V 
 
 THE 
 
 ITH I 5-VLLU STRATIONS
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 Library, 
 
 CLASS & 
 
 NO 32.
 
 PRIMUS \ 
 MPERATOR; 
 
 PETER THE PREAT.
 
 PETER THE GREAT 
 
 REVERSE OF MEDAL CORONATION OF CATHARINK I. 
 
 Ubomas flelson and Sons, 
 
 LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK.
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 By 
 
 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. 
 
 WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS, 
 
 Taken from the "History of Peter the Great," by 
 Professor BRUCKNER, of Dorpat. 
 
 OBVERSE OK ROUBLE OF PETERS TIME. 
 
 Bonbon: 
 
 T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 EDINBURGH ; AND NEW YORK. 
 1887.
 
 KEVEKSE OF ROUBLE OK THE TIME Of J-ETEK THE OKEAT.
 
 MOTLEY'S Life of Peter the Great is a historical cameo 
 worthy of the author of the "Rise of the Dutch Republic." 
 
 The chief merit of the present edition of the essay lies in 
 the very striking and beautiful illustrations. These have 
 been taken from the "History of Peter the Great,"* by A- G. 
 Bruckner, Professor of Russian History in the University 
 of Dorpat, which is regarded by Russians as the most com- 
 prehensive and impartial biography in their language of 
 the founder of their empire. These pictures now appear 
 for the first time in an English work. They have been 
 reproduced with the utmost care and fidelity from the 
 originals, which were executed by 
 
 PANNEMACKER and MATHE, Paris ; 
 KEZEBERG and EKTEL, Leipzic ; 
 KLOSS and HELM, Stuttgart ; 
 
 ZUBCHAN'INOF, RASZEWSKI, SCHLIEPEK, and WlNCKLER, 
 
 St. Petersburg. 
 
 The materials for the pictures were derived from authentic 
 contemporary representations of incidents, persons, and 
 places connected with the life of the great monarch ; and 
 to this they owe the vividness with which they appeal 
 
 * Two vols. St. Petersburg : 1882.
 
 vill PREFACE. 
 
 to the imagination. The portraits of Peter and his prin 
 cipal coadjutors in the work of Europeanizing Muscovy 
 give a vitality to the narrative such as no other work 011 
 the subject possesses. 
 
 As Motley has estimated the character of Peter from 
 the point of view of a republican, it may be useful to 
 quote here the concluding passage of Bruckner's work, 
 which embodies the present Russian view of the same 
 subject : 
 
 " Russia would have been converted into a European 
 Power, even without Peter. He gave no new direction to 
 the historical development of Russia ; but, thanks to the 
 genius and force of will of the Patriot Peter, Russia ad- 
 vanced in his reign with special rapidity and success in 
 the direction that had already been indicated to her. The 
 nation which created Peter may well be proud of that 
 hero, who was, as it were, the product of the impact of the 
 Russian national spirit with the general culture of the 
 human race. A profound comprehension of the necessity 
 of such a combination of the two principles the national 
 and the cosmopolitan has procured for Peter, imperish- 
 ably, one of the foremost places in the history of mankind."
 
 of SEUustnttions. 
 
 Peter the Great, . . . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece 
 
 Reverse of Medal Coronation of Catharine I., . . . . Vignette 
 
 Obverse of Rouble of the Time of Peter the Great, . . . . Title 
 
 Reverse of Rouble of the Time of Peter the Great, . . . . Rack of Title 
 
 Coronation Carriage of Peter the Great, . . Back of Li*t of Illustrations 
 
 Peter the Great's Room at Saardam, . . . . . . 29 
 
 Peter the Great's Boats at Astrakhan, and his Model in Ship Carpentry, . . 37 
 Plan of Petersburg in the year 1705, . . . . . . 46 
 
 Russian Soldiers of the Time of Peter the Great, . . 51 
 
 Reduced Fac-simile of a contemporary Engraving of the Marriage Feast of 
 
 Peter the Great, .. .. .. .. .. ..57 
 
 View of the Quay, Petersburg, in the Time of Peter the Great (from a 
 
 contemporary Engraving), . . .. .. . . 65 
 
 Charles XII., King of Sweden (from an engraved Portrait of I'll), .. 71 
 
 The Capture of Xarva, 1704, . . . . . . . . 75 
 
 Battle of Pultowa (from a Picture by Professor Kotzebve), .. 79 
 
 Catharine I. of Russia, . . . . . . . . 87 
 
 The Admiralty or Shipbuilding Yard on the Neva in the Time of Peter the 
 
 Great (from a contemporary Engrarinj), .. .. .. Ill 
 
 Peter the Great saving life at Lakhta, near Petersburg, . . . . 115 
 
 Reduced Fac-simile of Autograph Letter of Peter the Great to Jastischef, 
 
 ordering him to send a Carpenter to Olcnets, . . .. . . 127
 
 WKONATION CAKKIAGIi OK 1'ETEK THE GKEAT.
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 OXE day, in the year 1C 97, the great Duke of 
 Marlborough happened to be in the village of 
 Saardam. He visited the dockyard of one Myn- 
 heer Calf, a rich shipbuilder, and was struck with 
 the appearance of a journeyman at work there. 
 He was a large, powerful man, dressed in a red 
 woollen shirt and duck trowsers, with a sailor's hat, 
 and was seated, with an adze in his hand, upon a 
 rough log of timber which lay on the ground. The 
 man's features were bold and regular ; his dark- 
 brown hair fell in natural curls about his neck ; his 
 complexion was strong and ruddy, with veins some- 
 what distended, indicating an ardent temperament 
 and more luxurious habits than comported with his 
 station ; and his dark, keen eye glanced from one 
 object to another with remarkable restlessness. He 
 was engaged in earnest conversation with some
 
 12 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 strangers, whose remarks he occasionally interrupted, 
 while he rapidly addressed them in a guttural but 
 not unmusical voice. As he became occasionally 
 excited in conversation, his features twitched con- 
 vulsively, the blood rushed to his forehead, his arms 
 were tossed about with extreme violence of gesticu- 
 lation, and he seemed constantly upon the point of 
 giving way to some explosion of passion, or else of 
 falling into a fit. His companions, however, did 
 not appear in the least alarmed by his vehemence, 
 although they seemed to treat him with remarkable 
 deference ; and after a short time his distorted 
 features would resume their symmetry and agreeable 
 expression, his momentary frenzy would subside, 
 and a bright smile would light up his whole coun- 
 tenance. 
 
 The duke inquired the name of this workman, 
 and was told it was one Pieter Baas, a foreign 
 journeyman of remarkable mechanical abilities and 
 great industry. Approaching, he entered into some 
 slight conversation with him upon matters pertaining 
 to his craft. While they were conversing, a stranger 
 of foreign mien and costume appeared, holding a 
 voluminous letter in his hand. The workman started 
 up, snatched it from his hand, tore off the seals, and 
 greedily devoured its contents ; while the stately 
 Marlborough walked away unnoticed. The duke
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 13 
 
 was well aware that, in this thin disguise, he saw 
 the Czar of Muscovy. Pieter Baas, or Boss Peter, 
 or Master Peter, was Peter the despot of all the 
 Russias, a man who, having just found himself the 
 undisputed proprietor of a quarter of the globe with 
 all its inhabitants, had opened his eyes to the 
 responsibilities of his position, and had voluntarily 
 descended from his throne for the noble purpose of 
 qualifying himself to reascend it. 
 
 The empire of Russia at this moment more than 
 twice as large as Europe, having a considerable 
 extent of sea-coast, with nourishing commercial 
 havens both upon the Baltic and the Black Sea, and 
 a chain of internal communication by canal and 
 river, connecting them both with the Caspian and 
 the Volga was, at the accession of Peter the First, 
 of quite sufficient dimensions for any reasonable 
 monarch's ambition, but of most unfortunate geo- 
 graphical position. Shut off from civilized western 
 Europe by vast and thinly -peopled forests and 
 plains, having for neighbours only the sledded 
 Polack, the Turk, the Persian, and the Chinese, and 
 touching nowhere upon the ocean, that great high- 
 way of civilization, the ancient empire of the Czars 
 seemed always in a state of suffocation. Remote 
 from the sea, it was a mammoth without lungs, 
 incapable of performing the functions belonging to
 
 14 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 its vast organization, and presenting to the world 
 the appearance of a huge, incomplete, and inert 
 mass, waiting the advent of some new Prometheus 
 to inspire it with life and light. 
 
 Its capital, the bizarre and fantastic Moscow- 
 with its vast, turreted, and venerable Kremlin ; its 
 countless churches, with their flashing spires and 
 clustering and turbaned minarets glittering in green, 
 purple, and gold ; its mosques, with the cross sup- 
 planting the crescent ; its streets, swarming with 
 bearded merchants and ferocious Strelitzes, while 
 its female population were immured and invisible 
 was a true type of the empire, rather Asiatic than 
 European, and yet compounded of both. 
 
 The government, too, was far more Oriental than 
 European in its character. The Norsemen had, to 
 be sure, in the ninth century, taken possession of 
 the Russian government with the same gentleman- 
 like effrontery with which, at about the same time, 
 they had seated themselves upon every throne in 
 Europe ; and the crown of Ruric had been trans- 
 mitted like the other European crowns for many 
 generations, till it descended through a female 
 branch upon the head of the Romanoffs, the ancestors 
 of Peter and the present imperial family. But 
 though there might be said to be an established 
 dynasty, the succession to the throne was controlled
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 15 
 
 by the Strelitzes, the licentious and ungovernable 
 soldiery of the capital, as much as the Turkish 
 Empire by the Janizaries or the Roman Empire by 
 the Praetorians ; and the history of the government 
 was but a series of palace revolutions, in which the 
 sovereign, the tool alternately of the priesthood and 
 the body-guard, was elevated, deposed, or strangled, 
 according to the prevalence of different factions in 
 the capital. The government was in fact, as it has 
 been epigrammatically characterized, " a despotism 
 tempered by assassination." 
 
 The father of Peter the First, Alexis Michaelovitz, 
 had indeed projected reforms in various departments 
 of the government. He seems to have been, to a 
 certain extent, aware of the capacity of his empire, 
 and to have had some faint glimmerings of the 
 responsibility which weighed upon him as the 
 inheritor of this vast hereditary estate. He under- 
 took certain revisions of the laws, if the mass of 
 contradictory and capricious edicts which formed 
 the code deserve that name ; and his attention had 
 particularly directed itself to the condition of the 
 army and the church. Upon his death, in 1677, 
 he left two sons, Theodore and John, and four 
 daughters, by his first wife ; besides one son, Peter, 
 born in 1672, and one daughter, Natalia, by the 
 second wife, of the house of Narischkin. The
 
 16 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 eldest son, Theodore, succeeded, whose administra- 
 tion was directed by his sister, the ambitious and 
 intriguing Princess Sophia, assisted by her paramour, 
 Galitzin. Theodore died in 1682, having named 
 his half-brother Peter as his successor, to the ex- 
 clusion of his own brother John, who was almost 
 an idiot. Sophia, who, in the fitful and perilous 
 history of Peter's boyhood, seems like the wicked 
 fairy in so many Eastern fables, whose mission is 
 constantly to perplex, and, if possible, destroy, the 
 virtuous young prince, who, however, struggles 
 manfully against her enchantments and her hosts of 
 allies, and comes out triumphant at last Sophia, 
 assisted by Couvanski, general of the Strelitzes, 
 excited a tumult in the capital. Artfully inflaming 
 the passions of the soldiery, she directed their 
 violence against all those who stood between her 
 and the power she aimed at. Many of the Narisch- 
 kin family (the maternal relatives of Peter), with 
 their adherents, were butchered with wholesale 
 ferocity, many crown-officers were put to death, and 
 the princess at length succeeded in proclaiming the 
 idiot John and the infant Peter as joint-Czars, and 
 herself as regent. 
 
 From this time forth, Sophia, having the reins of 
 government securely in her hand, took particular 
 care to surround the youthful Peter with the worst 
 
 (76)
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 17 
 
 influences. She exposed him systematically to 
 temptation, she placed about him the most depraved 
 and licentious associates, and seems to have en- 
 couraged the germination of every vicious propensit} r 
 with the most fostering care. In 1689, during the 
 absence of Prince Galitzin upon his second unsuc- 
 cessful invasion of the Crimea, Peter was married, 
 at the age of seventeen, through the influence of a 
 faction hostile to Sophia, to a young lady of the 
 Lapouchin family. After the return of Galitzin, a 
 desperate revolt of the Strelitzes was concerted 
 between their general and Sophia and Galitzin, 
 whose object was to seize and murder Peter. He 
 saved himself by taking refuge in the Convent of 
 the Trinity the usual place of asylum when the 
 court was beleaguered, as was not unusual, by the 
 Strelitzes assembled around him those of the 
 boyards and the soldiers who were attached to him, 
 and, with the personal bravery and promptness which 
 have descended like an heirloom in his family, de- 
 feated the conspirators at a blow, banished Galitzin 
 to Siberia, and locked up Sophia in a convent, where 
 she remained till her death, fifteen years afterwards. 
 Peter now became sole ruler, his brother John con- 
 tenting himself with the imperial title. 
 
 In less than a year from this time Peter made 
 the acquaintance of a very remarkable man, to 
 
 (75)
 
 18 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 whom, more than to any other, Russia seems to 
 have been indebted for the first impulse towards 
 civilization. Happening one day to be dining at 
 the house of the Danish minister, Peter was pleased 
 with the manners and conversation of his Excel- 
 lency's private secretary. This was a certain 
 youthful Genevese adventurer named Lefort. He 
 had been educated for the mercantile profession 
 and placed in a counting-house ; but being of an 
 adventurous disposition, with decided military tastes 
 and talents, he had enlisted as a volunteer, and 
 served with some distinction in the Low Countries. 
 Still following his campaigning inclinations, he 
 enlisted under a certain Colonel Verstin, who had 
 been commissioned by the Czar Alexis to pick up 
 some German recruits, and followed him to Arch- 
 angel. Arriving there, he found that the death of 
 Alexis had left no demand for the services either 
 of himself or the colonel, and after escaping with 
 difficulty transportation to Siberia, with which he 
 seems to have been threatened for no particular 
 reason, he followed his destiny to Moscow, where he 
 found employment under the Danish envoy De 
 Horn, and soon after was introduced to the Czar. 
 
 It was this young adventurer, a man of no ex- 
 traordinary acquirements, but one who had had the 
 advantage of a European education, and the genius
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 19 
 
 to know its value and to reap its full benefit ; a 
 man of wonderful power of observation, in whom 
 intuition took the place of experience, and who pos- 
 sessed the rare faculty of impressing himself upon 
 other minds with that genial warmth and force 
 which render the impression indelible it was this 
 truant Genevese clerk who planted the first seeds 
 in the fertile, but then utterly fallow, mind of the 
 Czar. Geniality and sympathy were striking char- 
 acteristics of both minds, and they seem to have 
 united by a kind of elective affinity from the first 
 instant they were placed in the neighbourhood of 
 each other. 
 
 It was from Lefort that the Czar first learned 
 the great superiority of the disciplined troops of 
 western Europe over the licentious and anarchical 
 soldiery of Russia. It was in concert with Lefort 
 that he conceived on the instant the daring plan of 
 annihilating the Strelitzes, the body-guard which 
 had set up and deposed the monarchs ; a plan that 
 would have inevitably cost a less sagacious and 
 vigorous prince his throne and life, and which 
 he silently and cautiously matured, till, as we shall 
 have occasion to relate, it was successfully executed. 
 Almost immediately after his acquaintance with 
 Lefort, he formed a regiment upon the European 
 plan, which was to be the germ of the reformed
 
 20 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 army which he contemplated. This regiment was 
 called the Preobrazinski body-guard, from the name 
 of the palace ; and Lefort was appointed its colonel, 
 while the Czar entered himself as drummer. 
 
 It was to Lefort, also, that the Czar was, about 
 this time, indebted for the acquaintance of the 
 celebrated Menzikoff. This was another adventurer, 
 who had great influence upon the fortunes of the 
 empire, who sprung from the very humblest origin, 
 and who seemed, like Lefort, to have been guided 
 from afar by the finger of Providence to become a 
 fit instrument to carry out the plans of Peter. The 
 son of miserable parents upon the banks of the 
 Volga, not even taught to read or write, Menzikoff 
 sought his fortune in Moscow, and at the age of 
 fourteen became apprentice to a pastry-cook, and 
 earned his living as an itinerant vender of cakes 
 and pies ; these he offered about the streets, recom- 
 mending them in ditties of his own composing, 
 which he sung in a very sweet voice. While 
 engaged in this humble occupation, he happened 
 one day to attract the attention of Lefort, who 
 entered into some little conversation with him. 
 The Swiss volunteer, who had so lately expanded 
 into the general and admiral of Muscovy, could 
 hardly dream, nor did he live long enough to learn, 
 that in that fair-haired, barefooted, sweet-voiced boy,
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 21 
 
 the future prince of the empire, general, governor, 
 regent, and almost autocrat, stood disguised before 
 him. There really seems something inexpressibly 
 romantic in the accidental and strange manner in 
 which the chief actors in the great drama of Peter's 
 career seem to have been selected, and to have 
 received their several parts from the great hand of 
 fate. The youthful Menzikoff was presented by 
 Lefort to the Czar, who was pleased with his 
 appearance and vivacity, and made him his page, 
 and soon afterwards his favourite and confidant. 
 At about the same time that Peter commenced his 
 model regiment, he had also commenced building 
 some vessels at Voronej, with which he had already 
 formed the design of sailing down the Don and 
 conquering Azof, the key to the Black Sea, from 
 the Turks. 
 
 Nothing indicated the true instinct of Peter's 
 genius more decidedly than the constancy with 
 which he cultivated a love for maritime affairs. He 
 is said in infancy to have had an almost insane fear 
 of water ; but as there was never any special reason 
 assigned for it, this was probably invented to make 
 his naval progress appear more remarkable. At all 
 events, he seems very soon to have conquered his 
 hydrophobia, and in his boyhood appears to have 
 found his chief amusement in paddling about the
 
 22 PETER THE GREA T. 
 
 river Yausa, which passes through Moscow, in a 
 little skiff built by a Dutchman, which had attracted 
 his attention as being capable, unlike the flat- 
 bottomed scows, which were the only boats with 
 which he had been previously familiar, of sailing 
 against the wind. Having solved the mystery of 
 the keel, he became passionately fond of the sport; 
 and, not satisfied with the navigation of the Yausa, 
 nor of the lake Peipus, upon which he amused him- 
 self for a time, he could not rest till he had pro- 
 ceeded to Archangel, where he purchased and 
 manned a vessel, in which he took a cruise or two 
 upon the Frozen Ocean as far as Ponoi, upon the 
 coast of Lapland. 
 
 Peter understood thoroughly the position of his 
 empire the moment he came to the throne. Previous 
 Czars had issued a multiplicity of edicts forbidding 
 their subjects to go out of the empire. Peter saw 
 that the great trouble was that they could not get 
 out. Both the natural gates of his realm were 
 locked upon him, and the keys were in the hands 
 of his enemies. When we look at the map of 
 Russia now, we do not sufficiently appreciate the 
 difficulties of Peter's position at his accession. To 
 do so is to appreciate his genius and the strength 
 of his will. While paddling in his little skiff on 
 the Yausa, he had already determined that this great
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 23 
 
 inland empire of his, whose inhabitants had never 
 seen or heard of the ocean, should become a maritime 
 power. He saw that, without seaports, it could 
 never be redeemed from its barbarism ; and he was 
 resolved to exchange its mongrel Orientalism for 
 European civilization. Accordingly, before he had 
 been within live hundred miles of blue water, he 
 made himself a sailor, and at the same time formed 
 the plan, which he pursued with iron pertinacity to its 
 completion, of conquering the Baltic from the Swede 
 and the Euxine from the Turk. Fully to see and 
 appreciate the necessity of this measure was, in the 
 young, neglected barbarian prince, a great indication 
 of genius ; but the resolution to set about and 
 accomplish this mighty scheme in the face of ten 
 thousand obstacles constituted him a hero. He was, 
 in fact, one of those few characters whose existence 
 has had a considerable influence upon history. If 
 he had not lived, Russia would very probably have 
 been at the present moment one great Wallachia or 
 Moldavia a vast wilderness, peopled by the same 
 uncouth barbarians who even now constitute the 
 mass of its population, and governed by a struggling, 
 brawling, confused mob of unlettered boyards, knav- 
 ish priests, and cut-throat Strelitzes. 
 
 It was not so trifling a task as it may now appear 
 for Russia to conquer Sweden and the Sublime
 
 24 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 Porte. On the contrary, Sweden was so vastly 
 superior in the scale of civilization, and her brave 
 and disciplined troops, trained for nearly a century 
 upon the renowned battle-fields of Europe, with a 
 young monarch at their head w r ho was passionately 
 fond of war, gave her such a decided military 
 preponderance, that she looked upon Russia with 
 contempt. The Ottoman Empire, too, was at that 
 time not the rickety, decrepit state w r hich it now 
 is, holding itself up, like the cabman's horse, only 
 by being kept in the shafts, and ready to drop the 
 first moment its foreign master stops whipping ; on 
 the contrary, in the very year in which Peter 
 inherited the empire from his brother Theodore, 
 two hundred thousand Turks besieged Vienna, and 
 drove the Emperor Leopold in dismay from his 
 capital. Although the downfall of the Porte may 
 be dated from the result of that memorable cam- 
 paign, yet the Sultan was then a vastly more 
 powerful potentate than the Czar, and the proj- 
 ect to snatch from him the citadel of Azof, the 
 key of the Black Sea, was one of unparalleled 
 audacity. 
 
 But Peter had already matured the project, and 
 was determined to execute it. He required seaports, 
 and having none, he determined to seize those of 
 his neighbours. Like the " king of Bohemia with
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 25 
 
 his seven castles," he was the " most unfortunate 
 man in the world, because, having the greatest 
 passion for navigation and all sorts of sea affairs, 
 he had never a seaport in all his dominions." 
 Without stopping, however, like Corporal Trim, to 
 argue the point in casuistry, whether Russia, like 
 Bohemia, being an inland country it would be 
 consistent with divine benevolence for the ocean to 
 inundate his neighbour's territory in order to accom- 
 modate him, he took a more expeditious method. 
 Preferring to go to the ocean, rather than wait for 
 the ocean to come to him, in 1695 he sailed down 
 the Don with his vessels, and struck his first blow 
 at Azof. His campaign was unsuccessful, through the 
 treachery and desertion of an artillery officer named 
 Jacob ; but as the Czar through life possessed the 
 happy faculty of never knowing when he was beaten, 
 he renewed his attack the next year, and carried the 
 place with the most brilliant success. The key of 
 the Palus Maeotis was thus in his hands, and he 
 returned in triumph to Moscow, where he levied 
 large sums upon the nobility and clergy, to build 
 and sustain a fleet upon the waters he had conquered, 
 to drive the Tartars from the Crimea, and to open 
 and sustain a communication with Persia through 
 Circassia and Georgia. 
 
 Thus the first point was gained, and his foot at
 
 26 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 last touched the ocean. Moreover, the Tartars of the 
 Crimea, who had been from time immemorial the 
 pest of Russia a horde of savages," who said their 
 prayers but once a year, and then to a dead horse," 
 and who had yet compelled the Muscovites to pay 
 them an annual tribute, and had inserted in their 
 last articles of peace the ignominious conditions that 
 " the Czar should hold the stirrup of their khan, 
 and feed his horse with oats out of his cap, if they 
 should chance at any time to meet," these savages 
 were humbled at a blow, and scourged into insig- 
 nificance by the master hand of Peter. 
 
 A year or two before the capture of Azof, Peter 
 had repudiated his wife. Various pretexts, such as 
 infidelity and jealousy, have been assigned for the 
 step among others, the enmity of Menzikoff, whom 
 she had incensed by the accusation that he had taken 
 her husband to visit lewd women who had formerly 
 been his customers for pies; but the real reason was, 
 that, like every one else connected with the great 
 reformer, she opposed herself with the most besotted 
 bigotry to all his plans. She was under the in- 
 fluence of the priests, and the priests, of course, 
 opposed him. Unfortunately, the Czar left his son 
 Alexis in the charge of the mother a mistake 
 which, as we shall see, occasioned infinite disaster. 
 
 Peter having secured himself a seaport, sent a
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 27 
 
 number of young Russians to study the arts of 
 civilized life in Holland, Italy, and Germany ; but 
 being convinced that he must do everything for 
 himself, and set the example to his subjects, he 
 resolved to descend from his throne, and go to 
 Holland to perfect himself in the arts, and particu- 
 larly to acquire a thorough practical knowledge of 
 maritime affairs. 
 
 Having been hitherto unrepresented in any Euro- 
 pean court, he fitted out a splendid embassy extraor- 
 dinary to the States-general of Holland Lefort, 
 Golownin, Voristzin, and Menzikoff being the pleni- 
 potentiaries, while the Czar accompanied them 
 incognito as attache to the mission. The embassy 
 proceeds through Esthonia and Livonia, visits Riga 
 where the Swedish governor, D'Alberg, refuses 
 permission to visit the fortifications, an indignity 
 which Peter resolves to punish severely and, pro- 
 ceeding through Prussia, is received with great 
 pomp by the king at Kb'nigsberg. Here the 
 Germans and the Russians, " most potent in potting," 
 meet each other with exuberant demonstrations of 
 friendship, and there is much carousing and hard 
 drinking. At this place Peter leaves the embassy, 
 travels privately and with great rapidity to Holland, 
 and never rests till he has established himself as a 
 journeyman in the dockyard of Mynheer Calf.
 
 28 PETER THE GREAT, 
 
 From a seafaring man named Kist, whom he had 
 known in Archangel, he hires lodgings, consisting of 
 a small room and kitchen, and a garret above them, 
 and immediately commences a laborious and practical 
 devotion to the trade which he had determined to 
 acquire. The Czar soon became a most accomplished 
 shipbuilder. His first essay was upon a small yacht 
 which he purchased and refitted upon his arrival, 
 and in which he spent all his leisure moments, 
 sailing about in the harbour, visiting the vessels in 
 port, and astonishing the phlegmatic Dutchmen by 
 the agility with which he flew about among the 
 shipping. Before his departure, he laid down and 
 built, from his own draught and model, a sixty-gun 
 ship, at much of the carpentry of which he worked 
 with his own hands, and which was declared by many 
 competent judges to be an admirable specimen of 
 naval architecture. 
 
 But besides his proficiency so rapidly acquired in 
 all maritime matters, he made considerable progress 
 in civil engineering, mathematics, and the science of 
 fortification, besides completely mastering the Dutch 
 language, and acquiring the miscellaneous accom- 
 plishments of tooth-drawing, blood-letting, and tap- 
 ping for the dropsy. He was indefatigable in 
 visiting every public institution, charitable, literary, 
 or scientific, in examining the manufacturing estab-
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 31 
 
 lishments, the corn-mills, saw-mills, paper-mills, oil- 
 factories, all of which he studied practically, with 
 the view of immediately introducing these branches 
 of industry into his own dominions ; and before 
 leaving Holland, he spent some time at Texel, solely 
 for the purpose of examining the whale-ships, and 
 qualifying himself to instruct his subjects in this 
 pursuit after his return. " Wat is dat ? Dat wil 
 ik zien," was his frequent exclamation to the quiet 
 Hollanders, who looked with profound astonishment 
 at this boisterous foreign prince, in carpenter's dis- 
 guise, flying round like a harlequin, swinging his 
 stick over the backs of those who stood in his way, 
 making strange grimaces, and rushing from one 
 object to another with a restless activity of body 
 and mind which seemed incomprehensible. He 
 devoured every possible morsel of knowledge with 
 unexampled voracity ; but the sequel proved that 
 his mind had an ostrich-like digestion as well as 
 appetite. The seeds which he collected in Holland, 
 Germany, and England bore a rich harvest in the 
 Scythian wildernesses, where his hand planted them 
 on his return. Having spent about nine months 
 in the Netherlands, he left that country for England. 
 His purpose in visiting England was principally 
 to examine her navy-yards, dock -yards, and maritime 
 establishments, and to acquire some practical know-
 
 32 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 ledge of English naval architecture. He did not 
 design to work in the dock-yards, but he preserved 
 his incognito, although received with great attention 
 by King William, who furthered all his plans to the 
 utmost, and deputed the Marquis of Caermarthen, 
 with whom the Czar became very intimate, to 
 minister to all his wants during his residence in 
 England. He was first lodged in York Buildings ; 
 but afterwards, in order to be near the sea, he took 
 possession of a house called Sayes Court, belonging 
 to the celebrated John Evelyn, " with a back-door 
 into the king's yard, at Deptford ; " there, says an 
 old writer, " he would often take up the carpenters' 
 tools and work with them ; and he frequently 
 conversed with the builders, who showed him their 
 draughts, and the method of laying down by pro- 
 portion any ship or vessel." 
 
 It is amusing to observe the contempt with 
 which the servant of the gentle, pastoral Evelyn 
 writes to his master concerning his imperial tenant, 
 and the depredations and desecrations committed 
 upon his " most boscaresque grounds." " There is a 
 house full of people," he says, " right nasty. The 
 Czar lies next your library, and dines in the parlour 
 next your study. He dines at ten o'clock, and six 
 at night ; is very seldom at home a whole day ; 
 very often in the king's yard, or by water, dressed
 
 PfJTKT? THE rtEEA T. 33 
 
 in several dresses. The best parlour is pretty clean 
 for the king to be entertained in." Moreover, in 
 the garden at Saves Court there was, to use Evelyn's 
 own language, " a glorious and refreshing object, an 
 impregnable hedge of about four hundred feet in 
 length, nine feet high, and five feet in diameter, at 
 any time of the year glittering with its armed and 
 variegated leaves ; the taller standards, at orderly 
 distances, blushing with their natural coral ; " and 
 through this " glorious and refreshing object " the 
 Czar amused himself by trundling a wheelbarrow 
 every morning, for the sake of the exercise ! 
 
 He visited the hospitals, and examined most of 
 the public institutions in England ; and particularly 
 directed his attention towards acquiring information 
 in engineering, and collecting a body of skilful 
 engineers and artificers to carry on the great project 
 which he had already matured, of opening an arti- 
 ficial communication, by locks and canals, between 
 the Volga, the Don, and the Caspian a design, by- 
 the-way, which was denounced by the clergy and 
 nobility of his empire " as a piece of impiety, being 
 to turn the streams one way which Providence had 
 directed another." His evenings were generally 
 spent with the Marquis Caermarthen, with pipes, 
 beer, and brandy, at a tavern near Tower Hill, 
 which is still called the " Czar of Muscovy." 
 
 (75) 3
 
 34 PETER THE ORE AT. 
 
 During his stay in England he went to see the 
 University of Oxford, and visited many of the 
 cathedrals and churches, and " had also the curiosity 
 to view the Quakers and other dissenters at their 
 meeting-houses in the time of service." In this con- 
 nection it is impossible not to quote the egregiously 
 foolish remarks of Bishop Burnet in his " History 
 of his Own Times" (vol. ii., pp. 221, 222). 
 
 " I waited upon him often," says the bishop, 
 " and was ordered, both by the king and the arch- 
 bishop, to attend upon him and to offer him such 
 information as to our religion and constitution as 
 he might be willing to receive. I had good inter- 
 preters, so I had much free discourse with him. 
 He is a man of a very hot temper, soon influenced, 
 and very brutal in his passion ; he raises his 
 natural heat by drinking much brandy, which he 
 rectifies himself with great application ; he is sub- 
 ject to convulsive motions all over his body, and his 
 head seems to be affected with these. He wants 
 not capacity, and has a larger measure of knowledge 
 than might be expected from his education, which 
 was very indifferent ; a want of judgment, with an 
 instability of temper, appears in him but too often 
 and too evidently. He is mechanically turned, and 
 seems designed by nature rather to be a *////;- 
 carpenter than a great prince. This was his chief
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 35 
 
 study and exercise while he stayed here ; he wrought 
 much with his own hands, and made all about him 
 work at the models of ships. He told me he 
 designed a great fleet at Azof, and with it to attack 
 the Turkish Empire ; but he did not seem capable 
 of conducting so great a design, though his conduct 
 in his wars since this has discovered a greater 
 genius in him than appeared at that time. He was 
 desirous to understand our doctrine, but he did not 
 seem disposed to mend matters in Muscovy. He 
 was, indeed, resolved to encourage learning and to 
 polish his people by sending some of them to travel 
 in other countries, and to draw strangers to come 
 and live among them. He seemed apprehensive 
 still of his sister's intrigues. There is a mixture 
 both of passion and severity in his temper. He is 
 resolute, but understands little of war, and seemed 
 not at all inquisitive in that way. After I had 
 seen him often, and had conversed much with him, 
 I could not but adore the depth of the providence 
 of God, that had raised up such a furious man to so 
 absolute an authority over so great a part of the 
 world." 
 
 The complacency with which the prelate speaks 
 of this " furious man," " designed by nature rather 
 to be a ship-carpenter than a great prince," who 
 "did not seem disposed to mend matters in Muscovy,"
 
 36 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 is excessively ludicrous. Here was a youth of 
 twenty-five, who had seen with a glance the ab- 
 solute necessity of opening for his empire a path- 
 way to the ocean, and had secured that pathway by 
 a blow ; and who now, revolving in his mind the 
 most daring schemes of conquest over martial 
 neighbours, and vast projects of internal improve- 
 ment for his domains, had gone forth in mask and 
 domino from his barbarous citadel, not for a holiday 
 pastime, but to acquire the arts of war and peace, 
 and, like a modern Cadmus, to transplant from older 
 regions the seeds of civilization to the barbarous 
 wildernesses of his realm ; here was a crowned 
 monarch, born in the purple, and in the very hey- 
 day of his youth, exchanging his diadem and sceptre 
 for the tools of a shipwright ; while, at the same 
 time, in his capacious brain his vast future lay as 
 clearly imaged, and his great projects already to his 
 imagination appeared as palpable as, long years 
 afterwards, when completed, they became to the 
 observation of the world ; and yet, upon the whole, 
 the churchman thought him " not disposed to mend 
 matters in Muscovy," and " rather fitted by nature 
 to be a ship-carpenter than a great prince " ! 
 
 The Czar, before his departure from England, 
 engaged a large number of scientific persons, at the 
 head of whom was Ferguson the engineer, to
 
 PLEASURE YACHT IN ASTRAKHAN MUSEUM. 
 
 MODEL OF SHIP IN NAVAL MUSEUM, 1'ETEKSBURG. 
 
 BOAT IN ASTRAKHAN MUSEUM 
 
 UN, AND HIS 
 
 MODEL iN SHIP CARPENTRY.
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 39 
 
 accompany him to Russia, to be employed upon the 
 various works of internal improvement already 
 projected. To all these persons he promised liberal 
 salaries, which were never paid, and perfect liberty 
 to depart when they chose, " with crowns for convoy 
 put into their purse ; " although in the sequel the 
 poor fellows never got a ruble for their pains, and 
 those who escaped assassination by some jealous 
 Russian or other, and were able to find their way 
 " bootless home, and weather-beaten back," after a 
 few profitless years spent upon the Czar's sluices 
 and bridges, were to be considered fortunate. 
 
 One of the disadvantages, we suppose, of one 
 man owning a whole quarter of the globe and all 
 its inhabitants, is a tendency to think lightly of 
 human obligations. It is useless to occupy one's 
 mind with engagements that no human power can 
 enforce. The artificers, being there, might accom- 
 plish their part of the Czar's mission to civilize, or 
 at least Europeanize Russia. This was matter of 
 consequence to the world ; their salaries were of no 
 importance to anybody but themselves. It is odd 
 that these persons were the first to introduce into 
 Russia the science of reckoning by Arabic numerals, 
 accounts having been formerly kept (and, indeed, 
 being still kept by all shopkeepers and retail dealers) 
 by means of balls upon a string, as billiards are
 
 40 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 marked in America. For the Czar to have intro- 
 duced an improved method of account-keeping by 
 means of the very men with whom he intended to 
 keep no account at all seems a superfluous piece of 
 irony ; but so it was. He had, however, a nicer 
 notion of what was due from one potentate to 
 another ; for, upon taking his departure from 
 England, he took from his breeches pocket a ruby 
 wrapped in brown paper, worth about 10,000, and 
 presented it to King William. He also, in return 
 for the agreeable hours passed with Lord Caer- 
 marthen at the " Czar of Muscovy " upon Tower 
 Hill, presented that nobleman with the right to 
 license every hogshead of tobacco exported to Russia 
 by an English company, who had paid him 15,000 
 for the monopoly, and to charge five shillings for 
 each license. 
 
 Upon his return through Vienna, where he was 
 entertained with great pomp, he received news of 
 an insurrection which had broken out in Moscow, 
 but which had already been suppressed by the 
 energy of General Patrick Gordon. This news 
 induced him to give up his intended visit to Italy, 
 and to hasten back to his capital. He found, upon 
 his arrival, that the Strelitzes, who, instigated of 
 course by the Princess Sophia, were the authors of 
 the revolt, had been defeated, and the ringleaders
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 41 
 
 imprisoned. He immediately hung up three or four 
 of them in front of Sophia's window, had half a 
 dozen more hanged and quartered, and a few more 
 broken upon the wheel. Under the circumstances, 
 this was quite as little as a Czar who respected 
 himself, and who purposed to remain Czar, could 
 have done by way of retaliation upon a body of 
 men so dangerous as these Strelitzes. 
 
 It is not singular, however, that at that day, 
 when the Czar of Muscovy was looked upon by 
 western Europeans as an ogre who habitually 
 breakfasted upon his subjects, these examples of 
 wholesome severity were magnified into the most 
 improbable fables. Korb, the secretary of the 
 Austrian legation at Moscow, entertained his sov- 
 ereign with minute details of several banquets given 
 by Peter to the nobility and diplomatic corps, at 
 every one of which several dozen Strelitzes were 
 decapitated in the dining-room. He tells of one 
 select dinner-party in particular, in which the Czar 
 chopped off the heads of twenty with his own hands, 
 washing down each head with a bumper of brandy, 
 and then obliging Lefort, and several of the judges, 
 and some of the foreign ministers, to try their hand 
 at the sport. In short, if we could believe con- 
 temporary writers, the Strelitzes were kept in 
 preserves like pheasants, and a grand battue was
 
 42 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 given oncQ a week by the Czar to his particular 
 friends, in which he who bagged the most game was 
 sure to recommend himself most to the autocrat. 
 If we were to rely upon the general tone of con- 
 temporary history, or to place any credence in cir- 
 cumstantial and statistical details of persons having 
 facts within their reach, we should believe that 
 there never was so much fun in Moscow as while 
 these Strelitzes lasted. Residents there stated that 
 two thousand of them were executed in all, including 
 those made away with by the Czar and the dilet- 
 tanti. 
 
 Perhaps our readers may think that we are ex- 
 aggerating. We can assure them that the flippancy 
 is not ours, but history's. We should have dwelt 
 less upon the topic, had not our friend the Marquis 
 de Custine reproduced some of these fables with 
 such imperturbable gravity. 
 
 At all events, the Strelitzes were entirely crushed 
 by these vigorous measures ; and from cutting oft' 
 the heads of the Strelitzes, the Czar now found 
 leisure to cut off the petticoats and beards of his 
 subjects. The great cause of complaint which De 
 Custine makes against Peter is, that he sought to 
 improve his country by importing the seeds of 
 civilization from the older countries of western 
 Europe. He would have preferred to have had the
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 43 
 
 Russians, being a Sclavonic race, civilized, as it were, 
 Sclav onically. What this process is, and where it 
 has been successfully put into operation, he does not 
 inform us. As we read the history of the world, it 
 seems to us that the arts have circled the Earth, 
 successively implanting themselves in different coun- 
 tries at different epochs, and producing different 
 varieties of intellectual, moral, and physical fruit, 
 corresponding to the myriad influences exercised 
 upon the seed. At all events, if Peter made a 
 mistake in importing the germs of ancient culture 
 from more favoured lands, it was a mistake he 
 made in common with Cadmus, and Cecrops, and 
 Theseus, and other semi-fabulous personages with 
 Solon, and Lycurgus, and Pythagoras, in less cre- 
 puscular times. 
 
 Right or wrong, however, Peter was determined 
 to Occidentcdize his empire. The darling wish of 
 his heart was to place himself upon the sea-shore, 
 in order the more easily to Europeanize his country. 
 In the meantime, and while awaiting a good oppor- 
 tunity for the " reannexation " of Ingria, Esthonia, 
 and Livonia, provinces which had several centuries 
 before belonged to the Russian crown, but had been 
 ceded to and possessed by Sweden for ages, he 
 began to denationalize his subjects by putting a tax 
 upon their beards and their petticoats. Strange to
 
 44 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 say, his subjects were so much more patriotic than 
 their master that the tax became very productive. 
 Peter increased his revenue, but could not diminish 
 the beards or petticoats. He was obliged to resort 
 to force; and by "entertaining a score or two of 
 tailors " and barbers at each gate of Moscow, whose 
 business it was to fasten upon every man who 
 entered, and to " cut his petticoats all round about," 
 as well as his whiskers, he at last succeeded in 
 humanizing their costume a process highly offen- 
 sive, and which caused the clergy, who naturally 
 favoured the Russian nationality upon which they 
 were fattened, to denounce him as Antichrist. At 
 the same time, he altered the commencement of the 
 year from the 1st of September to the 1st of 
 January, much to the astonishment of his subjects, 
 who wondered that the Czar could change the 
 course of the sun. He also instituted assemblies 
 for the encouragement of social intercourse between 
 the sexes. But his most important undertakings 
 were the building, under his immediate superinten- 
 dence, assisted by the English officers whom he had 
 brought with him, of a large fleet upon the Don, 
 and the junction of that river with the Volga. 
 About this time he met with an irreparable loss in 
 the death of Lefort, who perished at the early age 
 of forty -six. Peter was profoundly affected by this
 
 PLAN OF PETERSBURG IN THE YEAR I7O5. 
 From ajac-simile attached to Ustrialofs " History of Peter tlu Great." 
 
 Island! : A. Petersburg. B. Admiralty. C. Vasili D. Krestofski. E. Mishin. F. Kamenny. 
 G. Aptekarski. H. Kozi. I. Petrofski. K. Rybni. ! Ovetchi. 
 
 Rivera: A. Neva. B. Malaya (Little) Neva. C. Bolshaya (Great) Neva. D. Malaya Ncvkn. 
 a. Fontanka. b. Mya. C. Bolshaya Okhta. d. Chcrnaya. e. Chcrnaya. f. Karpulka. 
 g. Jdanofka. h. Glukhaya. L Priajka. k. Tarakanofka.- 1. C.liikhaya.
 
 
 
 Petersburg Inland : 1. Crown Works.-2. Cottage of Peter T.-3. Mcnshikof s House.-4. Row 
 of Shops. 5. Original Exchange. 6. Hr*telr> r - 7. House of Civil Servants, etc. 8. Cottages of 
 Workmen. On Aptekariki Island : 9. Russian Batteries of 1705. 
 
 In the Fortress : I. The Sovereiijn's Bastion. II. Xaryshkin's. III. Trubetskoe's. IV Zotofs. 
 V. Golovnin's. VI. Menshikofs. L Church of Saints Peter and Paul. 2. Comman.. ant's 
 House. 3. Town Major's House. 4. Guardhouse. 5. Arsenal. 6. Victualling Stores. 
 7. Drawbridge. On Kamenny Island : 10. Swedish Batteries of 1705.
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 49 
 
 event, and honoured his remains with magnificent 
 obsequies. 
 
 Both coasts of the Gulf of Finland, together with 
 both banks of the River Neva, up to the Lake 
 Ladoga, had been long, and were still, in possession 
 of the Swedes. These frozen morasses were not a 
 tempting site for a metropolis, certainly ; partic- 
 ularly when they happened to be in the possession 
 of the most warlike nation of Europe, governed by 
 the bravest monarch, as the sequel proved, that 
 had ever sat upon its throne. Still, Peter had 
 determined to take possession of that coast, and 
 already in imagination had built his capital upon 
 those dreary solitudes, peopled only by the elk, the 
 wolf, and the bear. This man, more than any one, 
 perhaps, that ever lived, was an illustration of the 
 power of volition. He always settled in his own 
 mind exactly what he wanted, and then put on his 
 wishing-cap. With him to will was to have. Ob- 
 stacles he took as a matter of course. It never 
 seemed to occur to him to doubt the accomplishment 
 of his purpose. For our own part, we do not 
 admire the capital which he built, nor the place he 
 selected ; both are mistakes, in our humble opinion, 
 as time will prove and is proving. But it is im- 
 possible not to admire such a masterly effort of 
 human volition as the erection of Petersburg. 
 
 (75)
 
 50 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 In the year 1700 was formed the alliance be- 
 tween Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and 
 King of Poland, the King of Denmark, and the 
 Czar Peter, against Charles the Twelfth, King of 
 Sweden, then a boy of eighteen, of whose character 
 nothing was known, and who, it was thought prob- 
 able, might be bullied. The Czar, as we know, 
 desired Ingria and Carelia. Augustus wished to 
 regain Esthonia and Livonia, ceded by Poland to 
 Charles the Eleventh of Sweden ; and Denmark 
 wished to recover Holstein and Schleswig. It soon 
 appeared that the allied sovereigns had got hold of 
 the wrong man. Charles the Twelfth, to the as- 
 tonishment of his own court no less than of his 
 enemies, in one instant blazed forth a hero. He 
 " smote the sledded Polack," to begin with ; then 
 defeated the Danes ; and having thus despatched 
 his two most formidable enemies in appearance, he 
 was at leisure to devote his whole attention to the 
 Czar, whom, however, he treated with the contempt 
 which a thorough-bred soldier, at the head of tried 
 and disciplined troops, naturally felt for the bar- 
 barous autocrat of barbarous hordes. 
 
 Peter, however, who knew nothing of war but in 
 theory, with the exception of his maiden campaign 
 of Azof, went manfully forward to the encounter. 
 He invaded Ingria at the head of sixty thousand
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 53 
 
 men ; and wishing, like Andrew Aguecheek, to 
 ' keep on the windy side of the law," and to save 
 appearances, he defended his invasion by the ludi- 
 crous pretext that his ambassadors had been charged 
 exorbitant prices for provisions on their tour through 
 the Swedish provinces to Holland, and that he him- 
 self had been denied a sight of the citadel at Riga. 
 Not that he wanted Riga himself, or Ingria, or 
 Livonia " Oh no, not at all "- but the prepos- 
 terous charges made by the butchers and bakers of 
 Ingria were insults which could only be washed out 
 in blood. On the 20th of September he laid siege 
 to Narva, a strongly fortified town on the river 
 Narowa. On the 19th of November, Charles the 
 Twelfth fell upon Peter's army, during a tremendous 
 snow-storm, which blew directly in their teeth, and 
 with nine thousand soldiers completely routed and 
 cut to pieces or captured about sixty thousand 
 Russians. Never was a more ignominious defeat. 
 The Russians were slaughtered like sheep, and their 
 long petticoats prevented the survivors from running 
 away half as fast as they wished. The consequence 
 was that, according to the Swedish accounts, the 
 prisoners four times outnumbered the whole Swedish 
 army. 
 
 One would have thought that this would have 
 settled the Czar for a little while, and kept him
 
 54 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 quiet and reasonable. It did so. He preserved the 
 most imperturbable sang-froid after his return to 
 Moscow, and devoted himself with more zeal than 
 ever to the junction of the Baltic and the Euxine, 
 just at the moment when the former seemed farthest 
 from him, and when a common man would have 
 been " qualmish at the name " of Baltic. At the 
 same time, reversing the commonplace doctrine, he 
 continues in war to prepare for peace; with one 
 hand importing sheep from Saxony, erecting linen 
 and paper factories, building hospitals and founding 
 schools ; while with the other he melts all the church 
 and convent bells in Moscow into cannon, and makes 
 every preparation for a vigorous campaign the en- 
 suing season. He had not the slightest suspicion 
 that he was beaten. He was, in fact, one of those 
 intellectual Titans who never feel their strength till 
 they have been fairly struck to the earth. " I know 
 very well," he says in his journal, " that the Swedes 
 will have the advantage of us for a considerable 
 time ; but they will teach us at length to beat them." 
 And at a later period he says : " If we had obtained 
 a victory over the Swedes at Narva, being, as we 
 were, so little instructed in the arts of war and policy, 
 into what an abyss might not this good fortune 
 have sunk us! On the contrary, the success of the 
 Swedes cost them very dear afterwards at Pultowa."
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 55 
 
 In the following spring his troops obtained some 
 trifling successes, and General ScherematoflT made 
 the memorable capture of Marienburg, in Livonia 
 memorable not so much from a military point of view 
 as on account of a young and pretty Livonian girl, 
 who was captured with the town. This young woman, 
 whose Christian name was Martha, without any 
 patronymic, or any at least that has been preserved, 
 was born near Dorpat, and had been educated by one 
 Dr. Gluck, a Lutheran minister at Marienburg, who 
 pronounced her a " pattern of virtue, intelligence, 
 and good conduct." She had been married the day 
 before the battle of Marienburg to a Swedish 
 sergeant who fell in the action, and she now found 
 herself alone, a friendless, helpless widow and 
 orphan of sixteen, exposed without any protector to 
 all the horrors of a besieged and captured town. 
 
 If a writer of fiction, with a brain fertile in 
 extravagant and incredible romance, had chosen to 
 describe to us this young peasant-girl, weeping, half 
 distracted, among the smoking ruins of an obscure 
 provincial town; and then, after rapidly shifting a 
 few brilliant and tumultuous scenes in his phan- 
 tasmagoria, had presented to us the same orphan 
 girl as a crowned empress, throned upon a quarter 
 of the world, and the sole arbitress and autocrat of 
 thirty million of human beings ; and all this without
 
 56 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 any discovery of a concealed origin, without crime 
 and without witchcraft, with nothing supernatural 
 in the machinery, and nothing intricate in the plot, 
 should we not all have smiled at his absurdity ? 
 And yet this captive girl became the consort of 
 the Czar Peter, and upon his death the Empress of 
 all the Russias ! The Russian General Bauer saw 
 her, and rescued her from the dangers of the siege. 
 She afterwards became the favourite of Menzikoff, 
 with whom she lived till 1704 : when, in the nine- 
 teenth year of her age, the Czar saw her, was 
 captivated by her beauty, took her into his palace, 
 and afterwards privately, and then publicly, married 
 her. 
 
 To this memorable epoch belongs the abolition of 
 the patriarchal dignity in Russia. Peter, having 
 at a blow destroyed the Strelitzes, had long intended 
 to annihilate the ecclesiastical power, the only 
 balance which existed in the country to the autoc- 
 racy of the sovereign. The superstition of the 
 Russians was, and is, unbounded. Their principal 
 saint was Saint Anthony, who, says a quaint old 
 author, "came all the way from Rome to Novogorod 
 by water on a millstone, sailing down the Tiber to 
 Civita Vecchia, from thence passing through several 
 seas to the mouth of the Neva, then went up that, 
 and crossing the Lake Ladoga into the Volkhoff,
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 59 
 
 arrived at the city before named. Besides this 
 extraordinary voyage, he wrought several other 
 miracles as soon as he landed where the monastery 
 now stands that is dedicated to him. One was, to 
 order a company of fishermen to cast their nets into 
 the sea ; which having done, they immediately drew 
 up, with a great quantity of fish, a large trunk 
 containing several church ornaments, sacred utensils, 
 and priestly vestments for celebrating the liturgy; 
 which the Russians, as well as the Eastern Greeks, 
 believe was first performed at Rome in the same 
 manner and with the same ceremonies as they them- 
 selves use at this time. The people tell you, further, 
 that he built himself a little cell, in which he ended 
 his days. In this place there now stands a chapel 
 in which they say he was buried, and that his body 
 remains as uncorrupted as at the instant of his 
 death. Over the door of the cell the monks show 
 a millstone, which they endeavour to make the 
 ignorant people believe is the very same that the 
 saint sailed upon from Rome, and to which great 
 devotions were once paid, and many offerings made, 
 till the time Peter the Great made himself sovereign 
 pontiff." 
 
 To this saint, or to Saint Nicholas, we forget 
 which, letters of introduction were always addressed 
 by the priests, and placed in the hands of the dead
 
 60 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 when laid in their coffins. The superstition of the 
 Russians is grosser and more puerile than that of 
 any people professing to be Christians. They 
 would rather starve than eat pigeons, because the 
 Holy Ghost assumed the form of a dove ; they dip 
 their new-born children into the Neva in January, 
 through holes cut in the ice, directly after the 
 ceremony of blessing the water has been concluded 
 by the metropolitan ; and it would be an easy but 
 endless task to enumerate other similar absurdities. 
 It may be supposed that the patriarchal dignity, 
 founded upon superstition so solid as this, would be 
 a difficult power to contend with. It was so. The 
 patriarch's power was enormous. He pronounced 
 sentence of life and death and torture, without 
 intervention of any tribunal. On Palm Sunday, he 
 rode to church upon an ass " caparisoned in white 
 linen," at the head of a long procession of ecclesi- 
 astical and civil dignitaries, with a mitre upon his 
 head, and " skirts of many colours, three or four 
 ells long," borne by a band of young men ; while 
 the Czar walked uncovered by his side, holding the 
 bridle of the beast upon his arm. 
 
 This dignity which had been established by a 
 sort of accident in the year 1588, up to which time 
 the Russian Church acknowledged the supremacy of 
 the patriarch of Constantinople had grown to be
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 61 
 
 very distasteful to Peter. The Church was the 
 greatest possible enemy to his plans of reformation. 
 The bigotry of its opposition to all his projects was 
 insurmountable. Besides, it was very inconvenient 
 that any one should have any power, or any rights, 
 except himself. He determined to annihilate the 
 office of patriarch, and to place himself at the head 
 of the Church. We do not find, however, that he 
 thought it necessary to go through an apprenticeship 
 in this profession, as he had done in others ; but, on 
 the contrary, upon the death of the patriarch Adrian, 
 which happened about this time, he simply appointed 
 himself pontifex inaximus, and declined nominating 
 any other patriarch. The man who had destroyed 
 the Strelitzes, cut oft* the beards of his subjects, and 
 changed the course of the sun, was also strong 
 enough to trample the prelate's mitre in the dust. 
 He was entirely successful in his contest with the 
 Church. The clergy made but a feeble resistance. 
 The printing-press, to be sure, which he had first 
 introduced into Russia, swarmed with libels upon 
 him, and denounced him as Antichrist ; but he was 
 defended by others of the clergy, " because the 
 number six hundred and sixty-six was not found in 
 his name, and he had not the sign of the beast." 
 
 Before the close of the year 1702, the troops of 
 the Czar had driven the Swedes from the Ladoga
 
 62 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 and the Neva, and had taken possession of all the 
 ports in Carelia and Ingria. On the 10th of May, 
 without waiting another moment after having pos- 
 sessed himself of the locality, he begins to build his 
 metropolis. One hundred thousand miserable work- 
 men are consumed during the first twelve months, 
 succumbing to the rigorous climate and the un- 
 healthy position. But " il faut casser des O3ufs 
 pour faire une omelette ; " in one year's time there 
 are thirty thousand houses in Petersburg ! Never 
 was there such a splendid improvisation. Look for 
 a moment at a map of Russia, and say if Petersburg 
 was not a magnificent piece of volition a mistake, 
 certainly, and an extensive one, but still a magnifi- 
 cent mistake. Upon a delta, formed by the dividing 
 branches of the Neva ; upon a miserable morass 
 half under water, without stones, without clay, 
 without earth, without wood, without building 
 materials of any kind ; having behind it the outlet 
 of the Lake Ladoga and its tributary swamps, and 
 before it the Gulf of Finland contracting itself into 
 a narrow compass, and ready to deluge it with all 
 the waters of the Baltic whenever the south-west 
 wind should blow a gale eight-and-forty hours ; with 
 a climate of polar severity, and a soil as barren as 
 an iceberg was not Petersburg a bold impromptu? 
 We never could look at this capital, with its impos-
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 63 
 
 ing though monotonous architecture, its colossal 
 squares, its vast colonnades, its endless vistas, its 
 spires and minarets sheathed in barbaric gold and 
 flashing in the sun, and remember the magical 
 rapidity with which it was built, and the hundred 
 thousand lives that were sacrificed in building it, 
 without recalling Milton's description of the building 
 of Pandemonium : 
 
 " Anon, out of the earth a fabric huge 
 
 Rose like an exhalation 
 
 Built like a temple, where pilasters round 
 
 Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid 
 
 With golden architrave ; nor did there want 
 
 Cornice, or frieze with bossy sculptures graven ; 
 
 The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon, 
 
 Xnr great Alcairo, such magnificence 
 
 Equalled in all their glories, to enshrine 
 
 Belus or Serapis, their gods ; or seat 
 
 Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove 
 
 In wealth and luxury. The ascending pile 
 
 Stood fixed her stately height ; and straight the doors, 
 
 Opening their brazen folds, discover, wide 
 
 Within, her ample spaces, o'er the smooth 
 
 And level pavement." 
 
 Within a few months after the foundation of 
 Petersburg and Cronstadt, Peter had the pleasure of 
 piloting into his new seaport with his own hands 
 a vessel belonging to his old friend Cornelius Calf 
 of Saardam. The transfer of the seat of government, 
 by the removal of the Senate from Moscow to Peters- 
 burg, was effected a few years afterwards. Since
 
 64 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 that time, the repudiated Oriental capital of the 
 ancient Czars, the magnificent Moscow, with her gol- 
 den tiara and her Eastern robe, has sat, like Hagar 
 in the wilderness, deserted and lonely in all her bar- 
 barian beauty. Yet even now, in many a backward 
 look and longing sigh, she reads plainly enough that 
 she is not forgotten by her sovereign; that she is 
 still at heart preferred, and that she will eventually 
 triumph over her usurping and artificial rival. 
 
 The building of Petersburg in a year was, how- 
 ever, a mere aside in the great military drama that 
 was going on. Peter founded this city as soon as he 
 had won a place for it ; but the war still went on. 
 While the Czar was erecting his capital, establishing 
 woollen manufactures, and importing sheep from 
 Saxony, Charles the Twelfth was knocking the 
 Elector of Saxony off the Polish throne, putting 
 Stanislaus Leckzinsky in his place, and ravaging all 
 Poland and Saxony. The scenes of the great drama 
 which occupied the next few years, but which we 
 have no intention of sketching, opened in Poland, 
 and closed on the confines of Turkey. It is a mag- 
 nificent, eventful, important drama, a chapter of 
 history which has been often written and is familiar 
 to almost every one, and yet which would well bear 
 handling again. There is no life of Peter which is 
 in all respects satisfactory, which does not partake
 
 PETER THE GREA T. 67 
 
 too much of eulogium or censure in its estimation 
 of his character ; and there is none which develops 
 with sufficient accuracy and impartiality, and in a 
 sufficiently striking manner, the stirring events of 
 the great Northern war. The brilliant drama 
 enacted in the first fifteen years of the present 
 century forming probably the most splendid chap- 
 ter in the military history of the world, and which 
 is still so fresh in the minds of men has thrown 
 into comparative oblivion the very picturesque and 
 imposing scenes which were displayed in the first 
 fifteen years of the eighteenth. And yet what a 
 magnificent subject for the historical painter ! what 
 imposing personages, what dramatic catastrophes, 
 what sudden and bewildering reverses, what wild 
 scenery, what Salvator-like chiaro-oscuro, dark Sar- 
 matian forests enveloping the actors in mystery and 
 obscurity, with flashes of light breaking upon the 
 anxious suspense of Europe, and revealing portentous 
 battles, sieges, and hair -breadth escapes; what 
 " dreadful marches " through the wilderness ; what 
 pitched combats, upon whose doubtful result hinged, 
 as almost never before or since, the weal or woe of 
 millions, and in which kings fought sword in hand 
 in the hottest of the fight, with their crowns staked 
 upon the issue ! 
 
 There was always something very exciting to our
 
 68 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 imagination in the characters of the three kings 
 who were the principal actors in the Northern war. 
 There seemed to be a strange, fitful, mythical 
 character about the war and the men who waged it. 
 The Elector Augustus of Saxony, King of Poland, 
 with his superhuman and almost fabulous physical 
 strength, his personal bravery, his showy, chival- 
 rous character, his world-renowned adventures in a 
 gentler field, familiar to posterity through the records 
 of " La Saxe galante," is a striking personage. It 
 is astonishing that such a magnificent Lothario 
 should have chosen, for the barren honour of being 
 elected to the Polish throne, to exchange the brilliant 
 and voluptuous gaiety of his own court for "the 
 bloody noses and cracked crowns " which were 
 passing current in Poland. But it is still more 
 astonishing that, having once engaged in the affair, 
 he should have cut such a miserable figure in it. 
 The splendid Augustus, Augustus the Strong, Augus- 
 tus the Gallant, became merely the anvil for the 
 sledge-hammers of Charles and Peter. He made a 
 fool of himself ; he disgraced himself more than it 
 seemed possible for a human being to disgrace him- 
 self ; he humiliated himself more completely, more 
 stupidly, because more unnecessarily, than it seemed 
 possible for the greatest idiot, as well as the most 
 arrant coward, to humiliate himself. He lost his
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 69 
 
 crown at the very start; went down on his knees in 
 the dirt to pick it up again ; made a secret treaty 
 with Charles, renouncing his alliance with the Czar 
 deserted his ally, with incredible folly, just as the 
 Russians, in conjunction with his own troops, were 
 gaining a brilliant victory and entering Warsaw in 
 triumph ; concealed his shameful negotiation from 
 his own generals, while at the same time he wrote 
 a letter to Charles apologizing for having gained a 
 victory, and assuring him that he had intended to 
 have drawn off his troops and deserted to the enemy, 
 but that his orders had not been obeyed ; and then 
 sneaked off to Charles's camp, where, in obedience 
 to that monarch's orders, he capped the climax of 
 his shame by writing a letter of humble congratula- 
 tion to Stanislaus Leckzinsky for supplanting him 
 upon his own throne ! Peter, in the sequel, put his 
 crown on his head again, to be sure, but for ever 
 after he looked like 
 
 " The thief 
 
 Who from the shelf the precious diadem stole, 
 And put it in his pocket." 
 
 What a pity that this man, who was deficient 
 neither in courage nor, we suppose, in a certain 
 amount of intellect sufficient for all ordinary pur- 
 poses, should have got himself into such a scrape, 
 merely for the sake of carrying an election over
 
 70 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 the Prince of Conti and Stanislaus ! The truth is, 
 that the moment he got among giants giants in 
 action, like Charles and Peter he showed himself 
 the pigmy he was in mind, despite his stature, his 
 strength, and his personal bravery. 
 
 And Charles the Twelfth, the hero, the crowned 
 gladiator what had he to do with the eighteenth 
 century ? The hero of everybody's boyhood, he 
 remains a puzzle and a mystery to us in our maturer 
 years. He seems an impossibility in the times in 
 which he lived. On the death of Charles the 
 Eleventh, and the commencement of the hostile 
 movement by Russia and Denmark, the stripling 
 sovereign seems to dilate into the vast, shadowy 
 proportions of some ancient hero of Scandinavian 
 Sagas. He seems like one of the ancient Norsemen, 
 whose vocation was simply to fight who conquered 
 the whole earth, not because they wanted it, but 
 because they were sent into the world for no other 
 earthly purpose ; a legitimate representative of the 
 old sea-kings, or rather an ancient sea-king himself, 
 reappearing in the eighteenth century, with no 
 specially defined object, and proposing to himself no 
 particular business in the world which he had so 
 suddenly revisited, but to fight as much as possible, 
 and with anybody that came along. Viewed in this 
 light, he can be judged more justly. He was out of
 
 CHAR LES 
 (From , 
 
 XII., KING OF SWEDEN. 
 n enfraved Portrait 0/1717.,
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 73 
 
 place where he was. He would have been a magnifi- 
 cent hero and a useful personage six or seven hundred 
 years earlier. He was a very mischievous character 
 in the eighteenth century. People no longer fought 
 in the same way as before ; they no longer fought 
 for the fun of it ; they now had always an object 
 in their wars. Sovereigns, however belligerent in 
 taste, had always an eye to their interest. This 
 was pre-eminently the case with his great antagonist, 
 Peter. He never fought except for an object ; but 
 sooner than relinquish the object, he would have 
 fought "till sun and moon were in the flat sea sunk." 
 He was a creator, a founder, a lawgiver, as well as 
 a warrior. He was constructive; Charles merely 
 destructive. The Czar was a great statesman ; 
 Charles only a great gladiator. In war, Peter was 
 always preparing for peace ; as for Charles, after he 
 first started upon his career, he never seemed to 
 have had the faintest suspicion that there was such 
 a thing, such a status, as peace. He came into the 
 world to fight, and he fought ; he lived fighting, he 
 died fighting. He poured himself out, like a fierce 
 torrent from his native mountains, in one wild, 
 headlong, devastating flood. There was nothing 
 beneficent, nothing fertilizing, in his career. His 
 kingdom was neglected, his treasury exhausted, his 
 subjects impoverished; while he himself, from the
 
 74 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 admiration, and wonder of Europe, became, or would 
 have become, but for his timely death, its laughing- 
 stock. The hero of Narva was only Bombastes 
 Furioso at Bender. 
 
 While Charles was deposing Augustus and crown- 
 ing Stanislaus, the troops of Peter were not idle. 
 Keeping his eye ever fixed upon his great object, 
 the Czar was adding to his domain province after 
 province of what was then the Swedish sea-coast. 
 Dorpat and Narva are captured, and with them all 
 Ingria; of which Peter makes the pastry-cook's appren- 
 tice governor. Courland soon follows; and now the 
 Czar joins his forces to those of Augustus in Poland. 
 While he is called off to quell an insurrection in 
 Astrakhan (distances are nothing to the Czar), Augus- 
 tus seizes the opportunity to make the ignominious 
 compact with the Swedish king to which we have 
 referred ; and most shameful and perfidious part of 
 his treason surrenders to the vengeance of the 
 ferocious Charles, to the torture and the wheel, the 
 unfortunate General Patkul, ambassador of the Czar 
 at the court of Augustus, who had incurred the 
 hatred of the Swedish monarch for heading a deputa- 
 tion of Livonian nobles, and presenting to him a 
 petition concerning the rights and privileges of 
 their province. The allies of King Augustus 
 take possession of Warsaw, while King Augustus
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 77 
 
 himself is writing his congratulations to King 
 Stanislaus ! 
 
 Peter, having helped himself to almost as many 
 Swedish provinces as he cared for, while Charles 
 has been bullying Augustus and breaking Patkul 
 on the wheel, is now disposed to treat for peace. 
 The French envoy at Dresden offers his services, but 
 Charles declines treating except at Moscow. " My 
 brother Charles wishes to act Alexander," says the 
 Czar ; " but he shall not find me Darius." 
 
 Peter now conceives almost exactly the same 
 plan by which the conqueror of the nineteenth 
 century was entrapped and destroyed. He makes 
 his country and climate fight for him, and retreats 
 slowly before his advancing enemy, drawing him on 
 step by step to a barren country, whence he could 
 have no retreat, and where Peter could suddenly 
 advance from his own secure position, and overwhelm 
 him at a blow. With masterly generalship, he 
 retreats before his hot-headed adversary, still "tempt- 
 ing him to the desert with his sword ;" marches to 
 Moghilef and Orsha, on the eastern bank of the 
 Dnieper, a position in free communication with 
 Smolensk ; sends his Cossacks to lay waste the 
 country for thirty miles round, and then orders 
 them to join him beyond the Borysthenes. The 
 two Northern monarchs now disappear from the
 
 78 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 eyes of anxious Europe among the wildernesses of 
 ancient Scythia. Peter, with a hundred thousand 
 men, well provided, and in convenient communication 
 with his own cities and magazines, remains quiet. 
 Charles, intent upon dictating terms at Moscow, 
 crosses the Borysthenes with eighty thousand men. 
 A fierce battle without results is fought on the 
 Berezina. Charles pushes on to Smolensk. By 
 order of Peter, the country between the Borysthenes 
 and Smolensk had been laid waste. At the ap- 
 proach of winter, the Swedish army dwindles and 
 wastes away beneath the horrors of the iron climate. 
 Still Charles advances, when suddenly, and to the 
 Czar inexplicably, he turns aside from his path, 
 abandons his design upon Moscow, and directs his 
 steps to the Ukraine. The mystery is solved by 
 the news of Mazeppa's treason. The old hetman of 
 the Cossacks deserts to Charles, promising to bring 
 over all his troops. He brings no one but himself : 
 the Cossacks scorn his treachery, and remain faithful 
 to their Czar. 
 
 By this time it was December, the cold intense, 
 and the Swedish army perishing by thousands. 
 Count Piper implores his master to halt, and go into 
 the best winter-quarters they could find in the 
 Ukraine. The King refuses, resolved to reduce the 
 Ukraine, and then march to Moscow. In the month
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 81 
 
 of May, after a winter spent by the Czar's forces 
 in comfortable quarters, and by the King's exposed 
 to all kinds of misery, Charles lays siege to Pultowa 
 with eighteen thousand men, the remnant of his 
 eighty thousand. On the loth of June 1709, the 
 Czar appears before Pultowa, and, by feint of attack 
 upon the Swedes, succeeds in throwing two thousand 
 men into the place, and at length, a few days after, 
 gives him battle, and utterly routs and destroys his 
 army. Both the King and the Czar, throughout this 
 
 " Dread Pultowa's day, 
 When fortune left the royal Swede," 
 
 fight in the front of the battle. Several balls pierce 
 the Czar's clothes ; while Charles, having been pre- 
 viously wounded in the heel, is carried through the 
 fight upon a litter. After the total overthrow of 
 his army, Charles escapes on horseback, with a 
 handful of followers, and, entering the confines of 
 Turkey, halts at Bender, on the Dniester. 
 
 The battle of Pultowa and the final overthrow of 
 Charles are followed, during the autumn and win- 
 ter, by the complete conquest of Livonia Wiborg, 
 Elbing, Riga, and Revel being taken early in 1710. 
 At the same time, Peter deposes Stanislaus, and 
 restores the illustrious Augustus. 
 
 In the meantime, Charles remains at Bender, 
 
 (75) 6
 
 82 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 the stipendiary of the Sultan, while Poniatowski, 
 his emissary at the Porte, is busily intriguing to 
 bring about a declaration of war from Turkey 
 against the Czar. In conjunction with the khan of 
 the Crimean Tartars, who appeals to the Sultan's 
 jealousy of the increasing power of Russia, and 
 inspires him with a desire to recover Azof and expel 
 his encroaching neighbours from the Black Sea, 
 the envoy succeeds. The Grand Mufti declares that 
 it is necessary for the Sultan to go to war with the 
 Czar; whereupon the Muscovite ambassador is forth- 
 with "clapped into prison," by way of commencement 
 of hostilities, and the war begins. Peter imme- 
 diately makes a levy of one man in four, besides 
 one "valet out of every two belonging to the 
 nobility," makes a solemn declaration of war, and 
 then marches at the head of forty thousand men to 
 the frontier of Turkey. Previously to his departure, 
 he makes a public proclamation of his previous 
 marriage to Catharine ; and the Empress, despite his 
 earnest remonstrances, accompanies the invading 
 army. 
 
 It is strange that the Czar, on this expedition, 
 should have committed the same error, and placed 
 himself in almost the same unfortunate predicament, 
 as his adversary Charles. Trusting to the repre- 
 sentations and the friendship of the faithless Hospo-
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 83 
 
 dar of Moldavia, he advances rapidly, at the head 
 of an insufficient force, into a hostile and barren 
 country, relying for men and munitions of war upon 
 his ally. Crossing the Pruth, he finds himself near 
 Jassy, in a hostile country, between an army of 
 Turks and another of Tartars, with a deep and 
 rapid river between him and his own dominions. 
 Forty thousand Russians are held at bay by two 
 hundred thousand Turks and Tartars. The situation 
 of the Czar is terrible ; annihilation seems to stare 
 him in the face. His enemy, Charles, visits the 
 Turkish camp in disguise, urging the Czar's destruc- 
 tion upon the Vizier. A destructive battle is going 
 on unceasingly, which in three days costs him 
 eighteen thousand men. Retreat is impossible ; no 
 ally is near him, no succour expected. What can 
 possibly extricate him ? Shall he dash upon the 
 Turks at the head of his remaining forces, and cut 
 his way through them, or die, sword in hand, in the 
 attempt ? Shall he surrender to the overwhelming 
 power of the Sultan's army, and be paraded at 
 Constantinople as the captive Czar ? Tortured and 
 perplexed, he shuts himself up alone in his tent, 
 and falls into terrible convulsions. None of his 
 generals dare approach him ; he has forbidden an 
 entrance to all. Suddenly, despite of the prohibi- 
 tion, the captive of Marienburg stands before him.
 
 84 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 She who at all times possessed a mysterious power 
 to calm the spasmodic affections, half physical, half 
 mental, to which he was subject, now appears before 
 him like an angel to relieve his agony, and to point 
 out an escape from impending ruin. She suggests 
 the idea of negotiation, which had occurred to no 
 one in the desperate situation in which they were 
 placed, and which, she instinctively prophesied, 
 would still be successful. She strips herself of her 
 jewels, and ransacks the camp for objects of value, 
 to form a suitable present for the Grand Vizier. 
 The Vice- Chancellor Shaffiroff is despatched to the 
 enemy's camp, and the apparently impossible result 
 is a treaty of peace. Arms are suspended imme- 
 diately, and soon afterwards honourable articles are 
 signed, of which the principal are the surrender of 
 Azof, the exclusion of the Czar from the Black Sea, 
 the demolition of the fortress of Taganrog, the 
 withdrawal of the Russian soldiers from the neigh- 
 bourhood of the Danube, and the promise of free 
 passage to Charles the Twelfth through Russia to 
 his own states. 
 
 It is unnecessary to analyze or to criticise the 
 different motives that actuated the Vizier in acceding 
 to an honourable negotiation, when the Czar seemed 
 to be so completely in his power. It is sufficient 
 that this was the surprising and fortunate result of
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 85 
 
 Catharine's counsel. " Her great merit," says Vol- 
 taire, " was that she saw the possibility of negotia- 
 tion at a moment when the generals seem to have 
 seen nothing but an inevitable misfortune." No 
 language can describe the rage and mortification of 
 Charles the Twelfth at this unexpected result at 
 this apparently impossible escape of his hated rival 
 from overwhelming ruin. Hastening to the camp 
 of the Vizier, he upbraids him, as if he had been 
 his master, instead of his stipendiary ; he expresses 
 his profound disgust that the Czar has not been 
 carried to Constantinople, instead of being allowed 
 to go home so easily. " And who will govern his 
 empire in his absence ? " asked the Vizier, with 
 bitter irony ; adding that " it would never do to 
 have all the sovereigns away from home." In 
 answer to this retort, Charles grins ferociously in 
 his face, turns on his heel, and tears the Vizier's 
 robe with his spurs. After thus insulting the great 
 functionaiy of the Sultan, he continues three years 
 longer a pensionary on his bounty. To the reiterated 
 entreaties of his Senate that he would return, and 
 attend to the pressing exigencies of his kingdom, he 
 replies, in a style worthy of Bombastes, that he 
 would send one of his boots to govern them, and 
 remains at Bender, still deluded and besotted with 
 the idea that he should yet appear with a Turkish
 
 86 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 force before Moscow. At last, in 1714, after fight- 
 ing a pitched battle, at the head of his valets, 
 grooms, and house-servants, against a considerable 
 Turkish army, sent to dislodge him by force, he is 
 ignominiously expelled from the country whose 
 hospitality he has so long outraged, and returns in 
 the disguise of a courier to Sweden. 
 
 The Czar, upon his return to his dominions, gains 
 a considerable victory over the Swedish fleet in the 
 Baltic, commanding his own in person, in a line-of- 
 battle ship of his own building. On arriving at 
 Petersburg, he ordains a great triumphal procession 
 to bring the captured ships, with their admirals and 
 officers, up the Neva. At this time he transfers 
 the Senate from Moscow to Petersburg ; establishes 
 assemblies, at which the penalty for infringement 
 of the rules and regulations is to " empty the great 
 eagle, a huge bowl, filled with wine and brandy;" 
 institutes the Academy of Arts and Sciences ; founds 
 the public library commenced with the one captured 
 (" conveyed, the wise it call '') from the University 
 at Abo ; sends a mission through Siberia to China ; 
 and draws up a map of his dominions, much of it 
 with his own hand. 
 
 In 1715, after taking Stralsund, completing the 
 conquest of Finland and Esthonia, and commanding 
 in person the allied fleets of England, Denmark, and
 
 CATHARINE I. OF RUSSIA.
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 89 
 
 Russia, he makes a second tour in Europe, accom- 
 panied by Catharine. He revisits Saardam, where 
 he is received with great enthusiasm ; is entertained 
 with great distinction in Paris, and visits the tomb 
 of Cardinal Richelieu, where he exclaims, dropping 
 upon his knees, " Thou great man ! I would have 
 given thee half of my dominions to have learned of 
 thee to govern the other half." He drew up with 
 his own hand a treaty of commerce with France, 
 and returned through Berlin to Petersburg. The 
 letters of the Margravine of Bayreuth from Berlin 
 present no very flattering picture of the imperial 
 travellers. She describes Peter as dressed plainly 
 in a naval costume, handsome, but rude, uncouth, and 
 of dreadful aspect ; and Catharine as fat, frouzy, 
 and vulgar, needing only to be seen to betray her 
 obscure origin, and bedizened with chains, orders, 
 and holy relics, " making such a geklinkklank as if 
 an ass with bells were coming along." She repre- 
 sents them both as intolerable beggars, plunder- 
 ing the palace of everything they could lay their 
 hands on. 
 
 Peter had long ago constituted himself the head of 
 the Church, and treated with contempt the preten- 
 sions of the prelates to temporal power. When at 
 Paris, however, he had received an elaborate peti- 
 tion from the Sorbonne, the object of which was
 
 90 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 to effect a reunion between the Greek and Latin 
 Churches. But the despot who had constituted 
 himself the head, hand, heart, and conscience of his 
 people who had annihilated throughout his empire 
 every element of power adverse to his own, who 
 had crushed the soldiery, the nobility, and the clergy, 
 deposed the patriarch, and constituted himself the 
 high priest of his empire was not very likely to 
 comply with the Sor bonne's invitation to acknowl- 
 edge the supremacy of the Pope in his dominions. 
 Nevertheless, he received their petition with great 
 politeness. 
 
 On his return to Petersburg, he was vexed by 
 the importunity of some of his own clergy, who 
 clamoured for the appointment of a patriarch, on 
 the ground that it was demanded by the people, 
 and that it was necessary to assert the dignity and 
 independence of the Greek Church. Now there 
 happened to be about Petersburg one Sotoff, a ven- 
 erable jester of eighty-four, who had been the Czar's 
 writing-master in his younger years, and at the age 
 of seventy had been advanced to the dignity of buf- 
 foon. This venerable individual the Czar fixes upon 
 for the office of patriarch, previously creating him a 
 prince and a pope. In order to make the office of 
 patriarch completely ridiculous in the eyes of the 
 people, and to give them a little innocent recreation
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 91 
 
 at the same time, he now ordains a solemn marriage 
 between this patriarch and a " buxom widow of 
 thirty-four." We must ask indulgence while we 
 quote a short description of this funny ceremony 
 from the old author already cited : 
 
 " The nuptials of this extraordinary couple were 
 solemnized by the court in masks or mock show. 
 The company consisted of about four hundred per- 
 sons of both sexes. Every four persons had their 
 proper dress and peculiar musical instruments, so that 
 they represented a hundred different sorts of habits 
 and music, particularly of the Asiatic nations. The 
 four persons appointed to invite the guests were the 
 greatest stammerers that could be found in all Russia. 
 Old decrepit men, who were not able to walk or 
 stand, had been picked out to serve for bridesmen, 
 stewards, and waiters. There were four running 
 footmen, the most unwieldy fellows, who had been 
 troubled with the gout most of their lives, and were 
 so fat and bulky that they wanted others to lead 
 them. The mock Czar of Moscow, who represented 
 King David in his dress, instead of a harp had a 
 lyre with a bear-skin to play upon. He, being the 
 chief of the company, was carried on a sort of a 
 pageant placed on a sled, to the four corners of 
 which were tied as many bears, which, being pricked 
 with goads by fellows purposely appointed for it,
 
 92 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 made such a frightful roaring as well suited the con- 
 fused and horrible din raised by the disagreeing in- 
 struments of the rest of the company. The Czar 
 himself was dressed like a boor of Friesland, and skil- 
 fully beat a drum in company with three generals. 
 In this manner, bells ringing everywhere, the ill- 
 matched couple were attended by the masks to the 
 altar of the great church, where they were joined in 
 matrimony by a priest a hundred years old, who had 
 lost his eyesight and his memory ; to supply which 
 defects a pair of spectacles were put upon his nose, 
 two candles held before his eyes, and the words 
 sounded into his ears which he was to pronounce. 
 From church the procession went to the Czar's pal- 
 ace, where the diversion lasted some days. Many 
 strange adventures and comical accidents happened 
 on their riding-sleds through the streets, too long to 
 be related here. Thus much may suffice to show 
 that the Czar, among all the heavy cares of govern- 
 ment, knew how to set apart some days for the re- 
 laxation of his mind, and how ingenious he was in 
 the contrivance of those diversions." 
 
 We confess that we are unable to agree with the 
 grave conclusion of the author from whom we quote. 
 To us this " ingenious diversion" seems about as 
 sorry a jest as we ever heard of. However, it was 
 considered " most admirable fooling" in Moscow; and,
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 93 
 
 at all events, after two or three repetitions, seems 
 to have quite cured the people of their desire for 
 patriarchs. 
 
 "The Czar," says Voltaire, "thus laughingly avenged 
 twenty emperors of Germany, ten kings of France, 
 and a host of sovereigns. This was all the 
 fruit which the Sorbonne gathered from their not 
 very politic idea of reuniting the Greek and Latin 
 Churches." 
 
 The darkest chapter in the life of Peter now 
 approaches. After the lapse of a century, no one 
 can read the account of that dreadful tragedy, the 
 trial, condemnation, and death of the Czarowitz 
 Alexis, without a shudder of horror. No one can 
 contemplate the spectacle of a son judicially con- 
 demned by his father for no crime, no one can read 
 the record of the solemn farce which represents the 
 trial of the unfortunate victim, without feeling all 
 his admiration for the extraordinary qualities of the 
 Czar swallowed up by indignation and abhorrence. 
 Up to this time Peter seems a man a hard-hearted, 
 despotic, inexorable man, perhaps, but he is still 
 human. He now seems only a machine, a huge 
 engine of unparalleled power, placed upon the Earth 
 to effect a certain task, working its mighty arms 
 night and day with ceaseless and untiring energy, 
 crashing through all obstacles, and annihilating
 
 94 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 everything in its path with the unfeeling precision 
 of gigantic mechanism. 
 
 It was hardly to be expected, to be sure, that this 
 tremendous despot, who had recoiled before no ob- 
 stacle in the path of his settled purpose ; who had 
 stridden over everything with the step of a giant ; 
 who had given two seas to an inland empire ; who 
 had conquered the most warlike nation and sover- 
 eign of Europe with barbarians in petticoats ; who 
 had crushed the nobility, annihilated the Strelitzes, 
 trampled the patriarch in the dust ; who had repu- 
 diated his wife because she was attached to the old 
 customs of Muscovy, and had married and crowned 
 a woman of bad repute, because it was his sovereign 
 will and pleasure it was hardly to be expected 
 that such a man would hesitate about disinheriting 
 his own son, if he thought proper to do so. But it 
 might have been hoped that he would content him- 
 self with disinheriting him, and that the " Pater 
 Patrice" as by solemn decree he was shortly after- 
 ward entitled, would remember that he was also 
 father of Alexis. 
 
 This unhappy young man, the son of the repu- 
 diated wife of the Czar, seems to have been a very 
 miserable creature. We have the fullest sympathy 
 with the natural disappointment of Peter at the in- 
 corrigible, hopeless stupidity and profligacy of his
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 95 
 
 son. Still, he had himself to blame in a great 
 measure for many of his son's defects. His educa- 
 tion had been neglected, or, rather, worse than 
 neglected : it had been left to the care of monks 
 to the care of the very order of people most wedded 
 to the ancient state of things, and most desirous of 
 restoring it, if possible. The necessary result of 
 such training upon a dull boy might easily have 
 been foreseen. There was, however, not the slight- 
 est objection to disinheriting him ; he had no claim 
 to the throne, and he was totally unworthy of it. 
 There was no law of Russia designating the eldest 
 son as successor. On the contrary, the genius of 
 the Russian autocracy seems to vest the fee-simple 
 of all the Russias and all the Russians in the actual 
 autocrat, to be disposed of as he sees fit, and devised 
 to whomsoever he deems most eligible. This had 
 been and was then the law, if it be worth while to 
 talk about law when the will of the sovereign makes 
 and alters the law at any moment. Alexis seems to 
 have been weak, dissolute, and intriguing a sot, 
 a bigot, a liar, and a coward the tool of " bushy- 
 bearded" priests and designing women, whose con- 
 trol of the empire had been terminated by Peter's 
 energetic measures. The Czar's predominating fear 
 was, that at his death the empire would relapse into 
 the quagmire of barbarism from which he had re-
 
 96 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 claimed it. Alexis, priest-ridden and ignorant, was 
 sure to become a tool in the hands of priests as soon 
 as he should ascend the throne, and the old order of 
 things would as surely be reinstated. 
 
 Peter, soon after the death of his son's wife (a 
 virtuous and intelligent German princess, whose life 
 seems to have been worn out by the neglect, cruelty, 
 and debauchery of her husband), remonstrates with 
 him upon his evil courses, commands him to reform, 
 and threatens else to disinherit him. " Amend your 
 life, or else turn monk," says the Czar. " I intend 
 to embrace the monastic life," replies the son ; " I 
 pledge myself to do so, and only ask your gracious 
 permission." The Czar, just before his departure for 
 Germany and France, visits Alexis, w T ho was, or pre- 
 tended to be, confined to his bed by sickness. The 
 young man again renews his renunciation of the 
 succession, and repeats his pledge to become a monk. 
 Peter bids him take six months to consider the mat- 
 ter, takes an affectionate farewell of him, and sets 
 out upon his travels. As soon as his back is turned, 
 Alexis realizes the old distich : 
 
 " The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be ; 
 The devil was well, the devil a monk was he." 
 
 He recovers his health instantaneously, and cele- 
 brates his father's departure by getting very drunk 
 with a select party of friends. Seven months after-
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 97 
 
 wards, the Czar writes to him to join him at Copen- 
 hagen, if he had determined to reform his life and 
 make himself lit for the succession ; if not, to execute 
 his monastic plans without delay. Alexis accord- 
 ingly announces his intention of going to Copen- 
 hagen, draws a heavy bill on Menzikoff for his 
 travelling expenses, leaves Moscow, and, instead of 
 Copenhagen, sneaks off to Vienna. The Emperor of 
 Germany, however, turns him off, and he goes to 
 Naples. Two envoys of the Czar Tolstoy and 
 Romanzoff proceed to Naples, and induce him, by 
 ample promises of forgiveness on the part of his 
 father, to return. The following is a part of his 
 father's letter : 
 
 " I write to you for the last time, to tell you that 
 you are to execute my will, which Tolstoy and 
 Romanzoff will announce to you on my part. If 
 you obey vie, I assure you and I promise, in the 
 name of God, that I will not punish you, and tJiat 
 if yov; return I will love you moi^e than ever; but 
 if you do not, I give you as your father, in virtue 
 of the power which I have received from God, my 
 eternal curse ; and as your sovereign, I assure you 
 that I shall find the means of punishing you, in 
 which I hope that God will assist me, and that he 
 will take my just cause in his hand." 
 
 Upon the faith of this sacred promise, Alexis 
 as) 7
 
 98 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 accompanies the two emissaries to Moscow, where 
 they arrive on the 13th of February 1718. The 
 day after his arrival, the Czar, by way of keeping 
 his promise of pardoning and loving him more than 
 ever, calls a grand council of the Senate and all the 
 dignitaries of the empire, and there, in the most 
 solemn, formal, and authentic manner, disinherits 
 Alexis, deprives him of all claim to the succession, 
 and obliges him and all those present to take the 
 oath of future allegiance to his and Catharine's son 
 Peter, then an infant, who, however, shortly after- 
 wards died. This was the beginning of the fulfil- 
 ment of his promise, but it was only the beginning 
 of the end. Alexis was worthless, ignorant, stupid, 
 and depraved ; but he had committed no crime, and 
 deserved no punishment, certainly not the punish- 
 ment of death. A comfortable state of things there 
 would be in the world, if every man who happened to 
 have a profligate dunce of a son were to be justified 
 in cutting his head oft'; and for an autocrat and 
 high priest to do so seems to us a thousand times 
 more atrocious. 
 
 However, the Czar seems to have been determined, 
 after his first evasion, to get rid of him, and accord- 
 ingly produces the charge of a conspiracy. Alexis 
 is formally accused of conspiring against his father's 
 life and throne, and a pack of perfectly contemptible
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 99 
 
 stuff is collected together, to make what was called 
 evidence. It consisted of confessions of his pot- 
 companions, his confessor, and others all upon the 
 rack that he had been known to express wishes 
 for his father's death, and to throw out hints about 
 receiving assistance, in a certain event, from the 
 Emperor of Germany. But in the whole mass of it 
 there is not the faintest shadow of a shade of evi- 
 dence that he had ever conspired, that he had ever 
 entertained any design, against his father ; and the 
 necessary result, upon any candid mind, of a perusal 
 of the evidence is a conviction of his perfect inno- 
 cence of the crime charged upon him. There is not 
 a country in the world, where there is any pretence 
 of administering justice, in which such an accusa- 
 tion, supported by such evidence, would not have 
 been hooted out of court. Still, the accusation was 
 made, and something which they called a trial was 
 instituted. The prince is sworn upon the Holy 
 Evangelists to tell the whole truth, and nothing but 
 the truth ; and he immediately begins to utter lies 
 by the wholesale. His weak intellect seems to have 
 been possessed and disordered by one idea that if 
 he should confess a great deal more than was ex- 
 pected, and make himself out much more guilty than 
 he was supposed to be, he should perhaps obtain his 
 pardon. Having, however, done nothing criminal,
 
 100 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 and having said nothing that could be fairly con- 
 sidered suspicious, he dives into the bottom of his 
 breast, and brings up and displays his most secret 
 thoughts by way of self -accusation. The truth seems 
 to have been that he was bullied to the last degree. 
 We know the Czar to have been a man who emi- 
 nently inspired awe, and Alexis was of an uncom- 
 monly sneaking disposition. As the event proved, 
 Peter absolutely frightened his son to death. Cer- 
 tainly, never were the forms of judicial investigation 
 so outraged as in this trial. The details are sicken- 
 ing, and we have already transgressed the indulgence 
 of our readers. Let one or two questions made by 
 the prosecution, and answered by the criminal in 
 writing, suffice as specimens of the Czar's criminal 
 jurisprudence. 
 
 " When you saw, in the letter of Beyer [a gossip- 
 ing envoy from the German emperor's court, who 
 wrote to his sovereign all the news, true or false, 
 as fast as he picked it up], that there was a revolt 
 in the army of Mecklenburg, you were rejoiced ; I 
 believe that you had some view, and that you would 
 have declared for the rebels, even in my lifetime." 
 The answer of Alexis is : " If the rebels had called 
 me in your lifetime, I should probably have joined 
 them, supposing that they liud been strong enough." 
 In answer to another question, he avows that " he
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 101 
 
 had accused himself before God, in confession to the 
 priest Jacques, of having wished the death of his 
 father ; and that the confessor Jacques had replied, 
 ' God will pardon you for it ; we all wish it as 
 much.' " 
 
 After this farce of a trial had been enacted, the 
 Czar, waiving his prerogative of life and death, 
 determined to submit the case to the judgment of the 
 clergy, judges, and high officers of State. This has 
 always seemed to us very paltry. It was an attempt 
 to shift the responsibility of the murder off his own 
 shoulders, where only it belonged. The council of 
 clergy, after recognizing the Czar's power jus vitce 
 et necis which nobody ever doubted, and citing 
 several cases from the Old Testament, recommended 
 mercy, relying principally upon Absalom's case. It 
 was plain they washed their hands of it. Mean- 
 time, further investigations, it was pretended, had 
 made the matter worse ; and, on the 5th of July, 
 the ministers, senators, and generals unanimouslv 
 
 O ** 
 
 condemn the prince to death, leaving the sentence, 
 of course, open to the Czar's revision, and prescribing 
 no particular mode of execution. The sentence of 
 death is published, Alexis is informed of it, and 
 seems literally to have been frightened to death by 
 it ; for, while the Czar was deliberating what course 
 to take (and the opinion of the most indulgent we
 
 102 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 confess not ours seems to be that he did not intend 
 the execution of the sentence), the unfortunate young 
 man was carried off by a kind of apoplectic seizure, 
 and, on the 7th of July, died contrite, receiving the 
 sacrament and extreme unction, and imploring his 
 father's pardon. 
 
 This account seems to be now accepted as the 
 true one. But the Marquis de Custine, in his greedi- 
 ness to devour everything that blackens the char- 
 acter of Russia in general, and of Peter the Great 
 in particular, could not, of course, fail to reproduce 
 the stories that have been told and retold, exploded 
 and re-exploded, and which will continue, we sup- 
 pose, to be told and exploded, believed in and 
 ridiculed, to the end of time. It was not believed 
 by many people in Europe at the time, and it is not 
 believed by the Comte de Se'gur and the Marquis 
 de Custine now, that the prince died a natural 
 death unless the cataleptic convulsive fit, consequent 
 upon extreme and protracted mental agony, which 
 finally ended his life, can be called a natural and 
 not a violent death. All sorts of stories were told 
 at the time, each more incredible than the other, 
 and each disproving the other. The Czar was said 
 to have knouted him to death with his own hands; 
 to have poisoned him with a potion which he 
 sent Marshal Weyde to an apothecary's shop in
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 103 
 
 broad daylight to procure ; to have cut off his head, 
 and then to have had it privately sewed on again 
 by Madame Cramer ; in short, to have made away 
 with him by a variety of means, all of which could 
 not well have been true, and all of which are, under 
 the circumstances, extremely unlikely. To us it 
 seems ridiculous to add a new horror to this terrible 
 tragedy. We are not sure, either, that the supposed 
 assassination makes the matter any worse. " Murder 
 most foul as at the best it is," we are unable to see 
 that the private murder is a whit more atrocious 
 than the public, solemn, and judicial murder, of 
 which the Czar stands accused and condemned to 
 all eternity. 
 
 It certainly does not seem to have been in Peter's 
 nature to have taken his son off by poison or in 
 any private way. The autocrat was a man who 
 gloried in his own actions, in displaying the tremen- 
 dous, irresistible power of his own will. He had 
 collected all the dignity of his empire to assist at 
 the spectacle ; he had invoked the attention of all 
 Europe to the tragedy he proposed to enact ; he had 
 determined to execute his son, and he did intend, 
 we have no doubt, to murder him in the most 
 ceremonious manner, and for the good of his country. 
 We have not a doubt of his motives ; he thought 
 himself actuated by the purest philanthropy ; but
 
 104 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 those expansive bosoms, which embrace the whole 
 Earth, or a third of it, in their colossal affection, are 
 apt to be deficient in the humbler virtues of love 
 and charity when it comes to detail. The truth 
 was, Peter loved his country so well that he deter- 
 mined to sacrifice his son to its welfare ; in other 
 words, his heart was as hard as the nether millstone, 
 and he would have sacrificed twenty thousand sons 
 rather than have been thwarted in the cherished 
 projects of his ambitious intellect. But we confess 
 we can conceive of no motive for the alleged 
 assassination. It was not in the character of the 
 Emperor, and it was a piece of stupidity as well as 
 barbarity. "If the assassination had trammelled 
 up the consequence " of all that preceded, " then it 
 were well ;" and the deed might have been possible. 
 But the broken faith to his son, the atrocious trial, 
 the deliberate condemnation, could in no manner 
 have been obliterated from the minds of men by 
 a secret " taking off." He had announced to the 
 world his intention of executing his son for alleged 
 disobedience and conspiracy ; he had sent to every 
 Court in Europe copies of the judicial proceedings, 
 ending in the condemnation of the victim ; he had 
 been publicly brandishing the sword of justice over 
 his son's neck, and calling upon the world to wit- 
 ness the spectacle ; and why he should have made
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 105 
 
 all this parade for the mere purpose of poisoning 
 him, knouting him, or cutting his head off, in secret, 
 seems inexplicable. 
 
 Besides, as Voltaire very strongly urges, the dif- 
 ferent kinds of assassination alleged disprove each 
 other, and the fact that Alexis was never alone from 
 the moment of the condemnation to the hour of his 
 death makes any secret execution impossible. The 
 knouting story has not found many advocates ; the 
 poisoning and the beheading are supported about 
 equally, and are both about equally improbable. It 
 certainly was not probable that the Czar would 
 have sent a high officer of court to fetch the poison, 
 and a few minutes afterwards have despatched 
 another messenger to bid the first make great haste. 
 This is not exactly the way in which poisoning is 
 usually managed. And the other story, that the 
 young man's head was cut off and then sewed on 
 again, is so ludicrous that it would deserve no atten- 
 tion but for the number of writers who have re- 
 ported it upon the authority of contemporaneous 
 gossip. At what moment the Czar found a secret 
 opportunity to cut the head off; how Madame 
 Cramer found a secret opportunity to sew it on 
 again ; how this ingenious lady, who, we suppose, 
 had not practised this kind of needle-work as a 
 profession, was able to fit it on so adroitly as to
 
 106 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 deceive not only the whole court but even the 
 patient himself (for, as far as we can understand 
 the story, Alexis seems to have received extreme 
 unction and the sacrament, in presence of about a 
 hundred witnesses, after Mrs. Cramer's job was 
 finished), are all matters very difficult to explain. 
 Moreover, as we have already observed, we do not 
 see much greater atrocity in the one case than in the 
 other. Peter's will being the only law of the land, 
 he could do what he chose execute his son as he 
 chose, and by his own hand if he chose. The only 
 law which could have any binding force over the 
 autocrat was the law of nature, and that, to his soul 
 of granite, was weaker than the spider's web. He 
 was determined to sacrifice his son to the welfare 
 of his country, and to insure the continuance of his 
 reformation in Church and State. Sacrifices of this 
 sort have always found advocates and admirers, and 
 are sure to be repeated on great occasions, and at 
 rare intervals, to the end of time. 
 
 Dismissing this painful subject, we hasten to con- 
 clude this imperfect sketch of the principal events 
 in the Czar's history. We will not dwell upon the 
 extraordinary but abortive intrigues of the two 
 arch-plotters of Europe, Cardinal Alberoni and Baron 
 Goertz, by which the Czar and the Swedish monarch 
 were to be reconciled, and combined in a plot against
 
 PETER THE (IRE AT. 107 
 
 George the First of England, and in favour of the 
 Pretender. A chance bullet, from " a petty fortress 
 and a dubious hand," at Frederickshald in Norway, 
 terminates at once the life of Charles and the 
 intrigues of Goertz. The baron, instead of taking 
 the crown from George's head, loses his own head 
 at Stockholm ; Alberoni is turned out of Spain ; and 
 the Czar remains in statu quo, having been careful, 
 throughout the whole intrigue, which was perfectly 
 well known in England, to make the most barefaced 
 promises of eternal friendship to the house of 
 Hanover, and "to reiterate," as the diplomatists 
 say, " the assurances of his distinguished considera- 
 tion " for the English king, all the time that he was 
 plotting against his throne. 
 
 The death of Charles alters the complexion of 
 Europe. Peace, which was hardly possible during 
 his lifetime, becomes the immediate object of all 
 parties. The Prince of Hesse, husband of Queen 
 Ulrica, and, by cession of his wife, King of Sweden, 
 is desirous of peace upon almost any terms which 
 will allow of an honourable repose to his exhausted 
 and impoverished country. Peter, having obtained 
 possession of all the provinces he required, is ready 
 to sheathe the sword, on receiving proper recogni- 
 tion of his title to the property thus acquired ; and 
 accordingly, after a good deal of bravado upon the
 
 108 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 Baltic between the English and Russian fleets, and 
 the burning of some fifty or sixty Swedish villages, 
 innumerable chateaus, and fifteen or twenty thou- 
 sand houses, in a descent made by the Russians 
 upon the coasts of Sweden, the war, which continues 
 with ferocity during all the negotiations for peace, is 
 at last brought to a conclusion by the signing of the 
 treaty of Neustadt, on the 10th of September 1721. 
 By this treaty of peace, the Czar is guaranteed in 
 the possession of Livonia, Esthonia, Ingria, Carelia, 
 Wiborg, and the many adjacent islands, and thus 
 reaps the reward of twenty years' hard labour; 
 receiving, moreover, from the Senate and Synod, by 
 solemn decree what seems insipid homage for an 
 autocrat the titles of Great, Emperor, and Pater 
 Patrice. 
 
 After an interval of two years, passed in estab- 
 lishing woollen, paper, and glass manufactories, em- 
 bellishing his capital, and regulating the internal 
 and foreign commerce of Russia, we suddenly find 
 him, accompanied by the faithful Catharine, descend- 
 ing the Volga at the head of a large army. A 
 revolution which had broken out in Persia, in the 
 course of which the reigning sovereign, the imbecile 
 Hussein, finds himself hard pressed by the Afghan 
 prince, Meer Mahmoud, offers an opportunity to 
 Peter to possess himself of a few maritime provinces
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 109 
 
 on the Caspian, to console him for the loss of Azof 
 consequent upon the disaster of the Pruth. A few 
 hundred Russians, engaged in commerce at the town 
 of Shainakia, having been cut to pieces during some 
 of the hostile movements, he finds therein a pretext 
 for invading Persia, and requiring satisfaction from 
 both sovereign and rebel. Failing in this, of course, 
 he sails from Astrakhan to Derbent, which town he 
 takes possession of; and soon afterwards, being 
 applied to by the unhappy Sophi for protection 
 against the Afghans, he consents to afford it, in con- 
 sideration of receiving the towns of Bachu and 
 Derbent, together with the provinces of Guilan, 
 Mazanderan, and Asterabad. " It is not land I 
 want, but water," exclaims the Czar, as he snatches 
 these sunny provinces, the whole southern coast of 
 the Caspian, the original kingdom of Cyrus, from 
 the languid hand of the Persian, without the ex- 
 penditure of the blood, time, and treasure which it 
 had cost him to wrest the frozen swamps of Finland 
 from the iron grasp of Charles. 
 
 Peter's conquests are now concluded. The Russian 
 colossus now stands astride, from the " thrilling 
 regions of thick -ribbed ice" on the Baltic to the 
 " fragrant bowers of Asterabad " on the Caspian, 
 with a foot upon either sea. The man who had 
 begun to gratify his passion for maritime affairs by
 
 110 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 paddling- a little skiff on the Yausa, and who became, 
 on his accession, only the barbaric sovereign of an 
 inland and unknown country, now finds himself the 
 lord of two seas, with a considerable navy, built 
 almost by his own hand. It was upon his return 
 to Petersburg from his Persian expedition that he 
 ordered the very skiff in which he commenced 
 navigation to be brought from Moscow, and took 
 occasion to give to his court an entertainment, which 
 was called the "consecration of the Little Grandsire" 
 that being the name he had given to the skiff. At 
 the time of this ceremony of the consecration, the 
 progeny of the Little Grandsire numbered already, 
 according to the returns of the Admiralty, " forty- 
 one ships of the line, in a condition for service at 
 sea, carrying two thousand one hundred and six 
 guns, manned with fourteen thousand nine hundred 
 seamen, besides a proportionate number of frigates, 
 galleys, and other smaller craft." The little cabin, 
 which was Peter's house while building Petersburg, 
 still stands upon what is now called the Citadel ; it 
 is consecrated as a chapel, filled with votive offer- 
 ings, and enclosed with a brick wall ; and the Little 
 Grandsire is most religiously preserved within the 
 building. 
 
 We are certainly not taken in by the colossal 
 puerility of the Russian marine any more than the

 
 PETER THE GREAT. 113 
 
 Marquis de Custine is ; and although the descendants 
 of the Little Grands ire are now at least double the 
 number they were at the time of the consecration, 
 we have not heard of any very brilliant exploits on 
 any ocean to justify the very imposing and very 
 Roman rostra which decorate the Exchange at Peters- 
 burg. To use a vulgar but expressive phrase, the 
 Russian navy has not yet set the Baltic on fire ; and 
 we doubt if it ever will. If it could thaw it a little, 
 it would be all the better ; for Cronstadt being 
 blockaded by ice six months in the year, the navy 
 is only paraded during the pleasant weather for the 
 amusement of the autocrat. As long as England 
 stands where it does, and the Russian winter re- 
 mains as it is, we shall hardly fear much from the 
 descendants of the Little Grandsire, at least till the 
 capital is shifted to the Bosporus. 
 
 At the same time, we are far from agreeing with 
 the Marquis de Custine in his sweeping condem- 
 nation of Peter's policy in building Petersburg and 
 establishing a marine. It was a thousand times 
 better to have the Black Sea and the Baltic than 
 nothing ; and if his successors had taken half as 
 much pains as himself in fostering the maritime 
 trade of the country; and if Russia, instead of all 
 this parade of ships of the line, frigates and 
 steamers, could create a mercantile marine for it- 
 
 (75) 8
 
 114 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 self, and could manage its own considerable foreign 
 trade, now monopolized by foreign vessels, princi- 
 pally the English, she might still obtain the germ 
 of a maritime population, while waiting for Con- 
 stantinople. But till she learns that the strength 
 of a navy consists in sailors and not ships, she is 
 not likely to be a very formidable power upon the 
 ocean, let her build as many line-of-battle ships as 
 she chooses. 
 
 The only other interesting incident in Peter's 
 life, which now draws rapidly to its close, was the 
 coronation of Catharine as Empress-consort. This 
 event was celebrated with extraordinary pomp ; and 
 particular stress is laid, in the Emperor's proclama- 
 tion, upon her conduct in the affair of the Pruth, 
 and the salvation of himself and his army is attri- 
 buted to her heroism and presence of mind. There 
 seems to be little doubt that Peter intended this 
 solemn coronation of the Empress during his life- 
 timea ceremony which was not usual in Russia 
 to be an indication of his intention that she should 
 succeed to the throne upon his death. 
 
 Very soon after this, having exposed himself, 
 when in a feeble state of health, by standing in the 
 water a long time and over-exerting himself in 
 savino- the lives of some sailors and soldiers who 
 
 O 
 
 were near being wrecked in a storm upon the Gulf
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 117 
 
 of Finland, he was attacked by a painful disorder, 
 to which he had been subject during the later years 
 of his life, and expired, with calmness and resig- 
 nation, on the 28th of January 1725. His suffer- 
 ings during his last illness had been so intense that 
 he was unable to make any intelligible disposition 
 as to the succession ; and, strange to say, the pos- 
 sessor of this empire, of which the only fundamental 
 law was the expressed will of the sovereign, died 
 intestate. It is in the highest degree probable that 
 he had intended to appoint his wife as his successor : 
 at any rate, assisted by the promptness of Menzikoff 
 and her own resolution, Catharine ascended the 
 throne without opposition. 
 
 The disorder which thus cut off the Czar in the 
 fifty -fourth year of his age was an acute inflamma- 
 tion ; but, as a matter of course, his death was attri- 
 buted to poison. We do not observe that the Mar- 
 quis de Custine has revived this story ; which is 
 matter of surprise to us, particularly as we believe 
 that his friend the Comte de Segur has adopted it in 
 his history. The temptation to damage the charac- 
 ter of the Empress, and to represent her to posterity 
 as a poisoner, was too strong to be resisted by the 
 contemporary chroniclers. Lamberti gives us a de- 
 tailed account of an intrigue of Catharine, and a 
 consequent determination of Peter to shut her up
 
 118 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 for life in a convent. She escaped her fate, accord- 
 ing to the same faithful historian, in a singular 
 manner. Peter, it appears, kept a memorandum- 
 book, and was in the habit of making daily minutes 
 of everything he proposed to do, while one of Catha- 
 rine's pages was in the habit of secretly bringing 
 his Majesty's tablets from his dressing-room for the 
 daily inspection of the Empress. The intended im- 
 prisonment of Catharine, jotted down among other 
 memoranda, was thus revealed to her ; whereupon 
 she incontinently poisoned him. This story has 
 been sufficiently disproved. It is hardly worth 
 disproving ; for it is not probable that a man who 
 had suddenly made this discovery of the guilt of 
 the woman who had just been crowned as Empress, 
 and whom he had now determined to imprison for 
 life, instead of designating her as his successor, 
 would require to make any memorandum of the 
 matter. And yet we are expected to believe that 
 an entry was found upon Peter's tablets almost 
 literally to this effect : " Mem. To repudiate my 
 wife, shave her head, and lock her up in a convent;" 
 as if otherwise the matter would have slipped his 
 memory. How is it possible that our friend De 
 Custine has allowed this story to escape him ? 
 
 In the vast Square of the Admiralty at Peters-
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 119 
 
 burg stands the celebrated colossal statue of Peter 
 the Great. Around him are palaces, academies, 
 arsenals, gorgeous temples with their light and 
 starry cupolas floating up like painted balloons, and 
 tall spires sheathed in gold, and flashing like pillars 
 of fire. This place, which is large enough for half 
 the Russian army to encamp in, is bounded upon 
 one side by the Admiralty building, the Winter 
 Palace, and the Hermitage, the facades of the three 
 extending more than a mile. In front of the Winter 
 Palace rises the red, polished granite column of 
 Alexander, the largest monolith in the world ; from 
 the side opposite the palace radiate three great 
 streets, lined with stately and imposing buildings, 
 thronged with population, and intersected by canals, 
 which are all bridged with iron ; across the square, 
 on the side opposite the statue, stands St. Isaac's 
 Cathedral, built of marble, bronze, granite, and gold, 
 and standing upon a subterranean forest, more than 
 a million large trees having been driven into the 
 earth to form its foundation. The Emperor faces the 
 Neva, which pours its limpid waters through quays 
 of solid granite, which for twenty-five miles line 
 its length and that of its branches ; and beyond 
 the river rise in full view the Bourse, the Academy 
 of Arts and Sciences, and other imposing public 
 edifices.
 
 120 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 This equestrian statue has been much admired ; 
 we think justly so. The action of the horse is 
 uncommonly spirited and striking, and the position 
 of the Emperor dignified and natural. He waves 
 his hand, as if, like a Scythian wizard as he was, he 
 had just caused this mighty, swarming city, with 
 all its palaces and temples, to rise like a vapour 
 from the frozen morasses of the Neva with one 
 stroke of his wand. In winter, by moonlight, when 
 the whole scene is lighted by the still, cold radiance 
 of a polar midnight, we defy any one to pause and 
 gaze upon that statue without a vague sensation of 
 awe. The Czar seems to be still presiding in sculp- 
 tured silence over the colossal work of his hands; to 
 be still protecting his capital from the inundations 
 of the ocean, and his empire from the flood of bar- 
 barism which he always feared would sweep over it 
 upon his death. 
 
 " How shall we rank him upon glory's page?" 
 
 It is impossible not to admire his genius, his 
 indomitable energy, his unconquerable will. He 
 proposed to himself, while yet a youth, the mighty 
 task of civilizing his country, and of converting a 
 mongrel Asiatic empire into a powerful European 
 state. It is difficult to place one's self in the right 
 position to judge him correctly. We are very far
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 121 
 
 from agreeing with the Marquis de Custine, that 
 his mistake was in importing his civilization. 
 Russia had waited in vain quite long enough for 
 the spontaneous and indigenous germination of the 
 arts and sciences. Besides, in these days when 
 steam is so rapidly approximating and assimilating 
 the different parts of the Earth to each other, when 
 railroads are opened to the Red Sea, and steamers 
 paddle by the Garden of Eden, it is difficult to say 
 what nation will long retain a peculiar and appro- 
 priate civilization of its own. That the Czar opened 
 the door to Europe and the ocean, that he erected 
 a granite portal, a triumphal arch upon his western 
 frontier, is to us his greatest merit. If Russia is to 
 be civilized, it must be through the influence of the 
 West ; if Russia is to be free, the hymn of liberty 
 will never be wafted to her ears from the silent 
 deserts of Asia or the sepulchral stillness of China. 
 The Emperor did right to descend from his Sclavonic 
 throne, and to go abroad to light the torch of 
 civilization in more favoured lands. 
 
 But while we admire the concentration of purpose 
 which sustained him throughout his labours, we 
 cannot help deploring the great and fundamental 
 mistake which made them all comparatively worth- 
 less. A despot by birth, education, and tempera- 
 ment, he had never the most glimmering notion of
 
 122 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 the existence of a people. In Russia, then as at 
 this day, there was not even the fiction of a people. 
 Peter had a correct idea of the proper sources of 
 civilization ; he knew where and how to collect the 
 seeds, but he forgot that there was nobody to 
 civilize. A people may be humanized, cultivated, 
 brought to any degree of perfection in arts, and 
 arms, and sciences ; but he undertook to civilize a 
 state in which there was but one man, and that 
 man himself. The root must grow before the 
 branches and the foliage. Of this the autocrat had 
 no idea. He had already annihilated the only class 
 which was not composed of slaves. With one stroke 
 of his sceptre he had demolished the feudal nobility, 
 or what corresponded in a degree to the feudal 
 nobility of Europe, and had made all social rank 
 throughout his empire to depend upon service to 
 himself. What was accomplished at a later day in 
 Western Europe, in the midst of long convulsions 
 and struggles, by the upheaving of the democracy, 
 was effected by the autocrat at a blow. This was 
 a fatal error. There were slaves enough before. 
 It was unnecessary to degrade the nobles. But the 
 more closely we analyze Peter's character, the more 
 cogently we are compelled to conclude that his 
 actuating motive was rather his own fame than the 
 good of his country. A great peculiarity of his
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 123 
 
 ambition was, that though possessed of eminent 
 military talents and highly successful in his cam- 
 paigns, he seems to have cared but little for the 
 certaminis gaudia; to have taken but small delight 
 in battles and victories for themselves; to have 
 cared little for conquest, beyond what he required 
 for his settled purpose. Conquering, he never 
 aspires to be a conqueror ; victorious over the 
 greatest general of the age, he is ready to sheathe 
 his sword as soon as the object of the contest is 
 attained. His ambition was to be a founder, and 
 he never, in victory or defeat, was once turned aside 
 from his purpose. He was determined to advance 
 his empire to the ocean, to create a new capital, and 
 to implant there and throughout his empire the 
 elements of European civilization. If his ambition 
 had flown a little higher, had he determined to 
 regenerate his people, the real civilization of his 
 empire would have followed sooner than it is now 
 likely to do. Of this he probably never dreamed. 
 He was a despot throughout. He might have found 
 other matters in England worthy of his attention, 
 other institutions as intimately connected with 
 civilization as the English naval architecture ; but 
 he appears to have been completely indifferent to 
 the great spectacle presented to an autocrat by a 
 constitutional kingdom. " Are these all lawyers ? "
 
 124 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 said he one day, when visiting the courts at West- 
 minster. "What can be the use of so many lawyers? 
 I have but two in my empire, and I mean to hang 
 one of them as soon as I get back." He certainly 
 might as well have hanged them both : a country 
 without law has very little need of lawyers. 
 
 It was because his country was inhabited by 
 slaves, and not by a people, that it was necessary, 
 in every branch of his great undertaking, to go into 
 such infinitesimal details. Our admiration of the 
 man's power is, to be sure, increased by a contem- 
 plation of the extraordinary versatility of his genius, 
 its wide grasp, and its minute perception ; but we 
 regret to see so much elephantine labour thrown 
 away. As he felt himself to be the only man in 
 the empire, so in his power of labour he rises to a 
 demi-god, a Hercules. He felt that he must do 
 everything himself, and he did everything. He fills 
 every military post, from drummer to general, from 
 cabin-boy to admiral ; with his own hand he builds 
 ships of the line, and navigates them himself in 
 storm and in battle ; he superintends every manu- 
 factory, every academy, every hospital, every prison ; 
 with his own hand he pulls teeth and draws up 
 commercial treaties ; wins all his battles with his 
 own sword at the head of his army, and sings in 
 the choir as chief bishop and head of his Church ;
 
 PETER THE GREAT. 125 
 
 models all his forts, sounds all his harbours, draws 
 maps of his own dominions, all with his own hand ; 
 regulates the treasury of his empire and the account- 
 books of his shopkeepers, teaches his subjects how 
 to behave themselves in assemblies, prescribes the 
 length of their coat-skirts, and dictates their religious 
 creed. If, instead of contenting himself with 
 slaves who only aped civilization, he had striven to 
 create a people capable and worthy of culture, he 
 might have spared himself all these minute details ; 
 he would have produced less striking, instantaneous 
 effects, but his work would have been more durable 
 and his fame more elevated. His was one of the 
 monarch minds that coin their age, and stamp it 
 with their image and superscription ; but his glory 
 would have been greater if he had thought less of 
 himself and more of the real interests of his country. 
 If he had attempted to convert his subjects from 
 cattle into men, he need not have been so constantly 
 haunted by the phantom of returning barbarism, 
 destroying after his death all the labour of his life- 
 time, and which he could exorcise only by shedding 
 the blood of his son. Viewed from this position, 
 his colossal grandeur dwindles. It seems to us that 
 he might have been so much more; that his passible 
 seem to dwarf his actual achievements. He might 
 have been the creator and the lawgiver of a people.
 
 126 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 He was, -after all, only a tyrant and a city-builder. 
 Even now his successors avert their eyes from the 
 West. The city of his love is already in danger 
 from more potent elements than water. New and 
 dangerous ideas fly through that magnificent Western 
 gateway. When the portal is closed, the keys 
 thrown into the Baltic, and the discarded Moscow 
 again embraced, how much fruit will be left from 
 the foreign seeds transplanted ? When the Byzan- 
 tine Empire is restored, perhaps we shall see their 
 ripened development ; the Russians of the lower 
 empire will be a match for the Greeks who preceded 
 them. 
 
 Still, we repeat, it is difficult to judge him justly. 
 He seems to have felt a certain mission confided to 
 him by a superior power. His object he accom- 
 plished without wavering, without precipitation, 
 without delay. We look up to him as to a giant, 
 as we see him striding over every adversary, over 
 every obstacle in his path. He seems in advance 
 of his country, of his age, of himself. In his 
 exterior he is the great prince, conqueror, reformer ; 
 in his interior, the Muscovite, the barbarian. He was 
 conscious of it himself. " I wish to reform my 
 empire," he exclaimed upon one occasion, " and I 
 cannot reform myself." In early life, his pleasures 
 were of the grossest character ; he was a hard
 
 128 PETER THE GREAT. 
 
 drinker, and was quarrelsome in his cups. He 
 kicked and cuffed his ministers, on one occasion was 
 near taking the life of Lefort in a paroxysm of 
 drunken anger, and was habitually caning Prince 
 Menzikoff. But, after all, he did reform himself; 
 and in the later years of his life his habits were 
 abstemious and simple, and his days and nights 
 were passed in labours for his country and his 
 fame. 
 
 Once more we repeat, it is difficult to judge him 
 justly. Perhaps it would have been impossible to 
 have planted the germ of civil, or even social, liberty 
 in such a wilderness as Russia was at his accession. 
 It was something to lift her ever so little above the 
 waves of barbarism, where he found her " many 
 fathoms deep." He accomplished a great deal. He 
 made Russia a maritime country, gave her a navy 
 and a commercial capital, and quadrupled her revenue; 
 he destroyed the Strelitzes, he crushed the patriarch, 
 he abolished the monastic institutions of his empire. 
 If he had done nothing else, he would, for these 
 great achievements, deserve the everlasting gratitude 
 of his country. 
 
 THE END.
 
 24294
 
 A 000 678 499 5