, and such vast innate authority ! What Mus- 
 covite could daw to conceive the possibility of dispensing 
 with this son of Eurik, this descendant of St. Vladimir ? 
 Dastardly as was the soul of this prince, it seemed to be the 
 onlv one by which Russia could be animated: it might be 
 supposed to be the exclusive condition of the national exist- 
 , and that this immense body could not resign it without 
 suicide. 
 
 Such a degree of servility seems wonderful ; and yet we 
 shall see it increased ! This strong, this rooted faith, was 
 rewarded by a miracle ! At the very moment when Russia, 
 in dismay, believed that she had again fallen, and for ever, 
 into the chains of the Tatars, she learned, all at once, that a 
 similar terror had scattered the army of her ferocious domi- 
 nators ; that, during the premeditated inaction of Ivan, his 
 lieutenant of Svenigorod, and his allies, were on the march ; 
 that one of those allies, the Khan of the Crimea, united to 
 that voyevode, had, by attacking the Golden Horde in its 
 capital, compelled the menacing army to bend its course 
 li mewexd; while the others, a hetman of the Cossacks, and 
 the murza of the Nogays, stationed on the route taken by 
 the Mongols, had surprised them during their disorderly 
 retrograde march, and had totally destroyed them. 
 
 The mystery was now dispelled ! Ivan had prepared every- 
 thing, had foreseen everything. Regarded by his people as 
 a second Providence, his pusillanimity was now looked upon 
 as wisdom ; his cowardice as prudence ; his flight as skill. 
 He had wished to make his enemies their own destroyers:
 
 112 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [cil. XI. 
 
 without risking, like Dmitri Donskoi, the fate of Russia on a 
 battle, he had by a diversion, in spite of herself and for ever, 
 delivered her from the Asiatic yoke ; the hour, the place, all 
 had been prescribed. Placed, like the Divinity, out of tbe 
 sphere of those whom he protected, be had contemned even 
 tbeir contempt, and, unmoved by the clamour of his subjects, 
 had waited the appointed hour ! 
 
 Thus it was that time, fortune, and Mengkli-Ghirei en- 
 sured the triumph of Ivan over his first adversaries ; but his 
 good fortune did not intoxicate him. Having attained his 
 purpose, he despised not the means by which he had attained 
 it. Though, with the authority of a master, he gave sove- 
 reigns to Kasan, he chose them from the family of the Khan 
 of the Crimea, his faithful ally. His court and his state-; 
 were peopled with refugee or converted Tatar priuces. His 
 attitude, however, was materially changed. The Turks of 
 Caffa had plundered some Russian merchants. In the pusil- 
 lanimous Grand-Prince of 1480, who could recognise the 
 Czar of 1492, writing in the following terms to Sultan 
 Bajazet ? — " Whence arise these acts of violence ? Are you 
 aware of them, or are you not ? One word more : Mahomet, 
 your father, was a great prince ; he designed to send ambas- 
 sadors to compliment me ; God opposed the execution of 
 this project. Why should we not now see the accomplish- 
 ment of it ?" This same Ivan, who was lately so terrified in 
 the presence of the Tatar, expressly recommended to his 
 ambassador at Constantinople, in 1498, " to be careful not 
 to do anything to compromise the dignity of his master ; to 
 compliment the Sultan standing, and not on his knees ; to 
 address his speech only to that sovereign himself, and to 
 yield precedence to no other ambassador." 
 
 It is true that, at the period in question, Ivan had tri- 
 umphantly terminated another contest. Novgorod the Great, 
 Pskof, and Viatka had been subjugated. During tbe first 
 seven years of his reign, and of his war against Kasan, 
 pestilence and famine, the fit allies of tyranny, had enfeebled 
 those Russian republics ; and the dread of the end of the 
 world, which was predicted to happen at that time,* had, by 
 
 * In 1465, according to the Greek chronology, the seventh thousand 
 years was completed, and that was believed to be the epoch of the end 
 of the world.
 
 A.D. 1471] NOVGOROD HUMBLED. 113 
 
 turning from earth the passions of Ivan's subjects, afforded a 
 more free and secure scope to his own. 
 
 The insolent Viatka had, however, declared itself neutral 
 between Kasan and Moscow, and the prince had dissembled 
 his anger, for Novgorod had also shown itself rebellious : the 
 fall of Kasan had alarmed that great republic, and already it 
 had exclaimed to the Pskovians, " Take arms ! march with us 
 to destroy the despotic power of Moscow !" It was neces- 
 sary, therefore, to neglect Viatka, to gain Pskof and its twelve 
 cities, and to combine all against Novgorod. That having 
 once fallen, all the rest would follow. 
 
 Novgorod, rather an ally than a subject of Moscow, reigned 
 over all the north of Kussia, whose exclusive commerce it 
 possessed, and which it had to protect against the Swedes^ 
 the Livonian knights, and Lithuania. But, since the time of 
 Ivan Kalita, immersed in luxury, it had oftener ransomed 
 than defended its frontiers and its liberties. Of the latter, 
 some had already slipped from its grasp; but, in 1471, em- 
 boldencd by the presumed pusillanimity of the Grand-Prince, 
 it determined to resume them. It was stimulated to this step 
 by Marfa, the rich and powerful widow of a Posadnick, who 
 is said to have been enamoured of a Lithuanian. The idea 
 pleased her of bestowing her country on that of her lover. 
 She was an ambitious woman ; and in the ambition of females, 
 the passions are almost always exerted to the advantage of a 
 man. She opened her palace, and lavished her treasures on 
 the citizens of Novgorod. They drove out the officers of the 
 ( i rand- Prince, and seized on his domains ; and, when the 
 surrender of Kasan allowed Ivan to return towards Novgo- 
 rod and make his threatening voice heard there, they broke 
 out into revolt, and gave themselves, by a treat)', to Casimir 
 prince of Lithuania. 
 
 Here, amidst his other affairs with the Tatars, Sweden, 
 Livonia, Pskof, and the princes, his kinsfolk, it is curious to 
 observe the politic system pursued by Ivan against this 
 formidable republic. Let us especially notice his equally 
 firm and flexible determination; enthusiastic in its purpose, 
 \. t at the same time cool and persevering in its means; 
 sometimes resorting to humility and Machiavellism, sometimes 
 to pride and terror, but also to patience, kindness, and gene- 
 
 TOL. I. I
 
 114 UISTOltY OF ETJSSIA. [CH. XI. 
 
 rosity. These considerations, coupled with the faults of his 
 antagonists, and the imperious circumstances of the period, 
 give to the establishment of Ivan the Third's tyranny a 
 semblance of moderation and even of public utility. 
 
 Making allies of all that came in his way, he succeeded in 
 arming against the ultra-democracy of Novgorod the pride 
 of the nobles ; against its excessive opulence, the greediness 
 of the princes who were still possessed of appanages ; against 
 its treason and apostacy, the fanaticism of the people ; and 
 Novgorod, attacked at once by three armies, which were fol- 
 lowed by swarms of plunderers, resisted obstinately within, 
 faint-heartedly without, and was finally overpowered. 
 
 Ivan affected a moderation which he considered to be still 
 indispensable. Being not yet sufficiently secured against his 
 ambitious relatives to allow of his seizing on so rich a prey 
 without giving them a share of it, he seemed to content him- 
 self with a ransom and the restitution of some domains : but 
 he ruined Novgorod by devastation and plunde* ; and, in the 
 act of submission of that republic, the obscurity of some 
 ambiguous words reserved to him the authority of legislator 
 and of supreme judge. This was the side by which he seized 
 the prey, and by which he gradually drew it towards him, 
 that he might at length wholly devour it. 
 
 At the outset, he availed himself of the stupefaction pro- 
 duced by this first blow, and of an insult offered by the 
 Permians, to deprive the great city of those tributaries. 
 Thenceforth Moscow was enriched by the commerce of that 
 people with Germany, which had been formerly so much 
 coveted by Ivan Kalita. Then, on receiving intelligence of 
 an aggression of the Livonian knights, and under pretence of 
 affording succour to the great city, and to Pskof, he de- 
 spatched thither his ambassadors and troops, to fight and 
 negotiate in his name ; to render him present everywhere ; 
 and thus to take from those republics, which were also drained 
 by his army, the right of making peace and war. 
 
 At the same time, he fomented the dissensions between the 
 principal citizens of Novgorod and the lower class ; and when 
 he had succeeded in having all complaints addressed to him- 
 self, he went among them, to impoverish the rich by the 
 presents and magnificent receptions which his presence re-
 
 A.D. 147] -8] NOVGOROD IIUMBLED. 115 
 
 quired, to dazzle the people by the new splendour of his 
 Oriental court, and to seduce them by the partiality of his 
 justice. 
 
 Then it was that he sent to Moscow, loaded with chains, 
 the nobles of Novgorod who had formerly been his enemies. 
 He had procured their denunciation by the people, whose 
 blind jealousy exulted to see violated, in the persons of these 
 eminent men, the ancient law of the republic, " that none of 
 its citizens should ever be tried or punished out of the limits 
 of its own territory." Thus it was that, craftily mingling 
 stratagem with force, and justice with violence, Ivan dis- 
 united all his adversaries, made himself judge in all causes, 
 and gained the hearts of all the multitude, the transports of 
 which followed him even to Moscow. 
 
 These republicans seemed thenceforward desirous of appeal- 
 ing to no other dispenser of justice than the Grand- Prince : 
 their complaints were carried to the foot of his throne ; and 
 he, the better able to avail himself of the opportunity, 
 because it was of his own making, immediately summoned 
 all these imprudent men to appear before his tribunal. 
 " Never," say the annalists — " never, since Rurik, had such 
 an event happened ; never had the Grand- Princes of Kief 
 and Vladimir seen the Novgorodians come and submit to 
 them as their judges. Ivan alone could reduce Novgorod to 
 that degree of humiliation." 
 
 But the autocrat had succeeded in clothing all these 
 usurpations in seductive garbs. In all his encroachments he 
 seemed to be entirely above personal hatred. Marfa her- 
 self was not molested; his grudge was not against persons, 
 for their existence is transitory, and their cries might excite 
 emotion, or betray his course ; it was against things, for they 
 are more durable, are silent ; and, besides, include or com- 
 mand persons. Making good subservient to evil, he em- 
 ployed seven years in weaning these republicans from their 
 customs, by the generous moderation and equity of his 
 bi niences ; and when, by this slow, gradual, and almost im- 
 perceptible progression, he thought that he had led these 
 blinded men far enough astray from their ancient usages, 
 and had made them forget their ancient liberties, then, on 
 eery thoughtless movement to which he had given rise, and 
 
 I 'Z 
 
 .)•
 
 116 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XI. 
 
 on every imprudence he had excited, he grounded a claim of 
 right. 
 
 At length, the name of sovereign, which was given to him 
 during an audience, by the inadvertence or treason of an 
 envoy of the republic, sufficed to make him instantly claim 
 all the rights of an absolute master, which custom then at- 
 tached to that title.* He required, therefore, that the 
 republic should take an oath to him as its legislator and its 
 judge ; that it should receive his boyars, with all their arbi- 
 trary vexations, encroachments, and ruinous oppressions; 
 that it should yield to them the revered palace of Yaroslaf, 
 the sacred temple of Novgorodian liberty; their forum, 
 where, for more than five centuries, their public assemblies 
 had been held ; and, lastly, that each citizen should abdicate 
 his share of the sovereignty for the benefit of a single indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 This sudden explosion of tyranny was responded to by a 
 counter explosion of indignation and independence. The 
 veil dropped from the eyes of Novgorod ; the cherished voice 
 of its liberty, its vetchvoi Jeolokol, or great bell, uttered a last 
 peal of alarm ; it summoned the citizens to that forum from 
 which there was now an intention of expelling them for ever. 
 Novgorod arose with one accord, and exclaimed, " Ivan is, 
 in fact, our lord, but he shall never be our sovereign ; the 
 tribunal of his deputies may sit at Groroditch, but never at 
 Novgorod ; Novgorod is, and always shall be, its own judge." 
 Then, in their transports of rage, these unfortunate men 
 completed the alienation of the nobles, by the massacre of 
 several of them, whom they believed to be accomplices of 
 tyranny. Their imprudent envoy, whom they loudly dis- 
 avowed, was compelled to appear before them ; they tried, 
 clamorously condemned, and tore him into a thousand pieces ; 
 and a second time they gave themselves up to Lithuania, 
 whose prince they invoked to their aid. 
 
 When the perfectly foreseen intelligence of this righteous 
 insurrection reached the ears of the crafty despot, he feigned 
 a painful surprise ; he uttered groans : if he were to be 
 believed, it was he, this impostor, who had been treacherously 
 
 * The envoy addressed Ivan by the title of Gosudar, liege lord, 
 instead of Gospodin, master, which had been usual until then.
 
 A..D. 147S] NOVGOEOD HUMBLED. 117 
 
 deceived. He accused the invaded of having spread a snare 
 for the invader ; " it was they who sought him for their 
 sovereign ; and when, yielding to their wishes, he had as- 
 sumed that title, they disavowed him ; they had the impu- 
 dence to give him the lie formally in the face of all Russia ; 
 they had dared to shed the hiood of their compatriots who 
 remained faithful, and to betray Heaven and the holy land of 
 the Russians, by calling into its limits a foreign religion and 
 domination." 
 
 The tyrant addressed these hypocritical complaints to his 
 priests, to his nobles, to his people ; to all the powers of 
 heaven and earth, which he was arraying against these hap- 
 rcpublicans. Pskof and Tver alone appear to have 
 hesitated ; but, under the form of a contingent, he swept 
 away the whole of their military resources ; for he never 
 undertook more than out' thing at a time, and, with friends 
 as with foes, he had the art of combining the efforts of all 
 against a single opponent. 
 
 Surrounded by so many enemies, Novgorod was terrified, 
 and endeavoured to obtain conditions. " I will reign at 
 Novgorod as I do at Moscow," at length exclaimed the 
 despot : " I must have domains on your territory ; you must 
 give up your Posadnick, and the bell which summons you to 
 the national council!" Yet, always fraudulent, he, in the 
 same breath, promised to respect a liberty which he deprived 
 of every means of defence. 
 
 On hearing this terrible declaration, the unfortunate 
 citizens were thrown into the most violent agitation. Seve- 
 ral times did they furiously seize their arms, and as often did 
 they sink again into helpless despondency. Meanwhile, 
 they were closely watched by the crafty atitocrat. Ror a 
 whole month, though the sword was in his hand, he remained 
 immovable ; for he did not amuse himself with glory. His 
 patienl strength knew how to wait; he had collected such 
 abundance ox warlike means only to avoid war: and all this 
 innumerable army of combatants only to prevent a combat. 
 It was by consternation that he was desirous to vanquish; 
 and, contracting by degrees the circle of fire and sword, 
 which he had drawn round the republic, he overbore and 
 terrified it by his formidable presence. His all-powerful
 
 US HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XT. 
 
 arm, though so long raised, did not suffer fatigue ; its weight 
 sank but gradually on these unhappy beings ; and, by the 
 infallible effect of this slow and inevitable compression, with- 
 out striking a blow, it at length compelled their despair to 
 give place to resignation. 
 
 The system of circumspection thus displayed in the contest 
 was equally pursued after the victory ; the melancholy recol- 
 lection of which was not stained with blood. Marfa and 
 seven of the principal Novgorodians were the only persons 
 who were sent pi-isoners to Moscow, and had their property 
 confiscated ; but, on the 15th of January, 1478, the national 
 assemblies ceased, and the citizens took the oath of slavery. 
 On the 18th the boyars entered voluntarily into the ser- 
 vice of the victor ; and the possessions of the clergy, united 
 to the domain of the prince, served to endow the three hun- 
 dred thousand boyar-followers, the immediate vassals of his 
 own creation, by whom the autocracy of Moscow over all the 
 rest was to be permanently secured. He exacted the sur- 
 render of a great part of the territories belonging to the city, 
 and he is said to have conveyed to Moscow three hundred 
 cart-loads of gold, silver, and precious stones, besides a vast 
 quantity of furs, cloths, and other valuables. 
 
 In the following years the plan was followed up ; the fate 
 of the Eussian republics was sealed (1479). Viatka, a Nov- 
 gorodian colony, which was animated by the same spirit, was 
 subjugated with the same precautions. The Grand-Prince 
 had appeared inattentive to its rebellions — insensible to its 
 insults, as long as Kasan and Novgorod resisted ; but when 
 those states were reduced to submission he burst forth, and 
 it was by another display of irresistible force that, without a 
 combat, he annihilated this republic also. The blood of three 
 guilty persons was sufficient to satisfy his long-concentrated 
 irritation ; but he left there nothing but slaves. 
 
 The colony being destroyed, he returned to repeat his 
 blows on the parent city. From 1479 to 1528, at each con- 
 vulsion of the protracted agony of the great but now expiring 
 Novgorod, the yoke increased in weight ; till, exhausted of 
 its republican population, which was wholly transplanted to 
 the slavish soil of Moscow, it was re-peopled by Muscovites. 
 
 The restless and capricious ultra-democracy of Novgorod 
 formed a state within a state ; its existence was no less in-
 
 A.D. 1478] SOVGOEOD HUMBLED. 119 
 
 compatible than that of the appanages Avith the existence of 
 the Grand-Prince. Political necessity, therefore, impelled 
 Ivan to this great encroachment. As to the pretext, whether 
 Maria was excited by ambition, patriotism, or love, to seek, 
 in a foreign prince, a protector less dangerous than the sove- 
 reign of Moscow, her" motive is of little consequence; the 
 MachiaveUism of Ivan, in first fraudulently pilfering, and 
 then violently seizing upon, all the liberties of the republic, 
 did but too well justify the efforts of that celebrated woman. 
 It is a remarkable circumstance, that the most fatal blow 
 which Ivan gave to Novgorod was an involuntary one. Till 
 1402, that commercial mart had been singularly populous, 
 rich, and powerful ; and it is truly worthy of attention that, 
 notwithstanding its barbarism, and so many foreign wars and 
 internal dissensions, the fruits of its popular government, 
 Btill the commercial prosperity of that capricious city con- 
 tinued to increase: so much,* even in its most disorderly 
 form, is liberty favourable to commerce. It would seem as 
 if, amidst all their excesses, a free people preserve, in this 
 respect, the instinct of their true interest ; while absolute 
 power, in such cases, is perpetually falling into errors. 
 
 As long as Novgorod was free, the Hanseatic cities, not- 
 withstanding her frequent intestine commotions, continued 
 lo traffic therewith a confidence which was never misplaced ; 
 but, in the early days of her servitude, a burst of despotic 
 anger destroyed the source of her prosperity. Ivan the Third, 
 so skilful in 'extending and securing his power, committed a 
 fault which, during seven centuries, the popular assemblies 
 of the mad and inconstant republic had never committed. 
 Having been insulted by a Hanseatic city, he ordered to be 
 put in chains, at Novgorod, all the merchants of all the cities 
 of that union, and confiscated the whole of their property. 
 Prom that moment confidence was no more, the commerce of 
 the North took another route, and the great Novgorod^ 
 which, for many centuries, was able to muster a force ot 
 forty thousand men, and which is said to have been peopled 
 by four hundred thousand souls, is now nothing more than 
 an insignificant borough.
 
 120 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XII. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 IVAN III. CONTINUED. 
 
 On that vast field, meanwhile, from which every other 
 species of ambition had been swept away, the Grrand-Prince, 
 and the princes possessed of appanages (feudalism and auto- 
 cracy), were alone left standing, and now confronted each 
 other ; there w T as no longer any intermediary between them, 
 nothing to divert their attention to another quarter : accord- 
 ingly, they were not slow to come into hostile collision. 
 
 But in this third grand contest there was nothing unfore- 
 seen ; the autocrat had long been prepared for it ; it began 
 in his heart at the moment of his accession. The enfran- 
 chisement from the Tatar yoke was, however, more pressing ; 
 that prelude was necessary, and the enslaving of the Rus- 
 sian republics was more easy. 
 
 Accordingly, in this third contest, he had hitherto pro- 
 ceeded with a still more circumspect tardiness ; for here the 
 question related to individuals of a nature similar to his own, 
 and always less easily circumvented than large bodies. It 
 was for this reason that, during twenty-three years, his 
 Machiavellian patience recognised the rights of all those 
 princes, and even their independence ; all that he could 
 venture to do, in spite of their complaints, was to keep his 
 conquests without giving them any share, and to retain the 
 inheritance of two of his brothers, who left no heirs. "When, 
 however, in 1480, his two other brothers revolted, and with- 
 drew into Lithuania, plundering everything in their way ; 
 as he had not yet finished with the Horde and the re- 
 publics, he humbled himself to the very earth, and brought 
 the fugitives back by the most abject supplications, and the 
 most important concessions. But at length, in 1185, Nov- 
 gorod was crushed, the Golden Horde was destroyed, the 
 Livonian knights were vanquished, and the impotence of 
 Lithuania was obvious. The time was, therefore, come; 
 and as everything was prepared for it, the attack was imme- 
 diately commenced on the prince of Tver. 
 
 As a consequence of the invariable policy of the Grand- 
 Princes, Ivan III., guided by Vassili, his father, had formally 
 espoused, at the age of twelve years, the princess of Tver ; at
 
 A.D. 1490] IVAN III. AND THE APPANAGED l'EINCES. 121 
 
 eigliteen, he had a son by this marriage, who was afterwards 
 married to the daughter of Stephen, hospodar of Moldavia, 
 and by that son he had a grandson. But, in 1485, having 
 lost his first consort, he was wedded again, to a Greek prin- 
 cess. His son died;* the ties that connected Ivan with 
 Tver were thus broken, and since then, for a long period, he 
 had held that first and last rival of Moscow, in a manner 
 surrouuded and besieged by his conquests. 
 
 In this instance, his aggressive system was exactly the 
 same that he had acted upon against Novgorod. He began 
 by terrifying the prince of Tver with his ambition; and, 
 when he had led him to call Lithuania to his assistance, he 
 nosed the cry of treason ; he armed, and dismayed his victim 
 by the formidable aspect of all his irritated power. His 
 feigned moderation was to be propitiated only by conces- 
 sions, which deprived his feeble adversary of every means of 
 -ting him in future. Then, avoiding the ostentatious 
 show of dangerous power, which he had learned to render 
 useless, it was by an underhand war, by concealed violences, 
 that he achieved this conquest ; he stirred up a host of dis- 
 putes between the Muscovites and the Tverians, and mani- 
 •d such partiality against the latter, that they abandoned 
 so wearisome a cause in disgust. All came and ranged 
 themselves under the protection of Moscow; while their 
 prince, driven to despair, had no asylum left but Lithuania, 
 where he died without posterity. 
 
 Tver being united with Moscow, all speedily thronged to 
 that centre of attraction. The period of circumspect ma- 
 nH'iit was gone by ; Ivan strode rapidly onward to his 
 object : he spoke, and the sovereigns of Eostof and Yaroslaf 
 dared not be anything more than governors of those princi- 
 palities. A burst of his anger sufficed to strike such terror 
 into the prince of Vereia, that he fled into Lithuania, and 
 the autocrat punished his fear and his flight by compelling 
 
 * In 1490. His malady began with shooting pains in the legs. 
 Mistr Leo, a Jew physician, undertook the cure, pledging his head 
 for its success. SLx weeks after the prince's death Ivan had the un- 
 lucky physician publicly executed. Another physician named An- 
 thony, a German, suffered the same penalty in 1425, for having by 
 violent remedies accelerated the death of a Tatar prince. He was 
 given up to the relations of the deceased, and butchered by them.
 
 122 HISTOBY OF KUSSIA. [CH. XII. 
 
 the dying father of the fugitive to disinherit him of several 
 cities, which Ivan appropriated to himself. 
 
 Two brothers of the despot, however, still lived ; but one 
 of them, struck with dismay, submitted, and very soon his 
 appanage was reunited by will to the Grand- Principality ; 
 the other, though of a more stirring nature, was unsuspicious : 
 at the court of the Grand-Prince he was indulging in effu- 
 sions of the heart which he imagined to be reciprocal, when, 
 all at once, he was arrested, and loaded with chains, under the 
 burden of which he expired, with no other revenge than the 
 remorse of his murderer ; a tardy remorse, which a synod of 
 bishops stifled by an iniquitous and cowardly absolution. 
 
 Now, at length, the feudal hydra was vanquished ; all the 
 princes of the same blood as Ivan, whom, on his accession to 
 the throne, he had found almost as much sovereigns as him- 
 self, were either expatriated, or dead, or so completely sub- 
 dued that they aspired to no other honour than that of being 
 the most officious of his servants. They were beaten down 
 by so strong a hand, that, thenceforth, confounded with the 
 higher class of nobility, not one of them dared so much as 
 call to mind their common origin with their haughty ruler. 
 
 Thus far, Tatars, Russian republics, princes holding ap- 
 panages, everything, abroad as well as at home, had given 
 way ; but this triple advantage was gained by Ivan iu spite 
 of the efforts of Casimir of Poland, the constant ally of all 
 his enemies. Pbr thirty years this fourth contest was only 
 a war of diplomacy and kidnapping, in which each monarch, 
 enticing to himself the malcontent subjects of his adversary, 
 and becoming the underhand protector of their revolts, at- 
 tacked his enemy only indirectly, and, as we may say, by dint 
 of allies. 
 
 Eor Casimir, his allies were sometimes the Livonian 
 knights, sometimes the Golden Horde, and perpetually the 
 Russian petty princes and republics, whom he excited against 
 the Muscovite sovereign, but whose existence he compro- 
 mised and destroyed, by abandoning them to their own 
 strength in the moment of danger. On the part of the far 
 more able Russian prince, they were the celebrated Stephen, 
 first hospodar of Moldavia, whom he attached to himself by 
 marriage, Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, Maximilian
 
 A.D. 1492] IT AN III. — CONTESTS "WITH TOLAND. 123 
 
 of Austria, and, especially, Menghli-Ghirei, the Khan of the 
 Crimea, of whom, notwithstanding his own many proofs of 
 bad faith, he succeeded in making so faithful an ally. 
 
 In this war of two princes embarrassed by enemies whom 
 they stirred up against each other, and by untractable sub- 
 jects, all the advantage was on the side of Ivan. As early as 
 about 1492, the petty principalities which Vitovt had de- 
 tached from Eussia had already been successively reunited 
 to it. The first enticed or compelled the others, Avithout the 
 circumspect Ivan seeming to have any concern in this feudal 
 movement. But, about this epoch, Casimir died ; he was 
 succeeded by the weak Alexander, but only in Lithuania ; 
 that duchy separated itself from Poland : and power was 
 there more widely diffused, while at Moscow it was becoming 
 centralised ; the insidious autocrat then declared himself. 
 Here, as in his three previous contests, we see the moment, 
 so long prepared beforehand, in which success had become 
 almost infallible, and in which everything superabounded for 
 the explosion j he therefore marched with open force, but in 
 such a vast proportion, that he had less to combat than to 
 overwhelm. 
 
 And, notwithstanding this, he did not yet finish ; here, as 
 in other instances, and though completely armed, he paused 
 before the semblance of a battle. If he profited by the im- 
 mensity of his armaments, the powerful diversions of the 
 Khan of the Crimea, the simultaneous aggression of the 
 hospodar of Moldavia, and the weakness of Alexander, who 
 was deserted by his brothers, it was without daring to strike 
 a decisive blow : he preferred to expect everything from his 
 enemy, to ally himself witli all his faults, and to lead him, 
 like Novgorod, and like Tver, by successive concessions, to 
 be the instrument of his own destruction. 
 
 With this view, and to secure himself in the principalities 
 which he had surreptitiously reconquered, he accepted as his 
 son-in-law the Lithuanian prince, that very Alexander who 
 had recently attempted to poison him ; but he did not the 
 less continue the ally of that prince's enemies, whom he 
 excited to aggressions upon Lithuania, while, at the same 
 time, he prohibited Alexander from resisting them otherwise 
 tli an by complaints. The princess, his daughter, whom he 
 aeemed to have given to Alexander as a pledge of peace, was
 
 124 HISTORY OF BUSSIA. [CH. XII. 
 
 only an additional enemy, whom he had artfully introduced 
 into the heart of his adversary's states. She carried thither 
 the Greek religion, which was that of all the Russians who 
 were still subject to Lithuania. By them she was looked up 
 to as their avowed protectress, whilst they were persecuted 
 by her husband, as zealous a Catholic as he was a con- 
 temptible politician. 
 
 Ivan added fuel to this smouldering fire ; and when the 
 conflagration of a religious war at length burst forth, claiming 
 Heaven as his ally, and slathering courage from the cries of 
 his fellow-religionists, who implored his aid, he at last, about 
 1500, ventured, by a victory, to resume, as far as the walls of 
 Kief and Smolensk, a part of the conquests which were made 
 from his ancestors by Guediniin and Vitovt. 
 
 Thus was all accomplished at once, almost without com- 
 bats, and by the same patient, persevering Machiavellism, 
 advancing slowly and gradually, and not putting out its 
 strength till it had rendered the enemy so weak, and its own 
 power so strong, that the mere display of the latter Avas 
 sufficient to annihilate all opposition. 
 
 We behold a triple revolution of men, of things, and of 
 manners, at length consummated. But, for a long period, 
 Ivan, the sole centre of this sphere, had been looked upon by 
 the Russians as the source of all things. But having so 
 many internal enemies, whence did he derive this autocratic 
 ascendancy ? By what illusions did he fascinate such nu- 
 merous hostile gazers ? How happened it, that all power 
 capable of resisting his orders was thenceforth to appear dis- 
 order ? Exposed singly to so many domestic foes, whom he 
 curbed, how was the pusillanimous Ivan enabled at length to 
 overlook them from such an elevation that, even according to 
 their own avowal, he seemed to be their terrestrial deity ? 
 
 A last glance thrown on some particular details of this 
 great life will explain to us the phenomenon. Brom the first 
 years of his reign, what a long series of efforts concurred to 
 the accomplishment of his purpose ! Stratagems, intrigues, 
 fallacious promises, even an oath to apostatise, from which 
 he was released by the heads of his religion; nothing was 
 thought too much that could forward his designs. He was 
 desirous to obtain the Pope's assent, that Sophia, the last 
 princess of the Greek imperial family, who, being dispossessed 
 of Byzantium by the Turks, had taken refuge at Borne, should
 
 A.D. 1500] IVAN III. THE GBEAT. 125 
 
 come to adorn his throne, to consolidate it "with all her rights, 
 and to environ it with all her fascinations. 
 
 Constantinople is, in the eyes of the Russians, the sacred 
 source of the faith which they profess ; its emperors long 
 gave to them their primates ; it is thence that they derive 
 their written characters,* their vapour baths, a part of their 
 manners and usages, the saints to whose images they pay an 
 idolatrous worship, and, lastly, the supreme religion. They 
 had been brought to them, in a former age, by a Greek 
 princess ; it was she who had made their Vladimir that 
 master of their destiny on earth, their holy protector in 
 heaven. Wow that Byzantium was become captive to the 
 Turks, the dexterous Ivan wished that a second Greek 
 princess should come to render Moscow the heir of that 
 Byzantium ; that she should bring, as her dowry to its 
 Grand-Prince, the two-headed eagle,t that symbol of auto- 
 cracy, and the title of Czar, which, as the Russians tell us, 
 is identical with that of supreme authority. % He wished that 
 she should introduce into his palace the haughty hierarchy 
 of the sumptuous court of Constantine, and its pompous 
 ceremonies ; in a word, that despotism of divine right by 
 which devotedness to the prince would be strengthened and 
 even sanctified in Russia. This theocratic power, together 
 with the iron yoke which Ivan inherited from the Tatars, and 
 the entirely military constitution which was soon to be added 
 by a great man, were destined to complete the most extra- 
 ordinary concurrence of circumstances that ever formed 
 princes to despotism and nations to slavery. 
 
 • Their mode of writing dates from the year 865: it came from 
 Moravia. The Russian alphabet was then invented there, by a philo- 
 sopher named Constantine. This learned man had been sent from 
 Byzantium to translate the Scriptures into the language of the country. 
 In the time of Vladimir, about 981, there were to be seen at Kief in- 
 scriptions engraven in this character. 
 
 \ Until after the marriage of Ivan III. with Sophia the cognisance 
 d1 the Grand-Princes had always been a figure of St. George killing 
 the Dragon. 
 
 Thifi title occasionally appears even earlier in Russian history. It 
 is not a corruption of the word Casar, as many have supposed, but is 
 an old Oriental word which the Russians acquired through the Slavonic 
 translation of the Bible, and which they bestowed at first on the Greek 
 emperors, and afterwards on the Tatar Khans. In i'ersia it signifies 
 throne, supreme authority, and we find it in the termination of the 
 names of the kings of Assyria and Babylon, such as Phalassar, Nabon- 
 assar, &c. — Karamsin.
 
 12G HISTORY OF EUSSIA. [CII. XII. 
 
 .Nor was this all : by his union with that imperial scion, the 
 skilful and powerful hand of Ivan seems to have turned back 
 the face of his empire from east to west. He brought the 
 weight of the Russian throne into the balance of Europe. 
 Russia, which, during nearly three centuries, had been de- 
 tached from civilisation, was again to be linked with it by the 
 ties of policy, and by those of arts and sciences. It was the 
 Greeks, expelled from Constantinople, and sheltered in Italy, 
 who conveyed those arts to Moscow, in the train of their 
 sovereign. In fact, by a singular conformity of circumstances, 
 those Greeks, vanquished in their turn near the ancient and 
 Homeric conquests of their ancestors, had come like .ZEneas 
 and his Trojans of old to dignify Italy also, by taking refuge 
 there with their household gods. 
 
 This was the reason why the crafty Ivan seemed willing to 
 sacrifice even his religion to obtain this high alliance from 
 the Pope, who was then the protector of the Greek princess. 
 See how triumphantly he caused to be conducted through 
 his states this sovereign, who came to deify his power ! Hear 
 the language of his nobles and his priests: "God," said 
 they, " sends him this illustrious spouse, an offset of that im- 
 perial tree, the shadow of which was formerly spread over 
 all orthodox Christian brothers. Fortunate alliance ; which 
 brings to mind that of the Great Vladimir, and which will 
 make another Byzantium of Moscow, and give to its Grand- 
 Princes all the rights of the Greek emperors!" 
 
 Thenceforth, a sumptuous train was requisite to the new 
 autocrat. The novel pageantries of Constantinople came to 
 fascinate the eyes of these barbarians. At the same time, 
 his people saw him raise the massy walls of the Kremlin, the 
 awe-inspiring abode, the formidable fortress of autocracy; 
 and also that first church of stone, included within its circuit, 
 which the Muscovite architects had thrice endeavoured to 
 construct, and which had thrice fallen on those unskilful 
 artificers. Nothing was neglected by Ivan ; founders, engi- 
 neers, architects, miners, and minters, were invited from 
 Germany, and from Italy, and, following the footsteps of a 
 civilised princess, they ventured to penetrate into those 
 almost unknown countries. Pre-eminent among these 
 foreigners was the architect and engineer Aristotle of 
 Bologna, who built the Kremlin, and founded cannon, which
 
 A.D. 1500] IVAN III. THE GBEAT. 127 
 
 - j 
 
 was used for the first time, and with immediate success, iu 
 1482 at the siege of Felling in Livonia. The Swedes did not 
 use cannon till thirteen years later. The mines of Petchora 
 were discovered in 1491 ; and Eussia, for the first time, saw 
 silver and copper money, the produce of its own territory, 
 coined in its capital. 
 
 "We may imagine what a strikingly impressive effect must, 
 at that period, have been produced by a throne which was 
 raised to such a prodigious height that religion itself, every- 
 where else so dominant, served as one of its supporters, — a 
 throne whose summit, just beginning to emerge from the 
 obscure night in which all these tribes were still stagnating, 
 like a luminous point in the darkness, shone to their wonder- 
 ing eyes with all the splendour of the most gorgeous civil and 
 religious ceremonies, and with the first rays of European 
 civilisation. 
 
 Observe with what care this Louis XIV. of barbarism 
 turned these advantages to account. Proclaiming his divine 
 right, it is in the midst of this pomp that we hear him ex- 
 claim, " The high and holy Trinity, from which we have 
 received the government of all Eussia;" to which, according 
 to his prompting, the interpreter of that Trinity responds, 
 "The empire which you hold from God himself." 
 
 When, subsequently, the republicans of Pskof dared to 
 communicate with him otherwise than by a respectful em- 
 bassy, he instantly astounded them by his indignation ; nor 
 did he allow himself to be appeased, till after he had long- 
 bent them under the weight of his wrath, that he might be 
 certain they would never again lose the servile feeling thus 
 deeply and protractedly impressed. In like manner, he would 
 not grant his protection to the Livonian knights till, instead 
 of requesting, they had supplicated for it. In his diplomatic 
 instructions, we see him eager to ally himself with the en- 
 lightened courts of Europe, but pursuing that object with all 
 the precautions of the most susceptible pride ; he seemed to 
 fear that European civilisation might treat him as an upstart, 
 an Oriental barbarian, the tributary of a Horde. 
 
 It was for this reason that he, who so carefully studied the 
 policy of Europe, and deemed it of such high importance to 
 bring his throne in contact with other thrones, did yet, for a 
 mere omission of formalities, refuse to receive the Austrian
 
 128 HISTOET OF EUSSIA. [en. XII. 
 
 envoy, and even drove him from his presence. He forced the 
 emperor to treat with him as his equal ; and if his subjects 
 may be believed, he even denied his daughter to the king of 
 the Romans, Vienna not having consented to all the conces- 
 sions which he required. 
 
 As to the Margrave of Baden, the union of his daughter 
 with that German prince appeared to him a derogatory 
 alliance. When Maximilian endeavoured to natter his am- 
 bition with the title of king, Ivan haughtily declared to him 
 " that he would not degrade himself by receiving titles from 
 any prince on earth, and that he held his crown from God 
 alone!" 
 
 Through him it was that the Eussiau boyars lost their 
 ancient right of quitting the service of the Grand- Prince 
 to enter that of the other princes who still possessed appa- 
 nages. And what boyar, what Eussian prince of the blood, 
 could thenceforth have such an opinion of his own greatness 
 as not to humble himself before the dazzling splendour of 
 this sovereign majesty? Already blended together, and 
 oblivious of personal dignity, all crowded around him, and, 
 like the nobles of Byzantium, esteemed it an honour to 
 be admitted into his domestic establishment. Accordingly, 
 they soon were absorbed in it entirely, and had no other 
 existence than in the servile offices of which he delighted to 
 multiply. From this epoch it was that they began to con- 
 sider as hereditary those civil, military, and domestic ranks, 
 and to contend with each other for precedence ; but did they 
 dare to avail themselves of it in contravention of his orders, 
 then, depriving their vanity of this last resource, he declared 
 to them " that they ought to submit without a murmur to 
 the will of their sovereign, and that when the question 
 related to his service every office was good." 
 
 After the death of his eldest son, however, the issue of his 
 first marriage, these nobles are said to have pushed their 
 intrigues even to the foot of Ivan's throne, to secure the 
 inheritance of it to the son of the regretted prince ; it is 
 said, too, that these worthy ancestors of the boyars of Peter 
 the Great slandered their Greek czaritza, the mother of a 
 second son, out of hatred to the commencement of civilisation 
 which she protected, and the foreigners whom she had intro- 
 duced. One fact is certain, that Ivan being misled to be-
 
 A.D. 1500] ITAN III. TIIE GBEAT. 129 
 
 lieve that Sopliia intended to poison Iris daughter-in-law and 
 his grandson Dmitri, at first disgraced that princess, and 
 caused Dmitri to be solemnly crowned as his successor ; hut 
 afterwards, on better information, he restored Sophia to Iris 
 favour, and with a view to preserve Iris innovations, be made 
 her son his heir, to the exclusion of his grandson, whom be 
 consigned to perpetual imprisonment. Ivan would not leave 
 behind him this leaven of discord ; in this circumstance, as was 
 done at a later period, and more cruelly, by the regenerator 
 of Russia, be sacrificed everything to reasons of state. It 
 was on this occasion that Pskof ventured to t expostulate, in 
 behalf of the elder branch, against the heir whom he had 
 chosen. " Am I not, then, at liberty to act as I please ?" he 
 haughtily replied. " I will give Russia to whom I think 
 proper, and I command you to obey." And be bad the 
 envoys thrown into prison. 
 
 \ b to the boyars who had taken part in these intrigues, 
 their rank, hitherto respected, did not shield them : whether 
 accusers or accused, they were successively victims of the 
 prince's credulity, or of his vengeance. Russia, dumb with 
 astonishment, witnessed, for the first time, the fall of several 
 of those illustrious heads : a word from Ivan sufficed to strike 
 them off as easily as though they had belonged to the meanest 
 of his subjects. 
 
 Is it therefore astonishing that all should have bent down 
 before this autocrat, whose able band, rending the veil which 
 concealed Russia from Europe, had forced it to pay homage 
 to his power ; whose policy possessed the art of obtaining 
 the services of all, without ever serving any ; and who had 
 added to Russia nineteen thousand square miles and four 
 millions of subjects, by extending it from Kief to Kasan, and 
 as far as Siberia and Norwegian Lapland ? Personally, it 
 is true that he conquered nothing ; but, on the other hand, 
 live from the infatuation of warrior-kings, he knew how to 
 pause opportunely, to acquire as much, to retain more, and 
 to close his career under happier auspices. 
 
 I le was the first to borrow the arts of civilisation ; but for 
 himself only, as the means of riches and power, and much less 
 to enlighten than to dazzle his subjects. To him as their 
 second legislator, the Russians are indebted for a reform in 
 iho manners of their clergy, over whom he presided in their 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 HISTOEY OP BTTSSIA. [cil. XII. 
 
 councils ; a first attempt at a general seizure of the pro- 
 perty of that order ; and, in spite of their furious cries, the 
 suppression, hy means of ridicule and exde alone, of a heresy 
 Avhich the saints of the day wished to exterminate by fire. 
 
 This Jewish heresy consisted in expecting the advent of 
 the Messiah ; denying and cursing Christ and the Holy 
 Virgin ; spitting on the images of the saints, and tearing 
 them with the teeth ; disbelieving Paradise and the resur- 
 rection of the dead ; and putting faith in a cabalistical 
 book given to Adam by Cod himself. From that book 
 Solomon was imagined to have derived his wisdom ; and 
 Moses, Joseph, Elias, and Daniel, their power over the 
 elements and monsters, their skill in the interpretation of 
 dreams, and their faculty of looking into futurity. Zosimus, 
 the primate, is said to have been the head of these heretics. 
 " We see," exclaimed at that period St. Joseph of Volok, 
 " we see a son of Satan seated on the throne of the holv 
 prelates ; we see a devouring wolf under the garb of a simple 
 shepherd ! They are no more, they have flown to the bosom 
 of Christ, those daring eagles of religion, those godly bishops 
 who would have pitilessly torn out with their talons every 
 eye that was bold enough to look askance on the divinity of 
 the Saviour ! Now, in the garden of the Church, we hear 
 nothing but the hiss of a horrible reptile, which vomits forth 
 blasphemy against the Lord, and against his blessed mother." 
 But Ivan did not allow himself to be led away by these in- 
 sane declamations ; he contented himself with causing the 
 heresy to be anathematised, banishing the heretics, and nomi- 
 nating another primate. He himself, by virtue of his supre- 
 macy over the Church, and his divine right to the throne, 
 undertook the inauguration of the new primate ; thus it was 
 that he turned everything to the advantage of his own au- 
 thority. 
 
 A system of policy and administration at length began to 
 preside over the destiny of Eussia ; everything was classified 
 and fell into its place ; the roads and their stations, the police, 
 the army, were more regularly organised ; the taxes more 
 uniformly and better assessed. In the thousands of boyar- 
 followers, new possessors of military fiefs, a kind of spahis, 
 such as are still seen in Turkey, we recognise the institution 
 of a petty feudal nobility, but without a gradation of rank,
 
 A.D. 1505] IVAN III. THE GEEAT. 131 
 
 and dependent solely on the throne, the strength of which it 
 constituted. 
 
 A new code appeared; it regulated and taxed the 
 liberty which the peasants possessed of changing their 
 lords ;* it determined the limits of slavery ; and, though it 
 was forced to confide the dispensing of justice to the nobles, 
 and to those boyar- followers, the new proprietors, it joined 
 to them the elders, the chief men, and the civil functionary 
 of the place. 
 
 As to the rest ; in this barbarous code everything partakes 
 of the keenness of the sword, which is brought into action 
 in every part of it. Single combat decides upon the ma- 
 jority of criminal oifences ; in cases of suspicion, where repu- 
 tation is not spotless, torture is called in to enlighten justice. 
 A first theft (the spoliation of a church or the kidnapping of 
 a slave excepted) was punished with the knout and confisca- 
 tion of all the criminal's property, half of which went to the 
 injured person. The poor culprit was given up to his 
 accuser to be dealt with at discretion. A second robbery 
 ■as punished with death without any formality, when five 
 or six honest citizens deposed on oath that the offender was a 
 known thief. The penalties of Ivan's code are confiscation, 
 the knout, slavery, and death, the level of his despotism ; it is 
 since his reign that the Russians have astonished Europe by 
 their blind servility. Foreigners, as well as his subjects, 
 denominate him Ivan the Great. The Eussia of Oleg, of 
 Vladimir, and of Yaroslaf, existed no longer ; it is the Eussia 
 of Ivan III., reformed by Peter the Great, that still exists. 
 
 Ivan III. died in 1505, at the age of sixty-seven, after a 
 reign of forty-three years and a half. His son Vassili suc- 
 ceeded him without opposition. Pour years afterwards a 
 violent death terminated the cruel captivity of his grandson 
 Dmitri. 
 
 » The law of Ivan III. allowed the peasants, or free labourers, to 
 pass from one village to another, that is, to change their lords; but only 
 in the eight days before and after St. George's day. The abolition of 
 this privilege by Boris Godunof, made the Russian peasant a slave, as 
 he is at this day. 
 
 K 2
 
 132 HISTORY or RUSSIA. [cu. XIII. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 VASSILI IV. IVAKOVITCH — IVAN IV. THE TEERIBLE, 
 
 Vassili's reign of twenty-eight years was virtually but 
 the prolongation of that of Ivan III., whose principles he 
 followed in his domestic and foreign policy with equal in- 
 flexibility. Less celebrated for the fortune of his arms than 
 for his successful cunning and intrigue, he maintained the 
 dignity of the empire bequeathed to him by his father, and 
 enlarged its extent. 
 
 His first warlike effort had an inauspicious result. In 
 1508 he sent a great army, under his brother Dmitri, to 
 punish the refractory people of Kasan, who had murdered 
 the Russian voyevode placed among them with an authority 
 similar to that of the British residents at the subsidised 
 courts of India. This expedition was remarkable for the 
 imprudence and the alternate defeat of the two rival armies ; 
 but the last and heaviest blow was that sustained by the 
 Russians, who were utterly routed with great slaughter. 
 The victors, uniting with the Tatars of the Crimea, invaded 
 Russia, and carried their ravages up to the gates of Moscow, 
 which they filled with dismay. Vassili, true to his father's 
 ■temporising policy, did not shrink from the disgrace of pur- 
 chasing the safety of his capital by the payment of a large 
 ransom, and by putting his seal to a treaty by which he 
 engaged to become tributary to Makhmet-Khan. Satisfied 
 with having thus humbled their foe, the Tatars retired, 
 carrying with them 300,000 prisoners, whom they exposed 
 for sale at Caffa, in the Crimea, where they were purchased 
 as slaves by the Turks. 
 
 Vassili's vengeance was delayed by pressing engagements 
 at home, and by a war of ten years with Poland, which ter- 
 minated in the recovery of Smolensk from that power (1523). 
 He then assembled an army of one hundred and fifty thou- 
 sand men, and sent it against Kasan in two divisions, one 1>\ 
 land, the other by water. The latter division was almost 
 annihilated by the Tcheremisses before it reached its destina- 
 tion ; and the land army, deprived of its supplies, and decimal ml 
 by famine and sword, returned in a wretched plight to Moscow.
 
 A.D. 1533] THE KEGENT IIELENA. 133 
 
 For six years Vassili patiently digested this further disgrace ; 
 at last, in 1530, he sent a third expedition against Kasan. It 
 would probably have shared the fate of its predecessors if 
 the Kasanians had been as watchful by night as they were 
 valiant by day ; but then negligence enabled some of the 
 Russians to creep unseen up to the palisades, smear them 
 with resin and sulphur, and set them on fire. In a moment 
 the fortress was wrapped in flames, the Russians burst in 
 and massacred sixty thousand of the astounded Tatars. 
 There remained only twelve thousand inhabitants in the 
 heart of the city, which might easily have been taken ; but 
 prince Belski, Vassili' s nephew, bribed it is said by the 
 Kasanians, consented to enter into a treaty of peace with 
 that handful of men. 
 
 The only other events of interest in Vassili's reign were 
 the annexation of Vereia, the last of the appanages, aud the 
 extinction of the republic of Pskof, the last abode of Russian 
 liberty. He died in 1533, leaving the empire further en- 
 larged and consolidated by his wary management. 
 
 Then began the reign of the infant Ivan IV. The hideous , 
 scene opened with the saturnalia of that court which the two 
 preceding autocrats had suddenly called into existence, in 
 the midst of coarse and brutal ignorance. Its nobles were 
 barbarians, either upstarts or fallen from their pristine state. 
 A great number of them were of the blood of Rurik. For- 
 merly, the whole empire was the theatre of their ambition ; 
 its partition into appanages, their end; civil war, their 
 means : but, now that all was concentrated in the prince, 
 their sole arena was his court ; their end, the precarious ., 
 power derived from favouritism ; their means, intrigue ; they 
 were without rules, without manners accordant to their 
 novel situation ; they knew no other restraint than an iron 
 despotism, whose rude and ponderous mass had fallen into 
 1 be hands of a female of blighted character, the mother of an 
 infant who was only three years of age. 
 
 Helena was the second regent of the Russians. Since 
 the time of Olga, no similar instance had before occurred. 
 Muscovite manners would have dictated that the widow of 
 Vassili should be dead to the world; that a convent and 
 a new name should have hidden her sorrows from public 
 view; and the grandees were indignant to see the sceptre
 
 134 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XIII. 
 
 of Eurik in the Lands of that Lithuanian widow, and of her 
 paramour, whom she dared to impose on them as a master. 
 
 For four years, however, the impure couple kept their 
 ground by means of despotism. That weapon, so illegiti- 
 mate that it fits any hand that dares to wield it, gave an 
 answer to all ; to the indignation of the three uncles of Ivan, 
 it replied by a lingering death in horrible dungeons ; to 
 their partisans, — by torture, the cord, and the axe ; to 
 those grandees who emigrated to Lithuania and Crimea, 
 whence they brought back war, — by war and victory. 
 
 But, at length, crime did justice on crime ; tortures were 
 avenged by poison ; the regent died suddenly, and the great 
 boyars, of whom the majority were descended from princes 
 of the blood, who formerly held appanages, seized upon the 
 guardianship of that same despotism of which their ancestors 
 had been the victims. In the foremost rank of these barba- 
 rians stood the Shuiski, the chief of whom was president of 
 the supreme council of boyars. From father to son they 
 had long been treated as the enemies of the Grand- Prince 
 and of the state ; their turn was now come to treat the state 
 and its Grand-Prince as enemies. Their mischievous ambi- 
 tion was limited, however, by the crowd of other pretensions 
 by which they were surrounded. They could only dilapidate 
 the resources of the public, and of individuals, by their ex- 
 actions ; and avenge the fall of their ancestors by the humi- 
 liations which they lavished on the heir of the Grand-Princes. 
 They suffered the Tatars to harry the empire with impunity, 
 while they themselves desolated it by their rapine and their 
 „ proscriptions, which they did not even deign to cover witli 
 the name of their royal ward ; for the youthful Ivan was 
 spared no more than his subjects. His treasury was plun- 
 dered, his domains encroached upon ; the great boyars, 
 masters of his palace, seemed hardly to endure his presence 
 there ; it was their delight to degrade him. Shuiski, in his 
 clownish insolence, was seen to loll on Ivan's bed and bur- 
 den the lap of the descendant of so many sovereigns with 
 the unworthy weight of his feet. 
 
 The influence, however, of the Belski, and of the primate. 
 which was all at once increased by a Tatar invasion, awakened 
 the patriotism of the nobles, restored some degree of order, 
 and gave to the youthful Ivan a moment of dignity. But
 
 A.D. 1513] MINOEITT OF IVAN IT. 135 
 
 when the danger was over, the Shuiski re-appeared ; they 
 surprised Moscow in the dead of the night (Jan., 1542), and 
 made themselves masters of the palace ; they pushed their 
 brutal irruption even to the bed of their young master, and 
 roused him suddenly from sleep to fill his mind with mad- 
 dening terror. From his very side they dragged the primate 
 and prince Belski, the former to be ill-treated and deposed ; 
 the latter to be murdered in prison. Ivan's supplications 
 they disdained, and drowned by their vociferations; if he 
 ordered, they took a pleasure in disobeying ; if they saw him 
 regret his mother, who had been their victim, they scoffed at 
 his filial piety. The friendship he manifested towards Peodor 
 Voronzof was enough to bring down their hatred on the 
 latter. In a council one day they fell upon him like madmen, 
 loaded him with blows, and rent with their feet the garments 
 of the primate, who, touched by the entreaties of the Grand- 
 Prince, implored them to spare the young boyar whom they 
 wished to sacrifice. 
 
 It was amidst these horrors that young Ivan reached his 
 fourteenth year. The scene then changed, but in the per- 
 sonages only. This revolution was brought about by the 
 Glinski, who were kinsfolk of Ivan. All at once, in a 
 hunting-party, an angry word, which they suggested to the 
 Grand-Prince, thunderstruck Andrew Shuiski, the most in- 
 solent of the three brothers, and the whole train rushed 
 immediately on him, seized, and threw him to the dogs, by 
 which he was devoured (1543). 
 
 Put his tyranny survived him; it was continued in the 
 name of the prince. The Glinski pushed Ivan forward at 
 their head in the same path of blood and plunder. They 
 allowed him to misuse his recently acquired liberty. He 
 squandered it in roaming without a purpose through his 
 provinces, which were compelled to defray the charges ; they 
 were ruined by his costly presence, and astonished by his 
 caprices. There, his unworthy kinsmen prompted him to 
 punish without cause, and to reward beyond measure; glut- 
 ting some with what was confiscated from others. They 
 taught him not to think himself master, except when he was 
 smiting, and when he was causing to be tortured before his 
 eyes the suppliants by whose entreaties he was wearied. 
 These infamous beings made use of his youthful hand to
 
 13G HISTORY OP RUSSIA. [CH. XIII. 
 
 massacre their enemies. They applauded his cruelty, when 
 he amused himself with tormenting wild animals, and throw- 
 ing down tame ones from the summit of his palace ; when, 
 in his disorderly ramhles, he dashed old people to the ground, 
 and trampled under the feet of his horses the women and 
 children of Moscow. 
 
 These ehullitions of the youth of a tyrant had lasted three 
 years, when, one day, he awoke in Moscow surrounded by 
 the flames of a horrible conflagration and the clamours of 
 revolt (1547). Ivan was only seventeen. Terror had been 
 the first feeling of his infancy ; long oppressed by its 
 weight, he had lately taken delight in throwing it off upon 
 the whole of his people ; and now, from all points, that 
 terror was rebounding back upon him in burning brands, 
 threatening cries, and the blood of the Glinski, whom the 
 furious populace had torn in pieces. 
 
 Amidst this universal disorder, Sylvester, a monk, one of 
 those inspired personages who then traversed Russia, and 
 who, like the Jewish prophets, or the dervishes, dared to 
 stand up even against sovereigns, appeared in the presence 
 of the frightened young despot. He approached him, the 
 Gospel in his hand, his eye full of menace, his finger raised, 
 and with a solemn voice he pointed out to him, in the sur- 
 rounding flames, and blood, and furious cries, and the limbs 
 of his dismembered kinsfolk, the wrath of Heaven, which his 
 passions had at length aroused. To these terrific menaces 
 he added the infallible effect of certain appearances then 
 deemed supernatural ; and thus mastering the mind of Ivan, 
 he wrought a real miracle : the tiger was humanised ! Alexis 
 Adashef seconded Sylvester ; they encircled the young tyrant 
 with priests and able and prudent boyars ; and, assisted by 
 the young and virtuous Anastasia, Ivan's first and recently- 
 married bride, they, during thirteen years, made Russia enjoy 
 an unexpected felicity. 
 
 Everything was now pacified and reduced to order ; regu- 
 larity was introduced into the army ; the strelitz, a permanent 
 militia of fusiliers, Averc created ; seven thousand Germans 
 were hired and kept up ; a more just and equal assessment 
 of the military fiefs, services, and contingents was accom- 
 plished ; all proprietors of estates that required three hun- 
 dred pounds' weight of seed corn were obliged to furnish a
 
 A.D. 1547] IVAN IV. ADASUEF. 137 
 
 horseman completely armed, or an equivalent in money ; a 
 rate of pay for the soldiery was established, and was even 
 doubled, to encourage such of the boyar-followers as should 
 furnish a larger contingent than was imposed by law ; and 
 by these means tbe forces of the empire were so much 
 increased, that they were thenceforth estimated at three 
 hundred thousand men. The presence of the prince with 
 his armies at once re-established order in them, and stimu- 
 lated to exertion. Kasanwas once more reduced; the king- 
 dom of Astrakhan was conquered; fortresses were con- 
 structed to keep the Tatars in check ; and eighty thousand 
 Turks, whom Selhn II. had sent against Astrakhan, perished 
 in the deserts by which it was surrounded. Meanwhile, the 
 grand idea of the reign of Peter the Great, that of opening 
 to Eussia the commerce of Europe, by conquering the Ingrian 
 and Livonian ports, was almost realised ; the Don Cossacks 
 were united with the empire ; and the groundwork was laid 
 for the conquest of Siberia by« Yermak, one of those roving 
 people. 
 
 So much for what relates to war ; as to the rest, we see 
 the project of enlightening Eussia conceived ; a hundred 
 and twenty artists requested from Charles the Eifth ; the 
 iirst printing-office established ; Archangel founded ; an alli- 
 ance formed with England ;* and the north of the empire 
 throw r n open to the commerce of Europe. 
 
 At the same time, the abolition of prerogative and prece- 
 dence among the nobility was begun ; the greediness of the 
 clergy in monopolising landed property was restrained ; 
 they were improved in their morals, and in their observances, 
 which were still deeply embued with paganism ; and the 
 tolerant spirit of Adashef prohibited the cruelties with 
 which superstition inspired them. To crown the whole, the 
 laws were revised in a new code. Till then justice had been 
 
 * In the reign of Edward VI., 1553, three ships were sent out under 
 Willonghby and Chancellor, to look for a north-east passage to China 
 and India. Willoughby and the crews of two of the ships were frozen 
 to death, but Chancellor arrived safely in the White Sea, and anchored 
 iu the bay of the Dvina, near the spot where Archangel was founded in 
 consequence of that event. The English navigators met with a most 
 hospitable reception from the Russian sovereign and people, and the 
 report they brought home gave such satisfaction in London, that a 
 Company of Merchants Trading with Kussia was immediately formed.
 
 138 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XIII. 
 
 administered by the governors, -who paid themselves out of 
 fees levied at their own discretion. In 1556 Adashef and 
 Sylvester abolished all these fees, caused justice to be gra- 
 tuitously administered by the oldest and most eminent 
 persons of each place, and, finally, established a general 
 assessment, -which was collected by the officers of the Ex- 
 chequer. 
 
 The auspicious ascendancy of Adashef lasted thirteen 
 years. All the glory of the fifty years 1 reign of Ivan IV. 
 is circumscribed within this brief space. Ivan himself, in 
 1560, bore witness to it, while he cursed it ; for, at that 
 calamitous epoch, the death of the mild Anastasia, and a 
 violent disease which had previously attacked the despot, 
 seem to have alienated his mental faculties. 
 
 A salutary terror had kept down his ferocity ; another 
 terror again let it loose. Infamous informers instilled their 
 venom into his mind ; to the ministers whom they wished to 
 supplant, they attributed the death of the czaritza, and the 
 insubordination of the boyars, which they affirmed to be on 
 the eve of breaking out ; and with that weakness which is 
 inherent in cruelty, the superstitious Ivan persuaded him- 
 self that nothing but witchcraft could have enabled Ada- 
 shef and Sylvester to retain for so long a period their 
 paramount sway over his mind. In a letter, which still 
 exists, all the benefits which Russia attributed to him are 
 urged against them by this madman, as if they were a pro- 
 tracted series of crimes — for the barbarian could write ! his 
 letters and many of his speeches are even remarkable. 
 Like most insane persons, this frantic being now and then 
 manifested scintillations of talent, of which he made a 
 parade in sophisms, priding himself on his knowledge, and 
 often reasoning with considerable acuteness. 
 
 In his actions, consummate craftiness may also be seen 
 occasionally prevailing. In 15G6, being on the eve of 
 engaging in a dangerous war, he convoked an assembly of 
 the states-general, consisting of three hundred and thirty- 
 nine members — priests, nobles, citizens, and traders. He 
 laid before them his negotiations with Poland, on the sub- 
 ject of Livonia ; pointed out to them the importance of 
 preserving that outlet for the Russian commerce ; and suc- 
 ceeded in obtaining a declaration from the bishops, that
 
 A..D. 15G0] IVAN IT. THE TERKIBLE, 139 
 
 it did not become them to dare to advise their czar ; from 
 the nobles, that they were ready to shed for him the last 
 drop of their blood ; from the citizens and traders, that all 
 their wealth belonged to him. 
 
 But, already, the modern Seneca and Burrhus of this 
 Xero of the Xorth had experienced a fate similar to that 
 of the two prudent ministers of the Nero of Borne ; thence- 
 forth, drunk with blood, bewildered with terror, the life of 
 the Musco-rite tyrant was nothing but a long crime, a 
 furious lunacy ; its origin, however, may be perceived, and 
 we may detect its ruling principle amidst the wanderings of 
 a heated and irregular imagination. It was the despot in- 
 stinct of hereditary, innate, divine right, disturbed by fear ; 
 it was seventeen years of terror, received and repaid with 
 interest in his childhood and his early youth, that gained the 
 upper hand of thirteen years' efforts against nature. "We 
 behold a young tiger, which efforts have been made to tame, 
 and which reverts with horrible ardour to its original pro- 
 pensities. 
 
 Even as early as 1552, at the capture of Kasan, his 
 natural disposition had broken out. Apostrophising the 
 nobles who surrounded him, he then exclaimed : " At length, 
 God has preserved me from you !" In the following year 
 he had an interview with Yassian, ex-bishop of Kolomna, 
 who had stood high in favour with Vassili IV., and whose 
 heart was full of malice against the boyars, by whom he had 
 been deservedly deposed. From this wicked old man Ivan 
 received advice which he never forgot. " If you would be- 
 come truly an absolute monarch," said Vassian, "never seek 
 a counsellor wiser than yourself : never receive advice from 
 any man. Command, and never obey; then you will be a 
 real sovereign^ and a terror to the boyars. Bear in mind 
 that the counsellor of the wisest prince always ends by 
 being his ruler/' These words fell upon no indifferent ear. 
 Ivan kissed the old man's hand, earnestly exclaiming, "My 
 own Esther could not have given me more wholesome 
 advice." 
 
 Adashef, however, had kept him within bounds for 
 seven more years; but, in 1560, that first terror, with 
 which the nobles had impressed his childhood, awoke, like a 
 terrific phantom, in his mind, and thencefortli was ever
 
 140 HISTORY OF BUSSIA. [cil. XIII. 
 
 present to his thoughts. Very soon, the power of Sigis- 
 mond, who united Lithuania to Poland, and contended with 
 him for Livonia, and that of Stephen Battori, the successor 
 of Sigismond, whose vigorous hand was felt by Ivan, ex- 
 asperated his trembling and senseless rage : and the sus- 
 picion that his subjects connived with those princes increased 
 his frenzy. 
 
 In this burning and unintermitting fever of twenty-six 
 years, the Russians reckon six violent paroxysms ; in the 
 first, which was occasioned by the flight of prince Kurbsky* 
 into Poland, he accused that prince of a design to render 
 himself sovereign of Taroslaf: he could not conceive how 
 his subject, without bringing down the vengeance of Heaven 
 upon his soul, could have dared to secure his head from 
 him. The boyars were repi'oached with the offences which 
 they committed during his minority ; the remembrance of 
 those events bewildered him ; the impression made by them 
 was indelible ; and the madman, always having before his 
 mental vision a vast and perpetual conspiracy of the nobles 
 against his power, retired to Alexandrovsky, a fortress en- 
 compassed by a gloomy forest, the fit haunt of tyranny. 
 The imagination of the moralist poet, in his description of 
 the despot of Tyre, falls short of this reality. 
 
 The despot of Alexandrovsky, whose fear made his whole 
 empire tremble, at length denounced by letter (1565) to 
 the clergy and the people the crimes of which the grandees 
 had been guilty during his minority, and the new projects, 
 which his frenzy attributed to them, against his own life and 
 that of his son, and ended by declaring, that his wounded 
 heart resigned the government of a state which was so 
 thronged with traitors. On hearing this read, the people, 
 whom at the same time the crafty despot had won by his 
 flatteries, were astonished and aghast, and thought them- 
 selves lost : "Who thenceforth would defend them ?" The 
 priests and the nobles, either in consequence of the fear 
 with which the people inspired them, or of the universal 
 spirit of servility, exclaimed, " That their czar had over 
 them an imprescriptible right of life and death ; that he 
 might, therefore, punish them at his pleasure ; but that 
 
 * Sec the letters of Ivan and of prince Kurbsky.
 
 A.D. 1565] ITAX IT. THE TERRIBLE. 141 
 
 the state could not exist without a master; that Ivan was 
 their legitimate sovereign, whom God had given to them, 
 the head of the Church. Without him, who could preserve 
 the purity of religion — who could save millions of souls 
 from eternal perdition ?" All hastened to offer him their 
 heads ; they struck with them the dust at his feet, hoping 
 to move him by their lamentations, and bring him back by 
 their prayers. 
 
 The dastards obtained this misfortune. Ivan appeared 
 again in Moscow ; but, at sight of him, everybody was struck 
 with astonishment. Their surprise is described by their 
 historians. " Only a month," say they, "had elapsed since 
 the absence of Ivan, yet they hardly knew him again. His 
 large and robust body, his ample chest, his broad shoulders, 
 had shrunk ; his head, which had been shaded by thick locks, 
 was become bald ; the thin and scattered remains of a beai'd 
 which was lately the ornament of his face now disfigured it. 
 His eyes were dull, and his features, marked with a ravenous 
 ferocity, were deformed." The acts of his mind corresponded 
 witli the disordered appearance of his person. Not satisfied 
 witl»forming an entirely new household, court, and guard, he 
 deserted the palace of his fathers to construct, in Moscow itself, 
 another fortress ; he then drove out all the inhabitants of the 
 adjacent streets, and posted his satellites there. To those 
 satellites he soon after gave twelve thousand of the estates 
 nearest to his capital, of which, in the depth of winter, he 
 despoiled the rightful possessors. 
 
 Still uneasy, after so many precautions, the fear of God, 
 joined to that of man — for this monster felt every kind of 
 fear — prompted him to fly from Moscow, to return to 
 Alexandrovsky, and to assume the monkish habit with three 
 hundred of his minions. At the same time, he abandoned to 
 the trembling boyars the government of the empire ; he 
 derisively named them the boyars of the commons ; he himself 
 retaining only the military power, the power of striking. And, 
 nevertheless, his pusillanimity, which extended to everything, 
 covered the Russian banners with disgrace, which had hitherto 
 been \ ictorious over the Tatars and the Turks. In this third 
 portion of his reign, Moscow and several hundred thousand 
 Muscovites were again burned by the Tatars in the year 
 1571.
 
 142 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XIII. 
 
 The madman, who had said to the Russians, " I am your 
 God, as God is mine ; whose throne, like that of the Omni- 
 potent, is surrounded hy winged archangels, and who sends 
 forth armies of three hundred thousand men and two hun- 
 dred cannon agaiust his enemies," he trembled at the threats 
 of the Khan of the Crimea. An incursion of the Siberians 
 terrified him ; nor could he discard his fears till he learned 
 that Yermak, a robber, and six hundred Cossacks, his ac- 
 complices, paid by a trader, and flying from the rigour of the 
 Russian laws, had sufficed to reduce this new empire under 
 his dominion.* But what he dreaded above all things was 
 the anger of Battori ; he sent to that prince his dastardly 
 submissions, his abject supplications ; and even offered him- 
 self, in the person of his envoys, to the insults and blows by 
 which the king of Poland might please to dishonour Russia 
 and its czar. 
 
 Sweden, meanwhile, wrested Esthonia from this vile tyrant, 
 while Battori deprived him of Livonia. Since 1556, those 
 provinces, which were on the point of being conquered by 
 the talent of Adashef, had taken refuge, the one under 
 the Swedish sceptre, the other in the arms of Sigismond 
 Augustus of Poland ; and Kettler, the last Grand-Master of 
 the Livonian knights, had reserved to himself only Courland 
 and Semigallia. It was then (1581) that, to the new suppli- 
 cations of the czar, who grovelled before him, Battorif 
 deigned to reply only by branding him as a forger who 
 falsified the articles of treaties, and a monster who tortured 
 his subjects. " Where are you, then, God of the Russians, 
 as you compel your unfortunate slaves to call ycm?" This 
 insulting letter he closed Avith a challenge to single combat ; 
 but Ivan, whose ambassadors he had recently dismissed, 
 answered him only by fresh prostrations. 
 
 When, at length, to use the words of the Russian histo- 
 rian, " this cowardly prince, whose mind was degraded by 
 
 * This Yermak displayed, to the life, that likeness which has so 
 often been asserted to exist between the conqueror and the malefactor. 
 A despised Cossack, a detestable captain of robbers, while his genius 
 was cramped in his own country; and an admired conqueror, as soon 
 as he was at liberty to astonish mankind, by performing abroad, and on 
 a large scale, the same actions which had degraded him when he had 
 committed them at home, and by piecemeal. 
 
 f See the correspondence of the two princes.
 
 A.D. 1581] IV AK IV. THE TERRIBLE. 143 
 
 tyranny," had collected together three hundred thousand 
 men, he did not dare to command them ; if he marched, it 
 was under cover of the Jesuit Possevin, the envoy of Eome, 
 whose intervention with Battori he had fraudulently pro- 
 cured, by holding out to him as a bait the conversion of the 
 Russians to Catholicism. 
 
 This long effort, however, against the Livonian knights, is 
 worthy of remark ; its purpose, then avowed,* was to give 
 Eussia outlets upon the Baltic, and the means of communi- 
 cating with Europe. Its result was to make these maritime 
 provinces fall into more formidable hands ; but though this 
 masterly idea belongs to Ivan's ministry, and the deplorable 
 issue of it to Ivan himself, it is to this effort particularly that 
 must be attributed the admiration, so often highly censured, 
 which the greatest prince of the Eussians expressed for their 
 greatest monster. 
 
 At length, the germ of that terror with which the early 
 years of the tyrant had been impregnated, expanding still 
 more and more, he sometimes conjured up phantoms of re- 
 volted voyevodes, ready to give up to the Tatars, and then 
 he flew far from his armies, which he dreaded ; and, at other 
 times, he pictured to himself his boyars on the point of 
 raising the whole empire in rebellion, to overthrow him, and 
 to crush him with its collected weight. Then neither citadels 
 nor fortified convents seemed, in his eyes, to have power to 
 save him ; only an island beyond the seas appeared to offer a 
 safe asylum ; and he did not blush to request that asylum 
 from Elizabeth of England! 
 
 Everything in Eussia was bent down to earth ; and, yet, 
 the abject submission with which Ivan IV. was surrounded 
 did not tranquillise him ; his brain, shaken by the violent 
 emotions of his infancy, and by his tyrant conscience, made 
 ever present to him the phantom of a war of the public good. 
 The strelitz did not suffice him ; he formed a new guard of 
 six thousand select men ;t in a word, of spies, informers, and 
 assassins, ready to massacre all the grandees whom he might 
 
 * Karamsin, vol. ix. p. 439. 
 
 f The ( >pritehinikis. As types of their office they bore a dog's head 
 and a broom impended from their saddle-bow — the former to signify 
 that they worried the enemies of the czar, the latter to indicate that 
 they swept them off the face of the earth.
 
 144 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH, XIII. 
 
 suspect to have the slightest memory of ancient indepen- 
 dence. He chose these executioners from the lowest class, in 
 order to be sure that envy would make them participate in 
 the hatred which he felt. He gave them the property of 
 their victims ; and thus transferred eminence and nobility 
 from those who, having long possessed them, had any pre- 
 judices or pretensions whatever, to entirely new men, without 
 principles or predilections ; who were but too happy to bend 
 to anything that Avas required of them, so that they might 
 accumulate riches. 
 
 In his first fit of rage, several great boyars, of the family 
 of Rurik, were put to death by beheading, poisoning, or 
 impaling ; their wives and children were driven, naked, into 
 forests, where they expired under the scourge. In a second 
 paroxysm, he marched as a conqueror against the subjugated 
 Novgorod ; and, imagining that he imitated, or perhaps sur- 
 passed, the victory of his grandfather, he butchered with hit; 
 own hand a throng of the unfortunate inhabitants, whom he 
 had heaped together in a vast enclosure ; and when, at last, 
 his strength failed to second his fury, he gave up the re- 
 mainder to his select guard, to his slaves, to his dogs, and to 
 the opened ice of the Volkof, in which, for more than a 
 month, those hapless beings were daily engulphed by hun- 
 dreds. Then, declaring that his justice was satisfied, he 
 retired ; seriously recommending himself to the prayers of 
 the survivors, avIio took special care not to neglect obedience 
 to the orders of their terrestrial deity. 
 
 Tver and Pskof, also, experienced his presence ; Moscow, 
 at length, saw him again, and on the same day the public 
 square was covered by red hot brasiers, enormous cauldrons 
 of brass, and eighty gibbets. Five hundred of the most 
 illustrious nobles, already torn by tortures, were dragged 
 thither ; some were massacred amidst the joyful acclamations 
 of his savage satellites ; but the major part of them expired 
 under the protracted agony of being slashed with knives by 
 the courtiers of the Muscovite monster. 
 
 Neither were women spared any more than men; Ivan 
 ordered them to be hanged at their own doors; and he pro- 
 hibited their husbands from going out or in without passing 
 under the corpses of their companions, till they rotted ami 
 dropped in pieces upon them. Elsewhere, husbands, or
 
 A.D. 1584] IV AX IV. THE TEREIBLE. 145 
 
 children, were fastened dead to the places which they had 
 occupied at the domestic table, and their wives, or mothers, 
 were compelled to sit, for days, opposite to the dear and 
 lifeless remains. 
 
 To the dogs and the bears, which this raging madman 
 delighted to let loose upon the people, was left the task of 
 clearing the public square from the mutilated bodies which 
 encumbered it.* Every day he invented new modes of 
 punishment, which his tyranny, jaded by so many excesses, 
 still looked upon as insufficient. Very soon, he required 
 fratricides, parricides ! Basmanof was compelled to kill his 
 father ; Prozorovsky, his brother. The monster next drowned 
 eight hundred women ; and, rummaging with atrocious cu- 
 pidity the abodes of his victims, he, by dint of shocking 
 tortures, compelled their remaining relations to point out 
 the places in which their wealth was hidden. These confis- 
 cations, joined to monopolies, taxes, and conquests, accu- 
 mulated in his palace the riches of the empire and of the 
 Tatars. To this he joined those of the Livonians, whom he 
 plundered, though he could not conquer them. 
 
 In his long and fruitless wars against the Livonian knights, 
 hi-s transient successes were marked by frightful executions. 
 The courageous resistance which the enemy opposed to him 
 was, in his eyes, a revolt, and he ordered his prisoners to 
 be thrown into boiling cauldrons, or spitted on lances, and 
 roasted at fires which he himself stirred up. 
 
 Setting himself above all laws, this lustful being married 
 seven wives ; even his daughter-in-law was forced to fly from 
 his death-bed, terrified by his lasciviousness. He was eager 
 to procure an eighth wife from the court of his friend Eliza- 
 beth of England, and the daughter of the Earl of Hunting- 
 ton was offered to the inspection of the Russian ambassa- 
 dor at her own desire and the queen's. The daughter of 
 Henry VIII. was not shocked to hear at the same moment 
 of the czar's wish to be married, and of the birth of a prince 
 borne to him by his seventh living wife ; but before the 
 English match was concluded Mary Hastings took fright, and 
 begged Elizabeth to spare her the perilous honour. To com- 
 plete Ivan's usurpation, he assumed the manner of one who 
 
 * According to the annals of Pskof, there were sixty thousand 
 victims at Novgorod alone. 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 HISTOET OF RUSSIA. [CH. XIV. 
 
 was inspired, and all those external signs which our bounded 
 imagination attributes to the Divinity ; he made himself god 
 in the minds of his people. All that came from his hand, 
 blows, wounds, even the most degrading treatment, was re- 
 ceived with resignation — nay, with adoration. In the blind 
 and servile submission of the Russian people God and the 
 czar were identified: their proverbial sayings bear witness 
 to this ; and to the influence of things and men was joined 
 that of words, the power of which is more durable than is 
 commonly imagined. 
 
 -Finally, in a humble supplication, which was addressed 
 to him by the most faithful of his subjects, his frenzy again 
 saw a conspiracy of the boyars, of which the eldest of his 
 three sons, and the only one who was capable of succeeding 
 him, was to be the leader : transported with rage, the mad- 
 man felled to the earth, with a mortal blow from his iron- 
 bound staff, this hope of his race, to expire himself soon after 
 (1584), consumed by regret without remorse, and giving 
 orders for new executions. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 MANNERS AND CONDITION OF THE HESSIANS IN THE 
 SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 Before we pass from the contemplation of Ivan's reign of 
 terror to that of the nine-and-twenty wretched years which 
 formed its appropriate sequel, we may pause to glance at 
 the moral aspect of the Russians at that epoch. 
 
 Despotism and servitude are deeply rooted in Russia. 
 There is always a principal cause of the distinctive character 
 of a nation. The benefit which results from an institution 
 always leads the people to adopt its spirit, to make a bad 
 use of it, or conform to its abuses. Spain was subjugated 
 by a hostile religion ; it was by religion that Spain achieved 
 its liberation, and fanaticism still rules in Spain. A foreign 
 despotism, that of united Central Asia, fettered Russia, 
 winch was enfeebled by anarchy ; it was by the concentration 
 of power that Russia recovered its independence, and, thence,
 
 MANNERS, ETC., IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTUBY. 147 
 
 despotism established itself in Eussia, without encountering 
 any obstacle. 
 
 But there are other particular causes of despotism in that 
 empire. Extension and want of population are hostile to the 
 compactness of the mass ; in conjunction with the climate, 
 they hinder large and continuous assemblages ; they render 
 men conscious of the weakness caused by being insulated ; 
 they perpetuate blind and credulous ignorance, by cutting 
 off the communication of ideas ; they confine observation 
 within narrow limits, and thus the judgment cannot be 
 exercised for want of objects of comparison ; and the result 
 is, the existence of only a scanty number of ideas, which, 
 however, have a stronger hold on the mind, from the habit 
 of constant recurrence to them. Thus the Eussians of that 
 period, having none of those connexions which enlighten, 
 were unable to form for themselves a public opinion ; they 
 were obliged to take it from the court of the Grand-Prince ; 
 there was their oracle, their despot. All these causes, so 
 favourable to despotism, had, from immemorial time, destined 
 the Eussians to slavery. 
 
 After what has been already said, it will excite little 
 astonishment that the Eussians of those days were inclined 
 to dissimulation. They had been led to it by long servitude, 
 and by the practice of concealing what they had gained, that 
 it might not be wrested from them by their masters. They 
 were selfish and cheating, because they were poor, because 
 the major part of them had to purchase their liberty, and 
 because all means appeared good by which they could obtain 
 wherewithal to acquire so natural a right. The priests, the 
 only teachers of that age, were too coarse-minded to inspire 
 morality. The people, therefore, had no education, not even 
 that which example affords ; for the nobles, at all times the 
 models of the people, being surrounded, even from their 
 cradles, by slaves, were not more civilised than the rest. 
 
 To form an adequate idea of the ignorance of the Eussians 
 under Ivan IV., we must see them seriously entertaining the 
 idea that, because, in the sixteenth century, traders came to 
 St. Nicholas and to Archangel to purchase their grain, tim- 
 ber, hemp, and caviare, therefore their country was the gra- 
 nary and the dockyard of Europe, and that, without their 
 aid, the Europeans would die of hunger and of cold ! We 
 
 L 2
 
 14S HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [ClI. XIV. 
 
 must also see tliem imagining themselves the hest-informed 
 people on earth, at the moment when astronomy, anatomy, 
 and most of the sciences appeared to them to be diabolical 
 arts ; when not even three of their priests knew Greek ; 
 when their only mode of reckoning was by balls strung upon 
 strings ; and when the skins of beasts were still their current 
 money ! It was here that a noble substituted in place of 
 himself one of his servants, to receive the corporal chastise- 
 ment awarded to perjury ; and that, in the presence of the 
 czar, and even to himself, persons could venture to say 
 " Thou liest," without conceiving that they were offering an 
 insult ; for insults were punished by flues, blows, and banish- 
 ment; judicial duels had not yet introduced those other 
 duels, whicli honour elsewhere required. The latter, even 
 between foreigners in Russia, were punished as capital 
 offences. 
 
 For such rude beings the penalties were equally rude, 
 and, as manners and honour had no influence, the punish- 
 ments were horrible. Peculation was punished by whipping 
 and public branding ; but from the hands of the executioner 
 the criminal returned to his office ; this dishonoured the 
 office, and divested the punishment of dishonour ; or, rather, 
 it implies a general want of honour. 
 
 The custom of the Grand- Princes choosing their consorts 
 from among the collected daughters of the nobility ; the 
 slavery of prisoners of war ; the long afternoon slumbers ; 
 the taste for plumpness of person ; the dead silence in the 
 presence of the czar, — so dead, that, a foreigner tells us, if 
 the eyes were closed in the midst of the most numerous 
 court, the spectator might have supposed himself in a desert ; 
 the bazaars ; the practice of boxing ;* the hiring of mourners 
 at funerals ; the length of the vestments, which is suitable 
 to Asiatics, whose mild climate invites them to an indolence 
 that is favoured by this mode of dress ; the long beards ; the 
 monkish habit which Ivan, as well as several of his predeces- 
 sors, assumed in their dying moments ; and, lastly, the com- 
 position of its court, at once so unpolished and so sump- 
 
 * The Russians -were formerly as renowned for pugilism as the 
 English have been in later times. The practice was encouraged by the 
 government, as tending to keep up the courage of the people and 
 harden them to bear pain.
 
 MANNERS, ETC., IN T1IE SIXTEEKTn CENTURY. 149 
 
 tuous ; all this proves that this nation had borrowed from 
 the Greeks and Tatars only that which was most easily 
 acquired — usages, prejudices, and vices. 
 
 These same usages excluded women from society. Like 
 the Greek and Oriental, women lived retired in a separate 
 portion of the house ; they had no authority in the house- 
 hold ; their sole occupation was to spin and sew. This 
 seclusion of the sex may account for the unnatural lu3ts 
 which marked another point of conformity between the 
 manners of the Russians and those of the Greeks. There 
 existed at that period no such thing as society, at least in 
 our acceptation of the word; for women, its connecting 
 link, were banished from it. But, as reading and writing 
 were unknown, there was a necessity for communicating by 
 word of mouth. Every day, at noon, therefore, the people 
 met in the public squares : it was there that business was 
 transacted, that intelligence was spread, and that the educa- 
 tion of youth was completed. This custom, also, the uneasy 
 tyranny of Ivan IV. destroyed. He secretly introduced into 
 these meetings his nefarious informers. Before the reign 
 of this maniac, the Russians were accustomed to say, " If I 
 break my word, may shame be my portion." But the 
 monster extinguished the few remaining sparks of the rude 
 honour of the days of old.* 
 
 Thus everything in Russian history brings us back to the 
 history of despotism. By a horrible consequence of the 
 principle of this hateful government, it was an established 
 rule, that all the individuals of a family were involved in the 
 punishment of a single member of it. By another conse- 
 quence, every subject who went beyond the frontier, became 
 a traitor, who was daring to remove himself out of reach of 
 the prince — out of the sphere of that terror which was the 
 inspiring soul of the government ; he was a fugitive slave, a 
 rebel ! Nay, much more than that ; for was not his quitting 
 that sacred territory an offence against his God, since he 
 then breathed the infection of those hostile religions by 
 which Russia was surrounded, and mingled with miscreants 
 whose mere touch was contamination ? 
 
 * Many writers have repeated the erroneous statement that there 
 is no word in the Russian language to signify honour. Roth the 
 word and the idea are indigenous in Russia; the former is Tc/iest.
 
 150 HISTOET OF ETTSSIA. [CH. XIY. 
 
 Religious superstition, and the superstition of power, were 
 therefore the public opinion of that age ; it drove back into 
 the bounds of despotism every one Avho wished to quit them ; 
 there was no asylum from it ; it was all-present. A father 
 was as despotic in his wooden hut as the czar in the empire. 
 The fetter was general ; and, from the great to the small, 
 from the grandsire to his latest born descendant, all formed 
 one vast, connected chain of tyrants and of slaves. 
 
 There Avas, in fact, a law which allowed lathers to scourge 
 their children with rods, and to sell them four times. The 
 children were, therefore, the slaves of their fathers. Each 
 being was born a slave ; slavery showed itself everywhere. 
 The Russian wives were more enslaved than the Asiatic ; 
 their slavery, no doubt, was less strict, but it was more bar- 
 barous ; no law protected them from the violence of their 
 husbands, who, like savages, often put in force against them 
 the right of the strongest, as the caprice of temper, or pas- 
 sion, or drunkenness inspired them. It is even said that 
 Russian wives were unhappy if their husbands never beat 
 them : it seems they Avelcome ill-usage as proof that they 
 were not regarded with indifference. 
 
 In the Russian laws of that epoch, against wives Avho mur- 
 dered their husbands, Ave find the same cruelty that marked 
 the Roman laws against slaves who killed their masters. 
 Similarity of situation induced similarity of precaution. The 
 culprit was buried alive up to the neck, and a close guard 
 was set round her to see that no one supplied her with food, 
 or the means of ending her sufferings. In this state of 
 torture some have been known to linger a Aveek before they 
 were released by death. 
 
 I'rom the slavery of the women may be inferred that of 
 the men ; for the slavery of the one sex implies that of the 
 other. 
 
 Another laAV authorised persons to sell themselves. All 
 those who were ruined by the civil Avars, and by the Tatars, 
 were, in truth, under the imperious necessity of selling them- 
 selves, in order to subsist. Yet this laAv, Avhile it proves 
 slavery, proves also a sort of liberty ; for a man must have 
 possessed his liberty before he couid be able thus to dispose 
 of it. 
 
 Now, should Ave be told, " There exists a country in which
 
 MANNEES, ETC., IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTTJET. 151 
 
 prisoners of war are slaves ; where insolvent debtors are 
 given to their creditors ; where the poor man may sell him- 
 self to the rich ; and where fathers have the right of selling 
 their children three or four times ; to which must he added, 
 that only one class there can possess landed property, which 
 class is, by its nature, by usage, and by necessity, devoted 
 to the profession of arms;" should Ave not conclude that, 
 within a given lapse of time, such a country must be com- 
 posed of only nobles and serfs ? And if it should be replied, 
 that such a country existed, and that, nevertheless, during 
 six centuries, it had always a third estate, could we doubt 
 that the vague existence of that order must have been in- 
 debted for its preservation to local circumstances, to the 
 interests of the princes, to the weakness of the nobles, and 
 to the system of binding the slave to the sod not having 
 been yet introduced ? 
 
 In fact, this people, originally free, by its division into 
 tribes, till towards the end of the ninth century, was also 
 free in the time of Vladimir the Great, by its being united in 
 cities, of which several were commercial ; by the enormous 
 extent of the country, and the small number of conquerors ; 
 and because the Varangian leaders had not conquered with 
 the view of plundering and proceeding onward, but to esta- 
 blish themselves, and in many cities, as in Novgorod, it was 
 as allies and protectors that they were received. 
 
 We know, also, that in many of those cities the advantage 
 of civilisation was on the side of the vanquished. Besides, 
 by the simple manners of those times, the prince and his 
 subjects were on numerous occasions brought in contact with 
 each other; as at common festivals, the public repasts, to 
 which all were admitted, and the deliberations, in Avhich all 
 bore a part, because all had an interest in them. The traders 
 were held in estimation there ; for, in a country without 
 industry, and without any means of communication, they 
 wore the great connecting link, especially with foreigners. It 
 was, besides, necessary to have recourse to them fur every- 
 thing that was wanting ; accordingly, they always constituted 
 a body in the state. We see them appearing prominently in 
 treaties, in elections, in the assemblies of the cities, in those 
 of the nation even; tl^y were indispensable, in consequence 
 of their numbers, their connexions, and their wealth.
 
 152 HISTOET OF EUSSIA. [CH. XIV. 
 
 "We have remarked the duration, for six centuries, of the 
 warlike and commercial republic of Novgorod. Pskof, the 
 paramount ruler of twelve cities, and Viatka,were equally free; 
 it even appears that, like them, each city that was founded 
 before the Tatar dominion, had its boyars, denominated 
 Boyars of the Commons ; its tyssiatchsky, a military leader 
 appointed by the citizens, taking precedence of all the boyars 
 of the princes, and even of those of the Grand-Princes ; lastly, 
 its trial by jury ; and, above all, its vetche-bell, or assembling 
 of the people ; the voice of the supreme national power, often 
 seditious, and always dear to the Slavonians. By an ancient 
 law of Pskof, the husbandmen of its territory were consti- 
 tuted, in perpetuity, its tributaries and labourers ; for, with 
 the exception of some odnodvortzy (country landholders), it 
 seems that there were no landed proprietors, except military 
 persons, traders, and citizens. 
 
 The peasants of the lowest class, however, were not bound 
 down to the soil, but had the privilege of hiring themselves 
 to whom they pleased, either for life or for a term. 
 
 This is highly worthy of notice ; in this mainly consists the 
 difference between the feudal times of the Eussian people and 
 those of the rest of Europe. The right of the strongest was 
 then everywhere predominant. In Europe, the nobles having 
 gained the upper hand of the cities and princes, the necessity 
 of some kind of order gave rise there to the feudal hierarchy, 
 and the inhabitants of the towns and of the country were 
 slaves. Among the Bussians, the princes having remained 
 masters of powerful cities, and the country free from feudal 
 manors, the plebeians were protected ; there was no bondage 
 to the soil, no serfs, but farmers and hired servants ; and in 
 cities, a tribunal to make their contracts be respected. 
 
 Now, from the liberty and the protection afforded by the 
 cities, we must conclude, that the peasants continually de- 
 serted their fields, where they were at the mercy of all the 
 individuals of the military class, to be hired in the cities, 
 and to seek their fortune there ; that, consequently, those 
 cities were exceedingly populous, and were sometimes sum- 
 moned to the councils and elections of princes ; and that, 
 in the commercial cities especially, the commercial class must 
 have often enjoyed the pre-emincnce # How, then, happened
 
 MANNERS, ETC., IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTTTEY. 153 
 
 it that liberty was not the result ? for, in all ages, cities have 
 been its cradle and its asylum. 
 
 Too far apart from each other in that immense space, they 
 acted without concert : when we are speaking of Russia, the 
 words distance, extension, dispersion, perpetually present 
 themselves, and are always applicable. Besides, the country 
 being in general extremely flat, it affords few of those posi- 
 tions of difficult access in which liberty delights. Those 
 cities, with their ramparts of earth and resinous timber, could 
 not have been very secure places of refuge. In the thirteenth 
 century, we see them almost all burned by the Tatars ; again, 
 under Ivan IV., most of those which the Poles besieged they 
 compelled to surrender by setting fire to their ramparts. 
 Such cities, strong enough against the nobles, were weak 
 against their princes, and could not subsist without them. 
 
 It must be remembered, that the great number of those 
 princes, and the scarcity of cities, had caused each of the 
 latter to become an appanage, and that the faithful band by 
 which each appanaged prince was surrounded, composed for 
 him a permanent and formidable body-guard. Could the 
 municipal government long subsist in the presence of those 
 princes ? 
 
 Add to this, a perpetual state of hostility, and the continual 
 •danger to which each city was exposed ; whence originated 
 the preponderance of the military government, which, next 
 to the theocratic, is the most absolute of all. Hence resulted 
 the loss of their primitive liberty to those cities which were 
 not, like Novgorod, rendered secure from civil wars by their 
 power, and from the nomad wars by their northern situation. 
 Concentrated in this great Novgorod, the ancient liberty of 
 the Slavonians flourished there for six centuries and a half, 
 in despite of the Russian princes, of their guards, and of the 
 Tatars. It was under Ivan III. that the original despotism 
 of the Grand-Princes of the family of Eurik, reinforced by 
 the civil and superstitious despotism derived from Greece, 
 inherited also the savage and Asiatic despotism of the Tatars ; 
 everything, even the great Novgorod, completely sank beneath 
 and was levelled under the weight of this triple despotism. 
 
 At length, on this soil, several times conquered in mass, 
 and a thousand times in detail, we find, at the opening of
 
 154 HISTOBY OF ETTSSIA. [CH. XIV. 
 
 the sixteenth century, after Ivan III., nothing hut a victor 
 and the vanquished ; or, in other words, a master and slaves. 
 Order even, the only bearable side of servitude, did not exist ; 
 so much did the chances of force and of circumstances decide 
 everything. It was not till about the year 1600 that the 
 bondage of the peasant to the soil was introduced there, at 
 the moment when it ceased in the rest of Europe. This 
 crowning misery it was necessary to endure, to escape at 
 length from the chaos ; for there was no salvation to be 
 obtained but by concentrating all tyrannies into one. Thus 
 only could the army, the taxes — in a word, all the means of 
 government, be combined in the hands which had the 
 strongest interest in the maintenance of order and of public 
 tranquillity. Tranquillity was the first thing needed ; whilst 
 it lasted, it must produce increase of population, the means 
 of intercourse, knowledge, wealth, and all that naturally and 
 inevitably brings forward the liberty of the people, and at 
 last fixes it on a firm basis. 
 
 It was the usurper Godunof, then the prime minister 
 of Eeodor, son and successor of Ivan the Terrible, who 
 crushed Russia with this final chain.* In a very short time, 
 there were no longer even hired servants ; commerce fell 
 into the hands of the slaves of the nobles, and the cities 
 were filled with serfs. 
 
 . Surprise has been manifested, that, in this land of slavery, 
 bondage to the soil was so lately introduced ; but the country 
 having been rather under a feudality of princes than of 
 nobles, it must have been the interest of the princes, against 
 the nobles, not to render them proprietors of their peasants. 
 Besides, this institution could not be transmitted thither by 
 the Greeks, who were unacquainted with it when the Rus- 
 sians imitated them, and still less by the nomad tribes, when 
 the latter subjugated Russia. When, however, the public 
 and private interest had raised and firmly fixed a single 
 throne on the ruins of the princes holding appanages, and of 
 the higher class of nobility who replaced those princes, the 
 sovereign, who had a hold over the nobles and cities by their 
 property, knew not how to reach the lower class of the com- 
 munity, which was so widely dispersed ; he was obliged to 
 
 * See Tatischef.— The Law of 1592 or 1593 ; the Edict of 1597;— 
 Karamsin, Divof, Weydemeycr.
 
 SIANNEES, ETC., IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTTTBY. 155 
 
 render each proprietor responsible for the peasants whom he 
 employed. But those proprietors could not be answerable 
 for men who bad voluntarily entered their service, nor have 
 them forthcoming when the wants of the state required 
 them : at the beginning of the fifteenth century, we witness 
 the paternal administration of a prince of Tver, attracting 
 into his states the population of the neighbouring princi- 
 palities. 
 
 Thus, a continual fluctuation of the people prevented the 
 recruiting service and the taxes from being established on a 
 fixed basis : with such mutability, the creation, by Ivan III., 
 of three hundred thousand subordinate landholders, from the 
 mass of boyar-followers, subject to military service, and the 
 assessment of a tax on their ploughs, would have produced 
 but a very uncertain result. Accordingly, when, after 
 Ivan III., the Grand-Prince was possessed of an army, and 
 had no longer any fear of the nobles, it became his inte- 
 rest to introduce the bondage of the peasant to the soil. 
 Well-informed Eussians add, that Boris Godunof, embar- 
 rassed in his usurpation by the remains of the great families, 
 felt that the petty nobility, being envious, greedy, and less 
 united, would be more pliant ; that one of the means which 
 he employed to gain over the poor proprietors, of which the 
 nobihty was composed, was to secure to them the husband- 
 men, of whom hitherto the rich had easily deprived them ; 
 and that this was an additional cause of making the peasant 
 a bond-slave irremovable from the soil. 
 
 Another motive is also assigned for this barbarous institu- 
 tion. The natives of the south were always free ; that cir- 
 cumstance, and the climate, drew thither the peasants of the 
 north. It appears that the armies, when they withdrew from 
 K aaaaa and Astrakhan, left behind them numbers of soldiers : 
 from the concourse of people to the cities, from these deser- 
 tions or migrations, and from the vagabond habits which 
 prevailed, arose the depopulation of the rural districts, rob- 
 bery, and famine. Great evils were put a stop to by a lesser 
 evil ; bondage to the soil rendered the proprietors responsible 
 for their peasants, and brought back the latter to their agri- 
 cultural labours.
 
 156 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XV. 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 FEODOR I. — EXTINCTION OF THE DYNASTY OF RURIK — 
 BORIS GODUNOF — THE FALSE DMITRI. 
 
 Feodor, the eldest surviving son of Ivan the Terrible, 
 succeeded him in 1584, at the age of twenty-seven. The 
 character of the new czar was in singular contrast with that 
 of his father. Feeble and sickly in body, pliant, timid, and 
 superstitiously devout, Feodor would have been a sexton, 
 not a sovereign, had he been free to follow his natural bent, 
 for his greatest delight was to haunt the churches and ring 
 the bells. His incapacity was so complete that Ivan had 
 been forced to bequeath him, together with the autocratic 
 sway of which he was so jealous, to a council of boyars ; but 
 that precaution was unavailing, for he had already sealed the 
 doom of his dynasty. Ivan did not perceive that what had 
 preserved himself during his minority was the existence of a 
 higher class of nobility. Had Shuiski, the oppressor of his 
 childhood, not feared pretensions equal to his own, he would 
 have seized the crown. In reducing all around him to one 
 level, Ivan overthrew everything that could obstruct the de- 
 signs of a prime minister. The immense interval of terror 
 betAveen the throne and the subjects was a field open to the 
 ambition of a vizir who might remain alone in it with the 
 prince. The members of Feodor' s council immediately con- 
 tended for that position, and in such a strife the victory 
 could only belong to the most crafty and wicked of them all. 
 This was Boris Godunof, the descendant of a Tatar, and bro- 
 ther-in-law of Feodor, the last sovereign of the race of Eurik. 
 
 No man was fitter than Boris to become mayor of the 
 palace to that faineant monarch. Active, indefatigable, 
 more enlightened than any of his countrymen, versed in 
 affairs and in the knowledge of men, he possessed all the 
 qualities requisite to constitute a great minister. He con- 
 cealed his ambition under a cloak of piety and boundless at- 
 tachment to his country and sovereign. By his grave demea- 
 nour and noble presence he extorted respect from the jealous 
 boyars ; and when the czar showed himself to the people, 
 accompanied by his minister, every one felt that it was not on 
 the throne they were to look for the master of the empire.
 
 A.D. 1584] PEODOE I. 157 
 
 Between this able and unscrupulous man and the object 
 of his criminal desire, there stood only an imbecile czar, 
 who could not live, and the czar's brother and sole heir, the 
 unfortunate Dmitri, who was but a child. All others who 
 mi^ht compete with Boris he removed by calumny, banish- 
 ment, or assassination ;* and he had only one more crime to 
 commit in order to grasp the crown.f Having long medi- 
 tated that crime, he had from the first taken care to fatili- 
 tate it by removing Dmitri, with his mother and his maternal 
 uncles, to Uglitch, a town which Ivan had bestowed as an 
 appanage on his younger son, but without intending that it 
 should be made i'or him a place of exile. For a while Boris 
 entertained the design of bastardising Dmitri, on the ground 
 that he was the son of Ivan's seventh wife, such a union 
 being contrary to the canons of the Church. A third 
 marriage was with difficulty permitted, but a fourth was 
 absolutely void as condemned by religion. Boris forbade 
 that Dmitri should be prayed for, or his name mentioned in 
 the liturgy ; but afterwards he reflected that the marriage of 
 the dowager czaritza, though really illegal, had been sanc- 
 tioned or tolerated by the ecclesiastical authorities ; they 
 could not annul it now without thereby incurring a perilous 
 loss of credit. The very act would be a confession of shame- 
 ful weakness and error, and Boris had too much need of the 
 Church's favour to force upon it that humiliation. Besides, 
 even though Dmitri were declared illegitimate, public opinion 
 would not the less continue to regard him as the true 
 czarevitch and sole successor of Feodor. Boris had recourse 
 to a surer expedient. 
 
 He began by exciting odium agaiust his destined victim, 
 
 * Boris was sparing of public executions, but most of those who 
 incurred his enmity were poisoned by domestic traitors or strangled 
 in prison. 
 
 j A Kussian chronicler, who was certainly not acquainted with the 
 legends of Scotland, depicts Godunof as another Macbeth, urged to 
 crime by the predictions of soothsayers. "He assembled several 
 Soothsayers or astrologers, in the dead of the night, and desired them 
 to cast his horoscope. Their answer to him was, ' The crown is thy 
 destiny.' But then they were suddenly mute, as if dismayed by what 
 they foresaw besides. Boris insisted on their completing their predic- 
 tion, and they told him he should reign, but only for seven years. 
 Be embraced them in a transport of joy, exclaiming: 'Though it be 
 but for seven days, no matter, so I reign !' "
 
 158 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XV. 
 
 by publishing, through the mouths of his creatures, alarming 
 reports of the boy's cruel and perverse disposition. It was 
 everywhere said openly in Moscow that the little czarevitch 
 was the living image of his father ; that he manifested a pre- 
 cocious delight in blood and the sight of tortures ; and that 
 his favourite amusement consisted in tormenting and killing 
 domestic animals. These stories were intended to inspire 
 the people with aversion for Dmitri ; another was devised to 
 alarm the grandees. It was related that the czarevitch, 
 playing on the ice one day with other children, gave orders 
 that twenty images of men should be made of snow. To 
 each of these he gave the name of one of the leading men in 
 the state, and the largest of them he called Boris Grodunof. 
 Then, armed with a wooden sword, he began to hack and 
 hew at them all. He cut off the head of Grodunof' s image; 
 others he stabbed, or lopped off their feet and hands, ex- 
 claiming, " That is what you shall have when I am czar." 
 "We have no means of judging whether or not there was any 
 foundation for these tales ; nor is the question material. It 
 is enough to know that they were encouraged by Grodunof ; 
 for they were repeated without the least restraint in the 
 capital, where no man durst have whispered a word which 
 he thought capable, by any chance, of giving offence to the 
 dreaded regent. 
 f "When the minds of the Eussians had in this way been 
 sufficiently prepared for the catastrophe, the blow was struck. 
 In the afternoon of the loth of May, 1591 (O.S.), [Dmitri, 
 who was then ten years old, was playing with four other 
 boys, his attendants, in the court-yard of his palace at 
 Uglitch, a large enclosure containing several detached dwell- 
 ings irregularly placed. There were near him also his 
 governess, Vassilissa Volokhof, his nurse, and a servant- 
 woman ; but it seems that all the persons about him lost 
 sight of him for a moment. According to the unanimous 
 testimony of the three women and the pages, he had a knife 
 in his hand, and amused himself with sticking it in the 
 ground, or cutting a piece of wood. Suddenly the nurse saw 
 him writhing on the ground, bathed in blood. He had a 
 large wound in his throat, and died without uttering a word. 
 The czaritza, hearing the nurse's shrieks, ran to the spot, 
 and in the first outburst of her frantic grief she fell upon the
 
 A.D. 1591] DEATH OF THE CZAEEVITCH DHITKI. 159 
 
 governess, who ought to have watched the hoy, and beat her 
 with a billet of wood, accusing her of having let in the mur- 
 derers of her son. At the same time she denounced as the 
 assassin one Mikhail Bitiagofski, a creature of Boris, whom 
 the latter had placed in the palace of Uglitch, as paymaster 
 and comptroller, or, in other words, as a spy upon the 
 czaritza and her brothers. Mikhail Nagoi, one of the latter, 
 was roused by the uproar from the table where he was 
 drinking after dinner. Coming out in a state of intoxication, 
 he too beat the governess, and gave orders to ring the tocsin. 
 The court-yard was instantly thronged with townspeople 
 and servants, who had hurried to the spot with forks and 
 hatchets, thinking the palace was on fire. Among the rest, 
 Bitiagofski arrived with his son and some of his subordinates. 
 Trying to appease the tumult, he shouted that the boy had 
 killed himself by falling on his knife in a fit of epilepsy, to 
 which he was known to be subject. " There is the mur- 
 derer!" cried the czaritza. The crowd rushed at him with 
 uplifted weapons ; he fled to one of the houses in the court- 
 yard, and barred himself in ; but in a moment the door was 
 broken open, and he and his son were massacred. Every 
 one who ventured to say a word in his behalf, or who was 
 known to belong to him, was hacked to pieces. The gover- 
 ness lay bathed in blood, and half lifeless, on the ground, 
 with bare head and dishevelled hair, for the servants of the 
 Nagois had torn off her cap, thus inflicting on her what, in 
 the estimation of the Russians of those days, was a more 
 ignominious outrage than the blows she had received. One 
 of her serfs picked up her cap, and put it on her head ; he 
 was instantly murdered for his compassion. The frantic 
 multitude, still hunting down and slaying fresh victims, 
 carried the bleeding corpse of the czarevitch to the neigh- 
 bouring church, where Daniel Volokhof, the governess's son, 
 was sacrificed before it, under his mother's eyes. He was 
 known to be connected with Bitiagofski ; and that was 
 deemed proof enough that he was his accomplice. The 
 priests of the church with great difficulty rescued Vassilissa 
 and Bitiagofski's daughters from the hands of the mob ; but 
 they were all imprisoned under close guard in one of the 
 buildings belonging to the cathedral. 
 
 Thus far the facts we have related appear unquestionably
 
 1G0 IIISTOItY OF KUSSIA. [CH. XV. 
 
 authentic ; popular rumours, collected and intensified by 
 chroniclers who wrote long after the death of Dmitri, have 
 added to them a great number of details, palpably ficti- 
 tious, and all assuming the character of direct proof of 
 Godunof's guilt. The real evidence against him is by no 
 means so complete, and is only sufficient to establish a very 
 strong probability. Nor was the case rendered less obscure 
 by the result of a mock inquest held at Uglitch, by order of 
 Boris, four days after Dmitri's death. The two grandees 
 who were deputed to investigate the matter were Andrew 
 Klechnin, notoriously one of Godunof's creatures, and prince 
 Vassili Shuiski, who passed for his enemy. Shuiski's elder 
 brother Andrew had been put to death by the regent, and 
 he himself had been for some years in disgrace. But he 
 and his younger brother Dmitri had already been per- 
 mitted to effect their reconciliation with Godunof, and the 
 latter had given his sister-in-law in marriage to Dmitri. 
 The regent knew Vassili well, and was not deceived in the 
 choice he made of him, whilst at the same time it seemed to 
 testify entire freedom from fear and partiality on his own 
 part. After an inquiry conducted in secret, without any 
 examination of the body, any comparison of the wound with 
 the weapon said to have inflicted it, or the observance of any 
 one requisite for the discovery of the truth, the commis- 
 sioners reported that the czarevitch had died in the manner 
 before declared by Bitiagofski, that is to say, by a wound 
 accidentally inflicted on himself during a fit of epilepsy. 
 
 The patriarch and the bishops unanimously adopted this 
 report, and further declared that Mikhail Nagoi, the wicked 
 astrologers his accomplices, and the citizens of Uglitch, de- 
 served death for their treason in murdering the czar's officers ; 
 but this, they added, was a matter that concerned the secular 
 jurisdiction. A number of persons thus prejudged were 
 put on their trial before the Council of Boyars ; the bro- 
 thers of the dowager czaritza among the rest. Some of 
 the witnesses deposed that Mikhail and Gregory Nagoi, in 
 their fraudulent desire to prove the murder of the czarevitch, 
 had produced knives, sabres, and other weapons, smeared 
 with the blood of a fowl, and pretended that they had found 
 them in the hands of the officers massacred at Uglitch. 
 Especially it was testified that one of the brothers had given
 
 A.D. 1591] DEATH OF THE CZAREVITCH DMITRI. 161 
 
 the chief magistrate of Uglitch a Tatar dagger, known to 
 belong to Gregory, with directions that he should lay it on 
 the corpse of Bitiagofski, or of one of his companions. This 
 charge was faintly denied by Gregory, but was confessed by 
 Mikhail under torture. Such a confession proves nothing ; 
 the accusation may have been true or false, but in any case 
 it points to a conclusion the reverse of that for which it was 
 adduced. It curiously supplies that capital omission in the 
 inquest which we have before mentioned — the comparison of 
 the wound with the weapon said to have caused it — and it 
 corroborates the vague but undisputed statement that the 
 wound was a large one : that is to say, such as might have 
 been made by a sabre or a Tatar dagger (nagaiskiinoj), which 
 is a long, broad-bladed, two-edged weapon, but not by a little 
 knife (nojik) such as the czarevitch was represented as play- 
 ing with. The balance of evidence, therefore, is against the 
 probability that Dmitri's death was accidental. 
 
 The Council of Boyars decided otherwise. The dowager 
 czaritza was compelled to take the veil ; and her brothers 
 were sent to remote prisons. The inhabitants of Uglitch 
 were treated as rebels with atrocious severity. More than 
 two hundred of them were put to death ; others had their 
 tongues cut out or were thrown into dungeons. All the rest 
 of them whom terror had not already dispersed, were sent to 
 Siberia ; and a nourishing town that had numbered 30,000 
 inhabitants was converted into a, desert. The wrath of the 
 regent extended even to inanimate objects. The palace of 
 the czarevitch was rased to the ground, and the church-bell 
 that had summoned the inhabitants of Uglitch to rest was 
 banished with them; According to Karamsin, it was still to 
 be seen, at the end of the last century, in the capital of 
 Siberia. This excessive violence was no less impolitic than 
 inhuman ; it confirmed the suspicions it was intended to 
 avert. Boris alone had had a manifest interest in the czare- 
 vitch's death, and all men in their hearts pronounced him 
 the murderer. Macbeth stabbed the sleeping grooms in his 
 simulated rage; just so, it was whispered, Boris had exter- 
 minated the witnesses ho had been unable to suborn, and 
 had destroyed a whole city in order to efface even the mute 
 memorial of his guilt. Thenceforth the Muscovites looked 
 
 VOL. i. M
 
 162 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XV. 
 
 upon him only as an assassin, and saw nothing but crimes 
 even in his most laudable acts. 
 
 Soon after the horrible tragedy of TJglitck, a tremendous 
 fire broke out in Moscow and consumed a great portion of 
 the city. Boris had whole streets rebuilt at his own cost, 
 distributed succours among the victims of the disaster, and 
 exempted them from taxes. His bounty was eagerly ac- 
 cepted, but its very recipients secretly accused him of having 
 set fire to the capital, that he might create the opportunity, 
 of which he availed himself, to attribute the deed to the par- 
 tisans of the Nagois, whom he subjected to fresh perse- 
 cutions. 
 
 In the same year Kassim Gherei, Khan of Crimea, sud- 
 denly invaded Eussia with a formidable army, and appeared 
 unexpectedly at the gates of Moscow. The Bussian com- 
 manders were at their wit's end, the army without order or 
 efficiency, the people sunk in helpless despair. "When 
 Feodor was applied to he answered, with his usual apathy, 
 that " the saints who protected Eussia would fight for her." 
 Boris alone preserved his presence of mind in this extremity. 
 In the space of a few days he had Moscow surrounded with 
 palisades and redoubts, lined with numerous forces and for- 
 midable artillery. He reanimated the courage of the troops, 
 and by his prodigious activity supplied all that was wanting 
 in the emergency. The Tatars, repulsed in a first attack, 
 durst not attempt a second, but after some days' deliberation 
 resolved to retire. Their retreat became a frightful rout, 
 and hardly a third of their immense army reached home 
 again. Eussia was saved by Boris, but Feodor alone was 
 grateful. The people accused the regent of having called in 
 the Tatars " in order," they said, "that the country's danger 
 might make us forget the death of Dmitri." 
 
 In the following year, 1592, the unexpected pregnancy of 
 the czaritza Irene was announced. She was delivered of a 
 daughter, and Boris was immediately suspected of having 
 substituted a female child for the male which his sister had 
 brought forth. The infant lived but a few days, and then 
 it was said he had poisoned it. The long-expected death 
 of the czar, happen when it might, was sure to be attributed 
 to the same cause. But Godunof's ambition, though in- 
 ordinate, was patient. He suffered the weak Feodor to live ;
 
 A.JD. 159S] EXTINCTION OF THE EUEIK DYNASTY. 163 
 
 and reigning gloriously in his name, he purposed to make 
 himself indispensable to Russia, so that when the throne 
 should become vacant he should be called to it by the una- 
 nimous voice of the nation. Especially he took care to secure 
 to himself the powerful aid of the clergy. In the same 
 year in which he killed the sole heir to the throne, he availed 
 himself of the sordid ambition of a Greek bishop, who was 
 become the slave of the Turks, to purchase from him the 
 right of establishing in Eussia a patriarch, who was destined, 
 at a future period, to repay him diadem for diadem. 
 
 In the mean while, the grandees whom he could not deceive, 
 were either driven away or crushed by terror ; the petty 
 nobles were gained over by chaining down the serfs to the 
 soil in 1592 or 1593 ; the inhabitants of the cities, by a con- 
 tinued affectation of popularity ; criminals, by indulgence ; 
 and the whole nation, by the splendour of an able adminis- 
 tration and policy. Smolensk was fortified ; Archangel built ; 
 the Tatars, defeated for the last time under the walls of 
 Moscow, were chased back into their deserts, and were con- 
 fined within them by strong places constructed around their 
 haunts. Other fortresses arose, under the shadow of the 
 Caucasus ; Siberia was finally reconquered by the Eussian 
 manners, arts, and arms. The Swedes were driven into 
 Narva ; and a diplomatic intercourse was opened with the 
 European powers. Lithuania, and even Poland itself, is said 
 to have momentarily consented to submit to the sceptre 
 which was swayed by Crodunof. The spirit of sectarianism 
 alone appears to have dissolved this important union, which 
 was then voluntary, but which, two centuries later, was to 
 be the work of compulsion. 
 
 It was at the moment that the glory of Boris shone in its 
 brightest lustre, that, after seven hundred and thirty-six 
 years of existence, the dynasty of Eurik became extinct, in 
 the person of Feodor, its fifty-second sovereign, and with 
 the sixteenth century (1598). Other branches still existed, 
 but the tyranny of Ivan had pressed heavily upon all his 
 race. So completely had he insulated the throne by terror, 
 that none but the minister of that terror dared to aspire 
 to it. 
 
 The deputies of Eussia were assembled ; let us listen to 
 their annalists. " The election begins ; the people look up 
 
 11 2
 
 164 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [cil. XV. 
 
 to the nobles, the nobles to the grandees, the grandees to 
 the patriarch ; he speaks, he names Boris ; and instantane- 
 ously, and as one man, all re-echo that formidable name!" 
 
 Godunof, on his side, grasped with so firm a hand all the 
 links of power, that he felt a pleasure in obstinately refusing 
 a sceptre which he so ardently desired. The grandees and 
 the people besieged him with their supplications ; he escaped 
 from them, and took refuge in a monastery, where the throng 
 of slaves again fruitlessly surrounded him. This political 
 farce, which others of his kind have hardly been able to play 
 for a few minutes, he ventured to keep up for more than a 
 month. He knew that, from the cell to which he had hypo- 
 critically retired, a single breath of his would suffice to impel 
 the multitude as he pleased. 
 
 And so it was : people, nobles, priests, all obeyed the 
 impulse ; he appeared to direct, by unseen threads, every 
 movement of those thousands ; always invisible, he made them 
 come, or go, speak, or be silent, with one accord, and as he 
 willed, as though they had been a single body of which he 
 was the soul. To the walls of his monastic retreat the im- 
 postor attracted that herd of slaves, repelled them, drew 
 them on again, without fearing to disgust them ; nor did he 
 yield at length, till for six weeks he had kept all Russia in 
 suspense, on its knees, in tears,* and with clasped hands 
 holding forth to him the relics of the saints, the image of the 
 Redeemer, to whom it compared him, and that antique 
 crown, which during fourteen years he had coveted, and to- 
 wards which he had won his way by so many crimes. 
 
 The usurpation of Boris began, or rather it continued : it 
 sustained itself by dint of prodigalities, idle shows, and those 
 striking efi'ects of charlatanism which have such influence 
 over the minds of a rude and ignorant people. The satisfied 
 tyrant at first imagined that he might stop in the career of 
 crime. He sought to enlighten his subjirls with European 
 knowledge ; but this the priests opposed. His usurped 
 power was devoid of independence ; emanating from evil, it 
 was strong only for purposes of evil. The consciousness of 
 his crimes appalled him ; he hoped to quiet his alarms by 
 new acts of violence, which redoubled these alarms, and he 
 
 * A chronicler says, that " those who hail no tears at their com- 
 mand wetted their eyes with their spittle." — Karamsin, x., note.
 
 A.D. 1598] BORIS GODTJNOF. 165 
 
 completed the demoralisation of everything by the dread he 
 felt and inspired. 
 
 Boris had always pursued with diabolical art the policy of 
 undermining the grandees, which was begun by Ivan III. 
 He had even improved on that policy, and compassed the 
 extinction of many of the great families by withholding from 
 its members permission to marry. He now had cause, in 
 common with all usurpers, to be doubly mistrustful of those 
 who had so lately been his own equals ; in their ruin he saw 
 his own safety ; their riches would enable him to win the 
 petty nobles, whose pretensions could never come in compe- 
 tition with his own ; and also the love of the populace, which 
 the majority of tyrants have sought, and too often obtained. 
 Among his victims may be remarked the Bomanofs. Being 
 allied to the Buriks, they were the family which gave most 
 uneasiness to the usurper. The head of this eminent house 
 was preserved from the punishment of the axe only by that 
 of the tonsure. Ere long, we shall see this monk, after 
 having risen to the primacy, rendering himself illustrious by 
 his patriotic devotedness, and his virtues meriting for his son 
 the sceptre of an empire wdricli had been preserved by them 
 from foreign domination. 
 
 All was, in the mean time, brutified by fear : in the midst 
 of banquets, in the most peaceable ceremonies, the proudest 
 grandees of the empire, the descendants of so many princes, 
 on the least sign being given by this Tatar, were seen to rush, 
 like executioners, upon any one of their number whom he 
 pointed out as his enemy. Slavery was carried to its highest 
 pitch of intensity by this usurper ; with that slavery which 
 Ivan employed to crush the princes and the Bussian re- 
 public, which Ivan IV. extended to the higher class of 
 nobility and the cities, Boris fettered the country also,_ by 
 binding down the peasantry to the soil. The immediate 
 result disappointed his expectations. The peasants fled by 
 thousands to escape slavery, and easily found an asylum with 
 proprietors who wanted hands to cultivate their estates. A 
 new edict was issued in 1597, prescribing the most vigorous 
 measures for the discovery of fugitive serfs. Hence arose an 
 insupportable inquisition, as hateful to the landowners as to 
 the peasants themselves. Erom that moment, despotism was 
 omnipresent ; every village, every house, had its despotism
 
 16G HISTOET OF BUSSIA. [CH. XT. 
 
 equally with the throne, on which, in their turn, all these 
 despotisms were dependent. The Eussian nation was no 
 longer anything but a hierarchy of slaves. Thenceforth, 
 there was no intercourse ; none of those public meetings in 
 which the youthful part of society at least orally acquired 
 knowledge ; no compacts to protect the weak, no asylum for 
 them. Russia became sad and sullen: the minstrels, who 
 had been wont to traverse the country, now disappeared ; 
 their songs of war and the chase, and even of love, were 
 heard no longer. It is only in the chronicles of the time 
 that we discover the traces of those perished manners, those 
 forgotten songs : on meeting with them, the national his- 
 torian is surprised and affected, and mournfully exclaims, 
 " that, in these recollections, the Russia of the present day, 
 mute and enslaved, finds but the image of an object which 
 no longer exists, the echo of a voice which no longer vibrates 
 on her ear." 
 
 All these usurpations of Boris were not slow in producing 
 the natural results, which caused the tyrant himself to die of 
 grief on his tottering throne. He was doomed, in the first 
 place, to witness a calamitous emigration of the peasants, 
 in order to preserve their freedom among the Cossacks ; then 
 a horrible famine; and shortly after, an atrocious jacquerie, 
 victorious at first, but ultimately vanquished. These were 
 the fruits of his criminal attack upon the liberties of the 
 people. As to the murder of Dmitri, he imagined that he 
 beheld the shade of his victim rising from the tomb, to take 
 vengeance upon him. In conclusion, he left Russia depopu- 
 lated, exhausted, laid open on every side, and a prey to all 
 the horrors which arise from the breaking up of society. 
 What crimes, what torments, what woes, to procure a six 
 years' reign upon a throne which, two months after his 
 decease, was to overwhelm his son in its fall ! 
 
 The famine mentioned in the last paragraph began in 1G01 ; 
 it was accompanied as usual with pestilence, and both conti- 
 nued their dreadful ravages for three years. Boris was un- 
 sparing in his efforts to allay the calamity ; he caused immense 
 quantities of provisions, besides money, to be daily distributed 
 in Moscow ; but the consequence was that multitudes nocked 
 from all the provinces to the capital, and the mischief was 
 increased by concentration. At last the state treasury was
 
 A.D. 1603] THE FALSE DMITEI. 167 
 
 exhausted, whilst the famine was still unabated. It is said 
 that half a million of people died in Moscow. The dead lay 
 by thousands in the streets and highways, many with their 
 mouths full of hay, straw, or the filthiest offal, which they 
 had endeavoured to eat. Moscow was become a city of can- 
 nibals. In many houses the fattest person was killed to 
 serve as food for the rest. Parents devoured their own chil- 
 dren, children their parents, or sold them for bread. Petreius 
 saw a woman, in the open street, tearing with her teeth the 
 flesh of a living child she carried in her arms ; and Margeret 
 relates that four women, having decoyed a peasant into their 
 house under pretence of buying wood from him, killed him 
 and his horse, and dragged the two carcases into their ice-pit* 
 to serve them for food. 
 
 When the manifold discontents of the Russians had been 
 exasperated to the highest pitch by three years of this horrible 
 visitation, and by the countless secondary evils that flowed 
 from it ; and when the whole empire was full of that vague 
 disquiet which commonly foreruns revolution, a surprising 
 rumour, brought from the frontiers of Lithuania, spread 
 through all the provinces with incredible rapidity. The 
 czarevitch Dmitri had not been murdered after all, but was 
 alive in Poland ! His cause was espoused by the principal 
 lords of the republic, and he was preparing to assert his here- 
 ditary rights. Various accounts represented him as having 
 been previously seen at different places in the Russian terri- 
 tory disguised as a monk, or playing a distinguished part in 
 the military expeditions of the Zaporogue Cossacks. These 
 accounts were contradictory in several particulars, but all 
 agreed as to the main point, that Dmitri was alive, and was 
 about to call the usurper to a terrible reckoning. 
 
 About the middle of the year 1603, prince Adam Wisznio- 
 wiecki, of Brahm, in Lithuania, being irritated by some act 
 of negligence on the part of a young man who had not long 
 been in his service, gave him a box on the ear and called him 
 
 son of a . The young, man replied, with tears in his 
 
 eyes, " If you knew who I am, prince, you would not treat 
 me so, nor call me by that name." — " Who are you, then ? 
 and whence do you come ?" — " I am the czarevitch Dmitri, 
 son of Ivan Vassilievitch." He then recounted the particu- 
 * The usual receptacle for meat, fish, &c., in Russia.
 
 16S HISTORY OF EUSSIA. [CH. XT. 
 
 lars of his miraculous escape from the assassin employed by 
 Boris G-odunof. He stated that his physician, Simon, having 
 been tampered with by Boris, had feigned to comply with the 
 regent's designs against the life of the heir-presumptive, but 
 only that he might the more effectually frustrate them. On the 
 night appointed for the murder, Simon put the son of a serf 
 into his young master's bed, and it was that substituted boy 
 whom the murderers despatched. Convinced of the inutility 
 of appealing to Peodor against the minister who held his 
 mind enthralled, Simon fled with Dmitri from Uglitch, and 
 committed him to the care of a loyal gentleman, who for his 
 better protection made him enter a monastery. The gentle- 
 man and the physician were both dead ; but in confirmation of 
 his story, the pretender exhibited a Eussian seal, bearing the 
 arms and the name of the czarevitch, and a gold cross adorned 
 with jewels of great value, which he said was the baptismal 
 gift of his godfather, prince Ivan Mstislavski. 
 
 This tale, delivered with great persuasiveness of manner, 
 found ready credence on the part of the Polish prince ; the 
 costly diamond cross seemed to him an evidence not to be 
 resisted, for how could such a jewel have come into the young 
 man's hands if he were not really the czarevitch ? Wisznio- 
 wiecki immediately tendered his illustrious guest the command 
 of his wealth and influence, presented him with clothes, 
 horses, carriages, and a retinue suitable to his supposed 
 birth, and took him to the residence of his brother, prince 
 Constantine, at Jalojicz. There a Eussian fugitive, named 
 Pietrovski, in the service of the chancellor of Lithuania, vo- 
 lunteered a declaration that he had formerly been in attend- 
 ance on the czarevitch Dmitri, and that he recognised by 
 certain remarkable tokens his undoubted identity with the 
 young man then before him. The real Dmitri, if alive in 
 1G03, would have been about twenty-two years old ; that was 
 the apparent age of the stranger. The latter had a wart on 
 the forehead, another under the right eye, and one arm 
 a little longer than the oilier ; and Ivan's son was said to 
 have been marked in the very same way. 
 
 There was an end to all doubts. The Polish nobles thronged 
 to prince Constantine's mansion to be presented to the 
 rightful czar of all the Eussias, to offer their services to 
 him, and invite him to the most sumptuous entertainments.
 
 A.D. 1603] THE EALSE DMITEI. 1G9 
 
 His deportment was such as fully became his alleged birth. 
 Perfectly at his ease among the noble palatines ; gracious, 
 affable, but always preserving his dignity, he accepted their 
 services with tbe air of one who confers a favour, and with 
 assurances that he would one day reward them. He spoke 
 Polish as well as Eussian, perhaps with more facility; 
 knew a few words of Latin, and wrote with a bold and rapid 
 hand, which' was enough in those days to prove that he had 
 received a liberal education. Moreover, he was minutely 
 versed in the history of Eussia, and in the genealogies of all 
 the great families, their several interests, rivalries, and various 
 fortunes. In short, he had thoroughly learned his part as 
 pretender, and played it admirably. Adroitly flattering the 
 prejudices of his entertainers, he led them to attribute to him, 
 rather than confessed, a certain partiality for Polish manners 
 and usages, and seemed to set light by the institutions of 
 Eussia, and even by the superstitions of the Greek church. 
 In fine, and this was no small merit in the eyes of a warlike 
 nobility, he was a most accomplished horseman, indefatigable 
 in field sports, and excelled in all exercises that required 
 vigour or agility. 
 
 Boris was not slow to hear of the appearance of this for- 
 midable pretender on the frontier, and the reception he met 
 with in Poland. What made the danger more pressing was, 
 that whilst the palatines were feasting the self-styled Dmitri, 
 a Eussian monk, named Gregory, or Grishka Otrepief, was 
 going about among the disaffected Don and Zaporogue Cos- 
 sacks announcing to them the speedy arrival of the czarevitch, 
 and urging them to take up arms in his behalf. Boris made 
 haste to get his rival into his hands, but nothing could be 
 more injudicious than the way in which he set about effect- 
 ing his purpose. In offering the brothers Wiszniowiecki 
 money and lands if they would give up the impostor to him, 
 he took the surest means of confirming their belief that then* 
 guest was really the person whose name he assumed. The 
 indignant palatines dismissed the agents of Boris without 
 deigning to make them any reply, and carried Dmitri for 
 greater security into the interior of Poland, where he was 
 received with royal honours by George Mniszck, palatine of 
 Sandomir, father-in-law of prince Constantino. At Sandomir 
 another witness was found to identify Dmitri. This was an
 
 170 HISTOET Or EUSSIA. [CH. IV. 
 
 old soldier who had been a prisoner in Eussia, and who de- 
 clared that he perfectly recognised in the adult the features 
 of the child he had often seen at Uglitch. But what contri- 
 buted more than anything else to advance the pretender'3 
 fortunes was the interest he had now excited in the mind of 
 Eangoni, the papal nuncio, whose influence was paramount 
 with the weak and fanatic Sigismond, king of Poland. A 
 compact was entered into, through the medium of the Jesuits, 
 between the nuncio and Dmitri, by virtue of which the latter 
 was to bring over Eussia to the church of Eome, and Eangoni 
 was to support him with all his influence in Poland and 
 throughout Europe. 
 
 Dmitri now privately abjured the Greek faith in presence 
 of the nuncio, and signed a contract of marriage with Marina, 
 the youngest daughter of Mniszek, by which he settled upon 
 her the towns of Novgorod aud Pskof, and engaged to 
 pay her father a million of Polish florins as soon as he should 
 have ascended the throne. Soon afterwards he signed an- 
 other deed, by which he ceded the city of Smolensk and all 
 Severia to Mniszek and the king of Poland, to be divided 
 between them. These engagements, as well as his abjuration, 
 were to be kept secret for the present, and Dmitri continued 
 outwardly to observe the forms of the Greek ritual. He was 
 next presented by the nuncio in a solemn audience to Sigis- 
 mond, who saluted him as prince of Moscow, assigned him a 
 pension of 40,000 florins, and authorised him " to accept the 
 counsels and services of the subjects of the Polish crown." 
 The pension was an illusory aid, for it was to be paid by 
 Mniszek, Sigismond's nearly insolvent debtor, nor would 
 the king take up arms in the pretender's cause in violation 
 of the truce of twenty years which had been concluded with 
 Eussia; but it was a great thing that he had recognised 
 Dmitri as the rightful czar, and had permitted him to accept 
 the counsels and services of the Poles — that is to say, to levy 
 troops and prepare an expedition against Boris. Dmitri im- 
 mediately hastened to the frontier, and prepared to enter 
 Severia, where his Cossack partisans had already begun hosti- 
 lities against the government in their own desultory manner. 
 
 For a long time Boris was reluctant to appear, by the 
 magnitude of his preparations, to confess his sense of impend- 
 ing danger, and lend importance to his rival's claims. Affecting
 
 X.D. 1G01] THE EALSE DMITEI. 171 
 
 to regard Mm with contempt, lie thought to ruin him utterly 
 in the opinion of his Polish protectors and the Eussian 
 people by identifying him with the apostate monk Grishka 
 Otrepief. This man, whose parentage was well known, was 
 the nephew of a person high in the confidence of Boris, and 
 was notorious for his profligate and vagabond life. "We have 
 already mentioned him as a missionary on behalf of the pre- 
 tender among the Cossacks; but his own uncle loudly declared 
 that he and the spurious Dmitri were one and the same. 
 This opinion has been adopted by Karamsin and most mo- 
 dern historians ; Merimee, on the other hand, maintains that 
 it rests only on the assertion of Boris and his partisans, and 
 that it is inconsistent with known facts and dates, as well as 
 with the positive testimony of Margeret and others who knew 
 both the monk and his master. "We have said that while the 
 latter was revealing himself to the Polish nobles, the former 
 was busy among the Cossacks ; but this seemingly decisive 
 fact is invalidated by a statement made by Karamsin. He 
 says, without naming his authority, that while the real Otre- 
 pief was figuring as Dmitri in Lithuania and Poland, his con- 
 federate Leonidas, another monk, had assumed the name he 
 discarded, and was acting as his agent on the Ukraine. 
 If we assume, with Karamsin, that Otrepief was himself the 
 false Dmitri, nothing could have been better adapted to his 
 purpose than this ingenious artifice ; in the absence, however, 
 of any proof that it was put in practice, we must be content 
 to leave the main question unsolved. It is a question, in- 
 deed, more curious than important, since the well-authenti- 
 cated death of the real Dmitri leaves us no room to doubt 
 that the person, whoever he was, who afterwards assumed 
 his name, was an impostor. 
 
 Whilst Boris was fulminating his proclamations, and the 
 patriarch his anathemas against " the rascally disrobed monk, 
 the apostate, rebel, and magician, who wished to introduce 
 the Latin heresy into Russia, and to build Catholic churches 
 in the orthodox land," the object of their invective was re- 
 plying to them with more successful rhetoric, and gathering 
 recruits under his banners. On the 31st of October, 1G0-1, 
 he entered the Eussian territory, and marched on Moravsk, a 
 small fortified town of the present government of Tchernigof. 
 His little force consisted of about eleven hundred Polish
 
 172 HISTORY OF ETTSSIA. [CH. XV. 
 
 lances and their followers, making together upwards of three 
 thousand horse, five hundred foot of the same nation, and 
 some thousand Russian refugees. This was a very small 
 force with which to undertake the conquest of a vast empire, 
 but it swelled rapidly on its march. Town after town joy- 
 fully submitted to Dmitri, and the inhabitants, along with 
 bread and salt, the customary tokens of allegiance, brought 
 him their governors and other officers set over them by Boris, 
 and put them bound and gagged into his hands. Dmitri 
 liberated all these prisoners, and treated them in a manner 
 not less politic than humane. Many other functionaries 
 voluntarily deserted to him, and it was not until he arrived, 
 on the 23rd of November, before the walls of Novgorod- 
 Severski that he saw the face of an enemy. Peter Basmanof 
 had thrown himself into that town with a corps of five 
 hundred strelitz from Moscow, had set fire to the lower town, 
 and retired into the citadel. A flag was sent to summon him 
 to surrender in the name of the Czar and Grand- Prince 
 Dmitri. Standing on the ramparts with a lighted match in 
 his hand he replied to the envoy : " The Grand- Prince and 
 Czar is at Moscow, and your Dmitri is a robber who shall be 
 impaled, and his accomplices with him. Be oft" if you value 
 your life." Bepeated efforts were made to suborn Basmanof, 
 but all in vain ; an attempt was made to storm the fortress, 
 and was repulsed; three weeks were spent by tbe Polish 
 eugineers in preparing means for burning the palisades which 
 their cannons were too light to destroy ; but the garrison waa 
 aware of the project, and encountered it with such spirit that 
 the besiegers were forced to abandon it. Their losses were 
 considerable ; their supplies were wasting away, and this long 
 delay before a petty fortress spread discouragement amongst 
 Dmitri's troops, and gave time to those of Boris to muster 
 and advance. 
 
 Dmitri alone did not share the despondency of his fol- 
 lowers, and his steadfastness was soon rewarded by an un- 
 expected piece of good fortune. A train of waggons loaded 
 with casks of honey fell into the hands of his partisans, and 
 in these casks was found a sum of 80,000 ducats, which Boris 
 was sending to the commandants of the towns that still ad- 
 hered to him. At the same time the important fortress of 
 Putivle declared in favour of Dmitri ; and in less than three
 
 a.d. 1601] dmitri's victory at Novgorod. 173 
 
 days tliis example was followed by Rylsk, Sievsk, Voroneje, 
 and forty other places of more or less strength. The siege of 
 Novgorod was now prosecuted with renewed spirit, though 
 with no marked success. Basmanof, however, being aware 
 that an army was on its march from Moscow, adroitly con- 
 cluded a truce of a fortnight, engaging to surrender at the 
 end of that time if he was not succoured. 
 
 Godunof probably now perceived the error he had com- 
 mitted in affecting to despise the " rascally monk ;" the con- 
 struction put by the people and the soldiery upon his conduct 
 had been the reverse of that on which he had calculated ; for 
 their belief was, that Godunof was really afraid to oppose the 
 true son of Ivan. Boris might still have repaired this first 
 error if he had put himself at the head of his troops and 
 marched in person against the impostor. But his health was 
 broken ; he was no longer the man who, as regent, had in- 
 spired the drooping hearts of the Russians with his own 
 courage, and saved Moscow from the Tatar invaders. As if 
 his coward conscience would not suffer him to march even 
 against the shade of Dmitri, he committed his fortunes to 
 the hands of the boyars whom he suspected ;. and while he 
 issued the most peremptory orders that all who were capable 
 of bearing arms should repair with all speed to Briansk, he 
 seemed himself afraid to quit the capital. By the utmost 
 exertion of his authority, and a rigorous inquisition backed 
 by confiscations and the knout, fifty thousand men were 
 brought together at Briansk in the course of six weeks. In 
 1598 a less space of time had sufficed to assemble half a 
 million of fighting men at the mere word of a still popular 
 czar. 
 
 On the 25th and 28th of December there was some skirmish- 
 ing between the outposts, but neither Dmitri nor Mstislavski, 
 Godunof 's general, was in haste to bring on a general action. 
 The former expected to see the hostile army pass over to him 
 en masse ; and the latter thought that the enemy, who were 
 hardly fifteen thousand strong, would disperse without fight- 
 ing. Neither expectation being fulfilled, Dmitri marched out 
 of his entrenched camp at daybreak on the 31st, and daringly 
 took up his position in order of battle in an open plain, 
 extremely unfavourable to an army so inferior in numbers. 
 His principal force consisted of six or seven hundred Polish
 
 174 HISTOET OF ET7SSIA. [CH. XV. 
 
 lmights cased in complete mail, and their pocJioIiki, or 
 esquires, who were armed ahnost as well as their masters. 
 Putting himself at the head of this choice corps, Dmitri 
 harangued his soldiers with inspiring energy. "Almighty 
 God !" he cried aloud, " if my cause is unjust, may thy wrath, 
 fall on me alone ! But thou knowest my right, and will make 
 my arm inYincible !" He then gave the word to charge. The 
 Russian right wing was broken at the first shock by the 
 Polish lancers, and driven in upon the centre ; the whole 
 Muscovite army was disordered, and the soldiers fled, throw- 
 ing down their arms and shouting, " The czarevitch ! the 
 czarevitch!" Prince Mstislavski, a brave soldier though a 
 bad general, strove in vain to rally his dismayed cavalry, who 
 sought to excuse their disgrace by imputing their own fears 
 to their horses, saying that the latter were afraid to face the 
 Poles, for they looked like a troop of wild beasts, every man 
 of them having a shaggy bearskin over his armour. Mstis- 
 lavski fell from his horse, bleeding from fifteen wounds, and 
 was with difficulty rescued and borne off from the field. If 
 Dmitri had followed up his advantage, the route of the 
 Muscovites would have been complete ; but, meanwhile, 
 Basmanof made a sortie, and set fire to the camp. Dmitri 
 was obliged to put an end to the battle in order to repel this 
 attack, and Grodunof 's generals were enabled to effect their 
 retreat under cover of the woods. 
 
 Brilliant as the victory was, it brought Dmitri nothing but 
 barren glory. Badly as the Russians had fought, they had 
 shown no disposition to forsake the cause of Boris for his 
 own. They had not surrendered but fled, and very few 
 deserters had passed over to him. He knew that without 
 the voluntary submission of the Russians neither the Poles 
 nor the Cossacks would be able to overthrow Boris ; and there 
 was another and more numerous army on its march from 
 Moscow, which might resume hostilities in a few days. 
 While he was in this untoward predicament, there arrived a 
 peremptory order from Sigismond, commanding the Poles to 
 return home forthwith. Apparently this order had been ex- 
 torted from the king of Poland by the threats of Boris's 
 agents, and would not have been issued if the victory of 
 Novgorod had been known at the court of Cracow ; but the 
 inconceivable prolongation of the siege of a petty fortress,
 
 A.D. 1605] DMITEI DEFEATED AT DOBETNITCni. 175 
 
 and the immense preparations -which the czar was said to be 
 making, had greatly diminished the probability of the pre- 
 tender's success. All the palatines and the principal Polish 
 gentlemen, including even Mniszek, obeyed the command 
 of their sovereign a fortnight after the battle of Novgorod, 
 and only four hundred Poles remained with Dmitri. To 
 continue the siege of Novgorod was no longer possible ; to 
 shut himself up in one of the fortified towns that had declared 
 in his favour appeared to him more dangerous than to hazard 
 another battle. A desperate stroke might be successful, and 
 the second army might be less faithful to Boris than the first. 
 Dmitri felt besides that there is no safety for a pretender but 
 in bold action, and that he is lost the moment he appears to 
 doubt his own fortune. Determined, therefore, to risk every- 
 thing, he broke up his camp, and after passing some days at 
 Sievsk to refresh his troops, he took the field again with 
 hardly fifteen thousand men, most of them Cossacks. 
 
 Mstislavski was disabled by his -wounds ; Basmanof, the 
 only other commander who had earned the approbation of 
 Boris, was summoned to Moscow to be loaded with extra- 
 ordinary honours, which were a tacit reproach to others, and 
 excited the jealousy of the higher nobility to a dangerous 
 degree. "Whether it was that Boris feared to exasperate that 
 jealousy, or that he detained his best officer for the defence 
 of his capital and his person in case of extremity, he com- 
 mitted a capital fault in depriving his army of the only man 
 fit to lead it, and another in giving the command to Vassili 
 Shuiski, who, like Mstislavski, was personally brave, but 
 otherwise incompetent. No one knew better than Shuiski 
 that the so-called Dmitri was an impostor, and he had no 
 thought of promoting his success ; but though he fought for 
 Boris, he never forgot the wrongs he had sustained at his 
 hands ; in short, he was willing to defend the czar against 
 the pretender, but not to make him too secure. 
 
 On the 20th of January, 1605, Shuiski and the other 
 generals drew out their united forces, amounting to seventy 
 thousand men, on the plain of Dobrynitchi. Dmitri did not 
 hesitate to attack them with less than a quarter of their 
 numbers. As at the battle of Novgorod, he prayed aloud, 
 harangued his army, and divided it into three corps. Eight 
 thousand mounted Zaporogues formed the main body ; four
 
 176 HISTOET OF RUSSIA. [CH. XV. 
 
 thousand Cossack infantry were posted on a hill with the 
 artillery ; the vanguard, led by Dmitri in person, consisted of 
 the four hundred Poles and two thousand mounted Eussians. 
 Gallantly charging the enemy's centre, he routed and chased 
 their cavalry, bore down the foreign legion in spite of their 
 stout resistance, and fell upon the Muscovite infantry and 
 artillery. He was received with a general discharge from 
 fourteen cannons and sixteen thousand muskets. The hurried 
 and ill-directed fire emptied but a dozen saddles, and when 
 the smoke was cleared away Dmitri's lances were seen flash- 
 ing in the midst of a great gap rent in the enemy's line. Had 
 the Zaporogues seconded their intrepid commander, he would 
 probably have achieved a complete victory ; but they stood 
 stock still, bribed, it is said, by Boris. Meanwhile, Walther 
 von Bosen and the French captain Margeret rallied the 
 foreign legion, and gave the Eussians time to follow their 
 example. The Zaporogues wheeled round and quitted the 
 field without striking a blow. The day was lost for Dmitri ; 
 he fled; his horse was wounded, and the pursuit was hot. 
 Fortunately for him it was checked for a moment by his four 
 thousand Cossack infantry, who kept their ground without 
 flinching against the whole Muscovite army, and were killed 
 to a man, defending their cannons to the last. But in spite 
 of this diversion not one of the fugitives would have reached 
 Sievsk alive, had not Shuiski and the other voyevodes mani- 
 festly favoured the pretender's flight, their interest forbidding 
 them to relieve Boris from all cause for fear. They gave 
 orders to stop the pursuit, saying, " The fowl is in the pot,"* 
 a common phrase which was understood by the soldiers as 
 meaning that Dmitri was slain or taken. Beaten he was ; he 
 had lost by death or treachery seven-eighths of his army and 
 all his artillery and baggage ; but all this was really nothing 
 whilst he retained the prestige of his name. 
 
 "Whilst Dmitri was continuing his flight to Putivle, which 
 from its strength and its vicinity to the frontier offered him 
 a secure asylum, the czar's voyevodes remained at Dobry- 
 nitchi, busying themselves only with executions. They 
 hanged all their prisoners, except a few whom they sent to 
 Moscow, tortured and shot tho inhabitants of the province of 
 
 * " Popahia kur vo shtshi :" literally, "The fowl has fallen into the 
 cabbage soup."
 
 A.I). 1G05] SIEGE OE KEOMT. 177 
 
 Komarnitsk, and by these stupid cruelties augmented tlie 
 rancour of the people against Boris, and their attachment to 
 Dmitri, who behaved with invariable clemency even to his 
 enemy's most zealous servants. Instead of marching instantly 
 to exterminate the remains of the rebels, Shuiski dismissed a 
 part of his troops immediately after his victory, under pre- 
 tence of economising his scanty provisions; and when he 
 moved it was only to make a show of besieging Bilsk, where 
 Dmitri had halted for a while, but which he had already left. 
 After remaining inactively before that town for a fortnight, 
 he drew off his troops into winter quarters, and sent word to 
 the czar that no more could be done for that season. This 
 was not what Boris had expected, and his anger against the 
 voyevodes was now the greater for the short-lived joy with 
 which the victory of Dobrynitchi had inspired him. He had 
 been profuse of thanks, rewards, and promises to the army 
 and its leaders, and had urged them to complete the work so 
 well begun, assuring them that he was ready to share his last 
 shirt with his faithful servants. His displeasure was now 
 extreme, and he expressed it in a manner which excited deep 
 and general resentment. From that moment several digni- 
 taries of the army were visibly disposed in favour of the 
 impostor, and a growing desire was manifested to get rid of 
 Boris. By way, however, of ostensibly obeying the peremp- 
 tory orders of their sovereign, Shuiski and Mstislavski 
 marched out of camp, but only to engage in futile and 
 illusory operations. Leaving Dmitri undisturbed in Putivle, 
 where fresh adherents were daily rallying round him, they 
 sat down with all their forces before the little town of 
 Kromy, which was defended only by wooden fortifications, 
 and a garrison of six hundred Don Cossacks, under the valiant 
 Hetman Korella, whom the chroniclers denominate " a mighty 
 magician." The besiegers set fire with incendiary arrows to 
 the palisades of Kromy, but were greatly amazed to find a 
 wide ditch and an earthen rampart behind them. Abandon- 
 ing the hope of carrying the place by a coup de main, they 
 contented themselves with bombarding it; but the garrison 
 were perfectly protected by their casemates, and often mado 
 vigorous sorties by means of long burrows carried out from 
 the great ditch. Whenever a Muscovite post showed any 
 negligence, a band of Cossacks would rise out of the ground, 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 HISTOET OF RUSSIA. [CH. XV. 
 
 cut it to pieces, and vanish like foxes in their earths. Thus, 
 incessantly harassed by an invisible enemy, an army of 
 eighty thousand men, fully supplied with artillery, lay for 
 two months before that petty fortress, rather as besieged than 
 as besiegers. 
 
 Meanwhile Dmitri made good use of his opportunities. 
 He issued letters and manifestoes, which were received with 
 avidity throughout the country ; his agents wrought upon 
 the disaffection of the army ; and several men of rank, and 
 a great number of soldiers, left the camp at Kromy and re- 
 paired to Putivle to offer their services to the pretender. 
 Alarmed by the success of these intrigues and by the inert- 
 ness of his army, Boris sought other means to get rid of his 
 rival. Three monks arrived at Putivle with letters from the 
 Patriarch Job and from the czar, the latter of whom pro- 
 mised the townspeople a plenary amnesty and magnificent 
 rewards if they would deliver up the impostor to him, alive 
 or dead. The inhabitants of Putivle being all devoted to 
 Dmitri, the monks had no sooner begun to make overtures 
 among them than they were arrested. Being put to the 
 torture, two of them resolutely kept silence ; but the third 
 confessed that the youngest of them had a subtle poison con- 
 cealed in the sole of his boot, to be administered by order of 
 Boris to the czarevitch, with the connivance of two boyars, 
 who had traitorously insinuated themselves into his confi- 
 dence. The exposure of such attempts as these was more 
 serviceable to the pretender's cause than a victory in the field. 
 After punishing the traitors, Dmitri wrote to the patriarch 
 Job and to Boris, vaunting the special protection which 
 Heaven vouchsafed to him, the true czar, and reproaching 
 them with the vile means to which they had recourse so 
 awkwardly. To Boris he said with poignant irony, that he 
 was graciously disposed to extend mercy towards him. " Let 
 him descend from the throne he has usurped, and seek in the 
 solitude of the cloisters to reconcile himself with Heaven ; 
 in that case I will forget his crimes, and even assure him of 
 my sovereign protection." 
 
 To be addressed in words like these must have smitten the 
 haughty spirit of Boris with mortal anguish ; for he felt that 
 the power to punish such an indignity had passed away from 
 him. An impalpable force had neutralised all the efibrts of 
 his strong will and subtle genius, — all the resources of his ab-
 
 A.D. 1G05] DEATH OF BORIS. 179 
 
 solute authority. Like a magician mocked and undone by 
 his own familiars, he felt himself the victim of the universal 
 perfidy he had spread around him. Outwardly his state was 
 still unchanged ; he was still the autocrat, whom his slaves 
 approached only with trembling and adulation. The busi- 
 ness of the council proceeded as usual ; the court, pre-emi- 
 nent among those of Europe for its gorgeous splendour, was 
 as magnificent as ever. But every heart was full of feelings 
 which the face belied. Some disguised their terror ; others 
 their secret joy ; and Boris above all had to make super- 
 human efforts to hide his despair. In this awful eonfiict 
 with destiny he won the last prize in his career of ambition, 
 — to die as he had lived, a monarch. On the 13th of April, 
 1605, he presided at the council-board as usual ; received 
 some distinguished foreigners ; dined with them in "the 
 gilded hall ;" but immediately after dinner he was seized with 
 sudden illness, and blood burst from his nose, ears, and 
 mouth. In the brief interval between his being attacked and 
 sinking into insensibility, he was consecrated a monk by the 
 name of Bogolep ;* and two hours afterwards he expired in 
 the fifty-third year of his age, after a reign of six years. 
 Popular belief ascribed his death to poison, administered by 
 his own hand ; but we can be at no loss to account for it 
 without adopting the improbable supposition of suicide. 
 So long as the czar lived, and the army had not actually 
 revolted, the pretender's aspiring fortunes were not secured 
 from all chance of failure. The existence of Boris was the 
 only safeguard of his family. Would so cool a calculator 
 have thrown away a chance however faint ? Would a man of 
 such energy and resolution, so noted for the depth and ten- 
 derness of his domestic affections, have wilfully hastened the 
 triumph of his foe, and basely abandoned his wife and chil- 
 dren to inevitable destruction — to destruction only rendered 
 inevitable by his own act ?f 
 
 * i. e. Agreeable to God. 
 
 f " Why should I play the Roman fool, aud die 
 
 On my own sword?" 
 We have already alluded to the obvious analogy between the Boris of 
 history and the ideal Macbeth. The chief difference between them 
 consists in the far greater strength of character belonging to the 
 former. 
 
 v o
 
 180 HISTORY OP RUSSIA. [CH. XVI. 
 
 CHAPTEE XVI. 
 
 FEODOR BORISSOVITCH — THE EALSE DMITRI. 
 
 TnE deatli of Boris had been so sudden and unforeseen, 
 that Dmitri's partisaus in Moscow were unprepared to act on 
 the instant ; the accession of Feodor, the son of the deceased 
 czar, aged about sixteen, was therefore proclaimed without 
 opposition, and the oath of allegiance to him was taken by- 
 all orders, from the patriarch and the grand boyars to the 
 burghers and workpeople. Shuiski and Mstislavski Avere 
 recalled to the capital to aid the young czar with their 
 counsels ; and Basmanof was sent to take the command of 
 the army, and administer the oath of fidelity to the soldiers. 
 That ceremony was accomplished without difficulty, for, not- 
 withstanding the prevalence of disaffection, no one dared to 
 take the first step in open rebellion ; but hardly six weeks 
 elapsed before Feodor was deposed and strangled without 
 a sword drawn or a shot fired in his defence. 
 
 "When Basmanof quitted Moscow, his loyalty appeared as 
 incontestable as his courage and capacity ; and possibly it 
 was not until he had learned from personal observation how 
 much the voyevodes and the army were disposed in favour of 
 Dmitri, that he conceived the idea of betraying his trust. 
 Be that as it may, it is certain that soon after his arrival at 
 Kromy he began to negotiate secretly with Dmitri. Seeing 
 the weakness of the throne, and fearing the ambition of the 
 numerous family of the Grodunofs, he doubtless thought it 
 better for himself in the first place, and perhaps for liussia 
 too, to commit the sceptre to the bold hands of an impostor 
 even, whose courage and enterprising spirit extorted his invo- 
 luntary admiration. Besides, he could not but foresee that 
 should he save Eeodor's crown, the claims of the czar's pre- 
 server would always be eclipsed by those of the least of the 
 Godunofs ; whereas an adventurer without family Avould be- 
 stow the first place in his favour on the general who should 
 have opened to him the gates of Moscow. 
 
 On the 7th of May the troops were all under arms. Bas- 
 manof harangued them, and proclaimed Dmitri czar of
 
 A.D. 1605] FEODOR II. BOEISSOVITCn. 181 
 
 Moscow. The greater number responded with enthusiastic 
 acclamations ; the troops under the command of Ivan Go- 
 dunof, Feodor's uncle, threatened resistance, but were over- 
 awed by superior numbers, and he himself was arrested and 
 put in chains. The next day prince Vassili Galitzin hastened 
 to Putivle to tender the submission of the army to the czar 
 Dmitri, and as a pledge thereof to deliver the prisoner Ivan 
 Godunof into his hands. Dmitri received his new subjects 
 with his usual affability, and sent orders to Basmanof to 
 make ready to march to the capital. 
 
 Meanwhile Feodor still occupied the Kremlin, and Moscow 
 obeyed him. A great city well fortified, and containing a 
 large garrison and a vast population, was not to be carried 
 by a coup de main ; it seemed also imprudent to appear before 
 it with an army whose steadfastness in its new faith remained 
 still to be proved. Dmitri wished to sound the dispositions 
 of the inhabitants ; but his letters were intercepted, and the 
 bearers put to death by the Godunofs, who commanded in 
 Feodor's name. Not dismayed by these examples, two 
 officers, Pushkin and Plestcheief, arrived on the 1st of June 
 at Krasnoe Selo, a large town near Moscow, where many 
 wealthy merchants of the capital resided. The two envoys 
 assembled the chief men of the place, and read to them a 
 letter from Dmitri promising an amnesty in case of imme- 
 diate submission, and threatening merciless vengeance in 
 the opposite event. Struck bv the confident tone assumed 
 by Dmitri, the inhabitants of Krasnoe Selo marched en masse 
 with his envoys into Moscow, and convoking the people to 
 the great square, called upon them to acknowledge and pro- 
 claim their lawful sovereign Dmitri, the son of Ivan. They 
 were seconded by the majority of the boyars of the council, 
 and by many grandees whom Boris had exiled, and who had 
 returned after his death to the capital. The people, who 
 had long been wrought upon by Dmitri's emissaries, rent the 
 air with acclamations, and in a moment the revolution was 
 consummated. Petreius relates, that the Muscovites called 
 upon Vassili Shuiski, who had presided over the inquest at 
 Uglitch, to declare whether or not it was true that Dmitri 
 had been killed. Shuiski was not the man to make himself 
 a martyr for the cause of truth, or for that of the Godunofs, 
 and he declared without hesitation that the body which had
 
 182 HISTOET OF EUSSIA. [CH. XYI. 
 
 been exhibited to hhn was not that of the czarevitch, but of 
 a pope's son who bad been murdered instead of him. Satis- 
 fied with this declaration, the populace burst into the 
 Kremlin, seized Feodor, his sister Xenia, and his motber, 
 and removed them to the house whicb Boris bad occupied 
 before bis accession to the throne. There they were kept 
 prisoners till their fate should bave been decided by the new 
 sovereign, but otherwise they were treated with respect. 
 All the rest of the G-odunofs were sent off in cbains to 
 Dmitri's camp. 
 
 Tbesa events being promptly made known to the new 
 czar, be sent prince Vassili Gralitzin and Massalski to the 
 capital as his plenipotentiaries. Their first act was to de- 
 pose the patriarch Job, and shut bim up in a monastery, 
 though be had already professed his willingness to crown 
 with his own bands the man be had so recently anathematised 
 as a renegade monk. Then followed the murder of Eeodor 
 and his mother, whose bodies were carried witbout ceremony 
 to a monastery beyond tbe city walls, along with the remains 
 of Boris, which were no longer allowed to rest in the sepul- 
 chre of tbe czars. It was given out that the victims had 
 poisoned themselves ; but Petreius declares that when their 
 bodies were exposed in public, be himself saw on their necks 
 tbe marks of the cords with which they had been strangled. 
 It is possible, as Dmitri's most recent biographer remarks, 
 that this deed was not directly commanded by himself. 
 Most of the chroniclers allege that it was so ; but their 
 assertions rest only upon vague presumptions. The zeal of 
 Dmitri's agents, says Merimee, " doubtless had no need of 
 positive instructions. Tbe sequel of this young adventurer's 
 bistory shows that, far from being cruel, be was good-natured 
 and generous to a degree, which was very rare in those days 
 even among the most civilised nations. I am more inclined to 
 believe that men who, within a month, bad taken two oaths, 
 and successively betrayed Boris and Eeodor, eagerly seized, 
 without orders, tbe opportunity to remove enemies out of 
 their new master's way, and objects of remorse and dread 
 out of their own." The only member of the Grodunof family 
 who was put to death by the avowed order of Dmitri was 
 Semen, the bead of the secret police under Boris, and he was 
 probably sacrificed to the vengeance of the Bussian nobility^
 
 A.D. 1605] DMITEI'S ENTET INTO MOSCOW. 183 
 
 by whom lie was universally detested. The other members 
 of the family were banished to Siberia, or to various for- 
 tresses ; and if we consider that in those times it was no 
 unusual thing to exterminate a whole family for the crime 
 of its head, it must be owned that Dmitri manifested a 
 moderation at which his enemies themselves had reason to 
 be surprised. 
 
 Dmitri was not in haste to approach his capital, and there 
 was wisdom in his delay. Merimee hazards a conjecture 
 that he had studied Macniavelli, whose Principe had already 
 been translated into Polish, for his conduct since the defec- 
 tion of the army at Kromy seems as though it had been 
 strictly regulated by the precepts of that profound politician. 
 All the requisite acts of severity had been rapidly accom- 
 plished, and all his enemies removed, before his entry into 
 Moscow, so that he had only favours to distribute when he 
 took possession of his throne. On the 20th of June he 
 complied with the earnest entreaties of his longing subjects, 
 and entered the capital in great pomp, amidst the enthusi- 
 astic greetings of an immense multitude that thronged the 
 streets, the windows, and the housetops. Never was a be- 
 loved monarch received with a more joyous welcome. But 
 when the procession began to defile across the great square 
 before the Kremlin, there arose a sudden whirlwind, so vio- 
 lent that the horsemen could with difficulty keep their 
 saddles ; the air was filled with thick clouds of dust, and the 
 czar and his cortege were for a moment hidden from the 
 multitude. Struck by the omen, the superstitious Musco- 
 vites crossed themselves, and whispered, " God keep us from 
 harm." But the wind fell, and the untoward incident was 
 forgotten. Soon after a shock was given to the feelings of 
 the devout. At the moment when Dmitri dismounted to 
 kiss the relics with which the clergy advanced to meet him, 
 his Lithuanians struck up a flourish of military music that 
 drowned the chant of Te Dcum. Again, when the czar 
 entered the cathedral he was accompanied by several " Pa- 
 gans," as the Bussians called all foreigners who were not of 
 the Greek Church. Moscow had never before witnessed 
 such a profanation of its holy places. In another church, 
 however, which he visited after the cathedral, the czar's 
 conduct was beheld with sympathy and admiration. There
 
 184 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XVI. 
 
 he knelt in tears before the tomb of Ivan, and kissing it with 
 a well simulated transport, exclaimed, " father ! thy orphan 
 reigns ; and this he owes to thy holy prayers !" His emotion 
 was contagions ; all present wept with him, repeating one 
 to another, " He is indeed the son of the Terrible." 
 
 Unlike his putative father, however, Dmitri made haste 
 to shower benefits on his subjects. Not only the Nagois, 
 his pretended relations, but all those whom Boris had dis- 
 graced, were restored to their honours and fortunes. Even 
 the Grodunof family experienced his generosity, and several 
 of its members were appointed voyevodes of remote pro- 
 vinces. The salaries of the public functionaries and the pay 
 of the army were doubled ; and the new czar announced 
 that he would pay all the debts of the crown contracted by 
 his father Ivan IV. — an act of truly royal munificence, as it 
 seemed in those times, and one which had not been thought 
 of by Feodor or Boris. Dmitri also remitted many taxes 
 previously imposed on trade and on law processes ; sternly 
 discountenanced all venality; severely punished corrupt 
 judges ; and made it his practice to sit every "Wednesday 
 and Saturday in the portico of his palace to receive the peti- 
 tions of the humblest of his subjects and redress their 
 grievances. He modified the iniquitous enactments of 
 Boris respecting the peasants, and inaugurated a more 
 humane system of legislation, which still regulates, in theory 
 at least, however it be evaded in practice, the nuitual 
 relations of the Russian lord and his serf. "Whilst he 
 authorised the lord to reclaim his fugitive serf, he was careful 
 to restrain, under severe penalties, all fraudulent claims of 
 ownership. Every man was to be deemed free until his 
 bondage had been judicially established ; and the onus of 
 proof lay upon the master who claimed him. Moreover, 
 affirming the principle that the lord's right of property was 
 inseparable from the serf's right of maintenance, the czar 
 enfranchised all the peasants who had been abandoned by 
 their lords during the late famine. It often happened that 
 freemen who had engaged in service for a limited time on 
 hire, were afterwards retained as serfs against their will. 
 Dmitri made this abuse highly penal, and enacted that for 
 the future the right of ownership in serfs should be authen-
 
 A.D. 1605] MEETING OF DMITRI AND IVAN'S WIDOW. 1S5 
 
 ticated by enrolment, after sufficient proof given, in registers 
 kept by the government. 
 
 Dmitri had been a month in Moscow, and it began to 
 excite some surprise that he had not yet seen his mother, 
 though the convent to which Boris had compelled her to 
 retire was but 500 versts distant from the capital. The 
 interval was spent in preparing the czaritza for the part she 
 was required to play ; and this task, it appears, was volun- 
 tarily undertaken by her brother the Nagois, who succeeded 
 in impressing her with the advantages which would accrue 
 to their family from favouring the imposture. At last it was 
 known that the illustrious nun was about to quit her convent 
 at Vyska, and that her son was to meet her at Toininsk. 
 He set out from Moscow with great pomp, accompanied by 
 a great multitude, who looked forward to the approaching 
 interview with the most eager curiosity. A sumptuous tent 
 had been erected near Toininsk, and there it was that Dmitri 
 received Ivan's widow. They remained alone together for a 
 little while, but what passed between them was never known ; 
 presently they came out of the tent and threw themselves 
 into one another's arms with every token of the liveliest 
 affection. A unanimous shout of joy burst from the sympa- 
 thising multitude ; if any had doubted before, none doubted 
 now; not one who looked upon that touching scene but 
 would have sworn that the czar was truly the son of her who 
 was seen weeping on his bosom. Dmitri led the princess to 
 the carriage which was to convey her to Moscow, and walked 
 beside it bareheaded the greater part of the way. At the 
 outskirts of the city he mounted his horse and galloped in 
 advance, to await his mother at the gate of the convent of 
 St. Cyril in the Kremlin, which he had chosen for her tem- 
 porary residence, until he should have built a magnificent con- 
 vent expressly for her. He had made every provision for her 
 reception, with the honours due to the mother of the sove- 
 reign. She had a revenue assigned her, and a household be- 
 fitting a dowager czaritza. He went to see her every day, 
 and invariably treated her with manifestations of profound 
 respect and filial affection. He consulted her on affairs 
 of state, and her name was associated with his own in the 
 ukases he issued. The incredulous were put to confusion ;
 
 186 HISTOKT OF RUSSIA. [CH. XVI. 
 
 who could dare to question the testimony of the consecrated 
 czaritza ? A few days after her arrival Dmitri was crowned 
 in the cathedral with the ceremonies observed in the corona- 
 tions of Feodor and Boris. The day was marked, however, 
 by one novel incident, which had a bad effect. A Polish 
 Jesuit congratulated the monarch in a Latin oration, not a 
 word of which the Eussians understood, but they made no 
 doubt that it was full of horrible blasphemies against their 
 religion ; for they all knew that Latin was the language of 
 the papists. 
 
 Of nothing ought Dmitri to have been more careful than 
 to avoid prematurely provoking against himself the keen 
 jealousy and inextinguishable hatred with which the Eussians 
 regarded Poland, and everything associated with the Polish 
 name. But the impostor's rapid and marvellous success, 
 co-operating' with his youth and his natural intrepidity, had 
 filled him with an insane confidence in his star, that scorned 
 all prudential considerations. "While he astonished the 
 boyars of his council by his immense superiority to them all 
 in capacity and knowledge of state affairs, he offended them 
 beyond forgiveness by his unsparing sarcasms, and by inces- 
 santly sounding the praises of the Poles and other foreigners 
 in their ears. " Go and travel," he used to say to them.; 
 " observe the ways of civilised nations, for you are no better 
 than savages." This was in substance good advice ; but it 
 was unseasonably, and therefore unwisely, given. To mark 
 his trust in his Eussian subjects, Dmitri dismissed his 
 Polish body-guards ; but he could not forget that they had 
 stood by him when his fortunes seemed desperate, at the 
 moment when Mniszek and the other palatines had forsaken 
 him. He recompensed them with profuse liberality; they 
 had free access to him at all times, and he never addressed 
 them but as "comrades." He chose two Poles, named But- 
 shinsky, for his private secretaries ; whilst the only Eussian 
 whom he treated with the same degree of familiarity and 
 confidence was Basmanof, a man disliked by the grandees 
 as an upstart. Plattered by the preference thus shown them, 
 the Poles behaved towards the Eussians with an arrogance 
 that intensely exasperated their wounded pride. 
 
 The idea of the czar's anti-national tendencies once ad- 
 mitted, found abundant confirmation in his personal habits.
 
 A.D. 1605] DillTEl's IMPEUDEKCE. 1S7 
 
 They were such as shocked all established rules of decorum. 
 He was fond of riding a furious stallion, and would leap on 
 the animal's back without help, like the Cossacks; whereas, 
 etiquette required that a czar should be lifted into his saddle, 
 and ride slowly and gravely along. It was in that unseemly 
 manner he rode to church, instead of in his carriage like his 
 predecessors. He often neglected to salute the images of the 
 saints. He ate veal, which was deemed an unclean meat ; 
 dined without having his table blessed and sprinkled with 
 holy water, and sometimes had the impiety to rise from it 
 without washing his hands. If he had got drunk at table 
 with his buffoons like Ivan IV., none would have taken it 
 amiss; but the foreign fashion of having music at meals, 
 which he introduced, was not to be excused. Contrary to 
 the universal custom in Russia, he never indulged in a siesta 
 after dinner, but chose that time for walking about the 
 city alone, or with one companion, to the astonishment 
 of the Muscovites, who had only been used to see their 
 sovereign surrounded with all the pomp of their barbaric 
 courts. The clergy failed not to remark that in addressing 
 them he often used the phrases "your religion, your ritual," 
 whence they concluded that he had a different religion of his 
 own, which could be none other than the Latin heresy. One 
 day at a sitting of the council he was told that something 
 he had just proposed was prohibited by the seventh general 
 council of the Church. "Well, what matter?" said he; 
 " very likely it is allowed by the eighth." It may be that 
 he uttered these imprudent words in ignorance of the fact that 
 the seventh general council is the last which is acknowledged 
 by the Greek Church ; the expression, however, was regarded 
 as an abominable blasphemy, and an involuntary confession 
 of Catholicism. But what excited the most violent disgust 
 was the news that the czar was about to marry Marina 
 Mniszek — that a heretic woman, an unuaptised Pole, was to 
 be raised to the throne of orthodox Russia ! 
 
 Dmitri was prompted both by nature and circumstances 
 to aspire to the glory of conquest. His grand project was 
 the same as that of Stephen Batthori — namely, to combine 
 all the forces of the Slave race, and launch them against 
 the Turks and Tatars. A vast aggrandisement of his 
 dominions, unparalleled glory, and the consolidation of his
 
 188 HISTORY 01 RUSSIA. [CH. XVI. 
 
 authority, were the fruits he hoped to reap from this vast 
 enterprise. But it presented many dangers, the most con- 
 siderable of which were not the hazards of war. In order to 
 form the coalition of which he aspired to be the leader, 
 Dmitri was obliged to act with great circumspection with 
 regard to the king of Poland and the pope, especially the 
 latter. In Poland he had given a pledge for the conversion 
 of his subjects, and had himself become a Catholic ; but 
 though he had probably no more intention of fulfilling this 
 engagement than that which he had entered into with Sigis- 
 mond for the surrender of a part of his territories, it was 
 necessary that he should keep on good terms with both his 
 old patrons, and particularly that he should amuse the pope 
 by his pretended zeal for the interests of the Church of 
 Rome, whilst at the same time he carefully concealed his 
 change of creed from his own subjects, who were but too 
 much disposed to doubt his orthodoxy. This involved him 
 in a difficult and embarrassing correspondence with Pome, 
 where it was hardly possible to form a conception of the 
 obstacles he had to encounter. Besides this, his military 
 preparations entailed very great expense, for which the 
 treasures of the Kremlin were inadequate, largely diminished 
 as they had already been by his profusion. Under these cir- 
 cumstances he had recourse to what seemed to him the 
 readiest means of raising money. Like Charles Martel, he 
 assumed to himself the right of making the clergy bear part 
 of the cost of an expedition which had for its object the 
 glory and triumph of Christianity. He required an exact ac- 
 count of the revenues of numerous monasteries throughout his 
 empire, and plainly declared that he would not suffer so many 
 idle monks to live in affluence when a portion of Christen- 
 dom was to be delivered from Mussulman bondage. Reforms 
 and confiscations began ; several convents were suppressed, 
 and the rest had good reason to expect a very great reduc- 
 tion of their temporalities. Nor was this all ; the czar pro- 
 ceeded to acts of arbitrary spoliation. Desiring to have all 
 the people of his household, especially his foreign musicians, 
 lodged near him, he turned the monks out of the neighbour- 
 ing monasteries of Arbate and Tchertol, which he caused to 
 be comprised within the precincts of the palace. 
 
 This was his ruin. His other offences and irregularities 
 might have been endured ; the enmity of other classes he
 
 A.D. 1605] CONSPIRACY AGAINST DMITRI. 
 
 1S9 
 
 might have assuaged or curbed ; hut when he laid his sacri- 
 legious hand upon the Ark of the Lord, that is to say, upon 
 the coffers of the clergy, he raised up against himself legions 
 of implacable foes whose malice baffled resistance, for they 
 fought with the impalpable but deadly weapons of calumny 
 and superstition. The priests and monks became the in- 
 dustrious propagators of every false or exaggerated rumour 
 that could poison the minds of the people against the czar. 
 They compared him to Julian the Apostate ; and all the truly 
 royal qualities which they could not but recognise in Dmitri, 
 they turned to his vilification, as so many points of resem- 
 blance to the persecutor of the Christians. They instigated 
 a conspiracy to dethrone him, which was joined by several 
 boyars, among whom were some of those who had been the 
 first to desert the cause of Boris. In reality, the majority 
 of the nobles who had sided with Dmitri had done so 
 without caring whether or not he was the rightful heir of 
 Ivan the Terrible. They accepted him as a ready instru- 
 ment for their deliverance from a despot whom they them- 
 selves durst not attack ; and they expected to make of him 
 a King Log, under whose nominal rule each of them might 
 have free scope for the prosecution of his own ambitious 
 schemes. The new czar had disappointed their selfish calcu- 
 lations. They found in him a master as absolute as Boris, 
 but fortunately milder, less suspicious, and less prudent. 
 He had at once dismissed the host of spies whom his prede- 
 cessor had maintained with such care ; and it seemed an easy 
 thing, with the help of the clergy and the fanatic mob, to 
 push so unwary a monarch from the throne before he was 
 yet firmly seated upon it. 
 
 Foremost among the conspirators was Vassili Shuiski, 
 who, claiming to be the nearest collateral heir of the Buriks, 
 was more interested than any one else in creating a vacancy 
 of the throne. Shuiski was a bold and perfectly unscru- 
 pulous intriguer, but timid in action. By his advice tho 
 execution of the plot was deferred until the arrival of Marina 
 and her Polish retinue should have provoked a new exaspera- 
 tion of national and religious rancour, and stirred up tho 
 whole Muscovite people against the enemy of the faith. It 
 is said too, that, in the interest of the crown which lie hoped 
 to wear, he wished to await the return to Russia of the 
 pearls and diamonds amassed by Ivan and Boris, which
 
 190 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XVI. 
 
 Dmitri had sent as presents to his betrothed. This delay 
 led to the discovery of the conspiracy, and the arrest of Vas- 
 sili Shuiski and his two brothers. The latter were banished 
 to Siberia ; the former was bastinadoed and condemned to 
 lose his head ; but his sentence was commuted for banish* 
 ment at the very moment he knelt on the scaifold with the 
 axe lifted above him. Having given a solemn promise never 
 again to take part in any rebellion against his sovereign, 
 Vassili Shuiski began his journey to Siberia ; but was over- 
 taken on the road by a courier, and brought back to the 
 capital, where he and his brothers received a complete pardon. 
 His rank and his possessions were restored to him, and he 
 even took his place again in the council of the empire. "With 
 a duplicity which cost him no effort, he now conducted himself 
 to all outward appearance in such a manner as to disarm 
 suspicion, whilst being regarded by the malcontents as a 
 martyr, he continued to direct their movements with more 
 authority than ever. 
 
 Dmitri had hoped to promote a reconciliation between the 
 Muscovites and the Poles, by announcing that it was to the 
 intercessions of the latter, preferred through the medium of 
 the dowager czaritza, that he had granted Shuiski's pardon. 
 But the truth was, that the czar's Polish advisers strongly 
 urged him not to spare that convicted conspirator. " .No," 
 he replied to those who thus remonstrated with him ; " I 
 have sworn not to shed Christian blood, and I will keep my 
 oath. There are two ways of governing an empire ; tyranny 
 and generosity. I choose the latter. I will not be a tyrant. 
 I will not spare money; I will scatter it on all hands." 
 This, says Merimee, is almost the identical language of 
 Caesar to his confidants, when he had made himself master of 
 Italy in a few days.* Neither Caesar nor Demetrius disarmed 
 their enemies by clemency ; but posterity will not confound 
 them with the herd of ignoble tyrants who have died in their 
 beds. 
 
 * " Tentemushoc modo si possumus omnium voluntateni rccuperare 
 et diuturna victoria uti: quoniam reliqui crudelitate odium effugere 
 non potuerunt, neque victoriam diutius tencre, praeter ununi L. Sullam, 
 quern imitaturns non sum. Hscc nova sit ratio vincendi: ut miseri- 
 cordia et liberalitate nos muniamus." — Caesar's letter to Oppius and 
 Balbus, Cic. ad Att. 9.
 
 4..D. 1G06] MAEINA AEEIVES IN MOSCOW. 191 
 
 In the beginning of 1G0G Dmitri was threatened with a 
 civil war on the part of a new pretender, whom his own suc- 
 cess had prompted to imitate his imposture. A young man, 
 who called himself Peter Feodorovitch, but whose real name i3 
 unknown, appeared among the Cossacks of the Volga and 
 announced himself as the son of the czar Feodor and his 
 consort Irene, the sister of Boris. He had been taken from 
 his mother, he said, immediately after his birth, and placed 
 with some Cossacks, whilst a female infant had been substi- 
 tuted for him, and recognised by the credulous Feodor ; but 
 she died in her cradle. Upon the faith of this story some 
 three or four thousand Cossacks took up arms, and began to 
 pillage in the name of the lawful czarevitch. Dmitri wrote 
 to his new pretender, telling him that if he would come to 
 Moscow and prove his parentage, he should receive a pension 
 befitting his rank ; but that if he knew himself to be an im- 
 postor, he would do wisely to retire at once while he might 
 with safety. This hint, backed by military movements, made 
 Peter and his marauders disperse in the steppes, whence we 
 shall presently see them reappear. 
 
 It was not until the 12th of May that the neAV czaritza 
 arrived in Moscow, accompanied by a special embassy from 
 Sigismond, and with a retinue so numerous that it was like 
 an invading army. In spite of the czar's impatience and his 
 reiterated letters, the march from Cracow had occupied nearly 
 three months. The entry into the Russian capital was made 
 with all possible magnificence, and lacked no outward demon- 
 stration of gladness and loyalty. Marina was conducted to 
 the convent occupied by the dowager czaritza, where she was 
 to remain until her coronation, and the people were told that 
 during her residence there she was receiving instruction from 
 her pious mother-in-law in the practices of the orthodox 
 faith. But the people were in no mood to be cajoled by 
 such transparent flatteries. The first sight of the vast train 
 of armed Poles that came with the unbaptised czaritza irri- 
 tated the rankling jealousy of the Muscovites. These unin- 
 vited guests, armed cap-a-pie, and lance in hand, marched to 
 the sound of their national airs, as if they were taking pos- 
 session of a conquered city. " Is it the custom in your 
 country," said the Russians to the foreign merchants domi- 
 ciled among them, " to go to a wedding cased in steel, as if
 
 192 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XVI. 
 
 you were going to a battle ?" It was still worse when the 
 Poles alighted at their quarters, and began to unpack their 
 baggage. They had all come with the expectation of making 
 a campaign against the Tatars, and they were seen unloading 
 whole arsenals from their waggons. The people looked on 
 with anger and suspicion ; and the conspirators easily per- 
 suaded them that the czar had sent for his Polish allies, those 
 eternal enemies of Russia, to massacre all the orthodox 
 Christians. 
 
 A more plausible, but equally unfounded report, imputed 
 a sinister purpose to Sigismond's embassy. The latter was 
 simply complimentary, but the Muscovites believed that the 
 ambassadors had come to receive from the czar the cession of 
 a considerable portion of the Russian territory. By way of 
 counteracting these dangerous rumours, Dmitri took excep- 
 tion to the superscription of the letter addressed to him by 
 the king of Poland, wherein he was styled only Grrand-Prince 
 and Czar, whereas he insisted on receiving the higher title of 
 Caesar, or Emperor. Dmitri threatened to return the letter 
 unread ; the ambassadors remonstrated vehemently against 
 such an unpardonable insult ; a loug and acrimonious debate 
 ensued, and was pushed to the verge of open rupture ; finally, 
 Dmitri yielded in consideration of his approaching marriage, 
 but with a warning to the ambassadors that he would never 
 again be so complaisant. The quarrel was renewed on the 
 occasion of the marriage banquet. The ambassadors claimed 
 the right to sit at the same table with the czar. Dmitri 
 would not consent to this, because he had not invited the 
 king of Poland to his wedding. The ambassadors refused to 
 be present ; but at last, at Mniszek's urgent instances, they 
 yielded under protest, and dined at a separate table on the 
 czar's right. 
 
 Marina's conduct during the week preceding her marriage 
 was as injudicious as that of a spoiled child. Unable to put 
 the slightest restraint on her caprices, she could not conform 
 to the usages of the convent even for so short an interval. 
 She could not eat the Russian cookery, and insisted on 
 having a set of Polish cooks, to whom the Russian domestics 
 had to give place, to their intense disgust. Never supposing 
 that their skill could be questioned, the mortified Russians 
 gave out that the czar and his betrothed had brought in
 
 a.d, 1600] dmitei's marriage. 193 
 
 pagan cooks, that they might break the commands of the 
 orthodox church with respect to forbidden meats and fast 
 days. Marina complained of the tiresome babble of the 
 Greek priests, and the long litanies of the nuns. To indem- 
 nify her for these annoyances, the czar brought her musicians ; 
 and Moscow heard with horror that the holy retreat was 
 profaned with concerts, balls, and even masquerades. "When 
 the ceremonial of the marriage and the coronation was under 
 discussion, Marina insisted on going to church in the Polish 
 costume, which was the same as that of the court of 
 Prance — a long-waisted robe, a ruff two feet in diameter, 
 and hair frizzled and gathered into a thick tuft on the top of 
 the head. ISTow it was considered an abominable indecency 
 in Russia for a married woman to let her hair or the form of 
 her waist be seen ; and no czaritza had ever been crowned 
 except in the national costume, consisting of a head-dress, 
 called kokoshni/c, still worn by the peasantry, a gown hang- 
 ing straight down from above the bosom, and boots with 
 great iron-shod heels. Marina protested with petulant in- 
 dignation that she would never submit to be made a fright of 
 in that manner. The affair became so serious, that it was 
 brought before the council. Dmitri exhausted all his 
 eloquence in vain efforts to convince his boyars that the 
 choice of a toilette was a matter in which the wisest states- 
 men might fairly defer to the superiority of a woman's 
 judgment : they were inexorable. Marina had to conform 
 to the national usage on the wedding-day ; but immediately 
 after it she laid aside the odious Russian garb, and never 
 appeared in it again. 
 
 The ceremony of the marriage and the coronation took 
 place on the 18th of May, in the cathedral, with extraor- 
 dinary magnificence ; but the people remarked with horror 
 that it was an unlucky day, a Priday, and moreover that it 
 was the eve of a great festival, that of St. Nicholas. They 
 thought it scandalous that a marriage should be celebrated 
 on such a day ; and they made no doubt that Dmitri had 
 chosen the day on purpose to mark his contempt for public 
 opinion. The czar was held responsible for the indecorous 
 manner in which the Poles behaved in church, leaning their 
 backs against the iconostase, sitting on tombs that contained 
 revered relics, laughing and talking aloud, and appearing to 
 
 vol. I. o
 
 194 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XVI. 
 
 turn the sacred mysteries into derision. But the worst of 
 all was that the whole ceremony was gone through without 
 that ahjuration of the Latin heresy which the people expected 
 to the last moment on the part of the czaritza. Marina 
 kissed the images of the saints, received the communion 
 from the hands of the patriarch, but remained unconverted 
 and unbaptised, and yet was crowned and proclaimed as the 
 orthodox czaritza. 
 
 The revellings that followed the marriage gave occasion to 
 fresh scandals. The table-talk between the Poles and the 
 Eussians was not such as conduced to good fellowship. The 
 former hardly condescended to conceal their contempt for 
 the latter and their barbarous customs, and insolently said 
 to them, " It is we who have given you a czar." The Poles, 
 returning home from deep carousals at the palace, drew 
 upon peaceful citizens in the street, and offered violence 
 to their wives and daughters, and even to those of the 
 boyars, sometimes pursuing them into their very houses. 
 A Pole taken in the fact was about to suffer condign punish- 
 ment, but his comrades rescued him and massacred the 
 executioner. 
 
 The moment was come which Shuiski had patiently 
 awaited for so many months. He assembled the chiefs of 
 the conspiracy by night, in his house, and harangued them 
 on the necessity of immediate action. The assent of the 
 meeting was unanimous. City functionaries answered for 
 the concurrence of the people, officers for that of the 
 soldiers, and nobles for that of their dependents. The 
 Shuiski, who were enormously rich, had several thousand 
 men on whom they could rely, and these they had brought 
 from their estates to Moscow, under pretext of seeing the 
 splendours of the imperial marriage. The time was fixed 
 for the execution of the plot ; and meanwhile agents, chosen 
 from the lowest class, were to go about among the people, in 
 the markets and the public-houses, and tell them that 
 Dmitri was a heretic and an impostor, and that he was joined 
 with the Poles in a plot for an indiscriminate massacre of 
 the Muscovites on the 27th of May. A sham-fight had been 
 announced to take place that day beyond the walls ; but all 
 the innocent spectators were to be mowed down by grape, 
 and the capital of Kussia was to become a prey to the Poles,
 
 A.D. 1606] INSURRECTION AGAINST DMITRI. 195 
 
 on whom the emperor intended to bestow not only all the 
 houses of the boyars, nobles, and merchants, but even the 
 monasteries and convents, after turning out the monks and 
 marrying them to the nuns. 
 
 One of the men who spread these reports was arrested by 
 the czar's body-guards. Dmitri gave orders that he should 
 be examined by the boyars of the council ; but the latter 
 pretended that the prisoner was a drunken fellow, who had 
 talked he knew not what, and that the czar ought not to 
 give himself any concern about the raving of a drunkard, or 
 listen to every idle tale brought him by officious and blun- 
 dering Germans. 
 
 This advice coincided but too well with the czar's own 
 opinions. Relying on the attachment of the soldiery, he felt 
 himself secure against any possible attempts of an unorga- 
 nised multitude to shake his power. Besides, he had reason 
 to believe in the inexhaustible patience of the Russians, since 
 they had endured so tamely the ferocious and brutal tyranny 
 of Ivan, and the more universally felt insidious tyranny of 
 Boris. " I hold Moscow and the empire in my hand," he 
 said, " and nothing shall be done in it but by my will." In this 
 spirit he laughed at all the warnings given him by the Poles, 
 by Basmanof, and by the officers of his guard. He would 
 take no precaution for himself, not even so much as to increase 
 the ordinary guard of the palace, which consisted of but fifty 
 halberdiers, who were incapable from the nature of their 
 weapons, as well as from their scanty numbers, of offering 
 any serious resistance to an assailing multitude. 
 
 At daybreak, on the 29th of May, between three and four 
 o'clock, the whole city was in open rebellion. A body of boyars 
 and nobles was assembled in the great square on horseback, 
 and in full armour, with Vassdi Shuiski at their head. One 
 of the gates of the Kremlin was opened to them by the 
 guards, who had been previously suborned, and the whole 
 troop entered, accompanied by a countless throng of towns- 
 [iniple. At the church of the Assumption, Shuiski dis- 
 mounted, and prostrated himself before the image of our Lady 
 of Vladimir. Then rising with an inspired air, and brandish 
 ing a sword in one hand and a cross in the other : " Ortho- 
 dox Christians," he shouted, "death to the heretic!" My- 
 riads of furious voices repeated the cry : "Death to the here- 
 
 o 2
 
 196 HISTORY Or RUSSIA. [CH. XVI. 
 
 tic !" The great bell was rung, and was answered by the 
 three thousand bells of Moscow. The whole populace nocked 
 with axes and clubs to the Kremlin, or to the houses marked 
 with chalk as the abodes of the Poles, where breaking down 
 the doors, they began to massacre the sleeping inmates. 
 
 At the first sound of the tocsin, Dmitri sent to inquire the 
 cause of the alarm. Dmitri Shuiski, who was on duty in the 
 palace, sent the czar word that a great fire had broken out, 
 and then hurried off to join his brother. Presently the in- 
 creasing din of the bells and the uproar of the multitude 
 convinced the czar that something more serious than a fire 
 had set the whole city in commotion. Dressing in haste, he 
 sent Basmanof to the front of the palace to reconnoitre. 
 The outer court was already filled with an armed multitude, 
 yelling out, " Death to the impostor !" After giving a hur- 
 ried order to the halberdiers to stand to their arms, Basmanof 
 ran back to warn his master. At the same moment one of 
 the conspirators, who had followed him into the czar's apart- 
 ment, cried out : " Well ! unlucky emperor, at last thou art 
 awake. Come and give an account of thyself to the people 
 of Moscow." Basmanof snatched up the czar's sabre, cleft 
 the insolent traitor's skull, and then rushed to the peri- 
 style, which was already thronged by the conspirators. Dmitri 
 took a sword from one of his guards, and following his faith- 
 fid general, cried out to the rebels, "I am not a Boris for 
 you !" It is said that he killed several of them with his own 
 hand, whilst Basmanof, who seconded him with heart and 
 hand, appealed by name to the boyars he recognised, among 
 whom were the princes Gralitzin, Mikhail Soltikof, and 
 others, who had always professed themselves Dmitri's most 
 zealous partisans. Whilst he was endeavouring to recal 
 these traitors to their duty, one of them, Mikhail Tatistchof, 
 whom a few days before he had saved from exile, stabbed 
 him to the heart, exclaiming, "Go to hell, villain, with thy 
 czar." Dmitri and his guards were driven in from the peri- 
 style by a volley of musketry, and a series of sieges began in 
 the interior of the palace, the guards barricading themselves 
 in chamber after chamber, and the insurgents storming them 
 one after the other. When the last retreat was forced, and 
 the guards were forced to Lay down their useless halberts, the 
 czar was no longer among them.
 
 A.J). 1606] DEATII OF THE FALSE DMITEI. 197 
 
 When he found that resistance was hopeless, Dmitri threw 
 down his sword and ran to a room in the part of the palace 
 which was farthest from that assailed by the rebels. He 
 opened a window which looked out on the site of the palace 
 of Boris, which he had caused to be demolished. The window 
 was thirty feet from the ground, but there was no one in 
 sight, and he leaped down. In his fall he broke his leg, and 
 fainted with the pain. His groans were heard by some stre- 
 litz, who were there on guard, and were not in the plot. 
 They gave him water to drink, laid him on one of the founda- 
 tion stones of the ruined palace, and when he revived a little 
 and spoke, they swore they would defend him with their lives. 
 The first rebels who came to claim their prey were answered 
 with volleys of musketry ; but the news that Dmitri was 
 found brought multitudes to the spot ; the strelitz were sur- 
 rounded, and beiug threatened that unless they gave up the 
 impostor, their wives and children should be all massacred by 
 the mob, they laid down their arms, and abandoned the 
 victim to the fury of the rebels, who dragged him away to his 
 sacked palace. As he passed the spot where his guards were 
 held captive, he stretched out his hand to them in silence, in 
 token of adieu. One of them, a Livonian gentleman, named 
 Turstenberg, though unarmed, rushed forward to shield his 
 gallant master with his own body from the blows of his ruf- 
 fianly captors ; but the faithful servant was instantly mas- 
 sacred. Dmitri's agony was prolonged by the ingenious 
 malice of his assassins. They tore off his royal garments, 
 dressed him in a pastrycook's caftan, and hurried him into a 
 room in the palace to undergo the mockery of a trial. "Bas- 
 tard dog," said a Eussian nobleman, " tell us who thou art, 
 and whence thou art come." Exerting all the strength left 
 him to raise his voice, Dmitri replied, " You all kuow that I 
 am your czar, the legitimate son of Ivan Vassilievitch. Ask 
 my mother. If you desire my death, give me time at least 
 to collect my senses." Thereupon a Eussian gentleman, 
 named Valuief, forcing his way through the throng, cried out, 
 ' What is the use of so much talk with the heretic dog ? 
 This is the way I confess this Polish fifer !" And shooting 
 Dmitri through the breast, he put an end to his agony. The 
 mob then wreaked their fury on the lifeless corpse, and after 
 hacking and slashing it with axes and sabres, rolled it down
 
 198 HISTOBY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XVI. 
 
 the palace steps and threw it on that of Basmanof. " You 
 were friends in life ; go along to hell together," cried the 
 murderers in their savage exultation. The bodies were after- 
 wards dragged to the place of execution, where that of 
 Dmitri was exposed on a table, and Basmanof s on a bench 
 below it, so that the czar's feet rested on his favourite's breast. 
 A gentleman threw on Dmitri's body a masque, which he said 
 he had found in the heretic's bedchamber, in the place 
 reserved in Bussian houses for the images of the saints. 
 Another threw a set of bagpipes on his breast and thrust 
 the pipe into his mouth, saying : " Tou played upon us long 
 enough; now play for us." Others lashed the corpse with 
 their whips, crying : " Look at the czar, the hero of the 
 Germans !" The women surpassed the men in their obscene 
 fury ; for in scenes of mob violence the weakest are inva- 
 riably the most inhuman. 
 
 Marina narrowly escaped from the fate that befel her 
 husband. At first she ran half naked to hide in the cellars, 
 but was thrown down the steps by the rush of the mob. 
 They did not recognise her, and she contrived to return to 
 her own apartments, where the grand mistress of the palace 
 had the presence of mind to conceal her under her wide- 
 hooped skirts. A Bolish chamberlain, sabre in hand, guarded 
 the door of the room in which his terrified countrywomen 
 were huddled together. The rioters with a volley of fire- 
 arms shattered the door, and killed its defender and one of 
 the ladies within it. The ruffians rushed in, and with 
 hideous threats demanded the czaritza. The grand mistress 
 told them that she had escaped to her father. The age of 
 that lady preserved her from personal outrage, but the other 
 ladies of the czaritza's suite endured the worst brutality.* 
 At last some chiefs of the conspiracy put an end to the 
 abominable scene, and took Marina into safe custody. 
 
 Meanwhile a great number of the Boles, whose lodgings 
 were dispersed over the city, had been surprised in their 
 
 * Baer, p. 82, note 78. "Volumus nos omnes, unus post aliuni; 
 stuprum infcrre, unus in p — alter in v — . Audivimus polonicas 
 meretrices vestras plurium concubitus bene sustinere posse, nee ipsis 
 unus vir (sic) sufficere." Et postea nudabant sua equina pudenda 
 (proh Sodomia!) coram toto gynaeceo, dicentes: "Videte, meretrices, 
 videte nos multo fortiores sumus Polonis vestris. Probate nos."
 
 A.D. 1606] POPULAR COMMENTS ON THE DEAD DMITRI. 199 
 
 sleep and massacred without resistance. It was easy for the 
 mob to butcher defenceless domestics, musicians, and Catholic 
 priests, but not so easy to storm the mansions of the Polish 
 nobles, filled as they were with resolute and well-armed 
 heyduks and gentlemen. Each of these mansions became a 
 sort of fortress, which withstood all the disorderly assaults 
 of the rabble, and repaid them with musketry. At last the 
 chief conspirators thought it time to restore some degree of 
 quiet. About mid-day Vassili Skuiski, his brother, prince 
 Mstislavski, and the principal boyars of the council, rode 
 through the streets with a strong body of strelitz, and easily 
 prevailed on the people to desist from their unprofitable 
 attempts on the houses of the Poles ; and to the latter they 
 pledged themselves that their lives and properties should be 
 respected, if they would only remain in their houses until the 
 popular excitement had time to subside. 
 
 Por three days Dmitri's body lay open to the view of all 
 the Muscovites; but the rage of his enemies had rendered 
 this public exposition almost nugatory. In that shapeless 
 mass, all hacked and mangled, and covered with blood and 
 mire, who could recognise the gallant young man who 
 had been seen a few days before glittering in gold and jewels, 
 and wearing the imperial crown? Some persons thought 
 they perceived that the dead man had a beard, and it 
 was notorious that Dmitri had none. Conjecture, failing to 
 identify those disfigured features, suggested the idea that the 
 czar's intended murderers had a second time mistaken their 
 victim. On the third night the guards, who kept watch over 
 the body, saw a blue flame playing over the table ; it disap- 
 peared when they approached, and returned when they moved 
 back to a certain distance. This natural result of putrefac- 
 tion inspired the people with superstitious terror, and the 
 corpse was removed for burial to the Serpukhof cemetery 
 outside the walls. A hurricane had greeted Dmitri at his 
 entry into Moscow ; another accompanied him at his depar- 
 ture, and chronicles aver that it swept only those streets 
 through which the corpse was borne. Prodigies did not 
 cease even after the cause of them was laid in the grave ; 
 and the people whispered in terror that the false Dmitri was 
 a sort of vampire, being one of those wizards who, by means 
 of their infernal art, can come to life again after they are
 
 200 HISTORY OF BUSSIA. [CB\ XVII. 
 
 dead. To make this impossible in his case, the body was 
 disinterred and burnt ; the ashes were collected, mixed with 
 gunpowder, and rammed into a cannon, which was dragged to 
 the gate by which Dmitri had entered Moscow, and pointed 
 down the road leading to Poland. When the match was 
 applied, Russia fancied she was for ever delivered of the im- 
 postor. Yain hope ! His name subsisted still, with the 
 memory of his audacity and his success, and new Dmitris 
 were soon to spring from his scattered ashes. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 TASSILI IVANOVITCH SHTTISKI. 
 
 Immediately after the death of Dmitri, the boyars con- 
 certed measures for convoking deputies from all the towns, 
 and proceeding to the election of a new sovereign ; but they 
 were not allowed to accomplish their design. The throne 
 had been but four days vacant, when Shuiski directed his 
 partisans to proclaim himself. They led him forth into the 
 public place, named him czar by acclamation, and immediately 
 escorted him to the cathedral. There, in order to ingratiate 
 himself with his new subjects and make them forget the 
 illegality of his election, he took a solemn oath not to punish 
 any one without the advice and consent of the boyars ; not 
 to visit the offences of the fathers on the children ; and that 
 he would never revenge himself in any way on those who 
 had offended him in the time of Boris. Since Novgorod lost 
 its privileges, this was the first time that a sovereign of 
 Russia had pledged himself to any convention with his sub- 
 jects ; but Shuiski's oath was no guarantee for its fulfilment. 
 
 Having good reason to dread the resentment of the Polish 
 nation, Shuiski sent prince Volkonski on an embassy to 
 them, to represent the late czar as an impostor, who had 
 deluded both Poland and Russia; but the ambassador was not 
 even listened to. Sigismond and his subjects were resolved 
 to be revenged on the Russians, and to profit by the disturb- 
 ances which they foresaw would soon break out among 
 them. Shuiski was not liked by the Russian nobles, many
 
 A.D. 1606] VA8SILI SUUISKI. 201 
 
 of whom might have competed with him for the throne had 
 the choice of the nation been free ; and his conduct after his 
 elevation augmented the number of his enemies. In spite 
 of his oath he could not forget any of his old grudges ; and 
 he ventured to indulge them just enough to exasperate 
 their objects without depriving them of the power of re- 
 taliation. Moscow was the only city in the empire on the 
 allegiance of which he could rely ; but even there the people 
 had imbibed from their late excesses an alarming propensity 
 to disorder and mutiny. To meet all the dangers thickening 
 round him, Shuiski had neither an army nor money ; for 
 Dmitri's profusions and the pillage of the Kremlin had 
 exhausted the imperial treasury. His chief strength lay in 
 his renown for orthodoxy, which insured him the favour of 
 the clergy. The more to strengthen his interests in that 
 direction, he made it his first business to depose and send to 
 a monastery the heretic patriarch Ignatius, who had been 
 appointed by Dmitri, and to nominate in his stead Hermo- 
 genes, bishop of Kasan, an aged prelate, whose simplicity 
 rendered him a useful tool in the hands of the crafty czar. 
 
 Humours began to be rife in the provinces, and even in 
 Moscow, that Dmitri was not dead. Many of those who 
 had seen his mangled body exposed denied its identity, and 
 believed that one of the czar's officers had been massacred 
 instead of him. Four swift horses were missing from the 
 imperial stables ; and it was surmised that by means of 
 them Dmitri had escaped in the midst of the tumult. Three 
 strangers in Russian costume, but speaking Polish, crossed 
 the Oka in a boat, and one of them gave the ferryman six 
 ducats, saying, " Tou have ferried the czar ; when he comes 
 back to Moscow with a Polish army, he will not forget this 
 service." The same party held similar language in a 
 German inn a little farther on, in the direction of Putivle. 
 It was afterwards known that one of them was prince 
 Shakhofskoi, who, immediately upon the death of Dmitri, 
 had, witli singular promptitude, conceived the idea of finding 
 a new impostor to personate the dead one. To put an end 
 to these alarming rumours, Shuiski sent to Uglitch for the 
 body of the real czarevitch, that with the help of the 
 patriarch he might make a saint of him. "When the grave 
 was opened the body of the young prince was fouud in a
 
 202 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XVII. 
 
 perfect state of preservation, with the fresh hue of life upon 
 it, and still holding in its hands some nuts as miraculously 
 preserved as itself. It is curious that Shuiski should have 
 forgotten that nothing was said of these nuts in the report 
 of the inquest at Uglitch signed by himself. That document 
 only stated that at the moment of his death the czarevitch 
 was amusing himself with sticking his knife in the ground. 
 Notwithstanding this oversight, the act of canonisation was 
 good policy; for if the czarevitch became an object of 
 veneration for the people, if it was notorious that his body 
 worked miracles on earth, and consequently that his soul 
 was in heaven, then any one assuming his name could be 
 nothing but an impostor. The czar took pains to make 
 known far and wide what prodigies were effected by the 
 relics of the blessed martyr ; but the credit of the new saint 
 was of short duration. Shuiski himself damaged it by a 
 gross blunder in permitting the pompous removal to the 
 monastery of Tro'itsa of the remains of Boris Grodunof, 
 whom but a few days before he had named as the murderer 
 of the sainted Dmitri. No doubt he hoped in this way to 
 conciliate the partisans of a still-powerful family; but his 
 enemies immediately accused him of blasphemous wickedness, 
 alleging that he had substituted the body of a newly-murdered 
 boy for the decomposed corpse of the real Dmitri. 
 
 The public retractations of the dowager czaritza obtained 
 no more credit than the miracles imputed to her son. In a 
 letter signed by her, and immediately published by Yassili, 
 she declared that the impostor Grishka Otrepief had 
 threatened her with death to herself and all her family if she 
 did not recognise him as her son. But who could believe in 
 her sincerity after so many contradictory avowals and dis- 
 avowals ? Her declaration that she had been compelled by 
 fear to yield to the threats of a man whose aversion to 
 cruelty was notorious, suggested to everybody the idea that 
 she acted at that moment under the coercion of threats and 
 fear. 
 
 Civil war began. Prince Shakhofskoi had raised the 
 inhabitants of Putivle, and in a few days assembled a great 
 number of Cossacks and peasants, who routed the forces 
 sent against them. The insurrection spread rapidly; but 
 still the prince, twice miraculously saved, did not make his ex-
 
 A.D. 1607] EEBELLION AGAINST SHUISKT. 203 
 
 pected appearance. Instead of him there came from Poland 
 a general with a commission bearing the imperial seal of 
 Dmitri. This was an adventurer named Ivan Bolotnikof, 
 originally a serf to prince Teliatevski. He had been a 
 prisoner among the Turks, and having escaped to Venice 
 had probably acquired some military experience in the 
 service of the republic. His commission was recognised at 
 Putivle ; he took the command of the insurgents, defeated 
 Shuiski's forces in two engagements, and pursued them to 
 within seven versts of the capital. But the inexplicable 
 absence of the prince for whom they fought damped the 
 ardour of Bolotnikof 's men ; for they could not believe that 
 if Dmitri was alive he would delay to put himself at their 
 head. The ataman of the Cossacks, too, was mortified at 
 being supplanted in the command by an adventurer, and 
 suffered himself to be corrupted by Shuiski. Deserted by a 
 part of his army, Bolotnikof was defeated by Skopin Shuiski, 
 the czar's nephew, and forced to shelter himself in the 
 fortress of Kaluga. 
 
 It is probable that all this while Shakhofskoi and the 
 Poles were looking about for a fit person to play the part 
 of Dmitri ; but it required time to find him, and to put 
 him through training. In this conjuncture the false Peter 
 Peodorovitch, who had made a brief appearance in the former 
 reign, repaired to Putivle, and offered himself to Shakhofskoi 
 and the people as regent in the absence of his uncle. The 
 rebel cause stood in need of the prestige of a royal name, 
 and the czarevitch Peter was eagerly welcomed. Presently, 
 the czar having marched against him in person, the impostor 
 and Shakhofskoi shut themselves up in the strongly fortified 
 town of Toula, Avherc they were joined by Bolotnikof. 
 Vassdi laid siege to the town with an army of a hundred 
 thousand men ; but the besieged, who had no mercy to 
 expect if taken, fought more earnestly for their own lives 
 than did Shuiski's soldiers for the rights of a master to 
 whom they were but little attached. Seeing the little 
 progress he made, the czar began to doubt the success of an 
 enterprise to fail in which would be ruin. While he was in 
 this anxious state, an obscure ecclesiastic, named Kravkof, 
 presented himself before the czar and his council, and under- 
 took, if his directions were followed, to drown all the people
 
 204< HISTORY OP RUSSIA. [CH. XVII. 
 
 of Toula. They laughed at hiin at first as an idle brag- 
 gart, but he reiterated his assertion with such confidence 
 that the czar at last desired him to explain his plan. 
 Toula is situated in a valley, and the little river Oupa flows 
 through the town. Kravkof proposed to dam the stream 
 below the town, and engaged to answer for it with his head 
 if in a few hours after the execution of that work the whole 
 town was not laid under water. All the millers in the 
 army, men accustomed to such operations, were immediately 
 put under his orders, and the rest of the soldiers were 
 employed in carrying sacks of earth to the spot chosen for 
 the dam. The water soon rose in the town, inundated the 
 streets, and destroyed a great number of houses ; but the 
 garrison still fought for several months with unabated 
 courage, though decimated by famine, and afterwards by a 
 terrible epidemic. All the efforts both of the besiegers and 
 the besieged were concentrated about the dam, the former 
 labouring to raise and maintain it, the latter to break it 
 down. The inhabitants of Toula were persuaded that magic 
 must have had some share in raising so prodigious a work 
 with such rapidity, and magic was not neglected among the 
 means by which they sought to destroy it. A monk, who 
 boasted his proficiency in that art, offered to effect the 
 desired object for a reward of a hundred roubles. His terms 
 being accepted by Bolotnikof, he stripped, plunged into the 
 river, and disappeared. An hour afterwards, when every one 
 had given him up for dead, he rose to the surface, with his 
 body covered with scratches. " I have just had to do," he 
 said, " with the twelve thousand devils at work on Shu- 
 iski's dam. I have settled six thousand of them, but the 
 other six thousand are the worst of all, and will not give 
 in." For a long time the inhabitants of Toula continued to 
 fight against men and devils, encouraged by letters they 
 received in Dmitri's name, with promises of succour, which 
 never came. Shakhofskoi, the chief instigator of the rebellion, 
 was the first to propose a capitulation, and was thrust into a 
 dungeon by the Cossacks. At last, when the besieged had 
 eaten their horses, dogs, and all other carrion, and had not 
 so much as an oxhide left to gnaw, Bolotnikof and Peter 
 offered to capitulate on condition of amnesty for their heroic 
 garrison. They asked nothing for themselves, but declared
 
 A.D. 1607] A SECOND FALSE DMITRI. 205 
 
 that unless their soldiers obtained honourable conditions, 
 they were resolved to die with arras in their hands, and even 
 to eat each other, rather than surrender at discretion. 
 Vassili accepted these terms, and the gates were opened to 
 him (October, 1607). Bolotnikof advanced before the czar 
 with undaunted mien, and presenting his sword, witli the 
 edge laid against his neck, offered himself as a victim, 
 saying, " I have kept the oath I swore to him who, rightfully 
 or wrongfully, calls himself Dmitri. Deserted by him, I am 
 in thy power. Cut off my head if thou wilt ; or if thou wilt 
 spare my life, I will serve thee as I served him." Shuiski, 
 who did not pique himself on generosity, sent Bolotnikof to 
 Kargopol, where he soon after had him drowned. The false 
 Peter Feodorovitch was hanged; but Shakhofskoi, the most 
 guilty of the three, was more fortunate. The victor found 
 him in chains when he entered Toula, and Shakhofskoi made 
 a merit of his sufferings at the hands of the obstinate rebels 
 whom he had urged to submit to their sovereign. He obtained 
 his liberty ; but the first use he made of it was to rekindle 
 the flames of insurrection. 
 
 Before Shuiski had terminated the siege of Toula, and 
 whilst the issue of his conflict with one pretender was still 
 dubious, another, assuming the name of Dmitri, appeared in 
 the frontier town of Starodub, where he was hailed with 
 enthusiasm. Bolotnikof sent an officer to him from Toula, 
 to acquaint him with the desperate condition of the town. 
 This envoy was a Polish adventurer, named Zarucki, who 
 had become one of the atamans of the Don Cossacks, had 
 fought bravely for the first Dmitri, and been distinguished 
 by his favour. Although the first glance must have satisfied 
 Zarucki that the new pretender was an impostor, he affected 
 without the least hesitation to recognise him as his former 
 master. Another false witness of this identity was the Pane 
 Micchawiecki, a Pole, who was well known for the eminent 
 position he had held at the court of the first Dmitri, and 
 who was now the secret instructor of his successor in what 
 we may call the histrionic details belonging to his assumed 
 character. The pupil profited but badly by the lessons he 
 received ; for in everything but profusion he was the reverse 
 of h is prototype, and the least attentive observer could see 
 that he was a coarse, ignorant, vulgar knave, qualified only
 
 206 HISTORY Or RUSSIA. [CH. XVII. 
 
 by his impudence for the part he had undertaken. The 
 Cossacks were not such fastidious critics as to be shocked 
 by his uncourtly manners; but the Poles, whilst treating 
 him as a sovereign for their own ends, were by no means the 
 dupes of his gross imposture. Baer states that he was 
 originally a schoolmaster of Sokol, in "White Russia ; but, 
 according to the Polish writers, who had better opportunities 
 of learning the truth, he was a Lithuanian Jew, named Michael 
 Moltchanof. 
 
 The adherents of Dmitri, as we shall henceforth call him, 
 increased so rapidly in numbers, that he was able to defeat a 
 detachment of Vassili's army sent against him from Toula, 
 and to make himself master of the town of Kozelsk on the 
 road to the capital. "When the fall of Toula had left the 
 czar at liberty to act against him with all his forces, Dmitri 
 retreated to Novgorod Siverski. There he was joined by un- 
 expected reinforcements led by Pozyncki, Sapieha, Tiszkie- 
 wicz, Lissowski and others, the flower of the Polish and 
 Lithuanian chivalry. Prince Adam "Wiszinowiecki, the earliest 
 patron of the first Dmitri, came in person to the aid of his 
 successor at the head of two thousand horse. The Don 
 Cossacks brought in chains to him another schemer, who had 
 tried to put himself at their head. All that is known of the 
 man is, that he called himself Peodor Peodorovitch, and pre- 
 tended to be the son of the czar Peodor. His more pros- 
 perous rival in imposture condemned him to death. 
 
 Dmitri's army, commanded by the veteran prince Eoman 
 Rozynski, defeated that of the czar with great havoc near 
 Volkhof, on the 24th of April, 1608. All the vanquished 
 who escaped the lances of the Poles and Cossacks fled in 
 disorder to Moscow, and had the victors pressed their advan- 
 tage, the capital would have fallen into their hands. Pos- 
 sibly the Polish leaders were in secret unwilling to let their 
 protege triumph too soon or too completely, or to give up 
 Moscow to pillage, which is always more profitable to the 
 soldier than to the general ; but, whatever was the reason, 
 they halted at the village of Tushino, twelve versts from 
 Moscow, which the impostor made his head-quarters, and 
 there he held his court for seventeen months. 
 
 With a view to prevail on Sigismond to recal the Polish 
 volunteers in Dmitri's service, Vassili resolved to liberate the
 
 A.D. 1609] 1IAKINA ACKNOWLEDGES THE SECOND DMITRI. 207 
 
 ambassadors, the palatine of Sendomir and his daughter, and 
 the other Poles whom he had kept in captivity since the mas- 
 sacre of Moscow. With their liberty he bestowed on them 
 indemnifications for their losses, and only exacted from them 
 a pledge that they would not bear arms against Russia, or 
 in any way favour the new pretender. Thus, after having 
 made sport of the most solemn oaths, Yassili expected to 
 find in men, so deeply provoked, scruples of conscience which 
 he had never known himself. He sent Mniszek and his 
 daughter away under charge of an escort ; but they were 
 intercepted by a detachment of Poles, and carried to Dmitri's 
 camp. They had been prepared for this event by a letter 
 previously received by the palatine from his pretended son- 
 in-law, which contained this remarkable phrase : — " Come 
 both of you to me, instead of going to hide yourselves in 
 Poland from the world's scorn." He could hardly have 
 dropped a hint more adapted to move a woman of Marina's 
 character. Bather than go back to encounter ridicule at 
 Sendomir, she was willing to share the bed of a bandit who 
 might bestow a crown upon her. It is said, however, that 
 in their first interview with Dmitri neither she nor her 
 father testified all the emotion befitting so touching an 
 occasion, nor could quite conceal their surprise at the sight 
 of a man not at all like him whose name he bore. But 
 after a few days the scene of meeting was played over 
 again with more success, and the whole camp was witness of 
 Marina's demonstrations of tenderness for her husband. In 
 apology for her previous coldness it was said that, having 
 so long believed her Dmitri was dead, she durst not yield to 
 the delight of seeing him alive again until she had received 
 the most certain proofs that it was not a delusion. This 
 clumsy excuse was admitted; Marina's recognition of the 
 impostor brought over to him numbers who had doubted till 
 then; and the news being soon spread abroad, almost all 
 Eussia declared for him, except Moscow, Novgorod, and 
 Smolensk. 
 
 This was the culminating point of his fortunes : their de- 
 cline was rapid. The mutual jealousy of the Polish com- 
 manders rose to such a pitch that it became necessary to 
 divide the army ; and Sapieha quitted the camp of Tushino, 
 with 30,000 men and 60 cannon, to lay siege to the famous
 
 6 
 
 208 HISTOET OF EUSSIA. [CH. XTII. 
 
 monastery of tlie Trinity, near Moscow, which was at the 
 same time a powerful fortress and the most revered sanctuary 
 of Russian orthodoxy. The support which Shuiski received 
 from the monks was worth more to him than an army ; for 
 besides large subsidies, he derived from them a moral force 
 which still kept many of his subjects true to their alle- 
 giance. The loss of such auxiliaries would have consum- 
 mated his ruin ; therefore the capture of the monastery was 
 of extreme importance to the impostor. But in spite of the 
 most strenuous efforts, continued for six weeks, Sapieha Avas 
 unable to obtain the least advantage over a garrison whose 
 courage was exalted by religious enthusiasm ; and mean- 
 while the Poles had to sustain a harassing and murderous 
 guerilla warfare, waged against them by the plundered pea- 
 sants, whom they had made desperate. These partisan bands 
 were about to be supported by a more formidable army, led 
 by Skopin Skuiski and by James de la Gardie, who brought 
 five thousand Swedish auxiliaries to Vassili's aid. Early in 
 1609 these two generals began a brilliant campaign in the 
 north ; the Poles and the partisans of the impostor were 
 beaten in several encounters, and in a few months the whole 
 aspect of the war was changed. Finally, Sapieha himself 
 was defeated in an obstinate engagement, forced igno- 
 miniously to raise the siege of the monastery, and shut 
 himself up with the remnant of his force in Dmitrof. 
 Skopin entered Moscow in triumph ; but Vassili's jealousy 
 kept him there inactive for two months, until he died 
 suddenly, in his twenty-fourth year. Vassili, to whose cause 
 the young hero's death was fatal, was accused by public 
 rumour of having effected it by poison. 
 
 Por some months before this time there had been a new 
 champion in the field, whose appearance was equally to be 
 dreaded by Shuiski and Dmitri. About the end of September, 
 1609, Sigismond, king of Poland, laid siege to Smolensk, 
 with an army of twelve thousand men, and immediately 
 summoned to his standard the Poles who served under 
 Dmitri. The greater part of them complied, and the 
 impostor fled to Kaluga. In the spring of 1610 Eussia 
 presented a most deplorable spectacle, being devastated by 
 three great armies, all opposed to one another. In the west, 
 Sigismond was pressing the siege of Smolensk ; in the south,
 
 A.D. 1610] VASSILI SHUISKI DEPOSED. 209 
 
 Dmitri was m possession of Kaluga, Tula, and some other 
 towns. Some of the Poles who had quitted the impostor's 
 service had established themselves on the banks of the Ugra, 
 in a fertile country, which had not yet experienced the 
 sufferings of war ; and there, under the command of their 
 new leader, John Sapieha, they offered their services simul- 
 taneously to Sigismond and the false Dmitri, being ready to 
 join whichever of them bid highest. Nor was this all : one 
 of the Eussian princes, Procope Liapunof, took advantage of 
 the general confusion to raise a new banner. He pro- 
 claimed himself the defender of the faith, and, at the head of 
 a considerable force, waged a war of extermination against 
 the Poles and the Russians who recognised either Dmitri or 
 Vassili. A chronicler applies to him the phrase which 
 had served to characterise Attda : — " No grass grew where 
 his horse's hoof had been." And as if all these armies 
 were not enough for the desolation of the land, the Tatars 
 of the Crimea had crossed the Oka, under pretence of 
 succouring Vassili, their ally, but in reality to plunder 
 the villages, and make multitudes of captives, whom they 
 carried off into slavery. 
 
 Such was the condition of Russia at the moment of 
 Skopin's death. Vassili still derived some hope from the 
 division of his enemies, and turned his whole attention 
 against the most formidable among them. He despatched 
 to the relief of Smolensk an army of nearly sixty thousand 
 men, consisting partly of foreign mercenaries, under James 
 de la Gardie ; but he gave the chief command to his brother, 
 Dmitri Shuiski, who was neither liked nor respected by the 
 soldiers. Chiefly in consequence of this fatal appoiutment 
 the whole army was defeated at Klushino, by a force of only 
 three thousand horse and two hundred infantry, led by the 
 veteran Zolkiewski, and was forced to lay down its arms. 
 But for the enormous blunders subsequently committed by 
 Sigismond, the battle of Klushino might have for ever deter- 
 mined the preponderance of Poland in the north. 
 
 The defeat of Klushino was immediately followed by an 
 insurrection at Moscow. Vassili Shuiski was deposed, and 
 forced to become a monk ; and being soon after delivered up 
 to Sigismond, he ended his days in a Polish prison. The 
 same event was equally disastrous to the false Dmitri. 
 
 VOL. i. P
 
 210 HISTOBY OF RUSSIA. [cil. XVII. 
 
 Deserted by Sapieha and his Poles, he lost all hope of 
 ascending the throne of Moscow; he lived as a robber in 
 Kaluga, at the head of his ferocious gangs of Cossacks and 
 Tatars, until he was murdered by the latter in December, 
 1610, in revenge for the death of one of their countrymen 
 whom he had drowned. Marina was far advanced in preg- 
 nancy when she lost her second husband. She was delivered 
 of a son, who received the name of Ivan, and to whom the 
 little court of Kaluga swore fealty. Zarucki declared 
 himself the protector of the mother and the child, and put 
 himself at the head of the still numerous remnant of the 
 faction that remained obstinately attached to the name of 
 Dmitri. But the cause was hopeless ; for Zarucki was 
 neither a general nor a statesman ; his talents were those 
 only of a bold leader of Cossack marauders. 
 
 Russia was without a sovereign, and the capital was in the 
 hands of the Polish marshal. Zolkiewski used his advantages 
 with wise moderation, and easily prevailed on the weary and 
 afflicted Muscovites to resign themselves to the foreign yoke, 
 and agree to offer the throne to Vladislas, the son of 
 Sigismond. One word from the latter' s lips might have 
 reversed the subsequent fortunes of Kussia and Poland ; 
 but in his selfish vanity he preferred the appearance of 
 power to its reality, and claimed the crown of the czars, not 
 for his son, but for himself. Philaretes, bishop of Rostof, 
 and other ambassadors, were sent to him at his camp before 
 Smolensk, to make known the resolution of the Russians in 
 favour of Vladislas. Sigismond insisted that they should at 
 once put him in possession of Smolensk, which he had been 
 besieging for a year ; and this being refused, he seized the 
 ambassadors, and afterwards carried them away to Poland, 
 where they remained nine years in captivity. 
 
 Zolkiewski, foreseeing the consequences of his master's 
 folly, against which he had remonstrated in vain, retired from 
 the government of Moscow, leaving Gonsiewski as his 
 successor. The Polish troops seized the principal towns, 
 proclaimed Sigismond, and observed none of that discretion 
 by which the great marshal had won the confidence and 
 esteem of the vanquished. National feeling awoke again 
 among the Russians ; eagerly responding to the call of their 
 revered patriarch, Hermogenes, they took up arms in all
 
 A.D. 1611-12] INTERREGNUM. 211 
 
 parts of the empire, and war was renewed with more fury 
 than ever. Smolensk fell after an obstinate resistance of 
 eighteen months ; but at the moment of the last assault the 
 explosion of a powder magazine set fire to the city, and 
 Sigismond found himself master only of a heap of ruins. 
 The Poles in Moscow, assailed by the Russians, secured 
 themselves in the Kremlin, after burning down the greater 
 part of the city, and massacring a hundred thousand of the 
 inhabitants. They were besieged by an immense levy from 
 the provinces, consisting of three armies ; but these seemed 
 more disposed to fight with each other than to force the 
 Poles in their entrenchments. One of them consisted chiefly 
 of vagabonds escaped from the camp at Tushino, and was 
 commanded by prince Trubetskoi. Zarucki led another in 
 the name of 'Marina's son ; the third army, and the only 
 one, perhaps, whose commander sincerely desired the inde- 
 pendence of his country, was that of prince Procope 
 Liapunof ; but that brave leader was assassinated, and the 
 besiegers, disheartened by his death, immediately dispersed. 
 About the same time, the patriarch Hermogenes, the soul of 
 the national insurrection, died in his prison in the Kremlin, 
 to which he had been consigned by the Poles. 
 
 Anarchy was rampant in Eussia ; every town usurped the 
 right to act in the name of the whole empire, and set up 
 chiefs whom they deposed a few days afterwards. Kasan 
 and Yiatka proclaimed the son of Marina; Novgorod, 
 rather than open its gates to the Poles, called in the Swedes, 
 and tendered the crown to Charles Philip, second son of the 
 reigning king of Sweden, and brother of Gustavus Adolphus. 
 Another impostor assumed the name of Dmitri, and kept his 
 state for awhile at Pleskof ; but being at last identified as 
 one Isidore, a fugitive monk, he was hanged. When all 
 seemed lost in irretrievable disorder, the country was saved 
 by an obscure citizen of Nijni Novgorod. He was a 
 butcher, named Kozma Minin, distinguished by nothing but 
 the possession of a sound head, and a brave, honest, unselfish 
 heart. Roused by his words and his example, his fellow- 
 citizens took up arms, and resolved to devote all their wealth 
 to the last fraction to the maintenance of an army for the 
 deliverance of their country. Prom Nijni Novgorod the 
 same spirit spread to other towns, and prince Pojarski, who 
 
 v 2
 
 212 niSTOET OF RUSSIA. [CH. XVII. 
 
 had been lieutenant to the brave Liapunof, was soon able to 
 take the field at the head of a considerable force, whilst 
 Minin, whom the popular voice styled the elect of the whole 
 Russian empire, ably seconded him in an administrative 
 capacity. Pojarski drove the Poles before him from town to 
 town ; and having at length arrived under the walls of the 
 Kremlin, in August, 1612, he sustained for three days a hot 
 contest against Chodkiewicz, the successor of Gonsiewski, 
 defeated him, and put him to flight. Part of the Polish 
 troops, under the command of colonel Nicholas Struss, 
 returned to the citadel and defended it for some weeks 
 longer. At the end of that time, being pressed by famine, 
 they capitulated; and on the 22nd of October, 1612, the 
 princes Pojarski and Dmitri Troubetzkoi entered together 
 into that inclosure which is the heart of the country, and 
 sacred in the eyes of all true Russians. The assistance of 
 Sigismond came too late to arrest the flight of the Poles. 
 
 Upon the first successes obtained by prince Pojarski the 
 phantom of Dmitri, and all the subaltern pretenders, dis- 
 appeared as if by magic. Zarucki, feeling that an irresistible 
 power was about to overwhelm him, was anxious only to 
 secure himself a refuge. Carrying Marina and her son with 
 him, he made ineffectual efforts to raise the Don Cossacks. 
 After suffering a defeat near Yoroneje, he reached the Volga, 
 and took possession of Astrakhan, with the intention of 
 fortifying himself there ; but the generals of Michael 
 Eomanof, the newly-elected czar, did not allow him time. 
 Driven from that city, and pursued by superior forces, he 
 was preparing to reach the eastern shore of the Caspian, 
 when he was surprised, in the beginning of July, 1611, on 
 the banks of the Yaik, and delivered up to the Muscovite 
 generals, along with Marina and the son of the second 
 Dmitri. They were immediately taken to Moscow, where 
 Zarucki was impaled ; Ivan, who was but three years old, 
 was hanged ; and Marina was shut up in a prison, where she 
 ended her days.
 
 A.D. 1613] ELECTION OF A NEW CZAE. 213 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 ACCESSION OF THE HOUSE OF EOHANOF — MICHAEL 
 
 ALEXIS — EEODOE II. 
 
 The deliverance of Moscow had alone been awaited in 
 order to fill the vacant throne by a free election. This 
 could not properly take place except in that revered sanc- 
 tuary of the czarian power, the Kremlin, where the sove- 
 reigns were crowned at their accession, and where their 
 ashes reposed after their death. Delivered now from all 
 foreign influence, the boyars of the council, in November, 
 1612, despatched letters or mandates to every town in the 
 empire, commanding the clergy, nobility, and citizens to 
 send deputies immediately to Moscow, endowed with full 
 power to meet in the national council (zemshii sovetli), and 
 proceed to the election of a new czar. At the same time, to 
 invoke the blessing of God upon this important act, a fast of 
 three days was commanded. These orders were received 
 with great enthusiasm throughout the whole country: the 
 fast was so rigorously observed, according to contemporary 
 records, that no person took the least nourishment during that 
 interval, and mothers even refused the breast to their infants. 
 
 The election day came : it was in Lent, in the year 1613. 
 The debates were long and stormy. The princes Mstis- 
 lavski aud Pojarski, it appears, refused the crown ; the 
 election of prince Dmitri Troubetskoi failed, and the other 
 candidates were set aside for various reasons. After much 
 hesitation the name of Michael Eomauof was put forward ; 
 a young man sixteen years of age, personally unknown, 
 but recommended by the virtues of his father, Philaretes, 
 and in whose behalf the boyars had been canvassed by the 
 patriarch Hermogenes, the holy martyr to the national 
 cause. The Romanofs were connected through the female 
 branch with this ancient dynasty. The ancestors of Michael 
 had filled the highest offices in the state. He fulfilled, 
 moreover, the required conditions. " There were but three 
 surviving members in his family," says Strahlenberg ; " he 
 had not been implicated in the preceding troubles ; his 
 father was an ecclesiastic, and in consequence naturally more
 
 214 HISTOBT OF RUSSIA. [CH. XVIII. 
 
 disposed to secure peace and union, than to mix himself up 
 in turbulent projects." 
 
 The name of the new candidate, supported by the metro- 
 politan of Moscow, * was hailed with acclamation, and after 
 some discussion he was elected. The unanimous voice of the 
 assembly raised Michael Feodorovitch to the throne. Before 
 he ascended he was required to swear to the following 
 conditions : — " That he would protect religion ; that he 
 would pardon and forget all that had been done to his 
 father ; that he would make no new laws, nor alter the old, 
 unless circumstances imperatively required it ; and that, in 
 important causes, he would decide nothing by himself, but 
 that the existing laws, and the usual forms of trial, should 
 remain in force; that he would not at his own pleasure 
 make either war or peace with his neighbours ; and that, to 
 avoid all suits with individuals, he would resign his estates 
 to his family, or incorporate them with the crown domains." 
 Strahlenberg adds, that Alexis, on his accession, swore to 
 observe the same conditions. 
 
 These forms, however futile they may have been, are 
 remarkable ; not because they render sacred a right which 
 stands in no need of them, but because they recal it to 
 mind ; and also because they prove that, even on the soil 
 most favourable to despotism, a charter which should give 
 absolute power to a monarch would appear such a gross 
 absurdity, that we know not that an instance of the kind 
 ever existed. 
 
 Nothing could be more critical than the state of the 
 empire at the moment when its destinies were confided to a 
 youth of seventeen. Disorder and anarchy everywhere pre- 
 vailed. Oustrialof gives us the following picture : — " The 
 strongholds on the frontier which should have served to 
 defend his dominions, were in the hands of external or in- 
 ternal enemies. The Swedes possessed Kexholm, Oresheck, 
 Koporie, and even Novgorod. The Poles ruled in Smolensk. 
 Dorogobuje, Putivle, and Tchernigof; the country around 
 Pskof was in the power of Lisowski ; Raisin, Kashira, and 
 Tula struggled feebly against the Tatars of the Crimea and 
 the Nogai; Saroutzki (Zarucki) was established in Astra- 
 
 * There was no patriarch at that time.
 
 A.D. 1613-18] MICHAEL EOHANOF. 215 
 
 khan ; Kasan was in revolt. At home, bands of Cossacks 
 from the Don and the Zaporogues, and whole divisions of 
 Poles and Tatars ravaged the villages and the convents 
 that were still entire, when there were hopes of finding 
 booty. The country was wasted, soldiers were dying of 
 hunger, the land-tax was no longer collected, and not a 
 kopeck was in the treasury. The state jewels, crowns of 
 great price, sceptres, precious stones, vases, all had been 
 plundered and carried into Poland. 
 
 " The young prince was surrounded by courtiers belonging 
 to twenty different factions. There were to be found the 
 friends of Grodunof, the defenders of Shuiski, the companions 
 of Vladislas, and even partisans of the brigand of Tushino ; 
 in a word, men professing the most various opinions and 
 aims, but all equally ambitious, and incapable of yielding the 
 smallest point as regarded precedence. The lower class, 
 irritated by ten years of misery, were become habituated to 
 anarchy, and it was not without difficulty and resistance on 
 their part that they were reduced to obedience." Such, 
 then, was the situation of the country ; but Michael found 
 means to redeem it. 
 
 Notwithstanding the desperate state of his finance, the 
 insubordination of his troops, the ill-will of the diets, and 
 the confederations continually springing up against him, 
 Sigismond did not abandon his attempts upon Russia ; but 
 the negotiations which ensued in consequence, upon various 
 occasions, produced no result. Vladislas, at the head of an 
 army, once more crossed the frontiers, and appeared for the 
 second time, in 1617, under the walls of Moscow, which he 
 assaulted, and whence he was repulsed. Deceived in the 
 expectation which the intelligence he kept up with various 
 chiefs had induced him to form, harassed by his troops, who 
 w ere clamorous for pay, he consented to renounce the title 
 of czar, which he had up to that period assumed, and con- 
 cluded, on the 1st of December, 1618, an armistice for 
 fourteen years. The peace of Stolbovna, 26th of January, 
 1617, had terminated the preceding year the war with 
 Sweden, and was purchased by the surrender of Ingria, 
 Carelia, and the whole country between Ingria and Nov- 
 gorod ; besides the formal renunciation of Livonia and Es- 
 thonia, and the payment of a sum of money.
 
 216 .HISTORY OS RUSSIA. [CH. XVIII. 
 
 The captivity of Philaretes had now lasted nine years ; 
 from "Warsaw he had been removed to the castle of Marien- 
 burg, and it was from that place, as it is asserted, that he 
 found means to communicate with the council of the boyars, 
 and use his influence in the election of the czar, never 
 dreaming that it would fall upon his son. The cessation of 
 hostilities restored him to freedom. He returned to Moscow 
 on the 14th of June, 1619, and was immediately elevated to 
 the patriarchal chair, which had remained vacant from the 
 death of Hermogenes, in 1613. His son made him co- 
 regent, and the ukases of that date are all headed " Michael 
 Peodorovitch, Sovereign, Czar, and Grand- Prince of all the 
 Eussias, and his father Philaretes, mighty Lord and most 
 holy Patriarch of all the Eussias, order," &c. There exist, 
 moreover, ukases issued in the sole name of the patriarch, 
 thus called out of his usual sphere of action, and placed in 
 one in which absolute power was granted him. He took 
 part in all political affairs ; all foreign ambassadors were 
 presented to him, as well as to the czar : and at those 
 solemn audiences, as well as at table, he occupied the right 
 of the sovereign. He held his own court, composed of 
 stolnicks and other officers ; in a word, he shared with his 
 son all the prerogatives of supreme power. Prom this 
 period dates the splendour of the patriarchate, which at a 
 later epoch excited the jealousy of the czar Peter the Great, 
 who was induced to suppress it in 1721. 
 
 Philaretes always gave wise advice to his son, and the 
 influence he exercised over him was always happily directed. 
 A general census, of which he originated the idea, produced 
 great improvement in the revenue ; but, perhaps without 
 intending it, he contributed by this measure to give fixity to 
 the system of bondage to the soil.* In the performance of 
 his duty as head pastor, he directed all his efforts to re- 
 establish a press at Moscow, t which had been abandoned 
 during the troubles of the interregnum ; and he had the 
 satisfaction of seeing, after 1624, many copies of the Liturgy 
 issue from it. He took part in the attempts made to reform 
 
 * See Oustrialof's " Ilistoire tie Russie." 
 
 f Established in 1560. The first book printed in Moscow, "The 
 Evangelist," appeared in the month of March, 1.064. See Karamzin.
 
 A.D. 1645] MICHAEL KOMAKOF. 217 
 
 these books, the contents of which had, in the opinion of 
 many wise ecclesiastics, been seriously altered in the Scla- 
 vonic translations; and the quarrels which thence arose, 
 commencing under Job, were destined to assume a most 
 grave character under the patriarch Nicon, one of the suc- 
 cessors of Philaretes. 
 
 The peace with Poland being only for a stated term of 
 years, Michael endeavoured, before its expiration, to have 
 his troops placed in such a condition by foreign officers, that 
 he might be able to reconquer the countries ceded to the 
 Poles. Nay, on the death of Sigismond, ere the armistice 
 was expired, he began the attempt to recover these terri- 
 tories, under the idle pretext that he had concluded a peace 
 with Sigismond, and not with his successor. But the 
 Russian commander, Michael Schein, the very same who had 
 valiantly defended Smolensk with a small number of troops 
 against "the Poles, now lay two whole years indolently before 
 that town, with an army of fifty thousand men, and provided 
 with good artillery, and at length retreated on capitulation, 
 a retreat for which he and his friends were brought to 
 answer with their heads. The Russian nation were so 
 dissatisfied with this campaign, and the king of Sweden, 
 whom Michael wanted to engage in an alliance with him 
 against the Poles, showed so little inclination to comply, 
 that the czar was fain to return to the former amicable 
 relation with Poland. Peace was therefore again agreed on, 
 and matters remained as they were before. 
 
 During his reign, which continued till 1645, Michael had 
 employment enough in endeavouring to heal the wounds 
 which the spirit of faction had inflicted on his country ; to 
 compose the disorders that had arisen; to restore the 
 administration which had been so often disjointed and 
 relaxed; to give new vigour and activity to the laws, dis- 
 obeyed and inefficient during the general confusions ; and 
 to communicate fresh life to expiring commerce. It re- 
 dounds greatly to his honour that he proceeded in all these 
 respects with prudence and moderation, and brought the 
 disorganised machine of government again into play. More 
 than this, the restoration of the old order of things, was not 
 to be expected of him. Much that he was unable to effect 
 was accomplished by his son and successor, Alexis.
 
 218 HI3T0ET OF ETJSSIA. [CH. XYIII. 
 
 The administration, however, of the boyar Boris Morosof, 
 to whom Michael at his death committed the education of 
 Alexis, then in his sixteenth year, well-nigh destroyed the 
 tranquillity which had so lately been restored. Morosof 
 trod in the footsteps of Boris Godunof, put himself, as that 
 favourite of the czar had done, into the highest posts, and 
 thus acquired the most extensive authority in the state, 
 turned out all that stood in his way, distributed offices and 
 dignities, as they fell vacant, among his friends and creatures, 
 and even became, like Boris, a near relation of czar Alexis, 
 by marrying a sister of the czaritza. Like hia prototype, 
 indeed, Morosof effected much good, particularly by making 
 the army a main object of his concern, by strengthening the 
 frontiers against Poland and Sweden, erecting manufactories 
 for arms, taking a number of foreigners into pay for the 
 better disciplining of the army, and diligently exercising the 
 troops himself. But these important services to the state 
 could not render the people insensible to the numerous acts 
 of injustice and oppression which were practised with im- 
 punity by the party protected by this minion of the czar. 
 The most flagrant enormities were committed, more par- 
 ticularly in the administration of justice. The sentence of 
 the judge was warped to either side by presents; witnesses 
 were to be bought ; several of the magistrates, however 
 incredible it may seem, kept a number of scoundrels in 
 readiness to corroborate or to oppugn, for a sum of money, 
 whatever they were required to confirm or to deny. Such 
 profligates were particularly employed in order to get rich 
 persons into custody on charges of any species of delin- 
 quency sworn against them by false witnesses, to condemn 
 them to death, and then to seize upon their property ; as the 
 accumulation of wealth seemed to be the general charac- 
 teristic of all men in office. Prom the same corrupt fountain 
 flowed a multitude of monopolies, and excessive taxes on the 
 prime necessaries of life. The consequence of all this was 
 the oppression of the people by privileged extortioners, and 
 murmurs against injustice and the exorbitance of imposts. 
 In addition to this, those grandees who had now the reins of 
 government in their hands assumed a haughty, austere 
 behaviour towards the subjects, whereas Michael and his 
 father had been friendly aiid indulgent, and their gentleness
 
 a.d. 1648-50] alexis. 219 
 
 communicated itself to all who at that time took part in the 
 administration. 
 
 From these several causes arose discontents in the nation; 
 such great men as were neglected and disappointed, con- 
 tributed what they could to fan these discontents, and to 
 bring them to overt act. Moscow, the seat of the principal 
 magfstrate, who, himself in the highest degree unjust, con- 
 nived at the iniquities of his subordinate judges, was the 
 place where the people first applied for redress. They began 
 by presenting petitions to the czar, implored the removal of 
 these disorders, and exposed to him in plain terms the abuses 
 committed by the favourite and his adherents. But these 
 petitions were of no avail, as none of the courtiers would 
 venture to put them into the hand of the czar, for fear of 
 Morosof's long arm. The populace, therefore, once stopped 
 the czar, as he was returning from church to his palace, 
 calling aloud for righteous judges. Alexis promised them to 
 make strict inquiry into their grievances, and to inflict 
 punishment on the guilty ; the people, however, had not 
 patience to wait this tardy process, but proceeded to plunder 
 the houses of such of the great as were most obnoxious to 
 them. At length they were pacified only on condition that 
 the authors of their oppressions should be brought to 
 condign punishment. Not, however, till they had killed 
 the principal magistrate, and other obnoxious persons, and 
 forced from the czar the abolition of some of the new taxes, 
 and the death of another nefarious judge, could they be 
 induced to spare the life of Morosof, though the czar himself 
 entreated for him with tears. Thenceforth Morosof ceased 
 to be the sole adviser of his sovereign, though he continued 
 to enjoy his favour and affection. 
 
 Some time after these events, disturbances not less violent 
 occurred in Pleskof and Novgorod, and were not quelled 
 until much mischief had been done. The pacification of 
 Novgorod was mainly due to the wisdom and intrepidity of 
 the celebrated Nicon, who was afterwards patriarch. 
 
 "While the nation was in this restless and angry mood, 
 another false Dmitri thought to avail himself of an oppor- 
 tunity apparently so favourable to gather a party. He was 
 the son of a draper in the Ukraine, and was prompted to his 
 imposture by a Polish nobleman, named Danilovski. One
 
 220 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XVIII. 
 
 day, when the young man was bathing, marks were observed 
 on his back which were thought to resemble letters of some 
 unknown tongue. ' Danilovski hearing of this freak of na- 
 ture, determined to build a plot upon it. He sent for the 
 young man, and had the marks examined by a Greek pope 
 whom he had suborned. The pope cried out, "A miracle!" 
 and declared that the letters were Russian, and formed 
 distinctly these words : — Dmitri, son of the czar Dmitri. 
 The public murder of Marina's infant son was notorious ; 
 but that difficulty was met by the common device of an 
 alleged change of children, and the Poles were invited to 
 lend their aid to the true prince thus miraculously identified. 
 They were willing enough to do so ; but the trick was too 
 stale to impose on the Russians. The impostor found no 
 adherents among them ; and after a wretched life of vagrancy 
 and crime, he fell into the hands of Alexis, and was quartered 
 alive. 
 
 Alexis soon had an opportunity to repay in a more sub- 
 stantial manner the ill-will borne to him by the Poles ; who 
 had further offended him by rejecting him as a candidate for 
 their throne, and electing John Casimir. The cruel oppres- 
 sions exercised by the Poles upon the Cossacks of the 
 Ukraine had roused the latter to revolt, and a furious war 
 ensued, in which the enraged Cossacks avenged their wrongs 
 in the most ruthless and indiscriminate manner. At last, 
 after many vicissitudes, being deserted by their Tatar allies, 
 the Cossacks appealed for aid to Alexis, offering to acknow- 
 ledge him as their suzerain. With such auxiliaries the czar 
 could now renew with better prospects the attempt made by 
 his father to recover the territories wrested from Russia by 
 her inveterate foe. He declared war against Poland ; his 
 conquests were rapid and numerous, and would, probably, 
 have terminated in the complete subjugation of Poland, had 
 he not been compelled to pause before the march of a still 
 more successful invader of that country, Charles Gustavus, 
 king of Sweden. Incensed at seeing his prey thus snatched 
 from him when he had nearly hunted it down, Alexis fell 
 upon the king of Sweden's own dominions during his 
 absence ; but from this enterprise he reaped neither advan- 
 tage nor credit ; and he was glad to conclude, in 1658, a 
 three years' truce with Sweden, and subsequently a peace,
 
 A.D. 16G5] stenka badzin's rebellion. 221 
 
 which was an exact renewal of the treaty of Stolbova in 1G17. 
 The war in Poland ended more honourably for Russia. An 
 armistice for thirteen years, agreed upon at Andnissof, in 
 Lithuania, and afterwards prolonged from time to time, was 
 the forerunner of a complete pacification, which was brought 
 to effect in 1G8G, and restored to the empire Smolensk, 
 Severia, Tchernigof, and Kief, that primeval principality of 
 the "Russian sovereigns. The king of Poland likewise relin- 
 quished to the czar the supremacy he had till then asserted 
 over the Cossacks of the Ukraine. 
 
 Russia had as much need as Poland of repose ; for the 
 empire was suffering under an accumulation of evils — an 
 exhausted treasury, commercial distress, pestilence and 
 famine, all aggravated by the unwise means adopted to 
 relieve them. To supply the place of the silver money, 
 which had disappeared, copper of the same nominal value 
 was coined and put in circulation. At first these tokens 
 were received with confidence, and no inconvenience was 
 experienced ; but ere long the court itself destroyed that 
 confidence by its audacious efforts to secure to itself all the 
 sterling money, and leave only the new coin for the use of 
 commerce. The cupidity displayed in transactions of this 
 kind, especially by Ilia Miloslavski, the czar's father-in-law, 
 taught the public to dislike the copper coinage ; it became 
 immensely depreciated, and extreme general distress ensued. 
 A rebellion broke out in consequence in Moscow (16G2), 
 and though it was speedily put down, it was punished in the 
 most atrocious manner in the persons of thousands of 
 wretches whose misery had driven them to crime; whilst the 
 authors of their woe escaped with impunity. The prisoners 
 Avere hanged by hundreds, tortured, burned, mutilated, or 
 thrown by night, with their hands bound, into the river. 
 The number who suffered death in consequence of this 
 arbitrary alteration of the currency was estimated at more 
 than seven thousand ; the tortured and maimed at upwards 
 of fifteen thousand. 
 
 The conduct of the Don Cossacks was soon such as to 
 make it questionable whether the acquisition of these new 
 subjects was not rather a loss than a gain to the empire. At 
 the end of the campaign of 1GG5 the Cossacks were refused 
 permission to disband as usual and to return to their homes.
 
 222 H.ISTOEY OF ETJSSIA. [CH. XTIII. 
 
 They mutinied; and several of them were punished with 
 death. Among those who were executed was an officer, 
 whose brother, Stenka Radzin, had no difficulty in rousing 
 his countrymen to revenge this violation of their privileges, 
 and at the same time to gratify their insatiable appetite for 
 havoc and plunder. He began his depredations on the Volga 
 by seizing a fleet of boats belonging to the czar, which was 
 on its way to Astrakhan, massacring part of the crews, and 
 pressing all the rest into his service. Having devastated 
 the whole country of the Volga, lie descended into the 
 Caspian, and having swept its shores, returned to the Volga 
 laden with booty. For three years this flagitious ruffian 
 continued his murderous career, repeatedly defeating the 
 forces sent against him. At last, having lost a great number 
 of men in his piratical incursions into Persia, he was 
 hemmed in by the troops of the governor of Astrakhan, and 
 forced to sue for pardon. The imperial commander thought 
 it [more prudent to accept Radzin's voluntary submission 
 than to risk an engagement with desperate wretches whose 
 numbers were still formidable. Radzin was taken to Astra- 
 khan, and the voyevode went to Moscow, to learn the czar's 
 pleasure respecting him. Alexis honourably confirmed the 
 promise made by his general in his name, and accepted 
 Eadzin's oath of allegiance ; but instead of dispersing the 
 pardoned rebels over regions where they would have been 
 useful to the empire, he had the imprudence to send them all 
 back to the country of the Don, without despofiing them of 
 their ill-got wealth, or taking any other security for- their 
 good behaviour. 
 
 The brigand was soon at his old work again on the Volga, 
 murdering and torturing with more wanton ferocity than 
 ever. To give to his enormities the colour of a war on 
 behalf of an oppressed class, he proclaimed himself the 
 enemy of the nobles, and the restorer of the liberty of 
 the people. As many of the Russians still adhered to 
 the patriarch Nicon, who had been deposed and sent to a 
 monastery, he spread it abroad that Nicon was with him ; 
 that the czar's second son (who had died at Moscow, 
 Jan. 1G, 1670) was not dead, but had put himself under his 
 protection ; and that he had even been requested by the czar 
 himself to come to Moscow, and rid him of those unpatriotic
 
 A.D. 1671] "WAE WITH TUEKET. 223 
 
 grandees by whom he was unhappily surrounded. These 
 artifices, together with the unlimited licence to plunder 
 which Eadzin granted to every one who joined his standard, 
 operated so strongly that the rebel found himself, at length, 
 at the head of two hundred thousand men. The czar's 
 soldiers murdered their officers, and went over to him; 
 Astrakhan betrayed its governor, and received him; he 
 was master of the whole country of the Lower Volga ; and 
 on the upper course of the river, from Nijni Novgorod to 
 Kasan, the peasants rose to a man, and murdered their lords. 
 Had Stenka Eadzin been anything better than a vulgar 
 robber and cut-throat, he might have revolutionised Eussia ; 
 but he was utterly without the qualities most requisite for 
 success in such an enterprise. Disasters overtook him in 
 the autumn of 1670; a division of his army was cut to 
 pieces ; twelve thousand of his followers were gibbeted on 
 the high road, and he himself was taken in the beginning of 
 the following year, carried to Moscow, and executed. 
 
 The Turks had by this time made war on Poland, and 
 Alexis was bound by the treaty of Andnissof, as well as by 
 regard for the safety of his own dominions, to support the 
 latter power. In 1671 the Turks made themselves masters 
 of the important town of Kaminitz, and the Cossacks of the 
 Ukraine, ever averse to subjection, could not tell whether 
 they belonged to Turkey, Poland, or Eussia. Sultan Ma- 
 homet IV., who had subdued, and lately imposed a tribute 
 on, the Poles, insisted, with all the insolence of an Ottoman, 
 and of a conqueror, that the czar should evacuate his several 
 possessions in the Ukraine; but received as haughty a 
 denial. The sultan in his letter treated the sovereign of the 
 Eussias only as a Christian hospodar, and entitled himself 
 "Most Glorious Majesty, King of the "World." The czar made 
 answer, that " He was above submitting to a Mahometan 
 dog, but that his sabre was as good as the grand seignor's 
 cimetar." 
 
 Alexis sent ambassadors to the pope, and to almost all the 
 great sovereigns in Europe, except Prance, which was allied 
 to the Turks, in order to establish a league against the Porte. 
 His ambassadors had no other success at Eome than not 
 being obliged to kiss the pope's toe ; everywhere else they 
 met with nothing but good wishes, the Christian princes
 
 221 HISTOET OF BUSSIA. [CH. XVIII. 
 
 being generally prevented by their quarrels and jarring 
 interests from uniting against the common enemy of their 
 religion. Alexis did not live to see the termination of the 
 war with Turkey. His death happened in 1G76, in his forty- 
 eighth year, after a reign of thirty-one years. 
 
 Alexis was succeeded by his eldest son, Peodor, a youth 
 in his nineteenth year, and of very feeble temperament. 
 The most pressing task that devolved on him was the 
 prosecution of the war with Turkey, which, as far as Russia 
 was interested, had regard chiefly to the question whether 
 the country of the Zaporogue Cossacks should be under the 
 sovereignty of the czar or of the sultan. The contest was 
 terminated, three years after Feodor's accession, by a treat} r , 
 which established his right over the disputed territory. 
 Only one other memorable event distinguished his brief 
 reign. 
 
 Nothing could equal the care with which the noble 
 families kept the books of their pedigrees, in which were set 
 down, not only every one of their ancestors, but also the 
 posts and offices which each had held at court, in the army, 
 or in the civil department. Had these genealogies and 
 registers of descent been confined to the purpose of deter- 
 mining the ancestry and relationship of families, no objection 
 could be alleged against them. But these books of record 
 were carried to the most absurd abuse, attended with a host 
 of pernicious consequences. If a nobleman were appointed 
 to a post in the army, or at court, or to some civil station, 
 and it appeared that the person to whom he was now subor- 
 dinate numbered fewer ancestors than he, it was with the 
 utmost difficulty that he could be brought to accept of the 
 office to which he was called. Nay, this folly was carried 
 still greater lengths : a man would even refuse to take upon 
 him an employ, if thereby he would be subordinate to one 
 whose ancestors had formerly stood in that position towards 
 his own. It is easy to imagine that a prejudice of this 
 kind must have been productive of the most disagreeable 
 effects," and that discontents, murmurs at slights and tri- 
 fling neglects, disputes, quarrels, and disorders in the 
 service must have been its natural attendants. It was, 
 therefore, become indispensably necessary that a particular 
 office should be instituted at court in which exact copies of
 
 A.D. 1681] FEODOR III. ALEXIEVITCH. 225 
 
 the genealogical tables and service-registers of the noble 
 families were deposited ; and this office was incessantly 
 employed in settling the numberless disputes that arose 
 from this inveterate prejudice. Feodor observing the per- 
 nicious effects of this fond conceit— -that the father's capacity 
 must necessarily devolve on the son, and that consequently 
 he ought to inherit his posts, wished to put a stop to it ; 
 and with the advice of his sagacious minister, prince Vassili 
 Gahtzin, fell upon the following method : 
 
 He caused it to be proclaimed, that all the families should 
 deliver into court faithful copies of their service-rolls, in 
 order that they might be cleared of a number of errors 
 that had crept into them. This delivery being made, he 
 convoked the great men and the superior clergy before him. 
 In the midst of these heads of the nobles, the patriarch con- 
 cluded an animated harangue by inveighing against their 
 prerogatives. " They are," said he, " a bitter source of every 
 kind of evil; they render abortive the most useful enter- 
 prises, in like manner as the tares stifle the good grain ; 
 they have introduced, even into the heart of families, dissen- 
 sions, confusion, and hatred; but the pontiff comprehends 
 the grand design of his czar. God alone can have inspired 
 it!" At these words, and by anticipation, all the grandees 
 blindly hastened to express their approval; and, suddenly, 
 Feodor, whom this generous unanimity seemed to enrapture, 
 arose and proclaimed, in a simulated burst of holy enthu- 
 siasm, the abolition of all their hereditary pretensions, " To 
 extinguish even the recollection of them," said he, "let all 
 the papers relative to those titles be instantly consumed!" 
 And as the fire was ready, he ordered them to be thrown 
 into the flames before the dismayed eyes of the nobles, who 
 strove to conceal their anguish by dastardly acclamations. 
 I \j way of conclusion to this singular ceremony, the patriarch 
 drnounced an anathema against every one who should 
 presume to contravene this ordinance of the czar ; and the 
 justice of the sentence was ratified by tin; assembly in a 
 general shout of " Amen!" It was by no means Feodor' s 
 intention to efface nobility; and, accordingly, he ordered 
 new books to be made, in which the noble families were 
 inscribed ; but thus was abolished that extremely pernicious 
 custom which made it a disgrace to be uuder the orders of 
 
 VOL. i. q
 
 22G HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XIX. 
 
 another if his ancestry did not reach so high, or even — in 
 case of equal pedigree— if a forefather of the commander had 
 once been subordinate in the service to the progenitor of him 
 ■who was now to acknowledge him for his superior. 
 
 Feodor died in February, 1682, after a reign of five years 
 and a half, leaving no issue. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 IVAN V. AND PETER I. 
 
 Upon the death of Feodor the empire seemed destined to 
 be plunged once more into the anarchy attendant on a 
 disputed succession. This was in consequence of Alexis 
 having conformed with the usual custom of the czars, to 
 choose their consorts from among their own subjects. 
 Alexis was twice married ; his first wife being a Miloslavski, 
 his second a Nariskkin. By the former he had two sons 
 who survived him, Feodor and Ivan, and several princesses, 
 the eldest of whom, Sophia, is known in history; by the 
 latter he was the father of Peter and the princess Nathalie. 
 Under every reign the family allied to the sovereign naturally 
 acquired great influence in the state ; and when there were 
 two families in that position, their keen rivalry coidd not but 
 be injurious to the public interests. The Miloslavski and 
 the Narishkin faction contended with each other for the 
 privilege of giving a czar to Russia. Feodor' s accession had 
 been opposed by the Narishkins on the ground of his 
 alleged incapacity. Ivan, his younger brother, was still 
 more infirm in body and mind ; and the Narishkins strove to 
 have both excluded in favour of Peter, their own kinsman. 
 This project failed ; but on the death of Feodor the grandees 
 and the heads of the clergy resolved to reject the claims of 
 the imbecile Ivan, and to bestow the crown on his more 
 promising brother, then ten years of age. The princess 
 Sophia, however, contrived in part to defeat this resolution, 
 and to restore to Ivan a sceptre which she hoped to wield in 
 conjunction with Galitzin, the late czar's minister, during the 
 perpetual infancy of the weak-minded prince.
 
 A.D. 1682] IVAN Y. AND PETEE I. 227 
 
 If, on the one hand, the custom of raising a subject to the 
 rank of czaritza was favourable to the ladies, there was an- 
 other as much to then' prejudice. This was, that the daugh- 
 ters of the czar were very seldom married; so that they gene- 
 rally spent their days in a monastery. Sophia, a princess of 
 superior, but dangerous, abilities, when she perceived that 
 her brother Eeodor was very near his end, did not think 
 proper to retire to a convent ; but finding that she was likely 
 to be left between two brothers, who were unqualified for 
 the reins of government, the one by natural infirmities, and 
 the other by infancy, she formed a scheme for placing herself 
 at the head of the empire. Hence in the last hours of the 
 czar Feodor, she attempted to act the part that Pulcheria 
 had formerly played with her brother the emperor Tkeo- 
 dosius. 
 
 Immediately upon the nomination of Peter, and the ex- 
 clusion of his elder brother, a terrible insurrection broke 
 out among the Strelitz. Never did the pretorian guards, or 
 Turkish janissaries, behave witli more barbarity. "Within 
 two days after the czar Feodor's funeral, they armed and 
 repaired in a body to the Kremlin, there they began with 
 an accusation against nine of their colonels for defraud- 
 ing them of their pay. The ministry were obliged to break 
 those officers, and let the Strelitz have the money de- 
 manded. Not satisfied with this, the soldiers insisted that 
 the nine officers should be delivered up to them ; and by 
 a plurality of voices they condemned them to the bastinado. 
 
 While the Strelitz were thus spreading terror throughout 
 the capital, the princess Sophia privily encouraged them, in 
 order to make them subservient to her own purposes. 
 MeanwhUc she convened an assembly of the princesses 
 of the blood, the generals of the army, and the boyars, 
 with the patriarch, bishops, and even the principal mer- 
 chants: she represented to them that prince Ivan, by right of 
 seniority and merit, ought to succeed to the imperial dignity ; 
 but all the while she intended to hold the reins of govern- 
 ment in her own hands. As she withdrew^ from the assembly, 
 she promised some presents and a further increase of pay 
 to the Strelitz. Her emissaries, at the same time, inflamed 
 the soldiers against the family of the Xarishkins, and especially 
 against the two brothers of the young czaritza dowager, the 
 
 Q2
 
 228 HISTOET OF ETTSSIA. [CH. XIX. 
 
 mother of Peter the First. The soldiers were made to believe 
 that one of those brothers, named Ivan, had put on the imperial 
 robes, ascended the throne, and attempted to strangle prince 
 Ivan ; it was moreover added, that Daniel Vongad, a Dutch 
 physician, had poisoned the czar Feodor. At length Sophia 
 gave them a list of forty lords, whom she styled enemies to 
 their corps and to the state, and as such declared them 
 worthy of death. 
 
 The tragedy began with throwing the princes Dolgoruki 
 and Maffeof out of the windows : the Strelitz received 
 them on their pikes, and after stripping them naked, dragged 
 their bodies along the great square. This done, they rushed 
 into the palace, where meeting with one of the czar Peter's 
 uncles, Athanasius Narishkin, brother of the young czaritza, 
 they massacred him in the same manner ; then forcing the 
 doors of a neighbouring church, where three of the pro- 
 scribed had taken sanctuary, they dragged them from the 
 altar, stripped them naked, and cut them in pieces with 
 knives. 
 
 To such a pitch was their fury arrived, that a young lord 
 of the house of Soltikof, a great favourite of theirs, and who 
 was not in the list of the proscribed, happening to pass by at 
 that time, and one of their companions mistaking him for Ivan 
 Narishkin, of whom, they were in search, they destroyed him 
 in .an instant. But upon discovering their error, they carried 
 the body of the young nobleman to his father for interment ; 
 and the unfortunate parent, far from daring to complain, 
 gave them a considerable reward for the mangled body of his 
 son. His wife, his daughters, and the wife of the deceased, 
 with a flood of tears, reproached him for his weakness. 
 "Let us wait for an opportunity of being revenged," said 
 the old man. These words being overheard by some of the 
 soldiers, they returned in a transport of rage, and dragging 
 out the aged parent by the hair, they cut his throat at his 
 own door. 
 
 In the mean time, some of the other Strelitz were in 
 search of the Dutch physician Vongad, and happening to 
 meet his son, they inquired where his father was ; the young 
 man trembling, replied he did not know ; upon which they 
 cut his throat. Soon after a German physician falling in 
 their way, " You arc a doctor," said they, " and if you nave
 
 A.D. 1682] EEVOLT OF THE STEELITZ. 229 
 
 not poisoned our master Feodor, you have poisoned others, 
 and therefore you merit death ;" and saying this, they des- 
 patched him in an instant. 
 
 At length having discovered the Dutchman, who had dis- 
 guised himself in a beggar's habit, they dragged him before 
 the palace. The princesses, who were fond of the good man, 
 and reposed confidence in his skill, begged hard for his life, 
 assuring the Strelitz that he was a very skilful physician, 
 and had taken great care of their brother Feodor. The sol- 
 diers made answer, that he not only deserved to die as a 
 physician, but likewise as a sorcerer ; for they had found the 
 skeleton of a large toad, and the skin of a snake in his cabi- 
 net. They added, that young Narishkin must absolutely be 
 delivered up to them ; that they had been searching for him 
 in vain for two days ; that he was certainly concealed in 
 the palace ; and they would set fire to it immediately, unless 
 they could seize on bis person. The sister of Ivan Narish- 
 kin, aud the other princesses, terrified with these menaces, 
 repaired to the place where this young nobleman lay con- 
 cealed : the patriarch heard his confession, and administered 
 the viaticum and extreme unction to him ; then laying hold 
 of an image of the Virgin Mary, which was said to perform 
 miracles, he led the young man by the hand, and advanced 
 towards the Strelitz, presenting the image to their view. 
 The princesses, dissolved in tears, encompassed the victim, 
 and kneeling down before the soldiers, interceded in the 
 name of the Virgin for their relation's life ; but the bar- 
 barians, regardless of the suppliant ladies, dragged him 
 away to the bottom of the staircase, where, erecting a kind 
 of tribunal, they put Narishkin and the physician to the 
 torture. One of the soldiers, who could write, drew up an 
 indictment against them, and the two unfortunates were 
 condemned to be cut in pieces. This is the usual punish- 
 ment of parricides in China and Tartary, and is called the 
 punishment of ten thousand slices. After behaving in this 
 manner to Narishkin and Vongad, they exposed their heads, 
 feet, and hands upon the iron points of a balustrade. 
 
 Whilst they were thus glutting their revenge in the 
 presence of the princesses, the remainder of their corps laid 
 violent hands on everybody that was odious to them, or 
 obnoxious to Sophia.
 
 230 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XIX. 
 
 This horrid tragedy concluded with proclaiming the two 
 princes, Ivan and Peter, joint sovereigns (June, 1682), and 
 associating their sister Sophia to the government, in the 
 quality of co-regent. She approved of all the outrages of 
 the Strelitz, conferred rewards upon them, confiscated the 
 estates of the proscribed, and bestowed them upon the 
 murderers ; nay, she gave them permission to erect a 
 monument, with an inscription containing the names of the 
 persons they had massacred, who were represented as 
 traitors to their country ; and she published letters patent, 
 thanking them for their zeal and fidelity. 
 
 By these steps did the princess Sophia in reality ascend 
 the throne of Russia, though she was not declared czaritza ; 
 and these were the first examples Peter the Great had before 
 his eyes. Sophia enjoyed all the honours of sovereignty ; 
 her bust was on the public coin ; her hand to all despatches ; 
 she had the first seat in council, and a power without 
 control. She was a woman of talent ; composed verses in 
 her native language ; both spoke and wrote extremely well ; 
 and the charms of her person added a new lustre to those 
 abilities which were thus sullied by her ambition. 
 
 She procured a wife for her brother Ivan, in the begin- 
 ning of 1684, in hopes that the birth of an heir to the throne 
 would for ever exclude his brother from it, and prolong her 
 regency for an indefinite period. In the midst of the nuptial 
 entertainments, the Strelitz made another insurrection on 
 pretexts concerning religion. Had they been mere soldiers, 
 they never would have become controversialists ; but they 
 were also citizens of Moscow. 
 
 Russia had already experienced some disturbances in 
 consequence of the dispute about the sign of the cross ; 
 whether it should be made with three fingers, or two. A 
 priest, of the name of Abakuin, made himself conspicuous as 
 a preacher of the doctrines of the Eazkolniks, or old 
 believers, a sect who professed to maintain the principles 
 and practices of the Greek Church in their primitive purity. 
 Several burghers, and a great many of the Strelitz, em- 
 braced the opinions of Abakum. At length those enthu- 
 siasts rushed one day into the cathedral, at the time of 
 divine service, and driving the patriarch and his clergy 
 thence with stones, devoutly placed themselves in the seats
 
 A.D. 1685] KOVANSKl'S REBELLION. 231 
 
 of those ecclesiastics, in order to receive the Holy Ghost. 
 They called the patriarch the loolf in sheep's clothing, a title 
 which all sects have liberally bestowed upon one another. 
 Immediately the princess Sophia and the two young czars 
 were informed of these disturbances ; and the other 
 Strelitz, who maintained the good cause, were told that 
 the czars and the church were in danger. A party of the 
 Strelitz and the patriarchal burghers came to blows with 
 the faction of the E-azkolniks ; but as soon as mention was 
 made of convening a councd, the carnage ceased. Accord- 
 ingly a council was forthwith called in a hall of the palace : 
 the convocation was attended with no difficulty ; and all the 
 priests that could be found were summoned. The patriarch 
 and a bishop entered into a dispute with the leader of the 
 Razkolniks ; but upon coming to a second syllogism they 
 pelted one another with stones. The council ended with 
 beheading the leader and some of his faithful disciples, who 
 were put to death by the sole order of the three sovereigns, 
 Sophia, John, and Peter. 
 
 During this time of confusion there was a prince, named 
 Kovanski, who having contributed to the elevation of the 
 princess Sophia, wanted, as a reward for his services, to 
 obtain a share in the government. It is, indeed, believed 
 that he met with ingratitude on the part of the princess. 
 Having sided with the devotees and the persecuted 
 Razkolniks, he also raised a party composed of the Strelitz 
 and the people in defence of the cause of God. This 
 conspiracy was of a more serious nature than the enthu- 
 siastical behaviour of Abakum ; for an ambitious hypocrite 
 is sure to carry matters to a greater length than a simple 
 fanatic. Kovanski, in short, aimed at the imperial dignity. 
 In order to have nothing thenceforward to fear, he resolved 
 to massacre the two czars and Sophia, with the other 
 princesses, and all that were attached to the imperial family. 
 The czars and the princesses were obliged to retire to the 
 monastery of the Holy Trinity, within twelve leagues of 
 Moscow, which was at the same time a convent, a palace, 
 and a fortress. The imperial family were now in full safety, 
 rather from the strength than the sanctity of the place. 
 Here it was that Sophia negotiated with the rebel; and 
 having decoyed him to come half way, she caused him to be
 
 232 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XIX. 
 
 beheaded, together with one of his sons, and thirty-seven 
 Strelitz who accompanied him. 
 
 At this news, the body of Strelitz flew to arms, and 
 marched to the monastery of the Trinity, threatening 
 death and destruction : the imperial finnily intrenched 
 themselves ; the boyars armed their serfs ; all the gentle- 
 men of the country flocked to the monastery ; and the em- 
 pire seemed to be on the eve of a bloody civil war. The 
 patriarch in some measure appeased the Strelitz, who 
 began to be intimidated upon hearing of the troops which 
 were marching on all sides against them ; their fury was 
 soon succeeded by fear, and their fear by the most abject 
 submission. Three thousand seven hundred of them, fol- 
 lowed by their wives and children, wen.t in procession, with 
 halters about their necks, to that very monastery of the 
 Trinity which three days before they had threatened to 
 reduce to ashes. In this condition the unhappy wretches 
 marched two and two, each pair carrying a block and a hatchet; 
 then prostrating themselves on the ground, they waited for 
 their punishment: but, being pardoned, they returned to 
 Moscow, blessing their sovereigns ; still ready, though un- 
 consciously, to commit the same crime upon the first op- 
 portunity. 
 
 These convulsions being ended, the state recovered its 
 tranquillity. Sophia was still possessed of the chief autho- 
 rity : Peter being held in tutelage, and Ivan abandoned to 
 his incapacity. In order to strengthen her power, she shared 
 it with prince Vassili Galitzin, creating him generalissimo, 
 minister of state, and chancellor. Under this able minister 
 an alliance was concluded with Poland greatly to the advan- 
 tage of Russia. 
 
 Russia now enjoyed internal tranquillity : she was still 
 pent up on the side of Sweden, but had begun to extend 
 herself towards Poland, her new ally ; from Crim Tatary 
 she received frequent alarms ; and there was a misunder- 
 standing between her and China in regard to their frontiers. 
 Put what galled her most of all was, that the Khan of the 
 Crimea demanded of her an annual tribute of sixty thousand 
 roubles : a humiliation to which the Turks had likewise sub- 
 jected Poland. 
 
 To wipe off this disgrace, and at the same time fulfil the
 
 a.d. 1G89] peteh's first mareiage. 233 
 
 new engagement with Poland, Galitzin marched against the 
 Crim Tatars at the head of a numerous army. In his first 
 campaign he traversed the dreary steppes until there was 
 no possibility of advancing farther for want of forage ; upon 
 which he led his troops back to the river Samara. There 
 he employed thirty thousand men in building a town, in 
 order to erect magazines for the next campaign. The 
 houses, indeed, were of wood, except two of brick ; and the 
 ramparts were of turf, but well lined with artillery, and 
 in a* good state of defence. Nothing more was effected of 
 any consequence in this ruinous expedition. 
 
 In the mean while, Sophia continued to govern. Ivan had 
 only the name of czar ; and Peter, now at the age of seven- 
 teen, had the courage to aim at more than a titular sove- 
 reignty. By the unexpected pregnancy of his brother's wife, 
 he saw himself placed at a disadvantage towards the party of 
 Sophia and Ivan ; and to remedy this, he married in January, 
 1689, Evdokhia, the daughter of Feodor Lapukhin. That 
 union proved a very unhappy one ; but in its first year it 
 fulfilled the wishes of Peter by giving him a son. 
 
 It is alleged, with what truth we know not, that at this period 
 Sophia and Galitzin engaged the new chief of the Strelitz 
 to sacrifice the young czar to their ambition. It appears at 
 least that six hundred of those soldiers were to seize on that 
 prince's person, if not to murder him. Peter was once more 
 obliged to take refuge in the monastery of the Trinity, the 
 usual sanctuary of the court when menaced by the mutinous 
 soldiery. There he convoked the boyars of his party, as- 
 Bembled a body of forces, treated with the captains of the 
 Strelitz, and sent for some Germans who had been long 
 Bettled in Moscow, and were all attached to his person, from 
 his already showing a regard to foreigners. Sophia protested 
 her abhorrence of the plot, and sent the patriarch to her 
 brother to assure him of her innocence ; but he abandoned 
 her cause on being shown proof that he himself was among 
 those who had been marked out for assassination. Peter's 
 cause prevailed. All the conspirators were punished with 
 great severity ; the leaders were beheaded, others were 
 knouted, or had their tongues cut out, and were sent into 
 exile. Prince Galitzin escaped with his life, by the inter- 
 cession of a relation, who was a favourite of the czar Peter :
 
 234 HISTORY OP RUSSIA. [CH. XX. 
 
 but he forfeited all his property, which was immense, and 
 was banished to the neighbourhood of Archangel. 
 
 The scene concluded with shutting up the princess Sophia 
 in a convent near Moscow, where she remained in confinement 
 until her death, which did not happen till fifteen years after- 
 wards. From that period Peter was real sovereign. His 
 brother Ivan had no other share in the government than 
 that of lending his name to the public acts. He led a retired 
 life, and died in 1696. 
 
 CHAPTEE XX. 
 
 PETER THE FIRST. 
 
 Nature had given Peter the First a colossal vigour of body 
 and mind, capable of all extremes of good and evil. It is 
 impossible to review his whole history without mingled 
 feelings of admiration, horror, and disgust. That he was 
 not altogether a monster of wickedness was not the fault of 
 Sophia and her minister, whose deliberate purpose it was to 
 destroy in him every germ of good, that he might become 
 odious and insupportable to the nation. They succeeded 
 only in impairing the health, corrupting the morals, and 
 hardening the heart of the youthful czar ; it was no more 
 in their power to deprive him of his lofty nature than to 
 have given it to him. General Menesius,* a learned Scotch- 
 man, to wdiom Alexis had entrusted his education, refused to 
 betray him, and was, therefore, driven from his charge. The 
 first impressions on the mind of Peter were allowed to be 
 received from coarse and sordid amusements ; and from 
 foreigners, who were repulsed by the jealousy of the boyars, 
 hated by the superstition of the people, and despised by the 
 general ignorance. Thus it was hoped that he would at last 
 be driven by public execration to quit the palace for a monk's 
 cell ; but the very means which were taken to ensure his 
 
 * See Bassville.
 
 A.D. 1689] YOUTH or PETETt I. 235 
 
 disgrace served to lay the foundations of bis greatness and 
 glory. 
 
 Kept at a distance from the throne, Peter escaped the 
 influence of that atmosphere of effeminacy and flattery by 
 which it is environed; the hatred with which he was inspired 
 against the destroyers of his family increased the energy of 
 his character. He knew that he must conquer his place 
 upon the throne, which was held by an able and ambitious 
 sister, and encircled by a barbarous soldiery ; thenceforth, 
 his childhood had that which ripened age too often wants, it 
 had an aim in view, of which his genius, already bold and 
 persevering, had a thorough comprehension. Surrounded 
 by adventurers of daring spirits, who had come from far to 
 try their fortune, his powers were rapidly unfolded. 
 
 One of them, Lefort, who doubtless perceived in this 
 young barbarian the traces of civilisation, which had per- 
 haps been left there by his first tutor, gave him an idea of 
 the sciences and arts of Europe, and particularly of the 
 military art. 
 
 It is said that, on being made sensible of the barbarism of 
 his countrymen, tears of generous sorrow started into his 
 eyes ; it was like presenting a sword to the sight of a new 
 Achilles. But Peter was much more. That arms should 
 have been his toys, and military exercises his sports, excites 
 but little astonishment ; but what deserves admiration is, 
 that at a time of life when discipline is deemed an insup- 
 portable yoke, he should have comprehended its importance; 
 that he should have submitted to it with the same eagerness 
 that men display to elude it ; have persevered in it at the 
 most mutable period of existence ; and have given an example 
 at an age in which many are hardly capable of following one. 
 
 Such were the dispositions of this prince, notwithstanding 
 the follies of his youth. In the mean while his situation was 
 very critical, being obliged to guard against the different 
 factions of the nobility, to check the mutinous temper of the 
 Strelitz, and to defend himself against the Crim Tatars, 
 with whom he was almost constantly at war. Hostilities, 
 however, had been suspended in 1689, by a truce of no long 
 continuance. 
 
 During this interval, Peter was confirmed in the resolution 
 of introducing the liberal arts into his country.
 
 236 histoet or kussia. [ch. XX. 
 
 His father Alexis had been at great expense in sending 
 for Botkler, a shipbuilder and sea captain, from Holland, 
 with a number of carpenters and seamen. These people 
 built a large frigate and a yacht upon the Volga, with which 
 they fell down that river to Astrakhan: they were to be 
 employed in constructing more vessels, in order to carry on 
 an advantageous trade with Persia, by means of the Caspian 
 Sea. Then happened the revolt of Stenka Eadzin, who 
 destroyed the two vessels, which he ought to have preserved 
 for his own sake, and murdered the captain : the remainder 
 of the ship's crew fled iuto Persia, and reached some of the 
 settlements belonging to the East India Company. A 
 master carpenter, who was a very good shipwright, stayed 
 behind in Eussia, where he lived a long time in obscurity. 
 
 As Peter was one day walking in the court at Ismaelof, a 
 summer palace built by his grandfather, he perceived, among 
 other rarities, an old English shallop, almost fallen to pieces. 
 Upon this he asked Timmerman, his mathematical teacher, 
 and a native of Germany, how that little boat came to be of 
 a different construction from those which lie had seen upon 
 the Moskva ? Timmerman answered, that it was made to go 
 with sails, or with oars. The young prince immediately 
 wanted to make a trial of it ; but they were obliged to look 
 out for a person who could repair and fit it for service ; and, 
 after a long search, they found this very shipwright Brant, 
 who was living in Moscow. The Dutchman put the boat in 
 order, and sailed with it on the river Yauza, which washes 
 the suburbs of the town. 
 
 Peter caused this boat to be removed to a great lake in 
 the' neighbourhood of the monastery of the Trinity, where he 
 made the Dutchman build two frigates and three yachts, and 
 piloted them himself. A long time after (in 1G94), he 
 took a journey to Archangel, where he ordered this same 
 Dutchman to build him a small vessel, in which he embarked 
 on the frozen ocean, that had never been beheld by any 
 sovereign before him. On this occasion he was escorted by 
 a Dutch man-of-war, under the command of captain Jolson, 
 and attended by all the merchant vessels in the harbour of 
 Archangel. He had already learnt the manner of working a 
 ship ; and, notwithstanding the eagerness of courtiers in 
 general to imitate the example of their sovereigns, he was
 
 A.D. 1694] YOUTH OF PETER I. 237 
 
 the only person that learned this art. Among the many- 
 proofs which Peter gave of his indomitable strength of will, 
 this was not the least remarkable : that although he had such 
 a dread of water from his infancy as to be seized with a cold 
 sweat and with convulsions even in being obliged to pass 
 over a brook,* he became the best mariner in all the north. 
 He began to conquer nature by jumping into the water ; and 
 his aversion was ever after changed into a prodigious fond- 
 ness for that element. 
 
 To raise a body of land forces, well disciplined, and fond of 
 the service, was as difficult an undertaking as to establish a 
 navy. His first essay in navigation upon the above-men- 
 tioned lake, before his journey to Archangel, had been 
 looked upon as the amusement of a young prince of genius ; 
 and his first attempt to form a body of disciplined troops 
 had likewise the appearance of being only a scheme of 
 diversion. Sophia and her Strelitz meanwhile smiled at these 
 warlike sports. In this scries of efforts always directed 
 towards the same point, she did not perceive the essays of a 
 nascent genius. In the fifty boys formed into what was 
 called a pleasure company, she saw not the nucleus of those 
 regidar corps which were soon to aid in hurling her from the 
 throne, and destroying her satellites. 
 
 Le Fort, in whom he placed his whole confidence, did not 
 understand much of the military service, neither was he 
 a man of literature, having applied himself deeply to no 
 one particular art or science ; but lie had seen a great 
 deal, and Avas capable of forming a right judgment of 
 what he saw. Like the czar, he was indebted for every- 
 thing to his own genius : besides, he understood the German 
 and Dutch languages, which Peter was learning at that 
 time, in hopes that both those nations would facilitate 
 his designs. Finding himself agreeable to Peter, Le Port 
 attached himself to that prince's service: by adminis- 
 
 * The cause of this aversion is thus mentioned by Strahlemberg. 
 When lie was about five years of age, his mother went with him in a 
 coach, in the spring season; and passing, as he lay in his mother's lap 
 asleep, over a dam where there was a water-fall, be was so frightened 
 by the rushing of the water, that it brought a fever upon him, and, 
 after bis recovery, he retained such a dread of that element that lie 
 could not bear to see any standing water, much less to hear a running 
 stream.
 
 238 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XX. 
 
 tering to his pleasures he became his favourite, and con- 
 firmed this intimacy by his abilities. The czar entrusted 
 him with the most dangerous design a Russian sovereign 
 could then possibly form — that of abolishing the seditious 
 and barbarous body of the Strelitz. The attempt to reform 
 the janissaries had cost the great sultan Osman his life. 
 Peter, young as he was, went to work in a much abler 
 manner than Osman. He began with forming, at his 
 country residence of Preobrajen, a company of fifty of 
 his youngest domestics ; and some of the sons of boyars 
 were chosen for their officers. But in order to teach 
 those young boyars a subordination with which they were 
 wholly unacquainted, he made them pass through all the 
 military degrees, setting them an example himself, and 
 serving successively as private soldier, sergeant, and lieute- 
 nant of the company. 
 
 This company, which had been raised by Peter only, soon 
 increased in numbers, and was afterwards the regiment of 
 Preobrajenski guards. Another company, formed on the 
 same plan, became in time the regiment of guards known by 
 the name of Semenofski. 
 
 The czar had now a regiment of five thousand men on 
 foot, on whom he could depend ; trained by general Gordon, 
 a Scotchman, and composed almost entirely of foreigners. 
 Le Port, who had seen very little service, yet was qualified 
 for any commission, undertook to raise a regiment of twelve 
 thousand men, and effected his design. Pive colonels were 
 appointed to serve under him ; and suddenly he was made 
 general of this little army, which had been raised as much to 
 oppose the Strelitz as the enemies of the state. 
 
 Peter was desirous of seeing one of those mock fights 
 which had been lately introduced in times of peace. He 
 caused a fort to be erected, which one part of his new troops 
 were to defend, and the other to attack. The difference on 
 this occasion was, that instead of exhibiting a sham engage- 
 ment, they fought a downright battle, in which there were 
 several soldiers killed, and a great many wounded. Le Port, 
 who commanded the attack, received a considerable wound. 
 These bloody sports were intended to inure the troops to 
 martial discipline ; but it was a long time before this could 
 be effected, and not without a great deal of labour and
 
 A.D. 1G94] CBEATION OP A NATT. 239 
 
 difficulty. Amidst these military entertainments, the czar 
 did not neglect the navy : and as he had made Le Fort 
 a general, notwithstanding this favourite had never borne 
 any commission by land, so he raised him to the rank 
 of admiral, though he had never before commanded at sea. 
 Eut he knew him to be worthy of both commissions. True 
 it is, he was an admiral without a fleet, and a general without 
 any other troops than his regiment. 
 
 By degrees the czar began to reform the chief abuse in 
 the army, viz., the independence of the boyars, who, in time 
 of war, used to take the field with a multitude of their 
 vassals and peasants. Such was the government of the 
 Franks, Huns, Goths, and Yandals, who, indeed, subdued 
 the Roman empire in its state of decline, but would have 
 been easily destroyed had they contended with the warlike 
 legions of the ancient Romans, or with such armies as in our 
 times are maintained in constant discipline all over Europe. 
 
 Admiral Ee Eort had soon more than an empty title : he 
 employed both Dutch and Venetian carpenters to build some 
 long-boats, and even two thirty-gun ships, at the mouth of 
 the Voroneje, which discharges itself into the Don. These 
 vessels were to fall down the river, and to awe the Crim 
 Tatars. Turkey, too, seemed to invite the czar to essay his 
 arms against her ; and the same time disputes were pending 
 with China respecting the limits between that empire and 
 the possessions of Russia in the north of Asia. These, 
 however, were settled by a treaty concluded in 1792, and 
 Peter was left free to pursue his designs of conquest on the 
 European side of his dominions. 
 
 It was not so easy to settle a peace with the Turks ; this 
 even seemed a proper time for the czar to raise himself on 
 their ruin. The Venetians, whom they had long over- 
 powered, began to retrieve their losses. Morosini, the same 
 who surrendered Candia to the Turks, was dispossessing 
 them of the Morea. Eeopold, emperor of Germany, had 
 gained some advantages over the Ottoman forces in Hun- 
 gar \ ; and the Poles were at least able to repel the incursions 
 of the Crim Tatars. 
 
 Peter improved these circumstances to discipline his 
 troops, and to acquire, if possible, the empire of the Black 
 Sea. General Gordon marched along the Don towards
 
 210 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XX. 
 
 Asof, with liis numerous regiment of five thousand men ; he 
 was followed by general Le Fort, with his regiment of 
 twelve thousand; by a body of Strelitz, under the com- 
 mand of Sheremetef and Schein, officers of Prussian extrac- 
 tion ; by a body of Cossacks, and a large train of artillery. 
 In short, everything was ready for this grand expedition 
 (1694). ' 
 
 The Russian army began its march under the command of 
 marshal Sheremetef, in the beginning of the summer of 1695, 
 in order to attack the town of Asof, situated at the mouth 
 of the Don. The czar was with the troops, but appeared 
 only as a volunteer, being desirous to learn before he would 
 take upon him to command. During their march they 
 stormed two forts which the Turks had erected on the banks 
 of the river. 
 
 This was an arduous enterprise, Asof being very strong, 
 and defended by a numerous garrison. The czar had em- 
 ployed several Venetians in building long-boats like the 
 Turkish saicks, which, together with two Dutch frigates, 
 were to fall down the Voroneje ; but not being ready in 
 time, they could not get into the sea of Asof. All beginnings 
 are difficult. The Prussians having never as yet made a 
 regular siege, miscarried in this their first attempt. 
 
 A native of Dantzic, whose name was Jacob, had the 
 direction of the artillery under the command of general 
 Schein ; for as yet they had none but foreign officers belong- 
 ing to the train, and indeed none but foreign engineers, and 
 foreign pilots. This Jacob had been condemned to the 
 rods by Schein, the Prussian general. It seemed as if these 
 severities were necessary at that time in support of authority. 
 The Russians submitted to such treatment, notwithstanding 
 their disposition to mutiny ; and after they had undergone 
 that corporal punishment, they continued in the service as 
 usual. Our Dantziker was of another way of thinking, and 
 determined to be revenged : whereupon he spiked the 
 cannon, deserted to the enemy, turned Mahometan, and 
 defended the town with great success. The besiegers made 
 a vain attempt to storm it, and after losing a great number 
 of men, were obliged to raise the siege. 
 
 Perseverance in Ins undertakings was the characteristic of 
 Peter the Great. In the spring of 1696 he marched a second
 
 A.D. 1696] WAE IN THE CRIMEA. 241 
 
 time to attack the town of Asof with a more considerable 
 army. About tbis time died tbe czar Ivan. Though Peter 
 never felt any diminution of his authority from his brother, 
 who had only the name of czar, yet he had been under some 
 restraint in regard to appearances. The expenses of Ivan's 
 household were applied, upon that prince's demise, to the 
 maintenance of the army ; a very considerable relief to a 
 government that had as yet by no means a large revenue. 
 Peter wrote to the emperor Leopold, the States- General, 
 and the elector of Brandenburg, in order to obtain engi- 
 neers, gunners, and seamen. He likewise took some Cal- 
 mucks into his pay, whose light horse were of very great 
 service against the Crim Tatars. 
 
 The most agreeable part of the czar's success was that of 
 his little fleet, which he had the pleasure to see completely 
 equipped, and properly commanded. It beat the Turkish 
 saicks that had been sent from Constantinople, and took 
 some of them. The siege was carried on regularly, though 
 not entirely after our manner. The trenches were three 
 times deeper than ours, and the parapets were as high as 
 ramparts. At length, the garrison surrendered, the 28th of 
 July, N.S. (1696), without obtaining any of the honours of 
 war; they were likewise obliged to deliver up the traitor 
 Jacob to the besiegers. 
 
 The czar immediately began to improve the fortifications 
 of Asof: he likewise ordered a harbour to be dug, capable 
 of holding large vessels, with a design to make himself 
 master of the straits of Cafl'a, which open the passage into 
 the Black Sea. He left two-and-thirty armed saicks before 
 Asof, * and made all the preparations for fitting out a strong 
 fleet against the Turks, which was to consist of nine sixty- 
 gun ships, and of one-and-forty carrying from thirty to fifty 
 pieces of cannon. The principal nobility and the wealthiest 
 merchants were obliged to contribute to the fitting out 
 of this fleet ; and, as he thought that the estates of the 
 clergy ought to bear a proportion in the service of the 
 common cause, orders were issued that the patriarch, 
 the bishops, and the superior clergy should find money to 
 forward this new expedition, in honour of their country, and 
 for the general advantage of Christendom. He likewise 
 
 * Le Fort's Memoirs. 
 VOL. I. 11
 
 242 HISTORY OP RUSSIA. [CH. XX. 
 
 obliged the Cossaclcs to build a number of light boats, such 
 as they use themselves, and with which they might easily 
 infest the whole coast of the Crimea. The scheme was to 
 drive the Tatars and Turks for ever out of the Crimea, 
 and afterwards to establish a free and easy commerce with 
 Persia, through Georgia. This is the very branch of trade 
 which the Greeks formerly carried on to Colchis, and to 
 this peninsula of the Crimea, which the czar seemed likely 
 to subdue. 
 
 Before Peter left the Crimea he repudiated his wife 
 Evdokhia, and ordered her to be sent to a convent, where, 
 before his return to Moscow, she became a nun, under the 
 name of Helena. She had long made herself distasteful to 
 her husband by her querulous jealousy, for which, indeed, 
 she had ample cause, and by her aversion to his foreign 
 favourites and the arts they introduced. 
 
 After his successful campaign against the Turks and 
 Tatars, Peter wished to accustom his people to splendid 
 shows, as well as to military toil. "With this view, he made 
 his army enter Moscow under triumphal arches, in the 
 midst of fireworks and other tokens of rejoicing. The soldiers 
 who had fought on board the Venetian saicks against the 
 Turks led the procession. Marshal Sheremetef, generals 
 Gordon and Schein, admiral Le Port, and the other general 
 officers, took precedence of their sovereign, who pretended 
 he had no rank in the army, being desirous to convince the 
 nobility by his example that merit ought to be the only road 
 to military preferment. 
 
 This triumphal entry seemed, in some measure, to resemble 
 those of the ancient Eomans, especially in this, that as the 
 triumphers exposed the captives to public view in the streets 
 of Pome, and sometimes put them to death, so the slaves 
 taken in this expedition followed the army ; and Jacob, 
 who had betrayed them the year before, was carried in a, 
 cart, with the gibbet, to which he was fastened after he 
 had been broken upon the wheel. 
 
 Upon this occasion was struck the first medal in Russia. 
 The legend, which was in the language of that country, is 
 remarkable: — Peter the First, the august emperor of Muscovy. 
 On the reverse is Asof, with these words, Victorious by fire 
 and water.
 
 a.d. 1697] peter's schemes oe conquest. 243 
 
 CHAPTEE XXI. 
 
 peter's schemes of conquest — conspiracy to murder, 
 niM — nE travels to acquire knowledge — rebellion 
 
 AND EXTINCTION 01" THE STRELITZ — PETER THE AUTHOR 
 OE A SPURIOUS CIVILISATION. 
 
 The paramount idea of Peter's whole life displayed itself 
 in the siege of Asof, his first military enterprise. He 
 wished to civilise his people by beginning with the art of 
 war by sea and land. That art would open the way for all 
 the others into Russia, and protect them there. By it the 
 czar was to conquer for his empire that element which, in his 
 eyes, was the greatest civiliser of the world, because it is 
 the most favourable to the intercourse of nations with each 
 other. 
 
 But ignorant and savage Asia lay stretched along the 
 Black Sea, between Eussia and the south of Europe. It 
 was not, therefore, through those waters that Peter could 
 open himself a passage to European knowledge. But to- 
 wards the north-west, another sea, the same whence, in the 
 ninth century, came the first Eussian founders of the 
 empire, was within his reach. It alone could connect 
 Muscovy with ancient Europe ; it was especially through 
 that inlet, and by the ports on the gulfs of Finland and of 
 Eiga, that Eussia could aspire to civilisation. Those ports 
 belonged, however, to a warlike land, thickly studded with 
 strong fortresses. It mattered not ; everything was to be 
 tried to attain so important an object. 
 
 Peter, however, did not deem it proper to begin such 
 an arduous enterprise until he should have made himself 
 better acquainted with the nations which he wished to con- 
 ciliate, or to conquer, and which were recommended to him 
 as models. He was desirous, with his own eyes, to behold 
 civilisation in what he supposed to be its mature state, and 
 to improve himself in the details of government, in 1he 
 knowledge of naval affairs, aud of the several arts which he 
 wished to introduce among his countrymen. Perhaps he 
 
 r2
 
 244 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXI. 
 
 would have acted more wisely in remaining at home, and 
 developing the native genius of his people, instead of forcing 
 them to hecome mere plagiarists of foreign institutions and 
 usages ; and instead of making his Russians resemble their 
 neighbours, he should have tried to make them like them- 
 selves alone, and superior to every other people. The arts 
 and sciences would then have sprung up among them 
 spontaneously, or have found their way to them from 
 abroad, and become naturalised in Russia, whereas they 
 remain exotics there to this day. * He departed, however ; 
 and thereby he, at least, broke down the barrier which 
 despotism and superstition had raised between the Russians 
 and Europe, and which rendered war their only connecting 
 link. 
 
 But he was not allowed to depart in peace. The an- 
 nouncement of his intention was received with deep disgust 
 by his bigoted subjects. The Strelitz in particular, who saw 
 themselves supplanted by the regiments disciplined in the 
 European manner, were actively hostile. The childhood 
 and youth of Peter had several times escaped from their 
 rage ; and now, in the horror which was inspired by his 
 approaching departure for profane Europe, they determined 
 to sacrifice the impious czar who was ready to defile himself 
 by the sacrilegious touch of foreigners whom they abhorred. 
 They saw in the midst of them twelve thousand heretics, 
 already organised, who would remain masters of their holy 
 city ; while they themselves, exiled to the army, were 
 destined to fight at a distance on the frontier. IS r or was 
 this their only grievance ; for Peter had given orders to 
 construct a fleet of a hundred vessels ; and of this sudden 
 creation they complained, as being an insupportable tax in 
 the midst of an already ruinous war, and as rendering it 
 
 * "Pierre I," says Condillac, "aurait pu observer dans l'histoire 
 les avantages et les vices des differens gouvernemens, et c'est ainsi qn'il 
 pouvait cliercher a s'instruire. Les nations do l'Europe, mal gouvernees 
 et corrompues, ne pouvaient que lejeter dans 1'crrcur. Leur politesse 
 et leurs arts n'etaient pas ce qu'il fallait aux Russes. S'il y eut en 
 quelque part un pays Lien gouvcrne. je conyiens qu'il eut iteplus court 
 de l'etudier. Le czar cut done bien fait d'y aller, et les autres princes 
 de l'Europe auraientduy voyager a son exemple."— Corns cFetude, torn, 
 xiv., p. 488.
 
 A.D. 1697] CONSPIRACY TO MURDER PETER. 245 
 
 necessary to introduce into their sacred land a fresli supply 
 of those schismatical artisans who were preferred to them. 
 A few days hefore the departure of their sovereign, Tsikler 
 and Sukanim, two of the Strelitz leaders, plotted a nocturnal 
 conflagration. They knew that Peter would be the first to 
 hasten to it ; and in the midst of the tumult and confusion 
 common to such accidents, they meant to murder him 
 without mercy, and then to massacre all the foreigners who 
 had been set over them as masters. 
 
 Such was the infamous scheme. The hour fixed for its 
 accomplishment was at hand. The principal conspirators 
 assembled at a banquet, and sought in intoxicating liquors 
 the courage requisite for the dreadful work before them. 
 But drunkenness produces various effects on different con- 
 stitutions. Two of the villains lost in it their boldness, left 
 the company under a specious pretext, promising their 
 accomplices to return in time, and hurried to the czar to 
 disclose the plot. 
 
 At midnight the blow was to have been struck; and 
 Peter gave orders that, exactly at eleven, the haunt of the 
 conspirators should be closely surrounded. Shortly after, 
 thinking that the hour was come, he went thither alone, and 
 entered boldly, not doubting that he should find them 
 already fettered by his guards. But his impatience had 
 anticipated the time, and he found himself, single and 
 unarmed, in the midst of the ferocious gang at the instant 
 when they were vociferating an oath that they would achieve 
 his destruction. 
 
 At his unexpected appearance they all rose in confusion. 
 Peter, at once comprehending the full extent of his danger, 
 exasperated at the supposed disobedience of his guards, and 
 furious at having thrown himself into peril, had yet the 
 presence of mind to conceal his emotions. Having gone too 
 t;u- tu recede, he unhesitatingly advanced among the throng 
 of traitors, greeted them familiarly, and, in a calm and 
 natural tone, said, that " as he was passing by their house he 
 saw a light in it, and guessing that they were amusing 
 themselves, he had entered in order to share their pleasures." 
 He then seated himself, and drank to his assassins, who, 
 standing up around him, could not avoid putting the glass 
 about, and drinking his health.
 
 246 HISTOET OF ETJSSIA. [CH. XXI. 
 
 But soon they began to exchange looks and signs. At 
 last one of them leaned over to Sukanim, and said, in a low 
 voice, "Brother, it is time!" The latter, for what reason is 
 unknown, hesitated, and had scarcely replied, " Not yet," 
 when Peter, who heard these words, and along with them, 
 the footsteps of his guards, started from his seat, knocked 
 him down by a blow in the face, and exclaimed, " If it is not 
 yet time for you, scoundrel, it is for me!" This blow, and 
 the sight of the guards, threw the assassins into consterna- 
 tion ; they fell on their knees and implored forgiveness. 
 "Chain them!" replied the terrible czar. Then turning to 
 the officer of the guards, he struck him, and reproached him 
 with his want of punctuality ; but the latter showed him his 
 order ; and the czar perceiving his mistake, clasped him in 
 his arms, kissed him on the forehead, proclaimed his fidelity, 
 and entrusted him with the custody of the traitors. 
 
 His vengeance was terrible ; the punishment was more 
 ferocious than the crime. First the rack, then the successive 
 mutilation of each member : then death, when not enough 
 of blood and life was left to allow of the sense of suffering. 
 To close the whole, the heads were exposed on the summit 
 of a column, the members being symmetrically arranged 
 around them, as ornaments : a scene worthy of a government 
 of masters and of slaves, brutifying each other, and whose 
 only god was fear. 
 
 After this terrific execution, Peter began his journey in 
 April, 1697, travelling incognito in the retinue of his three 
 ambassadors, general Le Fort, the boyar Alexis Golovin, 
 and Vonitsin, diak, or secretary of state, who had been long 
 employed in foreign courts. Their retinue consisted of two 
 hundred persons : the czar, reserving to himself only a valet 
 de chambre, a servant in livery, and a dwarf, was confounded 
 in the crowd. It was a tiling unparalleled in history, either 
 ancient or modern, for a sovereign of five-and-twenty years 
 of age to withdraw from his kingdoms, only in order to learn 
 the art of government. His victory over the Turks and 
 Tatars, the splendour of his triumphant entry into Moscow, 
 the multitude of foreign troops attached to his interest, the 
 death of his brother Ivan, the confinement of the princess 
 Sophia to a cloister, and the fearful example he had just 
 made of the conspirators, might naturally encourage him to
 
 A.D. 1G97] PETEE TEAVELS TO ACQUIEE KNOWLEDGE. 247 
 
 hope that the tranquillity of his dominions would not be dis- 
 turbed during his absence. The regency he entrusted to the 
 boyar Strecknef and prince Romadonovski, who in matters of 
 importance were to consult with the rest of the nobility. 
 
 The troops which had been trained by general Gordon 
 continued at Moscow, with a view to awe the capital. The 
 disaffected Strelitz, who were likely to create a disturbance, 
 were distributed on the frontiers of the Crimea, in order to 
 preserve the conquest of Asof, and check the incursions of 
 the Tatars. Having thus provided against every contin- 
 gency, he gave a free scope to his passion of travelling, and 
 his desire of improvement. He had previously sent three- 
 score young Russians of Le Fort's regiment into Italy, most 
 of them to Venice, and the rest to Leghorn, in order to 
 learn the art of navigation, and the method of constructing 
 galleys : forty more set out by his direction for Holland, 
 to be instructed in the art of building and working large 
 ships : others were ordered to Germany, to serve in the 
 land forces, and to learn the military discipline of that 
 nation. 
 
 At that period, Mustapha II. had been vanquished by the 
 emperor Leopold ; Sobieski was dead ; and Poland was 
 hesitating in its choice between the prince of Conti and 
 Augustus of Saxony ; "William III. reigned over England ; 
 Louis XIV. was on the point of concluding the treaty of 
 Ryswick ; the elector of Brandenburg was aspiring to the 
 title of king ; and Charles XII. had ascended the throne. 
 
 Setting out from Novgorod, Peter first visited Livonia, 
 where, at the risk of his liberty, he reconnoitred its capital, 
 Riga, from which he was rudely repulsed by the Swedish 
 governor. Thenceforth he could not rest till he had acquired 
 that maritime province through which his empire was one 
 day to be enriched and enlightened. In his progress he 
 gained the friendship of Prussia, a power which, at a future 
 time, migh.1 assist his efforts ; Poland ought to be his ally, 
 and already he declared himself the supporter of the Saxon 
 prince who was about to rule it. 
 
 The czar had reached Amsterdam fifteen days before the 
 ambassadors : he lodged at first in a house belonging to the 
 East India Company, but chose afterwards a small apart- 
 ment in the yards of the Admiralty. He disguised himself
 
 248 HISTORY OP RUSSIA. [CH. XXI. 
 
 in a Dutch skipper's habit, and went to the great ship- 
 building village of Sardam. Peter admired the multitude of 
 workmen constantly employed ; the order and exactness 
 observed in their several departments ; the prodigious 
 despatch with which they built and fitted out ships ; and the 
 vast quantity of stores and machines for the greater ease and 
 security of labour. He began with purchasing a boat, and 
 made a mast for it himself: by degrees he executed every 
 part of the construction of a ship, and led the same life all 
 the time as the carpenters of Sardam ; clad and fed exactly 
 like them ; working hard at the forges, at the rope-yards, 
 and at the several mills for sawing timber, extracting oil, 
 manufacturing paper, and wiredrawing. He entered himself 
 as a common carpenter, and was enrolled in the list of work- 
 men by the name of Peter Michaelof. They commonly called 
 him Master Peter, or Peter-bas ; and though they were 
 confounded at first to behold a sovereign as their companion, 
 yet they gradually accustomed themselves to the sight. 
 
 Whilst Peter was handling the compass and axe at 
 Sardam, he received intelligence of the division in Poland, 
 and of the double nomination of the elector Augustus and 
 the prince of Conti. Immediately the carpenter of Sardam 
 promised king Augustus to assist him with thirty thousand 
 men. Prom his shop he issued out orders to his army in the 
 Ukraine, which had been assembled against the Turks. 
 
 His troops obtained a victory over the Tatars,* in the 
 neighbourhood of Asof ; and in a few months after became 
 masters of the town of Orkapi, or Precop. Por his part 
 he persisted in making himself master of different arts. 
 With this view he frequently went from Sardam to Am- 
 sterdam, in order to hear the anatomical lectures of the 
 celebrated lluisch. Under this master he made such 
 progress as to be able to perform some surgical opera- 
 tions, which, in case of necessity, might be of use, both 
 to himself and to his officers. He likewise studied natural 
 philosophy, under Vitsen, celebrated for his patriotic virtue, 
 and for the noble use he made of his immense fortune. 
 
 Peter-bas suspended these occupations only to pay a 
 private visit at Utrecht and at the Hague to William 
 the Third, king of England, and stadtholder of the United 
 * 1697, August the 11th.
 
 a.d. 1697] peter's occupations in Holland. 249 
 
 Provinces. General Le Fort was the only person present 
 at the interview of the two monarchs. Peter assisted 
 next at the ceremony of the public entry of his ambassadors, 
 and at their audience, when the deputies of the States were 
 presented, in his name, with six hundred of the finest sahles : 
 the States, in return, besides the usual present of a gold 
 chain and a medal to each, gave them three magnificent 
 coaches. They received the first visit of all the plenipoten- 
 tiaries assembled at the congress of Eyswick, except the 
 French, to whom they had not notified their arrival, not only 
 because the czar espoused the part of king Augustus against 
 the prince of Conti, but because king William, whose friend- 
 ship he cultivated, was averse to a peace with France. 
 
 Upon his return to Amsterdam he resumed his former 
 occupations ; and having finished with his own hands a sixty- 
 gun ship, which he had begun himself, he sent it to Arch- 
 angel ; for the Russians had then no harbour in the Baltic. 
 
 He not only engaged French refugees, Swiss, and Ger- 
 mans, to enter into his service ; but took care to send all 
 sorts of artists to Moscow ; not without previously seeing a 
 specimen of their abilities. There are few arts and manual 
 employments with which he was not well acquainted : he 
 took a particular pleasure in rectifying the maps of geogra- 
 phers, who having at that time but a slender knowledge of 
 his dominions, frequently fixed the situation of towns and the 
 course of rivers merely at a venture. He himself drew a 
 plan of the communication between the Caspian and Black 
 Seas, which he had projected some time before, and com- 
 missioned M. Brekel, a German engineer, to carry it into 
 execution ; this plan is still preserved. The junction of 
 those two seas was indeed a less arduous task than that of 
 the ocean and the Mediterranean, which had been executed 
 in France ; yet people were frightened at the very idea of 
 joining the sea of Asof and the Caspian. There seemed to 
 be a stronger reason for the czar to make new settlements 
 in that part of the world, as fresh hopes arose from his 
 successes. His troops, commanded by general Schriu 
 and prince Dolgoruki, had lately obtained a victory in the 
 neighbourhood of Asof, over the Tatars, and even over a 
 body of janissaries, whom sultan Mustapha sent to their 
 assistance.
 
 250 HISTORY OF EUSSIA. [CH. XXI. 
 
 Thus lie continued Lis usual employments of ship-builder, 
 engineer, geographer, and natural philosopher till the 
 middle of January, 1698, -when he embarked for England in 
 his ambassadors' retinue. 
 
 King William sent bis yacht to meet him, with a convoy 
 of two men-of-war. In England he followed the same manner 
 of life as that which he bad observed at Amsterdam and 
 Sardam. He took lodgings near the dockyard at Dept- 
 ford ; and almost his wbole time was employed in gaining 
 further instruction. Tbe Dutch carpenters had only taught 
 him the practical part of ship-building ; but in England he 
 learnt the fundamental principles of tbe art. He soon 
 became master of tbe theory, and was capable of giving 
 lectures upon it himself. He undertook to build a sbip ac- 
 cording to the English method of construction ; and it proved 
 a prime sailer. His attention was also directed to watchmaking, 
 an art which had already been brought to perfection in 
 London, and be made himself thoroughly acquainted with the 
 principles on which it is founded. Captain Perry, the engineer 
 who attended him from London to Eussia, affirms that there 
 was not so much as a single article belonging to a sbip, from 
 the casting of cannon to tbe making of cables, but what Peter 
 minutely observed, and set his band to as often as be came 
 into the king's yards. 
 
 In order to cultivate his friendship, king "William per- 
 mitted him to take a number of English artificers into his 
 service, as be had done in Holland ; but beside tbe artificers, 
 Peter engaged some mathematicians, whom be could not so 
 easily have procured from tbat republic. He contracted for 
 this purpose with Mr. Ferguson, a Scotchman, and a good 
 geometrician. This was tbe man wbo introduced the arith- 
 metical metbod of accounts into the exchequer in Eussia, wbere 
 before tbat time tbey used only the Tatar metbod of reckoning 
 with balls strung upon a wire ; a metbod which sup- 
 plied the place of writing, but was perplexing and im- 
 perfect ; because after tbe calculation, there was no means 
 of proving it, so as to obtain a certainty of tbere being no mis* 
 take. Tbe Indian cypbers, which we now use, were not intro- 
 duced into Europe till tbe ninth century by the Arabs ; and 
 the Russian empire did not receive them till many ages after : 
 such has been tbe fate of all the arts, to be slow in their
 
 A.D. 1698] PETER IN ENGLAND AND HOLLAND. 251 
 
 progress round the globe. Ferguson was accompanied by 
 two young mathematicians from Christ Church Hospital; 
 and this was the beginning of the marine academy, founded 
 some time after by Peter the Great. He observed and cal- 
 culated eclipses along with Ferguson. Perry the engineer, 
 though greatly dissatisfied with the czar for not having 
 sufficiently rewarded him, acknowledges that Peter had 
 studied astronomy. He understood the motions of the hea- 
 venly bodies, and even the laws of gravitation, by which they 
 are dh'ected. This force was already familiar to a sovereign 
 of Eussia, when other nations amused themselves with chi- 
 merical vortices ; and when Galileo's ignorant countrymen 
 were commanded by teachers as ignorant as themselves, to 
 believe the earth immovable. 
 
 Perry set out upon his journey in order to effect the junc- 
 tion of rivers, and to construct bridges and sluices. The 
 czar's plan was to open a communication, by means of canals, 
 between the ocean, the Caspian, and the Black Sea. 
 
 "We ought not to omit that the English merchants, headed 
 by the marquis of Carmarthen, gave him fifteen thousand 
 pounds for leave to import tobacco in Eussia. This branch 
 of commerce had been prohibited by the patriarch ; for the 
 Eussian Church looked upon smoking as an unclean and 
 sinful action. Peter, who knew better things, and who, 
 among his other projects, was meditating a reformation oi 
 the church, introduced the use of this commodity into 
 his dominions, and retained the monopoly of it in his own 
 hands. 
 
 Before he departed from Englaud, king "William enter- 
 tained him with a spectacle worthy of such a guest, that of a 
 sham .sea-fight. Little was it then imagined that the czar 
 would one day fight real battles on this element against the 
 Swedes, and obtain victories on the Baltic. "William also 
 made him a present of the Royal Transport, a very beau- 
 tiful yacht, which he generally used for his passage over 
 to Holland. Peter went on board this vessel, and got back 
 to Holland in the end of May, 1698. He took with him 
 three captains of men-of-war, five-and-twenty , captains of 
 merchant ships, forty lieutenants, thirty pilots, thirty sur- 
 geons, two hundred and fifty gunners, and upwards of three 
 hundred artificers. This colony of ingenious men in the
 
 252 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXI. 
 
 several arts and professions, sailed from Holland to Arch- 
 angel on board the Royal Transport ; and were sent thence 
 to the different places where their service was necessary. 
 Those whom he engaged at Amsterdam, took the ronte of 
 Narva, at that time subject to Sweden. 
 
 While the czar was thus transporting the arts and manu- 
 factures from England and Holland to his own dominions, 
 the officers whom he had sent to Eome and Italy succeeded 
 so far as also to engage some artists in his service. General 
 Sheremetef, who was at the head of his embassy to Italy, 
 made the tour of Eome, Naples, Venice, and Malta ; while 
 the czar proceeded to Vienna with the other ambassadors. 
 All he had to do now, was to observe the military discipline 
 of the Germans, after seeing the English fleet, and the dock- 
 yards in Holland. But it was not the desire of improvement 
 alone that induced him to make this tour to Vienna : he had 
 likewise a political view ; for the emperor of Germany was 
 the natural ally of the Russians against the Turks. Peter 
 had a private audience of Leopold, and the two monarchs 
 stood the whole time of the interview, to avoid the trouble 
 of ceremony. 
 
 During his stay at Vienna, there happened nothing re- 
 markable, except the celebration of the ancient feast of 
 landlord and landlady, which Leopold thought proper to 
 revive upon the czar's account, after it had been disused 
 during his whole reign. The manner of making this enter- 
 tainment, to which the Germans gave the name of "Wirth- 
 schaft, was as follows. The emperor was landlord, and the 
 empress landlady : the king of the Romans, the archdukes, 
 and the archduchesses, were generally their assistants : they 
 entertained people of all nations, dressed after the most 
 ancient fashion of their respective countries. Those who 
 were invited as guests, drew lots for tickets; on each of 
 which was written the name of the nation, and the character 
 to be represented. One had a ticket for a Chinese mandarin, 
 another for a Tatar mirza, another for a Persian satrap, or a 
 Roman senator : a princess might happen to be allotted the 
 part of a gardener's wife, or a milkwoman ; and a prince 
 might act the peasant or soldier. They had dances suited 
 to these different characters; and the landlord and landlady 
 with their family waited at table. On this occasion Peter as-
 
 A.D. 1698] REBELLION* AND EXTINCTION OF THE STRELITZ. 253 
 
 sumed the habit of a Friesland boor, and in this character was 
 addressed by everybody, at the same time that they talked 
 to him of the great czar of Muscovy. " These indeed are 
 trifles," says Voltaire, from vrhom the account is taken, 
 ° but whatever revives the memory of ancient customs, is, in 
 some measure, worthy of being recorded." 
 
 Peter was preparing to continue his journey from Vienna 
 to Venice and Home when he was recalled to his own do- 
 minions by news of a general insurrection of the Strelitz, 
 who had quitted their posts on the frontiers, and marched on 
 Moscow. Peter immediately left Vienna in secret, passed 
 through Poland, where he had an interview with king Au- 
 gustus, aud arrived at Moscow in September, 1G98, before 
 any one there knew of his having left Germany. 
 
 Gordon had already crushed the rebels ; had almost exter- 
 minated in battle a body of them, comprising ten thousand 
 men ; compelled seven thousand more to lay down their arms ; 
 decimated them on the spot, and carried the rest prisoners to 
 Moscow. But even this rigorous vindication of military dis- 
 cipline was not enougli to satisfy the cruel spirit of the czar. 
 Just returned from the tour he had undertaken for the pur- 
 pose of importing among his barbarous people the enlighten- 
 ment and civilisation of the west, he exhibited to them a 
 spectacle paralleled only by the deeds of the monster Ivan 
 IV., for whom, indeed, Peter always avowed his special 
 admiration. There were seven thousand Strelitz prisoners 
 in Moscow, all of whom he caused to be executed after six 
 weeks spent in personally examining them, day by day, 
 under torture inflicted before his eyes with every refinement 
 of diabolical cruelty. Two thousand were hanged by his 
 guards; the rest were beheaded, kneeling in rows of fifty, 
 before trunks of trees laid on the ground. This part of the 
 execution was begun by the czar himself, who struck off 
 some -ens of heads with his own hand. All the nobles of 
 his court, the foreigners Blumberg and Le Fort alone ex- 
 cepted, were compelled to follow his example ; and Mentchi- 
 kof made a boast of surpassing all his brother-executioners 
 in amount of work and style of performance. 
 
 Several hundreds of the corpses were gibbeted at the spates 
 of the city and along the walls; the rest were left unburied 
 where they had fallen; and as the execution took place in
 
 254 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXI. 
 
 October, at the setting in of the frost, the people of Moscow 
 had for five whole months before their eyes the horrid spec- 
 tacle of seven thousand corpses preserving the appearance of 
 recent violent death. Thirty gibbets, sustaining two hundred 
 bodies, were planted before the convent in which the czar's 
 sister, Sophia, was confined. The Strelitz had deputed three 
 of their number to present an address to the princess, in- 
 viting her to assume the crown. The three were gibbeted 
 before the single grated window that lighted the cell in 
 which the princess was immured, and the fatal paper was 
 held out to her by the stiffened arm of one of the dead men. 
 She could not turn her eyes to the light without beholding 
 the bodies of the wretches who had perished for her sake. 
 
 Among the czar's victims on this occasion were two ser- 
 vant women belonging to Sophia and her sister Marfa, who 
 was confined with her in the same convent. The two women 
 were tortured, and put to death. Their execution was not 
 public, and it is not certain whether they were buried alive 
 or drowned. One of them was known to be pregnant, but 
 this did not save her either from torture or death. 
 
 The widows and children of the Strelitz were transported 
 to wild and desert places, where a limited extent of ground 
 was assigned them ; out of which they and their descendants 
 were never to pass. About three thousand men had escaped 
 from the massacre inflicted by Gordon on the first body of 
 Strelitz whom he had encountered. The fugitives having 
 dispersed in different directions, it was forbidden, on pain 
 of death, that any one throughout the whole Eussian empire 
 should harbour one of them, or give him so much as a drop 
 of water. 
 
 The natural consequences of these inhuman acts were mani- 
 fested next year ; fresh insurrections broke out in distant 
 parts of the empire, followed by fresh executions. A number 
 of rebels were brought in chains from Asof to Moscow, and 
 eighty of them were beheaded by the czar with his own 
 hand, whilst the boyar Plestchef held them by the hair. It 
 is probably to this period we may refer an anecdote related 
 by M. Printz, ambassador from Prussia at the court of 
 Peter I. At an entertainment to which M. Printz was 
 invited by the czar, the latter, after he had drunk as usual 
 a great deal of wine and brandy, had twenty rebels brought
 
 A.D. 1698] SPURIOUS CIVILISATION. 255 
 
 in from the prisons. Then drinking twenty successive bum- 
 pers within an hour, he struck off a head with each, and 
 actual lv proposed to the ambassador that he should try his 
 skill in the same way ! 
 
 What kind of civilisation could that be which was inau- 
 gurated under such auspices as these, and by so brutal a 
 reformer ? Truly did Peter once observe, that " he wished 
 to reform others, yet was unable to reform himself." In fact, 
 he laboured all his life long under a total misconception ot 
 the very nature of civilisation ; and while making prodigious 
 efforts to secure its results, he was equally energetic in com- 
 bating its essential principles. " He showed himself," says 
 Schnitzler, " in one particular a true Russian. He attached 
 more importance to interests than to principles. Whilst all 
 material progress excited his sympathy to the highest degree, 
 the idea of elevating and purifying the moral character of his 
 country, and of contributing to her social and religious per- 
 fection, hardly entered into his thoughts. He saw in civili- 
 sation rather an element of might than a means of increasing 
 the dignity of human nature. The moral culture of his 
 people was overlooked by him ; but when their material 
 interests were concerned, nothing escaped his attention and 
 his indefatigable activity." The result is well summed up 
 in Diderot's homely phrase : the Russians, as fashioned by 
 Peter, "were rotten before they were ripe." 
 
 Having suppressed the entire corps of the Strelitz, Peter 
 established regular regiments, clothed and disciplined in the 
 European manner. As he had passed through the lowest 
 degrees in the army himself, he ordered that the sons of his 
 boyars and princes should serve in the capacity of common 
 soldiers before they became officers. Some of the young 
 nobility he sent on board his fleet at Voroneje and Asof, 
 where he obliged them to serve their apprenticeship in the 
 navy. None durst refuse to obey a master who had deigned 
 to set so extraordinary an example. The English and Dutch 
 helped to equip this fleet for sea, to construct sluices, to 
 establish docks for careening his ships, and to resume the 
 grand work of joining the Don and the Volga, which had 
 been dropped by Brakel the German. From that time he 
 set about a multitude of reforms in civil and ecclesiastical 
 affairs, and in the usages of society.
 
 256 HISTORY OP RUSSIA, [ch. XXI. 
 
 The revenue had been hitherto administei'ed nearly in the 
 same manner as in Turkey. Every boyar paid a stipulated 
 sum for his lands, and raised it upon his dependents or 
 bondsmen. But the czar appointed for his receivers select 
 merchants who were not powerful enough to claim the pri- 
 vilege of paying into the public treasury only just what they 
 pleased. He established a Senate in lieu of the old Council 
 of Boyars, and suppressed the titles of boyars, okolnitchi, 
 and dumnie-diaki, substituting for them those of presidents, 
 counsellors, and senators. 
 
 The reformation of the church, which in all other coun- 
 tries is looked upon as a dangerous attempt, proved an easy 
 task to Peter. The bishops had arrogated to themselves the 
 power of condemning people to death, and to other corporal 
 punishments. This authority, notwithstanding that it had 
 been usurped for several ages, was taken from them. The 
 patriarch Adrian happening to die at the end of this century, 
 Peter abstained from giving him a successor. At last, in 1721, 
 this dignity was entirely abolished ; and the great income of 
 the patriarchal see was united to the public revenue, which 
 stood in need of this addition. If the czar did not set him- 
 self up for head of the Bussian Church, he made himself 
 absolute master of the clergy, for the functions of the patri- 
 archate were transferred to a synod, the members of which 
 were to begin their ministry by taking an oath of submission 
 and obedience, couched in the following terms : " I swear fide- 
 lity and allegiance as servant and subject to my natural and true 
 sovereign, and to his august successors, whom he shall please 
 to'nominate, by virtue of the incontestable power for that pur- 
 pose, of which he is possessed. I acknowledge him to be the 
 supreme judge of this spiritual college : I swear by the all- 
 seeing God that I understand and mean this oath, in the 
 full force and sense which the words convey to those who 
 read, or hear it." This is much stronger than the oath 
 of supremacy in England. The Bussian monarch was not 
 indeed one of the fathers of the synod ; but he dictated their 
 laws : he did not touch the censer ; but he directed the hands 
 that held it. 
 
 While lie was waiting for the completion of this great 
 work, he thought that as his dominions were but ill peopled,
 
 A.D. 1700] REFORMS EFFECTED BY PETER. 257 
 
 the celibacy of the monks was eontraiy to nature, and to the 
 public good. The ancient usage of the church of Russia is, 
 that the secular priests shall marry at least once ; nay, they 
 are obliged to do it : and formerly, when the priest lost his 
 wife, he ceased to be in the sacerdotal order. But a multi- 
 tude of cloistered young men and women, who made a vow 
 to be useless to the public, and to live at other people's 
 expense, appeared in his eye a dangerous institution. He 
 reduced the number of convents, and ordained that none 
 should be admitted to a monastic life till they were fifty 
 years old — an age when all ties are either formed or broken ; 
 and he further prohibited the monasteries from receiving any 
 person, of what age soever, invested with a public employ- 
 ment. This regulation, however, has been repealed since his 
 time. 
 
 These alterations were at first received by the clergy with 
 great disgust. A certain priest declared in writing that 
 Peter was Antichrist, because he would have no patriarch ; 
 and as the czar encouraged the typographical art, it helped 
 to spread a multitude of libels against him. But on the 
 other hand, there started up a priest, who replied that it was 
 impossible for the czar to be Antichrist, because the number 
 666 was not to be found in his name, and he had not the 
 sign of the beast. These murmurs were silenced by force of 
 terror and ridicule. Peter, in reality, gave more to the 
 church than he took from her ; for by degrees he rendered 
 the clergy more regular and more learned. He founded 
 three colleges at Moscow, in which the students were in- 
 structed in different languages, and where the youth de- 
 signed for the church were obliged to study. 
 
 One of the most necessary reformations was the abolition, 
 or at least the mitigation, of the three Lents ; an ancient 
 superstition of the Greek Church, no less pernicious to the 
 persons employed in the public service, and especially to the 
 soldiers, than the old one of not fightiug on the Sabbath day 
 had been to the Jews. Accordingly the czar granted, at 
 least to his troops and his workmen, a dispensation from 
 observing these Lents; La which, though the people were 
 not permitted to eat, yet it was customary for them to get 
 drunk, lie even dispensed with their abstaining from flesh 
 
 vol. i. s
 
 258 HISTORY OF 11USSIA. [CH. XXI. 
 
 meat on fish days ; and the chaplains, both in the sea and 
 land service, were obliged to set the example, which they did 
 without any reluctance. 
 
 The calendar was an object of importance. The regulation 
 of the year was anciently made in all countries by the heads 
 of religion, not only on account of tho festivals, but because 
 in former times scarce any but priests understood astronomy. 
 The Russians began their year the 1st of September ; but 
 Peter ordained that thenceforward the year should com- 
 mence, as in this part of Europe, on the 1st of January. 
 This alteration took place in the year 1700, at the opening 
 of the century, which he ordered to be celebrated by a ju- 
 bilee, and by other grand solemnities. The vulgar admired 
 how the czar could be able to change the course of the sun. 
 Some obstinate people being persuaded that God had created 
 the world iu the month of September, continued to observe 
 the old style ; but the alteration took place in all the public 
 offices, in the court of chancery, and soon after throughout 
 the empire. Peter did not introduce the Gregorian calen- 
 dar, because it was rejected by the English mathematicians 
 of his day. 
 
 Marriages before that time were performed after the cus- 
 tom of the East, where they do not see the bride till the 
 contract is signed, and they cannot fly from their word. 
 This custom may be tolerated where polygamy is established, 
 and the women are confined ; but it cannot be suitable to 
 countries where men are obliged to be satisfied with one 
 wife, and where divorces are seldom allowed. 
 
 The czar strove to accustom his subjects to the manners 
 and usages of the nations among whom he had travelled, and 
 from whom he had received the several masters who were 
 then employed hi instructing his people. It was fit, he 
 thought, that the Russians should not be dressed in a dif- 
 ferent manner from those who were teaching them the arts 
 and sciences. He found no difficulty in introducing the 
 western mode of dress, and the custom of shaving among 
 his courtiers ; but the bulk of the nation were more stub- 
 born, so that he was obliged to lay a tax on long coats and 
 beards. Erom this tax he exempted only the priests and the 
 peasants. Patterns of clothes were hung up at the gates of 
 towns ; and those who refused to pay were obliged to have
 
 A.D. 1700] SOCIAL REFORMS, 259 
 
 their garments and beards shortened. " All this was done 
 with great gaiety," says Voltaire ; but the gaiety was only 
 among the courtiers ; there was rage in the hearts of the 
 people, and these merry doings provoked bloody insurrec- 
 tions. They were not even needful for the end in view ; the 
 spirit of imitation would have produced the desired change, 
 more slowly indeed, but quite as effectually. Besides, it may 
 be asked with Levesque, why force the Russians to adopt a 
 costume which they are obliged to hide for six months in the 
 year under a furred pelisse ? Why compel them to shave 
 their chins in order to wrap them afterwards in a fur collar ? 
 In spite of the ukases of Peter I., the lower classes still retain 
 their beards and their caftans ; and they are able in conse- 
 quence to brave the most intense cold with impunity. But 
 the custom of dressing soldiers after the fashion of temperate 
 climates, costs Bussia a great number of men in severe 
 winters.* 
 
 Among the minute details to which Peter descended for 
 the purpose of remodelling the usages of society, were those 
 which related to the convivial meetings of persons of both 
 sexes, which he ordered to be held after the manner of the 
 west ; whereas before his time the Bussian women had lived 
 in seclusion. He published a code for the regulation of 
 these assemhUes ; and in the preamble he explained to his 
 barbarians what was meant by that word in civilised 
 Europe. He decreed, that the assemblies should be held 
 three times a week in all houses of the nobility and mer- 
 chants in rotation ; that each should be announced by a 
 
 * According to the author of the Memoires Secretes de la cour de 
 Petersboury, the irrational practice alluded to in the text dates only 
 from the reign of Paul. " Previously to that time," he says, " the 
 Russian army offered a pattern to he followed in the beauty, simplicity, 
 and convenience of its dress, equally adapted to the climate and to the 
 genius of the country. A wide pair of pantaloons of red cloth, which 
 terminated in boots of pliable leather, and which was fastened by a 
 girdle over a red and green jacket; a little helmet, well adapted to a 
 soldier, with the hair cut short on the neck, but long enough to cover 
 the ears, and easily kept in order, constituted the whole of the military 
 Uniform. The soldier was dressed in the twinkling of an eye; for he 
 had but two garment!, and their size wa3 such as allowed him to de- 
 fend himself from the cold by additions underneath without infringing 
 upon the uniformity of his external appearance." 
 
 s 2
 
 260 HISTOEY OF BT7SSIA. [CH. XXII. 
 
 written card ; that every man of distinction, noble, superior 
 officer, trader, person employed in the chancery, and master- 
 workman, especially ship carpenters and master shipwrights, 
 should be admissible to them with their wives, and might 
 enter and depart when they pleased, between four o'clock 
 and ten at night. The obligation of bowing to the com- 
 pany on entering and quitting the room was expresslly 
 enjoined. "With respect to the host, it was ruled that, like 
 his company, he should be at full liberty to come and go, 
 to be seated, and to drink in the rooms, as soon as he should 
 have sufficiently provided them with chairs, liquors, and all 
 the means of amusement. The code even went so far as to 
 point out the place for the servants. It was further ordained, 
 that every transgressor of the rules should be obliged in- 
 stantly to empty the great eagle, a large bottle full of brandy, 
 a grotesque punishment, which exists also among the Chinese. 
 This was not a very likely way to preserve the decencies of 
 social intercourse ; but these were little regarded by Peter. 
 He beat Mentchikof in a ball-room for dancing without 
 having taken off his sword. 
 
 While Peter was thus beginning a new creation in the 
 interior of his dominions, he concluded an advantageous 
 truce for thirty years with the Turks, which left him free to 
 enter upon the fulfilment of his grand designs in the north. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 WAE WITH SWEDEN BATTLE OF NAEVA. 
 
 With the eighteenth century a momentous scene was 
 opening on the frontiers of Sweden. One of the principal 
 causes of all the revolutions which happened from Ingria as 
 far as Dresden, and which laid so many countries waste during 
 the space of eighteen years, was the abuse of the supreme 
 power, under Charles XL, king of Sweden, father of Charles 
 XII. The greatest part of Livonia, with all Esthonia, had 
 been ceded by Poland to Charles XL, king of Sweden, who 
 succeeded Charles X. during the treaty of Oliva : it was ceded 
 in the customary manner, reserving to the inhabitants the
 
 A.D. 1700] WAR WITH SWEDEN. 261 
 
 continuance of all their privileges. But these being little re- 
 garded by Charles XI., John Eeinhold Patkul, a Livonian 
 gentleman, repaired to Stockholm, in 1692, at the head of six 
 deputies of the province, in order to lay the strongest, and, 
 at the same time, the most respectful remonstrances of the 
 people before the throne. Instead of an answer, the six 
 deputies were committed to prison, and Patkul was con- 
 demned to lose both his honour and life. But he lost neither ; 
 for he made his escape out of prison, and remained for some 
 time in the country of Vaud in Switzerland. As soon as he 
 heard that Augustus, elector of Saxony, had promised, upon 
 his accession to the throne of Poland, to recover the provinces 
 wrested from that kingdom, he hastened away to Dresden, in 
 order to represent the facility of recovering Livonia, and of 
 dispossessing a young king, only in his eighteenth year, of 
 the conquests of his ancestors. 
 
 At the same time, the czar was meditating a scheme to 
 make himself master of Ingria and Carelia. These pro- 
 vinces formerly belonged to the Eussians ; but the Swedes 
 had conquered them at the time of the false Dmitris; 
 and preserved them since by treaties. Another war and new 
 treaties might restore them to Bussia. Patkul went from 
 Dresden to Moscow, and having excited the two monarchs to 
 avenge his cause, he cemented a close union between them, 
 and forwarded their preparations for invading the several ter- 
 ritories situated to the east and south of Pinland. 
 
 Prederic IV., the new king of Denmark, entered at the same 
 time into a league with the czar and Augustus against the 
 young king of Sweden, who seemed likely to be overpowered. 
 Patkul had the pleasure of besieging the Swedes in Eiga, 
 the capital of Livonia ; on which occasion he acted as major- 
 general. 
 
 The czar marched an army of about sixty thousand men 
 towards Ingria. True it is, that in this great army there 
 were hardly more than twelve thousand disciplined troops, 
 whom he had trained to war himself; these were his two 
 regiments of guards, and a few others : the remainder con- 
 sisted of an ill- armed militia, with some Cossacks and Cir- 
 cassian Tatars : but he had a hundred and forty-live pieces of 
 cannon. He laid siege to Narva, a small town in Ingria, 
 with a commodious harbour; and there was the greatest
 
 262 HISTOKT OF KUSSIA. [CH. XXII. 
 
 probability that the place would be taken in a very short 
 time. 
 
 Every one knows how Charles XII., who at that time 
 was not quite eighteen years of age, withstood his numerous 
 enemies, and attacked them all successively ; how he made a 
 descent upon Denmark, and finished the \y<u* with that crown 
 in less than six weeks ; how he sent succours to Riga, and 
 raised the siege of that town ; and how he marched over ice 
 and snow in the month of November, against the Russians 
 who had laid siege to Narva. 
 
 The czar, confident of taking the town, was gone to Nov- 
 gorod, leaving the command of his army, with instructions for 
 the siege, to the prince of Croy, whose family was originally 
 from llanders, and who had lately entered into the czar's 
 service. Prince Dolgoruki was commissary of the army. 
 The jealousy between these two chiefs, and the absence of the 
 czar, were in part the cause of the unparalleled defeat at 
 Narva. Charles XII. having landed his troops at Pernau in 
 Livonia, in the month of October, marched northwards 
 towards Revel, and defeated in that neighbourhood an ad- 
 vanced body of Russians. Thence he continued his march, 
 and beat another. The fugitives fell back on their main 
 army, and spread consternation in the camp. Tet they were 
 now in the month of November ; and the town of Narva, 
 though unskilfully besieged, was upon the point of surrender- 
 ing. The young king of Sweden had not with him quite nine 
 thousand men ; and could bring no more than ten pieces of 
 cannon against the Russian entrenchments, which were lined 
 with a hundred and forty-five. According to all the relations 
 of that time, the Russian army amounted to eighty thousand 
 lighting men, whilst Charles had only nine thousand. 
 
 Charles did not hesitate to attack so great a force with 
 his small corps ; but availing himself of a violent storm of 
 snow and wind, which blew full in the front of the enemy, 
 he attacked their entrenchments with the aid of a few pieces 
 of cannon advantageously posted, November 30, 1700. The 
 Russians had not time to recover themselves, in the midst of 
 that cloud of snow, which was driven by the wind directly in 
 their faces, so that they could not see the cannon that played 
 most furiously against them ; besides, they had no notion 
 that the enemy's force was so inconsiderable.
 
 A.D. 1700] BATTLE OF NAEVA. 203 
 
 The duke de Croy would give his orders ; and prince Dol- 
 goruki would not obey them. The Russians rose against 
 the German officers ; they massacred the duke's secretary, 
 with colonel Lyon, and several others. Each man quitted 
 his post ; and a general confusion and panic were diffused 
 throughout the army. The Swedish troops had then nothing 
 more to do than to kill and destroy a flying multitude. Some 
 of the fugitives threw themselves into the river of Narva, 
 where great numbers of them were drowned ; others flung 
 away their arms, and begged for quarter upon their knees. 
 The duke de Croy, general Allard, and the German officers, 
 more afraid of the mutinous Russians than of the Swedes, 
 surrendered to count Steinbok. The king of Sweden became 
 master of all their artillery. Thirty thousand of the van- 
 quished enemy laid down their arms at his feet, and filed off 
 with their heads uncovered before him. Prince Dolgoruki, and 
 all the other Russian generals, surrendered as well as the Ger- 
 mans ; but did not know, till some time after they had been 
 made prisoners, that they were vanquished by eight thousand 
 men. 
 
 Charles XII. reaped all the advantages that could be 
 drawn from a signal victory : his troops seized immense 
 magazines, and 120 Russian transports laden with pro- 
 visions : the enemy's posts were either evacuated or taken ; 
 in short, the whole country was in the possession of 
 the Swedes. Narva was now delivered; the shattered 
 remains of the Russian army durst not show themselves ; 
 and the Russian frontier being open as far as Pleskof, Charles 
 might have terminated the war with Russia as rapidly as he 
 had finished that with Denmark, had he not turned aside 
 from his chief enemy, and neglected his most favourable 
 opportunity in order to avenge himself on king Augustus, 
 whiist' Saxons were posted on the left bank of the Dvina. 
 
 A Russian bishop composed a form of prayer* to St. 
 Nicholas on this occasion, which was publicly read in 
 churches. This composition shows the spirit of the times, 
 and the gross ignorance of the country. It says positively, 
 that the furious and terrible Swedes were sorcerers ; and 
 complains that the Russians had been abandoned by St. 
 Nicholas. "The prelates of that country," says Voltaire, 
 * It is to be found in Voltaire's History of Charles XII.
 
 264 HISTOET OP RUSSIA. [CH. XXII. 
 
 " would not write such stuff at present ; and without any 
 offence to St. Nicholas, the Prussians soon perceived that 
 their business was to address themselves to Peter." 
 
 The czar having quitted his army before Narva towards 
 the end of November, 1700, in order to concert matters 
 with the king of Poland, was apprised upon the road of the 
 victory obtained by the Swedes. He was not at all dis- 
 pirited, but showed a firmness equal to the intrepidity 
 and valour of Charles XII. He deferred his interview 
 with Augustus, to apply a speedy remedy to the disordered 
 state of his affairs. The troops that had been in different 
 quarters rendezvoused at Novgorod, and marched thence 
 to Pleskof, upon lake Peipus. 
 
 After so signal a defeat, it was as much as the czar could 
 do to stand his ground. " I know very well," said he, " that 
 the Swedes will have the advantage of us a considerable 
 time, but they will teach us at length to beat them." 
 
 Having provided for the present emergency, and ordered 
 recruits to be raised on every side, he repaired with all 
 expedition to Moscow, to forward the casting of cannon. 
 All his artillery had been taken before Narva ; and as he 
 wanted metal, he had recourse to the bells of the churches 
 and monasteries. Out of these w r ere formed a hundred large 
 cannon, with one hundred and forty-three field-pieces, from 
 three to six pounders, besides mortars and howitzers ; and 
 the whole was forwarded to Pleskof. In other countries the 
 sovereign commands, and his subjects execute his orders ; 
 but here the czar was obliged to see everything done 
 himself. While he was making these preparations, he 
 entered into a negotiation with the king of Denmark, who 
 engaged to assist him with three regiments of foot and 
 three of cavalry, an engagement which that monarch durst 
 not observe. 
 
 No sooner was this treaty signed than he returned witli 
 the greatest despatch to the seat of war, and had an 
 interview * with king Augustus, at Birzen, on the frontiers 
 of Courland and Lithuania. His business was to confirm 
 that prince in his resolution of maintaining the war against 
 Charles XII., and to prevail on the Polish diet to engage iu 
 
 * February the 27th, 1701.
 
 A.D. 1701] WAE IN POLAND. 205 
 
 his quarrel. Patkul and a few Poles in the interest of their 
 king were present at these conferences. Peter promised to 
 assist them with subsidies, and with an army of twenty 
 thousand men. Livonia was to be restored to Poland, 
 upon a supposition that the diet would act in conjunction 
 with their king to recover that province; but fear had a 
 stronger influence on the determinations of the diet than 
 the czar's proposals. The Poles were under an apprehension 
 of having their liberties restrained by the Saxons and 
 Russians; and at the same time they had a still greater 
 dread of Charles XII. Hence the majority determined not 
 to serve their king — that is, not to fight. 
 
 The court party were exasperated against the contrary 
 faction ; in short, the king's proposal to recover a consi- 
 derable province that had been wrested from Poland was 
 productive of a civil war throughout the kingdom. The czar 
 had therefore but a weak ally in Augustus, and the Saxon 
 troops afforded him but very little assistance. Such terror 
 did Charles XII. inspire on every side, that Peter was obliged 
 to depend entirely upon his own forces. From Courland he 
 hastened back to Moscow, to forward the performance of 
 his promise ; and ordered prince Repnin to march with a 
 body of four thousand men towards Riga, upon the banks 
 of the Dvina, where the Saxon troops were entrenched. 
 
 The rapid success of the Swedes increased the general 
 terror of their arms. Charles having passed the Dvina, in 
 spite of the Saxons, who were advantageously posted on the 
 opposite bank, obtained a complete victory : he followed up 
 the blow by making himself master of all Courland ; and was 
 advancing with his victorious army into Lithuania, to animate 
 the Polish faction who had declared against Augustus. 
 
 Peter still pursued his great designs. General Patkul, 
 who had been the life and soul of the conferences at Birzen, 
 and had lately entered into his service, showed his zeal in 
 providing him with German officers, and in disciplining his 
 t roops ; in short, he was a second Le Port,* and finished what 
 the other had begun. The czar found relays for all the officers, 
 and even for the common soldiers, whether Germans, Livo- 
 
 * Le Fort died in 1699, at the age of forty-six. Golovin succeeded 
 him as high admiral. Gordon also had died before this period.
 
 266 HISTOET OF EUSSIA. [CH. XXII. 
 
 nians, or Poles,that came to serve in Lis armies; and took par- 
 ticular care of everything relative to their arms, clothes, and 
 subsistence. 
 
 On the confines of Livonia and Esthonia, and west of the 
 province of Novgorod, lies the lake Peipus : from the south 
 side of Livonia it receives the river Velika; to the northward 
 it sends forth the river Naiova, which washes the walls of the 
 town of Narva, in whose neighbourhood the Swedes obtained 
 their famous victory. This lake is upwards of thirty leagues in 
 length ; in some places twelve, and in others fifteen in breadth. 
 Here it was of the utmost importance for the czar to main- 
 tain a fleet, in order to prevent the Swedish vessels from in- 
 sulting the province of Novgorod ; to be within a proper 
 distance for making a descent upon their coasts ; and especi- 
 ally to train up a number of seamen. During the year 1701, 
 Peter caused a hundred and fifty galleys, each carrying 
 about fifty men, to be built on this lake, and other vessels 
 were fitted out for war upon lake Ladoga. He directed the 
 building of these vessels himself, and set all his new sailors 
 immediately to work. Those who had served in 1697 upon 
 the Sea of Asof, were now employed in the neighbourhood of 
 the Baltic. Meanwhile he frequently made excursions to 
 Moscow, and to the other provinces, in order to establish 
 the regulations already begun, or to introduce new im- 
 provements. In 1702 he began to dig that great canal which 
 was intended to unite the Don and the Volga. Other com- 
 munications were to be carried on, by the help of lakes, 
 from the Don to the Dvina, which empties itself into the 
 Baltic, in the neighbourhood of Biga : but this latter project 
 seemed to be still at a great distance, for Peter was far from 
 having Biga in his possession. Charles continued to ravage 
 Poland, while Peter was introducing thence, and from Saxony, 
 shepherds with their flocks, in order to have wool fit for the 
 manufacturing of good cloth : he erected linen and paper 
 manufactories : by his orders great numbers of blacksmiths, 
 braziers, armourers, and founders, with other artificers, were 
 invited from abroad : and workmen were employed to dig into 
 the mines of Siberia. Thus at the same time he endeavoured 
 to enrich and to defend his dominions. 
 
 Charles, eager to prosecute his victories, left a sufficient 
 number of forces, as he imagined, upon the frontiers of the
 
 A.D. 1701] THE RUSSIANS ACQUIRE PRACTICE IN WAR. 267 
 
 czar's dominions to defend the provinces subject to Sweden. 
 He was now determined to dethrone king Augustus, and 
 then to pursue the czar with his victorious arms as far as 
 Moscow. 
 
 This year there happened some little skirmishes between 
 the Russians and Swedes, in which the latter were not always 
 victorious; and even when they had the advantage, the 
 Eussians were learning the art of war. "Within a twelve- 
 month after the battle of Narva, the czar's troops were so 
 greatly improved in the military discipline, that they obtained 
 ■ victorv over one of the best generals belonging to Charles 
 XII. ""At last," said Peter, " we can beat the Swedes when 
 we are two to one ; let us hope that ere long we shall be a 
 match for them with equal numbers." 
 
 Peter was at Pleskof, whence he sent out numerous de- 
 tachments on all sides to attack the Swedes. The Russians 
 proved victorious under the command of a general of their 
 own nation. Sheremetef, by a judicious manoeuvre, sur- 
 prised several out-parties of Schlippenbach, the Swedish 
 general, in the neighbourhood of Dorpat, on the frontiers of 
 Livonia ; and at length obtained a victory over the general 
 himself. The Eussians took four colours, for the first time, 
 from the Swedes ; which was then thought a considerable 
 number. The Swedish and the Eussian fleets also had 
 several engagements on the lakes of Peipus and Ladoga, 
 where the former had the same advantage as by land— that 
 of discipline and long practice. Yet the Eussians were 
 sometimes successful on board their galleys ; and in a general 
 action upon lake Peipus, field-marshal Sheremetef made 
 himself master of a Swedish frigate. 
 
 By means of this lake, the czar kept all Livonia and 
 Estlionia in constant alarm ; his galleys frequently transported 
 over several regiments to make a descent in those provinces; 
 if the attempt did not prove favourable, they were re-em- 
 harked ; if they had any advantage, they improved it. The 
 Swedes were twice defeated in the neighbourhood of Dorpat 
 (June and July), while their arms were prosperous everywhere 
 else. In all these engagements the Eussians were superior in 
 number to the Swedes; therefore, as Charles XII. was vic- 
 torious in every other quarter, he did not give himself any 
 uneasiness about the czar's success : but he should have con-
 
 2G8 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CU. XXII. 
 
 sidered, that the numerous forces of his rival were improving 
 every day in discipline, and might soon be^p, match for the 
 Swedish veterans. 
 
 While the two nations were thus engaged by sea and 
 land towards Livonia, Ingria, and Esthonia, the czar received 
 intelligence that a Swedish fleet had sailed to the north seas 
 with a view to destroy Archangel : upon which he set out 
 for that city ; and the public was surprised to hear that he 
 was upon the banks of the frozen ocean when everybody 
 believed him to be at Moscow. He put the town into a 
 state of defence, prevented the Swedes from landing, drew 
 the plan of a citadel called the New Dvina, laid the first 
 stone, returned to Moscow, and thence to the seat of war. 
 
 Charles was advancing into Poland while the Russians 
 were making conquests in Ingria and Livonia. Marshal 
 Sheremetef marched against the Swedish forces commanded 
 by Schlippenbach, and obtained a victory over that general 
 near the little river Embac; taking sixteen colours and 
 twenty pieces of cannon from the enemy. Norberg says, 
 this engagement happened on the 1st of December, 1701 ; 
 but Peter's journal Axes it to the 19th of July, 1702. 
 
 The Russian general continued his march, and laying the 
 whole couutry under contribution, made himself master of 
 the little town of Marienburg, situated on the confines of 
 Livonia and Ingria. There are several places of this name 
 in the north of Europe ; but this, though it no longer exists, 
 is more celebrated than all the rest, for the adventure of 
 the empress Catharine. The little town having surrendered 
 at discretion, the Swedes, either through inadvertency or 
 design, set fire to the magazines. The Russians, provoked 
 at this behaviour, destroyed the town and carried off' all the 
 inhabitants. Among the prisoners was a young woman, a 
 native of Livonia, who had been left an orphan at three years 
 of age, and had been brought up as a servant by M. Gluck, 
 the minister of the place. She was the very person who 
 afterwards became the sovereign of those who had taken 
 her captive, and who governed Russia as the empress 
 Catharine I. In 1702, being then in her seventeenth year, 
 she married a Swedish dragoon, who was obliged to leave her 
 two days afterwards to join his regiment, and she never 
 heard of him again until she was empress of Russia. After
 
 A.D. 1702] THE EMPRESS CATHARINE I. 269 
 
 the capture of Marienburg, Sheremetcf made her his slave 
 and concubine, kept her seven months, and then transferred 
 her to Mentchikof, at whose quarters she was seen by the 
 czar. Peter took her away with him, and discovering in her 
 a remarkable capacity to aid him in his reforming projects, 
 he married her — privately in 1707, and publicly in 1711. 
 
 There had been instances before this of private persons 
 raised to the throne : nothing was more common in Russia, 
 and in all the Asiatic kingdoms, than marriages between 
 sovereigns and their subjects : but that a poor stranger, who 
 had been discovered amidst the ruins of a plundered town, 
 should become the absolute sovereign of that very empire 
 into which she was led captive, is an incident which fortune 
 and merit never before produced in the annals of the world. 
 
 The czar's arms were equally successful in Ingria ; for the 
 Russian galleys on the lake Ladoga obliged the Swedish 
 lleet to retire to the other extremity of that great lake ; 
 thence they might observe the siege of Noteburg, which 
 general Sheremetcf had undertaken by order of the czar. 
 This was an enterprise of much greater importance than 
 the Swedes imagined ; as it might open a communication 
 with the Baltic, the constant aim of Peter the Great. 
 
 Nbteburg was a very strong town, situated in an island 
 on the lake Ladoga, which it entirely commands ; so that 
 whoever possessed this place would of course be master of 
 the river Neva, which disembogues itself not far from that 
 spot into the Baltic. The Russians battered the town night 
 and day, from the 18th of September to the 12th of October ; 
 and at length having made three breaches, gave the assault. 
 The Swedish garrison were reduced to a hundred men in a 
 condition to bear arms ; yet what is very extraordinary, they 
 made a stand, and obtained an honourable capitulation upon 
 the breach (October lGth, 1702). Colonel Schlippenbach, the 
 governor, would not surrender the town but upon condition 
 of being permitted to send for two Swedish officers from the 
 nearest post, in order to examine the breach ; and to inform 
 the king his master, that eighty-three soldiers, all that re- 
 mained of the garrison, besides a hundred and iifty-six sick 
 and wounded, did not surrender to an entire army, till it was 
 impossible for them to make a longer resistance, or to pre- 
 serve the town. This instance alone shows what sort of an
 
 270 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXII. 
 
 enemy the czar had to contend with ; and how necessary it 
 was for him to use his utmost efforts in disciplining his 
 troops. 
 
 He distributed some gold medals among his officers, and 
 gave rewards to all the common soldiers ; except to a few, 
 who were punished for running away from an assault : their 
 comrades spat in their faces, and afterwards shot them dead. 
 The fortifications of Noteburg were repaired, and its name 
 was changed into that of Shlusselburg — Shlussel in Ger- 
 man signifying a key — for this place is the key of Ingria 
 and Finland. The first governor was Mentchikof, the 
 pastrycook's boy,* now grown a very good officer, and who 
 
 * " Prince Mentchikof was also a person raised from a very low de- 
 gree; I was told the following circumstances of his rise:— He was born 
 of gentle, but very poor parents, and they dying, left him very young, 
 without any education, insomuch that he could neither read nor write, 
 nor even did he till the day of his death : his poverty obliged him to 
 seek service in Moscow, where he was taken into the house of a pastry- 
 cook, who employed him in crying mince-pies about the streets ; and 
 having a good voice, he also sung ballads, whereby he was so generally 
 known, that he had access into all the gentlemen's houses. The czar, 
 by invitation, was to dine one day at a boyar's, or lord's house, and 
 Mentchikof happening to be in the kitchen that day, observed the boyar 
 give directions to his cook about a dish of meat he said the czar 
 was fond of, and took notice that the boyar himself put some kind of 
 powder in it, by way of spice ; taking particular notice of what meat 
 that dish was composed, he took himself away to sing ballads, and 
 kept sauntering in the streets till the czar arrived, when exalting his 
 voice, his majesty took notice of it, sent for him, and asked him if he 
 would sell his basket with his pies. The boy replied, he had power 
 only to sell the pies ; as for the basket, he must first ask his master's 
 leave, but as everything belonged to his majesty, he needed only to lay 
 his commands upon him. This reply pleased the czar so much, that 
 he ordered Alexander to stay and attend him, which he obeyed with 
 great joy. Mentchikof waited behind the czar's chair at dinner, and 
 seeing the before-mentioned dish served up and placed before him, in a 
 whisper begged his majesty not to eat thereof; the czar went into 
 another room witli the boy and asked his reason for what he had whis- 
 pered to him, when he informed his majesty what he had observed in 
 the kitchen, and the boyar's putting in the powder himself, without 
 the cook perceiving him, made him suspect that dish in particular; he 
 therefore thought it his duty to put his majesty upon his guard. The 
 czar returned to the table without the least discomposure in his counte- 
 nance, and with his usual cheerfulness; the boyar recommended this 
 dish to him, saying it was very good : the czar ordered the boyar to 
 sit down by him (for it is a custom in Moscow for the master of the
 
 A.D. 1702] MENTCniKOF — EOMODANOFSKI. 271 
 
 merited this honour by behaving most gallantly during the 
 siege. 
 
 After this campaign of 1702, it was the czar's will that 
 Sheremetef, and the officers who had signalised themselves 
 under his command, should make a triumphant entry into 
 Moscow (December 17th, 1702). All the prisoners taken in 
 this campaign marched in the train of the victors : before 
 them were carried the Swedish colours and standards, with 
 the flag taken on board the frigate on lake Peipus. Peter, 
 as was usual with him on all such occasions, assumed only a 
 subordinate rank in the pageant, and affected to hold himself 
 responsible to his own representative, Eomodanofski, on 
 whom he had bestowed the title of vice-czar. Strange to 
 say, the man thus favoured by the radical reformer Peter 
 Avas an ultra-conservative, full of blind and bitter hatred 
 against all innovations. Eomodanofski was a thorough 
 Eussian of the old school, ignorant, grotesque, and brutal. 
 He was president of the council of government, and head of 
 the secret chancery, a horrible sort of star-chamber, or state 
 inquisition, established by Ivan IV., and perfected by Alexis, 
 and which, like most tyrannical institutions, produced those 
 evils which served as a pretext for its own continuance. 
 Romodauofski's ferocious cruelty was undoubtedly a merit in 
 Peter's eyes; but what gave him a better claim to confi- 
 dence was his rigid integrity and unshakable fidelity to his 
 sovereign. Peter used to make a public report to him of all 
 his undertakings and his most important successes ; all 
 petitions, memorials, and other documents addressed to the 
 sovereign, were presented to this phantom of a czar, who 
 privately despatched them to the council : and when the 
 persons concerned, on not obtaining what they desired, 
 
 house to wait at table when he entertains his friends), and putting some 
 : on a plate, desired him to eat and show him a good example. The 
 boyar, with the utmost confusion, replied, that it did not become the 
 servant to eat with his master; whereupon the plate was set down to a 
 dog, who soon despatched its contents, which in a very short time 
 threw him into convulsions, and soon deprived him of life. The dog 
 being opened, the effect of the poison was clearly discovered, and the 
 boyar was immediately secured, but was found next morning dead in 
 Ids bed, which prevented all further discovery." — Memoirs of Peter 
 Henry Bruce, book iii. p. 77.
 
 272 HISTOET OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXIII. 
 
 complained to Peter, he answered coldly — "It is not my 
 fault ; all depends on the czar of Moscow." 
 
 A refusal was not the only inconvenience which suitors 
 had to apprehend from the whimsical old brute Romo- 
 danofski. He kept in his palace an enormous bear, trained 
 to a very curious trick. The animal presented to every one 
 who wished to speak with his master a glass of brandy, in 
 which there was a strong dose of pepper. Whoever did not 
 drink oft* this liquor was sure to have his clothes torn to 
 pieces by the bear, and to be severely mauled into the 
 bargain. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 PETERSBURG FOUNDED — NARVA AND DORPAT TAKEN — DE- 
 FEATS AT GEMAUERS AND FRAUSTADT — AUGUSTUS LOSES 
 THE CROWN OF POLAND. 
 
 The short stay which the czar made at Moscow in the 
 beginning of the winter 1702-3 was employed in seeing his 
 new regulations executed ; in improving the civil as well as 
 the military government, and in founding various establish- 
 ments. Then, after a visit to his naval works on the Sea of 
 Asof, he hastened to the frontiers of Sweden to inspect the 
 ships which he had directed to be built in the dockyards of 
 Olonitz, between the lakes Ladoga and Onega. In this 
 town he had erected some forges and founderies for the 
 making of arms : so that the place was filled with the bustle 
 of military preparations, while Moscow began to flourish in 
 the arts of peace. Thence he set out for Shlusselburg, in 
 order to improve the fortifications. 
 
 We have already noticed that Peter had thought proper 
 to pass through all the military grades: he had been a 
 lieutenant of bombardiers under prince Mentchikof, before 
 this favourite was made governor of Shlusselburg ; and now 
 he took the rank of captain, and served under marshal 
 Sheremetef. Near the lake Ladoga, and not far from the 
 river Neva, there was a fortress, named Nientschantz. it 
 was of the utmost importance for the czar to make himself
 
 A.D. 1703] PETEESBUEG FOTJNDED. 273 
 
 master of this place, in order to secure bis conquests, and to 
 prosecute his other designs. He was obliged to lay siege to 
 it by land, and, at the same time, to prevent its receiving 
 any succours by water. Peter undertook to transport troops 
 in small barks, and to watch the Swedish convoys ; while 
 Sberemetef bad the care of the trenches. The citadel 
 surrendered:, two Swedish vessels* came too late to re- 
 lieve it ; and they were both taken by the czar. His 
 journal makes mention, that, as a reward for his service, 
 " the captain of bombardiers was created knight of the order 
 of St. Andrew, by admiral Golovin, first knight of the 
 order." 
 
 After he had taken Nientschantz, be resolved to build the 
 city of Petersburg, at the mouth of the Neva, upon the Gulf 
 of Finland. 
 
 King Augustus's affairs were in a desperate state : the 
 successive victories of the Swedes in Poland had encou- 
 raged his enemies in their opposition ; and even his friends 
 prevailed on him to dismiss a body of twenty thousand 
 Jtussians with which his army had been reinforced. The 
 motive they alleged was, that this sacrifice would deprive the 
 malcontents of any pretext for joining the king of Sweden 
 but enemies are disarmed by force and encouraged by 
 indulgence. Those twenty thousand men, disciplined by 
 Patkul, did very great service in Livonia and Ingria, while 
 Augustus was losing his dominions. This reinforcement, 
 and especially the possession of Nientschantz, enabled the 
 czar to found his new capital. 
 
 It was in this desert and marshy spot of ground, which 
 communicates but one way with the continent, that he laid 
 the foundation of Petersburg.! The ruins of some of the 
 bastions at Nientschantz supplied the first stones. He 
 began witli erecting a small fort on Vassili Ostrof, an 
 island which now stands in the midst of the city. The 
 Swedes took no heed of this settlement, formed in a 
 morass, and inaccessible to vessels of burden : but how great 
 their surprise when they saw the fortifications advanced, a 
 town raised, and the little island of Cronslot, situate over 
 against it, changed, in 1704, into the fortress of Cronstadt, 
 
 * May 12th, 1703. 
 
 t Petersburg was founded the 27th of May, 1703, on Whit Sunday. 
 
 YOL. I. T
 
 274 HISTOET OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXIII. 
 
 under the cannon of which even the largest fleets may safely 
 ride at anchor ! 
 
 An enterprise of this nature seemed to require peaceful 
 times, yet was executed in the hurry and confusion of war ; 
 workmen of every sort were called together from Moscow, 
 from Astrakhan, from Kasan, and the Ukraine to assist in 
 the building of the city. Neither the difficulty of the 
 ground, which he was obliged to drain and to raise, nor the 
 distance of materials, nor the unforeseen obstacles which 
 constantly arose in every branch of labour, nor the mortality 
 which carried off a prodigious number of workmen,* could 
 shake the fixed resolution of the founder of this metropolis. 
 In the space of two months a new town arose out of the 
 ground. It is true, it was no more than a cluster of huts, 
 with two brick houses, surrounded by ramparts ; but this 
 was sufficient for a beginning ; time and perseverance 
 accomplished the rest. Petersburg had not been founded 
 above five months when a Dutch vessel came to trade there : 
 the captain received some presents for his encouragement ; 
 and the Dutch soon learned the way to this harbour. 
 
 It was not enough for Peter to have opened this new 
 road to commerce and industry ; it was necessary for him to 
 force to init his astonished subjects, in spite of their contrary 
 habits and manners. Por this reason it was that he covered 
 his seas, lakes, and rivers with vessels of every kind, which 
 he demanded from all classes of the rich. He was resolved 
 that his subjects should thus be made pilots and sailors. It 
 was also with this purpose, of rendering maritime the inland 
 people whom he had transferred to Petersburg, that he did 
 not throw a bridge over the Neva. He determined that the 
 new inhabitants of its banks should cross that dangerous 
 river only in sailing-boats, the art of guiding which would, 
 he knew, soon be acquired by them when their lives were at 
 stake. 
 
 Nor did he listen to the complaints of all his other pro- 
 vinces, with respect to the remoteness of the situation which 
 he had chosen for his capital: a ruinous distance, which 
 could not fail to occasion an excessive tardiness in all 
 administrative and judicial communications. It was equally 
 in vain that his boyars urged their objections to the barren 
 
 * A hundred thousand are said to have perished in the first year.
 
 A.D. 1703] PETERSBURG FOUNDED. 275 
 
 and swampy soil, to the inclement climate, in which winter 
 reigned for eight months of the year, where rye was an 
 article of garden culture, and a beehive a curiosity ; to the 
 Neva, which was a mass of ice for four whole months, and of 
 such unequal depth that ships of war launched at Petersburg 
 could not descend it without the aid of machines to float them 
 over the shoals, nor merchant vessels ascend without being 
 towed ; and to the port, capable, indeed, of containing three 
 hundred sail, but the egress from which, impeded by sands 
 and rocks, is so beset by dangers, that, before steam naviga- 
 tion was known, there was no possibility of accomplishing it 
 except with certain favourable winds. 
 
 Peter set at nought all these serious inconveniences, nor 
 did he take more heed of the freshness of the water, which 
 spread rapid decay in his ships, or of that solitary tree on 
 which was marked the height of the great inundation of 
 1680, and which he cut down with his own hand. That 
 irksome witness showed clearly that a storm of some hours' 
 duration from the Avest, by driving back the waters of the 
 Neva, would be sure to engulph the new city, which was 
 built upon piles in a bottomless marsh. 
 
 Since, however, he was thus obstinately determined to 
 choose for his capital a spot so removed from the rest of his 
 dominions, why did he not prefer the eminences which were 
 in its immediate neighbourhood ? The palaces, and most of 
 the public establishments, might have been built there out 
 of the reach of danger ; and if the passion of the czar for 
 imitating Holland, his first instructor, was so strong that, at 
 all risks, he must have something like that country, it was in 
 his power to extend this upper city to the river, by adding a 
 Lower city, in which he might have given a copy of Amster- 
 dam and its commercial streets, consisting of canals between 
 a double quay. 
 
 While Peter was directing the foundation of his new 
 capital, he took care to render it inaccessible to the enemy, 
 by makiug himself master of all the neighbouring posts. A 
 Swedish colonel, named Croniort, having stationed his men 
 in the river Sestra, whence he threatened the growing town, 
 Peter marched up to him with the two regiments of guards, 
 defeated the colonel's detachment, and obliged him to repass 
 the river. When he had thus provided for the security of 
 
 T 2
 
 27G HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXIII. 
 
 the town he repaired to Olonitz, to order a uuraher of small 
 vessels to be put upon the stocks ; and returned to Peters- 
 burg on board a frigate which had been built by his direc- 
 tion, together with six transports for present use, till the 
 others could be finished. He then surveyed and sounded 
 the coast himself, and fixed the spot on which the fort of 
 Cronslot was to be erected : after making a model of it in 
 wood, he employed prince Mentchikof to carry it into 
 execution. This done, he set out for Moscow (Nov. 5), 
 intending to pass the winter in that city, and enforce 
 the several regulations and changes which lie had made 
 in the laws, manners, and customs of Russia. He like- 
 wise put his finances into a new order; after which he 
 expedited the works undertaken on the river Voroneje, at 
 Asof, and in a harbour which he was building upon the Sea 
 of Asof, under the fort of Taganrok. 
 
 Upon his return to Petersburg (March 30), finding the 
 new citadel of Cronslot, whose foundations had been laid in 
 the sea, entirely finished, he provided it with numerous 
 artillery. In order to establish himself in Ingria, and to 
 wipe off the disgrace received before Narva, he deemed it 
 necessary to make himself master of that city. While he 
 was making the preparations for the siege, a small fleet of 
 Swedish brigantines appeared on the lake of Peipus, to 
 oppose his designs. The Russian galleys came out to meet 
 them, a brisk engagement ensued, and the whole Swedish 
 squadron, carrying ninety-eight pieces of cannon, was taken . 
 After this victory the czar besieged Narva by sea and land, 
 and at the same time laid siege to Dorpat, in Esthonia, 
 he himself incessantly going from one to the other, to 
 forward the attacks and direct the different approaches. 
 
 Schlippenbach, the Swedish general, was then in the 
 neighbourhood of Dorpat with about two thousand five 
 hundred men. The garrison expected every moment ho 
 would attempt to throw succours into the town. But Peter 
 prevented this design by an ingenious stratagem. He 
 ordered Swedish uniforms, colours, and standards for two 
 regiments of infantry, and one of cavalry. The pretended 
 Swedes attacked the trenches, and the Russians feigned a 
 retreat ; the garrison were thereby deluded to make a sally 
 (June 27) ; the mock combatants joined their forces, and
 
 A.D. 170-1] PETER TAKES NAEVA. 277 
 
 fell upon the Swedes, one lialf of whom were killed, and the 
 other half got hack to the town. Schlippenbach came up 
 soon after, with intent to relieve it, but was entirely de- 
 feated. At length Dorpat was obliged to capitulate (July 23), 
 just as Peter was going to order a general assault. 
 
 At the same time the czar received a considerable check 
 on the side of his new city of Petersburg ; which did not, 
 however, hinder him from going on with the buildings, nor 
 from pressing the siege of Narva. We have already men- 
 tioned that he had sent a supply of men and money to king 
 Augustus, whom Charles was stripping of his crown ; but 
 both those aids proved ineffectual. The Eussians having 
 joined the Lithuanians, who adhered to Augustus, were 
 entirely routed in Courland by Levenhaupt, the Swedish 
 general (July 31). Had the victors directed their efforts 
 towards Livonia, Esthonia, and Ingria, they might have de- 
 molished the czar's new works, and baffled all his grand 
 designs. Peter was every day undermining the outwall of 
 Sweden, and Charles did not seem to regard him ; being 
 engaged in a pursuit less advantageous to his people but 
 more glorious to his arms. 
 
 On the 12th of July, 1701, a single colonel, at the head of 
 a Swedish detachment, had obliged the Polish nobility to 
 proceed to the nomination of a new king on the field of 
 election, called Kolo, in the neighbourhood of "Warsaw. 
 The cardinal, primate, and several bishops submitted to the 
 will and pleasure of a Lutheran prince, notwithstanding the 
 menaces and excommunications of the supreme pontiff. 
 Stanislaus Leczinsky was elected, and Charles XII. caused 
 him to be acknowledged as sovereign by a considerable part 
 of the Polish nation. In order that Charles might continue 
 to find occupation in Poland, Peter concluded a new treaty 
 with Augustus in Narva (30th Aug.); and while his rival 
 luisied himself in making sovereigns, he employed his time 
 in beating the Swedish generals in Esthonia and Ingria ; and 
 in pressing the siege of Narva, which he carried by assault 
 on the 20th of August. 
 
 At the sacking of the town it was only by killing several 
 of his soldiers with his own sword that he succeeded in 
 saving his new subjects from their violence; but his own 
 violence he was not able to control. At sight of count de
 
 278 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXIII. 
 
 Horn, the governor, who was brought to him a prisoner, he 
 darted forward, struck him in the face, and exclaimed, " It 
 is you, and you only, who are the cause of so many cala- 
 mities ! Ought you not to have capitulated when you had 
 no hope of assistance ?" Then throwing his sword on the 
 table, "Look at that blood," he cried; "it is not Swedish, 
 but Russian ; that sword has saved the unfortunate inhabi- 
 tants who were sacrificed by your obstinacy." 
 
 Peter now being master of all Ingria, conferred the govern- 
 ment of that province on Mentchikof. As soon as the season 
 approached for opening the campaign in Poland (May, 1705), 
 he made haste to join the army, which he had assembled on 
 the frontiers of Lithuania, in order to assist Augustus. Put 
 while he was thus endeavouring to support his ally, the 
 Swedes had fitted out a fleet, which threatened the destruc- 
 tion of his new settlements of Petersburg and Cronslot. 
 This squadron consisted of two-and-twenty ships of war, 
 carrying from fifty-four to sixty-four guns each, besides six 
 frigates, two bomb-ketches, and two fire-ships. The land 
 forces on board the transports made a descent in the little 
 island of Kotin. Put a Russian colonel, named Tolboguin, 
 having caused his regiment to lie flat on their bellies while 
 the Swedes were landing, ordered them to rise up of a 
 sudden ; and they made so brisk and so regular a fire, as 
 obliged the enemy to retreat in the utmost confusion to 
 their ships, abandoning their dead, with the loss of three 
 hundred prisoners (June 17). 
 
 In the mean time, the Swedish fleet hovered still upon the 
 coast, and threatened Petersburg. The land forces made 
 another descent, and met with the like repulse. A body of 
 troops were advancing at the same time by land from 
 Vyborg, under the command of Meidel, the Swedish gene- 
 ral, and had taken their route by Shlusselburg. This was 
 the most formidable attack that Charles XII. had yet made 
 against the territories either conquered or created by Peter. 
 Put the Swedes were repulsed on every side, and Peters- 
 burg was saved (June 25). 
 
 The czar, on the other hand, was marching towards Cour- 
 land, and purposing to penetrate as far as Riga. His plan 
 was to make himself master of Livonia, while Charles com- 
 pleted the reduction of Poland under the obedience of the
 
 A.D. 1705] INSURRECTION IN ASTRAKHAN. 279 
 
 new king. Peter continued still at Vilna, in Lithuania ; and 
 marshal Sheremetef was approaching towards Mittau, the 
 capital of Courland ; but there he met with Levenhaupt, a 
 general celebrated for many victories. The two armies en- 
 gaged at a place called Geinauers-hof, or Gemauers. In 
 matters depending on experience and discipline, the Swedes, 
 though inferior in number, had always the advantage : the 
 Russians were entirely defeated, and lost all their artillery 
 (July 28). 
 
 After three defeats at Gemauers, Jacobstad, and Narva, 
 Peter still retrieved his losses, and even converted them to 
 his advantage ; for Levenhaupt was so ill supplied that he 
 was unable to maintain himself in Courland, and obliged to 
 retreat to Eiga. After the battle of Gemauers, Peter marched 
 a large army into Courland, sat down before Mittau, made 
 himself master of the town, and laid siege to the citadel, 
 which he took by capitulation (Sept. 14). At the taking of 
 Narva, Peter had so chastised the plundering propensities of 
 his Russians, that the soldiers now appointed to guard the 
 vaults in the castle of Mittau, the usual burying-place of 
 the great dukes of Courland, finding that the bodies of those 
 princes had been dragged out of their tombs and stripped 
 of their ornaments, refused to undertake the charge till 
 they had sent for a Swedish colonel to examine the place, 
 who gave them a certificate acknowledging that the troops 
 of his own nation had committed this outrage. 
 
 During these transactions a report was spread throughout 
 the Russian empire that Peter had been totally defeated at 
 the battle of Gemauers ; a report which did him more mis- 
 chief than the loss of the battle. The people of Astrakhan, 
 emboldened by this false intelligence to revolt, and incited by 
 a son of one of the Strelitz who had been executed, murdered 
 the governor of the town. Peter was obliged to send his 
 best general, Sheremetef, with a body of forces to quell the 
 insurrection mid punish the ringleaders. 
 
 The c/.ar seemed to be now in a very precarious situation 
 from a combination of hostile circumstances : such as Charles's 
 good foil une and valour ; the forced neutrality of Denmark ; 
 the rebellion in Astrakhan; the discontent of a pen] )le sen- 
 sible of the restraint, but not of the utility, of the late re- 
 formation ; the disaffection of the nobility in consequence
 
 280 HISTOBY OF EUSSIA. [CH. XXIII. 
 
 of their being subjected to military discipline ; and the 
 exhaused state of the revenue. Yet he never desponded. 
 He soon quelled the revolt ; then providing for the security 
 of Ingria, and making himself master of the citadel of Mittau, 
 in spite of the victorious Levenhaupt, who had not a suffi- 
 cient force to oppose him, he found himself at liberty to march 
 an army through Samogitia and Lithuania. After reinforcing 
 Augustus, he left him at Grodno, the capital of Lithuania, 
 and returned to Moscow (Dec. 30), where he had no sooner 
 arrived than he received advice that Charles XII. had carried 
 all before him, and was advancing towards Grodno in order 
 to attack the Russian forces. Augustus had been obliged 
 to fly from Grodno, and to retire precipitately towards Saxony 
 with four regiments of Russian dragoons ; a step which both 
 weakened and discouraged the army of his protector. Peter 
 found all the avenues to Grodno occupied by the Swedes, 
 and his troops dispersed. 
 
 While he was assembling his scattered forces with great 
 difficulty in Lithuania, the celebrated general Shullemburg, 
 in whom Augustus had placed his last hopes, and who after- 
 wards acquired such glory in the defence of Corfu against 
 the Turks, was in full march towards Great Poland with 
 about twelve thousand Saxons and six thousand Russians, 
 drawn from the body of troops with which the czar had 
 entrusted that unfortunate prince. Shullemburg expected, 
 with some reason, that he should be able to save Augustus 
 from ruin ; he perceived that Charles XII. was employed on 
 the side of Lithuania, and that there was only a body of ten 
 thousand Swedes, under Renschild, to interrupt his march. 
 He therefore advanced with confidence towards the frontiers 
 of Silesia, the usual passage from Saxony to Upper Poland. 
 Upon his arrival in the neighbourhood of a little town called 
 Fraustadt, on the frontiers of that kingdom, he met marshal 
 Renschild, who was come to give him battle. 
 
 There was a French regiment in the Saxon army who had 
 been taken prisoners at the famous battle of Hochstet, and 
 obliged to serve under king Augustus. They had the care 
 of the artillery; and being not only admirers of the heroism 
 of Charles XII., but dissatisfied with their Saxon masters, 
 they laid down their arms as soon as they beheld the 
 enemy (Feb. G) ; and desired to be admitted into the ser-
 
 A.D. 1706] BATTLE OF FRAUSTADT. 281 
 
 vice of the king of Sweden, with whom they continued to 
 the end of the war. This was only a prelude to a complete 
 victory : out of the whole Eussian army hardly three bat- 
 talions were saved ; every soldier that escaped was wounded ; 
 and as no quarter was granted, the remainder were all slain. 
 Norberg, the chaplain, states that the Swedish word at this 
 battle was, in the name of God ; and that of the Muscovites, 
 hill all : but it was the Swedes that slaughtered all in the 
 name of God.* The czar himself assures us in one of his 
 manifestoes! that many of his soldiers who had been taken 
 prisoners, as well Eussians as Cossacks and Calmucks, were 
 murdered in cold blood three days after the battle. The 
 irregular troops of both armies had accustomed the generals 
 to these cruelties ; greater were never committed in the most 
 barbarous ages. "I had the honour," says Voltaire, "of 
 hearing the following anecdote from king Stanislaus himself: 
 That in one of the skirmishes which frequently happened in 
 Poland, a Eussian officer, who had been his friend, came after 
 the defeat of the corps under his command to put himself 
 under his protection ; and that Steinbok, the Swedish general, 
 shot him dead with a pistol while he held him in his arms." 
 
 The Eussians had now lost four pitched battles with the 
 Swedes, without reckoning the other victories of Charles 
 XII. in Poland. The czar's forces at Grodno were in danger 
 of a greater disgrace, and of being entirely encompassed by 
 the enemy : but he fortunately assembled the several parts 
 of his army, and even strengthened them with new rein- 
 forcements. Being obliged to provide at the same time for 
 these forces and for the preservation of his conquests in 
 I n^ria, he ordered his troops to march eastward, under the 
 command of prince Mentchikof, and thence southward as far 
 as Kief. 
 
 While his men were upon their march, he repaired to 
 Shlussolburg, Narva, and Petersburg, and put those places in 
 the best posture of defence. Prom the Baltic he hurried to 
 the banks of the Dniepr, in order to march back into Poland 
 by the way of K ief ; his constant aim being to prevent Charles 
 from reaping any benefit by his victories. At this time he 
 attempted a new conquest, that of Vyborg, the capital of 
 ( '.trelia, on the Gulf of Finland (Oct.); but met with a dis- 
 
 • Voltaire. f The czar's manifesto in the Ukraine, 1709.
 
 282 HI3T0ET OF EUSSIA. [CH. XXIII. 
 
 appointment ; for succours arrived at a seasonable juncture, 
 so that he was obliged to desist from his enterprise. His 
 rival, Charles XII., did not acquire a single province by 
 gaining so many victories. At that time he was in pursuit 
 of Augustus in Saxony ; intent upon humbling that prince, 
 and crushing him with his whole weight; but not at all 
 solicitous about recovering Ingria, which had been wrested 
 from him by a vanquished enemy. 
 
 The terror of Charles's arms was spread through Upper 
 Poland, Sdesia, and Saxony. King Augustus's whole family — 
 his mother, his wife, his son, and the principal nobility of the 
 country had retired into Germany. Augustus now sued for 
 peace, choosing to surrender himself to the discretion of his 
 conqueror rather than into the arms of his protector. He 
 was negotiating a treaty which stripped him of the crown of 
 Poland, and covered him at the same time with ignominy. 
 This treaty he was obliged to conceal from the Russian 
 generals under whose protection he was at that time in 
 Poland ; while Charles was prescribing laws in Leipsic, and 
 trampling upon his electorate. Already had his plenipoten- 
 tiaries signed the fatal convention (Sept., 14) by which he 
 not only resigned the crown of Poland, but promised never 
 more to assume the title of king ; at the same time, he ac- 
 knowledged the regal dignity of Stanislaus, renounced the 
 alliance of the czar, his benefactor; and to complete his 
 humiliation, engaged to deliver up into the hands of Charles 
 XII. John Reinhold Patkul, the czar's ambassador, and 
 general in the Russian, service, who had been fighting in his 
 defence. Some time before this he had ordered Patkul to 
 be arrested upon false suspicions, contrary to the law of 
 nations ; and now he violated this law again by surrendering 
 him to his enemy. In signing this treaty which robbed him 
 of his honour and his crown, he likewise endangered Ins 
 liberty, because he was then at the mercy of prince Mentchi- 
 kof in Posnania, and the few Saxon troops he had with him 
 were paid by the Russians. 
 
 Opposite to prince Mentchikof 's quarters lay encamped a 
 Swedish army, reinforced by the Poles in Stanislaus's interest, 
 and commanded by general Maderfeld. The prince not 
 knowing that Augustus was in treaty with the enemies of 
 Russia, proposed to attack them, and Augustus durst not
 
 A.D. 1707] DASTABDLY CONDUCT OF AUGUSTUS. 283 
 
 refuse. The battle was fought in the neighbourhood of 
 Kalish, in the palatinate belonging to Stanislaus (Nov. 19). 
 This was the first time that the Russians gained a pitched 
 battle against the Swedes ; and the whole honour was due to 
 prince Mentchikof ; 4000 of the enemy were killed, and 
 2598 taken prisoners. 
 
 It is difficult to comprehend how Augustus could be pre- 
 vailed upon after this battle to ratify a treaty which deprived 
 him of the whole benefit of so signal a victory. But Charles 
 was triumphant in Saxony, where his very name intimidated 
 his enemies : besides, Augustus had little expectation of 
 being steadily supported by the Russians; in short, the 
 Polish party in his enemy's interest were so strong, and 
 Augustus himself was so ill advised, that he signed this fatal 
 convention. Neither did he stop here : he wrote to Rinkstein, 
 his envoy, a letter more shameful than the treaty itself, in 
 which he begged pardon for having obtained a victory, pro- 
 testing " that the battle was fought against his will ; that 
 the Russians and the Poles, his adherents, had obliged him 
 to it ; that with this design he had made some movements to 
 abandon Mentchikof; that Maderfeld might have beaten 
 him had he made a proper use of the opportunity ; that he 
 would deliver back all the Swedish prisoners, or break with 
 the Russians ; in short, that he would give the king of Sweden 
 all proper satisfaction" — for having dared to beat his troops. 
 
 There were two other circumstances which completed the 
 misfortunes of the king of Poland, elector of Saxony, and 
 plainly showed the ill use which Charles made of his success. 
 The first was his obliging Augustus to write a letter of con- 
 gratulation to the new king Stanislaus ; the second was 
 terrible, he even compelled Augustus to deliver up Patkul, 
 the czar's ambassador, into his hands ; and that minister was 
 afterwards broken alive upon the wheel at Casimir, in the 
 month of September, 1707. Norberg, the chaplain, acknow- 
 ledges that the orders for his execution were written in 
 Charles's own baud. Justly does Voltaire observe, that 
 the law of nature and nations were violated upon this occa- 
 !i by the law of the longest sword. The splendour of high 
 achievements used formerly to cover such cruelties, but now 
 they are an indelible stain to military glory.
 
 284 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXIV. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 CHARLES XII. INVADES RUSSIA — BATTLE OF POLTAVA — 
 
 BALTIC PROVINCES CONQUERED — AVAR WITn TURKEY 
 
 CAPITULATION OF THE PRUTH. 
 
 Charles was now triumphing at Altranstadt, in the 
 neighbourhood of Leipsic. The Protestant princes of the 
 empire nocked from all sides to yield him homage, and 
 sue for his protection. Ambassadors from most of the powers 
 in Europe courted his alliance. The emperor Joseph paid 
 implicit submission to his will. Peter then perceiving thai 
 Augustus had renounced his protection and the Polish 
 throne, and that part of the nation had acknowledged 
 Stanislaus, began to listen to the proposal made to him by 
 Tolkova of choosinsr a third king:. 
 
 Several palatines were proposed at the diet of Lublin j 
 among the rest, prince Ragotski appeared upon the list, the 
 same who had been long detained in prison in his youthful 
 days by the emperor Leopold, and who was his competitor 
 for the Hungarian throne after he had recovered his liberty. 
 This negotiation was pushed very far, and Poland was upon 
 the point of having three kings at a time. Prince Ragotski 
 not being able to succeed, Peter was inclined to confer the 
 crown on Siniafski, grand general of the republic, a man of 
 power and interest, and head of a third party, that would 
 neither acknowledge the dethroned king nor the person 
 elected by the contrary faction. 
 
 In the midst of these disturbances there was, according to 
 custom, some talk of peace. Besseval, the French envoy at 
 the court of Saxony, endeavoured to bring about a reconcilia- 
 tion between the czar and the king of Sweden. The French 
 government had a notion that if Charles made a peace with 
 the Muscovites and Poles he might possibly turn his arms 
 against the emperor Joseph, with whom he was offended, 
 and to whom he had prescribed very severe terms during the 
 time he resided in Saxony. But Charles made answer, that lie 
 would treat with the czar in the city of Moscow. Upon this 
 occasion it was that Peter said, " My brother Charles wants to 
 act the part of Alexander, but lie shall not find me a Darius." 
 
 The Russians were still iu Poland, and even at Warsaw,
 
 A.D. 1707] CHABLES XII. INVADES RUSSIA. 2S5 
 
 while the person who had been raised to the Polish throne 
 by Charles XII. was hardly acknowledged by that nation. 
 In the mean time, Charles was enriching his troops with the 
 spoils of Saxony. 
 
 At length he began his march (Aug. 22, 1707) from his head- 
 quarters at Altranstadt, with an army of 45,000 men ; against 
 so great a force it was very unlikely that the czar should be 
 able to make a stand, since he had been entirely defeated by 
 only 8000 Swedes at Narva. Charles boasted that " his 
 whip would be sufficient to drive the Muscovite rabble before 
 him, not only out of Moscow, but from the world." 
 
 "While the Swedish troops were passing near the walls of 
 Dresden, Charles paid an extraordinary visit to king Augustus; 
 a visit which, according to Norberg, posterity Avill always 
 admire — at least, they will read the account of it with some 
 surprise, for it was certainly running a great risk to trust 
 himself in the hands of a prince whom he had stripped of his 
 kingdom. Thence he continued his march through Silesia, 
 and at length re-entered Poland. That kingdom had been 
 entirely ravaged by war, ruined by factions, and exposed to 
 all sorts of calamities. Charles was advancing through 
 Massovia, and chose the worst road he could take. The 
 inhabitants fled into the morasses, being determined at least 
 to make him purchase his passage. Six thousand peasants 
 deputed one of their body to speak to him ; this was an old 
 man, of a very extraordinary size and figure, clad in white, 
 and armed with two carbines. lie addressed his discourse to 
 Charles, but as the Swedes did not rightly understand what 
 he said, they made no scruple to kill him in the presence of 
 their king, and in the middle of his harangue. The peasants 
 in a rage immediately withdrew, and took to their arms. 
 The Swedes seized on as many as they could find, and obliged 
 them to bang one another; the last was forced to tie the 
 cord about his neck himself, and to be his own executioner. 
 \11 their habitations were reduced to ashes. This fact is 
 mentioned by Norberg, the chaplain, who was an eye-witness ; 
 so tbat we can neither reject his testimony, nor help being 
 struck with horror at such cruelty. 
 
 This new expedition was intended by Charles as a retaliation 
 upon Peter, who already looked upon the Baltic provinces as 
 a certain possession, and reckoned with such security upon
 
 286 histoby or ettssia. [ch. XXIV. 
 
 king Augustus, that lie even overlooked tlie surrender of 
 his ambassador. Publicly, and for appearance sake, Peter 
 took the usual steps for Patkul's deliverance ; but it was 
 believed that he secretly acquiesced, because nothing resulted 
 from his representations. Charles's plan of following the 
 Russians through wastes, morasses, and forests, into the 
 heart of a barbarous country, was approved of by no one ; 
 Rhenschiold, it is true, suffered himself to feign acquiescence, 
 because he and Piper governed the young king by yielding 
 to his capricious and wilful schemes ; as soon, however, as 
 he, like an experienced general, wished to execute any judi- 
 cious plan in a proper military manner, the king no longer 
 listened to him. According to Charles's determination, 
 Levenhaupt was to march out of Livonia and Courland, 
 through Lithuania, and to join him at the Beresina, which has 
 once more become celebrated in our own da}-s. He was to 
 give up Livonia, which had now been defended for seven 
 years, and wasted by friends and foes, to take along with 
 him such cattle, horses, stores, and artillery as remained, 
 and advance with his king towards Moscow, whilst all was 
 in a state of hostility behind him in Poland and around him 
 in Russia. 
 
 As Charles was entering Grodno (the 6th and 12th 
 February, 1708), he learned that Peter had caused all the 
 inhabitants of Narva and Dorpat to be carried off into the 
 interior of Russia (they were only permitted to return in 
 1714) ; but this news made as little impression upon him 
 as the horrors committed by the Russians in Finland. Prom 
 this moment forward his conduct became more and more 
 incomprehensible. He first continued his march through 
 bogs and forests in the most unfavourable season of the 
 year, then remained for the three best months wholly 
 inactive at Rodeskiewicze, and finally liberated the Russian 
 prisoners in May, who immediately reinforced the enemy's 
 troops. He called Levenhaupt to his councils, who re- 
 mained with him six weeks, and everything was agreed 
 upon as to their future movements : but when Levenhaupt 
 returned to Livonia, and was advancing with his army, 
 Charles, without any necessity, forgot his promise to meet 
 him at the appointed place. In the meantime, the king had 
 set out in June from Rodeskiewicze and passed the Beresina;
 
 A.D. 1709] CHARLES XII.' S RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. 287 
 
 his delusion was increased by a fruitless victory at Go- 
 lovtchin on the 4th of July. He afterwards took Mohilefi, 
 and reached the Dniepr, passed over the river in the midst 
 of an unceasing contest carried on by the Eussians, who 
 were around him in swarms, and who had got some experi- 
 ence in warfare from their repeated collisions with himself. 
 Thev were, indeed, obliged to pay for their experience by 
 the sacrifice of the greater number of men, whilst the 
 Swedes lost comparatively few ; but Peter was easily able 
 to replace his loss, whilst that of Charles was irreparable. 
 
 Whilst Charles passed the Dniepr, and entered into a close 
 alliance with the Cossacks of the Ukraine, who regarded 
 Peter as the enemy of their independence, the Russian army 
 was separated into three great divisions, in order that every 
 division sent forward by Charles, or which might be ad- 
 vancing to form a junction with him, might be overpowered 
 by a superior force. The consequences of this disposition 
 were first felt by Lagercrona, and next by Levenhaupt. 
 Lacercrona had received orders to advance with a divi- 
 sion of troops into the Ukraine, whilst Charles continued 
 his march towards Smolensk. This division was attacked 
 at Dobro by Mentchikof (20th September, 1709) and 
 defeated, and every one expected that Charles, who was 
 in want of many necessary supplies, would wait the arrival 
 of Levenhaupt at the appointed place, when he at length 
 halted for a considerable time at the end of September and 
 the beginning of October. Levenhaupt, on this occasion, 
 gained for himself immortal renown. Surrounded on every 
 side by the enemy, and obliged to march through wastes and 
 forests, he reached the place, with all his baggage and artil- 
 lery, where he hoped to find Charles. He found him not, 
 but, on the contrary, was attacked near Liesna by a 
 superior Russian force ; he had only 10,000 men against 
 40,000 ; he won the victory, but was obliged to leave behind 
 him his horses, cattle, provisions, and artillery ; in short, all 
 tluii, he was to bring to Charles, in order to save his heroes 
 and their honour by a hasty march. Charles's conduct on 
 this occasion shows how very little idea he had of those 
 principles which ought to guide a commander; for Leven- 
 haupt fough.1 thisi battle on the 9th of October, and on the 
 11th formed a junction with the army of the king.
 
 288 HISTOEY OF BUSSIA. [CH. XXIY. 
 
 The march into the Ukraine, which threw Levenhaupt com- 
 pletely into the hands of the Russians, had been undertaken 
 by Charles because Mazeppa, the hetman of the Cossacks, 
 now seventy years old, had before supplied him with pro- 
 visions, and now invited him to join him. Charles was 
 neither acquainted with the unbounded plains of the Ukraine, 
 the relation of the different tribes of Cossacks to one 
 another, nor the influence which Mazeppa had amongst 
 them. Hitherto he had cruelly harassed the Cossacks, and 
 now he appeared among them at once, without having pre- 
 viously concluded any agreement either with them or their 
 hetman. Mazeppa, indeed, with his army passed over the 
 Desna ; his followers, however, believed they were being led 
 against Charles, and deserted their hetman as soon as his 
 views were known, because they had more to fear from 
 Peter than to hope from Charles. The hetman joined the 
 Swedes with only 7000 men, but Charles prosecuted his 
 march and despised every warning. He passed the Desna ; 
 the country on the further side became more and more 
 desolate, and appearances more melancholy, for the winter 
 was one of the most severe ; hundreds of brave Swedes were 
 frozen to death because Charles insisted upon pursuing his 
 march even in December and January. The civil war in 
 Poland in the mean time raged more violently than ever, 
 and Peter sent divisions of his Russians to harass and per- 
 secute the partisans of Stanislaus. The three men who 
 stood in most immediate relation to the Swedish king, Piper, 
 Rhenschiold, and Levenhaupt, belonged, indeed, to the 
 greatest men of their century, but they were sometimes 
 disunited in their opinions, and sometimes incensed and 
 harassed by the obstinacy of the king. 
 
 Mazeppa fell a sacrifice to his connexion with Charles, his 
 residence (Baturin) was destroyed by Mentchikof, and his 
 faithful Cossacks, upon Peter's demand, were obliged to 
 choose another hetman (November, 1708). Neither Piper 
 nor Mazeppa could move the obstinate king to relinquish his 
 march towards the ill-fortified city of Poltava. Mazeppa 
 represented to him in vain that, by an attack upon Poltava, 
 he would excite the Cossacks of the Palls (Zaporogues) 
 against him ; and Piper entreated him, to no purpose, to 
 draw nearer to the Poles, who were favourable to his cause,
 
 A.D. 1709] BATTLE OF POLTAYA. 289 
 
 and to march towards the Dniepr ; he continued, however, 
 to sacrifice his men by his march, till, in February (1709), a 
 thaw set in. He was successful in gaining the favour of the 
 Zaporogues through their hetman, Horodenski ; but fortune 
 had altogether forsaken the Swedes since January. In 
 that month they were in possession of Moprik ; in February, 
 the battles at Goronodek and Rashevka were decided in 
 favour of the Russians ; in March, Sheremetef took Gra- 
 ditch, which was occupied by the Swedes, and thereby 
 gave a position to the Russian army which could not but 
 prove destructive to the Swedes, who were obliged to besiege 
 Poltava without the necessary means, because their intract- 
 able king insisted upon the siege. In April and May, the 
 Swedes exerted themselves in vain in throwing up trenches 
 before the miserable fortifications of Poltava, whilst the 
 Russians were inclosing them in a net. One part of the 
 Russians had already passed the Vorskla in May, and Peter 
 had no sooner arrived, in the middle of June, than the whole 
 army passed the river, in order to offer a decisive engage- 
 ment to the invaders. 
 
 Rhenschiold acted as commander-in-chief at the battle of 
 Poltava; for Charles had received a dangerous wound in 
 his foot ten days before, and was unable to mount his 
 horse. The Swedes on this day performed miracles of 
 bravery, but everything was against them, for the Russians 
 fought this time at least for their country, and had at length 
 gained experience in the field. The defeat of the Swedes is 
 easily explained, when it is known that they were in want of 
 all the munitions of war, even powder and lead, that they 
 were obliged to storm the enemy's fortifications in opposi- 
 tion to an overwhelming numerical force, and that Leven- 
 haupt and Rhenschiold were so much disunited in opinion, 
 that the former, in his report of the engagement at Poltava, 
 makes the bitterest complaints against the commander-in- 
 chief, which have since that time been usually adopted by all 
 historians. Of the whole Swedish army, only 14,000 or 
 15,000 under Levenhaupt and Kreuz succeeded in erecting 
 an ill-fortified camp on the Dniepr, where they were shut up 
 by the Russians and the river. This small force might pos- 
 sibly have succeeded in fighting its way into Poland, and 
 Charles had at first adopted this determination ; lie was, 
 
 vol. i. u
 
 290 HISTORY OP RUSSIA. [ch. XXIV. 
 
 however, with great trouble, induced to pass the Dniepr, 
 and, accompanied by a small guard, to take refuge in Tur- 
 key. His plan was to reach the Bug over the pasture lands 
 which then belonged to the Tatars on the Black Sea, and, 
 aided by the Turks and the Tatars, to make his way first to 
 Otchakof and then to Bender, whence he hoped to per- 
 suade the Turks to take part in the Polish affairs. As soon 
 as the king had escaped (10th July, 1709), Levenhaupt, 
 mourning over the sacrifice which the wilfulness of Charles 
 had brought upon his Swedes, concluded a capitulation, in 
 virtue of which all the baggage and artillery were sur- 
 rendered to the Russians, together with the remnant of the 
 Swedish army, which, calculating those who had been taken 
 prisoners in the battle, amounted in all to about 18,000 
 men. 
 
 Charles's flight to Bender, and his long residence of five 
 years in Turkey, were the most favourable events which could 
 have occurred for the accomplishment of Peter's great plans. 
 He was now master in Poland. In the Swedish, German, 
 and French adventurers who had been in Charles's army, he 
 received the very best instructors of his people. Among 
 those who entered into his service, there were experienced 
 officers, artillerymen, architects, and engineers. The Swedes, 
 who for thirteen years long were neither set at liberty nor 
 received from their impoverished country the usual support 
 of prisoners of war, were distributed over the whole of 
 Russia, and sent far into Siberia. They founded schools and 
 institutions, in order to get a livelihood, and used their know- 
 ledge and experience against their will for the promotion of 
 Peter's designs. This was the more important, as there was 
 not a man among those many thousand prisoners who was 
 not in a condition to teach the Russians to whom he came 
 something of immediate utility, drawn from his experience 
 in his native land. Many never returned to their homes, 
 because they had raised up institutions, and commenced 
 undertakings which were as advantageous to themselves as 
 to the Russian empire. 
 
 The victory of Poltava was immediately followed by an- 
 other combination against Sweden. Augustus prepared to 
 recover his throne ; and Peter met him at Thorn (October, 
 1709), where they entered into a secret alliance. Peter,
 
 A.D. 1710] RESULTS OP THE VICTORY OF POLTAVA. 291 
 
 without any idea of fulfilling his engagement, promised 
 Livonia to the Poles ; and Augustus agreed in return that 
 Esthonia and all the other Baltic provinces should be united 
 with Eussia. This was kept secret ; whilst publicly they 
 spoke only of a defensive alliance, in which Poland, Prussia, 
 Denmark, and Saxony were the contracting parties. Peter 
 alone was the gainer : Augustus travelled, caroused, gambled, 
 and offended the Poles. The king of Denmark suffered a 
 disgraceful defeat in his attack on the southern provinces of 
 Sweden ; Prussia became afraid, and hesitated, whilst Peter 
 incessantly followed up his own plans even in Polish Prussia. 
 He took Elbing by storm, and kept possession of it, although 
 the cession of that country had been promised to the king of 
 Prussia ; Russians were scattered about in every part of 
 Poland ; Riga was besieged, and after a brave defence cap- 
 tured (June, 1710). The same fate befel Vyborg, Kexholm, 
 Bevel, Pernau, and the island of Oesel. Even the German 
 possessions of Sweden were threatened simultaneously by 
 the Russians, Danes, Prussians, and Saxons. 
 
 In Moscow the year 1710 was ushered in with a solemnity 
 most agreeable to a people who had been apprehensive of 
 seeing their capital in possession of those very Swedes who 
 were now led through it in triumph. The artillery of the 
 vanquished, their colours and standards, their king's litter, 
 the soldiers, officers, generals, and ministers of the captive 
 Swedes, all on foot, moved in solemn procession under seven 
 magnificent arches, attended with the ringing of bells, the 
 sound of trumpets, voDeys from a hundred pieces of cannon, 
 and the acclamations of an immense multitude. The victors 
 on horseback, with the generals at their head, and Peter in 
 his rank of major-general, closed the procession. At eacli 
 triumphal arch stood the deputies of the several orders of 
 the state ; and at the last was a chosen band of young noble- 
 men, the sons of boyars, in a Roman dress, who presented the 
 victorious monarch with a crown of laurel. 
 
 This public festival was succeeded by another ceremony, 
 that afforded no less satisfaction than the former. In the 
 year 1708 happened an incident, the more disagreeable to 
 the Russians as Peter was at that time unprosperous in war. 
 Mateof, bis ambassador to the court of London, having ob- 
 tained an audience of leave of queen Anne, was arrested for 
 
 u J
 
 292 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXIY. 
 
 debt, at the suit of some English merchants, and obliged to give 
 bail. The merchants insisted that the laws of commerce were 
 of a superior nature to the privileges of ambassadors : on the 
 other hand Mateof, and all the other foreign ministers who 
 espoused his cause, maintained that their persons ought to 
 be sacred. Peter, by his letters to queen Anne, strongly 
 insisted upon having satisfaction : but she could not comply 
 with his desire, since by the laws of England the merchants 
 had a right to sue for their just demands ; and there was no 
 law to exempt foreign ministers from being arrested for debt. 
 The murder of Patkul, the czar's ambassador, who had been 
 executed the preceding year by order of Charles XII., was 
 in some measure an encouragement to the people of England 
 not to respect a character so grossly abused. The other 
 foreign ministers residing then in London, were obliged t< 
 be bound for Mateof : and all that the queen could do in 
 favour of the czar, was to prevail on the parliament to pass 
 an act whereby it was no longer lawful to arrest an am- 
 bassador for debt ; but after the battle of Poltava it be- 
 came necessary to give a more public satisfaction to that 
 prince. The queen by a formal embassy made an excuse for 
 what had passed. Mr. Whitworth,* who was chosen for 
 this ceremony, opened his speech with the words : " Most 
 high and most mighty emperor." He told the czar that 
 the queen had imprisoned the persons who had presumed 
 to arrest his ambassador, and that the delinquents had been 
 rendered infamous. There was not a word of truth in this 
 but the acknowledgment was sufficient ; and the title o 
 emperor, which the queen had not given Peter before th 
 battle of Poltava, plainly showed the degree of estimation t 
 which he was now raised in Europe. 
 
 The progress of the allies against Sweden was the causi 
 of no little uneasiness to the naval powers and the empero 
 of Germany, who eagerly offered themselves as mediators 
 Charles declared that he woidd willingly accept their media 
 tion as to Denmark and Poland, but declined it altogethe: 
 with respect to Russia. 
 
 About this time Charles neither could nor ouq-ht to hav 
 accepted any agreement in which the Russians were in 
 
 * February 16, 1710. He was created Lord Whitworth by king 
 George I. 
 
 n 
 .s 
 
 :
 
 A.D. 1711] CAMPAIGN OF TIIE PJIUTU. 293 
 
 eluded, because he began at length to see his cabals crowned 
 with success, and his hopes realised in Constantinople. The 
 Turks were willing to declare war against Russia, and the 
 advantage was altogether on their side. Disputes had been 
 carried on between Peter and the Turks ever since 1704, on 
 the subject of the augmentation of his fleets in the Black 
 Sea, and the fortification of Asof and Taganrok ; but these 
 disputes had hitherto always been brought to a friendly 
 termination, and the Turks had at last (September, 1709) 
 formally renewed their treaty with the Russians. "When 
 Numan Kuprili afterwards caused a general war-cry in the 
 country by his imprudence, the new grand vizier, Mehemet 
 Baltadschi, was obliged to make the necessary preparations 
 for war, and a declaration of hostilities was actually pub- 
 lished in November, 1710. 
 
 This occurred about the same time in which Peter had got 
 full possession of Livonia and Esthonia, and, by the conces- 
 sion of a constitution and privileges, had gained over the 
 nobility of both provinces to his cause ; and he was now 
 seeking in like manner to draw over the princes of Moldavia 
 and Yallacbia to his interests. In a treaty agreed to at 
 Lutzk (April, 1711), Demetrius Cantemir promised his aid 
 to the Prussians in the Turkish war, and obtained in return 
 an assurance of Russian protection, and of the hereditary 
 descent in his family of the princely dignity of Moldavia. 
 In this year (1711) Peter anticipated the Turks in their 
 attack: he descended the Dniestr with his army, and ap- 
 peared to threaten Bender, but allowed himself to be allured 
 to the Pruth by the treacherous invitations of the hospo- 
 dars of Moldavia and Yallacbia. Demetrius Cantemir and 
 Brancovan pretended that Peter would be able to seize upon 
 considerable Turkish magazines, situated on the further side 
 of the Pruth, although none had been established there ; 
 this led him away from the Dniestr to the Pruth, and at 
 length induced him to pass that river. He now appeared 
 to be master of Moldavia and Vallachia, for he himself was 
 received with pomp in Jassy, and Sheremetef with his army 
 had been in Vallachia since March. 
 
 His joy, however, was short. The grand vizier, Mehemet 
 Baltadschi, with an unusually numerous army, and 100,000 
 Tatars, advanced to the Pruth, and threatened altogether to
 
 291 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXIV. 
 
 cut off Shereinetef ; Peter hastened to meet the Turks, in 
 order to keep open the communications and to assist his 
 general. The Turks were in position near Paltschi ; Peter was 
 far from his own country and destitute of provisions ; he 
 finally encamped (July, 1711) on a narrow piece of ground be- 
 tween the Pruth aud a morass. In this unfavourable position 
 of the Russians, the whole series of engagements which took 
 place during two days, with single divisions, were entirely 
 adverse to their cause, and the main Kussian army was 
 obliged to retire into their camp ; Rbnne and Janus and 
 their divisions were wholly separated from Peter, who saw 
 himself quickly shut up on all sides. The Russian army had 
 in their rear the Khan of the Tatars ; around them, the 
 river, the morass, and the Turkish army : the czar himself 
 was prostrated by a fearful attack of disease, and yet his 
 mind never showed itself greater than at this very moment. 
 His magnanimity on this occasion is proved by his declara- 
 tion sent to the Russian senate. " I announce to you," he 
 tells them, " that deceived by false intelligence, and through 
 no fault of mine, I am here shut up in my camp by a Turkish 
 army four times more numerous than my own, our provisions 
 cut off, and on the point of being cut to pieces or taken pri- 
 soners, unless Heaven comes to our aid in some unexpected 
 manner. If it befal that I am taken by the Turks, you will 
 no longer consider me your czar and lord, nor pay regard to 
 any order that may be brought you on my part, not even 
 though you may see my hand signed to it ; but you will wait 
 until I come myself in person. If I am destined to perish 
 here, and you receive well-confirmed news of my death, then 
 you will choose for my successor the worthiest among you."* 
 The Russian army and their emperor now seemed utterly 
 lost, when Catharine, whom Peter had already made his wife, 
 but to whom he had not given the title or dignity of 
 empress, was the means of delivering them from their 
 despair, an event which surprised no one more than 
 Charles XII. in Bender. Charles, in the most imprudent 
 
 * At this time Peter's son Alexis was twenty-one years of age. It 
 is evident that the idea of excluding him from the throne had already 
 taken hold of the czar's mind.
 
 A.D. 1711] CAMPAIGN OF THE PRUTH. 295 
 
 manner, had grievously insulted the grand vizier by his 
 insolent and contemptuous conduct, and especially by de- 
 clining his invitation to visit him in his camp. Peter's wife, 
 Catharine, knew how to win the vizier's favour by humilia- 
 tion and presents. The peace concluded on the Pruth, which 
 Catharine effected, still remains a riddle, because the presents 
 which she had it in her power to offer to him and his kiaja, 
 even if we add all that she could collect from the soldiers 
 and officers to her own jewels and furs, seem quite insignifi- 
 cant for such a purpose. Certain it is, however, that these 
 presents paved the way to a peace, and that it was after- 
 wards charged as a crime against the Turkish officials, that 
 the money and valuables were found in their possession.* 
 
 The unexpected news of negotiations for peace at length 
 drew Charles into the Turkish head- quarters, but he was 
 unable to prevent the conclusion of the preliminaries, or the 
 liberation of the Eussians from their grievous condition; 
 and in fact the peace was honourable and advantageous for 
 the Turks, who had taken the field for themselves, and 
 not for Sweden and Poland. In the preamble to the treaty, 
 Peter admitted that he accepted it as an act of grace : this 
 satisfied the pride of the Turks : Asof was to be restored ; 
 Kaminietz, Samara, Taganrok, were to be rased, and the 
 Kussian artdlery was to be surrendered to the Turks. With 
 respect to Charles, the solitary condition was inserted, for 
 form's sake, that Peter was not to oppose his return to 
 
 * The case has heen so often examined, that we do not mean to 
 trouble our readers with an inquiry into the probability or improba- 
 bility of the bribery. Minute accounts of the circumstances stated 
 above will be found in the "Hist. Osman," part vii. p. 157. A full 
 inquiry has also been made by Le Clerc, " Hist, de la Russie Ancienne" 
 (Versailles, 1784, 4to), vol. hi. pp. 324-334. To the many proofs already 
 given, we shall add that of a contemporary (the same who had a very 
 singular adventure with Catharine). Villebois relates the history of 
 the peace at great length. Catharine, he says, learned from Tolstoy's 
 letters the avarice of the kaimakan and the grand vizier, and she her- 
 self gave her instructions in the presence of Peter to an officer of the 
 guard, to whom she had entrusted the delivery of the valuables. Vil- 
 lebois says, that she not only gave her own jewels and furs, but 
 that she rode through the ranks, and represented that there was now 
 no means of escape but over a golden bridge, and thus moved the 
 soldiers and officers to contribute theirs.
 
 29G HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [dl. XXIV. 
 
 Sweden, nor to obstruct it in any "nay ; lie promised also to 
 interfere no further with the affairs of the Poles and Cos- 
 sacks. 
 
 The czar had no sooner placed Sherernetef and his chan- 
 cellor as hostages in the hands of the Turks, as a pledge of 
 the fulfilment of the preliminaries, than he hastened to 
 bring himself and his army into a place of security, to avoid 
 the chances of the vizier's change of opinion. The news of 
 a sudden and favourable peace was at first indeed received 
 in Constantinople with joy, but the representations of the 
 Swedish deputies, and of the enemies of the grand vizier who 
 had been won by them, combined with a report of the 
 presents which had been brought into the camp on the 
 night before the conclusion of the peace, quickly altered the 
 sultan's opinion. The grand vizier's disgrace was not, how- 
 ever, communicated to him so long as he was at the head of 
 the army ; but no soouer had he arrived at Adrianople, and 
 the most dangerous portion of the troops been separated 
 from him, than the storm broke out. The sultan deposed 
 Mehemet Baltadschi, and caused all those to be executed 
 who, under the influence of Russian presents, had either 
 advised the conclusion of a peace, or had proposed its con- 
 ditions. 
 
 Peter in the mean time had fulfilled none of those con- 
 ditions. He left his troops in Poland, and relied upon 
 cabals, upon bribery, and the grand vizier and his friends. 
 This last hope was now, indeed, wholly frustrated by the 
 deposition of the vizier, and a new declaration of war fol- 
 lowed in the course of the succeeding month (December, 
 1711), founded especially upon the czar's non-compliance 
 with the conditions of the peace, because he had delayec 
 rasing the fortresses, and made no arrangements for declaring 
 that portion of the Ukraine independent, which was inha- 
 bited by the Cossacks under the protection of the Turks. 
 England and Holland, in the mean time, tried to work in 
 opposition to the Swedes and French in Constantinople. 
 Kussiau money flowed into the hands of the avaricious 
 Turkish officials, whilst Charles abused the rights of hospi- 
 tality in Bender ; and in order to extort loans by his ob- 
 si .inacy, he offered opposition by force and arms, when ai 
 attempt was made to compel him to return to his kingdom.
 
 A.D. 1712-13] PEACE WITH TURKEY. 297 
 
 The English and Dutch were so fortunate in their labours, 
 as to bring about another peace before the opening of the 
 campaign in the next spring (1712), but Peter was as little 
 in earnest about the fulfilment of its conditions with respect 
 to the Ukraine as he had been in the previous treaty. 
 Charles and his friends used all their endeavours for seven 
 months to bring about a new war, and to make the sultan 
 suspicious of his ministers. In autumn their efforts appeared 
 to have been crowned with success. The vizier who had 
 concluded the last peace was also degraded, and his successor, 
 seven days after his appointment (19th November, 1712), 
 published a third declaration of war against the Eussians. 
 Charles, however, gained nothing by this step, for the new 
 grand vizier and the sultan continually and seriously im- 
 portuned him to hasten his departure from Turkey. Finally, 
 his hopes of being able to invade Poland with a Turkish 
 army were completely frustrated by a new treaty of peace 
 which was concluded between Russia and Turkey, under 
 English and Dutch mediation, in May, 1713. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 peter's acquisitions in the north — operations in po- 
 
 merania, &c. steinbock and his army made prisoners 
 
 — intrigues of oortz — naval victory of aland. 
 
 The unfortunate campaign of the Prutli was of worse con- 
 sequence to the czar than the battle of Narva ; by that defeat 
 ho had profited so as to recover all his losses and dispossess 
 Charles XII. of Ingria ; but by the treaty of Faltschi, 
 I k 'sides losing all his harbours and fortresses on the Sea 
 ef Asof, he was also to renounce the sovereignty of the 
 Black Sea. His enterprises still afforded him a large field 
 for action; and he alone, before the end of the war with 
 Charles XII. leaped the fruit of his vigorous efforts and his 
 numerous sacrifices. He founded the empire which was to 
 inherit the title and the power of Charlemagne, whilst the 
 Roman empire, which the latter had founded, was become the 
 derision of the world.
 
 298 HISTOET OF EUSSIA. [CH. XXV. 
 
 Peter had overrun Livonia, Esthonia, Ingria, Carelia, and 
 part of Finland ; and by the marriage of his niece, as it after- 
 wards appeared, brought Courland into subjection to Russia. 
 His niece Anna was married to Frederick William, duke of 
 Courland, on which occasion the life and customs of the 
 time, especially in the north, were exhibited in all their 
 barbarity. The newly-married duke was obliged to indulge 
 to such an extent in immoderate drinking during the 
 festivities consequent upon the marriage, that he brought 
 his life to an early termination (January, 1711). The czar 
 availed himself of this unexpected death to exclude the 
 brother of the deceased duke, to claim the province as a 
 settlement on the widow, and cause the administration to 
 be carried on in the name of the grand-duchess. The custom 
 of immoderate drinking, which proved fatal to the duke of 
 Courland, was taken advantage of by Peter, as well as by 
 diplomatists in general, to promote their political objects. 
 He compelled his guests, according to Eussian usage, to 
 drink brandy, that he might the more easily extract the 
 secrets of his nobles and the foreign ambassadors, or destroy 
 them.* 
 
 Peter would very willingly have established a firm footing 
 in Germany ; and the campaign of the two kings of Poland 
 and Denmark, which ended unsuccessfully, as well as the 
 dispute which soon after occurred between the duke of 
 Mecklenburg and his nobles, seemed to him to offer a fitting 
 opportunity. Peter had been in Carlsbad in the summer of 
 1711 ; he afterwards travelled to Dresden, and married his 
 son Alexis, heir to his throne, to a princess of Wolfenbuttel, 
 sister-in-law of the emperor Charles VI. ; and finally, when 
 
 * Villebois, who exaggerates nothing, "Weber in his " Altered 
 Russia," and Bassewitz, are inexhaustible in anecdotes with respect 
 to immoderate drinking. Villebois informs us how he was sent by 
 Peter to Catharine, who gave him an audience in bed, that he took 
 improper liberties with her in a fit of drunkenness, was arrested and 
 condemned, " pour deux ans a, la chaine," but was really kept to no 
 labour, and shortly afterwards restored to all his offices, because 
 Peter needed his services, lie states expressly, that Peter was in the 
 habit of cunningly extracting secrets from his guests when intoxicated, 
 and writing them down in his pocket-book, and that he removed 
 many a man out of the way who had revealed his mind in this 
 manner.
 
 A.D. 1712] STEINB0CK DEFEATS THE SAXONS AND DANES. 299 
 
 the Danes, threatened by the Swedes, retreated to Holstein, 
 he sent a Russian u?ray under Mentchikof, Galitzin, Repnin, 
 and Bauer, to Pomerania, in order to join and assist the 
 Saxons in the sieges of Stettin and Stralsund. Peter had 
 then still hopes that it would he possible to train Alexis 
 l'or a ruler, and gave him charge of the campaign. He left 
 & I entchikof with the army as his own substitute, recommended 
 hiin to provide magaziues, to spare the country, and to 
 punish every act of violence with -death. This, however, was 
 all to no purpose, as Mentchikof emulated the common Rus- 
 sians in robbery and destruction. He compelled the inha- 
 bitants of Dantzig to pay him 400,000 dollars, and Peter 
 extorted 100,000 from Riga ; but again, in the commence- 
 ment of the following year, offered the emperor of Germany 
 30,000 Russians to serve against Prance, if he would confer 
 upon him the rank of a member of the empire, and invest 
 him with Livonia as an imperial fief. This will explain the 
 reason why Louis XIV., or his banker, in the following year, 
 helped Steinbock oiit of his perplexity, when he had no 
 money to pay his troops, however little Charles XII. con- 
 cerned himself about Prance. 
 
 Count Steinbock, general of Charles's army, little expected 
 such a supply at a time wben his troops were on the point 
 of breaking out into a mutiny. Seeing the storm gather 
 about him, and having nothing but promises to avert it, 
 fearing also to be hemmed in by three armies of Russians, 
 Danes, and Saxons, he bad proposed a cessation of arms, and 
 sent a courier to Bender, representing to the king the de- 
 plorable state of his affairs, and informing him that the 
 proposal of the armistice was a step of absolute necessity. 
 The courier had not been gone three days, when Steinbock 
 received from the Paris banker two hundred thousand crowns ; 
 whicb, in a desolate country, and at that time especially, was 
 an immense treasure. Elate with this supply, he encouraged 
 his army, procured stores and recruits, and saw himself at the 
 head of t w dve thousand men, so that instead of seeking for a 
 suspension of arms, all his thoughts were bent on lighting. 
 
 Steinbock now marched along the Wismar road towards 
 the combined troops of the Russians, Saxons, and Danes ; he 
 soon found himself near the Danish and Saxon armies, the 
 Russians being three leagues behind. The czar sent three
 
 300 HISTORY OF ItUSSIA. [CH. XXV. 
 
 couriers close after each other to the king of Denmark, de- 
 siring him to wait his coming up, and representing the danger 
 of fighting the Swedes without a superiority in number. The 
 king of Denmark, averse to sharing the honour of a victory 
 of which he had made himself sure, advanced against the 
 Swedes, and attacked them near a place called Gadebusch. 
 This action was a fresh instance of the extreme enmity be- 
 tween the Swedes and Danes, the officers of both nations 
 furiously rushing on each other, and falling dead with mutual 
 wounds. 
 
 Steinbock had gained the victory before the Russians could 
 reach the field of battle ; but this victory was like that which 
 had given a moment's comfort to king Augustus, when in 
 the course of his misfortunes he had won the battle of 
 Kalish against the Swedes, who were everywhere conquerors. 
 The victory of Kalish aggravated Augustus's losses, and that 
 of Gadebusch only retarded the ruin of Steinbock and his 
 army. 
 
 The king of Sweden, on advice of Steinbock's victory, 
 imagined his affairs again on a good footing. He even be- 
 lieved that he should be able to bring the Ottoman empire 
 to declare a new war against the czar. In this hope he ordered 
 Steinbock to march into Poland, ever flattering himself, on 
 the least success, that the times of Narva, when he used to 
 give law, were returning : these imaginations were soon after 
 quashed by the affair at Bender, and his captivity in Turkey. 
 
 All the consequence of the victory of Gadebusch was the 
 reducing to ashes in the night the little town of Altona, in- 
 habited by traders and manufacturers ; a defenceless place, 
 and which, not having taken arms, should not have been 
 molested. It was totally destroyed : several of the inhabi- 
 tants perished in the flames, and others, especially the aged 
 and children, who had fled from the conflagration, died with 
 fatigue and cold at the gates of Hamburg.* This horrible 
 and petty advantage was all that Steinbock obtained ; the 
 Russians, Danes, and Saxons pursued him so closely after 
 his victory, that he was obliged to solicit shelter for himself 
 and his army in Tonniugen, a fortified place in Holstein. 
 
 * Norberg, the king's chaplain and confessor, in his history, coolly 
 says, that general Steinbock set fire to the town only because he had 
 not carriages to bring away the furniture.
 
 J..D. 1712] AFFAIRS OF 1I0LSTEI>*. 301 
 
 Holstein was at that time one of the most desolated 
 countries in the north, and its sovereign one of the most 
 unhappv princes ; he was Charles the Twelfth's own nephew. 
 It was for his father, brother-in-law to this monarch, that 
 Charles before the battle of Narva had carried his arms to 
 Copenhagen itself; and it was for him that he had made the 
 treaty of Travendal, b) r which the dukes of Holstein recovered 
 their rights. The king of Denmark and the duke of Holstein- 
 Gottorp were of the same house ; yet the duke, nephew to 
 Charles XII. and his presumptive heir, had an hereditary 
 aversion to the king of Denmark, who was oppressing him in 
 his minority. The bishop of Lubeck, a brother of his father's, 
 and administrator of this unfortunate pupil's dominions, saw 
 himself between the Swedish army, which he durst not assist, 
 and the Eussian, Danish, and Saxon army, which threatened 
 extremities. Endeavours, however, were to be used for saving 
 Charles's troops, without giving offence to the king of Den- 
 mark, who was now become master of the country, and drain- 
 ing it of all its substance. 
 
 The bishop-administrator of Holstein was entirely governed 
 by the famous baron Gortz, the most crafty and enter- 
 prising of men. Gortz had a private conference with Stein- 
 bock at IJsum, and promised him he would deliver into his 
 hands the fortress of Tonningen, Avithout bringing into ques- 
 tion the bishop-administrator his master ; and at the same 
 time the king of Denmark received assurances from him that 
 it should not be delivered up. Steinbock appeared before 
 Tonningen ; the governor refused to open the gates : this 
 prevented all cause of complaint from the king of Denmark 
 against the bishop-administrator; but Gortz caused an order 
 for admitting the Swedish army into Tonningen to be made 
 out in the name of the young duke. Stamke, the cabinet 
 secretary, added the duke's signature : thus Gortz only im- 
 plicated a child, who had no right as yet to give orders : at 
 the same time he served the king of Sweden, Avhose favour 
 he was courting, and he obliged the bishop-administrator, his 
 master, avIio appeared not to consent to the admission of the 
 Swedish army. The governor of Tonningen, who Avas easily 
 practised on, delivered up the town to the Swedes ; and Gortz 
 cleared himself as well as he could with the king of Denmark, 
 protesting that all had been done contrary to his advice.
 
 302 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXV. 
 
 Though the Swedish army was thus received, part into the 
 town and part under its cannon, yet this did not save it : 
 general Steinbock was obliged to surrender himself prisoner 
 of war with eleven thousand men, as about sixteen thousand 
 had surrendered after the battle of Poltava. It was agreed 
 that Steinbock, with his officers and soldiers, might be ran- 
 somed or exchanged ; Steinbock's ransom was settled at eight 
 thousand imperial crowns ; an inconsiderable sum, yet for 
 want of it that general remained a prisoner at Copenhagen 
 till his death. The territories of Holstein continued under 
 the discretion of an incensed conqueror ; and the young duke 
 was the object of the king of Denmark's revenge, for the 
 abuse which Gortz had made of his name. Thus Charles the 
 Twelfth's whole family became involved in his misfortunes. 
 
 Gbrtz, though his schemes were baffled, still intent on 
 acting a capital part in this confusion, reassumed a project 
 he had entertained of procuring a neutrality for the Swedish 
 possessions in Germany. 
 
 The king of Denmark was at the gates of Tonningen; 
 George, elector of Hanover, coveted the duchies of Bremen 
 and Verden, with the town of Stade ; Frederick William, the 
 new king of Prussia, had cast his eye on Stettin ; and Peter I. 
 was preparing to make himself master of Finland. Thus a 
 partition was projected of all Charles the Twelfth's foreign 
 dominions ; but the problem Gbrtz proposed to himself was to 
 reconcile such a variety of interests with their neutrality. 
 He negotiated, at the same time, with all the princes con- 
 cerned : day and night he was posting from one province to 
 another ; he prevailed with the governor of Bremen and 
 Verden to deliver up those two duchies to the elector of 
 Hanover in sequestration, lest the Danes might seize on 
 them for themselves. By his address with the king of 
 Prussia, that prince consented to take on him the seques- 
 tration of Stettin and "Wismar, jointly with Holstein; by 
 which means the king of Denmark would no longer molest 
 Holstein, nor get entrance into Tonningen. It was certainly 
 an odd way of serving Charles XII. to put his territories 
 and strong places into the hands of those who might keep 
 them for ever; but Gbrtz, by putting those powers in pos- 
 session of the towns, by way of hostage, forced them to a 
 neutrality, at least for some time ; hoping that afterwards
 
 A.D. 1713] NEGOTIATIONS ABOUT STETTIN. 303 
 
 Hanover and Brandenburg might be induced to declare for 
 Sweden. * He was also bringing into bis views the king of 
 Poland, whose ruined dominions stood in immediate need of 
 peace : in short, he was for rendering himself a necessary 
 man to all the princes. He disposed of Charles the Twelfth's 
 patrimony as a guardian, who to save one part of the estate 
 of a pupil reduced to distress, and incapable of transacting 
 his affairs himself, sacrifices the other. All this he did with- 
 out any formal legation, without any other authority for his 
 procedures than a commission from the bishop of Lubeck, 
 who himself was in no way authorised by Charles. 
 
 At first all things went well; Grb'rtz concluded a treaty 
 with the king of Prussia (June, 1713), by which this monarch 
 engaged, on holding Stettin in sequestration, to preserve the 
 rest of Pomerania for Charles XII. In consequence of this 
 treaty, Gbrtz proposed to Meyerfeld, governor of Pomerania, 
 for the facilitating of a peace, to deliver up Stettin to the king 
 of Prussia, believing the Swede, who was governor of Stettin, 
 might be as pliant as the Holsteiner governor of Tonningen ; 
 but Charles's officers were not used to obey such orders. 
 Meyerfeld answered, that if Stettin was entered, it should be 
 over his body and the ruins of the place. He acquainted his 
 master with this strange overture : the courier found Charles 
 a captive of Demirtash, after his adventure at Bender. It 
 was then questioned whether Charles would not be detained 
 prisoner in Turkey all his life, and be sent to some island in 
 the Archipelago or Asia. Charles, in his obscure confine- 
 ment, sent to Meyerfeld the very same order he had sent to 
 Steinbock ;- that he must die sooner than submit to the 
 enemy ; and be as inflexible as himself. 
 
 Gortz seeing that all his measures were disconcerted by 
 the governor of Stettin, who would not hear of any neutrality 
 or sequestration, formed the project not only of having Stettin 
 sequestrated, but also Stralsund ; and he found means to 
 bring the king of Poland, elector of Saxony, into a like 
 treaty for Stralsund, as he had made with the elector of 
 Brandenburg for Stettin. He clearly saw it was impossible 
 for the Swedes to keep those places without money and an 
 army ; and by these sequestrations he hoped to remove the 
 scourge of war from all the north. Denmark itself listened 
 to C itz's negotiations. Prince Mentchikof, the czar's gene-
 
 30-1 HISTOET OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXV. 
 
 ral and favourite, eagerly came to his lure, being made to 
 believe that Holstein might be given, up to his master the 
 czar : he cajoled that monarch with the plan of drawing a 
 canal from Holstein into the Baltic, an undertaking than 
 which nothing could have been thought of more to the taste 
 of that enterprising founder ; and especially with the acqui- 
 sition of a new power in becoming one of the princes of the 
 German empire, and thus being entitled to a vote at the 
 diet of Ratisbon, which he could always second with a good 
 
 army. 
 
 The many different forms this volunteer negotiator as- 
 sumed, the various ways he turned himself, and the many 
 parts he acted, are without a parallel. He even engaged 
 prince Mentchikof to destroy that same city of Stettin which 
 that general was for saving, and to bombard it, that Meyer- 
 feld the governor might be obliged to deliver it up on se- 
 questration. Thus he ventured to offend the king of Sweden, 
 whom he desired to please, and whom, indeed, to his misfor- 
 tune, he afterwards pleased too much. 
 
 The king of Prussia seeing that a Russian army was bom- 
 barding Stettin, began to fear that the place was lost to him. 
 and would fall into the hands of Russia. This was the very 
 point to which Gortz wanted to bring him. Prince Ment- 
 chikof wanting money, he procured him a loan of four hun- 
 dred thousand crowns from the king of Prussia, and after- 
 wards had the governor of the place treated with, when this 
 question was put to him : Which had you rather see, Stettin 
 in ashes under the dominion of Russia, or entrusted to the 
 king of Prussia, who will restore it to the king your master ? 
 The commandant at length complied. Mentchikof entered 
 the city, and having received the four hundred thousand 
 crowns, delivered it up with all its districts to the king of 
 Prussia, who, for form's sake, admitted two Holstein batta- 
 lions into it ; but this part of Pomerania was never restored. 
 
 Baron Gortz, after setting so many springs in motion, 
 could not prevail on the Danes to spare the province of Hol- 
 stein, and lay aside their design on Tonningen. He failed in 
 what seemed to be his chief scope ; but in everything else he 
 succeeded, and especially in becoming a person of importance 
 in the north, which was indeed his main design. 
 
 The elector of Hanover had already secured Bremen and
 
 A.D. 1714] NAVAL VICTORY OF ALAND. 305 
 
 Verden, Charles XII. being dispossessed of it ; the Saxons 
 were before his city of "Wismar ; Stettin was in the hands of 
 the king of Prussia ; the Russians were going to besiege 
 Stralsund, in conjunction with the Saxons, who were already 
 in the island of Eugen ; and the czar, in the midst of so many 
 negotiations about neutralities and partitions, had made a 
 descent in Finland. After having himself pointed the artil- 
 lery before Stralsund, leaving the rest to his allies and prince 
 Mentchikof, he embarked in the month of May on board a 
 fifty-gun ship built from a model of his own at Petersburg, 
 and steered for Finland, followed by ninety-two galleys and 
 one hundred and ten half-galleys, with sixteen thousand land 
 forces. 
 
 The descent was made at Helsingfors (May 22, 1713) ; 
 the difficulties were many, yet it succeeded : an attack was 
 made by way of diversion on one part, whilst the descent 
 was carried on in another ; thus the troops landed, and took 
 the town. The czar pushing his success, made himself master 
 of Borgo and Abo, and commanded the whole coast. The 
 Swedes seemed now destitute of any further resource ; this 
 happening at that very time when the Swedish army under 
 Steinbock had surrendered prisoners of war. 
 
 Prince Galitzin, one of Peter's generals, advanced from 
 Helsingfors, where the czar had landed, into the centre ot 
 the country, to the town of Tavasthus, a post which covered 
 Bothnia, and was defended by some Swedish regiments, with 
 eight thousand militia. An action ensued (March 13, 1714) 
 in which the Russians gained a complete victory, and dis- 
 persed the whole Swedish army ; they afterwards penetrated 
 as far as Vasa, making themselves master of the country to 
 the extent of fourscore leagues. 
 
 The Swedes had still a naval force with which they kept 
 the sea. Peter, desirous above all things to signalise a navy 
 of his own forming, had left Petersburg, and got together a 
 fleet of sixteen ships of the line, with one hundred and 
 eighty galleys fit for working through the rocks which 
 surround the isle of Aland, and other islands not far from 
 the coast of Sweden. Here he met with the Swedish fleet, 
 which in large ships was much stronger than his, but in gal- 
 leys inferior, consequently better adapted to light in open sea 
 than among rocks ; this was a superiority which the czar owed 
 
 VOL. I. X
 
 30G HISTOEY OF RUSSIA. [ch. XXV. 
 
 entirely to his own genius. He served in his fleet as rear- 
 admiral, and received orders from admiral Apraxin. Peter 
 desired to possess himself of the isle of Aland, which is but 
 twelve leagues from Sweden ; in order to do this he was to 
 pass withiu sight of the Swedish fleet : this bold attempt was 
 executed ; the galleys cleared their way under the enemy's 
 cannon, which indeed was not well served. The Russians 
 got into Aland, and this coast being almost everywhere full 
 of rocks, eighty-four galleys were dragged along a plank 
 road across the isthmus of Hango, and launched again in the 
 sea. Erenschild, the Swedish admiral, concluded he should 
 have little difficulty in taking or sinking these eighty galleys : 
 he therefore advanced towards them, but was received with 
 such a fire as made a most terrible slaughter among his 
 soldiers and sailors; his galleys and prames, with the ship 
 on board of wilich he had his flag, were taken, and he 
 himself escaping in a boat, was wounded, and at length 
 obliged to surrender (August 8). He was brought on 
 board the galley which the czar himself manoeuvred ; the 
 remainder of the Swedish fleet got safe to Sweden, but the 
 consternation was such, that even Stockholm did not think 
 itself safe. Neislot, the only fortress remaining to the 
 Swedes on the western coast of Finland, was at the same 
 time reduced by colonel Shuvalof, after a most obstinate 
 resistance. 
 
 The action of Aland, next to that of Poltava, was the most 
 glorious of Peter's life. Now master of Finland, the govern- 
 ment of which he left to prince Galitzin, after triumphing 
 over the whole naval force of Sweden, he returned to Peters- 
 burg ; the tempestuous season not allowing his longer stay 
 in the seas of Finland and Bothnia. On his way homeward, 
 a, storm arose, which threatened to swallow up both the 
 victors and the vanquished. Peter threw himself into a 
 boat, contended with the tempest during a passage of two 
 sea leagues, amidst deep darkness and innumerable reefs, 
 reached a port, lighted a beacon, and thus saved the whole 
 of his victory. Petersburg then witnessed another triumphal 
 procession. In this spectacle, the first exhibition was the 
 bringing into Cronslot harbour of nine Swedish galleys, 
 seven prames crowded with prisoners, and admiral Eren- 
 .schild's ship.
 
 A.D. 1714] PETEIl's HARANGUE. 307 
 
 The Russian flag-ship had on board the cannon, colours, 
 and standards taken in the conquest of Finland. All these 
 spoils were carried to Petersburg, the Russian army marching 
 in order of battle. The triumphal arch, which the czar, 
 according to custom, had himself designed, was decorated 
 with the emblems of all his victories ; under it passed the 
 conquerors, headed by admiral Apraxin ; the czar followed 
 him as rear-admiral, and the other officers according to their 
 rank ; they were all presented to the vice-czar Romadonofski, 
 who distributed gold medals among the officers, and every 
 soldier and sailor had one of silver. The Swedish prisoners 
 also passed under this arch : and admiral Erensckild imme- 
 diately followed the czar, his conqueror. On coming to the 
 throne, where the vice-czar sat, admiral Apraxin presented 
 to him rear-admiral Peter, who, in obedience to a command 
 from the throne, submitted an oral report of the engage- 
 ment. Apraxin then solicited for his comrade the rank of 
 vice-admiral, in recompense of his services : this claim, 
 which had been once before preferred and rejected, was now 
 admitted without demur. 
 
 After this august comedy, Peter, resuming the czar, thus 
 addressed the Russians around him: — " Priends," said he, 
 • which of you, only thirty years ago, Avould ever have 
 thought that a day would come when you and I should 
 build vessels on the Baltic ; when we should found a city in 
 that country, conquered by our toils and our valour, and 
 should see so many Russians become victorious soldiers and 
 skilful sailors ? Could you possibly have foreseen that such 
 a multitude of highly-instructed men, industrious artificers, 
 and distinguished artists, would come from various parts of 
 Europe to make the arts flourish in our native land ; that 
 we should impress foreign powers with such respect for us ; 
 in one word, that so much glory was destined for us ? 
 
 1 1 istary shows us that Greece was anciently the asylum 
 of all the sciences ; and that, driven from that beautiful 
 country by (lie revolutions of the times, they spread over 
 Italy, and thence into all the nations of Europe. It was in 
 consequence of the negligence of our ancestors that thcy 
 stopped short in Poland, and could not reach us ; but at one 
 time the Germans and Poles were plunged into the same 
 darkness of ignorance in which we languished till a recent 
 
 x2
 
 308 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [cil. XXVI. 
 
 period. It was by the exertions of their sovereigns that their 
 eyes were opened ; they have inherited the sciences, the polity, 
 and the arts of Greece. 
 
 " Our turn is at last come, if you will second me in my 
 undertakiug, if you will add labour to obedience. The 
 transmigration of the sciences and arts may be compared to 
 the circulation of the blood. I hope that the hour will come 
 when, abandoning Germany, France, aud England, they will 
 remain some time with us, in their way back to Greece, their 
 country." 
 
 CHAPTER XXYI. 
 
 CHARLES XII. LIBERATED FROM CAPTIVITY — POLITICAL 
 ASPECT OF EUROPE AT THAT PERIOD — PROJECT OF PEACE 
 
 BETWEEN TILE CZAR AND THE KING OF SWEDEN PETER'S 
 
 SECOND VISIT TO HOLLAND — CABALS OF ALBERONI AND 
 GORTZ. 
 
 The regency of Stockholm, exasperated by the deplorable 
 state of affairs and the absence of the king, had at length 
 come to a resolution to consult him no longer, and imme- 
 diately after the czar's naval victory, they had asked the 
 victor's passport for an officer, who was to carry proposals of 
 peace. A passport was sent ; but just then princess Ulrica- 
 Leonora, Charles the Twelfth's sister, received advice that the 
 king her brother was at length preparing to leave Turkey, 
 and come in person to defend his country. This put a stop 
 to the negotiator's journey. Charles, after a stay in Turkey 
 of five years and some months, left it towards the end of 
 October, 1714, and reached Stralsund November 22. Baron 
 Gortz was soon with him, and though the author of part of 
 his misfortunes, he justified himself so artfully, and laid 
 before the king such brilliant hopes, that he riveted himself 
 in his confidence, as he had gained that of all the ministers 
 and princes with whom he had negotiated. He brought him 
 to believe that he would detach the czar's allies from him, 
 the consequence of which must be an honourable peace, or,
 
 A.D. 1715] POLITICAL ASPECT OF EUItOPE. 309 
 
 ;it least, an equal war. From this moment Gortz obtained a 
 much greater sway over the mind of Charles than ever count 
 Piper could do. 
 
 Charles found Europe in a very different state from that 
 in which he had left it. Anne, queen of England, died soon 
 after making a peace with France ; Louis XIV. had secured 
 Spain to his grandson, and obliged the emperor of Germany, 
 Charles VI., and the Dutch to conclude a peace. The affairs 
 of the north had undergone a greater change ; Peter was 
 become arbiter in that part of the world. The elector of 
 Hanover, who had succeeded to the throne of England, 
 aimed at enlarging his territories in Germany, at the 
 expense of Sweden, whose German possessions were the 
 conquests of the great Gustavus. The king of Denmark 
 was bent on recovering Schonen, the best province of 
 Sweden, and which had formerly belonged to the Danes. 
 The king of Prussia, as heir to the dukes of Pomerania, 
 claimed, at least, part of that province : on the other hand, 
 the house of Holstein, oppressed by the king of Denmark ; 
 and the duke of Mecklenburg, who was in a manner at 
 open war with his subjects, solicited the protection of Peter. 
 The king of Poland, elector of Saxony, was desirous that 
 ( 'ourland might be annexed to Poland. Thus from the 
 iOlbe to the Baltic Sea, Peter was the support, as Charles 
 had been the terror, of all the princes. 
 
 Many were the negotiations set on foot since Charles's 
 return, but without any progress ; he thought that he could 
 assemble a sufficient number of men of war, and not be 
 afraid of the czar's maritime force ; and in the land war he 
 relied on his courage. As to the expenses, GOrtz, who was 
 suddenly made prime minister, persuaded him they might 
 be defrayed with copper coin, raised to ninety-six times 
 above its natural value, which is certainly a prodigy in the 
 history of government. But so early as the 1st of April, 
 1715, Peter's ships took the first Swedish privateers which 
 put to sea ; and a Russian army marched into Pomerania. 
 
 The Prussians, Danes, and Saxons joined their forces be- 
 fore Stralsund (April, 1715), and Charles, after returning 
 from his prisons of Demirtash and Demirtoca, found him- 
 self besieged on the shore of the Baltic. 
 
 It was during this famous siege of Stralsund, that the
 
 310 HISTORY OP RUSSIA. [CH. XXVI. 
 
 new king of England purchased of the king of Denmark for 
 800,000 German crowns the province of Bremen and Ver- 
 den, which the Danes had taken from Charles XII. Thus 
 Charles's dominions were bought and sold, whilst he was 
 defending Stralsund inch by inch. At last, the place being 
 reduced to a heap of ruins, his officers artfully forced him 
 to quit it : when he was safe, Duker his general delivered up 
 those ruins to the king of Prussia (December 15). 
 
 Peter was satisfied with having Livonia, Esthonia, Carelia, 
 and Ingria, which he looked on as provinces of his dominions, 
 and with having further added to them almost all Finland, 
 which was as a security in case a peace could be brought 
 about. In the month of April of the same year (1715), he 
 had married a daughter of his brother's to Charles-Leopold, 
 duke of Mecklenburg. Thus all the princes of the north 
 were either his allies or his creatures. He awed king Au- 
 gustus's enemies in Poland : one of his armies, of about 
 eighteen thousand men, easily dispersed all those combina- 
 tions so often shooting up in that seminary of liberty and 
 anarchy ; and the Turks, faithful to treaties, left his powers 
 and his designs their full range. 
 
 In this flourishing condition, almost every day produced 
 new establishments relating to the navy, army, commerce, 
 or the laws : he himself drew up a military code for the in- 
 fantry. He was founding a naval academy at Petersburg. 
 Lange was setting out for China by the way of Siberia on 
 commercial improvements ; engineers were laying down maps 
 throughout the whole empire. The superb seat of Petershof 
 was building : and at the same time forts were erecting on 
 the Irtish ; the depredations of the tribes of Bukaria were 
 checked ; and in another part, the Kuban Tatars were kept 
 in awe. 
 
 The measure of his prosperity seemed to be filled up this 
 year, a son being born to him by his wife Catharine, and an 
 heir to his dominions in a son of prince Alexis ; but of the 
 former he was soon deprived by death, and we shall see, in 
 the tragical fate of Alexis, that the birth of his son j could 
 not be accounted a happiness. 
 
 The czaritza's delivery interrupted the journeys in which 
 she continually attended her husband both by land and sea ;
 
 A.D. 1716] peter's second tour in EUROPE. 311 
 
 but on the first recovery of her strength, she accompanied 
 him in new expeditions. 
 
 "Wismar was then besieged by all the czar's allies. This 
 town was another of those German acquisitions which the 
 peace of "Westphalia had secured to the Swedes ; yet at 
 length, like Stralsund, it was obliged to surrender. The 
 czar's allies lost no time in making themselves masters of it 
 before his troops arrived ; but Peter himself coming before 
 the town after the capitulation, which had been transacted 
 without him, made the garrison prisoners of war (Feb., 1716). 
 He highly resented that his allies should leave to the king of 
 Denmark a town which should naturally belong to the duke 
 of Mecklenburg, the prince on whom he had bestowed his 
 niece; and this resentment, of which Gortz soon availed 
 himself, gave the first rise to his project for a peace between 
 the czar and Charles the Twelfth. Gortz, from this moment, 
 represented to Peter the Great that Sweden was sufficiently 
 weakened, and that Denmark and Prussia ought not to be 
 too much aggrandised. The czar was precisely of the same 
 opinion ; thenceforth he acted indolently against Sweden ; 
 and Charles the Twelfth being everywhere unfortunate in 
 Germany, resolved to carry the war into Norway; one of 
 those desperate steps which success alone can justify. 
 
 The czar, in the mean time, undertook a second tour 
 through Europe. The first he had made as a person who 
 sought information in the arts and manufactures ; the second 
 he performed as a prince desirous of coming at the secrets of 
 foreign courts. He carried his consort to Copenhagen, Lu- 
 beck, Schwerin, and Neustadt ; he had a meeting with the 
 king of Prussia at the small town of Aversburg, thence they 
 proceeded to Hamburg, and Altona, lately burnt by the 
 Swedes, but now partly rebuilt. At length he reached 
 \msterdam, and the little dwelling at Sardain, where 
 about eighteen years before he had learned the art of ship- 
 building; lie now found it improved into a complete and 
 pleasant structure, still known by the name of the 'prince's 
 /tome. It may be judged with what joy and fondness he was 
 received by a community of traders and mariners, whose 
 compauionhe had been : they looked on the victor of Poltava 
 as their pupil, who had founded trade and navigation in his
 
 312 H1ST0EY OF ETJSSIA. [en. XXVI. 
 
 empire, and had learnt among them to gain naval victories ; 
 they accounted him as one of their fellow- citizens raised to 
 the imperial dignity. 
 
 The czaritza had remained at Schwerin, being far advanced 
 in her third pregnancy since her marriage ; however, she was 
 no sooner able to travel than she proceeded to Holland after 
 the czar. At Wesel she was delivered of a prince, who died 
 the next day. With us it is not customary for a woman to 
 travel immediately after her lying-in ; but the czaritza within 
 ten days reached Amsterdam. 
 
 The czar continued three months in Holland. The Hague, 
 ever since the peace of Nimeguen, Byswick, and Utrecht, had 
 been reputed the centre of the negotiations of Europe, and 
 was chiefly inhabited by ministers from all courts, and by 
 travellers resorting thither to improve themselves in this 
 universal academy of politics. A great revolution in Europe 
 was then on the anvil ; the czar, who was privy to the de- 
 sign, prolonged his stay in the Netherlands, that he might 
 be nearer at hand to see at once what intrigues were carry- 
 ing on in the south and in the north, and to prepare for the 
 part it would become him to act. He perceived that his 
 allies were not a little jealous of his power ; and that, very 
 often, friends are more troublesome than enemies. 
 
 Mecklenburg was one of the principal causes of those 
 imavoidable variances between neighbouring princes, in a 
 division of conquests. Peter was not willing the Danes 
 should take Wismar for themselves, and much less that they 
 should demolish its fortifications ; yet had they done both. 
 
 The duke of Mecklenburg, to whom he had married his 
 niece, was openly protected by him against the nobility of 
 the country ; and they, on the other hand, had a patron in 
 the king of England. Peter also began to be very much 
 displeased with the king of Poland, or rather with his first 
 minister, count Fleming, who was for throwing off the yoke 
 of dependency which had been imposed by force and acts of 
 benevolence. 
 
 The courts of England and Poland, Denmark and Hol- 
 stein, Mecklenburg and Brandenburg, were distracted with 
 intrigues and cabals. 
 
 At the end of the year 1716, and the beginning of 1717, 
 Gortz, who, according to Bassewitz's Memoirs, was weary of
 
 A.D. 1717] CABALS OF GORTZ AND ALBERONI. 313 
 
 the bare name of counsellor of Holstein, and of being only a 
 clandestine plenipotentiary of Charles the Twelfth, had been 
 the first mover of all these intrigues ; and he now resolved to 
 make use of them for raising commotions in Europe. His 
 scheme was to reconcile Charles XII. and the czar, and 
 unite them, witli a view of replacing Stanislaus on the throne 
 of Poland ; and dispossessing the king of England, George 
 the First, of Bremen and Verden, and even driving him from 
 the British throne, which would disable him from ever ag- 
 grandising himself with the spoils of Charles. 
 
 There was at the same time a minister of his temper, who 
 aimed at the overthrow of England and France ; this was 
 cardinal Alberoni, whose sway in Spain exceeded that of 
 Gortz in Sweden ; bold and enterprising as himself, but with 
 much more power, being at the head of an opulent king- 
 dom, and paying his creatures in other coin than copper. 
 Gbrtz, from the distant shores of the Baltic, soon formed 
 connexions with the court of Madrid ; both Alberoni and he 
 diligently corresponded with all the English fugitives who 
 had declared for the Stuart family. The Swedish minister 
 posted into all the countries where he could meet with any 
 of king George's enemies, as Germany, Holland, Flanders, 
 Lorrain, and, towards the close of the year 1716, to Paris. 
 Cardinal Alberoni began with sending him to Paris a mil- 
 lion of French livres, that he might begin to fire the train, 
 as Alberoni expressed himself. 
 
 Gortz was for having Charles make considerable conces- 
 sions to Peter, and indemnify himself on his enemies, that 
 he might have his hands free to attempt a descent in Scot- 
 land, whilst the partisans of the Stuarts, after so many fruit- 
 less insurrections, should take up arms in England. The 
 accomplishment of these projects required that the king of 
 England should be deprived of his greatest support, the 
 regent of France. That France should be united with the 
 king of England against the grandson of Louis XIV., whom, 
 at such an immense expense and effusion of blood, it had 
 placed on the throne of Spain against the combination of so 
 many powerful enemies, was something extraordinary ; but 
 at that time everything was out of its natural course, and 
 the interest of the regent was not that of the kingdom. 
 Alberoni was already machinating a conspiracy in France
 
 314 history of eussia. [en. XXVI. 
 
 against the regent. The plan of this vast enterprise was no 
 sooner formed, than the foundations for conducting it were 
 laid. Gortz being first in the secret, was to go into Italy, in 
 disguise, in order to confer with the Pretender in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Rome ; thence he was to hasten back to the 
 Hague, to see the czar ; and he was to put the finishing hand 
 to all with the king of Sweden. 
 
 The Swedish minister had returned to Holland, at the end 
 of the year 1716, with bills of exchange from Alberoni, and 
 the credentials of a plenipotentiary from Charles. It is 
 very certain that the Pretender's party was to have risen on 
 Charles's making a descent from Norway into the north of 
 Scotland. This prince, who had not been able to preserve 
 his dominions in Germany, was going to invade those of 
 another. And thus after the prison of Demirtash, and the 
 ashes of Stralsund, he would crown the son of James at 
 London, as he had placed Stanislaus on the throne at 
 Warsaw. 
 
 It is certain that Peter was acquainted with the plan, 
 as appears from the letters which passed between Gortz 
 and Gyllenborg, the Swedish minister in London, which were 
 seized upon, and are now printed. Besides, it is known 
 that Peter not only negotiated with Gortz through prince 
 Kurakin, but that he also kept up communications with the 
 partisans of the Pretender in Scotland and England, through 
 his Scotch physician Erskine; and also that he was very 
 much offended with the Dutch for arresting Gortz, and was 
 indignant with the English for publishing the intercepted 
 correspondence, in which his name occurred. The czar 
 was so enraged at king George, that he not only loudly 
 and publicly abused him, but they carefully avoided 
 each other, when George came twice to Holland during 
 Peter's sojourn in that cotmtry (1717). Peter expressly 
 excused his conduct towards the Dutch ambassador, whom 
 he caused to be arrested, and whose papers he ordered to 
 be seized, by alleging that the Dutch had arrested Gortz. It 
 is clear that Peter took more interest, and participated more 
 deeply than Charles XII., in the cabals between Alberoni 
 and Gortz, the partisans of the Pretender and the malcontents 
 in Prance, because one of the chief points of the prelimi-
 
 A.D. 1717] CABALS OF GOETZ AND ALBEEOKI. 315 
 
 naries of peace agreed upon by Peter (in Lofoe) shortly 
 before Charles's death, relates to the Pretender. In addition 
 to this, Coxe states, that at a still later period Alberoni sent 
 the duke of Ormond to Russia, to enter into a close alliance 
 ■with Peter. A modern French historian is not far from the 
 truth in declaring that the whole of these cabals were a 
 swindle on the part of the scandalous and extravagant Gortz, 
 who was inexhaustible in schemes ; for he, Gyllenborg, Sparre, 
 and others, undoubtedly availed themselves of the credulity 
 of the Jacobites, in order to obtain 20,000 guineas in England, 
 and 100,000 livres from the opponents of George in Prance. 
 
 Gyllenborg, the ambassador in London, was a principal 
 mover in the whole scheme. "When the Danes by accident 
 found the letters which related to it in a Swedish ship, the 
 English caused a counterfeit to be made of the Swedish seal, 
 opened all the ambassador's letters, and finally arrested the 
 minister himself (9th February, 1717); and the Dutch, at 
 their request, seized upon the person of Gortz. 
 
 Charles XII. caused the English ambassador Jackson to 
 be arrested, and exchanged him for Gyllenborg. He forbade 
 the Dutch consul the court ; the duke of Holstein interested 
 himself also in favour of Gortz, but the states of Gueldres 
 had already set him at liberty, and formally promised him 
 their protection. Gortz drove from the place of his confine- 
 ment into Arnheim in a coach drawn by six horses, and 
 threw money amongst the people, who thereupon cheered 
 for the king of Sweden. The czar solemnly denied all 
 participation in the cabals, and even took a journey to Paris 
 (May, 1717), where Louis XIV. had refused his visit on his 
 first journey. The regent would undoubtedly rather not 
 have seen him in his capital, nevertheless he gave him an 
 honourable and ceremonious reception. But from the mo- 
 ment of his arrival all these vaiu pomps were rejected by the 
 czar ; they hid from him the useful things which he wished 
 to observe. " I am a soldier," he said ; " bread and beer are 
 all I want ; I like small rooms better than large. I do not 
 wish to move about in state and tire so many people." He 
 refused the apartments prepared for him in the Louvre, and 
 took up his abode in the Marais, at the Hotel Lesdiguiere, 
 belonging to Marshal Villeroi. * But for all his desire to avoid
 
 31G history of nrssiA. [en. xxvi. 
 
 ceremony and adulation, lie could not entirely escape from the 
 ingenious stratagems of French politeness. Happening to 
 dine with the Duke d'Antin at his chateau of Petitbourg, 
 three leagues from Paris, he perceived after the entertain- 
 ment that his own portrait, painted on the spot, had been just 
 put up in the dining-room, and he could not but feel that the 
 French, above any other people in the world, knew how to 
 receive so noble a guest. 
 
 He was still more surprised, when, going to see medals 
 struck in that long gallery of the Louvre, where all the king's 
 artists have such elegant apartments, a medal, on being 
 struck, fell on the floor, and the czar eagerly stooping to 
 take it up, found it to be a medal of himself, and on the 
 reverse a Fame, with these words of Virgil, so suitable to 
 Peter the Great, Vires acquirit eundo : a delicate and noble 
 allusion, and equally adapted to his travels and reputation. 
 The Russian monarch, and all his attendants, were presented 
 with some of these medals in gold. On his visiting the artists, 
 all the finest pieces were laid at his feet, with an humble 
 request that he would deign to accept of them. And when 
 he went to see the tapestry of the Gobelins, the carpets of 
 the Savonnerie, the working rooms of the king's sculptors, 
 painters, goldsmiths, and mathematical instrument makers ; 
 whatever seemed particularly to engage his eye, was offered 
 to him in the king's name. Peter being a mechanic, an 
 artist, and a geometrician, went to the Academy of Sciences, 
 where, with his own hand, he corrected several geographical 
 ■errors in the maps they showed him of his dominions, and 
 especially those of the Caspian Sea. He was pleased also to 
 become one of the members, and afterwards kept up a con- 
 stant correspondence with that illustrious body. 
 
 On visiting the Sorbonne the czar was possessed with a 
 fierce rapture at the sight of cardinal Richelieu's tomb, the 
 beauty of which masterpiece of sculpture scarcely attracted his 
 eye ; his admiration was engrossed by the image of a minister 
 whose policy, cruel, crafty, and inflexible, had crushed the 
 aristocracy of France, and made the throne despotic. He 
 embraced the statue with this exclamation, — " Great man, I 
 would have given thee one half of my dominions, to learn of 
 thee how to govern the other." Before ho left Paris, he inti- 
 mated his desire to see Madame de Maintenon, who was then
 
 a.d. 1717] petee's visit to fbance. 317 
 
 drawing near her end. His silence at her hedside showed 
 that his visit was prompted by no sympathy with the intole- 
 rant and superstitious widow of Louis XIV., though his 
 curiosity may have been moved by the sort of similarity 
 between the marriage of Louis and his own. But between 
 the king of France and him there was this difference ; the 
 latter had publicly espoused a heroine, and Louis only an 
 agreeable woman, and that in private. 
 
 In this journey Peter did not take the czaritza with him, 
 fearing the incumbrances of ceremony, and the curiosity of a 
 court, little qualified to estimate the merit of a woman, who, 
 from the banks of the Pruth to the shores of Finland, had, at 
 her husband's side, faced death both by sea and land. In 
 truth, the French of that time had no sense of Peter's great 
 qualities or of his utilitarian efforts ; his peculiarities and his 
 barbarism, however, surprised them, and his rude and brutal 
 enjoyments appeared not less to disclose total moral depravity 
 than the unheard-of excesses of their regent, who was the very 
 genius of sin. Nature, vigour, a sense for every tiling profitable 
 or agreeable, and an unceasing activity for the improvement 
 of his people, distinguished Peter, notwithstanding all his 
 moral corruption : such qualities could not be at that time 
 so justly estimated in Paris as they were after the revolution. 
 
 Yet some of the most earnest minds in France admired 
 the experienced glance and skilful hand with which he se- 
 lected the objects worthy of his attention, and the masters 
 whom he engaged to instruct his people ; and his preference 
 of the useful arts and sciences, to examine which he repeatedly 
 visited the artists and manufacturers whose merit he had dis- 
 cerned. " His questions to learned men and to artists," 
 they say, " uniformly gave proof of his knowledge, and excited 
 admiration of the sagacity of an enlarged mind, which was 
 as prompt to comprehend information, as it was eager to 
 learn." 
 
 In his rapid journey through Franco, Peter would often 
 stop, quit his carriage, and stray into the fields to converse 
 with common husbandmen. He made them explain the use of 
 their agricultural implements, and took sketches of them with 
 his own hand. The dress of one of them having attracted 
 his notice, lie stopped to interrogate him, and then, turning 
 to his followers, "Look," lie said, "at this good country
 
 318 HISTOET OIT EUSSIA. [CH. XXVI. 
 
 parson ; with the labour of his own hands he procures cider, 
 wine, and money to boot. Remind me of this when we are 
 in Russia again. I will endeavour to stimulate our priests 
 by this example, and, by teaching them to till the soil, rescue 
 them from their sloth and wretchedness." They remain, 
 however, to this day as ignorant and besotted as ever. 
 
 Peter's negotiations with the regent led to a treaty, to 
 which Prussia afterwards acceded, which was composed in 
 the general expressions and technical language of diploma- 
 tists, but which had really no significance. Returning 
 to Holland, Peter renewed his connexion with Gortz ; 
 he even held a personal meeting with him in Loo (August, 
 1717), entered into negotiations with Charles, and a place 
 was appointed for a congress to agree upon a treaty of 
 peace. The Russian troops had been withdrawn from Ger- 
 many since July, with the exception of 3000, who were 
 nominally in the service of the duke of Mecklenburg, and 
 by whose instrumentality he so oppressed his nobles, and 
 especially the poor city of Rostock, that the empire was at 
 length obliged to afford them aid and protection. Gortz had 
 at that time a Russian passport from Peter ; he first resided 
 in the neighbourhood of Berlin, then in Dresden ; stayed 
 for a short time in Revel, and hastened thence to Sweden, 
 where he consulted with the king as to the means of satis- 
 fying Peter. Peter had united his army on the frontiers 
 of Pinland and in Poland, in order to be able, according to 
 circumstances, either to act against king Augustus in favour 
 of Stanislaus, or against Charles XII. The negotiations 
 between Peter's plenipotentiaries and the Swedes, of which 
 no one knew the secret conditions except Gortz and his friend 
 Gyllenborg, began in May (1718) at Lofoe, one of the Aland 
 islands, and were entrusted by the czar to his most confi- 
 dential friends and advisers, Pruce and Ostermann, alone. 
 
 The world was astonished, when Peter once more re- 
 mained wholly quiet, and Charles directed his entire force 
 against Norway ; and still more, when it was understood 
 that preliminaries had been signed between Sweden and 
 Russia, in which the interests of Denmark, Hanover, and 
 Saxony had been altogether sacrificed by Russia. AVhoever 
 reads these preliminaries cannot repress a certain degree of 
 admiration of Gortz's skill, because it is evident that lie was
 
 A.D. 1718] ALEXIS DISINHERITED. 319 
 
 about successfully to extricate his master from those diffi- 
 culties iuto which his obstinacy had plunged him. Charles, 
 on this occasion, sacrificed all the remaining strength of his 
 brave nation in a thoughtless and wholly useless manner in 
 the Norwegian mountains ; but king George, who had 
 learned from Paris something of the plans which were being 
 forged against him, and of the preliminaries which had been 
 signed by Ostermann and Gortz, became seriously alarmed at 
 the cabals of the Swedish king, and sought to win him over 
 to his cause. When, however, all attempts to induce Sweden 
 to enter into negotiations proved vain, in May (1718) 
 admiral Norris, with an English fleet, appeared in the 
 Sound, as Charles was making preparations to invade Nor- 
 way. But Norris remained inactive ; the negotiations went 
 on smoothly ; and Alberoni and Gortz concluded that they 
 were on the eve of throwing all Europe into confusion, when 
 a random shot from the works of Frederickshall quashed all 
 their projects. Charles XII. was killed (Dec. 11 1718) ; 
 the Spanish fleet was beaten by the English ; the conspiracy 
 fomented in France was discovered and prevented ; Alberoni 
 was driven out of Spain, and Gortz beheaded at Stockholm. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXVII. 
 
 THE CZAREVITCH ALEXIS DISINHERITED — AFTERWARDS 
 BROUGHT TO TRIAL, CONDEMNED TO DEATH, AND POISONED 
 BY HIS EATHER. 
 
 The czar arrived at Petersburg from his foreign tour on 
 the 21st October, 1717. Twenty years .before he had sig- 
 nalised his return from a first visit to civilised countries by 
 the inhuman butchery of the Strelitz, and now he was about 
 to give still more appalling evidence of the deep depravity of 
 his heart. 
 
 Peter's early aversion to Evdokhia had a most deplorable 
 influence on Alexis, the son she bore him in 1690. The dis- 
 sensions between the father and the mother speedily dimi- 
 nished the father's affection for Alexis. Moreover, as Peter's 
 vast labours prevented him from paying much attention to
 
 320 HISTORY OF BUSSIA. [CH. XXVTI. 
 
 the education of his sou, Alexis at first grew up under female 
 tuition, and then fell into the hands of some of the clergy, 
 under whose guidance he daily conceived a greater abhor- 
 rence for his father. This being observed by Peter, he put 
 an end to the spiritual education, and appointed Mentchikof 
 superintendent of the prince's preceptors. 
 
 Mentchikof was no friend to Alexis, and the latter had been 
 early inspired by his mother with contempt and aversion for 
 the favourite of his father. The tutors who were now placed 
 about the prince were not able to eradicate the prejudices 
 impressed on his mind from his infancy, and now grown in- 
 veterate ; besides, he had an unconquerable dislike to them 
 as foreigners. The future sovereign of so vast an empire, 
 that was now reformed in all its parts, and by prosperous 
 wars still further enlarged; the heir of a throne, whose pos- 
 sessor ruled over many millions of people, had been brought 
 up from his birth as if designed for a Russian bishop ; theology 
 continued to be his favourite study : with a capacity for those 
 sciences which are useful in government, he discovered no in- 
 clination to them. Moreover, he addicted himself early in 
 life to drunkenness and other excesses. There were not 
 wanting such as flattered his peiwerse dispositions, by repre- 
 senting to him that the Russian nation was dissatisfied with 
 his father, that it was impossible for him to be suffered long 
 in his career of innovation, that even his life was not likely to 
 hold out against so many fatigues, with many other things of 
 a like nature. The conduct of Alexis, particularly his indo- 
 lence and sloth, were highly displeasing to Peter. Ment- 
 chikof, from political motives, to preserve himself and Ca- 
 tharine, was constantly employed in fanning the czar's re- 
 sentment, while the adherents of Alexis, on the other hand, 
 seized every opportunity to increase the aversion of the prince, 
 who, from his very cradle, had never known what it was to 
 love, and had only dreaded, his father. Alexis even at times 
 gave plain intimations that he would hereafter undo all that 
 his father was so sedulously bringing about. Nay, when the 
 latter, in 1711, appointed the prince regent during his ab- 
 sence, in the campaign of the Pruth, Alexis made it his first 
 business to alter many things in behalf of the clergy, so as 
 clearly to evince in what school he had been brought up. 
 
 The czar was in hopes to reform his son by uniting him
 
 A.D. 1718] ALEXIS DISINHERITED. 321 
 
 with a worthy consort ; but even this attempt proved fruit- 
 less. The princess of Brunswick- Wblfenbiittel, who was 
 
 selected for his bride, and to whom Alexis was married at 
 Torgau, in 1711, notwithstanding all her eminent qualities of 
 mind and heart, and her great beauty, could make no impres- 
 sion on him, and sank under the load of grief, brought on by 
 this unhappy connexion, soon after giving birth to a prince, 
 who was called by the name of his grandfather, Peter (1715). 
 By a continuance in his dissolute mode of life, by his bad 
 behaviour towards his spouse, and his intercourse with persons 
 who were notorious for their hatred of Peter and his reforms, 
 Alexis seemed bent upon augmenting his father's displeasure. 
 
 After the death of the princess, Peter wrote his son a 
 letter, the conclusion of which ran thus : — " I will still wait 
 awhile, to see if you will amend ; if not, know that I will 
 deprive you of the succession, as a useless limb is cut off. 
 Do not imagine I am only frightening you ; nor would I have 
 you rely on the title of being my eldest son ; for since I do 
 not spare my own life for the good of my country and the 
 prosperity of my people, why should I spare yours ? I shall 
 rather commit them to a stranger deserving such a trust, 
 than to my own undeserving offspring." 
 
 At this very juncture the empress Catharine was delivered 
 of a prince, who died in 1719. "Whether the above letter 
 disheartened Alexis, or whether it was imprudence or bad 
 advice, he wrote to his father that he renounced the crown, 
 and all hopes of reigning. " God is my witness," said he, 
 "and I swear upon my soul, that I will never claim the 
 succession : I commit my children into your hands, and for 
 myself desire only a subsistence during life." 
 
 His father wrote to him a second time. "I observe," 
 says he, " that all you speak of in the letter is the succession, 
 as if I stood in need of your consent. I have represented to 
 you what grief your behaviour has given me for so many 
 years, and not a word do you say of it ; the exhortations of a 
 father make no impression on you. 1 have brought myself 
 to write to you once more ; but for the last time. If you 
 despise my counsels now I am living, what regard will bo 
 paid to them after my death ? Though you may now mean 
 not to violate your promises, yet those bushy beards will be 
 able to wind you as they please, and force you to break your 
 
 VOL. i. y
 
 322 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXVII. 
 
 word. It is you those people rely on. You have no grati- 
 tude to him who gave you life. Since you have been of 
 proper age, did you ever assist him in his labours ? Do you 
 not find fault with, do you not detest everything, I do for the 
 good of my people ? I have all the reason in the world to 
 believe that, if you survive me, you will overthrow all that I 
 have been doing. Amend, make yourself worthy of the 
 succession, or turn monk. Let me have your answer either 
 in writing, or personally, or I will deal with you as a male- 
 factor." 
 
 Though this letter was harsh, the prince might have easily 
 answered, that he would alter his behaviour; but he only 
 acquainted his father, in a few lines, that he would turn 
 monk. 
 
 This assurance did not appear natural ; and it is some- 
 thing strange that the czar, going to travel, should leave 
 behind him a son so obstinate : but this very journey proves 
 that the czar was in no manner of apprehension of a conspi- 
 racy from his son. He went to see him before he set out 
 for Germany and France ;' the prince being ill, or feigning 
 to be so, received him in bed, and confirmed to him, by the 
 most solemn oaths, that he would retire into a convent. The 
 czar gave him six months for deliberation, and set out with 
 his consort. 
 
 He had scarcely reached Copenhagen when he received 
 advice (which was no more than he might well expect) 
 that Alexis admitted into his presence only evil-minded 
 persons, who humoured his discontent: on this the czar 
 wrote to him, that he must choose the convent or the 
 throne ; and if he valued the succession, to come to him at 
 Copenhagen. 
 
 The prince's confidants instilled into him a suspicion that 
 it would be dangerous for him to put himself into the hands 
 of a provoked father and a mother-in-law, without so much 
 a3 one friend to advise with. He therefore feigned that he 
 was going to wait on his father at Copenhagen, but took the 
 road to Vienna, and threw himself on the protection of the 
 emperor Charles VI., his brother-in-law, intending to con- 
 tinue at his court till the czar's death. 
 
 This was an adventure something like that of Louis XL, 
 who, whilst he was dauphin, withdrew from the court of
 
 A.D. 1718] ALEXIS DISINHERITED. 323 
 
 Charles VII., his father, to the duke of Burgundy. Louis 
 was, indeed, much more culpable than the czarevitch, by 
 marrying in direct opposition to his father, raising troops, 
 and seeking refuge with a prince, his father's natural enemy, 
 and never returning to court, not even at the king's repeated 
 entreaties. 
 
 Alexis, on the contrary, had married purely in obedience 
 to the czar's order, and had not revolted, nor raised troops ; 
 neither, indeed, had he withdrawn to a prince in anywise his 
 father's enemy ; and on the first letter he received from his 
 father, he went and threw himself at his feet. For Peter, on 
 receiving advice that his son had been at Vienna, and had 
 removed thence to Naples, then belonging to the emperor 
 Charles VI., sent Bomanzof, a captain of the guards, and 
 Tolstoi, a privy-councillor, with a letter in his own hand, 
 dated from Spa, the 21st of July, N.S. 1717. They found 
 the prince at Naples, in the castle of St. Elmo, and delivered 
 him the letter, which was as follows : 
 
 "I now write to you, and for the last time, to let 
 
 you know that you had best comply with my will, which 
 Tolstoi and Bomanzof will make known to you. On your 
 obedience, I assure you, and promise before God, that I will 
 not punish you ; so far from it, that if you, return, I will love 
 you better than ever. But if you do not, by virtue of the 
 power I have received from God as your father, I pronounce 
 against you my eternal curse ; and as your sovereign, I 
 assure you I shall find ways to punish you ; in which I hope, 
 as my cause is just, God will take it in hand, and assist me 
 in revenging it. 
 
 " Eemember further, that I never used compulsion with 
 you. "Was I under any obligation to leave you to your own 
 option ? Had I been for forcing you, was not the power in 
 my hand ? At a word, I should have been obeyed." 
 
 Belying on the faith thus solemnly given by a father and 
 a sovereign, Alexis returned to Eussia. On the 11th of 
 February, 1717, N.S., he reached Moscow, where the czar 
 then was, and had a long conference in private with his 
 father. A report immediately was spread through the city 
 that a reconciliation had taken place between the father and 
 son, and that everything was forgot; but the very next da\ 
 the regiments of guards were ordered underarms, and the 
 
 y 2
 
 321 HISTOEY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXVII. 
 
 great bell of Moscow tolled. The boyars and privy-councillors 
 were summoned to the castle ; the bishops, the archimandrites, 
 and two monies of the order of St. Basil, professors of 
 divinity, met in the cathedral. Alexis was carried into the 
 castle before his father without a sword, and as a prisoner ; 
 he immediately prostrated himself, and with a flood of tears 
 delivered to his father a writing, in which he acknowledged 
 his crimes, declared himself unworthy of the succession, and 
 asked only his life. The czar, raising him up, led him to 
 a closet, where he put several questions to him, declaring, 
 that if he concealed anything relating to his escape, his head 
 should answer for it. Afterwards the prince was brought 
 back into the council-chamber, where the czar's declaration, 
 which had been drawn up beforehand, was publicly read. 
 
 The father in this piece reproached his son with his mani- 
 fold vices, his remissness in improving himself, his intimacy 
 with the sticklers for ancient customs, his misbehaviour 
 towards his consort : " he has," says he, " violated conjugal 
 faith, taking up with a low-born wench, whilst his wife was 
 living." Alexis might fairly have pleaded that in this kind 
 of debauchery he came immeasurably short of his father's 
 example. 
 
 He afterwards reproaches him with going to Vienna, and 
 putting himself under the emperor's protection. He says, 
 that Alexis had slandered his father, intimating to the 
 emperor Charles VI. that he was persecuted ; and that a 
 longer stay in Muscovy was dangerous, unless he renounced 
 the succession ; nay, that he went so far as to desire the 
 emperor openly to defend him by force of arms. 
 
 It is hardly conceivable how the emperor, on such an 
 account, could have made war with the czar, and how, 
 between an incensed father and a refractory son, he could 
 interpose in any other manner than by good offices. In fact, 
 Charles VI. had only entertained the prince, and, on the czar's 
 demanding him, he was sent back. 
 
 In this tremendous piece Peter adds, that Alexis had 
 made the emperor believe that his life was not safe if he 
 returned into Russia. Now the event but too fully justified 
 that fear; for on the prince's return he was condemned to 
 death, notwithstanding an explicit promise of pardon and 
 greater affection.
 
 A.D. 1718] ALEXIS DISINHERITED. 325 
 
 " Such was the manner," the czar continues, "in which 
 our son returned ; and though his flight and his calumnies 
 deserved death, those crimes our fatherly affection forgives : 
 hut his notorious unworthiness and immorality will not 
 allow us, in conscience, to leave him the succession to the 
 empire, it being too manifest that by his ill conduct the 
 glory of the nation would be subverted, so as to occasion the 
 loss of all the provinces recovered by our arms. Our 
 subjects would be extremely to be pitied ; since, leaving 
 them under such a successor would be plunging them into a 
 condition much worse than any they have ever experienced. 
 
 " Accordingly, by our paternal power, in virtue of which, 
 according to the laws of our empire, every private subject of 
 ours can at pleasure disinherit a son, and pursuant to our 
 prerogative as sovereign, and in regard to the welfare of our 
 dominions, we for ever deprive our said son Alexis of the 
 right of succeeding after us to the throne of Russia, on 
 account of his crimes and unworthiness ; even though not a 
 single person of our family should exist at the time of our 
 decease. 
 
 " And we constitute, appoint, and declare, in the want of 
 a more aged successor, our second son Peter, * young as he 
 is, successor to the said throne after us. 
 
 " Accursed be our above-mentioned son Alexis, if ever, at 
 any time, he shall claim the said succession, or go about to 
 procure it. 
 
 " "We also require of our faithful subjects, ecclesiastics or 
 seculars, as well as every other state, and the whole nation, 
 that, pursuant to this appointment, and our will, they 
 acknowledge and consider our said son Peter, nominated by 
 us to the succession, as our lawful successor, and that, con- 
 formably to this present ordinance, they confirm the whole 
 by oath at the altar, on the Holy Gospels, and kissing the 
 cross. 
 
 "And all those who shall, at any time whatever, oppose 
 this our will, and who, from the date hereof, shall dare to 
 consider our son Alexis as successor, or assist him to that 
 end, we declare them tautors to us and their country, and 
 we have ordered these presents to be everywhere published, 
 that no person ma}' plead ignorance. Given at Moscow, the 
 * Son of the empress Catharine ; he died April 1 5, 1719.
 
 326 HISTORY OF RTJSSIA. [CH. XXVII. 
 
 13th of February, N.S. 1718. Signed with our hand, and 
 sealed with our seal." 
 
 If these instruments were not in readiness beforehand, 
 they were certainly drawn up with extreme despatch ; for 
 prince Alexis did not return till the 11th, and his disin- 
 heritance, in favour of Catharine's son, is dated the 13th. 
 
 The prince, on his side, signed a renunciation to the 
 succession. " I acknowledge," he said, " this exclusion to 
 be just ; I have deserved it by my jmworthiness, and I swear, 
 in the name of the sacred and almighty Trinity, to submit 
 myself in everything to my father's will." 
 
 This being done, all the ministers and great men present 
 took the oaths excluding prince Alexis from the crown, and 
 acknowledging prince Peter to be the undoubted successor 
 to it ; engaging to stand by him with their lives, against all 
 that should dare oppose him ; and that they never would, 
 under any pretence whatever, adhere to prince Alexis, or 
 assist him in the recovery of his forfeited rights. The same 
 oath was afterwards administered to the army and navy, at 
 home and abroad, and to every subject of the Eussian em- 
 pire. Even after all this, Alexis was still immured in a 
 fortress. There, every day and every night, violating his 
 sworn faith, every noble feeling, all the laws of nature, and 
 those laws which he had himself given to his empire,* an 
 absolute father armed himself against a too confiding son 
 with a political inquisition, which equalled the religious in- 
 quisition in its insidious atrocity. He tortured the pusilla- 
 nimous mind of this hopeless being with every fear that 
 heaven and earth can inspire ; he compelled him to impeach 
 friends, relations, and even the mother who bore him ; and 
 to accuse and condemn himself to death, under pain of death ! 
 
 This protracted crime lasted five months. It had its 
 paroxysms. The first two were marked by the exile and 
 spoliation of several grandees, the disinheriting of a sister, 
 the confinement and scourging of Peter's first -wife, and the 
 execution of his brother-in-law ; but all this was too little 
 for the insatiable cruelty of the inhuman czar. 
 
 Glebof, the paramour of the divorced czaritza, was impaled 
 in the midst of a scaffold, the four corners of which were 
 
 * See in his Code or Concordance of the Laws, chap. vi. art. 1, 2, 6, 
 8, &c.
 
 A.D. 1718] ALEXIS DISINHERITED. 327 
 
 marked by the heads of a bishop, a boyar, and two dignitaries, 
 who h;ul been broken on the wheel and decapitated. This 
 horrible scaffold was itself surrounded by a circle of trunks 
 of trees, on which more than fifty priests and other citizens 
 had been beheaded ! 
 
 This was, indeed, taking a terrible vengeance upon those 
 who, it was said, by their superstitious obstinacy, had re- 
 duced this unbending heart to the necessity of sacrificing 
 his son or hi3 empire ! a punishment which was a thousand 
 times more culpable than the offence ; for what motive can 
 furnish an excuse for such atrocities ? But it seems as 
 though, impelled by the suspicious instinct of unnatural 
 governments, Peter had obstinately persisted in seeking and 
 finding a conspiracy where there existed nothing but an 
 inert opposition of manners, which hoped and waited for his 
 death that it might be brought into action. 
 
 And, nevertheless, this direful butchery has found flat- 
 terers ! The victor of Poltava himself gloried in it as a 
 victory. "When," said he, " fire meets with straw, it con- 
 sumes it ; but when it meets with iron, it must go out." 
 Then he coolly walked about in the midst of the torments 
 inflicted by his order ! He had repeatedly examined Glebof 
 under torture, making him walk barefoot along planks set 
 with iron spikes. Still prompted by a restless ferocity, he 
 ascended the scaffold to question his victim again when he 
 was fixed on the stake. Grlebof, made a sign to him to ap- 
 proach, and spat in his face. 
 
 Moscow itself was a prisoner ; to quit it without the czar's 
 leave was a capital crime ; its citizens were ordered, under 
 pain of death, to act the part of spies and informers against 
 each other. The principal victim, meanwhile, had been 
 dragged from the prisons of Moscow to those of Petersburg. 
 There the czar laboured indefatigably to torture the mind 
 of his son, and to wring from him even the slightest par- 
 ticulars which he could recollect of his past irritation, 
 intractability, or rebellion; he noted them down each day 
 with a horrible exactness, triumphing in each avowal, 
 numbering every sigh and every tear, summing up the 
 whole in a detestable account, and struggling to convert 
 into a capital crime all those fleeting thoughts and all those 
 regrets, not one of which had assumed the shape of action.
 
 32S HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXVII. 
 
 "When at length, by dint of putting his own construction 
 on these confessions, he supposed that he had made some- 
 thing out of nothing, he hastened to summon the most 
 eminent of his slaves. He described to them his accursed 
 work ; he set plainly before their view all its ferocious and 
 tyrannical iniquity, Avith the hideous candour of a mind which 
 was blinded to the plainest principles of natural justice by 
 the self-idolatry of absolute sovereignty. 
 
 The court sat from the 25th of June to the 5th of July. 
 It is needless to go through all the futile details of the pro- 
 ceedings ; a few specimens may suffice. 
 
 One of the articles which were fastened upon to justify 
 the condemnation of the prince, was a letter from M. Beyer, 
 the emperor's resident at Petersburg, written after the 
 prince's elopement : the substance of this letter was, that the 
 Russian army in Mecklenburg had mutinied ; that several 
 officers talked of sending the new czaritza and her son to 
 the prison where the repudiated czaritza was confined, and 
 of placing Alexis on the throne when it should be known 
 where he was. Now it is true there had been a mutiny in 
 that army of the czar's, but it was soon suppressed, and 
 nothing further appeared. Alexis could have had no part 
 in exciting or have encouraged it ; a foreigner spoke of these 
 reports as a piece of news ; the letter was not directed to 
 prince Alexis, he had only a copy of it, and that sent him 
 from Vienna. ' 
 
 The czar, however, among other interrogatories drawn up 
 Avith his own hand, put the following to his son : " "When 
 you saw by Beyer's letter that there was a revolt in the 
 Mecklenburg army, you Avere glad of it ; I apprehend you 
 had some view, and that you woidd have declared for the 
 rebels even in my lifetime?" 
 
 This was questioning the prince on his secret sentiments, 
 which, if they may be owned to a lather, Avho, by his 
 counsels, would rectify them, may be concealed from a 
 judge, as he is to determine only from attested facts: the 
 hidden sentiments of the heart are not Avithin the cognisance 
 of a court of judicature. Alexis might have denied them, 
 or easily have thrown a veil over them — he was not obliged 
 to lay open his mind ; yet he answered, and in writing :
 
 A.D. 1718] TRIAL OF ALEXIS. 320 
 
 " Had the rebels invited me in your lifetime, I should pro- 
 bably have joined them had they been strong enough." 
 
 That he should spontaneously give such an answer is 
 inconceivable ; and no less extraordinary was it to condemn 
 him for thoughts which he might have had in regard to a 
 case which never happened. 
 
 Another charge was founded on a rough draft, in the 
 prince's own hand, of a letter written from Vienna to the 
 senators and archbishops of Russia, and containing the 
 words: "The continual injuries which I have undeservedly 
 suffered, have obliged me to quit my country ; it was very 
 narrowly I escaped, being shut up in a convent ; they who 
 have confined my mother were about using me in the same 
 manner. I am under the protection of a great prince until 
 it please God that I may return to my country. It is my 
 desire you will not forsake me at present" The words 
 at present, which might have been looked on as seditious, 
 frere drawn through with a pen, and afterwards replaced 
 with his own hand ; then again effaced ; which showed a 
 young man under perturbation, giving himself up to his 
 resentment one minute, and repenting of it the next. Only 
 the rough draft of these letters was found, for they never 
 came to hand, being stopped by the court of Vienna ; another 
 and no inconsiderable proof that this court had no thought 
 of quarrelling with that of Russia, and supporting the son 
 against the father with an armed force. 
 
 One of the witnesses deposed that he had heard Alexis 
 say : " I will say something to the bishops, and they will 
 tell it among the priests, and the priests to their parishioners, 
 and I shall be placed on the throne, even though it were 
 against my will." AVhat punishment does a man deserve 
 for words which he intends to say some day or other ? 
 
 The distressed prince, recollecting within himself what- 
 ever might conduce to his ruin, at length owned that, in 
 '•'infession to the arch-priest Yakof, he had accused himself 
 before God, " that he had wished his father's death ;" and 
 that the confessor made answer, " God will forgive you; it 
 is no yore than what we all wish." All proofs derived from 
 auricular confession arc, by the canons of the church, not to 
 be received at the bar; these are secrets between (Jod and
 
 330 HISTOET OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXVII. 
 
 the penitent : the Greek Church believes no more than the 
 Latin, that this private and sacred correspondence between 
 a sinner and the Deity appertains to human law. Takof, 
 however, was put to the torture, and owned what the prince 
 had revealed ; but he refused to give the names of the 
 persons to whom he alluded when he said, " we all wish for 
 the czar's death." It was a very uncommon circumstance 
 to see the confessor accused by his penitent, and the 
 penitent by his mistress. Another singularity in this affair 
 was, that the archbishop of Eezan having been entangled in 
 the accusations, on account of the sermon which he had 
 preached in favour of the czarevitch, at the first appearance 
 of the czar's indignation against his son ; this prince, in his 
 interrogatories, owned that he relied on that prelate ; yet 
 this very archbishop of Eezan was at the head of the eccle- 
 siastical judges, whom the czar consulted on the present ar- 
 raignment. 
 
 An essential remark offers itself in this monstrous trial : 
 in Alexis's answers to his father's first interrogatory, he 
 owned that when he was at Vienna, where he did not see 
 the emperor, he applied to count Schonborn, a lord of the 
 bedchamber, who said to him, " The emperor will not forsake 
 you; and, at a proper season, after your father's demise, he 
 will assist you with an armed force to ascend the throne." 
 " My answer was," added the accused prince, "that is not 
 what I ask : all I desire is, that the emperor will be pleased 
 to grant me his protection." This deposition is plain and 
 natural, and carries with it a great appearance of truth : for 
 to have asked troops of the emperor to go and dethrone his 
 father, would have been the very height of folly ; and 
 nobody would have dared to mention such an absurd pro- 
 posal either to prince Eugene, to the council, or to the 
 emperor. This deposition was in the month of February, 
 and four months after, on the 1st of July, towards the con- 
 clusion of these procedures, the czarevitch, in his last 
 answer, is made to say in writing : " Intending in nothing 
 to imitate my father, I endeavoured to come at the suc- 
 cession at any rate whatever. I was for having jt by 
 foreign assistance ; and if I had got my ends, and the 
 emperor had done tvhat he promised me — to procure ma 
 the crown of Eussia, even by open force, I woidd have
 
 A.D. 1718] TRIAL OF ALEXIS. 331 
 
 spared nothing to have secured myself in the succession. 
 For instance, had the emperor asked me, in return, some of 
 my country troops for his service against any of his enemies, 
 or large sums of money, I would have done everything he 
 would, even to the giving great presents to his ministers and 
 generals. I would, at my own expense, have maintained the 
 auxiliary troops with which he would have supplied me, to 
 put me in the possession of the crown of Russia ; and, in 
 short, I would have stuck at nothing to have carried my 
 point." 
 
 This last deposition of the prince is manifestly very 
 forced ; it shows on the very face of it that he strove to 
 make himself thought guilty ; and what he says clashes with 
 truth in a capital point. He says, that the emperor had 
 promised him to procure liim the crown by open force, which 
 was false. Count Schonborn had given him hopes that, 
 after the death of the czar, his imperial majesty would help 
 him to assert the claim of his birth ; but the emperor himself 
 had not made any promise : in a word, the case was, not to 
 revolt against his father, but to succeed him on his demise. 
 
 In this last interrogation, he says what he believes he 
 should have done in case of a contest for his inheritance ; 
 an inheritance which he had not judicially renounced before 
 his journey to Vienna and Naples : now we see him deposing 
 a second time, not what he has done, and what may be made 
 obnoxious to the rigour of the law, but what he fancies he 
 might one day have done, and what, of course, comes not 
 within the cognisance of any court of justice. Here we see 
 him accusing himself twice of secret thoughts, which he 
 might have had hereafter. The whole world does not afford 
 one single instance of a man tried and condemned for 
 transitory ideas, starting up in his mind, and never commu- 
 cated to any one living. There is not a court of justice in 
 Europe where a man accusing himself of criminal thoughts 
 would be minded ; and it is said, that God himself does not 
 punish them, unless accompanied with a determination of 
 the will. 
 
 When, by his lengthened accusation, the absolute master 
 thought he had irrevocably condemned, he called upon his 
 slaves to decide. "They had," he exclaimed, "heard the 
 long enumeration of crimes, such as were almost unheard
 
 332 HISTORY OP RUSSIA. [CH. XXVII. 
 
 of in the world, of which his son had been guilty towards 
 him, who was his father and his sovereign. They were well 
 aware that to himself alone belonged the right to give judg- 
 ment, nevertheless he asked their assistance ; for he stood in 
 fear of eternal perdition, and the more so as he had promised 
 forgiveness to his son, and had sworn it to him by the decrees 
 of God. It therefore remained with them to do justice, 
 without considering his birth, without paying any regard to 
 his person, that the country might not be endangered." It 
 is true that with this clear and terrible order he mixed up a 
 few words, which bear the mark of clumsy cunning. " They 
 ought," he said, "to give judgment without nattering him, or 
 fearing to fall under his displeasure, in case they should 
 decide that his son was deserving of only a slight punish- 
 ment." 
 
 The slaves comprehended their master ; they saw what was 
 the horrible assistance which he wanted from them ; accord- 
 ingly, the priests who were consulted replied merely by 
 quotations from their sacred books, choosing in equal num- 
 ber those which condemned and those which pardoned, and 
 not daring to throw any weight into the scale, not even that 
 sworn promise of the czar, of which they feared to remind 
 him. But they did remind him in their preamble, that the 
 absolute sovereign of llussia had no need to consult any other 
 authority than his own good pleasure. This preamble was fol- 
 lowed by a quotation from Leviticus, in which it is said, that 
 whoever curseth his father or mother, shall be punished with 
 death ; and another from the Gospel of St. Matthew, which 
 makes mention of this rigorous law in Leviticus : after several 
 other citations, they concluded in these words : 
 
 "If his majesty is inclined to punish the delinquent, 
 according to his actions and the measure of his guilt, he has 
 before him examples from the Old Testament ; if he be in- 
 clined to spare, he has the pattern of Christ himself, kindly 
 receiving the penitent prodigal, dismissing the woman taken 
 in adultery, who, by the law, was to be stoned ; and delight- 
 ing in mercy more than sacrifice. He has the example of 
 David, who is solicitous for the safety of Absalom his son, 
 though an open rebel, recommending him to the commanders 
 of his army, who insisted on giving him battle, 'Spare my
 
 A.D. 1718] MURDEK OF ALEXIS. 333 
 
 son Absalom .•' the father was for showing him mercy, but 
 divine justice*did not spare him. 
 
 " The czar's heart is in the hands of God ; let him choose 
 that to which Grod shall incline him." 
 
 At the same time, the grandees of the state, to the number 
 of a hundred and twenty-four, yielded implicit obedience. 
 They pronounced sentence of death unanimously, and with- 
 out hesitation : but their decree* condemned themselves far 
 more than it did their victim. "We see in it the disgust- 
 ing efforts of this throng of slaves laboui'ing to efface the per- 
 jury of their master; while their mendacity being added to 
 Ins own but makes it stand out with still more striking pro- 
 minence. 
 
 For his own part he inflexibly completed his work : nothing 
 made him pause ; neither the time which had elapsed since 
 his wrath was excited, nor remorse, nor the repentance of a 
 wretched being, nor trembling, submissive, suppliant weak- 
 ness ! In one word, everything which usually, even between 
 alien enemies, is capable of appeasing and disarming, was 
 powerless to soften the heart of a father towards his child. 
 He had been his son's accuser and his judge, — he chose also 
 to be his executioner ! On the 7th of July, 1718, the very 
 day after the passing of the sentence, he went, attended by 
 all his nobles, to receive the last tears of his son, and to 
 mingle his own with them ; and, at the moment when he was 
 imagined to be at last melted to pity, at that moment he sent 
 for the " strong potion" which he himself had ordered to be 
 prepared ! Impatient for its arrival, he hurried it by a second 
 message ; he presented it to him as a salutary medicine ! and 
 did not retire — with " a very dismal countenance," it is true — 
 till he had poisoned the unfortunate creature who was still 
 imploring his forgiveness. The death of his victim, who ex- 
 pired in dreadful convulsions some hours afterwards, he then 
 ;ilt ributed to the terror with which his sentence had inspired 
 him ! This was the flimsy veil with which he sought to cover 
 all those enormities from the eyes of those who were about 
 him — he deemed it sufficient for their brutalised manners; 
 he, besides, commanded their silence upon the subject, and 
 was so well ol)e\ed, that, but for the memoirs of a foreigner, 
 who was a witness, an actor even, in this horrible drama, his- 
 
 * Sec Appendix.
 
 334 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXVII. 
 
 tory would for ever have remained in ignorance of its final 
 and terrible particulars. Here is the statement made by 
 Peter Henrv Bruce : 
 
 " On the next day his Majesty, attended by all the sena- 
 tors and bishops, with several others of high rank, went to 
 the fort, and entered the apartments where the czarevitch 
 was kept prisoner. Some little time thereafter, marshal 
 Weyde came out, and ordered me to go to Mr. Bear's, the 
 druggist, ichose shop was hard by, and tell him to make the 
 POTION strong ivhich he had bespoke, as the prince was then 
 very ill. When I delivered this message to Mr. Bear, he 
 turned quite pale, and fell a shaking and trembling, and ap- 
 peared in the utmost confusion, which surprised one so much 
 that I asked him what was the matter xcith him; but he was 
 unable to return me any ansiver. In the mean time the mar- 
 shal himself came in, much in the same condition with the 
 druggist, saying, he ought to have been more expeditious, as 
 the prince was very ill of an apoplectic Jit. Upon this the 
 druggist delivered him a, silver cup with a cover, which the 
 marshal himself carried into the prince's apartments, stagger- 
 ing all the way as he went like one drunk. About half an 
 hour after, the czar with all his attendants withdrew with 
 very dismal countenances : and when they went, the mar- 
 shal ordered me to attend at tbe prince's apartment, and hi 
 case of any alteration, to inform him immediately thereof. 
 There were at that time two physicians and two surgeon .- 
 in waiting, with whom and the officers on guard I dined on 
 what had been dressed for the prince's dinner. The phy- 
 sicians were called in immediately after to attend the prince, 
 who was struggling out of one convulsion into another, and. 
 after great agonies, expired at five o'clock in the afternoon. 
 I went directly to inform tbe marshal, and he went that 
 moment to acquaint his majesty, Avho ordered the corpse to 
 be embowelled ; after which it was laid in a coffin covered 
 with black velvet, and a pall of rich gold tissue spread over 
 it ; it was then carried out of the fort to the church of the 
 Holy Trinity, where the corpse lay in state till the 11th in 
 the evening, when it was carried back to the fort, and de- 
 posited in the royal burying vault, next the coffin of the 
 princess, his late consort ; on which occasion, the czar and 
 czaritza, and the chief of the nobility, followed in procession.
 
 A.D. 1718] MUKDEE OF ALEXIS. 335 
 
 Various were the reports that were spread concerning his 
 death. It was given out publicly, that on hearing his sen- 
 tence of death pronounced, the dread thereof threw him 
 into an apoplectic fit, of which he died. Very few believed 
 Tie died a natural death; but it teas dangerous for people to 
 speak as they thought. The ministers of the emperor and 
 the States of Holland were forbid the court for speaking 
 their minds too freely on this occasion ; and upon complaint 
 against them, both were recalled."* 
 
 It had all along been easy to foresee that the trial of 
 Alexis would have a tragic termination. Had his life been 
 spared, Peter would have gained nothing by his condemna- 
 tion, except the odium of having gratuitously taken upon 
 himself to procure it. The civil death of Alexis would not 
 have hindered him from reviving and succeeding his father, 
 if his abrogated rights were reclaimed and supported by a 
 strong party ; or even without such support he would have 
 ascended the throne at the time when his son was raised to 
 it after the death of Catharine. It was necessary to the 
 accomplishment of the czar's designs that Alexis should die. 
 
 Peter, who is said to have shed tears over his victim before 
 he was immolated, and when he was in his coffin, did not 
 even spare his memory. The murdered prince was hardly in 
 his grave ere the murderer harangued the senate, vaunting 
 his own inexorable justice, and declaring his dead son to have 
 been " the falsest and most ungrateful being that imagina- 
 tion could conceive." Four years afterwards, in 1722, fearing 
 that on his decease the minority of the son of Alexis might 
 revive the hopes of his mother and of the old Pvussian party 
 
 • Whoever will take the trouble to read these memoirs of an officer 
 who was about the person of Peter I., and whose near relation was one 
 of the most useful generals of that reformer, will be convinced of the 
 veracity of his narrative. The artless simplicity of his whole book, and 
 the author's constant admiration of the czar, strengthen the melancholy 
 conviction which arises from the perusal of the above quoted passage. 
 Shortly after the execution, P. H. Bruce was entrusted with the educa- 
 tion of the son of the unfortunate Alexis. Leclerc, who was on the 
 spot, and a witness of this crime, quotes Bruce in his history, and en- 
 tertains no doubt of the sad veracity of his narrative, which lie gives 
 at full length. " It is certain," writes Voltaire, " that his son died the 
 day after the passing of the sentence, and that the czar had at Moscow one of 
 the jiiicst pharmaceutical establishments in Europe."
 
 336 history of kussia. [en. xxvir. 
 
 he declared by an ukase (as Ivan III. had done in his letter 
 to the Pskovians) " that the reigning sovereign had the abso- 
 lute right to dispose of the throne to -whomsoever he pleased." 
 Of all bis innovations, not a few of which were pernicious, 
 this was the worst and most indefensible. It abolished a 
 custom which, being consecrated by several centuries of time, 
 had more than the force of any legal enactment, and which 
 made the throne of Russia hereditary. By rendering the 
 order of succession uncertain, he opened up in his empire an 
 abundant source of troubles, conspiracies, and revolutions. 
 
 There were other judicial proceedings in this fatal year, 
 but they were instituted against actual offenders. The czar 
 discovered that the measures he had adopted to check the 
 knavish propensities of his high functionaries had been of no 
 avail, and that enormous depredations were committed upon 
 the resources of the state. A military commission was ap- 
 pointed to try the delinquents, the principal of whom were 
 men who had already been pardoned for the same crime : 
 prince Gagarin, governor of Siberia, prince Mentchikof, the 
 first subject in the empire, admiral count Apraxin and his 
 brother, general Bruce, and prince Volkonski, governor of 
 Archangel. They were all convicted of peculation ; Gagarin 
 was beheaded, Volkonski shot ; the rest were let off for pecu- 
 niary fines and the usual castigation administered by the czar 
 with his walking-stick. Thus lightly did Peter deal with the 
 enemies of his people, after punishing with inhuman rigour 
 his own son and others who had personally offended him by 
 a few indiscretions. 
 
 Mentchikof, so often convicted, and punished rather as a 
 rascally valet than as a guilty minister, was always incorri- 
 gible. The senate had ample proof of his peculations, but not 
 one of its members durst raise his voice to call the favourite 
 to account. All they could venture to do was, to draw up a 
 tabular statement of his depredations ; and this was laid on 
 the table opposite the czar's scat. Peter saw the paper, cast 
 his eye over it, but seemed to pay no attention to its con- 
 tents. The paper remained constantly in the same place. 
 At last one day as Tolstoi was seated in the senate beside the 
 czar, he made bold to ask what his majesty thought of that 
 document. " Nothing," replied Peter, " but that Mentchikof 
 will always be Mentchikof."
 
 A.D. 1718] THE MOCK CONCLAVE. 337 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 THE BURLESQUE OF THE CONCLAVE — INSTITUTIONS OF THE 
 TEAR 1718 — FEACE OF NYSTADT — FETER's FINANCIAL RE- 
 SOURCES. 
 
 The appalling episode we have just related was so far from 
 engrossing the thoughts of the czar, that it hardly inter- 
 rupted the course of his ordinary occupations. Nay, as if 
 to darken still more the tragic horrors of the year 1718, by 
 mingling with them the coarsest and most disgusting buf- 
 foonery, it was in that very year he instituted the crapulous 
 burlesque of the Conclave. 
 
 The occasion of it} was this. During the czar's visit to 
 Paris, the doctors of the Sorbonne addressed him with the 
 view of effecting a union between the Pusso-Greek Church 
 and that of Pome, and they presented to him a memorial 
 full of learned arguments against the schismatical tenets of 
 his co-religionists. This memorial only gave great offence to 
 the court of Pome, without pteasing either the emperor or 
 the church of Pussia. 
 
 " In this plan of reunion," says Voltaire, " there were some 
 political matters which they did not understand, and some 
 points of controversy which they said they understood, and 
 which each party explained according to its humour. There 
 was a question about the Holy Ghost, who, according to the 
 Latins, proceeds from the Father and the Son : and according 
 to the Greeks, at present, proceeds from the Pather, through 
 the Son, after having, for a long time, proceeded from the 
 Father only. They quoted St. Epiphanius, who says, that 
 ' the Holy Ghost is not the Son's brother, nor the Father's 
 grandson.' But the czar, at leaving Paris, had other busi- 
 ness than to explain passages from St. Epiphanius ; however, 
 he received the Sorbonne's memorial with great affability : 
 they also wrote to some Pussian bishops, who returned a 
 polite answer ; but the greater number received the overture 
 with indignation." 
 
 It was t<. dissipate the apprehensions of this reunion that, 
 after expelling the Jesuits from his dominions, he instituted 
 the mock conclave, as he had previously set on foot other 
 
 VOL. I. Z
 
 338 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXVIII. 
 
 burlesque exhibitions, for the purpose of turning the office 
 of patriarch into ridicule. 
 
 There was at his court an old man named Sotof, an enor- 
 mous drunkard, and a court-fool of long standing ; he had 
 taught the czar to write, and, by this service, imagined that 
 he deserved the highest dignities. Peter promised to confer on 
 him one of the most eminent in the known world : he created 
 him Kniaz Papa, that is to say, prince-pope, with a salary of 
 2000 roubles, and a palace at Petersburg, in the Tatar ward. 
 Sotof was enthroned by buffoons ; four fellows, who stam- 
 mered, were appointed to harangue him on his exaltation ; 
 his mock holiness created a number of cardinals, and rode in 
 procession at the head of them, sitting astride on a cask of 
 brandy, which was laid on a sledge drawn by four oxen. 
 They were followed by other sledges loaded with food and 
 drink ; and the march was accompanied by the rough music 
 of drums, trumpets, horns, hautboys, and fiddles, all playing 
 out of tune ; and the clattering of pots and pans, brandished 
 by a troop of cooks and scullions. The train was swelled by 
 a number of men dressed as monks of various Eomish orders, 
 and each carrying a bottle and glass. The czar and his 
 courtiers brought up the rear ; the former in the garb of a 
 Dutch skipper ; the latter in various comic disguises. 
 
 When the procession arrived at the place where the con- 
 clave was to be held, the cardinals were led into alone: 
 gallery, part of which had been boarded off into a range of 
 closets, in each of which a cardinal was shut up with plenty 
 of food and intoxicating liquors. To every one of their 
 eminences were attached two conclavists — cunning young fel- 
 lows, whose business it was to ply their principals well with 
 drink, carry real or pretended messages to and fro between 
 the members of the sacred college, and provoke them to 
 bawl out all sorts of abuse of each other and of their re- 
 spective families. The czar listened eagerly to all this 
 ribaldry, not forgetting in the midst of his glee to note down 
 on his tablets any hints of which it might be possible for 
 him to make a vindictive use. The cardinals were not 
 released from confinement until they were all agreed 
 upon a number of farcical questions submitted to them by 
 the Kniaz Papa. The orgic lasted three days and three 
 nights. The doors of the conclave were at last thrown open
 
 A.D. 1718] UKASES OF 1718 AND 1719. 339 
 
 in the middle of the day, and the pope and his cardinals 
 were carried home dead drunk on sledges — that is to say, 
 such of them as survived ; for some had actually died during 
 the debauch, and others never recovered from its effects. 
 
 This stupid farce was repeated three times ; and on the 
 last occasion especially it was accompanied with other 
 abominations, which admit of no description. Peter him- 
 self had his death accelerated by his excesses in the last 
 conclave. 
 
 From 1714 to 1717 Peter published ninety-two ordinances 
 or regulations ; in 1718 alone, in that year of crime, thirty- 
 six ukases, or regulations, were promulgated, and twenty- 
 seven in 1719. The majority of them related directly to his 
 new establishments. 
 
 The council of mines dates its origin from that period, as 
 do also the uniformity of weights and measures, the institu- 
 tion of schools for teaching arithmetic in all the towns of the 
 empire ; that of orphan-houses and foundling-hospitals, of 
 workshops for the poor, and of manufactories of tapestry, 
 silks, linens, and cloths for soldiers' clothing ; the founding 
 of the city of Ladoga ; the canal of the same name, which he 
 began with his own hands ; that of Cronstadt ; the plan of 
 another, which now unites the Baltic to the Caspian, by 
 the intermedium of the Volga ; besides numerous measures 
 of detail, including the police, the health of towns, lighting 
 and cleansing, founded upon what he had remarked during 
 the previous year in the great cities of Europe. 
 
 At this sanguinary epoch it was, that, by this multitude 
 of establishments for the promotion of all kinds of industry, 
 he gave the most rapid impulse to the knowledge, commerce, 
 and civilisation, to which he sacrificed his son ; as though, by 
 thus redoubling his activity, he had sought to escape from 
 himself, or to palliate, by the importance of the result, the 
 horror of the sacrifice. In several of these ordinances, it is 
 remarkable, that either from the inconsistency which is 
 inherent in our nature, or from the pride of a despot, which 
 believes itself to be detached from and above everything, 
 he required respect to be paid to religion, at the very 
 moment when, with such cruelty, he was paying no respect 
 to the sanctity of his own oath ; and yet the importance of
 
 340 HISTOET OF BUSSIA. [CH. XXVIII. 
 
 keeping sworn faith must have been well known to a prince 
 who one day said, " The irreligious cannot he tolerated, 
 because, by sapping religion, they turn into ridicule the 
 sacredness of an oath, which is the foundation of all so- 
 ciety." 
 
 It is true, that on this occasion, pushing right into wrong, 
 as he too often did, he mutilated and banished to Siberia a 
 miserable creature, who, when drunk, had been guilty of 
 blasphemy. So intolerant was he against intolerance. 
 
 The Raskolniks were, and still are, the blind and uncom- 
 promising enemies of all innovation. One of them, at that 
 period, even believed that he might avenge Heaven by an 
 assassination. Under the guise of a suppliant, this fanatic 
 had easily penetrated into the chamber of the prince ; he 
 was already within reach of him, and, while he feigned to 
 implore him, his hand was seeking for the dagger under his 
 clothes, when, fortunately, it dropped and betrayed the 
 assassin, by falling at the i'eet of the czar. 
 
 This abortive crime had made the persecution rage with 
 redoubled fury, when, all at once, a frightful report was 
 spread ; it was soon confirmed ; several hundred of these 
 wretched beings had taken refuge in a church, and, rather than 
 abjure their superstitions, had set fire to their asylum, leaving 
 nothing but their ashes to their persecutor. A horrible 
 sacrifice, but which was not useless ! Peter saw his error ; 
 his intolerance was only political ; it was enlightened by 
 these flames, which religious intolerance witnessed with such 
 atrocious joy. 
 
 Yet, unable to forgive these sectaries an obstinacy which 
 was victorious over his own, he once more tried against them 
 the weapon of ridicule : he ordered that they should wear a 
 bit of yellow stuff on their backs, to distinguish them from 
 his other subjects. This mark of humiliation, however, they 
 considered as a distinction. Some malignant advisers endea- 
 voured to rouse his anger again, but he replied, " ]S r o ; I 
 have learned that they are men of pure morals ; they are the 
 most upright merchants in the empire ; and neither honour 
 nor the welfare of the country will allow of their being 
 martyred for their errors. Besides, that which a degrading 
 badge and force of reason have been unable to effect, will 
 never be accomplished by punishment; let them, therefore, 
 live in peace."
 
 A.D. 1718] SUPERSTITION. 341 
 
 These were remarkable words, and worthy the pupil of 
 Holland and England, worthy of a prince to whom supersti- 
 tion was a most inveterate enemy. In reality, he was a 
 believer, but not credulous ; and even while he knelt on the 
 field of victory, he gave thanks to God alone for the reward 
 of so many toils, and could separate the cause of Heaven 
 from that of the priests ; it was his wish that they should be 
 citizens. We have seen that he subjected them to the same 
 taxes as his other subjects ; and because the monks eluded 
 tliem, he diminished their numbers. He unmasked the super- 
 stitious impostures of the priests, who all sought to close 
 up every cranny by which the light might have a chance of 
 reaching them. 
 
 For this reason, they held Petersburg in abhorrence. 
 According to their description of it, this half-built city, 
 by which Eussia already aspired to civilisation, was one of 
 the mouths of hell. It was they who obtained from the un- 
 fortunate Alexis a promise that it should be destroyed. 
 Their prophecies repeatedly fixed the epoch at which it would 
 be overthrown by the wrath of Heaven. The labours upon it 
 were then suspended, for so great was the fear thus inspired, 
 that the orders of the terrible czar were almost issued in 
 vain. 
 
 On one occasion, these lying priests were for some days 
 particularly active ; they displayed one of their sacred images, 
 from which the tears flowed miraculously ; it wept the fate 
 which impended over those who dwelt in this new city. 
 " Its hour is at hand," said they, " and it will be swallowed 
 up, with all its inhabitants, by a tremendous inundation." 
 On hearing of this miracle of the tears, the treacherous con- 
 struction which was put upon it, and the perturbation which 
 it occasioned, Peter thought it necessary to hasten to the 
 spot. There, in the midst of the people, who were petrified 
 with terror, and of his tongue-tied court, he seized the mira- 
 culous image, and discovered its mechanism ; the multitude 
 were stupiiied with a pious horror, but he opened their eyes 
 by showing them, in those of the idol, the congealed oil, 
 which wns melted by the flame of tapers inside, and then 
 flowed drop by drop through openings artfully provided for 
 the purpose. 
 
 At a later period he did still more; the horrible execution
 
 342 history or bussia. [ch. XXVIII. 
 
 of a young Eussian by the priests was the cause. This un- 
 fortunate man had brought back from Germany a highly 
 valuable knowledge of medicine, and had left there some super- 
 stitious prejudices. For this reason all his motions were 
 watched by the priests ; and they at last caught up some 
 thoughtless words against their sacred images. They imme- 
 diately arrested the regenerated young Eussian, sentenced 
 him without mercy, and put him to a torturing death. 
 
 But this individual evil produced a general good. Indig- 
 nant at their cruelty, Peter deprived the clergy of the right 
 of condemning to death. The priests lost a jurisdiction 
 which they alleged they had possessed for seven centuries, 
 from the time of Vladimir the Great, and thus the source 
 of their power was for ever annihilated by this execrable 
 abuse of it. 
 
 It was particularly in that sanguinary year, so fatal to 
 the last hope which the old Russians placed in his succes- 
 sor, that Peter seemed in haste to sever them from their 
 ancient customs, by giving an entirely new form to the 
 administration of his empire. As far back as 1711, he 
 had already replaced the old supreme court of the boyars 
 by a senate, a sovereign council, into which merit and ser- 
 vices might obtain admission, independent of noble origin. 
 Subsequently, and every year, other changes had been 
 effected. Thus, in 1717, he brought from France, along 
 with a commercial treaty, the institution of a general police. 
 But, in 1718, instead of the old prikaz, he substituted, at 
 one stroke, colleges for foreign affairs, naval affairs, finance, 
 justice, and commerce, and fixed, by a general regulation, 
 and with the utmost minuteness, the functions and privileges 
 of each of them. 
 
 At the same time, when capable Russians were not to be 
 found, he appointed his Swedish prisoners, and the most 
 eminent of the foreigners, to fill these administrative and 
 judicial situations. He was careful to give the highest 
 offices to natives, and the second to foreigners, that the na- 
 tive officers might support, against the pride and jealousy of 
 their countrymen, these foreigners who served them as 
 instructors and guides. For the purpose of forming his 
 young nobles for the service of the state, he adjoined a 
 considerable number of them to each college ; and there
 
 A.D. 1718] AFFAIES OF SWEDEN. 343 
 
 merit alone could raise them from the lowest stations to 
 the first rank. 
 
 The death of Charles XII. was immediately followed by a 
 revolution in Sweden. His sister Ulrica Eleonora, who was 
 married to the crown-prince of Hesse Cassel, succeeded him 
 on the throne ; but the constitution was changed, the 
 despotic authority of the crown was reduced to a mere 
 shadow, and the queen and her husband became the tools of 
 an oligarchy, who usurped all the powers of the state. The 
 czar and the new queen mutually protested their desire for 
 peace ; but Peter at the same time announced to the Swedish 
 plenipotentiaries that if the propositions he had made were 
 not accepted within two months, he would march forty thou- 
 sand men into Sweden to expedite the negotiations. 
 
 A project for the pacification of the north, the very oppo- 
 site from that conceived by Gortz, was formed by the diet 
 of Brunswick. The concocters of this scheme started from 
 the principle that the German possessions of Sweden were 
 more onerous than profitable to that power, as the occasions 
 of interminable wars. It was resolved, therefore, that they 
 should be abandoned to the powers that had conquered them ; 
 but as it was reasonable that the new possessors should pur- 
 chase the ratification of their titles by some services to the 
 common cause, they were required to aid Sweden in recovering 
 possession of Finland and of Livonia, the granary of that 
 kingdom. Of all the czar's conquests nothing was to be left 
 to him but Petersburg, Cronstadt, and Narva; and if he 
 refused to assent to this arrangement, all the contracting 
 powers were to unite their forces and compel him to submit. 
 This was one of those brilliant and chimerical schemes with 
 which diplomatists sometimes allow their minds to be so daz- 
 zled, as not to be convinced of their impracticability until 
 after a lavish waste of blood. 
 
 \\ hilst the allies were in imagination depriving Peter of 
 his conquests, Siniavin, his admiral, took from the Swedes 
 two ships of the line and a brigantine, which were carrying 
 corn to Stockholm. The queen of Sweden, however, en- 
 couraged by the promises made her by Lord Carteret, the 
 ambassador of George I., intimated to the czar that she 
 would break oil' the conferences at Aland if he did not con- 
 sent to restore all the provinces he had conquered. By way
 
 344 HISTORY OP RUSSIA. [CH. XXVIII. 
 
 of reply, Peter went in June, 1719, with a fleet of 30 ships, 
 150 galleys, and 300 barges, carrying in all 40,000 men, to 
 Aland, took up his station for a while under the cliffs of the 
 island of Lameland, and sent Apraxin to ravage the wastes 
 on the right of Stockholm, whilst Lessy destroyed everything 
 on the left of the city. North and south Telge, Nykoping, 
 Norkoping, Osthammer, and Oregrund, together with two 
 small towns, were burned, besides 150 noble mansions, 43 
 mills, 1360 villages, 21 copper, iron, and tile works — among 
 the iron works one was worth 300,000 dollars ; 100,000 cattle 
 were slaughtered, and 80,000 bars of iron thrown into the 
 sea. The mines were blown up and the woods set on fire, 
 and Stockholm itself was seriously threatened. Meanwhile, 
 the English fleet under admiral Norris again entered the 
 Baltic. Peter sent a message to the English admiral asking 
 peremptorily whether he came only as a friend to Sweden, or 
 as an enemy to Eussia. The admiral's answer was, that as 
 yet he had no positive orders. This equivocal reply did not 
 hinder Peter from keeping the sea, and incessantly harassing 
 the Swedes before the eyes of their naval allies. 
 
 The Swedish oligarchs and their mock king* had reckoned 
 in vain upon the intercession of the English ambassador, 
 and the aid of the admiral and his fleet. Carteret was not 
 even listened to by Peter, and admiral Norris did not 
 venture to attack the Kussians, because he knew that the 
 English nation was dissatisfied with the politics of their king 
 and of his ministers, who favoured his Hanoverian plans. 
 The Swedes were at length obliged to acquiesce in the 
 Eussian demands : negotiations for peace were again com- 
 menced in Nystiidt at the end of the year 1720, but their 
 conclusion was only brought about at the close of the fol- 
 lowing year by the exercise of some further cruelties on 
 the part of the Eussians. The Swedes had demanded a 
 cessation of hostilities during the whole time in which the 
 negotiations were pending, but Peter only granted it till 
 May, 1721, in order to compel the council of state to come 
 to a resolution by that time ; and as they still procrastinated, 
 the whole coast of Sweden was again plundered and devas- 
 tated in the month of June. The Eussian incendiaries 
 landed in sight of the English, whose fleet, under admiral 
 * Ulrica had ceded the crown to her husband.
 
 A.D. 1721] THE PEACE OP NYSTADT. 345 
 
 Norris, still continued in the Baltic, but did not venture to 
 lend any assistance to the Swedes. The whole coast, from 
 Gene as far as TJmea, was ravaged ; four small towns, 
 nineteen villages, eighty noble and five hundred peasants' 
 houses burnt ; twelve iron-works and eight saw-mills de- 
 stroyed ; six galleys and other ships carried away. Peter's 
 plenipotejitiaries at last prevailed; for so he jocularly called 
 his soldiers and sailors who were committing such horrible 
 destruction in Sweden. Negotiations were again opened in 
 Nystiidt, a small town of Finland, and the war of twenty- 
 one years was closed by a peace dictated by the conquering 
 czar. 
 
 The provinces ceded to Eussia by the peace of Nystadt 
 (10th September, 1721) were Livonia, Esthonia, and Carelia, 
 together with Yiborg, Kexholm, and the island of Oesel; 
 on the other hand, Peter restored Einland, with the excep- 
 tion of Viborg and Kexholm, and promised to pay two mil- 
 lions of dollars, but in the first years of the peace scarcely 
 paid off half a million. 
 
 Erom this time forward, the despotic sway and military 
 oppression of Eussia became the dread of all neighbouring 
 countries and people. All contributed to the external great- 
 ness and splendour of the ruler of a barbarous but power- 
 ful race of slaves, whom he constrained to adopt the vest- 
 ments of civilisation. The czar commanded in Poland and 
 Scandinavia, where weak or wicked governments were con- 
 stantly in dread from the discontent of the people. He also 
 gained an influence in Germany, Avhich ultimately caused no 
 small anxiety to the emperor and the empire. The Eussian 
 minister Bestujef played the chief part in Sweden in all 
 political affairs, sometimes" by counsel and sometimes by 
 threats, sometimes by mediation and sometimes by com- 
 mands. Bestujef was powerful in the Swedish council, and 
 at the same time, in compliance with the wishes of his 
 master, allured artists, artisans, workmen, and all those who 
 had been deprived of occupation, or ruined, by the late in- 
 roads of the Eussians, to remove with their tools, manufac- 
 tures, and trades to Eussia. Peter employed these people 
 in all parts of his empire to raise up manufactories, to 
 originate trades, and to set mines and iron-works in action. 
 The Euasian minister spoke in a no less commanding tone in
 
 346 HISTOBY OF EUSSIA. [CH. XXY1II. 
 
 Copenhagen than in Sweden, for Denmark was also fright- 
 ened by Peter's threats to adopt and second the cause of the 
 duke of Holstein. The duke was detained in Russia by 
 repeated promises, of whose fulfilment there was little pros- 
 pect. The Poles, through Russian mediation, were at length 
 reconciled to their king, and the Russians not only kept 
 firm possession of Courland, but remained in Poland itself, 
 under the pretence of preserving the peace of the country. 
 Peter, nevertheless, in his negotiations with Gortz and 
 Charles XII., had showed himself well inclined to sacrifice 
 king Augustus to his plans ; but this scheme was frus- 
 trated by the death of Charles. 
 
 Peter had now achieved a prodigious amount of external 
 and internal power ; yet the original nucleus of it all was 
 nothing more than fifty young companions in debauchery, 
 whom he transformed into soldiers, and the remains of a 
 sailing-boat, which had been left forgotten in a magazine. 
 In twenty-five years, this seed, nursed by a skilful and 
 vigorous hand, had, on the one part, produced two hundred 
 thousand men, divided into fifty-five regiments, and can- 
 toned, with three hundred field-pieces, in permanent quarters; 
 a body of engineers, and, particularly, of formidable artillery- 
 men ; and fourteen thousand pieces of cannon, deposited in 
 a great central establishment, in the fortresses, and three 
 military magazines on the frontiers of the three chief 
 national enemies, the Turks, the Poles, and the Swedes. 
 On the other hand, from the relics of the sailing-boat had 
 arisen thirty ships of the line, a proportionate number of 
 frigates and smaller vessels of war, two hundred galleys with 
 sails and oars, and a multitude of experienced mariners. 
 
 But with what treasures did Peter undertake the moral 
 and physical transformation of such an extensive empire? 
 "We behold an entire land metamorphosed : cities containing 
 a hundred thousand souls, ports, canals, and establishments 
 of all kinds, created ; thousands of skilful Europeans attracted, 
 maintained, and rewarded ; several fleets built, and others 
 purchased ; a permanent army of a hundred and twenty 
 thousand men trained, equipped, provided with every species 
 of arms and ammunition, and several times renewed ; sub- 
 sidies of men and money given to Poland ; and four wars 
 undertaken. One of those wars spread over half of Europe ;
 
 a.d. 1721] peter's financial resources. 317 
 
 and when it Lad lasted twenty-one years, the treasury from 
 which it was fed still remained full. And Peter, whose 
 revenues on his accession to the throne did not exceed a few 
 hundred thousand pounds, declared to Munich " that he 
 could have carried on the war for twenty-one years longer 
 without contracting any deht." 
 
 Wdl order and economy be sufficient to account for these 
 phenomena ? We must, doubtless, admire them in the czar, 
 who refused himself every superfluity at the same time that 
 he spared nothing for the improvement of his empire. 
 Much must have been gained when, after having wrested the 
 indirect taxes from the boyars, who were at once civil, 
 military, and financial managers, and from those to whom 
 the boyars sold in portions the collecting of them, Peter, in 
 imitation of Holland, entrusted the finances to committees 
 composed of select merchants. "We may also feel less surprise 
 at the increase of his revenue, after we have seen him 
 subjecting to taxation the clergy as well _ as the laity ; 
 .suppressing a number of monasteries, by forbidding monastic 
 vows to be taken before the age of fifty ; and uniting their 
 estates to the domains of the crown, which were swelled by 
 confiscations, by the reverting back of his brother Ivan's 
 appanage, and by his conquests from the Swedes. 
 
 We must remark, at the same time, that he had opened 
 his states to foreign commerce, and to the treasures of 
 Europe, which were carried thither to be exchanged for the 
 many raw materials which had hitherto remained valueless ; 
 wc must consider the augmentation of revenue which neces- 
 sarily ensued, and the possibility of requiring to be paid in 
 money a multitude of taxes which had previously been paid 
 in kind. Thus, in place of quotas of provisions, which were 
 brought from great distances, and were highly oppressive 
 to the people, he substituted a tax ; and the sum raised was 
 applied to the payment of contractors. It is true that even 
 uuder this new system the state was shamefully robbed ; for 
 the nobles contrived in secret to get the contracts into their 
 own hands, in order to fatten upon the blood of the people ; 
 but Peter at length perceived them ; the evil betrayed itself 
 by it own enormity. The czar then created commissions of 
 inquiry, passed whole days in them, and, during several 
 
 Eire, keeping these great peculators always in sight, made
 
 348 HISTOItY OF KTJSSIA. [cil. XXVIIT. 
 
 them disgorge by fines and confiscations, and punished them 
 by the knout, the halter, and the axe. 
 
 To this superintendence by the head of the state, which, 
 subsequently to 1715, the contraction of the war within a 
 narrower circle allowed him to exert, let us add the iucrease 
 of salary to the collectors, which deprived them of all pretext 
 for misconduct. Nor must it be forgotten that most of the 
 stipends were paid in kind ; and that, for several years, the 
 war, being carried on out of the empire, supplied its own 
 wants. It must be observed, too, that the cities and pro- 
 vinces in which the troops were afterwards quartered 
 furnished their pay on the spot, by which the charge of 
 discount was saved ; and that the measures which they 
 adopted for their subsistence appear to have been municipal, 
 and consequently as little oppressive as possible. Finally, 
 we must remark, in 1721, the substitution, iu place of the 
 Tatar house-tax, of a poll-tax, which was a real impost on 
 land, assessed according to a census repeated every twenty 
 years, and the payment of which the agriculturists regu- 
 lated among themselves, in proportion to the value of their 
 produce. 
 
 At the same time, the reformer refused to foreigners the 
 privilege of trading with each other in Bussia ; he even gave 
 to his subjects exclusively the right of conveying to the 
 frontiers of the empire the merchandise which foreigners had 
 bought from them in the interior. Thus lie ensured to his 
 own people the profit of carriage. In 1710 he chose rather 
 to give up an advantageous alliance with the English, than to 
 relinquish this right in their favour. * 
 
 But all the causes we have enumerated will not yet 
 account for the possibility of so many gigantic undertakings, 
 and such immense results, with a fixed revenue in specie, 
 which, in 1715, was estimated, by an attentive observer, at only 
 some millions of roubles. But in the fiscal expedients of a 
 despotic empire it is to fluctuating revenue, illegal resources, 
 and arbitrary measures that we must direct our attention ; 
 astonishment then ceases, and then begins pity for one party, 
 
 * Every one now knows that measures like these are contrary to 
 sound commercial principles; but that fact was not dreamed of until 
 a century after Peter's death. The repeal of the English navigation 
 laws is an event of yesterday.
 
 a.d. 1721] petee's financial eesources. 349 
 
 indignation against another, and surprise excited by the 
 ignorance with respect to commercial affairs which is dis- 
 played by the high and mighty geniuses of despotism, in 
 comparison with the unerring instinct which is manifested 
 by the humblest community of men who are free. 
 
 It is the genius of Russian despotism, therefore, that we 
 must question as to the means by wmich it produced such 
 gigantic results ; but however far it may be disposed to push 
 its frightful candour, will it point out to us its army recruited 
 by men whom the villages sent tied together in pairs, and at 
 their own expense ? Soldiers at a penny a day, payable every 
 four months,* and often marching without pay ; slaves whom 
 it was thought quite enough to feed, and who were contented 
 with some handfuls of rye, or of oats made into gruel, or into 
 ill-baked bread ;t unfortunate wretches, who, in spite of the 
 blunders of their generals, were compelled to be victorious, 
 under pain of being decimated !J Or will this despotism 
 confess that, while it gave nothing to these serfs, who were 
 enlisted for life, it required everything from them ; that, 
 after twenty-one years of war, it compelled them to dig canals, 
 like miserable bond-slaves ? " For they ought to serve their 
 country," said Peter, " either by defending or enriching it ; 
 that is what they are made for." 
 
 Could this autocrat pride himself on the perennial fulness of 
 an exchequer, which violated its engagements in such a man- 
 ner, that most of the foreigners who were in his service were 
 anxious to quit it ? What answer could he make to that hollow 
 and lengthened groan, which, even yet, seems to rise from 
 < very house in Taganrok, and in Petersburg, and from his 
 forts, built by the most deadly kind of statute-labour, and 
 peopled by requisitions ? One half of the inhabitants of the 
 villages were sent to construct them, and were relieved by 
 the other half every six months ; and the weakest and the 
 .most industrious of them never more saw their homes ! 
 
 These unfortunate beings, whatever might be their calling, 
 from the common delver to the watchmaker and jeweller, were 
 torn without mercy from their families, their ploughs, their 
 workshops, and their counting-houses. They travelled to 
 their protracted torture at their own expense ; they worked 
 
 * Sec Maneteio. f See Perry. 
 
 t See Kamcnsky, Life of Mentchikof.
 
 350 HISTOKT OF ItUSSIA. [CH. XXVIII. 
 
 without any pay. Some were compelled to fill up swamps, 
 and build houses on them ; others, to remove thither 
 suddenly, and establish their trade there ; and the whole of 
 these hapless men, one part of whom were bent to the earth 
 with toil, and the other part in a manner lost in a new world, 
 were so badly fed and sheltered, or breathed such a pesti- 
 lential air, that the Russians of that period used to say that 
 Petersburg was built upon a bed of human skeletons. 
 
 Listen to the complaints of the nobles and the richest 
 merchants.: after the gift of a hundred vessels had been 
 required from them, they were forced to unite in this slough 
 to build stone houses, and were also constrained to live there 
 at a much greater expense than they would have incurred in 
 their own homes. And when even the clergy remonstrated 
 against the excessive taxes laid upon the priests, who were 
 able to indemnify themselves out of their flocks, who can be 
 astonished at the possibility of so many creations, and at the 
 plenitude of a treasury which opened so widely to receive, and 
 so scantily to disburse ? 
 
 Personal services, taxes in kind, taxes in money, these 
 were the three main sources of the power of the czar. "We 
 have just seen what estimate we ought to form as to the 
 manner in which the first of these was employed. As to the 
 taxes in kind and in money, how could the insulated cries of 
 such a multitude of tax-payers, who were scattered over so 
 wide a space, have reached the present age, if the excess of a 
 simultaneous and universal evil had not blended them into 
 one vast clamour, stronger even than time and space ? It is 
 from this we learn the names of the throng of taxes which 
 were laid upon everything, and at every opportunity, for the 
 war, the admiralty, the recruiting-service, for the horses used 
 in the public works, for the brick and lime-kilns required in 
 the building of Petersburg, for the post-office, the govern- 
 ment offices, the extraordinary expenses, for the contribu- . 
 tions in kind, for the requisitions of men and their pay and 
 subsistence, and for the salaries of those who were in place ; 
 to whicli must be added innumerable other duties on mills, 
 ponds, baths, beehives, meadows, gardens, and, in the towns, 
 on every square fathom of land which bore the name of 
 black, or non-free ; and all this was aggravated by other 
 exorbitant and grinding burdens, and by fleecing the arti-
 
 a.d. 1721] petee's financial eesoueces. 351 
 
 sans in proportion to their industry and their assumed 
 wealth ; the result of which was that they concealed both ; 
 the most laborious of them buried their earnings that they 
 might hide them from the nobles ; and the nobles entrusted 
 their riches to foreign banks, that they might hide them from 
 the czar. 
 
 To this we have yet to add the secondary oppressions : 
 collectors, whose annual pay was, for a long time, only six 
 roubles ; and who, nevertheless, accumulated fortunes in four 
 years, for they converted to their own use two-thirds of the 
 sums which they extorted; executing by torture whoever 
 was unable to pay, they made the most horrible misuse of 
 the unlimited powers which, according to the practice of 
 absolute governments, were necessarily entrusted to them : 
 despotism being unable to act otherwise than by delegation. 
 
 These men had the right of levying taxes on all the 
 markets of the country, of laying whatever duties they 
 pleased upon commodities, and of breaking into houses, for 
 the purpose of preventing or discovering infractions of their 
 orders : so that the unfortunate people, finding that they 
 had nought which they could call their own, and that every- 
 thing, even to their industry, belonged to the czar, ceased to 
 exert themselves for more than a mere subsistence, and lost 
 that spirit which only a man's personal interest can inspire. 
 Accordingly, the forests were peopled with men driven to 
 desperation, and those who at first remained in the villages, 
 finding that they were obliged to pay the taxes of the fugi- 
 tives as well as their own, speedily joined their companions. 
 
 "What can bear witness more strongly to the disordered 
 state of those times than the facts themselves ? They show 
 us grandees, who were possessed of the highest credit, 
 repeatedly convicted of embezzling the public money ; others, 
 hanged or beheaded ; and a vice-chancellor himself daring, 
 without any authority, to give places and pensions, and, in 
 so poor a country, contriving to purloin nearly a hundred and 
 fifty thousand pounds. It was not, therefore, the czar alone 
 whom the people accused of their sufferings. But such is 
 the tenure of despotism, that, in depriving the people of 
 their will, it takes upon itself the whole responsibility. All, 
 however, agree thai, about 1715, they beheld their czar 
 astounded at the aspect of such numerous evils ; they
 
 352 HISTORY OF ETJSSIA. [CH. XXVIII. 
 
 acknowledge the efforts which he had made, and that all of 
 them had not been fruitless. 
 
 But, at the same time, to account for the inexhaustible 
 abundance of the autocrat's treasury, they represent him to 
 us as monopolising everything for his own benefit, giving to 
 the current coin of his empire the value which suited his 
 purpose, and receiving it from foreigners at no more than its 
 intrinsic worth. They accuse him of having engrossed the 
 purchase or sale of numberless native and foreign produc- 
 tions, either by suddenly taxing various kinds of merchan- 
 dise, or by assuming the right of being the exclusive pur- 
 chaser, at his own price, to sell again at an exorbitant price 
 when he had become the sole possessor. They say also that, 
 forestalling everything, their czar made himself the sole mer- 
 chant trading from European Russia to China and Siberia, 
 as well as the sole mint-master, the sole trader in tobacco, 
 soap, talc, pitch, and tar ; that having also declared himself 
 the only public-house keeper in an empire where drunken- 
 ness held sovereign sway, this monopoly annually brought 
 back into his coffers all the pay that had been disbursed from 
 them. 
 
 When, in 1716, he wished to defray the expenses of his 
 second journey to Holland, and at the same time avoid being 
 a loser by the rate of exchange, what was the plan which he 
 adopted? He laid hands on all the leather intended for 
 exportation, which he paid for at a maximum fixed by him- 
 self, and then exported it on his own account, the proceeds 
 being made payable in Holland, where it was purchased by 
 foreigners. 
 
 It is thus that many of his contemporaries explain the 
 riches of a prince who was the principal manufacturer and 
 merchant of a great empire, the creator, the superintendent 
 of its arts. In his eyes, his subjects were nothing more than 
 workmen, whose labours he prompted, estimated, and re- 
 warded according to his own pleasure ; he reserved to himself 
 the sale of the produce of their industry, and the immense 
 profits which he thus gained he employed in doubling that 
 produce. 
 
 AVhat a singular founder of commerce in his empire was a 
 monarch who drew it all within his own sphere, and absorbed 
 it in himself! "We may, however, be allowed to believe that
 
 A.D. 1721] COHMEKCIAL EKEOES. 353 
 
 he sometimes became a merchant and manufacturer, as he 
 became a soldier and a sailor, for the sake of example, and 
 that the obstinate repugnance of his ignorant subjects to 
 many branches of industry and commerce long compelled him 
 to retain the monopoly of them, whether he would or not. 
 
 It is curious to remark how his despotism recoiled upon 
 himself when he interfered with matters so impatient of 
 arbitrary power as trade and credit. Solovief is an example 
 of this. Assisted by the privileges which Peter had granted 
 to him, that merchant succeeded in establishing at Amster- 
 dam the first commercial Eussian factory that had ever been 
 worthy of notice ; but in 1717, when the czar visited Holland 
 for the second time, his greedy courtiers irritated him against 
 their fellow-countryman. Solovief had not chosen to ransom 
 himself from the envy which his riches inspired. They 
 therefore slandered him to their sovereign ; he was arrested 
 and sent back to Eussia; his correspondents lost their 
 advances ; confidence was ruined, and the autocrat, by con- 
 fiscating this source of riches, destroyed his work with his 
 own hand.* 
 
 Here, then, as far as regards his external resources, is 
 solved the miracle of such sudden and wonderful creations 
 of all kinds ! Can our age feel surprise at anything whatever 
 effected, in the lapse of five-and-twenty years, by confis- 
 cations, arbitrary taxes, monopolies, requisitions, compul- 
 sory labour, and a mind that shrinks not from the use of the 
 most desperate means ? And when to all these powerful 
 movers we add the docile disposition arising from long 
 slavery, what ground can there remain for astonishment? 
 Do not the onions and the servitude of Egypt sufficiently 
 explain the enormous magnitude of its pyramids ? 
 
 * Yet lie had a glimpse of something like free-trade principles. He 
 would never impose any higher penalty on smuggling than confisca- 
 tion. " Commerce," he said, " is like a timid maiden, who is scared 
 by rough usage, and must be won by gentle means. Smuggle 
 who will, and welcome. The merchant who exposes himself to the 
 chance of having his goods confiscated, runs a greater risk than my 
 treasury. If he cheats me nine times and I catch him the tenth, I 
 shall he no loser by the game." 
 
 TOL. I. 2 A
 
 354 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXIX. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIX. 
 
 PETER IS SURNAMED THE GREAT — THE PATRIARCHATE ABO- 
 LISHED — THE TCHIN INSTITUTED — PERSIAN" CAMPAIGN. 
 
 Great were the rejoicings in Russia, and especially in 
 Petersburg, on the conclusion of a peace which had so pros- 
 perously terminated a long and terrible war. All delinquents 
 in prison were released, excepting only those guilty of robbery, 
 murder, and high treason ; and all arrears of taxes due to 
 the czar's treasury were remitted. A grand naval gala was 
 held, not the least conspicuous object in which was the small 
 sailing vessel, the first sight of which had inspired the czar 
 with the idea of creating a navy. His biographers tell us 
 with what care he delighted to adorn it, to cover it witli 
 gilded copper, and arm it with silver cannon ; with what 
 precautions he had it brought from Archangel to Petersburg ; 
 how, on its arrival, he himself assumed the office of its pilot, 
 while the highest grandees of his empire acted as sailors ; 
 how he steered it through his fleet, which was dressed out 
 with flags, and pointed out to it, as it were, those gigantic 
 vessels which had been so often victorious, and which saluted 
 the humble boat by volleys from the whole of their artillery ; 
 so that, as the czar expressed it, " this worthy little grand- 
 father might receive the compliments of all these fine chil- 
 dren, who were indebted to him for their existence." In the 
 midst of the rejoicings Peter was promoted to the rank of 
 admiral, and the senate solemnly conferred upon him the 
 titles of Great, Emperor, and Father of Ms country. 
 
 " Emperor" is the name of a conventional dignity, which 
 belongs de jure to whoever enjoys it de facto ; but history 
 may challenge Peter's right to the appellations of Great 
 and Father of his country. Prodigious strength of will, and 
 extraordinary perceptive and imitative powers, the scope of 
 which was yet rigidly limited to material objects, fall far short 
 of constituting a great man. In one to whom that title is due 
 all the faculties of human nature must exist in well-balanced 
 development and vigour ; but Peter was a moral monster, half- 
 giant, half-dwarf. Nor were his relations with his people in 
 any respect paternal ; he was their merciless taskmaster, and 
 that was all. He was, indeed, the creator of that official
 
 A.D. 1721] THE CHURCH BRIDLED — MORE BUFFOONERY. 355 
 
 Russia, that " empire of nothing but facades," which exists 
 to this day. The revolution he effected divided Eussia into 
 two mutually repugnant parts : a dominant caste of placemen 
 and soldiers, and the mass of the nation, which has never yet 
 accepted his reforms, nor abated one jot of its passive resist- 
 ance to a system which it justly regards as an aggravation of 
 its slavery. 
 
 Peter had never been at any pains to conceal his indiffer- 
 ence or contempt for the national church ; but it was not 
 until that culminating point in his history at which we are 
 now arrived, that he ventured to accomplish his design of 
 abolishing the office of patriarch. He had left it unfilled for 
 one-and-twenty years, and he formally suppressed it after the 
 conclusion of the peace of Nystadt, when Heaven had de- 
 clared in his favour, as it seemed to the multitude, who always 
 believe the Deity to be on the strongest side. In the follow- 
 ing year, however, the synod, in spite of Theophanes, its 
 president, whom we may consider as his minister for religious 
 a flairs, dared to desire that a patriarch might be appointed. 
 But bursting into a sudden passion, Peter started up, struck 
 his breast violently with his hand, and the table with his cut- 
 Lass, and exclaimed, "Here, here is your patriarch!" He 
 then hastily quitted the room, casting, as he departed, a stern 
 look upon the panic-struck prelates. 
 
 Of the two conquests which Peter consummated about the 
 same time, that over Sweden, and that by which he annihi- 
 lated the independence of the Russian clergy, it is hard to 
 say which was the more gratifying to his pride. Some one 
 having communicated to him the substance of a paper in the 
 English Spectator, in which a comparison was made between 
 hi 11 1 self and Louis XIV., entirely to bis own advantage, he 
 disclaimed the superiority accorded to him by the essayist, 
 sa\ e in one particular : " Louis XIV.," said he, " was greater 
 than I, except that I have been able to reduce my clergy to 
 obedience, while he allowed his clergy to rule him." 
 
 Soon after the abolition of the patriarchate, Peter cele- 
 brated the marriage of Buturlin, the second Kniaz Papa of 
 his creation, with the widow of Sotof, his predecessor in that 
 mock dignity. The bridegroom was in his eighty-fifth year, 
 and the bride nearly of the same age. The messengers who 
 invited the wedding guests were four stutterers; some decrepit 
 
 2 a2
 
 356 HISTOfiY OF EUSSIA. [CH. XXIX. 
 
 old men attended the bride ; the running footmen were four of 
 the most corpulent fellows that could be found ; the orchestra 
 was placed on a sledge drawn by bears, which being goaded 
 with iron spikes, made with their horrid roarings an accompani- 
 ment suitable to the tunes played on the sledge. The nuptial 
 benediction was given in the cathedral by a blind and deaf 
 priest with spectacles on. The procession, the marriage, the 
 wedding feast, the undressing of the bride and bridegroom, 
 the ceremony of putting them to bed, were all in the same 
 style of repulsive buffoonery. Among the coarse-minded cour- 
 tiers this passed for an ingenious derision of the clergy. 
 
 The nobles were another order in the state whose resist- 
 ance, though more passive than that of the clergy, was equally 
 insufferable to the czar. His hand had always been heavy 
 against that stiff-necked race. He had no mercy upon their 
 indolence and superstition, no toleration for their pride of 
 birth or wealth. As landed proprietors he regarded them 
 merely as the possessors of fiefs, who held them by the tenure 
 of being serviceable to the state. Such was the spirit of the 
 law of 1715 relative to inheritances, which till then had been 
 equally divided ; but from that date the real estate was to 
 descend to one of the males, the choice of whom was left to 
 the father, while only the personal property was to pass to 
 the other children. In this respect the law was favourable 
 to paternal authority and aristocracy ; but its real purpose 
 Avas rendered obvious by other clauses. It decreed that 
 the inheritors of personal property should not be permitted 
 to convert it into real estate until after seven years of mili- 
 tary service, ten years of civil service, or fifteen years' profes- 
 sion of some kind of art or of commerce. Nay, more, if we 
 may rely on the authority of Perry, every heir of property to 
 the amount of five hundred roubles, who had not learned the 
 rudiments of his native language, or of some ancient or foreign 
 language, was to forfeit his inheritance. 
 
 The great nobles had ere this been shorn of their train of 
 boyar followers, or noble domestics, by whom they were per- 
 petually attended, and these were transformed into soldiers, 
 disciplined in the European manner. At the same time seve- 
 ral thousand cavalry were formed out of the sons of the 
 priests, who were free men, but not less ignorant and super- 
 stitious than their fathers. Against the inertness of the 
 nobles, too, Peter made war even in the sanctuary of their
 
 A..D. 1722] THE "TCIIIN" INSTITUTED. 357 
 
 families. Every one of them between the ages of ten and 
 thirty, who evaded an enlistment which was termed volun- 
 tary, was to have his property confiscated to the use of the 
 person by whom he was denounced. The sons of the nobles 
 were arbitrarily wrested from them ; some were placed in 
 military schools ; others were sent to unlearn their barba- 
 rian manners, and acquire new habits and knowledge among 
 polished nations; many of them were obliged to keep up a 
 correspondence with the czar on the subject of what they 
 were learning; on their return, he himself questioned them, 
 and if they were found not to have benefited by their tra- 
 vels, disgrace and ridicule were their punishment. Given 
 up to the czar's buffoon, they became the laughing-stocks of 
 the court, and were compelled to perform the most degrad- 
 ing offices in the palace. These were the tyrannical punish- 
 ments of a reformer, who imagined that he might succeed in 
 doing violence to Nature by beginning education at an age 
 when it ought to be completed, and by subjecting grown-up 
 men to chastisements which would scarcely be bearable for 
 children. 
 
 It is with reason that Mannstein reproaches Peter with 
 having expected to transform, by travels into polished coun- 
 tries, men who were already confirmed in their habits, and 
 who were steeped to the core in ignorance, sloth, and bar- 
 barism. "The greatest part of them," he says, "acquired 
 nothing but vices." This it was which drew upon Peter a 
 lesson from his sage ; for such was the appellation which he 
 gave to Dolgoruki. That senator having pertinaciously, and 
 without assigning any reason, maintained that the travels of 
 the Kussian youth would be useless, made no other reply to 
 an impatient and passionate contradiction from the despot 
 than to fold the ukase in silence, run his nail forcibly along 
 it, and then desire the autocrat to try whether, with all his 
 power, he could ever obliterate the crease that was made in 
 the paper. 
 
 .U last, by his ukase of January 24, 1722, Peter annihi- 
 lated the privileges of the old Kussian aristocracy, and under 
 the specious pretext of making merit the only source of 
 social distinction, he created a new order of nobility, divided 
 into eight military and as many civil grades, all immediately 
 and absolutely dependent on the czar. The only favour al- 
 lowed to the old landed aristocracy was that they were not
 
 358 HISTORY OP RUSSIA. [CK. XXIX. 
 
 deprived of the right of appearing at court ; but uone of 
 them could obtain the rank and appointments of an officer, 
 nor, in any company, the respect and distinctions exclusively 
 belonging to that rank, until they bad risen to it by actual 
 service. Such was the fundamental principle of that noto- 
 rious system called the tchin ;* and plausible as it may ap- 
 pear upon a superficial view, it has been fruitful of nothing 
 but hideous tyranny, corruption, chicanery, and malversa- 
 tion. The modern nobility of Russia is in fact but a vile 
 bureaucracy. The only thing truly commendable in the 
 ukase of 1722 is, that it degrades to the level of the rabblet 
 every nobleman convicted of crime and sentenced to a pu- 
 nishment that ought to entail infamy. Previously, as the 
 reader has already seen, a nobleman might appear unabashed 
 in public, and claim all the privileges of his birth, with his 
 back still smarting from the executioner's lasb. 
 
 Peter had always encountered great difficulty in attracting 
 to Petersburg the commerce of Central Russia, which the 
 merchants obstinately persisted in throwing away upon Arch- 
 angel. Yet at Petersburg they enjoyed several privdeges, and 
 a milder climate allowed of two freights a year, while at Arch- 
 angel the ice would admit of only one. To this must be 
 added the advantage of a calmer sea, a better port, lower 
 duties, a much shorter distance, and a much larger concourse 
 • of purchasers ; but no persuasion could make the Russians 
 abandon the old routine, until at last Peter treated them like 
 ignorant and stubborn children, to wbom he would do good 
 in spite of themselves. In 1722 he expressly prohibited 
 the carrying of any goods to Archangel but such as belonged 
 to the district of that government. This ordinance at first 
 raised a great outcry among the traders, both native and 
 foreign, and caused several bankruptcies : but the merchants 
 accustoming themselves by degrees to come to Peters- 
 burg, at last found themselves gainers by the change. 
 
 The trade with the Mongols and Chinese had been 
 jeopardised by the extortions of pi-ince Gagarin, the governor 
 of Siberia, and by acts of violence committed by the Rus- 
 sians in Pekin and in the capital of Contaish, the prince pon- 
 tiff of a sect of dissenters from lamism. To check the growth 
 
 * See Appendix. 
 
 f The men who have no tchin, the tchornii nurod, that is, the black 
 people, or blackguards.
 
 A.D. 1722] PEB3IAN CAMPAIGNS. 359 
 
 of this evil, Peter sent Ismailof, a captain in the guards, to 
 Pekin, with presents to the emperor, among which were 
 several pieces of turnery, the work of his own hands. The 
 negotiation was successful ; but the Eussians soon lost the 
 fruits of it by fresh acts of indiscretion, and were expelled 
 from China by order of K am-hi. The Eussian court alone re- 
 tainedthe right of sending a caravan every three years to Pekin ; 
 but that right again was subsequently lost in consequence of 
 new quarrels. The court finally renounced its exclusive 
 privilege, and granted the subjects leave to trade freely on the 
 Kiachta. 
 
 Peter's attention had long been directed to the Caspian 
 Sea with a view to making it more extensively subservient to 
 the trade of Eussia with Persia and Central Asia, which as 
 yet had been carried on at Astrakhan alone, through the 
 medium of Armenian factors. Soon after the peace of JNeu- 
 stadt had left the czar free to carry his arms towards the 
 east, a pretext and an opportunity were afforded him for 
 making conquests on the Caspian shores. The Persian em- 
 pire was falling to pieces under the hand of the enervated 
 and imbecile Hussein Shah. The Lesghis, one of the tribu- 
 tary nations that had rebelled against him, made an inroad 
 into the province of Shirven, sacked the city of Shamakhia, 
 put the inhabitants to the sword, including 300 Eussian 
 traders, and plundered Eussian property to the amount of 
 4,000,000 of roubles. Peter demanded satisfaction ; the shah 
 was willing to grant it, but pleaded his helpless condition, 
 and entreated the czar to aid him in subduing his rebellious 
 subjects. This invitation was promptly accepted. Peter 
 set out for Persia on the 15th of May, 1722, his consort 
 also accompanying him on this remote expedition. He fell 
 down the Volga as far as the city of Astrakhan, and occupied 
 himself in examining the works for the canals that were to 
 join the Caspian, Baltic, and White Seas, whilst he awaited 
 the arrival of his forces and materiel of war. His army con- 
 sisted of twenty-two thousand foot, nine thousand dragoons, 
 and fifteen thousand Cossacks, besides three thousand sailors 
 on board the several vessels, who, in making a descent, could 
 do the duty of soldiers. The cavalry marched by land through 
 deserts, which are frequently without water; and beyond 
 those deserts, they were to pass the mountains of Caucasus, 
 where three hundred men might keep a whole army at bay ;
 
 360 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXIX. 
 
 but Persia was in such anarchy, that anything might be at- 
 tempted. 
 
 The czar sailed above a hundred leagues southward from 
 Astrakhan, as far as the small fortified town of Andreof, 
 which was easily taken. Thence the Russian army ad- 
 vanced by land into the province of Daghestan ; and mani- 
 festoes in the Persian and Russian language were every- 
 where dispersed. It was necessary to avoid giving any 
 offence to the Ottoman Porte, which besides its subjects, the 
 Circassians and Georgians, bordering on this country, had 
 in these parts some considerable vassals, who had lately put 
 themselves under its protection. Among them, one of the 
 principal was Mahmoud D'Utinich, who styled himself sultan, 
 and had the presumption to attack the troops of the emperor 
 of Russia. He was totally defeated, and the public account 
 says, "his country was made a bonfire." 
 
 In the middle of September, Peter reached Derbent, by 
 the Persians and Turks called Demir Capi, i.e. Iron Gate, 
 because it had formerly such a gate towards the south ; it is 
 a long narrow town, backed against a steep spur of the Cau- 
 casus ; and its walls, at the other end, are washed by the 
 sea, which, in stormy weather, is often known to break over 
 them. These walls may be justly accounted one of the won- 
 ders of antiquity ; they were forty feet high and six broad ; 
 flanked with square towers at intervals of fifty feet. The 
 whole work seemed one single piece, being built of a kind of 
 brown free-stone, and a mortar of pounded shells, the 
 whole forming a mass harder than marble itself; it was 
 accessible by sea, but, on the land side, seemed impregnable. 
 Near it were the ruins of an old wall, like that of China, un- 
 questionably built in times of the earliest antiquity; it 
 was carried from the Caspian to the Black Sea, and probably 
 was a rampart thrown up by the ancient kings of Persia 
 against the numerous barbarian hordes dwelling between 
 those two seas. There were formerly three or four other 
 Caspian gates at different passages, and all apparently built 
 for the same end ; the nations, west, east, and north of this 
 sea having ever been formidable barbarians ; and from 
 these parts principally issued those swarms of conquerors 
 which subdued Asia and Europe. 
 
 On the approach of the Russian army, the governor of 
 Derbent, instead of standing a siege, laid the keys of the city
 
 A.D. 1723] PERSIAN CAMPAIGNS. 361 
 
 at the emperor's feet — whether it was that he thought the 
 place not tenable against such a force, or that he preferred 
 the protection of the emperor Peter to that of the Affghan 
 rebel Mahmoud. Thus the army quietly took possession of 
 Derbent, and encamped along the sea-shore. The usurper 
 Mahmoud, who had already made himself master of a great 
 part of Persia, had neglected nothing to be beforehand with 
 the czar, and hinder him from getting into Derbent; he 
 raised the neighbouring Tatars, and hastened thither himself; 
 but Derbent was already in the czar's hands. 
 
 Peter was unable to extend his conquests further, for the 
 vessels with provisions, stores, horses, and recruits had been 
 wrecked near Astrakhan; and as the unfavourable season 
 had now set iu, he returned to Moscow, and entered it in 
 triumph (Jan. 5, 1723), though he had no great reason to 
 boast of the success of his ill-planned expedition. 
 
 Persia was still divided between Hussein and the usurper 
 Mahmoud ; the former sought the support of the emperor of 
 Eussia, the latter feared him as an avenger who would wrest 
 from him all the fruits of his rebellion. Mahmoud used every 
 endeavour to stir up the Ottoman Porte against Peter : with 
 this view he sent an embassy to Constantinople ; and the 
 Daghestan princes, under the sultan's protection, having 
 been dispossessed of their dominions by the arms of Eussia, 
 solicited revenge. The divan were also under apprehen- 
 sions for Georgia, which the Turks considered as part of 
 their dominions. The sultan was on the point of declaring 
 war, when the courts of Vienna and Paris diverted him from 
 that measure. The emperor of Germany made a declaration, 
 that if the Turks attacked Eussia, he should be obliged to 
 join in its defence ; and the marquis de Bonac, ambassador 
 from France at Constantinople, seconded the German me- 
 naces ; he convinced the Porte that their own interest 
 required them not to suffer the usurper of Persia to set an 
 example of dethroning sovereigns, and that the Eussian 
 empire had done no more than what the sultan should have 
 done. 
 
 During these critical negotiations, the rebel Myr Mah- 
 moud bad advanced to the gates of Derbent, and laid waste 
 all the neighbouring countries, iu order to distress the Eus- 
 sians. That part of ancient Hyrcania, now known by the 
 name of Chilan, was not spared, which so irritated the people,
 
 362 niSTOBT OF RUSSIA, [ch. XXIX. 
 
 that they voluntarily put themselves under the protection of 
 the Russians. Herein tbey followed the example of the shah 
 himself, who had sent to implore the assistance of Peter the 
 Great ; hut the ambassador was scarcely on the road ere the 
 rebel Myr Mahmoud seized on Ispahan, and the person of 
 his sovereign. Thamaseb, son of the captive shah, escaped, 
 and getting together some troops, fought a battle with the 
 usurper. He was not less eager than his father in urging 
 Peter the Great to protect him, and sent to the ambassador 
 a renewal of the instructions which shah Hussein had given. 
 Though this Persian ambassador, named Ishmael-beg, was 
 not yet arrived, his negotiation had succeeded. On his 
 landing at Astrakhan, he heard that general Matuf kin was 
 on his march with fresh troops to reinforce the Daghestan 
 army. The town of Baku, from which the Persians called 
 the Caspian Sea, the Sea of Baku, was not yet taken. He 
 gave the Eussian general a letter to the inhabitants, exhort- 
 ing them, in his master's name, to submit to the emperor of 
 Eussia : the ambassador continued his journey to Petersburg, 
 and general Matufkin went and sat down before the city of 
 Baku. The Persian ambassador reached the czar's court at 
 the same time as the news of the surrender of that city 
 (Aug., 1723). 
 
 k Baku is situated near Shamakhia, where the Eussian fac- 
 tors were massacred; and though in wealth and number of 
 people inferior to it, is very famous for its naphtha, with 
 which it supplies all Persia. Never was treaty sooner con- 
 cluded than that of Ishmael-beg. The emperor Peter, 
 desirous of revenging the death of his subjects, engaged to 
 march an army into Persia, in order to assist Thamaseb 
 against the usurper ; and the new shah ceded to him, besides 
 the cities of Baku and Derbent, the provinces of Ghilan, 
 Mazandaran, and Astarabath. 
 
 Ghilan, as we have already noticed, is the southern Hyr- 
 cania : Mazandaran, which is contiguous to it, is the country 
 of the Mardi ; Astarabath borders on Mazandaran ; and 
 these were the three principal provinces of the ancient kings 
 of the Medes. Thus Peter by his arms and treaties came 
 to be master of Cyrus's first monarchy; but this proved to 
 be but a barren conquest, and the empress Anne was glad to 
 surrender it thirteen years afterwards in exchange for some 
 commercial advantages.
 
 A.D. 1724] COKONAXION OF CATHAEIKE. 363 
 
 So calamitous was the state of Persia, that the unhappy 
 sophy Thamaseb wandering about his kingdom, pursued by 
 the rebel Mahmoud, the murderer of his father and bro- 
 thers, was reduced to supplicate both Eussia and Turkey at 
 the same time, that they would take one part of his dominions 
 to preserve the other for him. At last it was agreed between 
 the emperor Peter, the sultan Achmet III., and the sophy 
 Thamaseb, that Russia should hold the three provinces above 
 mentioned, and that the Porte should have Casbin, Tauris, 
 and Erivan, besides what it should take from the usurper. 
 
 Peter, at his return from his Persian expedition, was more 
 than ever the arbiter of the north. He openly took into 
 his protection the family of Charles XII., after having been 
 eighteen years his declared enemy. He invited to his court 
 the duke of Holstein, that monarch's nephew, to whom he 
 betrothed his eldest daughter, and from that time prepared 
 to assert his rights on the duchy of Holstein Sleswick, and 
 even bound himself to it in a treaty, which he concluded with 
 Sweden (Feb., 1724). He also obtained from that power 
 the title of royal highness for his son-in-law, which was 
 a recognition of his right to the throne, should king Frederick 
 die without issue. Meanwhile he held Copenhagen in awe 
 of his fleet, and ruled there through fear, as he did in Stock- 
 holm and "Warsaw. 
 
 The state of Peter's health now warned him that his end 
 Was near ; yet still he delayed to exercise the right of naming 
 a successor, which he had arrogated to himself in 1722. 
 The only step he took which might be interpreted as an 
 indication of his wishes in that respect, was the act of 
 publicly crowning his consort Catharine. The ceremony 
 was performed at Moscow (May 18, 1724) in presence 
 of the czar's niece, Anne, duchess of Courland, and of 
 the duke of Holstein, his intended son-in-law. The ma- 
 nifesto published by Peter on this occasion deserves 
 notice ; after stating that it was customary with Christian 
 monarchs to crown their consorts, and instancing among 
 the orthodox Greek emperors Basilides, Justinius, Ileraclius, 
 and Leo the Philosopher, he goes on to say : 
 
 "It is also known how far we have exposed our own per- 
 son, and faced the greatest dangers in our country's cause, 
 during the whole course of the last war, twenty-one years
 
 364 HISTOEY OP KUSSIA. [CH. XXIX. 
 
 successively, and which, by God's assistance, we have termi- 
 nated with such honour and advantage, that Russia never 
 saw a like peace, nor gained that glory which has accrued to 
 it by this war. The empress Catharine, our dearly beloved 
 consort, was of great help to us in all these dangers, not only 
 in the said war, but likewise in other expeditions, in which, 
 notwithstanding the natural weakness of her sex, she volun- 
 tarily accompanied us, and greatly assisted us Avith her advice, 
 particularly at the battle of the river Pruth, against the 
 Turks, where our army was reduced to 22,000 men, and that 
 of the Turks consisted of 270,000. It was in this desperate 
 exigency that she especially signalised a zeal and fortitude 
 above her sex ; and to this all the army, and the whole em- 
 pire, can bear witness. For these causes, and in virtue of 
 the power which God hath given us, we have resolved, in 
 acknowledgment of all her fatigues and good offices, to honour 
 our consort with the imperial crown, which, by God's per- 
 mission, shall be accomplished this winter at Moscow ; and 
 of this resolution we hereby give notice to all our faithful 
 subjects, our imperial affection towards whom is unalterable." 
 
 In this manifesto nothing was said of the empress's suc- 
 ceeding to the throne ; but the nation were in some degree 
 prepared for that event by the ceremony itself, which was 
 not customary in Eussia, and which was performed with 
 sumptuous splendour. A circumstance which might further 
 cause Catharine to be looked xipon as the presumptive suc- 
 cessor was, that the czar himself, on the coronation- day, 
 walked before her on foot, as first knight of the order of St. 
 Catharine, which he had instituted in 1714 in honour of his 
 consort. In the cathedral he placed the crown on her head 
 with his own hand. Catharine would then have fallen on 
 her knees, but he raised her up, and when she came out of 
 the cathedral the globe and sceptre were carried before her. 
 
 It was not long before Peter was with difficulty restrained 
 from sending to the block the head on which lie had but 
 lately placed the crown. We have already mentioned that 
 the enmity of his first wife is said to have sprung from her 
 jealousy of Anne de Moens, who was for awhile the czar's mis- 
 tress, and whom, as Villebois tells us, he had serious thoughts 
 of raising to the throne. But she submitted to his passion 
 only through fear, and Peter, disgusted with her coldness 
 towards him, left her to follow her inclinations in marrying
 
 A.D. 1721] CATHARINE DETECTED IN ADULTERY. 3G5 
 
 a less illustrious lover. Five-and-twenty years afterwards 
 Evdokhia was avenged through the brother of her rival. 
 Anne de Moens, then the widow of general Balk, was about 
 the person of Catharine, and the handsome and graceful 
 young Moens de la Croix was her chamberlain. A closer 
 intimacy soon arose between them, and so unguarded were 
 they that Villebois, who only saw them together in public 
 during a very crowded reception at court, says that their 
 conduct was such as left no doubt on his mind but that the 
 empress was guilty. The czar's suspicions were roused, and 
 he set spies upon Catharine. 
 
 The court was then at Peterhof ; prince Eepnin, president 
 of the war department, slept not far from the czar ; it was 
 two o'clock in the morning ; all at once the marshal's 
 door was violently thrown open, and he was startled by 
 abrupt and hasty footsteps: he looked round in astonish- 
 ment ; it was Peter the Great ; the monarch was standing 
 by the bedside ; his eyes sparkled with rage, and all his 
 features were distorted with convulsive fury. Eepnin tells 
 us,* that at the sight of that terrible aspect he was appalled, 
 gave himself up for lost, and remained motionless ; but his 
 master, with a broken and panting voice, exclaimed to him, 
 " Get up ! speak to me ! there's no need to dress yourself;" 
 and the trembling marshal obeyed. 
 
 lie then learned that, but the instant before, guided by too 
 faithful a report, the czar had suddenly entered Catharine's 
 apartment ; that the crime is revealed ! the ingratitude 
 proved ! that at daybreak the empress shall lose her head ! 
 that the emperor is resolved ! 
 
 The marshal, gradually recovering his voice, agreed that 
 such a monstrous act of treachery was horrible ; but he re- 
 minded his master of the fact that the crime was as yet 
 known to no one, and of the impolicy of making it public ; 
 then, growing bolder, he dared to call to recollection the 
 massacre of the Strclitz, and that every subsequent year had 
 been ensanguined by executions ; that, in fine, after the im- 
 prisonment of his sister, the condemning of his son to death, 
 and the scourging and imprisonment of his first wile, if he 
 should likewise cut off the head of his second, Europe would 
 no longer look upon him in any other light than that of a 
 ferocious prince, who thirsted for the blood of his subjects 
 * See Leclerc, Coxe, Levesque.
 
 366 HISTOET OF ETTSSIA. [CH. XXIX. 
 
 and even of those who were a part of himself. Besides, he 
 added, the czar might have satisfaction hy giving up Moens 
 to the sword of the law upon other charges ; and as to the 
 empress, he could find means to rid himself of her without 
 any prejudice to his glory. 
 
 While Bepnin was thus advising, the czar, who stood 
 motionless before him, gazed upon him intently and wildly, 
 and kept a gloomy silence. But in a short time, as was the 
 case when he was labouring under strong emotions, his head 
 was twisted to the left side, and his swollen features became 
 convulsively contracted ; signs of the terrible struggle by 
 which he was tortured. And yet the excessive working of 
 his mind held his body in a state of frightful immovability. 
 At length, he rushed precipitately out of the chamber into 
 the adjoining room. For two whole hours he hastily paced 
 it ; then suddenly entering again like a man who had made 
 up his mind, he said to Bepnin, " Moens shall die imme- 
 diately ! I will watch the empress so closely that her first 
 slip shall cost her life !" 
 
 Moens and his sister were at once arrested. They were both 
 confined in the winter-palace, in an apartment to which none 
 had admission, except the emperor himself, who carried them 
 their food. At the same time a report was spread, that the 
 brother and the sister had been bribed by the enemies of the 
 country, in hopes of bringing the empress to act upon the 
 mind of the czar prejudicially to the interests of Bussia. 
 Moens was interrogated by the monarch in presence of 
 general Uschakof ; and after having confessed whatever they 
 pleased, he lost his head on the block (Nov. 27). At the 
 same time, his sister, who was an accomplice in the crime, 
 and a favourite of Catharine, received the knout, and was 
 banished to Siberia ; her property was confiscated ; her two 
 sons were degraded, and were sent to a great distance, on 
 the Bersian frontier, as private soldiers. 
 
 Moens walked to meet his fate with manly firmness. He 
 always wore a diamond bracelet, to which was a miniature of 
 Catharine ; but, as it was not perceived at the time of his 
 being seized, he found means to conceal it under his garter ; 
 and when he was on the scaffold he confided this secret to 
 the Lutheran pastor who accompanied him, and under cover 
 of his cloak slipped the bracelet into hia hand to restore it 
 to the empress.
 
 A.D. 1725] DEATH OF PETER I. 3G7 
 
 The czar was a spectator of the punishment of Moens from 
 one of the windows of the senate. The execution being 
 over, he got upon the scaffold, took the head of Moens by 
 the hair, and expressed with brutal energy how delighted he 
 was with the vengeance he had taken. The same day, Peter 
 had the cruelty to conduct Catharine in an open carriage 
 round the stake on which was fixed the head of her unfor- 
 tunate lover. He watched her countenance attentively, but 
 fortunately she had self-command enough not to betray her 
 grief. Eepnin adds that, from that dreadful night till his 
 death, Peter never more spoke to the empress except in 
 public, and that, in his dwelling, he always remained separate 
 from her. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXX. 
 
 DEATH OF PETER — RETROSPECT HIS POLITICAL TESTAMENT. 
 
 Peter was only fifty-two years of age ; but his life had 
 been one protracted and violent excess of labour, mingled 
 with other excesses. In 1722 a secret malady attacked him,* 
 but he said nothing about it ; and it was during that same 
 year, and in spite of the disease, that he achieved the con- 
 quest of the three Persian provinces, which he added for a 
 while to his empire. He shared in the fatigues of his mean- 
 est soldiers, and in their coarse food. He marched as they 
 did, on foot, under a burning sun, in a deep and heated sand, 
 through an atmosphere loaded with dust, and frequently with- 
 out water to quench the thirst during whole days. And yet 
 he constantly refused to make use of Catharine's carriage ; 
 she herself several times quitted it to fill it with soldiers who 
 were dying of heat and fatigue. 
 
 His disease, meanwhile, grew worse ; and, as he would not 
 drop any of his habits, his pains became every day more ex- 
 cruciating. At length, he could no longer endure them, but 
 it was only to one of his servants that he entrusted the secret ; 
 
 * " II avait etc atteint d'une maladie secrete qu'il disc-it hautcment 
 luy avoir etc donnee par madame la generale de Tchernitclieff, eontre 
 laquellc les effets de son ressentiment se bornercnt a de simples invec- 
 tives. . . . Cettc dame en convenant qu'elle etoit malefwiee, attri- 
 buoit l'originc de son mal aux debauches continuelles du czar avec 
 des creatures de toute espece." — Villebois,
 
 3GS HISTOEY OP ETJSSIA. [CH. XXX. 
 
 he directed him to obtain advice as if for some one else ; and 
 would not even consult his court physician. He then went 
 to the hot baths of Olonetz ; and being better on his return, 
 he placed the crown on the head of Catharine. 
 
 But whether it was that he, was guilty of some excess in 
 the coronation festivities, or that, as Paulson, his surgeon, 
 affirms, his disease had only been palliated by the first treat- 
 ment, or that, on his discovering the treason of the empress, 
 the violence of his auger had aggravated his case; certain it 
 is, that subsequent to the coronation, and but a few days 
 after the fatal discovery, his horrible malady broke out with 
 additional fury ; and for three months it was doubtful whe- 
 ther he would die of his disease, or of the means which were 
 employed to cure him. 
 
 But his vigorous constitution again got the better. He 
 was restored to life, and notwithstanding the most serious 
 statements of the danger, angry to have been so long a 
 captive, he immediately returned to his creations. Munich, 
 whose genius was in unison with his own, called for his 
 presence in those marshes, where intrigue and ignorance had 
 for so many years given a wrong direction to the famous 
 Ladoga canal ; the canal which was to be the feeder of 
 Petersburg, the junction of the waters of Northern Asia 
 and of Europe, the connecting link between two worlds. 
 
 Autumn, meanwhile, began— the autumn of the Eussians ; 
 but the czar took no thought of it. During the whole 
 month of October, he traversed those fetid marshes. He 
 found fault, however, with the line which had been adopted ; 
 aud addressing himself to the unskilful engineer, who was 
 protected by his favourites, " Pisaref," said he, " there are 
 two kinds of faults ; the one, when we err from ignorance ; 
 the other, which is more inexcusable, when we do not make 
 use of our five senses. Why are not the banks of this canal 
 prevented from giving way ? why are there so many windings? 
 Where are the hills which you made an objection ? Truly, 
 you are an absolute knave !" Then turning to Munich, of 
 whose plans he approved, he called him " his friend," and 
 declared that "in him he had found the man who would 
 complete this great work, and that his labours had cured 
 him." He put under his orders twenty-five thousand men 
 and the senate ; and then, at length, quitted that lifeless
 
 A.D. 1725] DEATH OF PETER I. 3G9 
 
 spot, which is now so full of life, breathed into it by the last 
 breath of his genius. 
 
 The same ardour impelled him to the extremity of lake 
 Ilmen, and then to the salt-works of Starai Boussa. He 
 bent his course at length towards Petersburg ; but hurried 
 away by his destiny, which was about to make him the 
 victim of that humanity he had too often outraged, he went 
 on, without stopping, to Finland ; being desirous to visit his 
 foundries there. He entered the port of Lachta on the 5th 
 of November. The weather was gloomy, the air keen and 
 cold, the sea rough and threatening. He was on the point 
 of reaching the abode prepared for him, when, casting a 
 glance towards the harbour, he perceived a small vessel, full 
 of soldiers and sailors, which had struck upon a shoal. He 
 saw that the unfortunate men were confused by fear ; and, 
 in the first instance, approaching the water's edge, he called 
 out to them, and told them what was necessary to be done 
 to save themselves ; but he exerted himself in vain, for his 
 voice was drowned by the clamours of the sufferers and the 
 roaring of the waves. Those whom he sent to assist them 
 were in fear of their own lives, and made but fruitless efforts. 
 Then forgetting all the danger that he ran, he himself at once 
 jumped into a skiff. As he could not approach the shoal 
 with it, he leaped into the sea, reached the stranded vessel, 
 saved the passengers, and conveyed them to the shore, where 
 he lavished on them the kindest attentions. 
 
 But in the middle of the same night his disease again at- 
 tacked him ; a burning fever fired his blood ; and all his 
 former pangs returned. He was removed to Petersburg. 
 There, living always more for his country than for himself, 
 while his alarmed physicians predicted gangrene and its 
 mortal consequences, he did not suspend his labours ; his 
 mind, stronger than such pungent agony, still watched over 
 his empire ; and even when pain seemed his only connecting 
 link with earth, and he was about to quit the world, he strove 
 to give a new world to Russia. 
 
 It was then that Behring received, from the monarch's 
 own hand, those second instructions which were to extend to 
 America the empire of the Bussians : an empire which their 
 czar had never ceased to aggrandise, by the conquests of 
 commerce and the arts as well as by those of war. Pur two 
 
 VOL. I. 2 B
 
 370 HISTOBY OF EUSSIA. [CH. XIX. 
 
 months longer, a multitude of other instructions and regula- 
 tions bear witness to his constant solicitude for the great- 
 ness of his nation. But this mode of reigning by ordinances, 
 and by his mind alone, did not satisfy him ; he wished to 
 put his own hand to everything, and to see everything with 
 his own eyes. He was to pause only to die ; and his thus 
 lavishing his own person, without bestowing a thought on it, 
 is his best excuse for his having spared others so little. 
 
 Thus, on the 17th of January, 1725, the day of the cere- 
 mony of blessing the water, he braved the severity of the 
 weather and of illness. But, on the following day, either 
 from the effect of this pious excess, or from his having 
 indulged in excess of some other kind,* a tightness seized 
 his chest, his fever increased, and he was tortured by an 
 obstinate suppression of urine. He still strove to struggle 
 against his disease, and rise superior to pain, the last monster 
 which this dying Hercules sought to conquer; but it 
 triumphed, and he fell hopeless on his bed of death. 
 
 The palace was thrown into alarm ; couriers were despatched 
 to Leyden and to Berlin to obtain the best advice. All the 
 physicians of Petersburg were summoned round the couch 
 where lay the object of so many recollections, and of so many 
 hopes of glory and national prosperity. There, while his 
 medical attendants were fourteen days employing the terrible 
 means which were meant to relieve, but which are said to 
 have ended him, he sometimes filled the palace with cries 
 extorted by his sufferings, and at other times, indignant 
 at his involuntary weakness, exclaimed that " in him might 
 plainly be seen what a wretched animal is man !" 
 
 At length, on the 26th of January, he became resigned; 
 he called upon Heaven, in a loud voice, and received the last 
 consolations of religion ; and, either from Christian humility, 
 the remorse of a dying man, or rather, perhaps, in con- 
 formity to an ancient usage, which is peculiar to Bussia, he 
 ordered his debts to be paid, and the prisoners to be released. 
 " I dare hope," said he, at the same time, "that God will look 
 upon me with a merciful eye for all the good that I have 
 done to my country !" 
 
 His agony lasted for two whole days longer ; but still re- 
 taining the same ardour for civilisation, and the same firmness 
 
 * Villcbois says that the fatal attack was provoked by the czar's in- 
 temperance in celebrating a Conclave.
 
 A.D. 1725] DEATH Or PETEB I. 371 
 
 with which he had lived, the czar, in the short intervals which 
 pain allowed him, laid his injunctions on Catharine to protect 
 his Academy of Sciences, and to invite to it the learned men 
 of Europe. He then pointed out Ostermann to her in the 
 following words : — " Russia cannot do without him; he is the 
 only man who knows her real interests." After this, he 
 settled the time during which mourning for him should be 
 worn. 
 
 He now wished to write his last will ; hut the fallacious 
 calm of a partial death, which succeeded to his pangs, had 
 deceived him as to his remaining strength. His palsied hand 
 could form nothing on the paper but illegible marks ; he him- 
 self could read no more than these three words, — " Give all to 
 
 " He then ordered the princess Anne, his 
 
 favourite daughter, to be sent for instantly ; but by the time 
 she could come, the voice as well as the hand and left side of 
 her father were gone. In the mean while he had endeavoured, 
 but in vain, to finish what he had begun ; the mind was yet 
 entire, but it had no longer any means of communicating with 
 the material world. This sovereign, so potent, still living in 
 the midst of his people, surrounded by his household, and in 
 the arms of his family, was, nevertheless, insulated from all ; 
 and remained alone, battling with death, during fifteen hours 
 of horrible agony. 
 
 At length, on the 28th of January, about four in the morn- 
 ing, his eyes closed for ever ; and thus, at the very same hour 
 when he was every day accustomed to awake from other sleep 
 than this, and resume the toils of his empire, he closed forty- 
 three years of a reign, and fifty-two years of a life, among the 
 most remarkable in history. 
 
 The Kussia of our day owes its existence to Peter the 
 Great : it is such as he and his successors, continuing his 
 work, have made it ; for the latter have all contributed to the 
 accomplishment of his projects, often even in spite of their 
 want of ability or will. Now the present condition of Kussia 
 is not such as justifies the unmeasured culogiums which hove 
 been lavished upon the author of its polity. Apart from this 
 consideration, and neither forgetting the defective nature of 
 Peter's views as a reformer, nor the hideous enormity of the 
 means lie used, we may admit witli his admirers that his em- 
 pire was indebted to him for positive results of his labours, 
 
 2 B 2
 
 372 HISTOKY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXX. 
 
 which astonish us by their number and magnitude. He gave 
 it six new provinces ; two seas ; an extensive commerce ; 
 fortresses ; ports ; a regular army of two hundred thousand 
 men ; an admiralty, a naval academy, and a fleet of forty sail 
 of the line and two hundred galleys ; a regular police ; a 
 multitude of elementary schools ; colleges for the mathe- 
 matical sciences, arts, and belles-lettres ; an imperial library, 
 and a cabinet of medals; schools of anatomy, medicine, 
 pharmacy, with ricli collections of subjects in anatomy, 
 natural history, and botany ; a botanical garden ; an obser- 
 vatory ; an academy of science ; printing offices, with new 
 kinds of types ; and a gallery of pictures and of statues, by 
 the most eminent masters : all of them things which before 
 his time were unknown among his people, who were so 
 ignorant that they looked upon foreign languages as heresies, 
 and the mathematical and natural sciences as witchcraft :* 
 who, nevertheless, believed their untilled and frozen land to 
 be the nighest to heaven, their clumsy language the most 
 pleasing to the divinity, their brutal manners the nearest 
 approach to those of the immortals : and who conceived that 
 their nation was the most rich and eminent under the sun, 
 that to which all others owed their existence, and without 
 which every other people, who were all pagans and impious 
 beings, would perish of famine ! 
 
 The plan of Peter's general policy was grand and compre- 
 hensive. To profit fully by the mighty rivers of his country : 
 to rule the Baltic and turn it to account ; to confine the 
 Swedes to their peninsula ; to enfeeble Poland by fomenting 
 its divisions ; to profit to the largest extent by the decay of 
 the Ottoman empire ; to draw within the sphere of his own 
 influence the Christians of Europe and Asia, who wore the 
 yoke of the Turks or the Persians ; to spread his influence 
 and extend his future commerce to those regions which lay 
 along his own vast borders, and even to others beyond them : 
 to gain for himself weight and consideration in the affairs of 
 the west : these were the projects which Peter in great 
 measure accomplished, and the further realisation of which 
 he bequeathed as an inevitable task to his successors. 
 
 * A mathematician amused himself one day in calculating how 
 many bricks there were in a large stock, liomodanovski would have 
 had him executed for a wizard, hut fortunately for the poor tavern 
 Peter heard of the case in time to save him.
 
 A.D. 1725] WILL OF PETEIt I. 373 
 
 But there was more than this. In a book published iu the 
 last century as the posthumous memoirs of the chevalier 
 d'Eon de Beaumont, there appeared a very remarkable docu- 
 ment purporting to be the will of Peter the Great. The 
 notorious d'Eon is known to have gone to Russia in the dis- 
 guise of a woman, as a secret envoy from France. It is said 
 that his intimacy with the lascivious empress Elizabeth gave 
 him extraordinary opportunities for making important dis- 
 coveries, and that he transmitted this document to Louis 
 X V. in 1757. 
 
 Doubts have been cast upon the authenticity both of the 
 memoirs and of the so-called will ; but we are not aware that 
 the subject has ever undergone such a thorough inquiry as 
 it certainly deserves. Independently, however, of its authen- 
 ticitv, the will possesses great intrinsic interest, as embodying 
 principles of action which have been notoriously followed out 
 by Russia during the last hundred years, with such modifi- 
 cations as time and circumstances, and the variations of the 
 European equilibrium have rendered necessary. 
 
 The will begins thus : 
 
 " In the name of the holy and indivisible Trinity, "We, 
 Peter, Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, &c. &c, to 
 all our successors on the throne and in the government of 
 the Russian nation. 
 
 " Forasmuch as the Great God, who is the author and 
 giver of our life and crown, has constantly illumined us with 
 his light, and upheld us with his support," &c. &c. 
 
 Here Peter sets out in detail that, according to his view, 
 which he takes to be also that of Providence, he regards the 
 Russian nation as destined hereafter to exercise supreme 
 dominion over Europe. He bases his opinion on the fact 
 that the European nations have for the most part fallen into 
 a condition of decrepitude, not far removed from collapse, 
 w In nee he considers that they may easily be subjugated by a 
 new and youthful race, as soon as the latter shall have at- 
 tained its full vigour. 
 
 The Russian monarch looks upon the coming influx of the 
 northerns into the east and west, as a periodical move- 
 ment, which forms part of the scheme of Providence, which, 
 in like manner, by the invasion of the barbarians, effected 
 the regeneration of the Roman world. He compares these 
 emigrations of the polar nations with the inundations of the
 
 37-i HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXX. 
 
 Nile, which at certain seasons fertilise the arid soil of 
 Egypt. 
 
 He adds, that Russia, which he found a brook, and should 
 leave a river, must, under his successors, grow to a mighty 
 sea, destined to fertilise Avorn-out Europe ; and that its 
 waves would advance over all obstacles, if his successors were 
 only capable of guiding the stream. On this account he 
 leaves behind him for their use the following rules, which 
 he recommends to their attention and constant study, even 
 as Moses consigned his tables of the law to the Jewish people. 
 
 RULES. 
 
 " 1. The Russian nation must be constantly on a war 
 footing to keep the soldiers warlike and in good condition. 
 ]N'o rest must be allowed, except for the purpose of relieving 
 the state finances, recruiting the army, or biding the favour- 
 able moment for attack. By this means peace is made sub- 
 servient to war, and war to peace, in the interest of the 
 aggrandisement and increasing prosperity of Russia. 
 
 " 2. Every possible means must be used to invite from the 
 most cultivated European states commanders in war, and 
 philosophers in peace : to enable tne Russian nation to par- 
 ticipate in the advantages of other countries, without losing 
 any of its own. 
 
 " 3. No opportunity must be lost of taking part in the 
 affairs and disputes of Europe, especially in those of Ger- 
 many, which, from its vicinity, is of the most direct interest 
 to us. 
 
 "4. Poland must be divided, by keeping up constant 
 jealousies and confusion there. The authorities must be 
 gained over with money, and the assemblies corrupted so as 
 to influence the election of the kings. "We must get up a 
 party of our own there, send Russian troops into the coun- 
 try, and let them sojourn there so long that they may ulti- 
 mately find some pretext for remaining there for ever. 
 Should the neighbouring states make difficulties, we must 
 appease them for the moment, by allowing them a share of 
 the territory, until we can safely resume what we have thus 
 given away. 
 
 "5. We must take away as much territory as possible 
 from Sweden, and contrive that they shall attack us first, so
 
 A.T>. 1725] WILL OF PETEK I. 375 
 
 as to give us a pretext for their subjugation. "With tins 
 object in view, we must keep Sweden in opposition to Den- 
 mark, and Denmark to Sweden, and sedulously foster their 
 mutual jealousies. 
 
 " 6. The consorts of the Russian princes must always be 
 chosen from among the German princesses, in order to mul- 
 tiply our family alliances with the Germans, and to unite 
 our interests with theirs ; and thus, by consolidating our 
 influence in Germany, to cause it to attach itself sponta- 
 neously to our policy. 
 
 " 7. We must be careful to keep up our commercial alli- 
 ance with England, for she is the power which has most 
 need of our products for her navy, and at the same time may 
 be of the greatest service to us in the development of our 
 own. "We must export wood and other articles in exchange 
 for her gold, and establish permanent connexions between 
 her merchants and seamen and our own. 
 
 " 8. "We must keep steadily extending our frontiers north- 
 ward along the Baltic, and southwards along the shores of 
 the Black Sea. 
 
 " 9. "We must progress as much as possible in the direc- 
 tion of Constantinople rfiid India. He who can once get 
 possession of these points is the real ruler of the world. 
 "With this view we must provoke constant quarrels — at one 
 time witli Turkey, and at another with Persia. "We must 
 establish wharves and docks in the Euxine, and by degrees 
 make ourselves masters of that sea, as well as of the Baltic, 
 which is a doubly important element in the success of our 
 plan. "We must hasten the downfal of Persia : push on to the 
 Persian Gulf ; if possible, re-establish the ancient commer- 
 cial intercourse with the Levant through Syria ; and force 
 our way into the Indies, which are the storehouses of the 
 world ; once there, we can dispense with English gold. 
 
 "10. Moreover, Ave must take pains to establish and 
 maintain an intimate union with Austria, apparently coun- 
 tenancing her schemes for future aggrandisement in Ger- 
 many, and all the while secretly rousing the jealousy of the 
 minor states against her. In this way we must bring it to 
 pass that one or the other party shall seek aid from Bussia ; 
 and thus we shall exercise a sort of protectorate over the 
 country, which will pave the way for future supremacy.
 
 37G nisxoET or hussia. [ch. xxx. 
 
 " 11. We must make the house of Austria interested in 
 the expulsion of the Turks from Europe, and we must 
 neutralise its jealousy at the capture of Constantinople, 
 either by pre-occupying it -with a war with the old European 
 states, or by allowing it a share of the spoil, which we can 
 afterwards resume at our leisure. 
 
 " 12. We must collect around our house, as round a centre, 
 all the detached sections of Greeks which are scattered 
 abroad in Hungary, Turkey, and South Poland ; we must 
 make them look to us for support, and thus by establishing 
 beforehand a sort of ecclesiastical supremacy, we shall pave 
 the way for universal sovereignty. 
 
 " 13. When Sweden is ours, Persia vanquished, Poland 
 subjugated, Turkey conquered — when our armies are united, 
 and the Euxine and the Baltic in the possession of our ships, 
 then we must make sepai'ate and secret overtures, first to 
 the court of Versailles, and then to that of Vienna, to share 
 with them the dominion of the world. If either of them 
 accepts our propositions, which is certain to happen if their 
 ambition and self-interest is properly worked upon, we must 
 make use of one to annihilate the other ; this done, we have 
 only to destroy the remaining one by finding a pretext for 
 a quarrel, the issue of which cannot be doubtful, as Russia 
 will then be already in the absolute possession of the east 
 and of the best part of Europe. 
 
 " 14. Should the improbable case happen of both rejecting 
 the propositions of Russia, then our policy will be to set one 
 against the other, and make them tear each other to pieces. 
 Russia must then watch for and seize the favourable moment, 
 and pour her already assembled hosts into Germany, while 
 two immense fleets, laden with Asiatic hordes, and convoyed 
 by the armed squadrons of the Euxine and the Baltic, set 
 sail simultaneously from the Sea of Asof and the harbour of 
 Archangel. 
 
 " Sweeping along the Mediterranean and the Atlantic they 
 will overrun France on the one side while Germany is over- 
 powered on the other. When these countries are fully con- 
 quered the rest of Europe must fall easily, and without a 
 struggle, under our yoke. Thus Europe can and must be 
 subjugated."
 
 A.D. 1725] PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PETER I. 377 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXI. 
 
 PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OE PETER I. 
 
 Before we part with Peter I., it remains for us to complete 
 our view of bis personal character and habits by some further 
 details, which could not well bave found an earlier place in 
 tbese pages witbout inconveniently breaking the course of 
 the narrative. 
 
 A retail shopkeeper of St. Petersburg would hardly con- 
 tent himself at this day with the paltry wooden hut which 
 Peter built for himself when be was laying the foundation of 
 his capital. Its whole furniture consisted of a bed, a table, 
 a chair, a lathe, and some books and papers. In the shortest 
 days of winter, which are but seven hours long in that lati- 
 tude, he always rose at four o'clock in the morning, and 
 lighted his own fire ; and at six he was to be found at the 
 senate or the admiralty. When he went out it was generally 
 on foot, or in a hackney sledge, and he sometimes borrowed 
 of the first passer-by the money to pay the fare. 
 
 He dined at one o'clock. At his table, which was usually 
 a frugal one, nothing came amiss to him except fish, which 
 this naval monarch could never bear. His favourite food was 
 such as was eaten by the people. He ate little, but often, 
 wherever he might chance to be, and no matter with whom ; 
 and he drank to excess. The czars his predecessors admitted 
 to their table only the ministers of foreign powers, the patri- 
 arch, and such of the grandees as they desired to honour by 
 a distinguished mark of their favour ; seated too on a throne 
 they ate at a separate table. Dutch and English skippers 
 were Peter's favourite boon companions. With a clay pipe 
 in his mouth and a mug of quass in his hand, he was " hail 
 fellow" among them, and swore as roundly as any of them. 
 
 Peter's usual dress was as coarse as his domestic economy, 
 and such as suited the manual occupations to which he was 
 addicted. Many a time he was seen working with his own 
 hands in the manufactories he had established. He often 
 piloted the foreign vessels that came to Cronstadt, and he 
 always received, like other pilots, the pay of a service which 
 he was desirous to render honourable. On one occasion, 
 having been compelled by the state of his health to stop at a
 
 37S HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXXI. 
 
 foundry, he for some hours became a smith. On his return 
 to Moscow, he went to the master of the foundry, and in- 
 quired what he paid his workmen. " "Well, then," said he, 
 " at that rate I have earned eight altins (about thirteen 
 pence), and I am come for the money." Having received it, 
 he said that " with this sum he would buy himself a neAvpair 
 of shoes, of which he was in great want." This was very 
 true ; and he hastened to the market to make his purchase, 
 which he afterwards felt a pleasure in wearing. " See what 
 I earned by the sweat of my brow," said he to his courtiers ; 
 thus priding himself on the fruits of his labour, in the eyes 
 of a nobility whom he wished to cure of the Oriental and 
 haughty indolence with which they were imbued. The prin- 
 ciple was a good one, but as usual he carried it to an extra- 
 vagant excess. 
 
 "With regard to the simplicity of his attire, the following 
 is related in the manuscript memoirs of a diplomatic agent 
 who resided a long time at his court. " On all the solemn 
 festivals, he only wore the uniform of his preobajenskoi 
 regiment of guards. I saw him in 1721 give a public audi- 
 ence to the ambassadors of Persia. He entered the hall of 
 audience in nothing more than a surtout of coarse brown cloth. 
 When he was seated on the throne, the attendants brought 
 him a coat of blue gros-de-Naples, embroidered with silver, 
 which he put on with great precipitation, because the ambas- 
 sadors were waiting for admittance. During this time he 
 turned his eyes towards the window where the czaritza had 
 placed herself to observe the ceremony. Catharine was heard 
 repeatedly to burst out into fits of laughter, as the czar 
 seemed to her to be astonished at seeing himself so finely 
 dressed ; and the czar laughed at it himself, as also did all 
 the spectators. As soon as the ambassadors were gone, Peter I. 
 threw off his embroidered coat, and put on his surtout." 
 
 It may well be conceived with what contempt Peter would 
 treat the pompous etiquette observed by his predecessors in 
 the first audience given to ambassadors. Peter received those 
 sent to him without ceremony, wherever he chanced to be ; 
 for he said they were accredited to his person, and not to this 
 or that hall or palace. He gave his first audience to the 
 Austrian ambassador at five in the morning, amidst the con- 
 fusion of setting to rights his cabinet of natural history.
 
 A.D. 1725] PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PETER I. 379 
 
 Priutz, the Prussian minister, had to carry his credentials on 
 board a ship. The czar was aloft, and bawled to him to climb 
 up into the maintop. Printz pleaded his want of practice as 
 an excuse for declining this aerial reception, and the czar came 
 down to him on the quarter-deck. 
 
 The ministers of foreign courts, who were forced to accom- 
 modate themselves to Peter's humours, found that the honour 
 of sharing Ins occupations and pleasures was not altogether 
 free from danger. One day he invited some of them to a trip 
 by water from Petersburg to Cronstadt. It took place on 
 board a Dutch vessel, which was steered by the czar. About 
 half-way an ugly squall came on. One of the ambassadors 
 urged him to make for the shore. " "We shall all be lost," 
 said the terrified landsman, " and your majesty will have to 
 answer for my life to the king my master." Peter laughed 
 in his face, and replied, " Sir, if you are drowned, we shall all 
 go to the bottom with you, and there will be nobody left to 
 answer to your court for your excellency's life." 
 
 The Eussians in Peter's time could no longer say: " God 
 is on high, and the czar is far oft';" for such was the rapidity 
 of his movements, that it seemed to them as if he was every- 
 where at the same time. The universal impulse which he 
 gave to his subjects he everywhere kept up by his unexpected 
 appearance. In all places, and at all times, each one looked 
 for his arrival. They felt assured that nothing could escape 
 his experienced eye, and that he would be certain to make 
 himself obeyed. Service about the person of such a monarch 
 could be no sinecure. "Whoever happened to be nearest him 
 had to put his hand to anything, no matter what, which the 
 czar required to be done at the moment. His dentchik, or 
 officer in attendance, had often to serve him in bleu of a pil- 
 low. He always slept an hour after dinner ; when he was 
 not at home, the deck of a ship, the floor of a hut, the bare 
 ground, or now and then straw, when he could get it, served 
 liim as a bed. The dentchik had then to lie down, and sup- 
 port his master's head on his belly; and in that position it 
 was his business to remain as mute and motionless as the 
 bolster he represented. "Woe to him if he coughed or 
 sneezed, for the czar's waking was terrible when it was not 
 spontaneous ; kicks, thumps, a thrashing with a rope's end 
 or a stick awaited the unlucky man who troubled his repose.
 
 3S0 HISTORY Or RUSSIA. [CH. XXXI. 
 
 One morning, the czar having come sooner than the sena- 
 tors to the hall where they assembled, he belaboured them all 
 soundly as they entered, with the exception of the oldest 
 among them. It is said, too, that having, on some occasions, 
 applied these brutal corrections by mistake, he thought it 
 quite natural to tell the ministers whom lie had beaten with- 
 out a reason, that he would make an allowance for this 
 error the next time that they deserved punishment ; and 
 he kept his word in all these instances. All this is but 
 too well proved; and it is also true that he daily, and in 
 public, cuffed or caned his principal officers, for slight faults 
 as well as for serious ones, almost without discontinuing his 
 conversations with those great personages, and without con- 
 ceiving that he had degraded them in their own eyes or in 
 those of others ! — Yet such acts of boorish violence as these 
 are susceptible of explanation ; they admit even of excuse in 
 a country which, for several centuries, had known no sub- 
 mission but that of slavery. 
 
 There chastisement, inflicted by the hand of the prince, 
 seemed almost a distinction, as it implied a sort of intimacy, 
 a vassalship immediately dependent on him ; it was looked 
 upon as a fatherly correction. So much did every one, when 
 in the presence of the czar, consider himself as being in a state 
 of minority, of childhood even ; and so absolutely was there 
 between him and his subjects not merely the distance be- 
 tween master and slave, but also that which exists between a 
 man who has attained the age of reason and the beings who 
 have not yet acquired the exercise of that faculty. In his 
 presence all were divested of free-will ; he was their living 
 and irrevocable destiny. • 
 
 The Eussians, nevertheless, and especially since the usur- 
 pation of Godunof, were not unaware of the possibility of 
 conspiracy ; but as long as they did obey, it was thus they 
 obeyed : there was no other mode known there of commanding 
 and yielding obedience. Even those ambassadors, who had 
 become polished by residing for many years in civilised coun- 
 tries, when they entered again into this murky atmosphere of 
 slavery, immorality, and barbarism, were obliged to change 
 their eyes and their hearts, in order to accommodate them- 
 selves to their situation. They soon forgot there the whole 
 of what they had learned. In justice, then, to the reformer,
 
 A.D. 1725] PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PETER I. 381 
 
 and in palliation of his faults, we must consider what an in- 
 fluence such hrutal and deeply-rooted habits in the nation 
 must have had on himself; especially since to instruct the 
 people and make himself understood, it was necessary he 
 should be perpetually in contact with them, and speak their 
 own coarse language ; and since, to drag them from the dark- 
 ness in which they were involved, fear being, as he supposed, 
 their only tangible point, he thought himself compelled to 
 seize them by that single hold. 
 
 Often he exclaimed to those about him, " You may make 
 war on wild beasts, it is a pleasure which is not unbecoming 
 to you ; but as for me, I cannot amuse myself in such a man- 
 ner, while I have so many to combat in my obstinate and un- 
 tractable subjects. They are animals whom I have dressed 
 like men ; I often despair of overcoming their pertinacity, 
 and eradicating their wickedness from their hearts. Let me, 
 therefore, be no longer painted as a cruel tyrant by those who 
 are unacquainted with the circumstances which have imperi- 
 ously directed my conduct ; what numbers of persons have 
 thwarted my designs, rendered abortive my most beneficial 
 plans for the country, and compelled me to use the utmost 
 rigour ! I sought for their assistance, and appealed to their 
 patriotism : those who have comprehended and seconded me, 
 aud have been the most useful to my people, I have loaded 
 with rewards ; they have been my only favourites !" 
 
 AVe must do justice to the indulgent patience which this 
 passionate master manifested towards all projects that had 
 a useful end in view. It is known with what attention he 
 caused all the experiments to be made in his presence ; with 
 what kindness he rewarded the authors, and even, not un- 
 ii-equently, when they had deceived themselves. He wished, 
 he said, to encourage them in search of something better, 
 and he endeavoured to put them in the right way, by explain- 
 ing to them the causes of their mistake with afl'ability and 
 kindness. 
 
 It was also the same chief, so inflexible, so absolute, and 
 whose military code was so terrible, who behaved like the 
 equal of his meanest soldiers, when he was not acting in the 
 character of their commander. He accepted their invitations 
 as readily as those of the highest nobles of his court, repulsing 
 no one, and, as we are told by his daughter, " standing god-
 
 382 history or KTJSSIA. [ch. xxxi. 
 
 father as often as he was asked." There, without either feel- 
 ing or inspiring constraint, seated at their humble repasts, he 
 seemed to be more gratified than at the most brilliant enter- 
 tainments: "then," to use the very words of the empress 
 Elizabeth, "a kiss given to the lying-in woman, and a 
 ducat put under the bolster, was all, and that gave satis- 
 faction." 
 
 A sovereign of such popular manners was no longer one of 
 those terrestrial deities, as the national historians denominate 
 their ancient czars, who, far from mingling familiarly with 
 their subjects, frightened them with their rare and formidable 
 presence. Had the Eussians been imbued with any tincture 
 of classical lore, Peter might rather have reminded them of 
 the demi-gods of the heroic ages, the inventors of arts, and 
 the conquerors of monsters, or, in other words, of barbarism. 
 Like those rugged heroes, confiding in his colossal stature 
 and extraordinary strength, he used to traverse the wildest 
 countries alone. Like them, too, he combated and overcame 
 the robbers whom he there met with ; and, like Csesar, he 
 also ransomed his life and liberty from their hands. 
 
 Thus, one day, on a lonely road, he found himself unex- 
 pectedly engaged with eight villains, whose vehicle stopped 
 his ; but, with a vigorous arm, he seized one of them by the 
 hair, pulled him out from amidst his companions, and dragged 
 him to a place of safety, where he compelled him to disclose 
 the haunt of his accomplices. On another occasion, bein" 
 surprised by a more numerous troop, he, with a sword in one 
 hand, and a pistol in the other, held them at bay. " I am 
 the czar," he exclaimed ; " what do you require of me ?" 
 But, this time, he was forced to capitulate, and even to re- 
 main in the power of the banditti, till one of them returned 
 from the neighbouring city with his ransom, for the payment 
 of which he had been obliged to give a written order. 
 
 These robbers were masters of the highways in open day, 
 and they seized upon the towns, and even upon Moscow 
 itself, as soon as the sun set. In some weeks, there were 
 found in the streets of that capital no fewer than sixty bodies 
 of its murdered inhabitants. Barricades were obliged to be 
 erected. The ferocious Komadonovsky, the czar's chosen re- 
 presentative, conquered these ruffians by surpassing them in 
 cruelty : he had them hunted down like wild beasts ; then he
 
 A.D. 1725] PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PETER I. 383 
 
 sentenced them, after Lis manner, in a moment, with a single 
 word, without appeal, always to death, without hope of par- 
 don. He hung them up alive, by hooks through their sides, 
 two hundred at a time, and left them to expire thus, in the 
 most horrible agony, in the public roads. This inundation of 
 criminals had its source in the weight of the taxes, the seve- 
 rity of the compulsory labour and of the recruiting, and the 
 general indifference to human rights and human feelings with 
 which the imperial reformer pursued his designs. 
 
 Peter was the most skilful turner in his empire, and he 
 himself translated a work on the principles of that art, 
 another on those of architecture by Leclerc, and one on the 
 art of constructing canal-locks and foundries. He also or- 
 dered the translation of numbers of useful books into Rus- 
 sian. H in any of these versions (as happened with respect 
 to that of Puffendorf ) the translator modified passages which 
 were severe upon the Russian nation, Peter made them 
 be given literally, and, reprimanding the translator, ex- 
 claimed, " That he did not want to flatter his subjects, but 
 to instruct them, and, especially, to show them what they 
 had been, and what foreigners thought of them, that he 
 might stimulate them to change, by their exertions, the 
 opinion of Europe." 
 
 Like Charlemagne and Napoleon, whom he resembled in 
 bis genius for vast undertakings, Peter could apply himself 
 with equal ardour to the most minute details. Nothing ap- 
 peared to him so insignificant as not to engage his attention, 
 as soon as he thought any benefit might arise out of it to his 
 country. During one of his foreign tours he even sent a 
 model of a coffin to Russia. Shortly before the conclusion of 
 the Swedish war, he had brush-makers, basket-makers, even 
 butter-women with butter-firkins, nay rat-catchers and Dutch 
 cats, brought to Russia. He had heard that the Dutch cats 
 were famous for preventing the mischief occasioned by mice 
 and rats in ships and houses. So attentive was he to the 
 minutest objects, that, perceiving the Russian boors made 
 better mat-shoes than the Finnish peasants in the neighbour- 
 hood of St. Petersburg, he distributed Russian mat-shoe- 
 makers in Finland, that they might communicate their art to 
 the Finns. 
 
 It appears, from the account given by field-marshal Munich,
 
 38-1 HISTORY OF EUSSIA. [CH. XXXI. 
 
 that the whole expenses of Peter's court hardly amounted to 
 60,000 roubles a year, and that there was no service of plate, 
 no chamberlains, grooms of the bedchamber, or pages. The 
 court consisted, except on extraordinary occasions, of only 
 ten or twelve dentchiks, and as many grenadiers of the 
 guards. The festivities were of the grossest kind. In the 
 memoirs of Bergholz, the Holstein high-chamberlain, we find 
 at almost every page accounts of barbarous drinking-bouts, 
 at which Peter compelled the whole of the ladies, the duke of 
 Holstein, and all around him, to indulge in excessive, and 
 sometimes even deadly potations. Among the Sloane papers 
 in the British Museum there is a manuscript in the hand- 
 writing of Dr. Birch, which gives the following account of 
 the palace entertainments : 
 
 " There are twenty-four cooks belonging to the kitchen of 
 the Russian court, who are all Bussians, and as people of 
 that nation use a great deal of onions, garlic, and train oil 
 in dressing their meat, and employ linseed and walnut oil for 
 their provisions, there is such an intolerable stink in their 
 kitchen that no stranger is able to bear it, especially the 
 cooks being such nasty fellows, that the very sight of them 
 is enough to turn one's stomach ; these are the men who, 
 on great festivals, dress about seventy or eighty or more dishes. 
 But the fowls which are for the czar's own eating are very 
 often dressed by his grand marshal, Alseffiof, who is running 
 up and down, with his apron before him, among the other 
 cooks till it is time to take up dinner, when he puts on his 
 fine clothes and full-bottomed wig, and helps to serve up 
 the dinner. The number of persons invited is generally 
 two or three hundred, though there is room for no more 
 than above a hundred at four or five tables ; but as there is 
 no place assigned to anybody, and none of the Bussians are 
 willing to go home with an empty stomach, everybody is 
 obliged to seize his chair and hold it with all his force, if he 
 will not have it snatched from him. 
 
 " The czar being come in, and having chosen a place for 
 himself, there is such scuffling and fighting for chairs, that 
 nothing more scandalous can be seen in any company, 
 though the czar does not mind it in the least, nor does he 
 take care for putting a stop to such disorder, pretending that 
 a ceremony, and the formal regulations of a marshal, make
 
 A.D. 1725] PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PETER I. 385 
 
 people sit uneasy and spoil the pleasure of conversation. 
 Several foreign ministers have complained of this to the 
 czar, and refuse to dine any more at court, but all the 
 answer they got was, that it was not the czar's business to 
 turn master of the ceremonies, and please foreigners, nor 
 was it his intention to abolish the freedom once introduced ; 
 this obliged strangers for the future to follow the Russian 
 fashion, in defending the possession of their chairs, by cull- 
 ing and boxing their opposer. The company thus sitting 
 down to table without any manner of grace, they all sit so 
 crowded together, that they have much ado to lift their hands 
 to their mouths, and if a stranger happens to sit between two 
 Russians, which is commo.nly the case, he is sure of losing 
 his stomach, though he should have happened to have eat 
 nothing for two days before. Carpenters and shipwrights 
 sit next to the czar ; but senators, ministers, generals, 
 priests, sailors, buffoons of all kinds, sit pell-mell, without 
 any distinction. The first course consists of nothing but 
 cold meats, among which are hams, dried tongues, and the 
 like, which, not being liable to such tricks as shall be men- 
 tioned hereafter, strangers ordinarily make their whole meal 
 of them, without tasting anything else, though generally 
 speaking, every one takes his dinner beforehand at home. 
 
 " Soups and roasted meats make the second course, and 
 pastry the third. As soon as one sits down, one is obliged 
 to drink a cup of brandy, after which they ply you with 
 great glasses of adulterated Toka3 r , and other vitiated wines, 
 and between whiles, a bumper of the strongest English beer, 
 by which mixture of liquors every one of the guests is 
 fuddled before the soup is served up. The company being 
 in this condition, make such a noise, racket, halloing, that it 
 is impossible to hear one another, or even to hear the music, 
 which is playing in the next room, consisting of a sort of 
 trumpets and cornets, for the czar hates violins, and with 
 this revelling noise and uproar the czar is extremely diverted, 
 particularly if the guests fall to boxing and get bloody 
 noses. 
 
 " Formerly the company had no napkin given them, but 
 instead of it they had a piece of very coarse linen given 
 them by a servant, who brought in the whole piece under 
 his arm, and cut oft* half an ell for every person, which they 
 
 vol. i. 2 c
 
 386 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXXI. 
 
 are at liberty to carry home with them, for it had been 
 observed that these pilfering guests used sometimes to 
 pocket the napkins ; but at present two or three Russians 
 must make shift with but one napkin, which they pull and 
 haul for, like hungry dogs for a bone. Each person of the 
 company has but one plate during dimier, so if some Rus- 
 sian does not care to mix the sauces of the different dishes 
 together, he pours the soup that is left in his plate either 
 into the dish or into his neighbour's plate, or even under the 
 table, after which he licks his plate clean with his finger, and, 
 last of all, wipes it with the tablecloth. The tables are 
 each thirty or forty feet long, and ten and a half broad ; 
 three or four messes of one and the same course are served 
 up to each table ; the dessert consists of divers sorts of pastry 
 and fruits, but the czaritza's table is furnished with sweet- 
 meats : however, it is to be observed that these sweetmeats 
 are only set out on great festivals for a show, and that the 
 Russians of the best fashion have nothing for their dessert 
 but the produce of the kitchen-garden, as peas, beans, &c, 
 all raw. At great entertainments it frequently happens that 
 nobody is allowed to go out of the room from noon till mid- 
 night, hence it is easy to imagine what pickle a room must 
 be in, that is full of people who drink like beasts, and noue 
 of them escape being dead drunk. 
 
 " They often tie eight or ten young mice in a string, and 
 hide them under green peas, or in such soups as the Russians 
 have the greatest appetite to, which sets them a kicking and 
 vomiting in a most beastly manner, when they come to the 
 bottom and discover the trick ; they often bake cats, wolves, 
 ravens, and the like, in their pastries, and when the company 
 have eaten them up, they tell them what they have in their 
 guts. 
 
 " The present butler is one of the czar's buffoons, to 
 whom he has given the name of Wiaschi, with this privilege, 
 that if any one else calls him by that name he has leave to 
 drub him with his wooden sword. If, therefore, anybody, 
 by the czar's setting them on, calls out Wiaschi, as the 
 fellow does not know exactly who it was, he falls a beating 
 them all round, beginning with prince Mentchikof and ending 
 with the last of the company, without excepting even the 
 ladies, whom he strips of their head clothes, as he does the
 
 A.D. 1725] PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OE PETER I. 387 - 
 
 old Russians with their wigs, which he tramples upon, on 
 which occasion it is pleasant enough to see the variety of 
 their bald pates. Besides these employments or entertain- 
 ments, the said "Wiaschi is also surveyor of the ice, and 
 executioner for torturing people, on which occasion he gives 
 them the knout himself, and his dexterity in the business 
 has already procured him above thirty thousand thalers, the 
 sixth part of the confiscated estates of the sufferer being his 
 perquisite." 
 
 Drunkenness was not the only kind of sensuality in the 
 indulgence of which Peter habitually outraged all decency. 
 Excessivelv libidinous by temperament, and with a mind so 
 utterly devoid of ideality as to be incapable of comprehend- 
 ing love except in its purely animal aspect, he pursued his 
 promiscuous amours with the effrontery of a cynic, and made 
 them a common topic of his jocular conversation even with 
 Catharine. His conduct with his niece, the duchess of 
 Mecklenburg, before the whole court of Prussia, was such as 
 a regard for the most ordinary decency altogether precludes 
 us from describing, and would have been monstrous even in 
 the rudest savage. Villebois, his admiral, accuses him of still 
 more abominable depravity.* 
 
 Peter had a confused consciousness of the evil that predo- 
 minated in his misshapen character : witness his sorrowful 
 ejaculation, that " he had undertaken to reform others and 
 could not reform himself." He often deplored the defects 
 of his education, and used to tell his daughters " that he 
 envied them in that respect, and would give one of his 
 fingers to have had the same advantages that they had." 
 Unhappily those advantages Avere all neutralised by the curse 
 of his own example. Often he repented of the violence 
 committed in his drunken rage, and strove to make amends 
 
 * "Les habitudes vicieuses auxquelles nous faisons icy allusion sont 
 si peu considere'es en Russia comme un crime, que les lois n'e'dictent 
 aucune peine contre ceux qui s'en rendent coupables. Parmy les 
 soldats seulement, ceux qui sont pris ca flagrant de'lit passent trois, 
 fois par tea baguettes. Cette punition a etc ordonnec par le reglement 
 militaire fait par Pierre I", qui luymeme n'etoit pas plus exempt que 
 les autres de ee vice. 11 c'toit un vray monstre do luxurc, et, quoique 
 laboricux, il s'abandonnoit parfois, si Ton peut s'exprimer ainsy, a. des 
 acces de fureur amoureuse dans lesqucls l';ige ct le sexe meme luy 
 importoient mediocreracnt." — Memoires Secrets de la Cour de liitssie. 
 
 2c2
 
 388 IITSTOET OF EUSSIA. [CH. XXXI. 
 
 to bis victims by favours and assiduous personal attentions ; 
 but tbese were not always successful. They were unavailing 
 in tbe case of Leblond, a French architect, whom be bad 
 unjustly struck, and who could not survive tbe insult. 
 Towards culprits, or tbose whom be chose to consider such, 
 be acted with unmitigated barbarity, because in such cases 
 his perverted conscience was in unison with his cruel im- 
 pulses. An anecdote related of him is highly significant in 
 this respect : Once as he lay very sick it was represented to 
 him that he should now, according to the practice of tbe 
 former czars, grant a free pardon to several capital delin- 
 quents, in order by this pious act to obtain from God the 
 speedier restoration of his health. Instead of following this 
 superstitious adA'ice, he commanded these culprits to be 
 immediately brought to trial, and executed without loss 
 of time if they were found guilty, as be hoped that this 
 would be more agreeable to Grod than letting such villains 
 loose again upon the world. 
 
 We have here the key to Peter's conduct in criminal 
 procedures. It was in the exaggeration of this spirit that 
 his bloodiest deeds were done. When he was most inhuman 
 he believed himself to be most just ; for like lord Angelo, he 
 knew not how sovereignly unjust must be tbe judge whose 
 rigour is not tempered by mercy. 
 
 He professed unbounded admiration for the memory of 
 Ivan tbe Terrible; but he was not such an incarnate fiend 
 as his prototype. His bold and earnest nature sympathised 
 with all that resembled it, and a true word bravely spoken 
 bad power to quell his passion in its fiercest mood. One 
 day in a fit of anger on board a boat, be seized one of his 
 companions, a senator, and was about to fling him into the 
 water. " You may drown me," said the senator, "but your 
 history will tell of this." The czar at once set him down 
 again unhurt. Peter's overwarm admirer, the count de 
 Segur, has pleaded for him a munber of such extenuating 
 instances, some of which we will give in the words of that 
 enthusiastic biographer. The first relates to the czar's con- 
 duct when, on the 25th of April, 1719, he lost tbe last 
 remaining son whom he had by Catharine. 
 
 His officers tell us that, at that period, tbe czar being 
 seized with tbose convulsions to which he was subject, they saw
 
 A.D. 1725] PEESONAL CHAEACTEEISTICS OF PETEE I. 389 
 
 the muscles of his face become contracted, and his neck stif- 
 fened and twisted in a frightful manner. Till that time, 
 during such painful paroxysms, which lasted for several hours, 
 the presence and voice of a woman had possessed the power 
 to quiet him ; but, on this occasion, he repulsed all importu- 
 nate attentions. For three days and three nights, over- 
 whelmed with sorrow, this colossus remained alone, shut up, 
 stretched on the ground, hiding himself from the light of 
 day, and from every eye, rejecting all food, and waiting im- 
 patiently for the end of a life, which thenceforth must be 
 without hope and without a future. 
 
 They feel a delight in calling to mind with what resolution 
 their great senator, their sage, for so they denominate Dolgo- 
 ruki, came to snatch him from this deep dejection. They 
 relate how, speaking to him through the door, which he 
 threatened to break open, he reproached him with deserting 
 the empire, declared to him that his successor should be 
 chosen, and at length forced him to open the door and show 
 himself to his whole senate, whom Dolgoruki had brought 
 with him, and whose unexpected presence, by astonishing 
 the czar, silenced his sorrow, and compelled him to repress 
 his despair. 
 
 In the year of famine, when, by an ukase which was 
 already signed, Peter was about to sacrifice Novgorod to 
 Petersburg, Dolgoruki had not co-operated in the injustice ; 
 he found it committed. But then, seizing, in full senate, the 
 obnoxious ukase, he, at the risk of his life, suspended the 
 execution of it, carried it away with him, and went to the 
 next church to receive the sacrament, which the priest was 
 then administering. Intelligence of this offence was instantly 
 conveyed to the czar ; he hurried to the senate, and sent orders 
 to Dolgoruki to appear there immediately. But the latter, 
 without turning his head, or diverting his attention from 
 heaven to earth, replied, " I hear you," and went on with his 
 prayers. A second and more imperious message had as little 
 effect upon him. " I give unto Ca?sar the things that are 
 Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's," he replied, 
 unmoved ; and it was not till the holy sacrament was over 
 that he took his way to the czar. 
 
 As soon as the monarch saw him, he rushed furiously at 
 him, seized him, drew his sword, and, with a threatening voice,
 
 390 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [ch. XXXI. 
 
 exclaimed, " You shall perish !" But Dolgoruki remained 
 unmoved, and pointing to his heart, " Strike !" said he, firmly ; 
 "I do not fear to die in a just cause !" On hearing these 
 words, the prince dropped his hand, his voice softened, he 
 stepped back, and said in a tone of surprise, " But, tell me, 
 what could have made you so daring ?"— " Yourself," replied 
 the minister ; " did not you order that the truth should be 
 told you, with respect to the interest of your people ?" He 
 then explained ; and Peter, who was convinced by what he 
 heard, thanked him for his courageous sincerity, and begged 
 pardon for his violence. 
 
 He, however, perpetually relapsed into that violence ; the 
 sword of the despot often again menaced the frank and reso- 
 lute minister ; but his arm was always arrested by the ascen- 
 dancy, which with him was irresistible, of reason, supported 
 by masculine and patriotic virtue. 
 
 On the occasion of the new and extraordinary compulsory 
 labour, which was imposed for the excavation of the canal of 
 Ladoga, Dolgoruki, indignant at such an abuse of power, 
 dared to destroy, in the midst of the senate, the order which 
 his master had himself dictated. On witnessing this unheard- 
 of action, the senators started from their feet in affright ; they 
 removed to a distance, and kept as far as possible from this 
 sacrilegious being, on whom the thunder was about to fall, 
 for the terrible czar had just entered. But Dolgoruki re- 
 mained in his place ; and unastonished either by his own 
 boldness or the violence of the czar, he opposed to the first 
 burst of wrath from his irritated master, the glory of such a 
 noble reign which he was on the point of tarnishing, and the 
 good of his subjects, whom doubtless he did not, like Charles 
 XII., desire to ruin. Then he stated the reasons of his in- 
 dignation, while at the same time he himself blamed its vio- 
 lence. 
 
 It is said, that the whole of the senators were struck with 
 astonishment to see the furious glances of their formidable 
 czar lose their fierceness ; his features, which were swollen 
 with anger, become composed ; his lips, which foamed with 
 threats, acknowledge his error, and revoke his order ; and his 
 pride, jealous as it was, far from punishing the blunt sin- 
 cerity of his councillor, satisfied witli the regret which he had 
 expressed to him.
 
 A.D. 1725] PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OE PETER I. 391 
 
 Nor was it with respect to this great personage alone that 
 Peter displayed such moderation and love of justice ; for 
 proof to the contrary, we may refer, among other instances, 
 to Kreitz, and even to an isvosthick. The latter was nothing 
 more than a person who let out horses, which, in the simpli- 
 city of his manners, the czar was accustomed to hire in the 
 same way as his people ; but one day, being made angry by 
 their slowness, he drove them without mercy, and one of them 
 having died in consequence, the owner demanded the value 
 of it. Peter refused to pay it ; the isvosthick had the boldness 
 to resort to the law ; his sovereign agreed to abide by the de- 
 cision of the tribunal, appeared before it, defended himself, 
 lost his cause, and submitted without a murmur to the ver- 
 dict which was given against him. 
 
 Kreitz was an admiral ; he had lost, by his disobedience, 
 two of the men-of-war on which the czar set such a value, and 
 which he had, perhaps, built with his own hands ! Accord- 
 ingly, the council of war condemned the criminal to be shot. 
 But Kreitz appealed to foreign admiralties, and Peter not 
 only gave his assent beforehand to their decision, but when 
 they confirmed the fatal sentence, he revoked it. He "com- 
 muted the punishment of the offender ; nay, more, at the 
 expiration of twenty-four hours, he remitted even the milder 
 penalty, and gave to this officer, who was more unfortunate 
 than guilty, the administrative superintendence of a navy, 
 with the vessels composing which he did not think it proper 
 to entrust him again. 
 
 Having quoted so far from Segur's pleadings in abate- 
 ment of the strictures pronounced by history upon his hero, 
 we dismiss Peter, miscalled the Great, with the following re- 
 marks of his countrywoman, the princess Hashkof, which give 
 in many respects a just view of his character : 
 
 " Before the birth of this monarch, Kussia had made great 
 conquests : Kasan, Astrakhan, and Siberia, as well as the rich 
 and warlike nation known under the title of the Golden 
 Horde, had Bubmitted to our arms ; and long before any of 
 his ancestors had been called to fill the throne, the arts had 
 taken refuge, and were cherished in liussia. I am ready to 
 acknowledge the merits of this extraordinary man; he had 
 genius, activity, and an unfeigned zeal to pi*omote the 
 improvement of his country ; but how were these qualities
 
 392 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXXII. 
 
 overwhelmed by his total want of education, and the tyranny 
 of his outrageous passions ! Cruel and brutal, he treated all 
 without distinction, who were subject to his sway, as slaves 
 who were born to suffer. Had he possessed the mind of a 
 great legislator, he would have permitted the example of 
 other nations, the effect of commerce, and the sure reform 
 of time, to have had their united weight in bringing about 
 those improvements which he, with violence, introduced ; or 
 had he known how to estimate the noble and respectable 
 qualities of our ancestors, he would never have sought to 
 efface the originality of their character, by the impress of 
 foreign habits and manners, which he prized so much above 
 our own. "With regard to laws, this monarch, after setting 
 aside the code of his forefathers, so often changed his own, 
 with no other view, sometimes, as it would seem, than to 
 assert his right of doing so at pleasure, that they soon ceased 
 to inspire reverence, and consequently lost half their power. 
 The nobility, as well as the slaves, were equally the victims 
 of his innovating frenzy ; the one he deprived of their 
 conservative tribunal, their only appeal in cases of op- 
 pression, and the other of all their privileges. And for 
 what ? to clear the way for the introduction of a military 
 despotism — of all forms of government the one most hateful 
 and pernicious. The vain-glorious aiming at the fame of a 
 creator hastened the building of Petersburg, by circum- 
 stances so little mingled with mercy, that thousands of 
 workmen perished in the marshes. One of his edifices, 
 indeed, of great labour and expense, might have been spared, 
 had it not been wanting to the glory at which the founder 
 of the city aspired, and that is an admiralty and dockyards 
 on the banks of a river which no labour could render navi- 
 gable for ships of war, or even for merchant vessels with the 
 most moderate cargoes." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 CATHARINE I. PETER II. 
 
 While Peter was yet lying in the agonies of death, several 
 opposite parties were caballing to dispose of the crown. At
 
 A.D 1725] CATIIAEINE I. 393 
 
 a meeting of many among the principal nobility, it was secretly 
 determined to arrest Catharine at the moment of his disso- 
 lution, and to place Peter Alexievitch upon the throne.* 
 Bassevitz, apprised of this resolution, repaired, in person, to 
 the empress, although it was already night. " My grief and 
 consternation," replied Catharine, " render me incapable of 
 acting for myself : do you and prince Mentchikof consult 
 together, and I will embrace the measures which you shall 
 approve in my name." Bassevitz, finding Mentchikof asleep, 
 awakened and informed him of the pressing danger which 
 threatened the empress and her party. As no time remained 
 for much deliberation, the prince instantly seized the trea- 
 sure ; secured the fortress ; gained the officers of the guards 
 by bribes and promises ; also a few of the nobility, and the 
 principal clergy. These partisans being convened in the 
 palace, Catharine made her appearance : she claimed the 
 throne in right of her coronation at Moscow; exposed the 
 ill-efiects of a minority ; and promised, that, " so far from 
 depriving the grand-duke of the crown, she would receive it 
 only as a sacred deposit, to be restored to him when she should 
 be united, in another world, to an adored husband, whom she 
 was now upon the point of losing." 
 
 The pathetic manner with which she uttered this address, 
 and the tears which accompanied it, added to the previous 
 distribution of large sums of money and jewels, produced the 
 desired effect : at the close of this meeting, the remainder of 
 the night was employed in making the necessary preparations 
 to ensure her accession in case of the emperor's death. 
 
 Peter at length expired. This event being made known, 
 the senate, the generals, the principal nobility and clergy, 
 hastened to the palace to proclaim the new sovereign. The 
 adherents of the grand-duke seemed secure of success ; and 
 the friends of Catharine were avoided as persons doomed to 
 destruction. At this juncture Bassevitz whispered one of 
 the opposite party, " The empress is mistress of the treasure 
 and the fortress ; she has gained over the guards and the 
 synod, and many of the chief nobility ; even here she has 
 more followers than you imagine : advise, therefore, your 
 
 * " Tant qu'on lui savoit un soufle de vie, personne n'osoit 1'cntrc- 
 prendrv. Telle etoit la force du respect et de la terreur, qu'imprima ce 
 he'ros." — Basaevitz, p. .'374.
 
 394 HISTOBY OF ETJSSIA. [CH. XXXII. 
 
 friends to make no opposition as they value their heads." 
 This information being rapidly circulated, Bassevitz gave the 
 appointed signal ; and the two regiments of guards, who had 
 been gained by a largess* to declare for Catharine, and had 
 already surrounded the palace, beat to arms. " Who has 
 dared," exclaimed prince Kepnin, the commander-in-chief, 
 "to order out the troops without my knowledge ?" — "I," 
 returned general Buttnrlin, " without pretending to dispute 
 your authority, in obedience to the commands of ray most 
 gracious mistress." This short reply was followed by a dead 
 silence. In this moment of suspense and anxiety, Mentchikof 
 entered, preceding Catharine, supported by the duke of Hol- 
 stein. She attempted to speak, but was prevented by sighsf 
 and tears from giving utterance to her words ; at length, 
 recovering herself, " I come," she said, " notwithstanding the 
 grief which now overwhelms me, to assure you that, submis- 
 sive to the wdl of my departed husband, whose memory will 
 be ever dear to me, I am ready to devote my days to the 
 painful occupations of government, until Providence shall 
 summon me to follow him." Then, after a short pause, she 
 artfully added, " If the grand-duke will profit by my in- 
 structions, perhaps I shall have the consolation, during my 
 wretched widowhood, of forming for you an emperor worthy 
 of the blood and the name of him whom you have now 
 
 * The Austrian envoy says that the guards received each fi/. 
 
 f The same person asserts that Catharine, although she secretly re- 
 joiced at Peter's death, played the farce admirably; she ceased not her 
 lamentations and groans; she repeatedly kissed the body; screamed 
 and swooned without end; so that the by-standers, who were not ac- 
 quainted with the real state of the case, were moved with compassion, 
 while the others could hardly refrain from laughing. Bassevitz also 
 relates the grief of the empress, which he, on the contrary, like a true 
 courtier, affirms to have been real : — " Insensible a tout autre sentiment, 
 qu'a celui de l'afniction, l'empe'ratrice n'avoit pas quitte son che'vet de 
 trois nuits." And again : " Catharine, au lieu de hater ses pas vers eux 
 et le sceptre, embrassoit vainenicnt son Epoux agonizant, qui ne la 
 connoissoit plus, et ne pouvoit s'en de'tacher." — "Elle e'toit au reste," 
 says Villebois, "une des plus belles pleureuses qu'on put imaginer, et 
 quantitc' de gens aecouroient au palais imperial, uniquement pour la 
 voir pleurer et soupirer. J'ay connu entr'autres deux Anglois, qui 
 n'ont pas laisse passer un seul de ces quarante jours sans y aller; et 
 j'avoue que moymcme, bien que je scnsse a quoy m'en tenir sur la 
 sincc'ritc de ces larmes, j'en e'tois toujours aussy emu que si j'avuis 
 assists k une representation cFAndromaque."
 
 A.D. 1725] CATHAKI>-£ I. 395 
 
 irretrievably lost." — "As tins," replied Mentchikof, "is a 
 crisis of such importance to the good of the empire, and 
 requires the most mature deliberation, your majesty will per- 
 mit us to confer without restraint ; that this whole affair may 
 be transacted without reproach, not only in the opinion of 
 the present age, but also of posterity." — "Acting as I do," 
 answered Catharine, " more for the public good than for my 
 own advantage, I am not afraid to submit all my concerns to 
 the judgment of such an enlightened assembly; you have not 
 only my permission to confer with freedom, but I lay my 
 commands upon you all, to deliberate maturely on this im- 
 portant subject ; and promise to adopt whatever may be the 
 result of your decisions." At the conclusion of these words, 
 the assembly retired into another apartment, and the doors 
 were locked. 
 
 It was previously settled by Mentchikof and his party 
 that Catharine should be empress ; and the guards, who sur- 
 rounded the palace, with drums beating and colours flying, 
 effectually vanquished all opposition. The only circumstance, 
 therefore, which remained, was to give a just colour to her 
 title, by persuading the assembly that Peter intended to have 
 named her his successor. For this purpose, Mentchikof de- 
 manded of that emperor's secretary whether his late master 
 had left any written declaration of his intentions ? The 
 secretary replied, " That a little before Ins last journey to Mos- 
 cow he had destroyed a will ; and that he had frequently ex- 
 pressed his design of making another : but had always been 
 prevented by the reflection, that if he thought his people, 
 whom he had raised from a state of barbarism to a high 
 degree of power and glory, could be ungrateful, he would 
 not expose his final inclinations to the insult of a refusal ; 
 and that if they recollected what they owed to his labours, 
 they would regulate their conduct by his intentions, winch 
 he had disclosed with more solemnity than could be mani- 
 fested by any writing." An altercation now began in the 
 assembly, and some of the nobles having the courage to op- 
 pose the accession of Catharine, Theophanes, archbishop of 
 Pleskof, called to their recollection the oath which they had 
 all taken in 1722, to acknowledge the successor appointed by 
 l'etrr; and added, that the sentiments of that emperor, de- 
 livered by the secretary, were in effect an appointment of
 
 396 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXXII. 
 
 Catharine. The opposite party, however, denied these senti- 
 ments to be so clear as the secretary chose to insinuate ; and 
 insisted, that as their late monarch had failed to nominate his 
 heir, the election of the new sovereign should revert to the 
 state. Upon this the archbishop further testified, that the 
 evening before the coronation of the empress at Moscow, 
 Peter had declared, in the house of an English merchant, that 
 he should place the crown upon her head with no other view 
 than to leave her mistress of the empire after his decease. 
 This attestation being confirmed by many persons present, 
 Mentchikof cried out, " What need have we of any testa- 
 ment ? A refusal to conform to the inclination of our great 
 sovereign, thus authenticated, would be both unjust and 
 criminal. Long live the empress Catharine !" These words 
 being instantly repeated by the greatest part of those pre- 
 sent, Mentchikof, saluting Catharine by the title of em- 
 press, paid his first obeisance by kissing her hand ; and his 
 example was followed by the whole assembly. She next pre- 
 sented herself at the window to the guards and to the people, 
 who shouted acclamations of "Long live Catharine!" while 
 Mentchikof scattered among them handfuls of money. Thus, 
 says a contemporary, the empress was raised to the throne by 
 the guards, in the same manner as the Roman emperors by 
 the praetorian cohorts, without either the appointment of the 
 people or of the legions. 
 
 This account of the election of Catharine is chiefly ex- 
 tracted from Bassevitz, who assisted Mentchikof in this re- 
 volution, and certainly mast deserve credit as far as he chose 
 to discover the secret cabals. Some authors relate tins event 
 somewhat differently ; but the difference is easily reconciled, 
 and the main facts continue the same. Busching asserts, as 
 he was informed by count Munich, that Peter was no sooner 
 dead, than the senate and nobles assembled in the palace un- 
 known to prince Mentchikof. The latter, being informed of 
 the meeting, repaired to the palace, and was refused admit- 
 tance ; upon which he sent for general Butturlin, with a 
 company of guards ; and bursting open the door of the 
 apartment in which the meeting was held, declared Catharine 
 empress. The Austrian envoy says, that general Butturlin 
 threatened to massacre the senate if the members did not 
 acknowledge Catharine. But we have already seen, from the
 
 A.D. 1725] CATHARINE I. 397 
 
 authority of Bassevitz, that many of the nobles, &c, repaired 
 to the palace, in opposition to prince Mentchikof ; that ge- 
 neral Butturlin had high words with prince Bepuin and the 
 opposite party ; that Mentchikof 's presence utterly discon- 
 certed them ; and it is probable, that both he and Butturlin 
 might have threatened the nobles, which Bassevitz might not 
 choose to record, as he was willing to make the nomination of 
 Catharine appear as unanimous as possible : although he says, 
 " C'est ainsi que Catharine saisit le sceptre, qu'elle meritoit 
 a si juste titre." In short, these three accounts are easily re- 
 concilable with each other ; they all prove one fact, that 
 Mentchikof, either by himself or his agents, by bribes, pro- 
 mises, and threats, forced the nobility to proclaim Catharine. 
 
 Catharine's first acts after her accession were in accordance 
 with her gentle and humane disposition. She reduced the 
 annual capitation tax by one-eighth ; ordered the gibbets to be 
 cut down which had been erected by Peter in great numbers 
 throughout the country ; caused the still unburied bodies of 
 the numerous persons he had executed to be interred ; re- 
 called most of those who had been banished to Siberia in the 
 late reign, excepting the relations and friends of Peter's 
 former wife ; paid the troops their arrears ; restored to the 
 Cossacks several of their privileges and immunities which had 
 been wrested from them by Peter, and made no changes 
 among the officers of state. She thus attached to her 
 the people, the army, and many even of the nation. The 
 attempts of two impostors, who severally gave themselves 
 out for Peter's unfortunate son Alexis, were speedily defeated, 
 and the pretenders to the throne beheaded. Yet perhaps 
 had she lived longer she would not have died as empress. At 
 least, there was never wanting a great number of malcontents 
 whilst she reigned. The obscurity of her origin, and the 
 history of her early days, ere she was acknowledged by Peter 
 as his wife, were a stumbling-block to many ; and papers 
 were frequently handed about in which she was very irre- 
 verently mentioned. In the second year of her reign she 
 felt herself under the necessity of threatening to punish with 
 death all such as should speak of her family in disrespectful 
 terms. 
 
 Aa long as Peter reigned, there was a continual jealousy 
 between Austria and Kussia: his death was followed bv an
 
 39S HISTORY OP RUSSIA. [CH. XXXII. 
 
 alliance between those powers, which proved ruinous to the 
 Poles and the Turks, and separated Austria from its natural 
 ally — England. Peter had consoled the duke of Holstein 
 with empty hopes, and used him as the toy and tool of 
 his politics ; and Catharine effected his marriage with 
 her daughter a few months after she ascended the throne 
 (June, 1725). The empress loved her daughter so tenderly, 
 that for her sake she overlooked the incapacity of the duke, 
 and assigned him the first place in her council, where Basse- 
 vitz continued to be his prompter, although not m uch more 
 efficient than himself. The empress wished also to turn to 
 account his claims upon Denmark and to the reversion of the 
 Swedish throne : for this purpose she stood in need of the 
 assistance of the emperor of Germany, whose favour, there- 
 fore, she and the duke earnestly tried to gain. Mentchikof 
 possessed wealth, estates, and lordships in Silesia, and was 
 the more easily purchased, as he needed the aid of the em- 
 peror in his Polish affairs : he was supported by Austria on 
 political grounds, whilst at last his friend the empress was 
 opposed to him in Courland. 
 
 The nobility of Courland at that time were in dread of the 
 impending blow of a union with Russia : they tried to rouse 
 the spirit of Poland and to gain the favour of king Augustus, 
 in order to save and preserve their freedom. Their duke was 
 long dead, but his widow Anne (Peter's niece) still lived in 
 the country under Eussian protection. The brother of the 
 last descendant of the house of Kettler was living abroad, 
 poor and childless. The Courlanders sought for a more 
 vigorous man, and one who had connexions which might be 
 useful to them, and they ultimately chose count Maurice of 
 Saxony, a natural son of the king of Poland, for their duke. 
 Maurice was born with the genius of a great commander, and 
 at a later period, as a marshal of Prance, he reached the very 
 pinnacle of glory : as the ruler of a small country, he might 
 have had as destructive an influence upon morality by his 
 example as his father had had in Saxony. The choice, how- 
 ever, was not realised, because the Poles as well as Mentchi- 
 kof opposed the selection. The Poles wished to unite the 
 duchy with their republic ; Mentchikof, on the other 
 hand, wished to force himself upon the Courlanders as 
 their duke. Whilst the ambassador of his empress waa
 
 A.D. 1726] CATHARINE I. 399 
 
 carrying on a vehement contest with the senate in "Warsaw, 
 Mentchikof ventured to go in person to Mittau; but there 
 met with resistance from the nobility, who knew that neither 
 the empress, the dowager-duchess, nor the Poles would sup- 
 port him ; and he treated the estates and their president in 
 Courland with his usual insolence. If Bassevitz had not 
 lent him his aid, Mentchikof would have been then utterly 
 ruined. Catharine would have willingly married the young 
 and much-admired Maurice; she therefore wished to pro- 
 mote his election, and had come to St. Petersburg expressly 
 in order to advance his cause. Bassevitz supported Ment- 
 chikof, probably because he foresaw that his duke, on Ment- 
 chikof s removal, must necessarily occupy his place, and knew 
 that he was not equal to the duties of a ruler. The empress, 
 indeed, shortly before her death, had sent count Deviez to 
 Mittau to investigate the accusations which were brought 
 against Mentchikof. This Deviez was a Portuguese, who had 
 entered into the Bussian service, and although brother-in- 
 law of Mentchikof, was nevertheless his most deadly enemy. 
 Her death soon afterwards altered the whole state of affairs. 
 Maurice had also deceived Anne : he tried in vain to main- 
 tain himself against the Bussians, and the latter did not 
 hesitate to drive him by force of arms in the midst of peace 
 from Courland, where he had settled as a stranger, and Austria 
 even deputed a person to be present at his expulsion. 
 
 Austria had previously shown itself favourable to the pre- 
 tensions of Bussia. In April, 1726, it had guaranteed the 
 reversion of the crown of Sweden to Charles Frederick ; and 
 when an English fleet afterwards appeared in the Baltic for 
 the protection of the Danes, who were threatened by the 
 Bussians, a formal treaty of alliance was concluded (6th Aug., 
 1726) between Bussia and the emperor of Germany. By 
 tlie terms of this treaty, each party engaged, in case of a war 
 with a third party, to furnish 30,000 auxiliaries to the other; 
 and Bussia also ' formally acceded to the alliance between 
 Spain and Austria which had been negotiated by Bipperda. 
 Immediately afterwards, Frederick William also withdrew 
 from the Hanoverian alliance and joined that of Spain, 
 Austria, and Bussia. 
 
 The reign of Catharine may be considered as the reign of 
 Mentchikof. The empress had neither inclination nor abili-
 
 400 histoet or itrssiA. [en. xxxn. 
 
 ties to direct the helm of government ; and she placed the 
 most implicit confidence in the man who had been the ori- 
 ginal author of her good fortune, and the sole instrument of 
 her elevation to the throne. She took to herself two new 
 favourites at once, the young prince Sapieha and a Livonian 
 gentleman named Loevenvolden. These two rivals strove 
 equally to please her, and alternately received proofs of her 
 tenderness without suffering their happiness to be marred by 
 mutual jealousy. During her short reign her life was very 
 irregular ; she was extremely averse to business ; would fre- 
 quently, when the weather was fine, pass whole nights in the 
 open air ; and was particularly intemperate in the use of 
 Tokay wine, in which she often indulged to excess. These 
 irregularities, joined to a cancer and a dropsy, hastened her 
 end ; and she expired on the 17th May, 1727, a little more 
 than two years after her accession to the throne, and about 
 the thirty-ninth year of her age. 
 
 As the deaths of sovereigns in despotic countries are sel- 
 dom imputed to natural causes, that of Catharine has been 
 imputed to poison, as if the disorders which preyed upon her 
 frame were not sufficient to bring her to the grave ! Some 
 assert that she was poisoned in a glass of spirits ; others, by 
 a pear given to her by general Deviez. Suspicions also fell 
 upon prince Mentchikof, who was accused of hastening her 
 death, that he might reign with still more absolute power 
 during the minority of Peter II. But these reports deserve 
 not the least credit, and were merely dictated by the spirit of 
 party, or by popular rumour. 
 
 Catharine was in her person under the middle size, and, in 
 her youth, delicate and well formed, but inclined to corpu- 
 lency as she advanced in years. She had a fair complexion, 
 dark eyes, and light hair, which she was always accustomed 
 to dye black. She could neither read nor write ;* her daugh- 
 ter Elizabeth usually signed her name for her, and particu- 
 larly to her last will and testament ; and count Ostermann 
 generally put her signature to the public decrees and des- 
 patches. Her abilities have been greatly exaggerated by her 
 
 * Bassevitz says, " Elle n'apprit jamais a e'erire. La princesse 
 Elizabeth signa tout pour elle, quaud elle fit sur le trone, meme son 
 testament." The Austrian minister says count Ostermann used to sign 
 her name to all the despatches.
 
 A.D. 1727] CATHABIKE I. 401 
 
 panegyrists. Gordon, who had frequently seen her, seems to 
 have fairly represented her character, when he says, " She was 
 a very pretty well-lookt woman, of good sense, but not of that 
 sublimity of wit, or rather of that quickness of imagination, 
 which some people have believed. The great reason why the 
 czar was so fond of her, was her exceeding good temper ; she 
 never was seen peevish or out of humour; obliging and civil to 
 all, and never forgetful of her former condition ; withal, mighty 
 grateful." "When Wurmb, who had been tutor to Gluck's chil- 
 dren at the time that Catharine was a domestic in that 
 clergyman's family, presented himself before her after her 
 marriage with Peter had been publicly solemnised, she recol- 
 lected and addressed him with great complacency : " What, 
 thou good man, art thou still alive? I will provide for thee." 
 And she accordingly settled upon him a pension. She also 
 was no less attentive to the family of her benefactor Gluck, 
 who died a prisoner at Moscow : she pensioned his widow ; 
 made his son a page ; portioned the two eldest daughters ; 
 and advanced the youngest to be one of her maids of honour. 
 If we may believe Weber, she frequently inquired after her 
 first husband, and when she lived with prince Mentchikof, 
 used secretly to send him small sums of money, until, in 
 1705, he was killed in a skirmish with the enemy.* 
 
 But the most noble part of her character was her peculiar 
 humanity and compassion for the unfortunate. Motraye has 
 paid a handsome tribute to this excellence. " She had in 
 some sort the government of all his (Peter's) passions ; and 
 even saved the lives of a great many more persons than Le 
 Port was able to do : she inspired him with that humanity 
 which, in the opinion of his subjects, nature seemed to have 
 denied him. A word from her mouth in favour of a wretch 
 just going to be sacrificed to his anger, would disarm him ; 
 but if he was fully resolved to satisfy that passion, he would 
 give orders for the execution when she was absent, for fear 
 she should plead for the victim." In a word, to use the ex- 
 
 * A reputed brother of Catharine's, whom she called count Skavron- 
 ski, appeared early in her reign at Petersburg. She married one of 
 his daughters to her favourite, Sapieha. Villehois tells a romantic tale 
 of the discovery of this Skavronski by Peter himself, and Voltaire re- 
 peats the story with embellishments of his own ; but there is much 
 reason to doubt its truth altogether. 
 
 VOL. I. 2 D
 
 402 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXXII. 
 
 pression of the celebrated Munich, " She was the mediatrix 
 between the monarch and his subjects." 
 
 The premature death of the empress Catharine in 1727, 
 after a reign of two years, appeared to place Russia alto- 
 gether at the disposal of Mentchikof ; for Peter II., the son 
 of Alexis, was yet only a boy, and by Catharine's will Ment- 
 chikof had not only obtained the presidency of the supreme 
 council, but by an article which it contained, the young em- 
 peror was to marry Mentchikof 's daughter. All this, however, 
 was not enough to satisfy his ambition, and he was himself 
 the first to violate the testamentary dispositions of the em- 
 press, upon which his guardianship was founded, and to seize 
 upon everything by force. Mannstein gives the following 
 report of these transactions : — Catharine's heir, Peter, was 
 between twelve and thirteen j r ears old when he came to the 
 throne, and the empress had therefore ordered that he should 
 remain under guardianship. This office was to be executed 
 by Catharine's daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, the duke of 
 Holstein, the bishop of Lubeck, husband of her daughter 
 Elizabeth, and by the supreme council. The senate at that 
 time consisted of prince Mentchikof, the high-admiral 
 Apraxin, the grand chancellor Gallowkyn, the vice-chan- 
 cellor Ostermann, and privy councillors Grallizin and Dol- 
 goruki. This commission of government, however, only 
 assembled once, and that on the day of Catharine's death. 
 At this meeting nothing was done further than the recog- 
 nition of the will, which in two hours afterwards was prac- 
 tically annulled. It had been expressly provided in the will, 
 that every question in the council should be determined by a 
 majority of votes : that was by no means agreeable to Ment- 
 chikof. He chose to decide alone, the others were to listen, 
 and no one ventured to oppose that on wdiich he had re- 
 solved : whoever did so was lost. 
 
 Three months afterwards Mentchikof compelled the duke 
 of Holstein and his wife to leave Russia (5th Aug., 1727), 
 and received the dignity of generalissimo from the emperor 
 in May : he accepted the lordship of Cosel in Silesia, as a 
 present from the emperor of G-ermany, and betrothed his 
 youngest daughter to Peter II., but by his brutality he 
 awakened a universal feeling of repugnance to himself and 
 his rule. At length he disgusted the emperor himself, and 
 thereby furnished the Dolgorukis, who had long gained the 
 emperor's confidence, with the desired opportunity of effect-
 
 A.D. 1730] PETEE II. -A03 
 
 ing their rival's overthrow. Mentcliikof, who had happily 
 outstood even the boisterous temper of Peter the Great, had 
 been all-powerful under Catharine, notwithstanding the duke 
 of Holstein's machinations against him, and was afterwards 
 the austere and imperious father-in-law of Peter II., was 
 now overtlirown, and obliged with his whole family, including 
 even the betrothed wife of the young emperor, to depart, in 
 September, 1727, for Beresof, in Siberia. By this stroke of 
 fortune, which he bore with singular calmness and fortitude, 
 all his plans of greatness were at once defeated, and the 
 treasures he had accumulated* were poured into the im- 
 perial coffers, from which the greater part had been surrep- 
 titiously taken. He died in his place of exile in 1729. Prom 
 the time of his downfal the Dolgorukis were at the head of 
 the state, and it appeared as if Eussia had forgotten European 
 affairs to occupy herself exclusively with her own. 
 
 Peter had changed his residence to Moscow, and favoured 
 Eussian institutions and usages in preference to those which 
 were foreign ; he betrothed himself to a Eussian lady, a Dol- 
 goruki, and during his reign nothing was thought of but 
 internal affairs and court cabals, whilst the other powers 
 concluded their agreements about Parma, Placentia, and 
 Tuscany. The unexpected death of the young emperor, how- 
 ever, recalled Eussia to her old politics. He was carried 
 off by small-pox on the 9th of February , 1730 ; and with him 
 the male race of the Eomanof family became extinct. After 
 Peter IP's death, one of the Dolgorukis, armed with a forgrd 
 document which he pretended was the will of Peter II., 
 attempted in vain to secure the succession to his own daugh- 
 ter Catharine, who had been betrothed to the late emperor : 
 his Eussian colleagues in the council, however, hit upon the 
 bold thought of changing the imperial autocracy into a sha- 
 dow, and sharing the power of the czar among themselves. 
 
 * These consisted of nine millions of roubles in bank notes and obliga- 
 tions, one million in cash, 105lb. of gold utensils, 420lb. of silver plate, 
 and precious stones to the value of about a million. If we reckon, be- 
 sides, the enormous estates in land which he possessed, his palace and 
 its furniture, we shall be the more surprised at the treasure which 
 Mentchikof was able to amass, as Peter was very far from being liberal 
 to his favourites, and had often punished Mentchikof for his embezzle- 
 ments by confiscating a part of his property. It used to be said of 
 Mentchikof that he night travel from Riga, on the Baltic, to Derbent, 
 on the Caspian, and sleep on one of his own domains every night. 
 
 2 D 2
 
 404 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXXIII. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 ANNA IVANOVNA CHOSEN EMPRESS DEFEATS AN ATTEMPT 
 
 TO LIMIT HER SOVEREIGN POWER INTERFERES SUCCESS- 
 FULLY IN POLAND — THE PERSIAN PROVINCES RESIGNED — 
 
 WAR WITH TURKEY WARLIKE ATTITUDE OF SWEDEN 
 
 DEATH OF ANNE CHARACTERISTICS OF HER REIGN. 
 
 Tiie testament produced by Dolgoruki being declared in- 
 valid, the succession to the throne ought to have been decided 
 by that still extant of Catharine I. and not annulled by 
 Peter II. In this it was ordained that, in case Peter should 
 die without heirs, Anne duchess of Holstein, and her pos- 
 terity ; on failure of them, the princess Elizabeth* and her 
 posterity should succeed. Anne, indeed, had been dead since 
 1728, but had left behind her a prince. He therefore would 
 be now, according to the purport of that will, the legitimate 
 heir. But shortly after Catharine's death the duke of Holstein 
 and his consort had left Russia, where Mentchikof rendered 
 their abode extremely irksome, and returned to their posses- 
 sions of Holstein- Grottorp, in Germany ; and the council, 
 which on Peter the Second's death directed the succession 
 and was averse to foreigners, would have paid no regard to 
 the young prince of Holstein, even if his father had been still 
 in Russia, much less was any notice taken of him now that 
 he lived in Germany.f Next to Anne and her posterity, by 
 Catharine's last will, the princess Elizabeth was to succeed : 
 but she remained quite inactive on the vacancy of the throne, 
 though her physician, Lestocq, took all possible pains to per- 
 suade her to put in her claim to the succession. It had 
 hitherto been her sole desire to live at ease, exempt from all 
 concern in the affairs of government, and only to pursue her 
 
 * Second daughter of Peter I. and Catharine. The eldest was mar- 
 ried to the duke of Mecklenburg. 
 
 f Indeed he was only mentioned for the sake of calling to mind that 
 both he and the princess Elizabeth were the offspring of a double 
 adultery, and therefore both of them ought for ever to be excluded 
 from the throne. It was observed that when Peter I. married Catha- 
 rine, the first husband of that princess and the empress Evdokhia 
 Lapukhin were still living.
 
 A.D. 1730] ANNE ELECTED UNDER CONDITIONS. 
 
 405 
 
 pleasures and her devotions — for she was very devout. As 
 for her pleasures, she shared them with all the grenadiers of 
 the guard. 
 
 The male line of the Eomanofs was extinct ; but besides 
 Elizabeth, Peter the First's daughter, three daughters of czar 
 Ivan, step-brother of Peter I., and his partner in the govern- 
 ment, were still alive. The eldest lived at Petersburg in a 
 state of separation from her turbulent husband, the duke of 
 Mecklenburg ; the second, who had been married to the duke 
 of Courland, lived as a widow, from 1711, in Mittau ; the third 
 was at Petersburg, still unmarried. Of these three princesses 
 the council was to elect one. Their choice fell upon the duchess 
 Anne, of Courland, who was expected to accept of the prof- 
 fered dominion upon whatever conditions might be prescribed ; 
 she was, however, first obliged to sign a sort of capitulation, 
 the conditions of which were of such a kind as to have 
 brought Eussia either under the dominion of a pernicious 
 oligarchy, or have thrown it into anarchy and confusion. 
 The conditions were:— 1. The empress shall only govern 
 according to the pleasure of the supreme council. 2. Neither 
 war shall be declared nor peace concluded without the advice 
 and approbation of the senate. 3. No taxes to be imposed 
 or important offices conferred without the senate. 4. No 
 nobleman to be tried before the ordinary tribunals or to be 
 punished with death, nor 5. his property to be confiscated. 
 G. No part of the crown lands to be disposed of or alienated. 
 7. Not to marry, or name a successor, without the consent 
 of the senate.— To these conditions was added that Anne 
 should not bring her favourite, the chamberlain Von Biren, 
 with her into Eussia. 
 
 Tagujinski had secretly sent a messenger to Mittau to the 
 duchess', to anticipate the arrival of the deputies* who were 
 sent by the supreme council with the conditions of the elec- 
 tion, and had advised her to their unconditional acceptance, 
 assuring her that it should be his care to see that they were 
 
 * One of whom was prince Vassili Lukovitch Dolgoruki, wlio had 
 been the successful lover of Anna Ivanovna, and was doubtless in 
 hopes of becoming so again. On entering the apartment of the duchess, 
 Dolgoruki found with her a man rather meanly dressed, to whom he 
 made a Blgn to retire. As tlic man did not stir, Dolgoruki took him 
 by the arm to enforce his hint. Anne stopped him. This man was 
 Ernest John Biren, and thus it was that the ruin of the Dolgoruki 
 family was occasioned.
 
 406 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXXIII. 
 
 annulled. It was sufficient to induce the Russians to abolish 
 these conditions, to know that, by virtue of them, all the 
 power would fall into the hands of the Dolgorukis. Anne 
 subscribed the articles which limited her power, first in 
 Mittau, and a second time in Moscow, and even made the 
 new form of government publicly known by means of a pro- 
 clamation, whilst all the arrangements had been already made 
 to restore the autocracy. 
 
 If the senate had been in a situation to maintain their 
 new constitution, they should have immediately sent back 
 Biren, whom the empress brought with her to Moscow con- 
 trary to the stipulations, and then have punished Yagujinski 
 and dismissed the guards, who were unfavourable to an oli- 
 garchy. As they were unable to do this, the constitution, 
 or rather the influence and power of the Dolgorukis, was 
 gone. By Yagujinski's advice, the empress gave to the abo- 
 lition of the articles of election an appearance of justice ; and 
 she was able to do so with greater truth and propriety, because 
 no one approved of the new constitution except the senate. 
 A numerous assembly was called, whose members were 
 called deputies and representatives of the nobles and the 
 army, although in reality they had no such commission ; and 
 they were asked whether the limitations imposed upon the 
 imperial power were agreeable to their will and desire. All 
 demanded the restoration of the old form of government, 
 and loudest of all, those who were called representatives of 
 the army.* 
 
 The empress pretended to be very much surprised that 
 the conditions imposed iipon her had been so much in oppo- 
 sition to the voice and desire of theBussian people, and tore 
 up the articles in the presence of the whole assembly. t Im- 
 
 * As such there appeared Trubetzkoi, Tcherkaskoi, Boratinski, and 
 Matvejef. 
 
 f Ostermann had the greatest share in annulling the capitulation. 
 Under the pretext of inrlisposition he neglected to attend the council 
 assembled on Peter's death, refused his assent to the capitulation, at 
 the same time complimenting the great men, by telling them that they 
 best knew what was for the benefit of the country, while he was exert- 
 ing every effort to counteract the council, and thus acquired the favour 
 of Anne to a superlative degree. It proved, likewise, of great assist- 
 ance to Anne, that the clergy had not been induced to approve of the 
 project of capitulation ; as their opinion had not been consulted, they 
 declined to support it.
 
 A.D. 1730] AJfNE'S FOREIGN RELATIONS. 407 
 
 mediately afterwards a new proclamation was published, by 
 which the complete restoration of the autocracy was an- 
 nounced ; and this was forthwith succeeded by a second, in 
 which the senate was again restored to all those rights and 
 duties which, as a council of the empire, it had possessed 
 under Peter I., and the newly created council, distinct from 
 the senate, was abolished. Anne, however, afterwards esta- 
 blished a cabinet to superintend the affairs of greatest im- 
 portance, consisting of no more than three persons, and in 
 which Ostermann's voice was of peculiar weight. The senate 
 had now only to decide upon less important matters, and had, 
 in fact, very little to do. 
 
 Anne's favoured lover Biren, under the title of grand 
 chamberlain, was now in reality the ruler of Russia. This 
 incapable and brutal favourite was prompted and aided by a 
 man of unlimited ambition, but at the same time of great 
 abilities : this was general count Munich, who was soon after 
 appointed generalissimo and a member of the cabinet. Munich 
 completely reformed the Russian army, erected admirable 
 schools and institutions for instruction in the science of war, 
 and as a man well acquainted with the subject, projected and 
 carried forward the construction of canals and public roads, 
 and finally directed the military power of the Russians 
 against the Poles, Tatars, and Turks, at whose cost, and with 
 reckless sacrifices, the new army was trained and fitted for 
 European warfare. Under the reign of this empress the 
 alliance between Russia and Austria was continually made 
 firmer, aud each wished to secure for itself an influence in 
 the approaching election of a king of Poland. By his disso- 
 lute life, king Augustus II. had at length destroyed his 
 robust constitution ; he could no longer stand upright, and 
 his end was manifestly approaching •. Prance would gladly 
 have seen (Stanislaus Leczinski, the father-in-law of Louis 
 XV., again elevated to the throne of Poland ; but this was 
 vigorously opposed by both Austria and Russia. Neither 
 of these nations was in reality disinclined to the elector of 
 Saxony ; they only wished that lie should purchase their 
 favour and support by the sacrifices which they respectively 
 required. 
 
 Russia was at that time still disputing with Poland con- 
 cerning Courlund. The nobles of Courland elected the last 
 descendant of the house of Kettle r, in order to gain a respite
 
 408 111STOEY OF EUSSIA. [CII. XXXIII. 
 
 at least till his death. The Russians took this very much 
 amiss, aud not only prevented the aged man from taking 
 possession of the duchy, but even caused the president of the 
 nobles in Mittau to be seized and carried oft*. Poland, on 
 the other hand, made immediate preparations after the death 
 of Ferdinand, the last of the Kettler line, to divide the 
 country into waywodeships and starosties. New Russian 
 troops were sent to the Polish frontiers in order to prevent 
 the fulfilment of this design, and any union of Courland with 
 Poland. Biren wished to secure the duchy for himself. 
 Austria concurred readily in this plan, and the only difficulty 
 was to prevent Prance from adopting and maintaining the 
 Polish claims. This was a new reason for hindering, even 
 by force, Leczinski's election. Austria and Russia therefore 
 set up a pretender in order to deceive Prussia, which was 
 opposed to the elector of Saxony. Von Lowenwolde, the 
 Russian master of the horse, travelled to Berlin, and there 
 (Dec, 1732) concluded that treaty which is called by his 
 name, and the only object of which was to restrain the king 
 of Prussia from taking part with Stanislaus, and to separate 
 Saxony from Prussia. Neither of the powers was in the 
 least degree serious about a Portuguese prince, w*ho, accord- 
 ing to the terms of this treaty, was destined for Poland. 
 
 King Augustus II. died a few months after the conclusion 
 of the Lowenwolde treaty ; his son, the new elector of Saxony, 
 courted the favour of the Poles to obtain the vacant throne, 
 but they were by no means well-disposed towards the Saxons ; 
 and moreover, the primate of Poland had recently persuaded 
 the nobles to enter into a new and close alliance with Russia 
 against their own king, in whom they had no confidence, and 
 to guard against his secret agreements and dreaded engage- 
 ments. On the death of Augustus, the majority of the Poles 
 declared (February, 1733) that they would only elect a native 
 Pole (Piast) for their king. 
 
 Immediately after the death of king Augustus, it was 
 publicly declared that the Lowenwolde treaty had not been 
 seriously intended, and Frederick "William, therefore, was 
 only a sullen spectator of the following events. Austria and 
 Russia now completely gave up the Portuguese prince Ema- 
 nuel, whom a pretended suit for the hand of the empress had 
 brought to Russia, and declared that they would not oppose
 
 A.D. 1733] AFFAIES OF POLAND. 409 
 
 the election of a Pole, Stanislaus alone excepted. Their real 
 object was to compel Saxony to purchase their favour by 
 sacrifices, to -which Briihlwas easily influenced. This minister 
 helped the phlegmatic Augustus III. to bear the tedium of 
 life, and ruled absolutely in his name : he drained the whole 
 resources of the Saxon people, as Flemming previously had 
 done. The elector of Saxony had already made a treaty 
 with France in order to maintain his claims to the inherit- 
 ance of Charles VI., but he now renounced this alliance, 
 subscribed the pragmatic sanction, and promised also that 
 lie would not oppose the views of Russia with respect to 
 Courland. On these grounds the aid of both powers was 
 promised him in his endeavours to obtain the crown of 
 Poland, and the usual anarchy was again promoted in that 
 unhappy country. One part of the nobility followed the 
 hints of the two powers, accepted their bribes or obeyed 
 their threats ; but by far the most numerous party, led by 
 French influence and old preference, declared itself in favour 
 of Stanislaus. The country was torn by internal disturbances 
 from March till September (1733), and as early as May a 
 confederation was formed under French influence ; on the 
 other hand, three Russian armies appeared on the frontiers, 
 and Austria also made a threatening movement. 
 
 France could not refuse assistance to the father of its 
 queen ; the ministry supported Stanislaus by money, and 
 even embarked some troops for his service. He came to 
 Poland, where he was chosen king on the 13th of September, 
 1733, upon the legal field of election; but fifteen senators 
 and some hundred nobles had been purchased by foreigners, 
 and these were supported by Lascy at the head of 20,000 
 Russians against the majority of their countrymen, who 
 seemed desirous of maintaining their national rights in 
 Warsaw. The partisans of the newly-elected king assembled 
 inPraga; at their head stood the primate, witli whom the 
 majority of the Poles agreed, but they proved unequal in 
 perseverance to Lascy and his Russians. Stanislaus there- 
 fore hastened to Dantzig, where he could not so easily be cut 
 off", and there awaited the French troops which had been 
 promised him. 
 
 The Poles of Stanislaus' party had broken down the bridges 
 over the Vistula on the approach of the Russians, and the
 
 410 HISTORY OF EUSSIA. [CH. XXXIII. 
 
 fifteen senators and six hundred nobles of the opposite party 
 were therefore obliged to hold their election upon the field of 
 Wola, where Henry of Valois had been formerly chosen. 
 They chose the elector of Saxony as their king (5th October), 
 in order that the Russians might be in a condition immedi- 
 ately to attack and harass king Stanislaus, in the name of 
 Augustus III. The Russians advanced, and their number 
 in a short time increased to 50,000 men, who closely block- 
 aded Dantzig. Field-marshal Munich, the generalissimo of 
 the Russian army, at length arrived (February, 1734), in 
 order to conduct the siege of Dantzig in person. In May a 
 small French force appeared in the neighbourhood of Dantzig, 
 but they were taken prisoners, and in June the city sur- 
 rendered. Stanislaus had previously escaped in disguise to 
 the Prussian territory, after Munich had set a price on his 
 head. The city of Dantzig was mulcted 2,000,000 of florins 
 for its fidelity to its rightful king ; but half that sum was 
 afterwards relinquished by the Russian empress. At this 
 time the military power of Russia threatened the freedom of 
 Europe in such a way as to become a matter of serious con- 
 cern. The army which had conquered Dantzig was spread 
 over Poland, and another division, under Lascy and Keith, 
 was advancing into Germany. A chosen corps of 10,000 
 men had reached the Rhine in June, and their appearance 
 had a very decisive influence upon the secret negotiations 
 then pending between Fleury and the emperor of Germany. 
 
 The Russian power had gained new vigour, and the army 
 new experience in the Polish war, and in fact the whole gain 
 and glory of it fell to the Russians. The first consequence of 
 this new humiliation of Poland, and of placing a king upon 
 the throne who was forced upon the people, was, that the 
 rude, brutal, incapable Biren, the favourite of the empress 
 Anne, accomplished what Mentchikof had attempted in vain. 
 In the year 1737, Biren was chosen duke by the nobles of 
 Courland, and in the year 1739 his new dignity was acknow- 
 ledged in Warsaw by the king and the senate. 
 
 Peter the Great, as we have already seen, had extended 
 the confines of his empire on the side of Persia. But it was 
 very soon found that this enlargement of the borders was no 
 substantial acquisition to the country. In order to preserve 
 them, it was involved in an expensive and tedious war; they
 
 A.TJ. 1735] WAR WITH TURKEY. 411 
 
 required a very considerable garrison even in peace ; and as 
 the climate did not agree with the Eussians, a multitude of 
 soldiers were constantly falling victims to disease.* Anne 
 therefore opened a negotiation with the shah, promising to 
 restore to him the conquered countries if in return he would 
 accord to her subjects some advantages to their commerce. 
 They at length came to terms ; and Eussia (1735) made a 
 formal surrender of all her Persian possessions, in lieu for 
 which the Eussian merchants obtained mercantile privileges 
 to a considerable extent in the territories belonging to Persia. 
 
 The peace which Peter, when surrounded by the Turks, 
 had been obliged to sign, on the borders of the Pruth, the 
 evacuation of Asof, the demolition of the fortifications at 
 Taganrok, by which Eussia was excluded from all the benefits 
 of trade on the Euxine, the refusal of the Porte to grant the 
 imperial title to the monarch of Eussia, the incursions of the 
 Crimea and other Tatars, acknowledging the Turkish supre- 
 macy into the Eussian dominions, in which they ravaged large 
 districts, and carried away many captives into bondage : all 
 these circumstances together had already occasioned Peter 
 to meditate a new war with the Porte. In prosecution of 
 this design, he strongly fortified the principal places of his 
 empire in the neighbourhood of Turkey, furnished them with 
 provision and military stores, and thus completely armed for 
 war. But he died on the eve of it ; and under Catharine I. 
 and Peter II. the execution of the plan was no further at- 
 tempted. 
 
 Biren did not wish to allow the Eussian army, which had 
 been brought to a high state of efficiency by Munich, and 
 provided with officers of all nations and an admirable artil- 
 lery, to fall out of practice by peace ; after the conclusion of 
 the Polish war, he therefore looked about for an opportunity 
 of employing it, and at length persuaded the empress to 
 iwenge upon the Turks the disgrace suffered by the Eussians 
 on the Pruth. Ostermann was vehemently opposed to the 
 plan of a Turkish war, and even Munich was not disposed 
 to commence it, although he was the only one who was after- 
 wards anxious for its continuance ; but Biren and some Eus- 
 
 * It is computed that, from the first taking possession of these 
 Persian provinces, in 1724, no less than 130,000 men had perished 
 there.
 
 412 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [OH. XXXIII. 
 
 sians also insisted upon the plan. The Eussians could have 
 no difficulty in finding a pretence for the war, because the 
 khan of the Turkish allies and dependents, the Tatars on the 
 coasts of the Black Sea, and the Sea of Asof, and in the 
 Crimea, could never wholly restrain his wandering hordes 
 from committing depredations and making incursions into 
 the neighbouring pasture-lands of Bussia. 
 
 The Tatars had already suffered a defeat from the Eussians 
 on their attempt to cross the Eussian territory, in order to 
 march by the nearest way to the assistance of the Turks in 
 their war against Persia ; and the khan himself was afterwards 
 attacked by them and beaten on his march to Daghestan. 
 
 In 1735 a Eussian corps marched into the Crimea, ravaged 
 a part of the country, and killed a great number of Tatars ; 
 but having ventured too far without a sufficient stock of pro- 
 visions, they were obliged to retreat, and sustained so great a 
 loss in men, that what had been accomplished bore no pro- 
 portion to this misfortune. 
 
 The almost total failure of this first attempt, which had 
 cost the Eussians ten thousand men, by no means deterred 
 them from pursuing their designs of conquest. Count 
 Munich marched with a large army from the Ukraine into 
 the Crimea (1736). The Tatars, less fitted for lighting in 
 the open field than for predatory excursions and sudden 
 attacks, suffered the Eussian troops to advance unmolested, 
 thinking themselves safe behind their entrenchments, de- 
 nominated the lines of the Crimea, from any attack of the 
 Eussians. But entrenchments of that kind were unable to 
 resist the impetuosity of the Eussian troops. They were 
 surmounted ; the Tatars repulsed ; and a great part of the 
 Crimea lay at the mercy of the conquerors. In the month of 
 June they entered the Crimean fortress of Perekop. The 
 Eussian troops now retaliated the devastations committed by 
 the Tatars in the empire ; but they found it impossible to 
 remain long in a country where those that fled endeavoured 
 to spread desolation as they went, for the sake of checking 
 their pursuers ; and where it is usual for the conqueror him- 
 self to make the whole of his warfare to consist in plunder 
 and devastation. Accordingly, whatever the army was in 
 want of, had to be fetched with extreme difficulty from the 
 Ukraine ; so that Munich at length found himself, towards
 
 A.D. 1737] WAB, ■WITH TUBKEY. 413 
 
 autumn, under the necessity of withdrawing with his troops 
 by the shortest way to the Ukraine. Provisions at least were 
 to be had there, but the Russians were very frequently 
 infested by the Tatars in their -winter-quarters. While 
 Munich was in the Crimea, endeavouring to chastise the 
 Tatars for their depredations, Lascy ha^ proceeded with 
 another army against Asof. The attack proved successful ; 
 and on the 1st of July the fort of Asof had already sub- 
 mitted to his arms. 
 
 The Turks had overlooked all the petty hostilities and de- 
 vastations which had been practised against the Tatars ; but 
 when Munich with the main army began to advance against 
 Asof, the sultan was obliged to lend assistance to his feodary. 
 The Ottomans published a manifesto against Russia, but they 
 were neither able afterwards to protect the Crimea nor Mol- 
 davia, for they were soon threatened with an attack from 
 Austria also. 
 
 By the treaty with Russia, the emperor was bound to 
 furnish 30,000 auxiliaries in case of a war with the Turks ; 
 but a party in the Austrian cabinet persuaded the emperor 
 that it would be more advantageous to make war himself. 
 The expedition which had been undertaken by Munich 
 against Asof and the Crimea in the year 1736 had un- 
 doubtedly cost 30,000 men, and the only advantage gained 
 by it was, that the Russian army and even the Cossacks 
 gained self-confidence by the easy-won victory over an 
 enemy hitherto an object of especial dread; but the glory 
 which Munich and his army would have gained from this 
 expedition is tarnished by the cruelties of all kinds which 
 they practised, and by the barbarities and devastations in 
 which they indulged. 
 
 In the year 1737 a new expedition was undertaken from 
 the Ukraine at an immense cost, because all sorts of supplies 
 were provided and conveyed along with the army, in conse- 
 quence of the dear experience which they had purchased, and 
 from having learned that there was more to fear in these 
 wastes from hunger and want than from the weapons of the 
 enemy. Some idea of this immense expedition may be 
 formed from the fact, that more than 90,000 waggons were 
 employed to transport the provisions and stores. A new- 
 treaty had been concluded with Austria before this cam-
 
 411 HISTOBY OF BUSSIA. [cH. XXXIII. 
 
 paign, in which the two empires agreed to carry on the war 
 in common, according to a stipulated plan. In order to gain 
 a pretence for the war, Austria had previously acted as if she 
 wished to force her mediation upon the Turks. 
 
 The first year's campaign was so unfortunate, that the 
 Austrians were obliged to give up all idea of prosecuting 
 their operations, and to think of the protection and defence 
 of their own frontiers ; for the Turks were making vast pre- 
 parations to invade their territories in return. Whilst the 
 Austrians were thus losing all the glory they had previously 
 won under Eugene, their allies the Eussians were everywhere 
 victorious, and made the name of their armies a terror both 
 in the east aud the west. Lascy undertook a new raid into 
 the Crimea. Munich first threatened Bender, then reduced 
 Otchakof without much difficulty, and left a few troops behind 
 him when he withdrew, whose defence of this fortress put to 
 shame the great armies of the German emperor. The main 
 body of the Eussians withdrew this year also into the inte- 
 rior of the Ukraine according to their custom, and left a 
 small Eussian force in the fortress of Otchakof, who were 
 there besieged by a large combined army of Turks and 
 Tatars, supported by a fleet. The Eussians not only main- 
 tained the fortress, which was, properly speaking, untenable, 
 but they forced the Turks to retire with a loss of 10,000 
 men. 
 
 The Eussian campaign in 1738 was as fruitless, and cost 
 quite as many men, as the Austrian, but it was at least the 
 means of bringing them some military renown. Munich 
 marched through the provinces on the Dniestr and the 
 Bog, wasted them as he had done in the previous year, and 
 afterwards returned to the Ukraine. In 1739 he did not 
 content himself, as in previous years, with a fruitless cam- 
 paign through barren wastes and with the capture of a few 
 fortresses; his army was more numerous than it had ever 
 previously been, and he lost fewer men by accidents and 
 sickness than in any former campaign. The Eussians at 
 first advanced towards Vallachia, but afterwards suddenly 
 turned in the direction of Moldavia, and on this occasion 
 the Polish territory was unquestionably violated without 
 any permission from Warsaw, and Poland barbarously devas- 
 tated. The Turkish and Tatar army which was opposed to
 
 A.D. 1739] PEACE OF BELGRADE. 415 
 
 the Russians was beaten and routed on the first attack ; 
 forty pieces of cannon and the whole camp fell into the hands 
 of the enemy. Immediately afterwards the whole garrison, 
 struck with a panic, forsook the fortress of Khotzim, which 
 had never been once attacked, and it was taken possession 
 of by the Eussians, who were astonished at the ease of the 
 conquest. Jassy was also taken, and Munich even wished 
 to attack Bender, when the news of the peace of Belgrade 
 having been concluded by Neipperg made him infuriate, be- 
 cause he saw clearly enough that Russia alone was not equal 
 to carry on the war, and that nothing, in short, would remain 
 to them after all their conquests except glory. 
 
 By the peace of Belgrade, Austria not only suffered shame 
 and disgrace, but lost all the possessions which had been 
 gained by Eugene in the last war, her best military frontier, 
 and her most considerable fortresses. This peace, which was 
 concluded by "Wallis and Neipperg, whilst Munich and his 
 Eussians were committing all sorts of outrage and plunder 
 in Moldavia, as they had previously done in the Crimea, was 
 the work of the French ambassador, who also negotiated for 
 Eussia, bribed the Italian who was the plenipotentiary of 
 the empress Anne, and immediately subscribed the prelimi- 
 naries ; and his agreement was confirmed at St. Petersburg, 
 notwithstanding all Munich's remonstrances. 
 
 By virtue of this treaty, Austria restored to Turkey 
 Belgrade, Shabacz, the whole of Servia, that portion of 
 Bosnia which had been acquired in the last war, and 
 Austrian Vallachia. Eussia was also obliged to evacuate 
 Khotzim and Otchakof ; the fortifications of the latter were, 
 however, blown up, as well as those of Perekop : Eussia 
 retained Asof, and a boundary Hue was determined, which 
 offered the Eussians the most favourable opportunities lor 
 extending their vast empire southward, at the cost of the 
 Tatars and Turks. 
 
 One of the reasons why Eussia was so ready to follow the 
 example of the house of Austria in concluding a peace, was 
 undoubtedly because she was afraid lest Sweden, encouraged 
 by tho Porte and Prance, which latter power was now of 
 almost sovereign influence hi the councils of Stockholm, 
 might have recourse to arms, and endeavour to make a diver- 
 sion in the north in favour of the Porte, while Eussia was
 
 41G HISTOKY OF BUSSIA. [CH. XXXIII. 
 
 engaged in the south by the Ottoman troops. It is to be 
 observed, that Eussia and Sweden had in 1724 entered into 
 an alliance for the term of twelve years, by which they 
 mutually guaranteed the safety of their dominions in case of 
 attack. At the expiration of these twelve years, this treaty 
 was again renewed (1736), when Eussia even made herself 
 responsible for the payment of a debt due from Sweden to 
 Holland of 750,000 Dutch guldens. But the amity of the 
 two countries continued to stand on a very tottering basis. 
 The generality of the Swedes could not bring themselves 
 absolutely to forget the sacrifices which they were reduced 
 to make to Eussia at the peace of Nystadt ; and the 
 French court, which was friendly to the Ottomans, and con- 
 sequently hostile to Eussia, exerted itself, by means of its 
 ambassador, to fan the discontents against the latter. Under 
 the form of government that then obtained in Sweden, by 
 which the national council in fact directed everything, while 
 the king was but the shadow of a monarch, the French 
 cabinet found no difficulty in forming to itself a strong party, 
 by presents properly bestowed. Sweden now was in hopes 
 that, while Eussia was occupied with the Turks, she might 
 venture some enterprises against that empire with little 
 danger of miscarriage ; and, notwithstanding that many true 
 patriots remonstrated against a war with Eussia ; notwith- 
 standing that the peace so recently concluded between Eussia 
 and the Porte rendered it now more hazardous to attempt 
 anything against that power, the warlike party at length 
 triumphed in the diet ; and war against Eussia became not 
 only the wish of that body, but ultimately of the whole 
 Swedish nation, on the occurrence of an event by which every 
 Swede thought himself insulted by the Eussians. 
 
 A Swedish major, named Sinclair, had been sent by his 
 government to Constantinople to negotiate concerning the 
 debts which Charles XII. had contracted there, and at the 
 same time to bring about a closer connexion between Sweden 
 and the Porte. Sinclair, a determined foe to the Eussians, 
 on his way home through Poland had at times spoken not 
 very advantageously of the empress Anne, and had occa- 
 sionally suffered to escape him some intimations about an 
 approaching humiliation of the Eussian pride by the combined 
 power of the Swedes and Turks. Munich, who was then
 
 A.D. 1740] MUEDER OF SINCLAIR, THE SWEDE. 417 
 
 stationed at the Polish frontiers, being informed of this, laid 
 a plan to entrap the Swedish officer on his journey back from 
 Constantinople. In order to this, his picture was engraved, 
 and numerous impressions of it were dispersed among the 
 Russian officers commanding on the frontiers. Sinclair set 
 out from Constantinople in April, 1739, travelled through 
 Poland to Breslau, thence continued his journey ; but, not 
 far from iSauuiberg, in Silesia, he was attacked by several 
 persons, among whom were some Russian officers, and 
 cruelly murdered. His fellow-traveller, Couturier, was then 
 conveyed to the Russian fort of Sonnenstein, but afterwards 
 was set at liberty, with a present of 500 ducats from the 
 Russian ambassador, and arrived iu September at Stockholm, 
 Avhere in the mean time Sinclair's despatches had been re- 
 ceived by the post. This murder was generally reputed to 
 have been perpetrated by an order from the Russian court. 
 The emperor of Germany complained loudly of the act as a 
 violation of his territory ; but Anne caused a declaration to 
 be drawn up, asserting her entire ignorance of the whole 
 affair; and Mannstein, who was adjutant-general to marshal 
 Munich, affirms likewise in his memoirs that Anne actually 
 knew nothing of it ; adding, that this murder was solely the 
 contrivance of her favourite Biren, count Ostermann, and 
 marshal Munich, in order to come at the contents of the 
 papers which Sinclair had about him. 
 
 The horrid deed excited intense indignation in Sweden ; 
 the French party took advantage of it to inflame the resent- 
 ment of the nation against the Russians ; the populace of 
 Stockholm broke the windows of the Russian ambassador's 
 house ; and the party in favour of war now found it more 
 easy to attain the accomplishment of their wishes — a declara- 
 tion of war against Russia. That government, quickly aware 
 df the designs of Sweden, had, however, in the meantime, 
 got its hands at liberty by the peace concluded with the 
 Turks, but wished, nevertheless, to avoid engaging in a new 
 war, as the wounds inflicted by that lately terminated were 
 siill sensibly felt. Accordingly, it entered into a negotia- 
 tion with Sweden, in which, however, the year 1740 was 
 entirely taken up. Preparations were made, notwithstand- 
 ing, on the part of Russia, by securing the frontiers of Pin- 
 land, filling the magazines, providing Cronstadt with a com- 
 
 TOL. I. 2 E
 
 418 HISTORY OF KTJSSIA. [cil. XXXIII. 
 
 petent garrison, repairing tlie fortifications, and getting 
 everything in readiness for the commencement of hostilities. 
 Ere the storm could burst, the empress Anne died at St. 
 Petersburg (1740), after a reign often years. 
 
 During her long residence in Courland, Anne had acquired 
 tastes somewhat more refined than might otherwise have 
 belonged to the niece of Peter I. It was her ambition to 
 make ner court the most brilliant in Europe ; but she only 
 succeeded in gathering about her an incongruous display of 
 profusion without elegance, tawdry finery, pomp and squalor. 
 Gross gluttony and drunkenness alone, from among all the 
 barbarous vice's of earlier times, in some measure disappeared 
 from her court ; but dissipation of every kind, ruinous gam- 
 bling and extravagance without measure were all the fashion ; 
 yet in the midst of all this, neither the political nor the mili- 
 tary affairs of the state suffered. Ostermann and Munich 
 were superior to all the ministers in Europe in knowledge, 
 and whatever they willed was law. All the institutions for 
 the promotion of industry and civilisation were progressively 
 improved ; morality, indeed, remained as it had ever been, 
 except that its sepulchres were painted and gilt. Traces of 
 the rudest barbarism continually appeared along with the 
 greatest splendour and immeasurable extravagance, and at 
 the same time there was often a want of the simplest 
 artificial necessaries. Poverty, such as is to be found in the 
 richest countries where manufactories abound, and which 
 awakens the deepest compassion in the heart of every friend 
 of humanity, is almost unknown in Eussia, because, by a 
 species of communism peculiar to that country, every mem- 
 ber of the rural population has the means of subsistence 
 secured to him by an allotment of land. In the times of 
 ■which we are now speaking, poverty and wealth were eloper 
 companions than they are now. The very first of the Eussian 
 magnates, without grievous suffering, passed from a state of 
 the most luxurious and riotous living to tlie endurance of 
 hardships and the severest privations, and he easily learned 
 to disregard the inclemency of the weather and the greatest 
 penury. It was this circumstance which made these fre- 
 quent alterations of destiny, which were the results of 
 political cabals and changes of government, less sensibly felt 
 than they would otherwise have been, and which appeared to 
 make the most cruel punishments a necessity.
 
 A.D. 1740] CHAEACTEEISTICS OF ANNE'S KEIGN. 419 
 
 Peter I. had never Lad fewer than twelve buffoons, and 
 for any private household to be without one buffoon at least, 
 would have argued very straitened circumstances. Anne had 
 six, three of whom were men of the highest birth. One of 
 them, who was a prince, had the care of her leveret. They 
 were beaten with rods if they did not submit with a good 
 grace to perform such fooleries as were required of them by 
 the sovereign or the courtiers. Prince Galitzin was among 
 the nobles who were punished in this way, his offence being 
 that he had changed his religion. Though above forty years 
 of age, and even having a son in the army in the rank of 
 lieutenant, he was made at once page and buffoon of the court. 
 His wife being dead, the empress married him to a girl of the 
 lowest birth, and defrayed the cost of the wedding. This 
 happened in the winter of 1740, which was unusually severe. 
 A house was built wholly of ice, with furniture entirely of the 
 same material, even to the nuptial bedstead. Pour cannons 
 and two mortars of ice were also placed in front of the house, 
 and were fired several times without burstiug. The governors 
 of all the provinces in the empire had orders to send some 
 persons of both sexes, chosen from all the nations subject to 
 Russia ; and these were dressed in the costumes of their 
 respective countries. The procession, consisting of more than 
 three hundred persons, passed before the imperial palace, and 
 through the principal streets of the city. The new married 
 couple were placed in a great cage on the back of an elephant. 
 Some of the guests were mounted on camels ; others were 
 drawn in sledges by all kinds of beasts, such as reindeer, 
 dogs, oxen, goats, hogs, &c. The dinner was laid out in 
 Biren's riding-house, which had been decorated for the occa- 
 sion. Each was treated according to the manner of cookery 
 in his own country. A ball followed, each nation having its 
 nun music and its own dancing. "When the ball was over, 
 the bride and bridegroom were conducted to a dismally cold 
 bed, and guards were posted at the door that they might not 
 get out before morning. 
 
 Though Kussia, which numbers among its subjects Mo- 
 hammedans, .lews, Buddhists, and other pagans, is compelled 
 to exercise a considerable amount of toleration, yet no mercy 
 has ever been shown to apostates from the national church. 
 In Anne's reign another frightful example was given of the
 
 420 HISTORY OP RUSSIA. [cil. XXXIV. 
 
 truth of Eousseau's remark, that in Eussia there is a domi- 
 nant religion to which the sovereign and the hangman always 
 belong. Voznitsin, a nobleman allied by marriage to the 
 Streshnef family, which had given a consort to the first czar 
 of the house of Bomanof, had embraced Judaism. Eefusing 
 the offer of pardon made him on condition that he would 
 recant his error, he was taken to the place of execution with 
 a gag in his mouth, lest he should preach Judaism to the 
 people at the very moment of his martyrdom, and was burned 
 alive along with the Jew who had converted him. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXIV. 
 
 IVAN VI. — THE REGENT ANNE — ELIZAVETA PETROVNA — 
 WAR WITH SWEDEN — TREATY OP ABO. 
 
 The empress Anne wished to ensure to her beloved Biren 
 the continuance of his oppressive influence ; she therefore 
 appointed as her successor, not Elizabeth, the daughter of 
 Peter the Great, or her own niece Anne, but the son of the 
 latter, Ivan, who was yet in his cradle. It soon appeared, 
 however, that Biren, who had given her this advice, bad 
 miscalculated. Anne's sister had been married to the mad 
 duke of Mecklenburg, and lived at a later period with her 
 daughter in St. Petersburg. The empress married this 
 daughter (July, 1739) to Anthony Ulrich, duke of Bruns- 
 wick-Lihieburg-Bevern, and adopted the son of this princess 
 as soon as he was born, to whom she gave her father's name 
 Ivan, and appointed him as her successor. 
 
 Prince Ivan of Eussia was born in August, 1740, and 
 adopted by the empress Anne on the 18th of October of the 
 same year, ten days after which she expired. Biren, instead 
 of going to Courland, and avoiding the bitter enmity of the 
 Bussians, which he had drawn upon himself, had obtained 
 from the dying queen the administration of the government 
 during the minority of the young emperor, although she 
 herself perceived that this regency, without the consent and 
 co-operation of the father and mother, would prove but a 
 hurtful gift. During the last reign, the regent was said 
 to have sent above forty thousand persons into Siberia : he 
 had inflicted the most dreadful persecutions upon thc^family 
 of Dolgoruki and every one connected with it. Shortly
 
 A.D. 1740] IVAN VI. 421 
 
 before the empress's death, lie had beheaded the minister 
 Valinski, and treated Ids friends in the severest manner, 
 and immediately after he had undertaken the duties of the 
 regency, even insulted the general to whom the command of 
 the army was entrusted ; he could not therefore possibly 
 maintain his position. Munich had hoped, in Biren's 
 name, to have the complete control of affairs ; but he no 
 sooner found himself deceived, than he came to an under- 
 standing with the duke of Brunswick and his wife, caused 
 Biren to be arrested in her name, and transferred the regency 
 to the duchess. 
 
 The fulfilment of this commission had little difficulty for 
 Munich, because he was sure of the generals, subalterns, 
 and soldiers ; and Mannstein makes the very just remark in 
 reference to the arrest of the regent, that the secret means 
 by which it was effected during the night were altogether 
 unnecessary > for he might just as safely have been publicly 
 arrested in open day. Tins event took place on the 28th of 
 November, precisely a month after the death of the empress.* 
 
 * Ernest John Biren, so famous for his great advancements, and his 
 not less extraordinary reverses of fortune, was born in 1687, in Cour- 
 land, of a family of mean extraction. His grandfather had been head 
 groom to James III., duke of Courland, and obtained from his master 
 the present of a small estate in land. He himself, after his rise, af- 
 fected to call himself Biron, and assumed the arms of that noble French 
 family, of which he pretended to be a scion. In 1714 he made his 
 appearance at St. Petersburg, and solicited the place of page to the 
 princess Charlotte, wife of the czarevitch Alexis ; but being contemptu- 
 ously rejected as a person of mean extraction, he retired to Mittau, 
 where he chanced to ingratiate himself with count Bestujef, master 
 of the household to Anne, widow of Frederic k William, duke of Cour- 
 land, who resided at Mittau. Being of a handsome figure and polite 
 address, he soon gained the good-will of the duchess, and became her 
 secretary and chief favourite, and subsequently duke of Courland, 
 and first minister, or rather despot of Russia. All now felt the 
 dreadful effects of his extreme arrogance, his base intrigues, and his 
 horrid barbarity. The cruelties he exercised on the most illustrious 
 persons of the country almost exceed belief; and Mannstein conjectures, 
 that during the ten years in which Biren's power continued, above 
 20,000 persons were sent to Siberia, of whom 5000 were never heard of 
 more. It is affirmed that the empress often fell on her knees before 
 him, in hopes of moving him to clemency, but neither her prayers nor 
 her tears were able to affect him. At the revolution that ensued upon 
 the death of the empress Anne, he was exiled to the frozen shores of 
 the Oby. Afterwards he was allowed to reside at Yaroslaf. Peter III. 
 restored him only to liberty; but Catharine II. gave him back the 
 duchy of Courland.
 
 422 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXXIV. 
 
 The duchess hecame regent, and appointed Munich prime 
 minister, but soon withdrew her confidence from this very 
 able but self-willed man, because he could neither agree 
 with her nor her husband, nor with Ostermann. Anne had 
 made her ignorant and insignificant husband generalissimo. 
 Ostermann was offended with his colleague for desiring to 
 conduct those affairs which belonged to his own special 
 department, and the regent had not understanding enough 
 to perceive that Munich, notwithstanding his unbounded 
 ambition, was absolutely indispensable to her; besides, he 
 seemed to follow a political system which was in direct con- 
 tradiction to the opinions entertained both by herself and 
 her husband, which were wholly favourable to Austria. 
 
 Since the peace of Belgrade, Munich had become alto- 
 gether averse to Austria, and had entered into friendly 
 relations with Frederick. Immediately after his accession 
 to the crown, the king of Prussia sent a relative and 
 acquaintance of Munich as his ambassador to St. Peters- 
 burg, who presented Munich with estates, and induced him 
 to make an agreement with Frederick, who had advanced 
 into Silesia, by which the queen of Hungary lost all hope 
 of Russian assistance. The marquis Botta, the Austrian 
 ambassador, who had brought about the marriage between 
 the duke and the regent, immediately returned to St. Pe- 
 tersbm'g (at the end of 1740), and formed a union with the 
 Saxon ambassador and with Ostermann against Munich. 
 The Saxon ambassador, the handsome count Lynar, had been 
 dismissed by the empress Anne because he lived on terms of 
 too great intimacy with her niece, but Br'uhl had sent him 
 back to St. Petersburg at the close of the year (1740). 
 Count Lynar renewed his intimacy with the regent, and 
 induced her to enter into an agreement with Saxony and 
 Austria, and to give force to her expressed opinions in 
 favour of the queen of Hungary by raising an army. This 
 was actually done by Ostermann without Munich's know- 
 ledge, scarcely three weeks after the treaty which had been 
 concluded with Prussia upon his recommendation. Munich 
 was so extremely indignant at this, that he refused to supply 
 the army with the necessary marching equipments ; but he 
 soon saw that a combination had been formed against hiin in 
 other affairs of importance also, and laid down his office on 
 the 13th of March, 1741.
 
 A.D. 1741] WAE WITH SWEDEN. 423 
 
 Lynar (who for appearance sake was to be married to 
 Mengden, one of the ladies of the regent's court) and the 
 marquis Botta strove to outwit each other ; and the latter, 
 in conjunction with Ostermann and Antony Ulrich of 
 Brunswick, tried to effect the march of the Kussian troops 
 which Munich had prevented. This gave occasion to an 
 attempt on the part of the French ambassador, by means 
 of money, to raise Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, 
 to the throne. The marquis la Chetardie, who was now 
 for the second time French ambassador in St. Petersburg, 
 in order to bring about this new Kussian revolution, lavished 
 the money of his nation in the payment of enormous sums, 
 and with as little responsibility as was done at the same time 
 in Sweden and Bavaria. 
 
 In Stockholm the king's party was outvoted by French 
 influence, and war was declared against Bussia (August, 
 1741), with a view of preventing that power from sending or 
 being able to send any aid to the queen of Hungary. The 
 king, however, and many of the most distinguished men of 
 the kingdom, still continued friendly to Bussia, and the 
 insignificant army which had been sent into Finland was 
 neither provided with sufficient stores, nor was it com- 
 manded by a general who was skilful enough to compete 
 witli such men as Lascy and Keith, to whom it was opposed, 
 and who had gained their experience on the battle-field and 
 in a number of victorious campaigns. The military chest of 
 the Swedish army in Finland was so empty, that the Bussian 
 generals no sooner advanced, than the soldiers deserted in 
 crowds because they received no pay. 
 
 The first results of the war were such as corresponded 
 with the measures which had been adopted and the leaders 
 who have been named. Lascy attacked the Swedish army, 
 which wis encamped under AVrangel near Vilmanstrand, and 
 completely routed it (3rd Sept., 1741). In consequence of 
 this defeat, Buddenbrock, and not "Wrangel, was condemned 
 to death, on the pretence that he had not advanced with his 
 division to the assistance of Wrangel at the proper time, but 
 in reality because they were enraged that flic war which Bud- 
 denbrock bad advised had taken such an unfortunate turn. 
 Vilmanstrand was taken by the Russians without any con- 
 siderable resistance. The war would have been brought to
 
 424 HISTORY OF ETJSSIA. [CII. XXXIV. 
 
 a conclusion at that time, if the Russians had heen ahle and 
 willing to follow up their advantages in the winter season ; 
 hut they withdrew, and the Swedes were therehy furnished 
 with an opportunity to get a new army on foot, and under- 
 take a second campaign, which proved still more unfortunate 
 than the first. In the mean time the new revolution had 
 heen effected in Russia. 
 
 French money, and the complete unacquaintance of the 
 regent with the nature of the Russian mode of government, 
 brought the daughter of Peter I. to the throne, who up to 
 this time had lived in the habitual indulgence of the grossest, 
 most offensive, and detestable sensuality. Anne preserved at 
 least some respect for outward appearances and public de- 
 cency, but Elizabeth outraged all propriety, openly carried 
 on an improper intercourse with the under officers and pri- 
 vates of the guards, who, since the building of the barracks, 
 were lodged close by the princess's dwelling, and passed 
 their nights together without the oversight of their superior 
 officers. The future empress had entirely won the favour of 
 the regiments, for she was good-humoured, as such people 
 usually are, and by no means disinclined, like the guards 
 themselves, to the drink of the Russians of former times. 
 As long as the indolent princess was not disturbed in her 
 inclinations, she never thought of seizing upon the manage- 
 ment of affairs, which became afterwards wholly intolerable 
 to her ; but she was cramped in her plans, beset with spies, 
 often blamed for her conduct, and finally even threatened 
 with what is most intolerable to a woman, — a husband 
 whom she hated. Elizabeth was to marry the deformed 
 and intolerable brother of the regent's husband, Antony 
 Ulrich of Brunswick-Bevern, for whom a vain attempt was 
 made to procure Biren's duchy of Courland ; she trusted 
 the management of the conspiracy, to which she now became 
 a party, to surgeon Lestocq, one of her most intimate 
 friends. The marquis la Chetardie, however, still continued 
 to be the soul of the whole afi'air, and also furnished the 
 money. Lestocq himself, the son of a member of the 
 Erench reformed church who had settled in Hanover, was a 
 man wholly destitute of political qualities, without discretion, 
 and without connexions. 
 
 Had the regent not despised the advice of the English and
 
 A.D. 1741] USURPATION OF ELIZABETH. 425 
 
 Austrian ambassadors, Finch and Botta, and even of her own 
 very acute and able minister Ostermann, sbe might still have 
 maintained ber position on the 4tb of December, by arresting 
 tbe princess Elizabeth and ber sergeant Griiustein, as well as 
 Easumofsky and Vorontzof ; but sbe was anticipated by an 
 adventurous stroke on the 5th. Guards, soldiers, the whole 
 miserable crowd of low men of all countries and neighbour- 
 hoods, who raised altars only for their own advantage, were 
 wholly indifferent whether they obeyed the daughter of their 
 great emperor, or the heiress of his niece; they were quite 
 as ready for pay to carry Elizabeth as Anne into Siberia or 
 to prison ; the only question was, who first bespoke their 
 services. On this occasion Elizabeth was the first applicant ; 
 perhaps only because Eestocq compelled her from terror 
 to make an effort which was quite foreign to her nature. 
 
 Accompanied by some hundreds of the guards with whom 
 she had been previously acquainted, and who now seized 
 upon the officer of the watch, Elizabeth went from the bar- 
 racks, in the neighbourhood of which she dwelt, and required 
 the officers and soldiers of the regent's guard to obey her 
 (5th Dec, 1741) as the daughter of their great emperor. 
 Other soldiers who had joined her on the way had been or- 
 dered in the mean time to arrest Munich, Ostermann, and 
 Golofkin ; whilst the regent, the duke generalissimo, the 
 young emperor and his sister, and all the persons of the 
 former cabinet, were made prisoners by her own guard. 
 This revolution, which had been effected during the night, 
 was terminated by eight o'clock next morning ; in the aft er- 
 noon tbe whole of the troops did homage to Elizabeth, and 
 she was proclaimed empress.* Count Lynar escaped the 
 fate which would have befallen him, in consequence of his 
 being at the moment absent in Saxony, whither he bad gone 
 to make arrangements for his marriage witli Mengden, which 
 would have made him an inmate of the palace with the 
 regent. The latter and her husband were sent from one 
 place of severe exile to another, and kept in close confine- 
 ment, and the unfortunate Ivan was brought up as an idiot 
 in a miserable imprisonment. When twenty years old he 
 
 * Vorontzof, groom of the chambers, Schwarz, who had been a 
 musician, and Griinstein, a sergeant, were chiefly instrumental, under 
 Lestocq, in bringing Elizabeth to the throne.
 
 42G histoey or kussia. [ch. XXXIV. 
 
 was for a brief space treated with some kindness by Peter 
 III., but when that prince was deprived of his throne and 
 his life, Ivan was again cruelly incarcerated in Schlussel- 
 burg, and at a later period, in pursuance of a conditional 
 order of the empress Catharine II., who regarded him as a 
 pretender, he was killed by the lieutenant of his guard. 
 
 The commencement of the new government appeared to 
 establish a species of mob law. The ablest people, such as 
 Ostermann and Munich,* were sent to Siberia, and all those 
 who surrounded the new empress, if we except Vorontzof, 
 resembled a common rabble of the most dissolute men, who 
 aimed at taking possession of the highest places ; but their 
 complete incapacity and ignorance kept them, happily, far 
 removed from any interference with business. The ignorant 
 and sensual friends of Elizabeth had neither inclination nor 
 ambition to take the charge and guidance of public affairs ; 
 they were satisfied with money, titles, orders, estates, and the 
 free indulgence of their vices and passions ; and the direc- 
 tion of affairs again fell into the hands of able men, among 
 
 * Munich was brought before a committee appointed to examine the 
 state prisoners. Being irritated with repeated questions, and per- 
 ceiving that his judges were determined to find liim guilty, lie said to 
 them, " Dictate the answers which you wish me to make, and I will 
 sign them." The judges immediately wrote down a confession of 
 several charges, which being subscribed by Munich, his mock trial 
 was concluded. Being thus, without further ceremony, convicted of 
 high treason, he was condemned to be quartered ; but his sentence was 
 changed by Elizabeth to perpetual imprisonment. For the space of 
 twenty years he was confined at Pelim, in Siberia, in an ostrog, or 
 prison, of which, according to Mannstein, he had himself drawn the 
 plan, and ordered it to be constructed for the reception of Bireu. It was 
 an area enclosed with high palisades, about 170 feet square; within 
 which was a wooden house, inhabited by himself, his wife, and a few 
 servants ; and a small garden, which he cultivated with his own hands. 
 He received a daily allowance of twelve copeks (about sixpence) for 
 the maintenance of himself, his wife, and domestics ; which little pit- 
 tance he increased by keeping cows, and selling part of their milk, and 
 by occasionally instructing youth in geometry and engineering. Mu- 
 nich's exile followed so closely upon that of Biren, whom he had him- 
 self sent into banishment, that he overtook him at the passage of the 
 Volga, where Biren liad been detained for some days by a flood. Munich 
 was recalled by Peter III., enjoyed the favour and protection of Catha- 
 rine II., and died in 17G7, in his eighty-fifth year.
 
 A.D. 1741] THE EMPUESS ELIZABETH. 427 
 
 ■whom Bestujef* deserves to be particularly mentioned, 
 however hateful his character was, and however much the 
 favour shown him by Austria and England made him an 
 object of suspicion. Kasumofsky caused no uneasiness and 
 gave no offence. The empress kept him apart from business 
 from her attachment to his person, and afterwards, by a private 
 solemnisation of marriage, made him her husband. Voron- 
 tzof, who was a man of estimable character, made himself 
 acquainted with business, became vice-chancellor, and finally 
 high-chancellor, and maintained his position even after the 
 death of the empress. The others, after having been unrea- 
 sonably favoured, were deprived of their situations, emolu- 
 ments, and honours. All those grenadiers who had been 
 favourites witli the empress received the rank of officers, and 
 formed the body-guard ; of which the empress herself was 
 captain ; but by their insolence and brutality they at last 
 became intolerable even to the [Russians. Grriinstein was 
 first created adjutant and then major-general ; Schwarz ob- 
 tained estates ; Lestocq was appointed physician to the 
 empress and director of all the medical institutions, and 
 received orders and estates ; but unhappily for himself, not- 
 withstanding his frivolous talkative nature, he sometimes 
 intermeddled with state affairs. All those people who were 
 instrumental in raising Elizabeth to the throne ruined them- 
 selvesf, and even France and Sweden altogether failed in the 
 
 * In that bufera infcrnale, says Hertzen, which carried public per- 
 sonages away with such rapidity that people had not even time to 
 become familiar with their features, what a climax of irony to see only 
 one individual maintain his position, that person being Bestujef, the 
 head of the secret chancery ! That honourable dignitary kept his 
 place in spite of all revolutions, and thus had opportunity to question, 
 torture, and execute all his friends, all his benefactors, and all his 
 enemies. 
 
 f Griinstein was ultimately banished; Schwarz, who had been made 
 a colonel, was sent to his estates; Lestocq was arrested in 1748, and 
 afterwards banished; and what Mannstein relates of the grenadiers of 
 the body-guard who had received the rank of officers and been elevated 
 to nobility, is very characteristic of a kingdom ruled wholly by force 
 and totally destitute of moral principles. They frequented the com- 
 mon public-houses, were often found drunk in the streets, went into 
 the houses of the most distinguished persons, extorted money, and car- 
 ried off whatever pleased their fancy. The most important is what 
 he subjoins: when their conduct became too had for longer endurance, the
 
 428 HISTOBY OF EUSSIA. [CH. XXXIV. 
 
 object for which they had effected the overthrow of Anne. 
 From the 28th of December, the empress transferred the 
 whole direction of affairs to the high-chancellor Tcherkaskoi 
 and to the vice-chancellor Bestujef ; but by the pardon 
 and liberation of more than 20,000 banished and imprisoned 
 persons, and by her refusal to sign any death-warrants, she 
 raised great but delusive expectations of the mildness of her 
 reign. 
 
 The empress made some splendid presents to the marquis 
 la Chetardie ; but Bestujef soon proved himself by far his 
 superior in cabals, and even before the departure of her am- 
 bassador, France found herself wholly deceived respecting 
 the advantages which had been expected. Sweden wished to 
 satisfy Elizabeth's claims by a considerable sum of money, 
 but the oligarchs desired the cession of some towns and their 
 adjoining territory ; this furnished the Russians with an 
 opportunity of breaking the armistice which had been con- 
 cluded in the winter, and the war commenced anew in the 
 spring (1742). 
 
 The chief command of the whole army was conferred upon 
 field-marshal Lascy. The second in command was the 
 Scotchman Keith, who became renowned as the friend and 
 companion in arms of Frederick II., and Lowendal, who was 
 afterwards made a marshal of France and esteemed one of 
 the best generals in the French service, as Lascy was in that 
 of Austria. As the Russians advanced, Levenhaupt and 
 Buddenbrock, who commanded the Swedes, had not even 
 collected their forces, but sent messengers of peace to meet 
 them, and sacrificed the fortress of Friederichshamm and all 
 their stores and munitions of war, which in the existing 
 condition of the Swedish finances it was quite impossible to 
 replace. The Russians themselves were astonished when 
 they found the passage of the Kymene, which might have 
 been easily defended, wholly undisputed, and the Swedes 
 rapidly retiring to Helsingfors, whither Lascy's army imme- 
 diately pursued them. 
 
 In the camp at Helsingfors, the Swedes should have come 
 to one of two resolutions, either to attack the Russians, or 
 to retreat with all speed to Abo ; they, however, did neither, 
 
 worst subjects were selected from the body-guard and distributed as officers 
 among the regiments in service, in which many places had been made vacant.
 
 A.D. 1742] NEGOTIATIONS WITH" SWEDEN. 429 
 
 but awaited the Russians in their camp. Regarding their 
 position as inaccessible on account of the woods, the Swedes 
 thought themselves secure in their camp, and there was no 
 time to fell the trees ; but one of the Philanders, who were 
 vehemently inceused against the Swedes, showed the Eus- 
 sians a path which had been cut by Peter I., but which was 
 now completely overgrown with bushes; upon proceeding 
 by this road, the Eussians succeeded in surrounding and 
 cutting off Levenhaupt's army. 
 
 The Swedish troops had been blockaded for fourteen days, 
 when Levenhaupt and Buddenbrock, relying upon their 
 influence in the council and the strength of their party, hit 
 upon a singular expedient for relieving themselves from their 
 difficult position: they left the army, under pretence of 
 being obliged to yield ready obedience to the demands of the 
 diet; the command then devolved upon the oldest major- 
 general, Bousquet, who had no other course to pursue than 
 to conclude a capitulation with Lascy. The army and the 
 whole of Finland were now in the power of the Russians, 
 and could only be preserved by endeavouring to win the 
 favour of the empress of Russia, and by espousing the cause 
 of her Holstein relation ; and the peace party pressed for 
 the adoption of this course. 
 
 Fortune at that time played a cruel game with the young 
 duke of Holstein- Gottorp : she offered two crowns for his 
 acceptance, and allured him to leave Holstein, where he 
 would have been safe and contented, in order to make him 
 unhappy and to devote him to a most cruel death in Russia. 
 Charles Peter Ulrich, the son of the unfortunate Charles 
 Frederick, was born in 1728, and succeeded his father in 
 Holstein in 1739: his aunt Elizabeth was no sooner firmly 
 seated on the throne than she sent for him to Russia (Feb., 
 1742). The empress named him as her successor in August, 
 and the Swedes had at an earlier period offered him the 
 crown, in order to induce the Russians not to insist upon the 
 eession of Finland. On his refusal of the offer made him by 
 the deputies from the diet, Elizabeth recommended the 
 Swedes to choose her relation, the bishop of Lubcck, uncle 
 to her successor, for their king; and the Swedes had reason 
 to expect a peace on moderate terms, if they complied with 
 the wish of Elizabeth.
 
 430 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [cil. XXXIV. 
 
 The majority of the Swedish nation, however, had no in- 
 clination for this candidate proposed to them by Russia. 
 There was, on the contrary, every appearance that Denmark 
 and Sweden would again be united, as most of the Swedes 
 "were desirous of having the hereditary prince of Denmark on 
 their throne ; and the Dalecarlians even broke out in open 
 insurrection on that account, rushed into the capital, and 
 furiously insisted on the election of the Danish prince. Den- 
 mark, Avhich wdshed for a renewal of the treaty of Kalmar, 
 made a number of apparently advantageous proposals ; and 
 Russia, therefore, seeing the negotiation for peace was likely 
 to be delayed, took up arms again in the year 1743. In this 
 campaign it was resolved to attempt some great exploit with 
 the fleet ; but, as an armament was also fitted out by Sweden, 
 the Russians contented themselves with making a few incon- 
 siderable descents on the enemy's coasts. In July the 
 election of the future king was to come on at Stockholm ; 
 and a Swedish ambassador, who was negotiating a peace with 
 the Russian commissioners at Abo, at length, by a stratagem, 
 took advantage of the approaching election, to determine the 
 Russians for peace, by pretending that Denmark was using 
 eiforts to frustrate the measures of the present congress, in 
 order to carry on her own designs ; and, as the Russians were 
 absolutely bent on making no compliances, he broke up the 
 meeting. This the Russian delegates had not expected ; but 
 now, for the sake of gratifying the wishes of their sovereign, 
 they concluded a peace, by which Elizabeth restored the 
 greater part of Finland, occupied by her troops, on condition 
 that the bishop of Lubeck should be appointed successor. 
 The news of the peace arrived at Stockholm just before the 
 el irtion ; the Dalecarlians were driven by the soldiers to 
 Paaren ; on the 4th of July, Adolphus Frederick, duke of 
 Holstein and bishop of Lubeck, was elected king of Sweden, 
 and the succession settled in his posterity ; and, in August, 
 the peace between Russia and Sweden was fully ratified. 
 
 The Swedes had reason to think themselves very fortunate 
 that, by gratifying Elizabeth, showed in the election of her 
 kinsman, they were enabled to procure better terms than 
 they had otherwise reason to expect. They received back 
 Finland, and only ceded the province of Kymmenegard, with 
 all the branches and mouths of the river Kymene Nyslot, and
 
 A.D. 1742] TREATY OF ABO. 431 
 
 all the district around it in the province of Savolar. But 
 even in the act of fulfilling the treaty, the diabolical spirit of 
 Russian policy was signally displayed. Mannstein relates 
 that before the Russian troops quitted Finland " they took 
 care to squeeze from it everything they possibly could ; the 
 intention of the court being to ruin that province totally, and 
 reduce it, notwithstanding the peace, into so wretched a con- 
 dition as not to be able for a long time to hold up its head 
 agaiu ; the generals had even repeated orders not to fail of 
 attending to this point. The empress, however, feigning a 
 desire to restore a good harmony with her neighbours, ordered 
 some thousands of bushels of grain out of the magazines, 
 whieh had been established in Finland, to be distributed to 
 the peasants of Finland for sowing their grounds." 
 
 We have already observed, that Lestocq and La Che- 
 tardie had been mainly instrumental in elevating Elizabeth 
 tn the throne : but notwithstanding this, the Russian mi- 
 nistry, in the year 1742, demanded from Fleury La Chetardie's 
 recal, and succeeded in their demand. In order not to appear 
 ungrateful, the empress made so many and such valuable 
 presents to him on his departure from Russia, that or) Che- 
 tardie's arrival in Paris, the king himself thought it worth 
 while to inspect and examine them ; their value was computed 
 at a million and a half of livres. 
 
 The circumstance of the war of succession induced the 
 French court to send La Chetardie anew to St. Petersburg, 
 in order, in connexion with Lestocq, to form intrigues 
 against Bestujef ; but the latter was far superior to both, 
 in cunning and talents. They at first tried to prejudice the 
 empress against Austria, and incidentally against Prussia, 
 although Frederick at this very time had negotiated a mar- 
 riage between the duke of Holstein, who was next in succes- 
 sion to the - throne of Russia, and the princess of Anhalt- 
 Zcrbst. It was pretended that lieutenant Berger, who was 
 entrusted with the safe keeping of Lbwenwolde, in his im- 
 prisonment had discovered a wide-spread conspiracy, in which 
 the marquis Botta, who had formerly been Austrian ambas- 
 sador at St. Petersburg and afterwards in Berlin, was deeply 
 implicated, and of which the king of Prussia had been 
 informed. The most cruel torments were inflicted upon 
 persons of the highest distinction, in order to extort con-
 
 432 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXXIV. 
 
 fessions and to furnish grounds for the imposition of the most 
 horrible punishments ; the whole conspiracy, however, was 
 either a matter of pure invention, or at least the account of 
 it greatly exaggerated. Berger, who was used as an accuser 
 on the occasion, was, however, rewarded with an excellent 
 appointment. Maria Theresa at first refused to exhibit any 
 sign of displeasure against Botta, who firmly denied that he 
 had had any participation whatever in this pretended con- 
 spiracy ; but as Bestujef sought to avail himself of this 
 affair to effect a reconciliation between the queen of Hungary 
 and the empress, and to expose Frederick to double hatred, 
 Botta willingly allowed himself to be made the scapegoat, 
 and to be for a time banished from the court. Frederick 
 continually protested that he knew nothing whatever of any 
 such conspiracy as he was charged with accordhig to some 
 portions of Botta' s letters, but still he remained suspected, 
 and Maria Theresa satisfied the empress Elizabeth by sending 
 Botta for some time to a fortress. He was afterwards fully 
 indemnified by the queen for consenting to be made the 
 scapegoat on the occasion. 
 
 La Chetardie, however, had scarcely returned to St. Peters- 
 burg, when he received a very sensible proof of having very 
 much overrated his influence. Belying upon a degree of 
 favour which he did not possess, he formed a most absurd and 
 comprehensive plan for overthrowing the ministers, bringing 
 about great changes in Russia, and laying a sure foundation 
 for the preponderating influence of France. The French 
 government was even blind and foolish enough to allow him 
 to spend above a million of livres in Eussia for the accom- 
 plishment of this most absurd plan, before he formally 
 undertook the character of an ambassador. This revolu- 
 tionary scheme was brought to light by La Chetardie's own 
 letters ; he was cited before the empress, and although ho 
 was still French ambassador, she caused him to be arrested, 
 deprived him of all the presents, orders, and diamonds which 
 she had previously bestowed upon him, and ordered him to 
 be sent over the borders under a military escort (1744). 
 Lestocq maintained his ground for four years longer, till 
 Bestujef and general Apraxiu united to effect his downfal.
 
 A.D. 17-15] MARRIAGE OF ELIZABETH'S HEIR. 433 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXY. 
 
 MARRIAGE OF ELIZABETH'S HEIR — GROWING ANTIPATHY 
 
 BETWEEN THE COURTS OF RUSSIA AND PRUSSIA THE 
 
 SEVEN TEARS' WAR — DEATH OF ELIZABETH — HER CHA- 
 RACTER. 
 
 The king of Prussia, as ruler of six millions of men, 
 understood how to maintain his dignity among the great 
 powers without employing splendid embassies, or spending 
 immense sums of money on his diplomatists, whose salaries 
 were regulated by a very slender scale. He declined the 
 proposal of the empress Elizabeth to unite his sister Amalia, 
 abbess of Quedlingburg, in marriage with the grand-duke 
 Peter, under the honourable pretence, that he regarded it as 
 unbecoming his dignity that she should change her religion. 
 As it is well known, he is said at the same time truly but 
 bitterly to have expressed his opinion among his confidential 
 companions respecting the manner in which the occupation 
 of the throne of Eussia had been effected. Bestujef is said 
 to have made the empress acquainted with his remarks, 
 and to have incensed her against the king, but, notwith- 
 standing, he recommended as a wife for the grand-duke the 
 daughter of the clever princess of Holstein, who was married 
 to a prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, then in the Prussian service. 
 This princess, Sophia Augusta, on her adoption of the Greek 
 faith, assumed the name of Catharine (1741), and the Eus- 
 sian grand-duke was no sooner declared by the elector of 
 Saxony, as vicar of the empire, to have attained Ins majority 
 as duke of Holstein, than this unhappy union was solemnised 
 with unexampled splendour (1745). 
 
 The Eussians were no favourites with the grand-duke 
 Peter ; his own little territory was more an object of interest 
 and affection in his eyes than the whole immense empire of 
 Eussia. In his youth, when he amused himself with soldiers 
 in Holstein, he had been altogether won over to the cause of 
 king Frederick and his military Prussians by Holstein officers 
 who had been in the Prussian service, and he hoped for 
 support from Prussia against Denmark. Having obtained 
 permission to train some Holstein troops in Oranienbaum, 
 not far from Petersburg, he put his little corps wholly upon 
 
 vol. i. 2 F
 
 434 histobt or bussia. [en. xxxv. 
 
 a Prussian footing, and manifested a disposition completely 
 in contradiction to the system of Russian policy. Bestujef 
 is said to have drawn great sums from England and Austria,* 
 and he might also, upon mere personal grounds, have been 
 desirous of raising a prejudice in the mind of the empress 
 against her nephew as well as against Frederick ; but it 
 cannot be denied, that he had also very good political grounds 
 for being unfavourable to Frederick. The latter could neither 
 be bribed nor deceived, Sweden and Denmark were secretly 
 supported by him, and he prevented both states from falling 
 completely under the dominion of Russia ; this embittered 
 Bestujef against him. The Russian minister was continu- 
 ally engaged with Kaunitz and Briihl in laying plans and 
 forming cabals, whilst the grand-duke on his part played the 
 Prussian spy and communicated all he heard to Frederick ; 
 for this reason Bestujef endeavoured to alienate the empress 
 from her nephew, to whom she was much attached, and he at 
 length succeeded in his design. Prom the year 1746 Eliza- 
 beth caused her nephew to be carefully watched, surrounded 
 him with spies, obliged him to send away all his Holstein 
 servants, and suffered Pechlin and Brombsen alone to re- 
 main as Holstein ministers, who were more zealous servants 
 of Bestujef than of their own duke. 
 
 About this time George II. was displeased with Frederick 
 on account of East Friesland ; Russia suspected that he was 
 desirous of supporting the king of Sweden ; Bestujef in 
 1746 had drawn up the treaty which was concluded with 
 Saxony and Austria in very equivocal terms as regards Prussia, 
 and in 1747 Saxony entered into a new agreement, in which 
 the article that had formed a part of the treaty with Austria 
 in 1745, and which referred to the partition of the Prussian 
 dominions, was introduced. It appears from the papers 
 which Frederick carried away from the Saxon archives and 
 caused to be printed on his invasion of Saxony, that this 
 affair had been afterwards the subject of extensive corre- 
 spondence ; such a result, however, could not be obtained, 
 
 * The marquis de Hautcfort, French ambassador in Vienna, in his 
 manuscript correspondence, February, 1751, having given full details 
 of all that Maria Theresa had verbally communicated, adds: "L'im- 
 peratrice me confirma clle-mumc que e'etoit l'avarice de M. de Bes- 
 tuslief qui etoit la principale cause de l'accession de l'Angleterrc au 
 traite' de Petersbourg." We must be persuaded she had the best rea- 
 sons for being acquainted with the fact.
 
 A.D. 1750] ILL-WILL TO PRUSSIA. 435 
 
 although Russia and Austria took every possible means of 
 showing their dislike to Prussia. 
 
 "With, astonishing energy Frederick maintained the honour 
 and dignity of his little kingdom against the greatest and 
 most powerful ones in Europe without exception, Russia 
 had recalled all her subjects from the Prussian service, and 
 caused captain von Stackelberg to be arrested, who was 
 secretly recruiting for Prussia : Frederick immediately re- 
 turned like for like. He seized upon two or three Livonians 
 as hostages for Stackelberg, did not suffer the Russian 
 ambassador to publish his letters of recal in the Prussian 
 newspapers, and gave him a very serious proof of his dis- 
 pleasure when he ventured to send the commands of his 
 empress to individual officers. About the same time (1750) 
 Russia had collected troops on the borders of Finland, and 
 Frederick immediately sent "Wahrendorf as charge d'affaires 
 only to Petersburg, in order to make some energetic repre- 
 sentations respecting Swedish affairs. On this occasion 
 Bestujef adopted a singular means of avoiding an explana- 
 tion. He had recourse to etiquette, and refused not merely 
 to present the ambassador to the empress, but even to receive 
 his despatches or hear his proposals, till he had received the 
 declaration of his sovereign with regard to his rank. In 
 order further to relieve himself from the necessity of hearing 
 him at all, he sent an immediate order to the Russian ambas- 
 sador in Berlin to leave the capital without taking leave, on 
 account of the disputes concerning the officers and soldiers, 
 and the want of attention shown to him by Frederick : this 
 would necessarily oblige Frederick to pursue the same course 
 with regard to Wahrendorf in Petersburg. 
 
 This dispute had for the moment no other consequences 
 than the absence of a Russian ambassador for a time from 
 Berlin, and that of a Prussian one from Petersburg ; but the 
 more closely France and Austria afterwards drew the bonds 
 of union, the more Russia became alienated from Prussia, 
 and even England had at one time acceded to the threatening 
 alliance of Ausl ria and Russia. In 1751 Prussia forbad the 
 circulation of Russian copper money in her territories ; in 
 1752 Russia refused to the merchants trading to Dantzig the 
 privilege of conveying their wares by Konigsberg, and com- 
 manded them to take the way through Poland ; and at length, 
 
 2f2
 
 43G HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXXV. 
 
 in May, 1753, a great conference* was held in Moscow, and 
 a resolution adopted, to have recourse to all possible means 
 to prevent the further growth of the Prussian monarchy, and 
 to reduce it to its former limits and condition. This was 
 intimately connected with the cabals which were carried^ on 
 in Vienna, Versailles, and Dresden. In the year 1754 mat- 
 ters had been so far matured, that troops were collected in 
 Russia, and held in readiness at a moment's notice, to make 
 an attack upon Prussia in combination with Austria.f At 
 that time Prederick was king of only seven millions of men ; 
 he was, however, the sole protector of Protestantism, the 
 champion of the claims and rights of free minds, about which 
 neither despots nor the selfish masses felt the slightest in- 
 terest. He stood alone in opposition to the whole of ancient 
 Europe, to despots and aristocrats, to all the powers and 
 abuses of the middle ages. And modern history presents no 
 grander spectacle, than the struggle which was commenced 
 by him in this singular position. 
 
 England was at length induced, by her anxiety respecting 
 Hanover, to favour the cause of Prederick ; she had actually 
 concluded a defensive ti'eaty with Russia in September, 1755, 
 and the latter power had agreed, for a compensation in 
 money, to place 55,000 men at her disposal for the defence 
 of Hanover. This treaty was annulled as soon as Russia 
 formed an alliance with Prance, which was at Avar with Eng- 
 land, and with Austria against the Icing of Prussia. In con- 
 sequence of this alliance, George II. was compelled to look 
 for the protection of Hanover through the instrumentality 
 of Prussia. The grand-duke was at that time very useful to 
 the king of Prussia, with whom he kept up a continual cor- 
 respondence by letter. He gave him secret information, 
 made him acquainted with all the secret plans which were 
 
 * This conference was composed of representatives of the Russian 
 ministry and those of the various persons interested in trade. 
 
 f The correspondence of the marquis de Ilautefort contains a very 
 remarkable passage hearing on this point. He writes to the French 
 ministry from Vienna under date of March 13, 1754, as follows: — " La 
 cour de Vienne fera tou jours ses efforts pour retenir dans le voisinage 
 dc PAHemagne un gros corps de troupes Russes. II paroit que cette 
 cour est aujourd'hui dans l'intimiti? la plus etroite avec celle de Reters- 
 hourg. ])'ailleurs le systeme favori du ministcre Russe est depuis 
 longtems de chercher a prendre part aux affaires d'Allemagne. -Ainsi 
 je pense que ces deux cours seront facilenient d'accord sur ce point."
 
 A.D. 1757] THE SEVEN YEAKS' WAE. 437 
 
 projected in Petersburg, threatened all those who promoted 
 Bestujef s views against Prussia with his future vengeance, 
 and as his aunt became weaker and more indisposed, he pro- 
 tested openly against the whole system. He united with 
 the English ambassador to endeavour to withdraw his aunt 
 from the coalition, and during her illness he even ventured 
 to send commands to the generals-in-chief which were the 
 very reverse of those which they received from the ministry 
 of the empire. Frederick on his part did all in his power to 
 serve the grand-duke by wise counsels ; but Peter was far 
 too narrow-minded to be able to follow the advice of so great 
 a man as the king of Prussia. 
 
 It was not until 1757 that Russia took part in the war ; 
 and then the exploits of her army in Prussia Proper had 
 only been dreadful to the poor inhabitants of that country. 
 Sibilsky, the commander of the Saxons, who were united 
 with the Russian array, was so indignant at the cruelties and 
 devastations committed by the Russians, that he appealed to 
 the empress against Apraxin, the commander-in-chief, and 
 unwillingly relinquished his command. The Russians had 
 long delayed commencing operations from want of money, 
 and it was only when Austria allowed some portion of the 
 stream of French subsidies to flow in that channel, that their 
 army under Apraxin and Fermor took the field against 
 Prussia. This force was so numerous, that great blame was 
 thrown upon the aged field-marshal Lehwald for having met 
 them in the open field and offei*ed them battle. Lehwald 
 had only 30,000 men when he attacked the Russians in their 
 camp near Gross jjigrrndorf, on the 30th of August, and was 
 beaten as had been foreseen. The Russians might now have 
 taken possession of Prussia and have crossed the Oder, 
 whereas they not only withdrew, but Apraxin retired with 
 such precipitation, and made such efforts to reach the Russian 
 frontiers, that his retreat had all the appearance of a dis- 
 graceful flight. 
 
 The singular conduct of the Russian general on this occa- 
 sion was connected with the state of affairs at the court, 
 because in Russia, as well as in France, the whole of the 
 national concerns was intimately bound up with the persons 
 and circumstances of the rulers. At this time the empress 
 Elizabeth no longer interested herself about public affairs, 
 and her successor was so indignant at the commencement
 
 438 HISTOEY OP RUSSIA. [CH. XXXV. 
 
 of the war, aud so openly and foolishly devoted to the cause 
 of Prussia, that Bestujef began to weave intrigues against 
 him, in which even the wife of the grand-duke offered hex- 
 aid. Catharine had previously offended the empress by her 
 adulterous intercourse with the Pole, Stanislus Poniatowsky, 
 who had come with the English ambassador to Petersburg, 
 and was afterwards obliged to leave the city. Bestujef no 
 sooner perceived that his plans might be promoted by Catha- 
 rine's assistance, than he induced Briihl to send the former 
 favourite of the grand-duchess in the character of charge 
 d'affaires back to Petersburg, and the grand-duke was to be 
 the sacrifice of the cabals of the minister and his own wife. 
 Moreover, Peter by his conduct furnished his wife with some 
 excuse for the course which she pursued, because he had 
 forsaken her and lived with Elizabeth Vorontzof as his wife. 
 
 We leave it undetermined whether Catharine was fully in- 
 formed of Bestujef 's plans, or whether he only foresaw that 
 her concurrence was necessarily certain ; but so much is 
 clear, that when the illness of the empress assumed a dan- 
 gerous appearance, he intended on her death to exclude the 
 grand-duke from the succession, to raise the eldest of the 
 young princes to the dignity of emperor, and to place the 
 administration of the empire in the hands of his mother. 
 The army which had been sent to Prussia was necessary for 
 the due execution of these plans, and Apraxin and major- 
 general "Weymarn had been gained over to the conspiracy ; 
 hence arose the long hesitation and delay about marching 
 to Prussia ; and detentions or expedition on the march, ac- 
 cording to the varying favourable or unfavourable news of 
 the empress's health. Shortly before the battle of Grossja- 
 gerndorf, Apraxin had received intelligence that the empress's 
 life was in danger, and hence the rapidity of his movements 
 on his return into Russia, as well as his alarm and terror 
 when he learned that the empress was recovered, and that he 
 would be called upon to justify his arbitrary conduct. 
 
 Bestujef was now caught in his own snare : Erance and 
 Austria united to trace out and disclose to the empress what 
 they called the English cabals, and the use which had been 
 made of Poniatowsky. Elizabeth, broken in health by de- 
 bauchery of all kinds, lived so completely within her palace, 
 that she was wholly unacquainted with what was passing
 
 a.d. 1758] bestujef's tbeasonable iktbigttes. 439 
 
 without, or with the place in which her army was. Sibilsky's 
 accusations or remonstrances had never reached her ; and 
 the grand-duke Peter was too ignorant and narrow-minded 
 to know what course to pursue, till Volkol' and Vorontzof 
 aided him by their advice. Volkof was one of the ablest and 
 most cunning men in the empire ; he had been long in the 
 confidence of Bestujef, but now betrayed him in consequence 
 of mutual misunderstandings and disputes ; and the vice- 
 chancellor Vorontzof informed the grand-duke of the plans 
 which were being forged against him. 
 
 At the commencement of the year 1758, the empress, as 
 soon as she had recovered, was informed by the grand-duke 
 of the scandalous combination of ambitious men which had 
 been formed for his destruction, and for paralysing or de- 
 feating the operations of the Russian army. Bestujef was 
 immediately arrested and banished ; Apraxin was called to 
 account for his conduct, but escaped the punishment which 
 awaited him by his death, which took place in August, 1758 ; 
 "Weymarn was dismissed ; and Catharine was not suffered for 
 months to appear hi the presence of the empress. No doubt 
 can be entertained with respect to Bestujef s guilt, because 
 there was found among his papers a copy of the deed of 
 renunciation which he wished to compel Peter to subscribe, 
 and even of the order drawn up in the name of the empress, 
 not only without but contrary to her will, in which Apraxin 
 was commanded to retreat. As he was afterwards recalled 
 from banishment by Catharine, and as much as possible 
 indemnified for his sufferings, it is at least highly probable 
 that she was privy to a plan, which if it had been carried 
 into execution, would have spared her the commission of 
 some of those dreadful crimes of which she was afterwards 
 guilty. Her connexion with Stanislaus Poniatowsky, whom 
 she afterwards made king of Poland, and suffered to be 
 treated in the most contemptuous manner by her ill-man- 
 nered ambassador during the whole of his reign, led to a 
 scene in the following year (1758) which necessarily caused 
 a complete separation from her husband. Stanislaus, al- 
 though he was now Saxon ambassador, was obliged imme- 
 diately to leave the country ; and the empress was so enraged 
 that she was about to send Catharine to a convent. 
 
 Before Bestujef was overthrown (for he was not ar-
 
 440 HISTOKY OF EUSSIA. [CH. XXXV. 
 
 rested till February) the Russian army had again marched 
 into Prussia, and under Fermor taken possession of Konigs- 
 herg on the 22nd of January. The occupation of the whole 
 kingdom from Memel to the Oder was rendered easy by 
 the removal of the Prussian forces, which had been marched 
 against the Swedes in Pomerania. The Russians, who ad- 
 vanced with incomprehensible slowness, appeared to calcu- 
 late on making Prussia a Russian province, for they received 
 everywhere the homage of the people, and treated the coun- 
 try with great consideration and mildness ; but they no 
 sooner entered the Mark, than they plundered and wasted 
 the country with the same cruelty and rage as lyid been 
 done in the time of Apraxin. 
 
 Frederick reached Silesia in the beginning of August, by 
 his admirably conducted march through Bohemia with thou- 
 sands of waggons and with all his artillery : there he learned 
 that the Swedes had again taken the field, and that the 
 Russians were pressing Ciistrin. Daun was to have sup- 
 ported the operations of the Russians and Swedes by an 
 inroad into Saxony, but he delayed so long, that Frederick 
 had time to settle affairs with the Russians, and then at 
 length he first threatened Dresden. Prom the 15th till the 
 17th of August the Russians continued wantonly to destroy 
 the town of Ciistrin ; the fortress, however, still held out, 
 when Frederick arrived at Frankfort on the 20th, collected 
 his forces, and crossed the Oder. This step compelled the 
 Russian general to withdraw the besieging army from Ciis- 
 trin, to concentrate his forces, and to await an attack from 
 the king. In the engagement which was fought at Zorndorf, 
 both parties boasted a victory ; the Russians unquestionably 
 suffered the greater loss in men, but they maintained their 
 position for several days after the battle. Frederick found 
 it the less necessary to venture upon a new assault, as 
 the Russians, after a very short time, broke up of their 
 own accord, withdrew their troops from Pomerania and the 
 Mark, which they had devastated after a Turkish fashion, 
 and after having made one more attempt to conquer Col- 
 berg, remained quiet in Poland and Prussia. 
 
 Poland was to be the scene of the next campaign. Thither, 
 therefore, the Russians marched, and thence they afterwards 
 spread themselves over all the Prussian territory (1759),
 
 A.D. 1759] THE SEVEN YEARS' WAE. 441 
 
 under the command of count Soltikof, who had been ap- 
 pointed chief of the army, in the room of marshal Termor.* 
 Frederick's German dominions, and Silesia, became now the 
 scene of action. Fortified, in some measure, by the reinforce- 
 ments he had received, general Wedel resolved, in pursuance 
 of his orders, to attack the Russians on their march. They 
 had got to Zulichau towards the latter end of July, and 
 directed their course to Krossen in Silesia, to get before the 
 Prussian army, and make good the passage of the Oder. 
 The situation of the Russians was very advantageous ; 
 posted upon eminences, defended by a powerful artillery, 
 and near seventy thousand strong. The Prussian army fell 
 short of thirty thousand ; and they had greater disadvantages 
 to overcome than such as arose from inferiority of numbers. 
 They had to pass a bridge, and so narrow a defile, that scarce 
 a third of a battalion could march in front. The ground was 
 such, that the cavalry could not support their infantry. Yet 
 with all these difficulties, the attack was long and resolute. 
 But this resolution made their repulse, which all these dis- 
 advantages had rendered inevitable, far more bloody and 
 distressful. Four thousand seven hundred were killed or 
 taken prisoners ; and the wounded were at least three thou- 
 sand. The Prussians were obliged to retire, but they were 
 not pursued; aud they passed the Oder without molestation. 
 The Russians seized upon the towns of Krossen and Frank- 
 fort on the Oder. 
 
 Frederick now marched with ten thousand of his best troops 
 to join the broken army of "Wedel, in order to drive this for- 
 midable and determined enemy from his country. Prince 
 Henry commanded the remainder of his army, which was too 
 well posted to fear any insult during his absence. The eyes 
 of all were fixed upon his march, and his soldiers who re- 
 membered Zorndorf, eagerly longed to try their strength once 
 more with the same antagonists. 
 
 Marshal Daun, the Austrian general, was not unapprised 
 of the motion of the Russians, or the designs of the king of 
 Prussia. He knew that the great defect of the Russian 
 troops was the want of a regular and firm cavalry, which 
 might be depended upon in the day of action. This defect 
 
 * Fcrmor now served under him.
 
 442 HISTORY OF BTTSSIA. [CH. XXXV. 
 
 had been a principal cause of their misfortune at Zorndorf 
 the last year ; a misfortune which disconcerted all the opera- 
 tions of that campaign. As this was the only want which 
 the Russians were under, so it was that which Daun was best 
 able to supply at a short warning. With this view he selected 
 about twelve thousand of his horse, and there is no better 
 horse than that of the Austrians ; which, with about eight 
 thousand foot, he placed under the command of general Lau- 
 dohn, one of the ablest officers iu that service. This body 
 was divided into two columns, one of which marched through 
 Silesia, and the other through Lusatia. By extreme good 
 fortune and conduct, with little loss or opposition, they both 
 joined the Russian army, and were received with transports 
 of joy. , 
 
 In the mean time, the king of Prussia, who was unable to 
 prevent this stroke, joined general Wedel at Muhlrose, and 
 took upon him the command of the united armies. But, still 
 finding himself too weak for the decisive action he was pre- 
 paring to attempt, he recalled general Finck, whom he had 
 sent some time before into Saxony with nine thousand men, 
 in order to oppose the Imperialists in that country. "With 
 these reinforcements he was not able to raise his army to fifty 
 thousand complete. That of the Russians, since the junction 
 of Laudohn, was upwards of ninety thousand. They had, 
 besides, taken a post, which they had so strongly entrenched, 
 and defended with such a prodigious number of cannon, that 
 it was extremely difficult and hazardous to attempt them ; 
 yet, under these accumulated disadvantages, it was absolutely 
 necessary that he should fight. The detachments from count 
 Daun's army already menaced Berlin ; Saxony, which he was 
 obliged to leave exposed, had become a prey to the Imperial- 
 ists ; and the Russians, united with the Austrians, encamped 
 before his eyes in Silesia, the best and richest part of his 
 dominions. In short, his former reputation, his present dif- 
 ficulties, his future hopes, every motive of honour and of 
 safety, demanded an engagement ; the campaign hasted to a 
 decision, and it was evident that nothing further could be 
 done by marches and choice of posts. The sanguine temper 
 of other generals lias often obliged them to fight under dis- 
 advantages ; but the king of Prussia's circumstances were 
 such, that, from the multitude of his enemies, he was neither
 
 A.D. 1759] THE BETES YEAES' WAE. 443 
 
 able to consult times nor situations. Rashness could hardly 
 dictate anything, which, in his coudition, would not have been 
 recommended by prudence. 
 
 AVhen the attack was resolved, the king's troops put them- 
 selves in motion on the 12th of August, at two in the morn- 
 ing; and, having formed themselves in a wood, advanced 
 towards the enemy. It was near eleven before the action 
 began. The principal effort of the king of Prussia was 
 against the left wing of the Russian army. He began, ac- 
 cording to his usual method, with a fierce cannonade ; which 
 having had the effect he desired from it, he attacked that 
 wing with several battalions disposed in columns. 
 
 The Russian entrenchments were forced with great 
 slaughter. Seventy-two pieces of caunon were taken. But 
 still there was a defile to be passed, and several redoubts to 
 be mastered, which covered the village of Kunnersdorf. 
 These were attacked with the same resolution, and taken 
 one after another. The enemy again made a stand at the 
 village, and endeavoured there to preserve their ground, by 
 pushing forward several battalions of horse and foot; but 
 their resistance there proved not more effectual than it had 
 done everywhere else ; they were driven from post to post 
 quite to the last redoubts. For upwards of six hours fortune 
 favoured the Prussians, who everywhere broke the enemy 
 with an unparalleled slaughter. They had driven them from 
 almost all the ground which they had occupied before the 
 battle ; they had taken more than half their artillery; scarcely 
 anything seemed wanting to the most complete decision. 
 
 The king in those circumstances wrote a note to the queen, 
 to this effect : " Madam, we have beat the Russians from 
 their entrenchments. In two hom-s expect to hear of a glo- 
 rious victory." This news arrived at Berlin just as the post 
 was 2;oing out, and the friends of the king of Prussia through- 
 out Europe exulted in a certain and conclusive victory. Mean- 
 time, fortune was preparing for him a terrible reverse. 
 
 The enemy, defeated in almost every quarter, found their 
 left Aving, shattered as it was, to be more entire than any 
 other part of the army. Count Soltikof therefore assembled 
 the remains of his right, and gathered as many as he could 
 from the centre, reinforced that wing, and made a stand at a 
 redoubt, which had been erected on a very advantageous
 
 444 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXXV. 
 
 eminence. No more was wanting to terminate matters in. 
 favour of the king, than to drive the Russians from this their 
 last hope. But this enterprise was difficult. It was confi- 
 dently said, that the Prussian generals were unanimous in 
 their opinion, that they should not endeavour at that time to 
 push any further the advantages they had obtained. They 
 represented to the king that the enemy was still very nume- 
 rous, their artillery very considerable, and the post which they 
 occupied of great strength ; that his brave troops, who had 
 been engaged for a long time, in the severest action perhaps 
 ever known, and in one of the hottest days ever felt, were too 
 much exhausted for a new attempt ; an attempt of such ex- 
 treme difficulty, as might daunt even troops that Avere quite 
 fresh. That the advantage he had gained would be as de- 
 cisive in its consequences as that at Zorndorf ; and whilst 
 the enemy filled the gazettes of their party with frivolous 
 disputes of the field of battle, he would be reaping, as he did 
 then, all the effects of an unquestioned victory. That the 
 enemy would be obliged to retire immediately into Poland, 
 and to leave him at liberty to act in other quarters, where 
 his presence was full as necessary. 
 
 These reasons were very cogent, and for a few moments 
 they seemed to have some weight with the king. But his 
 character soon determined him to a contrary resolution. He 
 could not bear to be a conqueror by halves. One effort more 
 was alone wanting to that victory, which would free him for 
 ever from the adversary which had leaned heaviest on him 
 during the whole of the war. 
 
 Once more he put all to the hazard. His infantry, still 
 resolute, and supported by their late success, were readily 
 brought to act again. They drew on their bodies, fainting 
 with heat and labour, to a new attack. But the enterprise 
 Avas beyond their strength. The situation of the enemy was 
 impregnable ; and their artillery, which began to be superior 
 to that of the Prussians, on account of the difficulty of the 
 ground, which made it impossible for the latter to bring up 
 any other than a few small pieces, repulsed these feeble bat- 
 talions with a great slaughter. With an astonishing, perhaps 
 with a blamable persevercucc, the Prussian infantry Averc 
 brought to a second attack, and Avere a second time repulsed, 
 and with a loss greater than at first. These efforts being
 
 A.D. 1759] THE SEVEN' TEAKS' WAE. 445 
 
 unsuccessful, the affair was put to the cavalry. They made 
 redoubled, but useless attacks ; the horses were spent, as 
 well as those they carried. 
 
 It was just at that time, when the Prussian horse was 
 wasted by these fruitless exertions, that the greatest part of 
 the Russian and the whole body of the Austrian cavalry, 
 which had been hitherto entirely inactive, and was therefore 
 quite fresh, rushed down upon them, broke them to pieces, 
 forced them back upon their foot, and threw the whole into 
 irreparable disorder. The army was universally seized with 
 a panic ; and in a few minutes those troops, so lately victo- 
 rious and irresistible, were totally dispersed and defeated. 
 The king did everything to restore the field, hazarding his 
 person, even beyond his former daring, and prodigal of a life 
 he seemed to think ought not to be separated from conquest. 
 Thrice he led on his troops to the charge ; two horses were 
 killed under him ; several balls were in his clothes. The 
 utmost efforts of skill, courage, and despair were made, and 
 proved ineffectual : a single error outweighed them all. 
 Scarcely a general, hardly an inferior officer in the army was 
 without some wound. That of general Seidlitz was par- 
 ticularly unfortunate; for to that wound the failure of the 
 horse, which he commanded, was principally attributed. It 
 was to the spirit and conduct of this able officer that a great 
 part of the success at Zorndorf had been owing in the last 
 campaign.' It is known, that if it had not been for a sea- 
 sonable movement of the horse, the whole Prussian army had 
 I lien been in great danger of a defeat. 
 
 The night, and the prudent use of some eminences, which 
 were defended as well as circumstances would admit, pre- 
 served the Prussian army from total destruction. However, 
 their loss was far greater than any which they had sustained 
 from the beginning of the war. All their cannon Avas taken. 
 The killed, wounded, and prisoners, by the most favourable 
 accounts, were near twenty thousand. General Putkammer 
 was killed on the spot. Those generals whose names were 
 so distinguished in that war, Itzenplitz, Hulsen, Finck, 
 Wedel, and Seidlitz, were among the wounded ; as was the 
 prince of "VVurtemberg, and five major-generals. The enemy 
 could qoI have had fewer than ten thousand killed on their 
 side. Por hardly ever was fought a more bloody battle.
 
 446 HISTORY OF EUSSIA. [CH. XXXV. 
 
 When the king of Prussia found himself obliged to quit 
 the field, he sent another despatch to the queen, expressed 
 in this manner : — " Remove from Berlin with the royal 
 family. Let the archives be carried to Potsdam. The town 
 may make conditions with the enemy." It were vain to 
 attempt to draw the picture of the court and city on the 
 receipt of such news, in the midst of the joy which they 
 indulged for the accounts they had received but a few hours 
 before. The terror was increased by the indistinct relation 
 that soon followed, which gave them only to understand, that 
 their army was totally routed ; that there was no account of 
 the king, and that a Russian army was advancing to take 
 possession of their city. 
 
 The day after the battle the king of Prussia re-passed 
 the Oder, and encamped at Retvin. Thence he moved to 
 Purstenwalde, and placed himself in such a manner that the 
 Russians did not venture to make any attempt upon Berlin. 
 He continually watched their army ; a part of which, instead 
 of turning towards Brandenburg, marched into Lusatia, 
 where it joined that of the Austrians. Here the victorious 
 Soltikof, for the first time, met marshal Daun, and amidst 
 rejoicings and gratulations, consulted about the measures for 
 improving their success. 
 
 The Russians profited no more by the advantages obtained 
 at Kunnersdorf than they had done the preceding year by 
 the victory at Yaegersdorf, but remained stationary in that 
 district, and demolished, according to custom, being ever 
 intent on spreading ruin and desolation around them, all the 
 sluices of the Frederick- William canal, which connects the 
 Spree with the Oder. Marshal Daun was for passing the 
 Oder : but he was overruled ; and thus furnished another 
 instance that the Austrian and Russian generals do not 
 readily act in concert.* Soltikof excused himself by alleging 
 that he had already done much : having hi this year alone 
 
 * This dislike to the Austrians might probably be in part ascribed 
 to the complaints which, in the seven-year war, the court of Vienna 
 was perpetually making against the Russian generals at that of Peters- 
 burg. This being at length perceived by the former, attempts were 
 made, by flattery and presents, to repair the union that had been thus 
 dissolved; but it was too late.
 
 A.D. 1760] THE SEVEN YEABS' WAB. 4-17 
 
 twice routed the Prussians, and thereby extremely reduced 
 his numbers, while the great Austrian army had remained 
 totally inactive ; and that therefore he ought not to remove 
 far from Poland, for fear of being distressed by the want of 
 provisions for his troops. Daun promised to send him 
 provisions : a promise which, as the Russians kept advancing, 
 he was unable to perform, especially since prince Henry 
 endeavoured everywhere to destroy the Austrian magazines. 
 Daun, who therefore had enough to do to provide for 
 himself, now offered the Russians money : but Soltikof sent 
 him word that his soldiers could not eat money ; and as, 
 moreover, the king was doing his utmost to prevent the 
 junction of the Russians with the Austrians, Soltikof retired 
 to winter quarters in Poland, without performing anything 
 further. His army also on this retreat committed incredible 
 outrages and cruelties, burning villages, the seats of noble- 
 men, and several towns in Silesia and Brandenburg, so that 
 smoking ruins now likewise marked the way by which they 
 abandoned the Prussian territory.* 
 
 In the year 1760, the Russians marched into eastern Po- 
 merania, where they invested Colberg both by land and sea, 
 and pressed that city with a close and unremitted siege ; but 
 again without effect. In the mean time another corps, under 
 the orders of count Chernichef, entered Berlin ; and the king 
 of Prussia at last saw his capital taken by his most cruel 
 enemies, and put to ransom ; his native country was wasted ; 
 they took up their quarters in his palaces, ruined all the 
 royal manufactories, emptied the arsenal, and would have 
 carried their wild outrages still further against the city and 
 its inhabitants, had not general Tottleben, who had been 
 formerly hi the Prussian service, and lived some time in 
 Berlin, acted the part of a mediator between them and their 
 enemies, and exerted himself to the utmost to procure them 
 a reprieve. The Russians, however, no sooner heard that the 
 king was on his march to the succour of his distressed capi- 
 
 * They were resolved, it was said, to leave the Prussian subjects 
 nothing but air and earth, and were actually making preparations to 
 put their inhuman threats, unjustifiable even in war, into execution. 
 Frederick on this occasion said, " We have to do with barbarians who 
 are digging the grave of humanity."
 
 448 HISTOKY OF EUSSIA. [CH. XXXV. 
 
 tal, than they turned about and withdrew to Poland, after 
 the command had been given to count Butturlin, iu conse- 
 quence of an opinion that prevailed even at St. Petersburg, 
 and \vhich had been corroborated by accounts from Vienna, 
 that it was the fault of the Russian commanders that the 
 combined forces of the two imperial courts had achieved no 
 more. 
 
 Again, in the following year (1761), the Russians suc- 
 ceeded in effecting a junction with the Austrians near 
 Strigau. But the want of provisions separated the two 
 armies ; when the Russians, having re-crossed the Oder, 
 now made themselves masters of the fortifications of Col- 
 berg, which, though badly garrisoned, had been no less than 
 ten times summoned to surrender in vain, and took up their 
 winter quarters in Pomerania and the Keumark. The affairs 
 of the king of Prussia were certainly at present in a far more 
 calamitous situation than they had been at any period during 
 the whole course of the war. The Austrians had spread 
 themselves over all Silesia, while the Mark and Pomerania 
 were submitted to the ravages of the Russians : nothing re- 
 mained to him but Saxony. Frederick, too, felt his distresses 
 more heavily than ever; he became suddenly reserved, speaking 
 but little, even with his most confidential officers ; and seemed 
 now to apprehend that it would be extremely difficult, if not 
 utterly impossible, for him any longer to make head against 
 his enemies. But at the very moment when his condition 
 seemed the most hopeless, the death of the empress Eliza- 
 beth, which happened on the 25th of December, 1761, opened 
 to him all at once a brighter prospect, and rescued him from 
 a labyrinth, out of which he could perceive no escape. So 
 unfortunately circumstanced were the affairs of the king of 
 Prussia, that his wisest schemes and happiest successes could 
 hardly answer any other end than to vary the scene of his 
 distress ; when exactly in this critical conjuncture, that un- 
 expected removal of his inveterate foe took place ; and the 
 very change thus effected in the person of the Russian sove- 
 reign, which suddenly snatched him from his lamentable 
 condition, at the same time laid the basis of that honourable 
 
 ace which two years after crowned his toils, and com- 
 pletely annihilated the plans and machinations of his nume- 
 rous enemies.
 
 A.JD. 17G1] CHARACTER OF ELIZABETH. 449 
 
 The indolence of Elizabeth's character subjected her to the 
 humours of favourites, who made a vile use of her authority. 
 She withdrew for whole months from all attention to busi- 
 ness ; her passion for drinking was unbounded ; it was with 
 difficulty she could be brought to sign the orders which were 
 written in her name, and which she never read. She not 
 only never wrote letters of ceremony with her own hand to 
 great princes, but she could seldom be induced to sign them : 
 and three years were allowed to elapse before she sent an 
 answer to the letter in which Louis XV. congratulated her 
 on the birth of the grand-duke Paul. At the commence- 
 ment of her reign Elizabeth made a vow never to punish a 
 malefactor with death: the judges, therefore, who could not 
 decapitate criminals, deprived them of their lives by the 
 barbarous punishment of the knout ; and never were there 
 more tongues cut out or torn away from the root, and more 
 wretches sent to Siberia, than under the reign of this 
 princess, so unjustly extolled for her clemency. The pane- 
 gyrists of Elizabeth (says Archdeacon Coxe) would certainly 
 have entertained some doubts concerning her boasted cle- 
 mency, if they had recollected that she did not abolish, but 
 retained, the following horrid process for the purpose of 
 extorting confession from persons charged with treasonable 
 designs. The arms of the suspected person being tied be- 
 hind by a rope, he was drawn up in that posture to a con- 
 siderable height in the air ; whence being suddenly lowered 
 to within a small distance of the ground, and the motion 
 being there as suddenly checked, the violence of the concus- 
 sion dislocated his shoulders, and in that deplorable situation 
 he underwent the knout. To this dreadful engine of bar- 
 barity and despotism, Elizabeth, amidst all her imputed 
 lenity, gave unlimited scope ; and, during her whole reign, 
 it was ordinarily applied even at the discretion of inferior 
 and ignorant magistrates ; nor was it abolished until the 
 accession of Peter III., who prohibited the use of torture in 
 nil criminal cases. 
 
 The commandant at Eogervyk had usually ten thousand 
 malefactors under his care, all of them shockingly mutilated, 
 either by having the tongue torn out, or the sides of the 
 nostrils cut away by red-hot pincers, or their ears cut off, 
 or their arms twisted behind them by dislocation at the 
 
 vol. i. 2 o
 
 450 HISTOEY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXXV. 
 
 shoulders, &c. About 80,000 persons are said to have been 
 sent to Siberia in the reign of Elizabeth, and it is supposed 
 that her government cost every year to the empire at least 
 1000 of her subjects by private imprisonment. Nothing 
 was more easy than to obtain a secret order for this purpose 
 by the flatterers of all ranks that swarmed about her person. 
 It was sufficient for one of the maids of honour to think 
 herself slighted, to obtain an order to have a person taken 
 out of bed in the night, carried away blindfolded, and gagged, 
 and immured under ground, there to drag out the remainder 
 of life in a solitary and loathsome dungeon, without ever 
 being charged with any crime, or even knowing in what part 
 of the country he was. On the disappearance of auy such 
 person from his family and acquaintance, it was highly dan- 
 gerous to make any inquiries after him. t " He has disap- 
 peared," was held a sufficient answer to questions of that 
 nature. Many of these victims were known to be stil 
 miserably wearing out existence in Schlusselburg and other 
 fortresses, so lately as the winter of 1780, not to mention 
 the exiles to Siberia. 
 
 Elizabeth's childish vanity and extravagance were pro- 
 digious. It was treated as a crime against the state if any lady 
 presumed to wear dresses of the same pattern as those of the 
 empress, or to receive the newest French fashions before her. 
 When she died, there were found in her wardrobe between 
 fifteen and sixteen thousand dresses, some of which had 
 been but once, and many never, worn ; two large chests full 
 of silk stockings, two others of ribands, some thousand pairs 
 of shoes, and several hundred pieces of French and other 
 rich stuffs. These were neither given away nor sold, but 
 left undisturbed till they were spoiled ; yet the new em- 
 peror was in pressing want of money — so nearly did penury 
 and boundless profusion approach each other at that time in 
 the Eussian court. To all this it may be added, that the 
 reign of Elizabeth was never marked by a single act which 
 could justify the revolution that placed on her head the 
 crown of Russia. In a word, she was fitter to have vegetated 
 in the sloth of a convent, than to be seated on the throne of 
 one of the chief empires of the world.
 
 A.D. 1762] ACCESSION OF PETER III. 451 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXVI. 
 
 ACCESSION OF PETER III. — END OF THE SEVEN TEARS' WAR 
 
 GENEROUS ACTS OF PETER III. — MEDITATED EXPEDITION 
 AGAINST DENMARK. 
 
 The duke of Holstein, on his elevation to the throne as 
 Peter III., showed such imprudence and precipitation, that 
 notwithstanding all his good intentions, he must be regarded 
 as having been wholly unfit to govern a great nation which 
 he seemed to despise, for in fact he set more value on a small 
 German duchy than on the whole of that immense empire. 
 The king of Prussia from the very first suspected that Peter 
 would probably meet with the same fate which had already 
 befallen so many of his predecessors upon this dreadful 
 throne ; meanwhile, he profited by the short period of Peter's 
 government to place himself in a better position of defence 
 against Austria, and to dispense with the assistance of Eng- 
 land. Peter immediately set all the Prussian prisoners of 
 war at liberty, and on the very evening of his aunt's decease 
 announced bis accession to the king of Prussia before he 
 communicated the news to any other power. By the new 
 emperor's command, money w r as distributed to all the inhabi- 
 tants of Pomerania who had suffered from the Russian*. 
 and even seed-corn was promised to the peasants ; and in 
 Prussia, every order of the Russian administration which 
 could be disagreeable to the king was immediately recalled. 
 Peter pushed his imprudent enthusiasm in favour of Prussia 
 to sucli a length, that even at his own court he wore the 
 Prussian uniform, appeared with Prussian orders, and de- 
 corated his rooms with pictures of the Prussian king. 
 
 In Sweden, the first effect of the accession of Peter, who 
 was a cousiu-german to the oppressed king, showed itself 
 in a change in the composition of the council, and in the 
 request preferred to king Adolphus Frederick to undertake 
 negotiations with a view to a treaty of peace witli Prussia. 
 A truce was proclaimed on the 7th of April, 1702, and a peace 
 signed with Prussia in Hamburg, precisely on the conditions 
 
 2 o 2
 
 452 histobt of eussia. [en. XXXVI. 
 
 of the peace of Stettin, on the 22nd of May, at the very mo- 
 ment in which the peace with Russia was solemnly announced 
 in Berlin. 
 
 Peter urged on the reconciliation with Prussia, like every- 
 thing else which he undertook, with morbid impatience, 
 although his able ministers, Vorontzof and Yolkof, had at 
 first declared to the other powers of the Austrian alliance that 
 Russia would fulfil her obligations towards them. He was 
 loud in the expression of his enmity to Denmark, and made 
 preparations in Russia, as well as in Prussia and Pomerania, 
 to take revenge on Denmark on account of the wrongs and 
 insults which he and his father had suffered. He felt such 
 repugnance to France, as never to allow the French language, 
 but only Russian and German, to be spoken at his court, and 
 pushed his admiration of Frederick to the highest degree of 
 absurdity. He did not moreover leave his allies long in 
 uncertainty as to his allowing himself to be bound by the 
 declaration of his ministers, but formally announced to them 
 on the 23rd of February, that he intended to restore all his 
 conquests to Prussia, and at the same time expressly required 
 that they should do the same. 
 
 A truce was agreed to hetween Russia and Prussia on the 
 lGth of March at Stargard ; Tchernitchef, separated from the 
 Austrians in Silesia, was provided by the Prussians with all 
 necessaries for his army, marched into Poland through the 
 midst of the Prussian troops, and daily expected orders to 
 unite with them, which orders he received in May. On the 
 20th of April prince Gralitzin intimated to the court of Vienna 
 that a peace between his own court and that of Prussia was 
 about to be concluded ; on the 5th of May the treaty was 
 signed in Petersburg, and on the 24th of the same month 
 proclaimed in Berlin. Peter was too impatient to wait till 
 this offensive and defensive treaty of alliance should be for- 
 mally , drawn up and signed, but as soon as an agreement had 
 been come to respecting its conditions, Tchernitchef received 
 orders immediately to join the Prussians in Silesia. The 
 terms of the peace had not yet been carried into execution, nor 
 the fortresses evacuated in Prussia, when lieutenant-general 
 Voyeikof, who commanded them, received intelligence of the 
 dethronement of Peter III. and the accession of Catharine
 
 A.D. 1762] PEACE WITH PRUSSIA. 453 
 
 his wife ; and at the same time hostile orders against Prussia, 
 which, however, were afterwards recalled. 
 
 By a proclamation of the 8th of July, Voyeikof had re- 
 leased the inhabitants of Prussia from the obligation of the 
 oath which they had taken to the emperor of Russia, and 
 given a formal promise that he would evacuate the fortresses 
 and give them up to the Prussian troops ; on the 15th, by a 
 new proclamation, he recalled both these declarations, and 
 only six hours later he received a countermand from the new 
 empress. In this last document he was commanded to fulfil 
 everything which he had promised on the 8th of July, and on 
 the 8th of August he published a third proclamation, couched 
 in the most peaceful and friendly terms. The empress Catha- 
 rine herself, haying recovered from her first erroneous im- 
 pression that Frederick had given advice which might have 
 been disadvantageous to her, announced her accession to the 
 king in the most friendly expressions, and caused Colberg 
 and the other Prussian fortresses to be restored to the Prus- 
 sian troops on the 13th of August. 
 
 The armies of Lower Silesia took the field as early as 
 March, but nothing was attempted on cither side worth 
 relating. In Upper Silesia the Prussians possessed the 
 superiority, sent out detachments into Moravia, and Frederick 
 made admirable use of the short time, three weeks, in which 
 Tchernitchef was with him, for the promotion of his plans. 
 Tchernitchef and his Russians had no sooner joined him in 
 July, than he immediately marched against Daun, compelled 
 him to retire behind Schweidnitz, sent detachments into 
 Bohemia, and finally cut off Daun's army wholly from any 
 communication with the fortress, in order that he might 
 undertake its siege. This took place on the 21st of July, 
 after Tchernitchef had received orders to leave the Prussian 
 army, which he partially disobeyed, and remained three days 
 for the pleasure of the king. In these decisive days, in which 
 Frederick assailed the Austrians, the Russian general awed 
 them merely by the position which he took, because they 
 were unacquainted with the fact that he was not allowed any 
 longer to act against them. 
 
 Peter III., as it appears, had inherited from his father an or- 
 ganisation peculiar to their family, and which had been proved 
 unfortunate to many of its members. Asa German prince
 
 454 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXXVI. 
 
 he would have governed the much-enduring Germans just as 
 Catharine's brother Frederick Augustus governed in Zerbst 
 and Jever ; but an empire like Russia will not suffer itself 
 to be ruled like Holstein-Gottorp and Jever, and the Russian 
 nobles are not as enduring as the learned, loyal, and prudent 
 Germans. Even the empress Elizabeth and the king of 
 Prussia, who were both his hearty well-wishers, publicly and 
 early acknowledged that Peter would find it impossible to 
 maintain himself upon the throne. Frederick had brought 
 about the marriage of the grand-duke with Catharine, and 
 laboured anxiously to preserve a good understanding be- 
 tween them ; earnestly recommending the grand-duke to be 
 forbearing towards his wife, notwithstanding her licentious 
 conduct, since he had publicly taken as a mistress one of 
 Vorontzof's daughters. The grand-duke had early made 
 himself ridiculous by his childish play with his Holstein 
 guards at Oranienbaum, by his Prussian drills, spatterdashes 
 and uniforms, and contemptible by his ignorance, his debts, 
 and the miserable means to which he was obliged to have 
 recourse to release himself from his difficulties. He was at 
 that time generally regarded as a man whose mental faculties 
 were not quite sound, and it cannot, therefore, be a matter of 
 surprise that he inspired no confidence when he mounted the 
 throne. 
 
 In the manifesto by which he proclaimed this event to the 
 empire, he mentioned neither his consort nor even his son ; 
 and interpreters were not wanting who clearly perceived in 
 this omission the intended overthrow of the hereditary suc- 
 cession. A fact that made a still greater impression was, 
 that he made no preparations for his coronation at Moscow, 
 a solemnity of the utmost importance, as a practice of high 
 antiquity, and as conferring an awful sanction on the 
 authority of the sovereign in the minds of the people. In- 
 stead of this, he pushed his blind passion for imitating the 
 king of Prussia so far, that he made preparations in this im- 
 mature state of his government to quit Russia, and go into 
 Germany, for the sake of an interview with that great 
 monarch, whose genius, principles, and fortune he so extra- 
 vagantly admired. 
 
 The impartial historian cannot withhold the tribute of 
 praise from his conduct in other respects at the beginning
 
 A.D. 1702] GENEUOUS ACTS OE EBTEB III. 455 
 
 of his reign. To say that he revenged himself on no one, 
 though he very well knew who were they who had taken 
 pains to injure him with the late empress, would he but 
 slight commendation, in comparison with the acts of benefi- 
 cence and justice with which he signalised his first accession 
 to the supreme command. He exercised kindness towards 
 all who had been attached to the late empress his aunt. He 
 continued in their posts almost all the great officers of state ; 
 he pardoned his enemies ; raised Peter Shuvalof to the rank 
 of field-marshal ; left the place of grand-veneur to Alexis 
 Razumofsky,* the favourite of Elizabeth ; and even conferred 
 benefits on Ivan Shuvalof, though he had frequently made 
 an unworthy use of his influence. Prince Shakuskoi, advocate 
 of the senate, of whom Peter III. had great reason to com- 
 plain, was the only person he removed from his employment; 
 but he exacted of him nothing .more than a simple resigna- 
 tion, leaving him both his liberty and his possessions. At 
 the same time a certain Glebof, who, from being but a com- 
 mon attorney, was appointed to transact the affairs of 
 Holstein, and in that administration had obtained the good- 
 will of the prince, was put into Shakuskoi's place. Glebof 
 afterwards but ill-requited so signal a mark of confidence. 
 
 Peter at once recalled all those unfortunate and numerous 
 persons who had been sent into exde during the preceding 
 reign, with the exception of those criminals who had been 
 condemned by the ordinary legal tribunals, and he caused 
 the estates which had not been alienated to be restored. 
 Bestujef, indeed, was not recalled, but he lived in affluence 
 on his country estate. Among the recalled were Biren, 
 Munich, and Lestocq. 
 
 Immediately after the extension of pardon to all political 
 offenders, Peter forbade the use of torture, and abolished that 
 hateful police, which, under the name of the secret chancery, 
 was appointed to watch over the existence and permanence 
 of the Russian government, and for that purpose entrusted 
 with the powers of a high court of justice. The rights and 
 
 * Alexis Razumofsky had often injured the grand-duke with the 
 empress Elizabeth. The grand-duke one day sent him an axe upon a 
 red satin cushion, as a hint of the catastrophe that awaited him; 
 but when seated on the throne, Peter disdained every idea of re- 
 venge.
 
 456 HISTOEY OF EUSSIA. [en. XXXVI. 
 
 privileges of this tribunal have been very indefinitely stated : 
 its duties seem to have been, to judge of all offences committed 
 against the state and the monarch, and therefore it always held 
 its sittings at the place where the sovereign happened to be. 
 In the language of this bloody tribunal, every complaint was 
 called the word. Whoever, therefore, had spoken the ivord, 
 that is, whoever had made the slightest or most insufficient 
 denunciation, was placed under the immediate protection of 
 the monarch. The person against whom the complaint was 
 made, even although he lived in the most remote part of the 
 empire, was sent off with his whole house, perhaps the whole 
 of the company who were accidentally present, to Petersburg. 
 JSuch unfortunate persons were often a whole year upon the 
 journey, and were obliged to remain years in prison before 
 their case could even in appearance be investigated. During 
 the investigation the accused was not allowed to plead in his 
 own defence, and if a powerful friend succeeded in saving 
 him, he was still sent to Siberia. No rank, no merit served 
 to protect a man before this tribunal against the malice of 
 the commonest and most wicked informer. 
 
 It served as a desirable instrument for ill-disposed persons 
 to employ in the gratification of envy and revenge. Among 
 servants, vassals, nay, to the destruction of all subordination, 
 even among sailors and soldiers, while suffering some (fre- 
 quently Avell-deserved) chastisement, or with persons who 
 had cherished some grudge against their superiors, it was 
 customary to make themselves formidable by the mischief it 
 enabled them to commit. The practice of the populace on 
 such occasions was, to cry out, " The word !" which signified, 
 I have a secret of importance to discover. The most 
 horrible, and among them the most ridiculous, stories are 
 related of the application of this custom. A patient in 
 the hospital employed it to prevent an operation the surgeon 
 was about to perforin. The sound was so awful and tre- 
 mendous, that if, in the midst of a great crowd, any one 
 called out, "The word," all present turned pale, and imme- 
 diately separated, running and crossing themselves as fast as 
 they could. 
 
 The history of this secret chancery sheds a light upon the 
 nature of absolute governments and the measures they adopt. 
 Catharine II. in appearance confirmed the abolition of this
 
 A.D. 1762] THE SECRET CHANCERY. 457 
 
 tribunal, but, in fact, she merely modified its form, and 
 allowed the thing itself to continue. Paul restored this 
 chancery, now called police, and made it more severe 
 and arbitrary than it had been even under Elizabeth ; 
 Alexander abolished it, but after his death it was again re- 
 vived and became more terrible than before. The institution 
 itself belonged to the times of old Russian barbarism, for it 
 was founded by Ivan the Terrible, and completed by Alexis 
 Mikhailovitch. We are obliged to conclude that some such 
 institution as the secret chancery is absolutely essential to 
 the existence of such a form of government as the Russian, 
 inasmuch as it has always been revived and restored down to 
 our own times under the most various names and forms. 
 Peter III., therefore, indisputably committed a magnanimous 
 error by abolishing one of the chief institutions of the Russian 
 government, at the very moment in which he provoked the 
 Russian clergy and offended the guards, and when his own 
 wife was conspiring for his dethronement. 
 
 Peter III. dismissed the costly and licentious body-guard of 
 Elizabeth, which was afterwards reorganised under a more 
 decorous form by Catharine II. , and called the chevalier 
 guard. He caused its members to be distributed amongst 
 the regiments of the line : this was wise and just, but the 
 thought of naming his Holstein cuirassiers his horse-guards 
 was in the highest degree unfortunate. The whole Russian 
 army was to be clothed and disciplined after the Prussian 
 model, and for this purpose the emperor appointed his cousin 
 duke George of Holstein, who had been in the Prussian 
 service, his generalissimo. At the very moment, however, of 
 his appointment, he was imprudent enough to say to the duke's 
 face, that he must have been a very bad general, otherwise 
 Erederick would not have allowed him to leave his service. 
 Peter himself made such a figure in his Prussian uniform, 
 and particularly with his most ridiculous hat and spatter- 
 dashes, which compelled him to walk and sit as if he had 
 stiff knees, that it gave some plausibility to the general re- 
 port that he was crazed. 
 
 By a noble sacrifice he wished to give the Russian nobility 
 a proper existence, by making them wholly independent of 
 the caprices of the sovereign ; he renounced all the monopoly- 
 privileges of autocrats, and even ventured to make an at-
 
 458 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXXVI. 
 
 tempt which lias ever proved perilous iu all ends and corners 
 of the world, — an attempt to reform the clergy and the 
 ceremonies of worship. His attempt to abolish the custom 
 among the Russian clergy of wearing long beards and a 
 peculiar dress, as well as to change different things connected 
 with the ceremonials of worship, met with a degree of resist- 
 ance from Sertchin, archbishop of Novgorod, which alone 
 prevented a rebellion among the people. Besides, Peter had 
 previously excited universal discontent by the erection of a 
 college or commission for the administration of all the estates 
 and incomes of the clergy. Catharine II. afterwards esta- 
 blished this college without resistance. 
 
 The first acts and ordinances of Peter III. gave proofs of 
 a generous heart ; but the noblest actions and the most ad- 
 mirable measures of his government only drew contempt and 
 scorn upon their author ; for everything he did wanted the 
 true Russian stamp. In the business of government Peter 
 possessed admirable advisers in Volkof and Vorontzof, but 
 they were unable to restrain him from following up even 
 what was good with a morbid zeal. 
 
 The clergy were enabled the more easily to rouse the 
 passions of the people against the emperor, as he had, just 
 at this unlucky moment, received and acted upon the dan- 
 gerous counsel of imposing a poll-tax upon the peasants. 
 He himself was cried down as a bad Greek Christian, and as 
 a secret favourer of Lutheranism, and had fallen into the 
 imprudence of formally abolishing all the fast-days at his 
 court, and publicly neglecting many of the ceremonies of 
 the Greek Church. Under the existing circumstances, the 
 friendship of the king of Prussia was rather disadvantageous 
 and burdensome to Peter than politically useful, for he 
 offended all the other courts. All the foreign ministers, but 
 especially the French ambassador, Breteuil, were accessory to 
 the conspiracy which was formed against Peter long before 
 the death of the empress Elizabeth ; for all the European 
 powers, and even Frederick, were afraid that the foolish plaus 
 Avhich he had projected, and the campaign he had determined 
 upon as an act of revenge upon Denmark, would disturb the 
 balance of power in Europe. 
 
 This idea of vengeance, and of the reconquest of that por- 
 tion of Sleswick and llolstein which had been seized by
 
 A.D. 17G2] MEDITATED EXPEDITION AGAINST DENMAEK. 459 
 
 Denmark in the northern war, had been cherished by Peter 
 from his youth up ; and unhappily all the attempts proved 
 failures which were made whilst he was graud-duke, to relieve 
 him from the pecuniary embarrassments in which he was in- 
 volved by the curtailment of his duchy. As soon, however, as 
 he had ascended the throne, his most faithful friends and 
 advisers were unable to restrain him from undertakiug this 
 foolish expedition against Denmark and placing himself at 
 its head. The Danes knew Avell that a revolution would 
 break out in Petersburg as soon as Peter had left it ; although, 
 therefore, they equipped an army, they reckoned far less upon 
 the service of "their troops than upon the issue of the cabals in 
 Petersburg. Meanwhile, the Russians, who, by the permission 
 of Frederick, had remained behind in Prussia and Pomerania 
 expressly for this purpose, began their march. 
 
 The Danish forces were under the command of the count 
 St. Germain, whose army took up its position in the ter- 
 ritory of Mecklenburg, with a view to throw the burden 
 of its support on their neighbour state, according to 
 the traditionary usage of those times. The Eussian troops 
 on their advance from Pomerania, had, in like manner, just- 
 passed the frontiers of Mecklenburg ; but no actual hostili- 
 ties took place, for Peter III. had been deprived of throne 
 and life before the Danes and the Russians came into mutual 
 collision. 
 
 Whilst Peter busied himself day and night with reforms, 
 and inconsiderately disturbed, altered, and threw into confu- 
 sion all existing relations, — while at the same time he in- 
 dulged in a German student's or guard-room life with his 
 officers and his mistress, Vorontzof, and sunk in these rude 
 dissipations, never suspected what was going on around him, 
 — his wife was following tile true bent of a diplomatic and 
 Russian life. Beautiful, sensual, and luxurious, she was 
 mistress of all the splendid qualities of her age and sex. 
 She had long reached that exalted height of genius at which all 
 social virtues may be boldly despised: she never hesitated for a 
 moment to compass the dethronement of her husband, to whom 
 her conduct was offensive, and who had threatened to remove 
 her. She selected for her companion and assistant iu this 
 bold undertaking, which was not to be accomplished without 
 murder, the sister of her husband's mistress, the younger
 
 460 HISTORY OF EUSSIA. [CH. XXXVI. 
 
 Vorontzof, who called herself princess Dashkof, because for a 
 short time she had concluded a diplomatic and political mar- 
 riage. Catharine's friend resembled her, as her sister did 
 the emperor, in her habits and morals : she enjoyed life as 
 much, and after the same fashion, as the empress, and like 
 her was idolised by the world and by cheaply-bought men of 
 letters. In the time of the empress Elizabeth, Catharine 
 had already conspired with Bestujef against her husband, 
 of which Peter thought he possessed such decisive proofs 
 that he excepted the ex-chancellor from the operation of the 
 general amnesty for political oifences which he proclaimed 
 on his accession, and expressly declared this as his reason 
 for the exception. 
 
 Peter's conduct towards his wife is perhaps the clearest 
 proof of that unsoundness of mind which was always more 
 or less perceptible : now impelling him to the adoption 
 of extravagant and senseless measures, now causing him 
 to fall into a state of the greatest timidity and irresolu- 
 tion. Sometimes he appeared wholly unconcerned about her 
 private life, allowed himself to be deceived respecting her 
 pregnancy, paid her debts, made her presents of estates, and 
 increased her yearly income ; sometimes again he threatened 
 her with a cloister, and spoke publicly of her conduct in the 
 strongest and coarsest terms. Her brother Frederick Au- 
 gustus of Zerbst was a man of a similar stamp to his brother- 
 in-law. He repaid the emperor in like coin for his want 
 of civility towards his wife, and his capricious return to polite- 
 ness towards her. When Peter, out of consideration for Ca- 
 tharine, made him the most splendid offers, he returned him an 
 answer whicli no one could repeat in decent society, but 
 which Gothe, in his " Gotz von Berlichingen," has put into 
 the mouth of his hero in reply to the chief of the empire.
 
 A.D. 1762] CONSPIRACY AGAINST PETER III. 461 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 PETER III. DETHRONED AND MURDERED — ACCESSION OF 
 
 CATHARINE II. 
 
 Under these circumstances, the senseless and precipitate 
 conduct of the emperor, the general discontent of the 
 slighted Russian soldiers and nobles, and the ill-will of the 
 clergy towards him, it could be no very difficult task for his 
 incessantly active wife and her splendid friend Dashkof 
 to organise a conspiracy of bold and unscrupulous par- 
 tisans. The five brothers Orlof formed the centre of this 
 conspiracy, among whom Gregory played the chief part. He 
 afterwards became the avowed lover of Catharine ; but long 
 before the death of the empress Elizabeth she had visited him 
 regularly by night, in the small house in which he resided in 
 the neighbourhood of the winter palace. The emperor ex- 
 hibited a degree of carelessness which astonished every one : 
 he listened to the warning of no true friend. Even Munich, 
 to whom Peter was attached, and who would undoubtedly 
 have saved him if the emperor had put implicit confidence in 
 him, was unable to render him any service. He himself 
 even supplied the money which the conspirators used for the 
 prosecution of their designs ; for at the very time in which 
 Gregory Orlof stood in need of large sums for bribing the 
 soldiers, and neither he nor Catharine possessed money or 
 credit, Peter suffered the military chest of the artillery, 
 which contained considerable sums, to be placed in the 
 hands of this dissolute lieutenant. 
 
 The corruption of the regiment of Ismailof, whose ser- 
 vices were afterwards used against the emperor, was the 
 more easily effected, as its commander, Kyrilla liasumofsky, 
 took part with the conspirators. He was brother of that 
 one, among all her innumerable favourites, whom the em- 
 press Elizabeth made her husband ; Kyrilla, the son of a pea- 
 sant, was sent for some short time to Euler at Berlin, and 
 then as a young man appointed president of the academy of 
 sciences, with the same justice and propriety as he was subse- 
 quently made hetman of the Cossacks. He was afterwards 
 obliged under Catharine to exchange the latter post for one
 
 162 HISTOET OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXXVIT. 
 
 of inferior rank, that of a field-marshal, though in reality he 
 had never been in service. The princess Dashkof was, more- 
 over, the soul of the whole conspiracy : she first gained over 
 count Pauin, who was the chief tutor of the grand-duke 
 Paul, then the attorney-general Grlebof, although the latter 
 possessed the complete confidence of the emperor, and 
 together with Volkof and Vorontzof drew up and approved 
 of all those ordinances which were published iu his name. 
 
 The conspirators had at first no fixed plan. They were so 
 imprudent as not only to postpone the execution of their 
 purpose from one period till another, but they made so little 
 secret of the whole aftair, that Volkof, the Prussian ambas- 
 sador Golz, colonel von Budberg, whom they sought to gain 
 over to their cause as the commander of a regiment, Gudo- 
 vitch, and even the king of Prussia himself, warned the 
 unfortunate emperor of what was about to be attempted. 
 Peter had sunk at that time from the morbid and restless 
 activity displayed during the first weeks of his government, 
 into an inconceivable degree of apathy and supineness. He 
 despised every warning ; whilst the conspirators carefully 
 spread the report that he was determined to send his wife 
 and his son, the grand-duke Paul, into a cloister, and to 
 marry the countess Vorontzof, who was living with him in his 
 palace, and was now pregnant. 
 
 According to the most trustworthy printed reports, the 
 conspirators at first wished to wait till the, emperor had 
 departed from Petersburg, put himself at the head of the 
 army, and begun the expedition against Denmark. If this 
 were really the case their calculations were very foolish, and 
 chance led them to adopt a much wiser course. If the former 
 plan had been pursued, Catharine indeed would have had 
 the advantage of not needing to take upon herself the crime 
 of murdering her husband, and been spared the necessity of 
 appearing publicly at the head of a band of bloody and reck- 
 less conspirators : all that, however, she regarded but little, 
 as she was far exalted above those feelings of remorse or 
 shame which influence ordinary minds. In this case Catha- 
 rine could have remained behind the scenes, as the chief 
 actors in such political tragedies are accustomed to do, until 
 the piece had been played out, and then, washing her hands 
 iu innocency, she might have reaped the benefit of the enor-
 
 A.D. 1762] CONSPIRACY AGAINST PETER III. 4G3 
 
 mities which were perpetrated, and have entitled herself to 
 the gratitude and thanks of the world for the restoration of 
 order. This, however, could not be done, and she was ob- 
 liged to come forward in open day in the capital as an exciter 
 of sedition and treason, as the tool of the five ruffianly bro- 
 thers Orlof, and as the companion of such villains as Passek 
 and Bibikof, and of robbers and bandits such as the Pied- 
 montese Odart. 
 
 Peter was passing his time in his country-house, thirty 
 miles from Petersburg ; and at the very moment in which 
 the plot was ripe for execution, was conducting him- 
 self with all the obstinacy of an insane man. "When he 
 received secret but certain intelligence of all that his wife 
 and the Orlofs were preparing to execute, he showed no 
 energy. He did not order the Orlofs to be immediately 
 arrested, and his wife at least to be summoned to his pre- 
 sence, but remained quietly in Oranienbaum, and direct a 
 watch to be kept upon the movements of the conspirators by 
 a miserable gambler and spendthrift named Persiliof, who 
 u as actually gained over to the cause of his enemies. For- 
 tune did everything possible for his deliverance ; but he him- 
 self perversely frustrated every means of escape or triumph 
 which the course of events presented to him. He finally 
 received a formal judicial notice, and still treated the affair 
 as if it were one requiring no expedition, or which had refer- 
 ence to events of inferior moment alone. 
 
 The rude Russian Passek had boasted of the conspiracy in 
 :i fit of drunkenness : an accusation was broughtagainst him 
 before the court of his regiment on the 8th (19th N.S.) of 
 July, and an incautious question put by one of his compa- 
 nions immediately proved to Ismailof, the captain of the 
 guards, that they were endeavouring to gain over the troops. 
 Both these facts were immediately communicated to Peter. 
 Notwithstanding all this, the emperor allowed the conspira- 
 tors time to anticipate the impending discovery. He had 
 indeed caused Passek to be arrested the same evening; 
 but instead of proceeding direct to Petersburg he remained 
 quietly in Oranienbaum, and postponed a more minute inves- 
 tigation of the affair till after the feast of St. Peter and St. 
 Paul. The conspirators, however, did not wait for the expi- 
 ration of the time.
 
 464 HISTORY OF EUSSIA. [cil. XXXVII. 
 
 
 The Orlofs and Dashkof, whose lives were staked upon the 
 cast, in some measure compelled Catharine to give the signal 
 for the rising. Catharine was at that time in Petershof ; 
 Bibikof and Alexis Orlof were sent thither at midnight by 
 Dashkof and Gregory Orlof to conduct her into the city, 
 whither in the mean time those companies of the guards 
 which had been gained over had been Drought. Catharine 
 reached the city about seven o'clock in the morning of the 
 9th (20th N.S.) of July, and immediately called upon the 
 guards to take the oath of fidelity to herself, without its 
 ever having occurred to any one to ask what right the prin- 
 cess of Anhalt Zerbst had to the throne of Russia?* For 
 the purposes of the conspiracy, the services of two old fa- 
 vourites of the empress Elizabeth, who were in other respects 
 insignificant persons, were employed — these were Rasumofsky 
 and Shuvalof. Under the preceding reign these men had 
 appeared so long and in such a splendid position near the 
 throne, that by doing homage to Catharine on this occasion, 
 they stamped some degree of propriety upon the cause of the 
 usurpation in the eyes of a people like the Russians, among 
 whom arbitrary assumption is really and seriously regarded 
 as right. Before the emperor was informed of what was 
 passing in Petersburg, as early as between nine and ten 
 o'clock, this atrocious crime and rebellion was sanctified by 
 religion, and the new empress consecrated. The archbishop 
 of Novgorod, who performed the ceremony, was careful, after 
 the priestly fashion, to preserve some appearance of justice 
 in the transaction, and he proclaimed Catharine in the cathe- 
 dral merely as the regent and guardian of her son. But 
 in the same moment as this was taking place in the church, 
 the Orlofs and Dashkof caused her to be proclaimed empress 
 
 * Decorated with the insignia of the order of St. Andrew, and the 
 uniform of the guards, which she had borrowed for the occasion of a 
 very young officer, named Talitzin, she rode on horseback through the 
 ranks with princess Dashkof, who was also in uniform. A young 
 ensign of the regiment of horse-guards, perceiving that Catharine had 
 no plume in her hat, rode up to offer her his. This was Potemkin, 
 who was then only sixteen. The horse on which he was mounted, 
 being accustomed to form into the squadron, was some time before he 
 could be brought to quit the side of that of her majesty, thereby afford- 
 ing her an opportunity of remarking, for the first time, the grace and 
 agility of him who, in the sequel, gained such an ascendancy over her.
 
 A.D. 1762] DETHRONEMENT OF PETEK III. 465 
 
 in her own right before the church, and the archbishop's 
 voice was reckoned as nothing. But even on this occasion, 
 and in Petersburg, all did not prove faithless or venal. Bud- 
 berg and others offered a noble resistance, which indeed 
 proved vain, and Bressan would have saved the emperor if 
 the latter had been capable of forming any determinate 
 resolution in this decisive moment, or been accessible to the 
 admonitions of prudence and wisdom. 
 
 At the very moment when the troops which were then in 
 Petersburg, and the senate also, pronounced the deposition 
 of Peter III., who of all others knew least of what was 
 passing in the capital, nothing was really lost. Munich, 
 Vorontzof, Trubetzkoi, and the younger Shuvalof, were all 
 with him in Oranienbaum, men able and willing to serve 
 him ; the whole empire was yet open to him, and would 
 have acknowledged him as its emperor; the fleet and the 
 whole of the army destined against Denmark were yet 
 uncorrupted, and therefore it was that his enemies took so 
 much pains to cut him oft" from all communications with the 
 capital. Catharine caused all the roads leading from Peters- 
 burg to Oranienbaum and Petershof to be immediately 
 occupied, especially the Kalinka bridge ; but Peter's faithful 
 servant had anticipated her. Bressan of Monaco had come 
 to Petersburg as a hairdresser; Peter III. had favoured 
 him, and conferred upon him rank and office, and he now 
 remained true to his protector and patron in his misfortune, 
 and sent him a careful messenger, who succeeded in passing 
 over the Kalinka bridge at the very moment in which it was 
 taken possession of by the troops. This messenger met 
 Peter at Petershof, whither he had come to seek for his wife 
 but had not found her, and gave him Bressan' s note. From 
 this moment the unfortunate emperor, who had previously 
 shown some distraction of mind, lost the little courage 
 and understanding which up to this time he had possessed. 
 Such courtiers as Vorontzof, Trubetzkoi, and Shuvalof did 
 not delay to seek pretences for going to Petersburg, where 
 they assumed an air of neutrality, and apparently in arrest 
 awaited the issue. Munich remained, and even then would 
 have saved the emperor, if the latter had placed implicit con- 
 fidence in him, or given him unconditional powers. 
 
 Peter afterwards delayed in Petershof without coming to 
 
 vol. i. 2 n
 
 466 HISTOBY OF BTJSSIA. [CH. XXXVII. 
 
 any resolution, or issuing any definite orders, till his 
 enemies had taken all their measures in Petersburg, and 
 issued commands to cut off his flight in all directions, and 
 deprive him of every place of refuge. The gang of con- 
 spirators did not fail to have recourse to official lies and 
 sophistry also, and a lying manifesto was published respect- 
 ing the revolution, in which religion was used as a cloak. 
 "With all the recklessness of crime, the peace which Peter 
 had concluded with Frederick of Prussia, and which never- 
 theless the new empress immediately afterwards confirmed, 
 was assigned as a reason for the deposition of the emperor.* 
 Whilst Peter was filled with alarm, and hesitated as to his 
 course, the conspirators had issued commands to the army, 
 and cut off all communication with Narva; they sent to 
 Cronstadt to secure the fleet, and stimulated the soldiers, 
 especially the guards, to the highest degree of rage. Even 
 the foreign ministers assisted in giving glory to this triumph 
 over the unfortunate Peter : they celebrated this horrible 
 revolution in a way which was quite worthy of the event, 
 and of the rude and brutal people who could rejoice in such 
 events, — they caused brandy to be distributed to the mob at 
 their doors. At the close of this day of eager and incessant 
 activity, 9th (20th N.S.) of July, Catharine set out about nine 
 o'clock in the evening, at the head of fifteen thousand men, 
 to Petershof, in order to subdue by force her good-natured 
 and weak husband, if he ventured resistance with the six 
 hundred Holstein troops and the few Russians by whom he 
 
 * Inasmuch as this manifesto has the advantage of most similar 
 documents in being short, we shall here insert its opening: — " All 
 true sons of Russia have clearly perceived the dangers with which 
 the empire is threatened. In the first place, the foundations of our 
 orthodox Greek Church have been shaken, and its principles have been 
 exposed to imminent destruction, so that there was great reason to 
 fear that that system which has from old reigned in Russia should be 
 abolished, and a new religion introduced. In the second place, the 
 honour of the Russian empire, which has been gained and founded by 
 the loss of so much blood, and by so many glorious victories, has been 
 really trodden under foot by the pence lately concluded with her bitterest 
 enemi/, and at the same time the internal constitution upon which the 
 well-being and solidity of our country rest, completely destroyed." 
 And then follows what is usually appended in every case of atrocious 
 crime, because no one willingly names the devil as his ally: — "Ca- 
 tharine HAS HAD RECOURSE TO GOD AND HIS JUSTICE."
 
 A.D. 17G2] DETHRONEMENT OE PETER III. 467 
 
 was surrounded in Oranienbaum. Sbe passed the night hall- 
 way between Petershof and Petersburg. 
 
 Neither Munich nor Gudovitch had in the mean time been 
 able to induce the emperor to come to any rational decision. 
 Had he immediately gone in person to Cronstadt, the fleet 
 would have been in his power, but he delayed and hesitated, 
 and the adjutant whom he at length sent either behaved 
 with great want of prudence, or even proved treacherous, 
 and did nothing till the admiral sent from Petersburg had 
 arrived and taken possession of the fleet in the name and 
 under the orders of the new empress. Peter went after- 
 wards in person to Cronstadt, but it was too late ; and even 
 in this decisive moment he had not the resolution or courage 
 to follow the advice of Munich, who urged him to despise 
 the threats of the sentinels who forbade him to land, told 
 him they would not venture to lire upon him, and that he 
 ought to land and conduct himself like an emperor. In his 
 dismay, Peter III. would consent to nothing but flight, and 
 ran to hide himself in the cabin of the yacht, among the 
 terrified women. They did not even give themselves time 
 to raise the anchor; but cut the cable, and went off by the 
 use of their oars. 
 
 When the yachts were at some distance from the port, 
 the men rested on their oars. It was a fine night ; and 
 .Munich and Gudovitch sat on deck, in mournful silence. 
 The steersman went down into the cabin, to the czar, for his 
 instructions. Peter ordered Munich to be called, and said 
 to him, " Field-marshal, I perceive that I was too late in 
 following your advice ; but you see to what extremities I am 
 reduced. You, who have escaped from so many dangers, 
 tell me, I beseech you, what 1 ought to do."— ' ; Proceed 
 immediately to join the squadron at lievel," said Munich ; 
 " there take a ship, go on to Pomcrania, put yourself at the 
 head of your army, return to Russia, and 1 promise you, 
 that in six weeks Petersburg and all the rest of the empire 
 will be in subjection to you." 
 
 Tho women and the courtiers, as if they had come to an 
 agreement to ruin the unfortunate Peter, began directly to 
 cry out that the rowers would never have strength enough 
 to reach Bevel. " Well, then," replied Munich, "we will all 
 row with them." But such generous counsel could not be 
 
 2 ii 2
 
 468 HISTOBT OF EUSSIA. [CH. XXXVII. 
 
 agreeable to this timid or treacherous court. They shud- 
 dered at it, and vied with each other in assuring the 
 emperor that his danger was not so great as he imagined ; 
 that Catharine only wanted to come to an accommodation 
 with him, and that it was far better to negotiate than to 
 fight. The imbecile prince yielded to these representations, 
 and gave orders to the pilot to make for Oranienbaum. 
 
 It was four in the morning (10th of July) when they 
 reached that place. Some of the emperor's domestics, in 
 great alarm, came to receive him. He commanded them not 
 to divulge the news of his return, shut himself up in his 
 apartment, strictly forbidding any person to be admitted, 
 and secretly wrote two cowardly and supplicatory letters to 
 his wife, to neither of which she sent any answer. 
 
 At ten o'clock he came out with a countenance tolerably 
 calm and serene. Those of his Holstein guards who were 
 come back to Oranienbaum, ran and surrounded him, shed- 
 ding tears of affection and joy. They kissed his hands, em- 
 braced his knees, pressed him to march them against the 
 army of the empress, and solemnly swore that they were all 
 ready to a man to sacrifice their lives in defence of his. Old 
 Munich seized this occasion once more to exhort Peter to 
 make a bold stand in his own defence. But the marshal's 
 persuasions had no more effect on the czar than the noble 
 devotedness of his Holstein troops. 
 
 From what has been already stated, and from what follows, 
 it will be evident that Peter was neither worthy nor capable 
 of conducting the government of a great empire, and that 
 sooner or later he must have been removed from his office ; 
 but the manner in which his deposition was effected was not 
 therefore the less detestable and cruel. It is maddening to 
 read, that his wife and her Orlofs behaved to this poor 
 prince with more barbarity and cruelty than Louis XVI. 
 endured from the Sans-culottes in Paris, upon whom the 
 whole world and Catharine herself called down the vengeance 
 of Heaven, and whose names are still spoken of with detesta- 
 tion. Yet the Parisians at least reproached Louis XVI. 
 with having broken his oath, which no one alleged against 
 Peter. The new empress received her husband's first letter 
 just as she was attending service in the convent of St. 
 Sergius, without thinking of the words of Isaiah to the
 
 A.D. 17G2] DETHRONEMENT OF PETEE III. 4G9 
 
 Jews, " When ye make many prayers I will not hear ; your 
 hands are full of blood." To this first letter she gave no 
 reply. When she arrived at Petershof she received a 
 second, which she handed over to Orlof, whom she com- 
 missioned to treat with its bearer respecting the honour and 
 life of her husband. The bearer of the letter was Ismailof, 
 who enjoyed the complete confidence of the unfortunate 
 Peter : he now accepted the empress's silverlings and be- 
 trayed him. 
 
 The agreement entered into between Catharine and 
 Orlof on the one part, and Ismailof on the other, was as 
 follows : — " If he was able to prevail upon Peter to sign a 
 document in which he should declare himself unworthy and 
 incapable to rule, he should receive a fixed sum of money ; 
 but if he delivered up the person of the unfortunate emperor 
 himself, then he was to receive the rank of a general, the 
 order of Alexander Nevsky, several thousand peasants, and 
 a pension of twenty thousand roubles." He did both, and 
 received the stipulated price. The completion of the 
 treachery was as scandalous as the treating respecting it. 
 Ismailof returned to Oranienbaum, attended by a single 
 servant. The czar had then with him his Holstein guard, 
 consisting of six hundred men. These he ordered to keep 
 at a distance, and shut himself up with the chamberlain, 
 who exhorted him to abandon his troops and to repair to the 
 empress, assuring him that he would be well received, and 
 would obtain of her all that he wished. Peter hesitated for 
 some time : but Ismailof telling him that he must make no 
 delay, for that his life was in danger, he followed the advice 
 of the traitor. Ismailof then helped him into a carriage with 
 the countess Vorontzof and Grudovitch, and they drove to 
 Petershof. On stepping out of the carriage there, his 
 mistress was carried oil' by the soldiers, who tore off her 
 riband,* with which princess Dashkof, her sister, was almost 
 instantly decorated. His general aide-de-camp Gudovitch 
 was likewise insulted ; but he preserved the utmost tran- 
 quillity of mind, and in a dignified manner reproached the 
 rebels with their insolence and treason. 
 
 The czar was led up the grand staircase. There the 
 
 * It has been by some alleged that it was princess Dashkof herself 
 that pulled it off.
 
 470 HISTOBY OF EUSSIA. [CB. XXXVII. 
 
 attendants stripped him of the marks of his order ; they 
 took off his clothes ; and, on ransacking the pockets, found 
 several diamonds and pieces of jewellery. After he had 
 remained there some time in his shirt, and harefoot, a butt 
 to the outrages of an insolent soldiery, they threw over him 
 an old morning-gown, and shut him up alone in a room, with 
 a guard at the door. 
 
 Count Panin, being sent by the empress, was admitted to- 
 the czar, and had a long conference with him. He told him 
 that her majesty would not long keep him in confinement, 
 but send him into Holstein according to his own request. 
 To this promise he added several others, probably without 
 the design of keeping any. He concluded his visit by making 
 him write the following declaration, and sign it as duke of 
 Holstein: — "During the short space of my absolute reign 
 over the empire of Russia, I became sensible that I was not 
 able to support so great a burden, and that my abilities were 
 not equal to the task ol* governing so great an empire, either 
 as a sovereign, or in any other capacity whatever. I also 
 foresaw the great troubles which must thence have arisen, 
 and have been followed with the total ruin of the empire, 
 and my own eternal disgrace. After having therefore seri- 
 ously reflected thereon, I declare, without constraint, and in 
 the most solemn manner, to the Russian empire, and to the 
 whole universe, that I for ever renounce the government of 
 the said empire, never desiring hereafter to reign therein, 
 either as an absolute sovereign, or under any other form of 
 government ; never wishing to aspire thereto, to use any 
 means, of any sort, for that purpose. As a pledge of which, 
 I swear sincerely, before God and all the world, to this pre- 
 sent renunciation, written and signed this 29th of June, 
 O.S., 1762." 
 
 Having obtained this fatal act, count Panin left him ; and 
 Peter seemed to enjoy a greater composure of mind. In the 
 evening, however, an officer, with a strong escort, came and 
 conveyed him a prisoner to Hoptcha, a small imperial palace, 
 at the distance of about twenty versts from Petershof. Thus 
 was a revolution of such immense importance effected in one 
 day, and without shedding a single drop of blood. The 
 unfortunate emperor enjoyed the power, of which he had 
 made so imprudent and impolitic an use, no longer than six
 
 A.D. 1762] ACCESSION OF CATHARINE II. 471 
 
 months ; and his wife, without any hereditary title, became 
 sovereign mistress of the empire. Peter's crime in the eyes 
 of the Russians was, that he was too German ; his clever 
 wife, who was even less Eussian than he, had the art to 
 persuade the nation that she was the very incarnation of 
 its own spirit. " Bleed me," she said, one day to her surgeon, 
 " bleed me, that not a drop of German blood may remain in 
 my veins." 
 
 Immediately on this revolution a number of manifestoes 
 appeared, in which the conduct of the late czar was severely 
 condemned, the weakness of his personal character exposed, 
 and designs of the blackest kind, even that of murdering his 
 consort, attributed to him. Those manifestoes were, more- 
 over, filled with the strongest declarations of affection from 
 the empress to the subjects of Russia, of regard to their 
 interests, and of attachment to their religion ; and they are 
 all filled with such unaffected and fervent strains of piety, as 
 must needs prove extremely edifying to those who are ac- 
 quainted with the sentiments of pure religion by which 
 great princes are generally animated on occasions of this 
 nature. 
 
 Catharine slept that night at Petershof, no longer as a cap- 
 tive, but as absolute sovereign. The day following, she 
 received at her levee the homages of the principal nobility, 
 who had joined her the foregoing evening, and those of 
 the courtiers and ladies who came from Oranienbaum. 
 Among these were, the father, the brother, and several other 
 relations of princess Dashkof, who, on beholding them pros- 
 trate before the empress, said, " Madam, pardon my family. 
 You know that I have sacrificed them to you." Catharine 
 commanded them to rise, and gave them her hand to kiss. 
 
 Marshal Munich also presented himself before her, to 
 whom, as soon as her majesty perceived him, she called 
 aloud : — " Field-marshal, it was you then who wanted to 
 fight me?" — "Yes, madam," answered Munich, in a firm 
 and manly tone ; "could 1 do less for the prince who de- 
 livered me from captivity ? But it is henceforward my duty 
 to fight for you; and you will find in me a fidelity equal to 
 that witli which I had devoted my services to him." 
 
 In the afternoon, the victorious Catharine returned to 
 Petersburg. Her entry was truly triumphant. She was on
 
 472 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [cil. XXXVII. 
 
 horseback, preceded or followed by the chiefs of the conspi- 
 racy. The whole army was crowned with wreaths of oak ; 
 the shouts of joy and the applauses of the populace mingled 
 with those of the soldiers. The crowd formed into lines for 
 the empress, and she condescendingly gave them her hand to 
 kiss, as she passed along. A great number of priests were 
 assembled on the occasion about the avenues of the palace ; 
 and as she rode through their ranks, she stooped down to 
 salute the cheeks of the principal clergy, while they were 
 kissing her hand. 
 
 For some days after her return to the imperial residence, 
 her majesty continued to show herself to the multitude with 
 great condescension. She knew how easy it is to gain the 
 applauses of the populace. She went to the senate, and 
 heard several causes tried before her. She then held her 
 court with a graceful and easy dignity, that effaced the 
 remembrance of the sudden revolution that had just placed 
 her on the throne. The foreign ministers had audiences of 
 congratulation ; and she received them with a particular 
 address to each in the most flattering terms. 
 
 Her first care was to have prince Ivan conveyed from the 
 house to which Peter III. had conveyed him, and to send 
 him back to Schlusselburg. She next proceeded to bestow 
 magnificent rewards on the principal actors in the revolt. 
 Panin was made prime minister ; the Orlofs received the title 
 of count ; and the favourite Gregory Orlof was appointed 
 lieutenant-general of the Russian armies, and knight of St. 
 Alexander Nevsky, the second order of the empire. Several 
 officers of the guards were promoted. Four-and-twenty of 
 them obtained considerable estates, with some thousands of 
 boors. The finances were insufficient to give anything to 
 the soldiers but brandy and beer: these were distributed 
 among them ; and Catharine behaved to them with the 
 greatest affability. At times she even put herself under con- 
 straint in order not to disoblige them. Three days subse- 
 quent to the revolution a drunken soldier dreamed that the 
 empress was carried oft". He rose up, ran about the barracks, 
 everywhere spreading alarm, crying out that the Holsteiners 
 and the Prussians had got possession of the empress. The 
 regiment immediately took up arms, ran to the palace, and 
 loudly insisted on seeing her majesty. The hetman Eazu-
 
 A.D. 1762] ACCESSION OF CATIIAltlNE II. 473 
 
 mofsky, having learned the cause of this tumult, appeared at 
 a window, assure?! them that the empress was not carried 
 off, and that after the disturbances and fatigues she had 
 undergone for some days, she was now reposing in peace 
 and security. But the soldiers refused to believe him, and 
 began to renew their clamours witli redoubled violence. 
 The hetman now went to the chamber of the sovereign, 
 caused her to be awaked ; and prayed her not to be 
 frightened. " You know that I am frightened at nothing," 
 she answered, boldly ; "but what is the matter?" — "The 
 soldiers imagine that you are not here : they insist upon 
 seeing you." — " "Well, they must be satisfied," she replied ; 
 and immediately rose up, dressed herself, called for her 
 carriage, and gave orders to drive to the Kasanskoi church. 
 On her way the soldiers surrounded her carriage, interro- 
 gating each other : " Is that indeed the empress ? Is that 
 indeed our mother ?" Being come to the church, Catharine 
 showed herself to them, harangued them, thanked them for 
 their solicitude, and dismissed them highly satisfied. 
 
 She made a point of showing clemency towards the officers 
 and friends of the emperor ; and though some of them were 
 forbid the court, not one was deprived of his property or his 
 life. Only Grudovitck, the aide-de-camp-general, Volkof, 
 and Milganof, were imprisoned.* Countess Vorontzof, who 
 at first had been treated rudely by the soldiers, was sent to 
 the house of the senator her father : and the empress 
 expressly forbade a repetition of the like affronts. She was 
 afterwards exiled for some time to a village one thousand 
 versts beyond Moscow. 
 
 The most zealous partisans of Catharine were meanwhile 
 not without uneasiness. Some regiments murmured, and 
 began to repent the part they had acted against their lawful 
 sovereign. The people, who easily pass from rage to com- 
 passion, now pitied the fate of this unfortunate prince. 
 They forgot his defects and caprices in the recollection of his 
 amiable fpialities, and his sad reverse of fortune. The sailors 
 cast it in the teeth of the guards that they had sold their 
 master for brandy and beer. A great number of the towns- 
 
 * They were all afterwards liberated; the two last-named received 
 lucrative appointments; Gudovitch alone would accept nothing from 
 the murderess of his sovereign.
 
 -474 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CK. XXXVII. 
 
 people who had been exceedingly active in the business, and 
 loudest in their execrations of Peter, were now seized with 
 remorse, and lamented the sufferings which they had brought 
 upon their monarch. But among the guards the same sen- 
 timents displayed themselves in a still more violent manner : 
 numbers of the soldiers, repenting of their abominable 
 treason, for in that light they now beheld their late beha- 
 viour, expressed their resentment against their accomplices 
 in the most abusive terms, imputing to their bad advice the 
 crimes into which they had been led. From words they 
 proceeded to blows, and even to murder. Though through- 
 out the revolution no blood had hitherto been shed, several 
 were now killed in these furious squabbles. The officers 
 repeatedly interposed, at the hazard of their personal safety, 
 to pacify the men, but in vain. Such are the populace in all 
 ages and nations : rash to perpetrate what their fury 
 suggests ; repentant at the sight of the mischief they have 
 done ; then prompt in their accusations against others, 
 instead of confessing their own misconduct. Nothing was 
 wanting but some resolute leader to have now replaced 
 Peter III. on the throne as suddenly as but three days ago 
 he had been precipitated from it : the attachment of the 
 common people to him was clearly evinced in the rebellion 
 of Pugatchef, eleven years after. In short, apprehensions 
 were entertained of a new insurrection. 
 
 "While the public mind was thus agitated, the news 
 brought from Moscow served only to increase the panic. 
 The governor of that capital, being informed of the revo- 
 lution by the emissaries of Catharine, ordered the five 
 regiments that composed the garrison to be drawn up 'in 
 the great place of the palace of the ancient czars, whither 
 the people flocked together in crowds. He then read aloud 
 the ukase by which the empress announced her accession, 
 and the abdication of her consort ; and concluded with the 
 exclamation, " Long live the empress Catharine the Second !" 
 But the people and the soldiers remained silent. He re- 
 peated the same cry ; the same silence ensued. No sound 
 but that of sullen murmurs was heard. The troops com- 
 plained that the regiments of the guards had insolently 
 dared to dispose of the throne. The governor, startled at 
 these unexpected expressions of discontent, called upon the
 
 A.D. 1762] MURDER OF PETER III. 475 
 
 other officers to join him. They cried out together, " Long 
 live the empress !" This done, the multitude was dismissed, 
 and the soldiers were sent back to their barracks. 
 
 The fears excited among the conspirators by these sinister 
 appearances precipitated the inevitable catastrophe. On his 
 removal from Petershof, the czar was still blind to the fate 
 that awaited him. Thinking he should be detained but a 
 short time in prison, previous to his being sent into Germany, 
 he sent a message to Catharine, asking her to let him have a 
 favourite negro who amused him by his oddities, together 
 with a dog he was fond of, his violin, a Bible, and a few 
 romances ; at the same time telling her, that, disgusted at 
 the wickedness of mankind, he was resolved thenceforward 
 to devote himself to a philosophical life. Not one of these 
 requests was granted, and his plans of wisdom were turned 
 into ridicule. lie was left in his prison at Eoptcha. 
 
 He had been there six days without the knowledge of any 
 but the chief conspirators and the soldiers by whom he was 
 guarded, when Alexis Orlof, accompanied by an officer 
 named Teplof, came to him with the news of his speedy 
 deliverance, and asked permission to dine with him. Accord- 
 ing to the custom of that country, wine-glasses and brandy 
 were brought previous to dinner ; and while the officer 
 amused the czar with some trifling discourse, his chief filled 
 the glasses, and poured a poisonous mixture into that he 
 intended for the prince. The czar, without any distrust, 
 swallowed the potion ; on which he presently experienced 
 excruciating pains ; a second glass being offered him, on 
 pretence of its giving him relief, he refused it, with reproaches 
 on him that offered it. 
 
 He called aloud for milk ; but the two murderers offered 
 him poison again, and pressed him to take it. A French 
 valet, much attached to his master, ran to his assistance. 
 The czar threw himself into his servant's arms, exclaiming, 
 " It was not then enough to prevent my reign in Sweden, 
 and deprive me of the Russian crown, but they will have my 
 life also!" 
 
 The valet dared to intercede for his royal master, but the 
 miscreants forced this dangerous witness to retire, and con- 
 tinued their ill-treatment. In the midst of the scuffle the 
 youngest of the princes Baratinsky, who commanded the
 
 476 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXXVII. 
 
 guard, entered the room. Orlof had thrown tbe czar upon 
 his back, and pressed bis knee upon bis breast ; with one 
 hand he seized his tbroat, and clencbed his head with tbe 
 other. Baratiusky and Teplof tben passed a napkin about 
 Ins neck with a running noose. Peter, in his struggle, 
 scarred Baratinsky's face, and fixed a mark tbat was retained 
 for some time by that villain ; but the unfortunate czar soon 
 lost his strength, and his murderers accomplished their 
 diabolical purpose.* 
 
 Alexis Orlof, after be had strangled the emperor, mounted 
 his horse, and eagerly rode oft", to inform Catharine that her 
 husband was no more. He arrived at the moment when the 
 empress was going to show herself at court. She affected 
 an air of tranquillity ; and afterwards shut herself up with 
 Orlof. Panin, Kazumofsky, Glebof, and other cruel confede- 
 rates. In this sinister council, the propriety of divulging the 
 emperor's death to the senate and people, was the subject 
 of deliberation ; they decided upon deferring it until the 
 next day. Catharine dined in public as usual, and in the 
 evening held her court with great cheerfulness. 
 
 On the next day, the empress, still feigning ignorance of 
 her husband's death, caused it to be announced when she 
 was at table. At that instant she retired, overwhelmed with 
 fictitious grief. She dismissed the courtiers and foreign 
 ministers, retired to her apartment, and for several days 
 together assumed the mask of profound sorrow. During 
 that time the following declaration, in which cruelty is joined 
 to the most consummate hypocrisy, was foisted upon the 
 public : 
 
 " The seventh day after our accession to the imperial 
 throne, we received intelligence that the late emperor was 
 attacked by a most violeut colic, occasioned by the hemor- 
 rhoids, of which he had suffered frequent returns. Tbat 
 therefore we might not be wanting in Christian duty, nor 
 disobedient to tbe divine command, by which we are enjoined 
 to preserve the life of our neighbour, we immediately ordered 
 that the said Peter should be furnished with everything that 
 might be judged necessary to prevent the dangerous conse- 
 
 * It has been falsely asserted that Potemkin was with them. Men 
 of undoubted honour, who were then in Russia, deny the assertion; 
 and Potemkin always treated it with disdain.
 
 A.D. 1762] EXPOSUEE OF THE BODY OF PETEE III. 477 
 
 quences of that fearful complaint, and to restore his health 
 by the aids of medicine. But, to our great regret and 
 affliction, we were yesterday evening apprised that, by the 
 permission of the Almighty, the late emperor departed this 
 life. ~VVe have therefore ordered his body to be conveyed to 
 the monastery of Nevsky, in order to its interment in that 
 place. At the same time, with our imperial and maternal 
 voice, we exhort our faithful subjects to forgive and forget 
 what is past, to pay the last duties to his body, and to pray 
 to God sincerely for the repose of his soul; willing them, 
 however, to consider this unexpected and sudden death as 
 an especial effect of the providence of God, whose impene- 
 trable decrees are working for us, for our throne, and for our 
 country, things known only to His holy will." 
 
 The body of the unhappy czar was conveyed to Petersburg, 
 and for several days exposed at Saint Alexander Nevsky's. 
 They took care to dress him in his Prussian uniform ; and 
 people of all ranks and conditions were permitted to render 
 him their last expressions of duty, which in Eussia consist 
 in saluting the lips of the deceased. His face was very 
 black. Extravasated blood exuded through the epidermis, 
 and even penetrated the gloves that covered his hands. The 
 poison administered to the czar must have been exceedingly 
 violent, for such as had the sad courage to lay their mouths 
 to his, returned from it with swollen lips. 
 
 The confederates knew very well that such frightful indi- 
 cations would not fail to discover the means used to abridge 
 the czar's existence ; but they were less anxious to save 
 appearances than to prevent the insurrections which, with- 
 out doubt, would have taken place had the people entertained 
 a thought that Peter still survived. 
 
 The day of his funeral was a day, in Petersburg, of deso- 
 lation and sorrow. The empress did not appear at the obse- 
 quies, out of regard to her health, as it was expressed in a 
 notification published by the senate, she having already taken 
 the death of the emperor so much to heart that she was 
 continually dissolved in tears. The populace were very 
 abusive to the soldiers of the guard, reproaching them with 
 having basely shed the last drop of the blood of Peter the 
 Great. The llolstcin soldiers, who till this had remained at 
 Oranienbaum, at liberty, but disarmed, followed their master's
 
 478 HISTORY OF RUSSIA. [CH. XXXVII. 
 
 corpse, venting their grief in tears. They were no longer 
 regarded by the Russians as rivals, engrossing preference, 
 but as faithful servants, in whose sorrow they participated 
 themselves. Catharine, however, ordered this disconsolate 
 band to embark the next day for their country. They were 
 put on board a vessel that sank in leaving the port of Cron- 
 stradt ; a small number saved their lives upon some rocks 
 rising just above the surface of the waves, and were all left 
 to perish by the barbarous Talitzan, under pretext that he 
 must send to Petersburg before he could give them any 
 assistance. 
 
 Prince George, whom Peter III. had named duke of 
 Courland, was obliged to renounce that title ; but he was 
 indemnified by the empress for this privation ; she confided 
 to him the government of Holstein ; to which he, and the 
 rest of his family, were immediately sent. He served her 
 majesty, in this appointment, with a zeal that she had no 
 reason to expect from the czar's relation. 
 
 The ex-chancellor Bestujef, Peter's old and most inveterate 
 enemy, but Catharine's trusty confidant and friend, was 
 recalled from exile. He was restored to his rank of field- 
 marshal, re-assumed his place at the council, and received a 
 pension of twenty thousand roubles, with a dispensation 
 from all official duty on account of his age. Bestujef made 
 a great pretence of piety in his latter years, but it did not 
 diminish his thirst for ambition and intrigue. He died at 
 St. Petersburg in April, 1766.
 
 APPENDIX TO VOL. I. 
 
 SUCCESSION OF THE SOVEREIGNS OE EUSSIA, GEAND-PEINCES 
 OE GEAND-DUKES, CZAES, AND AFTEEWAEDS EMPEEOES. 
 
 A.M. A.D. 
 
 Rurik 6369 861 
 
 Igor, his son, at first under the regency of his uncle 
 
 Oleg 6386 878 
 
 Sviatoslaf, son, first under the regency of his mother, 
 Olga, who embraced Christianity. Kief was at this 
 
 time the residence or capital 6453 945 
 
 Yaropolk, son of the grand-prince .... 6480 972 
 Vladimir, brother, first Cliristiau prince, and apostle of 
 
 his nation 6488 980 
 
 Yaroslaf, son of the grand-prince at Kief : his brothers 
 have appanages: thence the different principalities 
 
 or dukedoms 6523 1015 
 
 Isiaslaf, son 6562 1054 
 
 Vsevolod, brother . . . . . .6586 1078 
 
 Sviatopolk, son of the grand-dukc Isiaslaf . . . 6601 1093 
 
 Vladimir II., brother of Vsevolod .... 6622 1114 
 
 Mstislaf, son 6633 1125 
 
 Yaropolk, brother 6640 1132 
 
 Viatcheslaf, brother, abdicates ..... 6646 1138 
 
 Vsevolod II., great grandson of the grand-prince Yaroslaf 
 
 Isiaslaf II., son of Mstislaf 6654 1146 
 
 Eostislaf, brother of Vsevolod II 6662 1154 
 
 Isiaslaf III., son of David, and great grandson of 
 
 Yaroslaf ■ « 
 
 Youri, or Igor, or George, fourth son of Vladimir II. 
 He built Moscow : his successors leave Kief, and re- 
 side at Vladimir 6663 1155 
 
 Michael, son, governs with his brother Andrew, and 
 
 after his death alone 6665 1157 
 
 Vsevolod III., brother . . . . • . 6685 1177 
 Itror or George II., son. Constantino, his brother, 
 
 during two vears . . ._ . . • . O/ZA laid 
 Yaroslaf II. , brother, in subjection to the Tatars, as 
 
 also the following . 6746 1238 
 
 St. Alexander Nevsky, son 6753 1845 
 
 Yaroslaf III., brother 6771 1263 
 
 Vassili, or Basil, brother 6778 1270
 
 480 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 A..M. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 His brother Andrew- 
 
 Dmitri, or Demetrius, brother. 
 
 set up by the Tatars 6785 
 
 Daniel, fourth brother : since whom the grand-princes 
 
 reside at Moscow 6802 
 
 Igor, or George, son, deposed 6810 
 
 Michael, son of Yaroslaf III 6813 
 
 VassiU, or Basil II., brother 6828 
 
 Igor re-established 6833 
 
 Ivan, or John, brother . . . . . 6836 
 
 Simeon, son ........ 6848 
 
 Ivan II., brother . . . . . . . 6861 
 
 Dmitri II., son. Dmitri, his relation, set up by the 
 
 Tatars, two years 6867 
 
 Vassili, or Basil III., son 6897 
 
 Vassili IV., son. Igor, his uncle, usurps . . . 6933 
 Ivan III., son. The famous Ivan Vassilievitch who 
 
 threw off the yoke of the Tatars .... 6970 
 
 Vassili V., son 7014 
 
 Ivan IV., son, surnamed the Terrible, assumes the title 
 
 of Czar 7042 
 
 Feodor, or Theodore, son ; the last of the race of Rurik 7092 
 
 The following are of different families : 
 
 Boris Godunof 7106 
 
 Feodor II., son . . . . . .7113 
 
 Dmitri V., falsely calling hhnself son of Ivan IV. . 
 
 Vassili Shuiski, or Basil VI., elected .... 7114 
 
 Vladislaus of Poland elected, afterwards rejected . 7118 
 Michael, of the family of Bomanof (still reigning), 
 
 elected , . . 7121 
 
 Alexey, or Alexis, son 7153 
 
 Feodor, or Theodore III., son 7184 
 
 Ivan V. and Peter, brothers, together . . . 7190 
 
 Peter alone, afterwards styled the great emperor . . 7204 
 
 Russians cease to reckon by the year of the world. 
 .Catharine, widow of Peter ..... 
 Peter II., grandson of Peter the Great 
 Anne, daughter of Ivan .... 
 Ivan IV., grandson of Ivan ... 
 Klizabeth Petrovna, daughter of Peter the Great 
 Peter III., her nephew, deposed and murdered , 
 Catharine II., his widow .... 
 Paul, son of Peter III., murdered 
 Alexander, son of Paul .... 
 Nicholas, son of Paul .... 
 
 1294 
 1302 
 1305 
 1320 
 1325 
 1328 
 1340 
 1353 
 
 1359 
 1389 
 1425 
 
 1462 
 
 1506 
 
 1531 
 1584 
 
 159S 
 1605 
 
 160.') 
 1610 
 
 1613 
 1645 
 1676 
 16S2 
 
 1096 
 
 1725 
 1727 
 1730 
 1740 
 1741 
 1762 
 1762 
 17% 
 1801 
 1825
 
 THE VAKANGTAKS„ 481 
 
 THE VARANGIANS. 
 
 The Varangian names which have come down to us are 
 Scandinavian, and Nestor positively affirms that the Varan- 
 gians were Russians. 
 
 Constantine Porphyrogenitus remarks the difference be- 
 tween the Russian and the Slavonian languages. 
 
 The leaders of the people, who, about 862, conquered Nov- 
 gorod and Kief, were Scandinavians ; this is proved by their 
 names. Those leaders gave to their conquests the name of 
 Russia (see Nestor). They were, consequently, Russians, 
 and the Russians were Scandinavians. 
 
 The Russians who, in 839, accompanied the embassy which 
 was sent by the Greek emperor Theophilus, to Louis, the 
 son of Charlemagne, were recognised as Normans ; and, as 
 Luitprand tells us, were so recognised after a very jealous 
 and minute investigation. Now, the Franks of that period 
 had good reasons for knowing Normans. These Normans 
 complained of the hostile countries and tribes through which 
 they had been obliged to journey before they could reach 
 Byzantium ; and they desired to be sent back, by sea, from 
 France to their native land. 
 
 Ville-llardouin tells us, that, at the capture of Constanti- 
 nople, by Baldwin, earl of Flanders, who was a crusader, and 
 an ally of the Venetians, the Varangians, or, as he calls them, 
 the Anglians and Danes, repulsed the Latins with their axes. 
 These Varangians formed the body-guard of the emperors of 
 the Lower Empire. 
 
 Besides, the ancient wars of the Scandinavians with the 
 northern Slavonians and the Finnish tribes are not unknown 
 to us. The Swedes made a descent in Esthonia in the fifth 
 century, and often, both before and after. Sturlezon men- 
 tions several marriages between the princes and princesses of 
 Suevia and Finland. These attacks and alliances in the north 
 were terminated by a conquest. In 984, we see the Normans 
 masters of Livonia and Esthonia, and the Russian Varangians 
 in possession of all the rest of European Russia. 
 
 Did not Rurik commence his conquest by Ladoga and 
 Bielozero ? AVhy, then, should we believe that he came from 
 Prussia, as is asserted by Lomonosof ? And even if it were 
 
 vol. I. 2 I
 
 482 APPENDIX. 
 
 true, as he affirms, that Eurik came from the Niemen and 
 from Eugen, does not Prsetorius tell us that Alaric and his 
 Gothic successors were kings of the Eugians? and is not the 
 name of Goths given to the Eugians hy Procopius ? 
 
 Oleg imposed a tribute on the Novgorodians for the sup- 
 port of his Varangians. Ivor sent to ask assistance from the 
 insidar Varangians. Vladimir sought an asylum among the 
 Varangians, and returned with them. Taroslaf had recourse 
 to the Varangians beyond sea. "Were not, then, the princes 
 who threw themselves into the arms of the Varangians of the 
 same origin with them ? Now, is not this insular and trans- 
 marine origin Scandinavian? 
 
 Karamsin also (vol. i. p. 45) says, that the Varangians 
 were Goths or Normans ; that from time immemorial, there 
 had been in Sweden a province named Eosslagen, the in- 
 habitants of which were denominated Ehos or Ehotses, &c. 
 Moreover, the Kurisch-haf, in old Prussia, is likewise called 
 Eussna ; the northern branch of the Memel bears the name 
 of Euss, and the country that of Po-Eussia ; for those Ehos, 
 or Eoss, were Swedes who, according to Karamsin' s state- 
 ment, had conquered Prussia. One of the oldest streets in 
 Novgorod had the appellation of Prussia-street. Lastly, 
 about 1560, Ivan, when laying claim to Sweden, as being the 
 patrimony of his ancestors, affirmed positively that the Va- 
 rangians of Taroslaf were Swedes. 
 
 We know, besides, that Sigurd, the brother-in-law of the 
 king of Norway, was a subject of Vladimir, and enjoyed his 
 confidence; and that Trygvason, king of Norway, took refuge 
 in Eussia. All this might, indeed, happen, without the 
 Eussian grand-princes, and what they termed their court, 
 or their guard, having been Scandinavians. But we have 
 also a right to infer from it, that these princes were attracted 
 to the abodes of each other by identity of origin. 
 
 The learned and judicious Levesque says, that the Eussians 
 cannot have been Slavonians. He adds, that it is barely 
 possible that the Uigors, who were Siberian Huns, may have 
 spread as far as Livonia, and have been the original Eussians; 
 that thus the Eussians may be descendants of the Huns ; but, 
 as all their known names are Gothic, he states that, in that 
 case, before they conquered the Slavonians, they must them-
 
 THE YAKA> T GIAN9. 4S3 
 
 selves have been conquered by the Goths ; an opinion whicli 
 is much less probable, than that of the laborious and accurate 
 German writers, who assign a Gothic origin to the Russians. 
 
 In short, whatever may have been the primary origin of 
 the Russians, it is indisputable that, as early as the ninth 
 century, their alliances, their wars, their climates, and their 
 names, had so completely, and for so long a time, blended 
 them with the Scandinavians, that it is impossible to per- 
 ceive any distinction between them. And are we to imagine 
 that a people so famous in the north should have sprung 
 from the Finnish tribes, which were always obscure, rather 
 than from the Goths, Avho were the conquerors of the world ? 
 
 How do we know that the appellation of Russian, generally 
 adopted since the time of Rurik, was not derived from him. ? 
 or, still more probably, may not the Slavonians, whose demi- 
 gods of the waters were called Russalks, have given that 
 name to the Scandinavian Varangian pirates, who were more 
 truly the demi-gods of the bdlows whicli foamed under their 
 keels ? 
 
 Bat are more proofs required of the Scandinavian lineage 
 of the Russians ? Attend, then, to a literal translation from 
 Nestor, their oldest annalist. " In the years 8G0, 61, and 
 62, the Varangians came from beyond sea, and the Novgoro- 
 diaus, &c, refused them the tribute which had been agreed 
 upon." Read also the following quotation : — " The Novgoro- 
 dians went beyond sea to the Ross Varangians ; for these 
 Varangians were called Ross, as others were Svie (Swedes), 
 others Urmians (Normans), others Angles, and others 
 Goths. They asked them for princes, and those princes 
 went with all the nation ; and from those Varangians, the 
 territory of Novgorod was called the land of the Russians." 
 Strahlenberg, a Swedish officer of Charles XII., states 
 that, in his time, the Finns still denominated Sweden Ross- 
 lagen, and the Swedes Ruodzalains. lie has no doubt that 
 the Russian Varangians were from Soaadwrnwa. 
 
 As to Lacombe, he no doubt knows no better than I do 
 why he says, that a prince named Russus gave his name to 
 Russia. 
 
 Lisakewitz, a Russian, Bays positively (Hist, of Novgorod), 
 that the Varangians were Goths, and called themselves Rus- 
 
 2 i2
 
 484 APPENDIX. 
 
 sians ; that the Boxolani were Goths who moved to the 
 south in the fourth century ; and that a Swedish province 
 formerly bore the name of Bosslagen.* 
 
 Struve, in his " Dissertation on the Ancient Russians," a 
 scarce and very curious work, declares that the oldest Swe- 
 dish authors (he cites Saxo-Grammaticus) speak of the 
 existence of a Boss people in the first century ; that, in the 
 Celtic language, Biss or Ross signifies loftiness, whence he 
 infers that the Eiss or Eoss were Scandinavian mountaineers ; 
 that their country was situated to the east of the Bothnic 
 gulf; and that from thence they spread to the north and 
 south of the Ladoga, in Esthonia, &c. In the monastery of 
 St. Bertin, in Inlanders, he found indubitable evidence that 
 the Eussians, who were sent by the Greek emperor Theo- 
 philus to Louis the Debonair, spoke the same language as 
 the Swedes. 
 
 Out of the sixty-two names of the envoys sent by Oleg 
 and Ivan to Byzantium, we see that only three are Slavonian, 
 and that fifty-five are evidently Scandinavian. 
 
 Yaroslaf married Indigerga, daughter of the king of Swe- 
 den ; an union to which he was doubtless prompted by 
 gratitude for the succours which he had received from the 
 Varangians. We remark, besides, that Harold, the brother 
 of the king of Norway, commanded the Varangians, who 
 were the guards of Yaroslaf, and that the same station was 
 
 * It must be mentioned here, that this opinion is controverted by 
 Malte-Brun; he believes the Russians to be derived from the Roxolani, 
 the ancient inhabitants of central Russia. These Roxolani were known 
 by their wars against the Roman Empire, in 68, 166, and 270. About 
 the middle of the fourth century, we find them sometimes in subjection 
 to the Huns, and sometimes to the Goths, who were masters of thai 
 country after the time of Hermanric. It must be added, that Malte- 
 B-run quotes Suhm and Snorro against the opinion which makes Scan- 
 dinavia the cradle of the Russian nation. These authorities, however, 
 do not seem strong enough, nor does the appellation of Roxolani bear 
 a sufficient likeness to that of Russians, to destroy the body of proofs 
 which are afforded by all the preceding quotations. That the Va- 
 rangians were at once Russians and Scandinavians, we may, therefore, 
 continue to believe, till the Russians of the present day shall have 
 settled the question themselves; for it is said that they are now en- 
 tering upon the inquiry with a degree of zeal, intelligence, critical 
 spirit, and science, which is continually increasing in a remarkable 
 manner.
 
 SENTENCE ON THE CZAREVITCH ALEXIS. 485 
 
 afterwards held by Eleifur, the son of Eogvald. This arose 
 from Scandinavian chiefs naturally being given to Scandina- 
 vian Varangians. 
 
 It is known that Luitprand was informed by his fatber- 
 in-law, Yitricus, who witnessed, at Byzantium, the massacre 
 of the Russians of Igor's army, that those Russians were 
 from Scandinavia, and spoke its language. 
 
 Codinus tells us, that the Varangians of the Greek em- 
 peror's guard wished him long life in English. — See the 
 curious Dissertation of Lerberge, on the double Russian 
 names; that is to say, the Scandinavian and Slavonian names 
 of the autocrats of the Borysthenes. Lastly, D'Anville 
 also believes that the Russian Varangians were from Scandi- 
 navia. — Segur. 
 
 SENTENCE OF THE COURT UPON THE CZAREVITCH ALEXIS. 
 
 Pursuant to the express order of his czarish majesty, and 
 signed with his own hand the 13th of June, 1718, for the 
 trial of the czarevitch Alexis Petrowitz, for his offences and 
 crimes against his father and sovereign, the ministers, sena- 
 tors, military and civil officers, whose names are hereunto 
 subscribed, after several meetings held in the chamber of the 
 senatorial regency at Petersburg, having more than once 
 heard the originals and extracts of the depositions against 
 him formally read, as likewise the admonitory letters from 
 his czarish majesty to the czarevitch, and his answers to 
 them, written with his own hand ; likewise the informations, 
 confessions, and declarations of the czarevitch, botli those 
 written with his own hand, and those verbally made by him 
 to his lord and father, and before the underwritten, appointed 
 by his czarish majesty's authority to sit on the present 
 important affair: have declared, that though according to 
 the laws of the Russian empire it never has appertained to 
 them, being natural subjects of the sovereign dominion of his 
 czarish majesty, to take cognisance of an affair of this nature, 
 which, from its importance, solely depends on the absolute 
 will of the sovereign, whose power is derived from God, and 
 not limited by any law ; however, in obedience to the said 
 order of his czarish majesty, their sovereign, which invests
 
 4SG APPENDIX. 
 
 them with this liberty, and after mature reflections, con- 
 scientiously, without fear or flatter}' - , or respect of persons, 
 having before their eyes the divine laws, both of the Old and 
 New Testament, applicable to the present case, the sacred 
 writings of the Gospel and of the Apostles, likewise the 
 canons and decrees of councils, the authority of the venerable 
 lathers and doctors of the church ; besides the additional 
 light received from the sentiments of the archbishops and 
 clergy assembled at Petersburg by his czarish majesty's 
 order, a duplicate of which is hereto annexed, and conforming 
 themselves to the general law of all Eussia, and particularly 
 to the constitutions of this empire, to the military laws and 
 the statutes which correspond with the laws of many other 
 states, especially those of the ancient emperors, Boinan 
 and Greek, and other Christian princes ; we, the under- 
 written, having put the case to the vote, unanimously, and 
 without any contradiction, agree and resolve, That the czare- 
 vitch, Alexis Petrowitz, deserves death, for his many capital 
 crimes and offences against his sovereign and his father ; so 
 that though his czarish majesty, in a letter sent to the 
 czarevitch by M. Tolstoi of the privy council, and captain 
 Eomanzof, dated from Spa, the 10th of July, 1717, promised 
 that he would forgive his elopement on his returning of his 
 own accord and willingly, as the czarevitch himself, with 
 thanks, acknowledged in his answer to that letter, written at 
 Naples the 4th of October, 1717 ; wherein he says, that he 
 thanked his czarish majesty for the pardon which related 
 only to his elopement : he is since become unworthy of it 
 by his continual opposition to his father's pleasure, and 
 other offences repeatedly continued, as is set forth at large 
 in the manifesto published by his czarish majesty on the 3rd 
 of February in the present year ; and because, among other 
 things, he did not return of his own accord. 
 
 And though his czarish majesty, on the czarevitch's coming 
 to Moscow with a written confession of his crimes, wherein 
 he entreated forgiveness, had pity on him, as is natural 
 for a father towards his son ; and though at the audience, to 
 which the czar admitted him in the hall of the citadel on the 
 same day, the 3rd of Pebruary, his czarish majesty pro- 
 mised that all his offences should be forgiven ; yet this pro- 
 mise was made in the presence of all the numerous assembly
 
 SENTENCE ON THE CZAEEVITCH ALEXIS. 487 
 
 then present, with, this express proviso, that the czarevitch 
 should, without any exception or reservation, declare aud 
 make known all that he had committed or devised against 
 his czarish majesty till that day ; and that he should discover 
 all those who had been his advisers and accomplices ; and in 
 general all who knew anything of his designs and practice; 
 but that on any concealment of persons or things, the pardon 
 should be void, as if it never had been granted : which the 
 czarevitch consented to, and received, at least in appearance, 
 with tears of gratitude ; and he promised on oath to declare 
 everything without any reserve ; in confirmation of which 
 he, in the cathedral church, kissed the cross and scripture. 
 The next day his czarish majesty, with his own hands, a^ain 
 signified to him the same thing in the interrogatory articles 
 inserted above, which he ordered to be delivered to him, 
 having written at the head of them the following words : 
 
 "Having yesterday received your pardon on condition 
 that you should declare all the circumstances of your elope- 
 ment, and whatever relates thereto ; withal, that if you con- 
 cealed anything, you should be deprived of life ; and as you 
 have already made some verbal declarations, you are ordered, 
 as a fuller satisfaction, and that you may be acquitted, to set 
 them down in writing, according to the articles specified 
 underneath." 
 
 And at the conclusion, in the seventh article, the czar had 
 again written with his own hand : 
 
 " Make known whatever relates to this affair, though not 
 mentioned here, and clear yourself as you would at confes- 
 sion : but should you hide or conceal anything which may 
 hereafter come to light, do not blame me for the consequence ; 
 for it was yesterday declared to you, before all the world, that 
 in such case the pardon you have received would be void and 
 revoked." Nevertheless, the czarcvit :ch, in his answers and con- 
 fessions, has observed no manner of sincerity ; he has not only 
 concealed many persons, but capital transactions, concerns, 
 and offences, and particularly his rebellious designs against 
 his father and his lord, and the unnatural contrivances he 
 has long been carrying on for usurping his faiher's throne 
 during his life, by many evil ways, and under evil pretences ; 
 grounding his hope and his wishes for the death of his father 
 and lord, on the commonalty's declaring in his favour.
 
 488 APPENDIX. 
 
 All this has been since discovered by legal informations, 
 after he himself had refused to make any such declarations as 
 appeared above. 
 
 Thus, by the whole behaviour of the czarevitch, aud by his 
 declarations, both verbal and written, and lastly, by that of 
 the 22nd of last June, it is evident that he would not stay 
 till the succession to the crown should come to him after his 
 father's demise, in the manner that his father would have left 
 it to him, agreeably to equity, and by those ways and means 
 which God has prescribed ; but that he has wished for it, and 
 had a prepense design of seizing on it, even during the life 
 of his father and lord, by opposing in everything his father's 
 will ; and not only by a domestic rebellion, which he relied 
 on, but by the assistance of a foreign army, which he flattered 
 himself to have at his disposal, and to be purchased even at 
 the ruin of the state, and the alienation of everything which 
 might have been required of the state for such assistance. 
 
 The above detail shows, that the czarevitch, in concealing 
 all his pernicious designs, and secreting many persons who 
 acted in concert with him, as he continued to do till the last 
 examination, and till he was fully convicted of all his machi- 
 nations, intended to reserve to himself, on any opportunity, 
 means of resuming his designs, and thoroughly to put in 
 execution this horrible attempt against his father and his 
 lord, and against all this empire. 
 
 He has thereby rendered himself unworthy of pardon, 
 which his worthy lord and father had, in his great clemency, 
 promised him. He has also himself acknowledged, both before 
 his czarish majesty and all the states, ecclesiastical aud civil, 
 and publicly before the whole assembly ; and he has also, 
 both verbally and in writing, declared before the under- 
 written judges appointed by his czarish majesty, that all the 
 premises were true and manifest by such effects as had 
 appeared. 
 
 Therefore, as the before-mentioned laws, divine and eccle- 
 siastical, civil and military, and particularly the two latter, 
 condemn to death, without mercy, not only those whose 
 attempts against their father and lord have been manifested 
 by evidences, or proved by writings, but even those whose 
 attempts reached no further than a rebellious intention, or 
 the formation of a design to kill their sovereign, or seize on
 
 THE TCHIN AND THE TCHINOYNIKS. 489 
 
 the empire ; what can be thought of a rebellious design, such 
 as scarce has ever been heard of in the world, added to the 
 horror of a twofold parricide against his sovereign, first as his 
 political father, and then as his natural father (a most kind 
 father, by whom the czarevitch has from his cradle been 
 brought up, with every paternal care, with a tenderness and 
 indulgence which have appeared on all occasions ; who, with 
 incredible pains, and unwearied application, has endeavoured 
 to form him for government, and instruct him in the art of 
 war, that he might be worthy of the succession, and capable 
 of ruling over such a large empire), how much more then 
 does such a design merit a capital punishment ? 
 
 It is with grieved hearts, and eyes full of tears, that we, 
 being servants and subjects, pronounce this sentence, seeing 
 that as such it does not belong to us to take cognisance of so 
 momentous a concern, and especially to pronounce a sentence 
 against the son of our sovereign, and most bountiful lord, the 
 czar. However, it being his will that we should pass our 
 judgment, we by these presents declare our real opinion, and 
 we pronounce this condemnation with a clear and Christian 
 conscience, as we shall answer for it before the just and 
 impartial tribunal of God. Submitting withal this sentence 
 and condemnation to the supreme power, will, and merciful 
 revision of his czarish majesty, our most gracious monarch. 
 
 THE TCHIN AND THE TCHINOVNIKS. 
 
 The Russian word tchin, or tcJiinne, signifies ceremony, cere- 
 monial, order, rank. In Russia you may happen to be invited 
 leg tchinof, that is to say, without ceremony ; but in general 
 they preserve the tchin, or order of rank. They are accus- 
 tomed to see everything take place tchinna, according to the 
 rule or ceremonial ; and there is the tchin tscrkovnii, church 
 ceremonial, as well as that for civil and military affairs. 
 
 The tchin, strictlv speaking, is the order of rank intro- 
 duced by Peter I. (Jan. 24, 1722, O.S.), with the desire of 
 giving all classes of his subjects an interest in the new state 
 of things he wished to bring about, and to inspire a salutary 
 emulation among men capable of rising by their own merit, 
 as well aa among those who owed their position in life to the
 
 490 APPENDIX. 
 
 accident of their birth only. In other words, it is the classi- 
 fication of military ranks and civil offices on one common 
 standard, in -which the grades that admit of personal or here- 
 ditary rank being conferred are pointed out. Peter the Great, 
 wishing to secure the fidelity and attachment of his auxiliaries, 
 who were chiefly strangers, and whose services he urgently 
 required, declared that all honours in the state should be the 
 reward of services rendered to him ; that merit should take 
 precedence of birth, and that the highest rank should be that 
 in which both were united. He appointed sixteen degrees of 
 military rank, with a corresponding scale for the civil service. 
 These sixteen classes have since been reduced to fourteen, 
 and the denominations slightly changed ; but in every other 
 respect the institution has remained the same as when it was 
 established by the czar-reformer. 
 
 The following table will show the corresponding ranks in 
 the civil and military services. It commences with the high- 
 est rank. "We observe some blanks, for, in fact, there are 
 some degrees which can belong but to one of the two services ; 
 and we also observe one of these grades without any particular 
 name besides that of class, by which we specify it accordingly : 
 
 Military Service. Civil Service. 
 
 1. Field-Marshal Privy-Councillor (actual), 1st class. 
 
 2.. General-in-Chief .... Privy-Councillor (actual). 
 
 3. Lieutenant-General . . . Privy-Councillor. 
 
 4. Major-General Councillor of State (actual). 
 
 5. Councillor of State. 
 
 6. Colonel Councillor of the College. 
 
 7. Lieutenant-Colonel . , . Councillor of the Court. 
 
 8. Major Assessor of the College. 
 
 9. Captain of the Staff . . . Titular Councillor. 
 
 10. Captain Secretary of the College. 
 
 11. Lieutenant . 
 
 12. Suh-Lieutenant .... Secretary of the Government Class. 
 
 13. Ensign Sword-bearer . . . 
 
 14. Ensign Register of the College. 
 
 In the army, personal nobility may be conferred on officers 
 of the highest rank, and those above the rank of major maj r 
 receive an hereditary title. In the civil service, until the 
 year 1845, personal nobility was conferred on entering the 
 10th class, and hereditary nobility on arriving at the 8th,
 
 THE TCHIN AND THE TCHINOVNIKS. 491 
 
 which corresponds with the military rank of major ; but this 
 lias since been changed, as will presently appear. To each 
 class was attached a particular distinction (one is hlagorodnii, 
 well-born) from the moment of receiving the rank of personal 
 nobility. When arrived at the 5th class, you are addressed 
 vache vygokorodie ("your high birth"). In the 4th, "your 
 excellence ;" and above that, " your high excellence," vygoJco- 
 prevoslclwditclistvo. 
 
 The ukase of June 23, 1845, occasioned new arrange- 
 ments in the civil department. Thenceforth hereditary 
 nobility has in great measure depended on the will of the 
 sovereign, and the title of " honourable commoner" (patchotnii 
 grajedanine) been frequently substituted for the rank of 
 personal nobility. This distinction was introduced by the 
 imperial manifesto of April 10, 1832, and confers various 
 hereditary privileges, as exemptions from the poll-tax and 
 conscription. 
 
 The tchinovniks are the subordinate class of officials of the 
 icliin ; they are the Eussian bureaucracy, against whom so 
 many just complaints arise, and who press so heavily on the 
 poorer classes. These men, the greater part of whom, igno- 
 rant and proud though they be, and owing their advancement 
 only to their birth, are the most strenuous upholders of the 
 present order of things. Friendly to the abuses by which 
 they live, habituated to violence, mercenary to a proverb, 
 they have but little taste for improvement, and treat every- 
 thing foreign, whether men, ideas, or customs, with a degree 
 of arrogance of which M. de Custine has given an illustration, 
 where he introduces his reader to the family circle of the 
 engineer of Schlusselburg. He makes the following remarks 
 on the same subject : — " Had not an aristocracy whose in- 
 fluence had for years been acknowledged in the country any 
 better means of effecting its improvement than an exercise of 
 the hypocritical obedience exacted by a body of commission- 
 ers ? And," he adds, " from the privacy of their chambers, 
 these invisible despots, these tyrannical pigmies, oppress the 
 country with impunity, for their dominion reaches even to 
 the emperor himself, who is well aware he does not possess 
 the power attributed to him ; and who, in the terror he would 
 willingly conceal from himself, knows not at all times what 
 limit may be placed to his authority. He feels it, and suffers
 
 492 APPENDIX. 
 
 it without daring even to complain." This limit which is the 
 bureaucratic ascendancy, a fearful power at all times, from its 
 liability to abuse under the name of the love of order, is more 
 to be dreaded in Russia than in any other country. When 
 we see administrative tyranny substituted for imperial des- 
 potism, we tremble for the fate of a country in which the 
 system of government propagated by the French nation 
 throughout Europe has been established without any coun- 
 terbalanciug influence. 
 
 We have pointed out the disadvantages of the tcliin, and 
 they are serious ; but it is not so easy, perhaps, to find the 
 remedy. In a certain sense, the whole administrative system 
 of Eussia is founded on the tchin. It indemnifies officials for 
 the insufficiency of their emoluments, while it subjects these 
 to a certain rule of increase, in proportion to the years of 
 service ; it stimulates the self-love of all, gives an impetus to 
 the energies and the will, and forms a close tie between the 
 state and its members. In default of a more worthy object 
 of ambition, it is a powerful lever, for the degree of tchinovnik 
 is an object of desire to every man, and the advancement 
 from one class to another is in itself the grand occupation of 
 life. The thirst for exterior distinction is universal. " There 
 is no system," says a Sclavonian writer, " so favourable to the 
 promotion of personal ambition and self-love. The constant 
 expectation of obtaining a rank, an order, a distinction of 
 some sort, and the thirst for such things, so far from being 
 appeased by success, is, on the contrary, increased by it, and 
 becomes the ruling principle of life. Nevertheless, this 
 system, incompatible with any individual advancement, 
 renders man a mere instrument, a very automaton, which 
 moves only at the will of the government." 
 
 As a political stimulant, the tchin is certainly of consider- 
 able value ; but looked upon in a moral point of view, it gives 
 occasion for criticism, and is the cause of much of the cruel 
 thraldom in which the country is held. — Schnitzler. 
 
 The Eussian nation is divided into two classes : the aris- 
 tocracy, who enjoy all the privileges ; and the people, who 
 bear all the burdens of the state. 

 
 THE TCHIN AND THE TCHINOVNIKS. 493 
 
 "We must not, however, form to ourselves an idea of the 
 Eussian nobility at all similar to those we entertain of the 
 aristocracies of Germany, or of anti-revolutionary France. 
 In Eussia, nobijity is not exclusively conferred by birth, as 
 in the other countries of Europe. Tbere every freeman 
 may become noble by serving the state either in a military 
 or a civil capacity ; with this difference only, that the son of 
 a nobleman is advanced one step shortly after he enters the 
 service, whilst the son of a commoner must wait twelve years 
 for his first promotion, unless he have an opportunity of dis- 
 tinguishing himself in the mean while. Such opportunities 
 indeed are easily found by all who have the inclination and 
 the means to purchase them. 
 
 The first important modifications in the constitution of 
 the noblesse were anterior to Peter the Great ; and Feodor 
 Alexievitch, by burning the charters of the aristocracy, 
 made the first attempt towards destroying the distinction 
 which the boyars wanted to establish between the great and 
 the petty nobles. It was a curious fact that, at the accession of 
 the latter monarch to the throne, most offices of state were 
 hereditary in Eussia, and it was not an uncommon thing to 
 forego the services of a man who would have made an 
 excellent general, merely because his ancestors had not 
 filled that high post, which men of no military talent 
 obtained by right of birth. Frequent mention has of late 
 been made of the celebrated phrase, The boyars have been of 
 opinion and the czar has ordained, and it has been made the 
 theme of violent accusation against the usurpation of the 
 Mu>c<>\ ite sovereigns. Eut historical facts demonstrate that 
 the supposed power of the nobility was always illusory, 
 and that the so much vaunted and regretted institution 
 served, in reality, only to relieve the czars from all personal 
 responsibility. The spirit of resistance, whatever may be 
 said to the contrary, was never a characteristic of the 
 Russian nobility. No doubt there have been frequent con- 
 spiracies in Russia; but they have always been directed 
 against the life of the reigning sovereign, and never In an\ 
 respect against existing institutions. The facility with 
 which Christianity was introduced into the country, affords 
 a Btriking proof of the blind servility of the Eussian people. 
 Vladimir caused proclamation to be made one day in the
 
 494 APPENDIX. 
 
 town of Kiev, that all the inhabitants were to repair next 
 day to the banks of the Dniepr and receive baptism ; and 
 accordingly, at the appointed hour on the morrow, without 
 the least tumult or show of force, all the inhabitants of Kiev 
 were Christians. 
 
 The existing institutions of the Eussian noblesse date 
 from the reign of Peter the Great. The innovation of that 
 sovereign excited violent dissatisfaction, and the nobles, not 
 yet broken into the yoke they now bear, caused their 
 monarch much serious uneasiness. The means which 
 appeared to Peter I. best adapted for cramping the old 
 aristocracy, was to throw open the field of honours to all his 
 subjects who were not serfs. But in order to avoid too 
 rudely shocking established prejudices, he made a difference 
 between nobles and commoners as to the period of service, 
 entitling them respectively to obtain that first step which 
 was to place them both on the same level. Having then 
 established the gradations of rank and the conditions of 
 promotion, and desirous of ratifying his institutions by his 
 example, he feigned submission to them in his own person, 
 and passed successively through all the steps of the scale he 
 had appointed. * * * 
 
 With all the apparent liberality of this scbeme of nobility, 
 it has, nevertheless, proved admirably subservient to the 
 policy of the Muscovite sovereigns. The old aristocracy has 
 lost every kind of influence, and its great families, most of 
 them resident in Moscow, can now only protest by their 
 inaction and their absence from court against the state of 
 insignificance to which they have been reduced, and from 
 which they have no chance of recovery. 
 
 Had it been necessary for all aspirants to nobility to pass 
 through the wretched condition of the common soldier, it is 
 evident that the empire would not possess one-tenth of its 
 present number of nobles. Notwithstanding their abject 
 and servile condition, very few commoners would have the 
 courage to ennoble themselves by undergoing such a novi- 
 tiate, with the stick hanging over them for many years. 
 But they have the alternative of the civil service, which 
 leads to the same result by a less thorny path, and offers 
 even comparatively many more advantages to them than to 
 the nobles by blood. Whereas the latter, on entering the
 
 THE TCHIN AND THE TCHINOVNIKS. 495 
 
 military service, only appear for a brief while for form's sake 
 in the ranks, become non-commissioned officers immediately, 
 and officers in a few months ; they are compelled in the civil 
 service to act for two or three years as supernumeraries in 
 some public office before being promoted to the first grade. 
 It is true, the preliminary term of service is fixed for com- 
 moners at twelve years, but we have already spoken of the 
 facilities they possess for abridging this apprenticeship. 
 
 But this excessive facility for obtaining the privileges of 
 nobility has given rise to a subaltern aristocracy, the most 
 insupportable and oppressive imaginable ; and has enor- 
 mously multiplied the number of employes in the various 
 departments. Every Eussian, not a serf, takes service as a 
 matter of course, were it only to obtain rank in the four- 
 teenth class ; for otherwise he would fall back almost into 
 the condition of the slaves, would be virtually unprotected, 
 and would be exposed to the continual vexations of the 
 nobility and the public functionaries. Hence, many indivi- 
 duals gladly accept a salary of sixty francs a year for the 
 permission of acting as clerks in some department ; and so 
 it comes to pass that the subaltern employes are obliged to 
 rob for the means of subsistence. This is one of the chief 
 causes of the venality and of the defective condition of the 
 Eussian administrative departments. 
 
 Peter the Great's regulations were excellent no doubt in 
 the beginning, and hardly could that sovereign have devised 
 a more efficacious means of mastering the nobility, and pros- 
 trating them at his feet. But now that the intended result 
 has been amply obtained, these institutions require to be 
 modified ; for, under the greatly altered circumstances of the 
 country, they only serve to augment beyond measure the 
 numbers of a pernicious bureaucracy, and to impede the de- 
 velopment of the middle class. To obtain admission into 
 the fourteenth class, and become a noble, is the sole ambition 
 of a priest's or merchant's son, an ambition fully justified 
 by the unhappy condition of all but the privileged orders. 
 There is no country in which persons engaged in trade are 
 held in lower esteem than in Eussia. They are daily sub- 
 jected to the insults of the lowest clerks, and it is only by 
 (1 1 iit of bribery they can obtain the smallest act of justice. 
 How often have I seen in the post stations unfortunate mer-
 
 496 APPENDIX. 
 
 chants who had heen waiting for forty-eight hours and more 
 for the good pleasure ot the clerk, without daring to com- 
 plain. It mattered nothing that their papers were quite 
 regular, the nohle of the fourteenth class did not care for 
 that, nor would he give them horses until he had squeezed a 
 good sum out of the particularnii tchelovieks, as he called 
 them in his aristocratic pride. The same annoyances await 
 the foreigner, who, on the strength of his passport, under- 
 takes a journey without a decoration at his button-hole, or 
 any title to give him importance. I speak from experience : 
 for more than two years spent in traversing Eussia as a 
 private individual, enabled me fully to appreciate the obliging 
 disposition of the fourteenth class nobles. At a later period, 
 being employed on a scientific mission by the government, I 
 held successively the rank of major, lieutenant-colonel, 
 and colonel : and then I had nothing to complain of: the 
 posting-clerks, and other employes, received me with all the 
 politeness imaginable. I never had to wait for horses, and 
 as the title with which I was decked authorised me to dis- 
 tribute a few cuts of the whip with impunity, my orders were 
 fulfilled with quite magical promptitude. 
 
 Under such a system, the aristocracy would increase with- 
 out end in a free country. But it is not so in Eussia, where 
 the number of those who can arrive at a grade is extremely 
 limited, the vast majority of the population being slaves. 
 Thus the hereditary and personal nobility comprise no more 
 than 563,653 males ; though all free-born Eussians enter the 
 military or civil service, and remain at their posts as long as 
 possible ; for once they have returned into private life they 
 sink into mere oblivion. Erom the moment he has put on 
 plain clothes, the most deserving functionary is exposed to 
 the vexations of the lowest subalterns, who then omit no 
 opportunity of lording over their former superior. 
 
 Such social institutions have fatally contributed to excite a 
 most decided antipathy between the old and the new aristo- 
 cracy : and the emperor naturally accords his preference and 
 his favours to those who owe him everything, and from whom 
 he has nothing to fear. In this way the new nobles have 
 insensibly supplanted the old boyars. But their places and 
 pecuniary gains naturally attach them to the established
 
 THE TCHIN AND THE TCHINOTNIKS. 497 
 
 government, and consequently they are quite devoid of all 
 revolutionary tendencies. Equally disliked by the old aris- 
 tocracy whom they have supplanted, and by the peasants 
 whom they oppress, they are, moreover, too few in numbers 
 to be able to act by themselves ; and in addition to this, the 
 high importance attached to the distinctions of rank, prevent 
 all real union or sympathy between the members of this 
 branch of Russian society. The czar, who perfectly under- 
 stands the character of this body, is fully aware of its venality 
 and corruption ; and if he honours it with his special favour, 
 this is only because he finds in it a more absolute and blind 
 submission than in the old aristocracy, whose ambitious 
 yearnings after their ancient prerogatives cannot but be at 
 variance with the imperial will. As for any revolutions which 
 could possibly arise out of the discontent of this latter order, 
 we may be assured they will never be directed against the 
 political and moral system of the country ; they will always 
 be, as they have always been, aimed solely against the indi- 
 vidual at the head of the government. Conspiracies of this 
 kind are the only ones now possible in Eussia ; and what 
 proves this fact is, the impotence of that resentment the czars 
 have provoked on the part of the old aristocracy, whenever 
 they have touched on the question of emancipating the 
 serfs. 
 
 The czars have shown no less dexterity than the kings of 
 France in their struggles against the aristocracy, and they 
 have been much more favoured by circumstances. We see 
 the Eussian sovereigns bent, like Louis XL, on prostrating 
 the great feudatories of the realm ; but there was this differ- 
 ence between their respective tasks, that the French nobles 
 could bring armies into the field, and often did so, whereas 
 the Eussian nobles can only counteract the power of their 
 ruler by secret conspiracies, and will never succeed in stirring 
 up their peasants against the imperial authority. 
 
 "What may we conclude are the destinies in store for the 
 Eussian nobility, and what part will it play in the future 
 nistory of the country ? It seems to us to possess little in- 
 herent vigour and vitality, and we doubt that a radical 
 regeneration of the empire is ever to be expected at its 
 hands. The influence of Europe lias been fatal to it. It has 
 
 VOL. I. 2 K
 
 498 APPENDIX. 
 
 sought to assimilate itself too rapidly with our modern civi- 
 lisation, and to place itself too suddenly on a level with the 
 nations of the west. Its eiforts have necessarily produced 
 only corruption and demoralisation, which, by bastardising 
 the country, have deprived it of whatever natural strength it 
 once possessed. — Hommaire de Hell. 
 
 NOBLE FAMILIES OF RUSSIA. 
 
 The nobility of the Russian empire, like its population in 
 general, is composed of families of divers origins, Russian, 
 Polish, Lithuanian, German, Swedish, Tatar, Georgian, Ar- 
 menian, Tcherkess, &c. 
 
 Among the Polish nobility, historical names are so very 
 numerous that we cannot undertake to give a list of them ; 
 but to the higher aristocracy of the provinces now Russian* 
 belong principally the following: — Princes Radzivill, Sa- 
 pieha, Sanguszko, Tablonowski, Lubomirski, Droucki, Czet- 
 wertinski, &c. ; Counts Potocki, Eranicki, Grabowski, Wiel- 
 horski, &c. 
 
 Princes Giedroyc (pronounced Gliiedroitz) , the descend- 
 ants of the Jagellons, more particularly represent Lithuania, 
 properly so called, of which they have remained, with princes 
 and counts Ogiuski, and a few others, one of the most im- 
 portant families. 
 
 At the head of the German nobility of the Baltic pro- 
 vinces are the families of Lieven, Medem, Sacken, Tiesen- 
 hausen, Essen, Toll, Stackelberg, Budberg, Buxhoevden, 
 Benkendorff, Ungern-Sternberg, Sievers, KorfF, Pahlen, 
 Kayserlingk, and many others. The Wittgensteins, Nessel- 
 rodes, and Munichs belong to Germany, properly so called. 
 
 Among the Swedish families, we may mention the Stein- 
 bocks, Perseus, and Armfelds. 
 
 Princes Joussoupoff, Ouroussolf, Meschtcherski, and 
 Doundoukoff are of Tatar origin; but their union with 
 Russia is of such ancient date that these families ought to 
 be considered as entirely mingled with the Russian nobility, 
 
 * We do not speak of those who, like prince Czartoryiski, have sepa- 
 rated from Russia .
 
 MORAL STATE OF THE RUSSIAN CLEUGY. 499 
 
 properly so called. The case is not the same with the 
 Ghira'i and a few other illustrious Mussulman families ; the 
 latter, dispossessed of the countries under their domiuion at 
 a still receut period, have remained true to their nationality. 
 The Grhira'i, as is well known, are of the dynasty that 
 formerly reigued in the Crimea. 
 
 The countries where the Georgian language is spoken 
 furnish a considerable number to the higher nobility of the 
 empire ; we may mention the czarevitch of Grousia and 
 other members of the family of Bagrath, the DadianofFs of 
 Mingrelia, and princes Chervachidze, Tchevtchevadze, Orbe- 
 lianoff, Eristoff, Bagrathion, and Tsitsianoff. The Lasarefl's 
 and a i'ew more ancient families belong to Armenia. 
 
 The princes Tcherkassko'i settled in Russia several cen- 
 turies, having come from the country of the Tcherkesses, a 
 few pclii or princes of whom even now remaining in that 
 country, might likewise be reckoned among the nobility of 
 the empire. 
 
 As to the Russian families properly so called, the essen- 
 tially national aristocracy, the case is the same as with tlve 
 Polish families ; and we should be led too far if we were to 
 recount all their illustrious names. The most important of 
 these families, and those which history has had to quote the 
 most frequently, are the following: — First, princes Dolgo- 
 rouki, Galitsin, Troubetzko'i, Kburakin, and others of the 
 race of Rurik ; next, counts and princes Saltikoif, princes 
 Lapoukhin, Clu'remetieft", Tolstoi, Golovin, Wormzom, 
 Moussine-Pouschkin, Bourtourlin, Narvschkin, Tcherny- 
 chefF, Apraxin, Strogauoff, Roumantsoff, Panin, &c. Other 
 families, now very important, or who have been during the 
 last century, such as Chouvaloff, Rasoumofski, Potcmkin, 
 Orloff, and Zouboft', are of much more recent celebrity. * — 
 Schnitzler. 
 
 MORAL STATE OF THE RUSSIAN CLERGY. 
 
 During the last century the morals of the French clergy 
 were, as is well known, excessively corrupt; but the evil, 
 
 * The orthography of the names in this article is French : they must 
 be pronounced accordingly.
 
 500 APPENDIX. 
 
 though very serious among the upper ranks, had not infected 
 the majority of the cures, or officiating ministers of parishes. 
 The conduct of the latter was generally satisfactory, and 
 many among them furnished examples of the most virtuous 
 conduct. 
 
 In Russia we remark the very reverse. The upper clergy 
 are in general irreproachable and worthy of esteem ; in their 
 ranks there are, and have been at all times, very honourable, 
 learned, enlightened, and pious men — in short, men every 
 way qualified for their duty. But the case is not the same 
 with the lower clergy, who, with a few exceptions, are still 
 in a deplorable state of degradation. 
 
 Everybody is of the same opinion on this subject. " The 
 parish curates," says Coxein his "Travels,"* "who ought to 
 be the most useful members in the social body, are in Russia 
 generally the very refuse of the people." Most of the French 
 authors express themselves to the same effect, t and an en- 
 lightened and patriotic Russian;}; has just described to us 
 once more the state of the clergy as " next to degradation." 
 
 " In general the Russian clergy," says he, " are far from 
 being equal to the importance of their mission. He who is 
 in daily and permanent contact with the lowest orders of the 
 people, is found to be in such a state of inferiority and insig- 
 nificance, that he is scarcely sufficient to the performance of 
 the material part of his duties. His position does not allow 
 him ever to acquire the least moral influence over his flock, 
 still less to direct their consciences." 
 
 " Nowhere," says M. Grolovin,§ "is drunkenness so gene- 
 rally prevalent as in Russia." Formerly the clergy themselves 
 set the example of it, as may be seen from the following 
 passage in the " Travels of Olearius :" 
 
 " Being at Novogorod, at the time of our second embassy, 
 I saw a priest come out of a tavern, who, on approaching our 
 lodgings, wanted to give his benediction to the strelitz who 
 were on guard before the door. But on raising his hand and 
 
 * " Travels," vol. ii. chap. v. 
 
 t See Fortia de Piles' " Voyage de Deux Francais dans le Nord," 
 t. iv. p. 72; Lesur's " Des Progres de la Puissance Russe,"p. 435, &c 
 
 % N. Tourgueneff's " La Russie et les Pusses," t. ii. p. 35. See also, 
 t. iii. p. 230. 
 
 § " La Russie sous Nicolas I.," p. 87.
 
 VISIT OF PETER III. TO IVAN'S PRISON. 501 
 
 bowing, his kead was so heavy with the fumes of wine, that 
 it overbalanced his body, and the poor priest tumbled into 
 the mud. Our strelitz lifted him up respectfully, and re- 
 ceived all the same this muddy benediction, as a thing of com- 
 nton occurrence among them* 
 
 "VISIT OF PETER III. TO IVANS PRISON. 
 
 General Ungern Sternberg was aide-de-camp to Peter III., 
 and accompanied him in a secret visit to the unfortunate 
 Ivan at Schlusselburg, where he had been confined by Eliza- 
 beth. They found this wretched young man in a dungeon, 
 the window of which admitted but a faint gleam of day, the 
 light being intercepted by piles of wood heaped up in the 
 court. He was in a very dirty while jacket, with a pair of 
 old shoes on his feet. His hair was very light, and cut short 
 like that of a Russian slave. He was tolerably well made, 
 and his complexion had a paleness which showed that the 
 sun had never shone on his face. He was then upwards of 
 twenty, and had been confined ever since he was fourteen 
 months old ; but he had received some impressions and ideas 
 which he stdl retained. Peter III., affected at his condition, 
 put several questions to him ; among the rest, " Who are 
 you ?" — " I am the emperor." — " "Who put you into prison, 
 then?" — "Vile, wicked people." — "Would you like to be 
 emperor again?" — "To be sure ; why not. I should then 
 have fine clothes, and servants to wait upon me." — " But 
 what would you do if you were emperor?" — " I would cut 
 off the heads of all those who have wronged me." Peter III., 
 having then asked whence he learned what he told him, he 
 answered, that he had it from I lie Virgin and the. angels, and 
 began to enter into long stories of these pretended visions. 
 Though alone, and confined from his infancy, he did not 
 appear terrified at the sight of the emperor and his officers. 
 He examined his dress and weapons with much curiosity and 
 pleasure, as a bold child would have done. The emperor 
 asked him again what he wished for, and he answered in 
 his vulgar Russian dialect, " To have more air." Ungem 
 
 * " Liv. iii. trad, de Wicquefort," t. i. p. 216. 
 VOL. I. 2 L
 
 502 APPENDIX. 
 
 was left some time at Schlusselburg to gain his confidence, 
 and find out whether his apparent imbecility were onlv 
 assumed. He was soon convinced, however, that it was the 
 natural consequence of his mode of life. He gave him, from 
 the emperor, a silk morning gown. Ivan put it on with trans- 
 ports of joy, running about the room, and admiring himself 
 as a savage would have done who had never been dressed 
 before. As all his wishes centred in the requisition of more 
 air, Peter III. sent the plan of a little circular palace, in the 
 centre of which was to be a garden, with orders to have it 
 built for Ivan in the court of the fortress. It was cruel that 
 this act of humanity towards an innocent man should have 
 served as a pretext against the unfortunate Peter. He was 
 charged with having intended to build a prison for his wife 
 and son, and this was made a pretext for his own assassina- 
 tion. 
 
 END OF VOL. T. 
 
 C. WHITING, BEAUFORT HOUSE, STRAND.
 
 
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